Wild Honey (15 page)

Pain filled her throat. Sweet and stinging hot, it brought tears to her eyes. “Marc?” she whispered, reaching up to touch him. “Oh, Lord, Marc. What’s wrong?”

He avoided the caress of her hand and pulled her closer, his breath laced with low, whispering torment.

“You...you’re what’s wrong. You’re like a dull knife blade cutting through my body, opening me up and leaving me to bleed. You remind me of everything I was, dammit. Worse, you make me want it again, all of it, all those things I can’t have.”

“What? What can’t you have?”

His hands flexed on her arms. “That white-hot fire inside you,” he said softly, searching her face for the answers, “the purity, the uncompromising passion. Lord.” He laughed bitterly. “You still believe in right and wrong. You still believe in people—” His mouth twisted, and his eyes glittered brilliantly, sheened with anger and unrepentant tears.

Sasha’s heart wrenched. Her confusion mounted. “I don’t understand....”

He drew in a deep breath and released it. Bowing his head, he was suddenly, immutably, closed to her, to life. “Yeah—” he said on an exhaled breath. “Well, why should you understand? Why should anyone? Hell, I’m probably ranting about nothing anyway. I have a tendency to do that.”

He let go of her arms and walked away. He dug a hand into his shirt pocket, pulled out a cigarette from a pack of Gauloises, and lit it. “Look, I’m sorry. It was asinine of me to run off at the mouth that way.” He turned back to her, smoke streaming from his nostrils. His eyes were dull and dry. “Let’s just forget it happened.”

“No, Marc—”

But he’d already shaken off the whole episode. He picked up the wine bottle and held it high before taking a long drink. “Things to do,” he said.

Distraught, Sasha watched him stride from the room. “What are you running from?” she cried.

He hesitated briefly in the darkness of the hallway. “That’s easy...myself.”

She heard him climbing the stairs, and a hot flush of anger impelled her. “That doesn’t make you any less of a coward, Marc-André Renaud!”

A door cracked shut on the second story.

Sasha brought her fist down on the countertop in sheer frustration. He was escaping to his inner sanctum, of course. She stormed to the hall closet, dragged out a huge overcoat that probably belonged to him, and pulled it on. Why did she care anyway? He obviously didn’t want her help. He was probably beyond help! Why did she give a damn what was bugging that lost cause of a Frenchman?
And why was she aching in every cell of her body to be with him?

The breeze off the ocean cooled her flushed face as she stood on the terrace, hugging her arms and feeling very much alone. A sea gull’s cry cut through her, increasing her sense of isolation. She missed her home, the health club, T.C. She’d been separated too long from everyone she cared about, everything she knew and understood. It hit her all at once that she desperately wanted to get away from Malibu, from sets and movie studios, from all of it!

Moments later she was in the sprawling garage, staring at the Corvette and fighting off a crazy urge to hot-wire it again and head for Redondo Beach. Torn by confusing impulses, she stole into the interior of the car and fell back against the seat, rolling her head up, breathing in the leathery scent of tuck-and-roll upholstery, the lingering vapors of plush new carpeting.

Absently fingering the ignition, she was assessing her chances of getting to a pay telephone to call a taxi when the driver’s side door of the Corvette flew open. “Oh!” Sasha bolted forward in shock as Marc crouched in the doorway of the car, his hand resting on the interior handle.

“Going somewhere?”

“You nearly scared the life out of me!” she said, each word a soft squeak. The traces of amusement in his eyes sent a bolt of fury through her heart. If her reaction was fueled more by pent-up frustration than by fear, it propelled her nonetheless. “That’s it!” she vowed. “That’s it. I’m getting out of this asylum. Yes, I am going somewhere!” She jerked and fought with the huge overcoat as she struggled to get out of the car. “I’m going home, Marc—and I don’t give a damn whether you like it or not!”

She shoved past him, breaking through the barrier of his arms in her passionate determination to get out of the garage, and out of his life. If this was the man’s idea of a good time, she didn’t want any part of it.

She nearly made good her bid for freedom. Striding across the garage, she was just a yard or so from the door when he grabbed a fistful of the overcoat’s voluminous material and brought her to a skidding halt.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, catching hold of the coat’s lapel and spinning her around, “but are you angry?”

