Authors: Kathleen Creighton
"I think that’s horses, Colin."
"You’ll be fine once you’re back in your groove. Let me take you to dinner—"
"I quit my job."
"What?"
"I said, I quit my job. Today. Resigned."
"Oh, Julie. Why?"
She sighed and pulled away. "I can’t trust my judgment anymore. I don’t—"
"Don’t give me that!"
"All right, then. I just don’t want to be a Border Patrol agent anymore. What’s the matter with that? I’ve been an agent for a long time."
"I see." Colin’s voice was very quiet. After a short, oddly suspenseful silence he asked quietly, "What will you do instead?"
Julie smiled crookedly and lifted her hands. "I don’t know. I haven’t really thought."
"Have you—" Colin cleared his throat. "Have you considered getting married?"
"Is that a rhetorical question?" As soon as she opened her mouth she was sorry. She closed her eyes and said in a low voice, "God, that was a dumb thing to say. Forgive me."
"It’s okay. Have you?"
"Oh, Colin." She opened her eyes and looked up into his face. His strong, homely, trustworthy face. There was a muscle moving high in the side of his jaw; she lifted her hand and touched it briefly. "I wish I loved you. I really do. But I don’t. I’m sorry."
"I know you don’t. I haven’t asked you to. Would you consider marrying me anyway?" His tone was dry. He might have been suggesting to a client that he try for a plea bargain.
Julie smiled gently and shook her head. And in that instant the doorbell rang.
After a moment Colin said, "Expecting someone?"
She shook her head. The bell rang again, impatiently. "Well, aren’t you going to answer it?"
She knew who it was; there was tension and tightly restrained anger in just the sound of the bell. Her heart felt like a jackhammer trying to dig a way out of her chest. She winced when the bell pealed a third time. When it was followed immediately by a loud, determined banging, Colin gave her a quizzical look and pulled the door open.
"Now look, Julie, you’re being child—" Chayne stopped short when he saw Colin. Behind his fist, still raised for its assault on the door panels, his eyes blazed with cold fury.
"Come in," Colin said blandly.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Colin Redmond. A friend of Julie’s. And you, I take it, are Chayne Younger." It was his very best attorney’s manner, poised and dry.
Chayne hesitated, and then warily accepted the proffered hand, while Julie, seething with anger, looked helplessly from one to the other. As the two men took each other’s measure, she couldn’t help but compare them: Colin, tall and slightly stoop–shouldered, sandy hair streaked with gray, immaculately tailored, with that air of quiet competence that had always made her feel so safe; and Chayne, demon eyes blazing in his dark face, collar undone and tie askew, dangerous–looking even in a three–piece suit, and as full of suppressed violence as a caged leopard.
"I was just leaving," Colin said, startling her.
She gulped, and a shudder ran through her body. "Oh—no, Colin, please. Don’t go. I don’t want—"
"Don’t let me keep you," Chayne said pleasantly, moving past Colin and on into the room. Julie took an involuntary step backward.
"Colin," she grated through clenched teeth, "what about dinner?"
There was an electric silence. Colin looked from Julie to Chayne and back again, a peculiar smile on his lips. "Perhaps another time," he said softly. "Nice meeting you, Mr. Younger. Bye, Julie."
"Colin!"
Chayne rocked on his heels and showed his teeth in a savage smile. "So long, Redmond," he said cheerfully, and then added from the side of his mouth, "Say good night to your friend, Guerita."
"Colin—" But the door had already clicked softly shut behind him.
"You unspeakably rude, arrogant bastard!" Julie let go of her self–control in one burst of fury. "How dare you treat Colin like that? You damned, insufferable—"
"Colin. Is he by any chance the one who managed to dispose of your virginity for you without ever making love to you?"
Rage took her breath away. When she regained it she fired off a barrage that included every oath she could call to mind.
Chayne clicked his tongue and smiled. "At least you’re talking to me."
"How dare you bulldoze your way in here? This isn’t Baja—I’m not your hostage. This is my apartment. Get out."
"Not until we’ve talked." His voice was very quiet.
Julie tilted her head to one side and said, "What?"
