The Wedding Ransom (15 page)

He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then looked deeply into her eyes and spoke from his heart. “I want you to be sure, Maggie. You only have one first time. Are you positive you want it to be with me?”

Her slow, wistful smile would have brought him to his knees were he not already there. Maggie St. John was the true treasure hidden in this cenote, and Rafe held his breath, praying for permission to plunder.

She licked her lips and murmured, “You saved my life.”

Well, hell
. “I don’t want a gratitude tumble,” he snapped.

“You’re the most handsome man I’ve ever known.”

“Now that I like a lot better.”

Maggie lifted her hand to his jaw and stroked him, seducing him with her touch and the husky flow of her voice. “You are kind to my grandfathers. You’re warm and generous and you make me laugh.”

He closed his eyes. “So do puppies, I imagine.”

“Puppies don’t make my skin tingle when they touch me. They don’t make my blood run hot or my knees feel like butter. And Rafe, the way you say my name, the way you call me Mary, it makes me tremble inside. A warm, delicious shudder. You make me feel alive, Rafe. You’re an adventurer. A thief.”

“
Former
thief,” he rasped as her fingers grazed his nipples. She was killing him. Then she quit touching him and that was even worse.

As the moment stretched, Rafe’s heart fell. He heard her sit up.
Guess that was his answer. Well, hell. But it was better this way
, he tried to tell himself. Truly. He didn’t want a woman who would suffer regrets when the loving was done, even if it did mean he’d walk stooped over for the rest of his natural born life. She was a virgin, dammit. Her first time should be in a plump feather bed with an entire night stretched out in front of her, not on a hard rock with four crusty pirates waiting with cutlass at the ready, prepared to run her lover through for even thinking about touching her, much less actually doing it.

But, damn, he’d wanted her.

Stoically he opened his eyes, and once again the lady surprised him. She sat beside him, her loosened sarong clutched to her chest, while a hesitant smile fluttered at the corners of her lips. Rather than refusal in her eyes, he saw a plea to listen. Maybe she wasn’t telling him no after all.

She had him as confused as a fly in a butter churn.

Maggie’s voice rang with sincerity. “I think that you—more than any man I’ve ever met—have the ability to understand me. Today you may be a respected Texas rancher, but you have a past. You know what it’s like to be wicked. You know what I am, having been raised how I was.”

Anger flared and melded with the lust pounding through his blood. “You are not wicked! If that’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say. You may act stupid sometimes, forcing your way along on this swim, for instance. And how did you manage to lose your breathing tube? You want to tell me that?”

“I was daydreaming. You were kissing me, and I went to kiss you back.”

“Damn, Maggie,” he groaned. “You are wicked after all.”

She laughed softly. “No, Rafe, I’m not wicked, but I am different. I’m not like the girls at my school in Boston. I’m not like the society women who frequented Hotel Bliss, either. As much as my grandfathers tried to guide me and protect me and give me all the opportunities I could want, I still grew up aboard a pirate ship. I spent time in some of the roughest ports in the world among men who’d just as soon kill you as look at you.”

“You shouldn’t have been there.”

“I loved my papas. I wouldn’t have been anywhere else.”

The simply stated truth created a warm-honey feeling inside Rafe that had nothing to do with sexual heat. Love, pure and simple and freely given despite all the odds against it. It was something for which Rafe had searched but never found. Not yet, anyway.

Maggie continued, “I may be inexperienced, but I’m far from innocent. For my grandfathers’ sake, I tried to be good, tried to be a lady, and for the most part, I’ve succeeded. But part of me wants…” She took his hand and squeezed it. “A part of me
wants
.”

“Maggie…”

She lay down upon her back, allowing the sarong to slip once again to her waist. Her eyes glistened like blue diamonds. She reached for him, pulling him down to her. Rafe groaned as their bodies met, ache to ache. Hard to soft. “You say you came along on this trip for adventure. Well, I have that same craving, too. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t make me different in that regard.”

Her expression turned devilish. “In fact, I’m thrilled that I’m here, caught literally between a rock and a hard place.” She punctuated her point with a roll of her hips.

“That’s bad, woman,” Rafe said with a groan.

