Raven on the Wing (12 page)

“I …” She tried to catch her breath, tried to
combat the smothering feeling weighing her down. “I don’t want to … I can’t help it, Josh.…”

For an instant he was still, tense, and then his head lowered again and his mouth found hers with a gentleness all the more astonishing because she could feel the rigid muscles of his body demanding more, much more than a kiss. But he was careful, inexpressibly tender, as if there were no hurry. His tongue traced the sensitive inner surface of her lips softly; his teeth caught her lower lip gently; he brushed his mouth against hers lightly again and again.

The careful, insidiously seductive caresses dissolved Raven’s defenses as no demand ever could. The dark stillness within her faded away and tension grew. But this tension was sweet, shattering, and seemed to be centered deep within her. She felt his hand finally move, tracing the lower curves of her breasts, sweeping lightly down over her stomach and back again.

Raven looked at him when he lifted his head, staring at his absorbed face, quivering as his hand gently molded her breasts to fit his palm. He seemed mesmerized by her response to his
touch; his gaze was fixed on her breasts and her nipples hardened achingly even as he merely looked at them. Then his mouth touched the slope of her breast, trailing toward the yearning point with agonizing slowness.

All fears and barriers forgotten, Raven thought of nothing but her body’s need for him. And when his mouth at last closed hotly on her nipple, she moaned at the instant wave of burning pleasure that swept her entire body. Her fingers locked in his hair and she tried to hold herself still for that nerve-shattering caress, even though her body needed desperately to move.

She could feel his hand moving down her hip, then skim tantalizingly up the inside of one thigh, and the hollowness within her seemed to swell achingly. She was raw nerves and empty need, and the combination nearly drove her mad. She couldn’t breathe, her heart was pounding out of control, and his hand was stroking the inner thighs parting mindlessly for his touch.

Raven gasped, her body arching in a sudden, helpless reaction when his fingers found the warm, vulnerable flesh they sought. His mouth
moved from one breast to the other, tongue swirling maddeningly, while his fingers stroked gently, insistently.

“Josh!”

“Shhh.” He didn’t trust his own voice and could only draw a harsh breath when his head lifted. He couldn’t take his eyes off her tense, striving face, watching her faint, jerky movements as awakened senses took control of her body. His own body was hard and throbbing, and he thought he’d explode, but he was drunk on the touch of her, the taste of her.

He had managed to rein his desperate need because of the far more imperative need to reassure her, to ease his way past the barriers he’d felt in her mind and, perhaps, her soul. And now he held on to those restraints fiercely, all his consciousness bent on pleasing her.

He flicked a pointed nipple with his tongue again and again, then captured it hungrily. The kittenlike sounds she made drove him crazy, and his hand moved more insistently. Then he felt her explode, and she cried out softly as her body convulsed.

Blind and deaf to everything but the shattering waves of sensation racing through her body, Raven clung to him, shaking, the world revolving behind her closed eyelids. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this wild, mind-numbing pleasure, and she lost herself in the rippling waves of it.

Josh, his own need critical, gave her no time to examine these strange new feelings. His hands caressed her shaking body with undiminished hunger, and his lips trailed fire everywhere they touched.

Dazed, she stared up at his hard, intent face, and the molten heat in the pit of her belly renewed itself in an astonishing explosion that seared her nerve endings. Her desire was so intense, it was as if it were new again, surging powerfully within her, but this time she was all the more conscious of the emptiness. Where there had been shivering pleasure before was only a yearning, throbbing ache, and she knew she’d go mad if he didn’t ease that ache, fill that emptiness.

Instinctively trying to draw him closer, Raven almost sobbed with relief when he moved between her thighs and braced himself above her. His chest moved strongly with each ragged breath, and every muscle of his body was tense with strain, but still he hesitated, gazing down at her with hot eyes.

“I love you,” he said raspingly, his voice all but gone. “I’ve always loved you.…”

Raven felt a pressure against her aching flesh, and she barely caught her breath before a sharp pain tore a faint cry from her throat. Even as she saw Josh’s eyes darken in a quick reaction, she felt her body stretching, accepting him, and her own eyes widened at the primitive sensation.

