Dare

by Glenna Sinclair

  "I'm coming!" Cara shouted. She glanced around quickly for any means to ford the river, but she came up empty. The only thing to do was to jump, and to make it count—otherwise she risked the same fate that had befallen the man, and she wasn't certain she was powerful enough to swim against the current.

  Cara backed up into the road before taking a running leap across the trench. She rammed her hand down over the hood of her rain slicker to keep it from ballooning out behind her and slowing her descent. She extended her leg out and managed to land the jump. When the ground started to give beneath her, she latched on with her hands and managed a mad scramble to the other side. "Oh my God," she muttered to herself. "I can't believe I just did that."

  But there was no time to savor her victory over the elements. She darted across the lawn to the figure lying prone beneath the tree.

  It was Simon. His face was sheet-white, and there was blood trickling from his nose. He managed to sit half upright when he saw her coming, and Cara felt a rush of relief. The tree had only managed to pin his leg, and there didn't appear to be any damage above the waist.

  "Oh my God," she mumbled again as she fell to her knees beside him. "What happened to you?" She hated herself the next instant for asking the question—there were a lot more pressing things she needed to attend to. "Do you think you can help me lift this tree off you?"

  "I can certainly try." He sounded dazed, almost as if he couldn't fully believe in her presence there beside him, and Cara had to wonder how long he had been struggling out there on his own. How early had he left the house? How many hours between then and now?

  "On my count," she beckoned. She rose to a squatting position beside him, and they both tensed with their hands on the trunk. "Ready? One…two…lift!"

  The tree slid downward, and Simon cried out in terrible pain. Cara ignored him, though her heart seized at the sound; he had ceased pushing almost immediately, and it was up to her now to keep the momentum going. She gritted her teeth and turned, digging her shoulder into the massive trunk. The tree rolled fully off him, landing with a tremendous splash back down in the mud.

  Simon's face was completely bloodless, and he looked about to pass out. Cara returned to him quickly, and tried not to look at the state of his left leg—she could see in her peripheral vision that it was twisted at an unnatural angle, and the last thing Simon needed right now was for them both to faint dead away.

  "Can you stand? If you lean on me?" she pressed. "Stay with me, Simon."

  "I'm with you," the Englishman mumbled. He reached for her, and Cara ducked beneath his shoulder. Together, they managed to haul him to his feet. Simon winced, and she felt his entire body go rigid with the effort. "My leg is completely buggered."

  "Don't look at it. Just lean on me." Cara glanced frantically around them, but the only thing they would have stood a chance of seeking shelter beneath was the tree that the storm had already brought down. She couldn't distinguish anything else that might help them through the gray landscape of rain.

  "There's a cave," Simon muttered next to her. "More of a cliff, really. Well, less a cliff, and more a…"

  "Where?" Cara interrupted him quickly. The man raised a limp arm and pointed. She started across the field, struggling to keep him upright, trusting completely in his knowledge of the neighborhood. "Don't tell me…" she began to say, in an effort to keep his mind occupied and awake.

  "That this is my property?" Simon finished for her. "I'm afraid so."

  "How much of the surrounding area do you actually own?" Cara asked. She could see a dark hole rising up before them, and assumed it was the entrance to the cave. She hurried in her steps.

  "From here to town?" Simon gasped beside her. "All of it, I imagine."

  Despite the rain, and despite their dire circumstances, Cara rolled her eyes.

  Simon's cave was embedded in the side of a low hill. It was tall enough to admit them both, and relatively shallow, set about six feet back into the hill; there was a natural shelf in the rock above that acted like a roof to shield them from the rain. Cara helped deposit Simon against the back wall, flinching every time he winced. She tenderly pushed the wet hair out of his eyes and waited to see what he would do.

  "You're waiting for me to pass out," he said eventually. "So that you can take advantage of me." He managed a tight smile, one that they both knew was for the benefit of letting her know he was all right. "Cheeky girl," he added.

