Children of Destiny Books 4-6 (Texas: Children of Destiny Book 10)

by Ann Major

  When a tear trickled down Jess's cheek, she tried to brush it away with the back of her hand before Tad could see.

  "Hey, it's okay to cry," he murmured.

  "I—I don't know why I'm acting all sentimental when I didn't shed a tear when I figured out she was probably dead." Jess began weeping, an incoherent torrents of sobs convulsing her.

  His fingers curled and entwined with hers. "We both lost her long before she disappeared."

  "I think that's what hurts the most."

  "It always hurts when you can't love a person you want to love.” Taking her in his arms, he smoothed her damp hair out of her eyes.

  "But you, of all people! To think that you should see me like this, that I should actually seek comfort from you," she wailed, unable to stop the flood.

  "Really, Bancroft, your manners are every bit as atrocious as mine. And as for gratitude that I'm here to wipe away your tears—"

  "Oh, do shut up." She tilted her head back, but her attempt at a watery scowl disintegrated into fresh sobs.

  Again she made no objection to being folded more closely in his arms. Indeed she clung to him, and he could not ignore how delicious and hot her body felt pressed into his.

  The light was fading. The jungle was deep and dark. The child had not returned. The hushed, silent atmosphere was charged with emotion. Tad knew Jess was vulnerable. Just as he knew that he was probably taking advantage of that vulnerability.

  But such a moment might not come again.

  Jess—soft and gentle seeking his comfort. He might wait for weeks, months, even years for another chance like this.

  He wanted her. He had wanted her for years, and because he had, his marriage had been a double torment. He had been forced to endure the presence of a woman who resembled Jess so exactly in physical appearance, he had never been able to forget her.

  Jess's sobs were subsiding. In another moment she would regain her composure and her independence and push him away.

  He locked his arms more tightly about her. He felt the lush, overflowing fullness of her magnificent breasts against his chest.

  He was a healthy, red-blooded male.

  He’d never been a man to waste his opportunities.

  It was time he taught her she was his.

  Without a word, he lowered his hard mouth to hers and kissed her. She fought him, but he kissed her until she began to tremble again. He kissed her until she was breathless, until she was limp and dizzy and clinging to him. Until her fingers were curling weakly against his neck [JO13]and into the thick wetness of the golden curls at his nape.[JO14]

  Then he lifted her in his arms and carried what was surely the most stubborn bundle of femininity in all the world deeper into the jungle.

  It was the golden hour of his revenge.

  No hour had ever seemed sweeter.

  Nine

  The sun sank like a ball of flame behind the coral hills, and the moon came up to fill the velvet darkness with silver-spangled fire.

  The jungle was hot and silent. Tad was burning with a strange heat that centered in his loins.

  When his eyes fixed on Jess, her dark gaze widened uncertainly. Without a word, he carried her deeper into the thick, blackening shadows.

  He knew that she was wrong for him and that his life was plunging down a fatal course. Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop staring at those brilliant eyes or her softly inviting mouth. When he slid his hands along the velvet heat of her body, a soft sigh escaped those moist half-opened lips. At her response, he trembled from the intense shock of his ravening need.

  "We shouldn't," Jess protested as he lowered her to the towel that he'd thrown down to cover the soft sand.

  She was so right.

  "Don't you ever give up, Bancroft?" he whispered, kissing her throat hungrily, his mouth hot against her skin while his hands cupped her breasts.

  "Give up? Never!"

  But he felt her convulsive movement, when the palms of his hands grazed her nipples.

  "So you intend to defend the temple to the last?"

  "Yes, indeed." But her arms wrapped around his neck as if she would never let him go.

  "The hell you say," he whispered, crushing her to him.

  "The hell I say," she murmured with a languid sigh of defeat.

  He kissed her throat more fervently.

  "After this, I'll be the boss," he murmured.

  "That's what you think." She flung her words at him hotly. "Jackson, tomorrow you'll pay—"

  His long, strong fingers with their faintly callused tips ran possessively over the crests of her breasts in the wet bathing suit. He felt her quiver.

