The Touch of Fire

by Linda Howard

His face was grim. “We’re going to talk about it.”

  She shook her head in a quick negative movement, then glanced away.

  “We have to, or neither one of us will be able to sleep tonight.”

  Her gaze strayed toward the rumpled bed, then darted away. “No.”

  He didn’t know if she was agreeing with his assessment or rejecting the very thought of lying down with him again.

  Deliberately he released her and braced himself on his right hand, drawing his left knee up and letting his wrist dangle over it. He could sense her acute attention to every move he made, even though she wasn’t looking directly at him, and she let herself relax a little as his casual posture reassured her.

  “I had dozed off,” he said, keeping his voice low and even. “When I woke up I was hard, and half asleep. I just reached out and pulled you to me without thinking. Then by the time I woke up, I wasn’t thinking about anything except getting inside of you. I was on the edge. Do you understand what I’m saying?” he demanded, putting his finger under her chin and forcing her to look at him. “I was almost ready to climax. I was that hungry for you, sweet-heart.”

  She didn’t want to hear his endearments, but the gentleness in that last word almost undid her. The expression in his gray eyes was piercing, turbulent

  “I won’t rape you,” he continued. “Things wouldn’t have gone as far as they did if I’d been good awake. But you were responding to me, damn it. Look at me!” His voice cracked like a whip as her eyes shifted uneasily away. She swallowed and returned her gaze to meet his.

  “You wanted me too, Annie. It wasn’t all on my part.”

  Honesty was a burdensome thing, she found, a goad that wouldn’t let her take refuge behind lies. It would be better if she could keep such knowledge to herself, but he deserved the truth. “Yes,” she admitted raggedly. “I wanted you.”

  An expression of combined bewilderment and frustration crossed his face. “Then what happened? What scared you?”

  She bit her lip and looked away, and this time he permitted it. She struggled with how much to tell him and how to phrase it. Her thoughts were shattered by the enormity of what she had just admitted to him, and the power of the weapon it gave him. Had he been a little slower, a little more careful—had he been awake—he would likely have accomplished her seduction, and now he had to know that was all that was required for success, for she had confessed her vulnerability.

  “What happened?” he prompted.

  “It hurt.”

  His face softened and a little smile curled his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, reaching out to brush her hair back from her face. He smoothed the strand over her shoulder, his touch lingering, caressing. “I know it’s your first time, honey. I should have been more careful.”

  “I think it would have to hurt under any circumstances.” She bent her head on her drawn-up knees. “I treated one of the prostitutes in Silver Mesa once. She had been brutalized by one of her customers. I couldn’t help remembering.”

  It occurred to Rafe that an inexperienced woman whose exposure to sex had been limited to the seamier, rougher aspects of it could be excused for being wary of the act. “It wouldn’t be like that. I won’t lie to you and tell you it won’t hurt, because it probably will, but any man who would deliberately tear a woman apart like that is a bastard and should be shot. I’ll take it easy with you,” he promised. With a shiver she realized that to him the outcome wasn’t in any doubt. He had taken note of the weakness she had exposed and doubtless planned to take full advantage of it. If he got her back on that bed.. . . She couldn’t allow it to happen.

  “Please,” she said. “Just take me back to Silver Mesa without doing that. Take me back untouched. I have to live with myself. If you have any mercy at all—”

  “I don’t,” he interrupted. “You won’t wake up branded. For a little while we’ll be as close as two people can get, and I swear I’ll make it good for you. Then I’ll get out of your life and you’ll go on as before.”

  “And what if I ever want to get married?” she challenged. “I know it’s unlikely, but it isn’t impossible. What would I tell my husband?”

  Rafe’s hand fisted with a deep-burning rage at the thought of some other man having the right to touch her, make love to her. “Tell him you rode horses astride,” he said roughly.

  She blushed, her face turning fiery red. “I do. But I won’t lie to the man I’ve married. I’d have to tell him that I’d given myself to a killer.”

