Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams (11 page)

Nicholas's jaw clenched savagely. Dear God, he'd tear her apart, he thought dimly.

And then he smiled, a dark, primal twist of lips. He turned and swept the desk clear in one wild, powerful stroke and then lifted her up into his arms. A moment later, he arched her back onto the cool, smooth wood.

Gently, gently, his mouth traced a hot path down her chest to her navel.

“Wh-what—”

“Trust me, love,” he murmured thickly. “Just trust me. It will be good, I promise.”

“Nicholas, what are you—”

With a rich, sensuous whisper, the last barriers of cloth slipped free of her arms and hissed to the floor. Kacey's skin burned beneath him, glowing with an inner fire.

The fire of love, Nicholas thought, awed beyond words.

Knowing his own skin burned the same way.

In that moment he knew that all his life, he'd somehow been a taker. But now all he wanted to do was give. To atone, with body and soul, for a mistake he couldn't even remember.

And somehow Nicholas realized that this would be the very last chance he would be given.

Then he thought not at all. All heat and hard planes, his body glided down her nakedness. His head slanted forward.

“Nicholas—” Kacey gasped, restless, totally urgent. She tensed, realizing his intent.

“No, don't stop me, love,” he said roughly, aflame at her sultry beauty. At the sight of her burnished golden fur. Wanting to taste every sweet inch of her. “It's been a long time since I've been a knight—in shining armor or any other sort.”

She started to disagree, to say that wasn't the way she'd heard the story of Bhanlai from Adrian.

But then she froze. Fear ripped through her. “I—I can't, Nicholas! I promised myself—never again. Not unless it was on
my
terms. By my own choosing. Safe—and it can never be safe with you.”

“It's never safe, my love, don't you see that? It's only good when you give it all, when you've got everything to lose. It might be easier the other way, but it would be a damn sight less interesting,” he muttered.

And then his mouth traced the softness of her thigh.

Kacey tensed.

“Smooth and easy,” he rasped. “Let it happen, love—just feel it. Me wanting you. You needing me.”

His lips teased aching skin. His tongue found her flowering need.

Gently, then not so gently.

“I love you, Kacey.” His voice was a raw blur of sound. “Feel me loving you.”

And then conscious thought shattered as Kacey's body spun away, raw and desperate, awakened to infinite pleasure.

Her heart trembled and convulsed. Her spirit leaped free.

She cried out wildly.

And because it was Nicholas, and the night silence was lush with promise—because his touch was nothing but magic, pure, primal magic, she let the last wall topple and fled the bonds to find paradise breaking over her.

 

A
T THE WINDOW THE CURTAINS
rippled faintly. Wind growled and tapped at the pane.

Outside, Gideon floated comfortably in space one minute, then tensed abruptly and hit the ground with a muffled thud.

A low curse split the night air. “So sorry, old friend. I fear I've—miscalculated—once again.” The voice was gruff. “This whole thing is damnably awkward. It's been thirty years, after all. And two hundred before that. One forgets…”

There was a faint shimmering just beyond the glass windows, where a pair of shadows arched, then slid together into one. The air hung chill and sullen for a moment.

“One forgets a great deal. And now, seeing her again, like this—” The pale fingers clenched convulsively for a moment. “Yes, far better for me to go. But keep watch, old friend. On her. On them both. If it comes, it will be soon. That much I can feel. These men of Trang's are desperate.”

The gray cat meowed once, his long tail high and arched. Then Gideon turned and trotted obediently to the ancient wall, where he jumped noiselessly to a high perch. And there, his sleek body simply another shadow on the dappled stone, he lay down to wait.

Beyond the window, out in the darkness, the air spun wildly, rising in a vortex of twigs and fallen leaves. Then, slowly, the currents subsided and the shimmering began to fade, bleeding away into a silence that was night, and no more than night.

Until finally only the faint, lingering scent of roses remained in the chill air.

 

H
E HELD HER WHILE HER
breath stilled, stroked her while the tremors ebbed.

Lifetimes later she shifted, breathless, dazed.

Nicholas's eyes smoldered silver above her.

“Are you protected, my love?” His voice was raw silk.

Kacey's eyes cracked open dreamily. “I…I had all the shots before I left New York. The usual—smallpox, gamma globulin.”

She felt a sudden spasm work across his broad chest. “Nicholas?”

The rumble reached his throat and burst free in dark laughter. “Sweet, soft Kacey. Where have you been all my life?” Draycott turned and reached for the pocket of his pants.

