How many days had they spent here, dwelling in this enchanted valley that was so far away from the rest of the world? Ginny lost track of time, drifting in a confusing haze of peace and passivity.
It was warmer now, the sun a burning orb above. She went frequently to her favorite spot to sunbathe, lulled to serenity by the steady melody of water against the rocks, a fine mist diffusing the heat of the sun on her face.
Once, she would have lain atop the mossy rock without her clothes, but not anymore. She felt too exposed, too vulnerable. Now she remained covered from neck to ankle in the loose peasant garments. The restrictions of proper society that she had once chafed against were now harshly self-imposed.
“You look like a Mexican peon,” Steve said one evening as high peaks cupping the valley slowly swallowed the sun. A soft hazy light lingered, tinting the world in rose and saffron. His eyes narrowed slightly, his mouth curled into a rakish smile as he regarded her attire. “I remember when you once preferred going about like a bare-breasted Amazon.”
“I’m sure you do. But that was a long time ago.”
“Not so long. You wore more in that scandalous painting that the Prince of Wales purchased. No wonder he urged you to remain in London instead of accompany your husband to Mexico.”
“I should have listened to him,” she blurted, then lapsed into silence when Steve cocked his head and frowned. Why were her emotions so tangled lately, so contradictory?
“Ginny—talk to me. You can say what you want. I won’t get angry. Hell, I can’t stand seeing you like this, like a damned ghost drifting through this valley. I thought by bringing you here, you could feel safe.”
“I feel safe.” She sounded defensive even to her own ears, but couldn’t summon up the courage to confide in him. It was too devastating to talk about the elusive emotions that lurked beneath her outward calm. It was much easier to ignore what had happened, to drift along, thinking of nothing but the moment.
“If you do feel safe, you have a hell of a way of showing it.” Steve got up, his long legs eating up the space between them in two steps. He knelt in front of her so that she was forced to look into his eyes, compelled by his soft tone and the unexpected gentleness. “I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you again, green-eyes. Let me protect you. Let me bring you back from that ledge you’ve been on for the past month.”
“Oh, Steve, don’t be so melodramatic.” She brushed hair from her eyes, and leaned away from him to gaze at the silvery spill of water that cascaded like a delicate bridal veil from the high rocks. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“Are you? Is that why your hand shakes and you won’t let me get close to you without backing away? Are you frightened of me?”
Her chin came up defiantly, though she could feel her lips quivering with suppressed emotion.
“Perhaps I am, a little bit.”
“I’m not Luna, Ginny. Or Beal, or Devereaux, or any of the others who have hurt you in the past. Hell, I know I’ve hurt you, too, but don’t you know how I feel about you? You said our mistakes were all in the past…If that’s true, then you’ll have to trust me now.”
“Yes, I know. And I do…. I’m just not ready to leave here yet.”
“I understand your need to be away from everything for a while. But not forever, Ginny. We have to go back soon. It’s been over eight months since we left England and the children.”
“Yes.” She swallowed the sudden choking lump in her throat, and whispered, “Yes, I know. I’ve thought about them every day. Oh, Steve, I know you’re right but I’m so afraid.” She forced a shaky laugh. “I’ve never been so afraid, not even when I was with Devereaux, not even when Tom Beal dragged me with him—Perhaps it’s because now I know what can happen. Back then, I had no idea how brutal men can be.”
Steve was quiet for a long moment. Frogs harrumphed a bass symphony and insects hummed accompaniment. Peace settled in a flimsy veil over the valley again as they sat silently.
Finally Steve said softly, “We have to put the demons behind us. If we don’t, we won’t ever have the peace that you want and deserve. You know that.”
She dragged in a deep breath spiced with the rich scent of humus. Thick foliage dripped from towering trees, a green mantle of peace and protection spread around them. “It’s so lovely here. How did you ever find this place?”
“It belongs to me.” Steve smiled slightly when she looked at him in surprise. “Thank God Hearst never saw this valley, or he wouldn’t have sold it to me. It’s on the ranch I purchased from him. See? You can come back and bring the children with you.”
She said nothing, only stared at him in the deepening gloom as the silence stretched far too long. How could she tell him that she couldn’t leave? That the very though of going back terrified her? He’d think her weak and foolish. She felt weak and foolish.
“It’s all right, Ginny.” He said it softly, his voice only slightly lifted to be heard over the muted thunder of the falls. “We won’t leave until you’re ready. You know you’re safe here for now, just as you know we must leave. I know you’re strong enough to make that decision soon.”
