Children of Destiny Books 4-6 (Texas: Children of Destiny Book 10)

by Ann Major

  It was crazy to draw such pleasure in holding her, in talking to her. Wrong in a dozen ways. But confiding in her had brought him a strange peace. Caution told him he should send her below, that emotional closeness with her was dangerous, but the compulsion to hold her overpowered him.

  He forced a new hardness to come into his voice. "I lost everything—maybe because I was too soft, too trusting. My men, my good name, my soul, even you. All that is left of me is a savage desire for revenge against Otto."

  "So you took me from him."

  The gentle accusation was like a blow.

  Had she heard nothing? Understood nothing? Did she have no concept of murder? He could have shaken her.

  Deliberately he dropped his arms from her shoulders, but she remained so tantalizingly close, he could feel the heat of her body. Need for her made him grip the wheel.

  "Not exactly. I started a war. You got in the line of fire. I had no choice but to take you.'' A desperate tension filled him. "Believe me, having you on this boat is the last thing I wanted."

  As if stung, she backed away. "If you don't take me home, you'll ruin my reputation and life all over again."

  "Casualties of war," he replied with careful indifference.

  "The hundred men who followed you and died—is that all they were?"

  He went still, his dark eyes glittering.

  "Are you going to let Africa ruin everything you were?"

  "Shut up," he snarled, indifferent no longer.

  "I loved you. I thought you loved me. I made mistakes, and I've regretted them. But you've made them, too. You weren't a quitter then. It's as if you've given up on life, on what's beautiful about it. Is there nothing left...of Raoul? Of that wonderful man I loved even though I never knew quite how to handle him?"

  Why was her delectable mouth so inviting? Why did she ask questions that tormented his soul?

  "Nothing."

  "You’re lying." She edged closer again, standing only inches from him. "You remember me." Then she touched him, as no other woman could, with fingertips of flame that beguilingly traced sinew and corded muscle and made him ache anew with fierce forbidden needs.

  Yes, there was the memory of her and this feverish longing that refused to die even though he knew the world was a dark place and that his feelings for her were pointless.

  She let her hand fall away, but it was as if she’d branded him and he was mesmerized by the aftermath of its spell. His body raged to give up the helm, to sink into her and know the velvet, encasing warmth of her, to hold her tightly as he spilled his seed. He'd gone through hell to get back to her, only to find she was lost to him forever, even if he could never forget the splendor of her love and passion.

  When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible. "The women you've had, did you ever fall in love with any of them?"

  He laughed harshly. He thought of Anya, whom he'd planned to use in his plot of revenge, but Eva had given him his chance. "Love. You taught me the dangers of that trap. Never again. Women are to be used for the pleasure of satisfying an appetite. And nothing more."

  He saw the desperate hurt in her eyes before she turned away.

  "Let me go," she pleaded. "I promise that if you do, I'll run away—somewhere Otto will never find me."

  "I can't take that risk."

  "You don't care about me."

  She turned to leave him.

  A sane man would have let her go.

  Instead he uttered a low angry oath, secured the wheel and jerked her to him. His fingers embedded themselves in the thick waves of her hair. "No, I don't care," he muttered in a wild, gravelly undertone that was unfamiliar to them both. "I don't care... At least not in the way a woman like you wants a man to care. But you're like a fever in my blood, a disease that's devouring me from the inside out. And there’s no cure."

  As he talked his hands were moving on her skin, sliding beneath her fluttering blouse, handling her with a rough expertise that left her gasping. "I want to hate you or to forget you, but ever since I saw you in Otto's stateroom, I haven't thought of anything else but taking you. I want you underneath me. I want…"

  "Please...just let me go. Let me off this boat, and we'll both come to our senses."

  "It's too late." His fingers found her breasts, closing over the soft mounds of flesh. "I've lost mine completely. You're like a dangerous drug, and my craving is too strong." His jaw set in a ruthless line. "I can't let you go. He’ll kill you."

