“Listen to me.” He leaned close to whisper in her ear. “I’m not climbing that rock to start an itch I can’t scratch. Just watching you react to me is enough to do that. But I’m a man, Domini, not a boy who can’t or won’t control himself.
“And we’ve already proven that if I wanted you stripped, naked, and flat on your back, there isn’t much you can do to stop me. Right?”
Color deepened on her cheeks, and she jerked her head to one side. Looking at him with eyes the dark green of the forest, flashing with temper, she spat out a string of curses.
“Well, you got that part right, honey. Bastard is my middle name. As for the rest of that mestizo mess you’re spitting at me, there wasn’t a prayer in a word. And I’m not greedy, Domini. Remember? I offered to share. But if you’d think a minute, you’d realize that I don’t have a choice, either.
“I can’t see worth a damn from camp to the lake. You flounder in that water with a cramp an’ you’d drown before I heard you. If any other kind of trouble comes sniffing ’round that lake, we both know just how much you can and can’t handle alone.
“Go on, have your bath.” He gave her a slight push. “Head for the right. There’s a rock shelf there where you can put your things and reach them easily.”
She didn’t answer him. She walked away at an angle from where he strode to the falls. Domini didn’t fight the compelling need to look after him. Bathed in full sunlight, he moved with the easy grace of the wind through the meadow. Muscles rippled across his back. Muscles covered by skin that was crisscrossed with thin white scars.
She opened her mouth to call out. Her lips and teeth closed over the cloth she raised to hide her cry. Someone had beaten Luke. No, not beaten but whipped him.
Her mind struggled with the thought that anyone could hold him down … No!
One man couldn’t hold down Luke and whip him at the same time. Not unless Luke had been unconscious.
Or very young. Too young to fight back.
Secrets, Domini. Just like you keep yours hidden, Luke hides his.
He had to know that she saw him. But he gave no indication that he knew or cared. Before she reached the boulders spilling in a curved arc from the falls, Luke had already climbed high. The water beckoned, and she heeded its call. The cold would leech the shimmering heat he called forth from a body still shaken with this last encounter.
She ignored him by turning her back toward him.
Luke settled himself on the granite slab. He sat in perfect silence and perfect stillness, the rifle across his knees. This was a gift. A gift of stillness. From the time he had begun to ride, he had found he could will his body reactions down, animal-like, stiller than death. From the biting wind and the spray a coldness seeped through his pants and boots. The cold worked its way through his skin and chilled fevered blood, settling in the marrow of his bones. His arm throbbed. He refused to acknowledge the ache.
He deliberately blanked his mind from thoughts of Domini sliding into the water, as sleek and dark as an otter. He was one with the land.
The peace he sought wasn’t there. The land had never cared enough about him to be concerned that a few bee stings welted his flesh.
Domini had cared. Every time she had looked at the wound she inflicted on his arm, remorse had filled her eyes.
But he wasn’t going to think about her, wasn’t going to turn his head to see her strong strokes carry her back and forth in front of the rock shelf with nary a ripple on the lake’s surface.
It was ridiculous to think that he could hear the slide of cloth against flesh that had never been touched by the sun beneath the rumble of the water.
It was only the moan of the wind filling his ears, not sighs of pleasure from her lips.
Ruthlessly, as if chased by a demon, Luke ripped aside layer upon layer to climb into the one inviolate place in his mind. Nothing could follow him there. Nothing ever had.
He would be as he’d always been—alone.
Her image followed him.
He dug deeper to escape her.
Domini.
Face raised to the sun. Water cascading down heavy black, satin hair. Tendrils curled, clinging and stealing blue from the sky.
Luke dug deeper, fighting to erase her.
Image upon image flowed, one into another, pursuing him.
Droplets of captured sunlight splintered into shards, all falling, running together, soaking cloth thin as the mist rising at his back.
Domini.
Black eyes gleaming, licking sweet water from dusky lips. A child’s joy. A woman’s pleasure.
Luke’s mouth went dry. He was every bit as hard as the rock he sat on. All he could see was softness and velvet shadows.
No. There was strength in her sleek, graceful body. She wasn’t all soft heat. Dusky flesh, tightly beaded from cold, offered a sultry invitation to his parched lips.
Luke felt the force of his grip on smooth, dark walnut and blue-black metal that wouldn’t break. But all he saw was lushly rounded golden skin that would bruise easily with the strength of his hands.
His breath caught, held, then rushed out with the wild desperation seizing him. He couldn’t easily rid himself of blood that sizzled with need.
Domini.
Once his promise. But death made mockery of Jim’s someday promises to him.
Honey-hot whispers that pierced his skin, flaying him alive. Husky laughter caught in memory to torment.
How many times had his hands shaped her slender waist? And let her go? Let go, when he wanted to slide them down to rounded hips and nestle his aching flesh in womanly secrets veiled by black silk that was hotter than the sun and sweeter than rain?
Luke’s muscles clenched in agony. In his mind he ran faster. But he couldn’t escape.
Domini.
Needing to be held from the shocking truth of her frail defense. Rocking against him. Fitting him perfectly from mouth to mouth, breast to hip, thigh to knee.
