Angel Rogue: Book 4 in the Fallen Angels Series

by Mary Jo Putney

  She guessed that for Robin, the boy's death had come to symbolize everything that was innocent and courageous and doomed. The Treaty of Tilsit had been signed nine years earlier, and Robin would not have been much more than a boy himself. The wonder was not that he was close to breakdown, but that he had survived, and functioned, for so long while burdened with such terrible responsibilities and guilts.

  For a long time there was no sound but rain and distant thunder and grief. Gradually the echoes of anguish faded, though he still held her as if she were his one hope of heaven.

  Voice stark, he continued, "The French would have liked to retrieve the documents, but the river was high. They decided the water would destroy what the bullets hadn't, and they left. I stayed and helped the Werners search until we recovered Willi's body. His parents never said one word of reproach. In some ways, that was the hardest thing of all. They even apologized because Willi had destroyed my horse and insisted I take their best mount as a replacement."

  "It sounds as if Willi brought disaster on himself," Maxie said quietly. "If he hadn't intervened with his misplaced gallantry, you might have escaped cleanly with no one suffering."

  "Perhaps, perhaps not." Robin drew an unsteady breath. "But the fact remains that if I hadn't stopped at the Werners' farm, Willi would not have died."

  "Only God can know that, Robin. Perhaps it was Willi's time to die, and he would have slipped on the stairs and broken his neck at that same moment if you had not come. Perhaps he would have gone for a soldier when he was a year older and died fighting the French. Of course you feel grief and regret, but crucifying yourself serves no good purpose." She stroked his forehead, wishing she could soothe away the pain inside.

  "I always tried to do the right thing," he said bleakly. "But too often, I didn't know what the right thing was."

  She sighed. "I think most of us do the best we know how. There is really nothing more we can do."

  "My best wasn't good enough."

  His knotted pain proved that she had not done enough, either. She looked into her own past, then said, "After my mother's death, I attended a condolence ceremony held by members of her clan. It helped me a great deal."

  Praying that she could remember or improvise enough of the ritual to help Robin, she lightly covered his ears with her hands and recited, "When a man mourns, he cannot hear. Let these words remove the obstruction so that you can hear again."

  After lifting her hands from his ears, she laid them over his eyes. "During your grief, you have lost the sun and fallen into darkness. I now restore the sunlight."

  When she took her hands away, she saw that he was watching her gravely. Crossing her hands on the center of his chest, she intoned, "You have allowed your mind to dwell on your great grief. You must release it lest you, too, wither and die." She felt the rise and fall of his breathing beneath her palms until she lifted them away.

  "In your sorrow, your bed has become uncomfortable and you cannot sleep at night. Let me remove the discomfort from your resting place." She smoothed her hands across his shoulders and down his arms, then said quietly, "Willi has gone to his rest, Robin. Can't you do the same?"

  His eyes closed and he pulled her down against him. At first his heart was pounding as if trying to break free of his ribs, but gradually it slowed to a more normal speed. She held tightly, feeling that some of his inner darkness had been dissolved by the light. Though it was not complete healing, it was a beginning.

  He slid his hand into her hair and rested his palm on her nape. "How did you become so wise, Kanawiosta?"

  "The usual way," she said wryly. "By making mistakes." She settled her head on his shoulder, so tired from the emotional storms she could scarcely stay awake.

  "Whatever the reason, you have wisdom," His hand skimmed down her back, coming to rest on her hip. "Too much to consider marrying me."

  His statement acted on her fatigue like a spray of ice water, shocking her to full wakefulness. For a stunned moment she replayed his words to ensure that she had heard properly. Then she sat up and stared at her companion.

  Robin lay on the pillows and watched her with the patient stillness of exhaustion. The candlelight played over the stark planes of his face and bare chest, but it was too dim to read the color or expression of his shadowed eyes.

  Torn between shock, amusement, and desperate longing, she asked, "Is that an offer, or merely a product of your bizarre sense of humor?"

