by Diana Palmer
He pursed his lips. “Until you make him mad,” he agreed. He laughed. “I accused him of…” He didn’t dare say what he’d accused K.C. of. She loved her mother. “Well, I made him mad. He popped me one on the jaw and knocked me over a couch. He was coming right for me when I apologized quickly enough to head him off.” He roared laughing. “God, my old man packs a punch!”
She laughed. “I’m glad that you finally know. I suspected it, for a long time. You’re the image of him, Stanton. Even more so with your hair cut like that.”
“I sort of miss the length,” he confessed. “Domingo was vocal when he saw me. He said I’d hurt my ‘medicine’ by having it whacked off.”
“Jungle people are superstitious,” she said, but felt a cold chill when he told her what Domingo had said. Rourke was in a dangerous line of work. Very dangerous.
“Don’t you start,” he murmured drily, smiling down at her.
“I like it,” she replied, her blue eyes searching over his hard face, up to the wavy blond hair. “I think you look very distinguished.”
He drew in a breath. His hand touched her cheek. His thumb moved tenderly over her full lower lip. “I want to back you into the trunk of a tree and kiss you until I stop aching,” he whispered. He looked around, oblivious to her faint flush. “Damned people everywhere…!” he muttered with frustration.
“You’re very…forthright,” she managed.
He looked down at her. “Very blunt, you mean. Yes, I am,” he replied. His pale brown eye narrowed. He studied her face. “I shocked you the other night, when I coaxed you into undressing me.”
The flush went ballistic.
He didn’t make fun of her. He touched her soft cheek. “It was glorious,” he whispered. “Having your eyes on me. If I hadn’t been so damned drunk, you really would have been in trouble.”
She kept her eyes on his broad chest. “You’re…impressive,” she managed.
He chuckled. “Thank you.” He brushed his lips across her forehead. “So are you,” he whispered. “I could get drunk just looking at your breasts. I’ll bet,” he added as his mouth brushed against her eyebrows, “that your nipples are standing at attention right now.”
“Stanton!” she gasped.
“I’ve got something that’s standing at attention, as well,” he murmured at her ear. “It’s still looking for a place to hide, too.”
“I will hit you,” she threatened, stepping back, flustered.
He laughed with pure delight. “My Tat,” he said softly. “Bright and beautiful. God, how I’ve missed having you in my life!”
He wasn’t joking. That was real emotion on his face.
“I’ve…missed having you in mine,” she confessed.
“We go back a long way, don’t we, honey?” he asked quietly. “Your father lived next door to us when you were just a little girl. We were friends from the day we met, even though I was five years older.”
“I loved hanging around with you. The boys made fun of you for letting a girl tag along.”
“I didn’t mind. You were a cute kid, all legs and hair.” He searched her eyes. “You had pigtails,” he recalled. “I remember when you were about sixteen, I saw you in Nairobi with your parents. Your hair was down to your waist in back, like a pale gold curtain. You were wearing a simple little pink dress. It hurt me to look at you.”
“Why?”
“Because I got hard as a rock when I looked at you,” he said simply.
Her lips fell apart. “Even…then?”
“Yes, Tat, even then,” he said quietly. “You’re the only woman in my life that I ever wanted that badly, and never had.”
She swallowed, hard, and averted her gaze to the gorgeous tropical vegetation. “That’s just sex.”
“Just!” he scoffed.
She shrugged. “I don’t know a lot about it,” she confessed.
He drew in a breath. “I guess not.” He caught her hand back into his and they walked some more. “But you’re not totally innocent.” He glanced down at her. “I’ve never forgotten how it felt, to feel you come, watch you, that night at your house, when you were seventeen.”
She felt her face go scarlet.
He stopped walking and turned her to him. “Don’t make it into a sordid memory. It was beautiful,” he whispered. “You were…the sweetest candy I ever tasted. I would have died for you, even then.”
Her eyes lifted to his, full of curiosity.
“Do you think it was ordinary, for me? That I felt that way with other women? Because I never did, Tat.”
CHAPTER FIVE
CLARISSE LOOKED UP at him with her heart in her eyes. “Yes,” she confessed. “I knew you were experienced. Everybody did, in our circle of friends. You had women and threw them away.”
He grimaced. “Yes, I did.” He drew in a heavy, rough breath. “I thought men did that, I thought it was how a man was supposed to behave. K.C. was furious with me. He said that I was taking terrible chances with my health, and that what I was doing would come back to haunt me one day.” He shrugged. “I didn’t believe him, of course. And I was ticked at him, because he interfered so much in my life. My parents had been dead since I was ten years old. I’d lived in an orphanage and been on my own for a good while by then. K.C. had been out of the country when my mother was killed. But he came back a few months later. He took me out of the orphanage, looked out for me, took me in, was responsible for me until I was of legal age. But I thought that nobody except a blood parent should presume to lecture me, and I told him so.” He shook his head. “God help me, I had no idea.” His expression was full of remorse. “Yes, I had women,” he said. “But it would never have been like that with you, especially at your age. You were only seventeen, honey.”