"I said, not until we do some serious talking." He paced across the living room, tugging at his necktie. When it came loose, he flung it away and whirled to face her. "Where the hell have you been?"
"Where have I—"
"You peeled out of that lot like an accident looking for a place to happen. And then you never showed up here until an hour ago."
"Until— You’ve been staking out my place?"
"I was worried. Where were you?"
"None of your business. You have an incredible nerve."
"And what was that infantile tantrum all about, anyway?"
"Infantile tan—"
"You’re behaving like an irrational child instead of a trained professional. All I wanted to do was talk."
"I’ve got nothing to say to you."
"Well, I’ve got a hell of a lot to say to you."
"Nothing I want to hear."
"Hear me out, damn it!"
"Now? I begged you to tell me—"
"You owe me!"
They had been firing their shots at each other across the width of the room. In the aftermath of the shelling, Chayne’s whisper was like an echo. "You owe me, Julie."
In the silence, Julie made a strangled sound that was half hiccough, half sob. "Right—for saving my life."
He put his hands in his pockets and took a step toward her. "For that, at least—yes." His eyes were shadowed, but his mouth had a familiar bitter twist.
"Are you going to explain why you let me think you were a dangerous criminal?" Julie drew a ragged breath she thought would tear her throat apart. "Why you let me think my life was hanging by a thread?"
"It was," he said quietly. "Believe me. And so was mine."
At her sides, her hands clamped into fists. "But you knew who I was. You had so many chances to tell me…later. After. Couldn’t you have trusted me?"
"Would it have made such a difference?" he asked gently.
Julie’s answer was a cry of pure anguish. "Oh God—yes!"
He made an exasperated noise and rubbed a hand over his face. "Look. The number one commandment of an undercover operative is ‘Thou shalt not blow thy cover.’ You never give yourself away, even to someone you know is on your side. Not unless your mission’s success depends on it."
"It seems to me that it darn near did. It was dangerous to keep me in the dark. I kept trying to get away. What if I’d been successful? What if they’d killed me? What if you’d been caught trying—"
Chayne was shaking his head slowly. "Your ignorance gave you just the right degree of defiance to enable me to keep my cover intact. If you’d known, you’d have felt too safe, too comfortable. You might have given me away with a simple gesture, or a look."
Julie made a mute gesture of defeat and wiped her cheek— and only then realized she was crying. Chayne frowned and reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes.
"Look, you don’t happen to have any beer around, do you?"
Julie sniffed and shook her head.
"Scotch?"
"Just some vodka, I think."
"Colin drinks vodka?"
"Yes," Julie whispered. "He does."
"Damn," Chayne muttered.
He tossed the cigarette package onto the coffee table and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Look…Julie." Another step brought him close enough for her to see that his eyes were hooded, wary. "You asked me a question—down there."
Julie’s heart stopped beating. Chayne cleared his throat, rubbed the back of his neck, and then lifted his head and drilled her with twin beams of blue light.
"Something about, would it make a difference if you loved me. Was that a hypothetical question?"
"Um." Julie cleared her throat and counted heartbeats through an unbearable silence. At last she blurted in desperate illogic, "I asked you first!"
She saw his eyes change, become first startled, then wondering, and finally dark and smoky. She had begun to tremble long before he smiled, long before he growled, "Come here," and closed the space between them in two quick strides.
An arm of tempered steel caught her around the waist and dragged her against his body. She felt his heartbeat against her breast as for one timeless moment he looked deep into her eyes. She caught her breath in wonder.
He took her mouth, then simply took it over, possessed it, overwhelming her with a raging hunger as elemental as fire. Such raw and primal passion might have frightened her if her own hadn’t erupted with equal violence. If he was fire, she was earth and wind, and she exulted in the power. She felt as if her life had been aimed at this; all her being had one purpose: to be here, with this man. She had been dormant; now she was awake. Alive! This was what living was all about.
Chayne tore his mouth away, breathing raggedly. He groaned, "God, Julie…" while his hands raked through her hair, cradling her head, his fingertips rasping on her scalp. His lips roamed her face, touching her eyelids, temples, cheeks, chin, nose, and then came back to reclaim her mouth with renewed hunger, as if he had stayed away too long.
