At Twilight
Page 7
“Tamara, I swear to you, I did not know you were even acquainted with
St Claire until you said the words. I came to you because you begged
me to do so. In your dreams you begged me to come.”
Her eyes had begun to drift closed as his hand stroked her cheek, but
they flew wide now.
She searched her brain frantically.
How could he know about the dreams?
She shook her head quickly.
“No, that isn’t true.”
“What isn’t true? That you dream each night before dusk? That the
dreams are testing your sanity, Tamara?
That you cry out to someone in your sleep and cannot recall the name
when you wake?
Do not forget, you confided all of these things to me last night.
” Relief nearly made her limp.
“That’s right, I did.”
She had told him about her nightmares.
That explained why he knew.
“The dream was different tonight, though,” he said softly.
Again her eyes widened.
It had been different.
He couldn’t know that.
She hadn’t told him that.
She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“The name I call, I can’t remember what it is, but I know it isn’t
Marquand. Why do you want to play with my mind?” “I want only to ease
your mind. It is true, you have never cried my surname. It is my
first name you call in your sleep.”
His hand had fallen from her face, to gently stroke her hair.
Breathlessly she whispered,
“I don’t even know your first name. So it can’t be” — “Yes, you do,
Tamara.”
His gaze took on a new dimension as he stared into her eyes.
“You know my name.
Say it.
” And she did.
Just like that, she knew the name she’d cried over and over again in
her recurring dream.
She knew it as well as she knew her own.
The shroud had been lifted from her memory, and she knew.
But it couldn’t be him.
She shook her head.
“You aren’t” — “I am.”
Both his hands rested on her shoulders now, and he squeezed gently.
She winced inwardly because he’d put pressure on the spots where Curt
had held her last night, and the skin there had bruised.
He immediately readjusted his grip on her, as if he’d sensed her
discomfort at the instant she’d felt it.
“Say it, Tamara.”
Choking on unshed tears, she croaked,
“Eric?”
He nodded, his face relaxing in an approving half smile.
“Yes. Eric. If you require confirmation, I’m certain your St. Claire
can provide it.”
She looked at the floor, her relief so great the muscles of her neck
relaxed.
She didn’t need confirmation.
She knew he told the truth.
Why this intense relief, though?
And why had she dreamed of him in the first place?
“You’ve begged me to come to you, Tamara, and I am here.”
He caught her chin in gentle fingers, and lifted her face to him.
“I’m here.”
She wanted to fling herself into his arms.
She wanted to hold him desperately and beg him not to leave her ever
again.
But that was crazy.
It was insane.
She was insane.
As tears spilled over and rolled slowly down her face, she shook her
head.
“This isn’t happening. It isn’t real. I’m hallucinating, or it’s just
another dream. That’s all. It isn’t real.”
He pulled her against him suddenly, his arms going around her, his
hands stroking her back and shoulders, lifting her hair, caressing her
nape.
“It is real, Tamara. I am real, and what you feel for me is real…
more real, I think, than anything else in your life.”
His head turned and she felt his lips pressed to her hair just above
her temple.
lower, to her cheekbone.
lower, to the hollow of her cheek.
His voice uneven, he spoke near her ear.
“How did St. Claire manage to get custody of you? What happened to
your family?” She found herself relaxing against him, allowing his
embrace to warm and comfort her. ” I was six when I fell through a
plate glass window,”
she told him, her voice barely audible to her own ears. ” I severed
the arteries in both wrists and nearly bled to death.
They called it a miracle when I pulled through, because they hadn’t
been able to locate any donors with my blood type.
Everyone expected me to die.
” She drew a shuddering breath. In truth, she remembered very little
about the accident, or her life to that point. Daniel had always
insisted it was probably best for her not to try to remember. What was
blocked out was blocked out for a reason, he’d said. If her mind
didn’t think she could handle it, she probably couldn’t. After all,
near-death experiences were traumatic, especially for a six year-old
child.
She released the air she’d taken in, drew a steadier breath and
continued.
“I was still hospitalized when my parents were taken with an extremely
rare virulent infection. By the time the virus was isolated and
identified, they… they’d both succumbed.”
“I am more sorry for that than I can tell you,” he said softly, his
breath caressing her skin as he spoke.
“I wish I had been there for you.”
“So do I,” she blurted before she had a chance to consider the words.
She cleared her throat.
