by Robyn DeHart
She shivered beneath his hands. Her breath caught, making her words husky. “I’m not certain that would be a prudent activity in such a place.”
“Probably not.” But it didn’t mean that he couldn’t kiss her. Just one sweet taste. He caught her lips and kissed her hard. She whimpered against his mouth as her body relaxed against his. More than anything, he wanted to take her back to the house and properly bed her. But he couldn’t afford to ignore his duty to Solomon’s. He’d made a commitment to them, and he couldn’t ignore it. He’d be damned if he’d be the man his father was.
Vanessa was prim, yet not so proper, and it was a heady combination. Damnation if he couldn’t forget his own name while touching this woman. There was work to be done. He pulled back from her.
“Be careful; follow behind me. And don’t talk,” Graeme said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her in the direction that he’d been headed. He could attempt to send her back to the house, but he knew that would be wasted words and effort. She had already shown him once that she was not the sort of woman who would behave or do as she was told.
In fact, she seemed far more likely to do the exact opposite of what she’d been told. It seemed increasingly unlikely that he’d be able to send her to London unless he’d be willing to escort her there himself or tie her to the train. Neither option guaranteed she wouldn’t follow him right back here.
They crept along in the darkness, and Vanessa neither stumbled nor said a word. He tried not to be impressed that she could match his stealth and keep his pace. But that probably explained the smile that he knew played at his lips.
Somewhere to the right, Graeme heard a rock scrape down the stone wall. He stopped moving, and she halted along with him. Up ahead, he could see a slight flicker of light. Perhaps the torches there remained lit.
“It’s coming from over there,” Vanessa whispered, and he knew she probably pointed as well, but the tunnel was too dark to make out her precise position.
“Quiet,” he whispered into her ear. She smelled good, like springtime and clean linens, and he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her until her scent enveloped him. He stepped away to clear his head, then moved them in the direction of the noise.
The light grew brighter as they stepped forward, and Graeme knew they’d reach Niall soon. He just hoped there would be enough darkness to conceal themselves so they could watch his cousin.
Another bang of something, then Niall swore. Graeme found a wall to the right that they could hide behind. He moved Vanessa in that direction.
“You stay behind here,” he told her.
She nodded, her eyes wide.
Graeme looked around the corner and saw Niall moving rocks as if building a barricade. Over and over he bent, then rose to stack them until he’d walled off a section. What the hell was he up to? If he was searching for the treasure, why would he build a wall?
Graeme wasn’t certain how long he watched, peering around his hiding place but keeping most of his body huddled next to his wife’s. Her hand rested easily in his own, and she made no effort to move from her position. Most women would not be this comfortable shrouded in near darkness and hiding in a cave. But Vanessa stood there as if this were nothing more than a friendly game of hide-and-go-seeking.
Graeme leaned against the wall next to her, his breath labored, but quiet. She was keenly aware of him standing beside her, his body heat chasing away the chill of the cave. For the last few years, she’d longed to explore these very caves. Yet now that she was here, it was not the prospect of scientific discovery that excited her, but rather the man beside her.
He was handsome, intensely so, she had to admit that. Here in the cave, she couldn’t make out all of his features clearly, but she closed her eyes to remember them from the night before. His crystal green eyes had darkened when he’d lowered himself on top of her, turning the color of a spring field. It was a marvel really, the way her body had responded to his touch. Interesting. And the sensations had been mesmerizing. As if her body was no longer her own, and she was merely riding in the vessel and reveling in the experience. She’d had no idea her body was even capable of such things.
A most interesting experiment. Perhaps those feelings were what Jeremy had mistaken for love. He and Violet had writhed around on the floor for so long, panting and moaning, and now Vanessa knew what they’d experienced.
But could she and Jeremy not have shared the same in their marriage bed? Was the reaction to touch dependent on the other person so greatly that with one man you could share explosive passion and with the other feel nothing?
