Part 18 (1/2)

She frowned, not understanding.

He lifted his hand, wanting to smooth the lines between her s.h.i.+ny brown eyebrows. Yet he didn't trust himself to touch her in even so casual a way.

And he touched her anyway, tracing the frown lines with a fingertip that was callused and gentle. Her eyes widened in surprise, but she didn't pull back.

”I was raised,” he said quietly, ”in a big family with love and shouting matches and laughing and hugs, grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, parents and brothers and sisters, dogs and cats and car pools. Len was raised by an unloving woman who began life as a calculating piece of a.s.s and ended up as a bitter, alcoholic wh.o.r.e.”

Hannah listened with complete attention. She had often wondered about Len's childhood. She had learned not to ask. She had learned so many things.

And Archer was teaching her other things now, with the gentleness of his touch despite the blunt woman-hunger that had tightened his whole body.

”When I found Len and told him who I was, he just stared at me,” Archer said. He brought up both hands, barely touching Hannah's cheeks, tracing her sleek eyebrows with his thumbs. Her sudden breath brushed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his chest. He went still for an instant, then resumed the soft not-quite-caress of her eyebrows. ”I told him that he was welcome in the Donovan household, that Dad had spent years looking for him.”

”What did Len say?”

”Too late, kid. Time only goes one way.” She winced. ”That sounds like Len.”

”I tried to convince him to come home,” Archer said, looking at Hannah's eyebrows, her dark chocolate eyelashes, the pink curve of her mouth. ”He said he was already there.”

”Where was he?”

”In a h.e.l.lhole in Kowloon.”

Her mouth thinned. The fever that had killed her pregnancy had begun in Kowloon. It had ended in another country.

And now it all seemed very far away, the world shrinking to one room, one man, the gritty depth of his voice and his eyes watching her as though he had just discovered life.

”I didn't give up,” he said. ”I'd been looking for Len too long. I couldn't just let him go. He was a blond Viking like Kyle and Justin, with the Donovan smile, his way of looking over his shoulder, even his laugh. I couldn't believe that Len wasn't like the rest of my family.”

”Believe it,” Hannah said huskily. ”He wasn't. At least, for your sake, I hope he wasn't.”

”Though he looked like us, Len was different. I know that now. Too late to help you.” Archer's fingers trembled on Hannah's face. ”Way too late to change the pain. There was something bent or broken or missing or stunted in Len. Part of it was the way he was raised. Part of it was the sum total of all the choices he made when he was old enough to know better. The whys don't matter anymore. What I learned too late does matter.”

Hannah watched Archer's eyes change, felt him retreat from her even though he didn't move an inch physically. The emotion beneath his neutral voice made her heart twist. She knew what it was like to bleed silently beneath the careful mask she showed the world.

”Too late,” he said, ”I learned that Len resented me as much as he liked me. Instead of seeing us as a team, he saw us as locked in some kind of destructive compet.i.tion. He was always playing all the angles to come out on top.”

”He wanted to prove that he was the best man around,” she said.

For an instant Archer's eyes shut, veiling the shaft of guilt and pain. ”Is that what he said?”

”Not in so many words. But he used to taunt me for choosing the wrong man in Rio. If there was a wrong man in Rio, there must have been a right one. You.”

Wearily Archer swore beneath his breath and started to step back. The bathroom was too small for him to move. Hannah was too close, her hands over his, holding his palms against her cheeks. Holding him close. He felt as though he was absorbing her through his palms pressed against her skin. Her warmth and softness and strength went through him like a double shot of whiskey, making his blood ignite and his heart speed.

”That was another thing I learned too late,” Archer admitted huskily. ”Len knew how much I wanted you before I admitted it to myself. You were so young, so vivid, so ”

”Stupid,” she cut in.

His smile flickered and vanished. He lifted her right hand and kissed the cool center of her palm. ”You were innocent.

That's why I couldn't admit I wanted you. So I had a h.e.l.l of a shouting match with Len. I was going to send you to the Donovans. They would have taken care of you.”

The feel of Archer's lips against her palm made Hannah lightheaded. ”I was nineteen. An adult.”

