by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
"No," she begged, her eyes squeezed shut, "leave me alone. Leave me alone." There was a barely suppressed sob in her voice.
Nightmare or not, he couldn't just allow her to agonize like this. His hand on her shoulder, Max tried to shake her lightly.
When she shrank from his touch, he tried again, a little harder this time.
"Rivers, wake up, you're having a nightmare." She moaned in response. A gut-wrenching, frightened moan. This time, he shook her more roughly. "You hear me? It's a nightmare. It's not real. Wake up."
Her eyes flew open, disoriented, huge. Terrified.
Until this moment, Max would have bet anything that the bounty hunter beside him wasn't capable of being frightened, not like any mortal woman.
But she could be.
There were tears in her eyes, he realized.
Because he was a royal and because he was his mother's son, Max had always been first and foremost a protector. Seeing the tears sliding down her cheek brought out the qualities that had been ingrained in him since childhood.
Taking her into his arms, Max held her before she was completely awake or conscious of her surroundings.
And then awareness struck. She realized she was being held. Cara immediately began to struggle, to twist and strain against him, cursing his soul to hell along with the rest of him.
"Leave me alone, Ted, or I swear I'll—"
Instinct would have him let a rattler go before it bit. But this wasn't a rattler, this was a woman, a hurting woman and Max held her tightly, talking to her as if he were trying to gentle a stray dog that had been abused. There was a soft side to his heart when it came to the downtrodden and the frightened and he refused to be pushed away.
Rivers hadn't had a nightmare, he realized, she'd had a flashback. Back to a time when someone or something had terrified her. Badly.
"Shhh." He rocked with her, slowly, the way someone would comforting a child. But these were not childish fears, he knew. They were fears that belonged to a woman. "I'm not Ted. It's all right, Rivers, it's over. You're here, safe. No one's going to hurt you, you're safe," he repeated.
The sound of his voice, his words, sank in. For a moment, Cara sagged against him as relief washed over her. A dream, it had been a dream. A nightmare recreating the nightmare she'd lived through.
The one she would never be rid of, no matter how hard she tried to block it out. It found her in the night, when her defenses were down, ripping into any peace she might have found during the day.
Taking a deep breath, Cara willed herself to calm down, to steady her pulse.
And then she realized that Ryker was holding her.
Jerking back, pushing her hands against his chest to hold him in place, she looked at him accusingly. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Well, she was back to normal, he thought. It was like being confronted with both the lady and the tiger and he wasn't sure, in their present agitated state, which one could do the most harm.
"Trying to wake you up."
She didn't believe him. Like every other man, he was trying to take advantage of her. She should have known better than to trust him.
"Oh, right. By putting a half nelson on me?" she demanded.
He'd known this reaction was coming, but it still annoyed him. "Only way to keep you from taking a swing at me."
His answer cut through her tirade-in-the-making. "I tried to hit you?"
He laughed, shaking his head. Awake or asleep, she was definitely someone to contend with.
"Hit, bite, gouge," he elaborated. "You're hell on wheels, Rivers." And then he paused before asking, "Who's Ted?"
"Nobody," she snapped.
His curiosity was aroused. Reeled in, he didn't back off that easily. "Must have been somebody. You were pleading with him to leave you alone."
Her eyes narrowed. It was none of his business. "I said nobody. If I hit you, I'm sorry," she said tersely, then shrugged noncommittally. "Just a nightmare that got out of hand."
It was more than that and they both knew it, Max thought. His eyes never left her face. "You were crying."
Her chin went up, daring him to argue. "Probably because you were holding me too tight."
He shrugged, knowing the issue would go no further because she wouldn't allow it to.
"Yeah, probably." And then he paused, giving it one more try. "You know, if you want to talk—"
What was he, some kind of tabloid groupie trying to get a fix? "I don't."
She'd almost snapped his head off with her answer. "Right." He didn't need this aggravation. Lying down again, Max turned on his side, his back toward her. "Good night."
"Good night," she muttered.
There was no way she was going to sleep, Cara thought, frustrated. Shutting her eyes would only bring all the vivid images back. Images that had had her shaking in the night more than once.
Except that this time, she wasn't alone. She was with someone, someone who had tried, for whatever reason, to make the images go away.
She pressed her lips together, thinking. Debating.
Somewhere, she'd heard that confession was good for the soul and while she had nothing to confess in the absolute sense of the word, maybe sharing something that continued to haunt her might lessen some of its power over her.
What did she have to lose? After they got Weber back to Shady Rock, she'd never see this man again. Maybe purging a little to an almost anonymous stranger would actually do her some good.
She took a deep breath.
"Ted was my foster brother. Ted Henderson. He was the all-American golden boy, only son of the last family I stayed with."
The people she ran away from, he remembered. Max rolled over toward her, saying nothing. Not altogether sure he wasn't imagining the sound of her voice. He waited for her to say something else.
When she didn't, he prodded. "And this Ted, he's the reason you ran away?"