“Nooo…” It was a kind of moan, torn from her as she fumbled for elusive control of her tricky emotions, craving his reassurance but not quite believing it.
Steve rose slowly, his words careful and calm, as repetitive as if he were speaking to a small child. “You’re safe, Ginny. No one is going to hurt you here.”
Feeling foolish, she managed to nod. “Yes. I know. It makes no sense, but there are moments when…when it all comes back to me and I’m so afraid. I feel as if I’ll never forget it all…not just Luna, but all he represents.” A shudder ran through her. “There are times I don’t want you near me, that even when I know it’s not true, I feel as if you’re a danger to me.”
He was watching her closely. Light from the fire cast a glow on his face, leaving one side in shadow, while the faint haze behind him slowly deepened as dusk melded into night.
With the shadow of beard stubble on his lean jaw and the reckless slant of his mouth, his bare chest gleaming in the soft dusk, hard muscle and tawny skin marred by tiny scars, he seemed ruthless and predatory.
Oh God, he looks so dangerous! she thought wildly, her heart thumping madly in her chest as the fear surged through her in pounding waves. But Steve was unmoving as he studied her in the half light, staring at her with his wicked blue eyes narrowed and intent. Steve…her husband, the man she had loved for so long.
Yet she was terrified of him, even though she knew he would not hurt her.
Finally, moving in a slow, deliberate motion, he spread his arms out to his sides, watching her closely.
“Ginny, you’re safe with me. Nothing will happen to you here that you don’t want. Would it make you feel any better if I told you that I won’t touch you unless you give me permission?”
“That would be a novelty,” she said with a shaky laugh. “I don’t think you’ve ever asked anyone for permission to do anything.”
“Then this will be memorable.”
Ginny’s eyes widened. He sounded so serious. If it was anyone but Steve…
As if sensing her skepticism, his mouth quirked upward in a faint smile. “A new beginning, Ginny. Don’t you think it’s time we tried something different? Nothing else had worked in the past.”
Firelight was reflected in the deep blue of his eyes, diffusing the shadows. Drawn by powerful emotion, trembling with the need to be close to him and the fear that still lay just beneath the surface, Ginny put out her hand.
Steve’s fingers were warm and solid as he curved his hand around hers. He held her firmly but not tightly, and when she withdrew her hand he didn’t try to hold on.
“Ginny, fear won’t end until you face it, until you conquer it. I know.”
“You can’t know! You can’t know how terrifying it is to feel so vulnerable, to feel as if it could happen again at any time! That I’m helpless to prevent it.”
He studied her, his eyes dark and unfathomable. “Tomorrow I will teach you how to use a gun.”
“I know how to shoot.”
“Yes, but you should know how to hit what you’re aiming at. There’s a difference.”
Despite her nervous confusion, she smiled. “Trust you to put things in perspective.” She paused, then added, “Do you think knowing how to shoot will make me feel safer?”
“It will make me feel safer,” he said dryly, and when his eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, she found herself laughing at him.
“If improving my aim makes you feel better, then I’ll make the sacrifice, I suppose.”
“Ever the martyr, green-eyes.”
This was safer ground, a familiar banter that put her back on solid footing. Ginny’s tension eased.
By the light of the fire, with blankets spread upon a cushion of moss, they ate their evening meal, the customary beans replaced by a delicious stew Steve had thrown together in the huge iron pot over the open fire. Fresh vegetables were scarce, but there was usually an abundance of fresh meat. Ginny had learned long ago how to cook decent meals over an open fire, usually frijoles and corn tortillas.
Relaxed, she sat with her legs curled beneath her, leaning on a thick wad of blankets propped against a rock. The night sounds grew louder, only slightly muffled by the constant din of falling water. The air was crisp and damp enough for her to pull an edge of the blanket around her shoulders.
Steve came to sit close, facing her with his legs bent under him. He was near enough that she could feel the heat radiating from him, smell the faint scent of the soap he’d used earlier and hear the soft rasp of his breathing.
“Ginny,” he said when she tensed, “I only want to be close to you.”
Awkwardly, she sat in stiff silence as he lifted her bare foot in both his hands and pulled it onto his lap. A faint smile crooked his mouth, and she stifled a moan of pure pleasure as he began to massage the aching tendons of her foot.
