Teresa Medeiros - Once An Angel

He fought to keep his voice steady. "You're not the only woman to flee to this country to escape an intolerable past. If someone has hurt you … if a man has hurt you . . . ?"

Justin's compassion stabbed Emily like a blade. She wanted to scream, "You! You've hurt me!" but the words were locked inside some dark, secret place.

Her gaze raked him with all the cool contempt she could muster. "I'm not like them. You're not my savior. I'm not compelled to spill my sins to the mighty Pakeha."

He stepped back, and she suddenly knew what made his face so compelling. His features came alive

with every emotion. Even pain. A desperate need to comfort him flooded her. Fighting it, she struck

out like a wounded animal.

"What is it, Mr. Connor? Haven't I put you high enough on my pedestal?" She stalked him, spurred by some dangerous need to move him, to elicit some reaction that would prove he was no marble saint, but only a flawed creature like herself. "You enjoy their adoration, don't you? It must be very gratifying for

a man like you."

A moment earlier she wouldn't have thought it possible, but his face had closed now, gone as immobile

as a Maori totem. His words were clipped. "What sort of man might that be, Emily?"

"Patron to valets. Friend to lizards." She drew the crimson flower from her hair and ran it up his muscular arm, tracing teasing swirls on his sun-heated skin. "Is that what you want from me? Blind adoration?"

His body was rigid with tension, but the uneven rhythm of his breathing warned her she had affected him.

Tilting her face to his, she rubbed against him with a boldness that would have shamed a feline. "Shall

I fall on my knees and wash your feet with my tears?"

Emily was mocking him. Mocking his faith and his life. And all Justin could think of was the kittenish softness of her breasts pressed against his chest. He wanted to free them from their thin band of calico,

to feel their lush curves brand his skin with their naked splendor, to stroke their coral tips to aching fruition with his fingertips. The velvety petals of the bloom opened against his skin just as her lips might open to his tongue's invasion, her body to his fierce possession.

She must be truly mad to taunt him in such isolation. His senses sang with the relentless rhythm of the sea. How easy it would be to push her down on the bed of sand and take her without any of the niceties society demanded.

He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her crudely and deliberately into the cradle of his thighs.

Emily hung in his embrace, her courage melting in the heat of his wary, smoldering gaze. Somehow he had seized the moment and made it his own. She trembled with a primitive fever, but still she met his gaze squarely, refusing to lower her lashes, refusing to shy away from his blatant need.

He pressed against her, moving, seeking, showing her without words how easy it would be for the contours of their bodies to mold into one. He was marble, yes, but molten marble, not cool and distant, but hot and seething. He was not a saint, but a man. All man.

"Which of your foolish lads taught you to play such a dangerous game?" he asked.

"You don't like danger, do you, Mr. Connor?"

"I don't like games."

As she gazed deep into his eyes, his pupils seemed to swirl in a sea of amber. Her need. His power.

Her temptation. His challenge. Emily dropped her head back, going light-headed with fear.

He caught her by the shoulders, his face darkened with emotion. "I never asked you to worship me, Emily. All I wanted from you was a little common courtesy."

He thrust her away from him and strode down the beach. Emily knew he was lying. He wanted her. Badly. And that was one weapon she'd never thought to hold. Shaken, she sank down in the sand and watched the encroaching tide crumble her castle.

Justin had walked the twisted corridors of the Victorian mansion hundreds of times, first in childhood, then in dreams. The plush burgundy carpet unrolled at his feet. He was a boy again, hurrying past dim passages drenched in the shadows of flickering gaslight. Tall doors flanked the hallway, dwarfing him

with their mahogany splendor. He was late again, always late, and he knew his father would be displeased.

His thin legs would not carry him fast enough. The corridor stretched into infinity. He began to try

doors, afraid they'd be locked, but more afraid they wouldn't be. He rattled each crystal knob with shaking fingers. If he made too much noise, his father would lock away the piano and send him back

to his room without supper. His stomach knotted with hunger.

Light blazed at the end of the corridor. His steps slowed, mired in some unspeakable dread. Now the carpet was unrolling faster, dragging him into the widening air of light against his will. As the light

engulfed him, he swallowed a scream.

Thank God he had. There was nothing to be afraid of. He was standing inside the dining room, where

his family had gathered around the long oak table. He scooted into his seat, perplexed by the empty

chair at his side. They were all there. His mother. His three sisters, demure in their ruffled frocks. His ancient grandmother, nodding in her pudding.

Glowering, his father lifted a carving knife and pulled the covered warming tray toward him. The light from the gasolier burnished the keen blade. Justin glanced again at the chair beside him, haunted by its emptiness.

His father's fingers curled around the handle of the silver lid. Justin's stomach spun. He slammed his

chair back, overturning it. He had to warn his father, to somehow stop him from lifting that lid before it was too late.

