Authors: Heather Graham
“Don’t be absurd, I know what I’m doing—”
“Do you? You’re fooling yourself. Opium and wine. In large quantities. You don’t think there’s enough death and misery in the world?”
“This isn’t your affair! Now, please give it to me—”
“You’ve already had too much.”
She was dead still for a moment, realizing he knew she’d already been taking the drug. Then she tilted up her chin and stared at him with a cool disinterest. “No, Colonel, I never have enough. And this is not your affair.”
He took the two steps that brought them back together and reached for her. She cried out in alarm, but he drew her close to him again, determined to get his point across. “I’m a physician, and I can tell you that this is dangerous. Listen to me—”
“Go to hell! Leave me alone! I repeat—just who do you think you are to come in here and tell me what to do?” she demanded heatedly. Her body was stiff; she struggled again to free herself from his hold. When he refused to grant the least quarter, she brought her fists up between them and slammed them hard against his naked chest.
He didn’t stop her assault, but stepped closer to her, forcing her against him so that her blows had no impetus. “Oh, do you think that you can hurt me?” he asked. “You’re drugged, weak, and pathetic.”
“Pathetic! Oh! I will hurt you—” she cried, redoubling her efforts.
He caught her wrists. She flung back her head, staring at him.
“Fight me!” he taunted. “Go on, fight me. Try it.”
She tried to wrench away, realized quickly that she could not.
He jerked her back. Her eyes blazed upon his with loathing.
“You don’t need it,” he told her. “You are going to listen to me. You can die abusing opium. You know that, don’t you? Are you trying to die? Are you really such a coward?”
She inhaled sharply, and he knew that he had at last touched the core deep within her. “I’m not a coward.”
“The worst kind,” he told her.
“You
really
don’t understand. It hurts. I saw him. I saw him die. I heard him call my name. I saw the blood, I saw his eyes. I can’t forget. I can’t get it out of my mind. I lie alone at night, and I hear him call my name. Over and over and over again until I can’t bear it—”
“You can’t hear him.”
“I saw it!”
“You weren’t on the battlefield.”
She shook her head, eyes meeting his searchingly as if she sought some kind of understanding. She then lowered her head, as if she were too exhausted to fight him further.
And he was sorry. He wanted very much to take her into his arms and hold her and comfort her.
She didn’t want such comfort from a stranger. All he could do was try to make her realize what she was doing.
“Don’t,” he told her softly. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
“Just let me go!” she pleaded, her voice feminine, sweet, weary.
“I won’t let you do this,” he said firmly.
She wasn’t so exhausted. Her chin rose, her eyes touched his like daggers, and she went into a frenzy of struggling once again, trying to scratch, bite, hit, and kick. She knew where to aim her blows, and he realized he was struggling to keep her from hurting him. Her foot connected with his towel; it was suddenly disengaged. Swearing, trying to maintain the towel while keeping her from blackening his eye, he lifted her and carried her across the room, slamming her down on the bed and leaping down atop her, using his weight to pin her. For several seconds she continued to struggle against him—then she went dead still. She stared up at him, barely breathing, her fingers still wound around his upper arms. It was only then that he realized he’d lost the towel completely and her cotton nightgown was wound nearly to her waist.
“You are hardly behaving as a Southern gentleman,” she told him, her face rigid as her green eyes met his.
“I’m joining up with the Yanks, remember?”
Her eyes closed momentarily, then met his, and she shook her head. “The accent, sir, is Southern. There are smart Florida boys with the Union. Southern men are bred to courtesy.”
“Northerners aren’t?” he inquired.
“Of course. But not with quite the same enthusiasm. Since your place of origin has been established, I think it would be in good keeping if you would behave with honor and chivalry and get up and leave me to my own choices.”
He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Damn you, where are your manners? What was your mama doing while you grew up?” she queried, determined to shame him.
He eased back, grimly amused by her efforts. “Well, now, ma’am, my mother did teach me to be respectful to proper ladies. But I went to medical school. And there we were taught simply to take drug addicts into hand before they hurt themselves or someone else.”
