Kane (16 page)

“No, I—”

“I think you are.” He took a slow step toward her, and then another. “I think you have been all along. But I know how to get at the truth, right here and now, once and for all.”

He was closing in too much, getting too near. She started to sidestep, but he shot out his hand to catch her arm, holding her against the wall while he moved in until his chest brushed the tips of her breasts and his thighs cradled hers. She turned her head, straining away from him, but he pressed his palms to the wall on either side of her head and leaned so near that his cheek brushed hers and his warm breath fluttered across her lips.

“Don't!”

“Don't what?” he whispered, his warm breath feathering along her neck. “Don't touch you? Don't hold you? Or just don't expect to get what I want from you?”

His nearness was compelling yet frightening, both a powerful attraction and a profound disturbance. She wanted to be unmoved, but it didn't work. At the same time, she was struck by the terrible irony of her position. She had meant to use sex to discover what she needed to know from Kane. Now it seemed he in
tended to use the same weapon against her. The worst of it was that he was far more expert at it than she'd ever dreamed of being.

There was a difference, however, or so she thought. It was not her susceptibility to his lovemaking that he expected to use as a lever, but rather her fear of it, her horror at intimacy in a confined space, which he had discovered in the antique coffin. That put an entirely different twist on it.

He eased closer still, brushing his warm lips along her cheek, inhaling as if he would take the essence of her into his body. The heat and power of him engulfed her, swamping her senses, sending her reactions and instincts tumbling in confusion. Then she felt the brief press of firm male heat against her abdomen.

She jerked her arms up, slamming her elbows into his ribs. As he gave way a fraction, she shoved hard and launched herself away from the wall. He stumbled back a step, unprepared. She lunged for the trapdoor. He caught her from behind as she bent to grab the handle. She staggered, tripped, went down. A sharp cry left her as she landed on one knee.

Then he was on her, his weight flattening her, knocking the air from her lungs. Before she could draw breath, she was rolled to her back. He flung himself across her upper body and pinned her legs with one knee. Snatching her wrists, one in each hand, he held them on either side of her face.

She lay still, eyes closed tight as she concentrated on breathing. She could feel her heart trying to burst out of her chest, feel his thudding against her also in a fast, pounding echo. Tremors ran along her nerves;
she jerked again and again beneath his weight. In her mind was nothing except a red-black haze of dread.

Then Kane lowered his head until his lips were warm against hers, until he drank her harsh gasps. “Now,” he said in relentless calm, “where were we?”

“D
on't,” she whispered.

“Tell me why I shouldn't,” he murmured, his lips brushing hers with each syllable like tiny electrical charges.

“Decency?” It was a desperate chance. She could have sworn he had that in him.

He hesitated, for she felt it. Then he shook his head. “There are things I want to know, and I can think of no other way to get the truth from you. Try again.”

“You don't know…what you're doing to me.”

His laugh had a winded sound. “If it's anything like what you're doing to me, then I expect it to be highly effective.”

Her stomach muscles clenched as the deep resonance of his voice vibrated in places already sensitized by the heated heaviness of him against her. The words strangled, she cried, “I don't know anything!”

“Somehow I have trouble believing that.”

She tried to control the shudders building inside her, the darkness that threatened to overwhelm her, but knew ahead of time it would be impossible. “Let me go. We can…talk standing up.”

“I tried that already and it didn't work. Now I prefer lying down.”

The words were feathered with hoarse suggestion in her ears. “I don't! Please…you've got to—”

“The faster you answer me, the sooner I let you go. If I let you go. You can start by telling me what you're really doing in Turn-Coupe.”

“You know why I'm here.”

He shook his head, a slow movement that teased her mouth. “I know what you say is the reason,” he replied before dipping his head to taste her lips, then running his tongue along the sensitive inner edges. “What I don't know is who sent you.”

“No one,” she answered with a catch in her voice as she twisted her head away. “It was a referral. To look at your grandfather's jewelry.”

“You'll have to do better than that.” This time, he took her mouth more firmly, pressed deeper.

She shivered with the distress inside her. Her lips tingled and burned, and the sweet taste of him seemed to spread through her bloodstream like some potent, debilitating liqueur. At the same time, a dim and intuitive recognition of how she might counter what he was doing to her hovered at the edge of her mind. It grew, blossoming into an idea so simple it shocked her into stillness, made her drag air into her lungs in abrupt reaction.

She had thought she needed to be close to Kane Benedict to get what her cousin needed from him. Surely it was impossible to be much nearer than she was at this moment.

Self-control, that was what she required. She must conquer the old fears, stop the automatic reactions. This man was not the one who had betrayed and hurt her. Though he was holding her confined in his arms,
Kane wasn't harming her, hadn't caused her pain. If she could only forget the past, let go and think of this clash as mental combat, a battle of wills and imaginations, then she might gain something from it.

