Judith McNaught (30 page)

grip on her arms. "Julie—"

"I've spent the last fifteen years of my life," she sobbed brokenly, struggling harder against his grasp,

"trying to be perfect. I've been so perfect!" she wept, and the sound of her pain transmitted itself to Zack even though he didn't fully understand its source.

"And it—it was all for nothing!"

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As if she'd finally exhausted herself physically, she stopped struggling and her head fell forward, but her shoulders continued to jerk with sobs. "I tried so hard," she choked. "I became a teacher so they'd be proud. I—I go to church and I teach Sunday school.

They won't let me teach any more after this—"

Suddenly Zack couldn't bear the weight of her sorrow or his own culpability any more. "Stop it, please,"

he whispered achingly, wrapping her in his arms, cupping his hand around her head and holding her face

pressed to his chest. "I understand and I'm sorry.

When this is all over, I'll make them see the truth."

"You understand!" she repeated with bitter scorn, lifting her tear-streaked, accusing face to his. "How can someone like
you
understand how I feel!"

Someone like him. An animal like him. "Oh, I understand!" he bit out, holding her away, shaking her until

she looked up at him. "I understand
exactly
what it feels like to he despised for something you didn't do!"

Julie choked back her protest at his rough handling as she registered the fury on his face and the agony in

his eyes. His fingers bit into her arms, and his voice was raw with emotion. "I didn't kill anyone! Do you hear me? Lie to me and say you believe me! Just say it! I want to hear someone say it!"

Having just experienced herself a tiny part of what he would feel if he was truly innocent, Julie cringed inwardly at the thought of what he could be feeling.

If he was truly innocent… She swallowed, her blurry eyes searching his haggard, handsome face, and she spoke her thought aloud:

"I believe you!" she whispered, fresh tears starting to spill over her lashes and down her cheeks. "I do."

Zack heard the sincerity in her tearful voice; in her blue eyes he saw the dawning of true compassion, and deep within him the wall of ice he'd kept around his heart for years began to thaw and crack. Lifting his hand, he laid it against her soft cheek, his thumb helplessly rubbing away her hot tears. "Don't cry for me," he murmured, his voice hoarse.

"I believe you!"she repeated, and the tender fierceness of her reply demolished what was left of his

reserve. Zack's throat constricted around an unfamiliar knot of emotion, and for a moment he stood

there, immobilized by what he saw and heard and felt. Her tears were streaming down her cheeks, clinging to her sooty lashes, wetting his hand; her eyes looked like damp blue pansies, and she was biting

down on her lower lip, trying to stop it from trembling.

"Please, don't cry," he whispered achingly as he lowered his mouth to hers to stop her lips from trembling. "Please, please don't…" At the first touch of his mouth, she went rigidly still, her breath indrawn, though Zack hadn't any idea if it was fear or surprise that paralyzed her. He didn't know and didn't care at that moment. His only desire was to hold her, to savor the sweet feelings swelling inside him—the first sweetness he'd felt in years—to share it all with her.

Telling himself to go slowly, to be content with whatever she was willing to permit, Zack slid his lips

back and forth over the contours of hers, tasting the saltiness of her tears. He told himself not to push her,

not to force her, and even while he did, he began to do both. "Kiss me back," he urged, and the helpless tenderness he heard in his voice was as alien to him as the other feelings coursing through him. "Kiss me back," he repeated, sliding his tongue over the seam of her lips. "Open your mouth," he coaxed. When she obeyed and leaned into him, crushing her parted lips to his, Zack almost groaned aloud with the pleasure of it. Desire, primitive and potent, poured through his veins, and suddenly he was acting on pure

instinct. His arm tightened, angling across her back, holding her hips pressed to his while his lips forced hers to part wider, and his tongue plunged into the wine-flavored softness of her mouth. He backed her
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against the wall, kissing her with all the persuasive force at his disposal, his mouth slanting over hers, his

tongue teasing and provoking, his hands sliding down her spine and then up, under her sweater. Her soft,

bare skin felt like liquid satin beneath his hands as he caressed her narrow waist, stroked her back, and spread his fingers over her midriff, and then he finally let himself seek her breasts. She pressed closer to

him and moaned into his mouth when he touched her breasts, and the sweet sound was almost his undoing; it made his entire body throb while his fingers explored every inch of breast and nipple, his lips

locked to hers, his tongue exploring with rampant hunger.

