Summer Games (32 page)

“Background music?”

“The scanner.”

Laughing, he folded her against his body, cradling her, rocking her, comforting himself. “After this morning, I didn’t think anything could make me laugh. You’re so good for me, sweet rider.”

He brushed his open mouth over her neck, tasted her heat, touched the beat of her life with the tip of his tongue. She arched her neck to give him more freedom. He gave her a slow, tender bite and forced himself to release her.

“I like you in one piece,” he said, “so let’s see the rest of what this ‘right bastard’ course has in store.”

“You’ve been talking to Captain Jon.”

Cord shrugged. He had walked the course before the riders were ever allowed on it, but he hadn’t been looking at the obstacles themselves. Barracuda’s style was hit, run, and brag. If he had hidden inside the course itself, he could have hit whatever he wanted, but he wouldn’t have been able to run afterward.

Dead men don’t brag, either.

If Barracuda got past the redoubled security, he would be heading for one of the many positions Cord had already noted—hilltops where a sniper would have a good view of the crowd. And the contestants.

“Even after seeing the specs for myself,” he said, “I couldn’t believe the cross-country segment was as bad as Captain Jon made it sound. He’s done professional events all his life, and he says this is the toughest course he’s ever seen.”

Raine’s chin came up. The tone of Cord’s voice told her that he wanted her out of the competition. “The course is what it’s supposed to be. A test.”

He said nothing, but his mouth was a thin, hard line as he rummaged in the rucksack she was wearing. After a few moments he asked, “Ham-and-Swiss or Italian?”

“Italian.”

Eating as they walked, Raine and Cord cut across the course to the last segment, the cross-country. Between bites of Italian sandwich, she answered his questions. All of his queries had one thing in common: a blunt concern for her safety.

The more obstacles he saw up close, the more he worried. Taken by themselves, many of the obstacles were hair-raising, even for a man brought up racing mustangs through broken country. But these obstacles weren’t taken alone by a fresh horse. They were taken at the end of nearly eighteen miles of running and jumping.

Taken that way, the obstacles were appalling. They were conceived in hell and dedicated to the principle that any horse-and-rider unit could be broken into its component parts.

And left that way.

There was one obstacle called the Coffin. It had a sharp downhill approach, a pair of rails planted on each side of an eight-foot-wide stream, and an uphill landing. If horse or rider misjudged at any point, a vicious fall was inevitable.

Then there were the Steps, a gigantic staircase with each step just wide enough for a horse to land on and not one bit more. There was no space for a stride before the next step loomed up ahead. Without perfect timing, willingness and coordination, the horse could break a leg and the rider a neck.

The water jumps weren’t any easier. Water was softer than logs, but mud made for nasty footing. One of the jumps was styled after the type of obstacle any nineteenth-century military rider might have encountered—a stream sunk between banks that were almost four feet high. The stream was too wide to jump across from bank to bank. The horse was forced to jump down into water and then back up and out, jumping onto the far bank without knowing what kind of footing was there.

Another obstacle involved jumping blindly into water. There was a wall of logs that dropped into water on the far side. The horse had to take two strides in knee-high water and then leap over a chest-high fence in the middle of the pond. Jumping the fence required a wet, uncertain takeoff and a worse landing.

The more Cord saw of the course, the less he liked it. He measured another nasty test, which was a rough uphill run separating two obstacles. There was a jump at the base of the hill, a jump onto the crest, and another rugged jump hidden just below the crest on the far side.

“What if you fall between obstacles?” he asked.

Raine swallowed a final bite of her sandwich, savoring the crunchy mild pepper. “No penalty points. There are officials at each obstacle to make sure you take the obstacle in the right direction and land right side up. If you fall within the penalty area, you loose sixty points.”

“Not to mention teeth, among other things,” he muttered. The wood rails were solid and as thick as his arm.

She smiled, showing two unbroken rows of white teeth. “So far, so good. I still have the ones I was born with.”

“Broken bones?”

She shrugged. “Sure. It comes with—”

“—the territory,” he cut in, his voice hard.

