Dateline: Kydd and Rios (22 page)

“Okay,” Bob finally said. “I’ll try it . . . once.”

“You’re a great guy.” She flashed him a smile, using the last of her strength.

Half an hour, two aspirin, and one mug of coffee later, Kristine draped herself over the open refrigerator door and searched for something edible. Mancos nudged her legs, whining.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Old Mother Hubbard better get something for the cupboard.”

The whining stopped abruptly, and Mancos whirled around, almost knocking her over in the process. He barreled out of the kitchen hell-bent for leather, sliding on the wood floor and letting out a woof that made coffee redundant.

Eyes painfully wide, Kristine shuddered and shook her head, trying to get rid of the ringing in her ears. She heard Mancos hit the dog-door at full speed, followed in the next second by a loud, deep, “Aaiieey-yah!”

“Dammit, Bob,” she muttered, slamming the refrigerator door shut and stumbling after the mastiff. She ran through the living room, threw back the curtains, and jerked the atrium door open—to the most amazing sight.

He was fast, she had to give him that, and light of foot, like a highwire artist. And he definitely wasn’t Bob. He was racing along the deck railing, keeping either one step in front of or one step behind Mancos’s snapping jaws. The morning light spilling over the foothills cast him in a golden halo, a color shades paler than the thick, silky hair pulled away from his face and hanging in a roan braid down his back. Shorter strands of dark auburn hair feathered across his cheeks and melded into the winged curves of his brows.

The sleeves of his black tunic were rolled up, revealing dark skin, tightly corded muscle, and more gold bracelets than she could count. A wide leather belt hung low on his hips, banded on one side with the hilt and sheath of a large, wickedly curved
khukri
, the blade of a Gurkha mercenary. His jeans were tucked into roughly made short boots, nothing more than flaps of leather sewn together with strips of rawhide that were secured with silver hoops at the top. He was a running wind chime, and the music of his quick steps left her stunned.

She really needed to do something to save him, she thought, or her dog, if he went for his knife. Then he saw her, and his flashing grin and sly wink made her instantly aware of a need to save herself.

She stepped backward with a hand to her chest, a blatant gesture of self-defense, and a totally inappropriate action for a contemporary woman living in an age when the only raiding hordes inhabited Wall Street. But the uncivilized look of him conjured up undeniable visions of a long-ago time, when women were women and men were the barbarians who took them.

Barbarian
. . . Between one breath and the next she placed him, that damn barbarian, Kit Carson.

“
kukur, ahA
!” he shouted in a deep voice, watching the dog, but tossing her the chamois bag slung over his shoulder. When Mancos went for the bag, he clapped his hands and shouted again, recapturing the mastiff’s attention. “Hey, dog!”

Kristine caught the heavy bag and clutched it closely, not daring to take her eyes off Carson or the animal so determined to eat him for breakfast. He wasn’t afraid of the slavering, growling beast. The realization went through her with absolute certainty and wavering disbelief. Mancos’s looks alone kept most visitors in their cars, honking their horns. But then he wasn’t most men. He was the outlaw Carson, and she’d bet anything he was no Buddhist monk. Not with that smile.

The dog lunged for his ankle, and Kristine’s fingers tightened around the strap of the bag. The melange of soft textures drew her gaze—the strap was made of silk and the finest leather, and a yard-long auburn braid that matched the color of his hair. Her jaw slackened as she raised her head to stare at him again.

He was pacing the rail now, not running, and Mancos matched him step for step, back and forth across the deck. He was talking to the dog, and the singsong lilt underlying the rough timbre of his voice mingled with the fresh, light sound of his bracelets, mesmerizing the dog and her both. When he hunkered down on the rail, she felt sure Mancos would snap out of it, but he didn’t. Neither did she. The man reached down to scratch behind one of the dog’s rusty-brown ears, and she almost dropped his bag in shock. Then, with seemingly no effort, he stepped off the rail. He didn’t jump or leap. He just stepped, an act of power and grace that told her more about the muscles in his legs than any amount of running on the narrow rail. And he wasn’t even breathing hard.

