Conquer the Memories

Chapter 7

“Didn’t think for a minute there.” Charlie’s voice came from an enormous distance. “You want me to help carry the gear into the house?”

“Thanks, Charlie, but it’ll all wait until morning.”

“Well. Sleep tight, then.”

Sonia half heard Charlie’s exaggerated yawn, then the door opening next to her ear. “Come on, little one,” coaxed Craig’s soft whisper.

Sleepily, Sonia opened her heavy eyes, and was immediately enfolded in strong arms pulling her out of the car. It was the same as sleep, that dark, still world. Her feet touched ground, but her head simply wanted to lie in that curve of his shoulder. “I didn’t really fall asleep. I’m just resting for a minute,” she murmured.

She heard his chuckle but didn’t pay any attention. Winding her arms around his waist, she nuzzled her head under his chin and closed her eyes again.

In her dream, she was in motion, cradled close and moving through darkness. Lips pressed on her forehead, warm and smooth, once, and then again. The swaying motion didn’t stop until her back sank onto a firm, cool surface. She was alone, bereft. Sliding sounds came from somewhere, then muted snaps, then…a zipper?…from a million miles away.

She forced her heavy eyes open, but that seemed to be part of the dream as well, because Craig was bending over her in that darkness, naked, his skin white in the moonlight. Only he couldn’t possibly be naked; they were still driving home.

Always, once Sonia had fallen asleep, she slept as if drugged, waking only slowly and with reluctance. Half smiling, Craig gently grazed her breasts with his knuckles, as one finger searched her camisole for a tiny pin. He found the pin and undid it, then silently pulled at the satin ribbons that held the camisole together. Her breasts strained free, all warm and heavy, pearl-smooth.

He sank down to the bed, leaning over her, his hands gently chasing up the material until the satiny flesh was freed for him. In slow, silent motion, his lips dipped down and rubbed velvet-soft kisses in that warm pocket between her breasts. She stirred restlessly. “Don’t wake,” he murmured soothingly. “Don’t wake, honey.”

He ached from just that touch of her. She stirred again as he pulled off the camisole. “Craig?”

“Everything’s fine,” he whispered, and heard a rush of a sigh escape her lungs. He had to lift her hips a little to slide down the skirt. Her panties were little wisps of silk, so fragile; his hands glided them down over long thighs and slim calves.

“Cold,” Sonia murmured.

He dropped the panties over the side of the bed, and when he turned back to her, she had rolled to her side, one leg bent at the knee, her arm unconsciously reaching for the empty spot on his side of the bed.

He didn’t move for a moment. Didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t think. He didn’t want to wake her. And he didn’t want to stop looking. Moonlight rubbed silver on her bare skin; his lover was sprawled wanton in innocence, lovely in vulnerability.

She couldn’t possibly know how much he loved her.

His heart ached with it; his head ached with it. His body, so aroused he felt on fire, burned with it. No one could ever understand what he’d felt when that slimy blond bastard had attacked her in Chicago. The explosive rage that anyone would dare hurt her…the splintering frustration that he couldn’t stop them…the searing guilt that he had been responsible…his failure as a man to protect his woman.

Somewhere, a long time back, he’d almost been amused at how hard love had hit him. For Sonia, he’d wanted to run rapids, climb mountains, battle foes, slay dragons.

Obviously, there were no dragons, and Craig had never considered himself a romantic man. He was a realist, a man of action, no poet. And in the darkness he reached for her, his touch so tender that at first she barely wakened.

Something smooth and warm and as light as a whisper brushed on the soles of her feet, then her ankles and calves. The very lightest pressure increased up the long expanse of her thighs. Lips trailed farther, furrowing sensual roads over the soft white flesh of her bottom, to the base of her spine and up her vertebrae, one by one. All nine million vertebrae. Fingers combed into her hair, followed by more kisses, and then the trail started down again.

Sonia stretched, murmuring sleepily. The lap of a tongue feathered down all those vertebrae again, such soft, secret licks that she felt all warm inside, warm and cuddly and sleepy. The faint dampness traced the curve of her hip with an intimacy that far surpassed any fantasy or any dream.

