Silently, savagely, Erin struggled, using everything she’d learned in the past seven years.
Nothing worked.
Cole countered the blows with his greater strength and skill, keeping her from hurting either one of them. She was wasting her strength. She went completely still and waited for him to mistake her submission for defeat.
He looked at the green eyes so close to his and felt ice move beneath his skin.
“Erin, listen to me, I’m not going to hurt you, but I can’t let you walk blithely into a hallway until I check it out. I’m not going to hurt you, honey. I’m on your side.”
He repeated the words again and again while Erin watched him with feral eyes. Gradually what he was saying sank through fear to the intelligence beneath.
“I understand,” she whispered. “You can let go of me now.”
“Not a chance,” Cole said instantly, his voice no longer soothing. “Not until you tell me why you were doing your best to kill me a minute ago.”
“I’m sorry. I…panicked.”
“I noticed. Why?”
Erin’s voice died as she realized that Cole was holding her helpless, his body heavy over hers. She should be terrified, but she wasn’t. More than his soothing words, more than anything he could have said, his restraint calmed her.
She’d attacked him. He’d done nothing more than defend himself. Even now, despite the blood oozing from a cut on his lip and the bruise on his chin where she had butted him, he was being careful of her.
“You didn’t hurt me,” she whispered. “You aren’t hurting me now.”
The wonder in her voice startled him, but before he could ask what she meant, she was trying to explain.
“When you slammed the door it was like Hans all over again, going to the door and he caught me and then he let go and I ran and he caught me and it happened over and over….”
“Hans?” Cole asked softly, but there was nothing soft about his eyes.
She shook her head slowly.
“Talk to me, Erin. We’re going to be living in each other’s pockets. I don’t want to step on a land mine again.”
She closed her eyes. He was right.
“Hans was my fiancé seven years ago. He was as big as you. As strong. Oh, God, he was so strong.” She shuddered, then went on in an odd, flat voice. “I found him going through my father’s wall safe, photographing every bit of paper. I turned around to run, but it was too late. He was so quick. Like you.”
Cole waited, his pupils dilated almost as much as hers.
“When I tried to scream, Hans hit me in the throat,” she whispered. “Then he hit my shoulders. I couldn’t scream, I could barely breathe, my arms were numb, my fingers wouldn’t work. Then he let me run to the door again but I couldn’t open it, couldn’t move my arms, couldn’t make my fingers close. When he got tired of my kicking he dislocated my knees.
“Then I couldn’t move, I could only feel and see, and whenever I closed my eyes he hurt me.” Erin’s voice dried up and then resumed again, terrible in its lack of emotion.
Cole listened despite the overwhelming need to make her stop talking. He didn’t want to hear her low voice describing just how much of a blood sport sex had been to her fiancé.
Even as Cole locked his jaw against the bile rising in his throat, he wondered at his own primitive response. He’d heard worse, seen worse, the kind of savagery that was labeled inhuman because sane people didn’t want to believe how low humanity could sink.
Cole knew he shouldn’t be surprised, shouldn’t be appalled, and he certainly shouldn’t be enraged at what had been done to Erin.
But he was.
As he listened he clenched his teeth against the turmoil of emotions ripping through him, a combination of despair and killing rage the likes of which he hadn’t felt since Lai had casually aborted his child and married another man on the command of her family.
Slowly Erin’s words faded into silence. She realized that Cole had long since rolled onto his side, removing his weight from her, touching her only in the slow sweep of his hand over her hair while she talked. She looked at his eyes and saw both rage and a sadness that made tears burn against her eyelids. Without stopping to think, she curled against him, needing the reassurance of his warmth, wondering if he ever needed reassurance in the same way.
“Are you all right?” he asked finally.
She nodded. “I thought I’d forgotten. But I hadn’t. Not really. I feel better now. Lighter. Kind of floating.” She rubbed her cheek against his chest and let out a long sigh. “Thank you for being…gentle.”
“You’re the first one who ever accused me of that,” Cole said, smiling oddly.
After a moment Erin looked up and saw a drop of blood slowly welling from Cole’s lower lip. She touched the small cut with her fingertips. “I’m sorry.”
“No problem.”
Her fingertips slid down beneath his chin, sensing the slight raised area where her head had bruised him.
“Here too,” she said. “I hurt you.”
He tried to subdue his elemental response to her touch. She frowned as she looked at the bruise. She touched him even more gently, almost caressingly. He closed his eyes and told himself she didn’t know what she was doing.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” she said, lifting her fingertips as the tension in his body communicated itself to her. “It must hurt to have me touch it.”
He made a sound that could have been a throttled laugh or an equally throttled curse.
“It doesn’t hurt. It feels good. Too damn good,” he said bluntly.
“What?”
“Your fingers. My skin. I like the combination. What about you?”
Her hand hesitated, then resumed touching him. Silently she admitted that she was caressing him rather than looking for signs of injury.
Very slowly Cole resumed stroking her hair. After a time his fingertips traced the shadows beneath her cheekbones and the outline of her mouth. She made an odd sound and looked up at him. His eyes were closed and his expression was intent, focused on the sensations coming from his fingertips while he traced again the curve of her lips.
