Darkness Bound (24 page)

Then she turned and made her way to the porch, whistling, while Hawk cursed every deity he’d ever heard of for his miserable bad luck.

Love had finally found him, and so had love’s bastard brother.

Misery.

Jack’s sleep had been deep and restful, free of the monsters that usually stalked her dreams.

She’d awoken to the sound of gently falling rain, feeling peaceful, the drug Hawk had given her still numbing the pain and keeping her afloat on cloud nine. He’d been acting weird again, resisting her advances though she knew he wanted her as much as she wanted him. It was sweet, she decided, turning her face up to the spray of water. Sweet and silly, because she wasn’t going to stop wanting him when this drug wore off.

She wasn’t ever going to stop wanting him. How could she have thought otherwise?

The gravity shower was ingenious. With a bladder somewhere high up in the branches so the stored water was warmed by the sun, it operated with a simple pulley system to turn the spray on and off. There was handmade soap and some kind of citrusy-smelling gel in an unlabeled jar she assumed was shampoo; and she washed her hair and body in dappled sunlight, mindless of the strips of fabric on her back that were slowly peeling off and landing at her feet in sodden blobs. When she was finished, she dried off with a towel and went back inside.

Hawk was sitting with his head in his hands on the bed, looking as if he’d been run over by a truck.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked.

His head jerked up. He stared at her, emerald eyes bloodshot and wild, and cleared his throat.

He seemed to be doing that a lot.

Jack had wrapped the towel around her body, but unwound it and began to blot her wet hair with it. Hawk turned beet red, shot to his feet, and turned his back, standing with his hands on his hips.

He muttered to himself, “I’m going to
kill
that old man.”

“Hey, what’s this?” Jack picked up a package wrapped with a white silk ribbon from the dresser.

Without turning, Hawk said, “It’s a present. From Morgan. For you.”

It sounded as if he were having difficulty getting more than a few words out at a time. “Does nudity bother you?” she asked. Curiously, it no longer bothered her, though she clearly remembered that it used to. Why, she couldn’t fathom. It seemed so natural to be naked, especially here in the jungle.

Especially in front of him.

“Let’s talk about something other than nudity,” he said through clenched teeth.

Jack stood thinking a moment. “Do you think you should take a look at my back before I get dressed? Most of the bandages came off during my shower.”

“You got them wet?” he shouted, spinning around. He realized his mistake, clapped his hand over his eyes, and did a quarter turn.

“Oh. Yes. Was that bad?” She was having a little trouble differentiating between what was good and bad. Everything just seemed so
good
.

“Jacqueline. Listen to me carefully. Put the towel back around your body, and come over here and sit on the edge of the bed.” He paused. “Can you do that for me? Please?”

She did, and sat waiting. He lowered his hand from his eyes and glared at her. He pointed.

“Turn that way.”

She complied again, commenting, “You’re really crabby today.”

He blew out a hard breath and sat down on the edge of the bed behind her. “Pull your hair over your shoulder.”

Once she had, he eased the towel down a few inches past her shoulder blades. Silence.

“How does it look?”

His voice came a little easier. “Better than it should. Stay like that; don’t move.”

He rose from the bed and was back in a moment. Then he began to spread ointment over her skin.

It was cool and smooth and wonderful, especially with the added warmth from his fingertips. “That feels so good,” she whispered, shivering in pleasure.

He froze. Seconds later, he resumed a little more tentatively. She kept quiet because she didn’t want him to stop, and she sensed he would if she opened her mouth again.

He worked his way across both shoulders, down her spine, over her ribs on either side, ending just above the small of her back where his fingers lingered just a moment too long.

Then he said quietly, “Done.”

She turned to him so quickly he flinched. They stared at one another in silence for a long moment, the only sound the rain drumming softly on the roof above.

“I did something wrong again, didn’t I?”

