So, it was Rita-lou now. She returned his frozen glare and folded her arms. “Go ahead. This better be good.”
“It’s not safe for you to be living up here at the cabin alone.”
Her words came out tinged with harsh amusement. “I’ve been living up here alone for two weeks. Why the concern now?”
“No. You haven’t been.” His expression took on the strained look of someone in severe discomfort. “I’ve been keeping an eye out... at the site during the day and up here at night.”
Her brows rose in amazement. “Up here?”
He ran his hand across the back of his neck, as if massaging tense muscles. “Yeah.” The one word was grudgingly delivered. “I’ve been driving by once or twice a night for the last—well, since you moved up here.”
She watched him warily. Wanting to let herself hope, but afraid to. “Sort of a security check?”
“Yeah.”
So that explained the passing car she heard in the middle of the night. “You said you wanted to talk to me about a proposition,” she prompted.
“Come back to the camper—where I can keep an eye on you.”
She had to make him admit that he wanted her. She couldn’t go back under any other conditions. “Why are you doing this, Jonah?”
He drew a long, unsteady breath. “Because, damn it, I can’t sleep at night worrying about you.”
“What about your precious privacy?” she asked angrily. “You’re sure I won’t get in your way?”
His answer was a grim laugh. “Hell, yes, you’ll get in my way. But at least I’ll get some sleep. I can manage to do without my privacy for a little while, but I sure as hell need my sleep.”
She realized that that was the closest she was going to get to a commitment from him, temporary though the proposed arrangement might be. She gave him a daring smile. “I doubt that you’ll be getting any more sleep than before.”
He studied her features with unveiled longing. “Ritz,” he said, his voice oddly hoarse. “Come here.” Mesmerized by the seductive glint in his eyes and the velvet roughness of his deep voice, she walked slowly forward until he reached out a hand to capture her arm and abruptly drew her the rest of the way. She found herself crushed in his embrace. His mouth closed over hers, slanting back and forth in a fierce, wildly storming kiss.
Too soon, he raised his head, but only to slide his lips down her neck, sending shivers of torturing desire rippling through her rapidly heating blood. She felt the intimate, rising pressure of his body against hers.
“Ritz,” he breathed in a jagged whisper, “I don’t know how you feel about mercy gestures, but I sure could use some compassionate passion on your part.”
“I think I could manage to oblige you.” She stood on tiptoe and chastely pressed her mouth against his. He didn’t let her get away with it. His hand snared her hair, tugging her head back, and his tongue forced her lips and teeth into submissive parting. He captured her mouth in a deep, sweet-tongued kiss. She responded by stroking the soft inside of his mouth with her own tongue. She bathed in that kiss, drank it, went damp with it. Her body arched into his, her hips seeking more intimate contact with him.
Sweat broke out on his face, mingling with the wetness of their open, groping mouths. Her tongue traced tiny circles over his face, tasting his salt-wet skin. Suddenly his hands were all over—rough, clumsy, yet fiercely arousing as they moved over her waist, her breasts, cupped her buttocks. The incredibly erotic onslaught was a pleasure she would never have guessed, even in her wildest fantasies.
“I think I may get used to being ravished,” she gasped.
“Oh, Rita-lou,” he groaned against her lips, “you bring me to my knees.”
At that moment she knew she was finished playing archaic female games. “I don’t want you on your knees.” Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “I just want you to love me, Jonah. Love me!”
Somehow they made their way to her bedroom, frenziedly divesting each other of their clothing as they went. The trail of clothing led to her bed, where they stood facing each other, she in her lacy bra and silky panties, he in his jeans. His eyes fixed achingly on her love-dazed face, he unzipped his jeans and dropped them. His hands slid beneath the elastic of his red briefs, and her breath caught until those, too, were lying on the floor.
Liquid heat raced through her. Her eyes traveled down his suntanned chest and the taut plane of his stomach and fastened on the stark evidence of the effect she had on him. She felt heady with her newly discovered power.