  Nicholas forced her back against the cabin, steadying himself and her. Then his mouth crushed down upon hers, silencing her murmurs of protest. Her hands splayed helplessly against his broad chest, Eva was trapped between the solid muscled wall of his powerful body and his cabin.

  "Raoul." There was a plea in the way she said his name, her last futile attempt to stop him.

  His hands roamed her body, noting that her breasts and hips were fuller, her waist slimmer. She was not so untried or girlish as she’d been. She was a woman, fully formed, and he was a man fully roused. She had teased him and beguiled him and goaded him. What did she expect him to do?

  She squirmed to resist him. She wouldn't have done it if she'd known that every move of her hips against his sent jolts of electricity down the hard columns of his thighs.

  "Be still," he growled, "Or we'll never make it to my bed."

  From the cabin came two loud, frantic squawks.

  Damn it to hell! The radar's alarm!

  Directly ahead he saw gigantic red and green and white running lights. They were dangerously close! In the next second a giant black freighter loomed out of the misting darkness.

  Jerking free of Eva, Nicholas raced to the wheel and spun it fast and hard to starboard.

  “Tacking!'' he screamed.

  The jib was cleated and backing. He rushed forward and released it. The big sail crackled wildly across the foredeck. He wrapped the sheet around the winch and trimmed.

  Then he saw her white face. Her gold-brown eyes glittered opaquely as the freighter bore down on them. Rogue Wave seemed dead in the water. Eva screamed and flung herself toward him, ready to die in his arms.

  The freighter's bow wave crashed toward them, preceded by a deadly surge of white froth.

  Chapter Eight

  The ship had passed them, and Eva was safe…physically.

  Still quaking from the near miss, she lay in the dark listening to the waves slosh against the hull, her heart pulsing in anticipation of facing Nicholas again.

  When the aft hatch opened, she heard him barking orders to Zak. Holding her breath, she listened as he strode heavily across the teak floor of the main cabin before hesitating at the threshold of his stateroom where she lay on his bed.

  Her blood heated; her nerves tensed.

  The door banged and Victor meowed as Nicholas stumbled inside and groped for a light. A shiver of apprehension raced through her. If only there was someplace she could run to or hide, but the yacht was a prison, the deep water that surrounded it more confining than the highest walls. Tonight he did not bother to creep about silently and pretend to ignore her.

  He hit his hand against the tiny fan bolted to the wall and cursed before he found the lamp switch and yanked it. Instantly the teak cell was flooded with golden light.

  Shutting her eyes, she pretended to be asleep even as she observed him through her lashes. His dark hair was windblown; his face gray. Despite her wariness, she worried that he was pushing himself too hard.

  "That was close." Ignoring her pretense at sleep, he unsnapped his foul-weather jacket. "We missed her by no more than two hundred yards. Too close."

  Yes. Silently she agreed with him.

  He was speaking of the ship. She was thinking of his kiss, of the collision course their relationship was on.

  "But close doesn't count."

  It did to her. Especially now that they were alone together and would share the same bed for the rest of Zak’s watch; especially now that she knew how completely changed he
was from the man she’d once loved. All day she had tried to please him. She’d cooked and cleaned. She’d listened when he'd talked about Africa and had tried to understand what he’d been through. But Nicholas Jones was not the man she had loved.

  He was a stranger, determined to shut her out. Preferring to live in darkness, he wanted to forget that there could be another way to live. All she could ever be to such a man was a pawn in the game he was playing with Otto or a temporary object of lust.

  Through slitted lashes she watched him hang his foul-weather jacket in the closet and then strip off his boat shoes and socks. Next he tidily laid them on the shelf above her to dry.

  Was this all that remained of him—a man who went through the mechanical motions of living? A man who was fastidious about his person, his boat—his things. A man who made vast sums of money in a complex, high-stakes, international business, his motive to win at a deadly game of revenge. He could have written the owner's manual on any technical piece of equipment aboard Rogue Wave. He could sail her as though she were a part of himself. But when it came to being a real person...

  When he peeled off his shirt and jeans, her pulse began to throb unevenly at the primitive, earthy, masculine vision.

