Winter Fire

by Elizabeth Lowell

  That’s why she came crawling under my covers while I was asleep. She knew I wouldn’t make the first move, so she came up on my blind side.

  All I’m doing is returning the favor.

  Case was surprised to find that the lacing on the shirt went down all the way to Sarah’s navel, but he wasn’t complaining. He smoothed the flaps of doeskin aside and pulled back to see her better.

  I’ll just look at her. That’s all. There’s no harm in seeing her.

  She was silver and dusk and softly gleaming curves. A satin shadow lay between her breasts. Velvet darkness gathered at their tips, responding to the cold air flowing beneath the blanket.

  He stifled a groan of raw desire.

  My God. I could spend myself just looking at her.

  But he couldn’t stop looking at her any more than he could stop wanting to feel and taste and explore the softness he had just uncovered.

  He lowered his face between her breasts and took a deep, deep breath.

  It was like breathing a silky kind of fire.

  He stroked his forehead against the firm slope of one breast, then the other. When he discovered a velvety nipple, he lifted his head. His lips opened and his breath sighed out around her.

  With a hunger that was all the greater for his restraint, he drew the tip of her breast into his mouth. Licking, sucking, savoring, he shaped her into a velvety hardness that rubbed against his tongue, begging for more.

  I’ve got to stop this, he thought. I can’t give her what she wants along with the sex.

  Hearth, home, children.

  He lifted his head and saw her breast taut and pouting in the starlight.

  But God knows I can give her body what it hungers for.

  And God knows I’m fool to even think about it.

  He didn’t know how much of a fool he was until he tasted the velvet texture of her nipple again, warming the sweet female flesh, shaping it with his mouth, drawing it even tighter.

  Hunger raced through him like thunder, shaking him. Even as he bent his head to her other breast, he wondered if he could stop at all. There was even sweeter, hotter flesh waiting to be discovered, touched, cherished.

  He needed that. He needed it more than he needed to breathe.

  Sarah made a sleepy, throaty sound. She moved beneath Case, back arching slightly, both giving herself to him and demanding more of his loving.

  The motion was elemental, sensual, provocative, but she didn’t know any of that. All she knew was that she was lying beneath a beautiful, hot sun while liquid rays of warmth caressed her lazily, wonderfully.

  It made no sense, but then, dreams weren’t supposed to.

  All that mattered to her was that she was safe within the sensuous embrace of the dream. She knew it with a certainty that was greater than anything else, even the pleasure spreading through her body in slowly expanding rings.

  Without warning a hot rain of delight coursed through her. She arched slightly in primitive reflex, giving herself to the beauty of the sun’s penetrating, caressing heat.

  Distantly she realized that her shoulders were cold and her breasts were bare and wet and someone was breathing in tiny, ragged whimpers. She tried to stay within the dream…

  And then she sat bolt upright.

  She had just realized that it wasn’t the sun between her legs. It was a hand.

  A man’s hand.

  Case muffled Sarah’s attempt to scream the fastest way he could. His mouth covered hers so thoroughly that only a small cry escaped.

  He assumed that she would stop struggling when she realized where she was, and who was kissing her, and why. After all, she had been the one to come to him.

  But she went after him like a wildcat, kicking and clawing with every bit of her strength.

  He twisted until he lay heavily on her, pinning her legs to the ground. Then he caught her hands and dragged them together. Holding both of her wrists with one hand, he lifted his head just long enough to cover her mouth with his other hand.

  “Sarah, it’s me, Case,” he said softly.

  Her narrowed, glittering eyes told him that she didn’t care who the hell he was.

  “Sarah!” Conner called from thirty feet away. “What’s going on?”

  She jerked beneath Case, but he didn’t give an inch. He covered her the way he had when they were in a rocky alcove and the Culpeppers were right below.

  “Are you all right?” her brother called. “Sarah!”

  “Just a bad dream,” Case called softly. “She’s fine. No need to wake the dead.”

  “What’s she doing out here?” Conner asked, his voice low.

  Sarah and Case looked at one another.

  “If you start screaming,” he said in a low voice, “there’s going to be a lot of explaining to do—starting with why you crawled into my bed if you didn’t want just what I was giving to you!”

  She went still. Belatedly she remembered where she was, and why.

  “Sis?” Conner called quietly. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Case lifted his hand.

  “Nothing is wrong,” she whispered.

  “What?” her brother asked.

  “I’m fine,” Sarah said more loudly.

  “What are you doing out here? Is Case sick?”

  Case’s black eyebrow lifted in sardonic query.

  “Am I sick?” he mouthed silently.

  “When Ute came in from his watch, he said Case was thrashing and groaning,” she said. “I came out to check on him.”

  Surprise showed for an instant on Case’s face. Then his expression became as hard as the cliffs rising out of the dawn.

  “That was hours ago,” Conner said. “I’m coming in from watch myself.”

  “I fell asleep,” she said.

  “Oh.” Conner hesitated. “Are you going back to the cabin now?”

  She had a stark vision of what she must look like at the moment, with her shirt undone and her pants around her knees.

