by Kay Hooper
“And you were angry at me,” she insisted softly, “because the drugs were there. Because you’d seen me get that case. Because you had to leave.”
“Yes,” he breathed finally. “I wanted to stay with you so badly, and I was so angry that I was shaking. I kept telling myself to wake you up and confront you, find out for sure about the drugs, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to see the light in your eyes go out when I told you who and what I really was. Anything seemed better than that. Even—”
She quietly finished for him when his voice broke off. “Even leaving me.”
His hands found her shoulders, and he was aware that beneath the thick fabric of his dinner jacket were the delicate bones of her body, the fragility. The deceptive fragility.
“It wasn’t right to blame you,” he said roughly. “I knew it. I knew it. But I did blame you. For a while. I don’t blame you now, Kyle, and I haven’t for years. I read all the articles about you in the newspapers and magazines, and I nearly went crazy thinking of you being hurt in one of those dangerous stunts you kept pulling. And I couldn’t be angry anymore. Don’t you understand? Anger never had a chance.”
Kyle reached up to touch his cheek lightly with her fingertips. “Then stop pulling away from me,” she whispered. “Being cautious. Stop being worried that one of us is going to make a mistake this time.”
He knew that was true, knew that caution had indeed held him back. And his voice was raspy when he said, “Tonight you look so fragile! The way you did that night …”
“That night was a long time ago,” she said, her arms sliding up around his neck, her fingers twining in his hair. “This is now—and I’m not fragile now, Luc. Not like that. I’m strong enough to love you now, strong enough to love the man you really are. Will you deny me that?”
He caught his breath when she moved even closer, pressing her warm and yielding body against him until his own body throbbed in a heated, aching rush of desire. And the same surge of primitive emotions that he had felt in the trophy room enveloped him again, driving out everything but the essential need to feel her body alive in passion, hear her voice husky with it, and see her eyes nakedly wanting.
“Kyle …”
His lips found her parted ones, fierce and demanding, a demand she responded to with instant fire. For the first time they kissed with nothing hidden, nothing holding them back. And everything that had come before was only a pale preview, a ghostly hint of the sheer, raw emotion to come.
Kyle trembled violently, dazed by the feelings capturing her body. She was hot, cold, weak, strong, ravenous. Ten years of remembering a single night had not prepared her for this explosion, this eruption of all her senses. Her body was no longer her own; it was his, bonded to him, linked to his in some magical, overpowering affinity. And the hunger for his possession was alive in her, hurting her with its need.
Lucas drew back at last, staring down at her with darkened eyes, his breath raspy in the quiet of the night. Without a word he slipped an arm around her shoulders and guided them both out of the gazebo and into the maze. And it was Luc who found the way out, even though he was hardly conscious of it.
Neither of them noticed that his dinner jacket lay on the floor of the gazebo, the crumpled remains of formal distance.
Guests still laughed and moved around the mansion, but Kyle and Lucas hardly saw them. They went into the house and up the stairs, perfectly paced, and no one who looked at them could doubt that they were in a world of their own.
Kyle’s room was closest, and they found it awaiting them with welcome, the bed turned down and the lamps softly lighting the room. That faint golden light enabled Lucas to see what was in her face when she turned to him beside the bed, and it almost stopped his heart.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He framed her face in his hands, gazing into her turquoise eyes and seeing the naked wanting there. And seeing the love, astonished, awed, an unstoppable force. “I love you,” he told her with soft intensity. “I’ve always loved you.”
Kyle could feel the burning of her body’s need for him, the aching emptiness, and she wondered, with a sudden instinctive fear, if she really could let go with him and be as free as she had been on that other night so long ago, if her feelings could fully escape the prison where they had remained all these years. “I—I’m afraid,” she murmured. “It’s been so long …”
“Shhh.” He kissed one corner of her trembling mouth, then the other, gentle. “I’m afraid too,” he confessed.
“You?” She was surprised, moved. “Why?”
