Slater threw Regina a quick look of terror as he sidled a few steps farther along the wall. “Nothing, nothing. Just a misunderstanding.”
“Is that right?” Kane looked toward Regina again.
She could agree, try to pass the whole thing off, but she didn’t think Kane would accept it. Nor could she afford it. For one thing, Slater might try again because he thought she didn’t dare accuse him. But the main reason was because she so desperately needed Kane’s help. To have even a small chance of getting it, she had to level with him.
The time to start was now.
Swallowing hard, she said, “It was a misunderstanding all right. Slater seemed to think that I should pay him off since Gervis Berry won’t.”
“And what,” Kane asked, “do you have to do with Berry?”
“He’s my…” She stopped with a frown drawing her brows together as she realized what she was about to say. Speaking quickly, before she could change her mind, she said, “I live with him. Or I did.”
Alertness but no surprise sounded in Kane’s voice. “You don’t anymore?”
“We’ve parted company.”
“Why?” It was a word without compromise.
“Ethical differences.” She searched his face to see if he understood at all, but there was nothing to give her a clue.
“Now see here—” Slater began.
“Shut up.” Kane slung the words at the reporter in quiet ferocity. To Regina, he went on, “Do you want to press charges?”
“Hey!” Slater protested. “She’s the one broke my goddamned—”
Kane silenced him with a single look. The reporter’s mouth snapped closed so quickly his teeth made an audible click.
Regina answered Kane’s question with a shake of her head. “All I want is to have him gone and never have to see him again.”
Kane watched her a moment, his gaze dark blue with cogent thought, then he gave a slow nod. Over his shoulder, he said to Slater, “You heard the lady.”
“Fine by me,” Slater growled as he sidled past them, supporting his limp arm as he headed for the door. “I’d as soon shake the dust of this stinking town off my shoes. As for seeing this bitch—”
The gaze Kane turned on him sent the reporter scuttling for the door. He plunged through and slammed it behind him. A moment later, a car roared into life in front of a nearby unit, then tore away with tires screaming.
“You’re going to just let him go?” she said uncertainly.
“He won’t get far. Roan has a few questions he wants to ask him about Pops’s accident.”
The implacable sound of his words robbed Regina of any reply. The stillness that settled in the room was as thick and oppressive as the plaster dust in the air. She could feel its weight pressing on her shoulders. Staring in blank concentration at the wall beyond Kane’s left shoulder, she thought of how he had just connected Slater to the attempt on the life of Mr. Lewis, about his lack of any real response to what she had told him and the possible reasons behind that impassivity. There was only one conclusion. As she came to it, slow, poisonous despair seeped through her. When it seemed she would be crushed by it and the quiet around them, she stirred at last and turned her gaze toward him.
“You knew,” she said in stark acceptance.
“Days ago.”
She closed her eyes as pain and regret burgeoned inside her, cutting off air from her lungs, impaling her heart, mangling hope. The words a thread of sound, she said, “I’m sorry, so very sorry. For everything.”
For long seconds, he made no answer. When he finally spoke, it was as if he had not heard her at all. Voice even, without emotion, he said, “That you’ve left Berry is news. When did it happen?”
“This morning.” Her throat ached as if each syllable was embedded with spikes, but she followed his lead by going on to relate what had happened in New York.
Kane gave a short laugh of contempt when she finished. “Some relationship you and your so-called cousin had.”
“It wasn’t so bad once,” she said tiredly. Reaction from the excitement seemed to be catching up with her. Suddenly too exhausted to stand, she turned from him and walked to the bed where she dropped to the mattress.
“So the change of heart is because of the boy,” he said from where he stood.
She knit her fingers together, clasping them so tightly the fingertips were white. “And also because I don’t like the things Gervis is doing or wants me to do. Because I can’t stand hurting people. But yes, it’s mostly for Stephan. Gervis has him and he’s going to keep him from me unless I…cooperate.”
“And I’m supposed to believe this heartrending tale?”
She looked up in dismay. “You have to. It’s the truth.”
“Is it? You and the facts don’t have too close an acquaintance. Why am I supposed to take your word now?”
He had a point. “I told you I was sorry, and I am. Sorry for all the things I said in the past that weren’t exactly so, sorry for approaching your grandfather under false pretenses, sorry for getting involved with you for all the wrong reasons. If there had been a different way to go about it, I’d have taken it.”
“That much I can believe.”
She looked away, unnerved by the steel in his voice. “I know it wasn’t right or fair, but sometimes a person has to do things they don’t want because—because there’s more at stake than they can stand to lose. Anyway, I had the idea you weren’t exactly seeing me for the fun of it.”
An arrested look appeared on his face. In reluctant tones, he said, “You may be right.” A moment later, he went on, “But since you left without even a decent good-bye, I doubt you came back because of anything between us. Would you like to satisfy my curiosity by telling me why?”
With tears rising to rim her lashes, she said, “Because I need you. I need you to help rescue my son.”
“Rescue?”
