Something Different/Pepper's Way (29 page)

“You’re splitting hairs.”

“Pepper.”

“Oh, all right.” She pulled her hand from beneath his and stared across at him. “I was cut with a knife.”

It was Thor’s turn to frown. “An accident?” He’d noted that she hadn’t said she cut herself.

“You could say that,” Pepper drawled. “I certainly didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Worser and worser,” he muttered. “And you still haven’t told me how it happened.”

She took a deep breath. “Someone wanted to take something away from me.”

“A mugger?” he guessed.

Pepper hesitated for a split second. “Close enough.”

“Pepper—”

“My turn,” she said hastily.

“Dammit. All right, what’s your question?”

She nodded toward the small scar above his left eye. “How’d you get that?”

“What?”

Pepper reached across the low table to touch the scar lightly with her fingertip. “That.” And was disconcerted when he immediately caught and held her hand. She wondered why she had the odd feeling that he’d known what she was referring to; why she thought that he’d wanted her to touch him. Wishful thinking?

Thor chuckled softly. “Believe it or not, I
did
fall—out of a tree when I was seven.”

Pepper started to laugh. “It figures!”

He was smiling, but he didn’t laugh with her. Instead, he watched her with eyes gone a curiously metallic silver. “You and your damn rules,” he said softly.

She felt his hand tighten around hers, her own amusement fading. The tingling awareness within her grew and spread with the suddenness of a brushfire. She heard her own voice, husky and unsteady, and wished that she’d shown sense and turned in early. “I warned you.”

“You warned me. Sporting of you. Diana, goddess of the hunt, dropping me into a maze and turning loose her hounds.

And such strange hounds.” He sent an oddly expressionless glance toward Fifi. “A neurotic Doberman and an attack-trained Chihuahua.”

“You didn’t have to accept the challenge,” she reminded him.

“Oh, but I did,” he told her abruptly. “It was like waving a red cape at a bull to force an instinctive reaction.”

“I can still leave,” she said, after swallowing the lump in her throat.

Thor released her hand and leaned back against the chair, folding his arms across his chest. “No, you can’t. We both know that. One way or another, the game has to finish. But what happens to the loser, Pepper?”

“That… depends on who loses.”

“I know what happens if I lose. What happens if you do?”

Pepper saw where his thoughts had headed, and the ease of her understanding startled her; it was as though they were attuned somehow. They both understood that if she lost, it would be because she’d broken her rules and accepted his—a short-term relationship with no strings and no promises. And she understood then that Thor had realized she could be hurt by that.

She smiled faintly. “If I lose, I’ll just drive off into the sunset. Remember what I promised. You won’t have to ask me to leave.”

“Dammit, Pepper,” he said roughly.

She got to her feet, looking down at him and still smiling. “Don’t worry about me, Thor. I’m a survivor. And I’m always ready to pay the price for any chance I take.”

He was suddenly up and around the low table, catching her shoulders and looking down at her probingly “How many times have you paid a price for taking a chance?” he demanded. “The scar on your hand—was that a price, Pepper?”

She shook her head, trying not to be so stingingly aware of his touch. “No, not really. The end result of taking a chance, I suppose, but—dammit, don’t box me in!”

“What d’you think you’re doing to me?” His voice was fierce. “Hell, Pepper, every time I turn around, there’s a wall! I don’t want to get involved with you, but I can’t seem to help myself. I want to know everything there is to know about you. I want to get inside that puzzle that passes for your mind. Dammit, I want to carry you upstairs and make love to you, and that scares the hell out of me because I don’t think I’d ever be able to forget you after that. I don’t think I’ll be able to forget you anyway….”

“Do you want to forget me so badly?” she asked unsteadily, staring up at him and nearly hypnotized by the nerve pulsing erratically beside his mouth.

“I have to,” he breathed huskily. “Dammit, I have to … but I don’t think I’ll be able to…. God, Pepper, what’re you doing to me?”

Before Pepper could answer that unanswerable question, he pulled her abruptly against him, his hands sliding over the cool silk covering her back, and sought her lips hungrily. Hunger, a strange, soul-deep hunger welling up inside of him had taken control, and Thor could no more fight it than he could ignore it.

