Men of Midnight Complete Collection

by Emilie Richards

  What difference did scars make when it was the woman inside the body that he wanted?

  He closed his eyes and tried to let the whisky carry him off to sleep. He was a large man and should have had a large man’s tolerance for drink, but the moment his eyes closed, he knew he’d had too much. The darkness moved, shifting in waves inside his head. The car was parked beside the curb, yet it seemed to race beneath him. He clutched the blanket he’d taken from the boot and kneaded it with his fingertips. Finally he opened his eyes and sat up.

  His head cleared almost immediately. Rain had begun again, and he listened to the soft splatter on his roof and windows. He liked rain, and like any good Scotsman had learned to ignore it when it was inconvenient. Now it emphasized the barriers between him and Fiona. As the rain fell harder, it seemed to shrink the metal frame of the car and imprison him. He was used to solitude. No matter how lively, how outgoing, he was with others, he was most comfortable alone. But he wasn’t comfortable tonight. Tonight it seemed that none of the truths or the lies that he regularly told himself could make any difference.

  There wasn’t much left in the bottle now. He unscrewed the top once more and held it at eye level. In the glow of the rain-shrouded street lamps he could see the dim, distorted reflection of his own face. At no moment of his life had the resemblance to his father been clearer.

  * * *

  At first the smell of smoke was comforting. There were bonfires in the autumn in the field beside the hotel, and on the night of the Johnsmas fair fires were built on the hillsides. Her father held her on his shoulders so that she could peek over the crowds and watch the flames lick at the mists of evening. Her father had broad shoulders, and he never complained if she forgot to sit still. Her father was a strong man. He never grew tired when she sat on his shoulders, and he never scolded her.

  The smoke grew stronger, and she began to cough. Just a little, at first. Not enough to wake her completely. She lay with her thumb in her mouth, sucking greedily on it after each coughing spasm. She wanted nothing more than to sleep.

  The smoke thickened, and the coughing grew worse. Each indrawn breath tore at her lungs. She burrowed deeper under the covers, but even they couldn’t filter the smoke. At last she opened her eyes, but the covers were pulled over her face, and only darkness greeted her.

  She was awake enough to be frightened, now. She didn’t like the dark. She didn’t like the smoke.

  “Duncan?”

  She coughed again. Duncan didn’t answer. “Duncan?”

  She swatted the covers away, arms flailing faster and faster. She struggled to sit up. The room wasn’t dark. There was a strange and terrible glow, a bonfire on the floor beside her bed. As she watched, the flames licked higher and the smoke thickened.

  And then her blanket began to smoke, too.

  * * *

  Fiona bolted upright, the tartan blanket clutched tightly to her chest. A scream tore at her throat, but she smothered it with clamped lips. Only a moan escaped, a pitiful, horrifying moan that started deep inside her and went on and on.

  She hadn’t had the nightmare in years. She’d thought she had outgrown it, that the doctors who had encouraged her to talk about it had finally put the nightmare to rest.

  Soft lamplight spilled through the windows, and she could see, as she forced herself to survey the room, that nothing was wrong. She sniffed, but she was greeted only by the smell of old, worn carpets and stale air. There was no smoke.

  No smoke.

  She was trembling. Sleep had fled, and she knew it wouldn’t be back again that night. She rose on legs so weak they threatened not to hold her, turned on the bedside lamp and went to stand at the window.

  The panes of hand-blown glass were so familiar, and so was the layout of the room. Even the musty smell touched a chord deep inside her. Now she knew why she hadn’t felt safe here from the beginning, and why the nightmare had come back. She was alone in a room much like the one she had shared with Duncan as a child. There had been another bed, his, in the corner, and a door connecting the room to her parents’. But the room had smelled exactly like this one. Her mother had retrieved the heater and turned it on that night to drive away the chill and the smell.

  She leaned a pale cheek against the glass. The street below was not the high street of Druidheachd. This was Glasgow, and she was safe. Andrew was just down the hall.

