Gatekeeper

by Debra Glass

  She opened her fist and stared at the button. “This was his. You ripped it off his coat when he stabbed you.”

  Something desolate and dark flitted through Benton’s gaze. He closed her hand around the button and held it. With his other hand, he trailed his fingers down her cheek, brushing away her tears, caressing her. Jillian wanted nothing more than to cling to him, to linger here in his reassuring arms. But she couldn’t. Not now.

  Something about Bruce Bowers murdering Benton had everything to do with Lynn Bowers kidnapping her sister.

  Jillian searched his eyes. “Why would he want to kill you?”

  Benton’s lips parted but he did not speak. He drew in an audible breath.

  Jillian sat up on her knees. “I don’t understand. Was Hattie still in love with you?”

  His shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. Jillian swallowed hard. “Were…were you still in love with Hattie?” Her heart froze in her chest until he answered.

  He began with difficulty. “I grew up with the men who served under me. We attended school together, church. Hattie was the prettiest belle in Williamson County. And when I was promoted to colonel at the age of twenty-two, she began sending me pretty notes and baskets filled with home-baked goodies. I was nearly completely cut off from the commissary.” He gave her a little smile. “Word got around and I guess all the other fellows were a little jealous.”

  Jillian shook her head. “But why?”

  “It’s one thing to serve under an officer who is younger than you are but, Jillian, you have to understand. I was not the wealthiest man in the county by any means. My father built cotton gins for a living. He died when I was only sixteen. We weren’t members of the well-appointed planter class.”

  She tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear. He somehow never failed to surprise her. She had always thought of Civil War era Southern men as being somewhat like the characters in Gone with the Wind. Slave-holding, gambling dandies with hoop-skirted belles on their arms. And here was Benton telling her a totally different story.

  “It was by pure luck alone I was able to go to military school. So when I rose like a rocket in the ranks and caught the attention of the most sought-after belle in the county, men like Bruce Bowers weren’t too happy about it.”

  Jillian stared. “So he was…wealthy?”

  “Very. Before Shiloh he tried to buy a commission but the men in our company wouldn’t have it. I was one of the few with any military schooling, so…” His voice trailed off.

  She couldn’t suppress the feeling there was more to this than he was telling her. She thought back over the letters she’d read. “But…why did you break it off with Hattie when you’d written her you wanted to terminate your long engagement and get married in a month?”

  Benton averted his gaze.

  Comprehension seeped through Jillian. She felt as if she’d been hit in the stomach. She brought her fingers to her lips. “You slept with her didn’t you?”

  He shot her a quick glance and then swallowed uncomfortably. “We didn’t actually sleep.”

  A wave of heat rushed up Jillian’s spine at his admission. All sorts of sordid images filled her mind. Voluminous skirts thrown up in a clandestine and passionate encounter. So that’s why he’d been so concerned about compromising her the night before. She inhaled sharply. “I’m beginning to see a behavior pattern here.”

  He flinched and then very slowly, he lifted his gaze once more to hers. His eyes narrowed into slits. The soft gray turned steely. “Is that what you think?”

  Jillian crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re wasting your energy manifesting to me.”

  “Jillian!”

  She continued before he had a chance to interject anything else. “Because I wouldn’t want you to compromise me.”

  “Stop this. It’s not the same.”

  She shot to her feet. “And just how is it different?”

  “Because Hattie was pregnant.”

  Jillian’s breath froze. Her mouth fell open. How could Benton have refused to marry a woman he had gotten pregnant? Her heart twisted. She’d believed he was different. She’d believed he cared.

  And above all she wanted to know every last detail of it.

  Her every instinct screamed at her to turn inward, to unleash her psychic ability and see for herself. She wanted to do it. She wanted to lash out at him, to prove to him that she was not the simpering coward she’d been on their first encounter—to prove to him she was not powerless.

  She closed her eyes and willed the energy to surround her and at once, she was careening through a tunnel of light, spinning nauseatingly fast until she came to a dead and sudden stop.

