by Diana Palmer
He went very still. “What?”
She swallowed. “He may be much older than I am, but he’s a good, kind man.” She closed her eyes. “I said yes, Stanton,” she lied. It was the only protection she could give herself from a one-night stand that she didn’t want, couldn’t bear. She loved him too much. “So if you’re thinking in terms of a night in bed with me, think again. I won’t cheat on my fiancé.”
His whole world exploded. He stared at her with anguish that he couldn’t even hide. He started to speak, but before he could get a word out, General Machado appeared beside them with Maddie beaming at his side.
“We are getting married,” Machado said, laughing softly as Maddie actually blushed. “I wanted you both to know.” He shrugged. “I am years too old for her, but what the hell. I love her.” He looked at the pretty brunette with eyes that worshipped her.
“Almost as much as I love him,” Maddie tried to joke, but her eyes were eating him.
“Congratulations,” Rourke said, hiding his own misery. He shook hands with the general and kissed Maddie on the cheek. “I’m happy for both of you.”
“So am I,” Clarisse choked, repeating his gestures. “I hope you’ll be so happy together.”
“Same here,” Rourke added.
They smiled, then laughed, then talk revolved around the awards and how they came to be. The general mentioned that his son, San Antonio police lieutenant Rick Marquez had wanted to come, but his wife was in the early stages of pregnancy and wasn’t doing well; Rick couldn’t bring her with him, or leave her, so he sent his regrets via Skype. The general and his son spoke often these days.
Rourke went through the motions of paying attention, but he was dying inside. He was too late. Tat had finally given up on him. She was going to marry the damned doctor in Manaus.
* * *
He wandered away. Tat noticed him dancing with a ravishing blonde, laughing down at her. She smiled sadly to herself. Why did she ever expect things to change? There was Rourke, being himself, coaxing women to his bed. She imagined the ravishing blonde would give him what Clarisse wouldn’t, a single night of pleasure.
It disturbed her that he’d found a replacement so quickly. Well, what had she expected? That when he realized she wasn’t a blood relation, he’d declare eternal love and produce a wedding ring? Fat chance of that ever happening. She’d had a lucky escape, because it wouldn’t have been possible for her to refuse him. She loved him too much, despite everything.
She turned with a sad little smile and went out of the building, caught a cab and went back to her hotel room. It was just as well not to trust in dreams.
* * *
She was sleeping. She woke suddenly, just after an attack of some sort, bombs going off, a rifle shot. She was wet with sweat, even in the air-conditioned room. She still had nightmares from her ordeal in Barrera. The phone was ringing off the hook.
She answered the phone, noting that it was three o’clock in the morning. “Yes?” she asked, surprised at the call at this hour.
“Miss Carrington? It’s O’Bailey. You remember me?”
She searched her memories. “You’re the computer hacker. You were with us when General Machado led the counterrevolution.”
“That’s me, ma’am.” He cleared his throat. “The general said you were here for the awards ceremony. I was, too, but I arrived late. I heard a commotion downstairs and when I looked in the bar, well, it’s really bad. He’s going to kill somebody or get himself arrested. That would really upset the general with all the international press here, and I thought…”
“He?” Clarisse asked.
“Rourke,” he replied. “He’s totally out of control. I’ve only ever seen him drunk a time or two, and he’s dangerous when he drinks. Somebody has to get him out of there, or the general’s policemen are going to arrest him and put him in jail.” He hesitated. “There are reporters in the hotel, too. If one of them sees him…”
“Rourke is drunk?” She was dumbfounded. “O’Bailey, he doesn’t drink hard liquor. Well, maybe he drinks, but he never has enough to make him lose control…”
“Ma’am, he just threw one of the bouncers through a glass window.”
“Oh, good Lord!” she exclaimed.
“I was wondering if you could come down here and maybe talk to him.”
She hesitated. She was afraid of Rourke in a temper.