  Andrew. She longed for him in that moment as she had never longed for anyone. She was no longer a child. She was a woman, but still she longed to be enclosed in his arms. Just until the trembling stopped. Just until she could remember exactly who and what she was.

  She didn’t know his room number. She couldn’t knock on doors until she found him. She and Andrew would both be put out on the street, and rightfully so. She couldn’t ask him to hold her, or to take her back to Druidheachd. She had to wait until morning when he came for her.

  She had to wait and not fall asleep again.

  She tried to focus on the street below, washed gently by rain as it had been earlier. Tears filled her eyes and dropped to her cheeks. She seldom cried. She had learned too early that tears were little help. Tears hadn’t stopped the pain that had torn at her day and night for months after the fire. They hadn’t stopped the relentless duties of doctors and nurses who hurt her terribly every time they touched her. They hadn’t softened the hearts of the children who had turned away from her in horror when they glimpsed her scars. But she had cried tonight for Sara, and now she cried for herself.

  There had been no fire in this room. She was not imprisoned by walls of flame. She was imprisoned by her own memories, and by a nightmare that hadn’t disappeared, after all. And calling to her from somewhere over the prison walls was a man who claimed he wanted her, even as he claimed that he didn’t want to hurt her.

  There was movement on the street. She brushed aside her tears and turned her head. The door to Andrew’s car opened, and Andrew emerged. He looked up at the window, then, head bared to the rain, he started toward the side door.

  Confusion filled her, but only for a moment. The situation wasn’t difficult to grasp. Andrew had only been able to find one vacant room, and he had given it to her. He hadn’t told her the truth because he hadn’t wanted her to worry.

  He hadn’t told her the truth because he couldn’t imagine spending the night in the same bed with her.

  She told herself that the latter couldn’t be true. She was vulnerable tonight, still immersed in the darkness of her dream. Andrew wasn’t disgusted by her. He treated her like a woman, not like a sideshow freak. And he hadn’t seen what the fire had done to her. He could not be repulsed by what he only imagined. When he held her in his arms, there was no sign that he found her anything except desirable.

  But he had begun to discover what she really was.

  She remembered the day he had massaged her leg. Despite the fabric covering it, he must have noticed how extensive the scars were, how they bulged and twisted….

  And he had touched her back. His fingertips had probed the skin there, skin laced so tightly with scars that there was no skin, not skin like other women had, at least. Her back was a patchwork quilt of scar tissue, of skin grafts that didn’t have the resilience or appearance of normal skin, and sites where what skin had survived the fire had been harvested for grafts on her leg and feet.

  There was a knock at her door, and nothing tentative about it. She realized that she was wearing a T-shirt and little more. She ran to the bed, scooped her pants off the floor and sat to pull them on.

  He knocked again, louder this time. She nearly flew to the door to let him in. A brief look down the hallway assured her that no one had been awakened. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

  He stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind him. “I saw you at the window.”

  “Yes. I can see how you might have, considering that you were sleeping in your car.”

  “There was only one room.”

  “I figur
ed that out.”

  “Why are you up, Fiona?”

  “Why did you lie?” She stepped back to put more space between them.

  “What point was there in giving you more to worry about? There was nowt to be done about it. There’s no’ another room available in the city. I was lucky to find this.”

  “It’s a large bed. We could have shared it.”

  He didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. Then he turned away. “Why are you up?” He went to the window, as if checking his car.

  “I just am.”

  He glanced at her over his shoulder. “I could no’ see your face, but I had the feeling you’d been crying. I can see I was right.”

  Denial was absurd. She knew her eyes were red, and her cheeks were probably flushed. “I had a bad dream. That’s all.”

  “All?” He faced her, leaning against the sill. “Do you have them often?”

  “No. It was the room. It smells like…” She didn’t want to say it.

  “It smells like a room in an old hotel. Your room?”

  She shrugged. “Duncan and Mara make sure that all the rooms in the Sinclair Hotel are clean. And they air them constantly.”