“You weren’t going to stop,” she whispered.
“I couldn’t stop!” he returned. His face was rigid as his pale brown eye searched both of hers. “It had never been that way with a woman. Never! Even now, I go crazy when I remember how it felt.” His eye closed and he shuddered. “Eight damned long years I went without you because of a lie. I could kill someone…!”
“Stanton!” Her hand reached up and hesitated at his cheek.
He felt the heat of it and opened his eye. He winced as he recalled what he’d said to her at the airport, the last time they’d met before the awards ceremony. He knew why she was reluctant to touch him.
“I lied, baby,” he said softly, drawing her palm to his mouth. “I want your touch. I ache for it!”
Her cold fingers touched his hard cheek, moving up to just under the eye patch, where a small scar ran vertically from under it.
“It’s still pretty messy under that, despite the surgery,” he said stiffly.
She looked up into his face. “I saw it when you were recovering. It didn’t bother me, except that it hurt me to see how much pain it caused you.”
He frowned.
“I expect,” she said, averting her gaze, “that you’ve never taken it off with a woman when you…”
He was rigid.
“Sorry,” she said, and started to remove her hand.
He clasped it to his cheek. “Look at me,” he said huskily.
She looked up again.
His face was taut, his eye blazing with feeling. He wanted to tell her then, how long it had been since he’d had a woman. He wanted to make her understand what devastation the lie had caused him. But it would serve no purpose now except to hurt her. She’d been hurt enough already.
“You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” he said in a soft, deep voice.
“I have scars…”
“So do I,” he replied. “I let you see them, the night I got drunk.”
She flushed and averted her eyes.
“You can’t
imagine how it feels to me,” he whispered roughly. “To know that you’ve never done it with a man.” He laughed shortly. “You thought I had malaria because I was shaking when I had you in my arms. I was shaking because I want you to the point of absolute madness. I can just look at you and get hard enough to put it through a damned tree trunk…!” She flushed. He groaned and averted his gaze. “Sorry,” he bit off. “I’m really sorry. That was crude, even for me.”
“But that’s, I mean, it’s natural with men,” she faltered.
He let out a breath and moved a step closer. He caught her shoulders and leaned his forehead against hers. “No. It’s not. It isn’t like that for me, with anyone except you.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
His eye closed. He drank in the scent of her body. “You give me peace,” he whispered. “The only time I’ve ever known it is when I’m close to you.” He laughed softly. “And that’s surprising, Tat, because you shake me up, too.”
She let out a sigh. He drew her completely against him and stood just holding her, his forehead touching hers, his coffee-scented breath on her mouth.
“You don’t trust me,” he murmured quietly.
Her heart jumped. “Stanton…”
His cheek slid against hers. “I can’t hide how much I want you,” he whispered. “But I give you my word that I absolutely will not touch you with intent until and unless you ask me to.”
She drew back. He was serious. There was no teasing light in that one pale brown eye, watching her so intently.
She drew in a breath. She swallowed. “Okay,” she said finally.
He kissed her eyelids. “Let’s go see the street performers.” He took her hand, linked her fingers with his, and drew her along the path toward the exit.
* * *
THERE WERE STREET performers downtown. One had a guitar and he sang like an angel. Rourke and Clarisse sat on a bench, enjoying the sound of his deep voice as he crooned a love song in Spanish.
Rourke’s fingers smoothed over hers. “Lost love,” he mused when the last notes of the song faded slowly away. “So many songs have been written about it. Nothing quite captures the pathos, though.”
“Sometimes things don’t work out for people,” she said noncommittally.
He looked down at her. “And sometimes they do.”
Her eyes searched his. “You’re not a marrying man, Stanton,” she said quietly. “At the end of the day, that’s the bare truth. And I don’t play around.”
“I know that.”
She averted her gaze to people passing by.
“You used him.”
Her head came up, shocked.
His expression was quiet. Intent. “You needed some way to keep me at arm’s length. Carvajal was it. You think I’ll keep my distance because you’re engaged.”
She didn’t quite know what to say. He looked odd.
“You don’t know how it is with me, Tat,” he said softly. He smiled gently. “I’ve gone hungry for years, and I’m sitting next to a banquet. Do you really think even an engagement is going to continue to keep me at bay?”
“You respect a binding relationship…”
“I would if you loved him. You don’t.” He searched her wide, wounded eyes. “You love me, Tat. You’ve loved me at least since you were seventeen. Maybe even longer. It’s the only reason you’d ever have let me touch you the way I did, that Christmas Eve so long ago.”
Her cheeks flushed. She wanted to deny it. She couldn’t.
His chest swelled with pride. He’d been guessing, hoping. Now he knew the truth. It made the world bright and beautiful. She belonged to him.
His fingers slid sensually around hers, lightly touching, exploring. The way he smiled at her then wasn’t smug or arrogant. It was with a tenderness she’d rarely seen in him.
