“Reilly?” she whispered after a long moment.
He said nothing, waiting to see whether she’d slide off the bed and try to make it to the door.
But apparently escape wasn’t on her mind, not at that point. “Reilly,” she whispered again. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Keep my hands off you.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” he drawled. “And the answer hasn’t changed. I’ll take you where you want to go. To the States, if you want, or the closest safe airport outside of San Pablo. I’m taking the baby to his grandparents, but I’ll make sure you’re safe as well.”
“Even though I lied to you?”
“Even though you lied to me.”
“And what do you want in return?” She sounded her usual distrustful self, and he allowed himself a weary sigh.
“I thought I made that clear. Nothing that you aren’t willing to give. Now go to sleep, Carlie.”
“But ...”
“Go to sleep, or I’ll give you another lesson in kissing. And I might even manage to change your mind.”
She didn’t make another sound. The tension in her body gradually began to lessen, and in less than ten minutes she was sound asleep, her small, sweet butt pressed up against him.
He only wished he could find a similar oblivion.
* * *
Chapter Ten
* * *
Her dreams were shameful. Lascivious, shocking things, the likes of which hadn’t bothered her for years. She’d worked so hard at banishing dreams from her life. The terrifying nightmares that brought back full force the bloody day when her parents had died. The lustful dreams that left her feeling hot and trembly. Even the peaceful dreams, where she hoped God was speaking to her, had been blocked from her life. She would wake up once they started, jarred into consciousness and safety.
But she must have been too tired to fight it. The big, strong body stretched out beside hers, touching hers, worked its own insidious effect on her, invading her defenses, her longings, her dreams.
Her skin was hot. Prickling with awareness. There was a strange gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach, and her mouth ached. In her dreams she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. She’d kissed a man. She’d taken pleasure in it, she who’d eschewed men and this world. And she wanted to kiss him again.
Concrete images faded, to be replaced by shifting patterns, sensations. Heat and dampness, flesh and muscle, bone and sinew, taste and desire. She was running then, down a long hillside, chasing something that she couldn’t quite see. And he was behind her, waiting for her. She had only to stop, to hold out her hand, and he’d pull her back, away from the pit filled with noisy, cawing blackbirds, their wings flapping, their white veils fluttering in the jungle breeze....
Her eyes flew open in sudden awareness. She was lying pressed up against Reilly’s body, the thick darkness all around them, with only the soft glow of moonlight sending a faint light in the room. Her arms were around him, tight, and it was more than clear that she’d crawled over to his side, crept up to him while she slept, looking for comfort, looking for something she was too big a coward to define.
His eyes were open, still, in the moonlight, but he made no move to touch her. She found she was clinging to him, and he let her. Beneath her hands, beneath the thin cotton T-shirt he wore, she could feel the beat of his heart. Steady, slightly fast.
“You were dreaming,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Nightmares. About guns and death.”
“I do sometimes,” she said, too weary, too vulnerable to protect herself by lying. She was too close, and the heat and strength of him were irresistible. She knew she should apologize, move away. She knew she couldn’t.
“What happened?”
Another time she would have been more wary. She would have remembered the story she’d been telling him, about the privileged life of French finishing schools. But she was still half-asleep, still shaken from the vivid dream, and she wanted to tell him what she’d never told another living being.
“They killed them,” she whispered, her head down. She could feel the wetness of tears on her cheeks, and she pressed her face against the soft T-shirt, the hard, warm skin beneath, letting the soft cotton soak up the dampness.
He was holding her, loosely, comfortingly, one hand smoothing back her short hair. “Who did, Carlie?”
She tried to resist. ‘‘I don’t want to...”
“Who did?”
She couldn’t fight him, and herself, and her need to tell him. “The soldiers,” she said, her voice barely discernible. But she knew he heard every word. “They came to Puente del Norte and they killed them all. My parents. The people in the village. Even the children.”
“Why didn’t they kill you, Carlie?” His voice was a soothing rumble beneath her tear-damp face, and the large, rough hand kept stroking, stroking.
“They couldn’t find me. I was hiding, behind a clump of trees. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even hide my head. I just had to stay there, and watch, and...and…listen “
His arms tightened around her then. For a brief moment she fought it, but he simply held her, his voice that same comforting rumble. “There’s no one to hear you, baby,” he murmured. “No one to see you. No one to know if you cry.”
“I’d know,” she said.
His hand slid beneath her hair, tilting her face toward his. “You already know.”
He took her breath away. She wouldn’t have expected him to have any idea of her torment, and yet he’d honed in on it immediately. Whether she liked it or not, there was no way she could deny the truth of his words.
“I...” she began, one more token protest. But her voice failed her, and she began to cry. Noisily. Wetly. Burying her face against him once more, howling out her misery and rage, her loneliness and pain. She cried until her stomach ached with the force of her sobs, cried until her eyes stung and her chest ached and her nose was running with no tissue in sight. And all the while he held her.
He was an astonishing man. When her storm of tears began to fade, a bandanna appeared in front of her. She pulled away from him with no more than a quavery sigh, wiped her face, blew her nose and looked at him defiantly.
