Night Child, page 4
"Drink the juice, too," he advised. When she had finished he squashed the empty can with his heel and put it back in his pack. Then he took out a sack and shook some dates into her palm. "Eat them slowly.""
"Who are you?" she asked, when she'd finished the dates. "What are you doing here?"
He was holding his gun again, looking out the window, trying to ignore her.
"I asked you a question."
Something flared in his eyes, then vanished into the dark silence, and he said nothing.
"Didn't your mother ever teach you any manners, Mr. he-man?"
He turned his expression so dark and forbidding she cringed. "I never had a mother."
Unwittingly she had touched some ancient pain, one she understood too well. "I'm sorry," she murmured in a low, muffled tone.
"Do you think I give a damn for your apologies?" He stopped, clenched his jaw. "I liked you better gagged. Like most women, you talk too much."
His harsh words stung, as did his harsh demeanor. She lifted her head angrily. "If we're going to be stuck with each other, I just thought I ought to know something about you."
"There's no need," he replied tautly.
"Do you always get your way?"
"Most of the time," he gritted.
"I feel sorry for your wife then."
His mouth twisted cynically. "I'm not married."
"I can see why."
He practically threw his gun down and came toward her. His gaze was so hard and unfriendly, her bottom lip began to quiver. "Look, I need to concentrate on keeping us alive. If you'd just shut up, things would be a whole lot easier—for both of us."
"Maybe for you. Not for me," she whispered forlornly.
She needed to talk now that she was with someone, who, for all his obvious shortcomings, was actually on her side. It didn't matter on what subjects. For dozens of days and nights she'd been locked in that burning dark cell, with the terrifying Aslam her only companion, his constant threats of her imminent rape and murder her only conversation. She was half-starved, and she'd endured it all without a trace of hysteria. But now for some reason, now that she felt a bit safer with this man, her emotions were rising to the surface. She needed him to at least act like a human being instead of some macho-tough mercenary soldier.
"I bet you've never been scared in your whole life," she whispered.
He knelt beside her and took her raw wrists in his, turned them over and studied the bruises. Though he didn't say anything, she could feel his concern. With a finger he tilted her delicate chin to the light. He studied her smudged white face, the dark circles under her too-brilliant eyes. Briefly he touched her necklace. Then the black marks on her throat.
"Sure I've been scared," he admitted grimly. He knew all about being scared, all about growing up young and weak, fending for himself most of the time, all about people not thinking he or any MacKay was as good as the rest of folks, all about being locked up in a reform-school cell, hated by everyone, accused of kidnapping the child he'd nearly died trying to save. This girl was at the center of his life going wrong, but he didn't talk about those things, ever, to anyone. He'd learned a long time ago that people like this woman just wanted to pick and probe at him until they found out all the details and then despised him.
When he dropped her wrists abruptly, she caught one of his big brown hands in hers and pulled him back, liking the hot warmth that emanated from his skin to hers. His eyes reluctantly met hers again.
"At least tell me your name," she begged.
She wanted to know about him. She had to know about him to stave off some terrifying loneliness. He seemed locked up inside himself, remote, determined to be indifferent to her.
"I—I don't usually talk so much," she pleaded. "Really I don't. It's just that I was alone.. .so long.. .and so scared. Please tell me your name."
Her gaze fell to the silver identification bracelet he wore. Oddly there was no name. Just a figure of an Irish wolfhound engraved deeply into the metal. With a broken fingernail she traced the outline. She had the uncanny feeling she'd seen that bracelet somewhere before. Once she'd studied it with the same fascination she felt now. Her hand began to tremble.
Kirk hesitated, his expression stern as his stubborn will warred with the strange emotions she aroused in him. She seemed so young, so terrified, so vulnerable. Once he'd been like her. Her hands squeezed his fingers. "Please... oh, please ....Don't shut me out."
His eyes were steady as they probed hers. He saw her terror, her desperation, and something inside him softened.
He grimaced. He had a job to do. Any distraction could cost them their lives. He did not want to be moved by her, but he was.
"Kirk MacKay," he muttered in a grim low tone, "for what it's worth."
''K-Kirk..." Her voice was a thready whisper.' 'Kirk..."
She was aware of his eyes on her face, as though he were watching her intently to determine her reaction. When there was none, he relaxed.
The name made him less the mercenary, more human somehow. Her grip tightened on his work-toughened hand, the one she had bitten.
"I'm sorry I bit you," she said weakly. "I didn't realize..."'
"I know."
She felt the cold metal of his bracelet pressing into her, the strength of him flowing from his flesh into hers, his awesome power, and as she held onto him, the hard masculine features of his face blurred in a blaze of white that filled the room.
She knew his face, the bracelet. From some nameless time and place—long ago when she'd been a child. She knew his eyes. But where? How? Why had she forgotten these things? Why did it hurt so much to remember them now?
There was a splintering spasm of pain at the base of her neck.
She recalled her earlier vision in the cell. She had been running toward a boy with green eyes and straight black hair.
She knew, though she didn't know how she knew, that this man, though he was older and harder, was the person she'd seen. Just as she knew—he was not her enemy. She had loved him.