  The less he wore, the more stunning he was…lean teak muscle. When he sank down on the bed beside her, his virile nearness cast a powerful pagan spell.

  Trembling, she stiffened and pressed herself against the hull. She could not let his physical appeal blind her to who he was. He’d said he used women solely for the pleasure of satisfying an appetite, and she believed him.

  If she had had any illusions, his violent kiss had dispelled them. Raoul was lost to her. The man Raoul had become, Nicholas, was so hardened he could never love again. If she let him take her and use her, he could destroy her all over again.

  She remembered his harsh words and laughter. "Love. You taught me the dangers of that trap."

  Guilt washed her. Was that true? Was she the cause of all that had gone wrong?

  Years ago, Raoul had loved her desperately, and she had done everything in her power to try to change him. He'd been a reckless entrepreneur, a brilliant maverick. But she hadn't appreciated his rare brand of talent, nor his courage to stand apart from the mainstream and excel. She’d been too young to understand that loving someone did not give her the right to remake him. Not that she’d spared herself. Hadn't she constantly tried to remake herself into the kind of person her family wanted her to be?

  When her family had objected to his career, Eva had foolishly asked him to consider a more gentlemanly occupation like banking or medicine or law. At first he’d laughed, saying a scoundrel would be a scoundrel whatever his trade and that an honorable man would behave honorably in any career. He’d argued that he was good at his job and happy in it.

  If only she’d left it at that. Eva buried her head in her pillow, but she couldn't escape the haunting memories.

  After she'd successfully hounded Raoul into applying to law school, Eva's sister Noelle had become pregnant. At the time, it had seemed expedient that Noelle marry Garret Cagan and quickly. Since the Martins had disapproved of Garret as well as Raoul, the two sisters had decided that Eva should postpone her engagement to Raoul in order to spare their frail grandmother two misalliances at once. Eva had been so sure Raoul would understand.

  Instead, he’d been so hurt and angry and had quarreled with her bitterly and had leapt at the chance to rush off to Africa to check Otto's oil fields.

  Eva remembered too well his last taunt. "Better to take a bullet in Rana than stay and become the whey-faced, namby-pamby hypocrite you and your parents would prefer I was.”

  Everything else had gone wrong after that. Noelle's baby had died. Grand-mère had had a stroke. Instead of marrying Garret, Noelle had run away to Australia, and the Martins had covered up the scandal. Then war had broken out in Rana. A single letter had come from Raoul—he'd promised to be home for her birthday—to talk things out. Instead news of his death and treachery had come.

  Her family had tried to be sympathetic, and Otto had tried to console her. When she'd remained depressed, they'd encouraged her to move to London and put the whole unfortunate affair behind her.

  For years Eva had tried to forget Raoul. If only she’d believed in him and accepted him, he might never have gone to Africa and done whatever he’d done. Maybe everything that had gone wrong in his life was her fault. If he was hard—if he was a killer, even—had she set him up for that fate?

  Nicholas Jones snapped the chain on the lamp.

  When the room melted into darkness, fresh guilt splintered through her. Too aware of his hip against hers, she tensed at his every harsh breath. He lay down, only to thrash like a great imprisoned beast, yanking the covers off her. Rolling restlessly back to his original position again, he heaped the covers on top of her, making her feel like she was suffocating.

  She remembered his strong body crushing her against the cabin wall, her hair blowing against his face in the darkness, his hot lips against hers, devouring her mouth.

  An hour passed with her lying awake and dreading what might happen next, but when his great body remained tightly coiled as far from her as possible, gradually her fear of him lessened, and she shuddered silently, sad about all that they’d lost.

  Beside him, as still as stone, she sensed he was alert as a panther.

  A strangled sob broke the silence. Mon Dieu. To cry now... What was wrong with her? Why did the tears always come at the worst possible moment? When she tried to bury her hot wet face in a wadded pillow so it wouldn't happen again, he stroked her hair.

  "Eva..." His equally tortured voice rasped across the darkness, infinitely soft.

  She didn't dare answer for fear he would realize how close she was to shattering.

