Pieces of Dreams (10 page)

Then again, there was a lesson he had vowed to teach.

The distinct possibility existed that he needed no excuse. The urge toward outrageous action was simply there, and he succumbed without a qualm.

One moment he was untying the raft, the next he was at Melly's side. He bent to thrust an arm under her knees and one behind her back. She gave a low cry as he lifted her against him.

Swinging hard, he splashed to the craft that was easing out into the current. He hoisted her to the wet, uneven surface, then pushed further from shore with a strong surge. As she wrenched over, clawing at the slippery logs, he pulled himself up beside her and swung his legs on board.

Lydia screamed. Esther yelled. Sarah called Melly's name in horror. The preacher, the sheriff and Caleb swung around, then pelted to the river's edge. The first two stopped, but Caleb kept coming, cursing as he plunged in waist deep and began to swim.

It was too late. The river current caught the raft, swung it around and away from the bank, and sent it skimming downstream.

“Don't worry!” Conrad called across the water. “We’ll be fine! I'm three-quarters pirate, remember?”

Chuckling at his own mordant wit, he reached for the crude steering oar at the stern and put his back into swinging it, helping the dipping, gliding raft along. He reached the main channel, let it take the rough craft. The yells and cries died away. Caleb, never a particularly strong swimmer, began to fall back.

Within a few short seconds, the raft was rounding the next bend. A half dozen more strokes of the steering oar, and all trace of the others vanished.

Water and trees, all around. Nothing but trees and water.

Conrad felt the rise of fierce exultation.

He had the river to himself.

Yes. And he had Melly.

Chapter Eight

For the next several minutes Conrad concentrated on putting distance between himself and any possible pursuit. His blood was up, the rising wind was in his hair, and he was sliding smoothly over the river's surface, guiding the raft with a rhythmic play of the stern oar that was as natural to him as breathing.

He had escaped and the woman he loved was with him. It couldn't last, and he knew it. But for this small piece of time he was a contented man.

The woman he loved.

God, yes, beyond doubt.

He had not meant it to happen. But then he had learned early in his ventures at sea that things seldom went as planned. A crooked smile curved his lips as he glanced down at Melly.

His pleasure vanished. She was huddled on her side in the center of the raft, knees drawn up, eyes tightly shut, face white as death. He remembered her cry as he’d hauled her aboard the raft, the stiffness of her body against him, the way she had clung before he set her on the wet logs. He had thought her reaction only surprise and revulsion at being on the dirty, water-slicked craft.

That wasn't it at all.

Melly was afraid to the point of terror of deep water. The old, half-forgotten knowledge bloomed like a fiery explosion in his mind.

Releasing the oar, he plunged to his knees beside her. The movement rocked the raft with a violent tilt, and he heard her soft moan. The small sound cut deep, sliced into his heart. He caught her shoulders and dragged her up, folding her into his arms.

“Oh, Melly, I'm sorry, so sorry. I should have remembered. I'm an idiot, a criminal idiot, but I've been gone so long, and you seemed so—No, I should have remembered. How could I forget? God, how could I?”

He was jabbering, but couldn't stop in his bone-deep remorse. She was so cold and racked by shudders, and her pretty dimity dress was stained and wet where water was washing through the logs. His fault, all his fault.

“Please, Melly, open your eyes. Look at me. Please...”

She heard him for she burrowed closer, but that was the only response. He lay back, braced against the support column for the oar, pulling her against his long length. His hands shook as he rubbed her arms in an attempt to warm her chilled flesh. She pressed her face into his chest so he felt her warm breath through his shirt. She moved nearer to fit the curve of her hip more firmly into the cradle of his legs.

Conrad sucked air deep into his lungs and stifled a groan at the sudden stir of fervid heat in his lower body. With wide unseeing eyes, he stared at the clouds mounting in massed darkness overhead.

Dear God in heaven, but he wanted...

He couldn't. No. What kind of bastard was he to even let it cross his mind? This was not what he had intended.

Or was it?

A shudder of denial rippled over him. No. His needs and desires were not important. He had to help her. There must be a way.

“Oh, Melly, sweet Melly, it's only water,” he murmured in low and unsteady supplication. “It's cool and wet and deep, but not evil. Men are evil; they'll take your life and maim your soul and mangle all your pretty dreams. You must not trust any of them, ever—least of all me. But water is life, just life.”

She seemed to be more still, as if she was attentive to his words. Dragging air into his lungs, he went on, giving her his hard-earned knowledge of the thing he loved most, after her.

“Water quenches our thirst, cleans us, comes raining down to save the parched green things of this earth, to save us. We need it. And it's beautiful. It holds all the colors of the world—yellow, brown, gray, blue, yes and green, so very green, in tropic lands. It gleams and sparkles like liquid sapphires far out to sea, like emeralds and aquamarines close in shore. Sometimes it's as clear and still as the finest mirror; other days the waves billow and roll, riding as high as the sky. Water can take a man down, hold him, drown him if he isn't careful. But it's a gentle death compared to most. And no harm is meant, ever. The river, the sea, the ocean is only there. Wild or calm, deep or shallow, it's only as nature made it.”

She was shaking less, he was sure of it, though fine tremors still coursed over her. Was there a little more color in her face?

At least her breathing was no longer so frantic. It was surer, deeper, so deep it flattened the firm globes of her breasts against him, threatened his sanity.