She flared. “I’m not a drug addict!”
“I wish that were true.”
“I’m not addicted. I just—” she broke off and closed her eyes, weary of the fight. “Would you just leave me be? What can this matter to you?”
The fire had left her; the last was close to a desperate plea.
He touched her cheek softly. Her eyes flew to his. “I’m a doctor,” he told her quietly. “I can’t let you destroy yourself.” He hesitated a moment. “And I’m a simple man as well, who can’t bear the thought of such youth and beauty perishing in the pursuit of a moment’s solace.”
He felt her slender frame begin to tremble beneath him. Her brows furrowed. “I think—I think I need it.”
“No.”
“I can’t face the night; I can’t sleep.”
“I’ll lie here with you.”
She shook her head. “No, no ... men think that widows, that ... you don’t understand. I loved my husband.”
“I do understand. I’ve seen far too many men die.”
“He called my name!” she whispered.
“He loved you, too.”
She fell silent, her lashes fluttering over her eyes. He stared down at her for a long moment. She didn’t speak; she didn’t struggle. He eased himself from her, lying at her side, smoothing her gown down the length of her body. His towel was at the foot of the bed. He reached for it, drawing it about himself. He wondered if she had fallen asleep. She suddenly inhaled with a deep shudder. He reached out, hesitated, then smoothed back a lock of her dark hair. Her features were fine and fragile, her skin flawless.
She curled toward him suddenly. Trustingly. He continued to stroke her hair. She needed sleep. Simple sleep, without drugs.
He was barely breathing, aware of the way her hair teased his naked chest, the soft feathering of her breath against his flesh, the delicate touch of her fingers where they brushed his side. Her scent was intoxicating. And he was not blind. Flickering gold candlelight played over the white cotton gown, creating shadow and light, falling over the fullness of her breasts, the shadowed scoop of her belly, the rise of her hip. He touched her hair, and she came even closer to him, sleeping now as peacefully and trustingly as a kitten. She’d best not move too far, he thought, or she’d brush against a piece of him so ready that she’d leap away like a bird taking flight.
She sighed tremulously in her sleep. Her knuckles moved down his breast plate. He gritted his teeth, determined that he must move. Anything overt on his part would be taking advantage of her pain and drugged state.
She moved even closer to him, as if she melted against him. Touching him. Sleeping. Resting so peacefully, so secure. She had been taking an opiate, he reminded himself. How much, of course, he didn’t know. A lot. She’d known what she’d been doing; she’d meant to do more. She’d meant to knock herself out.
Maybe she was taking advantage of him.
He started to ease away.
Instinctively, she moved closer again.
Where was the potency of that wine he had drunk? Shouldn’t that make him able to sleep as well? He was desperate for rest; tomorrow they had to ride again, and he didn’t know what Yankee patrols they might encounter.
He couldn’t lie here awake all night. He eased his head down, thinking that he did have to move somehow.
Somehow.
Oh, God, he’d never sleep here as he was. He could feel her, breathe her, sense her ...
It felt as if the length of him were on fire. Hot. Burning. A wickedly hard, fast pulse beat throughout his veins drummed through his limbs; he throbbed, ached, was constricted, tight, in agony ...
He groaned aloud. She didn’t move.
He tried to ease away. She moved closer. Reached out. Her hand lay upon his naked chest.
Again, he tried to move.
“No ... don’t leave me,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes.
Where is that sleep you promised me, Mammy Nor? he wondered. Had he lost the feeling of warmth and comfort from the wine, could he bring it back? Breathe deep, feel the heat in his veins, feel it ease the tightness in his limbs ...
He needed to feel the breezes again, remember a time before the war, remember peace ...
He prayed for sleep.
