Mallory Rush - [Outlawsand Heroes 02] (7 page)

"How thoughtless of me. Seeing to myself while you shiver." Ever so softly he caressed the towel over her cheeks, her neck, and then the wet fabric clinging to her arms. "My lady... Lori. Leaving you will be enormously difficult for me. Nevertheless, I've stayed too long. I'll accept your offer of clothing and a bowl of soup. Should you have jerky or dried fruit you can spare me, I'll be most grateful. Even more so for the loan of a horse."

"Anything that I've got, you can have. But—"

"It is you whom I want. I must see you again, and when I do—soon, very soon—it will be with the most honorable of intentions. For now, however, I have no choice but to leave. Attu's life might very well hang in the balance."

Steeling herself, Lori said somberly, "I hate to tell you this, Noble, believe me I do. But you have no reason to leave. Your friend Attu, he's dead."
And all the other friends and family you once had.
How could she possibly tell him something so devastating, heap heartache on top of the heartache she witnessed now?

A sharp, tortured sound caught in Noble's throat. His eyes grew misty, the color of an overcast sky. Then swiftly his gaze hardened and his eyes turned a chilling shade of cold steel. His soft touch to her arm became a hard clench. Gone was the gentleman of refinement. This man was scary.

"I'm really sorry about your friend, Noble," Lori said, her voice trembling.

"Not half as sorry as the bastards who took him down will be. Once I'm done with them, they'll consider hell a merciful reprieve."

From the brutal rage marring his face, Lori knew that whoever those bastards were, they were lucky to be dead already. She wondered how a man of such breeding, a lawyer, had come to make dangerous enemies— who couldn't be half as dangerous as Noble clearly was himself.

Would he direct some of that terrible anger toward her in response to the shattering news she had to give? Quite possibly he would. But if she could connect with him on a deeper level first, forge a sense of kinship, surely he would be less upset. With that hope, she opened herself to him, let him touch a very private part of herself, a part that understood the destructive emotions she saw in him now.

Her gaze full of empathy, Lori cupped his cheek.

"I know what you're feeling, Noble, and it's a terrible thing. But hate has a way of eating a person alive, consuming them and taking over, until it poisons even the good things left in life. In the end, the person you're really hurting is yourself. Let it go."

He turned his lips into her palm. A soft, lingering kiss, and then he moved away. With the towel cinched at his waist and covering his thighs, he paced the small area of floor, reminding her of a sleek, lethal animal trapped in a cage.

"Your words bear consideration, and without doubt they hold much truth. I cannot, however, relinquish my thirst for justice, nor my sense of honor. If a man will not uphold the dignity of his family name, then he is no man at all." He speared her with a fierce, prideful gaze. "I am a man, Lori."

And what a man he was. Never had she beheld a man such as this, a magnificent warrior who thirsted for blood even as he held to his principles. Lord, but he must have been hell to take on in a courtroom.
Lord, but he must be the devil in bed.
And Lord, she'd better stop thinking such things and get him into those clothes that were sure to raise his suspicions.

"Stay with me tonight, Noble. We'll have dinner while we talk... about all kinds of things. I'm really tired of eating alone and I'd love nothing better than to have you for company. Besides, you've had a hard time of it and I'm sure you could use the rest."

"My dear, keeping company with you provokes many ideas, but rest is not among them." His low chuckle was seductive. "However, I accept your kind offer. In return, I offer you the promise of my protection—which includes guarding you from my less honorable nature."

Lori was a little sorry to hear this, but she delighted in his chivalrous flair. It induced her to indulge a feminine skill she hadn't tried out in years.

"My, what a gentleman you are," she replied, almost tempted to curtsy. "You have quite a way with women, Mr. Zhivago. I'm not entirely sure that you're safe with me."

She half expected him to laugh. Or maybe one up her in their flirtatious exchange. What she didn't anticipate was his head-to-toe devouring regard. It gave her the shivers.

She shivered even more when he bent low and whispered in her ear, "a gentleman I might appear to be, but appearances are often deceiving. I would very much like to have my way with you, and my way would be anything but gentlemanly."

His low growl of warning caused her to step back.

She slipped on the wet floor and he caught her with an arm around her waist, a hand bracing the pedestal sink. Noble went still. Too still.

She turned her head, followed the path of his shrewd gaze. It was on her electric toothbrush.

Oh no. Doomsday was here and she was nowhere near ready to take it on. And she certainly wasn't ready to take on a man who obviously thrived on reason and control—both of them about to be ripped from his grip.

Chapter 5

He narrowed his eyes at the anomaly he saw, and then at Lori. "What is this?" Noble demanded.

"It's—it's a... fancy toothbrush. From—"

"France?" he supplied as he urged her aside and lifted what bore only a minor resemblance to a toothbrush. There were bristles, but they were made of a white, unnatural substance he had never seen. And they were attached to a sleek, long, thick handle, possessing a most peculiar veneer. On it was a flat square with arrows beside it, pointing to the words
on
and
off.

When he made to push the square to the on sign, Lori grabbed his hand.

"Don't," she said frantically.

He shook off her grip, and with an upward press of his thumb, the instrument began to hum, pulsating in his palm, which had begun to tremble slightly without assistance. The bristles quivered and so did his stomach.

