CHAPTER NINETEEN

And the best of all ways

To lengthen our days

Is to steal a few hours

from the night, my dear.

THOMAS MOORE

MAC KNEW SHE was in trouble. Her mind knew it, anyway; her body had an entirely different opinion.

She’d been expecting this sooner or later, but somehow Liam had still managed to take her by surprise. Here she was, wearing practically nothing and confronting around two hundred pounds of angry male.

Mac backed up toward the bed and felt behind her for the muslin wrapper she’d left there. She tugged it on without haste. He watched every move she made with a dark hunger—hunger made more potent by barely suppressed anger. Heat coiled and pooled low in her body.

“I guess you came here to … to talk about yesterday,” she said.

“Talk, Mac? Is that what you think I want?” He grabbed his tie and loosened it with a yank that spoke volumes.

Okay, Mac. You can handle this. She moved to the other side of the bed. “I don’t suppose it’ll do much good to tell you that I didn’t expect Caroline to walk in on us last night.”

“No.” He hurled his tie to the floor and began to work on the buttons of his shirt. “But we do have some unfinished business.”

Mac watched his undressing with unwilling fascination. “All I wanted was … um … to distract you—”

“You succeeded.” He unfastened his left shirt cuff.

Only too well, it seemed Perry had set things up very carefully. Without telling Mac the full extent of his plans.

“I’m sorry it happened that way,” she said. “Whether or not you can accept it.”

He continued undressing with slow, jerky motions. “Did you know about the wine?”

“The wine?”

“That it was drugged,” Liam said.

“Drugged?” She felt a little dizzy and reached for the mahogany bedpost. The wine had been meant as a signal that she wasn’t succeeding—a signal she’d never given, botched when the waiter had walked in without being summoned.

“The wine was drugged?” she repeated.

He looked up at her, his shirttail loose at his waist. “You didn’t know,” he said. “You tried to drink it after I did.”

Good grief. Mac had a vague memory of pouring herself some wine, so confused by her own emotions that she’d only wanted to drown them. Liam had smacked the glass from her hand.

And she’d thought it was out of anger.

“Perry,” Liam said, striding to the window. “He masterminded it all. It wasn’t enough for him that Caroline saw us together. He wanted me out of the way, and he didn’t care if you were hurt in the doing of it.” He stared out at the city. “I know you met me at the Poodle Dog on his advice.

“But you didn’t know about the wine. Or the carriage. The axle could have broken anytime once we started to race.” His fingers worked into fists on the windowsill. “You could have been killed.”

“I … heard of the accident,” Mac said, still struggling with shock. “You weren’t hurt—” She moved toward Liam and stopped herself. “You think that Perry set up the accident and this drugged wine, and | was working with him?”

“Damn it, Mac!” He swung to face her. “He’s used you, deceived you just as he did me. You were a handy tool, no more.” He made a low, bitter sound. “I had him investigated- before our last expedition, when he began to show interest in Caroline. He wasn’t merely a younger son cut. off from his family’s fortune, as I first suspected. He worked for the British government before I met him. As a spy—probably an assassin. He had no scruples. I went to Guatemala to warn him away from Caroline.”

Mac shivered and sat down on the bed. A spy? It certainly explained Perry’s ability to get information and disappear so effectively. But an assassin …

“I don’t believe it,” she said, preparing herself for a hopeless argument. “I don’t believe that he tried to kill you, whatever his past. Yes, I met him—at the ball. And he was the one who told me about the carriage accident. I don’t know how he found out about it, but he didn’t have to volunteer the information. Especially if he considered me disposable.” She concentrated on keeping her words calm and level and logical.

“He knew you’d consider the accident proof that he was behind the attempt in the jungle, and he predicted how you’d react. But I chose to trust him. I wish I could give you a better reason than gut feeling and instinct.’ She waited for the lash of Liam’s scorn and disbelief. “If I thought for a moment that he really meant to hurt you—”

“You’d what?” He examined her face intently.