“What gave you the first clue?” Angry?
Angry?
It was all she could do not to haul off and slug him.

“Sasha—”

“Don’t call me that!”

He blinked, momentarily charming in his bafflement. “What would you like me to call you? It’s your name.”

“I know, but I hate the way you say it.” No, that’s not quite true, the quickening pace of her heart reminded her.
You love the way he says it. You wish he’d never stop saying it.
She took a breath, appalled at her own weakening resolve. “I suppose you think it’s funny, sneaking up on unsuspecting women? Scaring them half to death?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes you do. You
smiled
.”

He shrugged, and smiled again. “I didn’t think it was any funnier than you did when you tripped me.”

“Oh, so this is payback? Good, then we’re even.” She pulled free of his hold and started for the open door, moaning as he snagged her wrist and swung her back around. “Will you stop manhandling me!”

“Will you stop running away?”

Before Sasha could protest, he had her backed up against the garage wall.

“Why can’t you and I ever seem to have a conversation like normal people do?” he asked softly. “Whatever the reason, I’ve got a couple of things to settle with you.”

Her heart leapt into her throat. “What things?”

“First of all, this isn’t payback.” His eyes flashed a drenching, dizzying blue. “And second,
nobody
calls me a coward, Sasha, not even you.”

Even if she could have fought off the enchantment of his eyes, his voice would have snared her in its visceral web. It was suffused with the hard poignancy of need and desire. It was a burning love song. The heat of his hands penetrated the overcoat, and the scent of liquor was potent on his breath. Those signals tugged at her, warned her. He didn’t seem to be inebriated, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerously uninhibited. “I didn’t mean coward in the physical sense,” she tried to explain.

“What sense, then?”

Aware of the concrete’s chill against her shoulders, she summoned her wits. Every rational cell in her brain was telling her to be careful how she handled the question, and him. “Well, think about it,” she said, her voice soft, requesting reason. “I mean, what is a coward really, but a man who employs caution, a man who looks before he leaps—”

He shook his head slowly. “Sorry, won’t wash. I do my best leaping blindfolded. Now, why don’t you tell me the truth? Or maybe you’re employing a little caution yourself?”

Sasha didn’t pretend to be a skilled liar. She wasn’t even much good at the little white kind, and yet to be so easily exposed was embarrassing. “All right, then,” she said, provoked as much by his wry expression as by the pride she took in her own honesty. “You want the truth? The unvarnished truth? You
are
a coward, Marc. You’re terrified of getting involved with a woman like me, a real woman.”

He blinked in slow, droll amazement and mouthed her last three words as though he couldn’t believe he’d heard them. The glitter in his eyes was devastating as he stared down at her, holding her transfixed for so long that Sasha thought the earth must have stopped in its orbit. Everything seemed to be in a state of suspended animation, including her heart.

“I must admit,” he said, running his hands down her arms to her wrists, “you’ve got me curious now.” He tugged her closer, bent to her mouth in breathless hesitation, and then nipped the curve of her uptilted chin instead. Murmuring a shocking proposition under his breath, he pressed a stingingly sweet kiss to her lips. “How am I doing for a guy who’s terrified?”

Sasha felt as though she’d been sideswiped by an orbiting comet. “You’re doing fine,” she said, her disorientation skewing the words a little, “but that kiss was a sh—shade too sexual in nature, and therefore...”

Her voice evaporated as she perceived his thumbnail skimming circles in her palm, drifting, dipping. It was as intimate, as sexual an overture as she’d ever experienced in her life.

“Therefore what?”

Staring into his eyes, she sank slowly into a fathomless pool of silver water. Her breath spun out lacework in her head. She was lost in that infinite moment between heartbeats, where senses recede and become sensation. She was submerged, weightless, floating in warmth. From somewhere a muted voice came to her, soft and dreamy—her own voice—and she was saying something perfectly rational. “Therefore, I’m betting that it’s
emotional
involvement you’re afraid of, Marc Renaud, not sexual.”

“No, you’re wrong—” His breath traced her skin like an erotic fingerstroke. “It is sex, Sasha. With you.
Anything with you.
Sex, love, all of it.”