To Julie, what he was doing to her was like being imprisoned in a cocoon of dangerous, terrifying sensuality where she had no control over anything.

Particularly herself. Beneath the exploration of his long

fingers her breasts were beginning to ache with need; against her will, her heated body was molding itself to the hardened contours of his; and her parted lips were welcoming the continued invasion of his tongue.

Zack felt her fingers sliding into the soft hairs at his nape, and he dragged his mouth across her cheek to her ear.

"God, you are sweet!" he whispered while he took her nipples between his fingers, forcing them to harden into tight, hard buds, wanting to lavish her with pleasure. "Little one," he murmured hoarsely,

"you

are so damned beautiful…"

It might have been the endearment he'd used—one she was sure she remembered hearing him use in a movie—or perhaps it was his ridiculous use of the word
beautiful
that finally broke the sensual spell she

was under, but Julie slowly realized that she'd watched him play this same kind of scene dozens of times

with dozens of truly beautiful actresses in the movies. Only
this
time, it was
her
bare flesh that his hands

were exploring with such practiced certainty. "Stop it!" she warned sharply, pulling free of his arms, shoving him away and yanking down her sweater.

For a moment, Zack simply stood there, breathing deeply, arms at his sides, feeling completely disoriented. Her face was flushed with desire, and her

glorious eyes were still glazed with it, but she looked as if she wanted to bolt for the door. Softly, as if

speaking to a skittish colt, he said, "What's wrong, little—?"

"Just stop it right now!" she burst out. I am not your

'little one'—that was another woman in some other scene like this with you. I do not want to hear you call me that. I don't want to hear that I am beautiful either."

Zack gave his head a shake to clear it. Belatedly realizing that she was breathing in quick, shallow pants,

watching him as if she half-expected him to pounce on her, tear off her clothes, and rape her, he said very quietly and very carefully, "Are you afraid of me, Julie?"

"Of course not," Julie said shortly, but she realized as soon as she said it that it was a lie. When the kiss had begun, she'd understood instinctively that, somehow, kissing her had represented a kind of cleansing

for him, and she'd wanted to give him that. But now that her heart had taken that kiss as an urgent demand to give him much, much more, she was terrified. Because she wanted to do exactly that. She wanted to feel his hands rushing over her naked skin and his body driving into hers. In the moments she'd been silent, he'd evidently replaced passion with anger, because his voice was no longer gentle or kind, it

was cool, clipped, and hard. "If you aren't afraid, then what's bothering you? Or is it that you can give an

escaped convict a little empty sympathy, but you don't want him too close. Is that it?"

Julie nearly stamped her foot in frustration at his narrow logic and her own stupidity for letting things go

this far. "It's nothing like revulsion if that's what you mean."

His voice became a bored drawl. "Then what is it, or shouldn't I ask?"

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"You shouldn't need to ask!" she said, raking her hair off her forehead as she looked around a little wildly for something to do, some way to restore order to a world that had suddenly become alarmingly

out of her control. "I'm not an animal," she began.

Her eyes fell on a picture on the wall beside her that was a fraction of an inch crooked and she turned around to fix it.

"And you think I am? An animal? Is that it?"

Trapped by his questions and his nearness, she glanced over her shoulder and spied a cushion on the floor. "I think," she told him flatly as she walked over to the cushion, "that you're a man who has been locked away from women for five long years."

"That's right, I am. So what?"