  The words hovered between them, as sharp-edged as a razor. Rafe’s face went cold, and he got to his feet. “Get in the bed. I’m not going to stay awake all night because you’re a coward.”

  Annie regretted her last sentence, but arousing his anger had been the only defense she could find. Her virginal fear hadn’t been any protection at all, against either him or herself; he had known it, and had been slowly wearing her down. Only her shock, combined with the threat of pain, had enabled her to fend off his seduction the first time. When he had returned to the cabin she had been in despair that she would give in to him when next he touched her, he had mistaken the cause and labeled it fear, but she could still feel the throbbing need he had aroused deep inside her, and she knew better.

  At her hesitation, he leaned down and grabbed her arm, then hauled her to her feet. Quickly she put up her hands to ward him off. “At least let me keep on my clothes! Please, Rafe. Don’t make me take them off.”

  He wanted to shake her and tell her that a pair of cotton drawers wouldn’t protect her from him if he decided to take her. But maybe his unruly loins would behave better if she was encased in cloth, if he couldn’t feel her soft skin against him. “Lie down,” he snapped.

  Gratefully she crawled between the blankets, and curled up on her side away from him.

  Rafe lay down and stared at the shadowed ceiling. She thought of him as a killer. A lot of other people did too, and there was a huge price on his head. Hell, yes, he’d killed; he’d long ago lost count of how many men had fallen from lead he’d put into them, way before he’d started running for his life, but that had been war. The men he’d killed since then had all been after him, and when given the choice between the other man’s life and his own the other man had always come up a distant second.

  He wasn’t an upstanding citizen, the type a woman could dream about marrying and settling down with. Since he’d been on the run he had lied, stolen, and killed, and would do so again if necessary. His future looked pretty damn grim, even if he did manage to stay ahead of the law. He had kidnapped Annie and dragged her up here into these mountains, scaring her half to death. Looking at it like that, why would any woman want to bed down with him? Why should it sting so bad that she had hurled the word “killer” in his face?

  Because it was Annie. Because he wanted her with every bone, every ounce of blood in his body.

  Annie lay awake too, long after the fire had burned down, long after she had finally felt his tense body relax and his breathing deepen with sleep. She stared into the darkness with dry, burning eyes.

  She had to get away. She had thought she could resist him, and protect herself, for another few days, but now she knew that even one more day would be too long. The only safeguard around her heart now was the fact that she hadn’t fully belonged to him; once he took her, the heated intimacy would erode even that feeble shield. She didn’t want to love him. She wanted to pick up the threads of her life where they had fallen, and find everything unchanged.

  But if he took away that last tiny protection, nothing would be the same. She would go back to Silver Mesa, and she would spend long days trying to heal the sick and wounded, but inside she would be nothing but raw pain. She would never see him again, never know if he was safe and unharmed, or if the law had finally caught up with him and he had ended his life on a gallows with a noose around his neck. He might lie dead of a bullet wound, unburied and unmourned, while she spent her life waiting to hear from him, eagerly looking at
every tired and dirty stranger who rode into town before turning away in disappointment when it wasn’t him. It would never be him, and she wouldn’t know it.

  If she stayed, if she succumbed to the weakness, the fever of desire in her, she might bear his child. She would have to leave Silver Mesa, find some other place where she could practice medicine, and she would have to pretend to be a widow so her child, his child, wouldn’t bear the stigma of illegitimacy. Even if Rafe did survive and come looking for her, he wouldn’t find her because she would have left town and changed her name.

  She had thrown all sorts of excuses at him, all except the real one, that she didn’t want to love him. She was afraid to love him. He had been more right than he knew when he had called her a coward.

  So she had to leave. She was too terrified to sleep, for if she dared close her eyes she wouldn’t awaken until it was too late, and she wouldn’t have another chance to get away.

  She made herself wait, to minimize the length of time she would have to travel in the cold and darkness. She would try to leave about half an hour before dawn, when Rafe should be sleeping the soundest.