She could hear the need in him, the fierce poignancy, and behind it a voice was whispering to her, low and beautiful...
if you go, if you leave me now, I’ll die....

It was Jesse’s voice, Marc’s voice. Filled with longing, it pulled at her emotions. “Let me be what you need.” The words were drawn out of her with a whispering torment she couldn’t control. “Please, I can be what you need.”

His jaw clenched against something dark and powerful inside him. “What I need may frighten you, Sasha. It sure as hell frightens me.”

“I’m not frightened.” But she was.

She reached up to stroke his mouth, her fingers trembling. His eyes darkened with dizzying speed.

Sasha was swimming in weakness, in sensation as he steadied her with one hand while he stripped the overcoat off her.

The coat settled around her ankles, its soft folds imprisoning her.
I can be what you need
, she cried silently as he pressed her to the wall again, his hands strong and possessive, searingly hot against her skin. Her satin nightshirt fluttered against her body, and her nipples budded in response. A soft aching welled thickly in her loins. Of its own will her body was preparing her for the rich, drugging pleasure of his touch, his mouth, his body. She closed her eyes and let her head drop back.

Everything spun away from her but his hands. They touched her everywhere but those tender places she ached for him, her breasts, her womanhood. With tactile grace he drove her to a pitch of near frenzy, caressing her through the sliding silk fabric of her shirt. As he stroked her thighs, she could feel the fathomless pool, deep inside her now, rippling. It was torment. She’d never felt such beauty, such yearning.

His fingers trembled on her skin. “Want me,” he said, shocking her as he insinuated his knee between her legs and eased them apart. “Want me, Sasha, more than you want your next breath of air.”

She moaned as he pressed up against the most vibrant part of her body. He was transfusing her veins with fire, melting her limbs with a dreamy gush of erotic languor. “I do” was all she could whisper. “Lord, I do.”

Her words hung in the air, shimmering, gathering energy, exploding in Marc’s brain. He hardened instantly, everywhere. Sweet Lord he thought, this was what he needed—all he would ever need—this beautiful, abandoned woman. She was the cure. As she moved against his leg, excitement shot through him, pooling hotly in his loins. His fingers tightened on her arms.

His nerves were so exquisitely attuned to her, he could feel the shuddering sigh that passed through her body. He could read the message in her eyes as they drifted open briefly and met his. Full of dazed wonder and urgency, her whiskey gaze said one thing to him and one thing only. She was his. He could do what he wanted with her.

His body’s reaction was instantaneous. His legs weakened, and his stomach muscles spasmed, locking off desire. With slow, torturous control, he worked open the buttons of her nightshirt and drew the silky material off her shoulder, exposing one delicately veined, translucent breast.

For a moment all he could do was stare at her. She looked too fragile to touch, as though the slightest pressure of his fingers would leave marks on her skin. She was a creamy rose petal, her perfection easily bruised. And yet the banked fire in her amber eyes was wanton and sensual. She wanted to be touched. She wanted to be handled. She was drugged, intoxicated with wanting.

“Marc,” she whispered, her shoulders rising, her flesh quivering, “please...put your hands on me.”

Lightning flashed straight through to the core of him. Drawing the shirt off her other shoulder, he bared her to the waist and choked back a savage sound at the sight of her. She arched forward, moaning, and her breasts filled his hands. Her weight, her silky warmth, made his arms ache with sensations—wild little bursts of energy that blazed through his muscles and battered his senses with agonizing pleasure.

Blond hair flew as she tossed her head and let herself fall against him. A whimper of desire caught in her throat and she cupped her fingers over his, pressing him into her flesh. The fire in her eyes was a plea, a passionate challenge.
Now, now!
it blazed.
Don’t make me wait any longer.

He dragged her back to him, and she went a little crazy in his arms, moaning, sighing, tangling her hands in his hair. He closed his eyes, his belly filling with fire. He’d never known a woman who triggered such powerful, gut-wrenching needs. Cupping her buttocks, he brought her into the fit of his thighs and thrust himself against her softness. He took her lips at the same time, and her response was a throaty cry that raged in his blood. He relinquished her mouth and bent to her breasts, sipping, sucking, unable to get close enough to her.