She wasn’t breathing, period.

“
Namaste
,” he greeted her. Bracelets, beaten gold and chased in ancient designs, jangled as he touched his palms together. “Good morning.”

“Hi,” she said, but it came out more like the breath she’d lost than a word. Six feet of masculine brawn towered over her, gentled only by the teasing light in his eyes. The sheer size of him was overwhelming, and it was compounded by the energy she felt radiating off him. Renegade, outlaw, or monk, the man had presence in spades.

Kit grinned at the stunned woman. Finally, he mused, the long journey seemed worthwhile. He’d tracked his trunks across the breadth of America, from one fleeting destination to the next, until they’d led him here, to a house and a woman. His fainthearted partners had more than compensated for their irresponsible treatment of the trunks.

He took in her dishabille and the amazement in her eyes, and his smile broadened. If she’d been less beautiful, he would have been too tired. A wild cloud of dark curls tumbled past her shoulders, framing a face of untold delicacy; eyes of a color he’d never imagined, like mountain violets, and the palest skin he’d ever seen, skin delightfully unmarred by the heavy makeup that covered the faces of so many Western women.

“Concubine?” he asked, running his finger along her cheek. She was so soft, so beautiful, so welcome, he sighed. Yes, Shepard and Stein had done well. He graciously forgave them for their cowardice and merely doubled the price of the treasures he’d risked his life to bring them.

Con . . . cu . . . bine, concu-bine, con-cubine
. Kristine tried to untangle the word from his accent. When she did, her face flamed, especially where he’d touched her.

“No,” she gasped, then put more force into the word. “No. I am not a concubine.”

“Not mine?” One eyebrow lifted over spice-colored eyes, spice like cinnamon, dark, rich, and mysterious.

“No. No. Not yours.”

“Too bad, eh?” His grin flashed again, more dangerous than before.

Yes
. The word formed in her mind, and she chased it out on rapidly beating wings of panic. “I am . . .” She took a deep breath and tried again. “I am Kristine, Kristine Richards.”

“Kreestine, Kreestine?” he repeated, smiling again to ease her discomfort. Kristine felt anything but eased by the inherently sensuous curve of his mouth and the glimpse of strong, white teeth. Sensuality, she’d learned the hard way, was a thing to be avoided at all costs.

“No, just one Kristine,” she explained when she found her voice again.

“Ah, Kreestine,” He rolled her name off his tongue, putting a lilt on the second syllable. “Very pretty.”

“It’s a—a nice enough name.” she stammered, wondering when her brain was going to kick back in.

“No.” He slowly shook his head and his grin faded. Capturing her chin with a large, rough hand, he tilted her head back, immobilizing her with the gentleness of his touch and the light in his eyes. “Kreestine is pretty,” he murmured, his mouth lowering to hers, his breath warming her lips.

A flood of heat poured down her body at the slight touch. When he sealed his mouth over hers, her last shred of sanity followed. She melted as a masterfully strong arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her close, close enough to feel every curve of muscle in his chest and the tautness of his abdomen; close enough to feel the rising tide of his desire and his iron-hard thighs.

Good Lord, she thought through a haze of faintness. His tongue asked for and gained purchase into the recesses of her mouth. He tasted sweet, musky sweet, like honey from a faraway land, and he kissed with an abandon to match the wild flavor, completely, exotically.

Ravished
. The indescribable feeling spread through her mind as the moment slipped deeper into fantasy, further from reality. She was being ravished and she really needed to stop it before she decided she liked it.

More than beautiful, more than tantalizing, Kit discovered so much in her kiss. His first instant of astonishment slowly transformed into curiosity, then into exploration. With the patience of the ages he began to learn the pleasure she gave. He followed the path dawning in his mind as he deepened the kiss, drawing her ever closer, the way he was being drawn.

Ah, she should have been a concubine, he thought, but even as a simple keeper of his hearth she was more pleasing than any other. He’d been right to come to this unseen land of his mother and father. He’d been no monk. No amount of beating had changed the truth that the life of aesthetic riches had not been for him. He’d been meant to live this life with all its joys and pain.