”You were raised with a Stone Age tribe. You weren't ready for the tenth century, much less the twenty-first.”

”It wasn't that bad.”

”It was worse.” Tenderly he bit the pad of flesh at the base of her thumb. The swift breaking of her breath went through him in a shock wave of desire. He hadn't expected her to respond so quickly, so openly. Not after living with Len. ”You'd never seen a flush toilet, never seen a sink, never seen a computer, never watched television, never flown in an airplane, never driven a car, never ”

”I remember better than you,” Hannah interrupted, hearing the huskiness of her own voice, knowing its sultry source, not caring. If she didn't use her newly discovered freedom, it would become just another kind of cage, one filled with regrets and might-have-beens. ”Anyway, my parents had a radio phone.”

He laughed softly and bit her again with great care. ”For emergencies, right?”

She watched his teeth close on her flesh for a third time. Warmth flashed through her with an intensity that made her bones loosen. ”Yes,” she whispered, though she had forgotten the question. Somehow she was so close to Archer now that she could feel his body heat, breathe in the salt and mystery of his scent, feel the stark reality and lure of his erection brus.h.i.+ng against her with each deep breath.

”Ever use the radio phone?” he asked.

She shook her head, watching his eyes the whole time. If fog could burn, it would look like that, a hot silver glitter. ”Technologically,” she said, ”I was innocent. But in other ways, I wasn't innocent at all. I knew more about life, death, and sheer human endurance than most technological types ever have to learn. I also knew about the other world, the civilized one out there beyond the rain forest, because Mother and Father kept telling me how evil it was, how decadent, how G.o.dless, how driven by greed and malice.”

Archer turned Hannah's hand and began to taste each one of her fingers in turn. ”Didn't it scare you?”

”The outside world?” she managed, despite the vise of desire squeezing her throat. The velvet rasp and gentle suction of his tongue were a sensual revelation. The contrast between his neutral conversation and elemental s.e.xuality made her dizzy. His control was utterly unexpected. Len would have had her on her back by now, driving toward his own satisfaction.

”Scare me?” Hannah repeated, her voice as raspy-sweet as Archer's tongue. ”No. The world beyond the rain forest fascinated me. A place where you could go thousands of miles in a few hours instead of a few miles in days. A place where every book ever written could be conjured up on a screen and read. A place where people looked like me, yearned like me, needed like me.”

He tasted her little finger, decided that he liked it best, and tasted it again, deeply, before slowly letting it slide free of his mouth. ”What did you need?” he asked finally, looking at her, focusing only on her.

”I...” Her breathing frayed as a s.h.i.+ver trembled through her body. She had never been looked at like that, as if she was the very center of life. ”I don't know. But I knew I wouldn't find it in the rain forest.”

”Did you find it beyond the rain forest?” She closed her eyes. ”I grew up.”

”That's not the same thing.”

”It has the same result.”

”Which is?”

”You stop looking.”

When Archer would have asked another question, Hannah put her fingers against his mouth. He kissed them and waited. ”Turn around,” she said in a low voice. ”One of those bruises looked deep enough to need attention.”

Slowly he turned his back to her. Again he felt her cool, light fingers smoothing over his skin, probing gently, testing the bruises. He tried not to think how good it would feel to have her hands all over him. Not soothing him. Measuring him. Teasing and arousing, enjoying and demanding.

A decade of remembering her voice, her laughter, and her grace had been bad enough, but this was the most exquisite kind of torture he could imagine. Standing nearly naked, breathing in her cinnamon-and-sun scent, feeling her delicate touch on his skin, thinking what it would be like to pull her arms around him and kiss her until neither one of them could stand up...

He could barely breathe, barely think, only drown in a combination of l.u.s.t and tenderness that was like nothing he had ever felt for a woman. Eyelids half lowered, aching and oddly at peace, he steeped himself in the moment. When her breath washed warmly down his spine, he couldn't prevent a s.h.i.+ver of pure sensual pleasure. She was a dream he had never allowed himself to have, a warmth he had always needed and never known, the essence of everything he yearned for that had no name.

”Does that hurt?” she asked when he s.h.i.+vered again.