by Gayle Wilson
“I’m all right.” His master denied Diego’s concern. “Did you have any problems here?” he asked simply, but Diego knew him well enough to know what he really wanted.
“She was worried.”
“About what? What happened?”
“You told her three days and when you didn’t return…” Diego shrugged again.
“Worried,” he repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. “My God,” he said softly. “Are you sure that’s—”
“I’m sure. Why don’t you tell her you’re back,” Diego suggested. “Then you both can sleep.”
The soft laugh was also bitter. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s what you want to do. To see her. To be with her. For once, think about what you want.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why think about something that’s not an option?”
“It’s an option tonight,” Diego reminded him and watched desire battle that iron will.
RAE FELT HIM take her fingers and bring them to his lips. She thought she could even feel their warm texture as he lightly touched the delicate skin on the backs of her hands, and his kiss seemed again too real, too tormenting. She whimpered, trying to escape the web of the dream, and heard him speak into its darkness.
“Diego said you were worried. I’d like to think that was true,” he whispered as he turned her hands to kiss the palms.
She responded as she always did in her dreams, raising her body from the cold, lonely tangle of sheets to rest against the hard strength of his. Her fingers found the silk of his hair and felt it curl around them as she caressed the back of his head. Only then did she accept the reality of the body she held, the body of the man who was sitting now on the edge of her bed.
Finally he allowed himself to respond, his arms closing tightly around her slenderness. He crushed her against his chest, against firm muscle and bone, and buried his face in the fragrant, disordered softness of her hair. He lowered his head to touch his lips gently against the hollow of her collarbone, and involuntarily she shivered.
“I’m beginning to believe Diego may have been correct. It’s all right, querida. I have you.”
His lips traced the thin bones of her shoulder and then moved over the line of her throat. Their touch was as light as it had been before on her temple, over her closed eyelids, but she felt his heartbeat accelerate. Her head fell back as he caressed with his tongue the sensitive skin under her jaw. After an eternity, he sought her mouth and possessed it with the sureness she had recognized from the beginning of his bizarre courtship of her.
Rae knew she couldn’t match his experience, but felt the strength of her desire should make up for any lack of knowledge. For the first time she held nothing back. She met his heat with her own, and when he released her mouth, her lips clung to his until he held her away from him.
“Like a toothache?” he teased gently, and lowered his mouth again to hers to give her what she wanted. She no longer bothered to deny her need, even to herself.
“I was so afraid.”
“Shh. There’s no reason to be afraid.” He seemed surprised by her confession. He gathered her again against his body. “I’ll keep you safe, my heart. I swear it on my brother’s grave. No one will hurt you.”
She smiled against the stubbled, late-day roughness of his cheek and let him feel the quick shake of her head. “I’m not afraid for me. Diego said everything you do is dangerous. You told me three days. And then, when you didn’t come…”
“Someone I needed to see couldn’t arrange a meeting until today.”
“Someone in the task force?” she said and felt his body react to that question. He moved away from her, but his hands found her shoulders and held her lightly there.
“Do you want to share information with me, querida? Do you want to tell me about your friends?”
“You know I can’t do that. I would never—”
“Then don’t ask me to tell you what I’ve been doing.” He paused and she heard in the darkness the depth of the breath he took. “We find ourselves in what is not a unique situation. We are two people in bed together who have nothing to talk about.”
She smiled at the familiar teasing mockery.
“So perhaps we should concentrate on something besides conversation,” he finished. And waited.
“Answer two questions,” she said finally—and knew by the quality of his stillness that he was considering her offer.
“How do you know I won’t lie to you? That I won’t simply tell you whatever I believe you want to hear?”
“I don’t know how I know. But don’t. Whatever it is, tell me the truth at least about these two things.”
“You’re as trusting as a child. Everyone lies,” he said, the dark laughter very soft.
“I won’t lie to you,“ she argued and could only hope that he knew that.
“Querida,” he whispered, his tone one that might be used to answer an ingenuous child, but she interrupted whatever he intended to say to ask the first of her questions.
“Did you have anything to do with the courier’s betrayal and death?” she asked, her throat crowded with fear and hope.
“No,” he said immediately and then added with conviction she could hear. “That I swear to you.”
She believed him and breathed again.
“And the deaths? In the task force? Did you order them? Did you have any part in those?”
“No,” he answered as quickly as before, and with as much authority.
“Was the courier really what you said? Was he Escobar’s accountant?”
He was silent for a long time and, because of that hesitation, she wondered if she would be as certain about whatever he might tell her now as she had been about the other.
“That’s the third question, querida,” he said finally. “Our arrangement was for only two, and I’ve told you the truth about those. The rest we don’t talk about unless you’re willing to exchange information. There is no more for free. You have had your answers, and now you must decide what we are to do since the limits of our conversation have been reached.”
She took a deep breath and put away the convictions of a lifetime. He had answered her greatest fears. And she believed him. Maybe because she wanted to. But she did, and the rest she would live with. Her decision. He had told her that before, and once more she had believed him.
