Thieves In The Night (6 page)

“Yes,” she answered weakly.

It was a start, he thought, but it wasn’t good enough. He needed help. Searching the depths of her guarded eyes, he sent out an emotional plea.
Help me, Chantal. Help me or I’m going to go into convulsions right here on your pretty hand-braided rug.

Something must have clicked in her mind, because she slammed the door shut and dropped to his side. “Put your arm around my waist.” When he didn’t respond, she did it for him, holding him close and taking a deep breath. Together they got him to his feet and stumbled into the bathroom.

Jaz huddled over her slender shoulders and used his forward momentum to step directly into the tub, clothes and all. Chantal stopped him before he sat down.

“This will just take a second,” she said, putting one foot in the tub and wedging herself under his arm to keep him from falling over. She used both hands to jerk his pants down to his knees. “Okay.”

His legs buckled, and he collapsed into the glossy black tub, dragging her with him. It was too late to stop the convulsions rippling through his body.
This is it, babe. Hold on tight.
He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched the back of her shirt, twisting the material into bunches, trying not to crush her in the spasmodic cramped circle of his arms.

Chantal responded without hesitation, wrapping her own arms around his shoulders and holding him for all she was worth. He’d survived the cliff, he’d survived the trail to her cabin. She’d be damned if she let him die in her bathtub.

His head twitched and jerked on her shoulder, and she grasped a hank of the thick brown hair falling over the collar of his jean jacket, holding him still until the shudder passed through his body into hers. His body was ice to her heat, hard angles to her softness, but the pulse of life beat heavily in his veins. She felt it in the bands of steel around her torso, in the force of the breath rasping against her neck.

Minutes passed, and she continued to hold him, her fingers soothing the chill from the tense column of his neck. Sliding her thumbs up his hairline, she laid her mouth on his ear and gauged the damage with her lips. Cold, but not frozen. He stirred at her touch, instinctively rubbing his ear against her mouth. The warmth of the room was slowly invading his limbs, slackening his aching grip on her body and easing his sharper pains of being alive. But it wasn’t enough, and the pain wasn’t as bad as it was going to get.

“Jaz. Help me,” she pleaded, knowing they shouldn’t wait any longer. She pushed the jacket off his shoulders. He released her shirt and buried his head deeper in the crook of her neck. As she drew the jacket down one arm, his mouth opened in a muffled groan and his teeth grazed her skin. His breath was warm and moist on the nape of her neck, and the full realization of the situation hit her like a thunderbolt. She tried to switch gears from mother nurturer to clinical helper, but he was so vulnerable, so in need of care and a tender touch.

She eased the jacket off the other arm and tossed it over the side of the tub to the floor. As gently as possible she released him and worked at getting his pants and hiking boots off, becoming aware for the first time of the length and strength of his legs. Lean muscles corded his thighs and knotted his calves under nut-brown skin, and she wondered how many days in the sun it took to acquire such a richly dark color. The hair on his legs was a sandy brown, and she automatically glanced at his head. Sun-bleached streaks wove through the dominant chestnut color. Many, many days in the sun, she decided.

His sweater was glued to his shoulder with his blood, and, knowing what was to come, she left it on. Time enough for that pain later. She started to climb out of the bathtub, but his fingers curling around her shirttail stopped her. His eyes were closed, and without her support, his head had slumped onto his shoulder.

“Don’t go . . . please,” he said weakly. Chantal’s heart tightened in her throat, and she hesitated.

“Please,” he begged again.

The night had been full of decisions more important than this one, she thought. She’d share this last pain with him. With a single action, she ripped open the snaps on her shirt and shrugged out of her suspenders. Her jeans fell in a heap, and she tossed her shirt onto the floor. Clad in a black T-shirt and black cotton panties, she stepped back in and pulled his feet into her lap. Empathy stayed her hand for a moment before she started the water gushing into the tub.

“Dear God . . .” His face contorted in pain, and a silent scream hissed through his bared teeth. He tried to jerk out of her grasp, but she held him tightly, her fingers strong and sure as she squeezed his toes and insteps.

