Golden Flames

by Kay Hooper

  “You have a filthy mouth, Cassie,” Falcon said pleasantly, his tone hiding the distaste he felt as he looked down at her and wondered why her ripe breasts and expert hand left him completely unmoved. He hadn’t had a woman in weeks, and the interludes with Victoria had left him achingly aware of the lack; why wasn’t he responding to this very attractive and willing woman now?

  She stood on tiptoe, her free arm wreathing around his neck, and her lips were hot and avid. “A skilled mouth, darling,” she reminded, fumbling with buttons, taking him into her warm hand eagerly.

  He was aware of her mouth and her fingers, and a detached part of his mind remembered a very enjoyable hour or so spent in this garden with her some time back. She was an accomplished lover, completely abandoned, and Falcon knew well that half the men at tonight’s party had sampled her generous charms. Born poor, she undoubtedly would have become a whore; born wealthy enough to do as she pleased, and with the “protection” of an older, wealthy husband—willfully blind to her activities—she was merely one of the ladies whose silks, satins, and fine public manners disguised the soul of a slut.

  “A skilled mouth, darling,” she repeated, her voice a panting, breathless sound now. “Let me—“She started to drop to her knees, uncaring of the damp ground and her silken gown.

  He felt a sudden revulsion, directed at himself as much as her. It was the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong woman. “Stop it, Cassie.” He held her shoulders hard, pushing her back and away from him, automatically straightening his clothing.

  “You want me,” she stated, her eyes glistening in the moonlight. “You went wild between my legs!” Her hands went to her full, naked breasts, and she held them toward him as offerings.

  “Once,” he said coolly, unmoved by the display and distantly bothered by that unusual reaction. He had never been a man to ignore a willing woman, particularly one as beautiful and skilled as Cassie. “Men are like that, you know. Show us a scented garden and a scented, willing woman, and even the best of us go a little wild.” He was surprised by his own words, puzzled by the self-contempt and distaste he felt. “But not again, Cassie. Go back into the ballroom and hunt fresh game.”

  From arrogant certainty she descended abruptly into whining need. “But I want you!” She released her swollen breasts and began pulling up her skirts hastily, revealing a total lack of undergarments and pale flesh with a dark-furred mound that gleamed in the moonlight. “I’m wet with wanting you. I can make you feel so good, I can—“

  “Cassie, for Christ’s sake!”

  She stood staring at him—her skirt held bunched around her waist, mortified tears filling her eyes—realizing in shock that he really didn’t want her. There had been disgust in his voice. He didn’t want her! He had taken her once in this very garden, as lusty as she was herself, giving her unbelievable pleasure—and now he didn’t want her.

  It was that blond bitch, that washed-out, whey-faced blond bitch with her cat’s eyes. “You’re panting after the wrong bitch, Falcon.” She laughed harshly, dropping her skirt, reckless in her indignation. “It’s all over the ballroom that she’s lost her heart to some riverboat gambler! She probably spread her legs for him too. She’s the kind who only does it for love—“Cassie broke off and stepped back abruptly, her eyes widening and the fine hairs on the nape of her neck stirring, shocked by an abrupt coldness in the air. It was menace, and it came off Falcon in icy waves.

  “Get out of my sight, Cassie, before I break your neck,” he said softly.

  Fearful, pulling the neckline of her gown up over naked, bouncing breasts, she ran.

  —

  He found her at the very bottom of the garden, leaning against a tree and absently hugging herself for warmth in the evening chill. Victoria looked at him, eyes huge with hard-won calm. He came to her, slowly. She could see him in the gleaming light from the decorative lanterns hung along the garden paths, his face shadowed, hard.

  “Victoria.”

  She felt a hot shiver, just as in the ballroom when she had sensed the threatening strength in him, the untamed part of him that was so alarming. She felt now as if something primitive growled at her in the darkness of a dangerous place, crouched, ready to spring for her throat….Her struggle to come to terms with the threat of him was just a fragile leaf now, blown by a cold, relentless wind.

