Golden Threads (10 page)

"No." His voice was bleak, and his shadowed eyes never left hers. "I was supposed to try and win your trust, I won't deny that. I can't. But what happened between us wasn't part of the plan."

Lara forced herself to look away, fixing her gaze on the cat still sitting on the coffee table and regarding them solemnly. "Right," she said. "Well, I guess you have to say something like that. After all, hope springs eternal. I just might be desperate enough not to give a damn why you're here."

"Don't, Lara."

"You'll have to forgive me." She kept her voice detached and polite. "I'm afraid I don't know my lines. Outrage, maybe?
Betrayal?
Or should I just be quite pathetically grateful to have been treated like a mindless pawn?"

"You could have called the bureau at any point," he reminded tautly. "I urged you to—against orders, I might add. If you had done that, you would have been given a choice. To be hidden
again,
or to stay put. You had already made the choice, Lara. You didn't want to run."

"But I didn't know I was being used as bait! You should have told me. Why didn't you tell me?" It hurt that he hadn't been honest with her. She had broken all the rules to confide in him, while he had remained silent.

Devon took a deep breath and then spoke steadily. "I'm an undercover agent. I'm always undercover on an assignment. You said I couldn't know what it felt like to forget part of my life, my identity.
To answer to a strange name.
I do know what it feels like, Lara. I've known what it feels like for ten years. And in all those years, I never broke my cover. I never once told anyone who and what I really was, in large measure because my life depended on my playing the role I'd been assigned."

No wonder he had played the role of prince so convincingly; he was doubtless a natural actor, something the bureau had taken advantage of. And those past "roles" had, in all likelihood, been high-wire acts in deadly situations. She understood that, and the rationality of his defense made some of her bitter anger fade.
But not all of it.
"I wasn't your enemy," she whispered.

"I know. I'd already made up my mind to tell you tonight—whether you believe that or not." He sounded tired.

"Why now?" Her voice jerked.
"Because charm wasn't working?"

There was a moment of silence, and then he said, "We aren't lovers."

Her heart seemed to turn over inside her, and Lara was dimly aware that it was a purely intuitive response to his statement, as if something within her understood everything he meant with those three simple words. She tried to tell herself that she was seeing only what she wanted to, believing what her heart demanded that she believe.
And yet...
She felt that odd tug, the pull of something stronger than she was, and the power of the bittersweet affinity she felt with him almost stole her breath. She didn't look at him. Instead, all her other senses came tautly alive.

"I noticed," she said flatly. "So?"

"We could have been. You can't deny that." His voice was harsh now—and hard. "We should have been. And if I was an agent who just wanted to use you, for bait or anything else, we would have been. I wanted information from you, right? I wanted you to tell me everything you know about the night your father died, even the memories you can't bear to remember. And seduction would have given me that. So we should have been lovers."

"You were being noble?" she mocked with an effort that she hoped didn't show.

"It would have been the easy way, Lara.
The quickest way.
Just let nature take its course, and then listen to the pillow talk. And I was tempted."

She turned her head jerkily and looked at him.

His face was drawn, his eyes glittering in a way she'd never seen before.

Devon nodded. "Oh, yes, I was tempted—and not only because I wanted you so badly that I was half out of my mind. I was tempted because you wouldn't run, and you wouldn't hide, and I knew damned well you wouldn't panic. They wouldn't get any information from you, and I knew they'd have to kill you. So I was very tempted to take the quickest way to get the answers I needed from you."

"But you didn't." It was little more than a whisper.

"I couldn't do that to you.
To us."
He rose abruptly from the couch and moved away with the stiffness of a man who was rigid with control or pain. "I wish I could say it was nobility, but it wasn't. I simply didn't want you to hate me." Halting with half the width of the room between them, he faced her and shrugged wearily. "There aren't any princes, Lara, except in books and on stages. The rest of us simply do the best we can."

He waited, feeling as tense as if he'd just bet his life on a very dark horse. He half-expected her to order him to leave both her apartment and her life. She had bitterly referred to herself as a pawn, and he knew what she meant, knew how she must feel about that. But he couldn't go back and change the decision that had brought him into her life, any more than he could repeat these last few days.

And he couldn't expect a betrayal—even an incomplete one—to arouse in her anything but pain and disgust.

She rose from the couch and came slowly toward him, and when she spoke it was in a voice he'd never heard from her before.
A voice that reached inside him and touched something that had forgotten what a gentle, understanding contact felt like.

"I couldn't hate you, Devon, even if I wanted to. I realized that tonight, when I thought you might turn out to be an enemy. And you didn't trick your way into this prison of mine. You knew the way because you've been here or in a place very like this. I've known that all along. That's why I've never been able to fight the way you made me feel."

He didn't move when she stopped an arm's length away. "And I know," he said reluctantly, "that prisons are lonely places. Don't misinterpret your own feelings, Lara."

"Is that what you believe I'm doing?"

"I think it's possible.
Maybe even likely."

She looked up at him for a long moment, then said somewhat dryly, "I've been fighting this as hard as I know how. But it hasn't done any good. I don't believe in princes, Devon. And I don't know so much about happy endings. But I've never felt the way I do with you. And that's enough."

"The situation—"

"No, it isn't that." Lara hesitated, but knew this had to be resolved now. Steadily, she said, "I'm not in the habit of misinterpreting my own feelings, and being in a... prison hasn't changed that. I know how I feel. What I don't know is how you feel."

"You know."

"No." She smiled ruefully. "I don't know. It could have been the role."

