Angelic, yet invested with so much passion that the sight locked the breath in his laboring chest.
Then she opened her eyes, and desire blazed in the hazel. With her gaze locked with his, she moved—deliberately—to draw him to her. Inviting him into her body, into her softness, into her warmth.
As she’d said, into her embrace.
For a fleeting second, he hung there and simply drank in the sight. Caught in wonder and trapped by hunger and the searing realization that they stood on the cusp of a forever he’d only recently glimpsed. He was breathing as hard, as desperately as she. The hot honey of her welcome, of her need, coated the engorged head of his erection, and he wanted nothing more than to simply sink home, yet it seemed he had to ask, “Are you truly sure?” He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and managed to grind out, “Please say yes.”
“Yes. I want you—now.”
That was all he needed to hear—exactly what he needed to hear. With every rein he possessed gripped tightly in a mental fist, he kept his eyes closed and eased slowly—so slowly he thought he would go mad—into her tight channel.
Scalding velvet softness engulfed him. He pressed further—and felt the tearing rupture of her maidenhead, heard the quick intake of her pained breath.
He froze and held still, waiting, waiting...then he felt her ease beneath him, sensed the first faint stirrings of resurgent desire, and let the reins slide. Just a little.
Just enough to push home, then withdraw and ease into her slick heat once more.
Five strokes, and she was riding with him.
Ten, and she was driving him on, the cadence of her sobbing breaths a rapid tempo whipping him urgently on.
Kate gripped the bulging, flexing muscles of his arms, sank her fingertips in and clutched tight, desperately using the contact to anchor her as passion, and he, whirled her on. Into and through a landscape painted by passion and shaped by desire, one she’d never imagined could be, where every rasp of his hair-dusted limbs against her smooth skin sent a riot of sensations rampaging through her. But that was nothing to the until-then-unimaginable feeling of him filling her, stretching and impaling her. So large and steely, so hard—and so astonishingly and amazingly welcome.
Her body had yearned for this—for this closeness, this intimacy. Now she understood. Now she finally comprehended where passion and desire could lead—to another plane of connection, another level of fulfillment.
But as the heat and desperation built, as the flames that seemed to have enveloped them both flared ever higher, she knew she—and he—needed more. Something more. She caught her breath on an almost painful hitch, then surrendered to instinct, released his arms, and reached for him.
She wrapped her arms around as much of him as she could and pulled him down. To her.
He grunted and obliged. Without breaking the rhythm of their joining—something that now seemed vital and critical to them both—he came down on his elbows.
The change in sensation—the instant escalation—as his hard body rode directly over hers, the heavy muscles of his chest abrading her breasts, the hair at his groin more definitely riding over her mons, the altered angle as he thrust harder and deeper into her, sent her tension rocketing, ratcheting tighter and tighter.
Driven by a need she could never deny, she clamped her hands about his face and drew his lips to hers. Wantonly lured him back into an exchange even more fevered than before.
He plunged into her mouth and into her body. Again and again, to their own pounding beat.
She gasped through the kiss, clung, and poured all she was into urging him on.
Abruptly, a wave of intense sensation caught her up and swept her high.
High and still higher. Until she knew nothing beyond the coruscating delight of an intense pleasure that built and built.
Then sensation imploded in a starburst of brilliant, sharply exquisite feelings that streaked down every nerve, shot through every vein, then slowly sank, dissolving into her flesh.
Leaving her floating in a bliss-filled void.
One, two, three more deep thrusts and he joined her. She heard his low, guttural groan, felt the spill of his seed warm inside her.
Then he slumped, his weight pressing her into the bed.
And still she floated.
She reached up and stroked the hair at his nape, then gently touched his cheek.
Caleb felt that touch, that wordless blessing, to his bones.
It took effort, but he managed to lift his head enough to look into her face.
The madonna remained, although she now looked thoroughly ravished—and thoroughly sated.
