His thigh muscles squeezed involuntarily.
“I think I’m caught, Johnny,” she said, with her marvelous knack for stating the obvious.
“I know you’re caught.” He’d been doing his damndest to keep his hands off her, but she was making that noble effort impossible. He’d told himself that after the hell she’d been through coming up the mountain, the last thing she needed was him pawing her, rolling all over her like an animal. But maybe she wanted a little pawing—maybe she wanted a lot.
“How about if you open your legs?” he suggested.
“My legs? Why? I mean—how would that help?”
“It would help me a lot.”
Honor gazed up at him, bewildered. She could feel her whole body going weak and moist. His eyes were dark with desire, diamond-hard at the center. Still, he couldn’t mean what it sounded as if he meant, could he? He’d been aroused before, but he’d always seemed to be fighting demons, fighting her. Had he just lost the battle? “I’m not sure quite what you mean . . . .”
“Sure you are,” he said softly, impatiently. He feathered her cheek with his fingers, drawing them down to her mouth.
The sensation of weakness swept through her like a warm, humid wind. “Then, you are . . . talking about sex? About making love? To me?”
“Don’t make it sound so complicated. Men and women have been doing it for ages.” His voice had the raw, sexy edge of a man pushed beyond his limits. “Don’t tell me you’ve never fantasized about us doing that?”
Yes, she’d fantasized about it. Last night, and countless other nights since he’d disappeared from her life. She’d had dreams of him seducing her slowly, drugging her with desire as only he could. She had dreamed of him kissing her until she was insensate with passion, dreamed of him taking her with his dark animal hunger. She had dreamed so vividly, she knew it wasn’t safe to answer his question.
When she didn’t, he captured her chin and drew her head up, stroking her throat with his thumb. “So tell me, Honor. Do you want me to do that to you? Say it, baby. Would you like to feel me inside you?”
Honor’s stomach clutched with shock as much as excitement. His voice was rough around the edges. His eyes were black with passion, but there were flashes of another emotion electrifying their depths. The impulses registered on her every nerve ending. He was angry, she realized. Even if he wasn’t consciously aware of it, the darkness was there, triggered by the heat of his passion, feeding his desire. Damn him, she thought, her throat aching. She knew she ought to back away, but she couldn’t. The raw, sexy edge of his anger thrilled her.
“Yes,” she said, her voice gravelly, “I want you inside me.”
Johnny exhaled, heat pouring through his nostrils. He stared at her for one long, hot moment, on the brink of something reckless. His body throbbed; his mind shouted out an executive command that he act. God knew he wanted her. He’d always wanted her. She was the girl of his teenage dreams—and she was telling him yes, I want you inside me.
His heart was beating as wildly as it had when he first met her. His stomach was as painfully knotted with aching desire. Pain, he thought. This wasn’t pleasure, it was pain. He was as crazy as that idiot kid had been, as racked with need and out of control. But that kid had wanted only one thing—to win her love, to worship at her feet. The grown man had other dangerous impulses. He wouldn’t stop at winning her love. He wanted revenge.
He shifted his weight and felt her hand slip away from the heat between his thighs. She’d escaped him. His reaction was swift and angry. Burying his hand in her lush hair, he pulled her toward him and lifted her mouth to his.
Her lips parted in trembling surrender. She whimpered, the sound rife with uncertainty and desire.
That sound thrilled him.
“Johnny,” she implored, “love me . . . don’t hurt me.”
“Love you,” he breathed, his mouth on hers. His stomach muscles clenched. That was all he wanted, wasn’t it? In the deepest part of his soul? Just to love her? Still to love her?
He let his mouth linger over hers interminably, prolonging the agony. He ached to kiss her, to ravish her mouth, to thrust his tongue deep into the tender channel of her throat. He ached to invade every part of her, every orifice. He wanted to take carnal possession, to mark her and make her his. But once he let go of that last thread of restraint, once the cage door was open . . .
