Fire Brand

by Diana Palmer

“Not there, they wouldn’t,” he chuckled. “It’s as remote as the moon during the summer. And it’s on our land, so tourists don’t stray past the ‘No Trespassing’ signs.”

  She wasn’t certain if he was serious or not, but she didn’t press it. Her body still ached with what he’d done to it, and she tingled from head to toe with new knowledge of him and herself. She smiled at him as he went out the door, delighted to find that she hadn’t thought about the past even once.

  “Bowie?”

  He paused with the doorknob in his hand. “What?”

  “What about you?” she asked hesitantly, worried.

  “I’m fine,” he said firmly, and managed a smile. “Go to sleep.”

  She slid her gown back on when he was gone, and despite a faint niggling of shame at the freedom she’d given him with her body, she couldn’t help but delight in the promise of womanhood. She’d never dreamed such sensations were possible, but what she’d felt with Bowie gave her hope. If that was what possession felt like, then it was nothing to be afraid of—except that she might become addicted to it.

  The next morning, Montoya packed them a picnic lunch and they headed out toward the canyon.

  “What about Aggie?” Gaby asked worriedly. She was wearing jeans and a gray pullover knit top with her Western straw hat and boots.

  Bowie glanced at her with a grin. He was wearing jeans and a cream-colored Western shirt with his own hat and boots, and he looked as Western as a rodeo. “Aggie will turn up. The private detective still hasn’t come up with Courtland, but he’s more hopeful about Aggie. The one piece of information he delved was that Courtland didn’t register under that name on the cruise. The next step is to check out the passenger list. We know his age, so that eliminates a good many of them.”

  “I hope we can find Aggie,” she replied. “Although it would be interesting to find out who Mr. Courtland really is.”

  “That it would.” He turned on the radio, deep in thought, as they drove the miles to the box canyon.

  There was something new—a chain across the small trail that led into the canyon. Bowie unlocked the gate, drove the truck through it, and locked it back again.

  “I don’t want anyone in here defacing the ruins,” he explained. “Now this, little one, is what your friends at Bio-Ag want to level and plant.”

  He drove down a long, flat plain that led to the small mountain chain rising right off the desert floor. There was creosote and agave and ocotillo at first, and then mesquite, palo verde, cottonwood, and oak trees leading back to the increasingly dense vegetation of the mountains. He pulled off the road at a grouping of huge, smooth rocks.

  “It reminds me of Texas Canyon,” she remarked. “Although that’s much farther away.”

  “It reminds me of Cochise Stronghold,” he returned, helping her out of the truck, “which is much closer. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Cochise and his band spent time here, too. Come on.”

  He took her by the hand and led her through the rocks to the ruins of an ancient camp. “There isn’t a lot left,” he said, indicating adobe walls and scattered artifacts. “I’ve done some digging here, and I’ve let some archaeologists putter around, but I won’t allow anything to be carried away. The Hohokam were here before any of us—even the Pima and Tohono O’odham. They were the ancients. They had the most sophisticated irrigation systems in existence in their time period, and elegant philosophies about life, and time, and the equality of the spirit.”

  She smiled, touching one of the walls. “I remember hearing you talk once about their priests—men who lived in places where the ‘white winds’ blew. They were very poetic, weren’t they?”

  “Yes. They had a simple philosophy—that you mustn’t harm your brother in any way, for any reason, even an innocent one. Life was to be lived so that you didn’t disturb the fabric of it, by anger or evil.” He smiled. “They had a strong sense of democracy as well. Even the rich and powerful had houses only a little bigger than the others. They were special people. This is one of the last ruins left on private property. I’d hate like hell to see it go down for a cotton field.”

  “I can understand that,” she said, forcing herself not to say one word about Bio-Ag.

  He turned and looked down at her. “Gaby, do you know what used to sit in that grove of trees?”

  She gazed toward where he was pointing. “No.”

