Lord of Lightning Read online

  “Perhaps we could talk,” she said, holding open the screen, “once I’ve changed.”

  “I like to talk.” There was a studied casualness about him as he crossed the threshold.

  She followed him into the living room with the distinct feeling that she’d just been invaded by the enemy, at her own invitation. She couldn’t help wondering what he was thinking as he scanned her carefully preserved furniture with its rich flowery brocades. She’d bought it secondhand.

  Stephen wasn’t thinking about her furniture at all, except that, like everything else about her, it seemed to fit. He was still reacting to the effect she’d had on him when she’d opened the door. Wisps of blond had escaped her French braid, and in the white peignoir, she’d looked like a princess bride on her wedding night. Dressed for a fantasy, he thought.

  “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for coming by the class today,” she said, relaxing her hold on the robe’s drawstring bodice. “The kids loved it, and you really boosted morale. We might even have a shot at the prize money now, thanks to you.”

  He regarded her with interest. “Winning that contest seems very important to you.”

  “It is.” Glad of the opportunity, Lise explained about the possibility of the grade school’s conversion to a community center. “I want to show them that the students at Lincoln are learning important things, and doing important things,” she said. “Winning a national scholarship couldn’t hurt.”

  He seemed impressed with her efforts. “You’ve got the reason and the passion,” he said. “Now all you need is some luck.”

  “I think you’re our luck.” She flushed with laughter as their conversation drifted off into an uneasy silence.

  Lise wanted to suggest that they sit. She wanted to offer him something to eat or drink as she would have any other visitor, but this wasn’t a social call, she could tell. He had some specific purpose in mind. “You didn’t come to talk about the science project, did you?” she said.

  When he didn’t answer, she persisted, though every reasoning instinct she had told her not to. “Yesterday you said I had something you needed.”

  “I did say that.”

  “Is that why you’re here ... tonight?”

  “That’s part of it.” The setting sun glowed golden in the windows, and his eyes were luminous in the falling light.

  “But don’t worry,” he added softly. “I’m not going to drag you into a supply room and ravish you.”

  Lise reclaimed the robe’s lapel. “Thank goodness for that.”

  “I’ve got something else in mind.”

  “You do ...” Her throat went chalky and dry. A throw rug bunched under her bare feet as she edged away from him. “Would you like something to eat? Or to drink?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Are you sure?” she said, continuing to put distance between them as she backed from the room. “I’ve got some Anjou pears in the cooler. They’re delicious. I’ll get some cheese. And wine.” She reached the archway to the kitchen and waved him back. “Sit down! I’ll just be a minute.”

  The Brie in her refrigerator looked a little grayish, so Lise grabbed some crackers to go with the pear slices. A bottle of California chardonnay she’d picked up at the supermarket wasn’t chilled, but she took it anyway.

  Whatever he had in mind, she thought, loading up a tray, he would be doing it on a full stomach. Maybe that would slow him down until she could get some clothes on.

  The front door was hanging open and there was no sign of Stephen anywhere as she returned to the living room. She called out his name, set the tray on the coffee table, and walked to the door. It was rapidly growing dark outside, and a ripple of alarm moved through her as she scanned the yard. “Stephen?”

  She didn’t see his Land-Rover parked out front, and remembering how he’d disappeared from her classroom that afternoon gave her an uneasy feeling of déjà vu. If this was some sort of cat-and-mouse game he was playing, she wasn’t amused. Surely he didn’t think that sort of silliness was exciting to a woman.

  She ventured out onto the porch and down the steps, alerted by the soft rustlings in the grove of aspens alongside her house. A sudden breeze fluttered her cotton robe, but she doubted it was the wind making that noise. It sounded more like someone moving among the bushes.

  “Stephen? Is that you?”

  The small grove glittered with moonlight and shadows. Somehow Lise had managed to reach adulthood with remarkably few fears, but anything that went bump in the night qualified. It was only the niggling doubt that something might have happened to Stephen that kept her moving cautiously toward the trees.

  The breeze gusted and the rustle of leaves became an eerie rush of silver thunder. Lise’s senses quickened as she paused at the periphery of the grove. She thought she’d heard a voice through the noise, someone calling her name. “Stephen? Is that you?” Peering into the darkness, she moved along the border of the grove. Each tree seemed to spring to life as the passed it.

  The wind breathed her name again and she hesitated, her heart quickening as she turned in the direction of the sound. She scanned the trees and saw the silhouette of a man standing in the heart of the grove. Moonlight cast a silvery nimbus around the darkened form.

  “Stephen?” she called.

  The silence frightened her. She wasn’t close enough to discern whether it was actually a man, or just a shadow, but it was ominously still. The wind was silent as she edged closer, every instinct heightened. A crackle of sound to her right raised the hairs on her neck. She whirled, and heard someone come up behind her. A shadow fell across her path, and her heart ripped out of control “Who’s there?”

  The breezes swirled her hair, and she caught the scent of something familiar, sandalwood.

  “Stephen, if that’s you—”

  “I’ve come for you, Lise.”

