Darkness Before Dawn

by Anne Stuart

  “Let’s go,” he said finally, his voice even and polite as if the last half-hour of violence and savagery had never happened. “We’ll need all the sleep we can get. It’s close to midnight, and dawn is sometime around five.”

  She held her ground for a moment. “Are you all right?”

  “What do you mean?” His answering question was wary.

  “Did he hurt you? Did you hurt yourself … uh—”

  “Did I hurt myself beating the shit out of him?” Randall finished the question smoothly. “No. And he didn’t manage to lay a hand on me. I’m fine.”

  “You’re very good, aren’t you?” she said, wonder and distrust in her voice. And something else, something she didn’t even recognize.

  He looked as if he didn’t know what answer she wanted. He gave the only answer he knew, the honest one. “Yes.” He held out his hand to her, an instinctive gesture, and when he realized what he’d done, he dropped it.

  She crossed the few feet to his side, afraid to touch him. “I was afraid you were going to kill him,” she said suddenly.

  “I wanted to. But I’d promised Leopold.” He was watching her with a combination of patience and curiosity. “Are you coming with me, or are you going to spend the night out here?”

  It was a thought. Going back into that run-down hovel with Randall suddenly seemed comparable to climbing into the lion’s cage with a ferocious man-eater. She eyed him warily, wondering what she would do if he pounced. And even worse, what she would do if he didn’t.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  The shack seemed smaller. The moon was setting, the shadows were deepening, and Randall seemed suddenly much larger than before, filling the spaces around her. He shut the door behind them, quietly, carefully, but she wasn’t fooled. All through the silent walk across the field, she could feel the tension thrumming through him, feel the violence still simmering beneath the surface, feel the anger and intensity that she could never understand.

  “You take the bed,” he said, unbuttoning the remaining buttons on his shirt with deceptive calm.

  She stood very still. It was a very small bed, more a sagging cot than anything else, but courtesy and something else dictated that she make the offer. “Where will you sleep? On the floor?”

  “I could hardly hover in midair, now could I?” he replied, his thinly veiled temper slipping through.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Randall,” she snapped. “We can share the bed.”

  He moved then, swiftly, silently, and once more she was reminded of his deadly intent down by the bridge. It wasn’t death she had to fear from him, she knew that—unless it was the death of her soul, from loving the wrong man. “It’s a small bed, Maggie.”

  She managed a casual shrug that convinced neither of them. “We can sleep back to back. I’m not worried, Randall. I’m sure you’re not about to ravish me. I’m not one to overestimate my charms, and you’re very good at resisting what you want to resist.”

  “Maggie,” he said, his voice implacable and frightening in the darkness, “there are times when even you are a fool.” Then his hands were on her arms, and she knew the waiting was over, the choice was made, and there was no turning back.

  The roughness of his mouth on hers reopened the cut on her lip, and she could taste the blood as she moved into his arms. With a small, deliberate decision, she turned her brain off, turned her mind and memory and doubts away, so that there was only the two of them, entwined in the darkness, his hungry mouth on hers, devouring, demanding, denying the existence of a past or future.

  His mouth left hers, and his hands held her still, moving her inches away from his hot, tense body. “Maggie,” he said, his voice rough in the darkness.

  He was frustratingly out of reach. His voice was the voice of reason, but she fought against it, fought against him, reaching for him. He gave her a small shake. “Maggie,” he said again, “do you know what you’re doing?”

  She started to close in on herself again. “If you don’t want me, Randall,” she said, “all you have to do is say so.”

  “How many men have you slept with since Pulaski died?”

  She winced at the question, flayed by the memory of Mack. “None of your damned business,” she said.

  “No one, right? Don’t you think I’m a hell of a choice? Do you really want to make it with someone you hate?” His words were biting, intrusive, and she wanted to hide from them. But his hands held her steady, the long fingers biting into her arms.

