by Anne Stuart
“All right. Let’s get your story straight,” he said, moving around to the other side of the narrow bed and dropping down, lightly. She jerked, but she had enough sense not to leave the lumpy mattress.
“I don’t need to get my story straight,” she said irritably. “It’s the truth. My name is Caroline Forrest. I’m twenty-six years old, American, an old school friend of Caterina Mendino’s. My family’s dead, and I came to visit Caterina at the wrong time, that’s all. She asked me to keep her company during the latter part of her pregnancy, and I agreed. When her stepfather was killed we arranged to go to the Sisters of Benevolence, and we stayed there for the last two months. Caterina gave birth, she died soon after, but she asked me to make sure her baby was taken care of. She said Billy would be coming for them. But instead you showed up.”
“And the rest is history,” he said, stretching out on the bed and eyeing her. “Of course, there’s no way to check it. Caterina, and Billy, and almost everyone else who would know the truth are all dead. The good sisters have deserted San Pablo, and that just leaves you and me and the baby.”
“You’ll have to trust me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I trusted you. Enough to come with you.”
“But not enough to tell me the truth,” he said. “Okay, I’ll believe you.”
She was gullible enough to take him at his word. More proof that she wasn’t part of Caterina’s decadent crowd. She gave him a hesitant smile. A dangerous one. For both of them.
It would be simple enough to find out the truth. And more temptation than he felt like resisting at that particular moment. “That means we don’t need to worry,” he said in a deliberately low voice.
“Worry about what?”
“About whether you can do it or not.”
“Do what?”
There was no coquetry in the question. He almost hesitated, but he wasn’t in the mood for hesitation. He slid his fingers along the back of her neck, threading them through her short-cropped hair, bringing her close to him. She didn’t resist, but her eyes were wide and dark and frightened.
“Do what?” he echoed mockingly. And he told her, in precise, Anglo-Saxon words. In detail. Exactly what he wanted to do to her.
He was totally unprepared for her reaction. He expected coyness, or even enthusiastic participation. She moved so fast, jerking away from him, that another man might have let her go.
But Reilly was in fighting form, in the midst of a war-torn country with the enemy surrounding him, and two people dependent on him. His reflexes were automatic, hauling her back across the bed so that she lay across his body, trapped, panting, staring at him with terror and something else indefinable in her eyes.
“I didn’t say I was going to rape you,” he said irritably. Though he wasn’t sure why he should be so mad at himself. He’d set out to test her, to scare her. He’d succeeded in what he’d wanted, hadn’t he?
Except what he wanted was her mouth. Her panicked blue eyes closing as he kissed her. He wanted her small, perfect breasts against his bare chest, he wanted her strong, pale legs wrapped around his hips. He wanted her strong hands with their short, unmanicured nails digging into his shoulders. He wanted to make love to her.
“No,” she said. Her voice wavered just slightly, her only sign of fear.
“Who are you saving it for, princess? It’s a long night, and who knows where we’ll be tomorrow? We’re sharing a bed, we might as well share the rest of it, as well.”
“No,” she said. She was still half lying across his lap, his unmistakable erection.
He slid his hand behind her neck, pulling her closer. She didn’t resist, and there was resignation in her eyes. Resignation, and anticipation.
He kissed her then. Her mouth opened beneath his, willingly enough, though she jerked in surprise when he pushed his tongue past her lips. He held her still, his large hand cupping her neck, and she quieted after a moment. Letting him kiss her. Making no effort to fight him. No effort to kiss him back.
He lifted his head and looked down at her. “Practicing passive resistance, Carlie?” he murmured. “I told you, I’m not going to rape you.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Just satisfying my curiosity.” He released her, and she moved to her side of the bed as quickly as she could. She didn’t try to run again. She already knew he could catch her.
He leaned back against the lumpy pillows, watching her. “I’ll make a deal with you, Carlie,” he said lazily. “Kiss me back, and then tell me no. And I’ll believe you.”
Her blue eyes were clouded, wary. “You think I won’t be able to resist you? Your conceit is really extraordinary, Reilly.”
“I didn’t say that. Just kiss me as if you mean it. And then tell me no. And I promise I won’t touch you again.”
She moved very fast, as if she didn’t dare stop to think about it, swiveling around and pressing her closed lips against his, hard. Slamming his lips against his teeth, jarring his head, banging his nose, before she pulled back, obviously shaken.
He sighed. “You can do better than that,” he said. “Kiss me as you’d kiss a lover. Or I’ll kiss you.”
As a threat it was hardly that devastating, but she reacted with unflattering fear. He waited, patiently enough, stretched out on the bed, and this time she considered it.
“All right,” she said, getting to her knees, the long skirt swirling around her on the bed. He wondered whether she was wearing anything underneath it. He didn’t think so, and the thought made him ache.
Unfortunately he’d made a bargain with her. And he had every intention of keeping his side of it, as long as she kept hers.
She tilted her head to one side, as if considering how to go about it. Leaning forward, she put her small, strong hands on his shoulders, and brought her face up close to his. He watched her through lowered lids, but there was no mistaking the indecision and panic in her eyes.