“A technique I learned from an old Chinaman I knew in San Francisco,” he replied when she dredged up the energy to ask where he had learned such magic.
Blissfully relaxed, Ginny closed her eyes with a sigh as Steve continued to massage her foot in strong, circular strokes. His fingers worked up to her ankle, kneading the calf of her leg with sure efficiency. Then he turned his attention to her other foot.
The fire hissed and popped, and in the distance she heard the low howl of a coyote. The cry trembled on the night air as if suspended, then faded, muffled by the constant drum of falling water.
It had been so long since she’d felt this at peace, with the music of the night around her and Steve’s hands working magic on her tense muscles. All of he fears began to subside, replaced by a growing confidence that he would not hurt her, that he would do as he said and protect her as best he could.
“Um,” she murmured when he asked if she was relaxed, and heard him laugh.
“I’ll assume that means yes.” Deftly, his hands moved up her leg, gently kneading the skin of her calf, then skimmed higher to massage her thigh.
Ginny offered no protest. It was too easy, lying there with Steve, his hands familiar and yet foreign to her now, gentle despite the rough calluses that still marred palms and fingers. Had he gotten those calluses in the mines? It was painful to envision him forced to such brutal labor, agonizing to think that he might have died there.
Oh, she was such a coward, when Steve had survived the ultimate horrors of enslavement and degradation without disintegrating into a weak, sniveling wreck. Never before had she yielded to the kind of fear that had gripped her these last weeks.
The pressure of his thumb against her inner thigh was firm, sliding beneath the loose calzones she wore, rotating with slow stroked that were sweetly tender. She opened her eyes, gazed at his downbent head as he concentrated on what he was doing.
This was a different Steve than she had ever known before. There was only tenderness in his touch, not the arrogant dominance he had always exerted. They had both changed so much….
“Steve?” He glanced up, firelight reflected in his eyes as he met her gaze with a quizzically lifted brow. “Steve, I want honesty from you. I want you to tell me only the truth.”
“Haven’t I always?”
Irritation knifed through her, displacing the serenity. “No, you haven’t, as you very well know. Always before we’ve degenerated into recriminations or excuses. If I ask you something that’s very important to me, will you give me an honest answer, even if you don’t want to?”
His hand stilled, heat and hardness against her thigh. “If it’s important to you, it’s important enough to me to be honest with you, Ginny.”
“A politician’s answer.”
“Christ, Ginny. Yes, I’ll answer honestly. What do you want to know?”
She thought of Elizabeth Cady Burneson, but could not bring herself to ask him about her. Instead, she thought of all the times he had made her feel so powerless, so helpless and at the mercy of his whims.
“What would you have done if I hadn’t come to London for the children? Would you have looked for me?”
“Yes.” His thumb rotated against the sensitive curve of her knee for a moment before he glanced up at her. “I did come after you, but you’d already fled Stamboul, remember?”
“Yes, I remember you telling me that.” It was an answer yet not an answer. Disconcerted, she closed her eyes again and gave herself up to the soothing sensations he created with his massage.
“Ginny, if you’re worried that I’ll drag you somewhere you don’t want to go, or make you do something you don’t want to do, I won’t.”
Not daring to open her eyes, she murmured, “What’s happened to change you?”
“All the times I forced you to go with me, made love to you when you fought me—yes, even raped you—I was wrong. My grandfather nearly disowned me because of how I treated you, and he was right. I can’t undo everything I’ve done, but I won’t force you to do anything against your will ever again.”
Her eyes slowly opened. Steve was staring at her, his eyes level with hers, his hands still now, resting on her knees. Then he leaned forward.
He drew his hand down her face, his fingers lightly skimming the sculpted bones of her cheeks, then the slope of jaw. He dragged his thumb over her mouth, smearing moisture over the curve of her lower lip. The fire crackled and popped, curls of smoke drifting skyward, and the sound of the waterfall was a constant drumming rhythm.
“I want to kiss you, Ginny.”
His whisper fanned against her cheek, and she tilted her face upward.
Leaning forward, he kissed her, his mouth traveling from her lips to her ear, then down over the arch of her throat to linger, his tongue washing over her in leisurely, heated circles. When her breath grew a little ragged he said against her throat, “I want you to kiss me, Ginny. Will you?”
His soft question was unexpected. She hesitated, then found his mouth with her own. She kissed him, let him kiss her, his free hand moving behind her neck to hold her in a light clasp. Breathless, some of her restraint melted away.
