Cates, Kimberly (14 page)

"Did I hurt you? Are you all right?"

"No, damn it. I'm not all right."

"What... what is wrong?"

"This." He growled, his hand sweeping up to delve into the damp tangle of her hair. He tugged her mouth down toward his. Her heart slammed against her ribs at the hot intent glimmering beneath his lashes. And

Rhiannon wondered if she'd ever have the will to draw another breath as the sensual fullness of Redmayne's mouth closed over hers.

The contact jolted through her as if he'd infused her with the very essence of life—awakened her from a nursery world, all bright smiles and pretty stories, fistfuls of daisies and scuffed play slippers—and suddenly she'd awakened in a realm of legends and lovers, passions and promises.

She should have been shocked. For his was no tentative kiss. It gripped her in a fist of sensation, wild and wonderful and so unfamiliar she never wanted it to end.

She sensed that he expected her to draw away from him. But her own lips melted deeper into his as he explored the contours of her mouth, tasting, nipping, soothing the tender curves with his tongue. A gasp of pleasure parted her lips, her elbows buckling, until the tips of her breasts, unbound beneath her damp shift, brushed his naked chest.

She felt a ripple of heat radiate through him. His uninjured arm curved around her waist, pulled her down until she lay half across him, a tangle of damp linen, bare feet, and cascading hair.

The intimacy was searing, intoxicating, but he hurled her higher still, his tongue slipping between her parted lips, seeking the warm, eager cavern beyond them.

This was no gentleman's chaste kiss for his sweetheart. This was the kiss of a man, experienced in the ways of the flesh, an expert lover who knew how to stoke the fires he'd started within her.

Hungry. Hot. Insistent. He was all of those things. She should have pulled away. Instead, she opened herself to it with a soft moan.

"Rhiannon... you taste so... so good. Can't stop myself." He murmured against her mouth. Even through the haze of passion, his words struck her as odd. This man, so fiercely controlled, surrendering to impulses he didn't wish to. A surrender that thrilled her, and yet had come perhaps too easily to be trusted.

His hand stole up between them, and Rhiannon caught her breath as he teased the tender side of her breast. His fingers shifted until the hot point of her nipple was centered in his wide palm. A low groan reverberated through him, and in a heartbeat he'd opened the tie of her shift, let the fabric drop lower still, gaping open to reveal creamy-soft globes.

He pressed a hot kiss to the curve of her jaw, the pulsebeat at the base of her throat, traced kisses across her collarbone, then down the uncharted expanse of skin to where the hills of her breast began to rise.

It was shocking, indecent, unthinkable, what he was doing, nibbling away her sanity by inches. But more startling of all was Rhiannon's realization that she never wanted him to stop. She wanted more, so much more.

The points of her breasts burned, ached, as he circled hungry kisses nearer, ever nearer her nipple. The secret places between her thighs melted. She drowned in sensation, lost, like a leaf in a storm-swollen river, tossed upon wild currents, a little frightened, yet intoxicated by a power she hadn't ever known existed.

Warm lips drew closer to the tender pink of her areolae, and in that instant, she couldn't stand it any longer, the waiting, the need. Driven by instinct she didn't understand, Rhiannon shifted until her nipple brushed the damp satin of Lion Redmayne's lips.

What did she want? What was she reaching for? More kisses? More husky murmurs? For an instant she could feel it—a glimpse of feminine power, mysterious as the ages, a surging of heat through the man who held her. His lips stirred, parting just a whisper, as if to drink her in. A tiny sound escaped her, half whimper, half cry, and in that instant Redmayne's muscles went rigid wherever he touched her. With a muttered oath he pulled away from her, struggling to his feet as if the rock they'd lain on had suddenly grown white-hot.

Cool air streamed between bodies that had been so close moments before, drenching Rhiannon in reality, the sound of the stream bubbling past roared in her ears. She stared at him, wide-eyed, words and emotions, discoveries and possibilities, a mad tangle in her chest.

White-faced, he glared at her, his features tight with... what? Passion? Pain? Disgust?

