by Peggy Webb
“You aren’t handling this well, Elizabeth.”
“Stop it, Hawk.” She slammed the refrigerator shut. “I know what I’m doing.”
“You called me Hawk.” His eyes were very dark.
“It was a slip of the tongue.”
“Only my lovers call me Hawk.” His hands moved into her hair, loosening the pins and casting them onto the kitchen floor. The heavy mass fell down around her shoulders, and he tangled his hands in it.
Her breathing came in short bursts. Neither of them spoke. It was almost as if they had given up their wills and fate had taken over. Hawk’s eyes were predatory as he lowered his head toward hers.
“Hawk,” she whispered.
“You want me.”
“No.”
“I want you.”
His arms tightened as he backed her against the kitchen counter.
“Someone could come.”
“The blinds are closed, and I saw you lock the door.”
He slid her jacket off, and she heard it land on the kitchen floor. Bending low, he pressed his lips against her throat.
His tongue sent shivers skittering along her skin. Unconsciously she reached for him, splaying her fingers along the back of his neck and pressing his head closer.
His mouth captured hers, and she was lost.
Three
Without regard to his injuries or his responsibilities or his situation, he took his time with her, sliding his mouth over hers until he felt her response. It wasn’t long in coming, and he was amazed at the intensity. He had been right: Elizabeth McCade was a woman of fire.
He lifted her onto the cabinet and slid his hand under her skirt, his mouth never leaving hers. Her outward garments were a modern-day suit of armor, but underneath she was dressed to please.
“You can tell me no, Elizabeth.”
“I know that.”
He slid his knife out of his belt so it wouldn’t bite into her skin, then pressed closer so he was fitted perfectly between her knees.
Silk whispered as he undid her buttons.
She was swaying on the cabinet, making a soft murmuring sound, like night wind singing through the forest. He felt primitive and powerful with her, invincible.
She was beautiful beyond what he’d imagined, and he caressed her with gentleness and wonder, as if she were precious and breakable. He hadn’t expected to feel this way. He inhaled deeply, then began a slow, deliberate seduction.
Elizabeth was with him all the way, the heat spreading, building until Hawk felt as if he held the burning sun in his arms.
Suddenly she pushed against his shoulders.
“Elizabeth?” He lifted his head and looked at her. Her face was flushed with desire, but her eyes were wild with unnamed fears.
“Hawk.” She grabbed his shoulders, swaying a moment. Then a new determination came into her face, and she dug her fingers into his flesh. “We can’t do this.”
“Why not, Elizabeth?” His own breathing was ragged, and his heart was pumping so hard, he felt as if he had run cross-country.
Elizabeth fumbled with her clothing. He reached out and helped her.
“Why not?” he asked once more, gentler this time.
“Because...” She bent over her buttons, and her hair swung down and obscured her face.
Still pressed against her, he waited. He could feel the trembling in her body.
“Are you afraid of me, Elizabeth?” She said nothing, and he reached out and touched her cheek. “There’s no need to be afraid. I would never hurt you.”
“It’s not that.” She lifted her face, and he saw that it was drained of color. “I’m not afraid of you; I’m afraid of myself.”
“Why? I’m not asking for anything beyond the moment.”
“This has to do with more than sexual appetites.”
She made a move, and he lifted her off the counter. He didn’t release her immediately, but gripped her shoulders and scrutinized her face.
“Tell me,” he said.
“No. I can’t. It’s private.”
“What are your secrets, Elizabeth? What demons haunt you?”
She pulled free and bent over to pick up her jacket. Her expression was guarded as she slid her arms into the jacket and buttoned it securely at her waist. Her hands trembled as she swept her hair off her neck in an attempt to restore it to its prim knot. But she had no hairpins. They were scattered on the floor.
Hawk picked them up, one by one. Silently he handed them to her.
Equally silent, she took the pins and jammed them into her hair. Her color returned, and her trembling ceased.
“I will not be touched again,” she said.
“I won’t touch you again... until you ask me to.”
“I’ll never ask.”
He smiled at her and retrieved his knife from the kitchen counter. Tucking it into his belt, he faced her.
“We are alike, Elizabeth. You will ask.” He left her quickly, never looking back.
He heard her leave the kitchen, heard her footsteps on the stairs, heard her bedroom door slam. His flesh wounds ached and smarted, but not nearly as much as the wound to his spirit. It wasn’t a sense of rejection that pained him; it was a sense that he had somehow failed Elizabeth, that he had been the source of great anxiety to her.
Black Hawk stood in the hallway, pondering her behavior and his own. What were her secrets to him? There was no answer to his question, only the overwhelming feeling that he had to know.
o0o
Upstairs in her bedroom, Elizabeth sat at her desk staring at her diary, which lay open to an entry dated four years ago.
“Dr. Laton—Mark—is a professor and I am a student. Long-standing tradition and school policy both state that we can’t be together.”
Elizabeth propped her head on her hands and stared into space. They had been together—many times. Mark had pursued her until she gave in. He had been her teacher, her mentor, her idol. He had been older and wiser, and she had been young and naive.