  “Go on without me,” she said through her teeth.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Conner, for heaven’s sake! Do you want to walk me to the privy personally, or can I have just a wee bit of privacy?”

  “Oh, sure. Sorry. I just…”

  “I know,” Sarah said, her voice gentle. “I shouldn’t have snapped. You know how quick off the mark I am when I first wake up.”

  “Especially after a nightmare,” Conner said.

  She didn’t correct her brother’s idea of who had been the one with bad dreams.

  “Go on,” she said. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

  “Should I start the fire?”

  “No need. Just go to sleep. I’ll take care of the morning chores.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Conner withdrew toward the cabin.

  When she could no longer hear any trace of her younger brother’s presence, she looked directly into Case’s eyes.

  “Get off me,” she said through her teeth.

  Without a word he rolled aside. He watched her warily, as though uncertain of what she might do next.

  Blood welled from a nick just beneath his eye.

  “Have the decency to turn your back while I dress,” she said bitterly.

  “Climb down from your high horse,” Case said, his voice even. “I’m not the one who came crawling into your bed.”

  But even as he spoke, he rolled over and turned his back on her.

  “I didn’t come ‘crawling into your bed,’” she said angrily. “You were having a nightmare.”

  “I don’t remember any dreams.”

  “You were twitching and jerking and thrashing like a wolf in a trap.”

  “Doesn’t sound real inviting to me,” he drawled.

  “Ute didn’t think so, either.”

  “But you crawled right in.”

  “No,” Sarah said, yanking the last lace tight. “You dragged me in.”

  “I suppose Ute saw that, too.”

&
nbsp; She started pulling her underwear and pants up. At first she thought the slick heat between her legs meant that her monthly had come early. But there was no dark stain of blood. Simply a steamy, scented moisture.

  “What did you do to me?” she asked, startled.

  Case looked over his shoulder. There was a vision of dense auburn curls and pearly skin vanishing rapidly into worn doeskin pants.

  Hunger hit him like a fist, making it hard to breathe.

  “You were married,” he said roughly. “What do you think I did to you?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking, would I?” she snapped.

  For a moment he thought she was joking.

  Then he saw the wariness in her eyes. She was fastening her pants as though her body belonged to a stranger.

  Case didn’t know what to say.

  “Oh, never mind,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t have let you tuck me in next to you like a child. Then I went and fell asleep. I suppose I had it coming, whatever you did to me.”

  He opened his mouth. Nothing came out but silence.

  She jumped to her feet, grabbed her jacket, and pulled it on. As she did, she flinched slightly. Her nipples were still hard, still very sensitive.

  She looked puzzled by that, too.

  So did Case.

  Absently he brushed the stinging skin near his eye. The drops of blood that came away on his fingertip testified to Sarah’s speed and aim with her nails.

  The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly.

  “You’re a hellcat with those fingernails.” he said.

  “Practice makes perfect,” she said, her voice icy.

  His eyes narrowed.

  “The next time you have nightmares about your niece,” she said in a clipped voice, “you can damned well have them by yourself.”

  “My niece?” Case asked, startled. “What are you talking about?”

  “It will be tough telling you,” she drawled sarcastically, “seeing as how you told me never to say her name again.”

  “Emily?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She started for the privy.

  “How do you know I was dreaming about her?” he asked.

  Pausing, Sarah looked over her shoulder.

  “Do I take that as permission to say the sacred name?” she asked sweetly.

  “Hell, say whatever you want.”

  “My, you do know how to tempt a woman.”

  “Just spit it out.”

  She almost gave in to temptation. The icy clarity of his eyes stopped her.

  “You were thrashing—” she began.

  “—around and muttering,” he interrupted curtly. “I know that part.”

  “Who’s telling the story, you or me?”

  “Neither one, near as I can tell.”

  She bit back a searing word.

  Normally it wasn’t difficult to keep her temper. But this one man got under her skin worse than nettles.

  “I talked to you for a time,” she said tightly. “Soothing you.”

  “With that honey and sunshine voice,” he suggested, his face expressionless.

  She shrugged.

  “When you settled down some,” she said, “I got close enough to touch you. I wanted to wake you up gently.”

  “You sure you weren’t dreaming? I don’t remember any of this.”

  “You were asleep,” she shot back.

  “Uh huh.”

  “When I touched you, you didn’t wake up, not all the way,” she said, biting off each word. “You just mumbled Emily’s name, and then something about how you thought she had gone.”

  Case didn’t move, yet he closed up completely.

  “Keep talking,” he said.

  “You put your arm around me, pulled me under the covers, and told me not to worry, Uncle Case would chase the ghosts away.”

  His eyelids flinched. It was the only sign that he heard Sarah’s words.

  “Then you tucked me along your side,” she said, “cradled my face with your hand, and went back to sleep. It was a good sleep, clean and gentle.”

  She waited, but all he said was, “Anything else?”

  “When I tried to ease out of your bed, your arm tightened and you started to wake up. I waited, and tried again. Same thing.”

