Kane snapped the reins again, pushing the horses into a faster pace toward the creekbed and trees and whatever limited privacy there was in Sanctuary.
Sanctuary? He thought he’d been in hell in the Yank prison camp. That place had been a nursery next to this one.
“Kane?”
His name was said softly, and he was suddenly very aware it was the first time she’d used it. It was also the first time he hadn’t hated it. Kane sounded somehow soft in her voice, on her lips. Not harsh. Not murderous.
He turned and looked at her. Her face was visible in the light of an almost full moon. Her features appeared luminous, and altogether too appealing.
“I’m sorry my uncle … forced you …”
“He didn’t force me to do anything,” he said shortly. “I only hesitated because I’m so wrong for you. I don’t have a future, Nicky. You deserve better.”
There was a long silence. He didn’t know whether she accepted his explanation or not. But they rode in silence along the ruts that apparently served as the road for supplies. He chucked the horses several times, just to pretend a concentration on driving that he didn’t feel. He was too aware of her presence. God, how he wanted her in his arms.
There was a slight pull on his arm, and he looked toward her. She pointed to a stand of trees along the creek, and he made for it, though the buggy bumped and groaned. When he reached it, he stopped the horses. She jumped down without his help, and he had no choice but to follow. Then he cursed himself for a liar. He did have a choice. He could stay in the seat and be safe. Safe from her, safe from what he knew was coming.
He stepped down.
He looked at the pale silver of the moon, at the stars sprinkled like dust across the sky, and then his gaze turned to Nicky. She stood shadowed by the trees, a lonely, lovely figure. He didn’t move, thinking of the first time he’d seen her and the moments after she’d shot Yancy. She’d been so defensive, so full of prickles and fight. It had all been a sham, just like so much of him was a sham. They were both lost, she through no fault of her own, and he through self-inflicted mistakes. But he saw his own loneliness reflected in her, a loneliness he’d denied for years and that now shouted out for acknowledgment.
Kane moved toward her, propelled by a need so strong it denied anything else. He held out his hand. She took the several steps to him, and her fingers curled around his. She moved even closer until they were only inches apart.
He leaned down and rested his cheek on her hair. It was newly washed and smelled fresh and sweet. For a moment, his loneliness eased.
Neither of them spoke. She was unlike most women that way, he’d noticed. She was content with silence, satisfied just to be with him. He swallowed hard, knowing this was a rare peek at heaven.
He felt her every breath, her every heartbeat. Her body melded into his as if it were made to fit there. Her fingers intertwined with his, locking them gently but firmly to her. And then she moved slightly to face him, her expression full of both wonder and question.
“I never knew,” she said softly, “that I could feel so … like this.”
She obviously couldn’t find the words, and neither could he. Maybe it was something like belonging. He wasn’t sure because he’d never belonged to anyone or anything. But he knew it was something extraordinary, this flow between them, these currents of wonder and contentment and anticipation, and …
He never finished the thought. She was reaching on tiptoe, and her mouth was an inch away. Her lips met his, and his world seemed to explode, and all caution exploded with it. His mind couldn’t absorb anything but sensation.
Chapter Eleven
The kiss was beyond all of Nicky’s expectations. It was beyond anything she’d ever even imagined, and she savored every taste, feeling, and touch. She wanted to hold it to her heart forever.
Kane’s hands touched her with infinite care, with a restrained tenderness that made her soul bleed. She knew then that he hadn’t lied when he said he wanted her, hadn’t taken her buggy-riding because of her uncle. He cared in the same special way that she cared.
The kiss said so, and she never wanted to let it go.
The kiss was enough for a few moments, and then a new wanting started gnawing at her. She knew he felt it, too, because his kiss deepened and his tongue sought out hers. She knew now what to do, and her response was as fevered as his. Her body moved closer, so close she felt his heart beat against hers. His hand moved to the back of her neck, one of his fingers stroking the tender, sensitive skin there with increasingly powerful effect. She felt his body change beneath the confining trousers and heard the quickening urgency of his breath. Her body ached to move into his, to explore the sweet craving that was so irresistible.
I want you. She kept remembering those words, and the intensity with which he’d said them. They echoed in her mind, her heart. They wouldn’t go away. I want you. Soul-wrenching words jerked unwillingly from him. And now she knew why. She knew the full meaning of the word want.
She felt his hunger and she wondered at her own. How could she lust so after something she’d never had? Her hands went up around his neck, entwining her fingers in the dark thick hair. His mouth released hers then, and he just held her as if she were the most precious thing on earth.
It felt wonderful to be precious to someone. To be wanted. To be loved.
She would have died for him in that moment. She’d never understood her mother so well. She moved her right hand from his neck and traced the angles of his face, her finger resting on the scar. A tremor ran through his body, and she felt that, too, as if she were part of him. Her finger moved down to his mouth, to the side twisted slightly. He stiffened against her, but the want was still there. She felt that want. She felt it grow, just as that odd intolerable craving was expanding inside her.
She wanted to say love words, endearments. But she was afraid. She felt his hesitancy even though she didn’t understand it. He had gone to Rosita’s, hadn’t he? All the men did. Why then did he hesitate to do with her whatever men did? He virtually had her uncle’s permission, maybe not for this, but to be with her. And he wasn’t afraid of her uncle. She knew that.
