Tomorrow the Glory

by Heather Graham

  His lips suddenly fell upon hers with a bruising intensity. She tasted his blood as his tongue plundered her mouth, savagely demanding entrance. Kendall whimpered a protest at the intrusion, yet her heart was beating madly; she could barely breathe and the smothering sensation left her faint. She tried to twist to fight him, but his palm held her hair firmly to the floor. She gripped his back, digging her fingers desperately into his hard, rippling muscles. For the barest second his assault eased; then it began again. But the cruelty was gone. The motion of his lips became persuasive, caressing that which was bruised and in need of tender care. Kendall fell prey to the abrupt change of his touch, shivering as she succumbed, and finding, in spite of herself, that she still felt a hunger for him.

  His head at last rose from hers. His features were strained, his voice was harsh when he spoke. “All that began in Charleston ends here.”

  There was a fight in him; somehow Kendall sensed it. She also knew he meant what he said. If she opened her mouth and pleaded honestly, warned him of one truth he would shortly discover, he would be gentle . . .

  She wanted to tell him, but she couldn’t. The words refused to form on her quivering lips.

  All she could do was lie there as he rose and methodically began to strip, watch him as he stood high above her, bronze shoulders glistening in a narrow streak of twilight from the rear window, gray eyes as dark and stormy as the night sea.

  Transfixed, she watched as he took a step toward her, fluidly lowering himself to her side, his sleek, muscled body as finely honed as a panther’s. He drew her against him and undid the buttons of her dress. A hoarse grunt of impatience escaped him, and the fabric came away, ripped open in a clean stroke.

  “Brent . . .” His name at last formed on her lips, but she could say no more. She closed her eyes as his hands touched her waist, stroking her flesh with irrevocable purpose as he stripped away the pantalettes, her only remaining garment.

  His body covered hers. Heated power. She tensed as his knee abruptly forced apart her thighs, but even then, she couldn’t find her voice. He hovered above her, his eyes seeking hers. She returned his stare, but still she could say nothing.

  She closed her eyes as his mouth touched hers again. The movement was a gentle caress. His tongue rimmed her lips. His lips trailed down her chin, the moisture and warmth of his mouth grazed her ear, his teeth gently captured the lobe. Again his kiss wandered erotically. It touched her throat, found the shadow above her collarbone, and returned to her lips.

  Time, reason, life itself . . . all seemed to fade and shift and change. It might have been Charleston again. His was a touch she remembered all too clearly, all too sweetly. He had threatened, he had warned of vengeance, he had waged his private wars with himself, and she had kept silent, and still, none of it mattered. If he had sought to hurt her, he had failed. For he seduced. His kiss upon her lips seemed to rob her of both breath and protest. The sweep of his tongue seemed to bring with it a sweet, volatile storm of searing heat, touching her there, filling the length of her . . .

  He kissed her still as his hand cupped around her breast. Kissed her as he stroked and touched . . . drugging her. Then suddenly it seemed that his long bronze fingers were entwined with her, holding them free from him on either side of her, and she realized that she had dug her nails into his shoulders, torn her fingers into his hair . . .

  Not fighting . . . him. Just the storm of sensation.

  Yet so much more was to follow . . .

  She heard the slightest sound. A soft cry, a whimper. It came from her own lips. She remained gently but firmly imprisoned as he continued his . . . revenge. The searing caress of his mouth covered her flesh, the rough tip of his tongue slid over the hardened peak of her nipples, circling the underglobe of her breasts with liquid fire. She trembled, writhed, fought to escape the honeyed sensations that cascaded into her being with his touch, strained to free her hands, to twist, to move.

  Ah, revenge! He would have no mercy. His fingers remained tightly laced with her own. The wicked assault of his kiss became ever more intimate. The length and strength of his body parted her. The hot molten seduction of his touch and caress covered the bare innocence of her flesh, bathing her abdomen, creating sizzling sparks of fire upon her thighs, finding then the very heart of heat and desire within her. Not even the shocked cry that escaped her, the wild convulsions that seized her, could sway him from his purpose, his desire . . .

  His revenge.

