Her voice dropped, becoming husky. "That"s too bad. It"s such a nice face."
"No compliments, all right?" he said. "I don"t believe them, and I don"t expect them."
After a second she agreed wearily, "No compliments." Her fingers moved to one of his arms. She rubbed the liquid into it from elbow to hand. Then, as if the small scar on his palm required an inordinate amount of attention, she took her time stroking it.
Kyle shifted his legs. feeling the caress in areas that had little to do with his palm. She performed the same magic on the other hand, and he used all his concentration to keep from moving in an even more noticeable way.
"It"s too d.a.m.ned warm in front of this fire," he grumbled, breathing faster. "Floor"s hard." The floor wasn"t the only thing that fit that description, he thought. He arched his back a little and drew his knees up.
"Be still," she cautioned. "This stuff has to dry for a minute or two. Then you can move. In the meantime" a"she tugged his T-shirt up to his nipplesa""I"ll use the rest of the mixture."
Kyle could barely keep from groaning as her fingers spread over his chest and stomach, ma.s.saging the liquid into the scars there. One scar ran across his right nipple, and when her fingertip slid over the sensitive nub, Kyle bit the inside of his lip to stifle a growl of encouragement.
Her fingers glided along a ragged scar at the center of his chest, tracing without inhibition a path that he knew so well, had studied with loathing so many times. The scar bore an uncanny resemblance to a V; it looked as if Valdlvia"s dogs had left his personal brand near Kyle"s heart.
Sara"s touch made his skin tingle as if a grid of hilgh-voltage wires lay just under the surface. No other woman"s touch had ever had such an incredible effect, bringing the heat of desire and emotion to the surface untill his control was weakened with each stroke of her fingers.
Because his skin had become a supersensitive canvas for her magical art, the warm, foreign drop of water that fell on his stomach was an abrupt intrusion. Kyle opened his eyes quickly and looked at her. She was crylng as she looked at his torso. One of her tears had fallen on him. Pity. He died a little as embarra.s.sment crawled through him. "Stop it."
Her startled gaze flew to his, and her lips parted on a soft murmur of apology. "You don"t understand," she whispered.
"No tears. No d.a.m.ned tears."
She swallowed harshly and scrubbed her cheeks with the back of one hand. hurrying to comply. But she shook her head in rebuke. "Why won"t you let me feel sorry for you? It"s only human for me to cry when I think of what you went through. I know what happened to you after that day in the courtyard. I know that you were taken to another hacienda and treated like some sort of prisoner of war."
He cursed viciously. "Who told you about that?"
"Jeopard. When we were all at the hospital, going through thea"what did your people call it? The debriefing. You wouldn"t tell me anything, remember?"
"I didn"t think you wanted to hear the details. I didn"t think you could take it. There was something haunted about your eyes. Maybe you don"t remember as well as I do. You avoided me most of the time at the hospital. Then you left without even telling me good-bye."
She looked at him sadly. "How could I face you aftera being with Noelle"s father?"
He groaned softly, a sound of regret and understanding. "I wouldn"t have tried to make you feel guilty for that. You and I met only one time. When you were rescued you still didn"t know that I had survived. I was no more than a dead stranger in your memory."
"A dead stranger?" She stared at him in disbelief. "I never thought of you that way!" Her shoulders slumped. "When I found out that you were alive but badly hurt, I a.s.sumed that you wouldn"t want anything to do with me. After all, if you hadn"t been a.s.signed to find mea" She looked at him with the pain of memories in her eyes. "But after I saw you at the hospital, I had to know everything that had happened to you after that day in the courtyard. So I asked Jeopard."
"You shouldn"t have."
She struggled for control and had to turn her face away. "I had to. You were so thin, and the scarsa I could tell that your wounds had healed poorly. I asked Jeopard. He said that you"d been kept in a cellar, that you had never received any medical care, that some of the wounds had become infected."
Kyle sat up and grabbed the towel she"d brought. Roughly he began toweling her orchid concoction off his face and body.
"No." she said brokenly, reaching out to him, her hand shaking. "Please don"t."
"When I want pity from you. I"ll ask for it."
"You don"t understand. My sympathy doesn"t take anything away from all the good feelings that you and I share."
"It takes away a h.e.l.l of a lot. Respect, for one thing." He knew that he was overreacting, that she was trying to be kind and he was kicking her for it. But he didn"t want kindness from hera"he wanted her to see him as a strong, desirable man, someone for whom she didn"t have to feel sorry, someone she could love.
He got up. "Good night. I know I"m a b.a.s.t.a.r.d right now. I"ll try to get my good humor back before breakfast."
Kneeling on the floor, she looked up at him, seeming small and fragile. But her eyes snapped with resentment. "You are a b.a.s.t.a.r.d right now," she agreed.
He bowed in acceptance, and left the room.