  Some of Cara's concern for the man dissipated at this, and she rocked back on her heels with a scowl. "How did you know this cave was out here?" she demanded. "Is this where you lived before they decided to let you into the house, you old hermit?"

  Simon choked an appreciative laugh and leaned back against the wall. The leg that was clearly broken he left out in front of him, but he drew the other one in beneath him; Cara wasn't about to argue for a readjustment. She knew basic first aid, but nothing that would assist Simon now. All she could hope for was a break in the weather, one that would allow her to return to the house and get help.

  "I'm only twenty-seven, you know," Simon mentioned. "I know the accent makes me seem older and at least several intellectual levels above the men you're used to seeing."

  "We're so not seeing each other," Cara said. Simon turned his head against the wall to give her a look that was half-amused, and half-disapproving.

  "If I recall, you're the one who invited me home with you over the holiday," he reminded her. Cara bristled slightly.

  "And if I recall, you're the one who refused the invite, ruined dinner, and then got into a car that you are legally not allowed to drive, in weather that any man operating at a sub-intellectual level would have known was too dangerous to hit the road in."

  "Well, if further recollection serves, there were events that occurred in the interim that weren't all bad," Simon mentioned, and Cara flushed immediately. She had been so preoccupied that morning with panicking over how to best rescue Simon that any thoughts of last evening had been put on hold. It all came rushing back to her now: how she had angrily gone upstairs to provoke a proper goodbye from the shut-in, and how Simon had wound up provoking her to call his name out, again and again and again, as he took her atop his expensive bedsheets.

  A hand came up to touch her face, and Cara turned. Simon pulled away again, looking immensely pleased with himself. She realized he had been testing the heat of her blush.

  "Seriously, Simon, why did you come out here?" Cara pressed him. "They told me you were going into town early. I thought you never left your property for anything."

  "I don't," Simon agreed quietly. "At least, I've never had anything worth leaving the property for." The hand was back, smoothing down her face in a fond caress. "But the way you spoke about your family last night…I know it's important to you that you find your way back to them."

  Cara covered his hand with her own, pressing and holding it there against her. "Your life is more important than that," she intoned. "Please, Simon, I don't want you doing anything else dangerous on my account."

  "I think I'll be out of commission for a while," the man replied. He shifted and winced, before arriving at the conclusion that it was probably better to hold himself still. Cara rose and crossed to the cave entrance to gaze out into the storm.

  "I'll go for help as soon as it clears," she promised. "In the meantime—"

  "In the meantime, Cara, I want to tell you about myself," Simon said from the back of the cave. Cara turned, her fine eyebrows shooting up toward her scalp in surprise. She raked every inch of his face for any indication that he was joking. Some of the color had returned to his cheeks, but he still looked deathly pale. The muscles in his face looked permanently constricted against the pain in his leg, lending him a hard-edged look that she wasn't used to seeing. If speaking to her about himself now would help ease the pain, or at least distract him from it, then Cara felt it was well worth risking the dark nature of anything he might tell her.

  She moved to the back of the
cave and slid down beside him. After a moment, she held her hand out to him; the man took it, and gripped her hard. "What do you want to tell me?" she asked quietly.

  "I want to tell you how I got my scars," Simon said.

  CHAPTER 12

  Cara wasn't sure what to say to this. So, of course, her brain went with its most immediate and ridiculous selection. "What scars?"

  Her tone of voice was perfectly innocent in its inquiry. Simon stared at her for a long moment, before a startled, appreciative laugh escaped him. Cara winced.

  "Cara," he said slowly, "I know you've seen them. Is this your attempt at good manners?"

  "Glad I could make you laugh," she muttered. "Of course I've seen them. I just didn't know if you were maybe self-conscious about them, or—"

  "You needn't worry about that," Simon reassured her quietly. "I already know they're hideous. I'm used to them."

