by Janet Dailey
When he pulled his mouth from hers, it was to explore the curve of her throat and descend to the high, warm swell of her breasts. The front of her blouse was opened to expose the creamy gold flesh of her braless torso.
Delicious shudders quivered through her when Linc mouthed the taut peak of her breast. His hands were stroking down her body, inviting the rhythmic movement of her hips against them. Their caress offered a vague satisfaction but not the complete kind that Joanna desired.
Her fingers tightened in the virile thickness of his hair, applying pressure in an attempt to express the urgent needs of her flesh. Tiny sounds were coming from her throat, sounds that Joanna wasn’t conscious of making. His body weight shifted as he raised his head as if he intended to withdraw.
“Please.” Her voice wavered above a whisper, wanting him in the rawest sense. “Don’t stop now, Linc.” She was practically begging him to make love to her but she didn’t care.
The dark blaze of the setting sun cast a burnished light on his stark, powerful features. They held only one expression, the same one she was feeling.
“Why?” He wanted her to verbalize her reason, to admit to the passion consuming her bones.
But that required an honest examination of her emotions. All she wanted was to enjoy these sensations. Words seemed totally unnecessary at a time like this. A much more satisfactory communication could be achieved through physical expression.
“What difference does it make?” Her fingers linked together behind his neck to pull him down to her once more. “Just let it be something to tell my friends.”
She closed her eyes in anticipation when Linc started to give in to the pressure of her hands. A second later, his fingers were gripping her wrists and pulling her arms from around his neck. In dazed confusion, she opened her eyes and blinked at the harshness of his features.
As he stood up, Linc pulled her to her feet. Joanna staggered against him, her sense of balance slow to return. There was a controlled roughness to his touch when he steadied her.
“What is it?” She didn’t understand what was the matter with him. Why was he so angry?
“The sun’s almost down. We have to start back or else we’ll be riding in the dark.” He let go of her and covered the distance to the horses with long, impatient strides.
Joanna followed him, stumbling as she tried to hurry. While part of her mind conceded that there was a legitimacy to the reason he’d given her, she knew instinctively that it wasn’t the real one. When she reached him, he had gathered the reins to both horses.
“What did I do wrong, Linc?” Joanna persisted in her determined search for an explanation.
“Do I have to spell it out for you?” His mouth was grim. “You’d like to go back to that patch of grass and finish what we started, wouldn’t you?” Her cheeks reddened at his bluntness. It sounded so crude and animalistic put that way. “Well, I don’t,” he snapped.
“Why?” She was stung into challenging him. “You seemed anxious enough a few minutes ago.”
“Maybe I just don’t like the idea of being a vacation fling—someone to brag to your friends about back in California.” He threw the words in her face.
“As if you wouldn’t brag about it to your friends,” Joanna retorted with sarcasm. “Or are you a saint?”
“I’m no saint.” There was a flatness to his voice as Linc worked to bring his anger under control—and succeeded. “Indiscriminate sex was all right when I was young and wild. If the girl was willing, so was I.” In the slight pause, his gaze raked her. “Now I want her to be ready, too.”
“What makes you think I was willing?” Joanna thoughtlessly snapped at his presumptive statement.
His look became dry and mocking. “You were the one who said—don’t stop now.” He let the simple statement speak for itself as his hand cupped her elbow and pushed her toward the bay horse. “Mount up.”
Her cheeks were flame red as Joanna realized how brazen and immoral that sounded. With an angry little flounce, she spun away and stripped the reins from his hand. The muscles in her leg cramped when she attempted to lift her foot into the stirrup.
She had to grit her teeth against the soreness, but she was determined not to ask Linc for assistance. He was already astride the buckskin by the time she was able to pull herself into the bay’s saddle.
She fired him an angry look and turned her horse, pointing it down the hill the same way they had come. “We’re going this way,” Linc stated. She glanced over her shoulder to see that he was heading in another direction. “It’s a shortcut back to the road. We should be able to make it that far before we lose all the light.” He explained why they were using a different route.
“Why didn’t you say so?” she retorted and reined her horse in a semicircle to join up with him.
“You didn’t ask,” he said calmly and started his horse out at a brisk walk.
They traveled several yards before Joanna gave in to the need to defend her reputation. “For your information, I don’t sleep around.”
“I don’t remember saying that you did,” Linc replied with a brief glance.
“You seemed to have the impression that—”
He reined his horse to an abrupt halt and reached across to grab the reins of her mount, stopping it and leaning toward her. His level gaze seemed to bore into her.
“I don’t see the point in conducting a post mortem. Nothing happened and nothing is likely to happen, so why don’t we leave it at that.”
She wanted to argue with him but he had removed any grounds for continuing the subject. His logic was irrefutable. She lowered her chin in a silent acknowledgment of the fact, signaling her agreement to his suggestion.
“Why do you have to make an issue out of everything, Joanna?” he sighed and released her horse’s reins.
“I don’t,” she denied that as her horse started forward the instant the buckskin strided out.
“Yes, you do.” There was a half-smile on his mouth and amusement in his glance. “In another two seconds, you’re going to prove it by opening your mouth to argue that you don’t argue over everything.”