Julie whimpered deep in her throat, a whimper not of fear or distress, but of complete surrender. Her hands trembled over his face, renewing their tactile memory of his eyebrows, the roughness of his jaw, the silk of his hair and the newness of the bare nape of his neck.
At last they both tore their mouths away from each other, trembling, only to cling together like the survivors of a calamity, breathing hard and filled with the miracle of it.
"God, Julie…" Chayne said hoarsely against her hair. "Don’t ever do that again. Don’t put me through this. I need you. I need to talk to you. There’s so much I’ve wanted to tell you and couldn’t."
"You can tell me now." She closed her mouth over the leaping pulse at the base of his throat, trying to capture it.
"Later." He groaned, molding her body to his. "I can’t talk now."
Julie slipped her arms inside his jacket and pressed herself closer, absorbing the heat of his body through his clothing. Her hands roamed over his back, glorying in the hard resilience, the vibrant ripple of his muscles.
Her hands touched something foreign and recoiled. "Chayne, that isn’t a—"
"Shoulder holster. Yes. Don’t worry about it now, for God’s sake." He held her away from him, lifting her chin so she had to look into the dizzying vortexes of his eyes. "I’m crazy with wanting you. Do you want to talk about my damned gun?"
Hypnotized by his eyes, Julie could only shake her head. A tiny hiccup escaped her as he scooped her up in his arms.
"I’m going to make love to you, Julie. Here and now. And I’m going to keep making love to you until this craving I have for you is satisfied. And when that’s taken care of—in a few thousand years—we’ll stop and talk. And after that, I’ll make love to you some more."
"In that case," Julie said huskily, "hadn’t you better shut up and begin?"
It wasn’t a time for tenderness, for slow, honeyed raptures and sweet expirations. There was too much wildness in them both. Undressing was not a voyage of erotic discovery; clothing was disposed of in haste on floor and furniture, and without regard for its preservation.
Over his shoulder, Julie saw the holstered gun on a corner of her dresser, and even with her blood boiling, desire shivering through all her senses and misting her vision, her heart contracted. She closed her eyes and whispered fiercely, "Love me, Chayne."
"I do." His hand raked down her body to grasp her thigh. "I am." His warm breath dewed her parted lips. "I will."
Bodies already heated to the point of combustion touched, fused and exploded together in a nova of blinding ecstasy that left them both spent, but far from satisfied.
* * *
Chayne’s hard, warm hands framed her face, holding damp tendrils of hair back from her forehead while his thumbs brushed gently across her cheeks. Julie opened her eyes with great effort and encountered a gaze of fearsome intensity. She laughed a little and murmured, "What?" too steeped in love and drugged with sex to be self–conscious.
"Hush… I just want to look at you." He lowered his head and brushed his lips over her temples. Julie sighed and let her heavy eyelids drop, and a moment later she felt the warm pressure of his mouth touch them like a blessing. "I want to watch you, make sure you’re not a mirage."
Mirage.
Julie whispered, "Funny you should say that." She tipped her face, searching for his mouth.
"Why?" He found her moist, seeking lips and brought them home.
"Because," she whispered into his mouth, "I’ve been thinking a lot about mirages lately."
He kissed her deeply, a slow languid melding that left her feeling like melted butter. She felt the muscles in his back tense as he gathered himself to move away from her, and she tightened her arms around him. "Don’t go. Please."
He ducked his head and drank again from her lips. "I must be heavy."
"No." Her hands smoothed over the muscles of his back and down his spine, finding the flat plane just above the cleft of his buttocks. "Do you think we could stay like this forever?"
"I’d be happy to try. Though I suspect it may not be practical."
"Mmm. I suppose we’d have to eat sometime."
"Food? Who needs food when I’ve got you?" He buried his face in the hollow of her neck and nipped her earlobe, her shoulder. "Hold still, you delicious morsel…"
Giggling and shivering with delight, Julie gave one hard buttock a playful slap. "I remember the first time you called me that."
"I do, too." He bowed his back in order to bring his lips to her breasts, nuzzling at the place where his mark had been.
"I was scared to death." She gasped as his mouth closed over the tender flesh and began to exert a gentle suction.