Perhaps she should try again. Kiss Graeme and compare it to the kiss that she’d shared with Jeremy. Last night, she’d been too nervous about her seduction to pay close enough attention.
Without another thought, she pressed her hands to Graeme’s chest, reached up on the tips of her toes, and kissed him.
Immediately he responded. His arm snaked around her waist, pulling her close to his warmth. Possessively close. His kiss was not rough, but tenderness was decidedly absent. Instead his kiss was urgent, his tongue deep, his lips intense, but just as pleasant and thought-scattering as she’d remembered from the night before. Coils of pleasure wound their way through her extremities, up her legs, down her arms, around in her stomach, all swirling and moving toward the center of her body. The hidden area where Graeme had put his fingers.
Heat flamed in her cheeks and chest, and she knew pink stained her skin. The mere thought of their union brought color to her face. Not out of embarrassment, but pure unadulterated desire. She longed to get closer to him, longed to wrap her legs around him and have him ease the lust that pounded through her. Most interesting indeed.
They continued to kiss, and he kneaded her bottom, but she wanted more. No, craved more.
Without further thought, she hiked one of her legs up and wrapped it around his waist. He lifted her off the ground and pulled her tighter to him, pressing her to his erection. Yes, that was the spot; the pressure of him against her was precisely what she desired. In one swift movement, he flipped their positions so that her back pressed into the wall, and he pinned her in place. He lifted her other leg, and she wrapped both of them around him, her dress bunched up at her waist. In this position, nothing save her undergarments and his trousers stood between their skin.
He kissed her, and she bucked against him, rubbing herself along the hard ridge of his erection. Again and again, she moved until the pleasure unwound and the spiral of sensations burst through her. She did her best not to make a sound as her climax exploded through her.
Good gracious, but it was most fascinating how she reacted to him. He leaned against her, his warm breath scattering gooseflesh across her neck. Perhaps she’d misjudged lust, placing it in the same useless category as love. Lust was most pleasant, and between husband and wife, certainly it was appropriate, although perhaps too distracting to accomplish much.
Graeme lowered Vanessa’s legs to the ground and stepped away from her. Damned if she wasn’t a tempting little minx. And now he was so hard that he wanted to rip off her clothes and pound himself into her, but he couldn’t do that. Not here and certainly not now. He took a deep breath and pulled his mind out of his pants. He knew how to control himself. Hell, he’d been doing it his entire life.
He strained his ears to listen, trying to hear what Niall could be doing. He moved over to the wall and peeked around it, but Niall was gone. The stone barricade he’d made stood, but there was no other sign of the man. Graeme swore. He couldn’t even keep his hands to himself long enough to complete the task that he’d started this morning.
“This way,” Graeme said to Vanessa. He made no move to touch her this time since he struggled to keep his hands off her body.
But she followed obediently. They stepped around the boulder and entered the area where Niall had been working. Directly above them, the ceiling towered high, covered with long reaching stalactites. Then the chamber narrowed, rounding downward to form a tu
nnel. Damn it all, but Niall had already escaped. Gone into that tunnel? Or passed beside Graeme and Vanessa without being seen or heard?
“Son of a bitch,” Graeme bit out.
“What’s the matter?” Vanessa asked.
Plenty was the matter. While he’d been pleasuring his wife up against a wall, he’d allowed his target to escape. He exhaled slowly.
“The man you were watching, he left,” she said.
“My cousin,” Graeme corrected.
“Niall was here?” She stepped out into the open area of the cavern and started examining her surroundings. “Then for whatever reason were we hiding? If you wanted to know what he was doing, why would you not simply ask him?”
There was a simple logic to her question, and for a moment, Graeme wondered if that tactic would work. But he didn’t know if Niall trusted him enough to answer truthfully. Chances were he would not. Were their positions traded, it was unlikely that he would trust Niall. But if the men of Solomon’s were suspicious, then they had good reason to be. They were cautious men, and by no means alarmist.