“Yes. Like the scar across your left hip that you won’t tell me about. And the other one on your right side. And the third one buried beneath your hair at the back of your head.”

His right hand clenched in his pocket around the solid-gold coin. She was right. He of all people should know just how much abuse the human body could take and still survive. Yet a sense of disaster had been riding him since he had talked to Bonner that morning.

Cord had felt like this five times before in his life; three times people had died. Silently he cursed the Scots grandmother who had passed on her fey premonitions to him but had not passed on the means to prevent the disasters. He could only sense them through veils of coldness and unease.

He would give anything he had, everything he had ever hoped for, if only Raine wouldn’t ride tomorrow.

“Even if it wasn’t my job,” he said quietly, “I’d still want to protect you. You’re so beautiful, so alive, like a fire burning in a winter world.”

Tears magnified her eyes. She didn’t know what to say. She put her hand on his arm, and was shocked by the tension vibrating beneath his control.

Cord closed his eyes for an instant. Then he chose his words as though his life depended on them. He had never wanted anything so much—or been so helpless to get it.

“I know what it is to live out on the edge,” he said finally, “to test yourself and find out just what you’re made of, to test and test again until you can live freely, sure of your own abilities.”

She stared at him, seeing herself reflected in his eyes, his words.

“But there comes a time,” he said slowly, “when the old tests don’t teach you anything new. Do you understand what I’m saying?” His eyes changed, focusing on her, silently asking what he wouldn’t say aloud.

She touched his cheek. “I have to ride tomorrow.”

He didn’t move, yet it was as though he had. He held himself like a man expecting a blow.

“If it was only me, I might hesitate,” she said. “For you, Cord. Only for you. But it isn’t just you or just me.”

He closed his eyes, accepting what he couldn’t change. Very gently he kissed the center of her palm. “I know. God help us both, I know.”

And he did, for he was caught in his own responsibilities, a steel net that was drawing tighter, harder, pulling him away from everything he had ever wanted.

Raine.

* * * 

Sighing, she sat back in the motor home’s small dinette. She sipped at the half glass of white Burgundy that was all she had permitted herself to have tonight. Using her fingers, she picked at the few remaining greens on her salad plate, ate a crunchy leaf, and neatly licked her fingertips.

“That’s the best thing about this restaurant,” she said.

“What is?” Cord asked.

“I can eat with my fingers and no one cares.”

He smiled and held his hand out to her across the table. “Let me do that.”

“Do what?” she asked lazily.

“Lick your fingers.”

The fire that was never far beneath her surface when she was with him licked through her. “Why do I suddenly feel like dessert?”

“Do you?” he asked, his voice velvet and dark. His finger traced the line of her neck and throat and the valley between her breasts. “You don’t look like a strawberry waiting to be dipped in chocolate. You’re too rich and smooth. More like a vanilla sundae. Only much better . . . much warmer. I wonder how you’d look with chocolate running all over your creamy skin.”

Her breath rushed out as she tightened deep inside. Her nipples hardened against the soft navy T-shirt she wore.

He saw, and fought a sharp struggle for selfcontrol. He wanted to slide out of the chair and kneel in front of her, to undress her and cherish every bit of her sweetness until she melted in his hands, bathing him in her fire.

“We’ve checked Dev and eaten a meal to warm a nutritionist’s heart,” he said. “Do you have to follow any other rules for the night before the competition?”

“Such as?”

“Sleeping alone.”

She smiled slowly. “Not a chance.”

“Thank God.” Cord’s voice was gritty with restraint. “I don’t think I could keep my hands off you tonight. Especially knowing that you want me as much as I want you.”

For a moment he simply looked at her, his eyes pale and intense. The thought of her hurtling over that brutal course tomorrow was riding him mercilessly. Two nightmare visions kept turning in his mind like sides of a slowly spinning coin. The first was Raine, lying crushed at the bottom of a jump that had proved to be one obstacle too many for even Dev’s great strength. The second was an assassin’s bullet taking out the secondary target because the primary target was unavailable . . . Raine lying motionless, a casualty in an undeclared war, blood and silence and death.

