by Ann Major
“Look...” Something unreadable came and went in his eyes. “It’s better this way.”
“Stay with me,” she pleaded. “Just for tonight.”
She felt his eyes move over her body. His gaze was hot and brilliant, his dark face flushed. Everywhere his eyes touched her, her skin burned. A muscle ticked savagely along his jawline. His entire body shuddered, but he clenched his teeth together. “No.”
“Not even when you know I’m scared of the dark?”
“Leave the lights on then, princess,” he ordered, “and lock your door.” Then he’d vanished into the darkness, and she’d spent the night alone with only her wadded pillow to hug as she dreamed of him coming to her and folding her into his arms.
A Gypsy woman, racing for a plane, bumped into Dawn, and she held onto Kirk more tightly. Why, oh, why was he so anxious to be rid of her?
Kirk turned back from the ticket counter, his handsome face dark with fury. “Damn. I can’t believe he wouldn’t take a bribe.”
Dawn was filled with a wild joy. Kirk couldn’t put her on the plane. He wasn’t going to leave her...yet.
He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her through the milling, jostling throng.
“Where are we going?” she cried.
For a long moment he made no answer. “I can’t leave you in Turkey. Aslam has men here, connections.”
She paled.
Kirk’s eyes were steady as they met hers. “Honey, don’t worry,” he said in a gentle, soothing tone. “I’ll get you out...no matter what I have to do.”
She fought to appear brave to him but could manage only a quivery smile.
He thought she looked young and very vulnerable. He remembered how beautiful she’d been last night when she’d offered herself to him, how much he’d wanted her, how it had torn him apart to leave her. He couldn’t fail her and let Aslam get her again. Nor did Kirk intend to wait days for a passport.
Kirk’s hand tightened convulsively around her fingers and he pulled her through the crowd, outside into the blazing heat of the brilliant morning. For a long moment he just stood there, his great body tense, his mind a furious whirl as he scanned the airport and tried to think what to do.
“Damn!”
There was the smell of jet fuel, the scurry of baggage cars, the roar of jet engines. Kirk dragged her across what seemed like miles of concrete and asphalt until at last they reached a battered hangar. They went inside to a shabby office with an ancient, slowly-rotating overhead fan. A fat Turk with bulging black eyes and a dirty white suit was holding court behind a scarred desk.
“I want to lease an airplane.” Kirk held out a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills. “A jet. The best you’ve got.”
For a moment there was no sound other than the faint whine of the fan. Then the Turk waved his hand in dismissal, and his friends got up and went out to the hangar, one by one. He pulled out a knife and began to clean a black fingernail. “You need to be a Turkish citizen.”
“Hell.”
But the man seemed hypnotized by the wad of money. He set his knife on his desk. “Of course, we could provide you with a pilot. There would be no problem as long as you do not go outside of Turkey. Then we would need passports, certain documents, a few formalities...”
“I’m a pilot, damn it.”
The Turk cast one last regretful look at the money, picked up his knife and carved out the filth beneath a second nail. “Then, I’m sorry, sir.”
*
The private jet was cleared for takeoff. Kirk roared down the runway. Dawn clutched her armrest and watched concrete rush by in a sickening blur as the plane lifted into a vast cobalt sky. Behind the cockpit doors, in the cabin, Dawn tried not to hear the struggles of the pilot who was bound hand and foot to a seat.
“Where are we going?” she whispered as the jet shot higher and higher into the sky. Istanbul slid sideways. Her stomach flipped queasily, and a sudden tightness in her throat made it difficult to breathe. Kirk flew like a fighter pilot.
“I was hired to get you to London.”
“But the pilot...in the cabin...”
“I didn’t hurt him, and unless he does something crazy, I’m not going to.”
“The plane... We aren’t supposed...”
“For the money that crook charged me, I should fly you all the way to New York. After we land, the pilot can fly it back to Istanbul.”
“You’re breaking all kinds of international laws.”
“I had to get you out.”
“W-where did you learn to fly like this?”
“My sister’s a pilot. She got me interested.”
They were over the Mediterranean. Streaking over dazzling blue, over tiny ships, craggy islands. Then the jet shot straight up into the sky.
Dawn felt a rush of exhilaration as she covertly glanced at Kirk at the controls. He was wild. Wild. And his wildness was filling her. The world seemed very far beneath them. It was as if their separate lives, their separate worlds, were down there too, lost, unimportant to both of them. There was only this moment. Only Kirk. She felt alive in every cell in her body.
She began to laugh, and he turned to her, faintly alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she whispered. Her beautiful face was aglow. Her eyes were brilliant. “I’ve never known anyone like you before. I’ve never felt like this. So out of control. It’s fun to feel like anything in the whole world is possible! Absolutely anything!” Even us, she thought, and then let the thought die away.
Her head was thrown back, her lovely long throat exposed, her laughter a soft velvet sound that seemed to reach even the most secret places in his heart.
He smiled at her, his rugged face gentle, and the effect was devastating.
Her laughter died in her throat. Slowly her eyes met his. Even us, she longed to whisper.