“What are you afraid of, Carlie?” he murmured, his voice low and hypnotic. “It’s just a kiss.”
She closed the distance between them and put her mouth on his. Lips still closed tight over her teeth, her hands gripping his shoulders, she kissed him like an early Christian martyr going to the stake.
She pulled back, but he reached up and covered her hands with his, holding her there. “You can do better than that,” he taunted her. “Use your tongue.”
He half expected her to argue, but instead she put her mouth against his again. He reached up and cupped her face, stroking the sides of her mouth with his thumbs, and her lips softened, opened against his. He lured her tongue forward, carefully, masterfully, rewarded with her tentative touch against his, the quiet moan of pleasure that came from the back of her throat. Her mouth was sheer delight, hypnotizing, innocent, like nothing he had ever tasted before, and the desire that was raging through his body rose to new heights as he deepened the kiss. He teased her, taught her, and she responded with growing delight, moving closer, her breasts within reach, her hands clutching his shoulders now, her eyes tightly closed, her mouth open, seeking, seeking….
In the distance there was the sound of gunfire. She tore herself away from him, scrambling back across the bed, but this time he let her go.
She looked at him as if he were the devil incarnate. He simply leaned back and managed a cool, deceptive smile. She had to know what was going through his body, but he wasn’t about to belabor it. “You were just beginning to get the hang of it, Carlie. It’s hard to believe you were part of Caterina’s crowd of high-living jet-setters.”
“I told you, I don’t like kissing,” she said.
“You could have fooled me. You seemed to be developing a definite affinity for it.” He stretched back and closed his eyes, waiting.
It didn’t take long. “Is that it?” she demanded, sounding uncharacteristically exasperated.
He opened one eye. “Is that what? I presumed the answer was still no. If you changed your mind…”
“The answer is still no.”
He smiled sweetly. “Then good night.”
She stared at him, baffled. It was something of a consolation. He would have found a great deal of satisfaction burying himself in her small, gorgeous body, but without her cooperation he’d have to settle for second best. Driving her crazy.
She sank down beside him, turning her back in a furious huff. Unfortunately the nature of the bed didn’t allow for temperamental snits. She slid up against him on the concave mattress.
She immediately tried to scramble away, clinging to the side of the bed. “You aren’t going to have a very comfortable night like that,” he observed, sitting up and watching her.
“I don’t anticipate having a comfortable night as long as you’re around,” she snapped.
“You’re forgetting, I’m the one who’s keeping you alive,” he said lazily, reaching forward and turning down the oil lamp until the room was a dark cocoon. “If I hadn’t gotten back, you’d be in Dutchy’s bed, whether you liked it or not. And he probably has fleas.”
Silence. “Thank you for saving me,” she muttered. Belated. Grudging.
“My pleasure,” he replied, glad the inky darkness hid his grin.
She wasn’t falling asleep. The bed practically vibrated with her tension, and he wondered whether she was going to be fool enough to try to sneak off when she thought he was asleep. He deliberately relaxed his body, changed his breathing, to see whether she’d go for the bait.
“Reilly?” she whispered after a long moment.
He said nothing, waiting to see whether she’d slide off the bed and try to make it to the door.
But apparently escape wasn’t on her mind, not at that point. “Reilly,” she whispered again. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Keep my hands off you.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” he drawled. “And the answer hasn’t changed. I’ll take you where you want to go. To the States, if you want, or the closest safe airport outside of San Pablo. I’m taking the baby to his grandparents, but I’ll make sure you’re safe, as well.”
“Even though I lied to you?”
“Even though you lied to me.”
“And what do you want in return?” She sounded her usual distrustful self, and he allowed himself a weary sigh.
“I thought I made that clear. Nothing that you aren’t willing to give. Now go to sleep, Carlie.”
“But—”
“Go to sleep, or I’ll give you another lesson in kissing. And I might even manage to change your mind.”
She didn’t make another sound. The tension in her body gradually began to lessen, and in less than ten minutes she was sound asleep, her small, sweet butt pressed up against him.
He only wished he could find a similar oblivion.
Chapter Ten
Her dreams were shameful. Lascivious, shocking things, the likes of which hadn’t bothered her for years. She’d worked so hard at banishing dreams from her life. The terrifying nightmares that brought back full force the bloody day when her parents had died. The lustful dreams that left her feeling hot and trembly. Even the peaceful dreams, where God seemed to be speaking to her, had been blocked from her life. She would wake up once they started, jarred into consciousness and safety.
But she must have been too tired to fight it. The big, strong body stretched out beside hers, touching hers, worked its own insidious effect on her, invading her defenses, her longings, her dreams.
Her skin was hot. Prickling with awareness. There was a strange gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach, and her mouth ached. In her dreams she knew she’d been wrong. She’d kissed a man. She’d taken pleasure in it, she who’d eschewed men and this world. And she wanted him to kiss her again.
Concrete images faded, to be replaced by shifting patterns, sensations. Heat and dampness, flesh and muscle, bone and sinew, taste and desire. She was running then, down a long hillside, chasing something that she couldn’t quite see. And he was behind her, waiting for her. She had only to stop, to hold out her hand, and he’d pull her back, away from the pit filled with noisy, cawing blackbirds, their wings flapping, their white veils fluttering in the jungle breeze….
