Children of Destiny Books 1-3 (Texas: Children of Destiny Book 9)

by Ann Major

  “Lincoln Wilde. He was a prodigy and the most brilliant choreographer in the world. He’s only thirty-four, but he’s now the head of the New National Theater where we both work. He began to create small parts for me. I worked terribly hard. Then there were bigger parts because he believed in me. He was the only person who ever did.”

  There was something in her voice, a reverent note, that bothered Kirk, much more than he wanted it to. “And...are you in love...with this Lincoln?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.

  “Oh, he’s incredibly attractive and one of the few men in the ballet world who isn’t gay. He actually played football in high school.”

  Kirk felt a raw knot of jealousy tear his gut.

  “I suppose like every other girl in the corps, I had a crush on him for a while, even though he’s impossibly arrogant. He’s so big and blond and gorgeous—completely masculine, I assure you.”

  Not in the least pleased at this reassurance, Kirk picked up his kaffiyeh and wadded it into a tangled mass of cloth before thrusting it back onto the table.

  “But he’s married and deeply in love with someone else. She isn’t even a dancer. Once I let him know how I felt, he shut me out of his personal life just as he shut her out of his professional life. I was his dancer. The instrument for his creations. Nothing more. She was his wife.”

  “But you wanted to be more?”

  “Sometimes.” Her voice was shaky. “Y-yes, I wanted more, maybe because I knew he was so safe. You see, I was afraid of love, afraid of real life, afraid of being really close to someone...because I was afraid to love and lose again. My life consisted of dreams, ballet, the stage.”

  Kirk had never lived on dreams; his life had been filled with harsh realities. But he knew too well what it was to be afraid of loss.

  “O-oh, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” she murmured.

  “Because I asked,” he said softly.

  Deliciously steamy and flushed from her bath, she tiptoed on bare feet across the room and touched the back of his neck with warm, delicate fingers. It was as though she felt closer to him because at last he had evinced interest in her as a person, because something in his voice had told her he understood.

  At her slight touch, he whirled. They were face to face, body to body. His immense maleness dwarfed her. A breathless hush fell between them.

  She was only inches from him and a thousand times more beautiful in the flesh than in the reflection. He felt mesmerized, on fire. Her eyes were shining with some soft irresistible emotion. Her soul touched his, and he knew that what he felt went much deeper than desire.

  He wanted to take her into his arms, to crush her into his body, but he knew if he did, he would be lost—forever.

  He had been wrong when he thought he could take her a few times and leave her. Wrong. He hadn’t understood a damned thing about this woman, about the power of his own feelings toward her. He could never let himself have her. Not even once. Or he would not be able to bear losing her.

  “K-Kirk...” she whispered raggedly. Something desperate was in her eyes, too. “It’s your turn to bathe. I’ll sit here...”

  Her warm breath stirred against the pulsing heartbeat at the base of his throat. He caught her delicate scent. He could almost taste her, she was so sweet, so clean. He felt her quivering innocent emotion.

  There was a wildness in her. Untouched. A wildness that she did not understand, but he did.

  “No!” He sent the chair flying against the wall and strode across the room a safe distance away from her. “Damn, you! No!” He was trembling violently. He felt tormented, driven to the brink by the beauty of her, by the softness. “I’m going out. I have to be alone.”

  He fumbled in his satchel for a gun, jammed a clip in it and removed the safety. He set it on the table. “If someone comes…if you get scared, all you have to do is pull the trigger.”

  Then he opened the door and walked out, banging the door shut with an inarticulate cry of rage.

  She heard the thunder of his steps crashing down the stairs. Then there was silence.

  *

  Dawn sank down upon the bed, all joy gone from her ashen face, a bitter despair closing around her heart. What had she done wrong? What had she said to him that had made him storm out in such a fury? Why must she always make mistakes with him?

