Winter Fire

by Elizabeth Lowell

  The sound of the running horse slowed and then faded into silence.

  Bullets screamed from a different direction.

  She waited, but Case didn’t return the fire.

  It was the same as the night the raiders had attacked. Waiting and listening with her heart beating like a captive bird and terror lying cold in her belly.

  Is he hurt? she thought fearfully.

  Lying there waiting and worrying and wondering was against her nature. She itched to go out and check on Case. There was no Conner to sit on her and make her endure not knowing.

  Yet she didn’t move.

  She had given Case her word that she would stay where she was.

  He wouldn’t be expecting to find her crawling around out there. If he was alive, she didn’t want to distract him. If he was dead, she didn’t want to give away her position. If he was hurt…

  The thought was unbearable.

  Holding the six-gun steady, she bit her lip and prayed that Case would come back to her.

  After a time, a hawk called softly.

  Lips trembling, she gave an answering whistle.

  Moments later Case snaked through the brush and into the shelter of the pillars. He was sweaty, dirty, and scratched.

  The rifle he held was clean and ready to fire.

  “How many?” Sarah asked very quietly.

  “Three.”

  “Where?”

  “Two of them are coming up the canyon,” he said.

  “Where’s the third?”

  “On his way to hell.”

  She made a low sound.

  “Don’t feel bad for him,” Case said quietly. “When I got him, he was shooting holes in your jacket as fast as he could.”

  Suddenly her mouth was very dry. “Did he think it was me?”

  “He didn’t care whether it was you, me, or Conner.”

  The thought of her brother being murdered between one heartbeat and the next changed Sarah’s expression.

  “I hope the raider enjoys hell,” she said in a low voice.

  “I hope he doesn’t.”

  The cool finality of Case’s tone sent another chill over her.

  “Now what?” she whispered.

  “We wait.”

  “For what?”

  “Whatever comes,” he said.

  “What if Ute or Conner heard the shots? Sometimes sound carries for a long way in these canyons.”

  “Ute knows better than to ride blind into a gunfight.”

  “Conner” was all she said.

  Case didn’t answer. Instead, he sighted down the rifle barrel, let out his breath, and squeezed the trigger very gently. The rifle kicked.

  The report knifed through Sarah’s head.

  Down the canyon, halfway up the opposite side, a man pitched forward. He slid down the debris slope until a boulder stopped him.

  The boneless lines of the man’s body said that he had been knocked senseless or was dead.

  “Culpepper?” she whispered hopefully.

  “No. Too short. Too dark.”

  The canyon was quiet again except for the cold wind searching through every crease and crevice.

  After fifteen minutes, shivers began to run through her body. Her doeskin shirt and pants had been enough to keep her warm as long as she was dragging dead wood up and down the canyon. But lying against the ground on the north side of a winter canyon was draining heat from her body with every heartbeat.

  From the corner of her eye, she looked at Case, who was naked to the waist. He was watching the land within reach of his rifle fire. His eyes were narrowed, intent. If he noticed the cold, he didn’t show it.

  She tried to stop the shivers that kept rippling through her, but couldn’t. She clenched her teeth so that they wouldn’t chatter and distract him.

  After ten more minutes, her hands were shaking so much that it was impossible to hold the six-gun steady. Case took the gun from her fingers and holstered it.

  “Lie against me,” he said quietly. “I’m warmer than stone.”

  She eased closer until she was alongside him. He moved onto his side and tucked her against his body, then rolled partway over again, sheltering her.

  “Now cuddle in like a cold tabby cat,” he murmured.

  “I’ll g-get in your w-way.”

  “If I move suddenly, cover your ears.”

  They waited.

  After a time the noise of retreating hoofbeats drifted back up the canyon. It was a single animal, moving fast. Each strike of hoof against stone was clear. In fact, sometimes it sounded like a hammer hitting rock.

  “Shod,” Case said.

  “I don’t care if it’s winged,” Sarah said against his collarbone, “as long as the raider is gone.”

  “Quit wiggling.”

  She sighed hard enough to stir the hair on his chest and lay still.

  Ignoring her head tucked below his, he waited and watched, every sense alert.

  For a long time the wind was all that moved, all that spoke, all that showed any sign of life.

  They’re gone, he decided.

  Case was certain of it. The back of his neck no longer felt tight.

  He took a slow, deep breath. Along with air, he inhaled the presence of Sarah. Right now she smelled more like rock dust than roses, but it didn’t matter. His body hardened in a rush that made him feel as heavy as the cliff at his back.

  “Case?” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Are they gone?”

  “I think so.”

  She started to get up.

  Before he could think better of it, he found himself holding her where she was.

  Close.

  The memory of her jacket leaping while bullets tore it apart made him cold all the way to his soul. It so easily could have been her flesh rather than cloth.

  He didn’t know what he would have done then. He didn’t even want to think about it. All he knew was that he wasn’t ready to let go of Sarah yet.