  “A small house that once served as a wayside inn for the Overland Stage. I don’t have to tell you about the people who passed through this area in the late 1800s. The owner kept a diary, and two pages of it told about a visit he had from the Earps and Doc Holliday soon after Virgil Earp was gunned down in Tombstone.”

  “I didn’t remember that,” she confessed.

  “There are two big palo verde trees through here that were used by my great-great-grandfather to lynch rustlers in past times,” he added. “And it was here that he made a peace treaty with the Apache when they joined forces to fight Mexican bandits who were raiding the area.”

  “I can see the historical aspects,” she agreed. “But, Bowie, there’s so little left...”

  “Is there?” He turned her around and stood behind her, with his big hands on her waist. “Close your eyes and listen.”

  She humored him, but all she heard were natural sounds. “I hear the wind,” she murmured. “And birds. Tree limbs brushing against each other. I think I heard a cactus wren...”

  “That’s what I mean. Civilization hasn’t impacted here. This is natural, just the way it was a hundred years ago. It’s untouched. The water from the spring that flows down the mountain is pure and clean and unpolluted. The groundwater below us is the same way.” He turned her around to face him. “This is our children’s heritage, Gaby. Do you want to see it leveled for a quick profit, and all this,” he waved a long arm toward the unspoiled beauty, “destroyed forever?”

  That was a hard question. She moved away from him, to sit on one of the big boulders. It was smooth and very comfortable, warm from the sun but not directly in it, because it was shaded by a big juniper tree.

  “I like this rock,” she hedged, because she didn’t want to argue with him. She probably wouldn’t be able to sell her land to Bio-Ag, because she was more distrustful of them by the day. But she didn’t want to talk about Bio-Ag today—she just wanted to be with Bowie.

  She closed her eyes and drank in the air, then opened them to savor the solitude. The path they’d driven down led into a box canyon, where trees grew thick beside a trickle of a stream, and huge, smooth boulders surrounded a small pool where water trickled down from the mountains.

  “It’s beautiful,” Gaby enthused.

  “It was a good place for the Apache to camp, too,” he murmured, sliding onto the big flat rock beside her. “There was water for the horses and the people, a good level place to set up wickiups.” He smiled at Gaby. “Do you see those depressions in the stones? They were used by the women to grind corn into meal.”

  “Fascinating.” She leaned over to rub her hand over one and felt Bowie move suddenly, easing her onto her back on the sun-warmed stone. It wasn’t terribly hard on her back, and it seemed to curve to her spine as she lay there, looking up at him, his head blocking out the sun as its rays turned his hair to spun gold.

  “And very likely, when they weren’t using them to pound corn, beat clothes, or dry rawhide and pemmican,” he said softly, balancing his weight over her on his arms, “they made love here.”

  Her lips parted. “Here?”

  He eased one powerful long leg in between both of hers so slowly and lazily that she was left without a protest, especially when his mouth moved down to whisper over hers and tease her lips apart.

  The sun beat down on them, and the wind whispered around them. She lifted her arms to his neck and let his broad chest settle over her soft breasts
, glad that she hadn’t worn a bra so that she could feel the hard, warm muscles of his chest in almost direct contact with her skin. The two thin layers of fabric were hardly noticeable. He was careful with her, conscious of his size and her slenderness, keeping his body poised so that she didn’t have to take the brunt of his weight.

  His lean hands slid under her tank top and onto her rib cage. His head lifted, so that he could see her eyes. “We did more than this last night. I want to touch you that way again, very badly.”

  “Yes. I want it, too,” she whispered huskily. And she did. She’d dreamed of him, of what he’d done to her, all night. And all morning she’d ached with the need to feel those sweet, new sensations all over again. She was breathing unsteadily already, but she didn’t want him to stop. Her eyes searched his black ones. “I dreamed of you,” she breathed.

  “Did you?” He smiled. “I dreamed of you, too.”

