In one corner a pile of skins, probably crawling with lice and littered with rat leavings, provided the only place to lie down. The floor itself, Kristin could clearly see, was even dirtier, despite the sweeping she’d given it.
“Everything will be all right, princess,” Zachary said gently, and she was embarrassed to realize he’d been watching her, reading her cowardice in her face. “I promise.”
Kristin hugged herself and ran her tongue quickly over her lips. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“It’s out back,” Zachary replied, taking cans and small cooking implements from his pack. His gaze was averted now. “Take the broom—you’ll probably meet some wildlife.”
After drawing a deep breath and ordering herself to have courage, Kristin snatched up the only weapon available to her and marched around back to find a crude privy. The structure was made of very old wood, and it leaned distinctly to the left.
Kristin opened the door and flailed around inside with the broom until she was satisfied that no spider-filled cobwebs would drop onto her head. Something small ran between her feet at the last second, and she screamed.
Zachary was there immediately, but the look in his eyes made her wish she’d encountered a bandit or one of Jascha’s soldiers instead of a rat or squirrel. He handed her the flashlight and walked away, and she inspected the inside of the privy thoroughly before stepping in and closing the door.
When she returned to the hut, Zachary was heating water on the stove, along with two tin cans.
Kristin had been to the nearby stream, thanks to Zachary’s flashlight, where she had washed her face and hands as best she could. “What’s for supper?” she asked.
“Stew,” he replied, gesturing toward the pile of skins, which he’d covered with a blanket. “Sit down.”
Even before she obeyed, Kristin could feel things crawling on her. “I don’t like this place,” she said. “Couldn’t we just sleep outside?”
“We could,” Zachary replied, handing her one of the cans of stew and a spoon. “But it’s going to rain like hell tonight, so it wouldn’t be very comfortable.”
Kristin tried not to think about the things that might be living in the skins beneath the blanket. The stew, at least, was surprisingly good. “Whose place is this?”
Zachary shrugged. “It’s been empty as long as I can remember,” he answered, taking a place beside her on the blanket and beginning to eat from his own can of stew.
“So you’ve been here before.”
He nodded.
Because she was tired, and dirty, and her hair was a mess, because she’d wanted Zachary so desperately and he’d rebuffed her, Kristin felt a bit testy. “Did it ever occur to you that if you know the place is here, the bandits and rebels probably do, too?”
Zachary’s spoon was poised between his mouth and the stew. “Yes,” he answered patiently, “it did. But when the sky opens up and dumps the contents of your average reservoir on the countryside tonight, they’re going to be holed up somewhere, not out looking for us.”
With some difficulty, Kristin got to her feet. Still eating from the can of stew, she made her way to the door, opened it and looked out. Sure enough, there was no sign of the stars and the moon, and the sky was frighteningly dark. Even as she looked up at it, lightning snaked across it like a crack in black glass and the earth shook with the power of the thunder.
Kristin forced the door shut against a sudden and angry wind and turned, with what dignity she could manage, to face Zachary. “It’s inhumane to leave those poor horses outside in the storm.”
Zachary didn’t even stop eating. In fact, he went so far as to talk with his mouth full. “They’re in a lean-to.”
Again, the very air vibrated with thunder, and particles of dirt sifted down from the roof of the hut. Zachary automatically shielded his can of stew with one hand, but Kristin set hers aside with a thump, all appetite gone.
“This is some rescue,” she fretted.
Zachary glared at her. “Don’t start,” he warned. “Coming here and going through all this just to get your backside out of trouble wasn’t high on my priority list, either.”
“What was?”
He was chewing. “Wine, women and song.”
Kristin was unaccountably stung, and she turned away to hide her feelings. “I need a bath,” she announced, just to be saying something.
“Tough,” Zachary replied.
She looked around until she found an old wooden bowl that might serve as a basin. Using a little of the water heating on the stove and the sleeve of her shirt, she wiped it out. Then she rummaged through her pack until she found the soap.