  She wanted to die. She thought that she had died, would die. The night had exploded into stars, into blackness, into stars again. She tugged furiously upon her fingers again, desperate to free herself . . . or to touch some unknown magic that seemed to glitter just beyond her comprehension. She cried out, cried out his name . . .

  And he was there, over her again, his lips now upon her own once again, fevered, tasting of the force of his passion. Her hands were free, she realized dimly. And just as dimly she felt the shift in him, the sudden tension. She felt him, the heated tip of his sex against the portals of her own, like a hot steel blade. Dear God . . . she had been so seduced, she had not thought . . .

  The magic was cleanly ripped away by the staggering sensation of pain. Tears swam in her eyes; she tried not to scream, but a sob tore raggedly from her even as she instinctively writhed to escape the invasion of his sex.

  She wouldn’t escape. Just as instinctively, she knew that. They had come too far. Damage done.

  Revenge . . . not quite taken.

  “Kendall, damn, Kendall, you little fool you should have told me you . . . that you never . . .” His hoarse, stunned voice trailed away, but his palms caught and secured her cheeks and he forced her eyes to his. She read amazement in them, and still the storm of gray battle was there.

  “If I had told you, what then?” she whispered. “Would you have let me go?”

  “I . . .”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  “Damn you!” he grated out, and he seemed furious. The tension in his body wound the muscles into hard knots that seemed to embrace her mercilessly. But they could not go back. She could not go back.

  “Would you?” she demanded.

  “No!” he ground out. “But I—”

  “Would have been more tender?” she queried, taunting them both. Dear God, she was on fire. Burning with both pain . . . and something else. The liquid fire he had brought to her body, instilled within her. The need she had so nearly had fulfilled . . .

  “Would you have let me go?” she demanded.

  His eyes stared down into hers, dark, stormy, passionate, gray. “No!” he informed her, teeth grating, fingers winding into a lock of her hair. “No, I’d not have let you go, nor can I let you go.”

  A ragged sob escaped her. Her lashes swept her cheeks. “Damn you, Kendall, I cannot let you go!” he said again, and she didn’t know how to tell him that she did not want to be let go. That, even just for this moment, she longed to be loved.

  “Put your arms around me,” he whispered softly. “Hold me, hold tightly . . . kiss me . . .”

  His lips descended upon hers once again. He tasted the salt of her tears. His knuckles caressed her cheek in a gentle flow, and his fingers thread into the length of her hair. His eyes touched hers, held them. Her lashes swept low over her cheeks and she slipped her arms around him, holding tightly.

  He felt the pressure of her nails, but knew she didn’t mean to hurt him. He began to move, holding back the ravenous hunger, the reckless, desperate desire she evoked. The wildfire that raged within his loins. Sweet Jesu, it was agony to move so slowly, exquisite agony. The tension began to ease from her body, some small sound escaped her lips.

  “Kendall?” he whispered her name urgently.

  She lowered her head, burrowed against his neck, unable to face him. But her body suddenly seemed to mold to his, to arch, writhe, undulate in rhythm. He felt the silken touch of her breasts, teasing against his hair-roughened chest, felt her fingers cling
ing to his shoulders once again . . .

  She had suddenly given him the freedom to soar.

  The passion he had held so powerfully in check exploded. He slid his hands down her back, cradling her buttocks, holding her to him to meet and accept the increasing demand of his driving thrusts. She moved to him instinctively once again, his fire seeming to spread within her as well, to flame and blaze between them, consuming them both, overwhelming the world around them.

  For Kendall, there was nothing but the man, and the sensation. The past had faded, her life was gone. She rode the night winds and the darkness and the sweeping hunger that had invaded her, reaching, alive with wonder, knowing that she craved some sweet surcease she could not quite touch . . . enjoying the strange beauty of the exquisite torture and pleasure, dying a bit with the wanting of the end.

  It came. A moment of complete rapture; oblivious to everything but the sweet nectar that swept through her body and left her shuddering violently, enwrapped in tiny thrill after thrill, then drifting downward as if through snow-wild clouds into a field of gentle deliciousness.

