Clad in another of the severe gray dresses that were, oddly enough, a perfect foil for her bright coloring, Amanda was juggling several items, including a tureen of hot soup. All her attention was concentrated on not dropping anything as she entered the cavern. In consequence, she did not look up immediately, not until after she had safely deposited the tureen on the floor. The other items followed, and she heaved a sigh of relief as she looked around for Matt.
“I’ve brought you something hot,” she began, smiling at him. He had been kneeling when she came in; now he stood up, coming toward her, and Amanda felt her cursed cheeks grow hot as she saw that he was naked to the waist. Hastily she averted her gaze, retaining only a fleeting impression of black-furred planes and broad shoulders. Her eyes moved up to his face—and her mouth dropped open.
He was handsome, she discovered with a shock, more than handsome, in fact. Without the bristly black beard that had obscured the firmness of his lean jaw and the cut of his beautifully shaped mouth, he was marvelous-looking. His black hair was still overlong and untidy, but its waving thickness framed a rampantly male face that God must have designed expressly to appeal to the female of the species. The silver-gray eyes beneath the thick black brows, the straight, almost aquiline nose, the high, flat cheekbones, were brought into exquisite symmetry by the newly revealed lines of cheek and jaw and chin. A chin that was square, and looked as though it could be obstinate. A chin that was not softened in the slightest by the faint cleft in its center. As her dazed eyes moved back over his face, seeking to reconcile the man who stood looking down at her rather quizzically with the fearsome murderer she thought she had come to know, another fact became crystal clear to her: he was young; much younger than she had supposed.
“You’ll catch flies,” he said, gently teasing as his thumb came up under her chin to close her mouth. Amanda continued to stare at him, not even blushing, so intense was her surprise.
“How old are you?” She gasped out the first coherent words that popped into her brain. He grinned, and one of his eyebrows lifted at her inquiringly. She had seen that expression on his face before—his mockery was something she was rapidly becoming thoroughly familiar with—but now the crooked grin had a charm that almost made her mouth drop open again. Just in time she got a grip on the remnants of her self-possession and managed to keep her mouth closed.
“Thirty-three,” he answered equably, watching her with a glint of unholy amusement in his eyes. “Why, how old did you think I was?”
“I-I didn’t know.” Amanda stumbled over her tongue. Try as she might, she could not seem to tear her eyes away from the mind-boggling splendor of his face. The proximity of his naked chest paled into insignificance in comparison. “I thought about forty, or a little more,” she added feebly.
“Not quite, although thirty-three must seem nearly as old to you,” he answered, and to her relief took his eyes from her face to look with interest at the steaming tureen near her feet. “That looks good. What is it?”
“Potato soup,” she replied automatically, still unable to look anywhere but at his face. Even half averted from her, as it was at the moment, it was devastating. “I volunteered to take what was left from dinner to the Morells. Mrs. Morell just gave birth to her eighth child, and Sister Patrick thought she would appreciate the soup. Which she did, even though there wasn’t a lot left after I kept back half for you …” Amanda’s voice trailed off as she realized that she was rambling. Sudden annoyance with herself set in. So he was handsome, and not horribly old, she told herself fiercely, so what? He was still the same man she had rescued and begun to regard almost as a friend. To her relief he didn’t seem at all interested in her continued reactions to his changed appearance. Instead, all his attention was focused on the soup. Thank goodness his primary concern was his stomach! With luck, he hadn’t even noticed what a fool she was making of herself.
“You’d better eat it while it’s hot,” she said, grasping for composure. To her relief her voice sounded almost normal. “There’s fresh-baked bread, too, and butter.”
“It sounds wonderful.” He bent, picking up the tureen by its handle and gathering up the bread and butter in his other hand, then straightened, carrying his booty over to the flat-topped rock that served as his table. Retrieving a spoon and knife from the utensils she had brought him the night before, he sat cross-legged on the floor and began to eat with gusto. It was some few minutes before he stopped, looking a little self-conscious, and gestured to the food. “Will you have some?”
“What?” Amanda was still assimilating the shock to her system. “Oh … no, thank you. I’ve had dinner.”