Cord’s grim expression sent a cool trickle down Raine’s spine. “I’m not the only nervous one,” she whispered. “Is it getting very blue outside, Delta Blue?”

His smile was so brief she almost missed it. “Don’t worry about it. You have enough on your mind.”

“Why don’t I just tell Dad not to come to the course?”

“It’s too late. It’s been too late since Blue decided he was going to see his Baby Blue ride. Not that I blame him. If you were mine, I’d see you ride tomorrow if I had to take on hell with a garden hose.”

She whispered Cord’s name as her hands came up to frame his hard face. His eyes were like ice, but his mouth was warm, gentle, and very seductive against hers, nibbling, licking, touching, tasting, promising wild, sweet oblivion. When he reluctantly lifted his lips from hers, she sighed his name again.

“Shower first,” he said firmly, picking a piece of straw out of her hair. “I have a call to make.”

“You’ll pay for that,” she said in a husky voice.

“What?” he asked innocently.

“Teasing me and then telling me to take a cold shower.”

“Try the handle on the left. The one marked H.”

She muttered something succinct and unladylike. Then she walked toward the shower, shedding clothes with each step.

Cord watched until the bare curve of her shoulder emerged from her blouse as she shrugged aside the cloth. The elegant, deeply feminine movement went into him like a knife, making a floodtide of fierce, aching heat rise in him. With a curse, he turned away to make his call.

Still muttering, Raine tucked her hair into a green terrycloth shower turban. She went into the shower stall, turned on the water, and grabbed the soap. Before she had worked up a decent lather, the shower door opened and Cord stepped in, filling the small enclosure with his male presence.

He was fully naked, fully aroused.

She stood with soap forgotten in one hand, warm water running over her skin, desire spiking hotly through her. His eyes were silver-blue, smoky. The tension of passion showed in every muscular line of his body.

“What about your call?” Her voice was throaty, aching with need for him.

“He was out fishing.”

Smiling, Cord slid his hands slickly over Raine’s neck and shoulders, down her back, around her waist. He lingered over her hips, leaving heat and lather wherever he touched. When his fingers slid up and circled her breasts, she groaned softly. He watched her change at his touch, felt the silky resilience of her breasts and the tempting hardness of her nipples pouting against his palms.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since I washed your hair,” he said in a low voice. “Why the hell did I wait so long?”

Need blossomed inside her, a long, pulsing rush of liquid heat. “I’ll play your silly game. Why did you wait so long?”

“Stupidity.” He turned her toward the pouring water and watched iridescent lather slide down every feminine curve of her body. “Sheer criminal stupidity.”

She laughed, then made a throaty sound of surprise and desire when he bent and licked the smooth warmth of her neck. His lips and teeth and tongue caressed her, gently cherishing her while he fought to banish the fey nightmare . . . Raine hurt, dying, and he was too far away to help her.

With a groan, he spread his hands wide and held her against his hungry body, trying to touch all of her at once, know all of her, hold all of her now, because tomorrow would come too soon, bringing with it blood and silence and death.

His mouth moved to her breasts, licking and love biting, ravishing her tenderly while warm water poured over him, over her. Slowly he slid down her body until he was kneeling in front of her. His tongue traced her navel while his hands cupped her hips, tilting her toward his caresses. His teeth closed lightly on the inner curve of one thigh.

Her breath came in sharply. When she looked down, she saw his hair black against her pale skin, his teeth white and gleaming, the hard tip of his tongue teasing her inner thigh. And then his head turned, seeking her greatest heat, finding it, cherishing it with an intimate caress that made the breath stop in her throat.

“Cord—” Surprise and savage desire jolted through her, loosening her knees.

“It’s all right, sweet rider.” He turned his head away from the sleek flesh that called to him and laid his beard-roughened cheek against her thigh. “Everything is all right.”

He came to his feet in a single coordinated rush. As though he had never touched her, he shut off the water, stepped out of the shower, and reappeared carrying a soft towel. He rubbed the cloth slowly over her skin, drying her with gentle movements of his hands.