“Ma’am, there’s always one person that a drunk person can be controlled by. With my dad, it was my little sister. She could just lead him by the hand, when he’d kill another man for trying to make him stop drinking. I don’t think Rourke would ever hurt you. But I’ll be there if he tries to. Please?”
“Are you downstairs?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll meet you in front of the bar.” She hung up.
* * *
She put on slacks and a yellow pullover blouse. She didn’t wait to make up her face. She met O’Bailey outside the lounge downstairs, where a vicious loud voice was cursing in Afrikaans. She winced.
“He’ll listen to you,” he said. “I know he will.”
She gave O’Bailey a grim look. “I’ll try,” she said.
She walked into the bar. There was another man, one who looked about half as drunk as Rourke. He spotted her and got up, grinning from ear to ear.
“Well, look what a pretty little fairy just walked in the door,” the man exclaimed. He caught her by the arm and tried to pull her to him. “Precious, how about coming up to my room…?”
In an instant, Rourke had him by the throat. His one eye was dark with rage. “You touch her again and I’ll kill you!” he said through his teeth. He threw the man backward. He fell over a table and picked himself up and ran out of the lounge, holding his throat.
“Stanton,” Clarisse said softly.
He looked down at her. He was breathing roughly. He reeked of whiskey. He peered at her, frowning. “Why are you here, Tat?” he asked in almost a whisper.
“I came to get you.” She slid her cold, nervous hand into his. He’d frightened her when he grabbed the man by the throat. But he didn’t look violent at all now. “You have to come with me.”
“Okay,” he said easily.
She tugged on his hand. He let her lead him right out of the room, to where O’Bailey was waiting. She could hardly believe it. The bar was a wreck. Men, big men, were against the wall, behind tables, as if they were hoping Rourke wouldn’t notice them. Grown men were afraid of him, but he was following along with Clarisse like a lamb.
“I’ll talk to him. Is he staying at this hotel?” Clarisse asked the Irishman, grimacing as she noted the bartender just peering over the bar and looking hunted. “He’ll pay for the damage,” Clarisse said.
O’Bailey nodded. “Rourke’s in room 306. I imagine the key’s in his pocket.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“No, ma’am, thank you!” he replied, and she smiled.
He nodded, grinned, gave Rourke an apologetic smile and went into the lounge.
Rourke looked down at Tat. “Why are you here?” he asked angrily. “Won’t your fiancé miss you?”
“He’s in Argentina with a patient,” she reminded him. “He won’t be home for several weeks.”
“What a tough break for him,” he said, looking down at her with barely hidden hunger. “God, you’re a knockout,” he said huskily. “I ache just looking at you!”
She flushed. She turned and led him into the elevator. They rode up in silence to the third floor. He was watching her with unnerving intensity.
She led him to his door. “You need to get out the key card,” she said.
He leaned against the door. “No.”
“Stanton,” she groaned.
“Once I open the door, you’ll leave,” he said heavily.
She nibbled her lower lip.
“I can always go back to the bar,” he said cagily, shouldering away from the door frame.
“No!
”
“Promise you’ll stay with me until I fall asleep, then,” he said, his voice only slightly slurred. “Give me your word, Tat.”
She ground her teeth together. He wasn’t quite in control of himself and she was afraid of him. Not of his temper, but that he might try to continue where they’d left off when she was seventeen. That had been a near thing. Not until she was in her twenties did she realize just how near.
“I won’t…do anything you don’t want,” he promised.
She drew in a slow breath. “I’ll hold you to that, Stanton.”
He smiled. He drew out the card and pushed it into the lock. There was a click and a tiny green light went on. He pulled the card out and slipped it back into his pocket. He opened the door. “After you.”
She walked into the room, a poem about spiders and flies teasing around the edge of her mind.
The room flooded with light as he touched a switch.
She turned to him. He looked harder than she’d ever seen him. His handsome face was tense with some powerful emotion as he stared down at her with his one good eye.
She looked back, wincing at the eye patch.