  “Falcon?” She didn’t even know why she questioned, except that he wasn’t Falcon, somehow it wasn’t him. “It’s cold. We should go back in.”

  “Not just yet.” He moved even closer, a hand on either side of her and on the tree at her back, preventing her from moving. “We have to finish the conversation we began inside, don’t we, Victoria?”

  She was very still. “It’s finished.”

  “No. You belong to me, Victoria. I’ll hear you admit it now, or I’ll make it a fact.” His voice was so soft and casual it was chilling. “I’ll make it a fact that neither you nor anyone else will ever be able to deny. Right here, right now.”

  It was too much, suddenly too much. She didn’t know what she was feeling, didn’t understand his implacable savagery, and she had never felt so lost in her life, not even when her home and everything she had known had died in a war that made no sense to her young mind. Tears spilled from her eyes, and a sob caught in the back of her throat as she looked up at him in mute bewilderment.

  He was stiff for a moment, silent, and then a harsh sound escaped him and he pulled her into his arms. His embrace was gentle, and his voice shaken. “Don’t do that, dammit. Don’t. I didn’t mean to frighten you, sweet. I just went a little mad when I heard—Shhh. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you. I promise I’ll never hurt you.”

  Victoria’s arms crept around his waist, and she burrowed closer into his warm, hard body instinctively. Promises? Promises from him? “You looked as if you almost hated me,” she whispered. “As if you wanted to hurt me.”

  “No,” he soothed, brushing his lips over her forehead, baffled by his own tenderness. “I was just half out of my mind because—“He hesitated, then finished roughly, “I heard you’d lost your heart to some damned riverboat gambler.”

  She lifted her head, staring up at him in astonishment. “What?” Absurdly, a giggle fought to escape her throat. “But I just made him up, invented him! Because they would keep proposing, and I didn’t know what else to say!”

  After a moment, a laugh shook him. “Your amorous dancing partners? I ought to wring Cassie’s neck!”

  Victoria stiffened and pulled back a little. “Cassie? She said…And you believed—“

  He bent his head to kiss her swiftly. “I think we’re both jealous fools,” he said in a husky voice, pleased by her reaction to the other woman. “I wouldn’t have Cassie if she offered—come to think of it, she did offer. Rather blatantly, in fact. And I sent her away, sweet.”

  “Noble of you!” she snapped, but softly.

  “She wasn’t the woman I wanted,” Falcon murmured, concentrating on exploring the silky flesh of her throat.

  Victoria hadn’t even been conscious of tilting her head back, and felt dizzy. “We…we should go back to the house,” she whispered unsteadily.

  “It’s so much nicer here. Lord, you’re so warm and sweet!” He shifted against her subtly, the movement somehow widening her legs so that he stood between them. Then he moved again.

  Victoria gasped, her legs going weak as she felt the starkly intimate pressure of his bold arousal against her. Her arms tightened around him convulsively as heat swept over her. “Falcon!”

  “I know,” he said in a taut, raspy voice. “It hurts, doesn’t it, sweet? Wanting hurts. It feels as if I’ve wanted you forever, hungered for you.” His mouth captured hers fiercely.

  Victoria was hardly aware of the soft, hungry sound, like anguish, that tangled in the back of her throat, hardly aware that her arms had shifted, going up around his neck with a will all their own. His mouth was possessing her, branding her, and the subtle thrusting movements h
is body made against hers had ignited a fire that was burning her alive, melting her. She didn’t feel the rough bark of the tree scratch her bare back, she only felt him—his body against her, his mouth on hers passionately, his hands cupping her breasts.

  “No,” she murmured when his mouth lifted from hers at last, and she wasn’t sure if she protested his touch or the ending of that fiery kiss.

  Falcon seemed sure. He chuckled softly, a rough sound, and his teeth nipped lightly at her bottom lip. It was an incredibly sensual caress, drawing a gasp from her. And his voice was dark, liquid, heated.

  “You enjoy my kisses, don’t you, sweet? They make you burn, just as I burn.” His hands moved suddenly, grasping the laced edging of her neckline, and she caught her breath again as the material was pulled down to free her breasts. His hands surrounded the full mounds, squeezing gently. “And when I touch your lovely breasts, you burn even more.” His head lowered briefly, and a scalding tongue brushed in a tormenting caress across both breasts.

