At the Edge of the Sun

by Anne Stuart

  The room was dark, with only the fitful glow of the half moon illuminating the shadowed corners. Snow was still falling outside their window, disappearing into the murky waters of the canal, feathering the gondolas that were tied up to their striped mooring poles. No one wanted to go for a gondola ride on a cold night like this, a Christmas Eve made for families and warm fires and loved ones. Maggie wrapped her arms around her narrow body to keep the shivering at bay.

  He released her the moment they were inside, and she realized with surprise that her arms were numb where he’d held her. She heard the rasp of the lock, the rattle of the chain, but she still didn’t dare look at him. She stood there, waiting.

  He could have done it, she thought, feeling his presence as he stalked around her. He could have killed Mack himself, or he could have hired Bud Willis at twice the price. The rage he was in right now was one that could easily lead to murder. He wanted to kill her, she knew that. He was so angry that he wanted to strangle her and drop her in the canal. She knew that he’d killed before in the line of duty, and she also knew he was entirely capable of killing again if he had to. But would he kill her?

  He’d walked over to the bed, and the small glow of the bedside lamp pierced the darkness as he flicked it on. It would make an odd sort of sense, Maggie thought as she stood there, unmoving, waiting. They were so tied up in love and hate, distrust and passion. Surrounded as they were by pain and death, it was bound to spill over on them sooner or later. And if Randall killed her he wouldn’t have to deal with the problem of whether he loved her or hated her. Because she knew that it was loving her that he couldn’t stand. He hated to need anyone, to want anyone and he needed and wanted Maggie.

  She didn’t want to die. She wanted to lie in Randall’s arms and make love to him. She wanted to cry and be soothed. She wanted to be protected and nurtured and made to feel as only Randall could make her.

  She forced herself to look at him, forced herself to meet the fiery rage she knew she’d find in his face. And her last little bit of courage vanished in the face of that murderous fury.

  “Are you going to kill me?” She asked the question calmly, almost casually. He didn’t even blink.

  “Why should I do that, Maggie?” he replied in a soft, deadly voice. “I don’t like the sick little games you play, pretending I’m Pulaski, but it’s not as if it really matters in the long run.”

  “It matters.”

  “The hell it does.” For a moment the violence erupted, then died down once more. “I won’t deny that I like sleeping with you. For some reason you appeal to me, God knows why. It can’t be your sweet nature or charming personality. You’re self-centered, completely absorbed in your own grief and your own emotions, with just a little left over for your damned family. I admit I want you, but I know the difference between love and lust.”

  “Do you?” She goaded him deliberately, wanting to see the eggshell-thin composure crack, wanting to see whether he could actually feel like other human beings.

  For a long moment he stared at her. Moving slowly he picked up the handblown crystal water carafe that rested beside the bed and hurled it at the nearest wall. Then he caught her before she could run, his strong, merciless hands digging into her arms, and he shook her, hard, with all his repressed anger. His narrow, handsome face was no longer distant and mocking. It was twisted with rage and grief and despair, and Maggie felt her heart turn over inside her.

  “You pushed me too far, Maggie,” he said, his voice raw. “I’ve put up with all I can take from you. I can’t spend another six years waiting for you, watching you fall into bed with the wrong men, watching you fall in love with someone else when it should be me. I can’t spend another six hours knowing that all you can think about is Pulaski, knowing that you don’t give a damn that I love you—”

  The moment the words were out he stopped, and Maggie knew if he could call the words back he would. But it was too late. They hung in the air like an entity, shimmering between them.

  “Damn,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment as a look of agony swept over his face. When he opened them it was gone, and there was nothing there, no emotion, no anger, just bleak emptiness. “I’ve had enough, Maggie,” he said wearily. “Do you hear me?” He shook her again, hard, and his fingers were like iron around her arms. “Do you?”

  “What do you want from me, Randall?” she asked. She waited for him to say it, she needed to hear him say it. That he needed her to love him, to forget Mack and to love him.

  But he’d pulled his mask on once again, and the flaming emotions were banked, still smoldering. He released her, moving away to stand by the window, and the moonlight reflected on the canal and illuminated his weary face. “Nothing, Maggie. Nothing you’re prepared to give.”

  She stood there by the bed, not moving, not saying a word. It had been a long six years since she’d first met Randall, and had known joy, and agonizing sorrow with him. She’d loved Mack with all the passion she had in her, but Mack was dead. Now she belonged with Randall, from now on until he tired of her. But he wasn’t going to tire of her. He loved her as much as she loved him and it was now up to her to prove it to him.

  Holly had watched the two of them move off down the hall, a worried expression on her face. She’d never seen Randall look quite so angry, nor Maggie so frightened. She hadn’t heard what Signor Tonetti had said, but apparently it had a galvanizing effect on both of them. Maybe she’d better go make sure they hadn’t killed each other. Maybe she’d be bunking with Maggie after all.

  She stopped outside their door, listening. She could hear low, angry voices, but no sounds of violence. She reached out to knock, then pulled her hand back. They needed to work things out by themselves, they didn’t need baby sister to interfere.