  “Just to be sure it’s safe,” he said, “we’ll wait right here a while longer.”

  “It was worth a try,” she muttered.

  Her words were so muffled that he couldn’t understand any of them.

  “What?” he asked.

  She sighed. “Nothing. I just love being the slice of cold meat in a stone sandwich.”

  “I’m not stone.”

  “Could have fooled me. You’re hard as a rock.”

  The left corner of his mouth lifted enough to show even beneath the beard he hadn’t yet let her shave.

  “A lady isn’t supposed to notice,” he whispered against her ear.

  “How hard your body is? I’d have to be frozen like an icicle not to—ulp.”

  She had just realized that there was hard, and then there was hard.

  At the moment, his body suited both meanings of the word.

  “I’ll bet that blush warmed you right up,” he said dryly.

  “Watch it. I’ll bite you again.”

  A shudder of pure hunger went through Case.

  “You keep talking like that,” he said against her ear, “and I’m going to forget all about the Culpeppers’ nasty habit of leaving a man behind to finish off the wounded.”

  “Talking like what?”

  “About biting me.”

  While he spoke, his teeth closed delicately over the rim of her ear.

  She shivered and made a small sound.

  “Cold?” he whispered.

  “N-no.”

  “You’re trembling.”

  “Nobody ever bit me like that,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  Sarah’s teeth scraped gently over a pad of muscle on his chest.

  His heartbeat doubled.

  “Like that,” she whispered. “Gentle and teasing.”

  “I did. You just don’t remember it.”

  “When?”

  “A few weeks back, when you crawled into my bed.”

  Her body sti
ffened.

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said.

  “Sex?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sarah…” He searched for words. “Honey, sex can be tender and teasing and hot and wild and everything in between.”

  “For a man, maybe. Not for a woman.”

  “You didn’t like my gentle bite?”

  She rubbed her nose against the thatch of hair on his chest.

  “I liked it,” she admitted.

  “You didn’t like having your breasts petted and kissed two weeks ago?”

  “Case!”

  “Did you or didn’t you?” he asked.

  “How would I know? I was asleep!”

  “What were you dreaming?”

  A shiver went through Sarah as she remembered.

  “I was lying in the sun,” she whispered. “I was warm all over, as though…as though…I don’t know. I never felt that way before.”

  “You liked it.”

  “How do you know?” she retorted. “You weren’t in my dream.”

  “No, but I was in your body. I could feel how much you liked my mouth and my hands all over you.”

  A wild, hot thrill went through her.

  I was in your body.

  No other man had been that close to her except her husband. Her only memories of Hal were fear and pain and a throttled kind of rage that she should have to endure being bruised and ill-used in exchange for a roof over her head and food on Conner’s plate.

  “In my body?” she asked thinly.

  “Not the way you mean. Just…”

  His voice died.

  How do I explain to an experienced innocent that men tease women with their fingers? he wondered.

  “I was petting you,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “Inside?” she asked, shocked.

  The corners of his eyes crinkled.

  “Inside,” he agreed. “It didn’t hurt you, did it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said through her teeth.

  “Sure you do. You were awake at the last.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why?”

  “I just don’t!”

  “You’ll face off raiders over a shotgun and you won’t talk about whether or not something hurt you?” he asked. “They’re just words, not bullets.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Your husband was a piss-poor man,” Case said matter-of-factly. “Most men are more decent to their women.”

  “Sure,” she said sarcastically. “That’s why men pay women to put up with them. Well, there’s not enough silver in all of creation to make me put up with that again.”

  “What about your dream of lying naked in the sun, with heat caressing you all over?”

  “What about it?”

  “It was me.”

  “What?”

  “I was the sun. I was touching you all over. And you liked it, Sarah. I know you did. You ran like warm honey over my fingers.”

  She went very still, barely breathing.

  “When you asked me that morning what I had done to you,” Case said, “I thought you were joking.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I wasn’t. I…hadn’t ever…didn’t know…there was never anything like…”

  She gave up trying to talk and buried her hot face against his chest.

  “I feel like such a fool,” she whispered.

  “Your husband was the fool.”

  “Why?”

  “You have real passion in you,” Case said. “He never bothered to find it.”

  Sarah’s head came up so quickly she almost clipped his chin.

  “Passion?” she asked in disbelief. “You mean I like sex?”

  “You liked what you had of it with me.”

  “But I didn’t have, er, all of you. I ran away before you could hurt me.”

  His left eyebrow went up in a black arc.

  “What makes you think I would have hurt you?” he asked mildly. “I hadn’t hurt you up to then, had I?”

  Despite the heat sweeping up her cheeks again, she spoke as plainly as Case had. She was determined that he understand how mistaken he was.

  She didn’t like sex.

  Period.

  “I’ve seen you naked,” she said bluntly. “You’re big. Hal wasn’t nearly as big and he hurt me.”