  He sighed, turning his gaze from her to the ceiling. "It wasn't intended as humor. I guess I can't quite bring myself to make a direct offer. If we did marry, the advantages would all be to me. You would be a fool to accept, and you're too intelligent not to know that."

  She didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or shriek. The scalding emotions of the night had forced her to admit that she loved Robin, though she wasn't sure that she understood or even wholly trusted him.

  Which was not the same as saying that she distrusted him; she didn't doubt that he would be true to any commitment he made. And she understood him a good deal better now than she had an hour before. Still... "Marrying you is not without appeal, but I can't imagine what sort of life we would have. Our backgrounds are hopelessly different, and even though I've been a wanderer in the past, that isn't what I want for the future."

  "No more do I. I promise you that I can keep a roof over your head." His mouth quirked satirically. "I am not quite as improvident as I look."

  "Robin, look at me." When his gaze turned to her, she asked, "Why do you want to marry me? You have said nothing of love."

  His eyes closed in a quick spasm of sorrow. "I can promise many things, Kanawiosta. Security, fidelity, my best efforts to make you happy. But love? I don't think I am very good at love. It is one thing I would be wiser not to promise."

  Even when her father had died, Maxie had not ached like this. Robin's painful, despairing honesty made her want to weep. Instead she lifted his damaged left hand and kissed it, then pressed it against her cheek. "Do you want me because I am here and Maggie is not?"

  "No." His eyes opened and his fingers tightened around hers. "What I feel for you has nothing to do with Maggie. I did, and do, care for her deeply. I always will, but I don't want you as a substitute for her." Amusement flickered across his handsome, rogue angel face. "You are far too much yourself ever to be mistaken for anyone else."

  She felt adrift, uncertain how to react. "Caring and loyalty are valuable, even vital. But is that enough?"

  "Don't forget passion." He tugged her hand to bring her down next to him. "I haven't for one minute since I met you."

  He rolled over and embraced her. Their lips met, and she thought she would dissolve in liquid fire. There had been kisses and caresses before, but always they had been shadowed by doubt. This time was utterly different. Robin's formidable skill and concentration were for her, and her alone.

  She responded with all her wistful yearning. The drama of the night had scoured away normal defenses, and their emotions twined as intimately as their bodies. For a wild, sweet interval, there were no questions, only taste and touch and discovery. No matter how tortured Robin's past, despairing his present, and uncertain his future, she loved him.

  He trailed kisses down her throat, then slid her shift off her shoulders to bare her breasts. Cupping them together, he murmured, "Lovely. So perfect and lovely."

  As he rubbed his face in the shadowed cleft he created, she was struck by the contrast between her brown skin and his fairness. Then he lapped her nipple with his tongue and she forgot the contrast, forgot her doubts, forgot everything but the pure flame of desire.

  Her hands skimmed over his back, tracing the faint ridges of scar tissue from that long-ago whipping. Someday she would have to ask him about that, and the bullet wound, and his misshapen hand—about every perilous incident that might have ended his life before they had a chance to meet. But not tonight. Ah, God, not tonight.

  Abruptly he pulled away and buried his face in the pillow, his
shoulders heaving. "Passion is too easy." His voice was ragged. "Neither of us, I think, is in a state to make decisions."

  She was left gasping. Her hands clenched the counterpane as she stared at the ceiling and tried to collect her scattered wits. Why the devil couldn't she have gotten involved with a selfish man who was interested only in his own pleasure?

  Because she could not have loved such a man. Speaking with great care, she said, "I gather this means you are undergoing another crisis of conscience."

  He emerged from the pillow with a twisted, self-mocking smile. "Exactly so."

  Gently he pulled her shift up over her shoulders again. His hand lingered for a moment on her breast. Then he moved his arm away, his fingers knotting into a fist. "You're remarkable. After all I've put you through tonight, you should be having shrieking hysterics."

