When Gabe awoke, the setting sun's light, split by the small forest of pilings, was a hundred strands, turning the restless water, with its oily slick, to a magical surface. He had a vague memory of being pulled from the water, but where they were, or why, escaped him.
A weight lay across his chest. A woman's arm. When he turned his head, tangled golden hair tickled his nose. Gina. His memory cleared.
With it came the pain. No, it wasn't a pain any longer. Just a dull ache in his hip and thigh. The knee didn't hurt now. It was nearly numb. Before he could wonder at that fact, Gina stirred.
He caught her wrist before she could lift her arm. "Don't go 'way," he said, keeping his voice low. No telling who could be listening for them.
"I've slept in softer beds," she murmured. "I think I'm permanently dented." She pulled free and sat up. "How are you?"
"Wishing I had two good legs and a telephone. Do we have any water?"
"No. I didn't have any way to carry it. Will you settle for a lemon drop?"
"You're joking? Where on earth--"
"I found them when I was digging in the bags Peter left. Stuffed into a shoe there was this little bag." She held up a small muslin pouch. "There can't be many, but if we conserve them, they will keep us from getting thirsty for a while. Here." Between her finger and thumb, she offered one pale yellow candy to him.
He popped it into his mouth. The sweet-sour flavor made him forget his thirst. "Do you remember--"
"Katie and Luke, when they were lost in the snow..."
"...with nothing to eat but lemon drops..."
"...and they fed them to the donkeys, too." She clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter. After a moment she took it away and smiled, the first real smile he'd seen since he'd awakened with her bending over him, looking scared. "Oh, Gabe, at least it's warm here. And we've got transportation."
They both turned to look at the little rowboat. "Transportation of a sort," he agreed. "Now if we just had some money for food and a place to buy it."
"I have money. Peter gave me some before he left. A lot of good it's going to do us, though, unless we're willing to chance being seen."
"If Peter doesn't come tonight, we'll take the boat downstream just before dawn. A few miles along, no one will pay any attention to us."
Her head slowly moved back and forth in denial. "My dress is filthy and none of the clothes I found will fit you. Even if I wore the trousers, I'd look like a woman. Trust me, Gabe, we will attract way too much attention."
"We'll manage," he said. "One way or another." What he didn't say was that he didn't know how. All the while they'd been taking in near-whispers, he'd been testing his leg. So far he hadn't been able to feel his toes move, had no sensation past just above his knee.
A fear like nothing he'd ever experienced chilled him to the very soul. Something's very wrong with my leg.
* * * *
There was no way they could get out of here without being seen. Regina lowered herself back through the narrow gap between a broken plank and the rock wall. The warehouse attached to the dock that was their refuge was a busy one, with people constantly coming and going. She'd bet there was a shipment going out this evening or early tomorrow, from the activity both within and outside the building. Dockworkers hauled crates and barrels in and out--more coming out than going in--and a queue of freight wagons stretched as far as she could see into the dim interior.
She thanked her lucky stars that there had been straggly shrubs along the edge of the dock. Even though she'd felt exposed and vulnerable, there had been enough cover for her to hide behind.
But not enough for them to climb out and make their way to the road, even if Gabe miraculously regained use of his leg.
We'll have to stay under the dock and hope Peter comes tonight.
She slipped down into their dim hiding place. Gabe lay still, his forearm across his eyes. There was something about his pose that worried her. He looked...defeated.
They might as well eat the last hunk of cheese now. If Peter came tonight, they would need their strength.
And if he didn't... They would do what was necessary.
When they had made the cheese last as long as they could, she said, "We should sleep now. We'll need our strength, if we want to move before first light."
"Yes. All right." Gabe's voice was low, flat. He didn't move when she pulled the blanket over them both and nestled next to him.
It was too warm, still, to snuggle, but she needed the feel of another warm body next to her. I am so tired of being brave. She slid her arm across his chest.
Although his breathing was regular, she knew he wasn't sleeping. Perhaps ten minutes had passed, perhaps an hour, when he said, "Did you mean it?"
"Hmm?" She'd not been asleep, but she'd relaxed. "Mean what?"
"That you'll marry me?"
"If you still want me, when this is all over."
"I've never stopped wanting you. I can't remember not wanting you, even when I was too young to know what wanting was." His chest rose and fell in a deep sigh. "Gina, you were only an hour or so old when I first saw you. Red faced and ugly. You looked a lot like a piglet, except you had all that silvery hair. And squall! My god, you were the loudest baby!"