Something, though, was stopping him. Did he possibly think she was unwilling?
“I want you, too,” she blurted out suddenly, and only then did he look back down at her. The moon was bright, but not bright enough to show her his thoughts. It was never that bright. Even the sun wasn’t that bright. His gray eyes were dark and unfathomable. But she heard a harsh moan. It came from deep inside his throat like an animal in pain.
His mouth went down to her neck, and he kissed her throat. Then she knew why he’d moaned. She heard herself whimper with the need fomenting inside.
“Nicole,” he whispered, and the sound of her name on his lips was like a song sung low. Nicole, not Nicky. The name of a woman. She felt every inch that woman.
His head lifted from where it had been nuzzling her throat, and his eyes met hers as his hands moved to her dress. There was a question in them now. A question and something else: fire. There was no other way to describe the glowing glitter in them. She swallowed hard. They had started a blaze together, and even in her inexperience she knew it would be hard to quench.
She didn’t want to quench it. She knew that when their eyes dueled. He was almost daring her to back away, and a part of her wanted to. The part that was afraid. She felt the fear running almost as hot as her blood. She wasn’t afraid of him as much as she was afraid of caring for him. But she might as well try to stop breathing. He had already worked his way into her very being.
So much seemed clear at that moment. She hadn’t known whether she believed in the kind of love she had read about in books. She had wanted to believe. It had always sounded so marvelous for two souls to join, even easy. But her only experience with man-woman love had been tragedy. Her mother always waiting. The tears. Finally the terrible, wrenching pain of childbirth in a cold cave. And then her father’s pain. How c
ould anything be worth that?
Now she knew. She knew as Kane held her. She knew as he kissed her. She knew as he unbuttoned her dress and his finger caressed her skin. She knew as he picked her up and carried her to a protected place under the trees, as he knelt beside her, as his arms moved up and down hers, ever so gently over the recent burns. She knew as he finished undressing her, hesitating at every step, waiting for a protest that couldn’t make its way from her lips. She knew as her own hands unbuttoned his shirt, and she touched the dark hair on his chest, ran her fingers over the muscles and bone.
And she knew when his body bent to hers, when his reluctance was still so strong that she became the seducer.
Kane had always longed for something of his own. Now he was being given that gift, and it was too strong a need to deny. He knew Nicky was a virgin. She couldn’t be anything else and respond to his kisses with such amazed wonder. It was all the more reason to pull away, to run like hell, but he couldn’t. God help him, he couldn’t.
He needed her as much as she needed him. He needed that innocence and wonder as much as he’d needed anything in his life. He needed her like he’d never needed anything. Life had always been little more than a bad joke until now. He’d stumbled from one mistake to another. Even now he feared he was about to make the worst one in his life. Yet he couldn’t stop himself.
Nicole’s fingers crawled up his chest. Nothing in his past, no experience with women, had prepared him for this: the sweet explosion, the overwhelming hunger, the excruciating desire that hardened his body. His mouth found hers, pressed hard, his tongue urging her lips to open to him. They so readily, so eagerly, did. Her smallest touch was like a torch to him, her slightest movements firing new blazes until the ache inside him was unbearable.
He touched her breasts, then moved his mouth down to them, caressing, tasting, nibbling until they hardened and she cried out—a purr of anticipation as her body writhed with reaction to his slightest touch. His hands moved down, drawing the rest of her dress from her. She was wearing drawers and a camisole and nothing more. He thought of all she hadn’t had these years—all the womanly gewgaws that seemed to mean so much to other women. He wanted to give them all to her. He wanted to put them on, and take them off, slowly. He took a deep shuddering breath. It wasn’t too late to stop.
But then her hands went around his neck and drew him down to her, and he couldn’t stop. He was still wearing his trousers and he felt the hard throbbing demand against the cloth, seeking freedom. His hands went down, quickly unbuttoning, and his sex sprang free against her. She stilled for a moment, and he could no longer feel her breath against the skin of his chest.
Stop. He heard that voice inside but he couldn’t obey, particularly when he again felt her soft, sweet breath, and her body started reacting to his, straining and trembling and reaching. He started kissing her everywhere, his lips savoring every part of her—eyes, nose, cheeks, the curve of her neck. He felt her pulse, the quickening of it as her hands faltered where they’d been touching the back of his neck. Her entire body was trembling with feeling, with its reaction to him. He’d never known this kind of passion—a fierce tenderness that assaulted every barrier he’d ever erected inside himself. He’d never loved a woman like this, and he’d never known the rewards, the incredible sweetness of it, the exquisite longing that was more than hunger. For the first time, he felt a need to give more than to take.
But he wasn’t giving. He was taking a part of her forever. He was making promises he couldn’t keep.
With a groan of pure anguish, Kane pulled himself away and lay beside her, closing his eyes and trying to steady his breathing.
He felt Nicky’s hand on him, on his chest. Seeking. Questioning. Her body moved next to his, cuddling as close as she could, placing her head on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?” she finally whispered, and his soul cried at the wretchedness and confusion in her voice.
