by Linda Howard
“Put me down!” she whispered, kicking backward in an effort to trip him as she disregarded their precarious position on the stairs. He grunted as she made painful contact with his shin, just above his boot top. Shifting his hold on her, he slid his other arm under her knees and lifted her up against his chest. She could see only the shadowy form of his face as it came closer and she demanded once more, “Rule! Put me down!” There was no answer, and when she tried to protest again he cut her off by clamping his mouth on hers in a hot, rough kiss that bruised her lips and set drums to thundering in her veins.
The darkness and his movements confused her, left her feeling disoriented as he removed his arm from beneath her knees and let her body slide downward against his, all the while keeping his hungry, bruising mouth fused to hers. Cathryn shivered as she felt the burgeoning proof of his virility brush against her; then his hand cupped her bottom and pulled her firmly in to him, branding her through the layers of their clothing with the heat and power of his desire.
It took a supreme effort of will, but she pulled her mouth away from his and protested in a fierce whisper, “Stop it! You promised! Monica—”
“Damn Monica,” he growled, the sound rumbling up from deep in his chest. His hard hand cupped her chin and lifted it. “Damn Ricky, and damn everyone else. I’m not some tame gelding you can prance in front of without expecting to be taken up on what you’re offering, and I’ll be damned if I’ll watch you waltz off with some other man.”
“There’s nothing like that between Glenn and me!” she almost yelled at him.
“And I’m going to make damned sure there never is,” he said roughly.
Abruptly he reached out and snapped on the light, and Cathryn saw with astonishment that she was in her own bedroom. She had been so confused by the darkness that she had thought they were still in the hallway. Swiftly she stepped back from him, wondering uneasily if she could talk him out of his dangerous mood. He looked more than dangerous; with his eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, he reminded her for all the world of one of those blooded stallions in the paddocks. He began unbuttoning his shirt with silent intent and she rushed into speech. “All right,” she gave in shakily. “I won’t see Glenn if that’s what you want—”
“It’s too late for that,” he cut in with that soft, almost soundless tone that told her he meant business.
She had never seen a man undress so fast. He shed his clothing with a few economical movements and tossed the garments aside. If anything, he was even more menacing naked than he was clothed, and the sight of his hard, muscle-corded body stifled any further arguments in her throat. She put out a slim, useless hand to hold him off and he caught it, turning it palm up and bringing it to his mouth. His lips seared her skin; his tongue danced an ancient message against her sensitive palm. Then he pressed her hand to his hair-roughened chest. Cathryn moaned at the heady sensations aroused by touching him, unaware that she had even made the sound. Already the rising heat of desire was making her forget that she hadn’t wanted this to happen again. He was so beautiful, so dangerous. She wanted to stroke the panther just one more time, feel his sleek muscles flex under her fingertips. She moved closer and put her other hand on his chest, spreading her fingers out and flexing them against his hard, warm flesh. His chest was rising and falling with increasing speed as his breath began to race out of his lungs, and his heart was thudding wildly against her palm, slamming against the strong rib cage that protected it.
“Yes,” he moaned. “Yes. Touch me.”
It was a sensually loaded invitation that she would never be able to resist. She sought out his small, flat male nipples with her sensitive fingertips and teased the tiny points of flesh into rigidity. He made a sound deep in his throat that was half purr, half snarl, and reached behind her to find the zipper of her dress. In half a minute she stood before him wearing only the bracelets on her wrists and the blossom in her hair. The sight of her soft, womanly body broke his control and he snatched her hard against him, crushing the soft fullness of her breasts to the hard planes of his body. His lips were on hers and his tongue penetrated her mouth and conquered a foe that didn’t resist. The panther was no longer lying down to be stroked.
“Gardenias are my favorite,” he muttered, releasing her long enough to pluck the flower from her hair. Her breasts were still pressed against him by the hard circle of his right arm around her, and he tucked the creamy flower into her cleavage, trapping it between their bodies. Then he was moving her backward and the bed touched the back of her knees; she fell onto it and he fell with her, never letting their bodies separate.