What did it mean?
Why had he come for her?
She bit her cracked lips to keep from screaming. The world seemed to spin in a diamond-white caldron, and his haggard face was at the center of that whirl.
When the awful sensation passed, and she came back to the reality of a dark table and camel-dung smoke, she was shivering and weak with queasiness, drenched in her own perspiration. Kirk was holding her shaking body tightly in his arms.
Though the comfort he gave her was wordless, she had never felt so safe anywhere as she did wrapped in his silence, cradled close against his powerful, muscled body. It was as if she had come home after a long journey, as if she had been dead and miraculously brought back to life. The world seemed new, her senses sharper.
Her cheek rested against his shoulder. He was blistering hot, but she welcomed his heat. His rough hand was gently stroking her hair, loosening the matted tangles.
She didn't move or say anything because she was afraid if she did, he might let her go. And she never wanted him to let her go. She never wanted his fingers to stop combing through her hair.
He had come to this hellish place for one reason only—to save her.
Once they had belonged together. There would be time later, if they lived, to examine that. If she dared.
All of her adult life, she had lived without the touch of a man. She had lived only to dance, and her career had been meteoric. Dazzling and bewitching then on stage, she had been worshipped by every girl in the dance corps. It was as if a special magic was breathed into her soul when the stage lights were turned on, and only then could she truly live. Offstage, she was remote and withdrawn, her heart and soul empty of emotion.
Frederick, her last boyfriend, had complained. "You have nothing to give to a man. You are like a beautiful doll that's hollow inside! All your fire and passion is for the stage and an audience of strangers." So many men had been disappointed in her, and she had not cared.
Only Lincoln had been pleased. "You are lucky. You're meant for one thing only. Most artists live without this clear vision of who they are. If you work hard, I will make you the greatest dancer in the world." And he had. She had become a star, rushed through the night glimmer of crowded New York streets in white stretch limousines, feted at gala affairs.
For a woman like Dawn, there had been no suffering because there were no temptations. Other girls wanted to live, to have friends, to go to parties, to eat sumptuous meals at elegant restaurants. They had boyfriends, husbands, babies that meant the end of brilliant careers. Never Dawn. She had lived solely for the brilliant ballets Lincoln created for her.
Kirk's heat, his passion flowed into her slender body and transformed her.
It seemed she was awakening from a long dream.
Her mind wandered with a vague sense of deja vu. She had danced this part a thousand times as Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, and she knew every nuance of the role by heart.
In the ballet Aurora lay in a deep sleep on her canopied bed, her palace smothered with dark clouds and a tangle of undergrowth and weeds. Suddenly something hot and warm and alive pressed down upon her cold lips and breathed life into her. As she awakened in her Prince Charming's arms, the gloomy palace slowly filled with light. To the crash of cymbals and the rising tempo of Tchaikovsky's romantic music, the silent, motionless figures of court officials and servants began stirring to life after their hundred years' sleep. The overgrown weeds enveloping the room died down. Draperies of dusty cobwebs fell away, vanishing forever.
A prince's kiss, and the spell had been broken.
But this man and this moment were real and more wonderful than any finale to Act Two of The Sleeping Beauty could ever be.
In Kirk's arms, the familiar patterns of her lifetime were ended, and she was reborn into a new world where she was lost and uncertain. She would never feel she belonged anywhere else but with him.
His fingers touched the necklace she always wore, then lifted it so that he could examine it. Abruptly, as though burned, he let it fall back against her throat.
She had always been alone. Forever she had been waiting for this moment—when she would know that she belonged to someone else.
It no longer mattered who he was, where he'd come from, or who she was. Nor did it matter that they were strangers, that they came from disparate worlds. Some force more powerful than either of their individual wills drew them irrevocably together.
Gently he lifted her white face to his dark one, and she was powerless to resist him. His expression was odd, changed. The cold mask of his icy control had melted.
One glance into her luminous dark eyes, and he too was lost. All his anger toward her for having gotten him into this horrendous mess was gone, all his reticence toward her as a woman vanished. His harsh features slackened and grew softer. She touched, his cheek, traced the slight curve of his nose and could not imagine why she had not seen from the first how devastatingly handsome he was. His green eyes flared. In their sharp spiraling flame, Dawn instantly recognized unbridled male desire. He wanted her as she wanted him. A thrilling breath caught in her throat. He touched her chin tenderly and drew her mouth to his. Every muscle in her body froze as searing male lips tentatively met the softness of hers.
Then bunching her thick black hair tightly against her nape with his fingers, Kirk kissed her as though he would die if he didn't, and the hot glorious response he evoked in her was new and frighteningly exquisite. With her hands she felt his body through the voluminous black robes, exploring the contours of his muscles, the bulging male shape of him.
He was shaking from her gentle touching, and though she'd never known passion in a man before, she sensed her heady power over him. With a soft moan she melted against him. His kisses sent ripples of fire sizzling from her mouth to the core of her being.
His tongue entered her mouth and traced its hollow warmth. Flooded with an eager shimmering yearning, Dawn let her head fall back, limp and compliant. One of his hands slid inside the ragged gilt-edged bodice of her costume and found her breast to trace its rounded softness. Her nipple crested, tightening against his rough palm.
