He picked her up, still kissing her, and laid her out on the couch, easing his body down over hers in a silence that throbbed with frustrated desire.
“Soft,” he whispered. “Soft and sweet. All mine.”
She would have said something, but he was kissing her again, and she couldn’t think at all. She felt his big, rough hands go under her dress, up and up, touching and exploring, testing softness, finding her breasts under the lacy little bra.
“You feel like silk all over,” he murmured. He found the zipper and eased her out of the dress and the half slip under it, then out of the bra, so that all she had left on were her briefs. He kissed his way down her body, lingering on her pert breasts with their tight little crowns, savoring her soft, helpless cries of pleasure.
It excited him to know that she’d never done this. He ate her up like candy, tasting her hungrily. He nuzzled her breasts, kissing their soft contours with a practiced touch that made her rise up in an aching arch to his lips.
Somehow, his jacket and shirt ended up on the floor. She felt the rough, curling hair on his chest against her bare breasts as his body covered hers. His powerful legs eased between her own, so that she could feel with him an intimacy she’d never shared with anyone.
She cried out as he moved against her. Sensations were piling on each other, dragging her under, drowning her in pleasure. She clung to him, pleading for more, not even knowing exactly what she wanted, but so drawn with tension that she was dying for it to ease.
She felt hot tears run down her cheeks as his mouth moved back onto hers. He touched her as he never had before. She shivered. The touch came again. She sobbed, and opened her mouth under his. She felt his tongue go into her mouth, as his hands moved on her more intimately.
Suddenly, like a fall of fire, a flash of agonized pleasure convulsed the soft body under his. He groaned and had to fight the instinctive urge to finish what he started, to go right into her, push inside her, take what was his, what had always been his.
But she was a virgin. His exploration had already told him that. He’d known already, by her reactions. She was very much a virgin. He didn’t want to do this. Not yet. She was his. It must be done properly, in order, in a way that wouldn’t shame her to remember somewhere down the line.
So he forced his shivering body to bear the pain. He held her very close while she recovered from her first ecstasy. He wrapped her up tight, and held her while he endured what he must to spare her innocence.
She wept. He kissed away the tears, so tenderly that they fell even harder, hot and wet on her flushed cheeks.
She was embarrassed and trying not to let him see.
He knew. He smiled and kissed her eyes shut. “It had to be with me,” he whispered. “Only with me. I would rather die than know you had such an experience with any other man.”
She opened her eyes and looked up into his. “Really?”
“Really.” He looked down at her nudity, his eyes hungry again at the sight of her pink-and-peach skin, silky and soft and fragrant. He touched her breasts tenderly. “You are the most beautiful woman I will ever see.”
Her lips parted on a shaky breath.
He bent and kissed her breasts. “And now we have to get up.”
She stared at him.
“Or not get up,” he murmured with a laugh. “Because I can’t continue this much longer.”
“It would be...all right,” she whispered. “If you wanted to,” she added.
“I want to,” he said huskily. “But you won’t be happy afterward. And you know it. Not like this,
ma belle.
Not our first time together. It has to be done properly.”
“Properly?”
“You graduate from college, get a job, go to work. I come to see you bringing flowers and chocolates,” he mused, tracing her mouth. “And then, eventually, a ring.”
“A ring.”
He nodded.
“An...engagement...ring?”
He smiled.
“People do it all the time, even before they get engaged,” she said.
He got to his feet. “They do. But we won’t.”
“Oh.”
He dressed her, enjoying the act of putting back onto her lovely body the things he’d taken off it. He laughed at her rapt expression. “You have a belief system that isn’t going to allow a more modern approach to sex,” he said blandly. “So we do it your way.”
“I could adjust,” she began, still hungry.
“Your happiness means a lot to me,” he said simply. “I’m not going to spoil something beautiful with a tarnished memory. Not after I’ve waited so long.”
She stared up into his black eyes. “I’ve waited for you, too,” she whispered.
“I know.” He smoothed back her hair just as they heard a car door slam and footsteps approaching.
