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

by Ann Major

  Where was Raoul? Why had he come back tonight?

  Beneath she could see the harbor, the sparkling water and the lightning in the distance; she could smell the salt tang of the sea as well as the fragrance of nectar from the flowers.

  More than anything she wanted to be alone to think.

  She heard a stealthy footstep on stone. Had someone followed her from the house, someone who was hidden by the trees?

  "Who’s there?" Her voice was light and breathless.

  When no one answered, she took a faltering step back. Then another. Again she called out and no one answered. As the heel of her shoe caught the edge of a brick, too late, she remembered the pool.

  She fell backward, floundering wildly to save herself. A million reflected stars rippled across the inky liquid surface. She cried out in frustration, sputtering, as the water slopped into her sparkly shoes, then up to her waist and over her head. When she managed to stand up, her hair and her gown were a dripping mess.

  "Oh!" She was pushing the oozing mass of her collapsed hairdo out of her eyes when a tall figure moved in the shadows.

  "Very nice," a deep sarcastic voice drawled from the trees. "A hell of a lot nicer than the first time we met, when I had to jump in, too."

  When he stepped nearer the pool, she recognized the raven hair, his harsh profile, his unsmiling, yet ever-so beautiful mouth.

  "You!" she spat.

  In his flawlessly cut tuxedo, he was elegant in spite of his broadly-sculpted shoulders. From her embarrassing position in the shallow pool, he loomed out of the darkness. Striding toward her with a slight limp, he stopped directly above her. When he stared, his hard face gave nothing away.

  She swallowed.

  It wasn't his vile misdeeds that she remembered. No, it was his tenderness and the youthful pain of loving him and losing him followed by the years of heartache and disillusionment.

  He, who had meant so much to her, had probably never given her a thought.

  Slowly his insolent, black gaze roamed her, passing over her eyes and her red hair, to linger on her swelling breasts, clearly revealed by the ruined silk.

  "Well, don't just stand there!" she hissed. "Do something!"

  "The mistake I made was pulling you out of the river in the first place." At her quick frown, he grimaced, mockery flashing in his eyes.

  She could gladly have choked him. "Please," she whispered with pretended meekness.

  He leaned down and took her wet hands in his warm dry ones. Even this most casual touching was different with him than with any other man. She let her body go limp as he started to pick her up, so he had to put all his strength into the effort. Then just as he was about to lift her out, she suddenly hunched, put both feet against the side of the pool and kicked backwards.

  When he gave a startled male yelp and let out a stream of livid oaths as he fell, she laughed. Then she heaved herself out of the pool.

  A hand closed around her ankle like a vise and he dragged her roughly across the bricks back into the water...and into his arms.

  "Not so fast, chere," he whispered.

  "You're hurting me."

  "That was a nasty little trick." He pulled her more tightly against himself.

  "It’s way less than you deserve."

  The damp straps of her gown fell over her shoulders, and the bodice slipped revealingly. Her wet breasts were mashed into his chest. His hard thighs trapped her legs. When she thrashed to free herself, her every movement only made her more aware of him as a man. There was something erotic about the cool water and his hot skin.

  "Maybe you’re exactly what I deserve." Pressing her tightly against himself, he ran a caressing hand beneath her delicate chin.

  Unwanted desire traced through her like an electrifying current.

  "Let me go!"

  His predatory hands and eyes inspected her too closely. His masculine scent touched her nostrils.

  Too soon he had her breathless and trembling.

  His voice came low, like an animal growl. "You shouldn't have pulled me in if you didn't want my company."

  "Why did you come back—tonight?"

  "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." When a burning fingertip started to push one of her fallen straps back up, she jumped.

  "Try me."

  A charged silence fell between them.

  When his finger continued to trace a path across the naked skin of her shoulder, she jerked away as if from flame. He was watching her, his dark eyes taunting as if he were as conscious as she that all that separated their bodies was two layers of thin, wet fabric.

  "To save you. Otto von Schonburg is the worst scoundrel you've ever picked."

  "Why should you care? You never cared about saving anyone but yourself," she jeered.

  "Who told you that—Otto? I saved your life, remember?" His words were no more than a warm whisper.

  "Otto told me what you did—in Africa."

  She winced at the sudden bleak wasteland of pain in Nicholas's eyes and hated herself for the compassion she felt.

  "I'll just bet he did. You and yours always were ready to believe the worst about me. You were determined to remake me into some wimpy paragon your grandmother could approve of, and when you couldn't..." He forced himself to stop. "What else did Otto tell you…or teach you?" He ground out the words. And then, when she didn’t answer him fast enough, he caught her shoulders and pulled her closer. "What else?" he whispered.

  With the back of his hand he traced the softness of her cheek, the length of her nose, the voluptuous fullness of her lips, reading her every feature with the exquisite gentleness of a blind man starved for the sight of the one woman he craved. "You're a very beautiful woman. Did Otto enhance your skill in bed? Not that you weren't good before." When his fingertip moved insolently down her throat and slid between her breasts, she began to quiver from the mesmerizing warmth of his touch.

  "Don’t..." She tried to shrink away from him.