Sara sat there alone, her hands clenched in her lap, her thoughts rebellious. She had tried so hard to make him relax. Her unseductive att.i.tude and conversation and the way she had dressed for bed had been meant to make intimacy seem so comfortable, so right. She had obviously taken the wrong approach.
She leapt to her feet and hurried from the room. First she went to her bedroom, where she kicked her tiger slippers into a corner, then stripped naked. She covered herself in the green silk robe she"d been wearing the day he had climbed down her chimney unannounced.
Next she went to the nursery, tiptoeing so that she wouldn"t wake Noelle and Daisy. She rummaged through a set of drawers until she found everything she wanted. Her arms full, she went back to her bedroom, shoved open the door to the hall, and marched down to Kyle"s room.
She used one bare heel to drum loudly on the bottom of his door. He apparently thought some new emergency had risen, because she heard him run to the door. He Jerked it open and looked down at her worriedly. "What is it?"
"Respect," she said grimly, and found a knot in her throat. Why did he make this so difficult? "You want respect, I brought you respect."
He frowned at the things in her arms. As his eyes took in her change of clothes, he frowned harder. "Is this an experiment? Will there be a quiz later?"
"My mother liked to sew and crochet," she told him between gritted teeth. "She also did embroidery. Look." She threw one of Noelle"s crib blankets at him.
He caught it, his angry, bewildered gaze never leaving hers. "Just tell me what point you"re trying to make, Sara."
"I can"t tell you. You don"t listen. You don"t believe." She nodded toward the blanket. "Look at it."
Slowly he dropped his gaze. His fingers touched a corner of the blanket where Anna Scarborough had embroidered her granddaughter"s initials. "NKS," he read, then looked at her impatiently.
She threw a pink cap at him. "NKS," he said again, the cap spread over his hand as if his fingers were wearing it.
"NKS," she echoed, her voice trembling with bittersweet distress. She threw a tiny dress at him. Its collar bore the same initials. "NKS." She threw a pair of mittens. "NKS!" Then a monogrammed sweater. "NKS!"
"Whoa," he protested, trying to hold everything. When she drew her hand back with a pillow in it, like a powder-puff quarterback, he began to back away. "Easy, Sara, easy." His voice was soothing, his expression sad. "I"m sorry I upset you like this. Now, calma""
"NKS!" She advanced into his room, her arm still posed to fire the pillow at him.
"Dammit!" he said finally, and stopped backing. He tossed everything on the floor and came toward her, hands out to grab the small pink pillow edged in crochet.
"NKS!" she yelled, and thrust the pillow into his hands.
Kyle halted, staring at the name that had been lovingly st.i.tched into its center. "Noelle Kyla Scarborough," he whispered. "Kyla?"
Sara"s anger crumbled. "I named her after you," she said, her voice breaking. "If that"s not respect, I don"t know what is."
He continued to look at the pillow, his blue eyes reflecting his stunned, troubled thoughts. "Why did you do it?"
"Because 1 wanted to honor the most wonderful man I"d ever met. Because I never wanted to forget that man." She stepped close to him and laid a hand on his arm. "Because from the first day I knew that he was very, very special." He brushed his fingertips over the name on the pillow. His hand quivered visibly, and his voice was hoa.r.s.e.
"I hope I haven"t done too much to destroy your opinion."
Her throat ached with emotion. "Nothing you can"t fix easily."
He looked up at her, restraint and tenderness creating a volatile gleam in his eye. "Tell me what you want."
"I want you to show a little pity for me."
"Oh, G.o.d, let"s drop the subject of pitya""
"No." She took the baby pillow from him and tossed it onto a chair in his shadowy bedroom. Then she grasped his hands. "You can"t bear the thought that I might feel sorry for you. But don"t you feel sony for me? For my loneliness? Don"t you want to make me happy?"
"Any way that I cana""
"Then why won"t you accept the fact that I want you?" She raised her hands and cupped his face. Sara watched the slow tensing of the muscles. "I love touching you," she whispered. "I love looking at you. And I"d love to do a great deal more of both."
He was silent, searching her eyes, his torn emotions evident in the tense set of his broad shoulders and the quiet dilemma that darkened his expression. Give him time, Sara told herself firmly.
Stepping back from him was one of the most difficult things she"d ever done in her life. "I love you," she told him. She smiled through tears of hope. "I am going to believe that you want me to love you, and that eventually you"ll believe that I do. In the meantime. I"ll be waiting. Good night."
She turned shakily and started for the door. He reached it with a few loping strides and blocked her way. Sara gasped lightly as he s.n.a.t.c.hed her into his arms and pulled her against him, lifting her to her toes.
"Would you say the first part again?" he said.
She lost herself in his hypnotizing gaze. "I love you, Kyle." Sara laughed weakly. "I think I knew that in Surador. We were strangers, but I knew that I wanted to be a part of you. How"s that for jumping to an unsubstantiated, unscientific conclusion?"