  Case’s black eyelashes lowered for an instant. He hoped he wasn’t blushing as much as she had, but he wouldn’t have bet a lot of money on it.

  Talking about sex was a lot harder than simply doing it.

  “It hurt because you weren’t ready for him,” Case said finally.

  She frowned in confusion.

  “Ready?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

  “A woman’s body…changes when she’s ready for her man.”

  “Lola never said anything about a woman being ready. When the man is ready he has sex, that’s all.”

  “Lola was a prostitute,” he said bluntly. “The men who came to her wanted sex and they wanted it fast. They paid to get it that way.”

  “So?”

  Case opened his mouth, then closed it.

  “Did you and Lola ever talk about seduction?” he asked after a time.

  “Sure. That’s where women are fooled into believing it won’t hurt.”

  “It doesn’t!”

  “Not for the man,” she retorted.

  Carefully he put down his rifle. He cupped both hands over her face.

  “Will you let me kiss you?” he asked.

  “Just kissing?”

  “Just kissing.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all,” he whispered against her lips.

  Then he lifted his head and watched her troubled gray eyes while she thought it over.

  Suddenly she smiled at him almost shyly.

  “All right,” she whispered. “I liked being kissed by you.”

  Case came very close to smiling in return when he thought of the depth of her sensual ignorance.

  Just kissing covered a lot of very sweet territory.

  15

  Sarah watched Case’s head lower to hers and his black eyelashes close. She felt the brushing warmth of his lips over hers all the way to her toes. She sighed and shivered at the same time.

  “You’re still cold,” he said huskily. “I should get your jacket.”

  “I’m not cold.”

  “You’re shivering.”

  “Not that way. I just felt quivery and good all over when you kissed me.”

  She both felt and heard the quick breath he took.

  “Then I’ll do it some more,” he said.

  His lips moved over hers again, and again she trembled slightly in response. He nuzzled the corners of her mouth, the edge of her jaw, the delicate lobe of one ear. Then he sipped at the pulse beating quickly in her neck.

  With each motion of his head, his beard stroked her skin like a soft brush, bringing her nerve endings to wild, shimmering life.

  “You sure you’re not cold?” he asked.

  Nodding her head, she made a murmuring, purring kind of sound.

  “Like it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Good. Slide your arms around me and come in real close.”

  “I’m not cold. Really.”

  “I am,” he lied.

  “Oh,” she said, contrite. “I didn’t think of that. You always feel so warm to me.”

  Sarah slid her arms around Case and nestled in close. Her breasts pressed against him. She was surprised to find that her nipples were sensitive again. Not hurting, just…alive.

  And when she moved subtly against his chest, the odd, shivery feeling rippled through her from her breasts to her knees. It felt so good that she arched her back slightly and rubbed against him again, more slowly.

  “Is there a rock under your hip?” he teased.

  “No. I just like…”

  Her voice frayed into silence.
/>
  “What do you like?” he asked.

  She licked suddenly dry lips.

  “From the color of your cheeks,” he said, “I think I know what you’re trying to say. Let me help.”

  She gave him a startled look.

  “First I’ll just get rid of my gloves and put my hand here,” he said.

  His long fingers spread wide between Sarah’s shoulder blades. As he arched her back, he dragged his chest slowly against her breasts.

  Heat shot through her.

  “Oh!” she said, startled.

  “Too hard?” he asked.

  Only then did she understand that his movements had been anything but accidental. Curious, she stared at him.

  “Honey?” he said. “Was I too rough?”

  She shook her head, watching him.

  “Lord,” he whispered. “You have the most beautiful eyes.”

  “I do?” she asked, startled again.

  He knew that she wasn’t being coy. There simply wasn’t a coy bone in her body.

  “You do,” he said. “Sometimes they’re like mist and sometimes they’re like a storm and sometimes they’re a silver as deep as the sea.”

  The look in his eyes made Sarah’s mouth go dry. She licked her lips.

  He watched her tongue.

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s time for more.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing to worry about. Just another kiss.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “For me, too,” he said.

  “What—”

  The heated glide of his tongue over her mouth scattered her thoughts. She forgot the question she had been going to ask. All her attention was focused on her lips. They were vividly alive, hot where his tongue was touching and cool where it had passed on.

  Her arms tightened around Case until she was pressed hard against him. He helped by arching her back and rubbing her breasts over his chest again, bringing her even closer.

  Her breath came in brokenly, opening her mouth. His tongue dipped beneath her upper lip, gliding, probing, circling. His teeth caught her lower lip. He tugged gently.

  She didn’t know that she made a ragged sound and opened her lips wider. She knew only that his tongue was hot inside her mouth and the taste of his kiss was sweet beyond bearing.

  She wanted to tell him how good it felt, but she didn’t want to end the sweetness. So she gave him back the kiss, sliding her tongue over his, probing the sultry corners of his mouth, then catching his tongue delicately between her teeth.