  “But it was no’ always so. They’ve brightened things considerably.”

  “All right, Andrew. This room smells like the room I had as a child. And I guess that triggered my nightmare. Because I was—” She could no longer be matter-of-fact. She swallowed. “Back there.” Her voice dipped dangerously. She looked away.

  “Fiona.” He reached her in three steps and pulled her close. His arms tightened around her.

  He smelled like whisky, as well as the good clean scent of rain. She struggled to separate herself from him, but he held her tighter.

  “I’m fine. You’re always comforting me, and you don’t need to. I’m a grown woman now.”

  “Since when does a grown woman no’ need comfort?”

  “I’m not your sister.” She succeeded in pulling away. His eyes glittered strangely, almost as if he saw more than a delicately boned woman with tear-stained cheeks.

  “You’ve nowt to fear there. I’ve no’ thought of you as a sister since the day you stepped back on Scotland’s soil.”

  “Then how do you think of me? Am I too pitiful to share a bed with? Did the thought of sleeping beside me upset you too much to risk it?” The words hadn’t passed her lips before she regretted them. They were her worst fears, and only a tiny part of her believed them. But she was ruled by that tiny part, tossed and manipulated and horrified that it might be true. She had thought of herself as pitiful for so long that even though she had made a fragile peace with her body, she was not convinced that others ever could.

  “Pitiful?” His hand shot out and cupped her chin before she could move away. He held it tight and turned her face up to his. His right hand clamped hard on her shoulder. She was immobilized. “What have I done to make you think such a thing?”

  “Let go of me, Andrew.”

  “Tell me what I’ve done!”

  “You’ve slept in your car rather than sleep in the same bed as me!”

  “I slept in my car because I was afraid of what might happen if I slept with you. Shall I explain?”

  Shame filled her. She had bullied him into claiming to be attracted to her. She had exposed her deepest fears and humiliated herself. And for what? How could she ever know how much truth there was in what he’d said? Andrew would never hurt her. That was the one thing she knew for certain.

  “You dinna believe me.” Anger sparkled in his eyes, and his mouth was a grim line. “You force me to prove myself.”

  “I’m not forcing you to do anything.” She grabbed his wrist and pushed it away. “Look, I’ll help you make a bed on the floor. Then neither of us has to worry about anything.”

  “You’re a far different woman when you’re angry.” He held her by both arms so that she couldn’t turn away. “There are signs that the wee lassie who kicked my shoulders and pulled my hair is still inside you.”

  “I’m a grown woman!”

  “Aye, that you are, Fiona. That you are.” He tugged her closer. “And I’m a grown man, no’ a saint.”

  Before she could respond, he was kissing her. He neither ravished nor punished her lips. He took them as if they belonged to him, as if she belonged to him and always had. He tasted like whisky and desire. She could hardly breathe, but somehow it no longer mattered. When his arms encircled her they were not a prison but a boundary within which she was nothing less than whole.

  “Fiona.” His voice was ragged, and his breath was warm against her cheek. “I want you. Can you doubt it?”

  As if to prove his words, he pulled her hips to his. He was aroused; even a woman with no experience couldn’t misunderstand. Her doubts began to dissolve. His lips were warm against her jaw, and warmer as they searched for the hollow of her throat. Her head fell back, and she moaned. He urged her hips closer, and she longed for the brush of his naked flesh against hers. Her mind filled with flashing images, forbidden and erotic, of what it would be like to take him inside her body, to merge with him, to swallow him so completely that Andrew became a part of her forever.

  The images melted into reality, his hand kneading the fabric of her T-shirt, then settling against her breast. His thumb brushing slowly, achingly, over the erect nipple. She was flooded with heat, with sensations long repressed. She had abandoned hope that she would ever respond to a man this way. She had convinced herself that she had nothing to give, and that in return a man wouldn’t waste his time giving her pleasure. Now she understood that what gave her pleasure also pleasured Andrew. And that when she kissed him, touched him, his satisfaction was as great as her own.

