Wild Midnight (36 page)

“You ought to know why.” He lifted a hand to run it through thick, brightly streaked hair. “I keep telling myself that you’re just one woman in hundreds, thousands of women, and there’s nothing that makes you so different—no damned reason to let you into the wreck of my life and into my bed for what’s left of my body. Into everything I’ve ever managed to get ironed out, under control, resigned to, alone, where at least I can exist. But still nothing anybody would want to live with,” he added harshly. “I knew that when I threw Darla Jean out. You’ll have to leave me alone, Rachel. I can’t offer you anything, believe me.”
 

“I want you to love me,” she cried.
 

He turned then. She saw him breathing deeply, the pupils of his eyes dilated like black, feral disks. “I can’t love you, Rachel. That, most of all. You’re out of luck.”
 

The words were strangely familiar to her; there was a momentary echoing, as if she were reliving some half-forgotten dream. “But I love you,” she cried. “It will be enough—I’ll make it enough!”
 

He stood watching her from under the fine dark wings of his brows, head lowered, lean body curiously still. “I’m not another uplift project, Rachel.” His voice was soft. “You’re not going to fix me, make me all better with a lot of Quaker loving, you know. I hate to disappoint you, angel, but what happened to me in ‘Nam isn’t all that’s wrong with me. There’s a whole list—beginning with being born.”
 

There was a long silent pause, the air thick and waiting.
 

“I’m pregnant,” she whispered, her lips hardly moving.
 

The opal gleam of his eyes didn’t flicker. There was nothing in his face that showed he even heard her. The silence stretched on as though it were binding them in a bubble of time, unreal and unending. Then he lunged out to seize her arm so quickly Rachel gave a small scream.
 

“Let’s go to bed,” he said.
 

He grabbed her hand and started dragging her to the door and the hallway beyond.
 

“Stop it,” she gasped, twisting in his grip. “What are you saying? What are you doing?”
 

“Taking you upstairs. Where I can get your clothes off.”
 

They were out in the hall. When he started up the curving staircase that led to the second floor, pulling her after him, Rachel grabbed the newel post and clung to it. She looked around frantically, but there was no one in sight. The house was quiet. The dim light in the front windows showed it was almost dark.
 

“Don’t do this!” she begged him. “Can you listen a moment?”
 

She wanted to explain that even though she was carrying his child, she wasn’t going to force him to make a commitment, she had already decided that. She’d come to tell him only because it was cruel for him not to know—and yes, in the wild hope that he could love her sometime, someway.
 

He broke her grip on the post with a sharp pull that nearly took her off her feet. In her high-heeled sandals she couldn’t brace herself enough to keep him from pulling her up the stairs. At the landing she tried to struggle out of that punishing grip on her.
 

“Don’t fight me,” he warned. “You haven’t got anything to be afraid of, have you? Your conscience is clear?”
 

“What do you mean?” she cried. “Where are we going?”
 

“I told you—to bed. I want to have sex with you. It isn’t as though we haven’t done that before.”
 

He paused at the second flight and Rachel stared up at the bleak, perfect features that haunted her dreams. She loved him and wanted him; he used that as a weapon to make her surrender to him.
 

“I won’t stop loving you,” she cried with a flash of defiance. “No matter what you do!”
 

“You’re making a lot out of nothing.” He dragged her along the corridor to the door of one of the bedrooms. “You don’t know a damned thing about anything, Rachel—you live in a dream world of pious nuts helping the downtrodden. You haven’t been out into the real world, but believe me, it’s a hell of a lot different. I’ve been there.”
 

He flung the bedroom door open and switched on the overhead light, a massive bronze chandelier. It was a man’s room, its elegant furnishings of mahogany paneling, oriental rug, and fine Sheraton and Hepplewhite pieces overlaid with a clutter of boots, riding gear, books, and discarded clothing. The bed was a massive four-poster, a reading lamp clamped to the headboard, computer printout sheets and magazines on cattle raising and hunting and the morning’s newspaper cascading over the foot.
 

