Now and Forever (99 page)

Abigail lifted her head cautiously, then met Dakota's eyes. "You love me?"

Dakota nodded. When had it happened? Suddenly she couldn't remember when the sad-eyed little girl hadn't owned part of her heart. Dakota chucked her under the chin. "As it turns out, you're quite easy to love."

Abigail's cheeks turned rosy with pleasure and her eyes once again got the dreamy expression Dakota knew meant her ESP was kicking in. "You and Papa will be together for always."

To her horror, Dakota's eyes flooded with tears. "You said that once before, honey, but I don't think you're right."

"I am," said Abigail, nodding her head. "I know it is true."

"I have to go home some day, Abby, and I don't think your father will want to go with me." Abigail gave her a Mona Lisa smile and said nothing, which undid what was left of Dakota's equilibrium. "There are things you don't understand, honey. . . things even I don't understand."

"I don't care," said Abigail without missing a beat, "because I know you and Papa will be together always."

Dakota was overcome with a wave of maternal love and longing that was enough to send her racing toward the twentieth century without benefit of hot-air balloon. She could take just about anything life dished out, but she couldn't take this.

She ran from the room as fast as her shaky legs would carry her, then leaned against the closed bedroom door and let her tears fall. She didn't cry at sad movies or weddings, so why was she crying because a little girl with psychic abilities thought she saw a happy ending in her future?

You're wrong, Abby,
she thought, wiping away her tears and straightening her shoulders. There could never be a future for her and Devane, not in a million years. She wasn't meant for the eighteenth century and she was damn sure Patrick wasn't cut out for the twentieth.

Quietly she walked down the hallway to the room she was sharing with Patrick and closed the door behind her. Emilie Rutledge was asleep in the room where Dakota had spent her first night, while Cook's niece Molly slept downstairs in the kitchen with the help.

A candle burned brightly in the window and she sat down on the bed, tired to her bones. Patrick had been gone for hours. He'd disappeared during her conversation with Emilie and he hadn't returned for supper. When she'd asked Joseph where Patrick had gone, Joseph had shrugged his shoulders. "He told me to saddle his horse and he left," Joseph said. "'Tain't my place to be askin questions."

"'Tain't my place, either," Dakota said to the silent room. Whatever magic she and Patrick had shared was over. Finished. Vanished as if it had never happened. You couldn't drop a bombshell like the one she'd dropped on him and expect to escape the aftershocks.

Patrick lived in a world without electricity or flush toilets, and there she was telling him about time travel and jet planes. She must have been crazy to believe for one second they had a chance. Talk about geographically undesirable; she and Patrick were off the scale.

She lay back on the feather mattress and pulled a quilt up over her shivering body. She was cold from the inside out. Ever since dinner she'd found it impossible to get warm and, even more frightening, twice more her hands had seemed to grow transparent.

She buried her face in his pillow. The scent of his skin still lingered in the silky cotton.

She could feel the forces of destiny at work, moving the players around on some cosmic game board until they were all in position for the final play.

Andrew would meet his destiny. Zane and Josiah would be saved, and Andrew would achieve the recognition he deserved. All three men would be reunited with the women who loved them and their families would be together down through the years.

But what about Patrick and Abby? What will happen to them?

She tried to see into their future but all she saw was darkness.

#

Patrick returned to the house in the hour after midnight. He had ridden far in search of answers and had not been disappointed. The simplicity of it all astounded him and he wondered how they had not realized it sooner. But therein lay the beauty of the enemy's plan.

As he crossed the yard between the stable and the main house he looked up at the night sky. Clouds were moving in from the east, an unusual occurrence in itself, but these were clouds unlike any of his experience. He had seen the dark, jagged tower but one other time, on the day Dakota had come into his life.

Those clouds were a precursor to the events Dakota spoke of, events that would happen on the morrow. He now knew where Josiah and Zane were being held prisoner. He knew that Andrew McVie and Shannon Whitney lived. Tomorrow he would throw in his lot with fate and pray that when it was over, Dakota Wylie would still be at his side.

The only sound inside the house was the ticking of the tall clock in the hallway as he climbed the stairs to his second-floor room. He stripped off his clothes, washed, then climbed into the big bed next to Dakota. Her plain cotton nightdress was bunched up around her hips and she had tossed the pillow to the floor. He fit his body to hers spoon-fashion, then gathered her close.

She murmured something soft and infinitely appealing and pressed her rump against him. His arousal was violently sudden, springing to powerful life against her soft, firm cheeks. She moved again, a sinuous fluid motion, and he slid his hand between her thighs, then cupped her against his palm. She was wet for him already, her juices hot and sweet on his fingers as he stroked her lower lips, feeling them swell with her eagerness for him.

And it was for him. He would not think otherwise. No matter what else happened, he had been the first man to know her body. The first man to love her. The first man to take her with his mouth . . . .

#

Dakota had never had a dream like this before. Voluptuous waves of pleasure washed over her, almost drowning her senses in sheer bliss. She felt graceful . . . infinitely desirable . . . moving perfectly with the ebb and flow of the tides.

Her back arched and she opened her legs wider. Wave after wave of sensation . . . wetness . . . heat . . . a throbbing pressure that was building. . . building—

Her eyes flew open and she realized what was happening.

"Patrick!"

He looked up from between her thighs. His mouth gleamed wet and hot by moonlight. "Your honey is sweet," he said, sliding up the length of her body. "Taste yourself on me."

