The Unsung Hero (47 page)
Mallory had pulled his sheet up over her body—how funny that she was so modest—and now she watched him cover himself.
But no sooner was he done than the sheet was off. She pulled him down alongside her and kissed him, long and strong and sweet.
He would’ve been happy just to kiss her all night, but she was the one who urged him on. “Please, David . . .”
He’d been certain she would prefer to be on top, to take control, but she didn’t seem to want that. So he shifted on top of her, gently pushing himself between her legs. She opened for him and he touched her with his fingers. She was so smooth, like satin.
Like heaven.
He couldn’t wait. He pushed against her, sliding slowly into her, and then—
That was strange.
He pushed again, but he couldn’t go any farther. It was as if he’d hit a barrier.
He pushed a little harder—resistance. Definitely resistance.
What the hell? . . . And then he knew. Realization dawned.
“Mal?” His voice shook.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him and he saw the truth. He was right.
Oh, God.
“You’re a virgin.” Even though he said it, even though he could feel her tight around him, he didn’t quite comprehend it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
He’d assumed she was experienced. With her attitude and that body, he’d believed . . . And she knew what he’d believed. God, he was a jerk.
“You love me, David.” She searched his eyes. “Right?”
He nodded, scared to death, humbled, ashamed, exhilarated. “I don’t know if I can do this. The thought of hurting you, even just a little . . .” He truly didn’t want to hurt her, but the idea that he was the first—ever, only, because there was only one first time—was a total turn-on. She, Mallory, had chosen him, David. She could have had anyone, anyone, but she’d wanted him. And he wanted her, now, more than ever.
He moved inside of her, just the little bit he could.
“Tell me you love me,” she whispered. “Please, David?”
“Oh, Nightshade, I do love you,” he breathed. “With all my heart.”
He kissed her mouth, her face, her breasts until the room spun around him, until his need and his passion for her outweighed his fear, and then he thrust, hard and deep.
He felt the resistance give, heard her cry out, and he held her tightly, buried impossibly deep inside her.
He was trembling as much as she was. More.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Because I’m okay. I’m really okay.”
He lifted his head to look into her eyes. “Are you sure?”
She smiled tremulously, then kissed him, raising her hips and pushing him even more deeply inside of her. “Is this what I’m supposed to do?”
God, yes.
David moved with her. Slowly at first, then faster. He kissed her, touched her, loved her. Loved her. For her first time.
It was amazing—knowing, absolutely, that she loved him, too.
David could see the rest of his life, stretching out in front of him, a perfect, endless comic strip of laughter and song. And Mallory was there beside him, in every frame.
He felt her release, felt her cling to him as she exploded. It was all he’d been waiting for, and he crashed into her with such a surge of pleasure, his eyes teared.
“Oh, David, thank you,” she breathed.
She was thanking him.
David couldn’t speak for fear she’d know he was crying.
But then she used the sheet to wipe her face, and he knew. Tough-as-nails Mallory was crying, too.
Because she wasn’t tough as nails. She was soft and sweet. She was a total romantic—who had saved herself for love.
Charles was in pain.
It was enough to wake him up. Enough to bring tears to his eyes and keep him doubled over and gasping. Enough to make him grab the bottle of pills on his bedside table, to shake more than one into his hand and swallow them down with the glass of now warm water that was sitting there.
He also grabbed the phone. He clung both to it and to the knowledge that his daughter was just a speed-dialed phone call away as he waited for the pills to work.
He hated needing her. He hated needing anyone.
But it would take a while for the pills to kick in.
He groaned aloud. Maybe this was it. Maybe he was dying. Right now. Tonight.
He almost dialed the phone, but then he remembered. Kelly and Tom. Tom and Kelly. She’d invited young Paoletti to her room tonight. He was probably there right now.
Charles saw the way they looked at each other. Tom was definitely there right now.
More reason to call her. Stop them from going past the point of no return, from falling in love. It was so obvious they were dead wrong for each other. Either that, or they were a perfect match. Charles couldn’t decide, couldn’t deny that he both wanted them to marry and wanted them to run as fast and as far from each other as they possibly could.
Although, if they married, Charles wouldn’t have to worry about Joe.
The pain grabbed him again. Christ. He clutched the phone. Joe. He could call Joe.
Yes, he could always count on Joe. Joe had been there for him, loyal and true, for an entire lifetime. Joe had forgiven him for all his indiscretions. All of ’em.
Charles was the one who had never truly been able to forgive Joe.
Or Cybele.
Cybele. He closed his eyes, praying for the pills to start working, trying to help along that drifting, free-from-pain feeling by remembering Cybele as she was in the sunlight.
He’d seen her far too infrequently in the light of day.
But that one day, that one bright, golden summer day, she’d belonged to him and he’d belonged to her—in the sunlight.
It was the morning after the explosion gone wrong.
Dawn had come and gone by the time Charles awoke, still exhausted, still in pain, still afraid of being discovered by the Germans.
He opened his eyes and saw the late-morning sunlight playing across the charred beams of the ruined farmhouse. He felt Cybele stir beside him and . . .
Cybele.
He’d been sleeping with his arms around her, her back to his front, his leg beneath hers, her head tucked beneath his chin, his hand possessively on her breast.
She turned now to look up at him as he gazed down at her.
He moved his hand, smiling weakly. “Sorry.”
She didn’t smile back. She just looked at him.
“Are you all right?” He asked it twice, once in English, once in his pathetic French.