  “Message received, Randall,” she snapped. “Get your hands off me, and I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  He made no move to release her. She could feel the heat, the tension flowing from his body. His shirt hung open around his torso, and his lean brown chest was rising and falling rapidly. He wanted her. His eyes told her so, his body told her so. But his words kept pushing her away.

  “Did you think that because you slept with me before you met Pulaski somehow this wouldn’t count? That you’d still be faithful to your dead husband?”

  “Don’t!” She thought she’d screamed it, but the word came out a raw murmur of pain.

  He shook her, and her head snapped back. Her eyes met his. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe I look at it a little differently? For me, Pulaski doesn’t count. I had you first.”

  She stood very still at the bitter, passionate words. Finally, she found her voice. “What are you waiting for, Randall? An engraved invitation? Don’t you want to see if I’ve gotten any better with practice?”

  “You couldn’t have,” he said flatly, his hands leaving her arms.

  “Hopeless case, was I?” She began undoing her buttons, one by one; her eyes never left his.

  “You couldn’t improve on perfection.”

  Her hands stopped where they were. The shirt hung open, exposing her skimpy little bra. “I think your memory needs jogging, Randall.”

  “I think your mouth needs stopping, Maggie.” And he suited the action to the words, covering her mouth with his as he pulled her into his arms. His tongue slid past her teeth into the stunned interior of her mouth, and he kissed her long and hard and deep as his hands pushed the shirt off her shoulders and unfastened the bra. He stripped her jeans off and moved her down onto the narrow cot, covering her with his still-clothed body.

  And then it was all darkness, warmth, and heat. His mouth was all over her, arousing her, inciting her, devouring her, until she was arching in his arms and weeping against the roughness of his shirt as his hands and mouth brought her to the border of madness and then beyond.

  She lay gasping and trembling with reaction, listening to her pulse race and her heart pound. Randall lay, still clothed, half beside her, half on top of her, and he made no move to do more than hold her as she slowly floated back toward sanity.

  But sanity wasn’t what she wanted. She reached her hand down to touch him, but Randall caught her wrist, and she waited for him to pull her away. But he couldn’t do it.

  “What did Miroslav do to you, Randall?” she taunted softly. “Geld you?”

  He laughed then, a small, surprising sound of amusement. “You did a much better job than he ever did, Maggie,” he said, his fingers covering hers and pressing her hand against him. She began to tremble with fierce hunger, and her hands were clumsy as she tried to unfasten his zipper.

  Finally he took pity on her, stripping off his pants and looming over her in the darkness. She lay back, waiting, nerves on fire, desire sweeping through her, waiting for him to complete their union. He hovered there for a moment, hesitating, and Maggie’s arms reached for him.

  He moved then, swiftly, pushing deep into her, shoving her back into the narrow cot with the force of his thrust. Her fingers clutched his shoulders, and her legs wrapped around his narrow hips as she took him, all of him, deep inside her, and her entire body responded with a spasm of pleasure-pain that left her sobbing into the night.

  “Open your eyes, Maggie,” he said softly.

 
She had no choice but to obey, opening her dazed eyes to stare up at him. His gray-blue eyes looked silver in the moonlight, and his mouth was a thin line of desire. “I want you to know it’s me,” he said, punctuating his words with a thrust of his hips. “I don’t want you to lie there and pretend it’s anyone but me filling you. You feel that, don’t you? You know it’s me, deep inside you, wanting you, having you. For six years I’ve been waiting for you, and I’m not going to have you mistaking me for anyone else.”

  She lifted her hands, running them down the sides of his tense, sweating body. It took all her effort not to clench her fists in his sleek skin. She raised her hips to meet him, tightening around him, and watched with satisfaction as his eyes glazed. “Who am I, Maggie?” he whispered, thrusting into her, his voice raw with passion. “Who do you want? Who do you need? Who do you love?” He pulled away, waiting, demanding her answer, and desperately she clutched at him.

