Morgan's Mercenaries: Heart of Stone (20 page)

For once, Maya wanted to leave her heritage behind. Just this one time, she wanted to resist past lessons learned, and pretend they’d never happened. For once she wanted to simply enjoy this man, explore him and feel the sense of connection that he was offering her. Maya saw the surprise in his eyes as she turned and lifted her lips to his. Surprise turned to raw desire and his black pupils grew large and intense with longing—for her. She felt his hands upon her arms, pulling her more deeply into his embrace. Her breasts pressed against his chest. With her breath hitching as his head came closer, closer, Maya shut her eyes and eased forward. She’d never wanted anything more than she wanted this moment with Dane.

As he closed his mouth across Maya’s, a deep shudder went through Dane. Her lips were soft and tentative. Feeling her hesitancy, he placed massive control over his raging desire.

At first he was surprised. His mind churned despite the fire arcing through his body. Maya was vulnerable, and she was sending out a feeler of trust. Maybe, like
him, she was a little afraid of the intimacy that the kiss she offered him signaled. Just knowing that gave Dane the patience to move his mouth tenderly across her lips, to let her know that he, too, was shy for the very same reasons.

Maya moaned softly as his mouth grazed hers with unexpected tenderness. Never in her wildest imaginings would she have thought Dane capable of this kind of sensitivity. Sliding her hand across his chest, she wrapped her fingers around the nape of his neck, wanting more of him. He’d shown that he could take her fear, her hesitancy, in stride. He wasn’t about to blunder in.

Just knowing that he was attuned to her needs made Maya hunger for more of him. How could she have not realized that Dane was different from other men? Different in the most wonderful of ways? Lost in the glowing heat spreading throughout her belly, she felt his mouth cajole hers. He teethed her lower lip gently, wordlessly asking her to participate. His breath was ragged and moist across her cheek and nose. Maya felt the sandpapery quality of his face against hers. As he fitted his mouth fully against hers and rocked her lips open, Maya surrendered herself to him.

Easing his fingers through Maya’s thick, luxurious hair, and framing her face with his hands, Dane kissed her deeply and thoroughly. She was at once wet, responsive, yielding and bold with him. There was a courageous quality to Maya. Even if she was still afraid, she was trusting him—despite their stained past. Inhaling her soft, sleepy scent, feeling her hair swirling silkily against his jaw, he eased his mouth from hers. Opening his eyes, their lips now barely touching, he looked down into her drowzy emerald gaze. The desire
in her eyes, the sunlit gold flecks in them, called to him. Dane felt Maya’s hand move across his shoulder to pull him forward so that he could ease back onto the bed, with him on top of her.

Just then, there was a sharp knock at the door.

“Room service.”

Maya jumped.

Dane tensed.

She laughed softly as she released him. “Real life intrudes.”

He gave her an apologetic grin and reluctantly stood up to answer the door. “I thought what we were sharing was real life, too.”

Maya smiled. “It’s a dream.”

Tipping the waiter, he took the tray into the room himself and set it on the round table located at the window, which overlooked Cuzco. Dane felt his body aching without relief. He wanted Maya, he didn’t want food. Hearing her move around, Dane decided to stash those hopes away for another time and place. As he pulled the lids off the two plates filled with breakfast food, he saw Maya come to the table. She had her pink robe on, the color matching the high blush in her cheeks. Her hair was pleasantly mussed, and her mouth looked well kissed—by him.

“Coffee?” he asked as he sat down opposite her.

Maya nodded and placed the white linen napkin in her lap. Her heart was pounding. She could still taste Dane on her lips. Giving him a wry look as he handed her the china cup filled with coffee, she said, “I didn’t mean to kiss you…but I’m not sorry I did, either.”

Pouring himself coffee, Dane gave her an amused look. “Don’t be looking for an apology from me.”

Maya ate in silence. Her mind churned. Her heart
somersaulted. There was something so strong, so good in Dane that she sat there feeling like an idiot. Inca had seen it. Why hadn’t she herself detected it a long time ago? He was a strong, capable man, a man with feelings. He had an incredible sensitivity, an ability to know her, what she wanted and needed, without her ever saying a word to him. Maya knew how unusual that was in a man. Paying attention to her scrambled eggs and slathering her toast with strawberry jam, Maya knew the answer. She had been projecting all her own stuff onto him so she couldn’t see who Dane York really was.