  Thunder roared in Lise’s ears, the wild silvery thunder of a thousand trembling leaves. She closed her eyes and the sound filled her senses, cascading through her like water, breathing with her body. It was a lullaby, a symphony driven by brass and woodwinds, and in its clashing closing notes, Lise heard someone speaking to her. Stephen. He was telling her not to be afraid, promising not to hurt her....

  “Do as I say, Lise. Do you understand? Do exactly as I say.”

  Her breath caught in. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking you with me, away from here.”

  “Where? Why?”

  The wind whistled softly, darkly. It lifted her skirt with breezy, questing fingers.

  “You wanted to be abducted—”

  “What ... ? I never said that!”

  “You didn’t have to say it, Lise. I could see it in your eyes. You wanted to be swept away, transported.”

  “No—” Her breath shook in her throat.

  “Lise. Do as I say. Take off your robe.”

  His voice was low and male, hypnotic. She closed her eyes, trying to shut him out, but the soft command resonated through her. It was as powerful as a physical touch. It probed into vulnerable places, weakening her nerves and calling up all the riveting sensations she’d felt in the supply room. A sweet, frantic helplessness stole over her, and suddenly her heart was laboring in her chest.

  “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “Everything you want me to do. Everything you’ve ever dreamed about.”

  Dreamed about? How could he know that? She’d never told him her dreams. Her fantasies as a young girl.

  “Take off the robe, Lise.”

  “I can’t.” She couldn’t. Her arms and legs felt like leaden weights. Her heart was a crazy weightless thing, beating somewhere outside of her. She didn’t have the strength.

  She felt his hands run down her arms, easing off the robe in one fluid, effortless motion. The dull rip of cotton fabric made her wince as he tore off a strip of material. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s for your eyes—”

  “A blindfold? No
!”

  He caught her hand as she brought it up, restraining her gently. “I’m taking you to a place you’ve never been, Lise, a place where we can touch the stars. I want it to be a surprise.”

  She let out a trembling, disbelieving sigh. “I don’t like surprises, Stephen. I’ve never liked surprises.”

  “Sure you do.” A telling wryness softened his voice. “You’re just a little afraid of them.”

  “A little afraid? Stephen, I’m petrified!”

  He let out a soft groan of something that might have been laughter and drew her up against him, gentling her with his voice and his hands. “It’s all right, Lise,” he said. “Nothing will happen that you don’t want to have happen. This is your dream.”

  Her dream ... Lord, wasn’t she the one who secretly believed some dreams had to be shared to come true! Well that explained it. She’d tempted fate.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Lise,” he said. “I’d never do anything to hurt you. Do you believe me?”

  His voice was mesmerizingly husky. His hands were strong and bracing, so warm on her arms. Lise could feel his breath lifting her hair, sighing with sandalwood. Believe him, she thought, controlling the hysterical sound that bubbled inside her. She didn’t believe any of this! What was he doing to her? And why was she so gloriously weak, she could hardly stand up?

  “Lise ... do you want me to do this? Tell me now if you don’t, and I’ll stop.”

  The answer that swept into her mind was no. No, this was much too enthralling a dream for a woman who’d lived a life of careful restraint. No, she couldn’t. No, she shouldn’t.

  “I want it,” she said finally, her heart surging.

  His chest rose with a harsh breath. “The blindfold is a gift,” he said. “Welcome the darkness.”

  The fabric dropped over her head, and as he knotted it loosely, her thin nightgown swirled around her, belling out with the air currents. A gift? Lise sensed some elusive meaning, but her thought processes were too scattered to make sense of anything at that moment. She felt naked without her robe, and the rising heat of his touch made her dizzy and breathless.

  He released her then, standing back as the wind breathed silver lullabies, and the leaves trembled above her head. Her mind went crazy imagining what he might be doing. Was he looking at her? Could he see through the nightgown?

  She heard another rip of fabric, and her heart went wild.

  “Give me your hands, Lise. Put them behind your back.”

  Lise wouldn’t have believed it if someone had told her that this sort of thing could ever have happened to her. That a man would come into her life this way, a strange and powerful man who could make her do things she didn’t believe she was capable of. A week ago she wouldn’t have believed it.

  “Your hands, Lise. I won’t tie them tightly ... this is part of the dream.”

  A sound rose in her throat as she unlocked her clasped fingers. It was a shocked and trembling sigh. Her body arched instinctively as she put her hands behind her back, and he looped the fabric once around her wrists. What was she doing? What was she letting him do?

  “Everything you ever dreamed of, Lise.”

  Leaving the material draped over her wrists, he swept her up in his arms, moving so quickly, she was forced to press into him for balance. He covered what seemed like a short distance, perhaps fifty feet before he stopped. A car door creaked open and he lifted her into the seat.

  Moments later they were roaring down the highway.

  Lise was in a state of shock and wonder. Her world had gone dark, and yet she was acutely aware of everything that impinged upon her—the slightest swerve of the Land-Rover, the needlelike prickles of the upholstered bucket seat, the rubber floor mat vibrating beneath the balls of her bare feet. Her sensibilities were heightened to the point of pain. Even the delicate hairs on her arms pricked like sensors.

