"Oh," was all she managed to get out.
A while later Hope fell gasping onto Ryan's chest. Her body rose up and down as Ryan also struggled to get his breath.
"You certainly are a passionate man, Ryan Daire," Hope panted next to his nipple.
He buried his fingers in her hair. "You make me a little crazy, honey. I've never had to work so hard to find my control than when I'm with you."
She lifted her head and regarded him soberly. "I like it when you lose control," she whispered. "But I want to thank you for being so patient with me that night, Ryan ... at the Sweet Lash."
"I knew how much you wanted to console those women, honey. It's part of who you are."
"No. Not on that night." He paused in stroking her hair. Her throat convulsed as she swallowed. "The night in the past—when you made love to me. The night Jack Fletcher was having us photographed."
Ryan supposed the silence that followed was only a few seconds, but it felt much longer.
"I didn't want to do it, Hope."
She put her fingers over his lips and made a hushing sound. "I know. I know. When I first saw the photographs I was shocked. But then I recalled the details of that night and of our escape: your insistence that I be very quiet when I spoke familiarly to you, but didn't reprimand me when I was loud during our lovemaking; the tense, pained expression I saw on your face at times; that room where Diamond Jack stood .. . the fact that he had your gun."
"Jack forced me to do it. He had us at gunpoint the entire time."
"I guessed that might be the case when I stood there in shock staring at those photographs. What a vile creature he was. But even so, Ryan, Jack couldn't mar the experience. You made love to me that night—made something that could have been a nightmare into something rare and beautiful." Her velvety eyes gleamed with tears as she regarded him soulfully. "Thank you for that."
"I'm just glad you didn't jump to the conclusion that I would have taken part in something like that willingly."
She shook her head. "I know you wouldn't. Seeing those photographs made me go over again in my mind everything that happened that night. Suddenly everything fell into place and I realized what I had to do."
"What?" Ryan asked, puzzled.
"I had to go back and retrieve those photographs, for one thing! Do you think I wanted my father to see those? Do you think I wanted Jack to blackmail him?"
Ryan sat up slightly as he stared at her in dawning amazement.
Hope's lips curved into a witch's smile before she got up from the bed and padded over to the fireplace, her long curls swishing sensually around her curving hips. A second later she reached into the hidden compartment and pulled out the black-and-white photographs that had started his strange, awesome story with Hope Stillwater.
He hadn't replaced them in the compartment before he returned to her time, Ryan recalled in rising confusion.
"Just where I left them," Hope said with a satisfied grin.
"You left them on the mantel."
She shook her head and came back to bed, setting the photos on the bedside table. "No. I put them back in the compartment several nights ago—in my time. That was after I'd learned the possible identity of the photographer from my friend Addie Sampson—you remember her? The madam at the Marlborough Club? She's in the know about so many things that take place in the Levee District. I went to the flat of a Mr. Michael Divorak.
He was indeed the man Jack had hired to photograph me being supposedly ravaged and debased. Mr. Divorak was more than willing to trade the photographs and the film, which I destroyed, in exchange for my grandmother's diamond brooch, especially since Jack had become very ill after you shot him and never paid Mr. Divorak for his labor."
"Why didn't you just destroy the photos as well?"
Hope gave him a puzzled look as she crawled back into his arms. Their perspiration-slick skin slid together in an erotic glide as he pulled her close. "Destroy them? I couldn't do that."
"Why not?" he asked with a bark of laughter.
She gave him a look like she thought he'd temporarily reverted to being a three-year-old child. "Well, it's only logical, Ryan. I had to make sure that you found the photographs someday, didn't I? How else was this ever going to happen?"
She glanced down significantly to their naked bodies pressed heart-to-heart.
Ryan began to laugh. Hope seemed surprised by his reaction at first, but then she joined in his mirth.
"It's hardly logical, witch." He leaned up and brushed his smile next to hers. "But it doesn't have to make sense to be right."