by Nan Ryan
“No. We’re going down inside,” he said and winked at her.
Marietta frowned. “Now, Cole, I don’t know about that. Even if we could find a way down, which I’m not sure we can, Mrs. Longley said that the Comanches live in the canyon.”
“As I said, it’s a huge canyon. The Indians will never know we’re there.”
“Promise?”
He nodded. “Their stronghold is in the northernmost reaches of the canyon. We’re well to the south of them.” He told her, “You and I are going down into the canyon and make camp by the river. You lose the bet, baby, and I mean to collect.”
Relishing the thought of a bath, Marietta said, “What are we waiting for, Texan?”
Back in the saddle, Cole carefully guided the black along the edge of the canyon’s rim until he found a place to start a safe, gradual descent. While a nervous Marietta clung tenaciously to his waist, he neck-reined the responsive stallion down a serpentine trail where the towering cliffs were layered with bright bands of orange, red, brown, yellow, purple and maroon. Patches of juniper, mesquite, sunflower and prickly pear grew along the colorful slopes.
Adding to the canyon’s rugged grandeur were numerous pinnacles, buttes and mesas rising majestically from the level floor. When at last they reached the flat, grass-covered floor, Cole began scouting for just the right place to spend the night.
Thick groves of cottonwood along the river offered ample shade and total privacy. Firewood was plentiful. Grass covered the smooth riverbanks, making it ideal for spreading the blankets. But it was the distinctive sound of unseen water splashing that piqued his interest.
Cole pulled up on the black, turned his head and listened. “Hear that water falling into the river?” he asked.
“I do,” Marietta said, delighted.
Sunset in Palo Duro Canyon.
Marietta, unashamedly naked, stood thigh deep in the river, singing as she shampooed her long, heavy hair. Cole, fully clothed, lounged lazily on the blanket, smiling with pleasure as he watched her.
The bloodred rays of the sun fell on the red-walled canyon and on the winding Red River below. On the far side of the expanse, directly across from where they’d made camp, the mist of spray spilling over the rocky eight-foot waterfalls was tinged a luminous red-gold from the fading sunlight. The calm waters of the river were painted that identical soothing hue.
And the pale flesh of the woman standing naked in the river was tinted the same warm reddish-gold.
Smiling, Cole watched her.
Then all at once, like a bolt out of the blue, it dawned on him.
Marietta was singing.
She was singing and she wasn’t all that bad to hear. Not nearly as punishing as he remembered. Miraculously, the sound of her singing no longer grated or gave him a headache. It was, incredibly, almost pleasurable to listen to her.
Cole’s forehead knit. What the hell was happening here? Had she suddenly improved? Had he been too hard on her before?
Baffled, Cole rolled up into a sitting position and stared at Marietta. Arms raised, flaming hair now richly lathered, mouth open wide in song, she was a vision in all her naked glory. She looked so young and beautiful and happy, he felt his eyes smart. He wished he could keep her just as she was now for all eternity.
Cole swallowed hard.
He knew that the sight of her standing naked in the dying sunlight of this yawning canyon would be etched in his memory forever. His chest suddenly felt tight. He stopped smiling. His eyes clouded. He realized, as he watched her sink into the water to rinse the soap from her hair, that even after he had left her, he would never escape her.
She would still be there in his heart.
“I’m ready to scrub your back!” Marietta called out to him, sweeping her clean hair back off her face and holding up the piece of soap.
Cole’s smile immediately returned. For the moment she was his. He wouldn’t think past the here and now.
“I’m coming,” he shouted and swiftly stripped down to the skin.
“Bring a cloth,” she instructed.
Cole snapped up his silk bandanna and draped it around his neck. Marietta squealed when he came splashing into the warm water and grabbed her. He drew her up against his long, lean body, clasped his hands behind her, lowered his head and brushed a kiss to her smiling lips. She swooned and curled up against his chest contentedly. But he didn’t let her stay there. He laughed, released her and sank into the water.