  His eyes held hers as one hand smoothly tugged up the tank top and peeled it away from her body. Even then, he didn’t look. His hand slid to her waist and unfastened first her belt and then the snap and zipper of her jeans. He eased them away while she lay helplessly watching him, in thrall to a need so new and devastating that she could only give in to it.

  His hand found her and she gasped and gave in all at once, so in thrall to him that she wasn’t capable of even the slightest protest.

  “It’s all right,” he said gently, and his dark eyes smiled at her. He touched her and watched her force her body to lie still, to permit the intimacy. “No one will see us.”

  “Oh, Bowie,” she whispered, her face contorting as the pleasure came more swiftly this time because her body was familiar with it.

  His fingers moved suddenly and his eyes were quiet with a new knowledge of her. “Yes. I know.” He slid one arm under her head to pillow her neck while the other hand teased gently until she gasped. “Lie still,” he whispered. His mouth brushed hers, tasting her tiny cries as he built the tension, second by exquisite second. When she was shuddering, he lifted his head to watch her expression. As it began to contort and her cries became frantic, he leaned over her and increased the pressure delicately. Her eyes widened, her face stilled, and she cried out piercingly in the stillness. Her body lifted and fell in the throes of her fulfillment.

  He gathered her up against him and rocked her, smiling at the feel of her soft breasts against his chest through the fabric. But it wasn’t enough. While she was trembling back to reality, he unfastened his shirt lazily and drew her inside it, loving the sensation her soft breasts sent through him as they crushed against his hard chest.

  “Bowie?” she whispered, lifting her shocked, shy eyes to his.

  “I want more,” he whispered back, brushing his mouth against hers as he pressed her back against the rock again and slowly kissed his way down her body. All the while, he was removing fabric, baring her to his eyes and his lips and his seeking hands.

  He pulled off his boots and his shirt and then, while she watched, astonished, his jeans and everything under them. He turned to let her look at him, enjoying the feel of her eyes on his body.

  “You’re beautiful,” she whispered, lifting her rapt eyes from his body to his face. She was amazed that his arousal didn’t frighten her.

  “Not as beautiful as you are, Gaby,” he said. He eased onto the rock beside her, drawing her body slowly to his in a sunburst of sensation that made her gasp as she felt all the differences between his flesh and hers in the intimacy of the embrace.

  “Bowie!” she gasped, clinging. Her face nestled in the thick hair over his chest and she trembled with aching pleasure at the newness of touching without clothing.

  She put her lips against his chest and felt him tremble, too. That made her a little afraid—the thought that he might lose control. She didn’t know what she might do if she felt his weight over her...

  While she was deliberating, he caught her hand and slid it down his body. When she protested, his mouth slid over hers with a tenderness she hadn’t dreamed him capable of. And then it seemed so right to do what he wanted, to let him whisper, guiding her, until the silken concussion he’d kindled in her own body was threatening to erupt in him. He couldn’t control it. With his last rational thought, he realized his mistake in coaxing her to touch him, but the need was too great, and abstinence far too long, Gaby’s soft body far too accessible and beloved.

  “Let me,” he whispered huskily. His body moved over hers without warning, his hands guiding hers to his hips as he slid into a shocking new intimacy with her. His mouth ground into hers, and his breath came like a runner’s, quick and shaking. “Oh, God...let me, baby...!”

  She couldn’t seem to move. She looked up at his hard face. His eyes were glazed, his jaw taut, his features already distorting.

  He held her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he bit off as his hands caught her hips. “My... God,” he groaned. He drew in a harsh breath. “I love you...so. Forgive me...!”

  She didn’t understand until she felt the first hard thrust, like fire against her. She cried out, but he was beyond hearing. She felt her back being buffeted against the hard rock, the skin scraping faintly, as he drove violently for fulfillment, his big hands biting into her hips, his body overwhelming hers, possessing it.

  He cried out hoarsely, stiffening, and then he began to shudder rhythmically while he moaned against her throat, his body racked with pleasure that he couldn’t hide or control. It seemed to go on forever before he collapsed, shaking and damp with perspiration, on her cold body.

