Shuddering, helpless, she surrendered to the passion coursing through her, liquid heat like heartbeats swelling until she moaned. His voice caressed her, midnight and velvet, asking for her fire, telling her how the silky pulses pleasured him. She swayed, shaken by passion, and he smiled, watching his dream.
“I’ll never get you undressed,” she managed finally. The words were as ragged as her breathing. “I want to see you, to touch you, to feel all of you naked against me. Inside me.”
With a reluctance that nearly undid her all over again, he released her soft, slick flesh. Her hands were trembling as she pushed his slacks down. She felt clumsy next to the masculine power of his legs. Then her hand brushed a new knot of scar tissue on his thigh, and she froze.
“Go on,” he said. “It’s all right.”
He helped her ease the pants past the recent wound. When she saw the raw slash of barely healed flesh, she went pale.
“My God. What happened?” she asked starkly.
“Later.” He twisted out of his remaining clothes with a speed that mocked even the idea of injury. “It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as wanting you does.”
He rolled toward her, but she saw the instant of hesitation as his wounded leg rebelled. She wanted him, but not at the cost of the pain she had seen on his face for one terrible instant.
“Does it bother you when you lie on your back?” she asked.
Cord smiled crookedly. “Come to me, sweet rider.”
But despite the smile, his voice and hands were urgent as he lifted her onto him.
Raine settled over him lightly, completely, moving slowly until he groaned with pleasure and stark need. She shuddered deep inside her body and saw by the narrowing of his eyes that he had felt it. His smile was utterly male, as was the sudden tightening of his body as he took complete possession of her fire.
With an open, hungry mouth, she kissed his lips, his neck, his chest, consuming him with teeth and tongue as he had once consumed her, spreading fire wherever she touched him. His breathing shifted, quickened, like his flesh inside her. She deepened her caresses as shivering forerunners of ecstasy rippled through her.
He encouraged her with dark words and sensual hands gripping her, stroking with an intimacy that burned. Her hips moved slowly, rhythmically, riding him until his eyes were smoky, all but closed, his body tight with anticipation and need.
She didn’t hear the whimpers that came with each of her breaths. She didn’t know that her mouth on his was as demanding as her rhythm was slow. She felt nothing but him as their bodies fused together, flesh on flesh, tongue on tongue, heat swelling, ecstasy raking until they surrendered to it, consuming and renewing each other in the same endless, pulsing fire.
Boneless, utterly spent, Raine lay across Cord’s chest and tried to remember how to breathe. It was a long time before she stirred and lifted her head enough to look at him.
He read her satisfaction in her dazed eyes and slow, very female smile. Relief uncurled inside him.
“That answers my second question,” he said quietly. “It’s as good for you as it is for me. Which leaves only one question. Why didn’t you come to me?”
She blinked. “Come to you? How? Where?”
“In the hospital. The same way the good-luck piece did. You did send it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“And you said, ‘Give it to him, he needs it more than I do.’ ”
“Yes, but—” Her words ended in a harsh sound of frustration. “How could I come to you? I didn’t know where you were!”
His eyes narrowed. “Then how did you know I was dying and needed all the luck I could get to pull through?”
She went pale and flinched as though he had struck her. All her worst fears congealed in her soul, crushing her—ice and violence and raw scar tissue scored across the body of the man she loved. He hadn’t been telling a lover’s sweet fiction about missing her. He had been describing a brutal truth. He had awakened yelling for her and the doctors had knocked him out again and strapped him to the bed.
Her body shook repeatedly, helplessly. She had come so close to losing Cord and never even knowing that he had died. He had called for her, needed her, and she hadn’t been there for him.
The thought was agony to her, a pain greater than any she had known before. Lightly, blindly, her trembling fingertips traced his features while tears slid down her cheeks. She tried to tell him how much she loved him, that she would have moved heaven and earth to be with him if she had known; but no words could get past the tears filling her throat.
He caught her tears with his lips, kissing her again and again. “You didn’t know, did you?” he asked.
Numbly, she shook her head.
“Then why did you send back the good-luck piece?” His voice was coaxing, gentle. He kissed her tenderly, stealing each tear as it fell.
She shuddered as the rest of the truth congealed in her soul; Cord wasn’t hers, not really. He belonged to tomorrow, and sooner or later, tomorrow always came. The reality of it was a dry, cold wind that froze her tears.
“The coin wasn’t mine to keep, any more than you were.” Her voice was flat, lifeless.
He sensed Raine retreating from him, from any emotion at all, shutting down before his eyes, a castle with all gates closing, all bars being drawn. Fear echoed through him, returning as anger. His hands were suddenly hard around her face.
“What are you saying?” he demanded.
“You’ll come and go as you always did. No warning, no words, nothing.”
“I hadn’t planned on getting shot.”
She flinched and slid off him before he could protest. Very gently, her hand sought the new scar. “A bullet?”
“Yes.”
“Will you . . . heal?” she asked, remembering his pain.