“You’re smiling,” he said without opening his eyes.
“It tickles.”
“Does it?” He ran his fingertip across her full lower lip again. “Is that why you’re holding your breath?” He felt her body tighten as he bent down to her. “Don’t panic, honey,” he whispered against her mouth. “This won’t hurt, I promise. I won’t even hold you. I just want to know if you taste half as good as you fight. Okay?”
Surprised, caught off balance by the combination of humor and hunger in Cole’s voice, Erin waited for fear to claim her.
Nothing happened except a delicate, intriguing brush of warmth against her lips when Cole exhaled. A spear of sensation went from her breastbone to her knees, making her shiver.
“Frightened?” he whispered.
“I…”
He waited.
“After Hans…” she said, then took a deep breath.
“Afterward, the psychiatrists told me that virgins who had been brutalized the way I’d been nearly always became whores or nuns. I haven’t let a man get close to me in seven years. I don’t know if I can even now. I might panic again.”
“I’ll risk it if you will.”
“Will you…be gentle?”
“What do you think?”
She looked into the gray eyes that were only inches away and wondered how she had ever thought they were cold.
“Yes,” she whispered.
The tip of Cole’s tongue slowly traced the sensitive skin at the edge of her upper lip. At the first touch, she made a small sound. The gliding caress was unexpected, exquisite, unlike anything she’d ever known from a man. Slowly her body relaxed and softened, lifting subtly toward Cole, wanting more of his warmth. He repeated the gentle touch, tracing her whole mouth, enjoying the chaste caress with an intensity that surprised him.
/> When Erin felt the tip of his tongue along her lower lip, she shivered and instinctively closed her eyes, wanting to focus only on the sensations radiating through her from his touch. When he slowly outlined her lips again and yet again, lingering to probe the sensitive corners of her smile, everything shifted around her, fear vanishing, nothing existing but the warm caress.
Even when she felt the resilient heat of his biceps beneath her palms, she didn’t realize that she had reached out and was holding on to him.
“Cole…”
“Yes, like that,” he said, his tongue sliding between her open lips, touching the tip of her tongue with his own. “Let me taste you. Just a taste, honey. That’s all. I won’t hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”
As he spoke he caressed her mouth again and again, not holding her, not forcing her, touching her with nothing but the tip of his tongue and the warmth of his breath.
And because it was the only way Cole permitted himself to touch her, his senses narrowed down to the tip of his tongue. He felt the heat and textures of her mouth with a sensual intensity that was as new to him as it was to her. The vividness of the experience intrigued him. He traced her tongue again, dipping into the heat and softness underneath, tasting her as he had never tasted a woman in his life, savoring and caressing until he felt like every nerve ending in his body was concentrated in the tip of his tongue.
Finally Cole forced himself to stop. He eased away and came to his feet in a lithe motion, not trusting himself to stay close to Erin any longer without trying to mold her to the hungry length of his body. He wasn’t used to kissing a woman and not having her. The experience was as new to him as discovering the astonishing sensitivity of his own tongue.
Her eyes opened slowly. Her palms felt cool without his heat to warm them. So did her lips, her mouth, her tongue.
“Cole?” she asked huskily.
“Time for that walk, honey.”
She looked at the big hand he was holding out to her. When she took it, he pulled her to her feet and slowly, deeply, interlaced their fingers. His palm was warm and hard. The inner surfaces of his fingers were smooth and hot. She caught her breath at the sensations shivering up her arm when he flexed his hand.
When he would have let go of her, she protested. “Wait.”
Cole froze.
Erin touched the cut on his lip with a fingertip that trembled very slightly. When she traced the edge of his mouth, the rasp of his stubble was pronounced, underlining the surprising smoothness of his lips. While the silence lengthened she traced his black eyebrows, his cheekbones, his chin, and then his lips again. He closed his eyes, permitting the gentle, exploratory torture for as long as he could trust himself.
“No more,” Cole said finally.
Erin saw the pale blaze of his eyes as they opened and automatically stepped back. He didn’t release her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I thought you liked it.”
“That’s the problem. I like it way too much.” He looked at her, making no effort to disguise the elemental hunger he felt. “I wanted you the first time I saw you. Nothing that’s happened since has changed my mind. But I’ve never kissed a woman without having her, even when I was fourteen, and—”
“Fourteen?” Erin interrupted. Then, as realization hit, “Never?”
“She was nineteen and she knew exactly what she was doing. So did I, after she was through.” Cole smiled and put his finger under Erin’s chin, closing her parted lips. “Don’t look so shocked, honey. Where I came from, I was a slow starter, but I caught on real quick. I didn’t want to marry so I didn’t go looking for the kind of girl who kissed and said no. The girls I went out with didn’t know the word no. Dinner, a movie, and the backseat of a car.”
“The movie, no doubt, was optional?”
Cole smiled crookedly and flexed his hand again, rubbing his palm over Erin’s, drawing her closer to him without meaning to. “Most of the time, so was the dinner,” he admitted.
“Are you bragging or complaining?”
