by Mallory Rush
"Who did this?"
"I left instructions to have the bedroom made ready. I understand it's the custom, but I took the liberty of requesting a few personal touches. You like, or no?"
"It's... breathtaking. There must be a hundred candles lit, and is that music I hear?"
"Sound familiar? Seems like you said it evoked images of Arabian Nights and a brass lamp that belonged to Aladdin." He leaned into the door and the "click" sounded loudly, a hollow gong announcing their absolute seclusion.
Rachel tried to wet her lips but even her tongue was dry. "I thought you were going to put my fears to rest."
"I didn't say which ones." He settled the wine bottle on a bedside table then slid her slowly down his length. His hands strayed over her back, wisping and teasing her flushed skin to a prickling chill. She shivered and tried to move away, trusting herself less than him.
"Tell me your worst fear, the one making you pull away from me when I simply want to hold you. Is it me? Did I hurt you so deep tonight that you don't want me to touch you?"
"You did hurt me," she admitted. She searched his eyes and found remorse there, a need for acceptance in spite of what he'd done. She gave it with the slip of her arms about his waist.
"I want you to touch me," she said. "But even more I want to touch you. Inside, where you wouldn't let me in before. That's my worst fear, Rand. That you'll close me out and I'll die from the cold."
He hesitated, his lips pursed in indecision. Then he sighed heavily and embraced her, resting his cheek against the top of her head. She felt the tenseness of his muscles, the faint shake as he tried to force them to relax.
"The ice is part of me, Rachel. It probably always will be. But you've been thawing it out. I feel like I've been slipping and sliding through dark tunnels I can't see my way through anymore while I keep straining to reach a faraway light. You're holding it and I just pray to God I don't snuff it out before I can hit the finish line. Be patient with me. Be strong when I stumble like I did tonight. If you can do that, you'll be saving someone besides Sarah." He tilted her face up. "That someone is me."
Chapter 16
She reached out, daring to touch the flame that could both sear and warm.
"Rand," she whispered, touching his lips, desperately needing to touch them with her own. But the moment was ripe for a deeper discovery, one more urgent than the need to kiss. It was the need to know him. "Tonight I dipped into a tender spot for you and we both suffered for it. Maybe I'm being a glutton for punishment, but I don't think so. Tell me what you wouldn't before."
"It's not pretty," he warned. "You might not like the answers you get. I know I haven't."
"I'm not asking for anything pretty, or a dressed up truth. And as far as liking your answers go, they can't be half as bad as I feel not knowing."
His pause was a terrible timelessness as she waited... waited.
"All right." His nod was curt. "Stay here. I have something for you."
He kissed her quickly then disappeared into a connecting room she'd learned was his dressing chamber. On edge for whatever it was he might bring back, she knew the victory of courage, of having endured the hurtful and emerging with the prize of his willing exposure.
The hypnotic leap of the candle flames, their white tips dancing to the tune of the soft, billowing breeze through the open window, was a seductive companion in his absence. It wisped through her heightened senses, while she listened to the ripple of a sitar enhancing the scent of spice and...
Bay. She turned.
No robe. His chest was bare. Loose black silk pants rode low on his waist revealing the indentation of his navel. The garb was befitting a dark, powerful genie but he looked to her more sleek and dangerous.
A savage in silk.
Her legs took on the substance of no substance. She tried to swallow and almost choked on the immediate surge of unadulterated desire.
"I have two things for you. Give me your hand." Rand folded her fingers over a vial, keeping one arm behind him as he did. Her palm touched glass. The shifting weight of liquid. Liquid in the glass; liquid between her thighs.
"What is this?"
"Your freedom of choice."
Rachel held the vial to the candlelight and saw it was the color of burgundy.
"This looks like blood."
"When the cook wasn't looking I drained it from an uncooked lamb she'd stored in the refrigerator. It's a little thin but should serve the purpose."