She was on fire and weightless again, some distant part of her mind aware that he’d picked her up and placed her on the couch; another more primitive part of her mind was aware of the unfamiliar weight of his body lying half on hers. He was heavy, and she absorbed the weight of him in wonder; it should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. It felt right.

It didn’t occur to Pepper to resist, and even if it had, her body’s desires would have overwhelmed logic. As it was, both her mind and body seemed to have become two strangely disconnected things. Her mind was hazy, floating like a leaf in a fast-moving stream; her body was being bombarded by sensations it had never experienced before, and all her nerve endings seemed to have short-circuited.

She felt his fingers fumbling blindly with the tie closing of her negligee, pushing the silk aside to find the lace and silk of her gown’s \/-neckline. His lips followed the fiery brush of his fingers, exploring the lightly tanned flesh above the edging of lace. One of his hands rested on the back of her neck, the fingers moving in her hair; the other hand moved with rough gentleness to cup a throbbing breast warmly.

Her own fingers tightened in his hair, then loosened and moved down to grip his shoulders. Mindlessly her head tilted back against the hand holding it. Eyes fiercely closed, she wondered hazily if this was love, knowing somehow that it was. She wanted more of him than she could ever have, needed more than he could or would give to her. And the sadness of that brought the sting of tears to her eyes and pulled her wayward mind back into her aching body.

“Sweet,” he was murmuring hoarsely against her skin. “God, you’re so sweet! Don’t stop me, Pepper….”

“I won’t,” she breathed unevenly, realizing only then what she was saying, realizing that he would know too. She’d told him that lovemaking for her would mean that she’d found—or believed she’d found—what she’d been looking for in a man. And it was too soon, far too soon, to tell him that, but it was true, and she was too honest to pretend.

His head lifted, and Pepper saw slate-gray eyes staring down at her, cloudy, oddly uncertain. Pepper touched his face with hands that were shaking a little, giving him the honesty he’d demanded—and now wished she could consign to hell.

“I can’t ask you to stop. I don’t want to, Thor.”

Thor gazed into the bottomless pools of her violet eyes,
seeing the shine of tears that only a part of him understood. And a frustration greater than any he’d ever known gnawed at him relentlessly. He heard what she was telling him—and he wasn’t ready either to break his own rules or to ask her to break hers.

Stalemate.

Pepper knew his decision almost the moment he made it, knew that he was going to leave her. He was running, and she still didn’t know why.

He got to his feet slowly and stood for a moment looking down at her, his face taut and eyes restless. Then, with a smothered sound that might have been a curse, he turned on his heel and started for the front door.

She didn’t try to call him back. Sitting up, she saw him grab a jacket from the brass coat tree in the entranceway and heard the door close quietly. She waited for long, tense moments, but there was no roar from the Corvette.

Pepper swung her legs off the couch and got up, bending over the coffee table long enough to stack the cards neatly and place the chips back in their caddy. Then she picked up their wineglasses and carried them to the kitchen before going silently upstairs to her room.

The Doberman had followed her, but hesitated in the doorway to the room, whining softly. Pepper looked down at her for a moment, then smiled wryly. “You too, eh? Come on in, girl. I won’t close the door all the way. You can go to him when he comes in.” Fifi lay down in front of the chair by the door, still whimpering.

Pepper moved about the room for a few moments, putting her clothes away neatly and wondering if she’d be packing them back up tomorrow. Oddly enough she didn’t believe that Thor wanted her to leave. She’d seen the conflict in his eyes
tonight, and knew that something—perhaps his own set of rules, or something else—was having a tug of war within him.

She had to wait and find out what… or who… would win.

Going to the window to draw the drapes, she automatically looked out and down, seeing the moonlit shapes of Thor and his stallion by the fence. She gazed out for a moment, then drew the drapes. She slid between the sheets of the wide bed, pulling the quilted comforter up and reaching to turn out the lamp on the nightstand.

The water moved gently beneath her for a few seconds as she got comfortable and Brutus moved to his accustomed place near her feet. Then everything was still and quiet.