Cole sat down flat on the sandy river bottom, looked up at Marietta and said, “Payoff time, sweetheart.” He gestured over his shoulder to his bare back.
Marietta nodded and started to move around behind him. He stopped her. He wrapped his arms around her thighs, drew her to him and pressed his face against her glistening belly.
“If you do a good job of washing my back,” he told her, “I might be persuaded to return the favor.”
Marietta shoved him away, freed herself from his grasp, reached down and slipped the bandanna from around his neck. She stepped behind him, went down on her knees and dipped the neckerchief in the river. She dribbled water across his bronzed shoulders. His taut muscles gleamed wetly in the fading sunlight and she thought him the most beautiful creature God had ever created.
“What are you waiting for?” he said over his shoulder. “Get to work, woman.”
“Who says you’re the boss around here, Texan?” she asked with a laugh, reached up and yanked hard on a dark lock of his hair. When he grumbled and threatened to retaliate, she smiled and began slowly rubbing the bar of soap in tiny, tantalizing circles over his brown back.
“Ahhh,” Cole moaned his approval. “That feels good.”
“How’s this?” she asked and dragged the soaking bandanna over the spots she had lathered.
“Heaven,” he said, then sighed contentedly when she dipped the neck piece back into the river and thoroughly rinsed his back.
If he was enjoying it, so was she. Marietta found scrubbing Cole’s back to be a highly sensual experience. His was such an exquisite back, darkly tanned and deeply clefted and skin as smooth as silk. It was all she could do to keep her mind on her task.
When she finished giving his back a leisurely, thorough scrubbing and had rinsed away the last traces of suds, she couldn’t resist slipping her hands under his arms and around his chest. Cole groaned his approval. As she had done with his back, Marietta began making soapy circles in the hair covering his chest.
But when she allowed an inquisitive hand to start sliding down his slippery belly, Cole gripped her wrist and stopped her.
“No you don’t,” he said and pulled her around in front of him. “Your turn, baby. Give me the soap.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said with a laugh and scooted back away from him.
“Fine. But you don’t know what you’re missing,” he told her, rising to his feet.
She squealed, supposing that he intended to come after her.
To her surprise, Cole waded right past her, moving swiftly out into the deeper water. When the river rose up past his waist, he fell over onto his belly and began swimming.
Marietta stopped laughing. She tossed the soap and soggy bandanna onto the bank, turned and anxiously waded after Cole, calling out to him, “Wait for me!”
He didn’t.
He continued to slice through the water, his powerful arms pulling him farther and farther away. Marietta frowned, irritated, but sank into the water and began to swim after him.
He was much the swifter of the two, his legs and arms longer. The distance between them quickly widened. Marietta was annoyed with him. Twilight was not a half hour away and she was ready to get out of the water. She did not want to be all the way across the wide river when night fell.
“Cole,” she called, spitting water as she attempted to stroke more rapidly, “you’re getting too far ahead. Come back here. I can hardly see you.”
No answer.
Cole continued to swim across th
e river. Marietta, already growing tired and short of breath, doggedly swam after him. And suffered no small degree of panic when all at once she could no longer see him. He had disappeared. Her lungs burning, her body growing chilled, Marietta swam on, not sure she could make it to the far side. Equally worried that she might not be able to swim back to where she had started.
Short of breath and frightened, Marietta finally reached the loud splashing falls on the river’s far side. But there was no sign of Cole. She dog-paddled and turned in the water, squinting, searching nervously for him. She opened her mouth to call to him and closed it without making a sound. She hadn’t thought about it before, but suddenly she was worried that there could be Comanches nearby and they would hear her.
Her eyes widened with fear and she could hear the beating of her heart in her ears. What if Cole had gotten the bends, slipped beneath the surface and drowned? What would she do if something had happened to him?
Marietta flipped around and stared at the rushing falls spilling down over the rocks. She hoped she would spot Cole treading water beneath the loud, splashing water. She saw nothing but great torrents of water plummeting into the river.