  Even as she thought of touching him, she did. The top button of his shirt came free as she twisted the fabric in her hands. The hair on his chest was like silk against her palms and his skin was warm enough to singe her fingertips. He gave a guttural moan, an eruption from deep inside him, and jerked her closer. The shirt fell open as she slid her hands lower; buttons separated from buttonholes, and the fabric swung free.

  His chest was rock hard and ridged with muscle. How could his skin, as firm as steel, be so sensitive to her touch? He buried his face in her hair and clenched her hips tighter. There were layers of cloth between them, but the heat of his arousal sought the moist heat inside her as surely as if they were naked.

  He groaned again as she explored with hands that fluttered over him, learning the way the thick mat of hair tapered toward his belt buckle, the way that her touch dampened his skin with sweat. She could feel a tremor begin somewhere deep inside him. She had done this.

  She had done this.

  He kissed her again, a deep, dark kiss that reached all the way into her soul. There was nothing held back, no attempt to initiate her slowly into passion. He kissed her as if something had burst inside him, something uncontrollable and new. She shuddered with pleasure. Heat and sensation spiraled through her. She had done this. She had destroyed his caution. She was no longer a burn victim but a woman.

  “Fiona.” He filled his hands with her hair, tilting her head for greater access to her mouth. Then his hands traveled down her back, kneading and stroking. She was dizzy with the joy of it, dizzy and throbbing. When he lifted her shirt and touched her bare skin, she was too caught up in her own desires to realize what he was doing.

  At the end of the kiss her head fell forward against his shoulder. He was touching her breast now, not through the T-shirt but flesh to flesh. She had never experienced anything like it. She bit back a moan of pleasure and squeezed her eyes shut.

  And just before they closed, she glimpsed her own bare feet.

  She stiffened. She tried to pull away from him, but he was beyond explanation. He murmured against her neck, her neck where a fine web of scars was hidden by her hair. He kissed her jaw, her chin and, finally, her mouth. His hand glided to her other breast.

  She was torn in two. Half of her wanted to beg hi
m to continue, and half of her wanted to cry. She splayed her hands against his bare chest and tried to push, but it only seemed to excite him.

  “Fiona, come to bed.” His voice was a deep rasp, a dark masculine sigh.

  Fear began to fill the places where desire had been. “Andrew. Stop.”

  He didn’t respond to her command. He hardly seemed to hear her voice. “How could you think I did no’ want you? You have dreams of the fire, and I have dreams of you.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes, and for a moment she forgot to be afraid. He dreamed of her. He wanted her, despite what he knew of her injuries. She would not disappoint Andrew. Then she looked down again and saw the horror that was her feet, feet that had been seared by fire, feet that surgical teams had almost despaired of saving. Feet that for many years could not hold her weight. They served her proudly now, these battle-weary feet with their scars and their imperfect form, but they were a symbol of all she had endured, and all she was not.

  “No!” She succeeded in backing away this time, succeeded in breaking free of his arms. “Stop it, Andrew.”

  He was breathing hard. His arms shot out again, and he reached for her, pulling her back to him. “You dinna mean it.” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. He kissed her again, as if he would find his answer there.

  She was afraid, but not of him. She was afraid that he would stop kissing her when he saw what she was, that he would push her away and pity—or worse, revulsion—would finally cloud his eyes. He’d had too much to drink. She knew that now. She saw it in his loss of control. She saw it in the way he refused to listen.

  He scooped her up as if she were nothing, a dust mote or dandelion down. He strode to the old bed and lowered them both to it with a flourish of masculine strength. Then he stretched out half over her. She splayed her palms against his bare chest to keep him away, but his mouth descended hungrily to hers. “Dinna think about anything but this,” he murmured against her lips. “Just this and nowt more.”

  He covered her hands with his own and stretched them over her head. His chest brushed against her breasts. He pushed the knit fabric of her shirt higher until it was her skin, her naked breasts, that lay against him.