“Take off your coat,” she whispered, her trembling fingers beginning to loosen his tie. “You’re definitely overdressed for the occasion.”
“I didn’t know it was going to be that kind of occasion,” he said, rich amusement touching the caressing whisper, but he obeyed, and she knew by his movements when he had discarded both the coat and tie. Her fingers found the buttons of his shirt and she unfastened enough of them to allow her hands to slip inside the opening. She slid them over the warmth of his chest, spreading her fingers against the hair-roughened skin. She touched his nipples and felt them harden as hers had done under his hands.
He jerked his shirt out of his trousers and, unfastening the cuffs, dropped it to join the coat and tie. His chest was finally completely exposed to her searching hands.
She allowed them to trace upward, skimming across the width of broad shoulders, and then her palms smoothed down the hard, contoured muscles of his upper arms. She could feel his breathing deepen, but he let her explore, enjoying her touch, she thought, her obvious desire to know his body.
“And now I think you’re the one who’s overdressed,” he said softly as he found the hem of her cotton T-shirt bunched over her thighs. He slid the material higher, letting the cool of the air conditioner kiss her skin as he gradually exposed her body.
It was too dark for either to see even the outline of the other, and the necessity of exploring only by touch was more erotic than any visual assessment would have been. His hands stopped their upward journey to cup the fabric under her breasts, and then he lowered his head to kiss the hollow between the still-covered globes. His lips
explored that valley, feeling her heart beneath his mouth like a frightened animal’s.
“If I take this off, querida, there’s no turning back. I won’t be able to let you go. Not now. Are you sure, my heart?”
“Yes,” she whispered, unable to think of anything but how much she wanted him.
“In spite of everything?” he asked, his lips moving over her breast to circle and tease. She could feel the heat of his breath tantalizing the nipple through the thin material. She wanted his mouth against her skin. Over her. Wanted the sweet pressure, wet and so hot.
“I’ve fought this from the beginning,” she answered, her voice husky with need. “I’m not strong enough to fight you anymore. I don’t even want to.”
He reluctantly withdrew his mouth from her breast, the cotton clinging briefly to the moisture on his lips. Slowly he sat back, away from her body, allowing the nightshirt to fall down again against her thighs. He took her hand and pressed a kiss into the palm before he spoke.
“Then perhaps I must do it for you. I want you, Rae. I want so much to make love to you, but to me making love is a pleasant diversion, a spice to what is already a dangerous game. I don’t deal in forever-after. There are no promises in what I offer you tonight. I want your body. You must guard your soul. I am still who I am, and you are who you are. There is no magic to change that.
“Don’t,” she whispered, denying, trying to forget all that lay between them.
“I won’t fit into your images of sweethearts and boyfriends. I’ll walk away from you tomorrow, and you will be only a pleasant memory. One of many such memories. Can you say that to me? I don’t want to take advantage of you, querida. Your situation makes you too vulnerable. I’m someone who controls your fate, and perhaps you’re offering me the only thing you think you have that might guarantee your survival. I don’t want you that way, Rae—as some kind of sacrifice of who you are.”
“That’s not why,” she began, denying his interpretation of her motives, willing him to understand. What was between them here had nothing to do with the other. “I want you. I want you to make love to me.”
“And I want you. Make no mistake about how much I desire you. But not like that. Not because you’re my prisoner. Not coerced by your fears,” he said forcefully. When he spoke again she could hear but didn’t understand the emotion that colored the voice she loved. “And not as a result of some fantasy of happily-ever-after you’ve created to give yourself permission to be loved. Only if you’re willing to take tonight and be satisfied if we never see each other again. Only as a willing partner in a passionate, if fleeting, relationship. Only if you will have no regrets in letting me love you—only for tonight.”
Only tonight whispered somewhere in the darkness. He released her hand and waited a long time for her response. She heard his soft mocking laugh and then he commanded gently, “Go to sleep, querida. Perhaps that’s better for us both.”
“Stay with me,” she begged. “Tonight. Even if that’s all we ever have,” she said, destroying her own pride, and uncaring that she exposed her feelings to him. “Stay with me. Hold me. Prove to me that you don’t care anything about me, that you can walk away as easily as you say.”
“Games, querida? I don’t play games. If I stay with you, I’ll make love to you. Under my conditions. And if I decide it’s best, I’ll walk away from you in the morning and never see you again. That’s all I can offer you. Is that what you want?”
“This is driving me crazy. I don’t know why I care about you, but I do. And it’s not just…I know you’ll think this is insane, but it’s like I know you. Like I’ve known you all my life. As if I recognized that you were…someone I cared about. From the first night you touched me. It should have been wrong that your hands were on my body, but it was right. I felt that. I wanted them there. I knew you.” She could hear the desperation in her voice, the plea for his understanding of something that, even to her, made no sense.
“You don’t know me. Not even now,” he said quietly.
“Don’t go,” she begged. “Stay with me. Under your conditions. Under any conditions. Just don’t go.”
