Shades of Gray (14 page)

The breathless, rushing tension snared them, tore at them, lifted them higher and higher until there was nothing to do but fall or fly, and they soared together in a sweeping ascent that was violent and tender and devastating.

Sara was slow in returning from that wondrous flight. Too utterly limp and drained to move, she was only vaguely aware that Andres had eased over beside her. But she felt his arms drawing her close, felt shaking hands stroke her hair, her body, as if he couldn’t stop touching her. She found the strength somewhere to cuddle closer to the hard heat of his body, murmuring a wordless contentment.

She drifted, her entire body still tingling, pulsing slowly in a lazy heartbeat of pleasure. And if it occurred to her that she had burned all her
bridges except the one between her and Andres, the thought didn’t trouble her.

She didn’t want to go back.

Colonel Durant sipped his wine and looked up from contemplating his half-finished dinner as Maria came into the room.

A little worried, the housekeeper said, “He went to find her hours ago, Colonel. Do you think …” Maria glanced toward the dining room door, speculation written large on her pleasant face. “Dinner is cold,” she said almost absently. “They should eat.”

“I imagine they will. When it occurs to them.” Durant smiled. “Leave the food in a warm oven, Maria. If they wish to eat, they will.”

The housekeeper was smiling, her button-like eyes bright. “It is good for them to reach the bedroom at last,” she said happily. “I worried about them.”

Durant didn’t comment, but after Maria had returned to her kitchen, he sat brooding. He agreed with Maria; it
was
good that Andres and
Sara had apparently taken the logical and vital next step in their relationship. It was good for both of them, he thought. He could almost literally feel an easing of tension in the house.

Still … He knew Andres well. And he knew his friend was deeply troubled by the uncertainty of the life he could offer the woman he loved here on Kadeira. Andres was well and truly caught, needing Sara desperately and yet also needing to know she would always be safe. And the latter was little short of impossible. Given time to think it through, Durant had the uneasy suspicion that Andres would, in the end, try to send her away.

Durant could understand, and he wondered what Sara’s reaction would be. Did she know, he wondered, what she really meant to Andres? Did she comprehend what the depth of her own commitment would have to be? And if she did know and understand, was she willing to face the future at Andres’s side? Could she persuade the man who loved her beyond all else to allow her that place in his life despite the dangers?

The colonel muttered a curse and drained his
glass, barely tasting the wine. He wondered grimly if Andres had told her what they meant to do in the morning. Somehow he doubted it. But if Sara loved Andres as she said she did, the morning would bring a test of her ability to love in the face of danger.

Durant hoped she passed the test. For all their sakes.

Faint, years-old scars of a whip marked his back.

Sara had meant to slide from the bed and go downstairs in search of food, having been awakened by the complaints of her empty stomach. But she went still the moment she sat up, staring down at that wide, strong bronze back. He was lying on his stomach beside her, asleep, the covers having fallen to his hips when she sat up. And thin white lines crisscrossed from shoulders to waist, the marks of a cruel beating.

She reached out to trace the scars with soft fingers, her throat aching. Her heart aching. So much pain …

“It was long ago,” he said gently, raising up on one elbow to gaze at her with glowing eyes.

Sara eased back down onto her pillow, looking at him somberly. He slept like a cat, she thought. Or like a soldier. She wondered how many years it had been since he had been able to relax that constant guarded awareness. “What happened?” she asked.

Andres brushed a strand of her flaming hair away from her face, then stroked her cheek as if he couldn’t stop touching her. “I was taken by the revolutionary army when I was fourteen,” he murmured. “I had no choice. Kadeira’s leader at that time had lasted longer in power than any other. Years. He was cruel; the rebellion against him was gaining strength. But the revolutionary leaders were little better than he was. They took children for their army, stole them from their homes in the dead of night.”

“Is that how they got you?”

“Yes. My father had been killed before I was born—in an earlier revolution. My mother was killed a year after they took me, dying in a vicious raid on the town. I was one of the raiders.”