Michelle looked horrified, thinking what could have happened, what condition they could have been in as Darla put her key into the lock.
Gabriel burst out laughing at her expression. “Now was I right?” he asked.
The door opened. Darla stopped with Bob in tow and just stared at Gabriel. Then she grinned. “Wow,” she said. “Look what Larry changed into!”
And they all burst out laughing.
* * *
Michelle graduated with honors. Gabriel and Sara were both there for the ceremony, applauding when she walked down the aisle to accept her diploma. They went out to eat afterward, but once they were home, Gabriel couldn’t stay. He was preoccupied, and very worried, from the look of things.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” Michelle asked.
He shook his head. He bent to kiss her, very gently. “I’m going to have to be out of the country for two or three months.”
“No!” she exclaimed.
“Only that. Then I have a job waiting, one that won’t require so much travel,” he promised. “Bear with me. I’m sorry. I have to do this.”
She drew in a long breath. “Okay. If you have to go.”
“You’ve got a job waiting in San Antonio, anyway,” he reminded her with a smile. “On a daily newspaper. It has a solid reputation for reporting excellence. Make a name for yourself. But don’t get too comfortable there,” he added enigmatically. “Because when I get back, we need to talk.”
“Talk.” She smiled.
“And other things.”
“Oh, yes, especially, other things,” she whispered, dragging his mouth down to hers. She kissed him hungrily. He returned the kiss, but drew back discreetly when Sara came into the room. He hugged her, too.
He paused in the doorway and looked back at them, smiling. “Take care of each other.” He grinned at his sister. “Happy?” he asked, referring to the changes in her life.
Sara laughed, tossing her long hair. “I could die of it,” she sighed.
“I’ll be back before you miss me,” he told Michelle, who was looking sad. He wanted to kiss her, right there in front of the world. But it wasn’t the time. And he wasn’t sure he could stop.
“Impossible,” Michelle said softly. “I miss you already.”
He winked and closed the door.
* * *
Michelle liked the job. She had a desk and three years of solid education behind her to handle the assignments she was given.
A big story broke the second month she’d been with the newspaper. There was a massacre of women and children in a small Middle Eastern nation, perpetrated, it was said, by a group of mercenaries led by a Canadian national named Angel Le Veut. He had ties to an anti-terrorism school run by a man named Eb Scott in, of all places, Jacobsville, Texas.
Michelle went on the offensive at once, digging up everything she could find about the men in the group who had killed the women and children in the small Muslim community that was at odds with a multinational occupation force.
The name of the man accused of leading the assault was ironic. One of the languages she’d studied was French. And if loosely translated, the man’s name came out as “Angel wants it.” It was an odd play on words that was used most notably in the sixteenth century by authorities when certain cases were tried and a guilty verdict was desired. The phrase
“Le Roi le Veut”
meant that the king wanted the accused found guilty—whether or not he really was, apparently. The mysterious Angel was obviously an educated man with a knowledge of European history. Michelle was puzzled over why such a man would choose a lifestyle that involved violence.
* * *
Her first stop was Jacobsville, Texas, where she arranged an interview with Eb Scott, the counterterrorism expert, whose men had been involved in the massacre. Michelle knew him, from a distance.
Her father had gone to school with him and they were acquaintances. Her father had said there wasn’t a finer man anywhere, that Eb was notorious for backing lost causes and fighting for the underdog. That didn’t sound like a man who would order the murder of helpless women and children.
Eb shook her hand and invited her into his house. His wife and children were gone for the day, shopping in San Antonio for summer clothing. It was late spring already.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Michelle said when they were seated. “Especially under the circumstances.”
“Hiding from the press is never a good idea, but at times, in matters like this, it’s necessary, until the truth can be ferreted out,” Eb said solemnly. His green eyes searched hers. “You’re Alan Godfrey’s daughter.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
“You used to spend summers in Comanche Wells with your grandparents.” He smiled back. “Minette Carson speaks well of you. She did an interview with me yesterday. Hopefully, some of the truth will trickle down to the mass news media before they crucify my squad leader.”