She glanced down at the diary once more and continued to read. “Mark took me to the Celestial Hideaway two counties away. We sat at a table in the corner and gazed at each other across the red-checkered cloth. ‘I want to make love to you, Elizabeth,’ he said in that deep voice of his. My protests were weak and he knew it. That very night I allowed him to carry me back to his office in the English building where he proved himself as good a teacher of love as he is of Chaucer.”
Logic told her that she wasn’t the first student who had fallen prey to a forbidden seduction, but that didn’t change how she felt. Gullible. Foolish. Ashamed. Her reckless involvement with Mark had cost her the scholarship she’d worked so hard to earn. And though Aunt Kathleen said differently, Elizabeth knew she was disappointed that her brother’s only child had not lived up to everybody’s expectations. Furthermore, Elizabeth had lost respect for herself, a deadly thing for an ambitious young woman who had planned to set the world on fire.
Elizabeth flung the diary across the room.
“Elizabeth?” Hawk tapped at her door. “Are you all right?”
“Go away. I don’t want to see you.”
The door opened, and he walked in with a tray loaded with food and brightened by red-checkered napkins and a lighted candle, reminders of her past.
“Thank you for preparing my dinner. That was thoughtful of you.”
“I made enough for two.”
In her current state, she didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to sit at a table with him. She didn’t even want to be in the same room as him. But she wasn’t about to admit it. Surely she could handle sharing one meal.
She took the tray and glanced around her room. The bedside table would do; she could pull up two chairs. But she wasn’t about to be trapped with Hawk in her bedroom for the next thirty minutes.
“Well eat downstairs.”
They made their way downstairs side by side, saying nothing. When they reached her dining room, she blew ou
t the candle and tucked the red-checkered napkins into a drawer of her antique sideboard, replacing them with white linen. Hawk noticed, but she didn’t care. She was not going to offer any explanations or any apologies.
He pulled out her chair, and she thanked him. All very polite and proper. It amused her to think that they were the same two people who had almost made love on the kitchen counter only an hour earlier.
She expected the meal to be a strained affair, but Hawk surprised her. He was at ease and full of great charm, speaking on a variety of subjects that caught her interest—literature, entertainment, and especially politics as it affected the world they lived in.
They agreed on much and argued about little. It seemed their only bone of contention was the unspoken one—passion and how to handle it.
“You have a chess set,” he said near the end of their meal.
“Yes.” She smiled. “Given your habit of snooping, I suppose you can tell me everything I have in this house.”
“It’s called scouting, not snooping.”
She liked his sense of humor. In fact, there were a lot of things she was learning to like about Black Hawk—aside from the obvious.
“Shall we play a game?”
“What?” she asked, temporarily distracted by her thoughts.
“Chess, Elizabeth.”
He had a big, free laugh. Suddenly she was furious at Mark Laton, furious that he had taken away her ability to be totally relaxed with men such as Black Hawk. She was so tired of constantly being on guard.
“Certainly. I’ll play a game with you.” She got up from the table. “I trust you’ll be a worthy opponent.”
“I’m lethal.”
She already knew how lethal he could be. Together they stacked the dishes, then went into her den. It was cozy, with comfortable stuffed chairs, colorful rugs, and lots of lamps.
“Do you always keep your curtains drawn, Elizabeth?” Hawk asked as he set up the board on the game table.
“Why do you ask?”
“If anyone should come unexpectedly, would they notice anything different about your house?”
“No. I like privacy. And don’t worry. No one will come.”
They set up their pieces and started the game. Both played with great skill, but Hawk quickly won the first game.
“You’re an aggressive player,” Elizabeth said. “Do you always go on the attack?”
“Always. I’m a warrior.”
“In real life as well as in games, if all the stories I read about you are correct.”
“They’re correct in that assessment. Although a few of my exploits have been exaggerated.”
The story of your holding the mayor’s roast pig hostage while a hundred and fifty guests starved?”
“True.” He laughed.
“I don’t remember what that was all about.”
“He refused to consider or even discuss a proposal that would require recycling. I think we should be caretakers of the world we live in and not destroyers of it.”
“And what about the tale of your riding into the boardroom of the city planning commission on your horse?”
“It was the only way I could get their attention. That was over a small zoning problem.”
“It wasn’t so small, as I recall. You were trying to keep one of our city’s few remaining tracts of wooded land from being turned into an industrial park.”
“The industrial parks we have are not filled. If the planning commission had gotten its way, there would soon be no place left for the people of Tombigbee Bluff.”
They set up the board and started another game as they talked. Hawk checkmated her in an amazingly short time.
“Don’t expect to always win so easily.”
“But I do.” He smiled. “I don’t think you’re paying attention.”
It was true. Only half her mind was on the game; the other half was on her opponent. She vowed to herself to do better.
They both played with savage intensity. When she threatened his king, conversation ceased.
The room was perfectly still except for the occasional click of marble chess pieces against the board. Outside, a summer rain began to fall, tapping lightly against the windowpanes and the old tin roof of Elizabeth’s ancestral home. Gentle breezes stirred the pine trees to a melodic whispering.