He misread the look. “Ya,” he said coldly. “I’m disabled. That what you’re thinking?”
“I was remembering when it happened,” she said softly.
The tension grew worse. “I’d just…been told something that upended my life,” he said evasively, avoiding her quiet gaze. “Like a rank beginner, I walked right into an ambush.” He laughed coldly. “Lost an eye, took a bullet in the chest…” His eye cut back around to her face. “You were there, sitting by the bed when I came out from under the anesthesia.”
“K.C. called me,” she said. She lowered her eyes to his chest. “He was scared to death, and he didn’t want to start gossip all over again by sitting with you. Nobody thought it unusual that I did. I knew most of the hospital staff in Nairobi.”
He drew in a breath. He felt sick. Sweaty. “There was a lot of gossip after that.”
“I never noticed. Neither did you.”
He studied her downcast face. “As soon as the stitches came out, I invited Anita out to the game farm and sent you home to D.C.”
She bit her lip. “Yes.”
He closed his eye, anguish in his whole body as he recalled that act of cruelty. “I didn’t even thank you, for what you did. I wanted to die when they told me I’d lost an eye, that I might go blind. You made me want to live.”
She didn’t say anything, but her posture was eloquent.
He swayed a little. She caught him as he reeled.
“I’m drunk, Tat,” he managed with a breathy laugh.
“You don’t do this much.”
“Only rarely,” he agreed as she helped him toward the bed. “I don’t like being out of control.”
“You never did.”
He eased down onto the bed, shoes and all. He looked up at her quietly. “Help me undress. I can’t sleep in my clothes.”
She stared at him while the soft plea made her flush.
He held out a big hand. “Come on, chicken,” he said with a faint smile. “Tat, I’m drunk,” he reminded her when she hesitated. “I can’t get hard. If I can’t get hard, I’m no threat.”
The flush got deeper.
He laughed huskily. “And all these years, I thought you’d had one man after another,” he said. His face twisted. “Damn me for what I did to you!”
She didn’t understand the anger. She didn’t understand his change of attitude. She didn’t really trust it, either.
“Don’t,” he said, seeing the debate going on in her mind. He shifted and winced. “Help me, Tat. I just want to sleep.”
She moved closer to the bed. Hesitantly, she pulled off his shoes, and then his socks. He had beautiful feet, for a man.
He sat up. She dropped down onto the bed beside him, still wary. He pulled her hands to the buttons of his shirt. He stared into her wide eyes. “Take it off,” he whispered, his voice like deep, soft velvet.
She felt her heart run wild. It had been years since she’d been this close to him, since he’d wanted her this close.
“Come on,” he whispered again, coaxing her fingers to the first button while his mouth hovered just above her eyes.
The tone, the proximity, got to her. She worked buttons out of buttonholes, noting the thick hair that covered his bronzed chest as she pushed the shirt back over his broad shoulders. There was a raised place just to the left of his breastbone, where he’d been shot when he lost his eye. It was hardly noticeable now.
He felt his body going taut as the shirt fell off. Her eyes were so expressive. She loved looking at him. He loved letting her. He was getting aroused, despite his protests to the contrary. So many years. A lifetime.
“You can…do the rest, I’m sure,” she said, and tried to get up.
“No, I can’t.” He smoothed her cold hands to his belt. “Help me, Tat,” he whispered.
He lay back down. When he did that, she relaxed, just a little.
She managed a shaky smile. “I’ve never undressed anybody except myself,” she blurted out.
She unfastened the belt and pulled it out of the loops, noting the expensive leather it was made of as she dropped it into the chair beside the bed. She hesitated.
He pulled her hands to the fastening of his slacks. “I can’t sleep in my best clothes,” he said gently. “Keep going.”
“Rourke…”
“Shhh,” he coaxed. His hands smoothed hers down on the fastenings. “Just a little more. That’s it. Now put your hands under the waistbands and pull. That’s all you have to do.”