  “Answer me, Maggie,” he said, his voice a thin thread. “Who do you love?”

  Some small, distant, conscious part of her brain told her that now was the time for her revenge. Now she could wound him as he’d wounded her, years ago. All she had to do was say Mack’s name.

  She looked up at him, shivering with desire and frustration. “You, Randall,” she said. “Damn you to hell. You.”

  He moved then, thrusting into her with a force that shook the flimsy bed, once, twice, three times, and went rigid in her arms, in the same instant that she shattered around him. Together they were swept away, lost in a maelstrom of love, passion, and despair still tinged with fury. Maggie held on to him, her fingers slippery on his sweat-slick shoulders, burying her face against his neck, hiding, as the last of the tremors shook her body.

  He held her for a long, timeless moment. He didn’t say a word, just held her, and she felt his body relax slowly into the stillness of sleep.

  Darkness was all around them. The moon had set, and there was a soft wind whispering through the leaves and dancing across her damp skin. The feel of Randall’s strong body pressed up against hers was a mindless comfort that she refused to examine. She was too weary, too replete for second thoughts and recriminations. For now, she would take what he had given and worry about it tomorrow.

  She yawned, pressed her body back against him, and rubbed gently like a contented kitten as she sank into the velvet blackness of the summer night. One last thought flitted through her mind before she closed her eyes and gave herself up to much-needed sleep: She could learn to like the darkness.

  Randall felt the last bit of tension leave her body. She lay in his arms completely at ease, trusting. He didn’t have to look to know what her face would look like. Wet with her tears, her smooth skin would be relaxed in sleep with that look of surprise still lingering around her bruised mouth. He had managed to surprise her with her response to him. He had known that response was there, waiting for him to tap it. Sooner or later she’d accept it, too.

  She wouldn’t like the confession he’d forced from her. She’d hate him for that, she’d hate him for making her want him. He could live with her hatred—he had for years, because he’d always known it was tied up with wanting that she’d only recognize as love. And making her admit it, even if she denied it like crazy tomorrow, was the only way to tie her to him.

  And that was what he’d planned all along; to tie her to him so completely that she could never break free, not until he was ready to let her go. And as the blackness of the Gemansk night closed around him, he wondered for the first time if that day would ever come.

  Maggie sighed in her sleep, snuggling closer. Slowly, almost of their own volition, his arms moved around her, cradling her against him. And he realized with a flash of despair that he didn’t want to let her go, ever. Resting his chin against her silky mane of hair, he allowed himself a short, troubled sleep.

  seventeen

  Maggie sat in the doorway, fully dressed, her bare feet tucked under her, and watched the approach of dawn. It came silently at first, with an infinitesimal lightening of the eastern sky. Probably somewhere over Russia, she thought. Odd that a place she thought of as dark and shadowed would get the sunlight first. The sky began to swell with peach and pearly-gray and crimson stripes that reached into the darkness and banished the night. For once Maggie watched the blackness go with regret. With the darkness went the last of her illusions, the last of her comfort. Daylight would bring stark reality crashing in on her.

  The birds came next. Starting with a quiet little chatter of noise overhead, it soon expanded into a full-blown symphony of sound as they called to each other through the trees. Maggie wondered if they were calling to their mates. Did those soft gray-brown Eastern European swallows mate for life?

  A soft breeze began to pick up, rustling the trees and rumpling Maggie’s hair around her bleak face. It was as gentle as a lover’s caress, soft and warm and sweet. Maggie shivered, hugging her arms around her knees.

  She knew he was awake, knew he was watching her as he lay perfectly still, his own clothes still a tangle on the floor beside the cot. She could sit there and wait, or she could run from what she couldn’t face. He’d stripped her of everything last night, her clothes, her pride, her defenses. She could deal with that—pride and defenses could be rebuilt, clothes were easy to put back on. But he’d done the worst thing possible—he’d stolen Mack away from her.