She pinched his arm. "Say something nice, why don't you?"
"Give me a chance." He chuckled. "Lulu was what--ten months old? She was a pretty baby, all that honey-gold skin, those caramel colored curls. But she was my little sister, and so I had to be jealous of her. But you! I loved you at first sight. Squashed nose, double chin, and all. I remember telling Aunt Hattie that I was going to marry you when I grew up."
Something made her throat tighten. "I didn't know that."
"Of course you didn't. By the time you were old enough to talk, I was too old to say silly things like that. But I thought them, even though I knew it was a sissy thing to do." He caught her chin on the edge of his hand. "Gina, you've been mine, all your life. I've been waiting for you to realize it." His voice held the faintest quaver.
"Gabe--"
He turned just enough to brush her lips with his. "Damn this leg," he said. "I want to kiss you. I want to love you. And all I can do is lie here like a log."
She rose up on her elbow and looked down at him. It was dark enough now that all she could see was the gleam of his eyes, the flash of his teeth. "Gabe, you're hurt..."
"Not that badly. Can you..."
Understanding, she flipped his blanket back. His chest was smooth, warm, damp with a light sheen of sweat. When she touched him, the skin under her hand seemed to cling, as if they had melded together. "I don't want to hurt you."
"Lord, woman, you'll only hurt me if you stop loving me. I'm not much good right now, but I'd be honored...I'd be eternally grateful if you'd have your way with me."
He wasn't lying. Despite his injured leg, despite being pulled from the river half-drowned, despite the heavy does of laudanum that had kept him unconscious for three days, he was ready to make love to her. His penis stood tall and proud over the taut muscles of his belly. Under her hand, his pulse throbbed strong in his veins.
This night might be all they had...all they would ever have.
She bent close to him. With her mouth hovering a hair's breadth from his, she said, "I love you, Gabriel King. I've always loved you. But I was afraid."
"I reckoned you were. Never understood why."
"One day I'll explain. But for now..." She kissed him, tasting lemon and cheese and a flavor that was uniquely, eternally, his. "I love you."
Even if his leg had been perfectly healthy, their bed of shifting cobbles made motion impractical. Footfalls sounding right over their heads reminded them that they were not alone.
She didn't care. With her hands she touched him, body, limbs, face, cock, and balls. With her mouth she tasted him, smooth skin of chest, hairy thighs, calloused palms, and salty, weeping glans.
He caressed her, his big hands finding secret places where the merest touch sent shivers of fire coursing through her veins.
Sometime, when a loud clang from over their heads distracted them, she thought about the filthy water they'd been immersed in. No telling what disease it held.
And no telling if we will see the sunrise. She bent her head and took him into her mouth.
She smoothed his quivering belly, the sweat-drenched skin of his chest. She lapped at his pebbled male nipples, nibbled at the sharp ridges of his hipbones. With her fingernails, rough and untended, she drew scratchy patterns across his belly and delighted in the goosebumps she raised on his forearms. Before she could kiss her way south of his belly-button, he grasped her in strong hands and pulled her up, nose to nose with him.
"Not yet," he said in a hoarse whisper. "Too soon." He took her mouth in a rough, all-consuming kiss. When at last he released her, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close. "The sun is still up. We have no need to hurry."
"But I--" Even though he'd only touched her fleetingly, butterfly touches of fingertips on her voile-covered breasts, on her belly, hidden under her still-damp drawers, she could feel the looming culmination of her passion. "I need--"
"Oh, yes, you do, but not yet. We've hours yet. Look there." He motioned toward the setting sun, not yet close enough to the distant horizon to be blood-red, yet no longer casting the white-hot light of midday. "Even if they are close by, no one will come until full dark. We've time."
Her body was taut with need, thrumming with an unsatisfied sensual hunger. Gabe knew that promises made here and now might never be fulfilled. Right now was likely to be the only time they'd ever have.
Their chances of living through the night were slim. His enemies, whoever they were, would not assume him dead until they saw his corpse.
There were watchers. He would bet his life on it. He hoped he wasn't betting hers as well.
The only time...
His hands found her secret places and drove her to heights hitherto unexplored. He longed to thrust himself into her hot, wet depths, but knew it could not be. Even if they lived through this adventure, he had no right to risk impregnating her. Not now.
Not as long as he worked for the Coalition.
When she stiffened in his arms, he pulled her close and held her mouth against his chest muffling her cries of completion.