That headiness passed swiftly, to be replaced by a dryness in her throat, evidence of her sudden wanting. There was no way he could miss her erotic expression of red-alert response: tremulous lips parted in expectation; languid eyes clouded with desire; skin rosy with feverish passion; breasts rising and failing rapidly.
His fingers closed on her shoulders, and it was she who went to her knees. Her hands gripped his thighs, and she buried her face against him, inhaling deeply, shuddering with the intense clammoring that swept over her.
The steely muscles of his abdomen jumped reflexively, and a groan ripped from his chest. “Ohhh . . . Rita- lou,” he gasped.
The pleasure she gave him—and took for herself— was abruptly ended when he jerked her from her knees and pressed her down onto the mattress. Her face flushed, her breathing rapid and shallow, she stared up at him, watching as he bent over her.
Instead of taking her then, he began a renewed assault on her senses. His head dipped to nuzzle her neck before his mouth sought the soft skin of her breasts. His tongue drew tiny concentric circles there that puckered the rosy flesh. Then his teeth closed on her nipple, extracting a gasp of pure pain and pleasure from her. She entwined her fingers in his thick hair and pressed his dark head to her. How entertwined are the pain and plesure that weaves in and our of our lives, she thought . . . and then forgot to think.
His free hand roved over her body, grazed her stomach, then claimed the triangular mound of downy gold. Her ravaged body responded to that skillful hand. She squirmed in breathless, raging longing when his fingers deserted her nub, then sighed as they moved lower. His knee spread her pliant legs apart, and his fingers gained access to the sensitive softness of the opening they sought.
“So tight, so wet, so good,” he told her in a husky voice that stroked her all over. First two fingers, now three, that stretched her painfully . .. and, yes, pleasurably.
By the time his fingers stopped their deep stroking, white-hot sensations were screaming through her body, and she was raggedly desperate for surcease from such prolonged pleasure. As if fully aware of his power over her body, Jonah raised himself over her, his shaft probing lightly, teasingly, at the velvety place where his fingers had been.
“So hard, so beautiful,” she said, and moaning softly, she arched her hips, her hands pulling him down to her.
He braced his hands at either side of her head and sank into her. The glitter in his eyes was pagan, and his face was taut with the effort of repressing his own needs. He began to love her with an unselfish determination. With tormenting slowness, he eased into her wet warmth, then withdrew a fraction of an inch before sliding deeper this time, driving her wild with the need to be completely filled by him. Suddenly he plunged into her with a force that elicited a cry of painful pleasure from her. He held her impaled while her body spasmed with the last tremors of tumultuous relief.
For long moments she lay there gasping, feeling his heaviness, his sweat mingling with hers, and feeling totally female.
When he began to withdraw, her legs gripped his, and she began her seduction of him, moving her hips provocatively. “It’s my turn, sailor,” she teased in a lusty whisper. “You may have a girl in every port, but I’m the one you’ll never forget.”
He stilled her hips with the controlling pressure of his own and pushed the tumbled hair from her cheek in a rare gesture of intimacy. “I’ve never forgotten you, Ritz. Your features have been imprinted on those faceless gi
rls; I never even saw them.”
With that he crushed her to him, his arm encircling her back, and began his own journey toward that mystical, explosive completion, and with each plunging stroke she was a partner on that sensual journey, caressing his beautiful and powerful male body, urging him toward that one suspended moment of su-preme ecstasy with hoarse whispers. Then his powerful frame shuddered with wracking fulfillment.
“That was wonderful,” she whispered, her head pillowed on his massive chest. When he was within her, she had felt as if she would burst with the enormous feelings that exploded through her.
Amusement twinkled in his eyes. “Was? We’ve just begun.”
She groaned. “I’m sore, you lech!”
“Then I’ll wait—but not too long.” He tucked her into the hollow made by his bowed body, curling his arm around her waist, and immediately went to sleep.
For a few moments she luxuriated in his warmth and dormant strength; then she, too, succumbed to the demands of her drained body and fell asleep.