For the first time in their relationship, she felt in control of herself and the situation. It was a heady emotion after all the years of uncertainty, of frustration and defeat.
As her breath came faster, the hot sweeping rush of desire rose high, so that when Steve lay her gently back on the blankets, she made no protest. The fire was lower now, its light faint and wavering, rosy pools ringed with shadows. His hand explored her body, slow velvety caresses followed by fierce, needy kisses, a stimulating contradiction that sent shivers of desire through her.
When he began to pull the camisa over her head, she put a hand on his arm. Immediately, he paused.
“Only if you want it, Ginny.”
“If I tell you to stop, you will?”
“Yes. If that’s what you want.” He released the light cotton, watching her in the soft gloom of fire and shadows.
“I’m not sure what I want.” It was true. Part of her wanted to yield, to give herself up to the exhilarating oblivion he could so easily induce, but another part of her was still testing the boundaries of their relationship.
Steve sat up, raked a hand through his hair, his smile taut as he blew out a breath. “I know what I want, but what is more important is how you feel, Ginny.”
Amazed, she laughed softly. “I never thought I’d hear you say anything like that, Steve Morgan!”
“That makes two of us, green-eyes.”
Relaxed again, sharing laughter, she leaned into him, this time with no reservations as he held her and stroked her gently. When his hands moved to cup her breasts, teasing her taut nipples until they swelled, she reveled in it, in the power she had to make Steve’s breath come swift and harsh, to see the naked passion in his face. Her breasts throbbed, and a slow, steady pulse ignited between her thighs, spread through her body when he kissed her burning flesh gently, drawing the taut button of her nipples into his mouth, until she forgot everything but the delicious sweep of sensations.
At last he stretched out beside her, and she arched her body up for his touch. Her earlier fear had vanished forever, the nightmares fading at last. There was only room for Steve now, and he filled the night with his caresses, her world with reassurances.
“Oh, yes, Steve…please…?”
He answered her plea with his body, as he had so many times before, their joining one of mutual need and passion.
He kissed her. Then the delicious friction of him sliding insider her was a vivid reminder that this was Steve, the man she had loved for so long, the man she had never been able to forget for even a day.
For the first time since she had met him, she was confident they could work through anything—their doubts and fears, even anger with one another—and manage it in a way that wouldn’t destroy them.
Later would come the true test; now, there was only Steve, his hard, lean body over hers, his hands teasing her breasts, exploring her everywhere.
This was familiar, the aching tension inside her that escalated to an almost unbearable pitch before he eased it, before he took her from twisting, panting need to a sweet, exultant release that made her forget everything for the moment but how much she had always loved him….
Drowsily replete at last, she took a chance, risking it all to murmur her love for him over and over, in French, and Spanish and English, her lips moving against the damp skin of his neck and shoulder until he said it back, the words a harsh groan against her ear.
“Green-eyed witch, don’t you know I’ve always loved you?”
It was true, and Steve recognized it with resignation. She was in his blood, as he was in hers. No other woman had ever excited him like Ginny, or intrigued him, or infuriated him as she did.
He loved her for her courage, for her dignity even when her back was to the wall. He wanted to kill Luna all over again, watch the lights fade in his eyes as he died, for what he had done to her.
He could see the emerald sheen of her eyes in the soft shadows that enclosed them, the lustrous color faint but still recognizable…remarkable eyes, cat’s eyes, that haunted his waking hours and even his dreams. he scraped his palm up her body, over her flat little belly to cup her breast, felt a shiver ripple through her at his caress.
“Such soft skin…like satin…Ginny, you should know by now that I’ll never let you go. Don’t you?”
A fierce surge of need to protect her nearly swamped him, made his hands clench tightly in her hair, that glorious mass of copper fire that had tantalized and tormented him since the first day he had seen her.
“She is an obsession with you,” Paco had once told him, and he’d been right, known it then even though Steve denied it.
One day, he’d tell her everything. He’d tell her about Beth and what had happened to him at Prayers End years ago. He’d tell her how, when he’d thought she was dead, he hadn’t felt life was worth living anymore. That he’d only survived because he had not been able to accept her death.
And he’d tell her that he had another child, one he felt an obligation to assure his life was all it could be. Would she understand? With her fierce mother’s heart, would Ginny accept the knowledge that he’d created a son with Beth Cady?
Damn him for being a coward, he just couldn’t tell her about it now, not when she still seemed so fragile.