His voice was seducing her. She shouldn’t. She should get up and run. She was embarrassed and nervous. Her hands were shaking.
“You can’t be…that drunk,” she began.
“Hold on to that,” he said softly, and he lifted his hips and pushed both waistbands down.
She was looking at him without realizing what she was seeing for several shocked seconds. During them, he slid out of his slacks and boxer shorts and lay back down on the bed, his eyes on her wide-eyed, shocked face as she looked and looked.
He laughed with pure delight. He was aroused. Very aroused, despite the liquor. Her eyes were enhancing what was already a magnificent hunger. He shifted on the clean sheets and groaned softly.
“I’ve dreamed of this,” he whispered huskily. “Of letting you look at me like this, feeling your eyes on me.”
She was too shocked to reply or even to try to leave.
“Tat, at your age, you’ve surely seen photographs of men like this, even if you haven’t seen the real thing,” he chided.
“Well…yes,” she said in a choked tone.
“But…?”
“None…none of them looked like…like that,” she whispered, fascinated. “You’re…you’re beautiful,” she blurted out.
His face changed. He shifted again on the sheets and shivered.
“I should…I should…go,” she choked.
One long arm snaked gently around her waist and pulled her across him and down on the bed beside him.
He wasn’t aggressive. He didn’t demand. He unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it aside. His fingers went to the front catch of the lacy little bra and unfastened it. He moved it away and looked at her beautiful, pink-tipped breasts, the crowns hard.
“You were beautiful at seventeen like this,” he said quietly. “But you’re more beautiful now.”
She couldn’t even manage words. Her heart was beating her to death.
“What…are you going to do?” she asked with helpless apprehension, because she knew that she couldn’t stop him, didn’t want to stop him. She was almost shivering with a hunger that had eight years of abstinence behind it.
“I’d very much like to put my mouth on your breast and suckle you until I made you come,” he whispered. “The way I did when you were seventeen. Remember, Tat?” His voice was soft and sensual as he looked at h
er bare breasts. “You were shocked at first, and after you went over the edge you cried. I kissed you and moved on top of you. I had your lacy little panties halfway down your legs and my pants unzipped. And we heard footsteps.”
She was trembling. “Yes.”
“I hurt like hell. I never thought I could stop, even then.” He drew in a long, unsteady breath. “I lived on that night for years.”
“Before or after you started going through beautiful women like tissues?” she asked with weary cynicism.
He wasn’t going to get into that. “You don’t understand what it was like,” he said quietly. “Have you ever wanted someone so much that it was like physical torture to be near them at all?”
Her head rocked on the mattress. “Not really,” she confessed.
“I wanted you to the point of madness, Tat,” he said softly. “And I couldn’t even touch you.” He smiled, but it was a hollow smile.
“So that was why…”
“That was why.” He drew in another breath. He stared down at her relaxed body, at the taut little breasts open to his eye. “So beautiful,” he whispered.
“You…haven’t touched me,” she said.
“I know. I’m not going to.”
Her expression wasn’t easily read. “Is it…because of the scars?”
His eye went to the scars, faint white lines where that butcher, Miguel, had cut her when she was a prisoner in Sapara’s jail. His face was dangerous. “I killed him, Tat. I wish I could have spared you what happened.”
Her fingers went up to his mouth and pressed there. They were cold.
He kissed them tenderly. “Those scars are marks of honor,” he whispered. “And I want very much to kiss them. But I can’t.”
“You…can’t?”
He moved away from her, just a little, and coaxed her eyes down to the raging masculinity below his belt line.
She flushed.
“I can’t,” he repeated. “Because our first time isn’t going to be when I’m too damned stinking drunk to do justice to you.”
He sat up, tugged her up and put her bra and blouse back on. He nuzzled his nose against hers, but he didn’t kiss her. “Don’t take this the wrong way. But get out of here.”
She got to her feet. He pulled the sheet across his hips and lay back with a smile.