  "I'm willing to face the consequences, honey."

  His mouth hovered above hers. The fight was gone from her. And from him. For the moment.

  She opened her mouth to him endlessly and let his tongue slide inside. She was hot and honey-sweet. He felt the savage building fire of her response.

  "I've wanted you," he whispered, "for years. No one but you. Although Deirdre looked exactly like you, she could never take your place. Not in my bed. Never in my heart."

  Had he just said he loved her?

  What traitor made him confess such a thing? He didn't know. He didn't care.

  His fingers closed over the black spaghetti straps of Jess's bathing suit. Her breath caught when his knuckles brushed the smoothness of her shoulders as he lowered the straps. She grabbed his hand, stopping him when the top half of her breasts were revealed. Her breathing was coming in tiny gasps and her pulse was racing out of control.

  "No," she whispered bossily.

  "Your body's nothing to be ashamed of, Bancroft," he murmured. "You're lovely. Lovely. Your breasts..."

  "They're too big. Vulgar."

  "Sexy," he argued. He pulled the bathing suit lower.

  "They make me feel... dirty, somehow. Men always..."

  "They're beautiful. Magnificent. You're beautiful. I want to love them. I want to love you. All of you."

  Had he said it again?

  "If I could have had a say in the creation of my shape, I would have asked to be made as flat as two pancakes."

  "Thank goodness, then, that for once you weren't around to give your bossy opinion."

  She had many faults, but her breasts were all his torrid adolescent fantasies come true. Somehow he controlled his pulsing male instinct to hurry. He touched her, his hands trembling.

  Easy. He had to go easy. Especially since she was so shy about her breasts.

  Slowly his tender caresses, his hands, his lingering kisses, and his sweet murmured endearments—all served their purpose. He took a nipple in his mouth and she gasped. At her response, fire shot from his belly to his thigh. He buried his lips against her tender, voluptuous flesh and suckled her like a babe until she gave out whimpering sounds of ecstasy.

  Tad felt so full with male need he strained against his swimming trunks. Still, his shaking hands remained gentle as he lowered the straps and removed the clinging wet black cloth. Shifting, he yanked his suit off while she lay back, watching him with deep, dark, languorous eyes as he undressed. Moaning, she pulled him back until he felt himself hard and hot and naked, pulsing against her thigh.

  “Oh, my God! I almost forgot…”

  He tensed. “What is it now?”

  “We can’t make love,” she said. “You don’t have a condom.”

  “We’ll do everything then…except the act itself.”

  “What?”

  “Use your imagination,” he whispered.

  “You promise that you won’t…”

  “I promise, I’ll protect you. Look—no way do we need a baby to complicate our lives even more.”

  “I…I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into…” He continued to kiss her until at last she sighed, softly in surrender. “Okay…then…”

  And so began a long hour of bittersweet delirium for them both. In no time their stubborn wills were swept aside before the power of that inexplica
ble bond they’d always felt for one another. All their differences became nothing. She was sweet; he was tender. For a timeless, unforgettable moment they touched and claimed.

  In a fever he kissed her everywhere even as her lips explored every part of him. They came together, flesh to flesh, gasping, sighing, clinging to each other as if to life itself, making each other whole, her response as searingly white-hot and thrilling to him as his own.

  Their hellish private lonelinesses fell away. Never before had either of them felt anything remotely like it. It was as if some vital part of them had been dead and was now brought to life in a new form. That other time, ten years ago, had been a dream to them both, something they hadn't let themselves believe in.

  With bruising kisses, he tasted the salt tang of her skin. Gently he kissed her slender throat, her trembling breasts. His tongue dipped deeply into her navel. She opened her legs, and his lips moved lower to devour that sacred dewy, musky essence that was hers alone. She was a fire in his blood, a steaming, pulsating part of him, completely his.

