Blake cut the car’s engine. “We’ll be able to talk here without interruptions,” he said.
Unreasoning panic gripped Cat. For an instant she was the child again, on her knees, and paralyzed by the sexual static in a powerful man’s eyes.
“All right,” she said, fumbling the car door open. She let herself out and without waiting for him, began to walk toward the lake. Loose rocks cut through the thin soles of her pumps, and a brisk breeze off the bay whipped tendrils of hair into her eyes. When she reached the dock, she walked clear to its end without stopping.
The moorage moaned and groaned under her feet, murmuring to her like ancient soothsayers of foolish beginnings and dark endings. She felt the warnings with her senses more than her mind, and gooseflesh shivered on her arms. The dock swayed, and she was just learning its rhythms as it began to roll against her movements.
He was coming. Cat fought to keep her balance as the moorage rocked violently. Emotions tangled up inside her, past and present inextricably snarled. For all these years she had avoided exploring her feelings for him beyond the anger. The anger was safe. Now she needed desperately to find another shield to throw up. What had he wanted? To talk? No, that was to be avoided at all costs. Talk about what? And then she remembered. Johnny.
The soothsayers whispered again, and then the dock went still and silent.
“Is something wrong?”
It was Blake, behind her. He was close, concerned. She could hear the weight of it in his voice.
Ten years ago she would have been grateful for any show of kindness from him, any hint of sensitivity. But not now. Kindness could wreck her now. She was too exposed, too needy. Remembering had reopened all her wounds.
“You’re cold,” he said. “Do you want my jacket?”
She shook her head.
“What is it then?”
At her silence he persisted. “Hey, it can’t be that bad.” His voice took on a huskiness that was almost gentle. “Is there some problem? Maybe I can help.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head again. Why is he doing this to me? she thought, her throat tightening. Why is he suddenly pretending to care—
She stiffened as his hand grazed her shoulder. If he touched her, she would scream. She would go crazy.
“Cat, you’re shaking. Tell me what’s wrong.”
A board creaked beneath her, and the sound was urgent, a child’s cry of bewilderment. You hurt me, she thought, that’s what’s wrong. Not my body. You never left a mark on me physically. But emotionally, you nearly destroyed me. You stripped away my pride and what was left of my dignity. How could you do that to a terrified young girl? How could you do that to someone as desperate and lost as I was?
He touched her arm and she flinched.
“Why did you do that to Johnny?” She whirled on him, her eyes damning him with accusations.
“Do? I questioned him. That’s my job.”
“You alienated him.”
“No, I made contact.”
His golden hair flashed in the sunlight, and a strange transfiguration took place in Cat’s mind. Haloed by the bay’s fiery brilliance, he looked preternatural, like a god, incapable of human failing, invulnerable to human suffering. The vision was there and gone in an instant, but she had seen it before—the same man, the same burst of sunlight—just days after her father’s death.
She shook off the image. Blake Wheeler wasn’t a god. He was mortal, and he carried the same burdens of the flesh that she did. “You accused him of having something against Skip Sinclair,” she said. “You implied that he was lying.”
The mooring rolled with some deep, unseen current. Cat stumbled back and moaned softly as he reached out and caught her hand. Or was it the dock that had moaned? The sudden heat, the strength of him, penetrated through to her delicate bones. He had too much power, this man, too much control over others, even in the sheltering warmth of his hand. She pulled free of him and felt a clutch of sensation in her stomach. “Why did you do it?”
The pupils in his eyes narrowed fractionally, then he looked beyond her to the water. “Johnny has a bad reputation,” he said at last. “The defense will go after him with everything they’ve got. They’ll destroy him if they can. I had to find out if he’s a reliable witness. If he cracks under cross-examination, he’s no good to me.”
All she truly comprehended were the last four words—no good to me. The implications appalled her. “Is winning the case all that matters to you? My God, don’t you care about anything? Don’t people matter at all?”
The anger and hurt in her voice lashed out at Blake like a whip. It crackled along his nerve endings. He remembered physical beatings from his father that had carried less censure. Her assault was aimed at his character rather than at his body, but it stung like hell nevertheless.
The need to defend himself was compelling. “I prosecute killers, rapists, thieves,” he told her. “I keep the streets clean for people like you.”
“You also prosecute people like me.”
Blake had no answer for that. He was guilty as charged. He had done what the law required in her case, but she seemed to be saying that he had sacrificed her in the process. He wanted to deny it, but he couldn’t. Maybe because it was true. Or maybe because something crazy was happening inside him. Something that had never happened before. He wasn’t breathing as far as he could tell. His heart wasn’t even beating. Beyond that, he couldn’t take his eyes off Cat D’Angelo.
Her face was flushed with anger, and she was aiming her chin at him like a weapon. But none of those signals registered because the message hidden in her eyes was completely paradoxical. It was a flash of pain that cut to the quick. It defined her. It obliterated all the contradictions and told him who she was—a soul-bandaged child. The soft glimmering of agony in her dark eyes made his chest squeeze like a fist.