Kacey's cheeks flamed as she saw the small packet in his hands. His eyes smoldered over her face, one dark brow raised. “This is hardly the eighteenth century, after all. But I can and will protect you, my love. Every way I know how. Remember that.”

Kacey's heart lurched and sank into the dark current of his eyes. Even now he thought of her, he wanted to be sure—

Like a great effervescent bubble, joy burst through her.

And then she gasped as Nicholas molded her against him, skin to naked skin. Hands dark and hungry.

Discovering passion, in all its infinite variations.

For a ragged infinity, he let her feel him—wanting her.

He made her feel herself—wanting him back.

He eased her down onto the soft carpet. “I warn you, Kacey, the knight's gone now, and all that's left is the man. Tonight he's hungry. He's dangerous, I promise you. Because he's remembering all the things he's had before and all the things he's never gotten to have. Things he never even dreamed existed until now. If your mind's in a different place, then you'd better get away as fast and as far as you can, because in a few seconds, the man's going to be beyond stopping. He's going to do something crazy. And completely irreversible.”

“Take me, Nicholas.” Kacey's voice was breathless, husky with her own need. “Now. Beneath you. With you. I don't want to wait another second to know how you feel inside me.”

And when she looked up at him then, love-dazed and passion-
slick, skin turned inside out, heart shining on her shoulder, he found his way home inside her, all the way home.

Heaven, Kacey thought, and told him so.

“Sweet love—ahhh. So bloody good…so tight.” He tensed suddenly. “I'm not—oh, God, Kacey—hurting you, am I?”

She moaned breathlessly beneath him, adrift in dark, mindless currents of pleasure, past and present like a split image suddenly focused into one.

“Kacey?”
he muttered hoarsely.

“More—now. Oh, please…”

His smile was a fierce, feral thing, full of the heat of conquest, dark with triumph. A moment later, he did just as she wanted. As they both needed.

With a raw groan, he caught her to him and slid deep, rocking her to the very center of her soul, shaking himself to the roots of his being.

Crying out her name when he felt her silken contractions begin again.

Gripping him infinitely. Dragging him off to paradise.

Just the way it always was when he loved her.

Above them, half-shadowed in the gentle glow of the room's single light, the portrait of Henry VIII seemed to wink and smile down benignly.

T
HEY FELL ASLEEP THERE ON
the carpet, Kacey's long hair spilling golden over Nicholas's bronzed chest, his hard hand molded protectively around her thigh.

Once and then twice more they awakened in the long night, lips urgent, breath fled, fingers sure and swift, drawing each other to wordless, shattering passion.

Until Kacey sank down with something between a laugh and a breathless moan, and Nicholas began to have serious doubts about whether he would ever walk again.

But he merely smiled.

After all, giving up walking was a small price to pay for the exquisite pleasure he'd just experienced in her arms.

 

T
HE CALL CAME IN THE LAST
chill hour before dawn. The sharp peals shook Draycott awake as he drowsed somewhere between sleep and dreams, body and soul satiated in a way he had never before imagined possible.

The Englishman frowned, making no move to answer. Her cheek to his chest, Kacey stirred restlessly, mumbling a protest at the intrusive noise. When the shrill ringing continued, her fingers tensed on Nicholas's thigh.

At last the insistent peals stopped.

Draycott watched Kacey's eyelids flutter, relieved that she did not wake.

And then the ringing began again.

With a smothered curse, Nicholas slipped from beneath Kacey's warm body, twisted across the desk, and jerked the receiver to his ear. “Who is it?”

Silence.

And then from the other end of the line came the faint hiss of indrawn breath. “Dreaming again, Lord Draycott? Such a pity. But perhaps the American will ease your painful memories. Is she good in bed, by the way? Does she make you hard with desire? So different from Su Win, of course, for
she
knew how to pleasure you in the thousand ways of hand and tongue.”

Not Trang, Nicholas thought, but who? And what was Trang's part in all this?

“Leave me alone,” he snarled.

“So sorry, Lord Draycott, but that is quite impossible. You have something of mine, you see, and I'm afraid I need it back.” Silence fell for a moment, punctuated by another sharp hiss of breath as the caller's lungs again filled with smoke.

“I don't have anything of yours. I took nothing with me from Bhanlai, you bastard. You should know that better than anyone!”