"Cover yourself." He bit out the words, his voice so harsh it was as if he'd slapped her. A sick knot clenched in her stomach, and she glanced down at the front of her shift as if it belonged to someone else. Thin, damp, the fabric drooped low, revealing kiss-reddened breasts, trembling to the ragged pace of her breathing.

Shame—so fierce, so unexpected—flooded through her, icing the heat of desire, banishing the magic, stripping away half-forgotten dreams, and leaving behind stark reality.

"Rhiannon, do you have any idea what could have happened here?" he demanded, still glaring at her. "Five moments more, and I might have ruined you forever."

Ruined... He was right. Why had something so terrible felt so glorious, even for such a little while?

Her fingers numb, she fumbled with the tie of her shift, then hastened over to where her gown lay. She felt so foolish, so reckless, so small. "You're quite safe. I haven't any enraged father or brothers to come demanding a duel to defend my honor."

"I almost wish you had! A nice, swift bullet..."

Rhiannon lowered her gown over her head, wishing she could stay drowning in bluebell muslin forever. But that was impossible. Cowardly. She'd made this abominable mess. She'd best face up to it at once.

She glanced at Lion, saw the harsh lines about his mouth, the glint in his eyes—something almost like self-loathing.

"Rhiannon, I'm sorry," he ground out, and she knew instinctively that apologies from Captain Lionel Redmayne were rarer than dragons' teeth and far more costly to the man who gave them.

It would have been so easy to leave it at that, go back to the caravan and pretend the kiss had never happened. Some craven part of Rhiannon wanted to flee even now. But that wouldn't change what had passed between them. It would only make the kiss haunt them both more deeply still. And Lion Redmayne had enough dark secrets hidden away. She couldn't allow him to add this new fragment of self-blame.

"Lion..." She took a step toward him, touched his arm lightly, as if it were somehow as fragile as a butterfly's wing. Absurd thought, yet she couldn't help herself.

His fist knotted, but he didn't draw away.

"If anyone is at fault for what happened, I am."

"What the devil?" Redmayne stared at her, aghast—an emotion he could never remember having felt before.

"When you came down here, to the stream, I was scampering around in nothing but my shift—and a wet shift at that." Her cheeks blossomed red, her voice trembling just a little. "I know enough about men to realize that... well, that you have certain urges that are difficult to contain."

"Of all the ridiculous rot!" He scowled. "I'd prefer to pass on such a paltry excuse for acting like a lecherous cad."

"You mustn't be so hard on yourself. You're injured and unsettled by everything that has happened to you— someone close to you betraying you, the fact that you almost died. You can't help but be vulnerable."

God above, the woman was apologizing for compromising
his
virtue?

"It's just that... once we left Primrose Cottage, I thought I would never know what it was like to kiss a man, to feel all the things I felt when you touched me. You see, I'm not totally blinded by dreams, Lion. There was no sense grieving over something I couldn't change. But when you kissed me and I saw a chance, I just took it without thinking how you might feel afterward."

Something damned uncomfortable unfurled in Redmayne's chest as he looked at her, standing there with her gown still askew, her hair still caught beneath the collar, her face, earnest and ashamed and searingly honest. If she only knew the truth—that he'd planned this little tryst of theirs as if it had been another move in a chess game, cold-blooded, calculated. He'd capitalized on the very innocence that had driven her to pick up a wounded stranger by the side of the road.

He'd done plenty of reprehensible things before, things that were as necessary as they were unpalatable. But he'd never been ashamed—until now. He'd kissed the hell out of her, taken shameless advantage of the situation. And damn it, truth be told, his treachery had allowed him to taste the greatest pleasure he'd ever sampled from a woman's lips. Her mouth had stunned him with its sweetness, its eager clinging.

She'd kissed him, believing that he was worthy of such a gift. But he couldn't escape the knowledge that he'd desecrated something precious, a gift that should have been bestowed on a clean-hearted hero of a man with courage enough to give her an equal measure of his heart in return.

Because, dismiss it as she might, Rhiannon Fitzgerald was not a woman to kiss a man for the sake of experience. Ever since he'd met her, he'd seen her giving away pieces of her heart until it was a miracle there was anything left.

But he couldn't let that make him lose sight of his goal in starting this whole mock seduction: he needed to get back to the garrison. He needed Rhiannon to leave him behind. It would be safer for her, safer... for him.