He had grown beyond fear of man and death. But
this,
this perversity of nature, left him chilled. He instinctively threw down what had to be an illusion. The object landed in the porcelain sink and gyrated against a round gold circle. It was then that he noticed the spigot had an attachment that he pulled up and down; as he did so the gold circle went up and down too. It acted as a cork, he realized, but he'd never seen a cork such as this.

"Noble? Noble, look—" He shook off her frantic grip on his wrist and went to the tub. He repeated the motions, amazed, stunned by what his eyes insisted was true but his reason insisted was not.

Sweeping his gaze to what he had first thought an exotic chair with a slop jar housed in the seat, he saw that it also had a suspicious lever.

"Why didn't I notice that before?" he asked himself aloud. Then to Lori, he said decisively, "I've allowed you to distract me too much as it is. Move away."

She tried to block him and he thrust her aside, intent on confronting the throne in this delusive setting. He took a lurching step and his bare foot bumped the pile of devices he had thought to be aids for arousal.

"Noble, please, you have to listen to me—"

"Listen to you? To what shall I be listening? An hallucination? Yes. Yes, that's what you are." Dear God, please let all of this be exactly that. Let him be trapped in a bizarre delirium that had him fabricating the array of objects slithering like vipers around his feet, suddenly bearing no resemblance to sexual bed toys.

That he had allowed her to put these foreign perversities on him... he shuddered.

Noble swiped at his arm where she had put the cuff, feeling as if he had been violated by an obscenity of nature. Searching for something, anything that might give him a sense of reality, he spied his gun. With a desperate urgency, he bent to retrieve it. Only to encounter Lori's boot stamping down on the familiar metal before he could claim it.

"My gun," he snarled at her. "Remove your foot from my gun."

"I'm sorry, Noble. But I can't let you have your gun. Please, sit down, catch your breath, and try to relax while I explain everything as best I can."

"Explain everything?" he challenged, his eyes wild and wary. "Yes, please do. Explain this." He kicked aside the tools of her nightmarish trade. Everything about him, even time, seemed to expand and contract while he struggled for a sense of balance. Whether it was seconds or hours, he didn't know, but at last he slammed his hand down on the lever attached to the ornate slop jar.

No slop jar had a hole in the bottom of it. No slop jar made a sucking noise and contained a swirling pool of water that disappeared then re-surged as if by magic.

"And explain this." He raced back to the sink, but his feet seemed to be moving in slow motion, taking forever to get him to the elongated stained-glass fixture above the basin.

When he struck his fist against it, not only did the overlong light beneath shine too brightly to be a dull, flickering bulb, but the fixture itself lacked the properties of glass. The casing was too thin and had a texture unknown to him. It was attached to a wall, which was made of an equally strange substance. No paper covered the wood. In fact there was no wood to be seen at all.

He put his fist through a thin, glossy white... he had no idea what this enigma was doing passing for a wall. Noble quickly jerked away from it and put his palm to the light source that could be no more real than the burning sensation it elicited. No, he couldn't really be burned. No more than he could bleed—though blood appeared to spurt from the opposite palm he slammed against the trick fixture until it shattered.

"You're bleeding. Let me look at that and—"

"Get away from me," he snapped. Knocking her hand away, he quickly retrieved the gun left on the floor. Training it on her, he said in a lethal whisper, "stay where you are, you demon of the dark, seducing me with your feminine wiles. I know where I must be. I am either trapped in a nightmare or I'm in hell. Whichever it is, leave me be."

Backing out of the room, Noble tried to ignore her pleas that were so distressed, so absolutely human, he felt more threatened than ever. He made his way quickly down the corridor and a flight of stairs. His surroundings should have been askew, wavering and insubstantial, not possessing the solidity of a hardwood floor that supported his racing feet.

And why wasn't her voice calling after him a haunting echo instead of a desperate cry of his name as he found himself in what appeared to be a parlor not so unlike his own.

With his eyes darting around the room, Noble saw several strange items illuminated by a lamp. He didn't bother to investigate. Instead, he hurried toward the curtains. Jerking them back, he prepared to plummet headfirst through the enormous window, praying the jolt would awaken him and he'd be in his own parlor, not this house of horrors he was desperate to escape.

Just before he lunged, two bright lights appeared. They looked like monstrous eyes glowing in the dark, streaking in his direction. And attached to those eyes was a lumbering carcass he could liken only to a roaring dragon.

A nightmare within, a nightmare without. Noble threw himself to the side, away from the window, as if dodging a bullet.

How gladly he would take it. At least bullets were real.

His hip collided with a huge black box. Rounding the newest anomaly in this otherworldly place, Noble pointed his gun at it.

Cautiously, he scanned an assortment of buttons. He reached for the flat black button marked
on.

"Noble, no!"

He ignored her imaginary voice and slapped aside her phantom grip trying to stay his hand.

Noble pressed the button. The big black box lit up and he saw the impossible. A woman with nothing on except for the briefest of attire covering her breasts, her maidenhood.

Her voice spilled out with anger and fear, as if she were speaking to him, not the menacing man who was also inside the box leering at her.

"Sail your ship wherever you like, you bastard. Just don't ever try to drop your anchor in this port again." And then the man shoved her to what appeared to be white sand. With an evil smile he said, "such a shame you found out the reason I ever dropped it in the first place. Sorry, babe, but you know too much. You're dead."