Darkness Before the Dawn (Maggie Bennett 2)

Somewhere she found her voice. “No, Randall,” she said.

He didn’t loosen her wrist. “Too late, Maggie. I warned you.” And slowly, inexorably, he pulled her to him.

His mouth meeting hers was a shock. The savage hunger, the demand, the need that swept through her at his touch horrified what small part of her brain was capable of thought. Six years might never have passed; he might never have betrayed and abandoned her. She was in his arms, half-lying across him, and she was desperate for more than just his mouth on hers, more than his arms holding her captive, more than his hands on her breasts.

There’d never been any question of not responding. She’d opened her mouth beneath his, moved when he’d pulled her, and then lay beneath him on the sofa, stretched out. Her long bare legs were beneath his trousered ones, her breasts were pressed up against his suit jacket, her arms were wrapped around him and holding him tightly against her as she kissed him back with a need that terrified her.

It had been six years since Randall; it had been two years since Mack or any man had touched her, and her body cried out for it. Maybe she could shut her eyes and pretend she was back in her bed in Boothbay Harbor, pretend it was Mack’s hands holding her face, Mack’s mouth traveling across her lips, her cheekbones, her eyelids. But the lips were harder, thinner, hungrier, and the hands were uncallused—the hands of a rich man who had never had to work for a living. It wasn’t Mack. Mack was dead. The man pressing her into the soft cushions of the sofa was the man who’d betrayed her.

“No,” she screamed, but his mouth was on hers, smothering the sound, and her hands were trapped between their bodies. She struggled, and he must have felt it. He reached down, caught her hands, and dragged them away from him. She was very strong, but he was stronger. It took him only a moment to pin her to the sofa; one hand imprisoned her wrists, the other held her face still. She could see his eyes glittering with rage and desire; then his mouth caught hers again, and he kissed her, long and hard—an insult of a kiss that still vibrated with the desire that had sparked between them. And then he pulled his mouth away.

There was blood on his mouth, blood on hers, and she couldn’t tell whose it was. He stared down at her for a long moment. “Don’t do that again,” he said, his voice rough. “You never were a cocktease before, you don’t need to start now. I’m not going to play little games with you, Maggie. Don’t start something you aren’t prepared to finish.”

She stared up at him. He was still on top of her, pressing her into the sofa, and he was still fully aroused. “I didn’t mean—”

“You did,” he contradicted flatly. “And this is the only time you’ll get away with it.” With a sudden swift movement he rolled off of her, landing on his feet with his usual grace. As she struggled to sit up, his hand reached out and caught her shirt. “And next time don’t wear Pulaski’s shirt.”

“There won’t be a next time,” she managed, thoroughly sober, thoroughly chastened. She didn’t even bother to wonder how he knew it was Mack’s shirt. There were times when Randall seemed to know everything. She shivered.

“Won’t there?” With swift, economical motions, he stripped off his tie and unfastened the first two buttons of his silk shirt. He tossed the tie at her, and unthinkingly she caught it. “Will that do?”

Even his hair was rumpled. For the moment, Maggie was safe, the danger had passed. She curled herself up in the corner of the sofa. “Fine,” she said. “I think we’ve got more important things to think about than your appearance.”

“I’ve already told you that,” he said patiently, turning his attention back to the movies with a calm disregard that she would have found insulting if she hadn’t been distracted by her latest discovery.

“Do you see that?” she demanded, moving forward to the edge of the sofa, her voice rising in excitement.

“What?”

“That’s how the information is being passed.” She gestured toward the twin television sets that had been running cheerfully along, ignored by the two of them. The two screens no longer matched. On one set, potatoes were rolling all over downtown L.A., squashing tourists. On the other, the scantily clad leader of the Resistance was perusing the operating plans of a potato satellite. The long, loving closeup of those plans had already lasted at least a minute, and they didn’t look like any potato satellite Maggie had ever seen.

“You’re right,” Randall said, suddenly businesslike. He quickly backtracked, staring at one television while the potatoes rolled on amidst shrieks on the other. The scene lasted a full five minutes. Three of those minutes were devoted to the blueprint while ridiculous dialogue was carried on in the background. Every nuance of the technical drawing was on screen for long moments, and even the legend “Potato Satellite” emblazoned on top didn’t detract from it.

“What do you suppose it is?” Maggie demanded when Randall finally turned from the machine.

“Not a potato satellite. Not a satellite at all, if I’m any judge. I think it’s the newest missile the Pentagon’s ordered.”

“The cruise?”

“Worse than that. This is one of those cute little ones that wipe out everything living while leaving buildings and anything worth money intact. They’ve had them before, but this one has a much wider range.” His thin mouth curled in disgust. “Damn them all.”

“Why would you care?”

Randall looked up, startled at her prosai

c question. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said,” Maggie said. “Why would you care? Your opinion of your fellow man is astonishingly low. Why would it matter to you if there were several thousand fewer?”

“More like hundreds of thousands,” Randall said. “And you’re right, I don’t care much about my fellow man. But I also detest needless waste. Wiping out half the population of a country has never appealed to my sense of efficiency.”

“By all means, let’s be efficient,” Maggie said with a yawn, but her eyes were sharp. “Can we turn off the damned machines yet?”

“Not yet. The movie’s almost over. We may as well hold out to the end.”

“May as well,” she said with a sigh, crawling off the sofa and stretching out onto the popcorn-strewn carpet once more, her head resting on her arms. “Wake me when it’s over.”

She was asleep before the potatoes had made it to the Grand Canyon. He could hear her deep, steady breathing, with the faint suggestion of a feminine snore, as her long, slender body relaxed into sleep. He sat watching her, watching the television sets, his hands clenched in fists.