Dangerous Refuge

by Elizabeth Lowell

“Where will I be?” she asked.

  “Sleeping in. You’ve had a hard few days.”

  “Not that hard. If you leave me here, I won’t be here when you get back and I won’t be taking any of your calls. I’m in this to the end or I’m gone.”

  He started to argue, then decided it wasn’t worth the energy. He’d rather taste her. “Don’t snarl when I wake you up early.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And we agree on our story before we get there. I got lucky with an online check of coins—”

  “Do you have a computer with you?” she asked.

  Despite the ache and hunger prowling through him, he smiled. “Like I said, you’d make a good investigator. I don’t have a computer, but I know people who do. So I got two addresses. The first was a dead end. The second was Brilliant Moments, where we got Rua’s ID.”

  She nodded, downshifted, crept around a pile of rocks, and shifted into third again.

  The pale flesh of her hands caught his eye. Her fingers looked delicate. Edible. He remembered how it had felt to suck one into his mouth. Then he wondered if she would let him suck anywhere else, somewhere hotter, wetter.

  Wanting her was bad enough. Sensing that she wanted him but wasn’t sure was making him nuts.

  With a mental curse, he kept on talking. “We were hungry,” no shit, “and we went to a rib place you knew. Then we decided to soak in the hot springs rather than try to track down Rua in the dark. We slept, we ate breakfast, and we went to see Deputy August. Short and simple. No embellishments. Turn right just before those big pines.”

  Shaye turned. The ranch track became nothing but a ghost trail. She downshifted again and stayed in second.

  “You know what August’s going to think,” Tanner added. “About you and me.”

  She watched the brush that seemed to leap out of the darkness. Sage scraped against the sides of the truck.

  “He’ll think whatever he wants to,” she said.

  God, I hope he’s right, Tanner thought.

  “Good thing this truck has high clearance,” she said, slowing and downshifting into first as the truck crawled up and over a stone shelf that covered half the track.

  “We could have walked, but you look tired and I know I am.”

  Needing to take his attention off her, he unwrapped his hand and examined it by flashlight, casually bracing himself as the truck bumped around.

  “How is your hand?” she asked, not wanting to take her eyes off the miserable excuse for a road.

  “I’ll live.”

  “That’s a relief. Yikes, those boulders—”

  “Stop at the wide spot,” he said, bracing himself on the dashboard as he slid toward her. “There’s a path to the first pool.”

  “Good,” she said, relieved, “because there sure isn’t any more road.”

  She shut off the engine and turned off the lights.

  He got out immediately because he didn’t trust himself not to grab her. The bench seat of the truck had looked more inviting every instant. He took the chill air into his lungs and hoped it would settle to his crotch.

  No such luck.

  Overhead, the partial moon had outlasted the clouds. The stars looked close, sharp enough to cut. He had so many memories of them overhead as he curled up in his sleeping bag in the hayloft and dreamed of being a grown man.

  Now he was.

  His childhood memories were as bright as the stars, and as sharp-edged. He listened to the night and heard nothing unfamiliar, nothing threatening. He clicked on the flashlight and swept the ground ahead. The path to the pool was more overgrown than he remembered, but the boulders and pines hadn’t changed any.

  Shaye surprised him by pulling a thumb-size penlight from her jacket pocket and falling into line behind him.

  “You didn’t use that at Rua’s,” Tanner said, resettling the towels under his left arm.

  “I was afraid to.”

  “Smart.” He thought about adding that it would have been a lot smarter to stay put in the car as he had told her, but let it go. The scare she’d gotten was more than enough to make the point.

  They walked in an easy silence until they reached the first pool.

  “This one is only about ninety degrees,” he said. “We jerry-rigged some plank seats for the next pool. It’s about a hundred and two. The one above that is hot enough to cook trout and smells like the mineral stew it is.”

  “Lead me to the second one,” she said quickly.

  The idea of soaking was delicious.