“I want you so much,” he said on a groan, sliding down to bury his face in the sweet valley of her breasts, laden with the rich perfume of the crushed gardenia. His lips and tongue roamed over the rich mounds, sucking the pink nipples into taut buds; and wild shivers began to race through her body. Why did it have to be like this with him? Not even David had been able to persuade her to make love with him before their marriage, but with Rule it seemed that she had no will, no morals. She was his for the taking, whenever he wanted. The bitter self-knowledge in no way diluted the strength of her response to him. Heavy need was throbbing in her loins, making her entire body ache with an intimate pain that only he could assuage. She arched against him and he left her breasts to come fully over her, his hairy legs rough and heavy on the graceful length of hers. “Say you want me,” he demanded harshly.
There was no use in denying it when her own body would make her a liar. Cathryn ran her palms down his muscled sides and felt his entire body tense with desire. “I want you,” she said freely. “But this doesn’t solve anything!”
“On the contrary, it solves a major problem of mine,” he said, nudging her thighs apart. He fit himself solidly against her and Cathryn closed her eyes on a spiral of delight. Instantly he was shaking her, making her open her eyes again. “Look at me,” he directed from between clenched teeth. “Don’t close your eyes when I’m making love to you! Look at me; watch my face while I enter you.”
It was so erotic that she couldn’t bear it. She slowly took him inside her while she watched his face mirror the same sensations that were swamping her. His eyes were dilated; waves almost of pain washed again and again over his features as he initiated the rhythm of lovemaking. Tears flooded her eyes as she felt herself arching helplessly closer to fulfillment. “Stop it!” she wept, begging, digging her nails into his side. “Rule, please!”
“I’m trying to please you. Cat—oh, Cat!”
She heard the cry that was wrenched out of him, then it was all too much. Dying had to be like that, the utter loss of self, the gathering intensity, then the explosion of senses, followed by a drifting, a growing weaker, a falling away from reality. It was the most frightening experience of her life, yet she embraced it completely and let herself be conquered by it. She was aware, on the fringes of perception, of the demands his powerful body was making on hers as he also reached completion, and for a moment that physical perception was her only link with consciousness. Her full range of senses returned gradually and she opened her eyes to find him above her, stroking her hair away from her face while he softly crooned to her and enticed her back to him. His entire body was glistening with perspiration, his dark hair plastered to his skull, his dark eyes gleaming. He was the quintessential male, primal and triumphant in his renewed victory over the mystery of woman.
But his first words were tenderly concerned. “Are you all right?” he asked, disentangling their bodies and cradling her close to his side.
She wanted to shout that she couldn’t possibly be all right, but instead she nodded and turned her face into the damp hollow of his shoulder, still too stricken to attempt speech. What could she tell him, anyway? That she needed him with a need that went beyond rational thought, beyond the control of a will that had held her proudly upright even during her husband’s death? She couldn’t understand it herself, so how could she explain it to him?
His palm gently cupped her chin and tilted it up. She didn’t open her eyes, but she felt the kiss that he placed on her soft, bruised lips with a touch as delicate as a whisper. Then he wrapped his arms around her and settled her more closely against him, his breath stirring the hair at her temple. “Go to sleep,” he ordered in a soft growl.
She did, exhausted by the night of dancing, the late hour, and his steamy, demanding lovemaking. It felt so perfect to sleep in his arms, as if she belonged there.
Yet she woke with the certain knowledge that something was wrong. She was no longer in his arms, though her hand was lying on his chest, the fingers buried in the curly hair that decorated it. The room was dark, the moon no longer lending its meager light. There were no unusual sounds, nothing was stirring, yet something had awakened her. What?
Then, as she came more fully awake, Cathryn became aware of the unnatural rigidity of Rule’s body beneath her hand, the fast and shallow breathing that made his chest rise and fall. She could feel the perspiration forming on his skin.