  "Believe me, I'm tempted." Limbs still trembling with reaction, she rolled over and propped her head on one hand so she could see his face. "How serious are you about marriage?"

  "Completely," he said, his eyes lambent with passion.

  She closed her eyes for a moment to marshal her thoughts before speaking. She wanted to say that she loved him, but didn't dare, not after his painful doubts about his ability to love. Neither did she want to give him a new source of guilt if the morning light made him change his mind about his proposal.

  Was marriage to Robin why she had been unable to sense her future course? She thought about London, and immediately veered away, shaken by that horrible, black anxiety. But the fleeting contact reinforced her belief that her anxiety had nothing to do with Robin; it was more like a wall of fire that she must pass through in order to have a future.

  Trying to suppress an involuntary shiver, she said, "You are right that this is not the time to make decisions. I must learn what happened to my father, and you have a great deal of sorting out to do."

  He leaned forward and pressed a light kiss on her forehead. "I'll sort as fast as I can. In the meantime, at least you aren't saying no." He twined a lock of her dark hair around his forefinger. "I may be acting like the next thing to a lunatic, but I don't think I've ever felt happier in my life than these last days with you. I've been wishing this journey would never end. Now, since there will be no final answers until it does, I want to get to London as soon as possible. It's just that..."

  She waited patiently for him to continue.

  His eyes slid away and his hand stilled. "I don't know if it is wise to marry a woman because I need her so much. I think that might not be good for either of us."

  She studied his expression. The detachment that he had worn like a cloak was gone, and she savored the feeling of closeness. But it was difficult to think clearly when her blood was drumming in her veins. On a deeper level, she still felt the majestic, pulsing energies of passion and creation, the belief that together they would find a measure of wholeness.

  With sudden dismay, she realized that she had been behaving like her demure Collins cousins. Since meeting Robin, she had been defending her virtue, worrying about the future instead of living in the present, protecting her heart from possible hurt.

  But acting like a respectable Englishwoman would not save her from pain; it would only deny her the deepest desire of her heart. It was time to dispense with European reason in favor of Iroquois wisdom. She wanted Robin. She wanted to give and receive, to be the kind of whole, wise, passionate woman her mother had been, even if it was only for an hour. She wanted to live in this moment as freely as the wind and the rain. And in her bones, she knew that doing so was right.

  She gave him a smile filled with love. "Your problem, Lord Robert, is that you think too much." Then she leaned forward and kissed him.

  Chapter 24

  He could not resist her, yet for one crazed moment, as he thought of all of the people he had damaged, he tried. "Are you sure this is what you want?"

  She smiled and raised herself above him, bracing herself with one arm. "Perfectly sure."

  Waves of ebony hair framed the exotic features that had entranced him from the moment they had met. She was Kanawiosta, daughter of another land and another race. With her hair spilling over her shift-clad breasts, she looked like a pagan earth goddess, too mysterious for mortal man to know or possess, with a feminine power that could sear him to cinders.

  But when she bent to him again, her lips were warm and real, her small, capable hands generous in their caresses. Surrendering, he opened his mouth to her drugging kiss.

  He wanted to inhale her inside of himself so that she could mend the holes in his frayed spirit. He wanted to bury himself inside her and find shelter from the storm that had been raging in his head for a lifetime.

  As the kiss intensified, she skimmed her hands over his shoulders and chest, the warmth of her touch glowing through his skin and reaching deep inside him to melt ancient aches. Finally she interrupted their embrace and pushed herself up with one arm, her eyes black with desire and her chest heaving under the translucent shift. "I'm glad you changed your mind."

  "You changed it for me." He circled her breasts with his hands, using his thumbs to caress her nipples. They hardened, thrusting against the thin fabric. She closed her eyes and smiled, making a sound like a pleased cat.

  He pushed her shift from her shoulders and down to her waist so that he could admire the sweet curve of her breasts. They were exactly right—not too large, not too small, deliciously crowned with circles the texture of sheared velvet. Huskily he said, "You belong in the Garden of Eden, where clothing was unknown."