“It seems such a simple tactic is not possible.”
She shrugged. “Asking questions has always been preferable to me, than to wonder endlessly what someone is thinking or doing.” She looked around them, her nose wrinkled. “What is he building?”
“I don’t know. I need to look around,” he said, expecting at any moment that she would begin complaining about the temperature or the darkness or simply the fact that they were in a cave. But Vanessa seemed as at home here as he did. She nodded, then turned to investigate the stone wall Niall had constructed.
Graeme moved to the opposite side of the wall. Stone by stone, Niall had stacked rocks to the cavern ceiling. There appeared to be no significant reason, but that was unlikely. Graeme turned and looked back up at the high ceiling. Those long, narrow, and nearly flesh-colored stalactites pointed down at him. Accusatory fingers ready to blame him for failure. Echoes of his father’s voice whispered inside him. But Graeme wouldn’t give up so quickly.
He deliberately looked away, glancing down to examine the cavern floor. They continued looking for several minutes and still Graeme had found nothing that indicated what Niall might be up to. If the man was searching for the bloody Loch Ness treasure, why the hell would he build a wall? It made no sense.
Unless he’d already discovered the stone and was trying to block it off until he could remove it. Graeme turned in the direction of the wall just in time to watch Vanessa take a step around it, and then there was a huge blast. Dust exploded around them, and rocks tumbled to the ground.
A stalactite dropped, knocking Graeme to the ground. He tried to move and realized that the stalactite had speared through his arm, pinning him to the floor. Blinding pain surged through him, and he growled in response.
As the dirt cleared, Graeme saw that the explosion had split open the floor of the cave, creating a huge gash separating him from Vanessa. She, too, lay on the ground, but seemed unscathed.
“What the devil happened?” he asked.
“Some sort of explosion.” She came to her feet and brushed the dirt off her skirts. She looked around her. She came to the edge, where dirt continued to fall into the hole below.
“Don’t move,” Graeme warned, holding up his free arm. “That ground is still unstable.”
She took several steps backward. “It’s too wide,” she said calmly. “I don’t think I could cross it.”
“No, it’s far too wide. I couldn’t even cross it,” he said.
It was then that she seemed to look up and realize where he was. Her eyes widened—and she pointed. “Graeme, your arm. Are you bleeding?”
“A little. It isn’t that bad. It’s barely engaged my skin.” Not completely untrue, though he would lose more blood when he pulled the damn thing out. While the stalactite was not that large in circumference, it was brutally sharp, and had it fallen a few inches over, it would have gone straight through his heart.
He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and pulled up on the stalactite with all his strength. It tore through his flesh on the way out, and he knew that echoing sound filling the cavern came from his throat. But finally he was free. Blood oozed from the wound, running down his arm. He struggled to sit up, the pain swirling nausea through his stomach.
“You’re bleeding faster,” Vanessa said. “You need to stanch the bleeding. Create a tourniquet.”
He nodded, knowing what she said was true. He was thankful she said it aloud to remind his clouded mind what to do. He ripped his other sleeve off and wrapped it around his arm, then used his teeth to help tie it off. The fabric strained as he pulled it tight, and the blood slowed to a trickle before eventually stopping.
Graeme didn’t move for several moments, merely concentrated on inhaling and exhaling. Breathe in, breathe out.
Then he looked across the gap to where his new wife stood, her face concerned, but without fear. Injured or not, he couldn’t leave her over there. He came to his feet, using only his good arm as leverage. The empty chasm was far too wide for him to jump. If he had two good arms, he might risk it, but even then it would be a stretch.
Graeme looked around. “I’m going to have to find another way to get you out.”
“I don’t think you’re in any state to rescue me,” she said.
“You just sit still and don’t touch anything.” He glanced around them, surveying their surroundings once more. Several other stalactites had also fallen, and the blast could have caused additional structural instability. “I don’t want to cause any more shifts, or else we’ll never get out of here.”