  He cupped her breast. "You were unforgettably good, and unforgettably beautiful."

  Eva closed her eyes a moment. He was deliberately, cruelly humiliating her…and yet she hungered for his touch.

  "Underneath all that determination to be a perfect Martin, with a perfect life and a perfect man, there's a passionate, beautiful woman who wants to be free to find herself. Maybe that's why I can't let him kill you to get at me," he said softly as he released her breast. "I want to save that woman."

  "Kill?"

  His statement was so unexpected, so completely farfetched, that for a moment Eva could only gape. "Otto—kill me? That's crazy! You're the murderer."

  Gripping her arms, Nicholas dragged her closer. That bleak dark look was in his eyes again.

  "And you believed him, chere?"

  "He showed me newspapers."

  "Before or after he took you to bed?" His low tone was unspeakably cruel.

  "You know so much. You figure it out."

  "I already have."

  "Fine. Just go. I was doing just fine before you showed up."

  "It's easy to see why you think so. He told you you're going to be his princess. Your family probably approves. Do they know that you share his stateroom, his bed?"

  He lifted the ruby-and-diamond necklace from her throat. "He gave you this to wear around your neck like a dog collar. It's plain as day he owns you. Otto von Schonburg is a powerful, evil man. He can buy and sell newspapers, governments, human beings. He betrayed me, Eva. He had my men killed in Africa. He defamed my name with his lies. And now, if I don't stop him, he's going to kill you, to get at me."

  "I don't believe you."

  “You never could believe in me.''

  She flinched. Maybe once she could have believed in him—if he’d come back, if he’d trusted her. But now he was a cruel stranger, whose dark cheek she wanted very much to slap. Instead she balled her fingers tightly into her palms and would have turned away if he hadn’t held her fast.

  "You were mine before yo
u were Otto's. I can't stop myself from wondering whether the real thing is as good as the memory."

  His long fingers curved painfully into the wet tangled mass of her hair, bringing her head back so that the creamy-smooth length of her neck was exposed to his insolent gaze.

  "I should never have pulled you in," she whispered weakly. The comment seemed inane.

  His dark head moved lower, and she could feel his warm breath against her cheek. "Too bad you're just now figuring that out."

  "No..."

  "Yes," he murmured as his mouth came down on hers.

  He had kissed her before, but never like this. Never with such greedy, contempt and fury. There were years of pain and need in his hot, savage kiss. And even as she fought him, she felt something darkly alive, some treacherous alien thing deep inside her, quicken. Her skin became warm satin beneath his callused fingertips, her body pliant beneath his. After years of feeling dead, she felt alive. Against her will, she parted her lips.

  He groaned. Then his tongue plunged inside the warm, sweet wetness of her mouth. Their mouths fused; their tongues mated. She tasted pool water mixed with rum and that special flavor that was his alone. A bewildering tide of emotions made her ache for his physical embrace no matter how much she hated the man he had become.

  "You always were damned good," he muttered hoarsely before he kissed her again.

  "So you're alive," she whispered a long time later, after tearing her mouth from his. She ran her hands through his damp hair, slid her cheek against his. Forgetting the lies he’d told, she didn’t care about anything if only he would go on holding her in this dark time of fevered madness.

  "Would you prefer me dead?" he demanded.

  Weakly she shook her head. "All those years...you could have come back. Why didn’t you?"

  "Without making the real killer pay? With my name blackened? With everyone, even you, believing me a murderer? Could you have stood by me and borne that kind of scandal?"

  Once she had thought she could have endured any pain to have him back. But what did it matter? The past was over. With good reason he’d lost his faith in her then. There was nothing she could say to convince him now.

  "There was nothing for me to come back to," he said grimly. "Besides, Otto would’ve killed me."

  "But you did love me?"

  "It was a mistake. A dream. I woke up and realized I’d been a fool."

  "So you can't forgive me the past, nor Otto," she whispered.

  Nicholas was silent. His dark eyes grimly studied the sparkling necklace at her throat. "I was not blessed with a forgiving nature."

  "I can't forgive you, either," she said wearily.

  "Lucky me. I don't want your forgiveness, chere."

  "Then what do you want?"

  His fingers tightened at the back of her neck, and as he forced her face toward his again, the diamonds cut cruelly into her flesh.

  "I can't let him murder you the way he murdered my men."

  Then his mouth grazed hers with hunger again. "And I still want this." He shoved the strap of her gown lower and cupped her breast. His hand felt slick and wet and warm against her plump flesh. "Only this and nothing more…I want from you." His voice was as brittle as glass. But there was fire in him, too. Fire in the mouth that closed over her breast and suckled at her hardening nipple until she sank against the side of the pool, limp and breathless and damp between her thighs. "You were made for my kisses…and for everything else."

  At last she summoned the will to try to twist away, but he dragged her back and kissed her hard on the throat, on her mouth. A million liquid stars sparkled over the water like dancing diamonds as he pushed her against the side of the pool and pressed his hard body against hers.

  The water was icy, but he was on fire and his erection was huge, and she felt herself melting in his heat.

  "Not here," he said at last, his voice harshly resonant as he released her. "Not now.”