It seemed only moments later that he was awakening her with teasing kisses that tickled her neck. Sleepily she opened her eyes. Dawn was pearling through the window above the bed.
“Don’t you have any respect for people who need their sleep?” she mumbled.
“Let’s find something to eat.” He flashed her that cocky grin. “Besides each other.”
“You’re positively indecent, Jonah Jones!” But she was laughing, letting him tug her from the bed. With a fleeting thought for modesty, she grabbed the rumpled sheet and knotted it around her. He paused only long enough to draw on his briefs, then towed her into the kitchen to raid the refrigerator.
They devoured leftover cold chicken and emptied the milk carton, laughing at the way the milk coated their upper lips. They felt as if they were the sole possessors of a secret that surely no other lovers had shared.
“How did you get such a gorgeous body, Jonah Jones?” she teased.
He started on another chicken leg. “Genes. The same ones that gave me thick hair and perfect eyesight and a crooked tooth, I suppose.” He began to tell her dirty jokes that made her laugh. Then, abruptly, he laid aside the denuded drumstick. “Let’s go for a walk. I feel too full of energy.” She understood. She, too, was tingling with excess energy. “We can watch the sun rise over Mangas Peak.”
She also understood this. It was his one concession to her. Leaning forward, she placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him sweetly. “Let’s go back to bed, sailor.”
Later they slept, awoke to bathe together, foraged in the kitchen again and returned to bed. He didn’t shave—and he looked fiercely handsome—and the only time he allowed her to leave the bed without him was when she insisted on brushing her teeth.
And they talked that weekend, really talked.
Lying on his side, his head propped on one hand, Jonah spoke slowly. “Hell Week in the SEALs was just that. Hell. But it still didn’t prepare us for Nam. The navy sent us out into the muck of the swamps and jungle for days on end. You may not believe this, but we wore panty hose.”
Her brows rose in skepticism.
“No kidding,” he said. “The panty hose made it easier for us to remove the leeches that clung to us, sometimes more than a hundred per soldier.” His mouth curved in a slight smile. “It was an amazing sight, watching us navy commandos, all camouflaged and painted green and black, struggling to stuff ourselves into those damn panty hose.”
It probably was a laughable sight, but she could imagine Jonah, seventeen or eighteen, unprepared for what he had walked into. She had seen Vietnam vets on the University of Houston campus. They had come back with long hair, changed and puzzled eyes and barely contained anguish.
“Why’d you do it, Jonah?” she asked softly. “Oh, I know you had no choice about Vietnam. But why did you choose such a tough branch of the services?”
He shrugged expressively. “Because of the sea, I suppose. I loved it, its freedom, its fury.”
And so she knew: the sea was his mistress, her rival. It made no difference. She had these moments, these days, and she would love him until she had no more time.
She talked, too, her features earnest. “The anthropology books are all wrong, Jonah. They teach that we evolved from brutal, grunting savages. But I don’t believe that. Cro-Magnon man, given a haircut, a shave and a tailored suit, would be indistinguishable from anyone walking the streets of Silver City today.”
She paused, her eyes twinkling, and added, “Well, maybe Buck Dillard is a brutish throwback to Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis.”
Jonah traced the curve of her smile with one sensitive fingertip. “Sounds like you’re pretty involved with this Cro-Magnon man. Should I be jealous?”
She chuckled. “He’s too old for me. Thirty-five- thousand years old. And I think you’d like my Renegade Man.”
“Renegade Man?” His brow furrowed with perplexity. “Is that a new species?”
“No, it’s just my term for a reassessed Cro- Magnon. The people from the Paleolithic period were far more advanced than current evolutionary theory would have us believe. My Renegade Man even developed the harpoon, sailor boy. He was your ice-age seaman. There are caves in west Texas with twenty- five-thousand-year-old murals of spouting whales, you know. I just have to prove that Renegade Man made it as far as Silver City.”
He grinned and pulled her against him. “I think I am jealous.” He dipped his head, his teeth catching her earlobe, nipping lightly. “I can be a savage lover, too.”
