Nightfall (24 page)

It was icy cold, the panic that swamped her. "He didn't kill her," she said again, hearing the uncertainty in her own voice.

Sally ignored her. "You're not to break your promise," she said fiercely. "If I leave the children in your hands, you're not to go back on your word. Richard will be beyond stopping you, but I won't. If you do anything stupid that endangers those children, I will kill you. Do you believe me?"

Cassidy had no doubts whatsoever. "I would never anything to hurt them."

Sally stepped back, the fury vanishing from her, leaving her pale and sick-looking. "Good," she said flatly. "I trust you. God knows, I have no choice." She turned, starting back toward the cottage, when Cassie found words that surprised her.

"Do you love him?"

Sally stopped, but she didn't turn around. Her back was narrow and very straight, and she looked both strong and fragile. "I did once. To the point of desperation. He's good at that, you know. Getting a woman to love him."

Cassidy ignored the implications. "Do you still love him?"

Sally turned to look at her, and there was death and darkness in her eyes. "Not since he told me what really happened that night."

If Richard had any doubts about the very real danger Cassidy Roarke posed for him, that day would have wiped them out. He couldn't stop thinking of her. Remembering the taste of her skin, the scent of her neck, the texture of her nipples. He was like a randy teenager with a perpetual erection, and it had taken all his considerable willpower not to pull over by the side of the road and haul her onto his lap during the trip down to Neatsfoot.

He'd deliberately left her alone with the children, watching from a distance as they tested her, as only a five- and a seven-year-old can test. His children were nothing at all like their mother, thank God. They were resilient, fierce, openly demanding. Seth had already taken a fancy to her, climbing into her lap and chattering away amiably, and he suspected that Sally wasn't too pleased with how easily they were adapting. He couldn't let himself think about that.

He couldn't worry about Sally's well-being, or Cassidy's, or his own. All that mattered was his children's welfare. Cassidy had passed almost every test. He had one more for her, the most difficult of all. He wondered what he'd do if she failed.

Things had gone too far to pull back. If she backed out, betrayed him, then he would have no choice whatsoever.

At least then he would go to his death knowing he was getting no more than he deserved.

Odd, how Sally's clean, orderly kitchen left him unmoved. He leaned against the counter while she assembled sandwiches, surveying her neat movements, her trim figure.

"What did you say to her?" he asked casually.

Sally didn't pretend to misunderstand, nor did she waste their time by lying. "I warned her about you."

"I thought you might have. You don't like her, do you?"

"That's where you're wrong. As a matter of fact, I like her very much. Enough that I regret what you're asking of her."

"You were willing to give the same."

"But I didn't think I was in love you."

He said nothing, allowing her that fiction. He knew women, and he knew Sally. For all Sally's insisting that their short affair had come to a mutual conclusion, he knew she still wanted him. Still wasted her emotions on an impossibility. It would have grieved him, if he had any emotion to spare.

"You haven't told her the truth yet, have you?" Sally asked.

"No."

"Are you going to?"

"If I have no choice." He pushed away from the counter, going to stand by the window. The weather had shifted, darkened, from a glorious spring day to the promise of an angry storm. "I think I have to get back to the States."

"So soon?"

He'd learned to shut off his emotions two years ago. The presence of his children brought them forth again, combined with Cassidy Roarke's wild passion. It was all he could do to hide them from Sally. "The sooner I get back, the sooner I can have Mark make the final arrangements. You need to begin treatment, we both know it, and you've already waited too long."

"She'll just disappear? As I did?"

"If I can persuade her. Her father is dying. Once he goes, which I imagine will be fairly soon, she'll want to get away. By the time she realizes what she's done, the ties she's severed, it will be too late."

"Or so you hope."

"It will be too late," he said, his voice icy to hide his fear.

"Once I finish treatment, I can come back…"

"No. They've been disrupted too much in the last few years. First the loss of their mother, then their father."

"Not to mention their grandparents."