Then her lashes rose, and he found himself looking into hazel eyes lit by a glow impossible to mistake. He let himself fall, let himself sink—let himself drown.
Then her lips, swollen and rosy, lightly curved. “This,” she murmured, “was everything I wanted. Everything I needed.” Her tone was one of blissful wonder.
Her lids lowered. Her fingers stroked his cheek one last time. He only just caught her final whisper.
“I needed to, and wanted to, share the wonder, the joy, the bliss...to experience the sheer power of this with you.”
He felt her slide into slumber, sated and replete.
Feeling the same lassitude creeping over him, he tried to do the gentlemanly thing and relieve her of his weight, but even though she slept, the instant he tried to move, she gripped him with her arms, with her legs—with her sheath.
He surrendered, slumped into her arms, and let sleep—and her—have him.
* * *
As it happened, through the night and into the morning, Kate had him several times.
They woke every few hours, but she took up the challenge and, on each occasion, succeeded in keeping him abed and largely horizontal.
She felt a ridiculous sense of achievement when, finally, they emerged from the medical hut in response to the call for the midday meal. Neither had got all that much sleep, but he was walking steadily, with his eyes alert and his wits about him.
As for herself, she felt like a new woman. As if overnight, through the heated hours, she’d matured—and perhaps she had.
She’d taken an irrevocable step. She’d put her faith in love and put her hand in his.
And from now until they died, she and he would face life together.
She didn’t need to ask to know his mind.
Together they would fight, first to survive, and then to thrive—to claim the future they wanted and, even more now than before, were determined to make their own.
CHAPTER 19
They faced their first hurdle later that afternoon.
After Kate and Caleb joined the other captives about the fire pit, the short meal break had fled in a flurry of inquiries as to Caleb’s recovery, interspersed with quips and a certain amount of ribbing. Quieter, teasing and approving comments from the women had had Kate battling blushes. Yet overall, she’d sensed a resurgence of hope, carried on a fresh—renewed—wave of camaraderie that now buoyed the company.
The men had stepped in and taken a desperate step, but their plan had worked, and everyone had great hopes that the result would stretch the mining into September.
After the break ended, Caleb changed into another shirt and called at the cleaning hut. He found the ladies gathered about their long table, pretending to work while they gossiped. Judging by the bright eyes that fixed on him and the light blush in Kate’s cheeks, he was fairly sure as to the subject of said gossip; after asking after Muldoon and Dubois and being assured neither had put in an appearance there, he beat a hasty retreat.
He paused to speak with the children. What with all the rock being cleared from the mine, they were busy sorting, but he sensed a certain suppressed smugness. When he crouched beside t
hem, raised his brows, and looked around encouragingly, one of the older girls whispered that they were hiding most of the rough diamonds in their stockpile and sending very few on to the pile still waiting to be cleaned outside the shed.
“Our pile’s nearly as big as the one in the mine now,” one of the boys proudly proclaimed.
“Excellent.” Caleb grinned. “Keep it up, but make sure none of the guards see.” He rose and saw Amy with a group of other children busily trudging back from the mine, lugging their baskets.
The little girl wore a cheery smile, and her red ribbon was tied firmly in her hair. On reaching the ore pile, she dropped her basket and hurried to him. She caught his hand in both of hers, squeezed, and stared solemnly into his face. “Are you really all right, Captain Caleb? Your head must still hurt.”
Caleb assured her that he was almost back to normal. As she was transparently none the worse for her ordeal, he grinned, freed his hand and tweaked her ribbon, then, laughing at her delighted squeal, he headed for the mine.
He strode into the dimness and found the men loitering and lounging in groups. Their tools were beside them, but no one was even pretending to work.
“The guards are too frightened to come in,” Quilley informed him. “Now the tunnel’s completely cleared, the children are just darting about, making a good show while we wait for his highness to come make his inspection.”
