Somewhere I'll Find You (32 page)

Her slender arms circled his neck, her soft breasts pressed tightly to his chest until he felt every breath she took.  He kissed her until neither of them could breathe, until it wasn’t enough and never would be.  Her skin beckoned, smooth,
heated,
and so soft he nearly groaned aloud at the simple pleasure of touching her.  His heavy erection was a constant, painful demand impossible to ignore.  His mouth turned from commanding to demanding.  He kissed down her throat to the fragile lace of her gown.

They were too close for her not to sense the images that darkened his mind.  Visions of them entwined as lovers, glimpses of bodies twisted in positions that she wasn’t entirely sure were even remotely possible.  As the lace slipped to the floor she stood before him naked and vulnerable, but even fully clothed, Michael was even more so.  For the first time, he opened his mind to her, allowing her to see exactly who and what he was.  And still, her hands were working frantically at his belt, at the zipper that refused to slide down.

“I want you, Michael.  Any way that I can get you.”

His body reacted almost before his mind understood that soft whispered acceptance.  His heavy erection was thicker and harder than it had ever been, a painful need mixing with a dark lust that
was
building so fast
,
he could barely hang onto his control.  He couldn’t save her, not now; it was too damned late.  Not when she was looking at him with those eyes, not with her body flushed and her breasts rising and falling with her ragged breathing.
Not when she was every bit as needy as he was.

He knew that it was too late to turn back.  She’d changed his life forever.  The w
ay her hands fisted in his hair, the
trembling of her body, her soft moans; all of it fed his addiction.  Nothing mattered but having her.  He had waited his entire life to find this woman, and nothing was going to stop him from having her.

Michael drew in a sharp breath, watching as Paige drew her tongue slowly down the center of his chest, smiling as he shuddered against her.

At that moment, she was utterly peaceful; there were no ghosts, no hired guns, no murder or plots
entwined with
a long ago war – none of that existed on this plane that they shared.  There was only feeling and light, filling the room.  The latter painted his hair with glints of gold and copper, firing his body with a warm, supple overlay of bronze.

“How experienced are you, Angel?” he thought to ask
when some sense returned to him
.

“Does it matter?”  When his silence indicated that it did matter, she stammered out an answer.  “Only with Richard.  And that was only once.  Why does it matter?”
  She could feel a hot flush rising in her cheeks.

He smiled languidly.  “Only that you’re playing with fire.”

“Fire is exactly what I have in mind,” she whispered, her voice like hot silk.

“Are you sure, Angel?
  Say it while I still have the strength to walk away.”

“I’m sure
,
Michael.  More than I have been about anything in my life.”

His eyes glittered, filled with a promise of sweet revenge as his fingers danced over her skin, searching for and finding the sweet, hot warmth of her.  She gasped as his fingers danced and teased, moving and circling around the core of her.

She cried out as he continued a slow trail of kisses, starting at her throat a
n
d moving slowly down, down, down.  He licked
at
her,
as a cat would cream, her breathless cries only adding to the urgent need building inside him.

She cried out again, the sound strangled as she placed her hands on both of Michael’s shoulders
to steady herself when she began to tremble violently.  She spread her legs wider, threw back her head, putting herself into his care, giving him the trust that he wanted. 

Pleasure grew past anything that she had ever imagined and still he didn’t stop, drivi
ng her up until she thought
she would dissolve, just fragment into a million pieces, or lose herself in the rapture of his mouth.

“I can’t take any more.”  Even to herself, her voice seemed a husky, pleading moan.

Let
go, Angel, and just fly for me. 
She heard the thought as clearly as though he had spoken aloud, but even if she had wanted to, holding back was not an option. 
She had no choice, not with the flames building up inside her while her body bucked helplessly against his mouth and fingers, her soft cries filling the room.

Michael held her hips to steady her, even as he stood, stripping away his jeans with one hand, pressing her against the footboard with the other.

She was nearly sobbing, her body rocking into his, and he managed a shaky laugh.  “Easy
,
Angel, we’re going to go slow.”  Or he hoped that they would.  His hand circled around himself, finding her slick entrance.  She was burning hot, surrounding that first inch, gripping so tightly that he had to hold still, his body shuddering with pleasure.