His body shuddered, but Josh was still, gazing down at her with something she’d never seen before in his eyes, something very like wonder. “Raven …” he whispered.

She surged upward then, taking all of him, and her own whisper was fierce and sure. “I love you.” Her arms pulled him closer and she gloried in the hot, slick union of their bodies. “Josh …”

A wild tangle of emotions nearly ended Josh’s
control, but he hung on and began moving with all the care his strained body could manage. He had wanted her willing and wild beneath him, and now that he had it, he wanted to make it last forever.

One silken thigh brushed his hip in a nerve-shattering caress, and Josh groaned, his measured movements quickening in the instinctive drive toward release, and the coiling tension within him wound so tightly it was a quivering ache.

Her fingers dug into his shoulders and those glorious long legs cradled him passionately; when she whimpered softly, he lost control. His body buried itself in her again and again, striving to have more of her, all of her.

He was wilder than he’d meant to be, but her soft little cries were driving him crazy and her body sheathed his with a caressing tightness that made savage ripples of pleasure race through him. And she was moving with him, as fierce and driven as he, as desperate.

Then she surged against him wildly, crying
out, and her hot flare of pleasure caught him in its force. He buried himself in her with a hoarse sound, shuddering violently as waves of ecstasy jolted through him in a release so devastatingly complete he thought he had died.…

A
COOL BREEZE
from the air-conditioning system played over their damp, entwined bodies, and Josh managed to pull the covers up over them without losing his possessive hold on Raven. The lamplit room was quiet now, and his voice was hushed when he spoke. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Maybe I thought you wouldn’t believe me.” She cuddled closer to his side, her body limp and her mind floating peacefully.

Josh was stroking her long hair, his hand still a bit unsteady. “Did you think that?”

She was quiet a moment, then sighed. “No. I
can’t imagine another man who would have believed me, but I know you would have. Some women in this business … well, sex is a tool to them, to use like a smile or a certain dress or a gun. I was just never willing to use it. And until I met you—”

Josh raised himself on an elbow and gazed down at her with darkened, tender eyes. “I’m glad,” he said simply. “It wouldn’t have changed anything, but I’m glad.”

She smiled. “So am I.”

He traced the slightly swollen curve of her lower lip, still unable to stop gazing at her. “I thought I heard you tell me something else, though,” he murmured.

Her response was unhesitating. “I love you, Josh.”

With an odd, rough little sound, he lowered his head to kiss her very gently. “I was afraid to hope for that. You came into my life so suddenly, I was afraid you’d leave it the same way.” Then he stilled. “You won’t, will you?”

This time, she hesitated. “Josh, I’ve never thought much about tomorrow, even when I
could. Before. And these last years … well, I’ve seen things I’ll never forget as long as I live. Ugly things. You said it yourself. I’ve walked on the dark side for a long time.”

Josh was afraid he looked grim. He felt grim. But his voice was very soft. “Do you mean you don’t want to stop your work? Or that you’re afraid that work has changed you in some way that would make leaving it behind you impossible?”

She answered slowly, carefully choosing her words. “This kind of work isn’t something you plan to make a career of; it’s too easy to burn out, lose effectiveness. I don’t want to stop helping, Josh, but I want to stop working the way I have been.”

He nodded, expecting nothing else from her. “And the second question? Are you afraid you won’t be able to leave it behind you?”

“I just don’t know.” Raven felt the sense of well-being slipping from her grasp, and a little voice inside her warned that it would always be that way. She tried to speak lightly, tried, as always, to fight back shadows with a laugh. “I’ve
never fallen in love before; give me time to figure things out.”

Josh’s expression was still serious, and a muscle briefly worked in his jaw. But his kiss was gentle. “I’ve been rushing you since the night we met, haven’t I?”

“Oh, you noticed that?”

He kissed her again, not quite as gently this time, and both felt the inexorable rise of desire. A bit thickly, Josh asked, “Am I rushing you now?”

Raven wound her arms around his neck, losing herself in sensation as his mouth found her breast. “Who cares?” she murmured, and forgot the world again.