“Lot’s of light.” His voice was slightly weary. “A real first for us, honey—I can see you, and you can see me. Lucky you,” he murmured as he let her go.
 

Rachel stepped back, rubbing her wrist. “I’m carrying your child,” she whispered.
 

“So you said.” He pulled his belt from the loops and let it drop to the cluttered floor. “I’m not going to be rough with you, Rachel. Have I ever hurt you?” He sat down on the bed and started unbuttoning his shirt, still watching her with his glittering gold eyes. “Take off your clothes.”
 

Chapter Twenty

“Why are you doing this?” Rachel cried. She stood before him, not making any move to do as he ordered.
 

He lay back on the bed, propping himself on one elbow, the discarded shirt in his hand. “Knock it off, Rachel, you’re being tiresome. Don’t you want to turn me on? I just want to see all of that sweet white beautiful body I can’t get enough of. Take your clothes off.”
 

“Don’t be like this, please,” she pleaded. “I know that you can be caring, so tender—”
 

“Forget it. Take your clothes off, everything off, a little bit at a time. I’ve never seen you undress for me, remember?” he said huskily. “It’s always been dark.”
 

“I want you to listen to me,” she told him. “I came here to talk to you. Not just because I’m carrying your child, b-but because there are other things too!”
 

He didn’t move, his big virile body tense, unrelenting. “Yeah, I know. Like you love me. I don’t want to talk about it, Rachel.”
 

He suddenly sat partway up and started lowering the zipper of his fly, still not taking his eyes from her. “Take off the pretty dress, angel. Just do as I say.”
 

Rachel stared back at him for a long moment, putting her resistance aside with an effort. She wouldn’t deny him, she never could, but she wasn’t going to let him defeat her. Very slowly, she unfastened the neck of her dress, pulled the zipper down to her waist, tugged her arms out of the tight puffed sleeves, peeled down the snug bodice, and wriggled out of the skirt. The silk dress was puddled at her feet, leaving her in only a lacy beige scrap of a bra, small matching bikini panties, and strappy high-heeled sandals.
 

He lay back on one elbow again, leaving his fly open, a small, hard smile lifting the corners of his graceful mouth.
 

“New undies too. Rachel, you surprise me.” His eyes traveled over her like flames. “You don’t look very pregnant.”
 

“I ... I am.” She couldn’t help a rush of pink to her cheeks. “I went to the doctor in Hazel Gardens. The t-tests were positive.”
 

He raised a dark, skeptical eyebrow. “All dressed up in a pretty dress and sexy underwear just to come here and tell me you’re pregnant. You’re magnificent, sweetheart. Now take off the rest.”
 

Still flushed, but setting her mouth stubbornly, she unsnapped the front closing of the bra’s nylon and silk with unsteady fingers.
 

“Slowly,” he ordered.
 

Slowly she pulled the bra away. When her creamy rose-pointed breasts swung free she heard the swift, involuntary sound of his indrawn breath.
 

“I keep forgetting how beautiful you are,” he said, staring. “No wonder I can’t leave you alone, get you out of my head.” His voice darkened. “Take off the rest of it, Rachel. But slow.”
 

Just as slowly she pulled down the bikini panties and stepped out of them, then her high-heeled sandals, her stubborn compliance confirming what she’d told him before—that she would not stop loving him. When he reached for her, taking her by the hand, she allowed him to pull her to the bed and over him.
 

“It
is
making love,” she protested. Taking him by surprise as he tried to put his arms around her, she pushed him down on the bed. “I don’t mind undressing for you.” She shoved his hands away as they tried to seize her. “But I’m not going to let you turn it into something ugly.”
 

He went perfectly still as she bent over him to tug at his trousers, the silky curve of her breasts swaying.
 

“What are you doing, Rachel?”
 