She nodded, but continued to look around her.
“I’m serious, Vanessa; don’t move. The caves here go down so deep, if you fall down there”—he pointed at the gap between them, then shook his head—“I’d never be able to save you. But I think I can circle around and find another tunnel that leads to you.”
She took a steadying breath. “I’ll be safe. You just work on a way of getting me out of here. And concentrate on not bleeding to death.”
“I’m working on it right now.”
Chapter Eight
Niall made haste returning to his home. He knew The Raven had been following him, had heard his steps near. Had the bastard followed earlier, Niall might not have accomplished his task. But he’d heard the explosion. The man had stepped around his barricade to appease his endless curiosity, had fallen into Niall’s trap, and now was trapped himself.
Niall would wait a while to allow The Raven to take in the gravity of his situation. Then Niall would return to the cave and do a little blackmailing of his own. He had leverage now, and soon he’d be able to walk away from all of this. There had been a day when he’d longed to find the Loch Ness Treasure, but the quest had brought him nothing but pain and grief. No more.
The only thing that he wanted now was for his family to be safe. And he had The Raven right where he wanted him.
Vanessa surveyed her surroundings, knowing that Graeme was out there looking for a way to save her. Thank goodness that Niall had had the foresight to leave a lit lantern in this area. She assumed it meant he would be returning soon to his work, whatever that might be.
Graeme’s wound had been a nasty one, but the stalactite had missed any organs or arteries, so in time he should be fine. It seemed likely, though, that he’d need stitches. She considered this, and in the meantime decided that while she waited for him she might as well use this time to explore. Perhaps she’d find something useful. She did not think she was in the precise cave where Mr. McElroy had discovered his fossil, but that did not mean there weren’t discoveries to be made here. Or perhaps she’d even rescue herself.
She made her way over to the wall that had crumbled, hoping she’d find something buried within the stone. Fossils had a way of showing up inside of rocks. The crumbled wall dissolved into a pile of rocks about three quarters of the way down on one side. The only opening was consider
ably narrow. She reached into her bag and retrieved a candle and lit it. The flame sputtered to life, and she held it in between the narrow opening to see what was beyond.
It was yet another cavern, but because of the fallen rocks, the opening was far too narrow for her to pass through. It might be a way out, but in its current state she’d never be able to fit through the passage, not even by turning sideways. She needed to remove more of the rocks to widen the opening. She extinguished the candle.
She took one glance behind her, but Graeme was nowhere in sight. He’d told her to stay where she was, but what if his wound had started bleeding again? What if he’d passed out somewhere and needed her help? There was no waiting in a situation like this. There was only action.
Vanessa set the lantern aside to give herself free use of both hands. She bent to retrieve the first stone, lifting it to cradle near her body. The chalky exterior flaked against her skin, making the rock difficult to hold on to. Then she picked up another. This one scraped against her fingernail until it tore off so close to her finger’s tip that she fully expected it to bleed. But her tiny injury shrank in comparison to Graeme being impaled by a stalactite.
One by one, she removed rocks, setting them off to the side behind her. Though the air surrounding her was chilled, her exertion caused sweat to bead and roll down her back so that her dress began to stick to her skin. Almost there; the passageway was almost wide enough. She worked to pull some additional rocks out of the way. Finally she’d removed enough that she’d be able to squeeze through.
Retrieving her lantern, Vanessa sucked in her breath and climbed through to the other area. Gingerly, she stepped into the other tunnel and waited for another explosion. Only the sound of her own breathing filled the space. So she took another step, the ground firm beneath her feet. She only hoped where it led her wouldn’t bring additional danger.
Chalky dust filled her lungs as she inhaled, and the chill emanating off the stone walls seemed to close in on her. But she’d never been one to allow fear to stop her. She would simply walk down this way for a few meters and see if she could detect a way out, a way back to Graeme. If nothing came of her search, she’d return and wait until Graeme found her.