Black Hawk looked up from the chessboard. “It’s cozy in here, Elizabeth... just the two of us.”
She didn’t comment, but she had felt the coziness as well. After living as a virtual recluse, it felt good to have a guest in her house, to share a simple game of chess.
They gazed at each other over the chessboard for a long time, and then, almost self-consciously, they both turned their attention back to the game. Both reached out at the same time, and their hands collided over one of her pawns.
“Pardon me,” she whispered.
“I believe it was my turn,” he said.
“Certainly.”
She forced her attention back to her chess pieces, and played out the game to its conclusion. The rain had picked up speed and was whipping the house in a fury by the time Elizabeth and Hawk had made all their moves.
“I believe this is stalemate,” he said.
“So it is. Nobody won.”
“You re right. Neither of us won.” His eyes seemed to burn through her. “Another game?”
“No. It’s very late.”
She straightened the chess pieces and left the board set for a new game, while he sat in the chair, watching her. Her gaze slid sideways. His naked chest was still crisscrossed with marks, but they were no longer red and angry.
He was healing rapidly. Soon he would be gone.
“You are responsible, Elizabeth.”
“For what?”
“My rapid healing.”
“Do you read minds?”
“No. I read faces. You were watching me, studying my wounds.”
She didn’t bother to deny it.
“You have skilled hands, Elizabeth,” he added.
The double meaning in his words was intentional, she was sure.
“Good night, Black Hawk,” she said, careful to use both his names.
“Sweet dreams, Elizabeth.”
Upstairs in her bedroom, she undressed and drew her bath, taking her time. She was in no hurry to go to bed. The bed hadn’t been a sanctuary for her for a very long time.
Dressed in a gown of vivid blue, she stood at the window, looking out at the rain. Downstairs Hawk would be climbing into bed. Perhaps he was already there, stretched out naked on the sheets.
All the feelings he had unleashed in her came roaring to the surface, a raging river sweeping away everything in its path. She turned from the window and actually started across the room, when she heard Mark Laton’s parting words echoing from her past.
“Your first mistake was in trusting me. Your second was in falling in love. I didn’t hurt you, Elizabeth. You hurt yourself.”
She stood very still, torn by indecision and doubts. She had been running ever since she came back from Yale, hiding herself away in her shuttered house, defining her life by working hours at the bank, weekends with Aunt Kathleen, and the few pitiful social exchanges she allowed. Safe. Her life was safe.
And she was stifling herself to death.
Her silk gown whispered as she walked toward her door. She was going to Hawk. He had said the next move was up to her, and she was making it.
But this time she was older, smarter, and much, much wiser. She was not going downstairs expecting love and marriage, a cottage for two, and happily ever after. She was merely seeking companionship and release. Two days, three, and then it would be over. Nobody would be hurt. Hawk would leave, and she’d go back to her safe life.
She hurried, excitement pulsing through her. When she reached his door, she didn’t hesitate, but pushed it open and walked boldly inside.
The rain still whipped at the windows, and not even a sliver of moonlight relieved the intense bla
ckness. She strained her eyes, searching for Hawk among the shadows.
“You came.” His voice was strong and beautiful. If he had been aroused from sleep, she couldn’t tell it.
“Yes.” Now that she was in his room, she hesitated, not sure how to proceed.
“I knew you would.”
“Did you?”
Attuned now to the darkness, she saw him get off the bed. He was tall and noble and magnificent as he walked slowly toward her.
“Yes. I’ve already claimed you. You’re mine, Elizabeth.”
Four
Hawk had known Elizabeth would come to him. Stretched on top of his bed still dressed in jeans and moccasins, he had waited for her. Now he released her and snapped on the small lamp.
“Why?” she asked, nodding toward the light.
“I want to see you.” Slowly he circled her, taking her in from all angles. Her gown was slashed to the waist, front and back, and slit high on both sides. She had a beautifully defined body, tight musculature, satiny skin.
“Walk for me, Elizabeth,” he commanded softly.
She moved with the grace of a woman aware of her own sexuality and comfortable with it. The satin gown revealed long, enticing glimpses of leg. Her hair was down, rippling like a bolt of black silk in the lamplight.
When she reached the door, she placed her hand on the handle as if she intended to leave, then glanced at him over her shoulder.
“You won’t leave until you get what you want,” he said.
She turned slowly. “No. I won’t go until I have you, Hawk,” she whispered. “Every inch of you.”
She arched one shoulder and her gown strap slid down as far as her elbow. With her gaze smoky and promising, she reached across and pushed the strap over her wrist.
As he started toward her, she lifted her long hair off her neck and let it filter through her fingers. Hawk peeled her gown away until it lay in a dark blue pool at their feet. He explored her then, taking his time.
At last, when her knees threatened to buckle, Hawk lifted her and carried her to the bed. With her dark hair spread against the white sheets, she looked exotic, almost native.
He put his hand on his belt, but she reached up and stopped him. “I want to undress you.”