“Shh . . .” she crooned softly in counterpoint to his labored groans, watching the heave and buck of his chest. The gasping sound tore at her heart. “Shh . . . you’re okay. I know it hurts.” She moved her hands up his calves, working magic with her fingers, helping him as much as she could.

She followed the rise of water up his body, rubbing and kneading his muscles back to life. Slowly his skin lost the icy paleness beneath the tan. Her knees were on either side of his, her hands massaging his thighs, when he pulled her down beside him, resting his head below her shoulder. And she let him, holding him until the water threatened to overflow the tub.

Gently she extricated herself from his arms and leaned forward to turn off the faucets. Just as gently he brought her back. The sweater-covered arm around her waist slid her closer until his head once again rested in the valley between her breasts. His groans turned into heavy sighs.

The action surprised her. The strength of the action surprised her even more. This was not a man on the edge of death. At least she didn’t think so.

“Jaz?”

“Hmmm.” The answer came from deep in his throat, like a growl, or a purr.

“Are you okay?”

Slowly he tilted his head back, inadvertently smearing her T-shirt with blackface. Murky gray eyes caught hers with a languid gaze. “I’m not sure. Can we try this a little longer?” The words slurred over one another.

“Uh . . . sure.” The first flush of modesty coursed up her neck and blushed her cheeks. She’d gotten herself into this, she thought, and she would tough it out. She hoped. Any doubts she had disappeared when she noticed the pink stain of his blood floating above their legs. He had to be hurting a lot more than his voice revealed.

“Great,” he mumbled, snuggling back down, and she let them both rest, her eyes drifting shut in pure weariness. He would live.

The quarter hour slipped into the half hour and still she held him, feeling his chest press against hers in deep, even breaths. His thigh was now on top of hers and his arm had wrapped completely around her waist. Steam rose around them, dampening her face and wetting a few straying tendrils of hair against her cheeks.

The quiet and the warmth—and the man—drained the tension from her body. She was suffused with a sweet weakness that spread inward in soft spirals of pleasure. Seductive, melting pleasure . . .

Her eyes popped open and a low gasp escaped her lips. Her half-dead stranger was very much alive—alive and nuzzling her breast with his open mouth, kneading her through the thin cotton of her T-shirt.

“Jaz!”

Her cry went unheard. He bit down gently and ran his tongue across the peak. The spirals tightened and shot straight down her middle.

Oh . . . my . . . Lord.

“Jaz.” She moaned, trying one more time to take control before she figuratively and literally sank.

Perplexed, glazed eyes lifted to hers. “Hi,” he said softly. What he didn’t say, but what she heard, was, “Who are you?”

“Jaz. If you’re warm now, I think I should take care of your shoulder.”

He nodded slowly, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “I’m plenty warm . . . real warm.” His slate-gray eyes began to clear, and the faintest hint of a smile touched a corner of his mouth. “Even hot.”

“Yes, well, then I’ll just get what I—”

His fingers brushed across her lips, stopping her words. “Tell me one thing. Was I dreaming?”

Truth struggled with embarrassment, and won. “No,” she admitted slowly. She couldn’t have been in a more vulnerable or compromising position if she’d planned it.

“Then I apologize. Honest, Chantal, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.” The contrition in his eyes told her he wasn’t lying. His simple confession of how she’d made him feel was something else entirely. She decided the most graceful way out of the situation was simple acceptance.

“It’s okay, Jaz. We’re both strung out.” She untangled her body from his and stepped out of the tub.

He tried to follow, but the weight of the sodden sweater held him down. A wince flashed across his face. “You’re going to have to cut this thing off me.” he said. “It’s killing my shoulder.”

“I’ll get a pair of scissors,” she said, keeping her back to him as she padded around the room. At a hundred square feet, the bathroom doubled as a dressing area, easily accommodating a closet along one wall and her light-oak antique chiffonier. She grabbed dry undies, a towel, and her jeans and shirt. “I’ll be right back.”

In minutes she returned, fully clothed and holding the scissors in her hand. He’d let some of the water out of the tub, so only his legs were still covered.

“I thought I’d make it easier on us,” he said, grinning through the rivers of blackface streaking his face. “If you cut up the sleeve, we should be able to pull it over my head without doing me in.”