  Brent gave a deep, triumphant cry. She was aware of his body stiffening, driving hard, stiffening . . . Warmth swept through her again, filled her, encompassed her. She trembled violently in his hold . . .

  But then that hold eased. Swiftly.

  He carefully rolled off her. He did not touch her, but she felt him near her. He leaned on an elbow and stared at her, his curiosity fully aroused now that his passion was sated.

  Kendall closed her eyes and tried to roll away from him, crying out in protest when he relentlessly pulled her back. She had wanted him. So desperately. The magic had been beautiful, and she was still in awe of the sensations that led to the sensation greater than any other . . . rapture.

  She wanted to remember. To hide away within herself. To savor the memory while it was fresh, to create a dream with it.

  But more than anything, she wanted to crawl into the floor. And die. This had all come about because he had hated her. He had wanted revenge. He had used her. He had finished what she had begun, all that time ago in Charleston.

  He would never know just how great his revenge had been, she realized, and the thought was a whole new field of anguish.

  She closed her eyes tightly, her lashes long against her cheeks, a barrier she desperately needed. She didn’t want to face him, or the questions that would be no less demanding than his heated passions. She didn’t want to face the humiliation of them both knowing that he had forced no more than his first touch tonight.

  “Kendall—”

  “Don’t—”

  “Kendall—”

  “You’ve had what you wanted, you’ve had your revenge.”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Moore,” he said very softly, “I’ve just begun.”

  “Brent—”

  “Open your eyes, Kendall,” he commanded determinedly. “We’re going to talk.”

  Chapter Five

  If ever in her life Kendall had felt the irresistible urge to burst into tears, it was now. And if ever she had been determined not to, this was also the moment. She closed her eyes and lay stiff within the circle of Brent’s arms. “Let go of me,” she said tonelessly, adding a quiet “please.”

  The pressure of his arms increased tautly, but only for a moment. To Kendall’s vague surprise and relief, he released his hold. She lay on her back, arms crossed over her chest, one knee rising slightly to rest against the other.

  Brent stared down at her, puzzled, and torn between anger that she had again misled him, and guilt because there was obviously far more to the strange and stunning woman—who it seemed was destined to haunt his life—than he had been willing to admit.

  A streak of moonlight now fell on the magnolia silk of her flesh. She looked like a painting by a Renaissance master; her protective and alluring posture a picture of innocence that had been stolen. She lay on the floor with her golden hair a wild tangle of curls draping around her shoulders and over her breasts, seeming to enhance the aura of beauty and youth and seductive innocence. Her lashes were thick fans that grazed her cheeks, shadowed to mystery in the thin filter of moonlight. Yet for all its modesty, her pose was shatteringly sensual. Silver moonlight fell on the smooth hollow of her belly, and highlighted the graceful line of a curved hip and long, lean flanks. He wanted to touch her, savor the moon-silver silk of her flesh. Desire, so recently satiated, rose again.

  Silently he came to his feet in a smooth, agile motion and padded the few steps to retrieve his breeches. Then he grasped a blanket from the corner of the room and hunched down to balance on the balls of his feet as he cast the covering over her. Blue eyes, shining with the silver of the moon, sprang open wide as she surveyed him with surprise. Then her lashes descended again and she clutched the blanket to her, murmuring a soft thank you.

  “Don’t thank me,” he said curtly. “I want to hear your story.”

  “What is it that you don’t know?” she queried bitterly.

  “Are you or aren’t you married to that Yankee?”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was sold,” she said tonelessly, still refusing to open her eyes and face him. “Just the same as any field hand.”

  “You were forced to marry him?”

  “Yes.”

  Brent emitted a grunt of impatience. “No one can force another to say yes in the middle of a wedding ceremony.”

  Her eyes flew open again and fell upon his with a flame of anger. “Perhaps not the way you see it, Captain. But unfortunately we’re not all born muscle-hewn men with the power and arrogance to proclaim ourselves sovereign to the world.”

  “I see,” Brent said dryly. “You were beaten and dragged to the altar.”