  She tried not to let herself think of the dangers, for she didn’t know how to get back to Silver Mesa. Had she been less desperate, she would never even have considered leaving on her own. All she knew was that he had headed west out of Silver Mesa, so she would go east. Should she get lost, and she knew she would, all she had to do was keep traveling east and she would eventually get out of the mountains. She would have to travel without a weapon, and would have to leave her big medical bag behind; the thought of it wrung her heart, but she accepted its loss. The instruments and medicines and herbs it carried could be replaced.

  She caught herself dozing and forced her eyes to open.

  How long had it been? She had lost all sense of time. She panicked, then realized that she would have to leave now or take the risk of staying too long. It might be the middle of the night rather than close to dawn, but she had to take the chance.

  With excruciating care she inched away from him, pausing for a long time between each movement. He slept on, undisturbed. It seemed to take an hour, but was probably only about fifteen minutes before she had maneuvered herself off the pine-needle bed and crouched on the floor. The chill went through her bare feet. Dismayed at the delay, she nevertheless took the time to crawl over to the fireplace and feel around in the dark until she found her shoes and stockings. It wouldn’t do her any good to lose her toes to frostbite.

  She only hoped it would soon be daylight and grow warmer, for she didn’t dare get her coat. It was lying close by his head, and his rifle was lying across it. There was no way she could get it without awakening him.

  The most difficult part was getting the door open. She eased to her feet and groped for the roughly whittled handle.

  Her chest was so tight with anxiety that she could barely breathe. She closed her eyes and prayed as she pulled the door open with agonizing care, cold sweat dripping down her spine as she waited in terror for a scrape, a creak, a noise that would bring him up from the blankets with that big pistol in his hand.

  The cold air rushing in was bitter and stung her eyes. Dear God, she hadn’t expected it to be this bad.

  Finally she had the door open enough that she could squeeze through, and then she faced the equally difficult task of closing it without disturbing him. A freezing wind blew through the trees, rattling the naked limbs like the bones of a skeleton, but except for that the night was utterly silent.

  She almost sobbed aloud with relief when the door finally rested in its frame again. There was a faint lightening of the sky overhead that made her think she had estimated the time right, after all, and dawn was only a few moments away.

  Picking her way in the dark so she wouldn’t stumble, she made it to the horse shed. She was already shuddering convulsively with the cold by the time she opened the door. Her gelding, roused from a doze, recognized her scent and blew a soft welcome that wakened Rafe’s bay stallion. Both animals turned toward her with curious snorts.

  It was warmer in the horse shed, almost comfortable with the heat given off by their great bodies. Too late she remembered that her saddle, like Rafe’s, was in the cabin, and tears stung her eyes as she leaned her head against the gelding’s side. It didn’t matter. She tried to tell herself that it truly didn’t matter, that she rode well enough to make it bareback. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have had any trouble, but these circumstances were far from normal. It was cold and dark, and she didn’t know where she was going.

  At least he’d left the saddle blankets on the animals to help them ward off the cold. Going strictly by feel, and murmuring softly to the gelding to keep it calm, she slipped the bridle and bit in place. He took the bit easily and stood still under her soothing hands. As quietly as possible she led the gelding out of the shed and closed the door behind her. The stallion blew a protest at losing his companion.

  She paused in indecision. Should she mount the horse now or lead him until there was enough light to see? She would feel safer on his back, but horses didn’t see all that well in the dark and often depended on the rider to know where they were going. She would be totally lost if the gelding stumbled and came up lame, so she decided to lead him.

  The cold was almost paralyzing. She leaned closer to the animal’s heat as she led him slowly away from the cabin.

  A hard arm swept around her waist and lifted her off her feet. Annie screamed; the sound was high and shrill and was abruptly smothered by a big hand covering her mouth. The gelding shied, startled by her scream, and the reins in her hand were suddenly tugged hard. The hand left her mouth to grab at the bridle, pulling the horse down and calming him. “You goddamned little fool,” Rafe said in a low, harsh voice.