  Jillian was hovering above them. Benton and Hattie. Her heart lurched. Hattie was beautiful. Dressed in a billowing silver skirt that accentuated her tiny, tiny waist, Hattie stood facing Benton. Her shiny brown hair was swept back off her face, rolled up and secured with a decorative comb. She stared at Benton with unadulterated love glowing in her big brown eyes.

  Jillian felt guilty for eavesdropping. She started to quit this but stopped when she saw Hattie seize Benton’s sleeve in her fingers. A solitary tear rolled down her alabaster cheek. “How can you do this to me?” Her voice broke with emotion. Her knuckles whitened. Jillian’s heart went out to her. She had wanted to hate her but she couldn’t. Instead, she pitied her.

  God, why did she have to be so beautiful? With her wide eyes and translucent complexion, she looked like a carbon copy of Melanie Wilkes.

  “I won’t marry you then leave you alone, at the mercy of the Yankees. We are losing this war, Hattie. My men are starving, freezing. And if your insight is correct, I will die within the year. God help me if I leave you to the same fate I left my brother’s wife. God help me. I will not do it.”

  Hattie searched his steely gaze. She desperately clung to him with both hands. Tears poured unchecked down her face. “But I love you. Don’t go back! Let’s run away together. We could go to Europe. Anywhere! Please, Benton!”

  He stared and then set her away from him. “And what of my men? What of their fate?”

  “I don’t care, I don’t care.” She begged him with her wide brown eyes.

  “But I do care. I may not be able to protect you as a soldier or a husband but I’ll be damned if I fail to protect you as a man.”

  Hattie stopped crying and stared. Her gaze turned hard. Her eyes narrowed. “I see.” Her voice was cold. “Now that our little accident is out of the way, you had rather me be your whore than your wife.”

  “Hattie!”

  She drew back her hand and slapped him with all her might. “I hope you rot in hell, Benton Smith! I hope you do die on that battlefield. And God help me but I will marry your murderer if you leave me now!”

  Suddenly Jillian was being dragged back through the tunnel. Something had her ankles. She clawed at everything and nothing and twisted her head to see what held her.

  A soul collector!

  Panic surged. A scream ripped from her throat.

  And Benton was suddenly there wrenching the beast off her. Claws dug into her foot, scratching as he pulled it away.

  And as abruptly as it began, it was over and she was in a heap on the floor of her living room. Breathless and fresh from the fight, Benton loomed over her. His gaze swept her and Jillian thought for a moment he was going to ask her if she was all right. But he didn’t. Instead, he glared. Anger blazed in his eyes.

  She had been afraid of him the first time she encountered him. Now she was terrified. Unable to move or breathe, she stared.

  “You damn fool. You deliberately provoked the soul collectors!” His voice was like ice that sent a chill straight to Jillian’s heart. He was clearly upset.

  This time she wasn’t going to show him she feared him. Defiantly, she lifted her chin. “What if I did? I didn’t ask you to rescue me.”

  She instantly regretted her words. Never had she seen such a look of murderous fury. He lurched tow
ard her to lift her roughly by the shoulders and set her on her feet. Jillian stumbled but his vise grip kept her from falling. She sucked in her breath with dread. Her ankle burned where the soul collector had scratched her.

  “Do you want me to end up like those phantoms in the cemetery?” He gave her a hard shake. “Do you?”

  Wordlessly, she shook her head.

  His gaze searched hers before he crushed her in his arms. His lips claimed hers in a brutally intense kiss. White-hot heat unfurled in her body. His tongue pushed through her open lips, deepening his kiss, thrusting, demanding a response. He was conquering her and she was surrendering unconditionally. Instinctively, her nipples tightened. Her pussy pulsed. Jillian’s mind and body warred. She was not some fragile southern belle ripe for the taking. She was a twenty-first-century woman who did not need a man to come flying to her rescue at every turn. She yanked herself out of his embrace and stumbled several clumsy steps backward.