  After a silent moment, Cara shook her head. "They're not hideous." This time, nothing about her assertion rang false. "They're a part of you. And I…I think they're interesting. But we don't have to talk about them if you don't want to."

  "Talking about my scars doesn't bother me," Simon replied. "It's the story behind them, and what they've come to represent. Very few of the people who work for me even know about them. When I moved here from the U.K., I brought only Gerald with me."

  "The thing that happened to you…" Cara said hesitantly. "It happened there, didn't it? That's why you came over to the U.S. and closed yourself off. I've been thinking about it," she added when Simon shot her a surprised look. "Sorry. I knew I couldn't ask you, so I've been trying to put two and two together this entire week."

  "It makes sense that you would be curious," Simon said. "You are the first visitor I've had to the estate, so I wasn't sure what to make of you. Well, I was sure about a few things," he admitted. Cara felt his hand alight on her neck before trailing down to press possessively against the swell of her breast through her wet T-shirt. Evidently her rain slicker had come open during his harrowing rescue. She shivered against him, but it wasn't from the cold. "I knew from the moment I saw you that I wanted you," he whispered huskily. "But I knew I couldn't let myself have you. I'm not used to depriving myself of the things I want."

  The hand on her breast squeezed, and Cara leaned into the touch helplessly. He had been in command of her every desire ever since he had thrust her up against the pool’s side and ravished her, but she didn't need to be so obvious…she needed to cool down, especially if Simon, the injured party, was the one trying to initiate intimacy at the moment. She needed to keep a straight head for the both of them.

  Cara grasped his hand and drew it away from her, smiling wanly. "You were telling me about your scars."

  Simon nodded. "It was less than a year ago, while I was still living in England… You might not think it to look at me now, but I often threw large parties. And, you probably would think it to look at me now, but I used to drink. Quite a bit."

  Cara was silent. The pieces of the puzzle already felt like they were starting to come together, but she kept quiet, waiting for Simon to tell the story himself. The man appeared to momentarily struggle with continuing, and Cara squeezed his hand. Simon sighed.

  "This particular party was put on at a very expensive hotel. I was one of the earlier guests to leave—I hadn't thought I had very much to drink at all by this point, but I was mistaken. When I couldn't locate my driver, I decided I would drive the car home myself.

  "The other driver involved in the accident had also been drinking, but that hardly seems to matter now. On my way home, I collided with his vehicle. Both cars flipped, and the other driver went straight into the water. There was a river by my old estate…but I knew how to swim it. As soon as I had extracted myself from my own car, I stumbled into the water after him. I managed to pull him out of his car and revive him on the road. We were both the worse for wear, but by the time the ambulances arrived, it looked like he was going to make it.

  "He died en route to a hospital."

  Cara, who had been starting to expect a different ending, stilled beside him.

  "He was only sixteen," Simon concluded quietly.

  "But…" She struggled to form her first question. "How did he die? Did he sustain injuries? Internal bleeding?"

  "Alcohol poisoning." Simon was looking off past the cave's entrance into the rain. "He died of alcohol poisoning. His parents were distraught, understandably. I offered to pay for the funeral, and they were willing to forget the whole thing…until they found out who I was."

  The unvoiced question lingered between them. Who are you really? Cara thought, with a sideways glance at the pale, drenched man sitting beside her. Who was Simon back in the society he had fled from? More importantly, who was he to her?

  "They pressed charges. Their case is founded on the belief that my attempts to revive their son directly contributed to his death. They want to strip everything from me and destroy my life. But my life is already destroyed."

  Simon said nothing more after that, and Cara was led to believe he had concluded the story. She had been wrong—Simon's dark secret, the one that had sent him into exile, was about a hundred times worse than anything she could have ever imagined.

  But there were still a lot of unanswered questions. She peered up at him, wondering if he noticed the holes in his own story, but Simon gazed past her distantly, as if he were an ocean away. His face was contorted in remorse, and Cara knew he believed every word of what he had just told her. If there were holes in the story, they weren't his.