Blake’s heart surged. He forgot what she was accusing him of, forgot everything but the signal she was telegraphing. For several seconds it evoked emotions that were completely alien to him: helplessness, confusion, and guilt. And then it made him want her more. Suddenly he understood his obsession with Cat D’Angelo. He had to make the pain in her eyes go away because he had put it there.
He knew now what she was telling him and what she had been trying to tell him all along. He had wounded her in his zeal for justice or glory or whatever it was he’d been after then. She’d been a casualty of the system, his casualty.
The insight brought him back. “I care . . . ” he said.
Cat shook her head wildly and turned away from him. Her need to deny him was as strong as his need had been to deny her accusations. He didn’t care. Blake Wheeler was genetically incapable of caring. She’d heard the unsteadiness in his voice. He sounded almost defeated, and that possibility confounded her. She wouldn’t have believed him capable of an admission of surrender. He wasn’t. She clung to that belief. He wasn’t.
“I’ll talk to Johnny,” he said. “If there’s been any damage, I’ll repair it.”
Cat pressed a hand to her throat and felt her pulse trip painfully beneath her fingers. Repair the damage? Did he know what he was doing? Did he know what that kind of a promise meant to her?
“Turn around, Cat,” he said. “Look at me.”
“Why . . . ?”
“Your eyes . . . the sadness.”
She froze when he touched her, froze at the outrageous suggestion in his words and the intimacy in his hands. “There is no sadness in my eyes,” she said. “Don’t do this to me.”
“What? What am I doing to you?”
He knew. He had to know that he was tearing down the only barrier she had left. He was making her forget that she hated him at a time when she needed desperately to preserve that excoriating emotion, to keep on hating him.
“Cat . . . ”
Her nerves were oversensitized, exposed. She could even feel the air on her skin. His voice was roughened with emotion and so irresistibly grainy, she imagin
ed it floating over her, riffling the fine hair on her arms. A quiver of sensation stirred inside her, low and alarming.
“You’re not doing anything to me—” She shook her head abruptly. “Not that, anyway.”
Blake watched a shudder pass through her body, and he had to fight the urge to take her in his arms. He was doing things to her. God, yes, he was doing things to her. Her body gave up the quick, sweet heat of a woman in conflict. Her voice had altered when she’d spoken, and the shake in her breathing had sent a live current of electricity through him. She wasn’t invulnerable. She was terrified of every touch, every word. Underneath all her stunning ferocity there were needs she wanted desperately to protect.
The realization made Blake gentle. It made him hard.
He caught his breath as the swelling in his groin sensitized him to every shimmer of movement, even her breathing. Her shoulders rose faintly, swiftly. And there was a slash of crimson mottling the creamy skin of her neck. She was so beautiful, so profoundly threatened, she made him ache.
Of all the impulses firing in Blake’s brain, the one that promised to override every other consideration was the drive for contact. Deep contact. He wanted to take her in his arms and burn away the sadness. It was a physical need beyond anything he’d experienced. Its force astonished him. Touch her, man, take her, his body raged. Lay her down on this swaying dock and fill her beautiful body with yours. Rock her until she comes apart, then put her back together, man, tenderly, tenderly.
The drive to be with her tested his years of self-denial. It tested his will. He had learned control at the knee of a self-made man, his empire-building father, and those lessons, however brutal, had been effective. Now they allowed him to pull back, to remember what was at stake.
She was explosive—a beautiful, desperate time bomb. If he handled her carelessly, she could annihilate them both. Defusing her anger would be as delicate a task as a bomb squad’s, but if he could do it—His mind tightened, sharpened. If he could do it, the tears would come and she would open herself to him, her heart, her body. God, he wanted that. He couldn’t remember wanting anything more.
Cat gripped her arms against a sudden gust of wind. She had no more awareness of Blake’s needs than a stalked animal knows that danger is imminent. She only knew that he wanted something. Men like him always wanted something.
“I have to go,” she said, her voice tight. “Let me go.”
“I’m not stopping you.”
She turned and her shoulder brushed his chest. The accidental contact was startling. She caught her breath and arched her neck automatically, thinking he was going to touch her, or take her into his arms. Anticipation rippled her nerves, and her imagination spun out a scenario of being swept up in his embrace, kissed and caressed until she couldn’t breathe.
But he didn’t touch her. Nor did he move out of her way.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Blake almost laughed. She wouldn’t believe it if he told her. He didn’t believe it! He wanted love, he wanted life, he wanted hard, sweet sex with her. What do you think of that, Ms. Time Bomb? What do you think of that?
“I want to talk about us,” he said.
“Us?”
Blake could have predicted the stab of panic in her eyes, but he couldn’t have predicted what was happening inside Cat. As she met his gaze, she felt herself dropping, a wind-rider caught in a powerful downdraft. The plummeting sensation in her stomach was sudden and sharp. The dock seemed to go out from under her feet, and as she imagined herself falling, she caught a glimpse of something in her mind that riveted her.
Surrender.
Even the glimpse of such naked emotion was terrifying to Cat. It entranced and enthralled her. It was the source of her panic. It was the wellspring of her deepest need. To be touched, to be loved. She shuddered in silence and raised her face to his.