His statement forced her to keep silent, because it was precisely what she had been going to do. Only now she couldn’t. His low chuckle indicated that he knew it.
“You think you’re so smart, Linc Wilder,” Joanna muttered in irritation. “But you’re really not.”
“I’m smart enough to know if we don’t hurry it will be dark before we reach the road.” He prodded his horse into a canter.
The bald knob of the mountain was still bathed in the golden light of the setting sun but the woods were casting longer and longer shadows. Joanna realized how quickly the twilight was encroaching when they rode into the trees. Allowing Linc to take the lead, she pulled her horse back and pointed its nose at the dappled hindquarters of the buckskin.
The deeper they went into the woods, the darker it became. What light there was in the forest seemed to be a pinkish gray. There was rustling of undergrowth and the rattling of tree limbs. An owl hooted, its eerie cry not sounding far away. Joanna admitted to being a little nervous.
They seemed to have traveled a long way. She was about to ask Linc how far it was to the road when she noticed the trees thinning out ahead of them. She breathed an unconscious sigh of relief when she saw the pale stretch of graveled road.
She checked her horse while Linc put the buckskin down the slight embankment to the road then let the bay gelding choose its own path. Once out of the trees, it didn’t seem as dark as it had.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Don’t you recognize it?” He waved a hand down the road. “That’s where you drove your car into the ditch to avoid Jessie.”
“It doesn’t look the same in this light,” she said.
“The lane to his cabin is by that break in the trees.” He pointed to it in his effort to orient her.
“I see it,” she nodded.
Linc tipped his head b
ack to look at the sky. “It’s a shame we don’t have a moon tonight, but this half light should hold until we reach the cabin.” He brought his chin down to look at her. “Now that we’re on the road, it doesn’t matter whether we have light. There will be enough for us to see. There isn’t any reason to hurry unless you’re anxious to get back.”
“No. Not now that we’re out of the woods,” she replied.
By silent agreement, they kept their horses at a walk. The buckskin had a longer stride than Joanna’s more closely coupled bay mount so it naturally stayed a little ahead of her all the time. She was less bothered by the nightsounds that came from the woods flanking the road.
The first stars were beginning to twinkle in the blue-gray sky. But the road continued to be a pale ribbon unwinding ahead of them. She became conscious of a cool draft against her skin and realized she hadn’t tucked her blouse inside her jeans.
Letting the horse have its head, she wrapped the reins around the protruding horn of the saddle so her hands would be free. As she pushed her blouse inside the waistband, she became aware of the lengthening distance between her horse and the buckskin.
She was about to grab the reins when the bay jerked its head up and seemed to shudder beneath her. It snorted loudly and rolled a white eye toward the side of the woods just ahead of them. Her first glance only noticed the culvert but as her horse swung its head directly at it, she stared between the horse’s ears. An eerie white cloud drifted gossamer-thin alongside the road by the culvert.
Terror gripped her throat. She blinked, certain her vivid imagination was playing tricks on her. But the funny bluish-white light remained and even wavered. She screamed and her horse bolted in panic, lunging straight at the buckskin.
“Linc!” Joanna called his name in panic.
Somehow he swung his horse to the side, avoiding a collision and reaching out for her at the same time. She grabbed for his neck and managed to kick her feet out of the stirrups as the bay horse ran out from under her. The buckskin danced nervously while she sobbed in frightened breaths and hung on tightly until his strong arms were able to sit her across the front of the saddle.
“It’s a ghost! We’ve got to get out of here!” She buried her face in his shirt, digging her fingers into his shoulders.
“Joanna, what in heaven’s name are you talking about?” His voice sounded caught between being amused and confused.
“Over there by the culvert,” she whispered into the cloth of his shirt. “When my horse spooked, I looked between its ears and I saw it! Oh, let’s get out of here!”
There was a moment of stillness, followed by the rumble of laughter deep in his chest. “Look. Is that what you saw, Joanna?” He tried very hard to keep the laughter inside.
His complete lack of concern forced her to peer toward the culvert. The light wavered and grew brighter. Her heart tumbled to her throat.
“Oh, my God, it’s still there,” she whispered, because she had expected it to be gone.
“That’s foxfire.”
Chapter Twelve
This hand gripped the upper part of her arm and held her away from him, forcing Joanna to stop hiding her eyes. Shaken out of her wits by the experience, she was slow to register his words. Her eyes stayed closed and her teeth tightly clenched, her fingers curling into the hard flesh of his shoulders.
“Hey, did you hear me?” His chiding voice was low, rich with amusement. “It’s only foxfire.” Linc made it sound very harmless.
Braving the worst, she dragged her lashes open and rigidly focused her gaze on his face, still too frightened to look around. His hard features were gentled by contained humor and his eyes were warm with indulgent forbearance.
“Foxfire?” Her voice was a thin, wavering whisper.
“Marsh lights. It’s a natural phenomenon—as opposed to the supernatural,” he explained with a faint twinkle in his look.
By degrees, she inched her head around to slide an apprehensive peek at the mysterious glow. It seemed fainter, less ominous and frightening. It floated about waist high above the ditch, drifting toward the woods.