Sara caught her breath. “Andres!”

His smiled twisted and his eyes went distant.

“I didn’t even know what we were doing. Few of us did. We had learned to do as we were told. I suppose the generals intended to kill only the government soldiers patrolling the town, but—It was a tragedy, Sara. So many were killed. There were looting and burning, terrible atrocities. By the time the government gathered its forces and drove us into the hills, there wasn’t much left. The people could no longer stomach their
bright
revolution.”

“What happened?” she whispered.

He sighed. “The so-called freedom fighters were weary too. Within a week the revolutionary army had been cut in half by desertions. Those of us who were left were mostly children with nowhere to go, our homes destroyed, families gone or having disowned us. Kadeira’s leader took note, organized his army to round us up and capture us.”

Sara was afraid to ask another question.

Tonelessly Andres said, “He meant to discourage future uprisings. We were thrown into his
prison, and every day a dozen were taken to the center of town. Public whippings. Some of them fatal. The prisoners were left at the whipping posts from dawn until sunset, then were cut down. If they survived, they were free to rebuild their lives.”

“You were just a boy!” Sara burst out. “How could—”

“I had carried a gun for a year, Sara,” he said softly. “I wasn’t a child any longer. I had fought like a man. I was punished like a man.”

“No. Like—like an animal.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t right.”

“There wasn’t a right or a wrong then, my love. There was just the way things were.”

After a moment Sara asked, “What did you do?”

“I survived.” His faint smile attempted to soften the bleak words. “I found work at the docks. That was when I met John Chantry.”

“The American mercenary? You’ve mentioned him before.”

Andres nodded. “He changed my life. There were a number of mercenaries in the government’s army; he was one. I don’t know, to this
day, what he saw in me, why he spent time with me.” Andres laughed softly. “I was half wild, uneducated, filled with hate. But he fascinated me, because he was so much more than a soldier. He was quiet, thoughtful, intelligent. He read books and studied people, and no matter what happened, he never lost the belief that the world could be a good place.”

“He taught you English?”

“Yes. And taught me to read; I had spent little time in school and could barely write my name when we met. He found books, borrowed or bought them from other soldiers and from the ships that occasionally came to Kadeira. He taught me to respect words and learning. And when I spoke bitterly of the government and of the unlikelihood of change, he was the one who told me that in every revolution there was one man with a vision. If the vision was good and strong, he said, the revolution would be successful. I never forgot that.”

“Did he just leave one day?”

Andres shook his head slightly. “No. It was several years before revolution broke out again.
The government was bleeding Kadeira dry; the people were being crushed under a merciless regime. I joined then, willingly. I wanted to fight the wrongness of it. John was making plans to leave; his contract had expired and he wasn’t willing to fight any longer. He said he was getting old, that he wanted to go home.

“He never got the chance. In our first battle against government troops, I—I made something of a name for myself. Word reached the government, of course. The president was furious, and since he couldn’t take his fury out on me, he took it out on John. Had him executed for collusion with enemies of the state. By the time I heard, it was all over.”

Sara went into his arms silently, aching inside. What gave a man such strength? How had he kept going, year after year, with so much pain and loss, so much tragedy? And then she looked past his shoulder at the painting on the wall and she knew. Because he had a vision.

“Enough about the past,” Andres said roughly. He pressed a trail of heated kisses from her trembling lips down her throat, over her breastbone.
His hands caressed slowly. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters but this.”

And for a while nothing did.

It was Andres who went down to the kitchen sometime after midnight and brought up a tray of food for them. And Sara discovered a new Andres in the lamp-lit quiet of the bedroom, a man of teasing humor, a man who seemed determined to close out the world, the past, the future. They were alone and in love.

And it wasn’t until the dark hours before dawn, when she woke to the building fire of his renewed need, that Sara sensed a kind of desperation in him. He was silent except for words of love murmured in a strained voice. His face was fixed, his eyes intense. He seemed driven to love her, as if some terrible premonition had warned him he would never again have the chance. And Sara, her own desire ignited, caught his urgent mood, responding with a half-bewildered intensity, a frantic need to soothe the hunger in his soul.