“His highness” was Dubois. Caleb had a vague memory of Dubois saying something about an inspection in the afternoon. With a nod, he walked on and turned into the second tunnel.
More men were propping up the walls there, relaxed and unconcerned; Caleb passed them with smiles and nods. Toward what was now the end of the tunnel, he saw Dixon, Hillsythe, Fanshawe, Hopkins, and Phillipe gathered in a group a short distance from the other men.
As he approached, Caleb scanned his fellow officers’ faces. He’d expected some degree of satisfaction, even a touch of jubilation, yet judging by their expressions, matters had somehow taken a turn for the worse.
Deciding it behooved him not to leap to conclusions, he joined the group. “What’s happened?”
The others glanced at each other, then they all looked at Dixon.
The engineer sighed. “We’d expected that clearing the upper level would take longer, but...” He gestured to the almost ridiculously neat stretch of tunnel.
“Once we got you out,” Hillsythe said, “the rest of the rubble turned out not to be as densely packed as we might have wished. We still have to re-excavate and rebrace the last third, but that won’t take more than a few days—and more pertinently, won’t interfere with the ongoing mining along the rest of this level.”
Looking down the tunnel, over and through the clutter of rubble clogging the section that was no longer roofed and braced to where the entrance to the lower level had been—and seeing a wall of densely packed large rocks—Caleb lightly shrugged. “At least the lower level is well and truly blocked. That was our primary objective. Anything else was to be a bonus.”
Dixon snorted. “Sadly, our bonus has turned out to be a new and potentially worse problem.” He waved at the remaining rock face the men were supposed to be mining. “Just look at it.”
Caleb obliged, but he wasn’t sure what to make of what he was seeing. The instant he’d walked into the tunnel, he’d known something had changed, but as the dimensions of even the tunnel floor had been altered—both by the collapse and by the consequent digging and clearing—he hadn’t yet reached the point of deciding if the changes had any practical implications.
He surveyed the long rock face; for his money, there appeared to be many more fractured diamonds embedded in the rock... Was that bad? He shifted his gaze to Dixon. “You’ll have to explain. I’m still not thinking all that clearly.”
Dixon drew in a breath, then laid one palm against the jagged rock. “The collapse sheared a section off this rock face. Along with the rubble, we’ve cleared dozens upon dozens of diamond-bearing rocks. And yes, we’ve hidden most, but still...” He paused, focusing on the rock face as if he could somehow see into and through it. Then his features hardened. “I think—I greatly fear—that we’re all too soon going to run through the pipe. The shearing thinned it, so effectively we’ve already removed more than half its depth. Soon—perhaps in as little as a week—we won’t have much of it left.” Dixon met Caleb’s eyes. “I know we’ve kept back stones to tide us through for a short time at least, but not only do I have reservations we’ll be able to string that out long enough, that tactic also relies on Dubois believing that we’re actually still mining.”
Caleb realized he’d spoken the truth regarding his mind not functioning all that well. Taking in Dixon’s words was hard enough; accepting the implications...he couldn’t seem to get his mind to believe.
He glanced at the others; at least he now understood their downcast, almost disillusioned demeanors.
Before he could think of what to say—of what tack to take, of whether there was any possible way forward—a warning relayed from the mine entrance had all the men moving. Hefting pickaxes and lifting shovels, they made a show of working.
“Damn.” Hillsythe met Caleb’s eyes. “We’d hoped that regardless of his statement last night, Dubois’s aversion would keep him out for another day or so.” He glanced at the rock face. “At least long enough for us to decide how to handle this.”
A stir at the entrance to the second tunnel proved to be caused by Dubois, Muldoon, and four heavily armed and sweating guards.
“Out!” Dubois gestured to all those mining.
The officers glanced at each other, then fell in at the rear of the column of men as they filed out.
But as they approached Dubois and Muldoon, Dubois waved them back. “Not you.” Strain was already apparent in the mercenary captain’s face, but it appeared he was determined to conquer—or at least ignore—his fear of being in the mine, let alone a mine that had recently partially collapsed.