His heart pounded with a force that nearly suffocated him.
She was temper and passion, fire and fury. Soft enough to take away a man’s pain.
She doesn’t know.
I can’t tell her.
You won’t.
I won’t tell her about a nightmare I never fully remember.
Eyes alight with sensual curiosity. Asking. Begging. Unaware. Arousing a storm of violent emotions when her lovely mouth whispered denial.
Luke had the scent of her filling him. Eyes closed or open didn’t matter now.
He saw her standing before him, naked, veiled in sunlight, lushly scented.
Domini.
Jim Kirkland’s daughter.
Flame bright to rival the sun.
Hot enough to scorch a man.
“Luke? L-Luke.”
He opened his eyes and wiped the sweat beading his brow.
“Luke, what’s wrong?”
She stood below him, hand shading her eyes against the glare of the sun.
He’d never denied himself anything he really wanted.
What did Toma want with her?
If you really wanted … never denied…
“Answer me, Luke. What’s wrong?”
He looked down at her with eyes forged in hell.
Chapter 11
Domini pressed one hand against the damp cloth covering her chest. Luke looked wild. An angry god, all dark, pagan beauty where he sat above her, still as the mountains. His silence, that absolute silence, unnerved her. She started backing away and stopped. She couldn’t draw her gaze away from him.
Although he appeared carved from the same stone that challenged air and time to diminish it, she sensed the heat of raging conflict pouring out of him.
“Luke, what have I done?”
His eyes seemed to bore down into her. She retreated. An explosive darkness surrounded him. She shook her head, but the image persisted. What had happened? The whole time she
had bathed, she had watched his back.
“Get your things together. We’re leaving. It’s time for you to pay the devil his due.”
“I don’t understand, Luke. What about supper?”
“Lost my appetite.”
“And the snare you set? You’re not going to leave some poor creature to die.”
“Trap’s sprung. Came up empty.”
What’s wrong! She didn’t know this cold, even-voiced stranger. He rose to his feet. Domini flung her head back to look at him. The wet weight of her braid strained the arch of her throat. She stared at the rocky ledge and the man, assaulted by the raw, predatory power that locked his gaze with hers.
Domini didn’t know how long she stood there, watching him, just as he watched her. She knew he was right, that they had to leave here. She’d been alone too long with him. Too long with the confusion he created.
It was Luke who broke the silence stretched taut between them. His high, shrill whistle brought Devil trotting across the meadow. After a few moments the sorrel followed.
She didn’t wait for him to climb down the rocks. Domini ran for the clothing she had spread to dry. By the time she turned around, Luke was already leading the horses back to camp.
What caused that chilling, detached sense of violence that came so easily upon him? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Domini followed the path he had left through the tall meadow grass. She was lying to herself. She did want to know—wanted an answer with a need as compelling as Luke himself.
By the time she reached the clearing, instinct alerted her that whatever danger Luke had presented minutes before had passed.
The shirt he wore was as wrinkled as the damp, patched gown she had hurried to put on after bathing. He worked with a quick economy of motion that she tried to duplicate, just as she duplicated his continued silence.
He had saddled the sorrel first, then Devil before he went back to fill the canteens. Domini was mounted and waiting by the time he returned. When he slung both the canteen straps over his saddle horn, she understood that he didn’t want to come near her. Didn’t want to touch her, talk to her. His gaze avoided her, and she didn’t sense but knew how badly he wanted her gone from sight.
She thought back to what she had said to him. Had seeing her dark olive skin brought home to him what mixed blood she had? Until her bath he had wanted her. She hadn’t been mistaken about the blaze that gleamed in his eyes, rode his voice, hardened his body.
You should be rejoicing that danger is past.
The fact that she wasn’t bewildered her.
She turned for a last look at the clearing. The fire had been smothered, then covered over. Even the flat slab of rock she had struggled to move close to the fire pit was back in place as if she had never touched it. She lifted her gaze, and it caught on the honeycomb in the crook of the tree.
Luke hadn’t touched that. Ants and flies were already attacking the forgotten treat. She must never forget for a moment this was a land of prey and predator. Survival depended on skill and cunning.
But when Domini looked ahead at Luke, maintaining an easy pace across the meadow, she knew this time prey had escaped through no effort of its own. Luke was as cold, hard, and wary as any predator, far more skilled and cunning at baiting devil’s snares than she.
Luke wasn’t what she needed to worry about. As he had reminded her, it was time for her to pay the devil his due.
What Luke didn’t know, and she wouldn’t tell him, was that the opposite was true. Toma Colfax would be the one who paid. And she didn’t care if it was to God or the devil.
These past few days spent in such close company with Luke had made her lose sight of the reasons she had come here. She had to fight the lure of passion’s promise. It was only a momentary satisfaction. At least that is what she had been told, what she believed.
Love endured. Luke offered one without the other. Following him out of a narrow neck of woods into a steep-sided pass, Domini wondered if Luke even knew what love was.
She warned herself to be more guarded, for no matter how carefully she wove her reasons against Luke, she was far too aware that he had only to look at her for passion to stir and stretch, rending her weavings useless.