By the time he did touch her, the shuddering was deep inside her. It was emotional and sexual and beautiful. No, she thought, this is impossible. This isn’t happening. Not with this man. Not with him . . .
He curved his hand to her throat and drew her to him.
“What do I do, Cat?” he asked. “How do I make the sadness go away?”
The question rocked her softly, reverberating in the echo chamber her senses had become. Not this man. Not him. He’s hurt you too much . . .
“Sweet, sad, Cat.” He caressed the underside of her chin with long, long strokes of his thumb. The sensations were soft and erotic and thrilling, and they accomplished exactly what they were supposed to, Cat realized, bringing her head up sharply. He wanted her to look up at him. He wanted her throat arched, her head tilted back.
No, Cat! He’s hurt you too much.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Not you . . . ”
“Yes, Cat, me,” he said. “It has to be me.”
He bent toward her, and his lips touched hers with a lightning stroke of tenderness. Cat swallowed the moan in her throat. In all her guilty dreams of kissing Blake Wheeler—and there had been many—she had never imagined it as tender. She had never imagined a sweetness so sharp that it would fill her throat and tear through her heart like a poignant memory. Was this how lovers kissed? Lovers who had hurt each other and now needed to be very, very cautious? Lovers whose wounds weren’t healed?
Age-old warnings stirred inside her. She should have resisted, she wanted to resist, but as his lips brushed over hers she felt yearnings flare up inside her—a wrenchingly sweet need to deepen the kiss, to be held and crushed in his arms. She had imagined him as self-absorbed, an egotistical lover who would take what he wanted and assume that being with him was enough for any woman. A night with Blake Wheeler. A night in heaven! She had imagined herself rejecting him, ordering him out of her bed and out of her life. She had imagined all of those things so many times . . . but never tenderness.
His mouth was warm. It was as vibrant as the water sparkling around them. She touched his arm, perhaps to push him away, and then his lips drifted over hers, and her touch became a caress. Her fingers shimmered over heat and muscle, and she felt a sudden, sharp need to be closer.
All of her attention was focused on the extraordinary thing that was happening to her. A kiss, she told herself, it was just a kiss. But he touched her with such rare tenderness. His fingers plucked at her nerve-strings as if she were a delicate musical instrument. His mouth transfused her with fire and drained her of energy at the same time. And when at last his arms came around her and brought her up against him, she felt a sweet burst of physical longing that saturated her senses.
She had dreamt of his body, too. And the feel of him now was almost more reality than she could stand. His thighs were steel, and his pelvic bones dug into her flesh. He was hard, righteously hard, and even the slightest shifts in pressure put her in touch with her own keening emptiness.
His tongue stroked her lips, and she opened them to him slowly, irresistibly. On some level she knew she was playing a sword dance with her own emotions, tempting fate, tempting heartbreak, but the sensations were so exquisite, she couldn’t stop herself. They seemed as inevitable and sensual as the deep currents swaying beneath them.
The first gliding touch of his tongue against hers electrified her. A gasp welled in her throat as he grazed her teeth and tingled sensitive surfaces. The penetration was deliciously languid and deep. By the time he lifted his mouth from hers, she was shocked and reeling from the taste of him.
The urge to push him away was instinctive.
“No, Cat,” he said softly, inexplicably, “it’s mine now. The sadness inside you is mine.”
Studying her face, searching her eyes for something, he smoothed her hair and murmured melting suggestions that she couldn’t consciously decipher. They tugged at her sweetly, hotly, pulling her insides to and fro, eliciting yearnings. Cat’s first awareness of them was a kind of vague astonishment. It was deep and thrilling, what was happening inside her, like eddying water, like the sucking and pul
ling of currents. She’d never known such oddly captivating sensations.
The wooden dock creaked and the bay swelled gently beneath them, tugging at the pilings. Cat sighed as the rhythms of the sea and the man worked their enchantment. His hands were telepathic. They sought out all her tender spots. His fingers moved in concert with the deep currents, stroking the sideswells of her breasts, arousing her nerves to rivulets of excitement.
“Wild,” he murmured as he cupped her breasts in his palms. “Wild, wild child.”
Cat’s stomach tightened at the words.
Dark water flashed brilliantly behind him. The moorings creaked plaintively. Not him, child, not this man . . .
He began to open the buttons of her blouse.
No, Cat! He’s hurt you too much.
Warm, urgent hands skimmed over her skin, and Cat felt the collision of opposing forces. With fascinated detachment she watched the first button of her blouse come free and realized that Blake Wheeler was about to take from her one of the few really precious things she had left to give—physical love. The thought catapulted her back to reality. It horrified her.
His fingers brushed the cleft of her breasts and the raw sensuality of it took her breath away.
“No!” She clutched her blouse together and stepped back from him.
“What is it?”
She shook her head, forcing out the words. “This is wrong.”
“Wrong? What do you mean?” He searched her features, his voice compelling. “No . . . this was supposed to happen. Neither one of us could have stopped it.”
“I’m stopping it. I’m stopping it now!” She pushed past him and strode toward the end of the dock.
Wild Child Page 7