He closed his eyes and breathed slowly in and out through his nose, gripping the small container of ointment so hard his knuckles were white. “No. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then why are you angry with me?”

He opened his eyes, and they were pained. “I’m not . . . don’t think that. I’m not. It’s just . . .”

When he didn’t go on, Jack said, “I meant what I said before, you know. It’s not what you think; it’s not the drugs. I know what I’m saying when I say I want you.”

His eyes widened.

She leaned forward, repeated softly, “I want you, Lucas.”

He crushed the jar of ointment in his fist.

“Oh! Let me see your hand!” He’d hurt himself! Jack peeled his fingers open one by one as he sat there breathing raggedly, his jaw tight, nostrils flared.

“It’s. Fine.”

“It’s not! You’re bleeding, Lucas!” The blood was oozing through the mess of clear goo and broken glass in his palm.

“Stop calling me Lucas,” he said roughly.

“Stop being such a baby!” she shot back, irritated that her lovely fog in Pleasantville was being invaded by his not-so-lovely mood.

“You stop being—like you’re being!” he roared, red-faced. Jack stilled.

She said innocently, “Oh, you mean . . . like this?” and let the towel fall to her waist.

His gaze fell to her naked breasts and his eyes went dark. His expression turned hungry, oh so hungry, but also hard. Emotion was rolling off him in waves, anger and desire and something else, a terrible, heavy thing with depth and midnight blackness.

“You wouldn’t offer yourself so lightly if you knew what I really wanted from you,” he threatened, deadly soft, his body still as stone. He looked into her eyes and for a moment she almost felt fear.

But then she saw it.

Longing. Loneliness.

Suffering.

She recognized it instantly. She’d glimpsed it on her own face often enough in the mirror to know that look anywhere, that urgent pathos, welling to the surface.

That total lack of hope.

She put her hands on either side of his face. He closed his eyes and turned away, but she forced his head back, forced him to look at her. He allowed it, breathing hard, every muscle taut, every inch of him bristling.

“I don’t know what’s on the other side of this moment,” Jack whispered, feeling her own hands tremble as she cradled his face. “And right now I don’t care. All I know for sure is that I’m thousands of miles from home and you’re the one who brought me here . . . and I want you, Lucas, no matter how crazy that might be.”

He’d begun to shake. “You don’t know what you’re—”

“I. Want. You.” Jack kissed him. Gently, just a brush of her lips against his.

He froze, not responding. Not pulling away.

She tried again, softly stroking her tongue across the seam of his lips. He gasped as she sucked on his lower lip, drawing it between her teeth. He was watching her, his eyes wary, heavy lidded but wolf bright, his breathing erratic, not participating and not touching her, just allowing her to do as she pleased.

She began to explore his mouth with her tongue.

She slipped it between his lips, using gentle suction and gliding, getting a jolt from the connection as his tongue slid against hers. Her hands went around his neck, her fingers threading into his hair, and she pulled him closer, deepening the kiss.

One of his hands closed around her shoulder. His shaking had worsened.

“I took advantage of you once,” he said hoarsely, pushing her away. “I can’t do it again. I won’t.”

In answer, she took up the edge of the towel, wiped the broken glass and ointment from his hand, dropped the towel on the floor, and crawled into his lap.

He groaned as she pressed her naked body against his.

Jack wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders and leaned close to his ear so her lips brushed his earlobe as she spoke. “Let me ask you a question, Lucas. Does it feel to you right now that you have some kind of advantage over me? Because if I’m being honest, I really think I happen to have the upper hand at the moment.”

He sank both his hands into her damp hair and grabbed fistfuls of it, pulling her head back to stare down at her in agony. “You’re drugged! You’ll hate me tomorrow!”

“There
is
no tomorrow,” she whispered. “Everything we have is right here, right now.” She pulled his head down to hers, taking his lips. He moaned, a deep, masculine sound in his throat, and dropped a hand from her head to squeeze her bottom. Needing to feel his hardness at the center of her, where the ache had become a gnawing, burning need, she wriggled around in his arms and straddled him. He was hard and huge between her legs, the material of his pants the only thing between them.