He stared intently at her, his eyes hard and remote. “What did Blue tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“What the hell do you mean, nothing?” Cord asked savagely.
“Just that,” she shot back, her voice as harsh as his. “Nothing! Not one damn thing. I haven’t heard one word about or from you since you disappeared.”
He closed his eyes for an instant, hardly able to believe. “Christ . . .” His eyes opened pale blue, very clear, blazing with life and hope. “Yet you ran to me.”
“Yes,” she said finally, because he waited for her to answer.
“You cried for me.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And you made love with me as though there was no tomorrow.”
“There isn’t.”
“There is.”
“Not for us. For us there’s only today, now, this instant. In the next instant you could be gone, or the next.”
“No.” Cord’s voice was quiet and very sure.
Raine turned away, not wanting to fight with him, not wanting to face the end of the dream so soon after its beginning. “Have you eaten anything?” she asked, moving to get out of bed.
His hand closed around her arm, chaining her.
She turned to him. “Coffee? Black, no sugar, right?”
“Are those the only questions you have for me?”
“No. But they’re the only ones I’ll ask.”
“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”
She turned her face away, feeling shame crawl redly up her cheeks. “What do they call it?” she asked, her voice shaking. “R and R? Yes, that’s it. Rest and Recuperation. You know, when the soldiers go to town and pick up women.”
“Stop it.”
She turned on him with more despair than anger. “Don’t worry, I can stand the truth. I’m not going to throw you back out into the cold. I’ll be here when you get back the next time, and the next, until you find a woman you want more or you’re killed or I . . .” Her voice frayed into silence.
“Or what?” he demanded harshly. “Until you find a gentleman?”
“Until I stop loving you,” she said, her
voice ragged, “whoever you are, whatever your name really is.”
His expression changed, gentleness smoothing the rough edges of his mouth and voice. He pulled her close again, burying his lips in her hair, drinking her sweetness.
“My love, my love,” he whispered, “didn’t Blue tell you anything at all? I turned in my resignation the day after I made love to you the first time. I knew I had to have you, and I knew that you couldn’t live with my work.” He laughed curtly. “Neither could I. Not anymore. One too many battles, one too many wars.”
For a long moment Raine stared into Cord’s clear eyes, afraid to let herself believe. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t quit immediately. Not until a certain matter was cleared up. I didn’t know how long that would take.” He closed his eyes briefly, remembering a ravine where darkness fell too slowly and death came too fast. “I was going to wait until after your ride. You had enough to handle with the Olympics. You didn’t need to know that I was facing the most dangerous assignment of my life.”
Her breath wedged. She touched his lips with a hesitant hand. There was no hesitation in the kiss he gave her fingertips.
“I wish I could have seen your gold medal ride,” he said. “But it went blue all the way to the moon.”
She saw the change in him, anger and grief and pain. “What is it? What’s wrong? Do you have to go back soon? Isn’t it finished?”
“It’s finished.”
He closed his eyes, remembering the friend who had fought beside him and lost, the man who would never again mangle Spanish phrases and ask after chess games. But Bonner hadn’t died alone. Cord had made sure of that, despite the hot blood pumping out of the wound in his thigh.
“The terrorist I was after is dead,” Cord said evenly. “Very dead. Another man died at the same time. A good man. The best. So we gave him my identity, and we buried him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“According to official records, Robert Johnstone and an unidentified passenger died tragically in a light plane crash in the Mojave Desert.”
Raine remembered the name Robert Johnstone and realized that her father had given the good-luck coin directly to Robert Johnstone, alias Cord Elliot. No wonder her father hadn’t told her anything; if Cord hadn’t mentioned his real name to her, her father never would.
“Who are you?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“Cord Elliot,” he answered quickly, almost fiercely. “The man who loves you. The man who’s going to marry you.”
She stared at him, almost afraid to believe. “Are you sure?”
He smiled crookedly. “Yes, I’m sure I love you. Yes, I’m sure I’m going to marry you. And yes, I’m sure my name is Cord Elliot. I have the papers to prove it. Lots and lots of them.”
Raine smiled despite the tears that suddenly appeared on her eyelashes. “Is the ink dry?”
“Of course. I worked for the guy who owns the presses.” His smile faded. “Will you marry a man with no past, a man whose only marketable skill is a certain knack with knot-headed horses? Not that we’ll starve. I haven’t had much to spend my money on through the years.”
She smiled, then kissed him slow and tender and deep. “I’ll marry you on one condition.”
His black eyebrows lifted. “What’s that?”
“That you’ll let me buy this ranch for us.”
His expression changed.
“Don’t you like it here?” she asked quickly. “It’s so beautiful. And Dev loves it. We could buy a few mares and train the foals and—what’s wrong?”
“Do you really like it here?” he asked.
“It was like coming home,” she said simply. “If it hadn’t been for the peace these mountains gave me, I would have gone crazy these last weeks. Can you understand that?”
“Oh yes,” he said softly. “That’s why I bought this ranch five years ago. It kept me sane until I could find you. Will you live here with me, raise four- and two-footed hellions with me?”