  “Never!" Her voice shook. She felt queasy. How could she have let things go so far?

  She felt his hands at the back of her neck roughly undoing the clasp of her necklace. He pocketed the necklace. Then he yanked off her clip earrings and her diamond ring.

  "What are you doing?" she cried, furious again as he tossed the earrings and ring into his pocket as well.

  He took her hand and pulled her out of the pool. "I came here to save you from Otto. Not to steal his jewels. We've got to get out of here. Fast."

  "No! Everyone will think I ran off with you."

  "That's what always mattered—other people's opinions."

  "No...but Connoisseurs— You don't know what Otto will do if I humiliate him."

  "I have a hell of a lot better idea than you." With a single fingertip he made a swift slicing motion across the base of her slender white throat.

  The mere gesture made her shake. She pulled her hand free of his and would have run back to the house. But he grabbed her and yanked her down the path that led to the docks beside the glimmering dark water of the harbor a thousand feet beneath.

  "I don't have any clothes...and my contact lens stuff. And my cat! I can't leave Victor!"

  "We’re not going back for your damned cat!"

  "Where are you taking me?" she whispered.

  "Out there." He pointed at the lightning that burned the edges of the black sky with livid silver-white fire. "We're sailing straight out into the Med—into the teeth of that hell."

  "I’m terrified of boats…and water."

  “You should be terrified of Otto.”

  Eva tried to tear her hand away, but Nicholas gripped it tightly.

  "You’re crazy," she breathed.

  “Maybe.” His eyes were hard and dark and terrible.

  "What about my cat?"

  "Not that crazy, chere!"

  Chapter Six

  Even the slight flutter of his swollen eyelids when he opened them caused waves of pain to pulse in Paolo's brain. His throat was raw. Through the blur of his own blood, he saw vivid red spatters all over the white-painted aluminum, and he knew that, too, was his blood.

  Dio.

  His black suede pants were so wet with the stuff they stuck to his legs. The balcony looked like Girouard had mopped it with blood.

  Cursing vividly and shuddering convulsively, Paolo struggled to his feet. With a bloodied hand he pushed aside the pink curtains and stumbled back into the stateroom. The bastard, Girouard, had dragged him outside and nearly strangled him.

  Except for the moonlight and the flashes of lightning, the room was dark. Still, he could see that Girouard had made a mess as he'd hastily packed.

  Signorina Martin's leather bag, her clothes, and her cat were gone.

  Paolo had been waiting in the dark for him, and he would have gotten him but for the damned cat that had tripped him.

  Girouard had snuck up from behind and finished him off.

  A single piece of paper fluttered on the bed beside the dark glimmer of his boss’s jewels.

  Girouard was a fool for leaving the jewels and taking the woman. Paolo picked up the note and read the single word the bastard had scrawled.

  Revenge.

  The taunt brought a fresh bitterness to Paolo's heart, and he damned Girouard to hell and the devil.

  Paolo staggered to the balcony and let out a cry of rage when he saw Rouge Wave beating its way through rough seas straight into the frothing fury of the Mediterranean.

  No one but a crazy desperate fool would leave a safe harbor and sail into that storm.

  Paolo crumpled the note and struck a match. Setting the paper on fire, he let it burn down until he smelled the vile stench of his own flesh. Then he pitched the blackened fragments onto the priceless carpet and stamped on it.

  Revenge would be his. Not Girouard's.

  Girouard would pay, and so would the woman.

  Paolo imagined her slender white throat and grew hard at the thought of strangling her in front of Girouard.

  She would not
be his first woman. But he would enjoy her more than most.

  *

  A cat's claw found its way through the soft leather bag and raked Nicholas's shoulder, causing him to curse.

  Damnation! He’d been a fool to risk their necks for her cat.

  Nicholas jammed his great bruised body against the doorjamb so he could brace himself against the yacht's bucking movements. He was holding the leather bag, struggling to unlock the door of the forepeak cabin where he’d left Eva and dreading his reception all at the same time.

  Outside the seas were streaked with foam, and the gale-force winds were shearing the tops of the highest waves and pounding them onto Rogue Wave's decks. Zak was at the helm, steering the boat so she’d run with the storm. Nicholas had to get up there as soon as possible and shorten more sail. But first he had to deal with Eva. He had to find out if she’d sent him after the cat in the hope Paolo would murder him.

  Nicholas pushed the door open cautiously. With a single light aglow, the cabin was tiny and plain compared to the magnificence of La Dolce Vita. Not that his yacht was shabby. Hell, the richly glowing teak walls smelled of teak oil—he had rubbed every layer into the wood himself. And the brass fittings had been polished with equal tenderness.

  Eva was exactly where he'd left her, cowering on his bed looking so wet and pitifully bedraggled, a different man in a different mood might have felt sympathy.

  He remembered how close she'd once come to drowning in Louisiana, how terrified she'd been of boats and water ever since. Tonight even he couldn’t help but note she looked fragile and lost, and that her eyes lit with relief and joy at the sight of him. He was almost sure she hadn’t wanted him injured when she’d sent him after her fiendish pet. Not that he would allow himself to soften.