“Ten years of memories,” he said with a crooked smile. “I’m afraid I won’t please you, love. Afraid the shattered pieces of that god of yours will cut the both of us.”
His vulnerability gave Kyle the courage she needed, and her hands slid slowly up his chest to unfasten his tie. The buttons of his white shirt parted, one by one, and the golden flesh of his chest was hard and roughened with springy hair beneath her seeking touch. “You’ll please me,” she whispered. “We’ll please each other.”
She could feel his big, hard body tremble, feel the unsteadiness of his hands when one slid down her neck and the other searched out the side zipper of her dress. His mouth found hers, tender at first but instantly heated. And she could only dig her fingers into his shoulders, hold on urgently as that unfamiliar, frightening explosion consumed her senses.
But she wasn’t about to ruin this night by being afraid. She loved Lucas, and that was what mattered. All that mattered. Willfully she loosed the floodwaters of her own emotions a second time, holding nothing of herself back. Love and need, fierce desire and aching tenderness, a jumble of feelings flooded over her and through her. And fear, never very strong, was swept away in the powerful current.
She gasped when his lips left hers, and her head fell back to allow the hot exploration of his mouth. She felt the zipper of her dress give way, felt the silky slide of material as the dress fell to pool around her feet in darkness. Her sandals were easily discarded, the dress kicked aside. His fingers nimbly found the pins in her hair, sending them flying so that her hair fell down around her shoulders. And she twined her fingers in his hair, trembling when his mouth slid lower.
He pressed kisses in a lingering trail between her full, aching breasts, down the taut flesh of her rib cage and quivering belly. His fingers gently drew the last scrap of lace and silk down her long legs.
Kyle was lost in some heated, dizzying place, blind and deaf to everything but him, his touch. She was hardly conscious of being lifted, until she felt the softness of the bed beneath her back, wondering vaguely when he had stripped the covers farther back. Not that it mattered. Dazed and yearning, she lay waiting while he rapidly, carelessly, discarded his clothing.
He was beautiful, she saw, beautiful and proud and strong. Golden flesh reflected the lamplight as his muscles rippled with every movement, and she quivered just looking at him. Had she seen that ten years ago? No. She had seen then only with a young girl’s fascination in a body so different from her own. Now she saw the hard planes and angles, the utterly male sculpting of flesh and bone and muscle that caused her breath to catch.
Desire was an ache, an intolerable emptiness housed within her burning body, and the soft sound that escaped her when he joined her on the bed was husky and hurting.
His feverish gaze moved slowly over her, and Lucas groaned softly. “You’re so lovely, Kyle …” He kissed her deeply, his tongue possessing, twining with hers in a passionate joining, a preliminary possession that seared them both. His hand moved lightly over her breastbone, lower, seeking and finding the thrusting curve of her breast. A rosy nipple was hard to his touch, and she moaned when he tugged gently. His lips followed the satiny slope, caressing flushed skin and then capturing the rosy bud hungrily.
Kyle couldn’t breathe, couldn’t be still, as pleasure made every muscle in her body grow tense. She caught at his shoulders, compulsively stroked his smooth, golden skin. Despit
e the differences brought about during ten years apart, this was the body she knew, the body she craved, and the need to touch him was helplessly overwhelming. She said his name over and over in her mind, unable to say it aloud, unable to make any sound at all except for the husky, kittenlike whispers of desire.
Her legs parted at his gentle, insistent touch, and Kyle abandoned herself completely to sensation. The empty ache inside her grew, swelling in throbbing surges. The shatteringly erotic caress of his fingers, the swirling rasp of his tongue at her breast maddened her, pulled at her until hunger was all she knew, all she was.
She had never known that such feelings were possible. He had been gentle and careful ten years ago, so much so that her memories of that night were filled with that tenderness, that care of her. But she had been too young, too inexperienced to feel the complete range of sensations a woman’s body could know. She had found pleasure in his arms, but nothing had prepared her for what he was making her feel now.