Raine bent over Cord, letting her kiss be her answer. When she shifted to lie beside him again, she saw the livid scar. She touched his leg carefully. “Will you be able to ride?”
He laughed. His hand traced her spine, urging her closer. “In a few months, I’ll be as good as ever. Better. I’ll have you.” He nuzzled against her neck, tickled her ear with the tip of his tongue.
“We’ll spend a lot of time riding,” she said dreamily.
“Yeah.” His smile was slow and sexy. “And sometimes we’ll even take horses along.”
Her laugh sounded more like a purr. Her fingertips traced the tendons in his neck and settled on his pulse.
His expression changed as he watched her, saw her pleasure at simply touching him. “Come to me, love. I need that place by your fire.”
“It’s yours. It always has been. It always will be.” She curled against him even as he gathered her close. “All those tomorrows finally belong to us.”
An Excerpt from
Beautiful Sacrifice
By
Elizabeth Lowell
On Sale May 22, 2012
Chapter One
DR. LINA TAYLOR DROVE INTO THE STAFF PARKING AREA of Houston’s Museum of the Maya.
Good, she thought in relief. Nearly empty. I can park close to the back entrance. Thank God for winter break.
In a gesture that had become automatic over the past few months, Lina checked around the area before she turned off her little Civic. Nobody was paying any attention to her. There was no reason for the back of her neck to tingle in primal warning.
Yet it did.
Just before she opened the locked doors, her cell phone rang. The tone told her that it was her mother, Cecilia Reyes Balam— Celia to her friends, business associates, and family.
Is she calling for family or business? Lina wondered, hesitating. Some of both, probably. No doubt my great-grandmother is talking about a bad heart and a great-granddaughter who doesn’t visit often enough and should be long married, hip-deep in children.
It would be Celia, her mother, who carried the complaint. Celia orbited between family and business like a planet with two suns. Lina wished she could handle the balancing act with half of her mother’s grace. Lina was more like her father, an academic with a deep love of working in the field, discovering ancient cities and temples a single brushstroke at a time. Yet it was being one of the public faces of the Museum of the Maya that paid Lina’s salary, not working on the isolated Yucatan digs she loved.
For the third time, Lina’s cell phone burbled out its merry little jingle, a hot salsa beat. She thought about letting the call go to voice mail, but decided against it. If Celia wanted to talk to her daughter, she’d track her down in person. With a glance at her watch— plenty of time before she had to teach class— she opened the cell phone.
“Morning, Celia. Are you in town?” Lina asked.
“Not unless I have to be.”
“Is everything all right with the family?”
“Abuelita complains of her heart,” Celia said. “She calls me daily, asking when you will visit. So does mi primo.”
“Your cousin Carlos has always done whatever Abuelita wants.”
“Do not disrespect him,” Celia said. “Without Carlos, you would not be surrounded by the artifacts you love more than anything else.”
Oh, I don’t know, Lina thought. Hunter Johnston might give the artifacts some real competition . . . if he ever stayed put.
Guiltily she yanked her attention back to her mother. “No disrespect intended. I don’t know Carlos as well as you do.”
“You do not see him enough.”
Lina couldn’t argue that. Growing up, she had never felt close to her mother’s cousin Carlos. She felt no need to pretend closeness now, despite his recent, repeated invitations to confer with him about Reyes Balam artifacts, and how they might be used to celebrate the coming baktun in a worthy way. The Turning of the Wheel of time was a
great celebration among the Maya in general and her great-grandmother in particular.
If Carlos wants help decorating for the baktun, let him go to Philip. Neither one of them has asked me for so much as a nod in the past.
No matter how hard she had tried to please her father, she’d never managed that feat.
“What’s up?” Lina asked, ignoring the past and its disappointments.
“Was there anything good in the Belize shipment Philip sent? The market is humming with rumors.”
“Define ‘good.’ ”
“Worth a great deal of money at auction, what else?”
Lina winced. “Please, Celia. Someone could overhear and misunderstand you. After the scandal— ”
“You and Philip,” Celia interrupted, “always harping on what turned out to be nothing.”
After many thousands spent to grease bureaucratic wheels, Lina thought, and academic reputations ruined. Philip’s and mine. It didn’t do the family export-import business any favors either.
“Sorry,” Lina said, trying to get the conversation back on track.
“Yes, yes,” Celia cut in. “You have a reputation to maintain. I understand. So long as Philip keeps discovering artifacts on our land and the Reyes Balam family keeps ‘donating’ some of the artifacts to the Museum of the Maya— and a lot more to Mexican museums— you have nothing to worry about.”
“Philip also supplies you with artifacts for your export-import business.” Lina’s voice was mild, though she knew trying to bridge the gap between her parents was useless.
Her parents might still be married, but they lived separately because they fought constantly.
“Each artifact I receive is thoroughly documented, with proper export papers, and all fees and taxes duly paid,” Celia said as though reciting from memory. “What other shipments have you received in the last few weeks?”
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