Jaw aching from keeping the truth inside, Redmayne turned and limped toward the little campsite. But he made a vow with each step he took. When tonight came, he'd make certain she had no doubts about who was to blame for what happened between them.

Damn the woman, he'd make her loathe him as much as he deserved, even if it killed them both.

He was soldier enough to know this would have to be his final assault. The risk was becoming too great, the stakes far too high.

But for whom? A voice in his head mocked him. For Rhiannon? Or for the invincible Captain Redmayne himself?

CHAPTER 8

Redmayne prowled around the encampment with the restless tread of a lion expecting a cliff to crumble beneath his feet, the hours creeping past so slowly he wondered if darkness would ever come. How his grandfather would sneer—Lionel, who had been so certain he'd mastered the virtue of patience, pacing like any emotion-drunk fool.

But, damnation, he wanted this whole miserable affair over and done with. He wanted to put Rhiannon Fitzgerald behind him, relegate her seasick-hued gypsy caravan, her absurd menagerie of pets, and the incessant chafing of her kindness to that obscure netherworld of his mind, beyond memory, beyond regret, a place where he wouldn't have to remember how wide her eyes had grown, how trusting.

Blast, he should have known that, with Rhiannon, nothing would turn out as he'd expected. From the beginning the woman had possessed an irritating talent for outflanking him. He'd expected shock, outrage, and the usual posturings of innocence when he kissed her. Who could have guessed that she'd turn to quicksilver in his arms?

If it had been mere desire he'd elicited from her, he would have been surprised yet able to use it to his advantage. A woman's curiosity, too, could be fashioned into a most intriguing weapon, one he'd had in his hands many times before.

But no. Rhiannon had opened her heart to him with a courage and generosity so rare that he'd stumbled from his course.

Hellfire, he'd ridden headlong into the mouths of blazing cannon and never wavered. Why had he faltered before this one untidy Irishwoman? It was enough to unnerve the most seasoned commander, tripping over such an unexpected weakness.

And ever since the debacle at the stream bank, what had his quarry been up to? She'd fluttered about like a drunken butterfly, preparing food, cleaning everything from the horse's hooves to the darkest corners of the caravan.

She had even maneuvered the tiny table out into the sunshine and blanketed it with a lace-edged cloth as out of place here as a silk slipper on a scullery maid's foot. Mismatched yet elegant china was set out in a clutter that should have irritated him, and delicious smells emanated from the cook fire. Bread, hot scones, berries and sugar cooked down into jewel-colored jam, lined a shelf along one side of the caravan.

A less intuitive man might have looked on such preparations as a triumph—the lady's efforts to entice him. But Redmayne knew the woman's doings for what they were—a desperate attempt to keep busy, to bury herself in work so she could forget the damp sweetness of stream-splashed meadow flowers, drown out the pounding of hearts, cool the heat of lips still burning from that first incomparable kiss.

Unfortunately, there was nothing Redmayne himself could do except flash her hot looks from hooded eyes, occasionally pretend to sleep, and when his restlessness grew too unwieldy, pace.

Because he'd made several unwelcome discoveries himself since he'd made his way with such arrogance down the stream bank. He wanted her. Wanted her naked beneath him, those soft hands on his body. He wanted to catch her gasps of pleasure in his own mouth as he kissed her.

Redmayne grimaced. No, it wasn't Rhiannon herself who had unleashed such desires in him. It was merely physical needs held too long in check. His grandfather had been right, that sex was rather like brushing one's teeth—necessary on occasion, with a tendency to become most unpleasant if ignored for too long.

And yet... with Rhiannon, there would be none of the detachment that had marked every one of his other liaisons. She would hurl herself into lovemaking with her whole heart...

Which was exactly why there would
be
no real love-making. Only the pretense of it—and then the betrayal. The bruising of her tender heart. He regretted it, surprising as that might be. Yet better a bruise of this sort than an assassin's bullet, aimed to silence her.

He was almost ready to pace back to the tree he'd drowsed under several times that day when he glimpsed her coming around the wagon, a wicker basket in her arms. Something was moving inside, a glimpse of bead-like eyes shining out, wary, curious.