“If you wouldn’t mind stepping outside—”
Another blast of thunder made the walls of the hut shimmy, and torrential rain battered at the thin roof. “I’m not going anywhere,” Zachary replied.
Having set her heart on a bath, Kristin couldn’t bear not to have one. She might not get another chance for days.
“Zachary, please.”
“I’ll turn my back,” he conceded, finishing the stew and tossing the can into a corner, where it rattled against other cans from other visits, now rusted.
“I don’t trust you.”
“You’d better start. Your life depends on it.” He grinned and opened his pack, taking out soap and a real washcloth. “All right, you win. I’ll just step outside and have a shower. Either you’re finished by the time I’m through or you’re not. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”
“Just don’t come back in here before I’m dressed.”
He arched both eyebrows, one hand on the wooden latch that served as a doorknob. “And if I do?”
“I’ll report your behavior to your superiors,” Kristin replied out of pure bravado.
Zachary laughed and began removing his clothes, tossing them past her onto the blanket-covered skins. Kristin watched him for a few moments as though mesmerized, then, realizing he’d soon be naked, whirled away.
He laughed again and went outside, into the pounding rain.
Kristin practically ripped off her clothes. Then she poured hot water from the kettle on the stove into the wooden basin and hastily bathed herself from heat to foot. She washed her hair, too, and was purloining a T-shirt from Zachary’s pack when she felt a rush of cold, moist air.
Her nipples puckered, not just because of the chill but because she knew Zachary was looking at her. Goose pimples raced over her skin, fast as wildfire.
She wrenched the drab olive T-shirt on over her head and turned to look at him, only to find that he was magnificently naked. She swallowed and, with a great effort of will, turned her head.
“You might have knocked.”
“And you might have asked if you could use that T-shirt,” Zachary replied philosophically, “so we’re even.”
She saw the flash of his skin as he bent to take another T-shirt and a pair of shorts from his pack. Kristin noted with despair that they weren’t boxer shorts, but the kind that fitted close to his form.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
The next thing she knew, Zachary was zipping the sleeping bags together again and laying them out on the skins. She was only too aware of his tanned, soap-scented skin. It would be cool from a shower in the rain….
“I don’t suppose you brought along a deck of cards or anything,” she said in a desperate effort to put off lying down beside Zachary, stretching out. Remembering the kiss he’d given her when they arrived, she felt her blood heat and knew she wouldn’t be able to trust herself once he’d zipped that bag around them.
He grinned and brought a worn deck from his pack.
“What else do you have in there?” Kristin asked.
“I would have thought you’d know, since you felt free to help yourself to my T-shirt,” Zachary responded. Deftly, he shuffled the cards. “I could insist that you give it back, you know.”
The shirt carried his scent, even though it was freshly laundered,
and Kristin wanted to keep it next to her skin. “I’m too much of a lady to give it to you,” she answered evenly, “and you’re too much of a gentleman to take it by force.”
He sat cross-legged on top of the double sleeping bag, and his chuckle was an evil rasp. “Is that what you think? You are naive.”
Biting her lower lip, Kristin joined him, carefully arranging the hem of the T-shirt when she crossed her legs. “What’s your pleasure?” she asked, referring to the card game.
“Don’t ask,” Zachary responded, and his eyes moved lazily from her lips to the swell of her breasts to the part of her she most hoped was hidden by the T-shirt.
Kristin flushed. “Stop being such a bastard and tell me what we’re playing.”
“Strip rummy,” Zachary answered, beginning to deal the cards.
Kristin’s heart hammered with an emotion that was not entirely made up of dread. There were, if she was to be honest, threads of pleasure woven in, too. That spell that had possessed her earlier was still very much in evidence. “I’ve never heard of that,” she said quietly.
“Every time you lose a hand,” Zachary replied knowledgeably, “you have to take off an item of clothing. In your case, it means living on the edge.”