He matched her smile, even though the strain showed through. "I'm not the resident seducer at the bureau. That was never the plan, I swear to you. I haven't been playing a role, Lara. Not when I've held you. Not when I've touched you." His voice hoarsened on the last few words, and he cleared his throat. "We can talk about that later. I—"

"We don't need to talk anymore." Lara had often been impulsive, and sometimes reckless, but she knew that neither of those emotions was driving her now. The timing was all wrong, she knew, because Devon was half-convinced it was the situation and not he who had sparked desire. But the certainty she felt went too deep to allow doubts to stop her.

"Lara—"

She took his hand and turned toward the hallway.

His fingers closed almost convulsively over hers. "Honey, you can't be sure," he said huskily.

"I can't be sure of much," she admitted softly. "But I am sure of this, Devon.
Very sure."
And she led him down the hallway to her bedroom.

"Yah," Ching said softly. He jumped onto the couch and trampled methodically on Devon's jacket until it was comfortably creased and folded. Then he turned around several times and curled up in a boneless ball with his ringed tail covering his nose. He murmured for a while in the back of his throat, the monologue holding a considering tone,
then
drifted off to sleep.

He dreamed about chasing rabbits.

"You're living for today," Devon said as she turned on the lamp by her bed and faced him. "Lara..." His haunting voice was deep and rough, his expression taut.

"And you know what that feels like," she said, tacitly confirming his assertion. Then she smiled. "But, Devon, it doesn't matter. Because if I knew, with absolute certainty, that a million tomorrows were waiting for me, it wouldn't change what I want tonight."

"How can you know—
"

"I love you."

His breath caught with a harsh sound, and his eyes blazed with a sudden fire. He didn't question the words, or deny them, even though the part of him that was an experienced agent urged him to. He accepted, because he needed her too badly to doubt the astonishing generosity that could allow her even to say that to him.

Whether it was true or not.

He reached for her slowly, but the instant his hands touched her shoulders something inside him seemed to break. It was all he could do to force himself not to crush her in his arms, not to hold on to her with all his strength, as if some incoherent fear within him whispered that she'd be wrested away from him.

Lara melted against him, her arms sliding up around his neck, face lifting as he bent his head and captured her mouth with his. She felt a shudder go through his powerful body, and her own body trembled responsively. Her mouth opened to him eagerly, and a jolt of pure, raw desire seared her when his tongue touched hers. She had never felt anything like this mindless, compulsive need; it was as if she had to obey an instinct so ancient there was no name for it, there were no words for it.

She rose on tiptoe, fitting herself more firmly to his hard body, and the sudden, throbbing emptiness in the deepest part of her yanked a sound from her throat that was almost anguish. The urgency that swept over her was very nearly madness, and her fingers shook uncontrollably as she began fumbling with the buttons of his shirt.

"Lara," Devon said raspily against her throat, his hands sliding down to curve over her bottom and
hold
her tightly against the swelling fullness of his loins. But she wasn't close enough, and a groan escaped him. Swiftly, he moved her away, caught the hem of her sweater, and drew it up over her head. The moment her arms were free, Lara's hands returned to his shirt, and she coped feverishly with the final button just as he unfastened her bra and pulled it off.

When she pushed the shirt off his shoulders, Devon shrugged out of it, his gaze fixed on her. The bulky sweaters she usually wore had allowed only a hint of the ripe curves beneath, and the utter perfection of her round, full breasts took his breath. The firm mounds filled his hands, nipples rising stiffly into his palms in an unbelievably sensuous caress. He heard her gasp, saw her vivid green eyes widen, darken, and she swayed toward him.

Devon was barely aware of a growl rattling in his throat. It was the sound of a caged wild thing. His senses flared violently as the hunger inside him reached a sudden, critical peak, and the part of his mind still capable of thought realized that he couldn't control this need for her. For an instant he quite literally couldn't move, didn't dare try because he was afraid the primitive beast inside him would burst free.

Then Lara's darkened gaze met his, and he realized that somehow, against all reason, she had been hurled into the same frenzy that gripped him. It was there, in her eyes, a fire every bit as hot as the one that burned him. He felt a kind of astonished wonder in her, matching his own, and he could move again.

Lara was so dazed by the storm of desire that she was only half-conscious of the rest of their clothing falling away. She didn't know who took off what and didn't care. No one had warned her that it could feel like
this, that she could feel like this,
the hunger so stunningly powerful that every nerve in her body was on fire with it.

He was kissing her urgently, lifting her and placing her on the bed, and she could only hold on to him desperately. And even though the sensations ripping through her were alien, they were also, somehow, familiar. Her body knew how to respond to his touch, as frantic as his own body; she was conscious of an instinctive knowledge of what would please him, and didn't hesitate to touch him, caress him.

Lara felt wild, desperate,
greedy
. She couldn't be still, couldn't stop the sounds she heard escaping her. Her trembling hands slid over the hard muscles of his back and shoulders, and her body arched with a will of its own as he stroked her swelling breasts. She tried to catch her breath and couldn't, a moan blocking her throat, need burning her like a mortal fever.

His mouth was on her breasts, hot and hungry, his hands moving over her with a desire and skill that made her ache. There were things she wanted to say to him, but there was no room for them, no breath for them—no need for them.

And no time.
The shattering tension within them built with a swift, relentless power that denied them time. Lara had never felt such blissful agony, and when his hand slid down over her quivering belly and gently cupped her, the ache intensified so sharply that it wrung a cry from deep inside her. She felt his fingers probing, stroking, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was going to splinter into a million pieces.