“Neither,” he said, bringing Erin’s hand up to his lips once more. Very gently he caught her index finger between his teeth, tasted her, and released her quickly. “I’m trying to explain that in some ways I’m as new to this kind of playing as you are. Or did you see a lot of bad drive-in movies through steamy windows when you were a teenager?”
She tried to laugh, but her breath was too thick in her throat. “No. I was thirteen until I turned nineteen. Gawky and shy and plain. Phil, my brother, didn’t help. I had a terrible crush on a boy who was three years older, a senior. When he asked me out, Phil called the guy and told him that if he so much as kissed me he’d be history. Saturday came and the guy didn’t show up. I found out later that he had a thing for virgins. Kept a regular scorecard.”
“Funny how different men are. I never was interested in a virgin until you.”
Erin closed her eyes. “Not so funny after all. I’m not a virgin.”
“You’ve never given yourself to a man,” Cole said matter-of-factly. “That makes you a virgin in my book.” He released her hand. “Stay put while I make sure it’s safe to take a ride.”
13
Pacific Coast Highway
Cole drove erratically, first slow, then too fast. It was deliberate. He studied traffic in mirrors, looking for cars that matched his speed.
“Well?” Erin asked when she couldn’t stand it any more.
“Nobody yet.”
They turned off the highway and cruised several empty parking lots. No one took the bait. Finally he decided it was safe and parked at Will Rogers State Beach.
Eager to be outside, she reached for the car door. Then she stopped and looked over at Cole. He was still studying the rear and sideview mirrors. Despite her impatience to be out on the beach with nothing in front of her but seven thousand miles of water, she didn’t open the door.
“You’re a fast learner,” he said approvingly.
“Pain is a great teacher.”
“I’m sorry. I tried not to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” she said quickly. “That was why I stopped fighting. I expected to be hurt and I wasn’t. You’re damned heavy, though.”
He smiled slightly. “Next time I’ll let you be on top.”
She gave him a startled sideways look and then the kind of almost-shy smile that told him the thought intrigued her.
“Two choices, honey,” he said. “Go for a walk or take a remedial course in window steaming.”
She smiled sadly and looked away. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Why not?”
For a moment the car was silent. She turned around to face the man who had taught her more about sensual pleasure in a few minutes than she’d learned in her entire life. More importantly, he’d taught her the nature of the restlessness that had driven her from the arctic. The discovery of her own sexuality was as unexpected as Cole’s gentleness had been.
“I’m interested in what you’re offering,” she said, “but I don’t know how much and I won’t until it happens. Or doesn’t happen. That’s not fair to you.”
“If life was fair, someone would have gutted Hans before he had his first wet dream.”
Erin stared. Though Cole’s tone was casual, his eyes were like hammered silver.
“But life isn’t fair,” he said. “Only damned unexpected. Back in that hotel room you taught me something new about pleasure, and I would have sworn that was impossible. We could die before we take our next breath, or we could live to teach each other something else new about ourselves. So I’ll take what comes and not worry too much about what doesn’t. How about you?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Think about it. And while you do, think about this. A man who can’t control himself belongs to anyone who can. I don’t belong to anyone but myself. We could be dead naked and you could be all over me like a hot rain, but if you changed your mind, I’d get up and get dressed and tha
t would be the end of it.” Cole’s ice-pale glance went from mirror to mirror as he spoke. “While you think about that, let’s walk. We’ve both been caged up more than we’re used to.”
Erin waited until he came around and opened her car door. Caution, not old-fashioned etiquette. When he laced his fingers through hers once more, she found herself smiling. He saw the pale gleam of her teeth in the moonlight and smiled in return.
“You really like being outside, don’t you?” he said.
“Yes, but that’s not why I’m smiling. I feel about sixteen again, holding hands beneath the cool moonlight.” She gave him a sideways look. “I suppose you were about six when you started walking out with girls.”
He laughed softly. “Enjoy it. When we get to Australia, you won’t even want to stand close to another person, moon or no moon.”
“Why?”
“Too bloody hot. The Kimberley is in the upper part of the continent. The tropical part.”
“Tropical? The pictures I’ve seen of the Kimberley look more like desert.”
“Oh, it’s dry all right. Most of the year. Then the buildup begins, and great rivers of clouds pour in from the Indian Ocean. You sweat and the sweat just stays on your skin, making you hotter than ever, because sweat can’t evaporate into air that’s already saturated. The body can’t cool itself, and the sunlight is a razor slicing into your skin. The temperature goes way over a hundred, and the humidity gets right up to the point of rain and then it sticks there and sticks there until men literally crack up and go berserk.”
She made a sound of disbelief.
“It’s true, honey. The Aussies even have a name for that kind of madness. They call it going troppo. I’ve come close a few times myself. It taught me something. I avoid the buildup now.”
“You make it sound irresistible.”
“Oh, that’s not the worst of it,” he said, taking a deep breath of the cool, brine-scented air. “When the wet finally comes, the country is swamp. For months at a time you can’t travel except by plane.”
“What about four-wheel-drive?”
“Not unless it floats.”
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