“I know and I love it. I want adventure, you see. We’re here alone in this paradise and I want to take advantage of it. I want you to be my adventure, Rafe. It feels right. You feel right. Make love to me, please?”

Rafe was two layers of cloth and at most two thrusts away from exploding. This beautiful, exciting, warm, willing woman lay beneath him, asking for something he wanted to give more than he wanted to take his next breath.

He said the only thing he could say under the circumstances. “No.”

“N
o?” Maggie’s heart seemed to stop.

“No,” Rafe repeated and rolled off her.

Humiliation drizzled over her, quenching the fire that had burned so brightly just moments before. Quickly, she sat up, clutching her sarong against her chest, her fingers working furiously to knot the cloth at her shoulder. She wanted to die, to disappear in a puff of blush-colored smoke. She wished he’d never found her in the tunnel.

“It’s not right, Maggie. Not for you. Not right now. A person doesn’t make life decisions like that right after she damn near drowns. You are vulnerable.”

“I’m not vulnerable.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“No, I’m not. I told you how I feel.”

“Yeah, you did. And it was what you said that convinced me to stop. This has happened to me before, you know.”

No
, Maggie thought,
I don’t want to die
. She wanted to kill him. Maybe drown him in the blue-water pool.

“Not exactly the same thing, of course. I mean, I never turned down sex in a cenote before.”

Where was her gun? Her knife? She’d like to cut out his tongue. She could at least dunk him. She could reach over and give him a nice big shove into the water. Maybe get some leverage on him and hold him under.

But then the egotistical scalawag beat her to the punch by slipping into the pool himself. “I need to cool off, but this would work better if it were a bit colder.” He hooked his elbows on the edge of the ledge and hung waist deep in the cenote, sucking in a sharp breath. “As much as I’d like attending to the part of me that’s shouting for attention, experience has taught me I’m better off listening to my gut. I figured it out. It was the second time Luke arrested me. I’d just pulled off one of my more creative heists—I’d robbed an east Texas sugar plantation of their cash and jewels during the San Jacinto Day ball. Luke, curse his hide, said he knew it was me because the hair on the back of his neck stood up when he looked at the open safe.”

Rafe smiled at the memory. “Prescott is funny like that, always sensing stuff. Anyhow, I thought I’d gotten away clean so I wasn’t paying close attention. He caught up with me at Sally’s Whor—uh—place and cuffed me slick as slime.”

Frustration was a living, breathing monster inside her. “I don’t really care—”

“It was as he attempted to haul me back to the Nacogdoches jail that he started talking,” Rafe continued, showing no sign of having heard her attempt to interrupt him. “Gave me all sorts of chin music about why it was wrong for me to keep stealing. Now, everything he said made sense. I couldn’t argue with one of his reasons. But the more he talked, the more convinced I became that I needed to stay my course. Luke has the hair on his neck, but I have my gut. I listen to it, Maggie.”

She gave a snide sniff. “Maybe you should change your diet, Malone.”

He frowned at her. “The point I’m trying to make here—”

“No!” She clasped a hand to her breast. “You actually have a point?”

“Yeah, I do.” His glare would have scared a lesser woman. “
The point
is that despite a very strong argument originating below my belt, so to speak, my gut told me we need to go about this differently. Something is happening here between us, Mary Margaret. Something beyond romance or adventure. Because of that something, I won’t take your virginity on a rock while your grandfathers are checking their watches.”

“You weren’t going to
take
my virginity, anyway. I was going to give it to you.” Maggie’s emotions were in turmoil. She didn’t know what to think or feel or say, so she retreated into pride. “But that was a onetime offer, Malone. We’re not going to go about this differently. You missed your chance.”

He lifted one brow. “Oh, did I?” Amusement and something else—anticipation, maybe?—glittered in his eyes. He grabbed her ankle and tugged her into the water. His arms wrapped around her waist and he said, “You and your chances. Take a deep breath, Mary-mine.”

She did, and it was a good thing, because his kiss stole it right back from her lungs. They floated, totally immersed in blue water, white magic, and golden fantasy. Bonelessly, Maggie gave herself up to Rafe. He brought her to the surface, told her to breathe, then took her down again. Finally, but still too soon, he led her back to the ledge. He cupped her chin in his palm, gazed into her eyes, and said, “You, me, Texas, and a bed. No grandfathers.”