Alarmed, she started to shake him, wanting to make certain that he was all right, but before she could move he bolted upright in the bed, silently, not a sound coming from him. His right hand was clenched around the sheet. With obvious effort, every movement as slow as death, he opened his hand and released the sheet. A curiously soft sigh eased from his lungs; then he swung his long legs off the bed and got up, moving to the window, where he stood staring out at the night-darkened land.
Cathryn sat up in the bed. “Rule?” she asked in a puzzled voice.
He didn’t answer, though she thought she saw the outline of his body stiffen at the sound of her voice. She remembered what Ricky had said, that he sometimes had nightmares and would spend the night walking around the ranch. Had this been a nightmare? What sort of dream was it, that he suffered it in such taut silence?
“Rule,” she said again, getting out of bed and going to him. He was stiff and silent as she put her arms around him and rested her cheek on his broad back. “Did you have a dream?”
“Yes.” His voice was guttural, wrenched out of him.
“What happened?” He didn’t answer, and she prodded, “Was it about Vietnam?”
For a long moment he didn’t answer; then another “Yes” was forced past his stiff lips.
She wanted him to tell her about it, but as the silence lengthened she realized that he wouldn’t. He had never talked about Vietnam, never told anyone what had happened that had sent him back to Texas as wild and dangerous as a wounded animal. Suddenly it was important to her that he tell her what had haunted him in his dreams; she wanted to be important to him, wanted him to trust her and let her share the burden that still rode his shoulders.
She moved around to face him, sliding her body between him and the window. Her hands moved in a soft caress on his hard form, giving him the comfort of her touch. “Tell me,” she demanded in a whisper.
If anything, he went even stiffer. “No,” he said harshly.
“Yes!” she insisted. “Rule, listen to me! You’ve never talked about it, never tried to put it in perspective. You’ve kept it all locked inside, and it can’t be that way, don’t you see? You’re letting it eat you alive—”
“I don’t need an amateur psychiatrist,” he snapped, thrusting her away from him.
“Don’t you? Look at how hostile—”
“God damn you,” he snarled thickly. “What do you know about hostility? What do you know about perspective? I learned one thing pretty damned fast: there’s no perspective about death. The dead don’t care one way or the other. It’s the ones who are left alive who have to worry about it. They want it clean. They don’t want to be blown into a thousand bloody little pieces in somebody else’s face. They don’t want to be burned alive. They don’t want to be tortured until they’re not even human anymore. But do you know something, honey? You’re just as dead from one neat bullet as you are if you’re scattered over a solid acre. That’s perspective.”
His raw anger, the bitterness in his voice, slammed into her like a body blow. Involuntarily she reached out for him again, but he stepped back, evading her touch as if he couldn’t bear the closeness of another human being. Her hands fell uselessly to her sides. “If you would talk about it…” she began.
“No. Never. Listen to me,” he growled. “What I saw, what I heard, what I went though will never go any further. It stops with me. I’m handling it; maybe not the way the textbook reads, but I’m handling it my way. It took years before I could sleep an entire night without waking up with my guts in knots, my throat tight with other people’s screams. I can do it now, the dreams only come every so often, but I’m not about to lay this on someone else.”
“There are organizations of veterans—”
“I know, but I’ve always been a lone wolf, and I’m already over the worst. I can look at a tree now; I can let someone walk up to my back. It’s finished, Cat. I don’t wallow in it.”
“It’s not finished if it still bothers you,” she said quietly.
He drew a ragged breath. “I got out of it alive. Don’t ask for anything else.” A soundless laugh moved his chest as he walked even farther away. “And I didn’t even ask for that. At first…God, at first I prayed every night, every morning. Just get me out alive, let me get through this alive, don’t let me be blown into obscene little red pieces of meat. Then, after about six months, the prayer changed. Every morning I prayed that I wouldn’t make it out alive. I didn’t want to come back. No human being should have to live through that and still face the sunrise every morning. I wanted to die. I tried to. I took chances that no sane person would take, but I made it anyway. One day I was in the jungle, and the next I was in Honolulu, and those damned fools were walking under trees, letting people walk up to them, smiling and laughing and staring at me, some of them, like I was some kind of freak. Oh, hell…” he finished, his voice sliding away.
