Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams (43 page)

 

S
ILENCE
. P
ANIC THAT RAN
through the darkness on sharp little feet. Her heart, pounding like knives in her chest.

The little girl sat up, fingers clenched on the strange sheets in the strange bed in the strange, beautiful old house.

No one there. No one but shadows.

She pushed out of her bed and ran to the door, with the wind from an opened window blowing her hair like cobweb strands across her eyes.

Fingers tight, she ran past the hard-faced portraits, past the tapestries her mother had come to study, past all the pretty rooms with all their pretty things.

At the great oak door she stopped.

It lay open, open to darkness, open to shadows and the murmur of the moat.

She ran into the night, calling for her mother, calling wildly. And then she saw.

A dark shadow was spread against the lawns. Beneath the folds of her favorite amber plaid lay her mother's body. Unmoving. Arms twisted, legs bent.

All wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong…

And then ten-year-old Cathlin O'Neill began to scream.

Afterward all she could remember was the blood.

 

T
HE WINDOW WAS OPEN AGAIN
,
curtains drifting. Just as before, her hair played over her face, faint as cobwebs. She ran out of
her room, drawn to the faint glow of light, her eyes wide, full of shadows.

“Dominic?”

No answer. Dimly she heard the hammer of water. She shoved open the bathroom door. “D-Dominic.”

The water stilled. “Damn it, Cathlin, what are you—” His anger died as he saw her face, her rigid stance. “Hold on, Irish.” His eyes never left her face as he tugged a towel around his lean body and strode through the drifting steam. “I'm here, love. What's happened?”

She moved against him, oblivious to the beads of water that ran against her chin and seeped through her gown. “A dream. Just another stupid, silly dream.” She caught a ragged breath, hearing her heart pound.

Hearing his heart pound.

Feeling his muscles, tight and damp beneath her cheek.

Wanting him. Oh, God, wanting him more than she'd ever wanted anything.

But there was something wrong. Ever since she'd met this man, he'd drawn upon the shadowed part of her mind, pulling images out of the vacuum of her past. And every day she spent in his company the pull grew worse, until Cathlin knew one day she'd shatter.

“It's okay, Irish. You're safe now.”

“Am I?” Cathlin gave a shaky laugh, her eyes locked on the drifting mist, on a blur of blood she could never quite forget—even when she remembered nothing else. “And if I'm safe, it's only because you're
not.
And, I—I don't think I could stand it if any more blood were spilled here. Do you understand? It's gone too deep.”

Dominic's fingers slid into her hair, cradling her head. “Does this mean you've remembered something?”

Cathlin shook her head. “Only the old dream. The blood, just like always. And then—nothing. But now it's worse, because the memories are only inches away. Waiting. Hanging.”

Callused fingers smoothed over her lips. “Take it easy. They'll just keep coming, Cathlin. That's part of remembering.”

“I thought I wanted this, but I didn't expect it to hurt so much. I didn't expect to feel like I was a child again.”

“Shhh.” He eased his arms around her waist, his long damp body warm against hers.

Cathlin took a ragged breath. Her head rose. “Could I make you forget if I tried, Dominic? Could I make us be two strangers, just for one night?”

A muscle beat at his temple. “You don't know what you're saying, O'Neill. It's late, and you're exhausted.”

“I know, Dominic. I know exactly what I'm asking. So do you.”

The air shimmered between them, heavy, slow, electric.

As if compelled, his hands slid lower, trapping the pulse that throbbed at her neck. “The timing's wrong. Damn it, all wrong.”

“I don't care.”

Slowly, slowly his head bent over hers.

And she leaned into him, leaned into the unbowing strength of his body, into the mystery of his arms and the unbearable pleasure he was making her feel.

All the denials crumbled. All the protests fled.

All that was left was heat and hunger and a hundred kinds of needing. Lips, light and hot, feathering her skin. Her heart racing.

“Dominic, I can't—breathe. It's not supposed to—to feel like this.”

“Like what?”

Trembling, her fingers inched into his hair. “Like…forever.”

“Who said?”

She made a low uncertain sound. Her hands slid deeper into his hair. Dimly, she realized she was pulling him closer.

And Cathlin didn't care. She wanted him close. She wanted their bodied meshed, with only sweat and skin between them.

She wanted
him.

With all his demons and his fears. With all his flash and his careful brand of honor hidden beneath.

Warrior's honor. Warrior's heart.

She raised her hand, smoothing the crease at his brow. She saw the face of a man who'd looked into his heart and found his strengths and weaknesses. Each cold memory had left another line etched on that face. But the victories were there too, each set into the proud, sensual flare of his mouth.

And her skin was aflame as he caught her mouth with his. Lips hard, he slid across her, shaped her to his passion.

No fear. No room for fear. Too much need.

He made a low, rough sound. A sound of pain that left her utterly possessed.

“Please, hurry. Don't let me think. Don't let the dreams get through. Just once. Just tonight.”

Silent like the warrior he was, he moved behind her. Hands across her waist, he pulled her against him. “Sorry, Irish,” he whispered huskily. “Tonight hurrying's the last thing on my mind.” He found the hungry little hollow behind her ear and planted slow kisses down to the bend of her shoulder. There he nudged aside the soft gown.

“Can't you…go a little faster?”

