“And time,” Diana said, her voice husky, aching as she flipped slowly through the sketchbook. “Time is another kind of trap.”
“Why? Are you getting behind in your sketching?”
“No. I’ll be finished well within the deadline.”
“Deadline?”
“The middle of August. That’s when my contract with the Rocking M ends.”
Ten looked deeply into Diana’s eyes, wanting to protest what lay beneath her quiet words: when the contract ended, she would leave the Rocking M and Tennessee Blackthorn.
Diana looked only at the sketch in her lap, praying that Ten would reach past the wall he had built and ask her to stay without the pretense of archaeological work between them.
Ask me to stay, Ten. Ask me as a man asks a woman he wants and needs and might someday love. Please, love, ask me.
Silently, Ten’s fingertips traced the line of Diana’s chin, tilting her face up to his lips. He kissed her slowly, seducing her mouth for long moments before accepting the invitation of her parted lips and warm tongue. With controlled urgency he began undressing her, only to discover that he was being undressed, as well. Relief coursed through him almost as violently as desire. He kissed her again, drinking deeply, urgently, from the woman who haunted his sleep even when she was lying by his side.
By the time the kiss ended, their breathing was ragged and their clothes were scattered randomly around the bedroll. Ten’s hand slid from Diana’s ankle to the apex of her thighs. The deep, sultry welcome of her body made blood hammer in his veins until he could hardly breathe.
“It’s a little soon to be mentally packing your gear, isn’t it?” Ten asked in a low, rough voice as he caressed Diana, calling forth a husky moan and a tiny, searing melting. “A lot could happen in the next few weeks.”
“Could it?” Diana asked, hope leaping even more hotly than desire within her body.
“Sure. The Rocking M is going to need some expert advice on excavating the kiva you discovered. Who better than you to give it?”
Before Diana could speak, Ten took her mouth. The slowly building pressure of his kiss arched her across his hard forearm. She gave herself to the kiss and to the man, feeling desire and regret, caring and hunger, passion and restraint in Ten’s embrace, every emotion except the love that filled her until she ached.
When the long kiss ended, Ten lifted his mouth with tangible reluctance.
“There’s no reason not to extend your contract.”
“Luke might see it differently.”
“September Canyon is my land. The dig is being underwritten by my money. If I want it to go beyond the middle of August, it will.”
Diana shuddered from desire and grief mixed together, feeling as though she had been turned inside out until everything she was and could be lay exposed to the cool sunset light. Bittersweet understanding of the difference between her own needs and Ten’s knifed through her, and in its wake an anguished acceptance.
She wanted his laughter, his grief, his victories, his defeats, his silence, his conversations. She wanted his body, his mind, his children and a lifetime of tomorrows. He wanted the passion that ran like invisible lightning between them, and he wanted every bit of it for as long as it lasted.
She loved him. He did not love her. But she could take from him one of the things she wanted and give him the only thing he wanted in return.
Diana rolled onto her side and began running her hands down Ten’s muscular torso, caressing and citing him with the same motions.
“No, there’s no reason at all not to extend the contract,” Diana said, finding and teasing a flat male nipple with her teeth, “except common sense.”
“What does that mean?”
“Simple. As simple as this.”
Her hands closed around the thick evidence of Ten’s desire and he groaned with leaping need. She continued talking as she caressed the length of his body, scattering his thoughts, taking away everything but the heat of her mouth.
“The Rocking M-” Diana’s tongue probed Ten’s navel “-can’t afford to pay me.” She closed her teeth on the tightly flexed muscles that joined neck and shoulder. A shudder moved the length of his body. “Not as much as I earn being an assistant professor at the university.”
“We could-work something out. Weekends. Vacations.” Ten’s breath came in with a hissing sound as Diana nuzzled his ear, teasing, biting. “Part-time work. Something.”
Diana’s eyes closed against a wave of pain, but her mouth and hands remained gentle, loving Ten, sharing with and returning to him the gift of passion he had given so generously to her. After a few moments die could trust herself to speak again.