"Sometimes you have to go with your instincts. Doc," he whispered, his voice deep and husky with emotion.
"Do youa do your instincts tell you anything specific?"
"They tell me that I was right that day in Surador."
She looked at him through half-shut eyes and wound her arms around his neck. "Right about what?"
"That I wouldn"t mind dying for you."
Destroyed in the most tender way, she broke into a million pieces. Sara buried her head against the crook of his neck and cried.
"Oh, Sara, Sara," he said anxiously. "I was just being honest, not trying to upset you."
"That"s why it means so much to me."
He managed to chuckle. "Do you know what else I was right about?"
"What?"
"This." He sank his mouth onto hers for a long. deep kiss that buckled her knees. "And this." He stroked his hands up and down her back, slid them over her hips, and pulled her tight against his pelvis. "I knew you"d be magic."
She gave herself to him, arching into his embrace, licking the corners of his mouth, then kissing the dampness she had made, whimpering with devotion each time he opened her lips with the loving command of his tongue.
He dipped his head and delved into the smooth flow of her neck, nuzzling the sensitive skin under her ear. Sensation scattered down Sara"s body, and she curled into his arms as he lifted her from the floor. Kyle carried her down the hall to the master bedroom and stood quietly in the dim light from a single bedside lamp, kissing her until her head fell back weakly and she moaned.
"I thought you"d be more relaxed here," he whispered, laying her on the bed. He glanced at the open door to the nursery. "Where we could hear if Noelle cries during the night."
Looking up into the warm, unclouded blue of his gaze, Sara smiled. He understood so perfectly. She drew him down to her and nibbled his lower Up. "Thank you."
"Thank you." He slid a hand under her head and raised her face to be mapped by kisses. "Thank you." Slowly he settled beside her, his belly curved against her hip. He stroked the backs of his fingers down her robe and was superbly adept at raising goose b.u.mps on the flesh underneath.
Again and again he repeated his patient caress from shoulder to thigh, and now he found points of particular interest, where he lingered, bonding the silk"s smooth seduction with the more primitive urgency of his hand.
Sara writhed under his touch and kissed him wildly. Her hands tugged at his robe, pushed it open, and impatiently roamed over his T-shirt. She realized she was going too fast, being too greedy, and slowed her hands. Then, taking an infinite amount of joy in his clothed body, the hardness of his chest muscles, the slow flexing of his thighs under the cotton jogging pants, she met and held his gaze.
"1 love you," he said in a tone that made her feel as if she were floating. "And I wish I were the man I see in your eyes."
"You are." She guided him onto his back and leaned over him, smiling tenderly. Sara knelt and ran her hands along his body, finding the special places as he had done with her body. When she caressed the straining ridge on his belly, he made a soft growl that was potently masculine.
She began to push his shirt up. He grasped her hands and burned her with a pensive, questioning look. "Would you like to turn out the light?"
She shook her head gently. "Would you?"
"Not really. I want to see you. I just wasn"t certaina""
"I do," she answered. "I want to see you too. All of you. You have to understand something. I think you"re the s.e.xiest man I"ve ever known. When you did that ridiculous striptease for my security cameras, I was enthralled. I mean that."
He laughed, the kind of rich, relieved sound that told her she"d finally started to break through. Slowly the laughter faded into a look that simmered with desire. "Would you like a second performance?"
She nodded eagerly and even applauded a little.
Kyle rose from the bed and moved a few feet away, his back to her, the glow of the bedside lamp casting him in a tantalizing mixture of light and shadow. He shrugged his robe off one shoulder, struck a melodramatic pose with one hip thrust out, then smoothed both hands over his hair in a preening gesture.
He swiveled a little and let the robe fall from the other shoulder. With the burgundy material draped around his elbows, he pulled it back and forth across his rump.
"More, more." Sara urged, laughing softly. But this was no bawdy performance, this was a sharing of trust.
He dropped the robe and turned around. One brow arched wickedly as he splayed his hands across his stomach and rubbed. Inviting her to think about the terraced muscles under his T-shirt.
Sara pressed her hands to her throat and sighed grandly, while inside her heart nearly burst. This was the man he had been and would learn to be again, the man who was confident about his body and its effect on a woman.
He pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it to her. She buried her nose in the soft material and inhaled his scent as she peered at him coyly. He was a beautifully athletic man, and the scars were only marks of honor, the same as any knight would bear if he had fought dragons.
Abruptly he turned and flipped down one side of his pants, exposing a tight haunch covered in white briefs. "I forgot my G-string," he told her solemnly.
"You"ll have to pay the penalty, then. Go naked."
"Hmmm. You"d better tip big for this performance."
Sara fumbled with the tie on her robe, finally unfastening it so that the robe remained closed only by sheer luck. "I have your reward ready."
He stood very still and scrutinized her gently. "Are you blushing?"
She nodded. "We scientists are allowed to be a little shy. It"s part of our image." She cleared her throat. "Go on with your show."