Now and Forever (93 page)

He filled her, filled every part of her until she cried out not from pain but from a hunger so fierce it knew no words. He looked different by the light of the fire, his naked body backlit by the glow. Stripped of clothing and the veneer of civilization, he was a powerful male animal in his prime. Sweat glistened on his shoulders like diamonds. It tasted salty and fine against her tongue. She wanted to know every part of him, to take him in her mouth and feel the surging power of desire, but that would have to wait.

This time it was about mating, the fierce, primitive urge to join together two separate beings and make them one. He moved above her in a seductive rhythm, urging her hips to meet his thrusts. Her muscles clenched around him, drawing him more deeply inside her body.

More deeply inside her heart.

An exquisite tension filled her limbs. She was waiting, striving, yearning toward something, some wonderful mysterious something that she'd only read about and never believed would happen for her. When it did, it was as if the power and beauty of the universe and everything in it belonged to her and her alone.

The world as they knew it disappeared and there was only that room, that bed, that moment in time.

Chapter Seventeen

They made love again, with greater urgency this time, as if they both were aware that what they'd shared was as fleeting and beautiful as moonlight on snow.

He was a tender, passionate lover who saw to it that she found one shuddering climax after another before he allowed himself to be pleasured by her. And pleasure him she did. With her hands and her mouth . . . with her heart and soul. There were no barriers between them, no inhibitions. In that secret room, with only the crackling fire for company, they discovered the secrets of each other's body, worshiping each other the way lovers had since the beginning of time.

He watched her as she slept, her lovely face in the crook of his arm. Her thick dark lashes cast a shadow on the smooth white skin of her cheek, and he was mesmerized by the sight. If he were an artist he would capture that shadow on canvas so that in some cold and distant future he could remind himself that once he had known how it felt to be truly happy, for somehow he knew it would not be forever.

Who are you, Dakota Wylie?
Nothing about her was as it should be. Her appearance, her actions, the freedom with which she expressed every thought that passed through her mind—was there another woman in that vast world like her? He could not imagine it to be so. There was something so individual about her, so set apart from the rest of the world, as to make him wonder if she was flesh and blood at all but an apparition sent to ease the endless pain in his heart.

I do not wish to feel this way, madam, but you inspire in me something perilously close to love.

#

Dakota murmured in her sleep as she sank more deeply into a dream. The nursery . . . the hand-wrought cradle . . . the beautiful infant who slept peacefully beneath her lace-trimmed quilt . . . the man whose heart seemed too small to contain the boundless love he felt for the innocent babe—

She awoke with a start, surprised to find herself still nestled in his arms. How easy it was to get used to being happy. How dangerous when you knew it could never last.

She opened her eyes slowly. His face was the first thing she saw. He was looking down at her with something approaching adoration. She closed her eyes again.
Anytime you want me, God.
It couldn't possibly get any better than this.

"You were dreaming," he said, smoothing a dark curl back from her temple.

She pressed a kiss to the warm skin of his shoulder. "How did you know?"

"You smiled," he said, drawing the quilt up over her shoulders and pulling her closer. "Mayhap the dream was of me?"

"I dreamed about you and Abigail," she said softly. She saw the nursery and the cradle, saw the sunlight streaming through the windows, felt the love filling his heart until it hurt to breathe.

He pulled away from her as if she had slapped him. "I will not discuss this."

"Patrick, she's your little girl—"

"Do not pursue this line of inquiry, Dakota."

"She's your daughter—"

"I will not talk about this with you."

"Your flesh and blood—"

"The child is not mine."

It took a moment for his words to penetrate. She sat up straight, clutching the quilt to her breasts like a shield. "What did you say?"

He met her eyes. "I said I am not Abigail's father."

"Of course you're her father," she said automatically. "She's just like you. Anyone can see that."

"My wife took a lover in the same room in which you slept your first night in my house."

Dakota felt as if he had reached inside her chest and grabbed her heart with his bare hands. Cook had told her the same thing and she had urged the woman to share all the juicy details. How different those details sounded from his lips. And how ashamed she was of herself for wanting to know.

His tone was emotionless, but she knew it was only a front. "It was not the first time Susannah had broken her marriage vows."

"I don't care about your wife," Dakota said as a vision played out inside her head. "She doesn't matter. I saw you standing over Abigail's cradle, the one with the embroidered curtains that had belonged to your grandmother, and—"

He stared at her as if she'd sprouted horns and a tail.

Dakota gasped. What had she done? Abigail wasn't an infant any longer, she was a little girl. The cradle had long since been replaced by a small bed.

And she was in big trouble.

"How do you know these things?" he demanded, placing his hands on her shoulders and forcing her to meet his eyes. "How is it you know of things that happened before you came to this house?"

"I don't think you really want an answer to that," she whispered.
And I certainly don't want to tell you.