Her eyes flew open in sudden awareness. She was lying pressed up against Reilly’s body, the thick darkness all around them, with only the soft glow of moonlight sending a faint light in the room. Her arms were around him, tight, and it was more than clear that she’d crawled over to his side, crept up to him while she slept, looking for comfort, looking for something she was too big a coward to define.
His eyes were open, still, in the moonlight, but he made no move to touch her. She found she was clinging to him, and he let her. Beneath her hands, beneath the thin cotton T-shirt he wore, she could feel the beat of his heart. Steady, slightly fast.
“You were dreaming,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Nightmares. About guns and death.”
“I do sometimes,” she said, too weary, too vulnerable to protect herself by lying. She was too close, and the heat and strength of him were irresistible. She knew she should apologize, move away. She knew she couldn’t.
“What happened?”
Another time she would have been more wary. She would have remembered the story she’d been telling him, about the privileged life of French finishing schools. But she was still half-asleep, still shaken from the vivid dream, and she wanted to tell him what she’d never told another living being.
“They killed them,” she whispered, her head down. She could feel the wetness of tears on her cheeks, and she pressed her face against the soft T-shirt, the hard, warm skin beneath, letting the soft cotton soak up the dampness.
He was holding her, loosely, comfortingly, one hand smoothing back her short hair. “Who did, Carlie?”
She tried to resist. “I don’t want to…”
“Who did?”
She couldn’t fight him, and herself, and her need to tell him. “The soldiers,” she said, her voice barely discernible. But she knew he heard every word. “They came to Puente del Norte and they killed them all. My parents. The people in the village. Even the children.”
“Why didn’t they kill you, Carlie?” His voice was a soothing rumble beneath her tear-streaked face, and the large, rough hand kept stroking, stroking.
“They couldn’t find me. I was hiding, behind a clump of trees. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even hide my head. I just had to stay there, and watch, and…and…listen….”
His arms tightened around her then. For a brief moment she fought it, but he simply held her, his voice that same comforting rumble. “There’s no one to hear you, baby,” he murmured. “No one to see you. No one to know if you cry.”
“I’d know,” she said.
His hand slid beneath her hair, tilting her face toward his. “You already know.”
He took her breath away. She wouldn’t have expected him to have an idea of her torment, and yet he’d honed in on it immediately. And there was no way she could deny the truth of his words.
“I…” she began, one more token protest. But her voice failed her, and she began to cry. Noisily. Wetly. Burying her face against him once more, howling out her misery and rage, her loneliness and pain. She cried until her stomach ached with the force of her sobs, cried until her eyes stung and her chest ached and her nose was running with no tissue in sight. And all the while he held her.
He was an astonishing man. When her storm of tears began to fade, a bandanna appeared in front of her. She pulled away from him with no more than a quavery sigh, wiped her face, blew her nose and looked at him defiantly.
His T-shirt was damp from her tears. His face was hidden in the shadows, but she imagined she could see the gleam in his eyes, the faint grimness to his mouth.
“Reilly,” she said, hardly recognizing her tear-roughened voice.
She wasn’t sure what she expected fr
om him. Questions, mockery, a pass. She wasn’t sure which she’d hate the most.
She’d underestimated him. He simply lay back on the bed, looking at her out of steady eyes. “Are you ready to sleep?” he asked. “We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
She wasn’t sure what she should do. She was embarrassed, self-conscious.
He solved the problem for her. He caught her arm and pulled her back down beside him. Up close, pressed against him. He draped an arm over her, a possessive, protective arm. And then he closed his eyes, obviously prepared to go to sleep.
She held still, barely daring to breathe, overwhelmingly conscious of the heat of his body, the warmth of his breath against her hair, the steady thump of his heartbeat. It thumped at deliberate counterpoint to hers, and she tried to match his breathing, but hers was lighter, faster, as if she’d been running. Punctuated by the remnants of her bout of tears.
Odd, that she could feel so comfortable and so uneasy at the same time. She wasn’t used to touching other people, and the feel of his body plastered against hers, the casual possession of his arm, made her feel threatened.
And yet, she felt safer than she ever had. This was a man who would protect her, no matter what. This was a man who’d watch out for her, for the baby, who’d do what he said he would do, and nothing or no one would stop him. He was stubborn as a mule, but she realized for the first time in almost ten years that she wasn’t frightened of the future.
And she wasn’t frightened of the past.
She should have told someone, anyone, the story of what she’d seen in that tiny mountaintop village. The horror had been so real that she’d wanted to shut it out, and she’d been afraid that by talking about it she’d somehow make it real, give it power over her.
Not realizing the power it had already claimed.
She could have told Reverend Mother Ignacia. She could have confessed to Father Ramon, not any real sin, but the miserable guilt of surviving when so many had died. But instead she’d buried it in her heart, where it ate its way into her soul like a worm, until it came pouring out, confessed to a man of violence not that far removed from the men who had committed those atrocities.
