Surrender to Love (26 page)

“Why?” she burst out suddenly, her voice shrill as she scrambled to her feet and snatched at her skirts with an angry hand.  “I’m a woman, Michael.  I have feelings, too.  Do you think I can just turn them on and off whenever I like? 
Don’t you think I
want
to be here with you?”

Michael let loose a sigh of frustration he rolled to a sitting position.  He was sending her back to the States, he told himself for the thousandth time.  He was sending her back and he wasn’t going to be the one ruining her for some other man.  She was young.  She had a lifetime ahead of her.  And he wouldn’t be the one to brand her as an unclean woman.

“Sabine, you’re seventeen- “

“And I’m a woman,” she insisted, her emerald eyes blazing, “and don’t you dare say I’m not!  Don’t you even think it!”

Tears smarting her eyes, Sabine turned and fled, the pain of his rejection burning a hole in her heart.  He must think of her as nothing more than a school girl…a child!  But she wasn’t.  And he should have known that by the passions he had aroused so fervently inside her; how she had delighted in the demands of his touch, craving for him to request more from her than just a kiss.

And then he’d rejected her as quickly as he had taken her; tossed her aside as if she were some kind of curse, a plague.  As though her mere touch would poison him.

Well, she couldn’t take much more of this…of him…of every day wanting him and knowing she shouldn’t.

“Sabine – “

Michael grabbed her arm and gruffly swung her to face him.  She swiped at the trails of tears that stained her cheeks, her eyes blazing with fury as she looked into his face.

“Leave me alone, Michael,” she insisted through clenched teeth as she jerked herself free from his grasp.

He caught her again, her body tense and resisting as he captured her firmly, holding her close against the expanse of his chest.

“I’m not a child,” she said, her continuing sobs muffled against his chest as her small fist beat at him in frustration, punctuating her words.  “I hate it when people say that, because I’m not.  I’m
not.
  And I’m tired of everybody looking at me like I’m some sort of freak.  Like I don’t have any feelings because of who I am.”

“I never said you were, but I could never give you what you want, Sabine,” Michael told her quietly, stroking her hair consolingly.  “Not what you deserve, at least.”

“But I’m not a child,” she repeated, gazing at him steadily as she broke from him.  “Were those the feelings of a child back there?  Was it a child you held?  I’m a lot of things, Michael, but I’m not a child.  Don’t treat me like one,” she simply stated, her words slicing through the thick silence that surrounded them.

Her heart beating wildly, Sabine swallowed the lump of indecision that formed in her throat and stepped closer to him, her green eyes confident
as she slowly wound her arms around his neck, reaching for the lips that had claimed her passionately among the roses.  He kissed her in return, hesitantly at first, then more boldly, holding her close within the comfort of his embrace while she molded herself to the hardened muscles of his body.

No, Michael decided as he felt her hands wind themselves into his hair, she most definitely was not a child.

Chapter Seventeen

“Oh, God, Sabine.”

Michael’s words whispered against her lips as she yielded to his touch, and Sabine felt his manhood harden against her stomach. His mouth trailed the column of her throat, stopping briefly to graze the sensitive area behind her earlobe before capturing her mouth once again.  He felt so right.  The feel of his mouth on hers; his arms drawing her closer, tighter; his hands plunging into the wild, tumbling tendrils of her hair.

And suddenly, it was a though she would never feel safe or whole again without him.  As though all her years had been spent waiting for this moment, this time.

And it was right. 
They
were right.  And all the hurt and all the betrayal and all the longing and loneliness that had encompassed her heart, her soul, for so long were forcefully thrust aside by the warmth of Michael’s touch.

They were meant to be together.  Oh Dear Lord, deep down inside her she had always known it to be true.  No matter how hard she had tried to deny it, push the feelings away, she had always known.

And she wanted it to be.

Sabine’s hands slid down the length of his back, her palms memorizing every muscle, every curve.  She wanted him.  Wanted to feel the heat of his kiss. 
Wanted him to possess her and make her his own.  Wanted him to fill that cold emptiness that never seemed to go away.

She succumbed as his need became more insistent, his touch more demanding, and she didn’t shy away, didn’t flinch when his hands cupped her bottom and drew her tightly against his swollen desire.

“Michael…”

His name murmured of soft request as her hands came to rest on the broad expanse of his chest.  She reached up and tasted the skin at the base of his throat with the tip of an unpracticed tongue while her hand followed the muscular curve of his thigh where it joined with hers.  He smelled of tobacco.  Tobacco laced with a hint of liquor, blending with the intoxicating scent of his own body.  His smells, which mixed enticingly with the roses.

Her man.

God, how she wanted it to be true.  How she wanted to honestly believe that he felt the same as she.  That he wanted to make her his, to cherish her and keep her always.

Her fingers rested hesitantly, tentatively on the waistband of his trousers as Michael’s hands slipped behind her back and unfastened the first three closures of her gown. 

Her breaths quickened as her hands found his blond curls, boldly guiding him to the soft mounds of her half-exposed breasts.  Even with her inexperience, she knew she wanted to feel him there.  Wanted to feel his mouth, his tongue…

“Only if you trust me, Sabine,” he whispered against her skin.  “I won’t make love to you unless you do.”

She raised his face to hers and she drank p
assionately from his lips.  A shiver of desire and excitement raced through her.  Her breaths, shallow with the passion Michael had awakened within her, heaved against the thin lawn of his shirt.

It felt so good, so right, to be here with him.