“You don’t have to pay me to come to the Rocking M.” She bit the hard muscle of Ten’s biceps in a sensual punishment that was just short of pain. “All you have to do is ask. Or you can come to Boulder when you feel like it.”
“Diana…”
She waited, hope penned within her acceptance like a wild animal.
Ten made a half-angry, half-helpless sound.
She let out her breath in a long, soundless sigh, knowing acceptance had been right and hope had been wrong.
“I agree,” Diana said softly. “It’s better to keep it just a summer affair.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“No. It’s what you meant.”
“Dammit,” Ten said roughly, “I learned long ago that I’m piss-poor husband material.”
“Did you?” Diana asked, lifting her head, looking into Ten’s narrowed eyes. “Or did you just decide sex isn’t worth all the inconvenience of marriage?”
Bleak gray eyes searched Diana’s face.
Smiling sadly, she turned away and let her mouth slide down the warm, muscular tension of his abdomen. “It’s all right, Tennessee. I learned something long ago, too. Then you came along and taught me that I hadn’t learned everything.”
Diana’s cheek rested for a moment on a dense cushion of black, curly hair. Her lips brushed flesh that was hot, smooth, hard, pulsing with the swift beat of Ten’s life. When she moved her head to test the resilience of his thigh with her teeth, Ten made a deep sound. When her head turned again and the tip of her tongue touched him curiously, his breath came out in a low groan that was also her name.
“If I made you a promise,” Diana said, biting Ten lightly once more, stroking the thick muscles of his thighs, skimming over without ever really touching the hard, violently sensitive flesh that she had aroused, “would you trust me to keep it? Would you trust me not to ask you for anything more, ever?”
Blindly Ten reached for his jeans, his fingers seeking the familiar packet, finding it.
“Tennessee,” Diana whispered, brushing her lips over the musky cushion of hair, touching his hot flesh with the tip of her tongue. “Do you trust my promise?”
He groaned as a fine sheen of passion broke over his skin. His right hand clenched, crumpling the packet. “Baby, it’s damned hard to think when you’re doing that”
“Then don’t think. Just answer from the instinctive part of you. Do you trust me to keep my promise about never asking for one more thing from you?”
“Yes,” Ten said hoarsely, knowing as he spoke that it was true. He could trust Diana’s word. “What do you-want?”
“This.”
The sound Ten made was a combination of surprise and searing pleasure as Diana’s mouth tasted him with lingering sensual curiosity.
“When I first asked you to kiss me,” she whispered against his hot skin, “it was because I wanted to be able to lead a normal life, and that meant responding to men the way other women did. And it worked, up to a point. But then I began trying to imagine other men touching me the way you had, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to go through with it.”
“Fear?” Ten asked, the only word he could force past the passionate constriction in his throat.
Diana shook her head. Tendrils of silky hair brushed over Ten’s skin in the ins
tant before her mouth circled him in a caress that took what little breath he had remaining, tasting him, loving him as she never had before. When the caress deepened, Ten’s whole body flushed with wild heat. She held him for long moments, savoring him, loving the wild-ness coursing through him at her caress. Slowly, reluctantly, she released him from tender captivity.
She lifted her head and met the smoldering brilliance of Ten’s eyes. The look in them made her body melt. He felt it, knew that she wanted him as wildly as he wanted her, and had to close his eyes against the force of the need twisting through his body.
“It’s not fear that will keep me away from other men,” Diana said finally, biting Ten with great gentleness, feeling the wave of desire that swept through him almost as clearly as he did. “It’s the fact that I don’t want them. Other men wouldn’t have rain-colored eyes that blaze with desire. Other men wouldn’t have a scar below their jawline or one on their shoulder, their hip, the inside of their left thigh. Other men wouldn’t be able to handle a brute and a kitten with the same ease. Other men wouldn’t look like you, feel like you…taste like you.”
Ten made a hoarse sound of intense pleasure as the moist heat of Diana’s mouth caressed him again. He called her name roughly, feeling the world being stripped away with each silky movement of her tongue.
