by Sara Craven
He pulled her to his chest. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “You were having a nightmare, that’s all.”
She was trembling now, tiny shudders that lanced him to the heart. Stroking her back with all the tenderness at his command, he said, “Tell me about it, what was happening.”
She burrowed her head into his sweater, her arms fastening around his ribs with desperate strength. She had to tell him; she could feel the words beating at her skull, desperate for release. “It’s always the same dream,” she faltered. “But this time it went further than it ever has. I was so frightened and—hold on to me, Rafe, please don’t let go.”
“I won’t,” he said; and at a deep level knew the words for a vow. Binding and inevitable.
“The dream’s about Steve. It’s always about Steve.”
“About him drowning?”
She shivered. “If only it were that simple…”
“Tell me. It’ll help if you share it with me.”
Would it? Karyn had no way of knowing. But she couldn’t bear to carry this load on her own any longer. “I—I’m running away from Steve, that’s how it always starts,” she gulped. “I’ve left him and I know I have to get away and hide somewhere or he’ll find me. Track me down like a hunted animal. It’s in a city, I don’t know where and it doesn’t matter. I’m running down these dark alleyways…there are men sleeping on the sidewalk, all bundled up in newspapers like so much garbage, and I jump over them and run for the next alley. The whole time I’m terrified out of my wits—I keep hearing footsteps behind me but when I look, there’s no one there. My lungs hurt and I can hardly breathe and I don’t know how much longer I can keep going. Then, finally, I come out into the open and see the river, the water smooth as oil.”
Her breath hitched in her throat. “Steve’s standing there. His clothes are wet, still muddy from the river, and I realize he didn’t drown after all. He has a gun in his hand and he’s pointing it at my heart. Just as he’s squeezing the trigger—that’s when I usually wake up.”
Rafe sat very still, listening with growing horror. A marriage was being revealed to him, a marriage the very opposite of the idyllic love match he’d pictured. He said neutrally, “What was different about the dream tonight?”
“I couldn’t wake up. I was frozen, paralyzed, praying for release. Still holding the gun, he started walking toward me, taking his time, not saying a word because there was nothing he needed to say. We both knew I was powerless to stop him no matter what he did—that’s when you woke me up.”
“Thank God I did wake you,” Rafe said harshly.
Her arms tightened around him. “I—I don’t understand why you’re here.”
“I went back to the lodge, cooled down and figured you were right—I was using a double standard about commitment, one for you and one for me. So I came to tell you so.”
Her brain still flashing with nightmare images, Karyn could scarcely take in what he was saying. “Whatever the reason, thank heavens you came back.”
She was holding him so hard he could scarcely breathe. Her nightgown was made of some slithery material that bared rather more than it covered; to his nostrils drifted the same sensually layered scent he remembered from their first kiss. He still wanted her. That was a given. But when had he last comforted a woman, held her with a tenderness that sought to make her burdens his own? Or listened to an outpouring of terror that had appalled him?
Never, he thought. “Tell me about Steve, Karyn. What he was really like.”
Wasn’t it time for her to break her vow of self-imposed silence? And who better to do that with than Rafe? “How did you get in my room?” she asked, trying to steady her breathing. “I locked the door.”
“Through the screen in the bathroom window. It now has a big hole in it—I’ll have fun explaining that to the staff.”
Her giggle had a slight edge of hysteria. “He-man stuff.”
“I heard you scream,” Rafe said tersely. “I wasn’t going to hang around waiting for you to unlock the bedroom door.”
“What if it’d been a burglar?”
“I’d have flattened him first and asked questions afterward.”
A little kernel of warmth curled around her heart. “I bet you would have…my throat feels kind of weird, I need a drink of water.”
She was no longer trembling. Rafe eased back from her, smiling down at her in the semidarkness. “There are glasses in the kitchen, I’ll only be a minute.”