  She had so little time to understand him, and she had tried so hard after that first night when he had saved her, when she had behaved like such a wanton and he had rejected her so coldly. He did not want to be chased, and she had tried to contain her feelings. But it was so hard.

  For him, to win his respect, she’d endured the desert in silence, even when she’d believed she was dying. She’d ridden the camel for him, she who’d never once even gotten on a horse. Then at Azid’s camp, Kirk had nursed her so tenderly, and afterward he’d seemed friendlier, more open to her.

  Now it was as if he hated her all over again.

  Any time she ever got close to him, he deliberately recoiled, shutting her out.

  At last she turned out the lamp and lay down in the dark, feeling frightened, but leaving the lamp out because she was afraid he would never come until he thought she was asleep. A long time later her heart constricted when she heard the sound of his footsteps as he wearily climbed the stairs. It hurt so much that he wanted nothing to do with her.

  The door opened and closed. She was aware of him standing in the dark, of his eyes studying the way she sheets molded the lines of her body. Her body felt on fire beneath his gaze. Then he began to undress. The sound of his clothes falling to the floor sent a strange tremor through her.

  The mattress dipped with the weight of his body. Though he did not touch her, she felt the heat of him seeping beneath the covers, and she was comforted.

  She wished he wasn’t so set against her. She wished she could turn to him and cuddle up in his arms. Instead she lay in rigid, lonely silence. It was odd that he seemed not to be so threatened by her need for closeness when she was asleep and would accept her then.

  *

  When Dawn awoke later in the dead of the night and reached for Kirk, he was gone.

  She knew instantly that something was dreadfully wrong.

  Outside she heard some sound, footsteps on stone.

  The night seemed a living thing, pressing down upon her. She wanted to hide beneath the covers, to cower in the relative safety of her bed.

  But where was Kirk? What if he was in danger?

  Slowly she crept out of bed, careful to keep her footsteps soundless. Quickly she stripped out of her cumbersome gown and put on her ragged torn costume. Then she crawled out onto the balcony.

  In the moonlight she could make out shadowy figures running in the courtyard.

  They had Kirk. Two men were holding him, and another was beating him.

  There was a stake in the middle of the courtyard, ropes, guns. They were enjoying themselves before they tied him to the stake and shot him.

  They…they would come after her next.

  A man in black was standing apart. The moon came out, and a shaft of brilliance glinted across his dark features. She would have known that cruel face with the curved dagger’s nose anywhere. A shiver of terror traced the length of her spine.

  Aslam!

  There were sounds in the rooms below, and she knew that they were coming for her.

  Quickly she crawled back inside the bedroom, bolted the door, and then picked up the gun from the table. She raced outside onto the balcony again, looking down, wondering if she should scream or jump.

  There was no way she could get to Kirk except by running along the roofs, jumping from roof to roof until she could reach the courtyard. The buildings were not so far apart, and yet no one but a dancer would have considered such a thing. She limped to the farthest edge of the balcony, hesitated for a long moment as she judged the leap necessary to grab the tile edge hanging over the eave. For an instant she touched the medallion at her throat. Then she
willed the pain from her ankle and ran, leaping at just the last moment, arching, flying. Her nails dug into tiles and stone. Her body dangled thirty feet above flagstones.

  A roof tile came loose and fell with a clatter. She had no idea if the men below heard, if even now they were aiming their rifles at her struggling, swinging form, perfectly silhouetted against the white wall.

  It took all her strength, but she managed to stretch and cling, grabbing handhold after handhold, until at last she hauled her lithe body onto the roof.

  She looked down. The men were still beating Kirk. They were going to kill him if she didn’t stop them. Suddenly, as those other times before, she knew that all this had happened to her before in some long-ago forgotten time. This was some ancient nightmare come to life. She remembered a man with dark skin and foul breath pulling her close and holding a knife to her face. “I’m supposed to kill you, but I can’t. Run!” he’d growled, releasing her wrist. “Run!”

