What Price Love?

social mask. She tasted him, the untamed, not entirely safe, thrilling, exciting, wickedly sinful him.

She drew him to her. With her lips, with her body, she tempted and taunted, lured him with a wild and wicked promise of her own, offered her own passion, her heart and soul, in return for his.

The kiss turned greedy; her head started to spin.

One arm tightened, possessive and steely, about her waist. His other hand rose, pushing aside her loosened curls to frame her face-

Pain stabbed, sharp, intense; she jerked, winced, before she remembered…

“What is it?” He’d lifted his head on the instant. He looked at his fingers, then pushed back her curls. “My God, you’re bleeding!”

Pris fleetingly closed her eyes. Damn! “It’s just a little nick.” Opening her eyes, she tried to push back, but the arm about her waist gave not an inch.

“A nick? When…”

Dillon realized. He saw the faint powder burns around the ragged tear in the rim of her shell-like ear, the perfect alabaster curve desecrated beyond repair. She wouldn’t die, the wound would heal, but that perfect curve would never be perfect again.

Remembered terror, he discovered, could be worse than the original fear. Could be deeper, broader, courtesy of time and the ability to think, to imagine, to fully comprehend what might have been.

An icy rage filled him, fueled by that stark terror. He blinked, and all he saw was the black well of despair that had so nearly claimed her-and him.

“You got this when you tried to save me.” His voice was even-too even-his tone deathly cold.

Her head rose; his hand fell from her face as she angled her chin at him. “I didn’t just try-I saved you. You were just standing there, letting him shoot at you!”

Everything male in him rose up and roared, “Damn it! That’s not the point!”

She didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, she leaned nearer and face-to-face clearly enunciated, “It is to me. You were about to get shot-what did you expect me to do? Sit safely shielded behind you and wring my hands?”

“Yes!” He forced his hands from her; it was that or shake her. “That’s precisely what you should have done.”

She pulled back and stared at him. “Don’t be daft.”

“Daft?” He clutched his hair and swung away from her. “Damn it, Pris, you were nearly raped. Would have been raped if Rus and I hadn’t got there in time-and all because of me. Because of my wonderful plan to trap Mr. X, to protect us, to…to do what duty suggested.”

Unyielding before the hearth, Pris frowned at him. “Yes, I know. But you did get there in time.” She watched him pace before her, read the agitation in every wild and violent movement. What was this?

He shook his head. His face was set. “Yes, but…none of that was important. I thought it was, and at one level it is, but not at the level that matters most. You are important, and you-and what we have, you and I-all of that I put at risk.” He halted, met her eyes, his gaze dark, turbulent, a little wild. “Bad enough. That’s something I’ll have to live with-something I’ll never do again. Never risk again. But”-his hands fisted at his sides-“then you-you risked yourself! Trying to save me! Don’t you ever do such a foolish thing again!”

She returned his furious glare, opened her mouth-

“Don’t think I’m not grateful, but…” He dragged in a breath, spoke through clenched teeth. “You are going to promise me you’ll never, ever, put yourself at risk again, not for anything. You promised me you never would-”

“Not unless you were with me! You were! That was the point-I had to save you.”

“I don’t care! You are going to promise me you’ll never, ever, regardless of anything, risk yourself in any way what ever again!”

She narrowed her eyes on his. She let a telling moment tick by. “And if I won’t?”

His nostrils flared, his chest swelled; his entire body went rigid. “If you won’t, then I’ll just have to make sure you never again have the chance…”

She listened, amazed, as he described in inventive detail just how he would restrict her freedom, hem her in and restrict her ability to ever put herself in the way of any risk-no matter how infinitesimal.

How he would make it totally impossible for her to be her.

If it had been anyone but him, she would have screamed her defiance. Instead, she watched him pace, rant, and rave-watched his sophisticated carapace crack and shatter and fall away, leaving him exposed, vulnerable…

Blocking out his words, she concentrated on what he was really saying.

What emotion was riding him, driving him.

You are my life. You mean too much to me.

She saw, understood, and waited.

Eventually, he realized she wasn’t reacting. He stopped and looked at her. Frowned. “What?”

She couldn’t tell him what she’d seen in him, how it only made her love him more. She met his gaze, and quietly said, “Do you remember, when I asked how much you would surrender…for me, for my love? Do you recall what you replied?”

He studied her for a long moment. His lips thinned. “‘How much do you want.’”

She nodded. “You’ll also recall I didn’t reply.” He stiffened; before he could speak she continued, “This”-she waved between them-“is part of the answer.”

Stepping away from the fire so the flickering light reached his eyes, she held his gaze. “What I want from you in return for my hand is a partnership. A partnership of equals, each with our own strengths, our own weaknesses, maybe, and also our own wills and needs and wants.”

Her gaze locked with his, she tilted her head. “We’re alike in many ways-you understand how I feel. However you feel about me, I feel the same about you. So no, I won’t sit meekly by when your life is at risk, any more than you would if mine were. I will always claim the right to act, to choose my path.” She let her lips curve. “Just as I chose you-not just now, but in the summer house by the lake. That first time wasn’t because of the register, although I allowed you to think so. That time, as with all subsequent times, was simply for you. Just you. You were all and everything I’d ever wanted, ever dreamed could be, so I gave and took, all those nights ago.”

Drawing breath, she spread her hands; speaking truth at this level, this directly, was harder than she’d thought. “And what we have now-you, me, and what’s between us-that’s created by both of us, and if I lose you, I lose that, too. You can’t expect me not to act to protect you, just as you would me. We’re wild, we take risks, but we protect what’s important to us-that’s how we are, how we’ll always be.

“I can’t change, any more than you can. The price of my love is that you accept me as I am, not as you-or at least some part of you-might prefer me to be. My price is that you acknowledge what you know to be the truth-that I won’t be your possession, yours to rule, that I’m as wild and reckless as you, that what ever danger you court, I’ll be there, by your side, that what ever comes in the future to threaten us we’ll meet it together, defend us together.”

She paused. There was no sound in the room bar the crackling of the fire. She continued to hold his gaze, too dark for her to read, and slowly raised her hand-offered it to him. “I’m willing to accept you as you are-exactly as you are, all you are.” His fingers closed, tight, about hers. She smiled. “I can’t ask if you’ll pay the price for my love when you already have it…but will you do the same for me? Will you accept me as me?”

For a long moment, he didn’t answer, then he closed his eyes and sighed. “Not willingly.” He opened his eyes; a flame lit the darkness. “But I’ll do it. I’ll do anything for you.”

Dillon stared into her emerald eyes, and wondered where his violence and the terror behind it had gone. He could only marvel at her ability to cut through to the heart of him, to the soul of his needs, and soothe him. “To night…” He grimaced. “Just now-”

She came into his arms. “To night’s behind us, past-and we have more than enough to deal with tomorrow.” She held his gaze for a moment, then laid her hand on his cheek. “Let it go.”