  “It’s almost dawn.” Her voice was admirably cool and dispassionate in the stillness as she kept her gaze outward. “I’ll go find Tomas while you get dressed.” She rose in one fluid movement, keeping her back to him.

  “Maggie.” His voice was deep, smooth, and rich—so unlike Mack’s cracked shell of a voice. “Look at me, Maggie.”

  “Leave me alone, Randall,” she said gently, and she closed the door behind her as she ran out into the deserted, dawnlit street.

  He watched her go through the gaping shell of the window, watched her race away from him as if a thousand devils were at her heels. And slowly, savagely he began to curse.

  It was all much easier than anyone would have expected. Leopold’s cousin, Tomas, proved to be the dour member of the family. He was waiting for Maggie with a gloomy expression on his face, with forged papers in his back pocket, in a Mercedes pickup truck of prewar vintage. Maggie didn’t even want to consider which war.

  The three of them rode for hours, crammed together in the front seat, sharing cheese and fresh bread and very strong coffee for breakfast as they bounced along toward the border. After one look at her shuttered, set expression, Randall had left her alone, keeping up a running conversation with the serious Tomas. Lost as she was in her own dark thoughts, Maggie didn’t even notice when they crossed the border into Austria and were finally safe from the long arm of the secret police.

  It was still before noon when Tomas dropped them off at the train station with their original passports, complete with forged exit stamps. They made it to Vienna and on to the airport in less than an hour and were on a plane to New York by midafternoon. During all those hours, Maggie didn’t speak one unnecessary word to Randall and never once looked him in the eye.

  He seemed content to let her be. His curious eyes were on her, but his conversation, too, was restricted to the essentials. He slept during the long flight back to New York, his long legs stretched out in the first-class seats. He slept while Maggie stared out the window, hollow-eyed, empty, for the seven-hour flight.

  The massive sprawling bulk of JFK greeted her weary eyes, and a thousand memories hovered around her like angry bats, waiting to strike. So many times she’d stumbled wearily off a plane; so many times the huge airport had witnessed turning points in her life. There was the time Peter Wallace had met her, sending her off to see Mack Pulaski for the first time. And there was the time she and Mack had flown in from Central America and been reduced to stripping off their clothes in public, courting arrest to keep them safe from one of Mack’s many pursuers.

  It had bought them some time—t
wo years, in fact—until those pursuers had caught up with him. She moved through customs in a fog, hating the memories that swept over her, hating the throbbing pain. From now on, she wasn’t going to fly into JFK anymore. If she couldn’t get an international flight to another local airport, she’d fly into Philadelphia and drive up. It might even have been worth the wait for the next flight from Vienna to Chicago.

  But that would have meant more time in Randall’s company, and she couldn’t get away from him fast enough. She was desperate to get back to her apartment, away from him, away from everyone and everything but her memories of Mack. Somehow she had to get him back.

  Randall caught up with her as she was heading toward the rows of waiting taxis. His hand was rough on her arm, exerting just enough pain to let her know his calm voice was a ruse. She still refused to meet his eyes, but stood, head down, waiting until he released her.

  He made no move to do so. “Where are you going?”

  “To my apartment. I need a good night’s sleep, Randall.”

  “So do I.”

  “I hope you get one,” she said in her most polite voice. “You won’t be getting one with me.”

  “I know,” he said, and the double entendre sent a red flush into her pale face. She raised her head and focused on a point somewhere beyond his left shoulder. “All right, Maggie,” he said finally, his long fingers biting into her arm, “I’ll let you go this time. I have a few things to check on in the city anyway. I’ll make arrangements for us to fly to Chicago tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I’d rather take care of it myself.”

  “I’m sure you would. That, however, is not an option. I’ll give you some time to yourself, but tomorrow I’ll be at your apartment and you’d better be ready to go.” His voice was calm, unmoved, but through her numbness Maggie could feel the tension, the anger vibrating through him. “Understood?”