His low chuckle drifted over her naked skin. “Not a chance. Hell, Irish, I've got whole continents to discover.” His voice darkened. “And paradise to claim.”

“Dominic, something else. Serita told me.”

Silence.

“About your last job in Royal Protection. She also told me about La Trouvaille.”

More silence.

“What I'm trying to say is I'm sorry. You're doing wonderful things over there, and I'm just making all this harder for you.”
Her hands tightened. “I'm sorry you had to come back to a world you hated.”

More silence. Thicker now.

“Dominic?”

A raspy breath. “Not now, golden eyes. Only this now.” He turned her face and his tongue swept hers. “Only the heat to stop the nightmares.” Lace shifted. Linen rose.

Then only her heat, melted against his. Only her soft, muffled breath as he carried her to her room and laid her on the chintz settee beside the window. Moonlight pooled against her skin below curtains that drifted like ghostly fingers. The air carried the perfume of a thousand roses mixed with the warmth of lilacs.

He was confident in this as in all else, his hands sure in their possession. Cathlin watched his face, one side silver with moonlight and the other cast into darkness. She wanted then to be the one who pulled him from those shadowed memories. She wanted to be the one who made the laughter brighten his eyes and smiles crinkle his hard mouth.

She wanted. Oh, how she wanted. But he was moving too fast, spinning his dark enchantment over a body that was fast turning into a stranger's. Wanting struck her and a hot, sweet melting.

“Dominic, I—”

“Not now, Irish. I'm…busy.” He bent his mouth to her throat, to her collarbone, to the high, sweet arch of her breast.

“Dominic, why—”

“Do you always talk this much?”

Only when I'm frightened. Only when my heart is about to slam right out of my chest. Because it feels like I've wanted you this way forever and nothing has ever felt more natural than your skin touching mine.

“Sometimes,” she lied, wondering why his scent was somehow familiar. Why his eyes shone with a brilliance Cathlin seemed to have known somewhere before.

Or sometime before.

The sheer impossibility of it left her chilled for a moment. What was happening to them here in this lovely, dangerous place with too many secrets and too many shadows?

Then Dominic's mouth coaxed the warm skin at her shoulder and Cathlin forgot about secrets and shadows.

The only mystery she cared about was the mystery of skin brushing naked skin, of fingers twining and thighs caught in silken discovery.

Dominic seemed to have the same idea. His palm opened over her waist, drawing her back against him.

And he felt like forever. Like all the questions she'd ever had, answered in one hot, jerky breath.

With a strangled sound she raised her hands to the hard planes of his face. Her linen gown parted with a low hiss. Cathlin went utterly still, breath jammed in her throat as Dominic feathered tiny kisses over the high, full swell of her breast.

Desire slammed through her, finely edged, shining like a blade. Dominic nudged aside lace and linen, easing his way down to one swollen crest.

Champagne bubbles raced up her spine. “I don't think—this is anywhere in the rule book, Officer Montserrat.”

“To hell with the rule book,” her bodyguard said hoarsely. “Damn it, you taste fine.” Slowly he kissed his way up the curve of her throat. “Let me have all of you, Cathlin. Let me have your taste in my mouth. I want you to be part of me.”

Heat again. Delicious and amazing. Utterly tormenting. How could she possibly resist? “Dominic, I've never—that is, it's never felt so—”

Like forever. Like coming home.

Like we've done this a hundred times before.
“Good,” she finished lamely.

“No, perfect,” he growled.

“But you, haven't you ever felt—”

“No.” He frowned, studying the perfect crimson thrust of her, rising hungry to his lips. “Not like this.” His voice fell. “Not the way it feels with you. But I'm going to feel it now.” His breath caught. “With you, Cathlin.”

The old house slept, silence in the corridors, silence in the rose-filled courtyard. Only two shadows moved in the moonlight.

The wind played over her through the opened window, sweet and light as Dominic's fingers. Sweet as the dreams that pressed, full of heated memories.

Of yesterday and a hundred other yesterdays.

Cathlin caught a ragged breath as he kissed the hollows of her spine, then turned her slowly in his arms.

“Cathlin. Sweet God, you're so…”

So perfect for him, perfect against him as he found the curve of her and then her hidden heat. Pleasure welled through her heart, coursed through her veins, and she unfolded to him like a flower.

Forever.

That's what he gave her in his touch, in his hot, dark words poured against her yearning skin.

And forever was the place she struggled to find, anchored in his arms. But fighting wouldn't take her there, not when the memories followed, chill and leaden and all the more frightening because they had no form and no face.

Around her the curtains rose and fell, silent ghosts that mocked her for her fear.

Was
he Gabriel, their spirits somehow linked, carried through time by laws older than simple human understanding? And was she the woman Gabriel had kissed, there in a candlelit drawing room on a smoky London night two centuries before?

Images lapped at the edges of Cathlin's mind, images of another warrior and another pair of strong, callused fingers that had bared her body to racing pleasure.

Forever.

“I can't. Dominic, please, this isn't—”

“You
can,
Irish. Because my love will take you there.” She felt the silken slide of his fingers, firing her heat, wooing her silently until she arched in restless abandon. “Now, Cathlin. While the moonlight plays around you. Let me take you beyond dawns and darkness. Through that door of shadows you never dared to open.”