Patricia Potter (33 page)

“Damn, but I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know.”

“A few months ago. Michael … I have to go … the lieutenant doesn’t have long.”

“You’re at the hospital then? I have a friend there … Phil … you remember Phil Connors … have you seen him?”

She shook her head.

“I’m with a supply unit. We were ambushed south of here by some guerrillas, so you be careful riding out … even this close to Washington. We hear Stuart’s somewhere nearby.”

Lauren nodded.

“I’ll try to get by to see you, Lauren. I’m sorry to hear about Larry. I know how close you two were …”

“Thank you,” Lauren said, her face now averted from Adrian’s.

The officer touched the brim of his hat and trotted toward town, the other two men at his side.

Adrian’s gaze fastened on Lauren, and she lowered her eyelashes, her hands trembling slightly on the reins. “We … we’d better hurry,” she said finally.

Adrian kept his churning thoughts to himself. He had a million questions, but now, he knew, was no time to ask them. He leaned over and took her reins. “I think we’ll head south,” he said. “Off the road.”

She nodded, her face white now, and strained.

He tightened his legs around his horse and moved off the road and into the woods, his hands holding tightly the reins of her horse.

CHAPTER 18

Lauren could barely breathe. Her heart had stopped the moment she’d seen Michael Sowers, a longtime neighbor and her brother’s friend.

She knew he’d also seen Socrates, who had been perching contentedly on the saddle in front of Adrian.

It wouldn’t be long before a search was started for Adrian, and the woman who called herself Elsie Brown. And now there was a link between Mrs. Brown and Lauren.

What did they do to women who helped a prisoner escape? She couldn’t return to Dover now. She doubted Michael would protect her in this; he was, after all, an officer in the Union Army.

Neither could she go to Nassau. She had also betrayed Jeremy. She suddenly shivered despite the hot day.

Lauren drew a shallow breath and forced herself to look over at Adrian. But he was riding just far enough ahead of her that she couldn’t see his face. His back, though, was stiff, much stiffer than it had been earlier as he’d sat the horse so easily. He would know her role now, even if he hadn’t suspected earlier. He would have to, with a Union officer inquiring about her brother.

She had planned to leave him today, to turn toward Delaware and make her way back home once he was safely away. And now that course was no longer open to her. She had made so many turns and twists in her life during the past two months that she felt like a leaf in the wind—a fragile leaf about to be crushed.

But given the choice, she knew, she probably wouldn’t have done anything differently. She could not bear to see Adrian in prison because of her. Nor had she been able to forgo the opportunity to avenge Larry’s death.

And now where was she?

Misery crowded her mind, her heart. She had hoped to be gone when Adrian discovered she was a spy. Now she would have to face him, and, like a coward, couldn’t bear it. Not because she had physical fear of him; if she knew nothing else, she knew he would never hurt her that way. But fear because she couldn’t bear to see condemnation or contempt in his eyes. He had said trust was important. And no matter how much she had tried to repair the damage, she knew she could never mend the rent fabric of his trust.

Adrian quickened the pace. Lauren found a distraction of sorts in hanging on to the saddle with all her might. The horse’s gait was something less than even, and she had little experience with horses. Yet she’d dared not ask for anything other than a sidesaddle—no lady would—and a buggy would have been too slow. She could have, she supposed, sent Adrian on his way with one horse, but she’d had to see him to safety …

And, if she was really honest, she had wanted to feel his arms one last time, to taste again the apple of temptation. Well, she certainly had summoned the serpent of her own lies.

They traveled on through the evening, avoiding roads. But hearing troop movements nearby, Adrian would stop and dismount, holding both horses tightly and willing her to be silent. As the evening shadows turned deep gray and then black, the ache in her heart deepened. She watched Adrian’s tall back, the lean grace of the body on his mount, and she knew he was as at ease on horseback as on the deck of a ship.

She wished he would speak, but she knew the danger. And what would Adrian say when he did speak? Could she bear his words?

There was a full moon tonight—a hunter’s moon, she’d remembered one of the blockade runners call it—and they rode silently late into the night. She thought it must be past midnight when they finally stopped at a stream.

Still in silence, Adrian dismounted. Socrates scampered down and over to a tree. Adrian walked slowly to Lauren and held a hand out to her. Her body ached so from the long ride, from the demands on long-unused muscles, that she stumbled as her feet touched ground and fell toward him.

His arms went around her, and to her surprise they were as gentle as they had been previously. They hesitated a moment before relaxing slightly. In the moonlight she watched his face, severe and unsmiling, his eyes so dark she couldn’t read their expression. But then she’d never been able to do that. Even when he’d smiled and been his most charming, there had always been something private about him, something hidden.

Now it was much more obvious. Or perhaps she was more aware after the long ride and the lack of words between them.

She felt his breath on her as one of his arms continued to hold her, while another reached for a curl that had tumbled out of the knot she’d tried to pin so tightly.

“Ah, Lauren, you smell so sweet after that bloody jail.”

His head lowered, and his lips caught hers. She had expected questions, demands, accusations, but instead his lips were gentle, incredibly so. They caressed her mouth, then nuzzled her cheeks before returning to her lips. She felt the suppressed hunger bursting from him, the formerly restrained need, and her body trembled with needs of her own, with a longing to bind the shattered pieces of a heart so divided and wounded she could scarcely bear its anguish. She wanted to give herself up to the magic of his touch, to the yearning she felt in him, but the watchful, cautious part of her knew how dangerous that was.

She accepted his kiss, for she could do nothing else. Whatever will she had, he destroyed with a touch, a look. Her lips melded with his, and her whole body quivered with desire. Her heart thudded, the noise pounding in her ears. She felt his strength, and she relished it. She felt his need and blossomed in it. She felt his passion and responded to it, all the doubts and fears dissolving into a cavern of immense longing.