  Victoria stared up at him, dazed, mesmerized by his voice, his words, his caresses. Her hands were clasped on his shoulders, her lower body molded pliantly to his, and beneath his hands her naked breasts ached, the nipples tight and hard, throbbing. Yet, still, there was that part of Victoria that had been schooled in a gentler age, an age of pretty manners and ironclad strictures, of circumspection. And it was that part of her that denied what was happening to her, desperately denied these overpowering feelings he evoked with the ease of a magician.

  “No,” she whispered, and it was that girl who spoke. That gentle, mannered girl who had managed to continue her gentle existence, despite war and violence and the death of so many in her young life, because of the iron will and obsessive determination of one man who had fought to see his tattered dream alive in her.

  And Falcon, staring down at her face, understood a part of what he was seeing. It moved him unutterably, what he saw in her eyes, in her lovely face. He saw the last fragile, gallant tendrils of a way of life gone forever, of an innocence no amount of brutality could destroy. He didn’t know, couldn’t begin to guess, what kind of strength it had taken for her to hold on to and protect that inner fragility, that gentle core of herself, during the horrors she must have experienced in the war; he knew only that he would not harm it, no matter what the cost to himself.

  Very slowly and gently, he pulled her gown back up, smoothing the material with a touch that was tender rather than passionate. He bent his head, kissing her very softly, then drew her arms down and took her hand. He led her down one of the paths until they came to a secluded gazebo that was small and delicate and contained a single padded seat constructed for two.

  They sat for a moment in silence, hearing the distant rhythm of the music and the closer, soft sounds of the garden as a cool breeze stirred the plants.

  “Tell me about your family,” he said finally, quietly. “Parents, brothers, sisters?”

  The seat was curved and she was half-facing him, her eyes fixed on him. She didn’t know why he had stopped, but, although her body felt hot and restless, she was glad he had. It was all happening too fast; she needed time to think. “My family?” Her voice was low, husky.

  “Yes. Tell me about them.”

  She drew a shuddering breath, fighting not to remember too much. “They died in the war. My mother and father, my brothers.”

  He was gazing at her with a new, searching intensity. “And left you alone? What did you do?”

  I killed a man. The memory came out of nowhere—jarring, agonizing, buried and unexamined in all the years since Morgan had taken her away from Regret. She caught her breath, feeling the color drain from her face, feeling cold.

  Falcon frowned and reached to take her hand, surprised and unsettled by her sudden pallor, her stricken eyes. God in heaven, what could she have gone through to cause this reaction after so many years? And then he remembered the South in the last days of the war, the brutality and confusion, the chaos. He felt an icy dread grip him as he thought of the soldiers who had roamed across a bloody, defeated land, looting and burning out of hatred and rage. Taking out their revenge for a brutal war on the defeated enemy.

  “How old were you, sweet?”

  “Fifteen.” The response was automatic.

  “Victoria.” He kept his voice calm. “Were you—hurt? Did someone hurt you?”

  She looked at him blindly. “Hurt me?” Her voice was toneless. “He…he tried. But I killed him. He killed Papa and old Sam, and then he caught me. And I killed him.” The detached voice was curiously childlike.

  “How did you kill him?” Falcon asked quietly.

  “With a knife. Jesse gave it to me. Jesse is—was my brother. He told me what to do if anyone tried to hurt me. And I did it.” She looked down at her gown, a puzzled frown creasing her brow. “There was so much blood. It was all over my dress, my hands, and it was warm and sticky. So much blood.” Her free hand smoothed the material of her gown, as if she would have wiped a stain away.

  Falcon waited quietly, hurting inside for what had happened to her. It could have been worse, in many ways; she could have been raped, badly hurt, even killed. Instead, she had killed. A fifteen-year-old girl raised to be gentle and kind had thrust a knife into the body of her attacker and survived. No wonder, Falcon realized, she had protected that gentle core of herself for so long; when she had killed to defend herself, everything inside her must have gone into shock. The only surprising thing was that she had managed to keep that part of herself alive, even if deeply buried.