As she watched, the wispy phosphorescence grew smaller and gradually dissolved. A shudder went through her at its passing. She lowered her head and breathed in a shaky breath.
“I’ve never been so scared in all my life.” The low admission germinated a seed of anger. It sprouted quickly and spread through her raw nerves. “Damn that Jessie Bates and his ghost-talk. Thanks to him, I’ve made a complete fool of myself again.”
“You should be used to that,” Linc suggested dryly.
His ready concurrence ran through her like a hot knife. Indignation swelled from the wound. “You really know how to make a person feel rotten, don’t you?” Joanna charged.
He tipped back his head to let the laughter roll from his throat. It faded into a chuckle as he shifted her in his hold so that she was sitting crosswise in front of him. His head was tilted down, toward hers, a wide smile curving the Linc of his mouth. Her anger degenerated into a mild form of irritation and hurt pride.
“I don’t think it’s funny,” she protested on a low, injured note.
“My momma always said a kiss makes the hurt go away,” he murmured and bent his head, bringing his mouth against her lips. The pressure of his mouth was warm and mobile but all too brief. “Feel better?” Linc studied her with a laziness that said he knew well that she wanted more.
For that very reason, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of admitting it. “Some.” But her voice was shaky and she wondered if he could hear or feel the thudding of her pulse.
Her nerves were beginning to react to the hard contact with his muscled build. His left arm supported her back, the hand holding the reins pressed hard against the side of her hip. The palm and fingers of his right hand were curved to the outer portion of her thigh.
She could feel the strong rhythm of his heartbeat against her breast as she was molded sideways to his flatly muscled frame. It was a heady position with her hand resting on his shoulderbone to link fingers with the hand draped around his neck. There was a fleeting wish that she could stay this way for a little while longer.
Then she remembered, “My horse? It bolted.” Instinctively her gaze swung to the road in search of her mount.
At a signal from its rider, the buckskin moved out at a walk, mincing a little at its double burden. “He’s probably half-way to the barn by now,” Linc answered. “Well have to ride double. It isn’t far to the cabin though.”
The motion of the horse jabbed the saddlehorn into the tender flesh of her rump. Joanna winced and shifted her center of balance to avoid the prod of the horn. His strong hands assisted in the weight shift which brought her more fully against his body.
“Comfortable?” His downward glance was three-quarters lidded.
“Yes,” Joanna assured him the problem had been solved.
In fact, she was quite comfortable. She silently reveled in this contact with his powerful build. She had never encountered any man who possessed this combination of keen intelligence and brute strength. She studied the rawly masculine features of his face. In her position, it would have required an effort not to look at him since she was squarely facing his profile.
When Linc noticed the way she contemplated him, Joanna felt the need to break the silence. “What causes foxfire?”
The situation was reversed and now she was the object of his steady regard. “It’s a case of spontaneous combustion. Two elements can exist in the same environment with nothing happening until a spark sets them off—a catalyst of sorts.” The run of his gaze over her face seemed to give another dimension to his explanation, something to do with their personal chemistries. “It’s an elusive thing that is either there or it isn’t,” he finished.
It all became clear to her. The friction that was always between them, the physical attraction that kept pulling her to him, and the fire that was kindled within her when they came in contact, they all made sense.
>
As incredible as it seemed, she was falling in love with him, a man who could irritate her beyond belief yet could arouse a response that was more than mere passion. The dawning light of discovery shone in her eyes.
The air seemed to sizzle as his gaze locked with hers. His chest lifted with a breath that wasn’t released. Then he was kissing her, roughly, possessively, crushing her hard to his body. An incredulous joy swept through her, heating her blood at this blatant demonstration of his desires after he had previously denied hers. It was strictly a reflex action that tightened the pressure on the bit to stop the horse.
The buckskin wasn’t pleased with its double burden and impatient with its master who couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether to stop or go. The animal tossed its head in agitation and pulled at the bit, snorting and shifting sideways in protest to the pressure.
As the horse began to act up, Linc was forced to break off the kiss and bring his fractious mount under control. His arm tightened protectively around Joanna until the horse settled down. He relaxed the pressure on the reins and the buckskin moved forward at a brisk walk.
“Do you suppose he was jealous?” Linc mocked.
“Maybe.” Joanna contentedly nestled her head on his shoulder, enjoying the closeness.
“The next time I take you out we’ll ride in a car,” he stated.
A dreamy smile curved her mouth. “That sounds nice,” she sighed.
They were nearly to the cabin when a flashlight beam swept the road in front of them. A second later, it was squarely in their eyes. Joanna turned her face into his shoulder to escape the blinding glare of light.
“Linc. Joanna. Are you all right?” Reece’s voice came from the darkness behind the light. “Rachel and I heard a scream. A few minutes later a horse galloped by the cabin and through the pasture gate to your place. Was Joanna thrown? Is she hurt?”
“She’s fine. She wasn’t thrown,” Linc assured him on that score. “She just had a little scare, that’s all.”
The focus of the beam was lowered to the road. “What a relief. We were coming out to find you and see if you needed any help,” Reece explained as he approached the horse, accompanied by Rachel Parmelee. “What happened?”