“Hold still,” he pleaded.  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Paige tried to stop moving, to stop the terrible restless need gripping her as she felt him lodge himself inside her.  Her breath caught in her lungs.  She could feel the hard length of him invading her . . . stretching her.  But more, it was the essence of the man wedged so deeply inside of her that she knew she could never hope to remove the mark he was placing on her.  The sensations poured over her so fast
that
she couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t possibly control the screams of her body.

“Stay still, damn it,” Michael pleaded.  He needed her to keep from moving so sensuously; he was being driven mad with the feel of her sliding enticingly toward him as she tried to control her
.  With her squirming
around so much
, he could barely maintain sanity
,
let alone control.  He gripped her hips and
,
as her body thrust toward him, he rammed home, burying himself deep, driving through those snug,
half-yielding
muscles.

He built the rhythm slowly, gauging her reaction as closely as possible.  She was burning him alive, feeding the flames of their shared passion with her own need, utilizing a woman’s kind of magic, wrapping him in sex and mystery.

Lust rose into frenzied hunger and mingled with a far gentler emotion that took his heart and placed it entirely in her hands.  He slammed into her again and again, her pleas and the sound of their bodies coming together unchaining the leash of his control.  Paig
e gasped, a sobbing plea escaping her lips
, as wave after shocking wave tore through her. 

It was that last soft entreaty that proved to be his undoing; a fierce, almost brutal assault that took him by surprise and tore his own vicious release from him.

She slept
not long afterward
, curled against his chest.  He held her, watching as the moon slowly crossed the sky, brin
g
ing silvery light into the room.  But he knew that the shadows would return, and with them would come the danger from which he was sworn to protect her.

As she slept, Paige twisted in dark dreams that were filled with a man with eyes of jade and smoke, a man who had possession of too many memories to fit into one lifetime.

Somewhere in the giant, restless beast called London, a figure sat hunched in darkness, listening to quiet voices.

It always began with the voices, as it did that night.  They were never much at first, just a whisper in the da
rkness, or a sigh i
n the chill light of dawn.  But they never stopped there.

The figure in the darkness frowned, trying to hold back the light and the memories that came with it, but it never worked.  The pictures were too sharp
, the voices too shrill.  In a wild melody
,
they rose, racing ever closer until they broke into a feverish rush.

Only then would the blessed silence return.  The nothingness would reappear, bringing with it the blissful peac
e that he so craved.  Until the memories
began
anew
once again, with a soft voice or a hiss, just as it had tonight.  Just as it always would until all the traitors were made to bleed and weep, to pay for all the pain they had caused.

Now
,
and in the past.

* * * *

Paige was sweating.  Her fingers clutched at dreams as her sleeping mind watched planes flying in a nighttime raid, hearing the whine of bombs being dropped into the inky blackness of
a night she had never experienced for herself.
  She tried to pull free, to gain footing in the dark shadows of her dreams, but it was no good.  There were too many noises, too many memories
that were not her own
, and the sense of danger that tracked her through time, even in her dreams.

It was late in 1939 when t
hey had arrived in London. It was Jenny’s first trip abroad, with Erik enjoying his role as tour guide, showing her all the historical sites
while trying his hardest to hide from her the growing tension that was apparent even on the faces of the youngest Briton
.
  It cast a pall over their daytime activities that
Erik and Jenny
did their best to ignore, but when their nights were filled with as many
social functions as
they both had to attend, it was hard to believe that this was a country tensing for the possible start of a war.
The glitz and glamor which surrounded Erik and Jenny at these galas were very similar to the ritzy functions Jenny had attended back home in Hollywood.  But the guest list was often drastically different; in one case, when Jenny discovered that she and Erik would be dining with the future Prime Minister, she went into a full-blown panic.

“What do I wear?  What does a small town girl like me have in common with the most powerful man in all of England?” she wailed.

Taking her into his arms, Erik smiled softly, captivated by this new and unknown aspect of her.  “You’ll enchant them, darling, in just the same way that you’ve worked your magic on me. Besides,”
he
add
ed with a smile that warmed her,
“h
e isn’t Prime Minister yet.”

That night
, as with many of the others,
was an e
ndless whirl of names and faces; there were
too many for Jenny to remember.  It was Lord this and Earl that, with Jenny hopelessly floundering through the maze of British protocol.  In a state of confusion, she stumbled into a quiet, empty room, sinking into a leather sofa before releasing a sigh.

“It can be a bit overwhelming, can
it not
?”