  Then she kissed him back, tentatively at first, on his lips, then everywhere just as he had kissed her. She trailed light kisses down his belly. There was no part of him which that succulent, feminine mouth did not lick and caress. Soft lips, the tongue darting out, traced the back of his earlobe, curved into the hollow of his throat, traced a tingling path down his chest to his stomach and lower. Soft lips, hotter than fire, tickled him until he was wild for her.

  Suddenly he could contain himself no longer. He rolled over, pulled her snugly under him and thrust deeply.

  That first moment inside her was ecstasy. She was tight and small. Woman. His woman. Velvet warmth and soul-destroying sweetness.

  His salvation.

  His damnation.

  God, she felt good—tight and all-enveloping, her nipples pressing into his chest, her satin skin, smooth beneath his fingertips.

  Then he began to move, too fast.

  She cried out. “You promised to protect me.”

  “I will.” He forced himself to stop and be gentler even though every nerve in his body throbbed with urgency. Their hearts beat as one. Her hands stroked the damp curls that fell over his forehead. He opened his eyes and lost himself in the blazing darkness of hers.

  "Bancroft..." he whispered in a voice so tender he did not recognize it as his own.

  All of her primness and bossiness were gone. She was blushing and shy and yet a wanton.

  His wanton.

  "Jess..." she corrected. A fingertip toyed with his hair.

  "You are mine, darling Jess."

  "Yours," she said with those glowing, earnest eyes.

  Whether this was in agreement or a possessive statement of her own, he did not know. Or think to care.

  He began to move slowly again inside her sensuous warmth. He was careful, matching his rhythm to hers, until passionate waves swept away all restraint and her control broke. He pulled out when she shuddered against him.

  When it was over, she was left shaken and clinging. Vaguely he grew aware of her whimpering softly beneath him, of her body shuddering delicately, of her nail tips pressing lightly into his back. His body felt unbearably heavy and wet. She lay in his arms, her eyes closed as if she were in a torpid state of insensibility.

  There was no strength in any of his muscles. He felt drained, content, unable to move, wishing never to let her go, never to leave this moonlit bower.

  And in that moment he knew he was doomed. Dimly it occurred to him that he who had thought to possess was himself utterly possessed.

  He shrugged his misgivings aside, and stretched his lean, muscled frame out next to hers. Gradually his body cooled and he drifted to sleep, holding her warm body.

  He awoke to a lovely dew-moistened morning. The leaves and branches of the ironbark were black filigree against the red dawn of a brightening sky. He felt balmy, at peace, more self-confident, happier than he had in years.

  That was before he reached for her and found that she was gone.

  She had done it again!

  He jumped up, an angered, naked, abandoned giant. He was alone in the long shadows of the thickly wooded rain forest. She had left him. Without a word. Just like she had before. Why? Damn it!

  He had been a fool to have anything to do with her again. He saw his involvement with Jess Bancroft like catching some dreaded disease; once you got it, it never went away. It just kept getting worse.

  Where the hell was she?

  He grabbed his bathing suit. It was gritty and cold, but no colder than the fury filling his heart as he slapped the suit hard against a gum tree so that zillions of particles of silvery sand rained down onto the beach towel. Then he yanked it on.

  Maybe he was overreacting because of their history, but he felt the same total despair and rage she'd plunged him into ten years ago when she'd made love to him and then run off and served him up on a silver platter to her sister.

  It didn't matter that Jess had given herself to him. All that mattered was that she'd left him without a word as if what had happened meant nothing to her. Again.

  He should have taken Lizzie and thrown Jess out the first chance he'd gotten. That's what he would do now, as soon as he found her.

  Quickly he raced up the trail that skirted the cliff. Halfway to the cottage, he came to the place where she'd shoved him off the cliff. The bulldozer hovered precariously beside the cliff's edge. He was about to hurry onward when he saw a man stealthily climb out of the bulldozer and sneak down the shadowy trail.

  Tad was about to yell at him, when he heard the secretive sound of Jess's voice coming from below.