His father shook his head. His mouth didn't move, but the unspoken words pounded through the

room in bass counterpart to his sisters' soprano giggles. Don't be so sensitive, boy. You're too damned sensitive for your own good.

With a terrible grin his father lifted the lid of the warming tray. Justin screamed. Then he was alone in

the dining room, alone with the shadowy figure in the chair next to him. The figure turned, basking in

the glow of the gaslight.

Nicky.

Nicholas in all of his dark beauty, his hair slicked back at the temples, his teeth flashing white against

his swarthy skin.

He pointed a tapered finger at Justin. "Your father was right, my boy. You always were too goddamned sensitive for your own good."

He threw back his head in a burst of baritone laughter. t Justin clapped his hands over his ears and

backed into the corner until his own screams faded into the bright, tinkling notes of a child's laughter.

* * *

Emily sat straight up as a hoarse whimper arrowed through the darkness. She rubbed her eyes, disoriented. How late was it? she wondered. Exhausted by the playful beating her body had taken from sea and sun, and unable to endure either the false cheer of Penfeld's prattling or the sight of Justin's empty pallet, she had crawled to her own blankets after dinner and collapsed in a dreamless heap.

Her eyes adjusted slowly. Pale wisps of moonlight drifted through the window. Penfeld's comforting

bulk was humped under his blankets. A low moan shuddered the silence.

Emily sat up on her knees, her heart hammering in her throat. Justin was only a vague shape in the shadows. She crept toward him, dragging one of her blankets behind her like a lifeline.

A shallow beam of moonlight caressed his face. His waking defenses had fled, leaving him as helpless as

a child in sleep. Sweat beaded his upper lip. Emily wanted to touch him, to smooth away the grooves of pain around his mouth, to wipe the shadows from beneath his eyes. He flung out an arm, startling her, and she jerked back her hand.

He had thrashed his way out of the blankets, and the first two buttons of his dungarees had come

undone. There was something touching about the untanned swath of skin beneath the folded flap of calico, a beguiling reminder of the pale, proper young Englishman he had once been. He muttered a

name between clenched teeth. Emily leaned over, torn between curiosity and empathy.

His body twitched. His face crumpled in a spasm of horror. She reached for him, despising herself for

her hesitation.

His eyes flew open. With dizzying speed and no more than a grunt of exertion he caught her wrists and rolled over, pinning her beneath the hard length of his body.

A single word, fraught with meaning, hoarse with accusation, flew from his lips.

"Claire."

Emily's heart stopped.

A jolt of recognition blazed like a comet through Justin's eyes, then skimmed away, leaving her

straddled by a bewildered stranger. She didn't know whether to laugh with relief or weep with disappointment.

"Emily? What in the hell . . . ?"

She chose her words with care. "You were dreaming. Having a nightmare."

"Dreaming?"

Justin's gaze traced Emily's features in confusion. The moonlight had softened her gamin edges, given

her brown eyes a glow hauntingly familiar in its tenderness. Why did it hurt so bloody much to look at her? There was something there. Something he ought to remember flirting with the edges of his consciousness. His gaze traveled downward, held captive by the pliant sprawl of her limbs beneath him, her unspoken acceptance of his weight and will. Her slender wrists hung limp in his harsh grip.

Consternation flooded him along with the waking memory of his nightmare. He shoved himself off her and stumbled out the door.

Refusing to be abandoned yet again, Emily trailed after him. He stood in the sand a few feet away, his back to her, his shoulders heaving. She was afraid for a moment that he was going to be ill, but he straightened, dragging the back of his hand across his lips, shivering despite the heat.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I could have hurt you."

"Could you?"

Only the forest answered, creaking and sighing around them in a midnight symphony.

She touched his shoulder. His skin felt like warm marble to her fingertips. He flinched, but did not pull away.

"Tell me about Nicky," she whispered.

He swung around, and their faces almost collided. His tension had returned, as palpable as his suspicion.

"The nightmare," she said swiftly. "You cried out his name."

He bent to scoop up a stone and cast it into the darkness. "Nicholas was my partner."

"What happened to him?"

"He died. His vanity killed him."

Emily was very still. If vanity had killed Nicholas Saleri, what had killed her father? she wondered. His generosity? His loving nature?

A humorless laugh bubbled out of Justin's throat. "Even the wilds of New Zealand couldn't rob Nicholas of his precious vanity. He used to preen for the natives in his fine coat of English broadcloth. He even deigned to let the high priest run his shriveled hands down his silk lapels."

"He must have been quite the swell."

"He was." Justin tugged his ear. "The earrings were his idea. He fancied us Gypsy rogues-daring exiles from society. He pierced our ears himself with Maori needles that seemed as long and sharp as spears.

I bled for days."

Emily bit back a small, sad smile as she tried to imagine her bewhiskered father sporting a dashing