“Jacqueline,” he protested, grimacing when she rocked against him, his hands spanning her hips.

“I need you, Lucas,” she said, begging softly against his mouth. “Please.
Please
!”

It was that final, soft plea that broke through the last of his tenuous restraint. With a strangled oath, he leaned in and kissed her so ravenously he thought he might draw blood.

She made a little squeal of pleasure when he broke the kiss, panting, to take her breasts into his mouth. First one nipple, then the other, feeling so greedy and out of his mind he was sucking hard, using lips and tongue and teeth to taste her, growling like an animal, unable to restrain himself, kneading her soft flesh as he ran his tongue over and over and around those hard puckered nubs, loving how they grew even harder as he suckled them.

“Yes,” she groaned, arching back into his hands, shivering. “God, yes, please, yes!”

He remembered how she was the first time at the hotel, totally unrestrained and uninhibited, and she was the same now, grinding her pelvis into his erection, pulling his hair so hard it was painful, begging him in gasped breaths to taste her, kiss her, be inside her.

And he loved it. He loved every mad, wild, breathless second of it.

He loved it even more this time because he knew her, he knew how strong and brave and wonderful she was . . . and because he knew it had to end.

“I can make you come,” he panted, breaking away from her beautiful breasts to stare up at her face. “This doesn’t have to be for me. I can give you what you need without . . . I don’t want . . . I don’t need—”

“Don’t you dare!” she said vehemently, grabbing hold of his face and staring at him, going from lusty to livid with whiplash speed. “Don’t you say another bullshit word! Don’t you ever lie to me again, Lucas, do you understand me? Never!”

He stared back at her, speechless, his body threatening to erupt into flames if he couldn’t get inside her.

“That’s right,” she whispered, gentling, satisfied by whatever she saw on his face. She kissed him again, the most tender kiss he’d ever had in his life. “Your eyes tell me everything, Lucas. Your eyes say, ‘I
do
need,’ and ‘I
do
want,’ and ‘I
do
care,’ no matter how much your mouth says the opposite. So I’m telling your mouth to shut up. Let’s let your eyes do the talking from now on, okay?”

She was looking at him, waiting for an answer, her pulse beating hard and fast in the hollow of her throat.

How can you see me? How can you see inside me like this? How can you undo me with a single look?

Hawk was overcome by the wave of emotion that swept over him. He felt bare, naked, like she’d stripped away every layer of steel he’d laid over his heart and it lay there raw and vulnerable inside his chest, beating just for her, just because of the man she made him feel like when she looked at him like this. At that moment he understood with excruciating clarity why a man would kill for or die for a woman, why he would protect her with his own life, why he would lay his soul at her feet and swim through shark-infested waters to get her a lemonade if that’s what she asked him to do.

He would do anything, give anything, to have this woman look at him forever the way she was looking at him right now.

For the first time in his life, Hawk felt as if he
belonged
. Here in this room with her in his arms, in deepening twilight with the rain singing a sad, soft melody through the trees, he felt like he was finally home.

Looking into his eyes she whispered, “Me, too, sweetheart. Me, too.”

He closed his eyes to hide the moisture welling up, afraid he would drown in this river of insanity.

Gone. She’d be gone in days or weeks . . . and this feeling of beautiful homecoming, of
rightness
, would leave with her.

But then she kissed him, and he forgot about tomorrow, forgot about anything else.

There was only her. There was only the two of them. Together. Alone.

He tore his shirt off over his head, throwing it across the room. They kissed again, frantic, hungry, and he loved the feel of her breasts against his bare chest. He crushed her against him, even in his reckless fever mindful to avoid hurting her, and she stripped off his belt and unzipped his pants, finding the way of it even without breaking the kiss.