The camouflage was even more effective wet and runny, she thought, but somewhere underneath all that grime lurked a good, solid bone structure with everything in the right place and in the right proportion. Of course, a man didn’t need much more of an edge than a smile like his, a mouth like his, and the expertise to meld them both into mind-numbing kisses. She was almost afraid to see what he really looked like.

“Okay,” she replied, hoping she’d struck a casual note. She’d overcome the largest portion of her embarrassment in the living room, telling herself that if he’d thought he was dreaming he wouldn’t really remember what had happened. But all she had to do was look into his teasing gray eyes to know she was only fooling herself. He remembered plenty.

“You seem to have bounced back pretty well,” she continued in a light vein as she began cutting.

“Yeah, we Petersons are a tough breed.” The closer she got to his shoulder, the narrower his gaze became, following each snip.

“Don’t worry, Jaz, I’ve got steady hands. That slip-up at Sandhurst’s was a rare occurrence,” she said dryly, back on firm conversational ground.

His eyes fluttered open, the faint gesture an indication of his fatigue. “I trust you implicitly.” A vaguely mocking smile twisted his mouth. “It’s me I’m worried about.”

She lifted a dark brow quizzically, but otherwise ignored his statement. Just as well, he thought. He didn’t have the energy to explain the feelings she aroused. They were strong and tender, hotter than he’d confessed, and confusing him on more than one level.

Physically he understood his reaction. She was the prettiest, most delicately exotic woman he’d ever seen. A thoroughly mussed tumble of wild silver-blond hair was piled this way and that on top of her head, more than half of it falling around her shoulders. Her heart-shaped face and softly colored cheeks hinted at an innocence that belied her skill at Sandhurst’s. Her eyes were like a newborn fawn’s, soft and luminous, except bluer than a Colorado sky. Her skin looked like satin to touch. No, it didn’t surprise him that he wanted to take her to bed. But it surprised the hell out of him that he wanted
her
to take
him
to bed.

She leaned in closer, unwittingly echoing his thoughts, filling his nostrils with her special scent, and an unconscious groan escaped him.

She immediately lightened her touch. “I’m sorry, Jaz, but I’m almost finished.”

Her misinterpretation brought a wry smile to his mouth. And he was thinking about starting something she probably wouldn’t let him finish even if he could. The electric response they’d shared in the heat of danger wasn’t something he took for granted. When that much adrenaline was pounding through your blood, a person did a lot of things he wouldn’t consider when he was safe at home. But they were far from safe even now, and he wondered if she knew it.

Wielding the scissors gently, Chantal cut through the neck of his sweater. “I’m going to take it off your other arm first; then we’ll get it over your head. I’ll try not to hurt you.”

She didn’t want to hurt him. The same maternal instincts she’d felt while she held him in the bathtub were at work now, cautioning her to be gentle. The other feelings she’d had when he had held her . . . Well, she was unsuccessfully trying to ignore those feelings.

She helped him slip his arm out of the intact sleeve and paused for a moment. “Are you ready?”

“Go for it.” He gave her the thumbs-up.

She bundled the bulk of the sweater around his neck with both hands and as carefully as possible eased it over his head. A tremor jumped across his shoulder blades, but she didn’t stop.

He pulled his head out from under the sweater and came up grinning. “We made it,” he said, and sighed, slipping down and stretching full out in the tub.

The sheer cheerfulness of his smile warmed all the tender places of her heart. And the sight of his now nearly naked body turned those places to mush. No wonder he’d had the strength to hold her when by all rights he should have been helpless, she thought. Sinewy muscles wrapped over one another down the length of his arms, lean and tight, like the muscles in his chest. His darkly tanned skin stretched over the taut plane of his stomach, taking a concave dive below his ribs. Water lapped at the thin line of hair starting at his navel and disappearing under the only article of clothing she hadn’t stripped off him, a pair of black cotton running shorts. Wet, they didn’t hide much, and her heart flipped and sank.

“You got any soap, Chantal?” She snapped her gaze up to his face. He pushed himself upright, his eyes twinkling with an annoyingly accurate summation of her thoughts.