Stealing Kathryn (2 page)

Enjoying how she fought him, he threw her down on the bed that suddenly appeared. He followed over her, a dark hulking figure she could not make out or fight off no matter how hard she tried. She gritted her teeth in frustration, and he simply held her there, trapped and immobile.

“Who are you? What do you want?” she wanted to know. Then he paid great attention to the details of her trapped body. How soft she felt. How incredibly perfect she seemed. As far as jobs went, this wasn’t the worst one to have.

“You tell me first,” he taunted her, his voice like gravel and sand. “Obey me or you will not like the consequences.”

She thought about it, the stubborn set of her lips telling him she’d rather get her teeth pulled than tell him anything, but in the end her psychological make-up was going to defeat her.

“Kathryn,” she spat out.

Kathryn. Oh, how he loved to hear her name. He asked her for it every time, just to hear that defiant burst of passionate declaration. In the first three or four dreams he hadn’t asked for her name, not wanting to attach himself to her too personally, perhaps knowing on some level that there was a danger of it with this creature that was not present in others. Now he knew, and he could not take back the knowing. And he didn’t want to. He liked her name. Liked her. It was as bold and glorious as she was. She was, he thought heatedly, a one-of-a-kind and most perfect thing.

He rose over her, relieving her of the burden of his weight as he hovered above her. She might not be able to make his features out, but her mind would interpret his menacing and covetous expression as he ran his eyes over her stretched-out body. He reached to hold her hands above her head in one of his, then raked a hard hand and curved fingers down over her face, throat, and chest.

“You always fight,” he growled, and his harsh hand yanked up the gown and exposed her legs all the way to her thighs. The movement was such a hard one that she shimmied in all of her softest places, emphasizing just how much of a woman she really was. “But I know what you really want,” he told her as his hand scorched up over her thigh and his palm briefly cupped her bare sex. Kathryn gasped and lifted a leg as if to kick him, only succeeding in opening herself to him.

After all, as far as struggles went, this one was quite mild. Perhaps she was beginning to remember the game. Perhaps she was becoming too complacent.

“So, you have no desire to fight?” he asked her hotly, his breath coming quick even though she was being too easy. Just being this close to her stirred him to distraction. “Where is your fear?”

As he said it everything around the room exploded into flames. The only thing left untouched was the bed, but the heat felt all too real and dangerous. Kathryn cried out, struggling harder now to get out from under him, to get away from the thing she feared the most. He could feel her heart racing; she was panting hard for her breath. He tore at the top of her gown, exposing her to the waist, pulling her breast out to meet his mouth. When she screamed it was with a splendid combination of terror and arousal. She was filled with confusion as to why she would react in such a way. But he knew her mind far better than she did, and knew that the excitement of a forcible seduction was one of her darkest fantasies, one she would only ever indulge in here, where it was safe. The fear of the fire only heightened the adrenaline coursing through her. The more intense the danger, the more excited she became.

But still the key element was in her resistance to herself. She felt how she responded and thought it was wrong. She felt shame and guilt, like something was defective within her because she grew wet as he gnawed and devoured her nipple over and over again. He wished then that he could truly taste her skin, truly smell the scent of her. He wanted her in real dimensions, not these imaginary ones. He shifted up to crush his mouth upon hers, the full perfection of her mouth calling to him incessantly, day and night, with no quiet to be had. Frustration wormed through him as he kissed her with great passion but could experience none of the depth and flavor of her. He knew she could feel his passionate intentions, but he was just outside of truth of definition to her as well.

With a roar of fury he burst away from the bed and the object of his dissatisfaction. Ever since he had stumbled upon her the first time, he had been utterly obsessed. He’d tried time and again to stop, to carry on his work elsewhere, to fill his time with better sources of fear and focus.

But always she lured him back, with her infuriating perfection and needful body. She craved so many dark and wonderful things; she had the deepest of fears and yet faced them with such unbelievable courage. She was utterly fascinating.

And he wanted her.