Kristin picked up her cards, arranged them, and threw them down again. “I demand a redeal. You cheated.”
Using just one hand, he ferreted a flask from a pocket in his canvas backpack. “Now, now, your highness,” he scolded, unscrewing the lid of the flask with his teeth. “Don’t be a stick-in-the-mud. Sometimes you just have to play the hand you’re dealt.”
“Okay,” Kristin answered, laying out her cards on top of the sleeping bag. “Gin.”
Zachary looked at the perfect hand of cards and pulled of his T-shirt, revealing his broad, hairy chest.
Kristin’s eyes strayed to the odd little scar beneath his right nipple, the one he’d always refused to explain, then she lifted her gaze to his face. He looked insufferably pleased with himself. “This time I deal,” she said, reaching for the cards. She was all too aware that Zachary was wearing nothing now but a pair of skimpy briefs. “Where do you buy your underwear?” she demanded, to let him know she wasn’t moved. “In adult bookstores?”
Zachary ignored her sarcasm and offered the flask, which she refused with a shake of her head. He picked up the cards she’d dealt him and arranged them as though the fate of the free world depended on their order. Then, a slow, insufferable grin spread across his face.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” Kristin announced, flinging down her hand and scrambling into the sleeping bag. By controlling her thoughts, she reasoned, she would be able to forget the filthy skins beneath, and all the things that had probably nested on them.
“Chicken,” Zachary responded, pulling his T-shirt back on. He went to the table and blew out the candles and the kerosene lamp, then returned to the makeshift bed by the beam of his flashlight. “You were afraid you’d lose, weren’t you?”
“Or win,” Kristin answered quite honestly.
He switched off the flashlight and climbed into bed beside her, and the storm outside seemed to shake the very core of the earth. With an exaggerated yawn, he settled in to sleep.
Kristin was afraid to think of what might be outside, sneaking toward them through the storm, and she’d already ruled out contemplation of the things that might be under them. Her mind drifted, as she tried to keep her distance from Zachary, back to another night, when she’d known terror of another kind.
Zachary had been away on one of his mysterious missions when sudden, violent pains had grasped Kristin’s insides and wrung a strangled shriek from her throat….
The baby, she’d thought in desperation. Something was wrong with the baby she and Zachary had barely conceived, hadn’t even really talked about. Something was terribly wrong.
Stumbling to the phone, doubled over in agony, Kristin had called the paramedics, and they’d arrived in record time—but not soon enough to save the child. She’d lost it on the way to the hospital.
Her doctor had admitted her for a D and C and a night of rest, and the next day Kristin had gone home in a daze of disappointment and grief. Reassuring herself there would be other babies didn’t help.
She’d been lying in their bed, alone and sick, when Zachary called. She couldn’t tell him the child was gone; that would mean letting go, and she wasn’t ready.
But he’d heard the pain in her voice. “Kristin, what’s wrong?” he’d demanded. When she didn’t answer, he guessed. “Is it the baby?”
She’d remembered the conversations they’d had about babies then, how she’d told him she wasn’t ready to be a mother and a wife. And a horrible premonition came over her. “It’s gone,” she’d answered.
Zachary had been very quiet, and Kristin had known by the questions he asked that he believed she might have gotten rid of their child on purpose, even though he hadn’t come right out and accused her of that. And she’d hated him for it.
That very night she’d packed her clothes and left, sending a moving company a few days later for the rest of her things.
Now, lying beside Zachary in the darkness, Kristin was crushed by that same sense of hopelessness. Softly, brokenly, she began to cry, not only for that lost baby but for the lost weeks, hours and minutes, as well. She and Zachary might have found their way through the grief and confusion together, if only they’d tried.
She’d been a fool to run away, and Zachary had been a fool to let her, and now things would never be the same between them again.
4
Kristin felt Zachary’s hand come to rest on her shoulder. Gently he turned her over onto her back and, with a thumb, he caressed her cheek.
