Desperado (20 page)

“I failed him, right down the line,” she said unsteadily. “I never thought how I’d feel, if he’d had such a past and hadn’t wanted me to know. It all comes down to trust, doesn’t it?” she added, meeting his dark eyes. “If you love someone, you have to trust them.”

He smiled slowly. “I’m glad you’re getting the picture.”

“And nothing you do, nothing you have done, will ever make any difference,” she continued, as if she’d just found pure truth. “Because when you love, it’s unconditional.”

“Exactly.” He pursed his lips. “Why don’t you go home and tell Cord that?”

Her eyes brightened. It was like free fall. She didn’t have to be afraid. She never had to be afraid again, even of disclosure. Cord loved her. His was the only opinion that would ever matter. It was so simple, and she’d never considered that one simple fact.

She almost leaped out of the chair. “When the kids get bigger, I want to come and work for you. Can I?”

He chuckled heartily. “That’s the spirit. And yes, you can.”

She grinned. “I’ll hold you to that, Mr. Lassiter. Thank you. For keeping my secret. For making Adams and Stillwell keep it. For…everything! I think you’re terrific.”

He got to his feet and shook hands with her. “Just for the record,” he told her, “so does my wife.”

She chuckled. “I’m not the least bit surprised!”

T
he next few minutes were a blur of activity. Maggie almost knocked Tess down getting out of the building. She thanked her, blessed Dane, promised to phone, and dived into the car the minute Davis pulled up at the curb. She inspired him to break speed limits and sighed her relief that they weren’t picked up by the state police as they pulled up in front of the house.

She opened the door even as Davis was putting on the brakes. She dived into the house, past a surprised June, right into the office where Cord was speaking on the phone to someone about a bull.

She closed and locked the door behind her, almost shivering with her discoveries. “I’m sorry, but you have to hang up now,” she told Cord in a shaky little tone.

“Why?” he asked with the receiver an inch from his ear.

She shrugged, smiled sheepishly, and started to take off her blouse.

He dropped the receiver. It was the first time in their lives that Maggie had ever been forward with him. In fact, he’d been certain that her past would preclude any such delightful opportunities.

“I’ll call you back,” he told whoever was on the other end of the phone and hung up, quick.

Meanwhile, Maggie had shed blouse and bra and was stepping out of her shoes and working on the zipper of her slacks.

She went toward him, totally nude, enjoying his look of shocked pleasure. She took him by the hand and led him to the sofa, sprawling on it in breathless abandon.

“Well?” she asked huskily. “Are you up to it?”

He actually shivered as his hands went to rip off his knit shirt. “I’ll show you what I’m up to,” he said in a husky tone.

She watched him undress, stretching sensuously as the fabric came away from that tall, powerful body.

“Did you lock the door?” he asked roughly.

“Oh, yes,” she murmured with a smile. “You look very sexy.”

“I’d love to tell you how you look,” he said, sounding as if he were choking, “but I don’t think I have time!”

Neither did she, when she saw him without the last brief covering. He came down beside her, leaning heavily on his uninjured arm, and his mouth went homing to hers. His long legs were insistent, feverishly insistent, as they parted hers and he went down against her with uncontrollable desire.

“I’m sorry,” he ground out.

She relaxed, smiling under his mouth as he went into her suddenly, urgently. She gasped a little and arched to greet him, feeling his mouth swallow the husky little noise as he began to move on her with practiced skill.

She wrapped her long legs around his and shivered with the increasing stabs of pleasure that built from his uninhibited possession of her. She reached under him, her fingers sliding down the curve of his long back to his buttocks. She dug her nails in, pulling him closer, while he rocked on her in a fiercely ardent rhythm.

She felt him tense more and more as the heated tension built. Their movements were loud in the locked room, their breathing rasping, desperate, as they clung together. She opened her mouth wide and felt his tongue penetrating it as great sudden waves of delicious heat exploded in pleasure deep inside her body. She convulsed, crying piteously into his hard mouth as he thrust against her violently in the last harsh contractions of fulfillment.

He groaned hoarsely into her mouth, his powerful body arching downward and holding there, pushing, grinding, straining, as if even skin close wasn’t quite close enough. He shuddered over her even as her own body pulsed in ardent release.

She felt dampness under her palms as he rested heavily on top of her in the aftermath, his mouth open against her throat as he pulsed inside her.

“I can feel you there,” she whispered in his ear. Her legs tightened around him.

“I can feel you, too,” he whispered back, moving roughly from side to side to make her gasp with returning spasms of pleasure. “My God, what an explosion! I wasn’t sure I could bear it.”