When it was over, there were no words. But Sara held on to him even as his arms cradled her, a nameless fear shadowing her mind and heart as her sated body relaxed in sleep.

Sara woke alone. The room was darkened; it wasn’t yet dawn. Cold, she slipped from the bed, donned her shorts, and with no hesitation, one of Andres’s shirts. She went out into the dimly lit hallway and then downstairs, drawn to the half-closed door of his office, where light spilled out.

She got as far as the door when the conversation between Andres and Colonel Durant stopped her. Listening, she went cold, colder than ever before in her life, and only her gritted teeth kept back the cry of protest screaming shrilly in her mind.

No! Not yet! I’m not ready to face this yet
.…

“The men?” Andres asked, his voice remote.

“Waiting out front,” the colonel answered, sounding worried. “Andres, I should be with you—”

“No. If something happens, I want you here, to take care of Sara.”

Durant swore explosively. “Wait another day, then. To be certain, Andres. We can send in scouts, use their information to pinpoint Lucio’s camp more precisely. We can throw every man we’ve got against—”

“And watch him fade away into the jungle the moment his own scouts hear us coming and report to him? Vincente, you know as well as I do that there’s no possibility of approaching Lucio in that way. We’ve tried before. Our best chance is with this small group of our best jungle fighters attacking his camp before dawn.”

“You’ll be outnumbered by at least four to one,” Durant reminded him grimly.

“I’ll take those odds.” Andre’s voice held the sound of absolute finality.

Durant wouldn’t give it up. “And if we’re wrong? If Lucio has shifted his camp again? And if he’s expecting you to come? If he has left his men scattered through the jungle waiting for you? You won’t have a chance!”

Andres sighed. “Vincente, I don’t have a
choice
. You know that as well as I do. Sara is in greater danger with every passing day.”

“You can protect her here—”

“Can I? They took her from me once.”

“A mischance! It couldn’t happen again.”

“Give me a guarantee!”

There was a moment of silence, thick and tense.

“I won’t gamble her life on less than a guarantee,” Andres said more quietly. “I must be sure. Go out and see to the men, Colonel; make certain they have everything we’ll need.”

After a moment Durant strode from the room, his jaw hard. He hesitated when he saw Sara outside the door, seemed about to speak, and then continued purposefully toward the front door without saying anything to her.

Sara remained where she was for long minutes. It hurt to breathe, and her throat ached. She was cold, so cold, and the thought of her life without Andres in it was an icy, black emptiness.

He was a target; she’d known that. But she hadn’t expected him to stride willingly and determinedly into terrible danger. He had an
army
;
why couldn’t he send them instead of—But she knew. He’d never send his men where he refused to go himself. He would lead the way, just as he’d been born to do, just as his life had shaped him to do.

And she had to live with that.

He looked up, warned of her presence by instinct or the peculiar affinity between them rather than sound, for she made no noise. Slowly he slipped the big automatic into the webbed holster on his hip, half turning from the desk to face her. She looked so fragile, one of his shirts enveloping her, her long legs appearing to be bare. Her glorious hair was mussed, her eyes huge and unbelievably green.

His love for her swept over him, almost numbing in its intensity. It caught in his throat, knotted his stomach, dizzied his mind. He needed her with everything inside him—and with everything inside him, he needed the certainty of her safety. It was a knife in his heart.

“You should be sleeping,” he murmured huskily. “The sun won’t be up for hours yet.”

She came toward him slowly, with the grace of music, stopping a bare step away. “I woke up alone,” she said very softly. “I don’t ever want to do that again.”

Andres didn’t touch her. He was afraid to touch her, afraid he’d never be able to leave her in order to do what had to be done. He felt his jaw aching and knew his teeth were clamped together to hold back what he felt, as if there were a dam somewhere inside him and it was a treacherously unsteady thing. “I’ll be back within a few hours,” he said evenly.