Jade Star (Star Quartet 4)

Jules felt his large hands stroking down her back, pressing her more closely against his chest. She felt no fear. She felt secure and warm and happy. Her thoughts were tangled, the past intermingling with the present, and all she could grasp was her love for this man. “I love you, Michael,” she whispered yet again. “You saved me.”

“No, Jules, you don’t love me,” Saint managed. “Hush, now. Would you like a glass of water?”

She didn’t want water. She wanted Michael. She’d wanted him forever, it seemed now. He was holding her, caressing her. His hands were making her feel strange sensations—very pleasant, mysterious sensations that she didn’t want to stop. She raised her hand to lightly touch his face. “Michael,” she whispered. She raised herself and kissed him.

Saint stiffened, appalled at what was happening. It was that damned drug Wilkes had given her. He had to get away from her. He felt her soft lips and experienced a surge of desire for her.

“Jules, no,” he began, but she pressed herself against him and he felt her breasts full and soft against his chest.

“I’ve always loved you, Michael, and now you’ve saved me. I belong to you. Please, Michael.”

Please what, for God’s sake? He struggled for reason. “Listen to me, Jules. You’ve been drugged, sweetheart. It’s the opium that’s making you act and feel like this. We’ve got to—”

Her soft mouth covered his again, and he heard his own low moan. He didn’t know how it happened, but he was lying on the bed, Jules clutched against the length of him. “Dammit!” he said aloud. He tried to hold her still, but she was writhing against him, pressing herself more closely, as if she wanted to become part of him. He had to do something, dammit! What had that bastard Wilkes given her? What had been added to the opium?

He drew a ragged breath. He knew she was beyond reason, caught in a dream world of urgent passion. He also guessed that if it had been anyone else who had saved her, this wouldn’t be happening. But he was her Michael from five years ago, and it was all tangled in her mind. But none of it was real, none of it.

“Jules,” he said, feeling utterly desperate.

She moaned softly. “You’ll never leave me, will you, Michael? Promise me that you’ll never leave me again.”

“I promise,” he said.

She became more demanding, more feverishly urgent. He should leave her now, but he couldn’t. He closed his mind to his own appalling desire. “I’ll help you, Jules,” he said, his voice so ragged that he could barely understand his own words. He let her kiss him, let her move against him. Very slowly he eased his hand beneath the nightshirt. Her flesh was warm and smooth under his fingers. He closed his palm over the springy curls and gently pressed. She moaned, jerking against him.

“I’ll help you, sweetheart,” he said again, his words flowing into her warm mouth. His fingers found her, and he closed his eyes at the pleasure of it. She was warm, and moist, and frantic. Within moments he felt her convulse, felt her legs stiffen, heard the wild c

ries erupting from her throat. He gazed into her face and saw the bewildered look in her dazed eyes, the confusion, then the release. Then she became still, slumping into him.

He forced himself to ease his hand away from her. “It’s all right now,” he said against her temple. “Everything is all right now.”

And it was, at least for her. She fell asleep in his arms, her breathing soft and regular. Her last softly blurred words were “I love you.”

Saint didn’t move for a long time. Dear Lord, he thought, I never expected this. He felt his manhood, rigid and throbbing against her belly. Stop it, you ass, he whispered to his enthusiastic member.

I love you.

No, he told himself over and over in the quiet room, she didn’t, she couldn’t. She was confusing the past with the present. A young girl’s infatuation had melded with a woman’s needs, and the drug had made her lose all sense of reality, of rightness. But the passion in her . . . He knew she’d never felt a woman’s release before.

He felt the soft contours of her body, breathed in the pungent, musky perfume Wilkes had made her use. He felt weariness begin to overtake him, despite his still-rampant desire. Before he fell into a light sleep, he realized that he had a very real problem. Juliana DuPres was now his responsibility. What in God’s name was he going to do?

On the heels of that thought, he heard again her soft cries of pleasure, and his fingers tingled with the memory of her swollen moist woman’s flesh. Would she remember in the morning? Remember what she’d said to him and what he’d done to her?

For his own peace of mind, he hoped she wouldn’t.

6

Juliana cried out softly in her sleep when Saint moved away from her, and he whispered, “Just a moment, Jules. I’ll be right back, I promise you.”

He quickly pulled off his boots, then, unable to help himself, turned to look down at her for a long moment. He wished he could see her as the young girl of five years before, but it wasn’t possible, of course. He’d touched her, given her a woman’s pleasure, the first time she’d experienced such intense feelings, he thought again, and it pleased him that he had been the first man to bring her to passion. He could still see the dazed astonishment in her eyes when her body began to convulse in pleasure. He closed his eyes against the image, but only managed to see himself holding her against him, caressing her, knowing her. And he’d been involved in her feelings—no way around that, even though he hadn’t . . . Well, enough of that thinking, you idiot.

As he leaned down to douse the lamp, his eyes took in the long slender lines of her body encased in his ridiculous nightshirt. If only, he thought, he’d met her for the first time this evening, rescued a stranger from Wilkes, not his Jules. But she was alive in his past, warm and loving and vivid, and his memories of Lahaina were rich because of her. He pulled her under the covers and into his arms, settling himself on his back.

I won’t feel guilty about it, he said to himself as he stared up toward the darkened ceiling of his bedroom. I simply did what I had to do. A strange cure for a doctor to employ, he thought, and that made him smile. Then why did he feel a nearly painful throbbing in his damned groin? Sex, he thought, made a man foolish; it overpowered his brain and complicated things. Well, there was going to be nothing complicated about this. But he pulled her closer, and his last thought before he fell into a light sleep was that she had to bathe away that awful pungent perfume.

He dreamed about an afternoon that he’d thought long forgotten, an afternoon some six years before. He was walking along beside his young friend, his step automatically shortened to match hers, not at first realizing that she wasn’t behaving normally.

“The bird of paradise is so forceful,” Juliana said, stopping a moment to sniff and lightly touch the vivid flower. “All sharp lines, beautiful colors, of course, but it’s not delicate like the hibiscus.”