At the Edge of the Sun (Maggie Bennett 3)

“Are you ready?”

His voice was heavy with contempt and something else. Was it wariness? Damn it, Maggie thought, did she deserve that fury and disgust he was showing her? Or was it all a part of an elaborate defense?

She didn’t move. Every nerve in her body was taut, screaming, ready to shatter. She stayed there on her haunches, shivering, waiting for something to break the paralysis.

It was his hand. He leaned down and caught her shoulder, and his long brown fingers were hard and painful. “Get up, Maggie,” he said in a bitter voice.

The roughness of his hand on her was the final straw. “Get your hands off me,” she screamed, but the words came out in a tortured whisper. And then she began to fight.

ten

If she’d expected gentlemanly restraint, sympathy, or a gentle subduing of her blind rage, she’d attacked the wrong person, Randall thought. One of her strong fists grazed his cheekbone, and he caught that arm, twisting it around behind her. She kicked, and he dodged, grunting in anger and pulling her arm harder against her back. She’d bared her teeth against the pain, but her other hand was flailing around, thrashing at him. A distant part of his brain knew that she was capable of a much better effort. He could still subdue her—not only did he outweigh her, but he had years more experience. But Maggie was blinded by her fury, making mistakes that would have left her dead if she’d come up against anyone else but him.

He yanked at her arm again, hearing her muffled gasp of pain, and he told himself he was glad he hurt her. Told himself that as he loosened his grip. She responded by spinning around, driving her fist into his stomach, and bringing her knee up toward his groin.

No more mister nice guy, he thought grimly, jerking out of the way of that dangerous knee. He moved, quickly, efficiently, catching both arms, spinning her around and shoving her down into the dirt, following her down and pinning her prone body with his larger one. He caught her short-cropped hair in one large hand and yanked it upward, painfully, so that she could meet his glare.

He waited, panting, for her to start bitching. But the rage had left her body, the fight was gone from her grim mouth, and she lay there beneath him, staring up at him out of eyes that he never wanted to see in her face. Lost, hopeless, despairing eyes that were, to his horror, starting to fill with tears.

He released his grip on her hair, and her face sank down in the dust as the first sobs began to shake her shoulders. Narrow, oddly defenseless shoulders lying beneath him. Maggie Bennett, who prided herself on being so strong, so self-sufficient, lay there in a huddle of misery so vast that it frightened him.

Damn Pulaski. And damn her for loving him so much that she was still tormented and ripe for Bud Willis’s sadistic games. And damn him for caring one way or the other.

He should leave her lying there in the dirt. He could call Mabib from Damascus and have him come fetch her later. If he were truly guiltless that was exactly what he’d do.

But there was a small, niggling part of him that wondered whether he could have stopped Mack’s death. And as long as that question haunted him, then he deserved a tiny portion of Maggie’s distrust.

For such a tall lady she was very small beneath him. Her

body shook, quiet little tremors made without a sound. He had a choice—walk away and let her regain her self-possession, or take her now, when she was vulnerable. Turn her over and strip off those hastily donned clothes.

He wasn’t a teenage boy at the mercy of his hormonal urges. He wanted more from Maggie than her body. The worst thing he could do right now would be to make love to her, when she was too weak and defenseless to fight him and her own needs. She hated those needs, and he was damned if he wanted to face her one more morning with that look of condemnation in her eyes. He had to leave her alone.

The back of her neck was directly beneath his mouth. It was fragile, defenseless, with her short-cropped, wheat-color hair barely brushing it. There was something so indefinably erotic about the nape of her neck, the moonlight around them, the anguish and hatred and despair still ringing in the air. They were mere inches apart.

He stared down at her body still shaking with suppressed sobs. And without conscious volition he placed his mouth against her neck.

She grew very still beneath him. He was conscious of it, even as he was conscious of the smoothness of her skin beneath his mouth, the lingering taste of water from her sojourn in the pool, the faint saltiness of sweat brought about by her rage and near hysteria. The sobs shuddered to a sudden halt, and he half expected her to gather her remaining strength and try to roll his larger body off her.

She didn’t move. She lay there beneath him, quiet, waiting, and he knew it was too late. He wanted her too much to pull back. And she needed him too much to fight. He shifted, moving partway off her, and his hands were no longer rough and punishing. He rolled her over in the dust so that she faced him, and the look on her face shocked him. It was an expression of total, passive despair. And he knew that if he did nothing else he’d bring her back to life again, even if it meant bringing back her hatred.

Her hair was still wet from her brief swim. He gently pushed it out of her face. She didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, didn’t react at all. She just lay there on her back in the dirt, half beneath him, watching him out of emotionless eyes.

He hesitated for one last time. He’d taken advantage of her before—maybe this time he could make the supreme effort and let her go. Maybe for once in his life he could do the decent, unselfish thing.

“Do you want to go on to Damascus tonight?” He forced himself to ask it, and even to his own ears his voice sounded strained.

She just looked up at him. For a moment he wondered if she’d retreated into shock, not hearing, lost in some world where Pulaski still strutted and Randall Carter was nothing more than an unpleasant memory. But those calm, unseeing eyes focused on his for a moment, and she gave a faint, negative shake of her head.

He took a deep breath, a part of him amazed at the shakiness of it. “Do you want me to leave you here and have Mabib pick you up tomorrow?”

Again that small shake of her head. There was a streak of dirt across one of her high cheekbones. At least, he hoped it was dirt and not a bruise from his less than courteous defense.

“What do you want, Maggie?” His voice was raw and strained in the night air.

She looked up at him, out of those half-dead aquamarine eyes that still, somewhere, held a spark of life.

“I want you to make love to me,” she said in a small, distinct voice, as if she were asking for cream and sugar in her coffee. “I want you to make me forget everything. You’re good at that, Randall. Good at making me unable to think. I’ve thought too much, seen too much, hurt too much in the last few days. The last couple of years. I want to forget. Just for a little while.”