Her lashes fluttered open, to a room that was dark. Pitch-dark. Though the moon was full in the windows, her eyes could not adjust that quickly. And before they’d had that chance, fingers splayed on her thighs, gently urging her back flat to the mattress. Like a whisper of promise, she felt lips stealing down on hers, soft, elusive…and with all the taste and familiar warmth of Craig. Lazily, her arms lifted to snare her thief in the night, but his head had already moved down.

His cheek was beard-roughened, buried between her breasts. His hands cupped her breasts, and that stubbly cheek grazed against them, the tender nuzzle of a lover, his breath warm on her bare skin. Roused from sleep, Sonia felt her breath caught somewhere between the dream and the reality. Her nipples tightened and swelled for his tongue, so warm-wet, so unbearably tender. A calloused fingertip gently played with the tips, then his tongue again, then his fingertips. He hurt her. Really, he was hurting her terribly; the sweet, precious ache was both conscious and unconscious, spreading through all of her, engulfing her with intolerable longing.

“Easy,” he whispered.

“Craig-”

His mouth sealed hers in a silent, soft kiss that disarmed with its gentleness. Teeth gently pulled at her lips; she parted them. A firm, smooth tongue immediately took advantage, assaulting hers in a tender, soft battle of tastes and textures and exploding senses.

Her lungs hauled in air when his lips finally lifted. Blackness had lightened to charcoal; the only color in that chiaroscuro was the liquid blue of his eyes, more intense, more heated, than she’d ever seen them before.

“Lie there,” he whispered fiercely.

Lie there? She hadn’t the strength of a kitten. Long, sinewed arms cuddled her up; she felt all the hypnotizing massage of lips and fingertips trailing down. Her breasts first, but then he switched to the inside of her forearm, her elbow, her ribs-parts of her body that had never felt like erogenous zones. They did now.

From sleep to sheer wanton insanity was a miraculous transition. She’d made love with Craig a thousand times and never felt the lustful awareness of her own flesh that her lover was now engraining, inch by inch, so slowly. Her hands reached out, her fingers raking through his hair, wanting to draw his face up to hers, his lips up to hers again. A most familiar heat was pressing against her abdomen, then her thigh. Craig was in motion, and the feel of his arousal ignited restless fires in her bloodstream. He wanted her. He wanted her!

She wanted him. Now! Her fingers curled over firm, hot, smooth flesh-his hand covered hers, drew her away from his thighs. Her leg rose to encircle him, to draw him intimately closer, and another hand smoothed down her thigh in a caress, stopping her. The man was an expert at frustrating her.

So was the lover. His fingertips rushed over smooth skin that receded beneath his palms, arched for his touch. His tongue followed his fingertips, laving her breasts again, trailing to her navel, shifting down to the ticklish, curling hair below.

She shifted in a tangle of limbs and hands and lips, a flush tainting her skin that only the moonlight could see. “No,” she murmured. A certain kind of touch and she always turned shy.

“This time,” he whispered back. “Easy. Easy, little one…”

Inhibitions had no part in her relationship with Craig; they never had. It wasn’t inhibitions that lessened the pleasure of a certain touch, but an inexplicable loneliness at one being pleased and not the other. She wanted her mate inside her, safe, warm, with her. She didn’t like alone. Her pleasure was irretrievably linked with his, and her fingers reached again for the firm, hard evidence of exactly how much he wanted her.

He brushed her seeking fingertips aside and bent lower, his hands parting her thighs. Her muscles convulsed in sudden, unwilling tension. Craig surged back up the length of her to press a kiss on her lips. A long, lazy, slow kiss, sensual…scolding her for that brief denial of her response.

He was most unreasonable, her lover. She gave in, offering him exactly the response he wanted, her flesh brazenly arching for him again. Only then did his lips leave hers and wander down.

His tongue slowly traced soft, private skin; his palms pressed against the insides of her thighs. She surged up for him, an angry rush of a sigh escaping her lungs. She couldn’t fight both him and herself, not in this delicious war.