He didn’t ask why she was crying—he was just arrogant enough to assume he knew—and his lips brushed her forehead lightly.
A violent shudder ran through Kristin’s exhausted body, and it was as though she’d been thrust back through time, into happier, less complicated days. The barbs they’d exchanged and Zachary’s cold looks faded from her memory like golden leaves in autumn.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and snuggled closer to him, needing his warmth and strength.
With a groan, Zachary found her mouth with his own and possessed it fully. Again Kristin was electrified, with nothing to ground her. Her hands moved frantically up and down the muscular expanse of his back, seeking a place to hold on, a way to anchor herself.
He left her mouth to taste her neck, pushing aside her damp hair, and one of his hands closed lightly over her breast. Kristin arched her back and whimpered as he stroked the nipple with the pad of his thumb, causing it to harden in anticipation.
Zachary kissed her again, then went to her breast and boldly took the puckered morsel into his mouth.
Kristin groaned as she felt his tongue circle its prey, cried out when he began to suckle. He brought his hand down over her belly to the fevered mound where her womanhood was hidden, one finger creeping through tangled silk for a preliminary conquering.
While Kristin’s bottom rose and fell on the flannel lining of the sleeping bag, her knees falling wide, Zachary treated her other breast to the same thorough loving he’d given the first. Then he began kissing his way lower and lower, and her moist flesh quivered under the passing of his lips.
She pleaded with him, softly, senselessly, and gave a strangled shout of triumphant surrender when he parted the damp curls and took her. Her legs went over his shoulders, her hands flailed wide of her body then raced to his hair.
His strong hand cupped her bottom, holding her high, and she felt his hard back under her heels.
“Zachary,” she wailed, and he lashed her lightly with his tongue, rendering her nearly mad with need. Her head flew from side to side, her flesh was wet with perspiration from her hairline to her toes, and outside nature built toward a crescendo to parallel the one Kristin’s body strained for.
He gave her two kisses, soft as the touch of a butter
fly’s wing, and then nipped her gently with his teeth.
She cried out as the torrent broke within her, her body stiffening to align itself with the ferocious flow of pleasure that came from Zachary. She was gasping with exhaustion when he finally lowered her back to the sleeping bag and praying he would give her what she needed most of all, but he wasn’t through pleasuring her.
He set her on her knees and brought her down onto the warm moistness of his mouth. His hands reached up to cup her passion-heavy breasts and, while he toyed with her nipples, Kristin writhed on the tip of his tongue, her breathing ragged and harsh.
“Please,” she whimpered, “oh, Zachary, please…”
But still he teased her, mercilessly. She danced to the tune measured out by his tongue and lips.
At last, even he could no longer hold back the tide of Kristin’s response. She bucked violently as satisfaction overtook her, wringing hoarse, repeated cries from her throat, causing her body to curve into a supple rigidity as everything was demanded of it.
She fell down beside Zachary, convinced she had nothing more to give. But when, after several minutes of slow, tender caresses, he entered her, Kristin’s very soul was aflame.
Perhaps because she’d been so thoroughly tamed, she was the first to achieve the pinnacle. She knew immense satisfaction as she used her voice and her hands to guide Zachary through the treacherous territory of his own release, and his gruff cry made her heart catch.
They lay entangled afterward, the sleeping bag twisted around them, their hair and flesh soaked. Outside the little hut the storm continued to rage. Inside, the lovers slept, leaving regrets for the morning.
And Kristin had plenty of regrets when she awakened in the drizzly dawn and remembered.
Zachary, fully dressed, brought her a mug of coffee, made in a small enamel pot on the stove, and kept his eyes averted.
His voice was rough, like the sound of two pieces of rusty metal being rubbed together. “You and the prince weren’t planning to have a family right away, were you?”
She knew what he was asking—whether or not she could have gotten pregnant the night before—and she was annoyed by his assumption that birth control was her problem. “No,” she said coldly, “I have an IUD.”
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