The Secret Sister

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Neither is hunger.”

  He looked over his shoulder at her and smiled. “Point taken.”

  While he began setting up camp, she went about gathering wood for the fire she knew they would need later.

  The sun was sliding down the blue bowl of sky when Cain finished. He shrugged into a jacket that had seen better days and handed another, slightly smaller one to Christy. She put it on gratefully. Without the sun’s heat, the dry land quickly cooled.

  “Have enough energy for a walk?” he asked.

  “How far?”

  He pointed toward the notch on the ridge. “Be a shame to be this close and not enjoy the best view in the Chaco empire.”

  The climb to the ridge was easier than Christy expected. Cain stopped at the notch and stood looking out at the vast sweep of land and sky. She stood next to him, hardly able to believe the clarity of the air and the immense landscape empty of lights or wires or signs of man.

  “What do you see that’s different?” Cain asked after a time.

  “No streets. No skyscrapers. No hustlers. No gourmet takeouts. No theaters. No hypes. No bars. No drunks. No five-star restaurants. No taxis. No world-class shopping. No street people. No fine museums. No—”

  His laughter drowned out Christy’s litany of the differences between the New Mexican desert and Manhattan.

  “What do you see that’s different for the desert?” he asked.

  “Looks pretty normal to me. Empty. Immense. Dry. Rocky. Not very many plants.” She hesitated. “Except over there.”

  She pointed to a ragged green swath of unusually lush sagebrush. The strip was about thirty feet wide. It marched up the hillside like a farm crop.

  “That’s the imperial road,” Cain said.

  “Looks more like an imperial roadblock.”

  A smile flashed against his dense, short beard. “Now, yes. The old roadbeds are acting as catchment channels for the rains. Plants love that extra water. Watching for green is the best way for us to follow the road across dry ground.”

  She began walking up the hill, following the path of the sage. He paced her, saying nothing, caught by the intensity of her eyes as they searched the land. Near the brow of the hill, wind had scoured away the topsoil, revealing the rocky bones of the land beneath.

  “Look,” he said, sitting on his heels and pointing to the bare rock. “Sandstone curbs like this run on the sides of the road for a hundred miles.”

  She knelt next to him and traced the cool surface of the rock, seeing the marks left by a stonemason long before Columbus set sail for India and found an unsuspected continent blocking the way. Awe shivered through her, a sense of touching lives long lost, of dreams unknown, of being part of a whole that was so much larger than she’d thought.

  “A hundred miles of this?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  “A hundred miles in this road, maybe three thousand miles in the entire system,” he said. “We’re just beginning to understand how little we know about the ancient ones.”

  When they reached the top of the hill, the sun was low in the sky. There on a broad bench lay an extensive set of ruins that commanded a view of the entire San Juan Basin. There were no fences, no restorations, no signs, nothing but hand-carved stones slowly melting back down into the land.

  “Welcome to the center of the world,” Cain said softly.

  The La Plata and San Juan mountains lay straight north, pink in the fading afternoon light. Mesas and shadowed arroyos and red-rock spires lay east and south. Off to the west were more mountains.

  The air was clear and pure. The last of the sunlight was warm, yet there was a bracing chill just beneath it, like a gentle bite hidden in a kiss.

  “You can see four states from up there,” he said, pointing to a low sandstone wall.

  He mounted the ruined wall with an animal grace that she couldn’t help admiring. Leaning down, he held out his hand to her. She took it and learned once again that, for all his restraint, Cain was a powerful man. She went up the stones like she had wings.

  The wall was very thick. When she had her balance, he put his hands on her shoulders and faced her toward the distant San Juan Mountains. As he spoke, he turned her until she had made a full circle.

  “Colorado,” he said. “New Mexico. Arizona. And way off up there you can see the mountains of Utah.”

  Motionless, she absorbed the subtle voices of time and the wind blowing over the wild, empty land.

  Only when the last bit of the sun slid beneath the dark horizon did Christy realize that she was standing so close to Cain that his breath stirred her hair and the warmth of his body radiated into her, replacing the vanished heat of the sun.

  “We’d better get back to camp,” he said reluctantly. “I didn’t bring a flashlight.”

  He lifted his hands from her shoulders, both freeing her and setting her adrift in the fading colors of the day. She turned and watched while he descended the low wall, landing light and strong on the ground.

  When she started down, he reached up and lifted her, pivoting, making her fly. The earth beneath her feet came as a faint shock.

  He felt the hesitation before she regained her balance.

  “Okay?” he asked, not releasing her.

  “Yes. For a second there, I thought I could fly. Wrong life, I guess.”

  She turned away, leaving the memory of her bittersweet smile to haunt the twilight.

  And Cain.

  Chapter 49

  Out of reach of the wind, the campsite was calm and scented with cedar. The first stars gleamed in the east, where the sky had shifted from blue to purple. Christy and Cain prepared a simple dinner, ate, and cleaned up in a silence that was companionable rather than stiff. When they were done with camp chores, she took off her walking shoes and sat on one of the sleeping bags he’d spread near the fire. The mug of coffee in her hands was spiced with brandy and smelled like heaven.