Karyn nodded, watching as he got up from the bed and left her room: a tall, rangy man with black hair and a body that entranced her. She got up and went into the bathroom, her gaze riveted to the ripped screen. After closing and latching the window, she walked over to the sink. She looked like a ghost, she thought dispassionately, all big eyes and pale cheeks. Turning on the cold tap, she scrubbed at her face, wishing she could as easily scrub away the past.
When she went back to the bedroom, Rafe was sitting on the bed, propped up against the pillows, looking very much at home. She took a long drink from the glass he held out to her and perched a couple of feet away from him on the mattress.
He said easily, looping an arm around her, “Come closer.”
It was so easy to yield to him, to let her head fall to his shoulder, to burrow into it and feel her overstretched nerves relax. For now, she was safe.
Knowing she’d lose courage if she planned what she was about to say, Karyn plunged right in. “I should never have married Steve. We scarcely knew each other—it was a classic case of love at first sight. Only trouble is, no one told me that kind of love can be blind as a bat…well, that’s not strictly true. My mother tried to warn me, and so did Liz. But I ignored them both.”
Rafe’s shirt was smooth under her cheek; the slow rhythm of his breathing was very comforting. “Steve was handsome. He was sexy and charming. Polished, sophisticated and ambitious—he was an accountant with an international firm. So he represented a wider world than the island where I’d grown up and gone to university and gotten my first job. Yet he was in love with me, ordinary Karyn Marshall from Heddingley, Prince Edward Island. I knew I was the luckiest woman in the world. We got a special licence, got married, had a honeymoon in Hawaii and then came home and broke the news.”
She sighed. “Once we were settled, we threw a big party to celebrate our marriage. An old boyfriend—he was there with his wife—asked me to dance. We hadn’t taken ten steps before Steve cut in and whirled me away. I remember thinking at the time how strong Steve was and how much he loved me—so much so, that he wouldn’t want me dancing with anyone else…naive, wasn’t I? You can probably guess the rest. I gradually realized that Steve was enormously possessive and pathologically jealous. I work mostly with men. I visit a lot of farms, where there are more men. And yes, I’d dated at university, why wouldn’t I? He questioned me obsessively, he didn’t want to let me out of his sight in my off-duty hours, and he soon let it be known he didn’t approve of my friendship with Liz.”
“So you had no one to confide in?”
Grateful that Rafe had so quickly understood her isolation, Karyn nodded. “I suppose Steve did love me, in his way. That’s what’s so frightening—how many guises love can take, not all of them pleasant.”
“Did he hurt you? Physically, I mean?” Rafe asked, taking care to keep any emotion out of his voice.
“Very rarely—he didn’t need to.” She frowned. “It was so insidious, Rafe. At first I thought he was joking. If you
ever dance with Dave again, I’ll break your neck. But then I realized that it was no joke. He meant it. He was bigger than me, much stronger…and yes, I was afraid of him. Outwardly—to my mother, at the clinic—I kept up this huge front that we were a loving and happily married couple. But all the while I was trying desperately to figure out how to leave him.”
“Living a lie’s one of the hardest things you can do.”
“Just ask me,” she said unhappily. “A foolproof way to leave Steve—th
at’s all I wanted. I couldn’t just disappear from the face of the earth, and he’d told me if I left him he’d track me down no matter where I went. Was I going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder?”
“You’d have left him,” Rafe said. “Eventually.”
“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced.
“There’s no question of your courage.”
“But that’s just it! You know why I still don’t talk about him? Not even to Liz, who’s my best friend. Or to Fiona, my very own sister. It’s because I’m so ashamed. He turned me into someone I scarcely knew. A coward, who jumped if a shadow moved. A woman who kept trying to placate her husband, please him, keep everything smooth on the surface. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so awful. I couldn’t make him happy, no matter what I did, or how much I circumscribed my life and my friendships. My self-esteem plummeted. I despised myself because I didn’t dare tell him to go to hell, because I was too afraid to walk out my own front door and never come back.”
She let out her breath in a long sigh. “Well, you got an earful there.”