A breathless hush fell between them. He had not touched her since they’d gotten safely into Turkey.
He lifted her hand and kissed her wrist, and she shivered when she felt his hot mouth against her naked skin.
A fever pulsed from his warm lips directly into her bloodstream.
She wanted him to continue to kiss her, but he pulled away and said, “I’d better radio ahead, so we won’t be shot down.”
“What?”
“Relax. I know people.”
*
The jet was safely on the ground, taxiing the length of the runway at Heathrow Airport. A swarm of police cars with screaming sirens was careening toward the jet as Kirk brought it to a stop.
A voice from a loudspeaker was issuing a battery of commands and threats to the outlaws in the Turkish jet. Kirk was about to open the door, when Dawn touched his sleeve. She looked up at him, her face shining, yet frightened.
“I—I’ll never be able to thank you,” she whispered, her voice choked with feeling.
“It’s enough that you’re safe.” His low tone was husky, and his eyes were disarmingly gentle. He crooked his finger and touched her cheek, and then jerked his hand away.
Dawn stared up at him wordlessly. “I’m sorry you’re in so much trouble because of me.”
“I’ve been in trouble all my life,” he said. “If there’s anything I know how to handle, it’s trouble.”
She was thinking that he’d risked his life, everything for her. She drew a breath. There was no telling what the men outside might do to him. This tall, strangely silent stranger had shown her more kindness than anyone in her whole life ever had before.
In a burst of emotion, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. A ripple of excitement coursed through them both.
He had vowed never to touch her again, but nothing on earth had ever felt so good as the small slim body pressed into his, as the sweet flutter of hot lips opening beneath his.
He was caught in a swirling mist of passion, and he could not stop himself from arching her body into his. Beneath flimsy purple silk his fingers slid over the rounded shape of her breasts, and he held her tightly aga
inst his hardening body for the longest charged moment in either of their lives. He drew in a fierce sharp breath. His eyes closed and he bent over her, his kisses harder this time, hotter.
His arms drew her up against him until she was so tightly pressed against him it seemed as though the heat of his body fused her to him. His mouth moved against hers, his tongue moist and urgent as it slid between her still-parted lips. As he tasted her, she sighed. Instinctively her hands crept around his neck and clung.
He bent her backward, this impossible wanting fiercer than anything he’d ever experienced. Always before he’d looked upon women as necessary to his pleasure when they were available. Something he could live without when they were not.
Flames of passion engulfed him. Body and soul, he felt fused to her.
This woman was different. Utterly, completely different.
He felt her shudder. His body began to tremble. Abruptly he let her go. For a moment he couldn’t tear his blazing eyes from her beautiful, desire-flushed face. There were tears in her eyes. Her sorrowful expression ripped his soul to pieces. He started to say something, and then realized there was nothing to say except goodbye, and somehow he lacked the strength to say it.
He had to put her out of his mind, out of his heart.
He turned and opened the door.
Twelve men rushed up the stairs and tore his hand from hers.
She watched them manhandle him down the stairs and then slam him roughly against a waiting car with flashing lights and search him.
Then an officer yanked Kirk’s hands behind his back and brutally handcuffed him.
“No!” she screamed, stricken by this final humiliation. “No! You don’t understand!”
She knew Kirk heard her voice because he flinched. But he kept his black head bowed and would not look at her. Careful of his head, they shoved him inside the car.
When she raced down the stairs and tried to reach him, she was surrounded by reporters.
Moonlight glinted off the Thames. The long, eighteenth-century windows of the mirrored studio attached to her friend’s charming flat were open, and gauzy curtains curled in the soft, damp breeze.
Dawn lay on a couch in a corner, feeling wretchedly miserable and lost, sipping a glass of wine even though the wine merely intensified her feelings of loneliness. After the police had let her go and she’d escaped the siege of reporters clamoring for her story, she’d taken a taxi to an English ballerina’s flat in Chelsea, only to find her friend, Sheri, gone. Dawn had located the key under a pot in the garden and had let herself inside.
She refilled her glass. There was a gnawing ache in her stomach and a constant pain in her chest where her heart was. She had tried to do some stretches and warm-up exercises, but all she could think of was Kirk. All evening she’d kept flicking on the television and listening to the story concerning her escape. At least the press was making him into an international hero. Why couldn’t the police see that he wasn’t a hijacker, that he’d had to do what he’d done.
They had to let him go. They had to. She’d gone to the police station. After doing everything she could to make them see they should release him, she’d left Sheri’s phone number and local address in case he was released. Lincoln had appealed to everyone of any importance that he knew in London. Finally the police had allowed Kirk to make a couple of phone calls. Within an hour there had been a call from Washington. Kirk called and told her he was going to be released.
“I’m so glad,” she said.
“Things are starting to calm down,” he said. “I don’t think there will be any charges.”
“If you need a place stay, you have my address…”
“I shouldn’t see you again.”
She knew better than to press him. “Ok. If that’s how you want it.” When he hung up, she held onto the receiver. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
*
The doorbell rang at midnight, buzzing over and over again before she heard it above the music.