“What do you want to do today?” Dane asked lightly as he spooned eggs into his mouth.

With a slight, embarrassed laugh, Maya said, “Well, after sleeping eighteen hours straight, I think I ought to get off my duff, don’t you?” She tilted her head and caught his amused expression. “How about if I show you Cuzco? If you love architecture or history, this is the place to be.”

“I like both,” Dane said. What he really wanted to do was get up and drag Maya over to the bed to finish the delicious exploration they’d started earlier. Dane knew that it was Maya’s call to make. Besides, they needed to get to know one another better. He didn’t just idly hop into a woman’s bed for the hell of it. No, there had to be a lot more between them than just raw sex and desire.

“Good,” Maya murmured between bites. “Let me take a bath and get dressed, after I make a pig of myself here with all this great food, and then we’ll play
tourista.
”

Chuckling, Dane agreed. “I’ve got the most beautiful guide in the world. My day won’t go wrong no matter what we do.”

“So, your dad was an army helicopter pilot, too?” Maya asked. They sat at El Trucha, one of the five-star restaurants in Cuzco. After a day of touring the beautiful old Catholic cathedrals that graced the central Plaza del Sol, they’d settled on this seafood restaurant as their farewell to the city.

Dane cut into the tender pink flesh of the filleted trout on his white china plate. El Trucha was quiet, the service excellent, the booths very private. “Yeah, he was a career man. He retired after thirty years.”

Maya tried the tasty yellow potatoes, a delicacy of Peru. “And your mom? What did she do? Was she a career army wife?” She smiled at him in the low light, enjoying the intimacy that had remained with them all day long. Sometimes Dane would touch her hand or shoulder, but he never made another attempt to kiss her. The day had been wonderful for Maya. She had never enjoyed anyone’s company as much as she did his.

Frowning, Dane stopped eating. “No…she didn’t like the idea of staying home and being a mother to me….”

Hearing the pain, Maya stopped eating and looked up, seeing the hurt in his hooded blue gaze. “Did they divorce?”

“Yes.” Dane tried to concentrate on the moment, not his painful past. Maya had changed into a sleek black dress with a boat neck and a pale pink bolero jacket. She had bought it this afternoon at one of the many shops around Plaza de Armas, the main plaza in Cuzco. Her hair was caught up in a French twist, a pale
pink orchid with a red lip entwined in the strands. It made her look delicious and so very exquisite. Pink shell earrings and a necklace adorned her ears and slender throat. He had bought them for her. And she’d accepted the gift like an excited child. But as she sat waiting for his reply, he knew he owed her the truth.

“My mother was a lot like you,” Dane said, placing the flatware aside and picking up his glass of white wine. “She was headstrong, independent. She shot from the hip and didn’t like staying home to do housework.”

Maya smiled a little. “I don’t know of a woman alive who likes doing housework, do you?”

“No, but she could have at least hung around to help raise me. She left us when I was twelve. She told my father that she just wasn’t happy being a housewife.”

Blotting her lips, Maya heard raw pain in his low voice. She could see that by talking about it, Dane had lost his appetite. “So, you’ve been alone for a long time, too.”

Her words sunk into him. “Alone? I had my dad, but he was away a lot of the time. I had a baby-sitter until I was thirteen, and then I was on my own.”

“Did your mother have visitation rights?”

“Yeah…but she moved away, and then my father got transferred, and it was impossible for her to travel two thousand miles to see me. You know how it is when you’re a military brat.”

Setting her plate aside, Maya thanked the waiter when he came over and whisked it away. Turning her attention back to Dane, she whispered, “I do know. One camp after another somewhere in the world, moving every two years whether you liked it or not.” She
smiled bravely. “I learned a lot of German and French when my father was moved around.”

“I did, too, but so what?” Dane shrugged and handed his half-eaten plate of food to the waiter. “I swore that when I went into the army, I wasn’t going to raise a kid the way I was raised.”

“Does that translate into ‘I’m not going to marry a headstrong, independent woman who might run off and abandon me again’?”

Dane stared at her across the table. The low lighting emphasized the clean lines of her face. Maya’s eyes were warm with compassion. “Probably.”