She placed the cushion at a vertical angle against the arm of the sofa and began to feel more in control, now that there was distance between them. "So," she explained and actually managed an impersonal little smile at him across the width of the sofa, "I can understand that, to you, any woman would be like a…"

His dark brows snapped together over ominous eyes, and she trailed off uneasily, then she hastily bent and began rearranging the other throw pillows into a more artistic display, but she persevered with her explanation. "To you, after being in prison for so long, any woman would be like a—a banquet to a starving man. Any woman," she emphasized. "I mean, I didn't mind letting you kiss me if that made you

feel, well, better."

Zack was humiliated and furious at the discovery she regarded him as some animal to whom she'd been tossing a crumb of human feeling, a sex-starved beggar to whom she was reluctantly willing to give a little

kiss. "How noble you are, Miss Mathison," he jeered, ignoring the way the color drained out of her cheeks as he continued with deliberate brutality.

"You've sacrificed your precious self twice to me.

But

contrary to your opinion, even an animal like myself is capable of some sort of restraint and

discrimination. In short, Julie, you may think you're a 'banquet,' but you're completely resistible to this particular man, sex-starved though I may be."

His volatile anger was tangible, terrifying, and completely incomprehensible to Julie in her agitated state.

She stepped back, wrapping her arms around herself as if to fend off the hurt he was deliberately inflicting on her raw emotions.

Zack read her every reaction in her expressive eyes, and satisfied that he'd done the utmost possible damage, he turned on his heel and walked over to the cabinet beside the television, where he began looking over the various titles of the videotaped movies on the shelves.

Julie knew she'd just been discarded like a used piece of tissue and summarily dismissed, but her ravaged pride rebelled at the thought of creeping into her bedroom like a wounded rabbit. Adamantly refusing to shed even one tear or show any fluster, she walked over to the table and began straightening the magazines on it. His frigid command made her lurch upright. "Go to bed! What are you anyway, some sort of compulsive housewife?"

The magazines slid out of her hand and she glared at him, but she did as he told her.

From the corner of his eye, Zack watched her retreat, noticing the haughty lift of her chin and the proud grace of her walk, and with the skill he'd perfected when he was eighteen, he turned away and coldly dismissed Julie Mathison completely from his mind.

He concentrated, instead, on the Tom Brokaw
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newscast that Julie had interrupted with her angry outburst. He could have sworn that while he was trying

to comfort her, Brokaw had said something about Dominic Sandini. Sitting down on the sofa, he frowned

at the television set. He wished to God he could have heard exactly what it was. In two hours or so, there should be a late-night news update or at least a recap before the station went off the air. Propping his feet on the coffee table, Zack leaned back, prepared to wait for that. Sandini's face with its daredevil

grin took shape in his mind, and a faint smile touched his lips as he thought of the wiry, irrepressible

Italian. In all these years, there were only two men who he had come to regard as true friends: One of them was Matt Farrell and the other was Dominic Sandini. Zack's smile deepened as he considered the total dissimilarities between the two men he regarded as a "friend." Matt Farrell was a world-class

tycoon; Zack and he had forged their friendship out of dozens of common interests and a deep mutual respect.

Dominic Sandini was a world-class petty thief; he didn't have one single thing in common with Zack, and

Zack had done absolutely nothing to earn Sandini's respect or his loyalty. Yet, Sandini had given him both, freely and without reservation. He had broken through Zack's isolation with dumb jokes and funny stories about his large, unconventional family. Then, without Zack realizing it, Sandini had intentionally drawn him into that family. They came to the prison and they behaved as if the prison yard was a perfectly normal place for festive family reunions.

They thrust their babies into his inexpert arms to hold,

and they treated him with the same confusing, boisterous combination of warm affection and stern familial

concern that they showed to Dom. Looking back, Zack realized how much their letters and

cookies—and even Mama Sandini's garlic salami—

had really meant to him. He was going to miss them all much more than he'd have imagined. Leaning his head back against the sofa, he closed his eyes, his mood considerably lightened by his memories of them. He would find a way to send Gina a wedding present, he decided. A silver tea service. And he'd send a gift to Dom, too. Something special. But what could he possibly buy for Dominic Sandini that Dom would need and like? The most logical gift that came to mind made Zack chuckle at his own absurdity: a used car sales lot!