With a supreme effort, she stopped avoiding his kiss, allowed her lips to soften, to conform to the pressure of his mouth. Desperately, she concentrated on the warm, smooth contours, the friction of his tongue over hers, and the intimation of desire that mixed with the taste of him in her mouth. And slowly she felt, creeping in upon her like a fog, a vast and pleasurable lethargy that seemed as if it might banish the fear that hovered still behind her resolve.

He murmured in wordless surprise. Releasing her wrists, he gathered her close and captured her mouth once more with honeyed, drugging sweetness. The tender abrasion of his tongue invited her exploration in return, incited her to join in the sinuous play. She accepted, testing with wonder his satin smoothness, and also the firm promise of another, more intimate, invasion.

Abruptly, his muscles went taut. He raised his head. In razor-edged contempt that might have been for his own impulses as well as hers, he demanded, “What are you to Gervis Berry? And how does it feel to almost kill a man who never harmed a living soul?”

“Nothing! I didn't,” she cried, shocked and bereft at his unexpected change from tenderness to terrifying accusation. Tears sprang into her eyes, forced upward by the painful tightening of her chest and throat. They ran backward across her temples, tracking into her hair.

“You did,” he said in harsh answer. “You fingered
Pops for Slater, didn't you? You pointed him out so he could follow him home, run him off the road.”

His face was a blur above her, the words he spoke a dull roaring in her ears as the old horror returned. Her senses swam in sickening waves. She hardly knew what she was saying as she turned her head from side to side, moaning, “No, no, no.”

“Yes,” he insisted, brushing his hand across her breast, then cupping it. “You knew, and did it anyway. Why?
Tell me why.
”

His touch on the sensitive peak of her breast was like a lightning strike. It ripped through her, bringing the surge of panicky, white-hot rage. She bucked under him, twisting in insane strength to break his grasp. He was flung backward, catching himself on his elbow. She rolled, pushing free, scuttling away from him to the nearest corner where she turned at bay. Teeth clenched and eyes blazing, she waited for him to attack.

He surged to his knees, whipped around. He met her gaze, his own hot with fury. His muscles tensed to lunge.

He stopped.

For long moments, neither of them moved. Then Kane sank back on his heels. He wiped splayed fingers over his face, then plunged them through his hair and down the back of his neck. He shut his eyes so tight the lashes looked like rows of tiny spikes. When he opened them again, the rage and determination had vanished from their blue depths. His gaze held only tired self-disgust.

“Don't,” he said softly. “Don't look at me like that.”

She lifted her chin, not taking her eyes from him for a second. It was impossible to loosen her clamped jaws enough to speak.

“What happened to you?” he went on in low concern as he dropped his hand to his knee. “Who did it, and when? And why in the name of heaven hasn't someone helped you get over it?”

“It's no business of yours.” She hadn't meant to answer him; the words seemed to come by themselves.

“I think it is, since it almost caused me to do something we'd both regret.”

“It was you,” she said with a sharp, negative gesture. “Your own idea.”

“But it would never have crossed my mind, except you obviously objected to being—”

“Except you saw it as a weakness to be exploited.” She dragged air deeper into her lungs and felt her fear loosen its grip.

Tipping his head so the light moved across the blue-black waves of his hair, he avoided her gaze as he said, “I thought I could, and would, do anything to help Pops. I was wrong.”

It was both an apology and explanation, if she wanted to accept them. Did she? She wasn't sure, though she might be forced to it if she was to stay in Turn-Coupe. At least she had been right in her feeling that he was too inherently decent for such a ploy. Which didn't mean she had to make this easier for him. She remained silent.

In that moment of stillness, a hollow thump came from beneath the blind, vibrating through its timbers. The noise would not have been familiar an hour ago, but now Regina recognized it at once. It was the sound
of a boat knocking against one of the duck blind's pilings. That was followed by quiet, rhythmic splashes as someone paddled away. They were not alone here in the swampy back area of the lake.

Hard on that realization came the racketing roar of a motor being cranked into life, then changing as it was put into gear. Whoever had been under the blind was leaving. And he was in a hurry.

Kane sprang to his feet. Reaching the nearest wall in a single stride, he flipped the latches that held the hinged portion, then let it down. Bracing his hands on the rough-cut edges, he leaned out to search the water around them with his hard gaze. He swore in fluent virulence.

“What is it?” Regina put a hand to the wall behind her and dragged herself to her feet.

He didn't answer. Instead, he whipped around toward the trap door, lifted it, and laid it back. Swinging into the opening, he disappeared down the ladder. She followed him to the square hole, saw him clinging to the wooden ladder while he stared around in all directions.