  "Eden was in a warmer climate than England," she said practically. Her smile turned wicked as she looked at his drawers. Even through the loose linen, his response to her was blindingly obvious.

  "If we're going to pretend this is Eden, these must go." She tugged at the drawstring, then caught hold of his drawers and began pulling them off. It would have only taken a moment to remove them if she hadn't helped. Instead, her wandering, teasing hands made the process take much longer, and almost reduced him to incoherence.

  When they were both as bare as Adam and Eve, he drew her forward so that she was lying on top of him. Her breasts crushed against his chest, the nipples a distinct, teasing pressure.

  He could not get enough of the heated depths of her mouth. His hands glided down her back to linger on the ripe curves of her buttocks. Lost in yearning, he kneaded the firm muscles that lay beneath her satiny skin.

  She sucked in her breath, and her lower body rocked against his. Her legs parted a little and his heated shaft slid between her thighs, rubbing against her with an intimacy just short of intercourse. She made a tiny mewling sound and her teeth nipped his collarbone when his hips thrust upward once, then again.

  He wanted this to be slow and perfect, as she deserved, but she was making a shambles of his control. Struggling against the white heat that threatened to consume him, he caught her in his arms and rolled so that their positions reversed and he was above.

  "Not so swiftly, Kanawiosta." He caught her wrists and pinned them to the mattress on both sides of her head. "In interests of justice, I deserve a chance to drive you mad."

  "I'm a great believer in justice," she said with a ravishingly feminine smile.

  Taking his time, he grazed her breasts with his chin, the hidden whiskers delicately abrading the silky, lavender-scented skin until her body thrummed with desire. He bent his head and took the tawny tip of one nipple into his mouth, sucking and tugging until it was so rigid it grooved his tongue. Then he turned to her other breast.

  When she exhaled feverishly and twisted against him, he trailed his mouth downward, over the arc of her ribs and the taper of her narrow waist. He paused to swirl his tongue around her navel, then nibbled the flat arc of her belly.

  She strained against his pinioning hands, panting, "You've gotten your wish. In another five seconds, I'll be raving."

  "Excellent." He straightened up and claimed her mouth again in a lushly sensual kiss. Abandonin
g all pretense of being in control, he released her wrists and wrapped one arm around her. His other hand glided downward, following the path of his earlier kisses until his fingers became tangled in feathery black curls.

  She quivered when he first touched the hidden folds of female flesh. They were slick and swollen with moist heat.

  He probed deeper until he found the exquisitely sensitive nub he sought. The gentle friction of his finger caused her to writhe frantically.

  He broke their kiss so she could drag great gulps of air into her lungs. Then he closed his eyes, blocking out the beguiling sight of her so he could concentrate on the subtle messages of her body. Harder here. Back and forth again and again there, as her breath roughened and her hips bucked.

  As the heady scent of passion filled his nostrils, her pliant nakedness became his whole world. It had been unutterably long since he had held a woman like this, and never had he felt such deep yearning.

  The wildness built higher and higher, filling her mind with crimson fire. When she could bear no more, she cried out, her thighs clamping on his hand as a vortex of sensations swirled through her. The enfolding strength of his embrace held her safe as her spirit spiraled skyward, soaring falcon free.

  As she returned to earth, she sagged against Robin, dazed and trembling. He lay on his side, holding her close against him while one hand caressed her from shoulder to hip in long, easy strokes. She tilted her head back, and the satisfaction she saw in his eyes assuaged her sense of selfishness.

  But underneath his composed surface, his body was tense and unfulfilled. She lay back on the pillows, then caught his hand and pulled him across her. "Your turn, Robin."

  It took only a single slow, wanton roll of her hips to splinter his calm. His face stark with urgency, he parted her legs with one knee, then probed her intimately, separating the delicate folds. Nothing more was needed, for her body was still wetly welcoming.