  Breathless, she stared at him. Her fists clenched at her sides until her nails dug into her palms and she realized she was still holding the damned button. She ached to hurl it at him but she miraculously checked her anger.

  Benton stood there looking extremely pleased with himself. A smirk deepened the dimple at the corner of his mouth. He brushed a finger across his kiss-wet bottom lip.

  Jillian was outraged. “I don’t blame Hattie for slapping you. I’d slap you too if you were a real man.”

  He laughed outright but she knew her barb had hit its target. The hurt was evident in his eyes.

  Jillian could not bear to look at him any longer. She spun and rushed toward her bedroom. A strong forced knocked her to the bed and Benton flipped her onto her back before his long, hard body pressed her down into the mattress. Her breath left her lungs in a rush. His hands firmly pinned her wrists to the bed above her head. The button slipped from her palm to the sheets. She flung her head wildly from side to side. “Stop it, get off!”

  “Listen to me.”

  Thrashing beneath him only intensified the pressure of his body against hers from head to toe. Her heart thundered against her rib cage. “Please get off me.” Tears stung her eyes. She could not believe how foolish she had been. She’d shown him just how jealous she could be. She’d endangered him because of some woman who was long dead. Her face flushed hot. And last night she’d even told him she was falling in love with him. How stupid. What a fool she was! What a stupid, stupid fool!

  “Jillian, be still. Hear me out. I cannot condone my actions but at least hear what I have to say.”

  Some plea evident in his voice caused her to stop fighting. She forced herself to look into his gray eyes.

  “Hattie was with child. We decided to get married sooner. That was what the letter you read was about. At the time, I fully intended to marry her. But in that month, she miscarried. She blamed me. She told me it was because she dreamed I would be killed.” He loosened the grip on her wrists. “She was like you, Jillian. She knew things before they happened. And after my brother died…after I saw what it did to his wife and children, I couldn’t bear to leave Hattie a widow.”

  The pain in his eyes was unmistakable. Jillian’s heart softened.

  “She married Bruce Bowers within the month, no doubt to spite me.”

  “And he hated you because Hattie would always love you.” Her voice sounded soft, uncertain. But Jillian knew the veracity in her words. Any woman who fell under Benton Smith’s spell would forever love him. She loved him. She had to remind herself to breathe. “Am I right?”

  Benton shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. What mattered was that she would be taken care of after the war.”

  Jillian searched his gaze. “But you loved her didn’t you?” The thought made her heart turn over hard.

  “Yes. I loved her enough to let her go.”

  Jillian wanted to close her eyes but she couldn’t. She could only gaze into his thickly lashed gray eyes, the dark waves of hair falling forward to tickle her face, the sinfully sensuous curve of his lips accentuated dramatically by his feather-thin moustache and spade beard. He was so beautiful. So sincere.

  “Do…do you still love her?” She couldn’t believe she was asked such a juvenile question. Again.

  He looked at her. His gaze was warm and intense. “Not in the same way. Not now.”

  Her heart soared—because now she had no doubt she was in love with him. Not after this. But at the same time, her heart ached so badly at the idea of him leaving her she thought it would burst from her chest.

  With maddening slowness, he slanted his head down to hers and brushed his lips across hers. Jillian grew stiff. She wanted nothing more than to open to him, to taste his kiss, to feel his body moving in rhythm with her own. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t risk his safety—and she certainly could not risk heartbreak.

  She bit her lip and twisted her head away. “No, Benton.”

  He stopped. “Did I hurt you earlier?”

  “No,” she squeaked. She did not dare look into his eyes.

  He relinquished one of her wrists and caressed her cheek, letting his fingers trail down the gentle curve of her neck. She trembled. “Then why won’t you let me kiss you?” His drawl was silky. Dangerous.

  All she could think about was kissing him, about his mouth on hers, hard and hot, his tongue tasting, searching. She flushed. “Because…I’m afraid for you. Because I don’t want anything to happen to you. I’m sorry for what I did earlier. Can you ever forgive me?”

