Surrender to Love (29 page)

“Michael,” she ventured carefully, her voice whispering through the stifling discomfort of his silence.  “I need to speak to you.”

“Not now, Sabine,” he replied, closing his eyes.  “I just want to be left alone.”

His words settled on her ears with uncompromising dismissal, and she fought back the hot pressure of despair that built up behind her eyes.  There was no laughing now; no boyish antics that so often brought a bubbling merriment to her lips.

Did she actually expect there to be any?

She approached him cautiously, laying a hand hesitantly on his forearm as she knelt beside him.  He moved away with a jerk, never once looking at her, and her heart sank to the hollow pit of her stomach.

“Please, Michael,” she implored and dashed away a stray tear angrily as it zigzagged down her cheek.  “I – “

The words stuck fast in her throat.  She wanted to tell him.  She didn’t know why, but suddenly needed him to hear the words she had kept to herself for so long, the words, the feelings that had surfaced so powerfully in her soul that night in Marta’s garden: 
I love you.  I need you.

“I said I wanted to be left alone,” Michael repeated without inflection, his gaze dropping to the cuts and bruises on his right hand.

“I’m sorry.  About today – this afternoon.”  Her apology lay suspended in the tense air between them as she swallowed the knot of regret from her throat.  “I didn’t realize what was in the trunk, Michael.  Honest.  I didn’t.”

She blinked back the smarting tears that welled in her eyes, looking to him for some sort of sign, some sort of recognition that he had heard her.  Back he merely shifted his gaze again to the wall.

“Was she beautiful?”

She watched as his hands tightened into fists, his entire frame tensing with undisclosed anger.

“She meant a lot to you, didn’t she?”

Biting back a curse, he rose quickly from his chair and headed purposefully for the door.  Scrambling, she followed close on his heels, her heart pounding in her breast as she grabbed onto his arm, turning him to face her.

“Michael,” she insisted, “I need an answer.”

“It’s none of your business, Sabine,” he shot out as he pulled violently from her.  “Just drop it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?
  Why is it so important that you know about her?”

She looked at him, his eyes ice blue as the hardened muscles in his jaw twitched with fury.
  Then he turned, shaking his head in disgust, leaving her to stand alone in the dust of the yard.

“Because I love you.”

She wasn’t sure if she had said the words aloud, or merely thought them, but she could have sworn he hesitated for a second before continuing to the barn.  Not once did he look back toward her, and her heart crumbled into a million pieces with the silence of his rejection.

Chapter Nineteen

Someone was in the room.

Shifting ever so slightly, Sabine opened her eyes just wide enough to inspect her narrow field of vision, and the frantic beating of her
heart stilled as she discerned the shadowy figure at her bedside.

His handsome features, once hardened with rage and disdain, had melted into a fatigued softness, illuminated by the pale streaks of moonlight that filtered through the window.  He was silent as his gaze looked upon her, reflective – almost troubled – and he clasped his hands
loosely between his knees, sighing softly as he cleared his throat.

“I should hate you for what you almost made me do today, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t,” Michael whispered more to himself than her still form.  “I’ve never raised my hand to a woman in anger, Sabine.  Not ever.”

His voice trailed off brokenly and he leaned forward, pinching the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger as he drew a ragged breath.  The pain in his voice tore her heart, and the fringe of her lashes fluttered shut against the salty sting of tears that dampened them.

“Why do you do this to me?  You get me so mixed up sometimes I don’t even know which way is up.”

He was quiet once more, and Sabine’s pulse surged as she felt his fingers reach out and entwine themselves in the unruly mass of her curls, chills of excitement coursing the length of her spine as his calloused hand softly caressed her cheek, tenderly brushing the dried tracks of her tears with the pad of his thumb.

The strange twist of desire wound its way through her
insides once more, and she again found herself yearning for more than the innocent brush of his hand across her face.  She wanted to feel his magic, have him somehow satiate the fervent need to burned hotly inside her.

“Julia’s not all what you think she is.  I was young, Sabine, and blind
.  I thought she loved me, but she didn’t.  She never did.  She wanted a way out – a way to get back at her rich father.  What better way to do it than marry a poor dirt farmer who had nothing to offer but himself and a few acres of land in Kansas.

“At first it hurt when she left,” he said as he released a breath, his fingers brushing at the soft curls along her temple.  “I hurt so bad I never wanted to look at another woman.  Didn’
t want to risk having my heart ripped out a second time.  But after a while I didn’t even care anymore.  Didn’t even feel a bit of remorse when I found out she was dead.

“”And you can’t possibly love me, Sabine.  I can’t give you all the things you want, the things you need. 
I’m
not even who you think I am.  And if you knew, you’d probably hate me as well.  Maybe even walk out and leaving me standing here like some fool.  I wouldn’t blame you in the least after the way I’ve treated you.”

He fell silent, and Sabine listened to the steady rhythm of his breathing, its sound soothing to her ragged nerves
as her own heart palpitated wildly in spasmodic leaps.  She wanted to go to him; wanted to wind her arms around his neck and show him how much she needed him, loved him.  She didn’t know why, but even after all that had happened, she knew he was right for her –
they
were right for each other.

If only he would see it, too.

She could not bring herself to approach him.  Instead she would remain silent and allow him to believe that the figure before him still submitted to the comforting cloak of sleep.  Had he known she was aware of his confession, he would most certainly turn and walk away forever.

But even as his comforting presence warmed her soul, she couldn’t help but think of his words. 
I’m not who you think I am.