Not just in this realm he was limited to, but beyond it. In the real. He would take her—yes! Yes, he could keep her then, keep her for his very own, and no one could stop him. No one would dare to stop him.

He reached out for her, pulling her to her feet and into the fire. Her dress immediately caught flame at the hem and she screamed, struggling to brush away the flames.

“Tell me where you live and I’ll make it all stop,” he promised her.

“Stop it! Please!”

“Tell me,” he coaxed her as the flames leapt higher against her.

Drowning in terror and flame, she did.

Ripping out of the horrifying nightmare with a gasp, Kathryn instantly tried to beat out flames that no longer existed. Her sudden movement nearly toppled her out of the plain wooden chair she’d pulled up to her sister’s bedside. It took her a moment to shake off her disorientation, to realize she had fallen asleep while watching over Jillian. She hurriedly left her chair to lean over her sister’s bed. Jillian was shivering weakly, her breath rasping in a sickening staccato rhythm.

“Hush, now. Rest, love,” she crooned gently to the sick girl.

Kathryn rubbed the grit of weariness from her eyes as she turned to the bedside table. It took her a moment to focus on the paraphernalia there. There were bottles of medicine, a thermometer, and a large china basin with rags soaking in water and melting ice. The bottle labels were a confusion to her for a moment as she tried to get a grasp on her weary concentration. Then she found what she was looking for. She tumbled two small aspirin from one bottle into her palm, hoping to keep Jillian’s fever down. Then Kathryn grabbed a glass of cool water and turned back to Jillian, maneuvering herself behind the frail ten-year-old’s head and lifting it until she could manage to wrangle the medicine down the child’s throat.

Jillian accepted the pills well enough for someone who had occasionally been too weak to swallow, and it gave Kathryn a glimmer of hope. What she wouldn’t give for the simplicity of children’s liquid medicine right then. But in the bush of Australia you had to make do with what was in your supplies, and the colorful syrup had run out a while back.

“There now, what a good girl you are,” she praised Jillian softly, stubbornly believing that the child could somehow hear her. She spent a moment stroking her sister’s thin, pale red hair. Then she slid gingerly from the bed.

Kathryn waited anxiously for several minutes until she was certain the child had quieted again and was resting as peacefully as she could. Then she straightened stiffly, her hands pressing into the aching curve of her lower back. She looked at her watch, trying to determine what day it was as well as the time. She had called for help almost twenty-four hours ago, but things took time out in the bush. But it should be soon. Hopefully very soon.

Kathryn felt her exhaustion with sudden acuteness. Dizziness washed through her and she touched fingertips to her forehead in an attempt to steady herself and her swaying vision.

“Father,” she prayed fiercely, “give me strength.” She gritted her teeth as a harsher wave of vertigo spilled over her.

Kathryn…

Kathryn gasped softly when the low, thick whisper reached her ears. She whirled around drunkenly, taking in the madly tilting room to see who had spoken her name.

A macabre chill rushed her flesh.

“Papa?” she asked breathlessly, widening her eyes in an attempt to focus.

But no one was there but her and Jillian.

Kathryn reached to grasp one of the spiraling bedposts, clinging to it as she searched herself for a store of strength she might not yet have tapped.

There was none.

Kathryn fought back tears.

She must find the strength!

Somehow.

She was the only one left for her desperately ill family to depend on.

She waited, breathing deeply, for the room to stop pitching and rolling around her. She dared not close her eyes. She would surely succumb to the persistent, lurking need to sleep that had harried her every step these last days. She simply did not have the time or the luxury for sleep. And anyway, whenever she did fall asleep, there was nothing there for her but terrible and disturbing dreams. Sometimes, like before, all-out nightmares.

Slowly the room righted itself, becoming once again the firm, solidly built expanse of sturdy antique furnishings it had always been.

Taking another deep breath, Kathryn took a moment to tuck a straggling tendril of hair back behind her ear. She slipped a palm against her slightly rounded stomach, wishing it would settle as the room had. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything, but it seemed very unimportant when the lives of her family were at risk.