Regina dropped to her knees and leaned forward to search the empty expanse of water that surrounded the duck blind. As Kane looked up, she met his gaze. In stunned understanding, she said, “The boat. It's—”

“Gone. And it didn't come untied by itself.”

“Someone took it?” The other boat and motor they'd heard hadn't meant company or even rescue, as she had half imagined. “Who would do that?”

“You tell me.”

He started back up the ladder. As she moved out of
his way, she retorted sharply, “How should I know? This is your territory, remember?”

“But you're the one with the strange friends.” He regained the floor level, then seated himself on the ledge, letting his feet and legs dangle in the trapdoor opening.

“Your friends know how to get here. And your relatives.”

Something flickered in his eyes and was gone. “They wouldn't, not on their own. And I have no reason whatever for arranging to be left here with you.”

“You think I want to be with you? That I've got somebody following me around making sure of convenient encounters? If you believe that, then you're more of a dumb redneck than I thought!”

He stared at her a moment, then a grim smile tugged one corner of his mouth. “At least you got your feistiness back.”

“For what good it does me,” she muttered, looking away. To cover a comment that might be more revealing than intended, she added, “So what do we do now?”

“What do you suggest?”

“I don't know!” she shot back in exasperation. “Something besides just sit here and wait for dark to fall.”

He watched her with interest but no great concern. “It's a long swim back, but if that's what you want, be my guest.”

“That's your only suggestion?”

“Unless you can walk on water.”

She was about to blast him for that chestnut when
she noted the amused twitch of his lips, the speculation that lay behind his bland expression. “You're enjoying this, aren't you?” she said, clenching her hands in her lap. “You planned it. It's your way of turning the screws.”

“No,” he said in positive rejection as his amusement vanished. “I wouldn't go that far.”

“Come on, why should I believe that?”

“Because I said so,” he answered, his gaze lethally straight.

She held his eyes as long as she could, until her own burned from the strain. Then she lowered her lashes. “So what happens now?”

“We wait.”

Her attention snapped upward again. “For what? Doomsday?”

“For Luke, probably. He's our best bet since nobody knows the lake and swamp better. Or is more likely to guess where I might be.”

“You mean,” she said in incredulous comprehension, “that no one really knows where we are? Not your aunt or your grandfather? Not Luke? No one?”

“It isn't the sort of expedition you advertise.”

She could see that all too well. They were stranded, then. It was unbelievable. In this day of cellular phones, pagers, modems, satellite communication around the globe and even from outer space, they were stuck in the middle of nowhere with no means to get back and no way to let anyone know where to find them.

“There must be something we can do!”

“We can make ourselves comfortable.”

“Comfortable.” Frustration and suspicion freighted the word.

He sent her a brief, sardonic look, then sprang to his feet with easy grace and closed the trapdoor. Turning toward the metal chest in the corner, he knelt before it to lift the lid, took out a wool army blanket and tossed it toward her. That was followed by a couple of small cans of sausages, a can of beans, soft drinks in plastic bottles, and a plastic cracker box. The last thing he set out appeared to be a camping lantern.

“Always prepared,” she said with laconic lack of appreciation.

“Were you a Girl Scout?” He waited for her reply with a grin hovering at one corner of his mouth.

“Hardly. But I imagine you were a Boy Scout.”

“Matter of fact, I was. But I learned about anticipating emergencies the hard way, from experience.”

“In the swamps, or while slaughtering migratory birds?”

“I hunt,” he said. “This isn't my blind, though. It belongs to Pops.”

“Which you use as the mood strikes you, I suppose? I'm surprised there's no gun in there. You could bag us a duck for dinner.”

“Wrong season.” He gave her a brief glance over his shoulder. “Anyway, it's too damp here on the water. Metal rusts overnight. That's if I wanted to risk having a firearm stolen.”

“We couldn't have that, now could we?” she asked sweetly.

He closed the lid of the metal chest and swung around on one knee. “Are you always this cranky when things don't go your way?”

She held his gaze an instant, then looked at a place just past his left shoulder. “Not always.”

“If you're afraid of me, don't be. I wouldn't touch you now with a ten-foot pole.”

“What a gentleman,” she said acidly.

He watched her a moment. “I don't think I ever pretended to be that, and a good thing under the circumstances.”

He felt guilty. It was a startling revelation. More startling still was the fact that she felt little grudge against him. Holding his gaze, she said abruptly, “Don't be so hard on yourself. Some men wouldn't have stopped at all.”

“And you know, or knew, one of them?”

She didn't confirm his guess, but neither did she deny it.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Don't worry. As I said, you're safe from me.”