Through the Looking Glass (15 page)

When it happened, it caught Gideon by surprise. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, couldn't know what to expect, really, but he recognized it nevertheless. It was the most mesmerizing thing he'd ever seen.

The eyes were windows to the soul. Maybe, after all, it was everyone else's eyes that were mirrors, not Maggie's. Because when the light came, it began so deeply within her it could have come from no other place. And there were no hints now, no vague ripples that might have been things moving in unseen depths; it was all there, all of her. Intelligence, mischief, temper, humor, fey wisdom, tolerance, passion... all the glances that spoke of mad things understood, and solemn looks and unconventional words and all the sweetness.

By the time the light reached the surface of her eyes—vividly green, iridescent—and blazed out at him, Gideon had found one thing more. He hadn't comprehended the sheer, raw fury of it, and there was a split second when he wanted to say,
Don't
do that, don't love me that much, but then it was all right, it was perfect, and he wanted it more than he wanted his next breath.

"Maggie," he whispered.

"Bait?" she snapped, her voice shaking with a lot more than hurt and bewilderment now. "I love you, you idiot!" She scrambled from under the covers and onto her knees, silvery hair flying around her as if her emotions were literally electric. The T-shirt did little to conceal her, and Gideon was so distracted he barely felt the small hands on his shoulders as she tried to shake him.

"How dare you say I'm just a
reflection!
"

Gideon followed his instincts. He yanked her completely against him, one hand tangling in her hair—and it felt alive, that silver silk, clinging to him—as he covered her angry lips with his own. Fists beat against his shoulders and back for a few seconds, then finally slowed. Her fingers uncurled and found their way into his hair as her mouth softened beneath his.

He eased her back onto the bed, still kissing her, leaning over her. His lips left hers finally and trailed over her face, discovering the salt of her tears.

"Don't/' he said huskily
. "
Don't, Maggie."

"You hurt me," she whispered, wet green eyes looking up at him with childlike pain.

"I know. I'm sorry. But you'd shut me out, and I had to find a way in." He smoothed the tears away with his thumbs, surrounding her face with gentle hands. "At first I couldn't see anything but reflections—and then I couldn't see anything at all. You were hiding from me."

She bit her bottom lip. "I didn't want to, but I felt so much, and you didn't want it—"

"I do want it," he said in sudden fierceness. "I want your love. You said it was mine, and I want it."

Maggie felt her heart turn over with a bump, and she swallowed hard, hoping that what she saw in his face was real. "You don't think I'd be out of place in your world?"

He kissed her. "Honey, you'd be right at home anywhere, even on Mars."

In a conditioned reflex, because she felt so much it was frightening, her mind darted off on the tangent.
"Mars?
There aren't any people there; science disproved them. And the canals aren't really canals at all, they—"

Gideon kissed her again. "Why are you wandering off?"

She tried to catch her breath. Impossible; the word was in her vocabulary, after all.
"To Mars?
Because I had to look away for a minute."

Perhaps oddly, he understood. "You don't have to look away from us, Maggie. We're forever, remember?"

"Are you sure?" she whispered. "I couldn't bear it if you weren't sure. That's another reason I hid."

Gideon brushed a silvery strand of hair away from her face, smiling. "I'm sure. I've loved you since the moment you turned around and looked at me, sweetheart. I just didn't have the sense to stop thinking and let myself feel."

Her smile was one he'd never seen before. "I've waited all my life for you. What kept you?"

Whimsically, he said, "I guess I had to fall through Alice's mirror before I could see through yours. And it's been a hell of a bumpy ride."

"That's what happens when you forget what every child knows," she said in a solemn tone. "The back side of a mirror isn't dark and dull at all—if you get there the right way."

"A lesson I’ll never forget." He kissed her, the first gentle touch becoming something else when her response was instant and heated. "Maggie," he murmured against her lips, "it feels like I've waited for you all my life."

"No more waiting." Her arms tightened around his neck. "I love you, Gideon. I love you so much."