  Tad peered through the vines but could see nothing. Then he pulled himself into the bulldozer which commanded a better view. From that vantage point he could see Jess bending over a child. Had the man in the bulldozer been watching Jess, listening to her? With what intention?

  A key dangled from the ignition.

  The bulldozer was parked on the very edge of the cliff. Very possibly Deirdre had died here.

  The bloody bastard!

  An ice-like throbbing started in Tad's stomach. He sucked in a hard breath. All it would take was a flick of the wrist, and the thing could be started, put in gear, and it would have driven itself over the cliff and smashed whoever was down there. In his mind's eye, Tad saw Jess, still and white, crushed beneath the bulldozer.

  He thought of his road train, which had been blown up on Jackson Downs. The cattle had all died. The driver had been severely injured.

  In an instant Tad's fury toward Jess died, and he knew that he wanted to protect her at all costs. Even at the risk of his own life.

  The bastards! Had they followed him here? Were they after her, too?

  Tad wished he'd chased the man and beaten him until he found out who he was and what he wanted—who had sent him here. And why.

  With a shaking hand he parted the thick green vines. Jess was kneeling beside the wall of rock art, looking as prim as always in her baggy shorts and white poplin blouse. Her face was serenely unaware of the slightest danger. For all her courage and stubborn will, she was a fragile woman. He was determined to protect her. For her own safety, she had to distance herself from him and leave Australia.

  With one hand she picked up a thick bouquet of wild flowers. In the other she was fingering a tiny, shiny object that gleamed in her open palm. A child with matted yellow hair hovered at the edge of the trees. He was clutching a stuffed toy with a tattered purple ribbon against his bony chest as if it were very dear to him.

  "So you thought I was a ghost?" Jess asked gently.

  The child nodded. "I'm glad you're not her. I didn't like her. You gave me..." The dark hand tightened on the animal pressed close to his heart as if the object were precious to him.

  "And you gave me this." Jess took one last look at the bright object she was holding and then carefully pocketed it. "Thank you. She was my sister. My identical twin. You thought I was her ghost bec
ause I look like her. Do you know what happened to her?"

  The big liquid-black eyes rolled in terror.

  "Tell me," Jess pleaded. "Don't be afraid."

  "He come back, too," the boy whispered.

  "There are no such things as ghosts." The boy merely listened. "She didn't go swimming, did she? Not that last day. She came here to meet a man. A man who..."

  "He come back, too."

  "What man? What happened to her? Did he hurt her?" Jess pleaded. "Please tell me."

  "She fell down. He hit her with rock. On the head."

  "Where?"

  The boy caught sight of Tad through the vines and pointed at him, screaming incoherently.

  Jess turned. Tad sucked in a deep breath. Damn! Was that brat trying to frame him for Deirdre's murder? Was Jess encouraging him?

  Tad grabbed the vine and crashed down beside them. The child took one look at the flying male figure. The whites of the boy's eyes rolled. Then his high-pitched wails began again. "He come back, too! He come back, too!"

  Tad lunged for the child, but the boy made an agile sidestep and ran. Tad raced after him through the rain forest, crashing against trees, stumbling over roots, but the boy was faster and nimbler and knew his way. He slipped between a crack in the forest wall and disappeared soundlessly into the gloom. In his panic he had dropped his stuffed dinosaur.

  Panting and breathless, Tad leaned down and picked up the dinosaur. "The little lying thief! This is Lizzie's."

  Jess was right behind him, panting and breathless, too. "I gave it to him, you big idiot!" Jess snatched the animal from him. "What do you think you're doing?" She placed it back on the ground so the child would find it when he returned.

  Tad was equally enraged. He yanked her into his arms. "What's going on here? 'He come back!' What's that supposed to mean—that I killed her?"

  Jess caught the wrenching agony in his low tone.

  "No, you dope. The kid was so scared, there's no telling who he thought you were! But I might know if you'd kept quiet and let me play detective a bit longer. As it is... Oh, Jackson, why must you always be so difficult?"