Mallory Rush - [Outlawsand Heroes 02] (20 page)

"Survive. You'll survive, Lori. Only the strong survive and you're one of the strongest people I know."

"That's what Noble says, but I don't feel strong. When he touches me, I can't think. When we're apart, he's all I can think about. And when we're together, I'm so happy I could cry. Sometimes I do, but mostly I laugh. He makes me laugh. He makes me think. He makes me ache. He makes bread."

"Know what, Lori? If I were you, I'd be scared too."

"If you're trying to make me feel better, you're not."

Jennifer gripped Lori's hand. "Look, toots, the best advice I can give you is to hang tough and hang on to that man." Jennifer got up. "Go home, Lori. There ain't nothing around here to compete with this Noble of yours."

Lori took a look around. "Know what? You're right."

"Damn right I'm right. Now be a good girl and go home."

Lori gave her a high five. "Better yet, I'll go home and be a
baad
girl."

* * *

She was awake, tossing and turning in the too empty bed, when she heard Noble's tread on the stairs.

Unlike most men coming home at four in the morning, he didn't try to sneak in. He gave her a soft kiss while she pretended sleep; she listened to the domestic sound of him tossing off his boots along with the rest of his clothes.

Climbing in beside her, he palmed a breast and whispered, "Are you asleep?"

Even if she had been, she wouldn't be now. The feel of his chest to her spine, his lifting of her leg, and the partial arousal he wedged between her thighs before closing them back, was more than even a zombie could ignore.

"I won several hundred dollars tonight," he confided in a murmur. "It's not much, but it is a beginning. There's so much, Lori, so very much I want to give to you."

"Then give me," she demanded, nuzzling as close as she could get. "Give me you."

Chapter 15

"Are you kidding me? Noble, you can't be serious."

"But I am," he said, sloughing off lather and whiskers into the bathroom sink. So much had changed in the six weeks he'd lived with Lori that he found himself holding stubbornly to old habits, disdaining such things as electric razors and plying his whiskers with a straight razor and hard soap. He took another sweep, then paused when he saw her glaring at him in the mirror. To her reflection, he repeated, "I am serious, Lori. Though I appreciate your endeavors to gain me a new identity, I have no intention of assuming it."

"Why not?" she demanded. "You had two before."

His wince earned him a nick. Controlling his expression, Noble said reasonably, "my past is just that and I make no apologies or excuses for who I am now—Noble Zhivago, son of Boris and Diana Zhivago. As for the birth certificate you got a copy of, it belongs to Barry Jones, who, were he living, would surely not want me to take his name and birthdate any more than I wish to steal them."

"You're not stealing anything, you're just... borrowing some identification."

Noble narrowed his gaze at her reflection. "Believe me, I know the difference between stealing and borrowing. To take a man's name and rob him of his birth date,
that
is stealing."

"Okay, call it what you want. But the man is dead and has no use for them anymore. You do. Without that birth certificate you can't take a driving test and get the license you're so hot to have. And without a driver's license you can't write checks or—"

"Enough." He threw the razor into the sink and faced her squarely. "I am who I am, and that is that. I am not an actor pretending to rehearse his role for a movie. Neither am I Barry Jones, for he is dead. But Noble Zhivago? Why, he's quite alive. I am a proud man, Lori, one who is equally proud of his identity and heritage."

"Fine! You should be proud of it. Just be careful to keep it to yourself. I've told you, how many times, what could happen if the wrong people found out the truth about you. They'd be all over you and—"

"Just let them try." He sneered. "I have no fear of these people, though they should fear me should they attempt to steal my freedom."

"Okay. Okay, so you're not afraid of them. But I am. Do you hear me, Noble?
I am.
If they tried to take you away from me—" Her voice caught. He reached for her, but Lori pulled away. "Don't you understand how much you mean to me? Damn you, Noble. Damn you for coming into my life and making me need you and want you so much that it hurts."

"Might I take that as a profession of love?" Let it be, he silently beseeched her. If she would only tell him that she loved him, fiercely, beyond reason, then he would take the ultimate risk. He loathed this thing between them, his criminal past. He loathed it a thousand times more than this petty bickering over his real identity, which he would have to expose once his secret studies at the law library were done. He loathed it far more than his grinding frustration to search for his gold, something he could not do until he revealed all to her. Which he would do now if she would simply say it.

"Say you love me, Lori." His eyes spoke a demand, a plea.

"I—I..." She shook her head, averted her gaze. "I'm sorry, Noble, but I'm not ready to say it yet."

"Why not?" Gripping her chin, he forced her to look at him. "You sleep with me, you give your body freely to me, share your joys and sorrows. If that is not love, what is it?"

"It's a lot, that's what. What we have is really special and I need it so much I'm scared it's too good to last. I could love you, Noble, in a heartbeat I could. But once I let it happen, I'll want it all. I'll want forever. You've made incredible strides in a very short time and—and I'm still afraid you might outgrow me."

He smacked a fist into his palm and fought the urge to shake some sense into her. "For such a fearless, intelligent woman, I am amazed by your aptitude for daftness and sheer cowardice. You refuse to give up your blinders and see what's staring you in the face. And why? Because you choose to be a prisoner to fear. Fear of my progression. Fear of your emotions, fear of mine. Fear of my lack of fear. Bloody hell, Lori, you're so consumed with fear, it's a wonder there's room left inside you for anything else! No, you couldn't possibly love me yet, not when you're so damn afraid to put love ahead of what's eating you alive."