Well, neither was she.  A New Orleans girl who had known nothing but freedom, only to learn she was not truly free.
  Stolen…sold…now desperately clinging to the remaining threads of a life, a man, she truly loved.  A man who had shown her nothing but kindness.  A man who made her feel as though she truly mattered – realized he was a woman who had feelings and dreams and desires; not simply a piece of property to be traded or sold.

No, Sabine considered
as the rhythmic stroke of his hand against her temple lulled her back to slumber.  Michael Pierson wasn’t the only one with secrets, and as passionately as she wanted to ease the troubles that plagued his soul, she was hesitant to pry into the explanation of his words for fear she would have to reveal the truth of her own humiliating past.

XXX

The nightmare came again, rekindled with a fierce intensity that burned his soul.  He ran and ran until he thought his lungs might burst, but they came closer…closer…gaining with every stride, every leap.  And then, just as he thought he had managed to escape, a hand grabbed onto his arm, pulling him into the inescapable clutches of his relentless hunters.

Michael let out a hoarse shout as he
reached out and latched on to his pursuer’s throat, squeezing, crushing.

Maybe they thought they had him easily cornered, but he refused to give up without a fight; one of them was coming with him.

A piercing shriek jarred him to his senses.

A scream.  A woman’s scream.

Michael bolted upright in the straight-backed chair,  his heart hammering as he stifled the second shout that lay poised on his lips.  Caught between the obscure realities of sleep and awareness, his eyes focused themselves in the dim, early morning light, darting to the frightened form that backed against the wall next to him. What had he said?  What had he done in those fitful moments of sleep that might have revealed who he was, what he had done?

“Sabine, I – “

His voice lodged firmly in his throat, and though he suddenly, desperately wanted her to know all the thoughts, the doubts, the fears that flooded his mind, the words refused to come.

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her; there was no way he was going to haphazardly spill his guts and have her look at him as though he were some sort of monster, a cold-blooded killer.  There were some things she wasn’t meant to know, and his situation just happened to be one of them.

“Never mind,” Michael said gruffly and rose, leaving her to stare helplessly after him.  “I’m sorry.”

He strode across the room, the acute pain of his rejection
striking deep within Sabine’s breast, and waves of indignation and confusion crashed over her, dashing aside the panic that had previously encompassed her heart.

“Don’t you walk away from me, Michael,” she demanded as she scrambled from beneath bedcovers.  “And don’t you pretend nothing’s wrong.  Every time something goes wrong you walk away and act as though all the problems will be gone when you come back.  Well, they won’t.  I’m still going to be here, and I think I deserve an explanation.  After all, this is
my
bedroom.  And
you
are in it.”

He paused at the door, the anger in her voice piercing his heart.  He approached him cautiously, tenderly laying a hand on his arm.

“Please, will you tell me what’s wrong?  I’m not a fool.  I’m not blind.  I can tell something’s not right.”

Her whispered words reached his ears and he turned, the anguish etched plainly on his face as he leaned against the door.

“It’s just dreams, Sabine,” he said tiredly, his gaze settling on her, shifting from the imploring stare of her emerald eyes and trailing over her scantily clad bosom, the full honey-gold mounds of her breasts rising above the flimsy cotton of her chemise.  “Dreams.  That’s all.  Nothing more.”

Suddenly he wanted to pull her to him, taste the succulence of her mouth as his hands sought out her soft curves, the secret spots that would bring her pleasure.

“I hate feeling I can never be close to you.  And I never know where I stand with you,” she said quietly, breaking the silence, and she stepped so close to him that he thought he might burst from the nearness of her.  “There are times when I look at you, and it’s as though I’m some sort of Medusa who’s going to turn you to stone.  And then there are other times when the attraction between us is so strong it takes my breath away.  Is it my imagination, Michael, or do you feel it, too?”

Nothing else mattered to him at that
moment – not his anger, not his frustration, not even the posse who had tracked him as far as Havana.  Only she mattered.  Only Sabine…whose emerald eyes captured his soul every time he looked into them.

“It’s not your imagination.”

He pulled her to him, her softness pressing against the hardening shaft of his manhood.

“It frightens me, Michael.  Sometimes I never know how I’m supposed to act around you or what I should say.  I hate never knowing what it is you’re thinking.”

“I’m not even sure about myself half the time,” he whispered.  “Be patient with me, Sabine.  That’s all I ask.  It won’t always be this way.”

“I’m not like her, Michael.
  Like Julia,” she said as she lifted a hand to caress the rough stubble of his beard.  “I heard what you said last night, and I know what it feels like to be hurt, to be betrayed.  I’d never do that to you.”

“I know.”

Lowering his mouth on hers, he captured her sweetness, secretly pleased by the sharp intake of her breath as he took her, his need increasing as her hardening nipples pressed against him.

Willingly she returned his kiss, surrendering to his demands as she clung to him, the palms of her hands pressing against the muscles of his back, moving to the soft waves of blond hair that curled at his shirt collar.

And even as her inexperienced hands conveyed her need, his own roaming shamelessly over her body, burning possessively into her skin while he confidently closed his hand over her breast, feeling its perfect roundness fill the palm of his hand.  He wanted to take her, taste every inch of that curving body; feel the clenched rosebuds of her nipples as he wrapped his tongue around them; hear her moans of pleasure as she called out, wanting more, wanting him. 

His fingers hesitated as they grazed the tiny buttons that fastened her garment, his heart racing as he
r body demanded to feel her naked body against his.  He needed the soft fullness of her breasts, her slender waist, the smoothness of her skin; all of it – bared for his eyes, his pleasure only.