Red Midnight

by Heather Graham

  “But …” They both knew all the buts. The main one being that the marriage was a fraud, a fraud Erin sensed that he resented. He was in love with the wife he had lost. Yet even that full knowledge did little for her now. She could feel the span of his hand, warm and firm over the towel against the small of her back, the light touch of his finger upon her cheek. “Your suit,” Erin murmured stupidly, bringing her hands between them.

  “I’ve ceased worrying about my suits around you,” he returned softly. The soft caress of his fingers left her cheeks, threaded into her hair, where he dislodged the pins, sending the cascade of shimmering damp gold around her shoulders.

  Damn, was she beautiful. A silver-eyed mystery. Slender but so enticingly curved, so warm and alive. He allowed his hand to wind into the sleek softness of her hair, tilting her head back. And he kept staring into her silver eyes. Sun and moonlight, silk and satin, tanned and rose cream, igniting to a furnace beneath his touch.

  He pressed her closer, pulling her to his hips, letting her feel just what she did to him. And as he spurred his own desires into spiraling heights with the intimate pressure of her, he dropped the towel, availing his hands of the sleek line that was her back, the trim contour that was her waist.

  She quivered without protesting; the silver that clashed with blue fire misted until just the lure of her eyes was irresistibly sensual. And then he touched his lips to hers. They were wet and full and parted, waiting, knowing. Her tongue readily met his. He slipped his hands low to her buttocks, fluttering lightly over them, moving around to course smoothly over her lower abdomen, pause, relishing the deep curves of her hips, rising high to cup and caress the full, swelling mounds of her breasts.

  His own fevered need kept him momentarily from realizing that she had gone dead still. The warm darting tongue that had so eagerly, so beguilingly, intoxicatingly responded to the seeking quest of his had suddenly retreated; the sweet pressure of her golden creamy body attempted a retreat.

  “Jarod, no!” she shrieked, and the sound of her voice and the pressure of her hands took him off guard. It was with shock that he stared at her at first; shock because it had all been there. A need and desire to soar fully to match his own.

  “Erin,” he began in soft confusion, his touch going very gentle. Her silver eyes were wild; they were a storm of tempest he couldn’t discern. “Erin—” he began to repeat.

  “No!” she hissed firmly, wrenching from him with a spinning force that swept her past him at such a speed that his balance was lost; his customary agility deserted him.

  He careened into the bubblebath before he could right himself, and then the explosive degree of his desire fused with the deepest fury he had ever experienced. He was livid. He was out of control.

  It took him only split seconds to regain his balance, to stride after her with cougarlike speed despite his thoroughly drenched clothing.

  She saw his eyes, and panic lit hers. She attempted to wrench the spread from the bed to clothe herself. “Wait, Jarod, please—”

  But there was no mercy to be found in his eyes. He continued after her despite her hands raised in supplication before her.

  “A ‘no’ at the beginning would have been honored, Erin,” he hissed, his approach slow but as sure as that of a cat circling its prey. “But not after that, honey. I’m not sure what Erin McCabe is accustomed to getting away with, but madam, you don’t play that way with me.”

  He was coming close, too close. She had wanted to explain, but the terror hit her. It was blinding; it ruled away any form of logic or common sense. She knew that even now Jarod would never hurt her, but the thought simply failed to register over her overwhelming terror.

  She struck out, catching him first fully against one cheek, then flailing madly with her nails clawing.

  “Dammit, you little bitch—”

  She was absolutely no match for Jarod. It took him two seconds to duck beneath her wild blows and catch her in her midriff with his shoulder, another second to send her sprawling backwards upon the bed with his own weight hovering over her.

  And then, even as she still struggled in half insanity to rise, he caught her wrists in the iron vise of his fingers.

  “Oh, dear God!” she shrieked then, falling still in a horrified numbness. “Oh, dear God, please, Jarod, not my wrists!”

  He, too, went dead still, stunned and touched to the very core of his being by the pathetic depth of the raw pleading and beseechingness in her voice. Silent tears raced down her cheeks like the cascade of a waterfall from her tightly clenched eyes and she quivered against him in gigantic spasms.