“Karyn, you had good reason to be afraid. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I hated the woman I’d become,” she said in a low voice.
She was picking at the fringe on her bedspread, her head downbent. Rafe lifted her chin, looking straight into her eyes. “Your dream is prophetic—you knew all along that Steve was capable of violence. So you were wise to be afraid of him, and sooner or later you’d have figured out a way to get clear of him. I know you would.”
Tears caught on her lashes, she mumbled, “I wish I could believe you.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he repeated forcibly.
She ducked her head still lower. “Yes, I do. I haven’t told you the worst. When the police came to the clinic and told me Steve had drowned in the river, do you know what I felt? Relief. As though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. That’s a terrible epitaph for a marriage.” She gave an unsteady laugh. “And then, of course, he was hailed as a hero in the community, and I had to go along with it. It was true—he did save Donny’s life at the cost of his own. I’ve tried so hard to believe that he redeemed himself at the end.”
Rafe kept to himself his own conclusions: that Steve’s ego had been so immense he couldn’t have conceived he might drown in the river that ran behind his house. “You’ve never told anyone any of this?”
“I couldn’t bear to. It was so tawdry, so unconvincing—sure, he gave me a few bruises every now and then, but otherwise I had no evidence. Outwardly, Steve adored me. People used to tell me how lucky I was to have such a handsome husband who doted on me.” She grimaced. “I sold the house we’d lived in, I sold his car, and I changed my name back to Marshall. The whole village looked at me askance, but there was no way I could explain.”
“Maybe you should try telling Fiona, who loves you. Or your friend Liz. Now that you’ve told me.”
Karyn sat up, turning to face him. “I’m glad I’ve told you, Rafe,” she said slowly. “Thank you for listening.”
She looked heartbreakingly fragile in her pale gown, her skin with the sheen of ivory. He could see the jut of her breasts under the silky fabric, and felt his mouth go dry. But how could he possibly suggest they make love after everything she’d told him? “If you’re okay, I’ll go to my room now.”
“Stay here with me.”
“Karyn, I—”
“I don’t want to be alone, Rafe.”
“All right,” he said slowly, “I’ll stay. I can sleep in the armchair.”
She grabbed him instinctively. “No! Here in bed with me. I need you close.”
A test, Rafe thought wryly. Of restraint, self-control and willpower. Could he lie beside Karyn in the velvet darkness, hold her in his arms and only offer comfort?
Sure he could. If that’s what she needed.
Besides, how could he even be thinking of making love to her now that he knew what a wasteland of fear and loneliness her marriage had been?
Karyn sank down on the bed and tugged at his sleeve. “Hold on to me, Rafe…please.”
He pulled off his shoes and socks, and tossed his tie and belt on the chair. Lying beside her, he drew her into his arms, gently pressing her face into his shoulder. She felt as tense as a cornered animal. “You’re safe,” he murmured. “No one will ever hurt you while I’m around.”
For a space of time that felt like forever to him, she lay still; he had no idea what she was thinking. Then she pulled away, gazing up at him in the darkness. “Rafe,” she said unevenly, “I want you to make love to me.”
He reared up on one elbow. He’d outfaced tycoons and bluffed his way through cutthroat negotiations on which his whole future had depended; but a handful of words from Karyn and he was speechless.
Ducking her head, she blurted, “I shouldn’t have asked you—I’m sorry.”
“Karyn, I’m not hesitating because I don’t want you,” Rafe said forcibly. “But are you sure this is the right time? You’ve just had a horrible nightmare and you’re upset…”
“I want you, Rafe,” she said in a low voice. “Now.”
His heart overflowed with an emotion he couldn’t even name. He said huskily, “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
She looked as high-strung as a racehorse, by no means as certain as she was striving to sound. So it was up to him to bridge the gap between the terror that was Steve’s legacy and the joy that could be his own gift. Rafe reached out and drew her into his arms again, her soft curls tickling his chin as he began stroking the length of her spine, smoothly and rhythmically. “We’ve got all the time in the world,” he whispered, closing his eyes and allowing his senses to be saturated with her: her scent, her warmth, her beauty. He moved to her shoulders, rubbing the tension from them, feeling her gradually begin to relax.