She guessed the purpose. She also realized what it signified coming from Rand: He more than cared. This show of respect for her rights induced her to trust him implicitly.
"You're offering to let me keep my virginity. When you have every legal right to take it here, and you want to, you're not." Rachel rolled the vial between her palms like the talisman it was. "The blood of a lamb."
"A sacrifice on my part, believe me." He glanced down at the front of his silk trousers. Rachel followed his gaze and inhaled sharply. She did indeed believe him.
"A stained sheet is expected by the slavers tomorrow," he explained. "It's the custom for the slave to show proof of her virginity, if she is so sold to her master. A great store is put on that, especially since an owner can demand the return of his money if he has reason to think he's been sold used property."
Forcing her attention back to his face, she could feel her own grow warm. With pleasure. With an answering arousal. And with a little embarrassment that he'd caught her staring at his frontside with undisguised interest.
"You're a man of many colors, Rand Slick. Every color but black and white."
His face darkened a shade and he said, "Put the vial aside. I'm going to give you a piece of my past. Just remember what I told you. When the ice melts I tend to slip."
"I'll catch you," was her soft vow as she laid the blood beside the wine.
"Just so I don't crush you when you do." He took a deep breath and slowly brought his arm from behind his back. He extended a delicate doll and she took it. As she did, she felt the quick retreat of his hand as he ridded himself of the cloth body and baby features painted onto a porcelain face.
She studied it, unable to imagine why anything so sweet and comforting to hold would affect him as if he thought it vile. He turned and passed his finger through the lapping flame of a bedside candle. Several times he repeated the motion as if he'd rather court a burn than face another pain.
"I bought that for you today," he said in a tight voice. "I almost didn't."
"I'm glad you did. I'll treasure it as much as the doll I have at home. My dad gave it to me. Maybe that tells you how much this means to me." She closed the small distance and tried to see his eyes. Flat. Turbulent. Resentful. Tender emotion. They merged together while his fingertip descended.
She gripped his hand and forced it away from the dancing heat. He shook off her hold and reached for the wine bottle.
"I bought one for Sarah too. Santa gave her one a long time ago but I doubt she's still got hers." He laughed, a bitter sound that jarred her with its harshness. Rand took a long swig then swiped his forearm over his mouth before offering Rachel the bottle.
She took it and drank as a comrade might while she clung to the doll as if for protection from the beast she knew he could be and feared might emerge with a vengeance. Courage, she told herself, then acted on it.
"Tell me about Sarah's doll."
"Not much to tell. Just that that's all I left her with when she needed a brother." He turned on her, his eyes glittering with fury. At himself. At her for making him relive this. Rachel forced herself not to shrink back.
"Did you run away?"
"Oh yeah. I ran. I was so damn good at it I can't seem to stop."
"Why did you run?"
The sound he made was close to a snarl. She drank some more, needing some borrowed courage. He jerked the bottle from her hand and helped himself.
"It's like this, Rachel. See, we had a home. Not a rich one. Fact is, we were probably on the poor sid
e from most folks' standards, but me and Sarah never knew to care 'cause we had plenty when it came to what counted. Then our old man croaked. Penniless. No insurance, so might as well forget a will. You got any idea what happens to kids without parents? Kids that got no money so white trash relatives don't wanna take 'em in since they're nothin' but extra mouths to feed."
She felt as though he'd struck out at her with each hateful word. Words that he spoke in a dialect as foreign to his usual speech as the language of this country. But it was the picture that he'd painted with broad slashing strokes of black that stunned her into silence. She saw the tight swallow he made, the watery shimmer in his eyes that seemed closer to acid rain than tears.
"Tell me." She wanted to shed the tears that he refused himself, but didn't, knowing he would refuse them from her as well. "Tell me what happens to kids that are left like that."
"They get split up, that's what. One gets sent to a stranger's home the other gets railroaded to an orphanage. Unless they tuck their sister nighty-night with her doll, climb through a window, jump a train, and never keep their promise—" He choked on the last word.