  “Please!” she gasped again, “oh, please …”

  He released her instantly, leaning beside her, all anger toward her eradicated in a fury against the unknown he was slowly discovering. He touched her cheek very very tenderly, his fingers wiping away the moisture. She had almost left him; her eyes were so glazed and blank. With calmness, with gentleness—but with unbreachable firmness—he spoke. “Erin, you are going to talk to me. Now.”

  VII

  SHE COULDN’T SAY OR do anything. It was a ridiculous scene; she naked, quaking upon the bed, Jarod stretched beside her in his drenched tailored suit.

  He wasn’t going to hurt her. She had always known that no matter what the provocation, he would hold back. But just as surely, he would demand answers, as he was demanding them now, and there would be no place to hide. But she couldn’t talk to him. God! Of all people, she couldn’t to him. Her past was locked away. She didn’t want to open the Pandora’s box of the past. She couldn’t. A paralyzing force had enveloped her. She knew she breathed, she knew she saw dimly through a shroud of mist, but his voice penetrated through it. “Erin.”

  Still she couldn’t move. And then she felt him reach for her arm. Cold permeated her; the numbness, the paralysis, were too much to fight. The effort would be futile. His grasp was careful, very gentle, but like his voice, firm. He soothed her palm with a fingertip. Erin barely noticed; she had slipped away somewhere, aware that she waited, but not aware of what she waited for.

  “Something went very wrong somewhere,” he said softly, moving to circle his fingers around a bracelet.

  Not there, Erin thought vaguely. The bracelets were memories of what was good.

  Apparently Jarod realized quickly that the root of her problem lay in something far deeper than a penchant for favorite jewelry. He was silent for several seconds as he lay beside her. And then she heard his voice again, a crisp sheath of whispered velvet. Persistent. “Something happened with someone. Was it your husband?”

  She didn’t speak, she didn’t nod. She still couldn’t focus on his rugged features; she couldn’t, oh, dear, no, couldn’t, raise her eyes to meet that deadly icefire of his.

  Yet somehow he had received an affirmative answer. She heard and felt the rasp of his indrawn breath; the shudder that swept his form in an infinite wrath.

  “I’ll kill him,” he said tersely.

  He sounded as if he meant it. That thought finally broke through the perimeters of her mind. Jarod’s anger was all the more deadly because it was always so controlled. But it wasn’t an icy wrath; it was a flame.

  “No,” she managed, though little sound came from her lips. “It wasn’t exactly Marc … and I was as much to blame.”

  “I don’t believe that.” Erin felt his touch as he removed her bracelets. “The bracelets really aren’t any mystery, are they?” It was a question that didn’t require an answer. “But you’re panicked by having your wrists held….”

  She began a slow descent back toward reality from the corner or her refuge as he gently held her hands before him, then very tenderly kissed her wrists one at a time. He moved away from her, shedding his wet jacket.

  Her eyes were still dazed, he thought, and yet she was coming back to him. He was struck afresh by the purity of her beauty as she lay there, silver eyes wide, liquid and vulnerable in her perfect stillness. Her hair appeared as the softest web of
spun gold, the curls like a riot of sun beneath the fine sculpture of her pale face. Her lips were slightly parted as she breathed, an effort that created an almost indiscernible heave of her bare breasts, high and coral-rose-tipped above a slender torso in which the delineation of each rib created haunting shadows, falling low to the inward and equally haunting hollow of her abdomen. She was slender, so very slender, but he had never fully realized that her slenderness could hold such alluring, rounded, and beguilingly angled shapeliness.

  One knee was slightly lifted and tilted inward; her entire length was golden and glistened flawlessly. He ached to reach out and touch her, feel the silk of that skin, the softness of her secret places, the touch of her shimmering hair.