Not even in her most detailed fantasies had she ever come close to this.

His mouth found hers, his lips slick. He ran his tongue along the place where her lips met, urging her to open, to taste. A shudder of delight rippled through her body as he deepened the kiss. Just the thought of his mouth pressed between her legs was enough to send her tumbling into madness.

His erection throbbed against her thigh and suddenly she wanted to do for him all that he had done for her.

"I want to taste you," she whispered, wild and hungry for him. "I want to feel you in my mouth."

"Yes," he said, his voice almost a growl of delight. "Take me in your mouth."

The bedclothes rustled as they sought a new way to love. She knelt between his powerful thighs and cupped him with her palms. "I won't be able to—" She stopped, not sure how to phrase it.

"Just suckle me," he said, placing his hand behind her head, guiding her forehead. "As much as you can take."

His erection was smooth to her tongue and hot. She could feel the blood pulsing in the blue vein that ran along the underside.

"For you," he said, his voice floating toward her in the darkness. "All of it, everything."

Instinct took over. She drew him more deeply into her mouth, bringing him closer to ecstasy with her hands and mouth and tongue while he writhed beneath her. She felt more womanly at that moment than she ever had before, as if the secret of a woman's power were hers for the taking.

Suddenly, when she was sure he was near a climax, he grabbed her by the shoulders, and pulled her up the hard, muscled length of his body. She straddled his hips and lowered herself onto him, feeling her body open for him, envelop him, draw him deeply into her secret self until she could no longer tell where she ended and he began. She didn't need to know. They were one being, one heart, one life.

She cried when it was over. Loud, messy tears of pleasure and sadness and he held her close and stroked her hair until the storm passed.

"There is so much to tell you," she whispered, rubbing her damp cheek against his chest. "So much I want to share with you."

He silenced her with a kiss of such tenderness and love that tears again filled her eyes.

"There will be a time for that later," he said, rolling her onto her back and moving between her willing thighs. "Tonight there is only us." He found her entrance. "Only this pleasure." He slid inside her welcoming sheath. "Only this moment."

Chapter Twenty-one

"You look beautiful," Emilie said as Dakota twirled in front of her. "Nobody would ever guess you grew up wearing jeans and T-shirts."

Dakota took one last look in the cheval mirror in the corner of the room. The dress she had chosen for McDowell's party was a deep gold satin with intricate embroidery on the bodice and sleeves. The bodice was cut low in front and, thanks to clever corseting, she actually had cleavage. She didn't dare tell Emilie that when she looked into the mirror she saw a beautiful dress but the woman inside the dress was fading away.

"You might try smiling," Emilie suggested. "If you go downstairs looking like that, they'll think there's trouble in paradise."

Dakota turned and met Emilie's eyes. "Trouble doesn't begin to cover it." She gestured toward the window. "Did you see?"

Emilie nodded. "I've been trying to ignore it."

"I can't ignore it," Dakota said. "It's like that damn cloud is screaming my name." She looked into the mirror again, and could barely make out her own image.

"Funny," said Emilie. "I'm afraid it's screaming 'Zane Grey Rutledge! Here's your second chance!'"

"No," Dakota said. "Trust me. This one has my name on it."

She'd awakened early to find Patrick already gone. If it weren't for the rumpled sheets and the delicious ache between her legs, she would have thought she'd imagined their wondrous lovemaking. Cook said he'd saddled up early and ridden off toward town, but as the hours wore on, Dakota began to worry.

"I don't think he's coming home," Dakota said, twisting the silver bracelets she wore on her left wrist. "He was furious with McDowell about this party. It wouldn't surprise me if he boycotted."

"Zane and I met General McDowell two years ago in Philadelphia." Emilie shuddered. "The man redefines the word
sleaze.
"

"Patrick seems to think McDowell's loyalties are suspect."

"I know they are," said Emilie. "McDowell and his wife introduced Benedict Arnold to his bride, Peggy Shippen, and we both know where that's going to lead. Besides, he—" She stopped and looked out the window.

"He what?" Dakota prodded. "What were you about to say?"

"Just that McDowell was instrumental in bringing Patrick and Susannah together
and
in tearing them apart." Apparently Patrick and Susannah had met at one of McDowell's parties and, a few years later, it was at another of McDowell's parties that she'd met the young—and very wealthy—officer with whom she'd run off, back home to Philadelphia. She'd abandoned both her husband and child, humiliating the man she'd once loved before the entire colony.

"No wonder Patrick hates the man," Dakota said.

"There's more to it than that," Emilie said. "Everyone in the colony knows McDowell is dealing with the British. The problem is getting proof."

"How did Susannah die?"

"A carriage accident along the Delaware a year ago last Christmas. She and her officer friend drowned."

Dakota tried to muster some sympathy for the dead woman but came up empty. Patrick and Abigail continued to suffer from her selfish choices every day in ways only they understood.

"Are you sure you won't join the festivities?" she asked Emilie.

The red-haired woman shook her head. "I'm too tall to wear Susannah's dresses and there's no time to let down the hems. I'll sit in the kitchen with Cook and Molly and see what I can find out."

An odd sensation washed over Dakota as she looked at her reflection in the mirror. The dress glittered in the candlelight but the woman wearing it seemed as transparent as window glass. As quickly as the vision appeared, it vanished again.