Her skin grew damp and hot and pliable under his hands, his tongue; in a sweet, warm rush she dissolved for him, crying out in the darkness. And again, yet again…Spun crystals exploded behind her eyes, and moments later she clung to him, exhausted, exhilarated, unbearably replete. And yet lonely…

Craig gently pushed back her dampened hair, his touch soothing her until her heartbeat again quieted. “You are my incredibly beautiful lady,” he murmured.

She had the terrible urge to bury her face in his shoulder in shyness. “No.”

His lips brushed her cheek. “Yes. So responsive. So lovely. So special,” he said softly. “And your body always gives me this foolish little argument when I want to love you a certain way. It’s sheer pleasure for me just to watch you, little one, don’t you know that? I’m here. I’m with you…There’s nothing wrong, Sonia.”

“I never thought anything we did was wrong,” she whispered back, and sighed, her eyes closing as she snuggled against his chest. “Craig?”

“Hmm?” He pulled the sheet up to her chin, then slid lower to curl more closely around her.

“You’re a very special man,” she remarked.

His lips curled in a smile.

She reached up, sharing a kiss of smiles before curling close to him again. Her eyes closed. Her mind was in a desultory presleep haze after being so very thoroughly loved. Lingering sensations of pleasure floated all around her, not just from his lovemaking but from now simply being held and stroked before she fell asleep.

Part of that sleepy euphoria was the intimate feel of his hardness against her abdomen. It was his turn, she thought groggily, and fought to stay awake. Her hand reached out to caress him.

His hand laced loosely into hers and tucked it in a warm, secure embrace…and she fell asleep.

Squinting, Sonia bent forward until her face was an inch from the bathroom mirror. There. Right there at the outside corner of her eye. A wrinkle was definitely settling in. Particularly when she squinted with that determined expression.

When you were worried about finding flaws, it was amazing how fast they all jumped at you. One sunburned nose, one cracked toenail, knobby knees…and when Sonia turned around and held a hand mirror to the light, she saw a single white hair in the middle of her crown. Her fingers raced to pluck it out.

She lost it.

Wiggling her towel-clad bottom, she frantically combed through the curls on her crown again. The damn thing was elusive, but she knew it was there. She plucked the nasty thing, wincing.

“Sonia?” Two sharp raps echoed on the bathroom door. “You’re actually up? You still want to go for a ride this morning?”

“Just give me five minutes,” Sonia sang out, her cheerfulness volubly denying that it was unusual for her to be up at six in the morning. Actually, she’d been awake since five. Worrying.

At the speed of sound, she rushed back to the bedroom, drew on old pink jeans with a pastel plaid blouse, riding boots and belt, and then lingered another few seconds in front of the dresser mirror. She would not have been surprised to see some drastic signs of deterioration. A single white hair didn’t count.

The last she knew, her husband had been attracted to her-wildly so. Nothing had seemed wrong between the two of them even yesterday. Nothing had seemed wrong in a month. And there was nothing drastically unusual if a husband and wife didn’t share equal pleasure during a single night’s encounter. For heaven’s sake, it couldn’t always be even-Steven. The next night simply made up for that. It was part of a marriage, a give and take.

Always, Craig had been an inventive, giving, passionate lover…maybe with a slight inclination toward insatiability. Since he’d built up that same slight inclination in her, they’d just never had a problem. Well. Some slight problems controlling themselves occasionally…

Sonia chewed absently on her lip, staring at the mirror, and then hurried from the room. Last night…Her cheeks flushed as she waved a good-morning to Charlie in the kitchen and headed out the back door. Last night her husband had proved to be a most tender, erotic lover, forcing unexpectedly uninhibited responses from her, all but demanding the most incredible, intense pleasure…