Drawing on her strength for what she knew was her one and only chance, Kristine pushed against his chest. Where was Mancos when she needed him?

“Aaiieyah,” he whispered softly into her mouth, helping her push away.

She looked up dazedly at the pained expression on his face. Goodness sakes! Had she hurt him?

Hurt him? What was she thinking? She should have slapped his face.

“The dog likes you better than me?” he asked.

She followed his gaze down the length of his body to where Mancos’s huge jaws were wrapped around a mouthful of jeans and undoubtedly the leg beneath. No sound emanated from the jowly animal, a good sign.

“M-Mancos, shoo, shoo.” She flicked the tail end of her robe at him, grateful for the distraction and the chance to catch her breath. What in the world had she been thinking, to sink against him like some sunstruck coed?

“Sha, sha?” she heard him repeat above her head.

“Shoo . . . uu,” she instinctively corrected him, then wondered if she’d lost her mind.

“Sha-sha, Mancos. Sha-sha.” He raised his foot and shook it the slightest bit. “Sha-sha.” The dog did, but only a little. The ugliest head on the continent lifted just far enough to shove into the man’s crotch. He laughed, a deep, rolling sound that seemed to wash all through Kristine. And then he embarrassed her beyond the ends of the earth. “Not for you, Mancos.” He pushed the dog away. “For Kreestine.”

She figured her only glimmer of hope lay in the heretofore unheard of possibility of spontaneous disappearance. Of course, it didn’t happen. Her luck hadn’t been running in the right direction for miracles lately.

Or had it? Her own laughter rose in her throat, but she couldn’t tell if it was a mature response to his or the beginnings of hysteria. He took the opportunity to steal a kiss of her cheek, his head bending close to hers, his braid sliding over his shoulder. She knew it was hysteria she fought.

“
Namaste
, Kreestine,” he murmured.

“
N-namaste
. . .” She knew who he was, knew the only person he could be, but she still didn’t believe it.

“Kautilya Carson,” he said, filling in the blank left by her trailing voice.

“Kit Carson?” she questioned breathlessly, having never heard the other name.

“Westerners say Keet, yes.”

“The Buddhist monk?” she asked, attempting to clear up one of the obviously more doubtful rumors she’d heard about him.

“No. I am not a monk.” He laughed and touched her cheek again, as if she needed reminding of the kiss they’d shared. “I ran away before they gelded me.”

“They geld the monks?” She hadn’t read anything about gelding in her comparative religion textbooks.

“They try, in the mind,” he explained. “But some like boys.”

And she certainly hadn’t read that in any textbook.

“Don’t worry.” He laughed again. “They didn’t get me. You taste like coffee. Do you have coffee?”

She absolutely did not believe this. She didn’t believe any of it. He tasted of honey, and she tasted like coffee. They’d barely met and all they’d talked about and attempted was sex, an occurrence so rare in her life and so far back in her past, she’d completely forgotten what all the fuss was about until he’d reminded her. Oh brother, had he reminded her. She needed to go back to bed and give the morning another shot at normalcy.

“Yes,” she blurted out in panic, realizing bed was the last place she dared to go. “Yes, I have coffee.”

“Good.” He reached for the bag dangling from her hand and slung it over his shoulder. “Let’s share coffee.”

In the five feet stretching from where she’d stood on the deck to the front door, she managed to stumble over thin air.

“Careful, Kreestine.” He laughed and reached out to steady her. The warmth of his hand only flustered her more. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“No. No, I’m not hurt.” She really needed to stop repeating herself, she thought. Then she ran into something substantially harder than thin air.

“My fault.”

He grinned, and that, she knew, was something he really needed to stop doing, if she was going to get her pulse slowed to a reasonable pace. He bent down and picked up a huge duffel bag, slung it over his shoulder, then hefted a large trunk onto his other shoulder, a trunk to match the six already piled in her living room.