Gradually he became aware of the anguish in her breathing and opened his eyes. He saw pain in the set of her mouth, the sweet suffering in her gaze, and he drew back, confused. It took him only a moment to realize what had happened. He was hurting her. The hand he’d buried in her braid was clenched, gripping her hair tightly. His other hand had closed on her forearm, compressing the cuts and bruises.
The sight of her brought as vivid a flash of understanding as if he’d had one of his grandfather’s dreams. “I can’t love you. Honor,” he said with a hard, despairing sigh. “Not without hurting you. It’s impossible.”
He released her and rolled away, sitting up, his shoulders hunched forward, his legs drawn up. His loins were still pumping with heat and blood.
“Johnny?” Her voice was soft, shaking. “I’m all right, really. I’m not hurt, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
But you will be. Count on it.
She touched his shoulder, and he shook his head. “Don’t be a fool, Honor. You’ve been done a favor.”
He rose to his feet and walked to the mouth of the cave. He’d just had the perfect opportunity to take his revenge, but he hadn’t done it. The thought of hurting her had appalled him. The impulse inside him had been to save her, to protect her. He couldn’t seem to get near the woman without turning into a white knight.
The thunderstorm had passed, he realized, looking around at the craggy peaks of the mountain range. The day was bright and sunny, rainwashed. He only wished the storm inside him could dissipate as quickly and leave such beauty behind.
Narrowing his eyes against the sharpness of the sunlight, he walked out into the warm blue sky and let the light bathe him, soothe him. He wanted that connection with the elements now. In his childhood nature had been his only respite, the only thing that could heal him. It had offered him a serenity that nothing else could.
A short time later he heard Honor move around behind him. He turned to find her brushing hair out of her eyes and blinking against the brightness. In the torn camp dress and with her blond tresses flying free of the braid that hung down her back, she looked like a wild mountain woman.
It was a sight he’d never expected to see, and it had an odd effect on him. It liberated his mind for an instant. The girl called Honor was imperfect and real, he realized. She was flesh and blood, not the fantasized ideal he’d held in his mind for eighteen years. The insight made him want to lift her in his arms and swing her around, celebrating the morning, the sunlight.
“I wish you could see yourself now,” he said, his voice growing husky as he remembered how he’d cradled her in his arms the night before. “I don’t know how to describe it. You’re earthy. You’re beautiful.”
“Don’t do that!” She turned on him furiously. “I won’t allow you to shove me away and then turn around and tell me I’m beautiful . . . and earthy.”
He shrugged an apology, genuinely surprised. Somehow he’d missed a note in his analysis of the new Honor. She was angry. Spitfire angry. She drove home that fact as she whirled around and started down the mountain. He could hardly blame her. He wanted her one minute, hated himself for wanting her the next. He was at war, and she was getting caught in the crossfire.
He could see her limping and knew she must be in considerable pain. His own muscles were as tender as bruises from yesterday’s climb. Hers must have been torn apart by it. He’d seen the cuts on her arms and legs, but it was also clear that she wasn’t in any mood to accept aid and comfort.
She stumbled and caught herself, swearing so loudly even he could hear it. He decided to hang back an
d give her plenty of room. There was nothing to be gained in crowding an angry woman. But he smiled when she faltered again, then picked up a loose rock and flung it out of her way. The amusement he felt had an odd quality of sympathy to it, sympathy that for once wasn’t driven by guilt or tainted with anger.
His ancestors would have called it softening toward the enemy, he realized. And there was no greater shame for an Apache warrior. A man’s honor, his very life, depended on his ability to deal swiftly and mercilessly with anyone who threatened his survival, or the survival of his tribe. It was a violent code for a violent existence.
She did qualify as a threat, he reminded himself, watching her disappear down the trail. He’d been emotionally mugged by that sweet thing in blue chintz and braided hair. She had ripped his heart out when he’d been young and stupid, and if he hadn’t learned anything from that experience, then he deserved whatever he got.
