Darkness

by Karen Robards

  “We’re not going anywhere.” Cal’s voice was grim.

  Gina’s brows snapped together. “You don’t get to tell me what I’m going to do.”

  Dropping his arm, she turned away to head back toward the entrance. She wasn’t going to leave the cave. Upset as she was, she wasn’t totally stupid, and given that it was now fully night and freezing cold and there was a snowstorm and killers on the loose, she recognized that she was confined to the cave until at least daylight. But she wanted to get her bearings, to see whether she could look out into the darkness and remember where Keith had been working that day. To see whether she could think of some way to get a message to him.

  If he was even still alive. Her stomach knotted and her fists clenched as she faced up to that. Probably he wasn’t. Probably she was the only one left—

  When Cal’s arm snaked around her waist and he yanked her back against him, that was the thought that made her whirl in the hard circle of his arm and shove her palms furiously into his chest and snarl, “Damn you, let me go.”

  “Not a chance,” he said through his teeth. Shoving the flashlight in his pocket so that only the smallest, dimmest circle of illumination surrounded them, he grabbed her wrists and backed her up against the wall and pinned her hands to it on either side of her head and leaned into her, holding her in place with the solid weight of his body. “Let’s get something straight right now: I told you I was going to get you out of this alive and I mean to do it. So yeah, until then, I do get to tell you what you’re going to do. Every step of the way.”

  “Get off me.” Gina struggled to free herself. It took only a moment for her to figure out that she was wasting her time: she wasn’t getting away until he chose to let her go. But in the process she became all too keenly aware of how truly big and muscular he was, of how firm and unyielding his body felt against hers, of how warm and strong the hands imprisoning hers were—and of how vulnerable she apparently was to his particular brand of way-too-aggressive masculinity.

  She was furious at him. Spitting mad.

  But the feel of him against her was turning her on. The weight of his body holding her more or less helplessly against the wall was making her feel things she hadn’t felt in years. The crush of his chest against her breasts made them tighten and tingle with pleasure. The hardness of his thighs against hers gave her an electric thrill. The unmistakable bulge between them was large and urgent enough to be felt through the combined layers of their clothes, and it excited her more than she ever would have believed was possible.

  He held her fast, his big body pressing her back against the wall, and she felt a shaft of desire so intense that she shivered.

  Everywhere his body touched hers she burned.

  She only realized that she’d quit struggling and was standing perfectly still, staring up at him with God knew what expression, when his face, which had been taut with anger, changed. His eyes narrowed and the tension that had thinned his mouth into a straight line eased and—

  He bent his head and kissed her.

  Taken by surprise, she had no time to formulate a defense. Her lips fluttered beneath the first soft brush of his, and then they parted to let him in. It wasn’t a gentle kiss. What started out as a testing, a tasting, a question on his part, changed the moment she answered, the moment he felt her response. That was when his mouth turned hard and hungry and demanding, and he started kissing her like he could never get enough of her mouth. The blast of heat he ignited inside her blew her away. Her heart pounded. Her pulse raced.

  She closed her eyes and kissed him back as if she’d been dying to have him kiss her like that. Her lips molded themselves to his and her tongue answered his as he learned everything there was to know about her mouth. He kissed her with a carnality that was like nothing she had ever experienced, and fireworks went off against the screen of her closed lids. Bones melting, senses reeling, she kissed him back the same way. When he let go of her wrists to wrap his arms around her and pull her even closer against him, she slid her hands up over his broad shoulders and curled them around his neck, and clung to him like her life depended on it.

  Which, she thought with some irony, it actually did.

  He took her mouth again and again, in a series of long, slow, drugging kisses that stripped away every last ounce of her reserve, that made her head spin, that made her body pulse and burn, that had her kissing him back just as fervently. He kissed her like he was starving for the taste of her, like he never meant to stop.

  She didn’t want him to stop. Arching up against him, she told him so in every way she possibly could that didn’t involve words.

  Words were beyond her. Thoughts were beyond her. All she could do was feel. She was on fire for him. Wild for him. Molding herself to the sturdy contours of his body, she moved her hips suggestively against the granite-like hardness of him. He made a low, guttural sound under his breath and pushed her back against the wall, rocking into her, letting her feel the unmistakable proof of how aroused he was, making her gasp for breath, turning the hot, sweet throbbing that was building inside her into a raging conflagration.

  Her coat was open: his hand found and covered her breast through the thin layers of her shirt and bra. Her nipple hardened instantly against his palm. Lightning bolts of desire shot through her, and her kisses turned feverish with need. He caressed her breasts, ran his thumb over her nipples, back and forth, slow and sure. Her knees threatened to buckle and she moaned into his mouth.

  Until then she’d never thought that she was capable of something as primitive as pure, unadulterated lust. Now she knew that she was.

  When his hand slipped beneath her shirt to slide up over her rib cage, she went all soft and gooey inside with anticipation. His hand was big and warm and faintly abrasive and unmistakably male, and the feel of it moving against her soft skin made her quake. It slid over the silkiness of her bra to cover her breast and she quivered and pressed closer, loving the size of it, the hardness of it, the heat.