“Damn you, Cole Heflin!” she shouted, the danger of lurking Comanches quickly forgotten. He hadn’t drowned. He was an excellent swimmer. He was playing games and she was not amused. “Where are you? Answer me this minute, Texan!”
Treading water, she turned to look back out over the river. And screamed when a muscular bronzed arm snaked out through the rushing falls and grabbed her.
Thirty-Four
“What kept you?” Cole shouted to be heard as he drew the startled Marietta back through the roaring water and into a totally dry cavern behind the falls.
Quickly turning to face him, an angry Marietta swept her hair back off her face then began pummeling his chest with her fists.
“Damn you, Heflin,” she shouted. “I will never speak to you again!”
“Now, there’s an attractive idea,” he teased, easily deflecting her blows with raised hands. “A totally speechless woman. I didn’t know there was such a thing.” He laughed and slipped his arms around her.
“Very funny!” she said, squirming to free herself. “Let go of me, I’m not staying here with you.”
“Ah, sweetheart, I’m sorry,” Cole said, refusing to release her. “Don’t be angry.”
Continuing to push futilely against his chest, she said, “Why shouldn’t I be angry? You swim off and leave me, then hide from me while I…”
“It was the only way to get you over here,” he explained. “Had I suggested you swim across the river, would you have done it?”
“Certainly not. It’s too far. And for your information, my arms got very tired and I almost drowned! I’m not sure I can make it back.”
“You won’t have to,” he promised. “I’ll take you back. You know I will.”
“Fine. Let’s go right now before it starts turning dark.”
“Not just yet,” he said. “Look around you, Marietta. I wanted to show you this cavern. It’s my secret place. Now it’s our secret place.”
Beginning to soften a little, Marietta grudgingly glanced around. She was immediately enchanted. They were standing in a small, dry crater carved from the rock. A cozy room that was softly illuminated in an ambient red-gold light from the rays of the setting sun filtered through the splashing water. A hidden, private place where the only entrance was directly through the rushing falls.
“You knew this grotto was here?” she asked at last.
Nodding, Cole said, “I did. I found it one summer when Keller Longley and I camped in the canyon.” He released her, stepped back and said, “There’s something I want to show you.”
Ducking to keep from bumping his head on the cave’s low ceiling, he moved to the back wall and sank to his knees. Marietta followed, stopping to stand beside him. Cole smiled when he located the initials he had carved in the stone one hot afternoon that long-ago summer.
“Look, Marietta, here are my initials in the rock,” he said, tracing the crudely etched C.H. with his forefinger. “It’s been more than a dozen years since I put them there.”
Intrigued, Marietta slowly sank to her knees beside him and studied the initials. “Just think, Cole, those initials will be there long after you and I are gone. They’ll stay just as they are forever.” Then, childlike, she said, “I wish you had a knife with you.”
“I didn’t use a knife,” he said, then looked around for a loose rock. When he found one that was suitable, a piece of rock with a sharp edge, he told her, “I used an Indian flint arrow. Shall I add your initials to mine?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling, liking the idea very much. “Put them right next to yours, please.”
Cole immediately went to work. While he scraped at the canyon’s rock wall, he looked at her and asked, “Your name really is Marietta, isn’t it?” When she hesitated, then nodded, he said, “And Stone? Is that actually your last name, or is it your stage name?”
Again he detected the slightest hesitation before she replied, “One initial is enough. Just carve the M for Marietta.”
Puzzled, Cole said, “If you’re sure that’s the way you want it.”
“It is.”
In moments, the letter M was artfully carved directly beside the C. H. “There,” Cole said, admiring his handiwork. “Does that suit you?”
Marietta smiled at him, reached out, traced her initial and said honestly, “You’ll never know how much. Thank you, Cole.”
“You’re very welcome, sweetheart.” He touched her cheek and said, “Sure you don’t want me to add the S for Stone?” She shook her head. He asked, “Ready to go back now?”