She didn’t think she’d sleep. Her body was aching as if she were coming down with the flu, and her mind was, for once, too weary to tear apart the events of the evening, analyze them, and try to make sense of it all. The only thing she was certain of was that time seemed to have slowed to a crawl, and she’d lived a whole emotional lifetime in a little more than two days….

She slept, and she dreamed, oddly, of the occasion during which she had acquired the scar that seemed to fascinate Thor. In the dream she was running through the narrow streets of London, fog hampering her sense of direction, tensely conscious of the pounding footsteps of the man chasing her. Her good hand gripped the briefcase; the cut hand had been bound on the run with a handkerchief and was throbbing with every step. And then she rounded a corner and it was all right, doubly all right, because there was a bobby and there was the house, she recognized that peculiar gate, and she could finally stop running, and damned if she’d ever carry gems again….

Pepper woke with a start to see dawn’s gray light creeping through the narrow crack in the drapes. Her eyelids felt
scratchy, sure evidence of a restless night. And she’d moved all the way to the other side of the bed, which was easy to do on a waterbed but was, she noted, further evidence of disturbed sleep. The house was silent, and Brutus was sitting up and looking at her expectantly, his tail thudding softly against the comforter and saying “Out.”

Within a few minutes Pepper was up and dressed in jeans and a thick, bulky sweater of pale pink. She splashed water on her face in the bathroom, noting the red-rimmed eyes and realizing wryly that she looked as though she’d sobbed her heart out during the night. She hadn’t, of course; that was just the way she inevitably looked after a bad night.

She brushed her hair and left it to fall, straight and shining, past her waist, then donned her suede ankle boots, tucked Brutus under an arm, and quietly went downstairs. Fifi joined them just as she opened the front door, and she took a moment to reflect that Thor, too, had left his bedroom door ajar so the dog could get in.

Standing on the front porch, she watched the dogs race around in the chill morning air for a while, sharply calling both to heel when she heard Lucifer gallop up to the fence to investigate the strange goings-on. Then she took the dogs to meet Lucifer.

It took less than an hour to convince the stallion that she was his friend; it took nearly another hour to coax him to accept the dogs. Born with a gift for handling animals, Pepper was patient and soft-spoken with the horse. And wary. She knew horses—and particularly stallions.

She didn’t use carrots or sugar cubes or any other enticement, and she never lifted a hand against the horse. But by the time she’d slid off the fence and onto Lucifer’s back for a wild gallop around the pasture, they were friends. The stallion was well trained, responding to the slightest pressure of her knees,
and a few moments’ experimentation bore out her guess that he knew voice commands as well. After that it was downhill all the way.

The sun was well up and warming the frosted ground by the time Pepper climbed up to sit on the top rail of the fence and watch the fruits of her efforts. Lucifer and Fifi were engaged in a playful game of chase at the moment; the Doberman, while cowardly with people, was perfectly cheerful with other animals, and was both quick enough and strong enough to give the stallion a run for his money. Brutus, disdaining lesser pursuits, was down in the hollow investigating the stable.

Pepper enjoyed watching the games, interested as always in personalities—whether or not they were animal or human. She was so caught up in her observation, in fact, that she totally missed the sound of a strange car pulling up in the driveway. But she didn’t miss the strange masculine voice.

“Who’re you, for God’s sake?”

She swung around on the fence, nearly losing her seat, to find herself under scrutiny. Before she could respond, he was speaking again.

“Well, well, well. Don’t tell me Thor’s been caught at last!”

“I’m working on it,” Pepper said involuntarily.

Laughter immediately lit the stranger’s golden eyes and filled his deep voice. “Then
you
I’ve got to meet! D’you mind coming away from that fence for the introductions? Lucifer and I are old enemies.”

His name was Cody Nash, and he was a golden man. His thick hair was golden, his tan was golden, his remarkable eyes were golden, and his deep voice held the rough beauty of raw gold. She pegged him at about Thor’s age, although the classical
bone structure of his handsome face would probably, she decided, never really show age. Like Thor, he was a tall man, but a couple of inches shorter than Thor and more slender. He was innately charming, friendly, funny and possessed the kind of looks that had probably broken hearts for years.