She nodded as she pushed herself up, but then she sank back down, holding her head with both hands as if trying to keep it all in one piece. “Where are we?”
He immediately missed the warm intimacy of her body next to his. “Well, I’ve narrowed it down to . . . France.”
He wished he had water to offer her, but all he had was the whiskey in his hip flask. He took it out, and she shook her head. She had her own water, he realized, in a canteen left over from the Great War. The War to End All Wars. Hah. She took a sip, offered it to him.
He shook his head, preferring the hot jolt from the whiskey.
Cybele moved even farther away from him, leaning back against what was left of the kitchen wall. “What happened?”
“Luc must’ve had a faulty fuse,” Charles told her, struggling with the French. Still, she understood from his sign language. “His bomb went off too soon.”
“Luc Prieaux.” There was pain in her dark brown eyes. He wanted to hold her again, but he didn’t dare. “Is he dead?”
“I think so. I’m not sure, but . . .” He could still hear an echo of that single gunshot. Why raise false hopes? “Probably, yes. I’m sorry.”
She took a deep breath. “What of Henri?” she asked. “And Guiseppe?”
“I think Henri got away,” Charles told her. “As for Joe . . . I don’t know. Last I heard, he was leading the Germans in the other direction so I could get you to safety.”
She closed her eyes, and he wondered if she believed in God. He wondered if she were praying. For Henri and Luc. For Joe. For her own safety.
She was grimy, her face still streaked with the soot she’d used to blend in with the night. In the dark, dressed in men’s trousers and a coarse work-shirt, with her hair tucked into a cap, she could pass for a boy—provided the person looking at her was old and half-blind. But in the sunlight her femininity was even more obvious. The graceful line of her neck, the delicate curve of her cheek. Her too-slender wrists, long elegant fingers.
If the Germans found them, they’d have plenty about which to question them, particularly with last night’s sabotage fresh in their memories.
“We should wash,” Charles said abruptly. He wanted to get her to the safety of her home even more than he wanted to hold her again.
Cybele slowly pulled herself up, looking out the empty shell of a broken window. “I think I know where we are. There’s a stream nearby. If I’m right, there’s a trail through the woods we can use to head toward Ste.-Hélène. We should go.”
“You should go. I can’t even stand up.” He gestured to his ankle, now swelling out of the top of his boot. It looked awful. Christ, maybe it was broken.
“Mother of God.” She knelt beside him. Her touch was gentle, but still Charles had to bite back a curse. “Did you walk all this way on that? Carrying me?”
“No,” he said. “I ran.”
She looked at him, eyes wide, and he realized she’d misunderstood.
“I ran because I was afraid,” he explained. “See, it’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m really good at running away. Fear trumps pain. I didn’t feel a thing. Cowards usually don’t.”
Her eyes turned stormy. She didn’t understand half of what he’d said, but she understood enough. “Why do you always pretend to be someone you’re not?”
He was just as frustrated. “Why do you insist on seeing some kind of hero when you look at me?”
“I see what I see.” Cybele stood up. “Take off your boot. I’ll check if there’s water in the well in the yard. If so, it’ll be cool. We can soak your ankle in it. If not, we’ll figure out a way to get you to that stream.”
“I’ll go to the well,” he said, struggling to pull himself up. “Don’t you go out there without me.”
“You said you can’t even stand up.”
“Yes, I can. I was lying. See, I’m a liar, too.”
“I already know that,” she whispered, then turned away.
“Cybele.” Charles tried to follow, cursing and hopping.
She was back with a bucket of water before he’d painfully navigated his way around a pile of debris. His ankle wasn’t broken. He wouldn’t have been able to hobble on it if it were.
“Sit,” she ordered him back to the blanket he’d spread out on the floor. Her face was already clean, and she dipped the end of her shirt into the water.
“I can—”
“Be still.”
He let her kneel beside him and wash his face. He tolerated—yeah, sure—the sensation of her hands against his face, the sight of the softness of her belly as she pulled her shirt up slightly. But he couldn’t keep quiet. “You should go back alone. I can’t possibly move fast enough. I’ll put you into danger.”
“No,” she said with her customary, take-charge command. “We’ll wait until dark, and we’ll go together. Slowly.”
“Cybele—”
She looked down at him. “You want me to leave you here?”
“Once you get back, you can send Joe or—”
“Would you leave me?” There was no escaping the directness of her gaze, no denying that what he really wanted was to pull her into his arms, to kiss her, to love her. Would he leave her?
In a perfect world? Never. But this was no perfect world. “Yes.”
She laughed. “You are a liar.” But then her gaze softened, and she touched his face, gently pushing his hair back.
“I would. In a heartbeat.” He was desperate for her to stop touching him, but he couldn’t make himself back away. He used words instead to try to regain the proper distance between them. “Why do you think I’m in such a hurry to return to the American side of the line?”
It didn’t work. She dried his face gently with the loose sleeve of her shirt, that soft look never leaving her eyes. “Because despite what you think, you are a hero. Because you’re torn between what you want and what you believe is right.”
Charles laughed. Or maybe it was a sob that exploded out of him. It was difficult to tell. “A hero.” He grabbed her wrist, pulling her far too roughly toward him. “Would a hero do this?” He kissed her bruisingly hard.
She wouldn’t let him hurt her. She melted into him, taking his anger and returning it to him as passion. And it was. When Charles lifted his head to gaze down at her, only need—a powerful, burning need—remained.
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