  Slowly she turned, heading back down the hall to her own room. She would have liked to have stayed at the Tonettis’ party—even if her Italian was almost nonexistent she would still be busy enough to forget about Ian. Alone in her room she’d have no choice but to brood, to worry, to long for him. Damn the man to hell!

  The lamp was burning by her bed, making a small pool of light surrounded by shadows. Holly closed and locked the door, moving into the room, then stopping short as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness.

  She wasn’t going to be spending the night alone after all. Ian half sat, half lay in the chair beside the bed, sound asleep. He hadn’t shaved, he was still wearing those loathsome polyester clothes that apparently were de rigueur for a Venetian hit man, and he was snoring. He was the best damned Christmas present she’d ever gotten. With a salacious grin she advanced on him, eager to get to the unwrapping.

  sixteen

  The moonlight was filtering through the casement window, illuminating the drifting snowflakes, its unearthly glow mirrored in the dark canal water. It lit half of Randall’s face as he stood looking out the window, exposing painful defeat and repressed emotions.

  “Randall,” she said, her voice low and husky, “I’m prepared to give you anything you want. But you have to ask for it.”

  He didn’t move, he didn’t look at her. He spoke in a voice that was barely audible. “I want you to love me.”

  Waves of emotion washed over Maggie. It was as if she’d been locked under a spell, and his words had released her. Randall the remote, the cynical, the invulnerable, needed her and Maggie, the giver, let go of the last of her doubts. She could fight her own dark desires, and she could fight his efforts at control. But she couldn’t fight his need, not when it was what she needed too.

  She slipped out of her high-heeled sandals and walking away from the bed crossed the room to him, silently, her stockinged feet chilly on the drafty floor of the old palazzo. He still didn’t turn, but she knew that every cell in his taut body was aware of her approach. She stopped within inches of him, close enough to feel the burning heat of his body without touching him. A hundred memories danced through her mind, Randall seducing her, ministering to her, making lov
e to her until she was weak with a dizzy sort of relief. Always it had been Randall, setting the pace, calling the shots, making the moves, and she had accepted, sometimes passively, sometimes with enthusiasm, sometimes with grudging despair.

  This time it was different. This time it wasn’t Maggie lost in a welter of a pain and fright. It wasn’t an almost virgin confused by desire in a factory apartment in Gemansk, an angry, aroused woman in a shack in the Eastern European countryside, a grief-stricken widow in a New York apartment. It wasn’t any of the women she’d been for him over the years. It wasn’t even a woman in a deserted palace who’d seen too much death in the hills of Lebanon.

  It was a woman who’d finally accepted that she loved the wrong man, and there was nothing she could do but love him as well as she possibly could. And it was Randall who was lost.

  She lifted her hands, sliding them under his jacket to the silk-covered skin beneath. He was rigid with tension, the muscles of his back knotted beneath her hands. She edged closer, so that her body was pressed against his, and she slipped the jacket down his arms, dropping it on the chair behind her. She turned him gently toward her and then she reached for his tie.

  Memory brought her back to a similar scene, six months ago in her sister Kate’s apartment in Chicago. His hands shot up and caught hers in a painful grip, stopping her in the midst of unknotting the black silk tie, and his dark, tormented eyes blazed down into hers. “I said I wanted you to love me,” he said, his voice low and raw. “I didn’t say I wanted a sympathy roll in the hay.”

  She didn’t move, her hands still beneath his, and she felt herself begin to withdraw inside herself. She smiled, a small, knowing smile. “You don’t know what you want, Randall,” she said. “In one sentence you say you need me, in the next you use your nasty tongue to drive me away.”

  “Maggie,” he said, “I’m so damned tired of you hating me in the morning.” He dropped his hands, leaning back against the window frame, waiting for her to withdraw.

  Calmly, with only slightly unsteady hands, she continued to undo his tie, then moved to the shell buttons on his shirt, unfastening them one by one, exposing the pale, golden flesh of his chest and stomach. She pulled the shirt from his pants and pushed it from his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. Still he watched her, making no move.

  She reached for his thin leather belt. Her hands were shaking now, with a panicky sort of desire that she wouldn’t back away from. Randall would let her go, would probably be more than happy to have another fight, to precipitate another battle that would end with her beneath him on that soft bed. But not this time.

  The belt buckle finally gave, and she remembered that his damned trousers had buttons instead of a zipper. She drew a deep, unsteady breath and then sank to her knees in front of him. She pressed her face against him, against the swell of desire that couldn’t be hidden despite Randall’s distance. She kissed him through the thin wool, revelling in his involuntary start, and then her long fingers were blessedly adept, unfastening one stubborn button after another.

  “Maggie,” he said, his voice harsh and pleading.

  She released him from the wool trousers and the silk shorts, and he was hot and pulsing in her cool hands. She looked up at him, shaken at her own arousal, and managed a shy smile. “You wanted me to love you, Randall,” she said softly. “I will,” she said. “I do.”

  As she put her mouth on him, she could feel the tension radiate through his body, the shudder that swept over him, and his hands reached out to cup her head. She half expected him to draw her away, but instead he held her there, his hands gentle on her thick hair, as she gave him back some of what he’d given to her.