"Oh, Rand. I'm so sorry." She made to lay her palm against his cheek and he slapped her hand away.
"Keep your pity to yourself," he snapped. "I've had enough of it for one night."
"Not pity, Rand. Caring." Love.
"Yeah?" He snatched the doll from her grasp and flung it to the bed. "Then why don't you kiss it and make it better?"
He raised the bottle to his mouth then slammed it onto the table. She was staring at him, loving him, shaking with fear of what he might do next.
He jerked her against him. He crushed her open mouth with his lips. Rubbing them hard, as if to punish her for his exposure. She whimpered. And then, she embraced him.
Stroking his back, she tried to soothe away something she couldn't make right while he thrust against her belly as though he could find release that way and flush out all that was ugly inside him.
His thrusts gave way to a gentle bump and grind, and then he was moaning, opening his mouth and imparting the wine that he hadn't swallowed so that it swirled warm and rich over her tongue, trickling sweetly down her throat.
"Rachel," he groaned. "Rachel. You're killing me. You're tearing down what it's taken me a lifetime to build."
"Build again. Build with me." Her eyes beseeched him; her pubic crown she thrust forward to topple his last defense.
"I want to. God, I do, but I'm empty. Used up. Right now, I've got nothing left to give. You deserve more."
"I'll make up for it. I can give enough for us both."
"That's not my idea of a relationship." He fumbled for the vial and raised it between them. "This is." He uncapped it with his thumb and set her away.
Rachel watched as he drizzled the blood onto the pristine sheet and then strode to the window. He hurled the vial down to the street beneath then braced his hands against the window sill as the tinkling shatter of glass sounded below. His head hung forward as he took deep breaths of air.
She came to him, wrapped her arms about his bare waist and pressed her cheek to his back.
"You amaze me, Rand. For having some missing pieces, you make up for them in the most unexpected ways."
"Do I? I'm selfish, Rachel. What I just did was selfish because I'm hoping it makes you want to give even more than what you already have. Manipulative of me, don't you think?"
"Maybe. But this time, I rather like it."
She pressed a kiss to one vertebra notch, and then another. The sound of his ragged sigh was accompanied by the feel of his grasp at her wrist. Expecting him to disengage her arms, she was taken aback when he flattened her palm against bunched muscle and male chest hair. Hair which gave way to a thinning as he led her hand down... down, until he slipped it just beneath the drawstring of his pants and let go.
"I'd like you to manipulate me for a change. Whether you do or not, is up to you. But I am asking you to touch me. I need that much from you, if you can give it."
What she felt was trepidation, excitement, and a need that mirrored his. She slowly inched her way down, her heart pounding against her ribs to drum against his back. His abdomen was flat, taut, and one or both of them were quivering as she reached to grasp him.
Air sluiced through her lips. "My God," she whispered. "Rand." He was sleek, his flesh so warm it was hot. But what she hadn't expected was the pulse of his heartbeat filling her palm, this part of him assuming a life of its own.
"Stroke me?"
"I—" She began to pant in time to the movements she made by instinct. "Am I doing this right?"
"The mechanics don't matter, angel. The truth is, I've never been touched by a woman this way before. What you're doing is better than right. So right, it's a little scary."
He moved his hips, guiding her uneven strokes into a smooth, perfect rhythm.
"It could be more right," she whispered as she kissed his back, tracing his spine, so curved and deliciously salty, with her tongue.
"I can't make you any promises."
"Then don't."
"But you want them."
"I want you."
"Then take the only thing I've got to give you tonight." The evenness of his speech shifted with his groan as he cupped her hand over the plump end of his flesh. And then his fingers were interlocked with hers and he was pulling her hand away.
"No," she protested. "I want more."