“We know so much about each other,” he said softly. “Things we never share with other people.” He looked down at her soft hand. “You know how my parents died.” His face tautened. “I never talk about it.”
“You told me a lot of things, when you lost your eye,” she recalled. Her fingers slid in between his and closed on them. “You’ve had such a hard life, Stanton.”
He drew in a breath. “It made me the man I am,” he replied. “K.C. was good to me, but I resented what people said about him. I loved my mother and the man I thought was my father. I didn’t like having them gossiped about.”
“Not that many people gossiped,” she replied. “They were too afraid of K.C.”
“He’s still formidable,” he mused. “My old man.” He shook his head. “I used to live for him to come home, so he could tell me about the things he did, the places he saw. He knew all sorts of people, in dangerous places. I dined out on adventure tales.”
“You lived them, too,” she recalled.
“Ya, with an ammunition belt strapped around my chest, carrying an AK-47 when I was just ten years old. I went into battle with the insurgents. K.C. was horrified. He was still active in those years, off from one little war to another, leading men into battle. But he couldn’t believe I’d been rash enough to sign on with a bunch of mercs.” He laughed. “He was furious. He dragged me back to Kenya and formally became my guardian. I didn’t have much say in the matter, at that age. I resented him, for a long time. You see, I loved my mother,” he added quietly. “And my father. I hated the insinuation that my mother was a loose woman.”
“She loved K.C.,” she reminded him. “That didn’t make her a loose woman. I don’t think she could help it. He loved another woman and lost her to the church.”
“Ya. Got drunk and my mother felt sorry for him. And here I am.” His fingers tightened around hers.
“People pay for mistakes, Stanton,” she said softly, tugging at the hard pressure of his strong hand around hers.
“Sorry, love,” he said, loosening his hold at once. “Bad memories.”
“I know.”
He looked up at her. “You never left me, while they fought to save my eye,” he recalled. “You made me fight.”
“You’d never have given up, even if I’d gone home,” she said with a sad smile. “Anita would have been there…”
He put his fingers over her mouth. “She was just a friend,” he said. “I never slept with her.”
Her high cheekbones colored.
“I wanted you,” he whispered roughly. “If you’d stayed around when they let me go home, I would have…” He bit down on the words and averted his face. “I couldn’t risk it. I had to make you leave.”
She swallowed down the pain. “I wish…you’d told me.”
“I couldn’t. It was my burden.”
“It was mine, too. It would have made it easier…” Her voice broke on the word.
He stood up, tugging her with him.
She could barely see where she was going for the tears. He didn’t speak. He just walked, faster, until they reached the car.
He put her inside, started it and drove back to her house in a silence alive with tension.
When they got to the front porch, he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the door.
“Unlock it,” he said through his teeth.
She fumbled the key out of her pocket and opened the door. He retrieved the key, relocked the door and carried her straight toward the bedroom.
“Stanton…no,” she choked.
He was blind, deaf, dumb, so overcome with his hunger that he couldn’t even think. He placed her onto the coverlet of the big bed and went to lock the door. He leaned his forehead against it, shuddering.
Clarisse, watching him, was stunned.
“I gave you my word,” he choked. “I’m trying…damned hard…to keep it. I really am.”
She sat up in the bed, stari
ng at him with faint surprise. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “I don’t understand, Stanton.”
He turned and moved toward the bed. He stopped beside it. His face was almost chalk white as he looked down at her. His tall, powerful body was shivering with desire.
“Tat,” he said in a haunted tone, “I haven’t had a woman…in eight years.”
The enormity of the confession shocked her speechless. She stared at him with wide blue eyes, her lips parted as she tried to breathe normally.
“Eight…no,” she faltered. “No, it isn’t possible…!”
“You haven’t had a man,” he said roughly. “Why isn’t it possible?”
“Eight years…!” she said unsteadily.
“I can’t do it with anyone else,” he said harshly.
All her protests were quite suddenly gone. She could see the raging arousal that he made no effort to hide. She could see the tension in his tall, powerful body, the anguish that drew his face taut with pain.
She lay back on the bed, her hands beside her head on the pillow. She just looked at him with quiet, soft blue eyes. He’d robbed her of the last defense she had with that confession.
His gaze went from her head down her body, over the taut nipples that showed under her blouse, down her long legs to her small feet in strappy sandals. She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen in his life.
“I don’t have anything to use,” he said unsteadily. “But even if I did, I wouldn’t want to use it,” he added. “I want, very badly, to make you pregnant with my baby.”
She gasped. Her body reacted to the words by arching, shivering.
“You want it, too,” he said, surprised.
“I want it…more than anything in the world,” she stammered, and flushed.
He slipped out of his shoes, unfastened his belt and tossed it to one side. His big hands were unsteady as he flicked at buttons and stripped himself out of the silk shirt. He unzipped his trousers and stepped out of them, letting her watch.
He was so aroused that it was impossible to look anywhere else.
“Try not to look at that for a few seconds,” he said with graveyard humor as he sat down beside her on the bed, “or I’ll explode before I can even get inside you.”