His T-shirt was damp from her tears. His face was hidden in the shadows, but she imagined she could see the gleam in his eyes, the faint grimness to his mouth.
“Reilly,” she said, hardly recognizing her tear-roughened voice.
She wasn’t sure what she expected from him. Questions, mockery, a pass. She wasn’t sure which she’d hate the most.
She’d underestimated him. He simply lay back on the bed, looking at her out of steady eyes. “Are you ready to sleep?” he asked. “We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
She wasn’t sure what she should do. She was embarrassed, self-conscious, wishing she were anywhere else but lying in bed with the man she was becoming dangerously vulnerable to.
He solved the problem for her. He caught her arm and pulled her back down beside him. Up close, pressed against him. He draped an arm over her, a possessive, protective arm. And then he closed his eyes, obviously prepared to go to sleep.
She held still, barely daring to breathe, overwhelmingly conscious of the heat of his body, the warmth of his breath against her hair, the steady thump of his heartbeat. It thumped at deliberate counterpoint to hers, and she tried to match his breathing, but hers was lighter, faster, as if she’d been running. Punctuated by an occasional shudder, the remnant of her bout of tears.
Odd, that she could feel so comfortable and so uneasy at the same time. She wasn’t used to touching other people, and the feel of his body plastered against hers, the casual possession of his arm, made her feel threatened.
And yet at the same time she felt safer than she ever had. This was a man who would protect her, no matter what. This was a man who’d watch out for her, for the baby, who’d do what he said he would
do, and nothing or no one would stop him. He was stubborn as a mule, but she realized for the first time in almost ten years that she wasn’t frightened of the future.
And she wasn’t frightened of the past.
She should have told someone, anyone, the story of what she’d seen in that tiny mountaintop village. The horror had been so real that she’d wanted to shut it out, and she’d been afraid that by talking about it she’d somehow make it real, give it power over her.
Not realizing the power it had already claimed.
She could have told Reverend Mother Ignacia. She could have confessed to Father Ramon, not any real sin, but the miserable guilt of surviving when so many had died. But instead she’d buried it in her heart, where it ate its way into her soul like a worm, until it came pouring out, confessed to a man of violence not that far removed from the men who had committed those atrocities.
And yet he was. Just because he carried a gun, because he was willing and able to kill, didn’t mean he was one of them. He looked out for the innocents of this world. For Timothy. And for her.
“Reilly,” she said, her voice husky and still in the darkness. She half expected he’d be asleep already—he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who let a little thing like sleep disobey his command.
But a moment later he answered. “Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For scaring Dutchy off. For bringing us out of the jungle. For letting me cry all over you. For putting up with me.”
“Don’t get maudlin on me, princess,” he drawled as his long fingers gently stroked her bare shoulder where the loose top had slipped down. It was a simple gesture, meant no doubt to reassure. So why did it strike a hot spark deep within that dark, evil part of her? Why did it make her want to move closer still, to wrap her body around his and soak up his strength, his heat, his very being?
She froze, terrified at the rush of longings surging through her. She needed to get away from him. He was seducing her simply with the force of his presence, seducing her away from the safety she’d longed for and worked for. And he didn’t even want her.
She needed to be strong. She needed to remember her priorities. Get the baby safely out of the country, on his way to his grandparents and then join Mother Ignacia and the others, older but wiser.
“If you don’t relax,” Reilly whispered in her ear, “I’m going to figure out a way to tire you enough to make you fall asleep. Right now I can only think of one way to accomplish that, and while it seems like a fine idea to me, you’ve already said no. So if you want me to respect your wishes, you’ll stop wiggling around and sighing. Unless you want that wiggling and sighing put to good use.”
Carlie froze. He breathed a loud sigh and began to rub the tight muscles in her back with his strong hand. She tried to will herself to go limp, but she simply couldn’t. Not surrounded by the heat and the scent and the feel of him.
“All right,” he said in sudden exasperation. And before she knew what was happening he’d spun her over, onto her back, and he was straddling her, his big, strong body covering hers. “We’ll do it my way.” And he covered her mouth with his.
She struggled, but it was useless. He was so much bigger, so much stronger, so much more determined. Mother Ignacia had counseled her about rape. When they had first brought her to the Sisters of Benevolence she had scarcely been able to speak, so deep was her shock, and for the first few months it had been assumed that she had been raped. Even when part of the truth came out—that she was from a village destroyed by war—Reverend Mother was very matter-of-fact about the dangers of living in a country where their faith and their habits didn’t always protect them. She had escaped, physically unscathed. There was no guarantee her luck would continue.
It was no sin, Reverend Mother had said. When faced with rape, don’t put your life in danger, trying to fight. If you can’t escape, submit. God has already had enough martyrs.
Submit, she reminded herself, lying stiff and straight as a board beneath him, waiting for his hands to paw at her. It would be over soon enough. Perhaps this was the price she had to pay for her sins, to suffer this base degradation....