“I told you Gervis has him. He thinks I’ll do whatever he wants as long as he’s got him drugged and shut up with someone to watch him.” Her voice failed her as she choked out the last word. She looked away, at the floor, the walls, anywhere except the condemnation in his eyes.
“And will you?”
She lifted her shoulders in a hopeless gesture that could be taken for assent. “I have little way to fight him. He has grounds for claiming legal custody.”
“I know about that.”
“Do you?” Surprise brought her head up.
“He’s the father.”
“No, he’s not!” she exclaimed in revulsion. As his brows snapped together in a frown, she explained in a few hurried sentences. Regardless, there was no relenting in his features.
“So I’m supposed to supply some legal razzle-dazzle—injunctions, temporary custody, DNA testing to disprove fatherhood—whatever it takes to prevent Berry from claiming the boy. Is that it?”
That had been the obvious solution, the one she had thought of first. On the plane somewhere over the mountains of Tennessee, she had come to a different conclusion. Now she wiped distractedly at her eyes as she shook her head. “It would take too long, and in the meantime, Gervis might ship Stephan off somewhere, to a different institution or some foreign school where I could never find him. What I want—would like—is for you to help me take him away from Gervis.”
“Take him away? You mean you want to abduct him?”
His grim disbelief was not encouraging; still she nodded. “I know it’s against the law and all the black-and-white, right-and-wrong things you believe in, but I can’t think what else to do. Stephan is all I have, the only thing that’s ever meant anything in my life. I can’t lose him, I just can’t! And he’s only a little boy, so little. I failed him before, when I believed Gervis and let him send Stephan away, keep him drugged when it wasn’t needed. But I can’t this time. Please, Kane, you’re his only chance!”
“Am I?”
“I don’t know where else to turn. There’s no one else to ask who might be able to do it.
”
“Such touching faith,” he said softly. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to answer. Unless I should go down on one knee, hand on heart, and declare I’m yours to command?”
Wariness gripped her. Her voice thick, she answered, “No, not at all.”
“No?” He tilted his head, his gaze assessing. “Then maybe I should ask, in language you’ll no doubt understand, just what’s in it for me if I agree to this rescue.”
Hope stirred inside her. She licked her lips. “If it’s money you want, I—I don’t have any. But I could sell—”
“I thought,” he said with a taut smile, “that we had dispensed with the idea of passing money between us the last time we were together like this.” He moved to stand over her as he spoke.
Slow color mounted to her face as her gaze was caught and held by the dark intensity of his eyes. “You mean…?”
“I do. In spades.”
The breath caught in her throat. She could not have spoken if all eternity depended on it.
“Don’t look so shocked. Isn’t that how it’s done where you come from?”
“No!” she cried, recovering with a strangled gasp. “No, it isn’t, not for me. I never thought that you, of all men, would ever—”
“Stoop so low? I’ll admit it’s a change.”
Baldly, she said, “But it makes you no different from Slater.”
“Because he meant to take what you weren’t interested in giving? It’s not the same at all, because we both have something the other wants. You use me. I use you. It’s a mutual exchange. What do the methods matter so long as we’re both satisfied in the end?”
She hesitated, but the need to know was too strong. “You want me?”
“That should be pretty obvious.”
Her gaze brushed downward from his face to the long, firm outline under his zipper that she had failed to notice until this moment. She looked away at once, her gaze landing on the mirror over the console table that held the TV. The two of them were reflected there in a frozen tableau, male and female discussing an age-old surrender. How many times had it happened in this very room, on this very bed? And how many of those, she wondered in anguish, had been driven by desperation on one side and revenge on the other?
Lowering her head, she reached for the buttons of her blouse with trembling fingers. He made no move to stop her, said not a word, but watched with hooded eyes and a flexed muscle standing out in his jaw. Still, her skin felt scorched by the heat of his gaze, and the blood that raced in her veins was near boiling point. She felt as if she were moving in slow motion. At the same time, it seemed her clothing melted away too fast, her skirt falling to the floor as she stood to release it, her shoes and thigh-high stockings almost sliding off by themselves.
Kane swallowed, an audible sound, when she peeled away her bra and let it fall. Wearing only her panties of coral lace, she stepped closer to him. His chest was warm beneath the silky-smooth oxford cloth of his shirt as she placed her hands on the hard planes. Then with trembling fingers, she began to slip the buttons free. As she pushed the shirt from his shoulders and arms, she saw his muscles were rigid and his hands clenched into fists.
She didn’t pause, but moved as if controlled by something outside herself, perhaps by his unbending will or even her own regret combined with her pleasure in touching him, in sensing his all too human warmth. Her nipples crinkled into pale pink nubs as her breasts brushed his arm when she reached for his belt buckle. Her senses swam with giddy disorientation and her breathing grew uneven.
Kane wasn’t as unmoved as he pretended, she thought. Her knuckles skimming the taut surface of his abdomen brought an instant rash of goose bumps to his shoulders and arms. As she reached for his zipper, she thought she heard him grind his teeth together.
Sliding the zipper downward grew difficult as she reached his tumescence. He pushed her hands aside and attended to it himself, then pulled off his pants and briefs with efficient impatience. As he straightened again, he caught her behind the knees and toppled her back onto the bed. Following her down, he settled between her spread thighs.