  Though she couldn’t see Stephen, his image stood out in her mind like a photograph. She was riveted to his every movement, to his shifts of weight and posture, to his occasional, audible breaths. If she could only read his mind. If she could only predict his actions. He had promised he wouldn’t hurt her. On a rational level, she was sure he meant it. And yet she felt totally out of control.

  It was the ultimate irony, she thought. It was her karma. She’d spent a lifetime avoiding physical intimacy with a man. She’d always believed that some ancient territorial instinct took hold once a man made love to a woman. He became possessive and autocratic. Her father had controlled nearly every aspect of her mother’s life, and the possibility of that kind of relationship had always terrified Lise. And yet, now, with this man, the loss of control was thrilling somehow. Why?

  Gravel ground out under the wheels of the Rover, and Lise swayed back against the seat as they lurched up a steep incline. The car kept climbing and climbing until finally she was afraid they would topple off the edge of some mountain peak.

  From somewhere beyond them a crow’s raucous squawking carried over the drone of the engine, and the wind roared against the windshield, but there were no specific sounds to tell her where they were.

  “Why can’t I see where we’re going?” she asked.

  “There is nothing to see. Yet,” he added.

  When they finally came to a stop, Lise pitched forward, gasping as a brawny arm broke her fall. He pressed her back against the seat with one powerful arm swing, crowding her breasts. She could feel heat and muscle through her nightgown. She could even feel the hair on his arms.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, concern in his voice.

  Before she could answer, his door had wrenched open and slammed shut. A wall of cool air hit her as her own door opened, and she was scooped out of the van and into his arms.

  “Lise—talk to me. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes—fine,” she said, “just out of breath.”

  Moments later she could hear the sound of solid granite beneath his feet, the crunch of pebbles as he carried her toward some unknown destination. They were climbing again, she realized. She burrowed into the warmth of his leather jacket as a gust of wind whipped at her hair.

  He pulled the open jacket around her, covering her against the night’s sudden chill. The air that penetrated her eyelet nightgown felt cool and sharp against her flushed skin. Occasionally she caught the scent of something she vaguely recognized—pine needles or brown, sun-dried sage—before it was carried away by the wind.

  It was his scent that enveloped her as they climbed toward what felt like the zenith of the world. The tangy odor of his leather jacket mingled with the musk of overheated muscles and a tantalizing hint of something that might have been sandalwood.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “I told you, Lise. To a place you’ve never been, a place where we can touch the stars.”

  He moved quickly and powerfully up what seemed to be the sheer side of a cliff. The image that swept her mind was a golden lion of a man carrying her off to his lair. She saw him vividly—the Norse warrior—rough in his seduction, hungry in his ravishment of her trembling body. The fantasy left her weak with anticipation, dizzy with fear and desire.

  And then her imagination truly went off on a tangent. Perhaps he was an alien life-form, she thought, imagining some luminous spaceship awaiting them on a distant and lonely mountain peak. The thought sent a hard shudder through her. A panicky burst of laughter burned in her throat. The air was getting thin, and she was getting hysterical!

  Eight

  STEPHEN WAS BREATHING deeply as they reached a plateau. Lise pressed herself against him for balance as they floated downward for an instant. And then the icy wind was gone, as though they’d taken shelter in a ravine.

  “We’re here,” he said, his breath warm against her face.

  She felt herself being tilted forward and realized he was setting her down. Even though her hands weren’t bound, she felt a precarious sense of vertigo. “Wait!” she cried as her nightgown
began to hike up. Cool air swirled through her legs, and an instant later rock-solid ground burned the soles of her bare feet.

  After being carried for so long, she felt weightless, as though she were spinning in space. With her vision gone, the disorientation was total. She stepped backward, gasping softly as she lost contact with him. “Stephen?”

  The ground was uneven, studded with rocks and crevices. A moment of terror caught her as she imagined stepping off the side of a cliff. “Stephen! Where are you!”

  “Here—”

  She felt a tug at her wrists and realized he’d drawn off the cotton fabric.

  “You’re all right, Lise,” he said, turning her around, pulling her into his arms. “I’ve got you.” She felt herself being lifted gently and settled back down. And then something hard and cool pressed against her back, an embankment. Thank Heaven, solid earth.

  His hands anchored her shoulders, a steadying force. Lise slumped against the granite wall behind her, letting her head tilt back, breathing deeply. Lost in the darkness of the blindfold, she shuddered as he released her.

  Several seconds passed before the trembling subsided, before she became aware of his silent presence again. “Stephen?” What was he doing now?

  “You make a beautiful captive,” he said.

  Her nightgown felt like liquid silk against her skin, a cool flutter of nothingness. She knew it must be transparent in the moonlight, which meant he was seeing what she’d seen in her bedroom, tightening thighs, breasts that were full and overripe, a woman’s body shamelessly in need of a man’s attention.

  He hadn’t touched her in any intimate way, but she knew he was going to at any minute. In the dark recesses of her imagination, she could already feel his hands lifting her nightgown, sprinkling her thighs with electricity. “Let me go,” she whispered softly, not quite sure why she’d said it. He wasn’t even touching her.

  He knew why she’d said it. He smoothed back her hair and lifted her chin. “I can’t do that, Lise.”