* * *
Ravenna woke up in her bed. The rain had stopped, replaced by the orange glow of sunset which poured into the room from the gunport beside her. That glow hurt her eyes, her aching head, but still she sat up weakly and waited for sleep to clear away.
How many hours had she lain there? Eight? Ten? Visions of Paul’s face set in a dangerous scowl loomed in her memory, but as she began to sort the heaviness of dreams from reality, abruptly she realized she wasn’t alone.
Paul was slumped before the door.
His shirt had been ripped down over his shoulders. With his burly chest heaving, he gazed at her listlessly, and Ravenna felt a stab of pain: all the fight had been taken from Paul’s eyes. He was covered with blood, his blood, drawn in the name of Vancouver’s madness, for when he struggled to move toward her, clenching his teeth with the force of his effort, she saw the deep crimson bands cutting the length of his freckled back.
She crawled from her blankets. “What can I do? Should I bring the surgeon?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, and with that uncertain set to his mouth, she ached inside; she knew what it meant, that fearful expression, but before she could comfort him, he’d leaned into her, hunched over and swaying until his chin rested easily on her shoulder.
She held him as tightly as she could. She wanted so badly to reassure him, but she knew she couldn’t possibly ease the agony of those tracks. With the blood welling up and thickening in them, she wished she could murder Vancouver for all the senseless, stupid things he’d done, for beating Paul so needlessly.
Holding her in his arms, finally he straightened. He showed only minimal evidence of tears, but she knew; while he ran a hand through his tangled hair in a blatant try at indifference, he couldn’t hide that shine to his eyes.
“Guess I’m a bit of a baby,” he said. “Here you’ve almost died and all I can do is get the shite beat outta me.”
“I just passed out, that’s all,” she soothed, but as she lifted her fingers to touch his brow, she saw the casualness he pretended die away. He backed out of her hands, withdrew from her completely.
“You didn’t just anything,” he said to her darkly.
A moment or two passed in which she sat stunned by his refusal. She searched his eyes when finally he dared to raise them to hers, and she saw fear there—fear for her. He sniffed, wiped his cheek with the back of his wrist. As if he’d betrayed too much already, he turned away.
Wanting to eradicate his needless suffering, she edged closer. He tried to stop her, but still she managed to kiss his cheeks, his temples, the bridge of his nose.
Yet as her fingers massaged the back of his neck, he broke away from her advances. “You haven’t yet figured it out, have you?” He glared at her bitterly. “You think this is all some sort of coincidence, some New Age test for me t’learn from, yeah?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ravenna, you almost drowned, do you know that? And just last night I was as close t’shaggin’ you as I’ve ever been.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You feel responsible because we almost made love? That’s why you’ve waited so long to be with me? Because you thought God would kill me?”
“God takes away the people I love.”
“God hasn’t done anything,” she grumbled. “I’m the one who provoked Vancouver. I’m responsible if anyone is. And besides, don’t you think it’s pretty self-important of you to believe your love decides whether people live or die?”
Huddled in a mess of torn flesh and bruises, he shook his head. “I don’t expect you to understand. I’m just telling you the closer you an’ I get, the more likely something will happen t’one of us.”
“Then why are you here?” She challenged him, felt determined to expose him. “Did you come here to talk? To get your wounds doctored? Or maybe you just wanted me to mend your shirt—”
“Don’t be messin’ about with me.”
“Then tell me the truth. You came here so I’d hold you and promise everything’s gonna be OK…except you’re so terrified of death, you won’t even allow yourself that.”
“That’s right, because I’m not like you,” he said, meeting her gaze fiercely. “I’d rather you were living an’ not mine than dyin’ in my arms.”
“Well at least I’m not living in fear of what might happen. At least I haven’t wasted a whole year of our lives.”
Taking hold of her wrist sharply, Paul’s face colored with anger. “You can’t know what you’re saying, can you? You’ve never had someone stop breathing in your hands. You’ve never seen the life go out of someone’s eyes. I’ve seen it only this morning, and I’ll not go through it again, not with you, not after Aidan and m’mother an’ father, so you won’t mind if I don’t feel like shagging you this minute, yeah?”
The past shone in his eyes, tormenting him as he begged her to understand. “But you do,” she whispered. “You want to more than ever.”
With her gentle tone, finally he broke.
Letting go of her wrist, he kissed her. Harshly, feverishly, he searched her lips with a year’s worth of longing, a condemned desperation, as if he’d damned himself and her in the weakness of his need. In that kiss, she felt everything he’d suffered. His tongue moved achingly over hers. She took him deeper, dug her fingers into his hair until at last, with a roughness that betrayed his desire, he surrendered that final remnant of fear and backed her down to the cabin floor.
Sheltered by his brawny frame, she shivered with anticipation. His powerful shoulders loomed above her. His masculine hands slipped into her clothes. Tearing at the cotton, tugging her chemise over outstretched limbs, he was reckless, brutal in his haste…and still she urged him on.
He didn’t whisper. He said nothing at all in his Irish passion. Still, when he sank down between her thighs, he uttered a low, throaty groan of pleasure, and Ravenna dissolved. The feel of his open mouth, the fervor with which he pressed and stroked, it seemed too much, a bliss made all the more perfect by his forcefulness. I’m yours, she thought, carried by the hunger of his rhythmic suckling. Whatever you want, whatever you need…
Then abruptly, he stopped.
In the quiet of the cabin, she heard his husky growl. “God, you taste good.” His words were a brush of whiskers at her belly, a trailing caress all along her breasts. When he reached her lips, he kissed her tenderly. She didn’t know when he’d taken off his trousers, but as he lowered himself down, she felt the sudden heat of his skin, that soft rigid part of him she’d come to crave now tucked against her, tingling and warm.
“Do you want me, Sweetheart?” With the grim light of love shining in his eyes, he thrust himself a little closer. “Will you never leave me?”
Ravenna’s thoughts centered on that pulsating firmness. “Never,” she murmured, and dizzy with the feel of him, she slipped her hands around his buttocks. “Yes I want you. Please, Paul, don’t make me wait.”
Like an explosion he was, filling her with searing heat as he eased himself inside her. The thickness of him, the weight of him over her, these things made her pull him closer, and wrapping her legs around him, whispering his name again and again, she rocked to his movements until at last she heard his moan in her ear, like a velvet rush flooding everywhere.
She didn’t care what happened after that.
The light faded from the gunport beside them as he went on making love to her. The boards creaked beneath the weight of their movements, the men talked in the nearby cabin and Sarah’s sea-chest was in the way, but somehow nothing seemed so important as coaxing another kiss from him, shivering beneath still another caress. To be able to run her fingers over his hard, silky body, to feel the stubble of his cheek against hers as he murmured over and over that he loved her, that he needed her…these things for which she’d waited all her life were happening, and why should she care if anyone listened?
She only knew he was irrevocably hers when he wrapped his beaten body around her
and whispered in the darkness, “Don’t ever leave me…”