  He pushed her bra up out of his way.

  When he fondled her bare breast, his touch set off a firestorm inside her. When his hand flattened on her softness and her nipple jutted into the hot plane of his palm, her body clenched and her heart raced and her blood turned to steam.

  “I want you.” He growled it into her ear.

  Oh, God, she wanted him, too. So badly that she was ready to tear off her clothes and lie down right there on the floor of the cave and—

  The cave.

  Oh, no. Oh, wait.

  She’d forgotten where they were. Who they were.

  His mouth crawled down the smooth column of her neck. The warm, firm pressure of his lips and the wet slide of his tongue felt incredible. He caressed her breasts like he owned them, like they were his to do with as he pleased. The heat and hardness of his hand made her arch up against him, made her clutch his shoulders and breathe like she’d been running for miles, made her go all light-headed and melty inside.

  She knew where he was headed: he’d shoved her shirt and bra up so that her breasts were bared to him. His hand shifted to cup her breast, to hold it ready for his mouth. Her nipple was tight and eager as it waited to feel his lips, his tongue. The mere thought of it turned her insides to jelly.

  He would kiss her breasts and then he would—

  No. No. No.

  “Cal. Cal, no. Stop.” She could barely force the words out.

  His open mouth burned against the base of her throat where it curved into her shoulder, right above the modest crew neckline of her shirt. It stayed where it was, all moist heat and urgent demand, while his hand tightened on her breast. His thumb swept with slow deliberation across her nipple.

  A jolt of longing made her shiver. She made a tiny, helpless sound of pleasure. Her hands were on his shoulders, her fingers digging into the smooth shell of his coat, but she couldn’t summon the strength to even try to push him away. She ached and burned for him.

  With every cell in her body, she
wanted him to—

  “Cal. I can’t.” Her protest was breathless. Unconvincing. Weak.

  His hand stilled on her breast. With an audible indrawing of breath he lifted his head to look down at her.

  His eyes were black with passion. His face was hard and flushed with it. His mouth—she couldn’t look at his mouth. She wanted it on her body too badly.

  “I can’t,” she said again, meeting his gaze, knowing that her eyes had to look drugged with desire and that her lips were ripe and swollen from his kisses: a face that said yes even as she told him no.

  His eyes blazed down at her. His breath hissed out through his teeth.

  The steeliness of his arm around her held her fast against him. There would be no easy escape if he didn’t choose to release her. His body was as unyielding as the stone wall at her back. She could feel the urgency in him, the depth of his need. The air around them was electric with arousal. It crackled with the promise of sex.

  His eyes flickered down, and she realized that he was looking at her breasts. Pale in the dim light, they were round as tennis balls and taut with anticipation. Her nipples were dark, puckered, and obviously eager. Curled around her breast, his hand looked deeply tan and very masculine. His big thumb rested right beside her nipple.

  The sight was so erotic that she caught her breath. With every cell in her body, she wanted to change her mind, to pull his head down and—

  She watched as his hand dropped, and felt a sharp stab of regret.

  Their eyes met. She had no idea what he saw in hers, but his were heavy-lidded and burning hot. That steely arm tightened around her for the briefest of moments. Then he let her go and walked away, just a few long strides but far enough, before stopping with his back to her.

  Gina was left leaning against the wall, breathing hard, her body still smoldering inside as she looked at his tall, broad-shouldered form with fierce longing. Pulling her clothes down, adjusting them, she fought to banish the physical yearning that pulsed through her in an urgent, relentless rhythm. She wanted him. Badly. Nothing about that had changed.

  With every rational brain cell she possessed she knew, as well as she’d ever known anything, that she was doing the right thing in calling a halt. Her incendiary response to his lovemaking had made it abundantly clear to her that she was hungry for sex. Nothing so surprising about that: it was, in fact, a good thing, a sign that she was fully emerging into life again. But however hot Cal might make her, he was absolutely not the right man for her to jump back in the sexual waters with. She wanted sex in the context of a relationship, and what she wanted in a relationship was a man who was kind and gentle and affectionate and, above all, there. A man who did ordinary things, who went to work at an ordinary job, with whom she could build an ordinary life.

  Not a hard-eyed, hard-muscled mercenary who’d just killed a man and who’d gotten her friends killed and was probably going to get her killed before he died himself. At best, he could be counted on to provide her with a bout or two or three of steamy sex before disappearing from her life.

  She knew herself: if she had sex with Cal she’d get attached to him, and if she got attached to him she’d wind up trying to put the pieces of her broken heart back together all over again.

  How totally stupid would she have to be, to open herself up to something like that?

  Probably, if she survived this and made it back home, she ought to try dating again, she decided.

  In the meantime, she needed to get her act together and deal with the man in front of her.

  Cal hadn’t moved. The rigidity of his back made her stomach muscles tighten. His hands were curled into fists at his sides. It occurred to her that she actually knew very little about him—such as how he took rejection. Was he angry or—

  Her hands were unsteady as—in instinctive, unthinking reaction to what had just happened between them rather than because of the temperature, which this far into the cave was relatively mild—she zipped her coat back up. The metallic sound it made was jarring to her senses. He heard it, too: she saw his head lift.