“No wonder,” she mused softly, “you saw your mother in me. We’re alike, from the sound of it. Only, I don’t abandon people.”

His mouth twitched. “Yes, you two were a lot alike. She’s dead now. Got killed by a drunk driver coming out for my high school graduation.”

Maya’s heart squeezed with sympathy. “I’m sorry. It sounds like she tried to stay in touch with you?”

“Oh, sure, by letters, phone calls once a week, usually. And sometimes she’d visit when we were stateside, but it didn’t help.”

“You felt she didn’t love you enough to stay and raise you, right?”

“Ouch.” Dane scratched his head and gave her a long, intent look. “You’re pretty savvy about seeing straight through people, aren’t you?”

“One of my better qualities,” Maya laughed. “And you know as well as I do how that skill comes in handy when you’re a squadron commander trying to make fifty-some people work as a team, going in one direction, all at the same time.”

He laughed with her. A lot of the weight from the
past seemed to dissolve from his shoulders. Maya’s eyes were half-closed, and filled with desire—for him. Dane knew now what that look meant. If only they had time…but they did not.

“What about you, Maya? Why aren’t you married? You’re beautiful, bright and successful. There’s got to be men standing in line waiting for you after this assignment.” Dane hoped not, but he wasn’t a fool.

Now it was Maya’s turn to laugh. The sound was husky and filled with derision. “Most men, when they see me coming, run the other way, screaming.” Shaking her head, she sipped the wine. “I scare men, Dane, in case you didn’t already know that. They aren’t ready to deal on an equal basis with a woman like myself.”

“I’m learning to….”

Her lips pulled upward. “I can’t decide why you towed the mark with me. And no, you never flinched or backed down from me. I respected you for that—despite our past troubles with one another. You were never scared of me, either.”

“I was raised with a mother very much like you in personality. Just because you’re strong and confident doesn’t mean you aren’t feminine. I think, looking back on it, that my father married her because he was so taken with her individuality and charisma.”

“It takes a real man to deal with a woman like that,” Maya said. “And frankly, I just haven’t met that many.”

“Mike Houston? Morgan Trayhern?”

“Yes, they qualify. But they’re a rare species, you’ve got to admit.”

“So,” Dane murmured, “you’ve got your personal life on hold until…”

Grimacing, Maya finished off the rest of the wine
and set the glass aside. “I don’t have a personal life. The reason I’m here is to do what I’m doing now.”

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a personal life.” Dane gave her a quizzical look. Her eyes look troubled, and she wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Dane, and I’m sitting here trying to decide whether or not to level with you about it. I owe you the truth. In my line of work, what I want personally has to come second, not first. I’m dedicated to this mission. It’s my life.”

He ran a finger aimlessly across the linen tablecloth as he considered her words. “Is this where ‘different’ comes into play?”

Sitting back, Maya regarded him in the building silence. “Let me tell you a story, Dane. When I was twenty-one, I fell in love with a warrant officer who flew the Apache. I kept a…secret from him until it was too late, and we were completely involved with one another. My secret eventually was revealed. And when it was, he was shocked—and scared. He never came back. I lost him. I was devastated, of course. I had been warned that my uniqueness would cause a lot of pain. My teacher warned me that most people would never accept me—all of me.” Maya shrugged painfully and set the napkin on the table. Dane’s eyes glittered with intense interest. “Well, I’m not going to make that mistake twice. I learned a lot from that affair. I swore never to enter into any kind of a relationship with a man unless he knew up front the truth about me.”

“Okay…so what’s the truth that will make me run the other way?”

One corner of her mouth lifted. Dane was trying to tease her into relaxing. The look on his face was placid.
Could he accept the truth? Maya didn’t think so. “It’s not that easy…. The truth, that is…”

“You’re a highly complex person,” Dane murmured. “It’s a large part of what makes you charismatic, I think.” And desirable to him, but he didn’t say that. He saw the fear and indecision banked in Maya’s dark green eyes. She licked her lower lip—and that meant she was genuinely nervous, he knew. “Complex people are fascinating to me,” Dane continued. “You never lose interest in someone who’s complicated. At least, I don’t.” Nothing she could tell him would scare Dane off, but he was piqued by the intrigue she presented.