  His face and then other figures from the past swirled like dancing devils in a white-hot flame.

  No....

  The flame was inside her, possessing her, obliterating every rational thought.

  The men beneath her were dragging Kirk’s limp body to the stake. Others were shouldering their guns expectantly.

  Dawn had a flash of dread. This was her last chance! In another minute he would be dead.

  She had to keep panic at bay, or it would be too late to save Kirk.

  The flame rose higher, and she sank to the roof in despair, devoured in the radiant bosom of its fire. Frantically she touched the medallion at her throat.

  The last thing she heard was a sound, like a demonic cry, louder than anything she had ever heard before, piercing the silence. She had no idea what it was. Vaguely, she was aware of a shattering pain in her ankle.

  The moon slid behind a mountain, but she had no realization that it did so.

  They were going to kill Kirk! And then come after her! And she couldn’t stop them because she was being swallowed alive in some blazing flame from hell.

  Something snapped. Her world went black.

  When she came to, she was in the courtyard, her breath coming in harsh rasps, as if she’d exerted herself physically to the extreme limits of her ability. Even after dancing the most difficult ballets, she’d never felt this drained. She had the fiercest headache of her life, and her ankle was throbbing with an intense and inexplicable pain.

  The three men who had been beating Kirk lay unconscious on the ground. Aslam was cowering on the flagstones, his body a quivering mass, and a breathless battle-crazed Kirk had a gun shoved into the Arab’s belly. “Call off your men, or you die.”

  “One man against so many?” Aslam tried to laugh. His eyes glimmered with fanatical hate, but with fear, also. “They will kill you...and then the girl.”

  Kirk kicked him savagely. “But you will die first.”

  There was a long silence, and then Kirk’s hand moved on the trigger.

  At the last second Aslam screamed something in Arabic.

  “Tell them to put down their guns,” Kirk commanded in English first. Then he spoke in Arabic.

  More hysterical Arabic.

  “Tell them to open the cellar door and get inside it,” Kirk continued.

  “If you shut us in there, we might never get out.”

  “That’s your problem.”

  As if in a dream, Dawn listened to Aslam giving orders to his men; she watched his men filing one by one down the cellar stairs. The last to go was the Arabian couple who had betrayed them. Then Kirk yanked Aslam to his feet and shoved him screaming down the stairs.

  Kirk locked the doors behind them. He spent a long time securing the doors, laying stones and heavy pieces of equipment on the doors.

  Despite the cold air, he was sweating from the exertion when he finished. He turned toward her, his face alight with passionate admiration. Never in her wildest fantasy had she dreamed that he could ever look at her with such an expression.

  She flung herself into his arms.

  “Oh, Kirk,” she sobbed into his chest. “You’re all right. I thought... I was so afraid...”

  He held her tightly. His hard fingers ruffled her hair ever so gently. Then he held her away from him and studied her, his eyes glowing with awe.

  “You saved my life,” she whispered brokenly.

  “Honey,” he murmured. “It was the other way around.”

  Her eyes widened. “What?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. They were tying me up, about to shoot me. You came off that roof with your eyes as wild as an insane she-cat, scratching, clawing, shooting, screaming. I strangled the guy tying me up, got his gun, got to Aslam. You’re a natural soldier, the kind that comes to life in the thick of things. I never knew a woman...” His voice softened. “You’re one hell of a woman.”

  She listened to him in amazement. All she remembered was the vivid blaze of white filling her with a wild terror.

  “I—I thought I fainted...I don’t remember any of it.”

  “Things happened so fast, none of them knew what to do. You were incredible, wonderful.”

  She stared at him blankly. “Nothing.”

  “You mean, you really don’t remember?”

  She shook her head. She thought of those other white flashes and wondered briefly what they meant. “S-sometimes I see images I don’t understand. I think...I forget things.”