"Yes." Even the admission was hard for her to voice. Because if she admitted that Ted was the reason she ran away, she had to admit what he had done to her.
Max had seen the terror in her eyes before she'd focused them. He was acquainted with that look. His line of work had brought him to the lunatic fringe more than once.
"Did he hurt you?"
Did he hurt you? The question seemed to mock her. In a thousand ways you couldn 't even begin to imagine.
Out loud, Cara admitted, "He didn't think so. He thought he was doing me a favor." Her mouth twisted bitterly. The tears came of their own accord. She wasn't even aware of them at first. "Indoctrinating me in the ways of womanhood was what he called it. I tried to fight him off, but he was too strong, too sure I was going to love it."
Her voice caught and it took her a moment before she could continue. "I tried to tell his mother, but she wouldn't believe me. Nobody would believe that he would do such a thing. Everybody loved him." The suppressed anguish gave way to anger. She swiped at the tears that refused to stop, frustrated by their advent, pained by the memory that rose in her mind. "I was so crazy about him when I was first placed there. He was so handsome, so funny, so kind. I was so flattered when he began to pay attention to me." She pressed her lips together again, wrestling with the guilt. "Maybe I didn't realize—"
"That you had done something to bring it on yourself?" Max second-guessed her thoughts.
Cara froze, then anger flashed in her eyes. "I didn't."
Max wiped a tear away from her cheek with his thumb. "No," he agreed softly with conviction, "you didn't."
But if that were true, then why had everything fallen apart so drastically for her? The Hendersons were wealthy people, they could have afforded to wait, to let nature take its course and have the baby arrive with family in attendance, she thought.
Except that no one ever knew.
"I got pregnant." She looked at Max defiantly, daring him to say anything derogatory. When he didn't, she continued. "That's when I ran away. I knew they would blame me, the Hendersons. They were so crazy about
their son. They would say it was all my fault for tempting him. I was afraid they were going to make me get an abortion. And I was afraid that he would try something again." Her voice caught as the memories came flooding back. "So I ran away."
"What happened to the baby?"
Her voice was small, distant. "I lost it. I got sick and I lost it." She pressed her hands to her lips, trying to keep back the sobs. It had been so long since she thought of that, of the baby she never had a chance to hold, the baby she had loved from the moment she'd known of its existence—despite its origin.
There was so much love in her heart that had nowhere to go. That had never had anywhere to go.
This time, when Ryker took her into his arms, she didn't struggle, she let herself accept the comfort he offered. It was only temporary. This was only talking out loud to a man destined to disappear from her life, nothing more. She didn't have to be afraid of the consequences, didn't have to risk the hurt again.
Max held her, rocking with her, feeling for her. For the girl she had been, frightened, alone with nowhere to turn and no one to believe her.
Faced with tenderness instead of antagonism, Cara could feel herself breaking down. She began to cry. And damned herself for it as well as him. If he'd only been distant, critical, she could have kept it together.
Max sensed the internal struggle she was waging, understood the need she had to release the pain that was there.
"It's okay," he told her softly. "Let it out. You can cry, no one'll know."
"You'll know." Her voice was muffled against his chest.
He felt her warm breath through his shirt. The sensation made him feel closer to her. "I don't count, Cara."
She looked up at him, her face streaked with tears. He'd never said her first name before. The walls inside her crumbled.
"Yes," she said quietly, "you do."
Max couldn't help himself then. She'd stirred something within him, something that went beyond the boundaries of being a protector, something that spoke to him on a gut level, where he lived.
Very gently, Max brought his lips down to hers and kissed her.
He waited for her to shove him away. It was in her nature, what he had come to expect from her.
She surprised him.
Cara wound her arms around his neck and drew him to her even as she drew herself up to him, and returned the kiss with such passion, such need that it left him completely breathless.
Completely captivated.
The kiss deepened as he gathered her to him, holding her as if she were something precious, something fragile that could break at the slightest pressure. Someone he had to protect at all costs.
She could have cried, he was so gentle. And yet, there was something explosive about the way he kissed her.
A fire began in her belly, a fire that spread to her loins and her limbs, engulfing her with a vulnerability that was completely foreign to her, a vulnerability that reduced her to a mass of needs that begged to be met, desires that not only bordered on the physical, but were tied tightly to the emotional.
She kissed him back, kissed him as if she was never going to be kissed or kiss again. Kissed him as if he could save her from the abyss that loomed before her, lonely and large.
Kissed him as if there was no yesterday, no tomorrow, only now.
Forever.
All of her life, she'd always been the strong one because there was no one else to rely on, nowhere else to turn. She'd been strong because there had been no choice and had learned never to let her barriers down because the consequences were too grave.
But just for tonight, she didn't want to be strong. She wanted to be held and if not loved, then made love to, made love with. If it was all fantasy, all make-believe, then she would deal with it in the harsh morning light. But for now, she needed to have someone with her, someone she could pretend cared.
As he kissed her, his head spinning out of focus, Max slipped his hands to her breasts. Touching the soft flesh filled him with deep, urgent desire that threatened to overpower both of them.