Still, he though, watching her yellow hair swing in the sunlight, she was changing, transforming before his very eyes into a female even more irresistible than the one he remembered. Fortunately she was angrier than hell at the moment and wouldn’t let him near her. If he thought he’d done her a favor by backing off in the cave, he knew with the utmost certainty that she was doing him a favor by being furious with him now.
He drew a deep breath and started down the mountain after her. They were about to spend several more days together alone in these mountains. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if they both let their guard down at once.
“The moon! Look, there’s a ring around it,” Honor said, pointing up at the night sky. A silvery nimbus surrounded a moon so full it seemed about to give birth.
Johnny twisted to look up where Honor was pointing. The campfire they sat at had burned down low, making it easy to see even the tiniest stars sparkling above them.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said, turning back to Johnny’s mysterious smile. “And very mystical,” she added. “Does it mean something?”
He just shrugged, which piqued her curiosity.
After the climb that morning, and out of necessity, they’d spent most of the rest of the day gathering food. It had been a tense but bearable experience once she’d decided it was pointless being angry at someone as unpredictable as Johnny. Tonight, after a meal of roasted rabbit, mescal, and acorns, they’d both relaxed a little.
“Is that a smile?” she persisted, searching his darkly handsome face. “What’s going on? Does it mean something spooky? Like zombies rising from their graves?”
“Not even close. I don’t know if there’s any official meaning, but when I was a kid and the moon got like that, I used to hear the women whispering about ‘love magic.’”
“What’s love magic?”
“Remember, you asked.”
She laughed. “I’m holding my breath here.”
“It’s a spell used to attract lovers. In its strongest form, godistso nca, it creates an uncontrollable obsession to be with the one who cast the spell.”
“Sounds romantic.”
He sat forward, long hair flowing around him as he regarded the fire. “That depends on your point of view,” he said finally, looking up at her. “The obsession is sexual. The object of the spell becomes a love slave.”
“Love slave?” Honor fingered the long rip in the neckline of her blouse. The tears in her blouse and skirt had happened yesterday on her trip up the mountain, but now she felt as if her clothes were falling off. “And how do you—I mean, how does one cast such a spell?”
He shrugged again, his smile faintly wicked. The fire painted the bronzed angles of his face with liquid gold. “I never got into sorcery.”
Her whistle of relief seemed to intrigue him, and she found herself wishing she could look away from the golden flames reflected in his eyes. He didn’t need sorcery. All he had to do was catch a woman in his gaze, in the luminous glare of his panther eyes, and she was helplessly ensnared—his quivering prey, his love slave, or whatever his mercurial mood dictated.
Almost involuntarily Honor glanced over at the lean-to, his “bedroom” out-of-doors. Was she going to be sleeping in there with him? That didn’t seem a wise idea given their track record.
“We’ll do it back-to-back,” he said.
“What?”
“Sleep. Tonight. Back-to-back shouldn’t get us in too much trouble.”
“As long as we stay that way.”
Her words were prophetic. They fell asleep back-to-back, but woke up face-to-face, her leg thrown over his hip, the back of her hand pressed into his pelvis.
“Do you think you could find another place for that?” he asked, indicating her hand.
He was surprisingly polite, considering everything.
“It must have been the moon,” Honor explained.
That day he showed her how the Apache hunted waterfowl without weapons. He floated gourds in a pond full of ducks until the ducks accepted the objects drifting among them. Then he made himself a gourd mask and entered the pool, submerging until only the gourd showed. Within seconds he was close enough to a duck to touch it. He was about to grab its little webbed feet and pull it under when Honor realized what he was going to do and let out a shriek.
“Don’t drown that duck!” she cried.
“You would have been one hungry Indian,” Johnny told her as waterfowl scattered far and wide.