He said nothing for a long moment. "They'll stay with Cassidy. If I work things well enough, they'll assume she's just another victim of mine."

"What are people going to say when I show up again? Don't you think they'll ask questions?"

"I doubt anyone will notice. They're more interested in rumors than facts. If anyone asks, just say you were in an ashram in India, and that you didn't know I'd been accused of murder. Tell them you think I'm entirely capable of slaughtering my wife and children."

"Richard…"

"Do it," he said, his voice tight with tension. "It's the one last thing you can do for me. My children are dead. As long as the world believes that, they're safe."

"I can't…"

"You've done this much for me already, Sally. Don't let me down at the last minute."

She looked at him, her dark brown eyes filled with love and hopelessness. "I'll do it," she promised.

His children wept when they left, early that evening. He lied to them, because he had to, telling them that Daddy had to go back and work, but that he'd be coming back by summer. It was small comfort. He'd be dead by summer. He would never see his children again.

"May I come again?" Cassidy asked them, her voice slightly unsteady, her green eyes bright with unshed tears. "If your father can't make it, do you mind if I come alone?"

The response was everything he could have hoped for, and it was enough to keep him from losing his tenuous grip. They would survive. They would thrive. He was leaving them in the best of hands.

He didn't say a word as they drove back north. He was driving too fast, and he knew it, and he didn't give a damn. The mindless rage was simmering through his veins, and there was no way he could vent it, apart from driving much too fast in Cassidy's car.

She sat next to him, eyes closed, face shuttered. He could see the white streaks her tears had made on her pale cheeks, and the sight of that enraged him even further. He could feel the blackness closing in around him, and it frightened him. He'd been fighting it for so long. Now, when things were finally in place, he couldn't allow the darkness to destroy everything. One final lie, and everything would be safe.

If he could trust her. If he could trust his power over her, that power he'd worked on so painstakingly. It had been an assault, long and well-planned, and she'd succumbed, just as he'd expected her to. She was his, now and forever, completely, and if he'd made the fatal mistake of being caught in his own web, then there wasn't that much time to suffer for it. If loving her made his eventual punishment that much harder, it was the least he deserved.

She said nothing as he drove faster and faster, the demons pushing him toward the edge, dragging her along. The speedometer crept higher and higher, the rain lashed against the windshield, and the roads were slick and narrow. He didn't care. He wasn't going to die, not this way, not with her beside him, even if some crazy part of him wanted it. Wanted her death, with his, tied together in a kind of mad eternity.

He took a corner too fast, the wheels lost their purchase, and he felt the car begin to slide. Slide toward the cliff, and he watched it go, calmly, wondering whether they'd tumble, end over end, down into the fierce and angry sea. He was entirely willing.

And then, at the last possible moment, he jerked the wheel. The car stopped its death slide, skidding around on the wet, deserted pavement and ending up against the bank of the far side, headlights spearing crazily into the black rain.

The car stalled out. He dropped his hands, closing his eyes, and in the dark of the silent car, he could hear her breathing, rapid, panicked, he could hear the pounding of her heart.

He wanted to feel her heart against his hand, he wanted to lick her skin, he wanted to taste her tears. He opened his eyes in the darkness, to meet hers.

She looked like a woman who had faced death, willingly. Her face was pale, her eyes huge, and her car was too goddamned small.

He stumbled out into the rain, dragging her with him. They tumbled down the hillside, slipping in the mud, her hand tight in his, and when they ended up beneath a twisted yew tree, it took less than a moment for him to find her, with his mouth, with his hand. She was wet and ready for him, she would do anything he wanted, and he knew it. She would go down on him in the rain, kneeling in the mud, if he wanted it. He could take her any way he wanted, and she asked for nothing in return. Nothing but his soul, which she'd stolen when he hadn't been looking.

He wanted to push away from her, but he couldn't. He was caught, just as she was, and her breasts were cool and damp in his mouth as he pushed her down in the mud, ripping her clothes open. She was slick and ready, but this time, in the cold, in the rain, he perversely wasn't going to rush it. He was going to screw her, long and slow, in the mud, in the night, so that when he finished with her she would be beyond defenses, beyond help. She would be his, body and soul.