He lay there for a moment, saying nothing, hoping the breeze would cool the heat in his body, the fever in his head. He’d never wanted anything so much in his life, and he’d wanted a lot. He was experienced in not getting what he wanted, but this time the pain ate into his gut as it never had before.
There weren’t many more days now, not for him. But she had so many. He couldn’t bear to leave her the legacy of the worst kind of betrayal. What in the hell had he been thinking?
He hadn’t. He had only been feeling. He felt now. He felt her body next to his. Ready. Wanting. Like his. His manhood throbbed with need. So easy to roll over and take her. He’d never allowed himself to think of hell, but it couldn’t be worse than this. Except perhaps knowing for the rest of his days, however few they might be, that he had destroyed her.
“Kane?” Nicky’s voice, soft and questioning, quivered slightly.
He swallowed hard. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” he finally asked, already knowing the answer. No one could fake the wonder, the awakening of her body.
“Does it matter?” she said, and he knew she was prepared to lie. She was so inexperienced that she wasn’t aware he would know the difference, that he already did.
“Your uncle said a buggy ride,” Kane said harshly. “I don’t think he meant for me to … ruin you.”
“I don’t think I would be ruined,” she said in a small tentative voice.
“A man wants a virgin for a wife,” he said cruelly, “not damaged goods.”
There was a long silence. She’d flinched at the words. He felt her body stiffen for the tiniest moment. He was making it very clear he didn’t want her as a wife.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said after a long, agonizing moment, but the indifference she tried to feign sounded hollow. “No one would want the niece of Nat Thompson, anyway.”
Anyone would want her. Anyone with any sense. But she believed what she was saying. Her acceptance of what she believed was truth, her bravado, touched him deeply.
He rolled over so he could face her. “I want you, Nicky. I want you worse than any damn thing in my life. But you’re worth more than me. You deserve a hell of a lot better.”
“No,” she said. That simple, fervent denial was like an arrow in his heart.
“I’m not going to risk your uncle’s anger,” he said, trying another tack. “I’ve heard what happens.”
“You aren’t afraid of him,” she said. “That’s why he likes you.”
“I want him to keep on liking me.” Kane tried to keep his voice impassive, even indifferent.
“Then why did you bring me here?”
“Because he suggested it, but I don’t figure he had this in mind,” he said, hating that cruelty he was forcing into his voice again. “A buggy ride, that’s all.” He rolled away from her, grabbing his trousers that had slipped down to his ankles. He pulled them up, turning so she couldn’t see his arousal, his difficulty in covering it.
He couldn’t see her face. He didn’t want to see her face. He couldn’t bear to see it, nor that long-limbed slender body that still sent quakes through him. He’d never prayed before, not even when he thought he would hang. But he prayed now. He prayed for the strength to keep from touching her. She couldn’t be allowed to see how hard this was for him.
Most of all, she couldn’t know that he was falling in love with her.
Kane walked to the shadows of some trees and waited. He waited for some sound to indicate she was dressing. He waited in an agony of self-disgust over what he had almost done. What he still wanted to do. Like his namesake, he seemed destined to destroy those closest to him: his mother, Davy, and now Nicky.
How many days did he have left? How many to save Davy? How many before he had to destroy Sanctuary and everyone in it?
Christ! He hit the bark of the tree with his fist. The jarring force stretched the burned places on his back, but he welcomed the pain.
“Kane?” Her voice again. Tentative.
He swung around, expecting to see her dressed. She was, but only in his shirt. It hung way
below her hips, and expanded seductively across her breasts. Long, shapely legs seemed to tremble slightly as she rose to stand. Her hair was tousled, a few pine needles clinging to the curls that framed her face. She was the most enchanting sight he’d ever seen.
“Get dressed,” he said in a strangled voice.
“Not until you tell me what’s … wrong,” she said. “If you’re so damn worried about my uncle, he won’t care much for you leaving me out here.” There was anger in her voice now, as well as a plea.
“I can carry you back.”
“Like this?”
“I can dress you.”
“I’ll just take it back off.”
Despite his frustration, his lips cracked slightly. She would, too. He could always tear a piece of cloth from his shirt and tie her, but he imagined she would be a wildcat on the way home. He supposed that was one of the things that he liked about her. She didn’t give an inch. She hadn’t the first time they met, or when she was defending her brother against Yancy. Just like tonight. She simply didn’t know how to do anything halfway.
The mere thought made his blood run hot again. She would be as passionate in lovemaking as she had been in defending her brother. And then he felt that splash of ice-cold water again. He was worse than Yancy. At least Yancy had been honest about what he wanted.
“I told you,” he said finally. “I’m no good for you. I can’t offer you a damn thing. Not a future. Not a day beyond tonight.”
“I didn’t ask you to offer anything.”
“Your uncle would,” he said wryly. “He’s not a man who would take … this lightly.”
“My uncle has nothing to do with this.”
“He has everything to do with it. He loves you, Nicky.”
“He wants you to stay. He would approve.”
“And you? Do you want to stay here forever?”
She was silent for a moment, and he knew then she had also thought of escape.
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