That night they feasted on nuts, seeds, and berries and gazed uneasily at the ringed moon. The next morning it was Johnny who had his hand in the wrong place when they woke up. He was curled behind her, cupping her breast. He released her immediately, but it was too late to do Honor any good. She had already melted like a quart of ice cream left out at a birthday party. His touch enthralled her, showering her with hot jets of pleasure. Her dreams paled in comparison to the real thing. “It was your turn,” she assured him earnestly, hoping to give him a hint.
Johnny didn’t need hints. He already had the combined sex drive of ten rutting stags. The way she’d caressed him the night before with her white-hot fingertips, it was a miracle all he did was touch her. He wanted to shake her naked body with his deep thrusts. He wanted to feel her clutching at him, to hear her throaty screams of pleasure.
He’d been aroused for days on end without relief. It wouldn’t have surprised him if this was another part of the test his grandfather had in mind. Warrior training, he thought, smiling grimly. Get a man as hard as a war club and keep him that way day and night. It was guaranteed to put him in a fighting mood.
But as the days wore on, it was her ability to endure hardship that most challenged his assumptions about her. Strength and bravery weren’t qualities he’d expected from her, but she didn’t shrink from the creatures that howled by night or the grueling excursions to find food during the day. She was generous to a fault, sharing whatever she’d foraged with him, even when there was barely enough for her. She wasn’t acting like the kind of woman who would betray a man lightly, he admitted to himself.
An uneasy bond formed between them. Johnny told himself it was an alliance against the elements. They had to cooperate to survive. He even found a way to reduce the agony of their sleeping arrangements. He would wait until she was asleep before joining her in the lean-to.
On this particular night he waited even longer than usual, but Honor was still awake when he entered. She was holding something in her hand when she glanced up and saw him. Quickly she slipped it into the pocket of her dress.
“What are you doing?” Johnny asked. He’d got a glimpse of what looked like a small blue stone, similar to one of the charms in his medicine bag.
“Nothing, really. A good-luck piece I brought with me.”
Her vague smile made him suspicious. Still, he couldn’t imagine that she would have gone through his medicine bag. “What is it, Honor?”
“Nothing,” she said, a note of urgency in her voice. “Let it go, okay?”
Distrust was seeping into his blood, threa
tening the tentative bond that was developing between them. “Honor, don’t do this,” he said softly. “Talk to me. We have a bargain, remember? You agreed to do whatever I asked.”
She shook her head and rolled away from him, assuming the position she slept in. “I don’t care what I agreed to,” she said. “It’s late, and I’m tired.”
He put a hand on her shoulder, and she jerked away from him. “Johnny, don’t!”
Sensing the depth of her turmoil, he backed off.
Gradually she turned to face him, and with great reluctance drew the stone from her pocket. Johnny struggled to breathe as he stared at the triangular piece of turquoise, one of the strongest of the Apache medicine charms.
“You gave it to me,” she said, “a long time ago.”
“I know.” He had given her the charm before going to trial on the assault-and-battery charges. He’d had no idea then how things would turn out, that she would testify against him. But perhaps he’d had a premonition that he might never see her again.
She sat up and brought the stone to her mouth, pressing it against the softness of her lower lip, unaware of how penitent the gesture looked. Finally, with great difficulty, she spoke. ‘“No matter what happens, Honor, keep this. Remember me.’”
She looked up at him, tears sparkling in her eyes. “That’s what you said to me.”
The pain Johnny felt was so razor-sharp, he had to suck in air to control it. He turned away from her, his eyes unfocused, his mind riveted on the past. He remembered the words, and every ragged breath he’d had to take to find the control to say them.
“I kept it,” she whispered. “I didn’t forget.”
“Honor, don’t—” Even her voice stabbed at him. He couldn’t let her resurrect that memory. It was the pocket where all his pain resided. He couldn’t even let her express her anguish about that day, because it touched his own. He would never forget the awkwardness, the naked misery, with which he tried to say “Remember me” and ended up saying good-bye. His sixteen-year-old heart had felt as though it were bursting.
“Johnny, please . . . ? Can we talk?”
The Stealth Commandos Trilogy Page 29