  His entire body was rigid with instinctive reaction to his senses, but even as he wanted her with a torture that was agony, he knew that this moment was fragile, infinitesimally delicate. He held her future in his hands. She was the embodiment of exquisite loveliness, but all that lay unnurtured within her, her sweet sensuality, untapped passion, could be forever buried if he didn’t handle her with the greatest of care. She was as soft and tender and vulnerable as the new petals of a storm-tossed rose. He knew that they had come to a crucial point in her life and that he would have to lead her past it. He held her as he might that storm-tossed flower, and he knew that his greatest restraint and most gentle moves could bring the most beautiful and softest of roses to full bloom.

  He gathered her into his arms, holding her, soothing back her straying curls of gold with gentle fingers that hinted of comfort, not passion.

  He should have known, he thought belatedly. He should have realized she harbored a terrible hurt and fear. She was not coy, not a game-playing temptress. All that she had ever offered him had been real; the passions, the sensuality, the warmth, the giving he had sensed within the heat and natural rhythms of her body against his.

  The temptress in her was warm and alive. This golden seductress was a woman born to love naturally … beautifully.

  None of it had ever been a lie.

  At that moment, nothing existed for Jarod except the two of them. The reasons they had come together, the life he lived, suspicions, doubts, and mistrusts ceased to be. They simply weren’t relative to the fragile now.

  He didn’t even stop to think of his own feelings, to question them, or ponder them. He didn’t think of love; his was a deep-rooted humanity. And he was outraged. The care of this exquisite golden beauty had become his. She bore the title of his wife. He craved to have her as his lover as well; he wanted to purge her wounds.

  Again he picked up a slender wrist with infinite tenderness, pressing his lips against it.

  “If you don’t release things, Erin,” he said softly, “they grow and they fester inside. I can’t make you, but I would very much like you to talk to me.”

  She was silent for a moment, her golden head bowed low against his chest. He waited. It was a tiny movement, very tiny, but she nodded.

  Standing up, with her in his arms, he swept the cover from the bed and wrapped it around her. He made his way down the stairs, cradled her into the corner of the couch, and stoked the dying fire. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with two glasses of wine, pressing hers into her fingers, then lifting her to bring her back against his body again. He asked nothing of her now and she knew it; his desire was simply to be there, to offer safe harbor, to give her the much-needed security she craved.

  “Were you in love with him?”

  Erin nodded again. She took a long sip of her wine, gratefully feeling the liquid wash away even more of the numbness.

  “I lost a fiancé once when I was very young,” she murmured. “I hadn’t believed I would ever love again.” She came up with a dry little smile. “My bracelets were a gift from Jodie. They were just very special, and they became my trademark. It always amused me a little to know that people thought them such a mystery.”

  “Go on, Erin,” Jarod prodded softly.

  “I … I had learned about loving from Jodie. Our marriage was all planned out, our values were the same … old-fashioned, I guess.”

  “You were never lovers?”

  She blushed and bit her lip. “No … Jodie died before …” Her voice trailed away and came back thinly. “And then Marc came along. I was very flattered that he should care for me, so much to insist upon marriage.”

  “And so you married him very quickly.” It was more statement than question, but again Erin nodded against his chest. It wasn’t so terribly hard to talk; it was becoming amazingly easy. And it was absurd that a man like Jarod Steele, living by a cold code of principle and efficiency, could offer such understanding and compassion and not turn away. Not be repulsed, but want to understand even more.

  And she needed to make him understand; she owed him an explanation. And so far, she had done nothing but give him cryptic half-truths.

  “Marc isn’t a cruel man,” she found herself explaining. “Marc never hurt me—purposely or physically I mean. He …” She started chewing upon her lips again. “I think he was disappointed from the start. He was accustomed to worldly women. He had thought for sure I would be one. Until the night of our marriage, I guess he didn’t realize—”

  “That you were a virgin?”

  Erin couldn’t meet his eyes. “Yes,” she murmured, barely coherently. “As I said, he wasn’t cruel, and he didn’t intentionally hurt me. But the night was miserable. I … I tried to pretend … I tried to give the responses he wanted, but all I ever wanted was for it to end. And he just kept assuring me that it would get better.”