“No grandfathers,” she repeated on a sigh.

“And plenty of time. I promise. But right now, I’d better go rescue a treasure. This is the last chamber. The one with the extra-deep dive that will take me to the chest. You wait here for me, and I’ll be back quick as a minnow.”

You, me, Texas, and a bed
. Maggie cleared her throat. “I’m coming with you.”

“No. Your grandfathers and I agreed. You’ll wait here.”

She felt dazed, her thought processes numb. “All right,” she said vacantly. “You’ll hurry back?”

He nodded. “Up on the ledge. I’ll feel better if you’re out of the water before I leave here.”

Maggie exited the water without argument. She watched from the ledge while he lined up beneath the marker on the opposite wall, filled then emptied his lungs of air three times, and dove. And dove. And dove. The clarity of the water made him appear closer than she knew he was. She watched till he disappeared from sight. Then ever so softly, she murmured, “He promised.”

She trembled, but not from fear of the physical effort facing her as she stood on her tiptoes, filled her lungs, and followed Rafe Malone. Under other circumstances she might have been afraid to face this dangerous dive so soon on the heels of a near drowning, but her mind was too busy recalling the moments just passed.
You, me, Texas, and a bed
.

He promised.

Down, down she went. Pressure gripped her chest, squeezing it like a vise as she found the opening she sought in the wall. Wiggling through, she tried to ignore the bursts of light shining before her eyes. Pull, Maggie, pull. Her arms pumped. Her legs scissored.

Her head broke the surface.

Gasping, she spent a moment treading water and replenishing her body with air. A fiercely bellowed curse attracted her attention to a rocky shelf some ten feet wide and thirty feet in length on the far side of the cavern. Rafe stood on the shelf beside a large wooden chest. Maggie was surprised the heat in the glare he aimed her way didn’t start the cenote to boiling. “You

hardheaded, stubborn fool. You’d think someone who grew up with four fathers would have had the ornery spanked out of her by now. Don’t you have a lick of sense, woman?”

Short strokes sliced the water and took Maggie to the ledge where she pulled herself up and out of the water. She sat for a moment, catching her breath, then said, “Open the treasure chest, Malone.”

“I can’t. Gus has the key, and he hasn’t lowered it down to me yet.”

A muffled voice descended from above. “What are you yammering about, Malone? We can barely hear you.”

Rafe’s flinty gaze held Maggie’s as he yelled back, “Just send the key.”

A minute later, a rope threaded through a plate—sized hole in the roof of the cavern, a small burlap bag dangling at its end. “If I could figure out a way to fit you through that hole I’d send you up to them this very second,” he groused. Stepping over to the rope, Rafe removed the bag and opened it. He fished out an ornate golden key.

Seeing it, Maggie’s hand automatically went to her neck seeking the necklace that usually hung around her neck. It wasn’t there today, of course; she always removed it before going swimming. But she knew at first glance that the key that hung from the chain was a miniature of the one Rafe Malone held in his hands. She burst into tears.

“What the—” Rafe stared at her in horror. “Maggie, what’s wrong?”

“It’s just like mine. My papas gave it to me on my ninth birthday. For the true treasure in their lives, they said. Isn’t that sweet of them?” She gazed upward. “I wish I could hug them all right now.”

Rafe shook his head. “Maggie, you set me back on my heels. Most women I know would be thinking only of what’s inside this box at a moment like this.”

She sniffed through her tears. “Haven’t you figured out yet that I’m not like most women, Malone?”

He chuckled as he fitted the key into the lock. “Honey, I figured that out the moment you joined me in my mud bath. Now, come on over. Since you’re here you might as well be in on the moment we crossed the Gulf of Mexico to experience. Personally, I feel like a boy at a mercantile candy counter.” The metallic click of the releasing lock echoed in the cave. “Come take a look, Maggie. It’s your grandfathers’ past and your future.”

Excitement thrummed through Maggie. She liked jewels as much as the next woman, and she couldn’t wait to see some of the items her grandfathers had described over the years. A million butterfly wings fluttered in her stomach as she moved to stand beside Rafe. Hinges squeaked as he lifted the lid.