"Were you a friend of Susannah's?"

She had been right about the name and she knew she was right about this, as well. "I never met your wife."

"My family is dead. You cannot have learned this from them."

"Do us both a favor and don't try to figure it out. Just consider it a lucky guess."

"Tell me how you know these things."

"Would you believe I'm just very, very smart?"

His jaw grew noticeably tighter.

"I guess you wouldn't believe that." She regrouped. "Okay, here's the truth: I'm psychic."

"Say again."

When had the word
psychic
come into common use? "I have second sight."

"You see the future?" He sounded the way most people sounded when she told them.

She nodded. "Sometimes I get a glimpse of the past, too, but not very often."

Patrick had known from the start that Dakota Wylie was unlike most women, but he had not suspected anything of this most incredible nature. "And that is how you came to know about the cradle and the curtains."

"Yes." Her voice was soft, almost sorrowful. There was a new expression in her dark eyes, a tenderness he did not wish to see, for it would be his undoing. "You love Abby very much."

A great shaft of pain pierced his heart. "She is not my child."

He had said those words to no man or woman who walked the earth. They tore into his gut and twisted hard. The pain burned deep into his heart and then, when he thought he could stand it no longer, she reached out and placed her hand on his forearm and he felt as if she had somehow laid a healing balm against his tortured soul.

"She
is
your child."

"No, madam, I assure you she is not."

"How can you know that?"

"That revelation was my wife's last gift to me." Again he had never spoken these words to anyone, but he felt compelled to speak them to the dark-haired woman who watched him so closely. Who seemed to know the contours of his heart. "Susannah had lain with two other men the month she conceived, either of whom could claim the child as his own."

His rage and sorrow permeated her skin and filled her lungs until she could scarcely draw a breath. She wondered how much it had cost him to tell her. "I'm so sorry."

"You offer me pity?" he challenged, his gaze never leaving hers.

"I would never do that to you. I offer you truth. Abigail is your daughter. I believe she is yours by blood but even if she is not, six years of loving her is all the proof I need."

"I have made my peace with the situation and moved forward."

"You haven't moved. All you've done is turn away from your child."

"Have you not heard my words? She is not my child. Another man's blood flows through her veins."

"And what if it does?" she countered. "Does that change the love you had for her? Does that make her love you any less?"

"There are those who say I drove Susannah from our bed."

"You are a difficult man. Living with you wouldn't be easy."

"How quickly you have learned that."

"Don't punish your daughter for something your wife did." Dakota grabbed his hands in hers with a gesture so unexpected that another layer of his defenses shattered. "Abby needs you so much."

"I have no wish to hurt her."

"Do you have any idea how lucky you are to have Abby? I'd give anything to—" She stopped, appalled by what she had been about to say.

"You cannot know how it is for me," Patrick said. "Such things are not in your experience. To believe your blood lives on in someone so small. 'Tis a thing apart."

"You're wrong," she whispered. "I cannot have children, Patrick, but I can tell you that I would love Abby as much as if she had grown beneath my heart."

The moments ticked by silently, then the minutes. They lay together on the narrow bed, not touching or talking, as the barriers between their separate lives once again fell into place and the empty chill of loneliness recaptured their hearts.

Dakota supposed she should be relieved. There was something terrifying about being that vulnerable before a stranger. Not even with him cradled inside her body had she felt so open and exposed as she had these past few minutes.

The wounds Susannah Devane had dealt him had been fatal. Whatever capacity to love he'd possessed was gone now, destroyed by her treachery, and not even Dakota Wylie, girl librarian and psychic, could bring it back.

She and Devane had been brought together to help Andrew McVie take his place in history, and nothing more. Once that happened they would go back to their separate worlds and life would go on as if paradise hadn't been right there for the asking.

"It must be nearly daybreak," she said when she could stand the silence no longer. "We should be getting back."

"I will see you to the room, then set forth to find McVie," he said reaching for their clothes, which were scattered on the floor next to the bed.

"Not without me, you're not." This was her destiny he was messing with. If anyone was going to find Andrew, it had better be Dakota Wylie or she'd know the reason why, "Where do
we
plan on searching?"

"
I
will begin with my neighbors. Mayhap he has sought shelter with one of them."

"I'll come with you."

"Nay, madam. It is too dangerous for a woman."

"Too dangerous to visit the neighbors? I'll pretend I didn't hear that."

"You will go back to the house and wait."

"
You
go back to the house. I've spent more than enough time in your house." Didn't he realize the biggest danger she faced was in pretending she belonged in his life?

"Your company will make my job more difficult."

"You're taking your beloved new wife out to meet the neighbors. What better way to get into their houses so you can snoop?"

"I am not known for affability. Their suspicions would be aroused if I came calling with my wife in tow."

"It's not like you have time to build secret passageways to every house in Franklin Ridge."