It really did feel as if he had waited for her forever, the tensions, frustrations, and desires of the past days almost exploding inside him.
Knowing now that the woman in his arms had an infinite capacity to feel all that he felt, and to return it with the same ferocity, freed him.
For the first time in his adult life he could relinquish his need to control.

It was a new and heady kind of freedom to just feel, to sate himself with an emotional and sensual awareness of another person so intense it was shattering. Emotionally, he already felt bonded to her, connected by some affinity his mind had at first blocked, as if it had always lain, unseen, inside him. And his senses opened up in a way he'd never felt, dazzling him with the burst of raw impulses. He had thought he'd known desire for her before, but this....

At first, it was almost too much, a blind compulsion to hold her tightly against him, as if his very cells needed to merge with hers until they became one being. But they couldn't get close enough for that, and holding her wasn't enough, not nearly enough, to satisfy his terrible craving.

Maggie felt his hand touch her thigh, and then a tug at the hem of her shirt as he drew it up with slightly rough impatience. As driven as he was, she helped, pulling her arms from the sleeves when he lifted her a bit to get the shirt off. Her long hair caught in the neckline and was swept to one side, spilling over the pillow and the edge of the bed in a shower of silver as the shirt was tossed onto the floor.

"Maggie..."

It never occurred to her to be embarrassed or self-conscious because she was lying naked in his arms. And, if it had occurred to her, his expression would have banished those feelings instantly. He looked at her, she thought in wonder, as if she were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. His gray gaze, burning almost silver, moved over her with such
an intensity
that it might have been his touch on her flesh. In response the glowing embers inside her burst into flame.

"It's... too much," she said breathlessly, the force of her own feelings overwhelming her. "I can't—"

"Yes, you can," he interrupted, his voice raw and hoarse. He kissed her, insistently this time, demanding that she hold nothing back. "It's mine. All of that primitive emotion was meant for me, and I want it."

She never doubted that he understood, that he saw or felt or sensed the wildness inside her. But he wasn't drawing away from it—he was urging her to let go, to free the feelings and share them with him. And for the first time in her life, she couldn't look away from them herself. With a sound almost like a sob, she reached for his shirt, helping him to discard the barriers that kept them apart.

She hadn't realized he would be so beautiful. Muscles rippled powerfully under tanned flesh as he moved, his strength vividly revealed now. The mat of red-gold hair covering his broad chest was soft and springy under her fingers, the hard planes and angles of his body so compellingly different from her own that he seemed alien, yet stirringly familiar as well. And all her emotions swirled wildly around an aching emptiness.

"Dear Lord, Maggie," he murmured, one hand sliding up over her ribcage to surround a firm breast, "I need you so badly."

She gasped when his mouth closed hotly over her tight nipple, the sensation so stark it was almost painful. Her fingers twined in his thick hair and a soft moan escaped her throat. He was burning her, setting all her nerves on fire as his mouth moved on her. The hunger in him shuddered through his powerful body and awoke answering tremors in her body. Hot shivers broke like waves over her.

The empty ache inside her seemed to pulse, throb, growing moment by moment until she couldn't be still, couldn't breathe except in shallow gasps, and couldn't keep the sounds locked in her throat. She felt his hand slide down over her belly, warm and heavy, and she was opening to him eagerly, an instinctive tension holding her poised on the brink of something because he was so close to the awful emptiness.

She cried out almost silently when he touched her, her feverish body arching helplessly. His probing, stroking fingers intensified the ache until she thought she'd go mad, until that emptiness was all she could feel and it was consuming her.

His name burst from her in a sound that was love and need and desperation, a sound winging free of her because it belonged to him now. It was a sound he felt
pierce
him and touch an answering chord deep inside him.

With a rough sound of his own, he spread her legs and slipped between them, willing the last threads of his control to hold steady just a little longer. But Maggie's need was impatient of control, and she surged upward to meet him, possessing him as surely as he possessed her. Her body accepted him, claimed him, as if the certainty of him as her one and only love was stamped in her very cells.