She swallowed and looked down at her lap. “Isn’t there something else you should be worrying about— like who’s really trying to kill you?”

His footsteps whispered on the carpet. “Do you mean the tongs, Mac? You overheard my meeting with Chen in the Gresham library.”

“Yes. Enough to know you were on your way to do something dangerous.” She sat up straighter, hoping for information. “I know the tongs are criminal organizations that practically runs most of Chinatown, but—”

“They deal in human cargo, Mac. Girls brought illegally from China, bribed and coerced into leaving their homes, too young to fight or to know what they’re getting into.” He strode across the room and back again with brittle anger. “Children ruined by men who see them as commodities, whores to be used until they die of disease or violence or despair. A very profitable enterprise.”

The passion in his voice was more eloquent than any mere explanation could have been. Mac was almost humbled by it. This was a part of himself he kept hidden, a part that had revealed itself only in his obsessive desire to protect Caroline—and sometimes Mac. A part she still didn’t understand.

“Then … that’s what you were doing the night of the ball, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Something to do with these girls. Raids. Saving them—”

“From their masters and from the corrupt outsiders who’d take their own cut of this obscenity. The law is all but useless in stopping it. For a year the band’s been successful. Until the night of the ball, when the raid went sour. When someone betrayed us to the tongs.”

The informant. “Then you do have other enemies. These tong people—”

“And their ally,” he said. “Peregrine Sinclair.”

Ob, God. “Was he part of your group?”

“He wasn’t involved. He didn’t have to be.” Liam’s mouth set in a harsh smile. ‘I’ve had him watched since I returned to San Francisco. He was clever, but not clever enough. My men saw him with one of the foremost tong bosses. He was the one who undermined the last raid. He’s doing the tong’s dirty work for them and for himself at the same-time-’?

Mac closed her eyes. Impossible. That Perry was so utterly villainous, so heartless, so’ capable of deceiving her….

But even if he wasn’t, Liam’s-danger had been real, and deadly. He could have died in that carriage accident, or on one of these raids. Cold lighting raced along her nerves.

“Are you finally convinced that your ally is a blackguard?” Liam demanded.

She couldn’t lose faith now. “No.”

He slammed his fist against the wall, shaking the light fixture overhead. “He could have killed you without a second thought. You played Perry’s game and helped rob a girl of her innocence—”

“I what?” Mac jumped to her feet. This conversation was moving almost too fast for her to follow, but she refused to be left behind. “You mean Caroline? You never let me get close enough. What happened? Did she finally shatter your image of the delicate, naive Miss Gresham? Did it finally get into your head that no one can protect anyone from life the way you wanted to protect her?”

She regretted her words as soon as she saw his stricken expression.

“I’m sorry, Liam,” she said. “Truly sorry. I never wanted to cause you pain—”

Even if she’d been listening she couldn’t have heard his footsteps, so quietly did he move. She looked up just as he reached her, as he caught her chin in his hand.

“Don’t worry, Mac,” he said. “You’ll make it up to me.”

She felt the heat reborn in him, burning away that all-too-brief insecurity, the doubt he couldn’t allow himself.

“Were you afraid I’d abandoned you?” he asked, stroking her cheek with Startling tenderness. “I’d never have done that. I had plans to see you settled in a safe place, where you could live as you wished. You didn’t give me a chance to tell you. But now it doesn’t matter, does it?” He touched her lips with a calloused finger while his other hand began to work at the waistband of his trousers. “I don’t give a damn anymore who you are or what you’ve done. I don’t care if you worked for Perry or even if you’re crazy. You succeeded, Mac. You made me want you.”

The top button of his trousers popped free of the buttonhole. He let them fall, giving Mac an eyeful of magnificently aroused male. She remembered the way that sleek hardness had felt under her hand, and against her—

“No need to stare, darlin’. You’ll see plenty and get a lot more before we’re through.”

Darlin’. How long had it been since he’d called her that? Back in the jungle, when he’d played her for a fool….

“It works better when you don’t try to woo a woman with intimidation,” she said, managing a semblance of sarcastic bravado.