  "But then you came along…" Simon continued, startling her from her thoughts. "And the strangest of circumstances forced us together. I've never met someone so combative, so fierce, in all my travels up and down the world. I thought my days of discovery had ended when I vowed to lock myself away. Yet here you are, despite my best efforts. And I feel as if I am slowly but surely coming back to life once more."

  He looked at her then in awe, and Cara found she couldn't help herself any longer—she leaned in, and caught the familiar part in his lips with hers. The sensation of their mouths meeting flooded her with warmth, and she forgot all about the rain outside. Simon was kissing her back immediately, ardently, as if he had only been biding his time with his story—as if any moment shared between them was only in anticipation of the next time they came together.

  The injured man pulled her onto his lap, and Cara followed, stripping herself out of her rain slicker and thrusting Simon's own coat down his squared shoulders. She broke from the kiss and dropped her lips to the column of his throat, nipping and sucking as she rocked her hips against his beneath her. Simon gasped into her hair and clutched at her waist, and she could feel him rising already to the occasion; the crotch of his pants swelled, exciting a deep, molten feeling in her core. She couldn't help herself: she needed him, now, and she had every indication that the Englishman needed her the same.

  His hands hesitated no more. He unzipped the front of her rain-soaked jeans and hooked his thumbs in the waistband as he teased them down her hips; Cara wiggled sensuously atop him to aid in their descent. The tantalizing patches of skin revealed beneath her jeans were flushed and red with cold; once he had her pants off her, Simon struck her backside with the flat of his hand. Cara arched against him with a cry of startled pleasure, throwing her head back over her shoulder to watch the pale handprint fade away. The offending hand returned to grip the swell of her ass in a greedy handful, parting and massaging her as she rocked atop him. Cara shuddered, loving every minute of the unexpected exploration. She threaded her arms over her head and yanked her shirt off as Simon pulled her against him.

  The moment between them felt heated, almost feverish, but she knew she would have to be careful—he was injured, after all. Fortunately, there were parts of him that were still extremely functional, and Cara intended to take full advantage of them. She pushed her breasts insistently against the damp fabric of Simon's shirtfront, distracting him with the
swell of her cleavage over her black bra as she dipped her hand between them. The man gave an appreciative groan as her dexterous fingers worked him free. There wasn't anything to be done about his clothes in this position, but Cara didn't mind—she was desperate to have him by any means necessary. The hand that gripped her rear steered her against him as her own hand encircled and stroked his thick, smooth length.

  Simon groaned again, this time deep in his throat, and rested his head back against the cave wall, his eyes falling shut. Seeing him in such a vulnerable state despite his dominating grip on her excited Cara, and she stroked him again, fingers applying a teasing pressure to his throbbing cock. Simon moaned and bucked beneath her, his eyes half-opening to look at her.

  "If you don't get on now, I will break my other leg throwing you onto your back," he promised through clenched teeth, his voice a husky whisper. A thrilled shiver ran through Cara as she felt Simon's finger tug the seam of her underwear aside to allow him access. She lowered herself down, feeling the slick dome of his erection plunge inside of her. She cried out as she was penetrated, her voice echoing in the cavernous room. Anyone who happened upon them in that moment would have been treated to the sight of a half-naked college student impaling herself on the rigid cock of the landowner.

  Simon seemed to be sharing her debased line of thinking. "You're so loud, Cara," he gritted through his teeth, clearly struggling to speak through the wave of intense pleasure their union inspired. "You're lucky there's no one living close by. If anyone happened by, they would surely hear you. What would the neighbors think?"

  "I don't care," she gasped back to him. It wasn't her most brilliant moment, but it was difficult to remember how to form words when her sole focus was on how Simon filled her utterly. She moved with him inside her experimentally, and moaned when she was scarcely given the leniency to do so. Were she not so aroused already, she was certain that taking Simon into her like this would have been too much for her.