  She looked at him, finally, saw him. “I—I’d forgotten. I never told anyone about that.”

  “I know.”

  Puzzled, she said, “Why did I tell you?”

  After a moment, lightly, he said, “Because I asked, sweet.”

  Looking at him, Victoria had the sudden feeling that there was something between them now, something he had put there. His eyes were unreadable, his faint smile unrevealing. She was bewildered, hurt suddenly.

  If Falcon saw, he didn’t respond to the hurt. Instead, still in a light tone, he said, “Why don’t we go back inside? It’s getting cold out here.”

  It was, indeed, cold.

  —

  The carriage ride back to her hotel a couple of hours later was silent. Falcon stepped out of the carriage to offer her an impersonal hand, and when she said coolly that he didn’t have to come in with her, he bowed to a perfectly impersonal depth and held the door for her, wishing her good night in an easy, impersonal tone.

  Victoria held on to her composure while she got her key from a sleepy desk clerk and went upstairs. She undressed and put on her nightgown, unpinned and brushed her long hair, and gazed into the round mirror with blank eyes.

  I killed a man.

  Had that been it? Had Falcon’s ardor cooled instantly upon hearing that the virtuous lady he was bent on seducing had blood on her delicate hands? Was he one of those rough, hard men who possessed an idealized vision of women, a vision easily and often shattered by reality? She wouldn’t have thought so.

  But something had changed him. So passionate in the garden, so tender. And then, abruptly, so formal. Polite and smiling, but with shuttered, unreadable eyes.

  Victoria went to bed, blowing out the lamp, pulling the covers up over her shivering body. She lay on her back, staring up at a dark ceiling, and felt hot tears trickle from the corners of her eyes.

  And she knew, then, what he had done to her.

  —

  Falcon ordered the coachman to return to the Hamilton estate, knowing the party would go on for hours yet. His mind was deliberately blank, his posture in the carriage careless and relaxed as he lounged back. He gazed out the window at darkness, and when the carriage arrived, he got out, told the driver to wait, and went inside the huge house.

  He found Cassie near the punch bowl, her face sulky and bored as she stared at the dancers. She looked up as he approached, and the first flash of pleasure was replaced by
wariness. “I thought you’d gone,” she said.

  “I came back.” He took her hand and began leading her toward the door to the entrance hall. She didn’t resist, but once they were in the deserted hall, Cassie hissed a question.

  “Where do you think you’re taking me?”

  He paused with a foot on the bottom step, looking at her with hard, hot eyes. “That’s up to you. I can take you upstairs or take you in the garden.”

  Cassie understood him immediately, and felt a sudden, hot wetness between her legs. The earlier insult forgotten, she thought only of the pleasure he had shown her once before. “Upstairs,” she murmured. “But not a bedroom. I know a place.”

  He allowed her to lead the way, his mind still blank. She drew him into an alcove in a darkened part of the second floor hallway and immediately slid her arms up around his neck. “Against the wall,” she breathed.

  He pushed her back against the wall, taking her mouth savagely, crushing her body against his with one hand while the other yanked up her skirts and probed roughly between her legs. She moaned into his mouth, writhing, her legs parting widely. “Take me,” she whispered. “Now, Falcon. Right now!”

  He waited for desire to fog his senses and swell his body, waited for the pounding, driving need to bury himself in the willing female body. But his body refused to respond to this female body, and suddenly his mind wasn’t blank anymore.

  He was furious at himself, and self-contempt and guilt washed over him. Not Cassie’s fault, of course, and rejecting her coldly now was something he couldn’t bring himself to do. She wasn’t an animal with no feelings, and she didn’t deserve what he was doing to her. No one deserved to be used as he had wanted mindlessly to use her.

  Some distant part of him realized that he was caressing her expertly, guiding her toward the release she so desperately needed. And he waited until she was shuddering and half-sobbing, her body limp, before he pulled away slightly and smoothed her skirt back down over her thighs.