Her eyes danced with delight, but her body caught fire all over again. “Prove it.”
He rolled over atop her, pinning her wrists above her head with one hand. “This time I shall play the pirate with you, my love,” he told her with a fierce scowl of desire.
“Do you want me walk your plank?” she teased.
“No, my lady, I want you to suck it,” he growled.
In no time they were simultaneously whirled downward through a whirlpool of pure, piercing rapture. Much later, as she lay with him, their legs entwined, she asked that question that no woman should ever ask. “You called me your love, Jonah—while we were making love. Do you? Do you love me?”
A great sadness claimed his eyes, darkening them almost to black. “Yes. Yes, I love you. But not as much as I love my independence.”
Chapter 15
J onah rose from the bunk and gave one of those feel¬good stretches. His body was beautiful, she thought. She was tempted to entreat him to join her again, but the days were growing fewer, and they both had work that would keep them busy from dawn to dusk. But not too busy for interludes of sensual play in the river or quick, passionate encounters in the shade.
As a lover, Jonah’s prowess was both masterful and playful, clever and considerate. He was adventurous and innovative, mysterious and exciting. And if he didn’t love her enough to want her with him always ... well, she would enjoy every wonderful moment with him while she could.
Those were halcyon days for her, and the small camper became a sensual lair.
Soon, too soon, Jonah would be off on another adventure—the ultimate adventure for him, his life¬long dream—if he succeeded in his golden quest. And, though she realized now that she loved him, loved him with a terrible totality and wanted only happiness for him, some infinitely small part of her soul dreaded the moment when he would hit on his fabled mother lode.
She worked steadily at the dig, but all the while a tune played in her head, and she hummed it absently. The morning was half-gone before she realized what the words were: I was born under a wandering star. A navigator’s star.
She shivered, feeling as if it were an omen.
A little while later she uncovered something hard and lifted it gingerly in her palm. A spear point glinted in the sunlight. It was thin, finely chipped and shaped more or less like a laurel leaf, but grooved with distinctive fluting. A small seed of excitement took root in her. What she held was a Clovis spe
ar point, one of the oldest artifacts ever found in North America.
She should have been feeling more pleasure than she was, but something was bothering her, and she knew what. She had found the spear point in a zone of ochre-colored earth—sterile soil that accumulates when no one has lived on the site—in contrast to black soil, a sign of organic material, indicating that a site had once been inhabited.
Clearly the spear point had been disturbed and moved from its original location. Often a flood was the explanation; it could carry objects as heavy as mammoth tusks from their sites. Sometimes a glacier or a similar upheaval could deposit an artifact where it didn’t belong.
But why was this spear point the only artifact that had ended up here?
Intrigued, she concentrated her digging in that grid, anxious to uncover the next layer and make some sense of the puzzle. But Jonah’s shout cut short her efforts.
“Ritz!” He was crossing the flats toward her, his quick strides an eloquent testament to his turbulent excitement. “Look! Look what I’ve found!”
She dragged her gaze from his magnificent physique to fasten on the green stalks dangling limply from his hand. “Grass?”
“Look closer.”
She did. There in the roots, glowing in the sunlight, were particles of gold. Her breath caught in her throat. “How did you find it?”
“I slipped coming up the riverbank and grabbed at the grass. Do you know what this means, Rita-lou? It means that there’s gold there after all! Right along the bend of the riverbed. Lots of it!”
His excitement was contagious. “Oh, Jonah, that’s wonderful! Will it be hard to get to?”
He swept her up in his arms, leaving her feet dangling six inches above the ground. “Hard? Nothing’s too hard for the amount of gold I just know is down there!”
He ducked his head to kiss her gently. It wasn’t the right time, but she couldn’t help herself. She took flame, responding to that kiss with quick little nips up and down his muscle-corded neck. And in an age-old rite of celebration, he lowered her to the earth and began to stake his claim to her. Clothes were strewn in the dirt. The sun toasted their nakedness. The hot summer breeze played a love song in the gamma grass.
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