His voice not quite even, uncertain what he was saying in his need to reassure her, he continued. “The sea to me is siren and mistress and all the other things that men call it who love it. The sound and feel and look of it is inside me, a part of me. Yet it's just water all the same. It can harm us if we let it, yes, but also serve us. This raft floating along on the river can carry us to all the wide, free reaches of the world. If we let it, it could carry us past all the towns and right on out to sea, steadily taking us wherever we wanted to go. I wish it would...”

He trailed off, his breathing ragged as he fought for control of the ache that had filtered into his voice.

Melly stirred, sighing so her warm breath fluttered across his throat. “So do I,” she whispered.

The words were so soft he might not have heard if he had not been straining so hard for some sign, some sound. But he did hear, and his heart kicked into a hard beat.

At the same time, he was unbearably moved that he could reach her with his words. That he could banish her fears even for a moment was a gift beyond price, one that helped ease his guilt for having forced her to face them.

Holding her in his arms seemed to fill the emptiness in his soul, to soothe the loneliness he had carried with him for years. It was as if they belonged together, as if he had always known it. Still, the fierce shift of possessiveness he felt inside stunned him.

The top of his head felt on fire. The muscles in his arms corded. He lay perfectly still while he fought impulses too dark to be named.

Safe
. Melly felt so safe within the strong, confining circle of Conrad's arms. The horror in her mind receded, drifted away to nothing. Her last small shiver faded, along with the goose bumps on her arms. The core of warmth remaining inside her began to radiate outward again, leaving languid weakness in its wake.

The rocking of the raft and its steady glide were oddly soothing. The firmness of the shoulder under her cheek, the planes and ridges of muscles against her breasts gratified her in some way she did not care to consider. The need to lie as she was forever, happen what might, was astonishing.

Then the internal echo of the words she had spoken half in delirium reached her. As she recognized their startling truth, she opened her eyes wide and drew back to look at the man who held her.

There was torment in the rich, sea blue of his eyes, and something more that made her draw a strangled breath through parted lips. And suddenly every fiber of her being was awake, alive and aware.

She felt the quick rise and fall of his chest, the thud of his heart under her breast, the taut muscles of his abdomen and sheer, hard strength of him. His scent, made up of starched linen, bay rum, fresh air and heated male assailed her with such mind-swimming pleasure that the muscles of her belly contracted. The river gurgled and slurped around the raft. The wet logs rubbed with a steady rhythm, rocking her in intimate friction against his firmness at the apex of his thighs.

Warm, she was so warm. Somewhere deep inside a rich and indolent urge stirred, stretched, tingled along her nerves. The nipples of her breasts tightened. Her lips felt swollen, sensitive. She was sinking in the deep sea darkness of his eyes, buffeted by the storm she saw brewing there, drowning in its fury. And she didn't care.

Then Conrad's thick, gold-tipped lashes came down to shield his expression. He turned his head to stare at the passing shoreline.

“Hell and damnation!”

He shifted to sit erect. Then he cursed again in soft, foreign fluency.

“What is it?” she said, her voice husky and not quite even. She dragged the black, wind-whipped silk of her hair out of her eyes as she stared toward the featureless green shore.

“We've drifted past Good Hope. I meant to pull in there at the landing, be waiting when the others got back.”

“How far past?” Her question was punctuated by a rumbling sound of thunder that was much closer than earlier.

“I'm not too sure, though I recognize that big dead tree over there from the trip up river the other day. I should have been keeping track, but—” He stopped, folding firm lips over whatever he had meant to say.

Melly had always stayed as far away from water craft as she could get. Still, she knew there was a big difference between traveling upstream and down on a raft, even with a steering oar. The crude paddle at their stern could guide them but would not propel them upstream against the river's strong current.

She said, “We'll have to land and walk back.”

“No other choice,” he agreed with a nod as he disentangled himself and rose to his feet. Squinting against the wind, he scanned the bank some distance ahead of them for a suitable place to put ashore.

In that instant thunder boomed again. Lightning crackled immediately afterward, streaking down toward the water in a crooked line like a crack in the overturned bowl of the sky.

Melly flinched. As the brightness faded, a sharp, almost singed odor drifted on the wind.

Clutching at a knot in the raft’s binding ropes, she stared around her, frowning as she noticed how much the weather had changed in so short a time. Dark clouds blotted out the sun, leaving the sky almost as black as night. White-capped waves dotted the wide river’s surface. A white fog of mist torn from their crests made it difficult to see the distant shore line. Water slapped over the logs on which she lay, wetting her to the skin.

“Conrad—” she said with a shading of alarm.

“Right,” he said in grim agreement. “Whatever we're going to do, we'd better be quick about it.” Swinging with strong grace on the pitching square of logs, he reached for the rear oar.

She shuddered, feeling exposed and bereft without Conrad's protection. Her old terror hovered, threatening to swamp her just as the river seemed intent on swamping the raft. Yet at the same time she could sense the slow unfurling inside her of something near excitement.

There was a peculiar beauty in the gathering storm, majesty in the fury of the elements. And the man who stood over her was part and parcel of these things. Feet braced, he rode the raft as if it were a living thing. With his hair whipped into a wild, golden tangle and his shirt plastered to the hard sculpting of his body by wind-blown spray, he was fearless as he faced the late summer gale. With him there was the assurance of security and intimations of a consummate glory that pounded in her blood, swelling like a storm-tide in her heart.