  “No,” Kendall said coolly. She closed her eyes once more and again attempted to turn away. But he had no intention of leaving her alone. She felt his slight movement as he slid to a cross-legged posture beside her. And she felt his hand on her shoulder, broad palm and long fingers splaying over the blanket she clutched to her.

  “Turn around, Kendall. I want to know exactly what you were doing aboard my ship last winter. And I want to know why I just deflowered a virgin who has been married for quite some time.”

  She spun about so quickly that he tensed, muscles bunching in response to the heated venom in her flashing eyes. “Have you ever loved anyone, Captain?” she demanded coldly. “Not a woman, but a brother, a friend, your mother, perhaps? If you have, Captain, you just might understand. Love can be a greater weapon than any instrument devised by the cleverest armorer. When someone you love is threatened, Captain, you just might discover that you’ll do any number of things that are normally against your principles.”

  His gray eyes narrowed, but his hard, unimpassioned expression didn’t alter a hair. “Go on. I’m waiting.”

  Kendall ground her teeth together and turned her eyes to the ceiling above her. “Waiting for what, Captain? You’ve heard all I have to tell. My father died. My mother remarried. White trash in an elegant frock coat. Her husband went through the profits of an affluent plantation in a matter of years. He ran out of inanimate objects to sell, and so he turned to flesh-and-blood creatures. I believe the bid on me was higher than it was on my sister. High enough for him to promise me—in writing—that she would remain safe from his avarice if my sale paid the bills.”

  He was silent for so long that she jerked her head back so that she could face him again.

  He sat just like Red Fox, she thought. Spine straight, shoulders broad and square. His chest was still bare, the flesh taut as a drum in quiet, sinewed power. His wrists rested over his knees; only the slow clenching and unclenching of his long callused fingers gave any indication of emotion.

  “You still haven’t explained yourself,” he reminded her, his tone as brutally cold as hers.

  “I wouldn’t think you’d need an explanation,” Kendall said. She had wanted her words to be scornful and biting, bu
t despite all that passed between them, the discussion had come to its inevitable, painful peak. Crimson splashed its way into her cheeks, and her scornful murmur paled to nothing more than a whisper.

  “I don’t need an explanation for the obvious,” he drawled, not allowing her the smallest mercy. “But although I have yet to enjoy the pleasure of meeting your husband while conscious, I’ve heard enough about him to understand that he cuts a respectable figure. And it strains the bounds of rational belief to discover that a man who has supposedly purchased a bride at an extravagant price has also left her untouched for years . . . I assume.”

  “Three years, to be precise,” Kendall snapped. She clenched her jaw tightly as she saw that her flippant sarcasm hadn’t made a dent in his ruthless determination. If anything, he stared at her more grimly . . . more threateningly. She lowered her eyes and noted his hands. His fingers were balled so tightly into his palms that his knuckles appeared white against the dark tan of his flesh. Swallowing, she chewed nervously on her lip, then blurted out the answer he demanded without further prodding on his part.

  “John Moore may look fine, but he isn’t. He caught a fever several years ago that almost killed him. He has never fully recovered. He suffers from muscle spasms and severe headaches. And from . . . complete impotence.”

  A flicker of caustic interest at last touched Brent’s narrowed eyes. “And so you were deserting the man because of his infirmity?”

  For a moment the charge so astonished Kendall that she could only stare at him blankly. Then fury possessed her like a resurging tide, and the injustice of his callous remark struck a note of wild insanity in her. She sprang upward, forgetting her blanket, forgetting everything in her determination to strike the wry contempt from his cold and arrogant features. With a cry of anguished rage she hurled herself against him, beating her fists against his bare chest, wildly attempting to aim a blow against the strong contour of his jaw. “You are a son of a bitch!” she hissed, yet the vehemence of her whisper faded along with the madness of the action as his arms came around her like bars, crushing her against him as his storm-gray eyes locked with hers. The bare cream-white mounds of her breasts came in naked contact with the tawny-matted hardness of his chest, and she was rudely and painfully reminded of the intimacy she had just shared with the man who scorned her. An intimacy he would not be adverse to repeating . . .