When she stumbled across the forecourt and elaborate gateway to the double doors, the last person she expected to see on the twisting staircase was a brooding, darkly-tanned Kirk with his heavy satchel slung over his shoulder. His silver bracelet gleamed in the moonlight. He stood on the bottom step, as if he’d been on the verge of leaving.
They each were very still, regarding one another silently, a raw elemental tension leaping between them.
“They let you go...with the money?” she whispered.
“Friends in high places,” he murmured in a deep, raspy voice. “You helped too, you know, fighting for me so hard. If you hadn’t made them let me make those calls...”
His chiseled features were harsh yet handsome. That wayward black lock tumbled across his brow. His eyes were so deep and dark and intense that she shivered.
In the background she could hear the music filtering from the studio as it rose to a crescendo. A wild, thrilling excitement filled her, drumming along her nerve ends. It was a struggle to keep her voice calm.
“I thought you’d just go back to wherever you came from when they let you out.”
The music enveloped them.
“I was going to. The authorities want me out of England—fast. I was boarding a chartered plane for the States, but all I could think of was you—jumping down from that roof, fighting like a wildcat to save me. I kept thinking about the way you pleaded my case with the police, the way you made me out to be such a hero to the press, the way you told me where to reach you when I was released. I kept seeing your face, your eyes. I kept remembering how you felt in my arms. I’ve never known anybody like you before. No woman... Not ever... I couldn’t just walk out of your life without even saying goodbye.”
She wanted so much more than goodbye.
He took her hand in his and brought it slowly to his lips. She nearly fainted when she felt his tongue, wet against her warm naked skin. When he felt her tremble he looked up, and the wanton invitation in her brilliant dark eyes dazzled him. He fought an inner battle, striving for control.
She was an innocent, but she wanted to be a woman. His woman.
“I should have gotten on that damned plane,” he muttered fiercely, but the hunger in his eyes grew more intense than ever.
“No...”
He let her hand fall from his lips and leaned into her body, crushing her to him. They held onto each other as if they would die if they didn’t. After a long time he let her lead him into the studio.
The mirrored room was filled with moonlight and sensuous music. In the mirrors she could see the reflection of a slim girl in a flowing skirt and a tall, powerful man.
“So you’ve been dancing... alone?” he whispered huskily.
“And drinking wine,” she admitted.
“There are some things one should never do alone.”
His voice was deep and melodious, and it blended with the music and flowed inside her. She felt a passionate fire in every part of her. The drumbeat of the music seemed to pulse at the exact tempo of her heart.
“You’re thirsty then?”
“That and much more.” His tone was low and charged.
She poured him a glass of wine, but he set it down beside hers.
“Dance with me,” she whispered.
His eyes met hers, and he studied her for a long time, as though caught in the spell of her beauty. She was lovely with the moonlight shimmering in her hair, with the silvery light falling gently across her filmy skirts. He could think of nothing but the nearness of her soft young body.
He knew how wrong it was to have come.
He remembered her laughter in the plane, the exquisite bolt of wild joy he had felt then.
It was the same now.
He was out of control.
He had never felt better in his life.
He reached for her, spanning her tiny waist with his large hands, shaping her body against his muscular body. For a long time they were still, savoring the delicious hot feelin
g of coming together.
They stood in the darkness with the moonlight sifting through billowing curtains. Tentatively her hand moved up his chest and gently circled his neck. Her nipples hardened against his chest, and his body turned to fire. It was as if she were his first, as if he’d never touched another woman before.
He began to move slowly, languidly to the music, pressing her body into his, leading her in the most sensual dancing she’d ever done.
She was barely conscious of his arms tightening around her, so caught up was she in the unbelievable sensations of his body touching hers. She felt his hips move against her own, and a fever ran in her blood. He was shaking against her, and to her surprise, Dawn realized that she was shaking, too. Suddenly she was dizzy, and her hands slid automatically over the muscles of his chest to his shoulders. Beneath his shirt she felt the pattern of smooth dark skin stretching over sinew and bone. The latent power of his body against hers sent a thrilling ripple through her.
They were in an erotic dream of their own making, dancing beneath a spotlight of moonlight, a dazzling couple floating at the center of a shaft of silvery white fire.
For most of her life she had danced.
But never like this.
Never had she danced as though she were one with the music, one with the man, and for the first time the dance was real.
She had stepped out of her dreams into a reality more dazzling than any dream.
*
The bedroom was wrapped in total darkness...and he was darkness, too. And for once in her life, she was unafraid, because he was with her, because she was discovering that there was a beauty in darkness that could never be found anywhere else, a beauty in touching, a beauty in listening to the hushed, wordless sound of love, a beauty in the closeness of two bodies coming together.
He was touching her, holding her, undressing her, sliding cool silk across her heated skin, pulling her down, down beneath cool, crisp sheets and clasping her close to his searing length until every cell in her body was ablaze.
Never had she been handled with such exquisite tenderness as she was by this hard, yet gentle man.
“Kirk,” she whispered. “I—I don’t know how.”