  “Cal.” Her voice was husky. It didn’t help that her bra now felt about two sizes too small, or that her mouth still tingled from his kisses, or that the hungry throbbing deep inside her hadn’t abated.

  He turned to look at her. Since the flashlight was tucked in his pocket still, the small circle of illumination surrounded him. She was able to see his face, while hopefully she was deeper in shadow and he couldn’t see hers well enough to read anything in it. His eyes were still black and hot. His mouth was iron with control. His body radiated tension.

  His eyes slid over her, registering, she could tell, her zipped-up coat. He said, “Hmm?” without any intonation at all.

  She took a breath. “Can we talk?”

  “About what?” There was a harshness to his voice that confirmed, as if any confirmation was necessary, that he was still at least as turned on as she was.

  Her lips compressed. “About what just happened. About the fact that we—kissed. About why I can’t let it go any farther.”

  He took a breath. It was deep and ragged enough that she both saw and heard it. When he spoke, his voice was slightly less harsh than before. “You have a perfect right to call a halt anytime you want. I’m fine with it, okay? So is there anything else you want to talk about?”

  She searched his face. Those ruggedly handsome features could have been carved from stone for all the emotion they revealed. Yet she could see the enormous amount of self-control he was exercising in everything from the curl of his fingers to the tension in his stance.

  She said, “I’d really like to know what you’re feeling.”

  He made a sound that was the grim equivalent of a derisive hoot. “So who’s playing at being Dr. Phil now?”

  “I’m not playing at anything.”

  His eyes were black and unfathomable as they held hers. “You want to know what I’m feeling? Fine, I’ll tell you. How about—horny?”

  At the sudden blast of heat that flamed at her from his eyes, the world seemed to tilt on its axis. She couldn’t tear her gaze from his. The truth, the horrible, incontrovertible truth, was that she felt the exact same way, although she would never have put it so crudely. Plus her state was specific to him, while she guessed that for him being sexually aroused was probably something way more frequent and generic, as in, any young and reasonably attractive woman in his vicinity would do. But to her dismay she discovered that giving a name to what she was feeling only seemed to make the condition worse. If he came toward her now, if he took her in his arms and kissed her again, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to call a halt a second time.

  “You don’t have to look so worried.” His voice was dry. She abandoned the hope that he could not see and read her expression. Obviously he could. “I’m not going to jump you. What just happened was an accident.”

  Gina frowned. “You make it sound like we had a car wreck.”

  “That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?” Pulling the flashlight out of his pocket, he masked its brightness with his hand and gestured down the passage with it. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Gina didn’t move. She was having to work to keep her breathing even. Her body was still all soft and shivery with arousal and, despite how ready he seemed to be to dismiss what had just happened, electricity still arced palpably between them. None of which was good for achieving the kind of working partnership that she felt their situation called for. Striving for honesty, she also wanted to do what she could to clear the air. Their survival—her survival—might depend on it.

  “Cal, listen: I loved what we just did. It was good. Great, actually. That was some truly impressive making out.” Watching his face tighten, she hesitated. When she continued her tone was earnest. “It’s just— I can’t go any farther. I can’t get involved with you.”

  His eyes narrowed. After a moment he said, “Honey, there’s a big difference between getting it on and getting involved.
And that thing we just did? It falls smack dab into the category of getting it on.”

  That whole speech, from the generic “honey” to the getting-it-on shot, made the hackles rise on the back of Gina’s neck. Clearly he hadn’t liked what she’d just said. Well, she didn’t like his reply right back.

  “All right,” she said, her tone several degrees cooler. “I can’t get it on with you.”

  “Probably a good call under the circumstances. How about we forget it ever happened?”

  Gina nodded, nettled but trying not to show it. “Consider it forgotten.”

  Her knees still felt wobbly, but she managed to step away from the wall. Not for anything was she going to let him know how shell-shocked she still felt from the intensity of the desire he had roused in her. There was no future in wanting him: she not only could not, she would not let this thing—the blazing sexual attraction, the tentative friendship, the building trust, whatever it was that the sum of those parts added up to—simmering between them grow into anything more.

  The truth was, there was no way he would be in her life beyond Attu.

  Provided they even survived Attu.

  That thought was the wake-up call, the reality check she needed as she walked toward him. Forget sex; think survival, she told herself grimly. It was enough to at least cool her blood a little, and to take the hot, shivery feelings that she still couldn’t seem to rid herself of down to a manageable level.

  Without waiting for her to reach him, he turned and started walking away, heading down the passage with the sliver of light skipping ahead of him.

  “I still want to warn Keith,” she said to his retreating back. It was absolutely true, but it was also in the nature of underscoring the fact that she hadn’t given in: she might be walking after him now rather than walking away as she’d been doing before he’d grabbed her and they’d kissed, but that did not mean he was the one calling the shots. Necessarily. Only if she agreed with what he suggested. She’d spent most of a lifetime giving in to people who thought they knew best, against her better judgment, and she wasn’t about to make that mistake again.