The soft sounds Willow made went no farther than Caleb’s mouth as she unravelled beneath him, captive to ecstasy once more. He continued moving slowly, rocking, caressing her with his whole body, loving her gently, relentlessly, sending streamers of fire radiating up through flesh that was still shivering from a tender storm of fulfillment.
“Caleb,” she whispered. “I—” Her back arched as pleasure speared through her.
“Again,” Caleb whispered. “Again, Willow. Until there is nothing else but you and me. No brothers. No sisters. No yesterday. No tomorrow. Just us and the kind of pleasure you can die of.”
Willow’s eyes opened as a sweet violence consumed her. She tried to speak but could not. She had no voice, no thought, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but Caleb and the kind of pleasure she could die of.
16
W ILLOW stirred, awakened from her dreams by the absence of Caleb’s warmth. Sleepily, she sat up. Just as she was going to call his name, she heard his voice from the direction of the campfire where her brother had made his bed. Reno’s voice answered. Neither man sounded friendly.
Adrenaline went through Willow in a wild rush, sweeping away all chance of going back to sleep. She began dressing quickly, fearful of the argument that might develop if she left Caleb and her brother alone.
“You took your damned time,” Reno said.
“I wanted to be sure.”
“I’ll bet.” Reno’s voice was sarcastic. “Is she finally asleep?”
“Keep your voice down if you want her to stay that way.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, you son of a bitch. I don’t take orders from the likes of you.”
“When it comes to Willow, you do,” Caleb said, his voice as hard as Reno’s had been.
Reno moved abruptly, a man composed of midnight and the slicing silver light of the moon. Every muscle in his body was poised to strike at Caleb.
“You better plan on getting Willow to a preacher real quick,” Reno snarled. “If you don’t like that idea, you can reach for that six-gun you’re wearing. Frankly, I’d rather you went for the gun.”
“Don’t be a damned fool,” Caleb said coldly. “At the first shot, Slater’s bunch would be all over us like a rash. Even if we’re quiet as stone, we’ve left tracks from here to Hell and back. Slater’s no fool. He’s getting closer to us all the time. It’s going to take at least two of us to shoot our way free of him.”
“That will be my problem, not yours. You’ll be dead.”
“What about Willow?” Caleb demanded. “Do you know what Slater’s bunch would do to her?”
“Same thing you did.”
Fury snaked through Caleb’s body, testing his self-control. “I didn’t rape Willow. She wanted it just as much as I did.”
Reno’s breath came in hard and fast. “Shut your foul mouth.”
“No,” Caleb said in a flat voice. “I’m tired of listening to you carry on as though you never lay with a girl.”
“I never seduced a virgin!”
“Liar.”
Caleb took a single, predatory step toward the other man before he brought himself under control once more.
“My sister was just as innocent as Willow,” Caleb said in a low, savage voice. “You seduced my sister, you left her, and she spent her days crying and watching the road, waiting for the man who said he loved her and would come and marry her. He didn’t come back and he sure as hell didn’t love her. All he loved was the pleasure he got between her legs, and any woman could give him that. When gold fever called, he left her and never looked back.”
Ten feet away from the men, Willow stood frozen in darkness, her hand jammed in her mouth so that she wouldn’t cry out from the pain that grew greater with every word she overheard.
You seduced my sister, you left her….
He sure as hell didn’t love her. All he loved was the pleasure he got between her legs, and any woman could give him that.
“My sister died after giving birth to your bastard,” Caleb said, and his eyes promised vengeance for that death.
Reno saw the barely controlled rage in Caleb and had no doubt that the other man was telling what he believed to be the truth.
Reno also had no doubt that it wasn’t the truth.
“When?” he asked flatly.
“Last year.”
“Where?”
“Listen, you—”
“Where?” demanded Reno, cutting Caleb off.
What Reno really wanted to know was the girl’s name, but he knew if he asked, Caleb would reach for his gun. A minute ago, Reno would have been glad to provoke the fight.
But not now.
Caleb was right. As long as Slater and his men were around, the real loser in any fight would be Willow.
“Arizona Territory,” Caleb said, biting off each word.
Reno’s eyes widened in surprise as he put facts together. “You’re the Man from Yuma.”
“Dead right, Reno. I’ve been hunting you for a long time.”
Willow flinched at the hatred in Caleb’s voice. She remembered something Eddy had said, something about letting Caleb know if he heard anything about a man called Reno. A new fear grew in Willow, a fear so great she could barely breathe.
Had Caleb known all along that her brother was called Reno? Was that why Caleb had seduced her? Eye for eye…
The thought went through Willow with an agony as great as her love. She prayed that Caleb hadn’t known her brother’s nickname before tonight.
“You’re dead wrong, Yuma man. I never touched your sister. Marty did, though. He was crazy for her.”
There was a taut silence as the two men measured each other across the ashes of a dead campfire. The temptation to believe Reno was so great that it shook Caleb, telling him how much he didn’t want to kill Willow’s brother.
“Who,” Caleb asked softly, “is Marty?”
“Martin Busher, my partner. At least he was until he met Becky Black. I saw the way things were going and drifted.”