And yet he hadn’t taken his own. Craig had never been a selfish lover, but after more than a month Sonia had been frankly expecting…a quickie. A rather explosive quickie. Followed by long, leisurely “seconds.” Sonia knew her lover quite well. Abstinence was not in his vocabulary; he’d probably never even heard the word, and she suddenly saw that for a month he’d been…different. Very small things, really. The P.I.’s receipt he’d kept from her, the occasional withdrawn look in his eyes, the way he’d all but handcuffed her to his side at work…

You’re making far too much of it, she chided herself as she strode outside. In the distance, she could see the two Andalusians pawing the ground. Craig was holding them by the reins, murmuring to them with his back to her. He wore old jeans that fit snugly around his hips, and his checked shirt rippled over his shoulders as he moved. The look of the man was downright erotic even in the broad light of day. When he turned to her, his smile would have aroused sexual feelings in a nun.

You’re making too much of it, she repeated to herself, and acknowledged wryly that she would undoubtedly continue to make too much of it. She hadn’t been able to shut off her intuition since five this morning. She had great plans for growing old with this man, and she knew darn well that a single white hair and one pending wrinkle weren’t about to turn him off, but something, dammit, was wrong.

Mostly in play, but partly to test his response, she sassily patted his fanny on the way to being offered a leg up.

As if to assure her everything was absolutely normal, he then forced her to lean down from her horse to accept a kiss. “You sleep all right?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Someone woke me up in the middle of the night,” she announced.

“No kidding?”

“You wouldn’t believe what he did to me.”

Belle snorted impatiently. Craig ignored the mare, grasping the reins with one hand as his free palm roamed over Sonia’s thigh and ribs, undoubtedly checking for signs of injury. “You don’t seem any the worse for wear. What happened?”

Such innocence, such big blue eyes filled with innocence…and such a lusty smile. Sonia, there isn’t a damn thing wrong with anything, she told herself. “Just a pirate in the night,” she mentioned blithely. “He took my virtue but left the jewels. Not to worry.”

“What virtue?”

She leaned over her horse’s mane. “The same virtue I had plenty of, Mr. Hamilton, until I met you. Now, are you going to continue to tease me in front of this yard full of ranch hands, or are we going to have a dead race for the hills?”

Belle snorted noisily, her choice obvious. Both Black Lightning and Sonia’s Belle had become used to their morning ride.

“I would prefer to tease you,” Craig said lazily as he put his foot in the stirrup. “For that matter,” he added gravely, “your cheeks look windburned, honey. I’d advise you to force your pirate to shave next time. And I certainly hope that no other portion of your body has that same reddish-”

It took a great deal to make Sonia color. To the sound of his low laughter, her thighs pressed tight against her mare’s flanks, and in seconds the wind was whipping through her hair. “Two bits says I’ll beat you,” she called over her shoulder.

Belle was bursting with energy, all power and grace beneath her, responsive to her suddenly ebullient mood and the wonderfully cool morning and the path they both knew so well.

Belle was responsive…but not as fast as Craig’s Black Lightning. It hardly mattered, since she knew Craig would let her win. In moments, he was beside her, matching her pace with his own, his hair whipped back sleek by the wind, his shirt flattened against his tautly muscled chest.

The long green slopes fell behind them, until their house and the ranch buildings became small dots on a distant landscape and the river looked like a silver fluorescent rope in the sunlight. They didn’t slow the horses until the trail started to climb and twist. They were both out of breath by then, ready for quieter sport.

The southwestern corner of the ranch was more arid than the rest. They inevitably rode toward those acres. The verdant green and gentle roll of the major portion of the ranch was nature’s gift, where cattle or horses could graze and the land held a richness of water and trees in the foothills. Not here.

Some would have called this a wasteland, where pockets of wind had found a home for centuries and erosion had taken its toll. Here, there was oil beneath the stubborn rock, oil Craig had tapped when he was seventeen to secure his heritage, but no one traversed the land now except the two of them. Through a narrow canyon, the trail wandered south, and suddenly they rode high up along a ridge. A stark gulch beneath them reflected myriad strata of blue and green and yellow in the sunlit rock. Wildflowers stubbornly insisted on growing, tucked in crevices here and here. The beauty was in the wildness, in the stretch of endless sky and space and loneliness.