  A devastating smile pulled at his lips, creating a deep dimple at the corner of his mouth. “Of course, my dear. But you know it only weakens my energy if I manifest to you—if I allow you to touch me.”

  Warmth rushed through her body. She was thrilled. Her heart beat wildly. Was he telling her he could make love to her without manifesting? She wanted to protest but her body was already betraying her, traitorously yearning for him, rocking upward against the unmistakable hardness that pressed against her hungry pussy. She battled with razor-sharp desire. Even if he could make love to her without endangering himself, she wasn’t sure she wanted to allow it to happen again. He wasn’t the only one in danger.

  But when his mouth found the curve of her neck where he rained expert kisses across the breadth of her collarbone, Jillian heard herself moaning. She reached for him but her hands moved through him.

  “No, no, sweet,” he whispered against her skin. “This time it’s my turn.”

  He raised his head, looked into her eyes and then vanished.

  Jillian gasped. She would have thought he was gone except for the fact she could still feel every long, hard inch of him on top of her. “Benton, what are you doing?”

  She had a feeling he wasn’t giving her a choice this time. Panic surged.

  The buttons of her blouse opened one by one, the snowy silk falling away to expose a lacy, champagne-colored bra. Her nipples tightened and although she couldn’t see him, she knew Benton was touching her, cupping her breasts, teasing one pointed nipple with the hard tip of his phantom tongue. Closing her eyes, she writhed on the sheets. Hands moved under her body, unfastening the bra, pushing it away. Hot kisses moved down her belly to where insistent fingers unbuttoned and unzipped her trousers. With her eyes closed, it was as if he were there. She raised her hips as he pushed her slacks, along with her panties, down and off.

  The adamant kisses found the sensitive inside of one of her thighs, moving higher and higher until Jillian gasped and opened wantonly for him as she felt a finger pushing inside the slick, wet folds of her labia and up into her greedy cunt. Raising her hips, she heard herself moan. Heat spiraled through her body. She had never known anything so erotic.

  Her eyelashes fluttered open and all she could see in the milky darkness was a glittering mist floating over her skin. Never had she felt as if she were the center of attention in bed. No one had ever set out to please only her. Her whole body tensed when she felt the tip of a warm tongue flicker over her distended clitoris
, joining the finger in a relentless, exquisite assault. Strong arms encircled her hips, lifting her, pulling her toward a hot, hungry mouth.

  Jillian’s fists clenched the covers. She rocked against Benton’s mouth as he explored, licked, sucked, teased. And then it was building inside her, cresting. She was coming. Her breath caught in her chest and she cried out as spasm after earth-shattering spasm racked her body.

  But there was hardly time to recover before she felt his energy move over her like a whisper-soft breeze. Some unexplainable urgency consumed her and she found herself begging, pleading for more. Her body tingled. It was electric. She grew still and lay there waiting, anticipating, relishing every moment of this strange new experience.

  Her body became weightless. Amazed, she gasped as it floated inches off the surface of the bed but she hardly had time to protest before the palpable energy caressed her. Hands roamed over and around her as if he had dozens of them instead of only two. The insistence of his mouth came down on hers and she opened for him, tasting the tangy sweetness of her own juices, feeling hard, warm pressure that made her lips tingle. The energy rippled over her whole body until she couldn’t discern exactly what he was doing anymore. She knew she was lost and she no longer cared. All that mattered was this moment, this connection, this exquisite pleasure—this soul.

  “I want you inside me,” she murmured, gasping as she felt him, huge and hard, gliding inside, encased tightly, deeply within her. Her mind was spinning.

  Never had she dreamed she could experience such passion, such complete and utter fulfillment in a man’s arms. Fear welled inside her that it was only temporary but she forced it away and concentrated on the incredible energy humming through her body. She could actually feel him plunge and recede time and time again. Was he feeling it too? Desire to please him overwhelmed her and she begged him to manifest.