“Yes. This man, Angel,” she began, looking over her notes while Eb Scott grimaced and tried not to reveal what he really knew about the man, “his name is quite odd.”
“Le Veut?” He smiled again. “He gets his way. He’s something of an authority on sixteenth-century European history. He and Kilraven, one of the feds who’s married to a local girl, go toe-to-toe over whether or not Mary Queen of Scots really helped Lord Bothwell murder her husband.”
“Has this man worked for you, with you, for a long time?” she asked.
He nodded. “Many years. He’s risked his life time and time again to save innocents. I can promise you that when the truth comes out, and it will, he’ll be exonerated.”
She was typing on her small notebook computer as he spoke. “He’s a Canadian national?”
“He has dual citizenship, here and in Canada,” he corrected. “But he’s lived in the States most of his life.”
“Does he live in Jacobsville?”
Eb hesitated.
She lifted her hands from the keyboard. “You wouldn’t want to say, would you?” she asked perceptibly. “If he has family, it could hurt them, as well. There wouldn’t be a place they could go where the media wouldn’t find them.”
“The media can be like a dog after a juicy bone,” Eb said with some irritation. “They’ll get fed one way or the other, with truth or, if time doesn’t permit, with lies. I’ve seen lives ruined by eager reporters out to make a name for themselves.” He paused. “Present company excepted,” he added gently. “I know all about you from Minette.”
She smiled gently. “Thanks. I always try to be fair and present both sides of the story without editorializing. I don’t like a lot of what I see on television, presented as fair coverage. Most of the commentators seem quite biased to me. They convict people and act as judge, jury and executioner.” She shook her head. “I like the paper I work for. Our editor, even our publisher, are fanatics for accurate and fair coverage. They fired a reporter last month whose story implicated an innocent man. He swore he had eyewitnesses to back up the facts, and that he could prove them. Later, when the editor sent other reporters out to recheck—after the innocent man’s attorneys filed a lawsuit—they found that the reporter had ignored people who could verify the man’s whereabouts at the time of the crime. The reporter didn’t even question them.”
Eb sighed, leaning back in his recliner. “That happens all too often. Even on major newspapers,” he added, alluding to a reporter for one of the very large East Coast dailies who’d recently been let go for fabricating stories.
“We try,” Michelle said quietly. “We really try. Most reporters only want to help people, to point out problems, to help better the world around us.”
“I know that. It’s the one bad apple in the barrel that pollutes the others,” he said.
“This man, Angel, is there any way I could interview him?”
He almost bit through his lip. He couldn’t tell her that. “No,” he said finally. “We’ve hidden him in a luxury hotel in a foreign country. The news media will have a hell of a time trying to ferret him out. We have armed guards in native dress everywhere. Meanwhile, I’ve hired an investigative firm out of Houston—Dane Lassiter’s—to dig out the truth. Believe me, there’s no one in the world better at it. He’s a former Houston policeman.”
“I know of him,” she replied. “His son was involved in a turf war between drug lords in the area, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he was. That was a while back.”
“Well, tell me what you can,” she said. “I’ll do my best not to convict the man in print. The mercenaries who were with Angel,” she added, “are they back in the States?”
“That’s another thing I can’t tell you right now,” he replied. “I’m not trying to be evasive. I’m protecting my men from trial by media. We have attorneys for all of them, and our investigator hopes to have something concrete for us, and the press, very soon.”
“That’s fair enough.”
“Here’s what we know right now,” Eb said. “My squad leader was given an assignment by a State Department official to interview a local tribesman in a village in Anasrah. The man had information about a group of terrorists who were hiding in the village—protected by a high-ranking government official, we were told. My squad leader, in disguise, took a small team in to interview him, but when he and his men arrived, the tribesman and his entire family were dead. One of the terrorists pointed the finger at Angel and accused his team of the atrocity. I’m certain the terrorist was paid handsomely to do it.”
Michelle frowned. “You believe that?”
Eb stared her down with glittering green eyes. “Miss Godfrey, if you knew Angel, you wouldn’t have to ask me that question.”