  After returning the horse to the shed, he carried her into the cabin as if she were a sack of flour slung under his arm and roughly deposited her on the blankets. Swearing steadily under his breath, he stirred up the fire and threw wood on. Annie couldn’t stop shaking. She huddled on the blankets, her arms wrapped around her torso and her teeth chattering.

  Suddenly his control broke. He flung a stick of wood across the cabin and wheeled on her. “What’s wrong with you?” he roared. “Would you rather die than have me inside you? It’d be different if you didn’t want me, but you do. Tell me you don’t want me, by God, and I’ll leave you alone. Do you hear me? Tell me you don’t want me!”

  She couldn’t. She flinched from his rage, but she was too numb with despair to manage a lie. All she could do was helplessly shake her head, and shiver.

  He stood over her huddled body, his tall frame blotting out the fire. His broad chest was heaving like a blacksmith’s bellows. With a violence born of frustration he pulled off his coat and threw it, too. Annie noticed that he was completely dressed, which meant that he had been aware she had gone from the moment she had crept out the door, otherwise he wouldn’t have had time to have dressed. She hadn’t had a chance to escape.

  “It’s the middle of the night and you didn’t even take a coat.” His voice was harsh with restrained violence. “You’d have been dead within a couple of hours.”

  She lifted her head. Her eyes were dark pools of despair. “Isn’t it nearly dawn?”

  “Hell, no, it isn’t dawn! It’s about two in the morning. It doesn’t make any difference what time it is, daylight or dark, you’d have died out there. Can’t you tell how much colder it is? It’s going to snow, probably by morning. You’d never have made it out of the mountains.”

  She thought of being alone out there for hours, unable to see, getting colder by the minute. As short a time as she had been outside, she still felt frozen to the bone. She probably wouldn’t have lived even until morning.

  Rafe squatted down in front of her and she had to fight the urge to draw back. His pale eyes were savage in expression. His voice dropped until it was an almost soundless rasp. “Were you so afraid I’d rape you that you’d r
ather die?”

  Shock rippled down her spine. He had saved her life. She stared at him as if she had never seen him before, her eyes searching out each detail of his face. It was a hard, uncompromising face, the face of a man who had nothing to lose, a man who lacked everything that by her standards was needed to make life worth-while. He had no home, no friends, nothing good or warm or secure. If she had frozen to death it would have been less trouble for him, more food for him, yet he had come after her, and it wasn’t because he had feared she would make it back to Silver Mesa and tell someone—who?—where he was. He had known she wouldn’t make it. He had brought her back because he didn’t want her to die.

  In that silent instant she felt her last fragile defense crumble into dust.

  Hesitantly she reached out and placed her cold hand on his face. His beard rasped against her sensitive palm. “No,” she whispered. “I was afraid that you wouldn’t have to.”

  The expression in his eyes changed, became more intent, as he registered her meaning.

  “It was a losing battle against myself,” she continued. “I’ve always thought of myself as a virtuous woman, with standards and ideals, but how can I be virtuous if I feel such shocking things?”

  “How could you be a woman,” he countered, “if you didn’t?”

  She looked at him with a tiny smile on her lips. That was the heart of the matter, she supposed. She had devoted her entire life to being a doctor, to the exclusion of everything else, including the normal female roles of wife and mother. Despite the arguments she had used earlier, she doubted she would ever marry, for she would never give up her work and she doubted any man would want a wife who was a doctor. Now she was finding, to her astonishment, that her body had desires of its own, very womanly desires.

  She took a deep breath to steady herself. If she took the forbidden step she would have turned a corner in her life, and there would be no going back.

  The truth was there had been no going back from the moment she had felt her resistance dissolve. She faced the truth that she was already half in love with him, for good or ill. Perhaps she loved him completely; she was inexperienced in these matters and couldn’t say for certain exactly what she was feeling, only that she wanted to be a woman, his woman.