“I know. Me, too.” She strained up toward him. “I love you so much. I love you more than my life!”

He groaned harshly at her ear and kissed her again, his hips moving helplessly against hers until he felt himself suddenly capable in seconds and gasped with returning desire.

“Yes,” she whispered at his ear, almost choking on the delight of his movements. “Can we, again? Can we? Oh, Cord, I want…you…so much!”

His mouth found hers and his movements deepened, lengthened, slowed, until she was shivering with every agonizing brush of his body on hers.

He laughed suddenly and rolled onto his back, still joined to her, still shivering. “My arm’s giving out,” he whispered. He looked up at her with fierce passion. “Take me.”

“Wh…what? How?” she exclaimed.

“Like this, you little puritan,” he chided, taking her by the hips and showing her the movement. He grimaced, shifting the wounded shoulder. “It’s too much, too soon, but I can’t stop. You can’t stop. Maggie! You can’t…stop!”

He groaned harshly. She sighed and set her lips, moving until she found the pressure and the rhythm that made him
gasp. After a while, it became exciting, and pleasurable, and then it was fun. She laughed. He laughed. Until the pleasure bit into them so deeply that thought, and speech, became impossible…

She lay beside him, damp and drained, with one leg thrown over his, so content that she never wanted to move.

“I’m not complaining,” he said at once. “But could you tell me what brought that on?”

She kissed his uninjured shoulder lazily. “It’s all a matter of trust,” she said softly. “I haven’t given you any. I thought it was time I did. So I had to show you that I could be a woman, without being ashamed of myself, of my past, of my body.” She sighed. “It’s glorious, being a woman, Cord.” Her hand rubbed slowly over the thick wedge of hair that covered his chest, and he arched toward it with a silvery groan.

“It’s glorious for me, too,” he managed to say, stilling her hand. “But you’re overestimating both of us. I’m wasted.” He laughed. “Really wasted!”

She smiled complacently. “I’m good,” she murmured.

“Oh, you’re better than that.”

She kissed his shoulder. “Thanks.”

He shifted, so that she was closer at his side. “What did Lassiter tell you, exactly?” he asked.

She stilled. “How did you know I went to see him?”

“Simple logic,” he murmured lazily. “You couldn’t rest until you knew what he’d told me about you.”

“He didn’t tell you anything,” she said knowledgeably.

“See?”

Her fingers curled into his chest. “He didn’t tell you. But I have to. Cord, when I was six, my mother died,” she began slowly, painfully. “My stepfather was left with me. He had a friend. They liked to drink beer and play cards, and they didn’t like to work. Neither one of them could hold down a job. For over a year, I was tolerated and not much more. My stepfather was going to put me in care, and then another man said I was a cute kid and he wondered if they couldn’t use me to make money.” She swallowed hard. “My stepfather and the other man got in touch with someone who was…into child pornography.” She felt him tense under her, but she didn’t stop. “They got another little girl and two little boys, and they made…movies of us…”

“Stop it!” he ground out, his hand tight in her long hair. “You don’t have to do this to yourself! I don’t have to know…!”

“Yes, you do,” she said, despite the trembling of her lower lip and threatening tears. “I have to tell you. You have to listen. They made movies of us, pornographic movies. We were forced to do things we didn’t understand, and if we didn’t, they used doubled-up belts on us. That made bad marks, and they were even madder because they had to stop until we healed. After that, they used…other punishments, ones that didn’t show.” She closed her eyes, feeling Cord’s powerful body tense with rage. Unconsciously her nails curled
into him. “I wasn’t in school and a truant officer came to find out why. It was while we were in front of the cameras…. He saw, through a window blind, and he went to get the police.”

“Thank God,” he muttered.

“Yes. We were ashamed and frightened. The police were very kind to us. They had a woman officer come to take charge of me and the other little girl. But as we went out, a neighbor woman laughed and said we’d grow up to be prostitutes, and it served us right, nasty little kids.” She shivered. “Nothing ever hurt so much.”

His arm tightened around her. “Finish it,” he said tightly.

“My stepfather and his friend went to jail. There was a long trial and it was a sensational story. It was in the papers, on television, radio. The videotapes were taken into evidence, but one got out and was locked away by someone—that’s the tape Stillwell and Adams had, I guess, because we were told that the others were destroyed eventually.”

“That was when you were taken to juvenile hall,” he guessed. “After the trial.”

“Yes. They…thought I was young enough that it wouldn’t damage me emotionally,” she whispered. “I spoke to a child psychologist a couple of times, and then I just sort of got lost in the system. There are so many little kids in the system,” she said helplessly.