A soft chuckle. “Really, Lord Draycott, do you think me such a fool?” And then the soft voice dropped, ruthless beneath its silken timbre. Ruthless as only one who has lived long amid the poverty of Asia can be. “You have one more day to give me what I want. If not, you die. And your death will be the old way—the hard way. The way you saw all the others die at Bhanlai. And your American lover, she will die too. Just as Su Win died—after she betrayed you.” The chuckle that followed was low and coarse.

A vein began a wild staccato throb at Nicholas's temple. Anger roared through him, along with the ragged edge of fear. Who, damn it? Who was it this time?

It could be any number of people, of course. The warlord,
Trang, had had dealings with many nations. He must have double-crossed them all at one time or another—Russian, American and Chinese. Even the British had had their reasons for approaching the ruthless warlord on occasion.

And Trang would deal with anyone for hard cash. His trade was infinitely accommodating—any commodity of worth to the buyer. Information. Poppy. Planes.

But it was the human trade Trang liked most. And he was very good at it.

Bloody, sodding dung-eater!

Lips clenched, Nicholas waited for the cold, precise voice to finish, fighting his rage and saying nothing because he knew that this would goad his caller most.

Long minutes later, his face a mask of unrelenting fury, he lowered the telephone back to its cradle.

Slowly. Very carefully.

Trying to ignore the wild, ragged laughter that erupted in a shrill din just before the line clicked dead beneath his fingers.

One more day to give them what they wanted.

One more day—and then they would kill him and everyone in the abbey.

 

S
OMETHING WARM ON HER
cheeks. Something soft at her breast.

Sweet fatigue and dark, silken memories.

“Mmm.” Smiling dreamily, Kacey curved her body into that heavenly softness. Her fingers moved, seeking the warm, muscled length that had pillowed her, teased her, and coaxed her to wild abandon throughout the long night.

But her hands met only cold cloth.

“Nicholas?” she cried, jerking upright, her eyes fixed on an unfamiliar room. Heavy velvet draperies on a huge mahogany four-poster. Spare, bold prints on pale silk walls.

Nicholas's room. Nicholas's bed…

She remembered all of it now and couldn't help smiling even as her cheeks reddened at the memories of the night before.

But where was
he?

She frowned, sensing a strange emptiness. The air did not hum or the room shimmer as it always did when he was near.

Slowly she lay back, wincing at the protest of hidden muscles. Where had he gone? Was he already regretting last night? Had something happened to him?

Unbidden, a new image sprang to her mind.

Lightning over a jagged silver shore. A riderless horse, hooves pounding out of the darkness. “Wait!”

And then a scream, ragged with terror.

Her
scream.

Kacey tensed, feeling the fear slam through her even now. What was wrong with her? Was this the dream that shook Nicholas from sleep night after night? Was this the past that Adrian had warned her would be repeated?

Was there a curse on this house, after all? Or was it perhaps
she
who was cursed?

She slipped from the bed, her eyes widening as she took in the dress and lacy lingerie laid out on a nearby chair. She picked up the accompanying note, its lettering angular, elongated and bold. Nicholas's writing—there could be no doubt about that.

Her eyes glistening, Kacey lifted the silken dress, mesmerized by the way the soft mauve folds fell about her, as smoothly sensual as Nicholas's hands had been the night before. A collar of handworked lace framed the old-fashioned square neck—richly feminine with just a hint of sensuality.

Oh, yes, trust Nicholas Draycott to choose well, she thought.

Her carry-on bag lay on the dresser, and she realized Nicholas must have put it there before he left. Deftly, she fished out the pink ballet slippers she had packed for comfort on the long flight.

Then, fully dressed, she smoothed down her long skirt, feeling every inch a princess or a heroine in an old novel.

Feeling, best of all, like the woman Nicholas loved. Which was all she wanted to be, anyway.

There was a soft tap at the door. “I beg your pardon, Miss Mallory.” It was Marston's voice, low and acutely uncomfortable.

Kacey opened the door. “Yes?”

The butler's eyes were carefully averted, and a hint of color streaked his cheeks.
So you're not accustomed to seeing strange women in Nicholas's bed, are you?
Kacey's heart, already humming, took a serious, high-voltage leap at that realization.

“Lord Draycott was called out some two hours ago, Miss Mallory. Before going, he left instructions that you were not to be disturbed.” The splash of red across the butler's cheeks darkened.

God bless you, Marston, Kacey thought. But she was careful to keep her thoughts from showing. “And?” she prompted, sensing that there was more.