“Luc …” It was a whisper, ragged, urgent. She thought she’d go crazy if he didn’t take her now, make her his again.
Lucas could feel his own passion building, his body aching as he forced control. She was unimaginably lovely, and he was mesmerized by the changes maturity had wrought in her body. Dizzily he thought of a flower just budding, then a flower in full, glorious bloom. Parted from her so long ago, he had not been able to watch that lovely transition; he could only remember then and see her now.
Then slender and fragile, virginal yet so utterly giving, so passionately fiery in his arms. And now still slender but with the ripe curves of womanhood igniting his senses, no longer virginal but still new to this physical loving and still so utterly responsive and giving.
Ten long years … And impossible to forget that, impossible to forget how long he had ached for her.
How long he had loved her.
The hoarse little sounds she made drove him wilder, and her shaking hands on his shoulders, his back, seared his nerve endings. Her breast throbbed beneath his lips, and the slick heat of her need beckoned irresistibly. She was starkly beautiful in passion, fierce and strong and exciting. She was ten years of dreams. He thought he’d explode with wanting her and knew he would never, ever, get enough of her.
“Luc …” The almost inaudible, husky sound of his name on her lips was an invitation, a demand, a plea, and he responded with driven eagerness. Her trembling legs parted for him, welcoming him, and the silk of her inner thighs against his hips was the touch of home.
She was gazing up at him, her clouded eyes fixed on his face, wondering, needing.
“I love you,” he whispered in a rasping sound, and his body joined with hers in a movement so smooth and certain, it was as if time itself had decreed it, sanctioned it.
Kyle caught her breath, her nails biting into his shoulders. She hadn’t remembered. Dear God, she hadn’t remembered how it really felt. Her body accepted his, but she could feel the taut stretching of tissues that had known a man’s possession only once so long ago. And there was a brief, instinctively fearful moment when he felt alien inside her, an intruder that would steal something from her. But then it was all right, it was perfect, and her body was responding wildly to the throbbing fullness it had captured.
Lucas had half closed his eyes, still and trembling in that hovering moment of waiting. His chest moved with every harsh breath, and control was something he clutched desperately when the molten tightness of her body sheathed his.
“Kyle?” A whispered question.
And it was Kyle who moved first, her body arching into his, the instinctive undulations of her hips beginning the dance both their bodies craved.
Lucas groaned, and his body responded to the invitation of hers. The burning of his need tortured him, and he couldn’t get enough of her, couldn’t satisfy the imperative necessity of melding them into one flesh, one being. It seemed that his body demanded compensation for the long years apart from her, demanded a possession so complete, so utterly absolute, that she would always be a part of him.
And it seemed that Kyle craved the same thing. She was wildness incarnate, demanding with a woman’s desperate, instinctive drive toward completion. Her body loved his, fought his, captured his totally. With every breathless, raw sound she held him; with every touch of her hands she seduced him; with every taut tremor of her body she humbled him.
Control was a distant thought splintered by need, an unimportant thing neither wanted or needed. Frenzied necessity held them captive, spurred them on. It was a kind of madness, impatient, driven, aching wildly, far beyond their dominion.
Kyle thought she would certainly go mad and didn’t care. The tension of her need was torture; sweet, raw agony. She was breaking, tearing. Her heart was pounding out of control, her breathing raspy, and primitive sounds tangled in the back of her throat. And then, in a mind-numbing instant, she was shattered, pieces of herself flying away into oblivion, and she held on to Lucas’s body as the center of reality in a world gone mad with pleasure.
The exploding ecstasy that Kyle was experiencing captured Luc, held him fiercely, and he cried out, even as she did, the hot, inner contractions of her body driving him to the edge and then over it, making him intensely alive, killing him, changing him forever …
He was heavy, and she gloried in that male strength. She felt dazed, shaky, and yet tension was building again. While aftershocks of that incredibly sensual earthquake still shook them, she could feel the rise of desire in them both.
Lucas rolled slowly, carrying her with him, his lips seeking hers blindly. Their feverish bodies clung together, merged still, and he kissed her as if only the sharpest edge of hunger had been blunted.