“But Daniel was there. He worked part-time in the research lab at the
hospital then. As soon as he heard about the miracle girl upstairs, he
came to see me. After that he was there every day. He brought
presents with every visit, and constantly went on about how he’d
always wanted a little girl like me.
By the time my parents got sick, Daniel and I were best friends.
When they died he petitioned the courts for custody, and got it.
I had no other close relatives.
If it hadn’t been for Daniel, I would’ve been alone.
” She felt his swift inhalation, and the slight stiffening of his
body.
“I’m sorry.”
The words were almost a moan, so much pain came through in them.
His arms tightened around her and he rocked her slowly.
God, why did his touch feel like heaven?
Why did the wide, hard chest beneath her head and the steel arms around
her feel like the safest cocoon in all the world?
His voice only slightly more normal, he said,
“It was Daniel who arranged for your employment at DPI, then.”
She only nodded, moving her head minimally against his chest.
“And what do you do there, Tamara? Do you work with St. Claire?”
“No,” she mumbled into the fabric of his coat.
“My security clearance isn’t” — She broke off, stiffening, and jerked
away from him.
My God, he’d played her well!
“DPI is a government agency, a subdivision of the CIA, for God’s sake.
And you are the subject of one of their most long-running
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investigations. I certainly don’t intend to discuss what I do there
with you.”
She broke eye contact, and shook her head in self-deprecation.
“God, you’re good. I was actually buying all of this. You just wanted
to milk information from me.”
“You know better.”
His deep voice held anger now, and for the first time Tamara felt
afraid of him.
She backed up another step and felt the iron rail press into the small
of her back.
Eric Marquand stood between her and the doors.
“I only want to discern whether I can trust you.
St.
Claire is out to destroy me.
I cannot dismiss the possibility that you are a part of that plan.
” “Daniel wouldn’t hurt a fly!”
She bristled at the suggestion that her beloved Daniel was anything
less than the sweet, loving man she knew him to be.
“I know that to be false. I do not need proof of his intent.
I already have it.
It is you I need to be sure of, Tamara.
Tell me what your duties entail.
” He took a step nearer and there was nowhere for her to go.
“I won’t,” she told him.
“I can’t betray the division … or Daniel.”
“You would rather betray me?
” She shook her head fast, confusion muddling her brain.
“I couldn’t betray you. I know nothing about you.”
“You could easily be the instrument of my destruction.”
“But I wouldn’t” — “Then tell me. Answer whatever I ask, it is vital”
-She shook her head again.
He sighed and pushed one hand back through his hair, loosening several
black silk strands from the queue in the back.
When he looked into her eyes again the intensity had returned.
“I can force you, you know.”
Fear tiptoed over her spine.
“If you touch me, I’ll scream.”
“I don’t need to touch you. I can make you obey my will just as I made
you come out here tonight… with my mind.”
“I think you need help, Marquand.
You’re more screwed up than I am, and that’s saying something.
” One raven brow rose inquiringly.
“You doubt what I know to be true?”
He stared at her, and she saw an iridescent shimmer, as if the jet
irises were suddenly translucent and the swirling light behind them
came through.
She felt her mind turn to water, and the hot whirlwind began to stir
around her ankles, gaining force as it rose until it surrounded her
like a twister.
Her hair whipped her face.
The satin robe flagellated her legs from calf to thigh.
The wind moved, forcing her forward until only millimeters separated
her from him.
He put his hands on her throat, his thumbs caressing the hollows above
her clavicle.
His fingers slipped beneath the material of the robe at her
shoulders.
The wind whipped the sash free, seemingly at his command.
Slowly he pushed the scarlet satin from her shoulders, and it fell, to
her horror, in a shimmering cascade at her feet.
Yet she was incapable of lifting her arms to prevent it.
She tried to tell her body to move.
He wasn’t holding her to him by force.
Her arms hadn’t been pinioned to her sides by his iron grip.
They only hung limply there, abnormally heavy, unable to move.
Her feet seemed to have the same mysterious malady.
She could not make them take her a single step away from him.
Her eyes had followed the soft red cloth as it fell, but he caught her
chin now and lifted it.
He stared down into her eyes, but his gaze shifted every few seconds to
her throat.
Part of her mind screamed in protest.
Another, primal part screamed for his touch.
He lowered his head and caught her earlobe between his lips.
He nibbled it so lightly his touch was almost imperceptible, yet desire
shot through her in fiery jolts.
His lips trailed a path around her face and stopped only when they
reached hers.