“Do you trust me?” His words came as an urgent question as his hand slid slowly up the length of her thigh.

She did, but could not say it out loud.  She trusted him with her life, her heart, her innocence.  Dear Lord, her soul almost sang out with the glory of it.

“Sabine,” he said at her silence.  “Not until you can say the words. Not until you can tell me you trust me.”  Michael straightened her clothing and stalked to the house.

She trusted him, Sabine’s thoughts screamed as she watched him go.

She loved him.

XXX

The mahogany walls still managed to gleam through the hazy film of smoke that hung in the air, and the strains of the
fiesta
filtered through the closed doors of the study.  Staring off into the distance, Michael sat back in a chair,  his thumb absently circling the rim of his glass as he half-listened to Luís.

What, in God’s name, was going on here?  With him?  With her?  First he had…and then
she
had…

Damn she was bold.  Really bold.  The way she had come to him, put her arms around his neck, and tasted him with her honey-sweetness, pressed against him with that soft body of hers until he had lost control.

She was a child.

The hell she was.  Who, in God’s name, had said that of her?  A damned temptress was more like it – making him betray any rational thought he ever had.

He shifted uncomfortably, his groin vividly recalling what had transpired no more than a few hours ago in the gardens, and he quickly downed the liquor in his glass.

She was almost eighteen years old, and girls – no,
women,
he reminded himself – like her didn’t go around throwing themselves at every man they met.  They wanted to be courted and wooed and all those other things they read about in ladies’ journals, and he wasn’t going to take that route again.  Not for her. Not for anybody.

But he wanted her still, and he couldn’t help but think about the way she’d feel beneath him, her thighs wrapped around his waist, calling out her name as he rode her hard, her breasts slick with his perspiration as they joined her short, neat fingernails digging into the flesh of his back as she cried out for him – and then again as he took her slowly, carefully, sheathing himself in her as she writhed beneath him, gasping as he released his life-giving seed.

He forcibly shook the thought from his head and poured himself another drink, finishing it in a hurried rush as he unstopped the decanter again.  This had to stop. 
He
had to stop.

And she had to go home.

“You have not listened to a word I have said in five minutes,” Luís stated, annoyed as he offered Michael a
cigarrito
from his silver case.  “This is important news I bring, and you sit and ignore me.”

“I’ve had a lot on my mind lately,” he replied, turning his attention fully to his friend as he declined
Luís’s overture.  “With Sabine…the money…everything.”

“Enrique told me this afternoon that there were two men asking about you in Havana.”

“Why didn’t you say anything earlier when I saw you?” he asked stiffly, his jaw tightening as he set the glass on the table next to him.  “All you said is that you needed to see me.”  Michael muttered a harsh curse under his breath as his hands clenched angrily.  “And then you wait almost
three hours
to tell me?”

Luís
regarded him coolly and flicked his spent ashes into the tray next to him. “Would you rather wish for Sabine to hear this?”

“No,” came his disgruntled reply, and he let loose and irritated sigh.  She wouldn’t understand.  And he knew he wouldn’t be able to handle the harsh accusations that would most certainly reflect in those emerald eyes of hers.  She would never looks at him the same way ever again; a murderer, a beast – the creature she once imagined him.

“Besides, when I saw you again, you were otherwise engaged with Gisela.”

“Don’t remind me,” he groaned as the scene repeated himself in his memory.  “I suppose
you
saw what happened, too.”

“Of course.  The usual discussion?”

Michael snorted bitterly.  “All that and more.  Her latest trick almost resulted in a hell of a lot more than a simple understanding.  Sabine witnessed her whole display, and, to say the least, she didn’t stick around to see the entire performance.”

Luís
eyed him with raised eyebrows and motioned with the lit
cigarrito
in his hand.

“Gisela is consorting with Colón now, you know.”

“She told me.”

“I’d watch how you treat her, Michael.  Colón can be unpredictable.  There is no telling what she will tell him in order to save face.”

Silence fell between them as Michael pondered Luís’s words.  She wouldn’t dare.  She wouldn’t dare pull a stupid stunt like that just to get him into her bed. What did Gisela think he was?  Some stud who sat idly by, anxiously waiting until she desired to be serviced?  Well, it was never going to happen.  And he wasn’t going to sit up night wondering what she was hiding up her sleeve.

“So did Enrique happen to say what these men in Havana wanted?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Only that you were wanted in America.  For murder.”

Michael cursed to himself and ran a frustrated hand through his hair as he leaned back, staring at the ceiling.  He knew it would come to this sooner or later; he couldn’t hide forever.

“Did he tell them anything?” he asked, his blue eyes piercing Luís’s unmovingly.

“No,” he said with a shake of his head.  “Enrique would never betray you, nor any of my family.  He looks to you like a brother.  You are one of us.”

“You know it was an accident.”

“Of course I do,”
Luís affirmed. “You are not the type of man to do such a thing on purpose.”

Michael stared fixedly at the wall opposite him and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, his heart pounding.  Time was running out…and he wasn’t yet ready to face whatever his fate might be.  Wasn’t ready for the decisions he had to make.  And he wasn’t ready to let Sabine go.

She had to go.

But really, he wanted her to stay; and if anything ever happened to her as a result of his troubles, he’d never be able to forgive himself.

Why the hell did things have to be this way?

“
Luís?”  His voice was quiet as his gaze looked to Luís once more.

“
Sí?”

“If anything happens…”

“I will take care of her,” he promised sincerely. “I can see it in your eyes.  You fear for the girl.”