“All the more for me, then.” He grinned with unabashed greed. Amanda was still coming to grips with the dazzling attraction of that grin, unobscured now by bristling whiskers, when he returned his attention to his meal. It was some little time before he spoke again.
“Still angry at me?” he asked casually, barely glancing up at her as he spread butter on a chunk of bread with absorbed pleasure.
Amanda blinked. It took her a moment to remember that she had been furious with him when she had stormed out the night before.
“No.” She shook her head, smiling faintly. “I get over being angry almost as fast as I get angry.”
He looked reflective, or as reflective as it was possible to look while crunching on a piece of bread. He must have finished the soup, because he was looking into the tureen with a faintly regretful expression and laying aside his spoon.
“You’re not still afraid of me, are you?” He looked up at her again, swallowing the last of the bread, his eyes suddenly keen.
“Of course not,” Amanda answered, then wondered if it was true. Oh, she was no longer afraid of him physically—that he would harm her, that is—but without his beard he was suddenly a stranger. An impossibly handsome stranger.
“Then why are you standing way over there? I don’t bite—at least, not if you feed me.” He grinned a little. Amanda realized with a burn of embarrassment that she had been rooted to the same spot since she had come in. She moved jerkily, turning her back to him and crossing to the place she had left the basilicum powder and bandages. At the memory of her fingers brushing against the hard wall of his abdomen—the abdomen of a young and unquestionably virile man—her blush deepened.
“Do I embarrass you?” he pursued softly. “Would you like me to put my shirt back on?”
Amanda turned to look at him. He was still sitting cross-legged on the floor, his eyes narrow as he regarded her thoughtfully. To tell the truth, she had almost forgotten about the bareness of his chest. So much male flesh was overwhelming, it was true, but in her shock she had hardly registered it. Now she did, her eyes automatically absorbing the wide shoulders and deep chest, the sinewy arms and flat, hard-looking muscles blurred by a soft covering of black hair. Foreign to her, certainly, but not the reason for her odd behavior …
“Yes, please,” she said, hoping that he would think it was his state of undress that had caused her confusion. Her embarrassment would increase a hundredfold if he should realize that it was the sheer masculine beauty of his face.
He shook his head, standing up with a single fluid movement and reaching for his shirt, which lay across the rocky shelf that also held the mirror.
“You’re going to have to learn to control yourself, Amanda.” He was teasing her; she could tell from his tone. “You can’t go on blushing like a brushfire every time something makes you feel a little shy.” He was holding his shirt in his hand, smiling wickedly at her as he spoke.
Amanda bristled. “I don’t …” she began, only to break off as he half turned to shrug into his shirt. It was the first time she had seen his bare back. She froze, staring, her hand flying to her mouth. The smooth, rippling flesh of his shoulders merged with a mass of half-healed scars.
“Matt—your
back,
” she gasped. Matt swiveled to look at her, his brows meeting in a thick black line above his eyes. His shirt hung loosely from his shoulders, still baring a considerable expanse of chest. “What on earth happened to your back?”
“I forgot about that,” he said after a moment, his voice gruff. “I’m sorry, Amanda. I would never have let you see it if I’d remembered.”
“What difference does my seeing it make?” she demanded impatiently, moving toward him as she spoke. “It looks so
painful.
What happened to you?”
He smiled, a crooked, rueful twist of his lips. Her hands went out to him automatically, and just as automatically he caught them in his, drawing her toward him so that only a foot of space separated them. “It’s customary to beat a prisoner—especially a condemned one,” he explained, looking down into her upturned face. “Unfortunately they did not make an exception of me.”
“Oh, Matt.” Amanda’s throat closed with the sheer horror of it. He had been beaten, beaten in a way that would have sickened and infuriated her if it had been done to an animal. How it must have hurt! Tears welled in her eyes. “
Matt.