  Her color had risen. It was getting easier to talk, but her explanations still seemed so poor. She started speaking again quickly. “I was touched at first that Marc cared enough about me to be so patient. But I should have known from the beginning. Lord knows, there were enough women around to give me the hints.” She finally managed to meet Jarod’s eyes. “My being a failure meant little to Marc, because I don’t think a day passed when he didn’t see another woman. But I never believed the hints. I just kept believing Marc that things would get better, because even though Jodie and I hadn’t been together, I had wanted to be with him.”

  “Erin,” Jarod interrupted softly. “There was nothing wrong with you. He simply wasn’t the right man.” Not a man at all, he thought furiously. “But there’s more to this, Erin. I want to know what makes you so terrified to have your wrists held.”

  She hesitated a long moment, but he allowed her to do so. Again, she started so softly that he could barely hear her. “I didn’t believe that Marc saw other women. I … I did love him. And I … was simply unbelievably naïve. Anyway, I came home after work one day to find a friend of his—another photographer I had worked with once or twice—drinking brandy in my living room. I was surprised, but I assumed Marc had let him in, which he had. I greeted him cordially—and asked him where Marc was. He started laughing and winked at me and told me Marc would be busy for a while. I still didn’t get it. I tried to carry on a casual conversation and I offered to make him another drink”—she stopped, took a breath, and rushed on—“and all of a sudden he was behind me, kissing my nape, slipping his arms around me. I was shocked, and I demanded to know where he got the nerve to do such a thing in Marc’s own house. He started laughing and said something about what the hell did I think Marc was doing. He accused me of being a tease: he and I both knew damned well Marc wouldn’t give a damn. Everyone knew that Marc and I had an open marriage. I was so stunned and incredulous. I was easy prey when he started after me again. But then I started fighting him and he just kept laughing, telling me how he loved my little game, how the fight gave the finale all the more gusto.

  “He got me down and he held my wrists and I couldn’t break the hold. I’d never been so powerless, so terrified, in my life. And humiliated. He was going to be able to do whatever he wanted to me and my own husband had put me in that position.

  “I don’t know how long he held me. He thoug
ht I was playing all along … and so I finally got a chance to kick him. He was so surprised and in so much pain that he released me and … and I ran. Out into the street. I went to a friend’s house, and I never returned. I did talk to Marc once after the incident. He couldn’t believe that I had ever thought he intended our marriage to include fidelity. I should have known the score.”

  “Bastard!” Jarod rasped, and she felt the fury within him. His hands had grown tense. With an effort they relaxed, and he smoothed the golden tendrils of her hair against her temple. “And so you’re still afraid…. Oh Erin, don’t be afraid! Your fiancé was more the norm. You were not at fault in any way. You are beautiful and giving, and if Helmsly had had a single iota of sensitivity he would have discovered it all. And I guarantee you, Erin, any normal man would cherish you and want to kill before allowing another man to touch you.” He broke off a bit gruffly and enveloped her into his arms.

  “You poor thing,” he murmured against her hair, his whisper then changing to assure her that everything was all right, that things would be okay, that she should cry if she needed to.

  But she didn’t cry. She shivered and shivered until the shivering stopped. Outside the day had become night; only the warm orange glow of the fire touched them, and it was warm, and it was secure, as was the feel of the arms of the man around her.

  And as he held her, the outrage continued in his mind. He didn’t speak the thought aloud again, but he was certain that if he were ever to meet the man—or men! Helmsly was guilty of emotional cruelty, the other of attempted rape—who had taken such a tender crystalline beauty and made a mockery of the innocent and loving sensuality she had offered—he would surely be tempted to kill … or cripple…. At the very, very least, rearrange a nose and jawline.

  He merely held her for a long, long time. And then he tilted her chin upward, bringing her silver stare to meet his. He should leave her alone, he thought briefly. If he were really honorable, he would leave her alone. But he wasn’t quite that honorable. He was a man, and the vital male within was roaring that the wrong done to her needed to be purged.