She wanted his hands on her body—everywhere.
"I want you," she whispered, "to love me."
He drew a harsh ragged breath. It would be so easy to take her. He thought of her small firm body beneath his, pressing against him, and he went rigid with desire. She was looking at him in that hot way that made him know he had only to push her down, only to remove her torn costume, only to touch her naked flesh to have her quivering beneath his hand. He wanted to kiss her until her mouth became soft and sweet against his, until little whimpers rose from her throat. He wanted to make love to her until she begged him to take her, until she shuddered and moaned in ecstasy beneath him.
This woman was a stranger.
And yet she was not.
He had never desired a woman more.
Outside there was a shout. Men were running toward the stable, their boots and guns clattering past it, and Kirk MacKay was sprawled helplessly on the floor about to make love to the woman he'd come to rescue.
Had he gone mad? How in the name of hell had he let things go so far? How could he have forgotten that they were in the middle of Aslam Nouri's armed camp?
These realizations brought him fumbling back to his senses. He raked his hand out of her costume and shoved her away. His heart was pounding violently. His face was flushed, his breath heavy, and he bent his head to keep from looking at her.
"Why...did you stop?" she whispered shakily, dazed with hurt and rejection.
Her voice was sweet as honey, flowing into him. Never had anything or anyone been more precious to him.
He wanted to pull her into his arms, to take her then and there. He got to his feet and stumbled like a blind man toward the window. Outside three men were chasing a donkey that had gotten loose.
Kirk turned back to her. "Don't you understand? Anyone could have come in here, found us, slit our throats." She heard only his harshness, his coldness. "B-but..." "If you're smart, you'll leave me the hell alone." His voice was rasping, unsteady. He picked up his gun and checked it again. "What happened to the girl who was going to hate me forever? You certainly changed your tune in a hell of a hurry."
"You kissed me!"
"My mistake, sister!"
"Oooo! I hate you!"
"Good!"
She turned away and buried her face in her hands. If only she did hate him! At least then she might salvage some remnant of pride left to her. But no! She had been so starved for human companionship, she had practically thrown herself at him.
What kind of man kissed a woman so tenderly as he had, as though he were crazed for her, and then brutally rejected her? A tortured sob rose in her throat.
From the window he broodingly watched her miserable figure. Her head was bowed so that he couldn't see her face, but despite the concealing dark waves of hair spilling over her shoulders, he knew she was crying. He had hurt her, and he hated himself for making her so unhappy.
"Look. I'm sorry, okay?" he mumbled gruffly. "I'm not mad at you. I came here to save you, not to get you killed. I shouldn't have let myself forget where we were." His voice softened. "Why don't you lie down and get some rest? Tomorrow's going to be a long day. We're clearing out of this dump as soon as the sun comes up. It's going to be 120 degrees by ten o'clock. Moon's going down right now. That means daylight in about two hours."
It wasn't the world's most gallant apology, but to her it seemed so. She wiped her cheeks dry of tears. "Why don't we go tonight?"
"Because your friend Aslam and his men are lurking behind every mulberry tree and mud hut," he said.
"And won't they be able to find us better in broad daylight?"
"Not if we're invisible."
"Have you lost your mind?"
The grooves beside his thin lips deepened. "Trust me."
"That's not so easy, you know."
He squatted against the wall under the window and laid his head back wearily. Suddenly she realized how tired he was.
"Lie down," he said.
This time she obeyed, but with the light of the moon gone and Kirk's forbidding silence, the blackness seemed stifling, choking, worse even than when she'd been in that cell. Her fear of the dark was like a ripple from a thrown stone in the middle of a pool. It started in the center of her being and spread until it encompassed every part of her. She covered her lips with her hand, not wanting him to hear her when she began to whimper.
But he heard. "What's the matter now?"
"Nothing..." But she couldn't check the low sob that strangled even the tail of that single word.
"There damn sure is. Either tell me or shut up. I'm trying to sleep."
"You don't understand."
"Try me."
"I—I'm scared of the dark."
Scared of the dark and she'd come to a country on the verge of revolution! "It figures," he muttered sarcastically. He wished he could ignore this crazy woman and her shivering sobs, but somehow every snivel seemed to tear his heart out. "Come over here, then," he muttered roughly. "No. You don't want me."
"That's true, but I'm dead tired, and neither of us is going to get any sleep if you keep this up. Swallow your pride and get over here."
She hated him for his smug superiority, for his courage in the face of grim danger.
She closed her eyes, and the dark seemed filled with demons and skulking Arabs with curved knives. Reluctantly she edged toward him. When she almost reached him she stopped, her pride holding her back, but he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her against his body. Even though she knew he despised her, his nearness made her feel safe, protected, and gradually the shudders of fear died as she nestled against him.
He was glad of the darkness, glad of any barrier between him and this fragile woman. The barriers of a lifetime of careful emotional control were crumbling, and he didn't want them to. He was safe when he kept his heart locked away. For years he'd avoided women, any real closeness to them. Still, she was a little thing, pleasant to hold. Dangerously pleasant.