Her blood was hot, rushing like a storm-swollen river through her body. Her hands tightened on his body, on the rough clothes she’d bought him, the clothes that molded his lean, muscled body as it strained toward her. She felt the dampness of his skin, and wondered whether it came from an inner boiling heat like her own, but then all thoughts disappeared as his kiss deepened, his tongue roaming and stroking and seducing until shudder after shudder rocked her body.

If his arms had not been so tight around her, she would have faltered, stumbled against the pleasurable weakness that flooded her body.

“I need you, Lauren,” Adrian whispered, the words like a drug to her. Her hand went to his cheek, tracing the hard lines with wondering fingers, and it was answer enough for him.

Lauren felt his hands go to the back of her dress, his impatient fingers awkward in their haste. At every movement, every touch, she felt herself shudder with new awareness of a body she’d never totally understood. All her upbringing, all her beliefs, were being shunted aside now, discarded in the night, just as her principles had the past three weeks. But she couldn’t stop now … the demand of her body and heart and soul was too great. And there might never be a tomorrow. She felt a warm tear on her cheek as explosions rocked her, as his hands moved inside her dress and camisole and caressed her breasts, playing against the sensitive flesh that was aching, changing, hardening, under his fingers.

And then she was on her knees with him, and his mouth was kissing her breasts, which, like pieces of clay, seemed to take on a life of their own. In wonder, she looked down and watched them swell and tingle and burn. Her own hands were unbuttoning his shirt and stroking the hard muscles in his chest, teasing the wiry hair that looked golden in the moonlight. She heard him moan, or was it she, as his hands moved down and cupped her hips, moving them toward him until she felt the strength of his manhood and knew a whole new dimension of need.

His head suddenly lifted, his eyes going to the moonlit heavens and the stars that were like silver dust on velvet cloth. She heard his exultant cry, a cry of freedom and passion and elation that exploded into the still night air and infected her with its uncomplicated joy.

Tonight was theirs.

His hands removed the remainder of her clothes, his fingers loving, reassuring, caressingly tender. She felt a night breeze brush skin never before touched that way, and his quiet elation became hers as she was filled with so many new sensations, as every nerve in her body sang with life and expectation. She had felt this way before with him, but never to this degree, never to a point where the merest brush of skin became a match to gunpowder, igniting a cordon of explosions, of exquisite, tormenting fires that strained against the boundaries of her body.

Adrian’s hands fed those blazes as they moved over her skin, and he lowered her to the ground. She lay against crisp, old leaves, savoring the smell of pine needles and the coolness of earth. Each sensation was heightened by his presence, his nearness. He left her for a moment, no more, and when he returned, she saw his body outlined in the moonlight, naked and beautiful, each muscled contour a wonder of strength and beauty.

Lauren knew she should be shamed and afraid, but she knew only a fierce expectation and need as new waves of desire washed up and down her body. Instinctively she arched upward, wanting him so badly, so completely, that everything else in the world stopped. Only this moved on, only this pulsing eagerness for something she didn’t understand …

His body came down on hers, the warmth of his skin touching and brandishing, setting off even more sparks, as his manhood touched the now agonized triangle of her femininity, each of his slow, deliberate movements making her need greater. But still he teased that part of her until she felt a dampness there, then a raw, naked hunger so strong that she could no longer bear the tantalizing pain of desire. Her body instinctively moved up to him, to force whatever was required to relieve the pressure inside, the terrible, driving craving that consumed her.

His lips came down on hers just as his manhood entered her, stretching against some barrier, and then exploding in pain that drew a gasp from her. But then the pain erupted into something else, something so startling and overwhelming that she felt she was being sucked into the nucleus of the universe, an arena of stunning sensations and colors and sunbursts, of feelings indescribably delicious and satisfying. And yet still her body continued to seek more and more of him. He moved in her, a sensuous dance of slow, hypnotic rhythm that her body caught, and she moved with him. Her hips rotated in circular movements, even as she wondered at her own boldness, her own instinctive knowledge, and she felt him go deeper and deeper inside until he reached the very core of her, and his movements became compulsive, as did hers.

Almost … almost … and then she felt an explosive ecstasy rock her as warm honey seemed to erupt inside her. Her body shuddered uncontrollably with vivid satisfaction and fulfillment, and she felt his body shake with the same tremors, the warmth of his skin now hot and damp, the fullness inside her pulsing with energy and then trembling as his manhood moved against the tender enclosure, once more revitalizing new and different thunderbolts of physical sensations.

“Lord in heaven,” he whispered.

“Adrian,” was all she could offer in return, but its almost reverent sound was just as awestruck as his exclamation.

Adrian’s body relaxed, but his throbbing manhood remained inside her, and she loved the feel of him there, the gentle abrasion that continued to send sweet tremors through her body. He rolled over on his side, carrying her with him, his arms holding her fiercely against his fevered body. The pounding of two hearts seemed loud in the quiet night, and their breaths mingled as his lips brushed her face in wondering kisses, the very tentativeness of which spoke of emotions too deep to express.

They lay there, ignoring the hardness of the ground, their eyes feasting upon the other, their lips occasionally meeting and then separating so they could so gaze on each other, fixing this moment in time, freezing it for the future.

Lauren’s body still hummed and tingled, still sought to wrap itself around that part of him that had so awakened her. He felt so good, so natural a part of her. She squirmed slightly, and even that small movement sent rushes of sensation through her.

She wanted never to move. She looked upward to their blanket of stars, and to him again. She wanted to capture forever his dark eyes, fomenting now with so many emotions, open as they had never been before. His hand went to her face, touching it with such tenderness she wanted to cry.