Along with the other officers—the captives’ de facto leaders—Caleb stood back against the tunnel wall.
Once the men in the mining gangs had left, Muldoon walked into the tunnel, his footsteps echoing hollowly.
Dubois, they all noted, took up a stance barely inside the entrance. With his hands clasped behind his back, he stood and watched as Muldoon ventured down the tunnel.
This was the naval attaché’s first foray into the mine. Eyes wide, his expression fascinated, he eagerly looked here, there, everywhere. Taking in the corridor-like tunnel and the beams lining its roof, he said to no one in particular, “I must say, I’d always envisioned mining tunnels as far more cramped.”
Dubois looked at Dixon, and the engineer moved to Muldoon’s side.
“It’s because these are diamonds,” Dixon said, “and they can shatter if struck wrongly. So it’s imperative that the men mining have the space to swing their picks, not just with sufficient force but also with excellent aim.”
“Ah.” His gaze now on the rock face, Muldoon nodded. “I see.” He halted halfway down the tunnel and peered at the rock face.
Caleb shifted so he could see the man’s face; he caught the moment when Muldoon realized just what he was looking at.
“My God!” Muldoon’s tone turned reverent. “Are these...” He stretched out a hand and all but caressed a winking stone. Then he swallowed and looked at Dixon, then at Dubois. “These are the diamonds?”
Dubois nodded.
Dixon stated, “These are diamonds in the rough, as it were.”
Muldoon’s mouth had gone slack. He stepped back and swept his gaze along the rock face—the two-thirds of the pipe presently exposed. “But...there’s more than a king’s ransom—hell, there’s more than ten king’s ransoms here!”
Dixon hurried to explain, “The collapse sheared along the rock face and exposed
more of it. That’s why there are so many diamonds visible.”
“But...that’s excellent!” Eyes ablaze with blatant avarice, Muldoon swung to face Dubois. “Fate has clearly smiled upon us. As I understand it, there’s now no impediment to getting these stones out and off to Amsterdam, and our backers, with all speed.” He paused, then rather challengingly asked, “Is there?”
For an instant, Dubois didn’t react, then he stated, “I believe that is so. However, what about the lower level?”
Before Dixon could cut in with predictions and suggestions that would significantly reduce the number of men mining, Muldoon waved. “Forget the lower level. There’s enough here, I tell you. And we only have so much time.”
Muldoon’s last sentence sent a chill down Caleb’s spine and, he was quite sure, those of all the other men. Quickly, he said, as if reminding Dixon, but in reality for all to hear, “I thought you said we would need to shore up the far end properly or mining along the last third will risk another collapse.”
Dixon picked up the lifeline without a blink. “Yes, that’s right.” He turned to Dubois.
Who coldly remarked, “With all the fresh supplies and timber we’ve already brought in, you should encounter no difficulties and no delays in making sure this tunnel—all of it—is properly shored up again.” Dubois shifted his gaze to Muldoon. “So other than with that caveat, the mining can proceed apace.”
“Excellent!” Muldoon had returned to eyeing the diamonds glinting like stars trapped in the darker rock. “I must say,” he murmured, again reaching out to stroke a glimmering stone, “that seeing all this is a huge relief. As you know, our backers have been growing increasingly restive and ever more demanding. They’ve been making loud and still-louder noises about needing to see evidence and so be convinced that the risks they’re taking will be as amply rewarded as we’ve promised they will be.”
Muldoon smiled and stepped back, then looked at Dubois. “A steady stream of strongboxes filled with diamonds getting into Amsterdam will appease them and, more, will shut them up.” Muldoon’s expression shifted to reflect a cynical coldness worthy of Dubois himself. “There’s nothing like a solid return to convince businessmen like our backers to leave their investments in place.”
The Daredevil Snared Page 36