She waited in the darkness and then she felt him turn away. He sat on the edge of the bed a long time without moving. Finally she reached out and somehow, in the blackness of the night that surrounded them, found his hand. She brought it to her lips and kissed the palm as he had done with hers.
“Just for tonight,” she whispered.
“Only tonight,” he repeated. It was a demand, and so she nodded against his hand she still held to her cheek.
“Move over,” he commanded harshly, and as she scrambled to the other side of the bed, she felt him reach down to remove his shoes. Finally he lay down. Tentatively she moved back until she was on her knees beside him.
“I told you that you’re overdressed,” he said, all the doubt that had been in his voice erased. His hands trailed over her thighs, catching the soft cotton and pulling it slowly up her body. There was nothing hurried about his movements. Slow and sensuous, using the glide of the material as a contrast to the roughness of his palms that occasionally brushed her skin. When she was naked, he pulled her down to lie against his body. She felt the hair on his chest against her breasts, the steel of muscle under her softness.
His lips nudged the tangled strands that covered her shoulder to lie, out of his way, against her neck and then returned to stroke like velvet over the rounded bones and soft curves. He pushed her suddenly onto her back and raised his body over hers so that his lips could trace over the surface of one breast, brushing the nipple that rose of its own accord to deepen the contact. His tongue flicked over and then around the taut peak. And she moaned as heat shimmered through her body like lightning.
“What’s wrong, querida? Is this what you want?” She could hear the tender teasing in his voice. His hand trailed tantalizingly down her stomach and then between her legs, which fell apart involuntarily, anticipating.
“So wet,” he whispered hoarsely, the teasing gone. “So wet for me.”
His fingers caressed, stroking the center of her need. The sensations began to gather in her lower body and move upward, flowing molten through her stomach. Her hips arched, wanting to hurry the sweet insanity of the contact between his fingers and her body, but he stopped what he was doing and simply held her, forcing her to lie still with his hand cupped with possessive mastery between her legs, while his mouth explored her breasts until he felt her breathing slow, and she shivered at the falling away from the peak she had almost managed to reach.
She gasped when she felt him begin again the stroking, the demanding caresses, with fingers that seemed to know exactly how to touch her need. She lifted as the pressure built and this time he let her, holding her, surrounding her, until she knew that she had to touch the place her body so desperately sought, and then he again stopped her. He held her as she writhed and sobbed and begged for release. He kissed her neck and shoulders, nibbled her aching breasts, as she pleaded, but he didn’t relent until she lay limp and panting against him, sure that she had lost the opportunity he had twice promised and twice denied.
When he finally touched her again, she cried out at the first feather stroke, straining against his hand. And this time he didn’t stop, even when she dug her nails into his skin. Then her body exploded, all sense of self lost, all knowledge of anything but how much she wanted him. The waves of pleasure hadn’t stopped breaking within her when he turned her, quickly positioning her under his hips. She felt him enter her and fill her, his hands lifting her into him as he thrust deeper than she believed she could bear.
“Don’t,” she gasped. “You’re too big, too deep,” she begged hoarsely, suddenly afraid of his possession.
“You were created for this,” he whispered, his lips moving against her throat. “You were made for me, to fit together. You knew it with your mind. Now let your body know me, too. Relax, my heart. Relax. Love me. Take me. All of me.”
She felt her b
ones melt and re-form around him. She could feel him in her soul, in her heart, filling every space that had ever been empty in her body, seeking out every atom that had ever dreamed of him, and fulfilling those dreams. He began to move inside her, and she thought then that she couldn’t bear the pleasure. Her hands found his shoulders and held as he thrust again and again into the honeyed warmth and tight silk of her body. Her long legs involuntarily wrapped around his driving hips, and she answered every movement until she begged for whatever waited beyond the demanding force. She cried out when his shuddering eruption within her ignited an answering response, and they climbed and then fell together. And lay exhausted, still joined, their bodies slick with the mingled sweat of their lovemaking.
Finally she could breathe, her face against his chest, and the fragrance of his cologne, released by the heat of his skin, filled her senses, soothed her, gathered around her as the familiar scents of home comfort the returning traveler.
He moved to lie by her side, his hands drifting slowly over the trembling muscles of her back. She wanted that contact with this one man she had chosen—against all sanity. She pushed close to his chest and finally felt the rise and fall of his breathing ease. His strong hands were now limp against her body, and she knew that he slept.
And knew that whatever doubts she had had about the rightness of giving herself to this man had been erased by what had happened between them.
She wanted to touch his face, to trace his features, to satisfy her need to know more about how he looked, but she thought that he would wake, and it would be a betrayal. Finally, she ran her hand instead over his chest, moving her fingers through the thick hair, following the line of it down his flat, ridged stomach and found that he was completely undressed. She hadn’t even been aware of when he had removed the rest of his clothing. He spoke from the darkness.
“No more. I’ve had a long and very difficult day. I’m too tired for whatever else you intend.”
“‘Not tonight, dear’?” she whispered, laughing. “I thought I was supposed to say that.” But she obeyed, moving her hand upward to caress the narrow stomach and waist.