An eagle soared overhead, undoubtedly searching for a very foolish rabbit for its breakfast. Sonia exchanged smiles with Craig. It was always a good omen when they spotted an eagle. They watched it soar and dip and then wing off with a mournful scream of frustration.

“We haven’t camped out here in a long time,” Craig said idly.

“Too long,” Sonia agreed, as she stroked her mare’s sleek neck.

“I think I could stay here forever.”

Sonia smiled. “And instead you’ll undoubtedly work late again today,” she teased, knowing full well that as important as his land was to Craig, it alone could never keep him satisfied.

“In another week, I hope the long hours will be over. You have plans for the day, honey?”

She nodded absently. “Nothing hard and set, but I thought I’d head into town.” She cocked her head with a wry smile. “Do you realize I’ve barely been off the ranch since we got home? Once to go to work with you, and once for my parents’ party. Lazy is one thing, but this is ridiculous! Charlie’s even taken to doing the grocery shopping. I think,” she added conspiratorially, “that he must have a girl in town.”

She glanced at Craig, expecting him to share the humor of Charlie’s unwonted domestic role, and instead found him staring straight ahead, an oddly tense pulse working in his throat. “Craig?”

He turned to her, his smile so determinedly casual that she relaxed again. “What time do you plan to go into town?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. After lunch, probably. I thought I’d see Marina, window-shop…well. I have every intention of spending a little of your money…” She still couldn’t seem to raise an honest smile. Perplexed, she stared at him.

“Sonia, are you bored?” he asked quietly.

“No, of course not. I’ve never in my life been bored.” She sighed, and with a flick of the reins turned her mare toward home. “It’s just been so long since we’ve really been home,” she admitted softly. “You’re into the project full-time now. I knew that was coming, but I worked with you more before, especially in Washington. There isn’t a darn thing I can do to help you now…”

“You’ve helped every damned step of the way,” he said roughly. When she glanced at him, his voice gentled. “I can more than understand that you’d want time to explore your own…thing. There is time, now, Sonia, and if you really want to work for Marina-”

“Craig, do you want a baby?” Sonia tugged on the reins, slowing Belle to a halt.

Craig stopped, too, studying his wife, picturing her first with a burgeoning tummy and then with a baby in her arms. Both images roused instant loving, protective instincts. Fiercely, he wanted her to bear his child, a child with her loving nature and their blend of strengths and all that future that a baby implied. He wanted her daughter.

He’d settle for her son. And he’d waited a long time for her to ask that soft-spoken question.

But not now.

Sonia didn’t know how his feelings had changed since that incident in Chicago, and he didn’t want her to. The issues were between him and himself, things he had to work out on his own.

A man protected his woman. An archaic instinct, really; machismo was out this decade. Unfortunately, it was engrained in him to the core. At gut level, he had failed her.

Sonia was more fragile than rose petals. She was gregarious and sassy and innately trusting; love bubbled from her as from a never-ending well. He’d risked all of that, in Chicago. A man who’d failed to protect his lady…How could he protect a child?

“Craig?” Sonia was looking at him curiously.

“Do you want a child?” he asked quietly.

Her eyes softened. “When you do.”

He didn’t want either, at the moment. Not a child, and not her working where she was exposed to the public. He wanted her safe. “I want you happy,” he said simply, and stared straight ahead. “Look, see Marina if you want to. Then we’ll talk about it.”

He could feel her confusion; his eyes narrowed deliberately on the stretch of trail ahead. “Listen, lady. I’m about to reclaim my fifty cents. You’ve got to the start of ten to get that lazy mare in motion.”

“Lazy!” Her thighs instantly pressed tightly to Belle, both horse and rider offended at the insult.

Craig trailed her laughter down through the hills, savoring it, cherishing it, his mood lifting with it.

He was going to let her win again. Halfway down the trail, he slowed up long enough to dig a hand in his pocket and make sure he had the dollar she was certain to demand. Sonia was a stickler for paying one’s debts.

So was Craig.