Rafferty looked up from the papers spread out on the desk and peered at Zach as the big man moved restlessly to the bar and fixed himself a drink. “Go to bed,” the lawyer advised dryly.

“I don’t see you sleeping.”

“That’s because your summons caught me in the middle of a case; I have to work sometime,
don’t I?” He wasn’t really surprised that Zach barely listened.

Zach stared at his empty glass as if it had offended him in some way. “Dammit, he should be back by now. He should have been back hours ago. It’s three o’clock.”

“He won’t be back before dawn,” Rafferty said calmly. “If then.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“Of course it’s dangerous.”

Zach sat down on the couch and pulled a deck of cards toward him, then began to deal a hand of solitaire. “Dammit,” he grunted morosely.

Lucas emerged from his bedroom in a robe, but looked alert. “You two would wake the dead,” he complained in the tone of a man who just wanted something to say and didn’t particularly care what it was.

Rafferty, a little amused, sat back in his chair and sighed. “Look, guys, he’s a big boy.”

“Who?” Lucas asked rather unconvincingly.

Zach placed a black nine on a black ten, and frowned at the result. “You two shouldn’t have let him go in there alone,” he said.

“I didn’t think he needed any help,” Rafferty said.

Lucas poured a drink for himself and then promptly ignored it to pace over to the window. “Be daylight in a couple of hours,” he said to no one in particular.

Gathering up his papers, Rafferty said in a brisk tone, “He’ll fire all three of us if he finds us waiting up for him.”

Lucas swung around to face them. “Maybe we should—”

“No,” the lawyer said instantly.

Zach sighed and agreed heavily, casting his cards aside. “No. He sure wouldn’t thank us for it. In fact, he probably
would
fire all three of us. He’d be with her right now even if she were on the deck of the
Titanic.”

“Or inside the gates of hell,” Rafferty acknowledged softly. “It must be something to feel like that. It must really be something.”

There was a smothering sensation of dread and the sick feeling of being surrounded by icy
shadows and menacing movements more felt than seen. The same nightmare, always the same, and she knew that the shadows would go away if she could only wake herself up and turn on a light. But she’d see Tara’s face, Tara’s body, if she turned on the light; that was what kept her trapped in the darkness. She couldn’t bear to see Tara again, not like that, not the way she had been in that awful house. It would happen all over again. She’d blindly feel her way through that dark smoky room and turn on a light, only to see her sister … the dying creature her sister had become. Darkness was closing around her and she moaned, cold and alone, unable to turn on a light and leave the darkness that was choking her.

Then she heard a low sound, gentle and soothing, and felt sudden warmth wrap around her. The darkness receded slowly and she could breathe again.

For the first time, she didn’t wake screaming.

Josh, still shaken, held her close to him, his hands stroking her hair soothingly. The sound she had made in her sleep had been a soft one, but it had chased chills through him. The sound
of an animal in pain. He lifted a hand to stroke her cheek and forehead, relieved to find the clamminess gone.

The lamp was still on, and he stared at the ceiling while she slept in apparent peace beside him. Nightmares. Shadows from the past? He could guess the cause, and wondered if Raven would be haunted always by the sister she had found dying.

Was that the part of her past that forever would color the present and future? Or could he somehow reach into a guarded, wounded soul and help heal her? Josh didn’t know.

He knew only that he had to. Somehow.

Josh woke in the faint gray of dawn, instantly aware of coldness, where before there had been warmth. He sat up in a quick movement, then stilled as he saw her by the window. She was wearing the white robe and stood well to one side of the window, where no one watching from outside could have seen her, barely lifting the heavy drape to look out.

Her expression was intense; Josh didn’t think she was conscious at all of her guardedness. And that somehow made it all the more chilling.

“Raven?”

She turned, smiling, and moved toward the bed. “Good morning.” She drew one leg up as she sat on the bed, the short robe parting to bare her thigh, and Josh found his hand going to her silken flesh as though drawn by a magnet.

“Good morning.” He curled his free hand around her neck, drawing her gently forward for his kiss, and then sent a very reluctant glance toward the light struggling to penetrate the drapes. “I suppose I should leave.”