Except it didn’t feel like degradation. His mouth danced across hers with the lightness of a butterfly, brushing against her tightly closed lips. He held her pinned with his body, but with one hand he began pulling the loose cotton shirt from the waistband of the skirt. His warm hand was on her waist, sliding up to cover her breast, and she squirmed, trying to buck him off.
She might just as well have tried to dislodge a boulder. He was slow, deliberate in his caress of her breast, and she opened her mouth to cry out in protest.
He slid his tongue inside her mouth. She arched again, but it seemed to push her breast against his rough-skinned hand, and the sensation was... disturbing.
Not nearly as disturbing as what he did next. He rolled to his side, taking her with him, and her skirt was bunched up around her thighs. And his hand was between her knees, sliding up toward the center of her being.
Submit. She heard the words in her head again, but she couldn’t make them echo in her heart. She didn’t want to lie back and let him do this, she didn’t want him to break his promise. She had trusted him—if he took her by force he would prove himself no better than Morales’s men, or Dutchy. He just happened to smell better. And taste better. And feel better.
As she realized the way her mind was going, she panicked. Submission was all well and good, but not if she was going to enjoy it. There was no way Reverend Mother would countenance that.
She hit him, catching him on the side of the head with her fist. He barely seemed to notice. He simply caught her flailing arms with one strong hand, pinning them to the sagging mattress beneath them. And he pushed his other hand up under her skirt, between her legs, where no one had ever touched her before.
It was shocking, it was sinful, it was disgusting, it was…Carlie’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment as he touched her, intimately. A faint shimmer of pleasure danced along her nerves, and her eyes opened again in outrage.
“Relax, Carlie,” he murmured. “It’s better than a sleeping pill.”
She tried to jerk her hands free, but he was too strong. She opened her mouth to protest, but he simply put his own mouth over hers, as she let him kiss her, knowing it was wrong, unable to help herself.
She was wet between her legs. His hand was making her wet. It astonished her, as the tremors and trills of reaction amazed her. She considered begging him to stop, but she knew that would be a waste of time. She considered praying for deliverance, but quickly ruled that out. She didn’t want to be delivered. Besides, the sinful, wonderful feelings that were lashing through her body were entirely incompatible with the stern God she’d followed for the past nine years.
His mouth left hers, trailing across her cheekbone, but she could no longer fight him. It was too late—her will, her honor had been sapped. He had no right to do this, no right at all, holding her there, forcing her...
“Let it happen,” he said in her ear, a deep growl. “Stop fighting it, Carlie. You want it, you need it and I can give it to you. Just let it come.”
She had no idea what he was talking about. She was cold, and hot, her brain had ceased to function and her entire body was racked with tremors. She wanted to cry out but she couldn’t, she wanted to hit him, she wanted to put her arms around him, but her hands were trapped, her mouth was silenced by his, her body was imprisoned, and there was nothing she could do beneath the sleek, wicked onslaught of his hand between her legs, his fingers pushing deep inside her innermost being, his thumb pushing, pressing, sending shards of shimmering delight through her.
And then it happened. One moment she was trembling in helpless reaction to the terrible things he was doing to her, in the next her entire body convulsed. Releasing her hands, he shoved her face against his shoulder, muffling her hoarse cry, but she was beyond noticing. Blackness closed in around her, a t
imeless, deathless eternity, shot with a pinprick of stars dancing in front of her eyes, as everything stopped, her heart, her breathing, the world on its axis.
It lasted forever. And then she was suddenly dropped back, into reality, into the small, stuffy room at the edge of the tropical jungle, lying in bed with a professional soldier, her skirt up to her waist, her blouse shoved up to her armpits, her entire body a shaking, quivering mass of exhaustion.
Now he was going to do it, she thought distantly. He was going to rape her, and she couldn’t bring herself to argue, or to care. She felt as if she’d run twenty miles, and her entire body was so limp she let her eyes drift closed, content to just let it happen.
He pulled her skirts back down around her legs with gentle hands. He pulled the shirt back down, as well. He stretched out beside her, pulling her up close to him, and she was too weak to do anything but curl up next to him. Now he’d hurt her, she thought sleepily. Now he’d force her.
And within moments, she was sound asleep.
* * *
Reilly listened to the sound of her deep breathing with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. He’d accomplished just what he’d set out to accomplish, by force, no less. If a small, selfish part of him had hoped she’d get into the spirit of things long enough to return the favor, he should have known he’d be shit out of luck. He’d been through a streak of purely miserable misfortune for the past year and a half, starting with his realization that he just couldn’t hack the army anymore, his falling-out with Billy, followed by Billy’s crazy marriage and then his death. All ending up in this stupid trek through the jungle with a newborn infant and a woman who had no connection to either the Morrisseys or Reilly. A woman who didn’t know how to kiss, seemed as out of touch with her own body as a puritan, and made him so damned horny he thought his insides would fall out.
How could anyone so small, so unpracticed, turn him into the human equivalent of Jell-O? He’d spent his entire military life following orders and giving them, but the bottom line had always been the most good for the most people. His priorities were very clear here. He needed to get Timothy Morrissey home to his grandparents. Carlie Forrest was just an unnecessary complication.