Cathryn felt something on her face and brushed the back of her hand over her cheek, surprised to feel dampness. Tears? She had been too young to understand the horror of Vietnam while it was happening; but she had read about it since, had seen pictures, and she could remember Rule’s face the day her father had brought him to the ranch. Rule’s battered, bitter face, the silence of him, was her picture of Vietnam.
But while she had only a picture, he had the reality of his memories and his dreams.
A low cry came from her as she rushed across the floor to him, wrapping her arms about him so tightly that he couldn’t shove her away again. He didn’t try to; he enclosed her in the tempered steel of his embrace, bending his head down to rest it on hers. He felt the liquid grief on her face as it touched his chest, and he dried her cheeks with the palm of his hand. “Don’t cry for me,” he muttered, kissing her hard, almost brutally. “Give me comfort, not pity.”
“What do you want?” she whimpered.
“This.” He lifted her high, kissing her again and again, stealing her breath until she was dizzy and clung to him with her arms and legs, afraid that she would fall if he relaxed his hold. But he didn’t let her fall. He lowered her slowly, slithering her body along his torso, and she cried out as she felt his entry.
“I want this,” he said harshly, his breath rasping in and out of his lungs. “I want to bury myself in you. I want you to go wild beneath me when I’m making love to you, and you do, don’t you? Tell me, Cat. Tell me you go wild.”
She buried her face in his neck, sobbing with the fire he had ignited with his powerful, driving loins. “Yes,” she moaned, giving in to any demand he made.
The hot rush of delirium swept over them simultaneously. He went down with her to the floor and she didn’t even notice the hardness or her discomfort as he surged against her. At last the sweet, hot pulsing of his body had stopped and he lifted her onto the bed, once again cradling her soft body to him until she slept.
When she awoke again it was a sunny morning and Rule still lay beside her, a faint smile g
entling the hard contours of his face as he watched her as she stretched and realized that she wasn’t alone. She looked at him and gave him a sleepy smile. Then he drew her to him with one hand on her waist and without a word made love to her again.
When it was over he lifted his head and dared her in a velvet rasp, “Marry me.”
Cathryn was so stunned that she could only gape at him.
A rueful smile curved his hard, chiseled lips, but he repeated the words. “Marry me. Why do you look so surprised? I’ve planned to marry you since you were…oh, fifteen or so. Since the day you slapped my face and got your little fanny tanned for your effort, as a matter of fact.”
Suddenly terrified of this new demand he was making on her, Cathryn sat up away from his arms and said in a shaking voice, “I can’t even decide if I should stay here or not, and now you want me to marry you. How can I decide about that?”
“That part’s simple,” he assured her, drawing her down beside him again. “Don’t think about it; don’t worry about it. Just do it. We may fight every inch of the way to bed every night, but once we get there it will be worth every bruise and scratch. I can promise you that you’ll never crawl into a cold bed at night.”
Cathryn was shaken to the core. Oh, God, she wanted him so much! But despite the drugging intensity of his lovemaking, he would share nothing of himself with her except for the physical part of a relationship. She had all but begged him to trust her and he had shoved her away.
Shudders of reaction began racing through her. “No!” she cried wildly, afraid most of all of the powerful temptation to blindly do as he said and marry him despite everything. She wanted him so much that it was terrifying, but he hadn’t said that he loved her, only that he had planned to marry her. He had planned everything. He made no secret of his devotion to the ranch. He was obsessed with it, perhaps to the point that he would marry simply to keep it under his domination. Last night she had seen part of what Vietnam had done to him and she understood more fully why he clung so fiercely to this ranch. Hot tears suddenly scalded her face and she almost screamed, “I can’t! I can’t even think when you’re around! You promised you wouldn’t touch me, but you broke your word! I’m going back to Chicago. I’m leaving today. I can’t stand being pressured like this!”