Her breath lost again, her self lost again, Kyle responded eagerly. And in the hours that followed, she was conscious only of delight. Like lovers with very old souls long ago committed to each other, they made love again. In aching need, as if the morning would tear them apart forever, they made love.
Desire drove them until each touch and kiss sensitized their flesh almost unbearably, until the featherlike brush of fingers and lips was like a torch branding raw nerves. Until even the meeting of eyes was unbearable and yet was borne; almost agony and yet they craved it.
Insatiable, they loved. In the lamplit quiet of the room there were only faint sounds. Beloved names whispered, soft vows, simple, private words of need. And the low, raw sounds of anguished release, of aching pleasure.
And though two hearts and minds would have worn the night away in love, their earthly selves finally yielded to exhaustion. Bodies entwined, limbs tangled, utterly limp, they slept.
Kyle woke slowly, and in the first disoriented moment it seemed that ten years had not passed at all. For an instant she was that seventeen-year-old girl, her first night of love behind her—waking to the shocking absence of her lover.
She didn’t want to open her eyes; she wanted just to lie close beside Lucas under the warmth of covers he must have drawn up over them. She wanted just to lie there and feel what she should have felt then: warmth and love and incredible happiness.
And in that moment the last faint throb of that old wound signaled the final healing.
She felt him move slightly and opened her eyes, gazing up at him as he lay propped on an elbow watching her.
“Hello,” he said softly.
Kyle could feel the delight of her own smile. “Hello.” She studied his face in fascination, learning it all over again. And she had never known, never guessed, that so hard and masculine a face could look so tender.
He lowered his head and kissed her slowly, thoroughly, and Kyle felt an instant, hot tremor.
“I love you,” she whispered when she could.
Lucas smiled at her, and his eyes were dark. Huskily he said, “When I left you before, I knew that one day I’d find you again. Crawl to you on my knees if I had to. I used to wake in the middle of the night, thinking you were with me, beside me. But you never were. Until last nig
ht. Kyle, I love you so much.”
Kyle touched his cheek, her eyes misty, and her voice was shaking. “You said something last night about the pieces of that broken god cutting us both. But it never broke, Luc. Not then, not since. It’s just standing on solid ground now … and it’s taller than it was before. No pedestal, no glittering image, just a man I love with all my heart.”
A rough sound escaped him and he kissed her again. “I don’t deserve you,” he said almost inaudibly. “But I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to, love. If you’ll let me.”
She went very still, her breath caught somewhere near her heart. “Luc?”
He cupped her cheek with one big, warm hand. “You asked what would happen on Monday. I only know what I want to happen. Marry me, Kyle. Be with me always.”
“There’s no place I’d rather be,” she whispered, and went into his arms again.
SEVEN
THE NECESSITY OF reporting in and pangs of hunger finally drove them from their room just after seven. They found that the huge staff of the mansion had cleaned up after the night before and had even had a buffet breakfast ready at this early hour. But other than themselves and the staff, no one seemed to be stirring yet.
By eight they were in the maze, and Kyle left Lucas to report in with Kelsey while she went to the center to find his dinner jacket. The jacket was lying over the low railing of the gazebo, and just inside the little structure was Martin Rome.
“You’re up early,” he called as she approached.
Kyle, never easily embarrassed, stepped up into the gazebo and picked up Luc’s jacket. “I love mornings. And I had to get Luc’s jacket.”
Rome glanced at the jacket, then studied her face. Conversationally, as if he were discussing something only mildly interesting, he said, “A serious love affair for you, obviously.”
“Very serious,” she confirmed.
He leaned against a column; he was dressed, as she was, in slacks and a thick sweater, and he was as wide-awake as she. Suddenly Kyle was on her guard. She wasn’t quite sure why, except that there was something in his dark eyes she had never seen before. And this had nothing to do with Lucas’s mission here; this, she knew, was strictly between the two of them.