She thrashed beneath him, trying to hurry him, hot and eager, and his power over her made him feel both cruel and alive. He slid his fingers between her legs, testing the heat and dampness, then moved farther, between the dark cleft, so that she jerked beneath him.

He kissed her, hard, and she kissed him back, arching against him. He put his jeans-clad knee between her legs, pressing against her, rocking against her, and heard her faint whimpers, felt her fingers clutching against his shoulders, as the rain poured down around them.

He caught her hands and forced them back, into the mud, as he rocked against her. He hadn't even unzipped his pants, and he could feel his cock pressing against the rough denim, a pleasure pain that equaled what he was doing to her. She was beyond coherent thought, her hair was wet with rain and mud, and he was so far gone he wasn't sure if he'd be able to shuck off his pants and finish.

She was crying now, making small, helpless sounds of distress beneath him as she writhed, and he took pity on her. And on him. Levering himself off her body, he unfastened his jeans, releasing himself into the cool night air.

"Tell me," he whispered low, a dark, cruel force driving him. "Beg me."

Her only response was a harsh, choking noise, as he put his cock against her, feeling the heat and dampness and need of her. He sank in, hard, filling her, and the sound she made would haunt him until the day they killed him. A low, keening wail of despair and completion, as her body tightened around him, waves and ripples of reaction as she climaxed.

He came immediately, not regretting it, shoving her down into the mud, exploding inside her with the pent up fury and obsession that had been simmering all day. He was only vaguely aware of the long, endless orgasm that shook her, clenching him tightly within the milking depth of her body, and when he finally collapsed on her, he could still feel the ripples caressing him.

He could do it again, he knew it. He was still hard, and he wanted to, he wanted to just keep fucking her until there wasn't anything left of either of them.

And then he heard it. The faint sound of smothered tears.

He rolled off her, into the mud, shocked. Shocked at the guilt, the sorrow that swamped him.

"Cassie," he whispered, his voice harsh. "Baby."

The endearment was another shock, one he wouldn't have thought he could utter. He pulled her into his arms, tight against him, as she shook, sobbing. He didn't know why she cried. Because he'd screwed her in the mud, because he'd hurt her. Or something far more frightening.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked urgently, pushing her hair away from her tear-streaked face. Her eyes were tightly shut, but tears were streaming out, mixing with the rainwater and the mud from his hand. "Cassie, baby, tell me what's wrong."

She just kept crying. Diana had been a master of crying—he'd learned to hate women's tears, and the various manipulations they hid. He'd learned to ignore it, to listen to a woman sob and wail and not feel anything at all. Cassie lay in his arms, weeping, and he couldn't bear it.

"Cassie, love," he said, and his own voice was breaking, his powerful control was breaking. "Don't." He kissed her, kissed her tear-streaked cheeks, her mud-streaked brow, her chin, her nose. "Don't cry, baby. I won't hurt you again, I promise. Just don't leave me. Don't run this time, Cassie, God, don't run."

He was scarcely aware of when the sobs halted. Her arms were tight around him, her eyes were open, swimming with tears. "I won't run, Richard. I swear it."

And fool that he was, he believed her.

«
^
»

They called it a bed-and-breakfast, but as far as Cassie was concerned, it was the closest she'd come to an American motel since she'd set foot in England. The long low whitewashed structure was hidden behind the old coaching house, its newness artfully disguised by darkened timber and texture paint, but the beds were queen-sized and new, the televisions in each room had remote controls, and she could even work the shower.

She needed it. Mud plastered her hair, was ground into her skin. Richard had tugged her clothes back around her with impatient, yet gentle hands, then pulled her back up the slippery hillside to their abandoned car. It seemed as if they'd been down in the mud for hours, but during that time no one had driven by and noticed the car halfway off the road. Or at least, no one had bothered to investigate.