  The idea of having him next to her was hotter than the third pool.

  She squashed the thought. She was too tired and too off balance to be thinking about sex, much less to follow through on it.

  The second pool steamed gently in the moonlight, surrounded by rocks and tall pines.

  Tanner left the towels on a boulder by the edge of the pool. Then he sat on another waterside rock and began pulling off his shoes and socks. With quick efficiency he stripped off his jacket and shirt, folded them, pulled the gun and holster from the small of his back, and stacked everything neatly on the ground.

  “I’ve never gone in the springs wearing more than my skin,” he said, standing and reaching for his belt. “It’s one of the best things about being here.”

  She wasn’t surprised, but she was intrigued. “Clothes or no clothes, no promises about anything else.”

  A deep laugh floated up as he peeled down his pants and underwear in a smooth motion. “Gotcha. No touching without an invitation. It goes both ways, you know.”

  “Damn,” she said without thinking.

  Thinking was the last thing on her mind. The shine of moonlight on his bare, muscular chest, the intriguing dark swirls of hair, the clean, strong line of his legs, and his obvious hunger for her made her breath back up in her throat. She had thought her ex-husband was beautifully made, but next to Tanner her ex was . . . insignificant.

  “Both ways,” she said, watching Tanner disappear into the pool a few inches at a time. Then, “You sure?”

  “You already have your invitation,” he said, sinking in up to his waist, then ribs, then his chest.

  “I do?”

  His head turned toward her. “Anytime. Anywhere.”

  “I see,” she managed.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet you did.”

  She tried not to laugh, or at least not to let him hear it. But she was sure he could see her blush. Hastily she bent to undo her hiking shoes. Like him, she folded and stowed everything within reach. By the time she was down to her underwear, she was feeling the biting edge of chill in the air. Hurriedly she peeled everything off and walked to the pool.

  “There’s kind of a gravel path into the water,” Tanner said. “Go about a foot to your left. Feel it?”

  “Smooth but not slippery?”

  “That’s it.”

  The playful breeze raised gooseflesh on her skin. The hot pool was a gleaming lure promising warmth. It wasn’t her first time in one of the many natural hot springs in the area, so she knew to walk carefully on the uneven bottom of the pool until she was almost hip-deep. Then she sank into the water and did a half float, half walk over the rocky bottom. The contrast between cold air and heated water made her take a ragged breath.

  The pool became deep enough to swim in.

  “You said something about benches?” she asked.

  Tanner barely heard her. He was still seeing her careful, graceful entry into the pool. Her body was slender, lithe, and so female in its dips and curves that he was having a hard time breathing.

  A hard time, period.

  “Benches?” she reminded him.

  “Come closer. You’re in the deep end.” His voice was too husky, but he didn’t care. She’d already had an eyeful of just how much he wanted her.

  “How deep?”

  “Over your head.”

  “What about yours?” she asked.

  “Depends on how well I keep my footing.” He held out his hand
to her.

  She took it, letting him float her to the underwater bench.

  “Splinters?”

  “Nope. Lorne and Dad sanded it in the barn workshop. What they couldn’t smooth out, the water has. Careful, though. It’s wedged between two big boulders and they’re rough on the skin.”

  “I’m surprised the plank hasn’t washed away in a spring melt.”

  “The springs aren’t a runoff channel,” Tanner said, “so floods aren’t a problem. Hot water bubbles to the surface, makes a chain of three pools, and drains back into the earth again. Probably seeps into the stream somewhere, but we’ve never found where.”

  Shaye settled lightly onto the plank, found a place to brace one foot so that she wouldn’t float off—if she concentrated—and sighed. The silence was like a texture of the night, as endless and deep as the starry sky. Heat seeped into her, unraveling her. She closed her eyes and simply let herself be, until she was a part of the hot spring and the forest and the night.

  Tanner watched her eyes close and her body relax. When she started to float away like moonlight on water, he gently captured her with his arm around her waist. She opened her eyes, smiled, and curled into him, wrapping her arms and legs around him, letting him anchor both of them. Then she sighed and let herself relax utterly.