He wanted her, had wanted her possibly from the very first. Because she'd sparked him with her courage, her fire, her determination and go-to-hell attitude. He had never met anyone quite like her. And this frailty he'd uncovered within her...
Abruptly Max reined himself in.
He couldn't take advantage of this vulnerability within her, couldn't take advantage of her. He wasn't his father. The very thought, the very fear that he could be, that he could turn into the very man he'd loathed for so long, had haunted him through all of his adolescent and adult life.
Like some kind of giant roadblock, it had impeded his life.
Fear of turning into his father had kept him from ever becoming serious with any woman he'd been interested in. Because he could not risk the chance that he would ever do to any woman what his father had done to his mother. He'd sworn that on his mother's grave so many years ago. The only way he knew how to keep that promise was to never become involved with a woman for more than a night.
This night, a small voice within him whispered. Make it this night.
But he would be thinking only of himself, not of her. And it was her that he was concerned about.
As difficult as it was, as much as he wanted her, Max drew back and looked at Cara's face.
"You're sure?"
Cara didn't want to say anything, didn't want to have to think about it, about anything. She wanted only to drown her thoughts in a river of reaction. Reaction to his kindness, to his masculinity, to the very real, physical pull she felt.
That she had been feeling all along.
Words, thoughts would only ruin the moment. Would only drag reality in. And reality was cold.
"Shhh," was all Cara said as she framed his face with her hands and drew his mouth to hers.
He wanted to stop her, wanted to be sure that she would have no regrets when this was over, but he had no power to draw on.
She'd drained it all away.
All he wanted to do was make love with her. Until there was no night left. Until the tears on her cheeks had evaporated as if they never existed.
He could feel her heart racing along with his, could feel her breasts rising and falling tantalizingly against his chest. He lost the battle before he ever reached for a sword.
He was hers.
Max didn't remember undressing her, couldn't recall how his own clothes disappeared. All that occurred in a distant, obscure haze. All he was sure of was that she was too hard to resist and he would disintegrate in the fire of his own making if he couldn't have her.
Garments flew off, torn away by an urgency that had seized them both.
He caressed her body as if it was something that wasn' t altogether real, but fashioned out of his deepest fantasizes.
Cara felt beautiful to the touch and he longed to touch her, to discover all the places that gave her pleasure, because her pleasure was his.
Max was careful not to go too fast, even though every fiber of his being urged him to. He didn't want to frighten her, wanted to leave a door open, just a crack, no matter what it cost him, for her to be able to pull away if she suddenly changed her mind.
He couldn't take her if she did.
He prayed she wouldn't.
She didn't.
Instead she seemed to be on fire, her body radiating heat at every movement.
When he went slowly, she twisted her body beneath his, tantalizing him, her fingers lightly feathering along his rib cage, his back, his hips.
She had, he realized, absolutely no idea of the power she wielded, no concept of what she could do to a man just by the light press of her lips to his body.
He moaned as she pressed her lips urgently beneath his chin, her tongue lightly gliding along his throat. His arms tightened around her, needs battering at him at every turn.
"A man can only hold back so long," he told her, his breathing heavy, his head and senses filled with the scent of her.
&
nbsp; "Then don't." She whispered the invitation against his skin.
The last of his control snapped like a dried twig caught within a raging inferno.
Rolling Cara from him and onto her back, he drew his body over hers. As he kissed her almost senseless, he coaxed her legs apart with his knee, anticipation racing through his body.
And then, watching her eyes for a sign that she suddenly regretted what was happening, seeing only his own features reflected there, Max slowly lowered himself, filling her.
He heard Cara gasp his name, felt her close around him, her body moving seductively.
Max began to move, first slowly, then more urgently as her hips fit against his and mimicked the movement, the harmony that had captured them both and now held them tightly together in its grip.
His heart racing at an ever-increasing tempo, Max threaded his fingers through hers, locking both hands tightly over her head. Reality faded away to less than a pinprick as he drove them over the ridge to a place they both desperately wanted to go.
Chapter 11
She'd screwed up.
Royally.
There was no reason, Cara thought as she quickly pulled on her clothes, for her to have fallen apart like that last night. She'd had that nightmare before, had lived through that nightmare and managed to go on.
Why had she crumbled like some stale, forgotten-about cookie this time?
It was his fault. All Ryker's fault for being so damn nice to her.
Gathering up her things in the room, Cara glared at the man who was still asleep in the bed. It was all his fault for sensing exactly what she needed and providing it for her so that she had no control, no anger to fall back on and keep her strong.
Well, she was angry now. Plenty angry. With herself, with him. With the whole damn world.
For two cents, she'd walk out that door and leave him here. She could tell the sheriff that there had been a change in plans and she was going on alone with the prisoner. No reason in the world not to believe her.
Determined, Cara took a step toward the door.
And then stopped.
She sighed. Ryker had given her his word back at the gas station that he wouldn't leave her while she went and changed and he hadn't.