Then she took the firmest steps she could manage to the door. She was halfway along the hallway when her vision blurred again and the floor fell away with sickening speed. She collapsed to her knees and hands, jarring her joints as she realized the floor was still very much where it was supposed to be, it was merely her head and her vision leaving much to be desired.

“Get up, Kathryn Louise Macdonough,” she commanded herself fiercely. “You’re the daughter of Connor Macdonough, the granddaughter of Fiona Macdonough. You shame the Macdonough name if you quit now!”

Somehow, after this empowering speech, she managed to drag herself back up to her feet, using the wall as her main support. She slid herself along it so that she could tell right from left and up from down while using it for the stability her betraying eyes would not provide. She finally reached her father’s door.

“Kathryn.”

The whisper was louder this time. Nearer.

She convinced herself that it had been her father after all, even though it sounded nothing like him. But the sickness could very easily have put that rough, mournful lilt into his words…couldn’t it?

Kathryn shrugged off another foreboding chill. She had been living in a stranger’s body for well over a week now, exhaustion robbing her of all that had felt normal. A new, strange feeling seeping into her bones was not all that new or strange an occurrence to her anymore.

She pushed herself into Connor Macdonough’s room and moved to the bed, steeling herself for the weakened image of her father. The preparation did not work. As she bent to change the cloth on his forehead, now heated through with his fever, her eyes misted with tears.

Her father had been a large, robust man. He filled rooms with his very presence and had made stone walls vibrate with a mere laugh. But now her poor papa was but a shadow of himself. In just a week he’d lost a noticeable amount of weight from this wretched flu. His hands, which until now had still been able to toss her around despite her twenty-two years of age and full-grown womanhood, were now knobbed joints and thin, translucent skin. His merry cheeks had lost their natural color, only the occasional spike of fever making them blush.

Kathryn cursed the pilot of the supply plane that had come out to them a little less than two weeks ago. He had brought this vile sickness with him, his simple sneezes and sniffles dooming her father and sister to suffer. The nearest medical help was much too far to drive to by conventional means, and all that rough country and dust while strapped in a car would do her family no good. No, the best thing was to wait for an airlift. Which should be soon. Hopefully very soon.

Kathryn laid the fresh cloth on her father’s forehead, biting her lip brutally hard. She wouldn’t let herself think about the worst. Help was coming. She would go downstairs and call once again, pestering the authorities with all she had to make them come for her family.

The only other option would be to give up…and to bury them next to her sweet, unfortunate mother. The hard life out in this wild country had claimed her mother’s life three years earlier.

Pain of that too-recent loss flooded her, but again she fought back the despairing thoughts. Now was not the time for mourning. Right now, she had to keep her already foggy head as clear as she could if she was to complete her rounds and make her call to civilization.

Then, maybe, she could rest.

For a small while.

“Kathryn!”

“Yes, Papa, Kathryn’s here,” she murmured automatically. She looked down at her father’s face.

He was as still as death. There was barely breath enough in him to sustain his life—never mind to speak her name in that strong, growling whisper.

“Who is here?” she demanded in sudden panic, clutching her father’s bed linens to steady herself as she looked around the room wildly. “Who is here?”

Fear tightened her throat and her heart began to pound. It made her overtaxed body work harder than it should, making her weak again as vertigo struck with a vengeance.

The air became thick around her suddenly and her nostrils flared as she tried to suck in a breath. She smelled something tart and tangy, like nutmeg. Nutmeg and a rich, dank, musty odor like a room long overdue for an airing. Her skin prickled and the hairs on the back of her arms and neck rose as a tingling sensation of stinging heat crept over her.

“Kathryn.”

The voice was upon her now. Behind her. Coming into her ear with warmth and nearness as if the speaker was just at her back.

She spun around, terror clutching at her.

There was no one.

But she could feel heat! The heat and warmth of a person. The electric aura of a powerful, unexplained presence.