He turned his back to her.

"Tell me," he demanded, "should another person ever chance to see my mark, how would you have me explain it?"

"You'd never show that to anyone," she hedged. "Not unless it was another woman you trusted enough to show it to."

"And not unless I was rushed to your workplace, bleeding and broken from some accident. Alas, two more of your fears I neglected to mention. Other women and sudden death."

"It's not that I don't trust you, it's other women I don't trust. Hell, we can't even go into a grocery store without me having to watch my step so I don't slip on the drool."

Though he wished to empathize with her, as he so easily did, Noble felt none of that now. All he felt was a deep disappointment as Lori once again took three steps forward, two steps back. His patience was wearing thin.

"Have I not vowed to you, despite your foolish and tiresome belief otherwise, that no other woman but you will do in my life or in my bed? Unfortunately, I cannot vouch for the fickleness of time in meeting one's Maker. Should I meet mine tomorrow, how would
you
explain my mark to those curious people, save Ryan, who would see it on my corpse?" When she hesitated, he snarled, "dammit, Lori, answer me. The truth."

"I... I'd tell them it was a tattoo. A botched-up tattoo job. Or something else just as ludicrous, like—like you'd had a wild past and been a member of a gang and it was part of the initiation rites."

"And you actually believe such excuses would be more laudatory of my past than the true horrors of it?"

"No." Her palm to his brand was a fire in itself, branding him more surely than his tormentors had. "But if I told them the truth, if by some miracle they believed me, they'd probably take you apart with a scalpel. Rummage around your organs to see what they looked like. Expose your brain to see if brains were different a hundred years ago than they are now, and gnash their teeth because they lost the chance to squeeze you dry for information while you were alive."

"But what should I care if they wished to dissect me? After all, the dead feel no physical pain."

"Maybe the dead don't, but the living do. It would tear me up if they tore you apart and treated you like a specimen who wasn't entitled to a shred of dignity."

Noble tapped his lips. And then he put his on hers. Parting a whisper's distance, he said solemnly, "my dignity belongs to me and only to me. No one can take it away, not even with a knife. But you, Lori, as always you cut too deep. Far deeper than any surgeon's blade ever could. You cut me to the quick and lay open my heart with your tender mercies for this untender man."

"Untender?" She shook her head. "You're one of the most tender men I've ever known. Even if I could, I wouldn't change a thing about you.
Except
for that infuriating stubborn streak of yours that won't listen to reason."

"Alas, you're right. Stubborn I am." Noble pinched the defiant jut of her chin. "And so are you." He chuckled.

Lori didn't laugh with him. He was taking this too lightly and she wasn't ready to give up.

"Don't let your pride get in the way of good sense. Please, Noble. Use the birth certificate."

"As Shakespeare once said, 'to be or not to be, that is the question.' Let it be, love. For now, just let it be."

"Only you"—she sighed—"only you would make a closing statement quoting the Bard and the Beatles."

"They say much of the same in their disparate ways. Their words are framed by insight and emotion rather than the passage of time. So it is with you and me." He leaned down and she felt the warm fan of his breath as he repeated, "so it is with you and me."

His coaxing whisper, the taste of shared air, was more intimate than a kiss. How easily he made her desire him, with a word, a look. And how easily he could persuade her, even when his reasoning made no sense at all. Not for the first time Lori winced inside at the terrible unfairness of his awesome talents going to waste.

Only it didn't have to be that way. If only he was willing to listen, she could explain her plan, the reason she had selected Barry Jones as the perfect identity to steal. Or rather, borrow. Permanently.

Accepting a temporary defeat, she said with certainty, "You were one hell of a lawyer, weren't you, Noble?"

"Actually... yes. I was quite ruthless in the courtroom, and much in demand. Rather like I am in bed, only I kept my clothes on and limited my passion to the stating of cases, the thrill of win after win." He softly bit her bottom lip. "I'll win you as well, Lori."

There was little doubt in her mind that he would. Noble slapped down the defenses she put up when the fears pressed in with the ease of a swatter to a fly. Even now he was making her melt with the slide of his thigh between her knees, the span of his hands gripping her jean-clad hips while he pressed her against the bathroom wall.

"Come along now," he murmured. "Come for a ride with me. Hold on tight and I'll guide the reins."

Hold tight she did, her nails biting into his shoulders and eliciting a low, lusty growl at the harder, higher rub of his thigh until she stood on tiptoe.

What had begun as a trot ended on a gallop. A short but breathtaking ride. With a smile of supreme satisfaction, Noble caught her up in his arms.

"I rest my case," he said with a satisfied laugh. "I'll win you yet, Lori. Even if I have to ride you into the dust to do it, I will win your heart for my own."

From there he carried her to his room and tossed her onto the bed. Maybe the fall knocked some sense into her, or maybe it was just that she had stopped hyperventilating and the oxygen kicked into her brain. Whatever, she was hit with the pinpoint realization that Noble had been right. He had his act together and knew his own mind. She was the one standing in their way, not he.

"Let's go to the Kick and Kaboodle tomorrow night," Lori said quickly, before she changed her mind.

His pants drawn down to his thighs, he paused. "Very well. But why do you sound so... so resigned to visiting what was once your favorite dance hall? The one you've taken to shunning despite our lovely Jennifer's open invitation to join her there," he said pointedly. "Not that I'm overly inclined to go myself, but why do you suddenly wish to go?"