  He held her in return, ignoring the insistent ache of his erection. The peace she brought him was new, staggering. He didn’t want to disturb it. For long, long minutes they sat in the pool, wrapped in hot water and each other.

  An owl called softly. The sound was slow, rhythmic, the heartbeat of the forest given voice.

  Finally, reluctantly, Tanner stirred against Shaye. “Time to go back. Too much more of this heat and we won’t be able to crawl, much less walk.”

  She nodded. “I know. But this is . . . incredible. I didn’t know how cold I’d become.”

  “Me, too.”

  She tightened her arms and snuggled closer. His erection lay taut between them. A heat that owed nothing to the pool bloomed through her. She had thought the pool had totally relaxed him, drawing out all the tension in his body.

  She had been wrong.

  “That doesn’t feel cold to me,” she said, rubbing against him.

  She felt the involuntary leap of his flesh as it hardened even more. Deliberately, gently, she bit the muscular curve of his shoulder.

  “You sure?” Tanner asked almost roughly, knowing how spent she had been.

  “Yes.”

  “Hold that thought.”

  Without moving anything but one arm, Tanner fished a condom from his nearby jeans.

  “Let me,” she whispered.

  He opened the packet and handed her the contents. When she fitted it to him with great care and attention, he thought he would come right there.

  “Shaye,” he said with a strangled sound.

  “Right here.”

  She raised her head for his kiss, tangling her tongue languidly with his, then more deeply, urgently. When their mouths separated, their rapid breaths mingled with the twists of steam rising from the pool. Her tightly drawn nipples rubbed against him each time she drew in air.

  “I wanted to go slow,” he said. “I wanted to spread you out on a bed and taste you until you were screaming and clawing.”

  A shudder rippled through her. “I’ve never . . . God, Tanner. I want to do the same to you.”

  “Next time,” he promised.

  He lifted her and sucked on first one nipple, then the other, until she was twisting against him and making small sounds. His hand slid between her spread thighs and probed, testing and caressing, sliding deep into her clinging sheath, until her sounds became both pleas and demands.

  She felt the broad, smooth head of his penis replace his fingers and tightened her hold on his shoulders until her nails dug in.

  Tanner hissed between his clenched teeth. “Take me at your own pace, Shaye. I’m all yours.”

  Her eyes half opened, dark slices of night and desire. She eased down on him, retreated, returned a little deeper, retreated until it was more than the hot springs that made him sweat.

  “You’re a tease,” he said hoarsely.

  “You’re bigger than I expected,” she said, licking her lips. “I’m really enjoying it.”

  “Enjoy more of it.”

  She laughed and sank down slowly until he was locked in her so deeply she could feel his heartbeat inside her.

  “Your turn,” she breathed against his lips. “I’m all yours.”

  “I can feel that. You. Me. Us.”

  His voice became a low groan and then he began to move, measuring both of them again and again with increasing speed. His tension became hers until she was riding him as hard as he was riding her. She started to say his name, then lost her voice as everything flew apart in pulses of ecstasy that were neither hers nor his, but theirs.

  Twenty-four

  Shaye awoke, feeling both disoriented and safe. She was on her side in a bed, one bare leg over an equally bare male leg, her cheek on a man’s smooth, muscular shoulder, and her arm around his lean and naked waist. Gradually she realized Tanner was as wrapped around her as she was around him. She sighed and enjoyed the simple intimacy, wondering when the last time was that she’d awakened to such peace. Or been so thoroughly satisfied by a man.

  Then she realized that she never had.

  Before she could get nervous about it, strong, tapering fingers gently counted down each vertebra in her spine, stroked her bottom, then slowly counted up her spine to her nape, caressing, and going back down, lingering at the curve of her hips.

  “A woman could get used to waking up like this,” she said, nuzzling closer, breathing in the scent of clean man.