"That's what I'm giving you, angel." He kissed the hand that had stroked him then wrapped it about his neck. His embrace was gentle, desperate, and so very encompassing. They held each other tightly for how long she didn't know. But then he lifted her chin and pressed a deep kiss to her mouth.
"Thank you, Rachel. For everything. Hopefully I can make it up to you someday."
He released her and started for the door.
"You're leaving?" How could he leave after this? I'm so good at running, I can't seem to stop. His confession came back to her with a clarity she didn't want to acknowledge. She wanted to tear at it, to rip it to shreds and burn it for the waste that it was.
"As the Master, Rachel, I can sleep wherever I choose. And until I can give something back, I choose not to sleep with you."
"Did it occur to you that just maybe I'd be satisfied with a warm body for the night?"
"Don't devalue yourself like that. Hold out for something more substantial." He softened the gentle rebuke with a gaze that held both kindness and heat. "Sweet dreams, angel. With luck, maybe I'll have some for a change too."
When he'd denied her before, she'd felt angry, rejected. But this denial was even worse. She had touched him. Reached inside and grasped his whole in far more ways than the physical. It was this whole that made her heart contract now and her unfilled body to do the same.
She could beg him. She could possibly seduce him with her minimal skills.
She could let him go and wait for him to come back. A different man, perhaps. A homogenous blend of each man that held her more captive than any exchange of money and Zebedique paper ever could.
As his feet ate a path through Persian rugs and marble floor, she watched the departure of two very different people sharing the same body. Two men, not one...
It was a flash, one of those stark insights that come out of nowhere but emerge clear as a conspiratorial whisper.
His hand was on the brass door latch when she stopped him with a single word.
"Joshua," she called.
He paused while her recognition echoed in his head. Joshua, Joshua, Joshua...
How many years had passed since anyone had called him that? Sarah had been the last. And here he stood hearing the past roar in his ears as loud as a freight train while he stood and watched it fly by on its tracks.
Joshua waved from a boxcar, a memory resurfaced and demanding his due. But he wasn't Rand. They were both tied up in him, struggling to reach a compromise.
"Joshua's at an impasse, Rachel. As soon as I can manag
e it, I'll introduce you. Something tells me the two of you would have a lot in common."
He left then. Went straight to his office and a bottle of bourbon. It kept him company, but small company in that. It wasn't Sarah. And it sure as hell wasn't Rachel. Rachel who had recognized his dual identity, who continued to summon the remnants of Joshua's spirit.
The thick rib of glass was infinitely more satisfying and more true to his real nature than a crystal glass. Tonguing the bottle's mouth, he pretended it was Rachel's virginal lips; the warm liquid inside the nectar of her arousal, the boozy, nirvana sensations those that her strokes had evoked.
They hadn't made love and yet it had been the most sexual experience of his life. Maybe because she'd given and asked for nothing back. There was a word for that, wasn't there? Selflessness. Love?
Rand considered the word, or rather the actions that spoke it. He thought she loved him, selfish bastard that he was. But now he had cause to wonder if maybe even selfish bastards could fall in love too.
Messages flashed on the computer's screen. Probably important, but for once he didn't give a tinker's damn.
He wasn't drunk yet but his mind was racing so fast he had the head spins. Love. Could it be that he was in... was it possible that his refusal to accept her offer meant that...
Rand got up and rummaged through his desk. Putting pen to paper he decided that getting sauced and staying put sure beat the hell out of shutting windows and running.
Chapter 17
A light tap sounded at the bedroom door. Rachel peeked over the top cover, wondering if it was Rand. Her heart accelerated. She scrubbed at her cheeks and wiped at her puffy eyes, hoping her crying jag wasn't obvious. The baby doll that she'd held on to in the night lay on the pillow where his head had belonged. She quickly and carefully shoved it underneath the bed.
"Come in," she said shakily.
"Good morning, mistress. The Master requested that I bring you breakfast. He said..." Jayna averted her gaze as she rolled a table next to the bed.