  The light beside the bed flickered and went out, plunging the room into darkness. Maggie didn’t flinch. Moonlight surrounded them, illuminating the snow outside, and there was just the two of them, her hungry mouth and his uncontrollable desire, tension and desire sweeping over her as she brought him closer and closer to release. She was trembling as he was, shaking with love and desire and need, and he was almost there …

  His hands moved from her head, where he’d been holding her against him, moving down to her shoulders, and he pulled her away.

  “No,” she cried, fighting him, but he was stronger than she was. He pulled her up, into his arms, holding her there as she struggled. “No,” she whimpered again. “I wanted to—”

  “I didn’t.” His voice was low and tight and yearning. “I don’t want you servicing me like a whore. I want to give to you when you give to me. I want to be inside you when I come, I want—”

  She’d slid her hand down between their bodies to capture him. He groaned, pressing against her hand, and she tried to kneel again. But once more he stopped her, and his hands were hard and perversely arousing on her arms. “Maggie,” he whispered. “I want all of you. Not just your mouth, all of you.”

  Together they moved toward the bed and they sank down together onto the soft mattress they’d shared so platonically the night before.

  It took her a few moments to struggle out of her designer jumpsuit, and she spared one of her last conscious thoughts to curse Holly’s taste in clothing. Then Randall’s mouth was everywhere, tasting, demanding, moving from her own soft lips, down her slender neck to the taut firmness of her breasts. She arched against him, overwhelmed by the response that was raging through her, and for a moment all she could do was lie there and quiver. His deft hands were holding her still, and then trailing across her flat stomach and between her thighs. She gasped when he touched her, so exquisitely aroused that she almost couldn’t bear it.

  She tried to push his hand away, but he was inexorable. With slow, delicious strokes he continued his sensual assault, and she began to shudder. His hand left her, his mouth released her aching breast, and before she knew what he intended he’d moved down and placed his mouth on her—a hot, hungry demand that she could no longer fight. She reached down and cradled his head, as he’d cradled hers only minutes before, and gave herself up to the unimaginable pleasure he was giving her.

  Within moments she was lost, shivering and gasping, her body melting in waves against his hot mouth. He waited until it passed, and then he moved up, over her, thrusting deeply into her, filling her, impaling her, controlling and destroying her last ounce of sanity.

  Suddenly it changed. He rolled onto his back, taking her with him, and then it was up to her. She was the instigator, she was the taker. She knelt there astride him, revelling in the feel of him, deeply a part of her, as she captured and surrounded him. She tightened around him, slowly, deliciously, and was rewarded with the glazed look of unspeakable pleasure that darkened his eyes. She rested her hands on his shoulders, pressing them back against the cool white sheets, and began to rock, slowly at first, deliberately, moving back and forth, capturing and then almost releasing him.

  It was delicious, it was overwhelmingly heady, this sense of control that was rapidly being wrested from both of them. His strong hands reached up to cradle her hips, not to push her, only to caress her, and when she sank down again he arched, filling her even more fully. Randall’s shoulders were slippery with sweat, his body taut and trembling, and Maggie felt her heart and soul contract.

  “I love you,” she heard herself say in a rough, almost desperate voice. “I love you, Randall. I always have.”

  Everything exploded into blackness pierced by glittering shards of light. He thrust against her once, twice, and then was lost, spilling his love into her. Maggie had only a moment to savor his release, when suddenly her body dissolved beneath her, and she was flung out into the darkness with him.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but met his instead, as her body convulsed in a series of shattering spasms that were unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. All she could do was cling to Randall’s sweat-slick body.

  It seemed forever before sense and reality returned. First the trembling stilled, then the darkness began to recede. Her mind returned, slowly at first.
She was lying on her side, locked in Randall’s embrace, still clinging to him with hands and arms that were cramping with tension. He was still inside her, pressed deep, and his heart was thudding as heavily as hers. Her face was drenched in tears she never knew she’d shed.

  Randall’s hands came up to smooth her short tangled hair away from her tear-swollen face. She ducked her head in unexpected shyness, but he caught her chin and lifted her face to meet his gaze.

  It was a revelation to her. As his searching eyes swept over her no-doubt bedraggled appearance, it was Randall who was the surprise. There was no mockery, no reserve, no wariness in his face at all. It had been washed clean of bitterness and years of cynicism. He looked like a young man, a boy. A boy in love.

  Again Maggie’s heart turned over inside her. She smiled at him then, a loving, tear-filled smile and with complete trust she put her head against his shoulder and fell instantly, prosaically asleep.

  It was morning, and the bed was cold. Maggie opened her eyes and reached for Randall. He was gone.

  The room was empty. No sign of a note, and his clothes were neatly folded on the dresser. He wouldn’t have gone far, she told herself, settling back against the headboard of the bed that was too big for one person.

  The snow had almost stopped. She looked out the leaded casement windows to the drifting flakes that were still sauntering down with a lazy air. The narrow cobbled path along the side canal was covered with it. Maybe they could go for a long walk later, hand in hand, like normal lovers on Christmas day. Maybe they could be normal lovers, with no more hatred or distrust coming between them.