“Where is he now?”
“Dead.”
The breath came out of Caleb in a long sigh. “Are you certain?”
“He was supposed to meet up with me here about eight months ago,” Reno said. “We were going prospecting. He never showed up. I waited two weeks, then went prospecting on my own. I figured he got married and settled down.” Reno’s expression changed, hardening. “One day I heard shots. I went to take a look. When I got there, the fight was over. Marty was dead.”
“Utes?”
“Probably. None of the horses wore shoes.”
Caleb hesitated before he very slowly reached into his pocket with his left hand, making certain that every motion was illuminated by moonlight.
“Don’t get edgy, Reno. This isn’t my shooting hand. I’ve got something I want you to look at.”
Reputation and observation had told Reno that Caleb was indeed a right-handed shooter, but Reno watched very carefully just the same. More than one man had died watching the wrong hand.
All that came from Caleb’s pocket was a gold locket. He flicked it open, using his left thumbnail.
“Strike a match,” Caleb said.
Reno did, using his right hand, for he was a left-handed shooter.
Gold metal shone brightly, reflecting the flare of the match. Willow saw the locket, remembered Caleb showing it to her, asking her if the people inside were her “husband’s” parents. Fear filled her, choking her. With a tiny sound, she did what she had done during the war when she had hidden and men had drawn so near that fear threatened to overwhelm her; she bit into her hand until physical pain restored her self-control.
“Recognize them?” Caleb asked.
A quick glance was all Reno spared. It was all he needed. “Must be Marty’s folks.”
“Must be? Why?”
“Ears,” Reno said succinctly. “Marty could put a milk pitcher to shame.”
A muffled sound that was part laughter and part rel
ief came from Caleb, but he still didn’t understand what had happened to put him on the trail of the wrong man.
“When I asked Becky who the father was,” Caleb said slowly, “she told me a man called Reno, a man whose real name was Matthew Moran.”
The words echoed in Willow’s head, her worst fears calmly spoken by the man she loved.
The man who didn’t love her.
The man who had been hunting Matthew Moran, nicknamed Reno. But Caleb hadn’t found Reno. So Caleb used what he did find, which was a girl who could lead him to Reno.
A chill shook Willow as she understood that Caleb was indeed what he had seemed in Denver, a dark angel of retribution.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
Sister for sister.
The vague salt and copper taste of blood spread through Willow’s mouth, but the pain of her hand was nothing compared to the bleak realization that she had been seduced in order to balance the merciless scales of a justice that was as hard as Caleb Black.
“Becky said her man gave her the locket when he rode out to make their fortune in gold.”
Reno hissed a word under his breath. “Your sister lied about me, Yuma man.”
“I’m beginning to think so,” Caleb agreed calmly, “but why?”
“What were you going to do when you found your sister’s seducer?”
“Beat the living hell out of him, then stand him up in front of a preacher with Rebecca,” Caleb said.
Reno smiled grimly. “My sentiments exactly. Did she know what you were going to do?”
“She knew me.”
“Then she was probably trying to protect her man, such as he was. Marty couldn’t have been more than seventeen. He was a good kid, but he wasn’t up to your weight in any kind of fight.” Reno smiled savagely. “I am. I know just what to do with a man who forces himself on an innocent girl.”
“I didn’t force Willow and you know it.”
“Like hell, Yuma man. You were alone with her. She was at your mercy and you—”
“Tell him, Willow,” Caleb interrupted, his voice like a whip.
Without looking away from Reno, Caleb held out his left hand to the girl who had been standing motionless in darkness, trying not to make a sound. Caleb had wanted to spare Willow this, but it was too late now.
“Tell your brother how it was between us right from the start,” Caleb said.
“Get away from him, Willy.”
Without a word to either man, Willow lowered her hand from her mouth and walked forward until her boots crunched among the ashes of the dead campfire. Ignoring Caleb’s outstretched hand until he slowly withdrew it, she stood between the men, looking at neither of them, touching neither of them. A single drop of blood slid down her hand like a black tear in the moonlight.
It would be as close to crying as she came. Tears came from hope or fear, and Willow felt neither. Not anymore. All she felt was cold.
“Willy?” Reno asked quietly, worried by his sister’s eerie calm.
“I begged for him to take me.”
For a moment, the meaning of Willow’s words escaped both men. They were too shocked by her voice to get past it to the words. The huskiness and subtle laughter that was so much a part of her voice was gone. In its place was nothing at all, a flatness of tone that was barely human.
“I can’t believe it, Willy. You weren’t raised to—”
“No more,” Caleb said, cutting across Reno’s words. “You asked, she answered, and that’s the end of it.”
Gently, Caleb stroked Willow’s hair, silently urging her closer to him. She remained motionless, as though nothing more than moonlight was touching her. Long fingers brushed over her cheek. She turned away. With a whispered curse, Caleb dropped his hand and turned back to her brother.
“You can climb down off your high horse,” Caleb said roughly to Reno. “I’ll marry Willow as soon as we can find a preacher.”
Silence stretched, then snapped with Reno’s long sigh. His body shifted subtly, coming off the fine edge of battle readiness. His left hand curled into a fist, then relaxed.