She gave a tiny sigh of pleasure and lifted her face to be kissed. “I feel as though I’ve never done this before,” she said with a shaky laugh.
“We haven’t. Not with each other.” He bent to find her lips, their waiting softness sending a shaft of heat the length of his body. He stamped it down. This wasn’t about him. With exquisite control he laved her lips with his tongue, nibbling them, teasing them open, then kissing her in a surge of tenderness. A kiss he wanted to go on forever, he thought dimly.
The first flick of her tongue sent another of those heated flashes through every nerve. He ran his hands along the yielding curve of her back, let his palms span her ribs and drift to the ripe swell of hip. The satin of her gown tantalized him with its smooth flow; frustrated him because it hid from him her nudity. Need slammed through him. But he couldn’t rush her. He mustn’t.
Then she undid three buttons on his shirt, sliding her hand beneath it. He gasped involuntarily as she tugged at his chest hair, exploring the arc of rib and the hardness of his belly. Releasing her briefly, Rafe hauled his shirt off, and in a firestorm of desire felt her press her breasts to his bare skin. He took their firm ripeness in his palms and lowered his head; pushing her gown aside, he suckled her, tasting, lingering, caressing, all the while inflamed by her small moans of pleasure. Her head was thrown back. He trailed his mouth the length of her throat, skimming the shells of her ears, nipping her lobes. Then, fighting for restraint, he kissed her again.
She said jaggedly, “Take off my gown, Rafe.”
Her eyes were like deep pools of darkness; as she rose to her knees, he slipped the gown over her head and let it fall to the bed. Her body was illumined in the pale glow of the moon, all flow and surrender. He said, scarcely trusting his voice, “You’re so beautiful, Karyn.”
Drawing her closer, he buried his face between her breasts, the rapid staccato of her heartbeat echoing in his ear. He held the whole world. All he had ever wanted or desired.
As her fingers ran through his hair, he shifted his head, tonguing the sweet rise of her flesh and flicking its tip to hardness. S
he was whispering his name, over and over, her eyes closed in ecstasy, her body arching backward. He slid his mouth down the tautness of her belly, grasping her by the hips and then touching her between the thighs. She was hot and wet; he almost lost control.
With his fingertips he found her center, watched her shudder in response, her face a blur of desire. Using all the skill at his command, he played with her until she was writhing and sobbing. Beneath his fingers, the throbbing gathered and spun out of control and with the harsh cry of a falcon as it plummets from the sky, she collapsed into his arms.
Her heart was thrumming against his rib cage. Her tiny puffs of breath warmed his bare skin. Then she muttered, “Thank you, Rafe…oh, thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” he said, and knew, instinctively, that for Steve her pleasure would never have been paramount. He, Rafe, was more than making love to her; he was exorcising a ghost. Hadn’t he known that all along?
He held her, his heart pounding, his whole body craving its own release. Very slowly she raised her head, her breath still as rapid as if she’d been running. Then she kissed him, her teeth scraping his lips in deliberate seduction.
He couldn’t take much more. “Don’t you think we should go easy, you must be worn-out—”
She was sinking down on the bed, fumbling for the catch on his trousers. “It’s not fair,” she whispered, “I haven’t got a stitch on, and look at you.” She gave a tiny, incredulous laugh. “Just look at you,” she repeated, her eyes wandering over his body like licks of fire. “You’re beautiful, too.”
A simple compliment, yet it speared him to the heart. “Karyn,” he said helplessly, “all I want is for you to be happy…”
She was edging his zipper down, her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration; suddenly impatient, he twisted off his trousers and his boxers. Since he’d first started massaging her shoulders, he’d been hard and ready for her; and had kept his distance, not wanting to frighten her.
She smiled at him, a smile of such sweetness that his breath caught in his throat. “I want you to be happy, too.”