“You didn’t need wooing yesterday,” he said, trailing his finger to the hollow of her throat. “Pretty speeches are wasted on you. It’s something a little rougher that excites you, isn’t it?” He’d returned to that deep purr that made his blunt words unbearably erotic, lethally carnal. “Last night you were ready for me, wet for me.” He rested his palm on the swell of her breast. “You were right when you said it was good between us. It’ll be better this time. This time we won’t stop.”

Her mouth went dry, robbing her of a retort.

“Shall we find out if I’m right?” he said, kicking his trousers free.

Still she couldn’t move, frozen in an agony of terror and desire. Terror, not of him, but of herself. Of the wild feelings he aroused in her as he aroused her body, spinning her out of control. Of how desperately she did want him. Wanted him to make love to her, all the way.

“You think you’ve won,” Liam taunted, herding her back to the bed: “But there’s always a price for victory, darlin’. Take it from me.”

Yes, there was a price. Mac had only begun to understand in the Poodle Dog, when he’d almost taken her there on the settee.

It was hunger: a physical, aching need—the woman she’d never fully recognized within herself, coming to painful life inside her awakened body. Liam had done that. He had that power over her, a power too terrible to give to a man she should never have known.

“It’ll be good, Mac,” Liam murmured. She felt the play of muscles in his thighs as he carried her with him onto the bed. He stretched out beside her, his hand resting on her hip in masculine possessiveness.

She lay still while he ran his hand down her muslin-clad thigh and under the hem of the chemise. Well, Mac, she told herself, trying to maintain her calm, look at this rationally. You do want him. You can enjoy this for what it is. Exactly as he will.

Her thoughts fragmented as Liam’s fingers worked along bare skin. She bit the inside of her lip as he found what he was looking for and stroked her—once, again, a third time. His fingers found no resistance, no friction. He withdrew, but she felt no relief.

“Ah, darlin’,” he said, “you don’t have to say a thing.” He waited until she met his gaze and then deliberately licked her wetness from his fingers.

The gesture almost undid her.

“You want me inside you,” he murmured. “You want me to take you hard and fast, the way I would have done it last night. Admit it.” He pinned her down, his erection pressed to her inner thighs, his breath hot on her ear. “The woman in you wants to be tamed, and there’s only one way and| one man to do it.”

He began to stroke her again, pushing her chemise up over her thighs, her hips, to her waist, “You took from me. Now I’ll do the taking. But you’ll enjoy it, darlin’, I promise you.”

His touch was expert. It couldn’t have been more effective. In spite of all his threats of “hard and fast,” he didn’t hurry. His finger slipped inside her, moving with a rhythmic omen of what was to come. She jerked and arched against him.

“That’s it, darlin’. Give in.” He pushed her chemise higher still, and then it was over her head and she was naked. Defenseless. His mouth found her breast, nipping and suckling. A moan betrayed her, and then there was no more point in pretending.

And no more passively lying there like a frightened virgin—even if the latter designation was almost true. She’d be damned before she gave him all the advantages in this affair. There’d be two to tango, and she wasn’t going to let him forget the experience.

With a heave and a lift of one knee she encouraged him to shift position. While he was still off-balance she rolled, carrying him with her, until she was on top and straddling him.

He didn’t know what’d hit him. She reached down between them and found his prominence. No confusion there. She had him where she wanted him.

“Since we’re on the subject of confessions,” she said softly, “I think it’s your turn.”

She smothered his retort with a kiss designed to get his attention. She was a very fast learner; he looked almost dazed when she came up for air.

“Admit it,” she said. “Admit that you wanted me in the jungle as much as you want me now.”

She closed her hand around him, worked her fingers up and down his length until he shuddered as she had shuddered at his caresses. “Admit,” she said fearlessly, recklessly bold, “that you want me the way you’ve never wanted any woman before “

She waited. An eternity passed.

“Yes,” he said. He trapped her arms and pulled her down flat on top of him. “Yes, damn you.”

And he proved it with his kiss.