S
HE’D BEEN IN LOVE
with Richard Tremaine as long as she could remember. He hailed from Virginia, very near Washington, D.C. She had been born and raised in north Florida. But their fathers had known one another forever—they had both come from a small town in Wales. Richard’s father had become involved in American journalism, and hers had found Florida, salt production and plantation life. But the men had remained friends, despite the changing climate of the country. It helped that Rhiannon’s father had remained an ardent Unionist, totally against secession, no matter what the outside pressure set against him. In 1860, while the threat of war had billowed around them, she had blissfully wed Richard in a small ceremony in Washington. The first night of their marriage, she had awakened screaming, the remnants of a terrible dream haunting her. She had seen a battlefield strewn with the dead, and all around them, men calling out with haunting taunts.
We can whomp those Yanks in a matter of weeks ...
Those Rebs will be sorry they started this after we give them one good lickin’...
So many bodies, mangled, burned, bloodied, eyes opened, staring.
She hadn’t wanted to tell Richard, but he knew about her dreams, and that she often simply knew things, and so he had listened to her, and he had soothed her. She had been afraid, and so he had told her that he could take her mind off of her nightmares, and he did, making love to her, sitting up with her, sharing wine, making her laugh, making love again ...
But she had seen a glimpse of the war to come, and when Richard had received his commission, she’d had the dream again. She had begged him not to fight, but he had told her that he didn’t have a choice. And when Florida had rushed to secede from the Union, she had been numb.
Dreams. She prayed that they would not haunt her so. Richard had always said that she had to think about the good, and forget, block out, what she found to be painful. What frightened her. Sometimes dreams were warnings, perhaps, of things she could stop from happening ...
Richard.
Beside her now.
She knew, of course, that he couldn’t be beside her now. He had perished. She had seen it. In a dream. But dreams, perhaps, were deceiving, because she could touch him, feel flesh, feel heat, warmth, the wonderful, electric feel of life beside her in the shadows of the night ...
Remember the good, he had always told her, and he had been the good. Dreams could bring happiness as well as pain, he had assured her. She’d dreamed about his death, but he was with her now, and so, perhaps, the dream had been a warning, and she could keep him now, stop him from going into battle, make him stay, with her ...
She touched him, feeling the muscles ripple within his chest, the sleekness of his flesh. The quickening movements in him as the brush of her fingers teased and aroused his heated flesh ...
She could keep him. Make him stay.
She pressed her lips against his shoulder, his throat, lower, her fingers upon his flesh all the while, stroking, teasing, arousing
...
He was so still. Still as death ...
No ...
He groaned, in the night, in the darkness, in the sweetness and life of the dream.
And he touched her face, cupping her cheek with his palm, brushing her lips with his thumb. She felt an instant stirring deep within her, a hunger, an aching, deeper, more desperate, than she had ever known before. Perhaps, because it was a dream, each sensation intensified, the pad of his thumb upon her mouth, the fever heat of his body, brushing against hers, the extent of his arousal ...
He kissed her. Lips barely touching hers at first, then forming upon them, devouring them. She felt his tongue in her mouth, tasted him, wanted him. She returned the kiss with sweet, manic passion, wanting more and more. His hand moved from her cheek, molding over her breast, his palm erotic as he rotated it over the cotton of her gown. Desire
—
a white hot flash of sunlight
—
seared straight through her, and she ran her hand down the smooth, lean length of his body, finding the hard protrusion of his sex and stroking. The sharp intake of his breath against her lips assured her that she touched with magic
—
or witch’s spell
—
and she trembled with both need and pleasure when his hand slipped beneath her gown and slid between her thighs. How strange ... she’d been so uncertain on their wedding night, fearful of showing what she felt when he touched her, when they made love. But he’d taught her that love created its own boundaries, and he wanted all that she brought to his bed, witch, angel, enchantress ... laughter, passion, lust ... all belonged between them, and he wanted a wife who wanted him. She hadn’t known how much she missed this ... hadn’t thought ... hadn’t ... since
...
Oh, God. He pressed within her ... touched, withdrew, rotated his thumb ... withdrew just slightly, creating a rhythm that increased in tempo, teased and beckoned, aroused until she was arching, writhing for more and more. His lips were against hers again, against her throat, her collarbone. Her gown was thrust up, and his mouth flowered over her breasts, her abdomen, lower, lathing, soaking, teasing, tormenting ...