  “You saved my life,” he whispered. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

  She let her head fall limply against his chest. She felt the warm, steady beating of his heart. “I have what I wanted. You’re still alive,” she murmured. “I—I’m not sure I can walk. I think I hurt my ankle.”

  “It doesn’t matter. After what you did, I’ll gladly carry you every step of the way.”

  He lifted her into his arms, and she felt very tiny and very feminine sheltered closely against his powerful body as he moved toward the house.

  “I don’t know about you, but for me the hydrangeas and snapdragons have lost their charm. What do you say we get the hell out of here?”

  “In the dark?” She turned her face to him. He kissed her mouth softly.

  “Real soldiers aren’t afraid of the dark,” he murmured.

  “So... I’m not a real soldier.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The sun will be up in an hour. Until then, I’ll fend off the monsters of the night. It’s my turn to take care of you.”

  Seven

  A sigh of fear escaped Dawn’s throat as she clutched Kirk’s sleeve. Three days had passed since the cottage in the mountains. They had trekked across two countries in a jeep, in a broken-down truck, and then on foot.

  They were in the Istanbul airport, and he was going to put her on a plane. He was leaving her, sending her back to her own world as she’d known he would, and there seemed nothing she could do to dissuade him.

  The airport swarmed as busily as an anthill. Dark-skinned people in flowing robes with long sleeves and bright fabrics shoved and shouted in the long lines behind the ticket counters, their passionate voices mingling into cacophonous thunder. On an open grill, a man was cooking eggplant, shish kebab and goat meat. Strangely, nowhere else had Dawn felt more terribly alone or more abandoned than in this bustling madhouse.

  “Passports, please,” the man behind the ticket counter insisted when Kirk pushed his way to the front of the line.

  “The lady’s lost hers,” Kirk said grimly.

  “Then we can’t book her to London.”

  Dawn stood behind Kirk, holding onto his arm. Kirk had bought her a pair of jeans and a purple silk blouse. Her ankle, which was much improved, was wrapped in an Ace bandage. He was wearing black slacks and a black shirt. They clung to his massive muscled body like a second skin. She didn’t want him to send her away, but she could think of no way to stop him.

  The mission was over as far as he was concerned, and so was his involvement with her. H
e’d made that very clear the night before when he’d walked her up to her hotel room after they’d had dinner. When they’d reached her door, he had towered beside her, vitally masculine. He’d stood so close to her that she’d had to tilt her head back to see his face. Only an inch or two had separated their bodies, and though she’d longed for him to take her into his arms, he had not touched her. An impenetrable mask had covered his dark features, but the searing passion in his eyes had jolted through her.

  “Why did you save me?” she asked softly as she handed him her room key.

  Her fingers touched his briefly, yet so tantalizingly, that he’d jumped at even this slight contact with her. Her own pulse quickened. His dark eyes had slanted from the brass key in his open palm to her upturned face, lingering on her mouth, then back to the key before he’d jammed it into the lock.

  “You’ll find out,” he muttered hastily.

  When the door didn’t open and she moved closer, he swore quietly, as though all his frustrations were centered on the lock.

  “But not now?” she queried softly.

  “No.”

  “And not from you?”

  “That’s right,” he muttered harshly. His hands were shaking as he worked with the perverse lock and key. He was not immune to her.

  She came even closer, until she was almost touching him, and whispered, “I think...maybe...you’re turning it the wrong way.”

  He twisted the key in the opposite direction and the lock clicked.

  “There!” she exclaimed triumphantly.

  His eyes met hers and she felt the passion in him, blazing just below the surface. She took a shallow breath.

  “You want me, too,” she whispered.

  He shook his head and backed away, clenching his fists as he retreated deeper into the shadows.

  “Yes, you do! But you’re just going to walk out on me.”

  “I’m putting you on a plane to London in the morning. You’ll be okay.” He turned to go to his own room.

  “No!” she cried across the darkness, knowing that the last thing she should do was chase him.