  “So could a man,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine, why?”

  “It was a tight fit. Did I hurt you?”

  He felt the blush that spread from her breasts to her face.

  “Any sounds I made had nothing to do with pain,” she muttered against his chest.

  “You sure?”

  “Trust me. I would know.” She bit him on his shoulder with enough pressure to make her point.

  He smiled and his fingers continued their journey down her spine, but this time they lingered in the shadow crease below her tailbone. His other hand slowly caressed the soft breast that was plumped up against his chest. The feel of her nipple drawing tight was lightning in his blood.

  The telephone in the kitchen rang.

  “Ignore it,” he said. “I’m going to.”

  He shifted and brought her mouth to his. While the phone rang and rang, they enjoyed the kind of utterly lazy, exploring kiss that they’d been too impatient to have the night before. His biceps flexed and his body tightened. Without breaking the kiss, he pulled her up over him like the sweetest kind of blanket.

  The phone in the kitchen stopped ringing.

  The cell phone in his discarded jeans started clamoring.

  “Who has both numbers?” Shaye asked against his mouth.

  “No one.”

  “You wish.”

  “Yeah. I wish.”

  With one hand he groped on the floor next to the bed. Finally he fished the still-yammering phone from a pocket. The incoming call was local, but that was all he could tell. He answered the damn thing.

  “What?” Tanner snarled.

  “Hell of a way to answer the phone. This is—”

  “Deputy August,” Tanner said.

  Shaye stiffened and began to slide off him. He held her in place with casual strength.

  “How was Meyers last night?” the deputy asked easily.

  “Who is Meyers?”

  “Not who. Where. The town.”

  “It’s barely after seven,” Tanner said. “Is there a point to waking me up or do you just harass citizens at random?”

  “I’m having breakfast at the Western Café at eight. You can join me there or you can see me at nine at the office. You’d rathe
r eat breakfast. If Shaye happens to be handy,” he added sardonically, “bring her. It will save time.”

  August hung up.

  Tanner stared at the phone, thinking like a homicide cop—hard, fast, and mean.

  “What is it?”

  “Deputy August wants company for breakfast at the Western Café at eight or I can talk to him at the sheriff’s office at nine. He recommends breakfast. He said it would save time if I brought you.”

  She blinked. “Really.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Remember what we did yesterday?”

  “Computer search, grubby pawnshop, fancy pawnshop, Rua’s name, ate at the rib joint, came back here, soaked in hot springs, and crashed. Plan on talking to Rua today, after we find out what August might know.”

  Tanner’s grin was as hard as his eyes. “Short and simple. If August tries to make it complex, you don’t remember. Got it?”

  “Sweetie, I was so lost in your midnight-sapphire eyes I didn’t remember my middle name.”

  He laughed so hard she nearly fell off his chest.

  “I can’t wait to see August’s face when you hand him that one,” he said.

  As Tanner and Shaye drove down the east face of the Sierras, slanting sunlight filled Refuge valley.

  “Beautiful,” he said, as if seeing it for the first time.

  The fields gleamed bright green and every pond and irrigation ditch looked like liquid diamonds. Beyond the settlements and pastures, the sagebrush and mountains fell away in shades of silvery gray and navy blue. Clouds cast an ever-changing patchwork of dark, silky shadows.

  “If we had time, I’d pull over and just enjoy the view,” he added. And you. Last night was barely an appetizer. “But if we had that kind of time, we’d be back in bed and I’d be so deep inside you we’d both scream.”

  “I thought you liked the way I tickled your fancy.”

  “That wasn’t a tickle, honey, it was a full-on, full-length squeeze. And I can’t wait to do it again.”

  Shaye felt heat liquefy her. “Change the subject or I’ll have to go back and change my underwear.”

  “Don’t say things like that when I’m driving.”

  “Pot, kettle.”

  “If you stick out that sweet tongue at me, I’ll take it as an invitation to get naked right now.”