  Cain poured himself a bit more coffee and moved to the fire’s light and warmth. He sat on his heels in front of the flames and added several pieces of cedar.

  From beneath lowered eyelashes, she watched every move he made. He had a muscular masculine grace that pleased her. There was something both new and familiar about him, as if she’d dreamed him long ago in an old house on the High Plains of Wyoming and now was remembering the dream in a New Mexican desert that was the center of an ancient world.

  The flickering light of the fire bathed his hands in alternating tongues of gold and black velvet. His fingers were long, strong, deft. They fascinated her, as did the silky luster of his beard and the thick, straight black hair that he brushed carelessly back from his forehead. The reflected firelight made his eyes gleam.

  He was watching her watching him.

  “I want a second chance,” Cain said.

  Her breath hesitated, caught, stayed. She looked away.

  “I was wrong about you,” he said simply. “You weren’t thinking about saving your sister last night. You really wanted me.”

  He waited.

  She didn’t speak or look at him.

  “Know when I figured it out?” he asked.

  Silence.

  “When you threw me out of the cabin,” he said.

  Looking only at her coffee, she held the mug tightly to hide the trembling of her hands. It didn’t work. Tiny rings rippled across the dark surface of the coffee. She closed her eyes.

  “A woman who was looking for leverage over a man wouldn’t have done that,” he said. “And she sure as hell wouldn’t have melted and run all over my hand like—”

  “Nolo,” she interrupted harshly.

  “Bullshit, Red.” He came to his feet in a single flowing movement. “It happened. It happened hard and fast and deep.”

  “For one of us,” she said in a flat voice.

  “For both of us. Just like we were both wrong about each other.”

  She shook her head, making firelight gleam like liquid gold in her hair.

 
“I stopped because I wanted you too much, not because I didn’t want you enough,” he said, walking closer.

  Then he was so close to her that he could touch her. He clenched his hands to keep from doing just that.

  “I wanted you the way I haven’t let myself want a woman since I was eighteen,” he said in a rough voice. “I’d have fought to have you. Christ, I’d have killed—”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “—to have you,” he continued relentlessly. “And it scared the hell out of me.”

  Shivering, she clung to the coffee mug and told herself that the raw hunger she heard in his voice wasn’t real.

  It couldn’t be real.

  Men didn’t want ordinary women like that. That kind of male passion was reserved for women of extraordinary beauty.

  Women like Jo-Jo.

  Christy had never been that desirable. “No,” she whispered, eyes tightly closed.

  “Yes. And I still want you,” Cain said savagely. “Too damn much!”

  He snapped the dregs of his coffee into the fire. Steam hissed.

  Her eyes opened, then widened in shock. The view she had of him profiled by firelight left no doubt that he was telling the truth.

  For the space of several breaths, it was silent but for the sound of flames licking softly against the body of the night.

  “You’re staring, honey.” His voice was half husky, half amused, and one hundred percent hungry.

  “You’re…worth staring at.”

  He gave a crack of laughter and sank slowly to his knees in front of her.

  “You’re the only woman I’ve ever known who could make me laugh and turn me on to the point of pain at the same time,” he said.

  She tried to speak, but he was so close she could taste his breath. His eyes were a smoky kind of gold that was as hot as the leap of flames.

  “Give me that before you drop it,” he said softly, taking her coffee mug and setting it aside. “Your hands are shaking.”

  “So are yours.”

  “Am I frightening you?” he asked.

  “Not…quite,” she whispered. “Am I frightening you?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes widened. “Why?”

  “We could just have sex and stay free. I don’t think making love will be the same.”

  “Don’t you know?” she asked.

  “Never had the chance to find out. You?”

  “Same here,” she whispered.

  “Want to find out?”

  For an instant she closed her eyes.

  Then she nodded.

  His fingers slid deeply into her hair, caressing and holding her in the same instant. She felt the tremor of emotion that ripped through him, shaking his strong body.

  “Cain?” she whispered.

  “I don’t have any defenses against you,” he said. “And I don’t care anymore.”

  His teeth closed carefully on her lower lip. When she gasped with surprise and racing pleasure, his tongue shot between her teeth, filling her mouth as he wanted to fill her body. His hands shifted and his arms closed around her, lifting her to him. Heavy, hungry, frankly sexual, his kiss told her more than words could have about his barely leashed need.

  When she struggled in his arms, his mouth lifted just enough so that he could speak against her lips.

  “Don’t fight me,” he said raggedly. “Please, honey. I don’t deserve you, but I need you until I’m shaking with it.”

  The words went through her like lightning through a storm. She wanted him the same way, no defenses, needing him as she’d never needed another man.

  “I wasn’t fighting,” she said.

  “You were trying to get away.”

  “No.” She laughed a little wildly. “I was trying to get closer!”

  His arms tightened suddenly, pulling her hard against him, arching her body so that she felt him from her knees to her mouth mated with his. Her arms went around his neck, holding him with all her strength while he kissed her like he expected to die in the next instant.

  When the kiss finally ended they both were breathing in soft, rushing bursts. With two quick motions he unzipped her jacket and his own. The snaps on his shirt and hers came undone in twin ripples of sound. Firelight gleamed on naked skin and licked over black lace.