Gideon felt that certainty as well, felt it in the fire consuming them both, in the tight clasp of her body, in the shattering culmination that hurled them over the rim of something so imperative that he knew it had been intended.

In that stark moment of wild physical pleasure and profound emotion, he understood. He belonged to Maggie, not in any possessive sense, but in truth. More basic than any of society's conventional tags—friend, lover, wife—she was his mate.

For life.

"Wooooo?"

Maggie yawned and snuggled closer to Gideon's side, wondering vaguely what that peculiar noise was.

"Wooooooo?"

She felt his arms tighten around her and was conscious of a drowsy surge of delight. How nice, sleeping with a man.
This particular man.
Every inch of her body was tingling warmly. Somebody should have told her. She would have gone to San Francisco and hunted this man down years ago.

"Woo-oooo?"

"Tell him to go away," Gideon muttered, pulling her an impossible inch nearer.

Maggie yawned again. One completely sleepless night and one virtually sleepless night had taken their toll. She thought she could possibly move if somebody lit a fire under her, otherwise it was a lost cause.

"Woooo!"

"Sweetheart, if you love me,
strangle
that cat," Gideon said, sounding as plaintive as the feline outside.

"He loves you too," she murmured. "You abandoned him last night."

"It's
his own
fault. He told me to." Forcing his eyes open, Gideon found that she had lifted her head from his shoulder and was looking at him in mild puzzlement. A brief and rather uncertain laugh escaped him.
"Never mind.
It sounds just as crazy on this side of the mirror."

Maggie accepted that amiably. "What time is it?"

He looked at his wrist. "I don't know. My watch is gone." Peering past her, he added, "It's right on the table there.
On your side."

The bed wasn't all that big. Maggie roused herself enough to reach around behind her until she found the table and then his watch. She stared at the thing for a minute,
then
sighed heavily. "It's after eight. I hope Farley fed the animals."

"Wooo," Leo commented miserably from the other side of the closed door.

"He wants in," Maggie said.

"He isn't coming in. And we're not going out. Do you hear that, Leo?" Gideon demanded, raising his voice slightly. "Go away. Mind your own business."

"Why aren't we going out?" she asked interestedly. "Not that I can move at the moment, but we have to eat."

"I want you all to myself for a while. It's an interesting world, your side of the mirror... but crowded."

Quite suddenly, Maggie sat up. "I just remembered. Today it won't be crowded. One day a week almost everybody goes into town to shop and maybe see a movie. At least one of us usually offers to stay and watch the camp. If you and I stay—"

"That sounds—"

"—we can look for the cache," she finished.

Gideon closed his eyes briefly,
then
hauled her back down to his side. "I have another suggestion. Let's go to San Francisco. Richmond. Australia."

Maggie folded her hands on his broad chest and rested her chin on them.
"Anyplace but here?"

"That's the idea."

Gravely, she said, "I have to finish what I started, Gideon. I owe it to my family. It shouldn't take much longer. If I know my uncle Cyrus,
hell find
the information we need. Then all that's left is to find the cache and get a confession."

He stared at her. "That's all? Honey, we might— just might—find the cache. If it exists, that is. We might even find out who the guilty party is. But how on earth do you expect to get a confession?
And why?
The goods would probably convict him."

"Not of murder."

Gideon wasn't surprised. He'd had a hollow feeling she was going to say just that. And since he understood her, since he could, now, see the determination in her
eyes,
he knew it was useless to argue. But, naturally, he tried.

"Maggie, you said yourself there was no evidence.
That the police ruled the death as accidental.
No murderer in his right mind would confess to—" he stopped, blinked. "Is anybody here in their right mind? Other than me and thee, that is?"

Brushing the question aside, she said, "A confession might be a problem. What we need is evidence.
Or a witness.
I have to be able to make the killer think I know exactly what went on the night Merlin was killed."