“As it happens, there is a police officer below requesting to speak with you, miss. I asked the nature of his business, but he declined to say. Shall I…?” The servant's voice trailed away suggestively.

“No, of course I'll speak with him.”

The broad-shouldered officer was waiting before the mullioned windows in the salon. He turned as Kacey came in, his
eyes blue and very keen, his smile expectant. He was much younger than she'd expected.

Marston left them, closing the door softly.

“Ah, there you are. Miss Mallory, isn't it? That Marston chap's always so tight-lipped. One can't ever get a bloody thing out of him.” He took her hand in a quick, brisk grip. “I expect you'll be wondering why I've come. Business, I'm afraid.” His eyes flickered over her face, assessing her reaction. “But I haven't even told you my name. How silly—” He extended a hand a second time. “Detective Chief Inspector Gerald Parks, Hastings Police. But perhaps…yes, I think you'd better sit down before I continue.”

Kacey paled. “Go on,” she whispered, sinking into the nearest armchair.

“Yes, well, there's been an accident, I'm afraid. Or at least we believe it was an accident. We found Lord Draycott on the coast road slumped over his steering wheel about ten miles from here. Engine still running—but the Alfa was pretty badly banged up. Before he passed out, the viscount muttered something about another car trying to run him off the road.”

Kacey felt the room begin to spin. “Is he—dear God, will he—”

“I expect he'll pull through, Miss Mallory. They've taken him to hospital in Hastings. We've an excellent staff there—no need to fret. But before he went under, Lord Draycott asked…for you.” The policeman's blue eyes were kind.

And very curious.

But Kacey barely noticed, already lurching to her feet. “What are we waiting for, inspector?” She ran to the door. “I'll just tell Marston where I'm going and—”

The inspector's eyes narrowed. “I'd prefer that you didn't do that.” It was soft, but an order just the same.

Kacey looked back, frowning. “Why not?”

“The fewer people who know about this, the better, Miss
Mallory. Lord Draycott was being harassed and…well, it's strictly on a need-to-know basis, I'm afraid. The only reason we're telling
you
is because he specifically asked. You do understand, don't you?”

Kacey didn't understand, not entirely, but she nodded anyway, desperate to get to Nicholas.

The young inspector nodded approvingly, then patted her shoulder—a quick, professional touch. “You're very brave, you know.”

Kacey bit her lip. She didn't feel brave. Right now, all she felt was wobbly and sick and horribly afraid. Somehow she managed a bleak smile before following the inspector outside to a dusty blue Mini with a badly rusted fender. An older man, dark-haired with a creased, lived-in face, nodded to her from the front seat.

“My partner,” the inspector explained. “Right now he's got a nasty case of laryngitis. Too many late nights, eh, William? When are you going to learn it's no good burning the candle at both ends?”

The older man shrugged, smiling grimly.

The next moment the engine coughed to life and they were bowling down the long, twisting drive. Kacey's eyes blurred, and she had to resist an urge to turn and stare back at the abbey's ancient walls, warm and mellow in the morning sun. Suddenly it seemed as if the last two days had been a dream. Nicholas, the Whistler, Marston even—all a dream.

Why did she have the odd feeling that when she returned, it would all be gone?

She gave herself a shake, fighting down a sick stab of fear. “Have you—have you had any luck with your search?” she asked, trying vainly to think of anything but Nicholas lying white-faced and silent in a hospital bed somewhere.

“Luck?” The blue eyes flickered to her face in the rearview mirror.

“With the search for the thieves. Nicholas—Lord Draycott—mentioned what happened to the gatehouse.”

“Not much, I'm afraid. No trace of the paintings. In fact, no clues of any sort.” The inspector frowned. “Damn good, these fellows.”

Kacey barely heard him.
Hold on, love. You can't get away from me now—not when I've just found you. I'm coming, Nicholas…

“How about you?”

“Me?” Kacey blinked.

“With the painting Lord Draycott discovered. It's become quite the focus of local gossip, you know. Down here, everyone knows everyone else's business.”

Remembering Nicholas's insistence on secrecy, Kacey bit off what she'd been about to say. “Not yet. It's still too soon to say.”

The driver nodded. “I suppose your work is rather a lot like ours, in the end. Chasing down clues, sorting through all the possibilities. And something tells me you're very good at what you do, Miss Mallory.” The keen eyes studied her in the mirror. “The very best, in fact.”