“No,” she said and laid a hand on his chest.
“No? I thought you wanted to get back across the river before nightfall.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said and began to smile. She looked into his eyes and admitted, “I don’t think I can wait that long.”
“Wait that long for what?”
“To be in your arms. Could we make love here in our secret place?”
“Ah, darlin’,” he said, turned, rose onto his knees and drew her up into his arms. “Sure we can. Kiss me, Marietta. Kiss me.”
Cole brought his mouth down on hers and fire instantly surged through their wet pressing bodies. When at last his lips left hers, he kissed her cheek, her ear, her throat and the curve of her neck and shoulder, leaving a trail of fire with each soft caress.
Her arms around his neck, hands clasping the thick damp hair at the back of his head, Marietta clung to him as if she would never let him go.
His lips took hers again, urgent but gentle, teasing, tasting. Then abruptly he deepened the kiss and she sighed her approval. The enveloping hotness of his seeking mouth closed firmly over hers and sucked the very breath from her body. Her pulse pounding, Marietta trembled against his chest. Weak with desire, she tore her lips from his and pressed her face against his throat.
Cole set her away and hurriedly stretched out on his back. He immediately reached for her, lifted her atop him. Settling herself astride his hips, Marietta leaned down and kissed him. She kept kissing him for several minutes, her breasts flattening on his chest, her knees hugging his ribs.
Cole responded to her sweet, probing kisses and did not rush her to do more. Marietta loved kissing. Couldn’t get enough. Wanted to kiss and be kissed over and over again. He humored her. If it took dozens of kisses to satisfy her to the point where she was ready for total lovemaking, he would do all he could to hold his raging passion in check.
It was far from easy.
She was so incredibly desirable. So warm and soft and beautiful. It was sweet torture to have her draped naked atop him like this, kissing him, pressing her breasts into his chest, sensuously rotating her hips against his thighs. With each kiss, he grew hotter. So hot he felt as if he couldn’t wait one more second.
But he had to, for her sake.
Cole became conscious of the hard pounding of blood through his veins, the involuntary surging and seeking of his aching erection. The sound of the water rushing over the falls somehow added to the sensation. The hammering water was allowed to spill unfettered into the receptive river. He badly needed to spill into the receptive flesh of this tempting woman.
Cole heaved a sigh of relief when finally Marietta’s lips left his and she sat up. Fighting the powerful impulse to turn her onto her back, take her and hammer forcefully into her, he bit the inside of his jaw when she scooted down his body.
He drew a sharp intake of air when she impulsively lowered her face and brushed a butterfly kiss to the smooth head of his masculinity. It jerked against her lips and she lifted her head.
“I could,” she told him, “lick my fingers and make you wet the way we did atop the stallion. Or, I could simply lick you wet with my tongue. Which will it be?”
His breath dangerously short, Cole tried to speak, to tell her it wasn’t necessary, that he was still wet from the river. But he didn’t say a word. More than anything in the world he wanted to feel her lips and tongue upon him. At the same time he was afraid he would climax if he allowed it.
Finally he said, “No, baby, I—”
But Marietta didn’t listen.
Delicately, taking great care not to hurt him, she bent to him, put out her tongue and licked lightly upward, all the way from the base to the tip. A great paroxysm of air rushed out of Cole’s tight lungs and he anxiously grabbed her arms and pulled her up.
“I thought you would like that,” she said, her green eyes afire.
“I do like it,” he said. “Too much.”
Marietta smiled, catlike, and laid a gentle hand on the hard flesh she had just licked. “Shall I do the honors?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” he croaked and placed nervous hands on her thighs.
“Watch, to make sure I do it correctly,” she said.
“I will,” he ground out.
Choking with sexual excitement, Cole watched unblinking as she raised onto her knees, wrapped a gentle hand around his rigid male flesh and carefully placed the tip just inside her. She took her hand away and slowly, sensuously, lowered herself onto him.