  Cain’s breath came hard and fast. Then he eased his index fingers beneath the straps of Christy’s bra. Slowly his knuckles slid down.

  Her breath broke when his fingers smoothed down the soft slope of her breasts, drawing the lacy cups aside until the cloth was beneath her breasts and they were naked but for the firelight gliding over them. Her nipples tightened in a rush, silently telling him of her own desire raging like a hidden, sultry storm.

  With a low sound he bent and caught one nipple between his lips and then drew it deeply inside, shaping her, making her moan. When she was hard and moist from his tongue, he turned to her other breast.

  Her nails dug into his arms while passion spiraled up like flames. The small pain of her nails was a sensual goad, urging him to strip away more of her control and his own until there was nothing between them but unleashed desire.

  He turned his head from side to side, caressing her sensitized breasts. Their tips were dark, tightly drawn, and they glistened with firelight and the moist heat of his mouth.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said hoarsely. “Just looking at you makes me want to—” He closed his eyes. “You’re hell on my self-control,” he said after a moment.

  “Good.”

  The edge of her teeth on his ear made him bite back a curse of pleasure and restraint that was sliding away with each breath, each touch.

  His hand slid down her body until his fingers curled between her legs. He flexed his hand deeply, savoring and caressing her at the same time, watching waves of pleasure claim her.

  Eyes dilated until they were as dark as night, she looked at him. She felt dizzy, almost weak, yet her body pulsed with a relentless, restless heat.

  “Cain?” she whispered.

  “Don’t be afraid, honey.” He let out a rushing, hissing breath. “I won’t hurt you. If you’re not ready…”

  He unfastened her jeans and slid his hand beneath black lace. Long fingers searched, probed, discovered, sank deeply into her sultry heat. The low, husky sound of his name breaking on her lips made him smile.

  “Like fire and rain at once,” he said in a low voice. “Hot, soft, wet…”

  Her hands went from his shoulders to the dark swirls of hair on his chest, dropped to the cool sterling buckle with its turquoise eye.

  And stopped.

  “Keep going,” he said huskily.

  He dipped into her heat and then withdrew. A thumb slick with her passion circled the satin knot he’d drawn from her softness. The broken, hungry sound that came from her made him want to tear away clothes and sink into her.

  Instead, he set his teeth and circled the sleek bud again.

  Blindly, hands shaking, she traced the unfamiliar fastening on his belt, a hook rather than a buckle. She tugged once, but nothing came undone. She tugged harder. Same result.

  Reluctantly Cain withdrew his hand from Christy’s clothes. His fingers closed over hers. For an instant she went very still, remembering last night when he had refused to be touched. She looked up at him with a question in her eyes.

  “Don’t you want…?” she asked.

  “I want your hands all over me. Everywhere, honey.”

  Her eyelids half lowered and she smiled as though the idea intrigued her. “Your buckle is in the way.”

  “Move this hand over here,” he said, guiding her, “and then pull across and up with the other.”

  “Like this?”

  The belt opened.

  “Yeah, just like that.” He grinned. “Now you know how to get into my jeans anytime you want.”

  Her almost hidden smile was as sexy to Cain as the sound of his zipper sliding down. Her hand eased into his jeans and discovered that
part of him had already escaped from his briefs. Her fingers hesitated for a moment, then slid down the aching length of his erection.

  The frankly approving, purring sound Christy made as she caressed him nearly undid Cain. A low curse came from between his clenched teeth.

  “You’re going to push me over the edge,” he warned.

  “Can I really do that?”

  “You damn well know you can.”

  “No, I don’t,” she whispered. “But I’m going to find out.”

  His breath hissed between his teeth as the sweet pressure of her fingers gave way to the harder pressure of her naked palm. She measured him once, twice, watching his eyes narrow and his whole body clench. Then she slid her fingers inside his briefs and knew the coarse silk of his hair and the twin spheres that were so tightly drawn with desire.

  He stiffened and groaned as though she’d taken a whip to him. With a dismayed sound, she withdrew.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. “You’ll have to teach me more than how to undo your belt.”

  His eyes opened. There was little left of gold in them except a glittering circle around a dark, dilated center.

  “I never really wanted to touch a man,” she said hesitantly, “so I never learned how. But I want to touch you.”

  The soft confession was more arousing than any caress could have been.

  “That did it,” he said hoarsely.

  His hands slid over her back and down inside her jeans. His fingers flexed, sinking hungrily into her hips, drawing a cry of surprise and sensual pleasure from her. Slanting his lips over hers, he sank into the sultry warmth of her mouth, penetrating her hungrily. One powerful arm closed around her back, lifting her.

  In the next instant Christy felt her jeans and underwear stripped away. The sleeping bag felt cold against her back, but the heat of Cain’s body covering her more than made up for it. As she lifted up to meet his kiss, her breasts rubbed tantalizingly against his chest. She twisted against him and shivered at the sensations streaming from her breasts to the pit of her stomach.

  He pulled away and reached into his pocket.

  “Cain?” she whispered. “What…?”

  Then she saw the gleam of the foil packet in the firelight and understood.