Late afternoon sun turned the peaks a rich scarlet. They continued to ride in silence, and Domini grew tired of gazing at rock like the bare, brownish hillside that they were climbing. The footing was treacherous for the horses on the talus slope. Masses of ice-chipped rock fragments covered the earth. On either side stunted trees gave way farther down to majestic evergreens. The long, straight trunks were a rich orange, the branches a bright emerald green. Once more they plunged down into a fragrant spruce forest, following a wide stream where the water appeared green from the reflection of the trees. The sun dropped behind the spruces and the air turned chilly.
And Luke’s growing tension communicated to her that they were nearing Colfax land. This, too, was a puzzle she wanted to solve, but he had not once turned to look at her. Lost in thought, she nearly rode past Luke, unaware that he had stopped to wait for her to catch up with him.
His arm shot out and caught hold of the sorrel’s rein. Startled, Domini rocked off balance for a few moments.
“Past this stretch of woods is the pass into a valley,” Luke said, biting off each word. He hid his annoyance that she avoided looking directly at him.
“We’re here, then?”
“You’ve been on Colfax land the moment we rode into that meadow.”
“I see.” She bit her lip, fighting not to look at him, fighting not to ask him why, if they had been this close, he had stopped there.
“Don’t think you do, but it’s of no matter now. I’m giving you a last choice. Once we ride into that pass there’s no way out.”
“There’s always a way, Luke.”
“Not here. This is the devil’s caldron, honey. His pot, his stakes, his game. Toma don’t like losing. He’ll bottom deal or up the ante for your soul if it gets him what he wants. Better men, a hell of a lot more skilled than you, have come away dazed to find themselves owned.”
She looked at him then. His hat brim was canted low, adding shadows to the black stubble covering his lower face. Outlaw. The word aptly described him. Yet despite his threatening appearance, tendrils of sensual tension coiled between them. The sorrel danced in place, bringing her knee against Luke’s. If touching with cloth between them could send a flare of heat streaking up her leg, what would it be like if skin rubbed against skin?
“Did you hear me, honey?”
“Stop calling me that, Luke. I’m not your honey. I’m not your anything.”
“Don’t be too sure about that. Right now you’re rock hard and mule thick not to listen to what I’m saying.”
“I listened. I heard. I don’t have a choice. Lead on, Luke.”
Domini was proud that her voice didn’t waver. Her gaze fell to his smile. The three-day growth of black stubble made the curve of his lips savage. Her gaze slid down to his bare, tanned throat and the half-buttoned shirt that revealed black curling hair and the glitter of sweat caught there. She didn’t know she had touched her tongue to her lips until he swore at her.
Like his smile, the curses were savage.
“Everything you’ve told me about Toma Colfax tells me that you’ve clashed with him, even if you’ve worked for the man. Did he get you into a game where you lost your soul to him, Luke? Or have you the skills to walk away the winner?”
“You’re about to find out, honey. Smile pretty and say hello to Ramsey and Caully. You remember them, don’t you?” he asked, never turning around to watch the two men coming up the slope toward them. “These generous men were willing to share you around.”
Domini remembered too well the night she had stood ready to face them alone. Her gaze barely skimmed the two men, but went instead to the barely noticeable bandage beneath Luke’s wrinkled shirt. She wasn’t likely to forget the result o
f that night or her first taste of a man’s hungry passion.
“Christ, Luke!” Ramsey said, reaching them first. “Where the hell have you been? Matt’s had us huntin’ your tail for three days.”
“Nice of him to be concerned.”
“Yeah, well, you know him, Luke.” He shot a quick look at the woman, eased his hat brim back, and then gazed at her again. “Well, well, if it ain’t that little green-eyed breed.” And to Caully, who joined them, he said, “Don’t need to ask what’s kept Luke away. The old man ain’t gonna like you bringing her here.” He took in the long, hastily made braid, her wrinkled pale blue gown, tracking the line of tiny buttons that rose from her slender waist to her throat.
The knowing look he exchanged with Caully sent a shudder of repugnance through Domini. Luke was still holding the sorrel’s rein’s, keeping her beside him. She was thankful that he was between her and the two men. Even so, their gazes felt like hands crawling over her skin.
Caully, randy as any bull, ignored Luke’s narrowed gaze. “Was she worth it?” He all but licked his lips.
“She musta been. Luke ain’t never taken up with no woman an’ brought her here,” Ramsey answered before Luke did.
“Remember that while you ride ahead an’ tell Matt you found me. And the old man. Tell him, too.”
Domini looked from the two men to Luke. He had spoken softly, in a hair-raising whisper, but they merely nodded, circled around them, and walked their horses off through the trees.
“Why did you let them think I’m someone you brought along for your amusement?”
“That what I did, honey? Didn’t sound that way to me.”
“You know what you implied,” Domini accused, trying to pull the leather free from his hand.
“Sure as hell wasn’t that you amuse me. You haven’t yet. Now if you said I’d made it plain as your gown being a size too small to be decent, honey, that I’d bedded you till neither one of us wanted to move for the past three nights an’ still had a itch that wants scratching, you’d be closer to the truth.”
Whisper My Name Page 11