They lingered there, barely touching.
His hands touched the backs of her thighs and rose slowly, cupping her
buttocks, squeezing, parting.
One slipped around her hips, to cup her most intimate place, while the
other remained behind her, to hold her immobile.
She felt his fingers touch lightly, part her, probe her, and she heard
a stifled whimper that must have been hers.
Fire coursed through her veins, heating her blood until it boiled.
She wanted this.
damn him, he was making her want it!
Both hands flattened against her stomach and inched slowly upward.
She trembled violently, knowing what was next.
Awaiting it with a burning need that came against her will.
Still his lips worked hers, sucking at them, first upper, then lower.
Biting them softly, licking them with quick tiny flicks of his tongue,
followed by slow, languorous laps that traced their shape.
His fingers finally reached her breasts.
He positioned a thumb and forefinger at each nipple, barely touching.
She moaned low and hoarsely in supplication, and he closed them,
pinching, rolling the erect nubs between his fingers until they pulsed
like the rest of her.
She realized she’d regained use of her arms when she found them linking
behind his head and pulling him closer.
Her mouth opened wide to him, and his tongue plunged into it, stroking
hers, twining with hers, tugging at it.
He pulled it into his own silken moistness, and suckled the way she
wished he would suckle her breasts.
They throbbed for his mouth.
Before she’d completed the thought his hands were at her back, between
her shoulder blades.
His lips burned a path of liquid heat down over her chin, over her
throat, along her chest.
She arched backward, supported by his hands behind her, one at her
back, one at her buttocks.
He bent over her and unerringly found one swollen crest with his
mouth.
Mercilessly he worried it, licking until she whimpered, sucking until
she cried out and biting until her hands tangled in his hair, holding
him to her.
She couldn’t catch her breath.
She wanted him so badly it was out of control.
Her center throbbed with hot moisture, and longed to be filled.
with him.
He lifted his head and eased her upward until she had her balance.
At some point during the rapacious seduction he had released her
mind.
She was unsure when, exactly, but at some time she had been free to
object, to pull away, to slap him.
She hadn’t.
Instead she’d responded like an animal.
She was angry, with herself, with him and with her mind for refusing
to give her the memory she needed to make sense of all of this.
He bent down, retrieved her robe and straightened again, slipping it
over her shoulders.
“You see?”
He said it very softly.
“Why are you doing this to me?
” Her voice cracked as she asked the question.
She tugged her robe together, yanking the sash tight.
She couldn’t look him in the eyes.
“Not to you, Tamara.
I came tonight for you.
To help you, if you’ll permit it.
” “Was what you just did to me supposed to help me, too?”
When he didn’t answer right away she looked at him.
To her surprise his gaze fell before hers.
“No,” he finally whispered.
“I meant to demonstrate…. I did not intend to go so far.”
She frowned, looking at him—really looking at him-for the first time
since he’d peeled his body from hers.
His eyes fairly glowed with passion and were still hooded.
His breaths came in short, shallow gasps, just as hers did.
My God, he’d been as swept away by what had happened between them as
she had!
He moved past her, his hands trembling as he gripped the iron rail and
looked down over it into the blue-black night, and the illuminating
snow covered ground below.
His back was presented to her, its broad strength slightly bowed.
Nothing prevented her going back inside.
“I am afraid I’ve handled this badly,” he said slowly and carefully,
though his voice was still hoarse.
“It is not my wish to frighten you, or to make you loathe me. I care
for you, Tamara. I have for a very long time.”
She allowed his words to penetrate the confusion in her mind.
“I think I believe that.”
He turned, faced her and seemed to search for the correct words.
“I truly came to you because I heard your cries. I had no other
motive.
Can you believe that, as well?” She drew a slow breath. “I work with
a young boy who has, on occasion, demonstrated some psychic ability.
Several operatives have had sessions with him, besides me. But his
powers, however slight, are always a good deal more evident when he is
with me. I suppose there’s a chance I might have some latent
clairvoyant tendency that’s been enhancing his. Maybe you did somehow
hear my dreams.
I won’t say it’s impossible.
” She was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, no matter how
outrageous his claims seemed to be.
Besides, how else could she explain what had been happening?
Encouraged, it seemed, he went on.
“I came to you only because of the desperation in your cries. I swear
this to1 you. I had no idea St. Claire was your guardian.”
He took a step forward, one hand lifting, palm up, a gesture of