When he released his seed in a great paroxysm, he buried his teeth in his lower lip to lock in his own shout of triumph.
He kept his arms around her when she would have pulled away. "Give me this last hour, Gina. Don't leave me."
"I was only going to--" Her gesture took in the drying seminal fluid on his belly.
"It isn't important. Stay with me." He held out his arm, inviting her to snuggle against his body again.
* * * *
As the night deepened, the lantern light from the dock above them shone in narrow orange bars between thick planks. Shadows came and went as stevedores hauled and sorted and piled whatever cargo was due for the next steamer. Gabe had drifted into sleep after their awkward but satisfying intimacy, but Regina found herself too tense for slumber.
For a while she watched the shifting shadows, seeking patterns in their movement, trying to guess what the outgoing cargo might be. Perhaps that was why she knew immediately when the intruders came.
The shadows no longer moved in regular patterns between the shore and the edge of the dock. They froze in place, and the hollow sound of footsteps ceased. For a moment. Then she heard new ones, abrupt and decisive, approaching the center of the dock.
A voice, as sharp and abrupt as the footsteps, came to her ears. But indistinctly, so she had no idea of what words were spoken. It was familiar, though, and she knew, without doubt, that the speaker was the leader of her abductors. What had Gabe called him? Horrow, or some such?
She cupped a hand about her ear, but it did no good. The words were blurred, distorted. And French. Too rapid, too idiomatic for her to understand.
The tone was threatening. She wondered if the stevedores sensed the danger as clearly as she did.
They must have, for when someone spoke, his words tumbled over each other as if they could hardly wait to fall from his lips. His patois was impossible to understand, but his fear came through the gaps in the wood as if he had shouted it. The only reason she didn't share it was that no one had come looking for them in the several hours they had hidden here. She was reasonably certain that they had crossed the last open water unseen, and that no one knew they were hiding here.
A soprano toot from a steamer interrupted the Frenchman's questioning of the stevedores. She looked toward the river, but could only see a distant hull, dark against the gleaming water. Was this the expected cargo ship, come to offload the crates and bales and barrels on the deck over her head?
No, for it slid slowly out of her sight. As it disappeared, she heard someone whistling. A slow, haunting melody. It tickled a memory for an instant, one that barely registered before it faded like the steamer's white, foaming wake subsiding back into the gleaming, restless water.
The sight of the steamer reminded her what she must do. They could not stay here through another day. She must get them to a safer refuge before daylight made escape impossible. She donned her camisole and drawers, strapped on her knife.
The cobbles threatened to roll and tumble under her feet, so she crawled across them, wincing as her knees landed on hard, round stones. The rowboat slid easily back into the water, with a small screech that that could have been any natural nighttime noise. She pulled it into position and weighted the painter with a large rock before she pulled the stern around so the boat lay parallel to the steep shore.
Back she crawled to fetch their meager belongings, all but the blanket covering Gabe, the gunnysacks that padded the cobbles. The longer he slept, the less apt he was to argue with her.
Boat loaded, she sat back and considered her plan. It had to work. Gabe was incapable of clambering across the gunwale. But would he admit it? Or would he play the big, strong man and try to do it his way instead of hers?
Not for the first time, she wished she was bigger and stronger. Sometimes force was the only answer.
She crawled back to him on bruised and bleeding knees. "Gabe? Wake up." Her voice was a bare thread of sound.
"Huh?"
She clapped a hand over his mouth. "Shh. There are men--" She rolled her eyes toward the planks overhead.
His quick nod showed he understood. He raised his eyebrows in question.
She leaned close and spoke just above a whisper. "We've got to move before daybreak. Once I get you into the boat, I'll tow it out into the river and we'll let the current carry us downstream. I can't drag you. though. You'll have to roll again."
"No!"
"Yes. Don't argue. I'm fit, you're not. Or would you rather stay here until we are found or we starve?"
Resistance was plain in his gaze, but gradually the stern lines on his face relaxed. Finally he nodded. "Do what you must."
"It's going to hurt." She pulled the blanket from him, tossed it on the slope below. "Can you turn so you've lying crossways?"
With muffled curses, he rotated his body. Sweat glistened on his brow when he looked up at her and mouthed, "Let's do it."
Some time while she was making preparations, the activity on the dock above had resumed. Now she realized that another steamer was drawing close. Regina held her breath, hoping...
"Thank God," she breathed, as it nudged up against the dock. Their chances of getting cleanly away just got a whole lot better.