His weight confined her, held her immobile. The silken swirls of hair on his chest teased the curves of her breasts, her upper abdomen. Then he entered in fast, relentless invasion, probing the warm, moist vulnerability at the center of her being with the satin-sheathed steel length of his maleness. She gave a gasping cry, writhing against him with the sudden filling, then she was absolutely still.
He hovered above her, unmoving. Slowly, she lifted her lashes. For endless moments, his eyes held hers, his own dark with bitter triumph. She sustained that regard with defiance. Regardless, she could not prevent the slow, acid seep of tears. They pooled in her eyes and overflowed, collecting in the hollows beneath her lashes, running backward in wet tracks into her hair. At the same time, her muscles, her nerves, her mind, began an inevitable rejection.
A long shudder, like a tidal wave of the blood, ran over her. She tried to stop it, breathing rapidly so her chest rose and fell against him, clenching her muscles, her jaws, fists, and even the internal ring that encompassed him. That only made it worse, for she was that much more aware of him inside her, of his intimate possession, his dominance.
Abruptly, his face changed. The glaze of anger fled from his eyes, leaving them strained and liquid with remorse. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Please don’t. Dear God, Regina, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what—I’m just so sorry.”
He released her, cupping her face with one palm. She clasped his broad shoulders, meaning to push him away. He started to rise, to disengage, but that movement made her feel panicky. She sensed long years of fear stretching before her. And an incipient loneliness more desolate even than the wound to the heart he had given her.
Abruptly, she wrapped her legs and arms around him, gripping tight, holding him to her in sudden, convulsive need. “Help me,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Please help me.”
His lashes flickered in a hesitation so slight it might have passed unnoticed if she hadn’t been so aware of his every breath, his every pulsing heartbeat. Then he bent his head and brushed her soft lips with his own in mute apology. In a quick experiment, he slipped his tongue lightly along the sensitive line where they joined before raising his head with a question in his eyes.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”
He eased inside her once more, his gaze still resting on her face to gauge her reaction. Her tension faded. She drew a slow breath, felt herself relax still more. But she didn’t want to be watched or tested. She wanted forgetfulness, erasure, mindless ease for the ache in her heart and the dread of being forever fearful of love that hovered so close around her. She smoothed her hand along the strong slope of his shoulder to his neck, then pressed him deeper inside her once more.
He followed her lead while kissing her brow, her eyes and cheekbones, the tender skin below her ear. Against the turn of her neck, he murmured, “I told you once I was not nearly so noble as you thought. I didn’t intend to prove it.”
“I never meant to give you cause,” she answered, a breath of sound.
He sighed. “Tell me what you want and it’s yours.”
“Love me,” she said, and turned her head in a quick, compulsive movement to put her lips to the hard molding of his jaw. Or she thought she said the words, though she may have spoken them only in her mind. Either way, the results were the same.
He gathered her close and made amends of slow, thorough caresses and long kisses that were as deliberate, hot and deep as a Southern summer. He melted her bones and molded her to him, setting aside all anger, all fear. Drawing out her desire, he tended it, stoked it, drove it higher until she clung, moist and panting, hovering on the edge of conflagration. Then he caught her hips and took them both up in flames, driving out her terror for good, giving her the healing strength of his power and the gift of utter transcendence. Afterward, courteous and protective, he smoothed the tangled strands of hair from
her face, cradled her against him, and soothed her until she slept in his arms.
But he made no promises.
17
What in the name of heaven was he doing?
Kane couldn’t quite remember agreeing to this child abduction scheme, yet here he was, winging his way toward New York with Regina like some brain-damaged commando on a secret mission. Pops had often told him his temper would get him in trouble one day. He should have listened. Out of rage and righteousness, he’d made a fatal mistake, one that left him hot with shame every time he thought about it. Which was too often for any kind of comfort.
What had got into him? The trigger, he thought, had been hearing that he meant nothing to Regina Dalton, had no place in her life. To her, he was the hick Louisiana lawyer she’d conned into thinking she was a sexual neophyte, someone she could use any way she had in mind. She’d made a fool of him, it seemed, and thought she could do it again with her pitiful tale about her son. He’d intended to show her it wasn’t going to happen, had meant to force her to offer her body in exchange for what she claimed to want, then walk away without taking her up on it.
He’d gone too far.
In his stupid, stubborn pride and trust in his own infallibility, he’d declined to consider that she might be telling the truth, or what desperation might force her to do. He’d also failed to allow for her effect on him. Her sweet, naked vulnerability had gone to his head. One touch, and what he’d been thinking with was no longer his brain.
He’d lost control. Lost sight of everything except the need to have her in the most basic, primitive way possible since she could never belong to him in any other.
It was amazing she hadn’t called the cops and had him arrested. She might well have talked Roan into it. His cousin the sheriff was as much a stickler for the letter of the law as Kane was himself, and a pushover for a wronged female.
Wronged. By him, Kane Benedict. No matter how often he winced away from the idea.
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