He smoothed her hair and kissed it tenderly. “Yes. Too many!”

“My stepfather was killed in a riot in prison. The other man…I guess he’s still there, somewhere,” she added.

“He died of cancer two years ago, still serving time in a federal prison,” he told her abruptly.

“Oh.” She sighed heavily. “So they’re both gone…” She held her breath even as she felt him tense. “How did you know that?”

There was a long, ragged sigh. “I broke into the protected files, while we were in Amsterdam.”

She lifted up and looked at him. “So Lassiter was right? You knew, all along? And you still married me?” She sounded as if she couldn’t believe it.

“Of course I did, you idiot!” he said furiously. “What sort of human being do you think I am, that I could hold a past like that against you? I love you! I’m damned sorry for what you went through, and even sorrier that I never knew about it in the first place, but it doesn’t make a bit of difference to me!”

“It doesn’t?” she asked, stunned.

“No. It doesn’t.” He pulled her down and kissed her hungrily. “It won’t make any difference to you, either, eventually, Maggie,” he said gently. “You belong to me, now. I’ll cherish you as long as I live.”

She looked into his dark, angry eyes. “You belong to me, too,” she whispered. “Don’t you?”

“All of me,” he agreed huskily. “Heart, body and soul.”

She felt odd—relaxed, happy, unbearably and pleasantly surprised. She smiled slowly. “I seduced you.”

He chuckled, despite the gravity of the discussion they’d been having. “Masterfully, at that,” he murmured. “I’m shocked to discover that I’m so easy.”

Her eyebrows lifted. She smiled with delight. Until recent days, it had never occurred to her that intimacy could be so much fun. With Cord, life itself was an ongoing adventure.

“I’m very glad,” she teased. “It gives me confidence. I might do it again, in fact.”

“Wow! Something to look forward to,” he murmured deeply.

She smiled and laid her cheek against his biceps to search his eyes. “You aren’t disgusted,” she asked hesitantly.

“You were a child, Maggie,” he said gently, but with gravity. “How could I be disgusted? I don’t understand how any adult could exploit a child like that. It’s savage.”

“Greedy people don’t care how they make money.”

“True.” He traced around her soft mouth. “Amy should have told me,” he said. “You should have told me. Things would have been so different…”

“You’d have felt sorry for me,” she said simply. “Anything is better than pity.”

He winced. “I didn’t have a clue what your past was like. I seduced you, that night…”

She put her hand over his mouth. “And now I’ve seduced you, and we’re even,” she told him firmly. She pursed her lips then and looked down the length of his relaxed body, enjoying the pleasure of his firm, muscular physique. “But I did it better than you did, the first time.”

He laughed. “No argument there. But then,” he added, bending to kiss her, “you were sober.”

She kissed him back lazily. “You said you knew, in Amsterdam.” It explained his recent behavior, which had been a puzzle until now.

He nodded. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I was ashamed, shocked, hurt. You’ve never shared any of your worst pain with me. Not even about our baby, when you miscarried.”

“I didn’t trust you enough, and I’m sorry,” she replied. “I thought you’d never want me, really, and that it would just be one more rejection.” She searched his hard face lovingly. “Then you said that you loved me. I…was sure I was dreaming. I couldn’t quite believe it.”

“But you do now.”

“Yes. I do now, or I could never have told you about what happened. I didn’t know that you’d already ferreted it out.”

He smiled again. “Which proves how much you trust me,” he said softly. He kissed her nose. “Maggie, we’re going to have a lot of years together. And I’m going to wear your heart out loving me.”

“I won’t mind.” She traced his mouth. “But I wish we could have another baby, Cord.”

He drew her close. “You have to start believing in miracles, my darling,” he murmured drowsily. “You’ve had few enough in your life until now. But, trust me, they’re going to start popping out like measles.”

“Do you think so, really?” she asked.

“Really. Damn. I’m sleepy…”

The insistent knocking on the door woke them hours later.

“Mr. Romero!” Davis was yelling. “Are you okay? I’ve got a key, and I’m coming in…!”

“Davis, you crack that door, and you’re fired!” Cord raged just as the door began to open.

Davis saw a pile of clothing on the floor that led in a trail to the sofa, where a pair of furious dark eyes met him over the back of it.

The door slammed, a key dropped on the floor, and booted feet ran pell-mell down the hall.

Despite the near calamity of the situation, Cord looked down at a drowsy Maggie and burst out laughing. When she realized what had almost happened, and her gaze was directed to the clothing strewn all over the floor, she couldn’t help joining him. Life was glorious.