“I want you,” she said softly. “Isn’t this what you want? You taught me well, you know.”
 

His hands gripped her wrists tightly. But he lifted his hips to let her slide his pants all the way off. He wore black elasticized nylon briefs that tightly hugged his hips and loins, boldly revealing the big rod of his straining arousal. He gave a small grunt of surprise as she slipped her hands under the waistband to pull them down. “Oh, hell,” he muttered, closing his eyes.
 

His mouth clenched tightly as she stroked the white, pitted scars with the tips of her fingers, following them over his thigh and damaged hip to the triangle of sparse patches of brown curls interspersed with the slickly scarred flesh of his groin. He shuddered, his eyes closed tightly.
 

“
Rachel
.” The word was a harsh sound ripped from deep inside him.
 

She felt him flinch when a lock of her hair brushed his thigh. Then he was frozen as her kiss touched the rigid velvet of his flesh, his hands clenched in her hair. His face was taut, almost pained, as he shuddered.
 

“I love you,” Rachel murmured against his damp skin
 

“No,” he ground out, and jerked up. Pulling free, he took her by the arms, and dragged her under him. He rolled onto her, breathing rapidly, his weight holding her down. “No, baby, it has to be me this time. I’ll give you what you want, and I’ll take what I want, but I have to feel that beautiful body, I need to hold you. I need to get deep inside you, Rachel, I need to feel you tight and hot and sweet around me, that’s all I want. I’ll be gentle.”
 

With a low groan he fitted his mouth over hers and kissed her so softly, so deeply, that a silky fire flowed into her like scarlet waves, smoldering and spreading. Without moving his mouth, his tongue teasing her lips and her teeth and the sweet recesses beyond, he lifted her arms and placed them over her head and then began to explore her as though imprinting her on his mind and senses, outlining the shimmering smoothness of her shoulders, her breasts the curve of her ribs and the sleek fall of her belly, then the outside of her thighs. When she stirred restlessly she heard him laugh softly against her mouth.
 

“I haven’t been really gentle with you, Rachel.” The husky murmur caressed her lips. “No sweet words, nothing to woo you as you ought to be wooed, and yet you came back to me. Look.” He took her hand, his fingers around her wrist, drew it to his mouth and kissed each finger separately and then the palm, his tongue stroking lightly. “See how tender I’m being for you? I just want to have you, honey. I know you won’t hold anything back from me, that’s the beauty of it, the way it’s always been with us. That’s what makes it so damned sweet, so perfect, that I always remember.”
 

She stared up at that hard, handsome face with widened brown eyes, searching for some trace of mockery, but there was none. He seemed intent, careful, gently deliberate—as if he wanted not only to please her but to taste her, savor her as slowly as he could. With a small cry she lifted her hand to touch his tightened smooth flesh over cheekbones and the hard outline of his jaw. The quick scrape of his roughened fingertips went down her body and backup again swiftly, then he moved to follow them with his mouth, his kisses against her skin inexpressibly warm, tenderly soft.
 

He kept the pace slow, his soft words whispered against her skin, across her stomach and thighs, and then finally, when she was moaning for it, the delicate undercurve of her breasts. With excruciating gentleness his firm lips followed the ripe, creamy fullness, and at last with little nips of his teeth he came to the aching pink centers. She writhed wildly under him, trying to press him closer as his hurting, exquisite mouth took her firmly.
 

“In a minute, love,” he muttered. “Right now I want to do this, cover every inch of you, the way I’ve dreamed of these past weeks.”
 

He began in earnest, touching light kisses to her kneecaps, the backs of her thighs, his hard, stroking hands and fingertips following his mouth. His lips found her ankles, and he lifted her feet to kiss and caress them; as he held her leg high, his hand slid down the length of it to the warm furry patch at its joining, opened it with a touch of his finger and slipped inside. He heard her gasp, then her low moan of desire. He stroked her softly, watching her flushed face as she stared at him under half-closed lids.