  Sensing her pain, he edged nearer. Too upset to resist, she took comfort in his nearness, in the warmth and power of him.

  "Chere..."

  He touched her hair, petting the long silky waves.

  "I—I didn't want to bother you." Her voice was a small choked sound. She tried to keep her face buried, but he pried the pillow free and tossed it to the foot of the bed.

  "Pillow pig," he whispered. "You had both of them, you know. No wonder I couldn't sleep."

  His hand curved along her slender throat, turning her face slowly toward him. His lips brushed her cheeks, kissing away the salty residue of her tears. She held her breath, not needing air, if only his mouth would continue its sensual exploration of delicate skin and bone.

  She licked her lips, inviting him to kiss them, but although his mouth hovered close, he didn't. Instead he pulled her into his arms, sliding her smaller body so that it fit beneath his, and cradled her against him.

  "I'm sorry for what I did, for what I said," he murmured in a low husky tone.

  "Don't..." She put two fingers against his lips.

  Involuntarily her fingertips trailed downward, tracing the hard firm curve of his chin, the line of his jaw. When a single fingertip touched his earlobe, she heard his deep, indrawn breath.

  She withdrew her hand.

  A long hushed silence fell. They lay together, her body nestled beneath his as the boat rolled back and forth seductively. The hard feel of his naked flesh against her smaller shape rocked her senses. She felt the heat of his breath against her throat, caught his musky scent.

  Not that he was any more immune to her than she to him. When his pulse began to pound, his arms fell away. He clenched his hands into fists as if to resist the temptation of deepening their embrace.

  Feeling bold, she edged closer, touching him with wanton fingertips that made him gasp.

  On a groan he rolled over, pulling her on top of him so that her hair spilled over his perspiring face and shoulders and the long satiny strands stuck to his hot skin.

  "Are you sure?" he demanded, his voice unsteady as emotion-charged seconds ticked by while she pretended to consider.

  His pupils dilated.
>
  Casually she leaned down and flicked his earlobe with the tip of her tongue. Then her fingers curled into the wavy thickness of his hair.

  "I think so." She gave a long sigh.

  "You only think so?" He laughed throatily.

  When he drew her face down gently, it was Raoul who kissed her lips, Raoul whose hands undressed her and played over her body with reverent expertise.

  Quivering, she let out another sigh as wild, frantic hunger swept them both.

  Sex had always been good between them, but this was different. Fiercer, hotter. When he'd lain in prison with his leg so infected he thought he'd surely lose it, he'd held on to his sanity by dreaming of her.

  There was a ferocity in them both they’d never experienced before. His tongue licked its way down her slim body, tickling her nipples, delving into her navel. When her shaky voice begged him to take her, he moved on top of her, only to draw back stunned at her whimper when he found difficulty in entering her. Her eyes blazing, she held him close, her fingertips pressed into his spine, and whispered, "It's only because...there has never been anyone but you. Only you."

  She'd been a virgin the first time. But this was better, infinitely better. He touched her cheek tenderly and murmured something in French that was low and inaudible. Then he couldn’t wait. He was inside her, plunging, claiming, filling her, and there was pleasure, immense shattering bursts of pleasure that saturated his mind and heart.

  They were twisting and writhing, and everything that had gone wrong between them was forgotten in that one final melting explosion as he lost himself in her.

  Afterward he gathered her to him, and when she fell asleep cradled in his arms, for a fleeting moment, he felt joyous because at last everything was going to be all right.

  *

  Nicholas stood at the helm, coldly oblivious to the perfection of the sparkling morning. All trace of the storm had vanished from the skies and seas. Directly ahead he saw his island floating like a dazzling white jewel in a turquoise sea. The salty air blowing off the fringe of cliffs brought the scents of basil, bougainvillea, pine, and all the unidentified herbs Marcos planted every spring. At any other time, especially after a storm, the scene would have seemed paradisiacal, but this morning the bleached dome with its plunging cliffs loomed before, Nicholas threatening him. How many days—how many nights—would he be trapped here with Eva?