“Damn good thing, Yuma man.”
Willow saw the change in Reno as he relaxed. She remembered the speed with which her brother had drawn his gun, and understood why Caleb had agreed to marry her. Fury uncurled in her body, an emotion as cold as her passion had been hot.
“Good?” Willow repeated softly. “A liar will marry me rather than face my brother—who happens to be a gunfighter called Reno—and that’s good?”
Abruptly, tension arced through Reno again. “Are you saying Caleb lied his way into your bed?”
“How did I lie to you?” Caleb asked simultaneously. His voice was soft but it nonetheless overrode Reno’s question. “Tell me, Willow. Tell me how I seduced you with lies. Did I promise to marry you?”
The sound Willow made could hardly be called laughter, but it was. “No. No promises.”
“Did I tell you all the lies about love and forever after that a man bent on seduction uses?”
Willow’s breath came in harshly. “No. No words of love and forever after.”
“Then how did I lie to you? Tell me.”
The sound of Willow swallowing against the tension in her throat was painful to hear. Her eyelashes closed, but it was only for an instant. Caleb was right and they both knew it. He hadn’t had to lie. She had fallen into his hands like a peach all flushed and hot from the sun. The ease of the conquest must have surprised him. No wonder he thought she was a fancy lady.
For him, she was.
“You didn’t tell me you were hunting my brother,” Willow said at last, not looking at Caleb.
“I thought you were Reno’s fancy lady,” Caleb said roughly. “You were my best hope of avenging Rebecca. Your brother is a hard man to track down. I didn’t like using a woman to get to Reno, but given the same circumstances, I’d do the same thing again.”
Willow turned and looked at Caleb for the first time since she had walked out of one kind of darkness and into another kind, one whose end she couldn’t see.
“I hope Marty lied to your sister,” Willow said, her voice as soft and cold as snow. “I hope she heard a thousand loving lies from her man. I hope she died believing each one of them. It would make the memories less…shameful.”
“There’s no shame in what we did,” Caleb said furiously, feeling his self-control evaporating with each word Willow said. She had always had that effect on him, making a shambles of the defenses that other people found so solid. “We aren’t the first man and woman in creation who couldn’t wait for a preacher to put the seal on their marriage.”
“What marriage?” she asked.
“The one that will take place as soon as we get the hell out of here,” he retorted.
“Yuma man, I’m not marrying you.”
Caleb was too surprised to say anything.
Reno wasn’t. “You can marry him or you can bury him. Your choice, Willy.”
Caleb gave Reno a hard look, but when Caleb spoke, his voice was reasonable. “Bullets aren’t like words. You can’t take them back when you’ve gotten over your anger.”
For a few moments Willow continued to stare through Caleb as though he didn’t exist. Finally, her breath came out in a long rush. “Yes. My brother is blindingly quick with his belt gun, isn’t he?”
That wasn’t what Caleb had meant, but he was too disturbed by the quality of Willow’s voice to protest. Her voice belonged to someone much older and much less gentle than the girl who unravelled so sweetly and so completely in his arms.
“He’s quick enough,” Caleb said evenly.
Silence stretched as Willow looked at the big man she had loved before she ever really knew him. But as much as the mistake hurt, she knew it was her own doing, not Caleb’s. He may have abetted her ignorance, but he didn’t create it. He hadn’t lied to her. He hadn’t needed to.
She had lied so successfully to herself.
Silly little trout,
not knowing the difference between lust and love, mistaking a backwater swirl for the river of life itself.
Willow closed her eyes and saw again the stunning instant when Reno’s gun had simply appeared in his hand. There had been no warning, no hesitation, nothing but speed and a cold steel weapon poised to kill.
Her fingers clenched together, fingers interlaced. The small wound across the back of her hand protested and wept another black tear. Willow barely felt it. Her thoughts were too painful to allow for anything except the silent scream raking at her throat.
Caleb doesn’t love me but he’ll marry me rather than face my brother’s gun.
Caleb, who had saved Willow’s life more than once on the long way to the San Juans. Caleb, who hadn’t forced her into his becoming his fancy lady. If anything, she had forced him, tempting him in ways she hadn’t even understood at the time.
Of course Caleb doesn’t love me. An Old Testament kind of man doesn’t love a fancy lady. He uses her, though…the pleasure he finds between her legs.
The memory of her own wanton sensuality washed through Willow in a scalding tide of humiliation that receded slowly, leaving her skin as cold and colorless as her voice.
“Well, Willy,” Reno said impatiently. “What will it be? A wedding or a funeral?”
Willow knew she had to choose, but there was no choice she could live with. She couldn’t condemn Caleb to death at her brother’s hands. She couldn’t condemn herself to life with a man who at best saw her as a duty he had acquired on the way to avenging his sister’s death. And at worst…
Fancy lady.
At worst, Willow would condemn herself to marrying a man who had nothing but contempt for her and a lust that could be slaked between any woman’s legs.
Slowly, Willow opened her eyes and looked from the brother who didn’t understand her to the man who didn’t love her.
“I’ll do what I must,” Willow said.
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