  She felt his damp skin with fascination. So that was what it was like, she thought. The pleasure had only been an illusion, and this was the reality. It was just as he’d said it would be—she’d had no enjoyment from it. But even then, it came to her that she hadn’t once thought of the past, of the terror. This was Bowie, and despite his loss of control, he loved her and she loved him. She touched his hair hesitantly and held his face against her body, overwhelmed with what had happened. He was her lover; they’d made love.

  “Oh, my God,” Bowie groaned. He rolled away from her, his face a study in agonized regret as he bent over to run his hands angrily through his damp hair. He couldn’t bear to look at her, to see the revulsion and fear he knew were going to be on her white face. “My God, I’ll never forgive myself for that,” he said roughly. “Not the longest day I live.”

  Gaby studied him curiously. He looked as if he wanted to throw himself off a cliff. She couldn’t have that...

  “It’s all right, Bowie,” she whispered. She reached up and tried to touch his face, but he actually flinched away from her. “Bowie!”

  He got back into his jeans and boots, his movements jerky and rough with subdued anger. He glanced at her and grimaced, as if the sight of her nude body was actually painful to him. “Get dressed, sweetheart,” he said quietly.

  At least his anger didn’t seem to be directed at her. She sat up, touching her raw back, and gasped.

  He turned, his eyes narrowing with pain as he saw her. If anything, his face grew harder. “There’s a first aid kit in the truck,” he said through his teeth. “Get your clothes on and I’ll put something on that scratch.”

  She managed to get her clothes back on and sat docilely while he raised the back of her blouse and dabbed antiseptic on the short, wide scratch. It hurt, but she didn’t flinch. She couldn’t bear to make him feel worse than he already did.

  “Will I get pregnant?” she asked under her breath, because that delightful possibility had just occurred to her. She felt dazed with wonder. She was a woman, and she hadn’t fought or screamed. She’d actually given herself. That was the first step out of her nightmares and into the sunlight, but Bowie didn’t seem to realize what a momentous experience it had been for her. He was blaming himself for losing control. She didn’t. It was like getting over a hurdle.

  Hi
s hands stilled and tautened on her back. “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t hold anything back. It’s possible that you might.”

  She smiled to herself. “Well, I... I wouldn’t mind.”

  He seemed to have stopped breathing. “Gaby...this is why we broke off the engagement,” he reminded her. “Because you hated the thought of intimacy with me.”

  “Not with you,” she corrected. She glanced at him and then away. “With anyone. I...you were the only man I was ever able to...to want.”

  “You didn’t want me just now,” he said coldly. “I forced you...”

  “No!” she whirled, her hand going to his lips, her eyes wide with regret. “No, no! I let you touch me and kiss me and...and...do that to me,” she added, stammering and averting her eyes as she flushed with remembered pleasure. “I didn’t fight you, you know. There was never any question of force between us. I’d give you anything I have, Bowie—anything I am. I belong to you now.”

  His arms contracted, and he grimaced when she cried out. “Your back,” he sighed heavily. “I’ll never get over this.”

  “It’s all right,” she repeated. “I understand.”

  “Do you?” His dark eyes searched hers. “Can you understand that I would have killed to have you? That my body was in such agony that I didn’t even know what I was doing? Or can you imagine that kind of passion, little one?”

  She couldn’t. There was a reserve in her that wouldn’t seem to let her feel violent emotion, even with Bowie. She knew pleasure now, but she didn’t understand how to give it, or how to participate in it. Perhaps that was what he meant. She lowered her eyes to the shirt he was buttoning. “I knew you wanted me,” she said.

  “Well, now you know how much.” He got up, running an angry hand through his hair. “The fat’s in the fire now. Come on.”

  He took her hand and pulled her up, smoothing back her hair. “Do you own a white dress?”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  “Do you own a white dress?” he persisted, his eyes dark and stormy and irritated.