  Case looked away from Sarah, but she sensed that she still had his full attention.

  “I fell asleep,” she said simply. “It was so warm and peaceful to be held like that. No wonder Emily came to you when her dreams troubled her.”

  A flash of stark pain went over his face like black lightning.

  Sarah’s breath caught. Despite everything, she wanted to go to him, to hold him and be held in turn.

  There were times when life simply hurt too much to bear alone.

  “Emily is dead, isn’t she?” Sarah whispered.

  Only silence answered the question.

  “Is that why you’re hunting Culpeppers?” she asked.

  “I will see every last one of them in hell.”

  His voice was like winter itself—quiet, cold, unstoppable.

  She shivered and rubbed her hands over her arms.

  “I don’t doubt it,” she said. “Unless you get yourself killed first.”

  “No one will hang crêpe if I die.”

  “I would.”

  Slowly Case looked back to her.

  “Don’t,” he said simply.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Care about me. It will only hurt you.”

  Sarah’s smile was bittersweet.

  “That’s how you know you’re alive, Case. You hurt.”

  After that, nothing disturbed the morning silence but the sound of her footsteps moving away.

  Case dumped an armload of wood in the cabin. Sitting on his heels, he sorted and stacked the wood neatly near the fire.

  Sarah looked up from her spinning. Though she was tired enough to fall on her face after a day of grinding corn with Lola, boiling laundry, and making soap, the spinning still had to be done. The cloth not only made their own clothes, it was one of the few sources of cash she had.

  Unfortunately she wasn’t too tired to blush every time she thought of what had happened that morning, with the sun barely up, her pants down around her knees, and a wild singing in her body.

  Hastily she looked away from Case. The firewood he had brought in was obviously from the higher country beyond Lost River Canyon. There was even some pine wood among the piñon and juniper.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’re very handy with that ax Ute, uh, found.”

  She suspected Ute had “found” the ax—and more besides—at the raiders’ camp in Spring Canyon.

  “No thanks necessary,” Case said. “I eat food cooked over that fire just like Conner does.”

  The cabin door opened. Conner stuck his head in.

  “If you’re finished with that wood,” he said to Case, “I could use a hand.”

  Sarah looked up quickly from her spinning.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing you need to worry about,” her brother said.

  “Then Case doesn’t need to worry about it, either,” she said. “He worked like a donkey getting firewood today.”

  “It won’t take long,” Conner said.

  Case glanced at the rawboned boy and stood up smoothly. He had been expecting something like this ever since Conner had reluctantly walked off this morning, leaving his sister in Case’s bed.

  “Be right with you,” he said.

  Conner withdrew. Rather pointedly he left the door open behind him.

  “That boy,” Sarah muttered, setting aside her spinning. “You would think he was born in a barn.”

  “I’ll get the door on my way out.”

  When Case closed the door behind him, Conner was standing off toward one of the clumps of big sage. In the waning light, the boy cast a long, thin shadow. The six-gun he wore was a blunt black bulge on his hip.

  He put t
he sun behind him, Case realized. Right in my eyes. The boy has promise.

  Hope he lives long enough to grow into it.

  “What happened this morning?” Conner demanded as soon as the other man was within speaking range.

  “You heard your sister.”

  “How did you nick your eye?”

  “What’s on your mind? Something special eating on you?”

  “Sarah. Leave her alone.”

  Deliberately Case hooked his thumbs through his belt and took a relaxed stance.

  “You do recall whose bed is out in the brush and whose is in the cabin?” he asked quietly. “Have you considered that you might be lecturing the wrong person?”

  Conner’s mouth thinned. The look in his dark green eyes was far too adult for a boy of fifteen.

  “Sarah wouldn’t turn away from a creature in need,” he said. “Ute said you needed her. She went to you and you grabbed her.”

  “Your sister came to me. I didn’t grab her. That’s all you need to know. If you don’t believe me, ask her. She won’t tell you any different.”

  Conner gave Case a level, measuring look.

  “My sister wouldn’t tell me different even if you had raped her,” he said flatly. “She would be worried about me calling you on it and getting killed.”

  “But you aren’t worried.”

  “I’m not that stupid. I can no more beat you in a fair fight than Sarah could outwrestle you in the dark.”

  Case nodded, but he wasn’t as relaxed as he looked. He half-expected to have to jump Conner when the boy went for his out-sized belt gun.

  “So I wouldn’t fight fair,” Conner said coolly. “I’d come at you with a shotgun from ambush. This is the only warning you’ll get. Leave Sarah alone.”

  For a moment Case looked thoughtful.

  “What if she comes to me again?” he asked.

  “If she does, it wouldn’t be for sex.”

  Case’s left eyebrow rose in a dark arc.

  “Just because Sarah is your sister doesn’t mean that she lacks womanly needs,” he said evenly.

  “Sex?” Conner asked derisively.

  “Sex,” Case agreed.

  “Anything that leaves a woman bloody and whimpering isn’t something she would seek out. Sarah sure didn’t. She ran like hell every chance she got.”

  Case went still. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You think that’s what sex is?”