”
“Good God, you’re not going to cry about it, are you? It’s not that bad, I promise—and it’s certainly not the first time I’ve been beaten. My mother’s gentlemen friends used to lay into me regularly when I was growing up. Said it was good for my character—and no doubt it was.” He smiled, obviously hoping to relieve Amanda’s distress with humor. She dutifully tried to smile back, but the effort was wobbly at best. And then it was spoiled entirely by a large tear, faintly golden in the candlelight, which spilled from the corner of one thick-lashed violet eye to traverse a shining path over the creamy pale curve of her cheek.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Amanda, you’re too damned softhearted for your own good.” Matt’s voice was almost a growl as he reached out to flick the tear away with a gentle forefinger. It was immediately followed by another. Seeing it, Matt groaned and pulled her against him, one arm going around her waist while the other hand cradled the back of her head. Amanda burrowed her face into the soft, faintly moist fur of his chest, her arms going instinctively around his waist so that she could get closer. He felt so warm against her, warm and strong and solid. In his arms she felt safe … She thought again of the horror of abuse that his back was mute testament to, and despite everything she could do to stop them, tears fell thick and fast from her eyes.
“Don’t cry, Amanda.” His voice was faintly rough. ‘I’m not worth one of your tears. Please don’t cry.”
Perversely this only made her cry harder. Matt swore under his breath, cradling her closer, bending his head so that his face rested on her soft crown of braids. Amanda sobbed against his chest, eyes closed, arms locked tightly around his waist. Almost unconsciously she registered the salty taste of his flesh wet with her tears, the warm, faintly musky smell of him …
“Hush, now, Amanda,” he was murmuring into her hair. “I can’t stand to see a woman cry—it makes me want to cry myself. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
The image his words conjured up—that totally masculine face awash with tears—was so ridiculous that Amanda giggled despite herself. The sound emerged half strangled, but Matt apparently had no trouble interpreting it correctly.
“That’s my girl.” The words were partially muffled as he spoke into her hair. “Come on, Amanda, dry your eyes. If you don’t, you’re liable to cause a flood that could wash us right out of here.”
He was putting a little distance between them as he spoke. One hand still rested loosely on her waist while his other hand came up to dry her cheeks gently with the corner of his shirttail. Amanda’s own arms had released their death grip on his middle; her hands now lay almost unconsciously on his bare chest. When her face had been dried to his satisfaction, he let his shirttail fall back into place and gripped her chin instead. Tilting her face so that he could see it properly, he regarded her with a quizzical, faintly worried expression.
“Better now?” he asked. Amanda nodded, then sniffed, the small sound prosaic. Matt’s eyes warmed on her face, and one corner of his mouth crooked upward. Amanda’s eyes were still misty with tears as they met his, but she smiled at him. An achingly sweet smile that touched Matt to the heart.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t be.” His voice was husky, and his eyes were disarmingly gentle as they moved over her face. “I don’t think anyone’s ever cried over me before. I like it. I like it very much.”
Amanda stared wordlessly at him as his finger tilted her chin even more, and he bent his black head to brush a soft, sweet kiss across her mouth.
The touch of his mouth had a strange effect on her. She felt almost dizzy, and her hands slid automatically from his chest to his shoulders to steady herself. The feel of his lips, firm and warm against hers, the rasp of his chest hair beneath her fingers and then the satin-over-steel strength of his shoulders under her palms sent a quiver of sensation through her. She drew a breath, more of a little gasp; Matt had already begun to draw back when he felt the faint flutter of her lips under his. Amanda felt him begin to pull away, felt the moment when he stopped, standing like a statue for an instant, his eyes darkening as they locked with hers. Then his breath drew in sharply, much as hers had done but louder, fiercer; his eyes closed, and he bent over her again, his mouth on hers, but harder this time, and hotter.
She had never thought a man would kiss like this. That was Amanda’s last thought as his arms tightened around her, drawing her up against him until they were pressed so tightly together that it seemed as though the heat of his body must fuse them into one. His mouth was moving against hers, his tongue moist and urgent as it slid between her still-parted lips. It stopped at the barrier of her small white teeth, tasting the inner flesh of her lower lip before drawing it into his mouth and nibbling on it in a way that was part pleasure, part pain. Amanda opened her mouth to say something, anything, but before she could force words out, his tongue slid past her teeth to explore the warm, moist sweetness within. Amanda felt her knees weaken as the world seemed to revolve around her, and her hands instinctively crept around his neck for support as she closed her eyes.