“Make love without barriers for the weeks I have left on the Rocking M,” she said. “Be completely naked inside me. No matter what happens afterward, there won’t be any demands, any regrets.” Slowly Diana slid up Ten’s body until the thick length of his arousal skimmed her softness, making her breath break. “Ten?”
His own breath came in with a harsh, ripping sound as she melted over him. “I’m not sure I can hold back with you, baby,” he said roughly. “You could get pregnant. Have you thought of that?”
“Yes,” Diana said, shivering, melting, searing him with her need. “Many times.”
Ten’s right hand opened with a savage movement, sending the small packet tumbling onto the ground. He lay still but for the elemental tremors of desire coursing through his hard body.
“Last chance,” he said thickly.
Her hips moved. Sultry fire licked over Ten. Shaking with a hunger he had never felt before, Ten knew he was going to take what he must have, what she was asking him for, what they both wanted until it was agony not to have it; but he had never taken a woman like this before, no barriers, nothing except violently sensitive skin and a need so great it kept him on the breaking edge of self-control.
When Ten’s aroused flesh found the incredible softness and heat waiting for him, the sensation was so intense he couldn’t breathe. He felt each separate pulse of Diana’s response as he parted the soft flesh, sheathing himself within her slowly, deliberately, deeply, sharing her body and his own in an exquisite intimacy that was just short of anguish.
“I’ve never-been like this-before,” Ten said thickly, his breath breaking. “Naked. Nothing held back. It’s-I can’t-”
He went utterly still, fighting desperately not to lose control.
“Tennessee,” Diana whispered, looking into the silver blaze of his eyes, feeling the first waves of pleasure ravish her. “Give me your baby, Tennessee.”
A sound of hunger and ecstasy was torn from Ten’s throat, and then ecstasy alone, Diana’s name repeated in shattered syllables as he gave himself again and again to the sweet violence of a union unlike any he had ever known.
16
Thunder cracked with a noise like rock shearing away from tall cliff faces, a naked violence of sound that made September Canyon tremble in the night.
Ten eased out of the blankets he shared with Diana and went to stand at the edge of the overhang. The chilly air took the heat from his body, but he barely noticed the temperature. The smell, taste and sound of the wind told him all that he needed to know. He and Diana would have to pack up and cross Picture Wash before dawn.
And Ten had counted on spending the hour before dawn quite differently.
“Damn.”
“What’s wrong?” Diana asked sleepily.
“Storm coming on. A big one.”
By memory alone Ten went to the camp table, struck a match and lit the Coleman stove. The golden glow of naked flame danced in graceful reflections over the pale sandstone. He made coffee with the swift, economical motions of a man very familiar with the task. Then he walked to the warm blankets where Diana lay, grabbed his clothes and began dressing.
“Ten…?”
It was only a single word, but he understood all that she wasn’t saying. Reluctantly he shook his head.
“Sorry, honey,” Ten said, his voice gritty with hunger and regret. “We’ve got a lot of packing to do and not much time to do it.”
Diana bit back her protest even as it formed. The storm didn’t care if it were cutting short her last hours with Ten in September Canyon.
Silently she kicked off the blankets and began pulling on clothes, shivering as the cold wind washed over her body. Working by the light of a gas lantern, she packed quickly, forcing herself not to think how this day was different from any day that had come before or would come after.
As soon as Diana’s personal gear was packed, she began working on the artifacts that were to be taken back to the ranch. She packed slowly, carefully, saying goodbye with her fingertips to the ancient pots and stone axes, fiber sandals and bone implements that she had come to know as well as she knew the less textured camping equipment of her own time and culture.
When each box was ready, she set it aside for Ten to carry to the truck. Periodic lightning shattered the black sky. Thunder rang repeatedly, a barrage that deafened. She ignored it, working steadily, thinking only of the task at hand. As she reached for another empty box, she found Ten’s hand instead. Startled, she looked up.
”Leave it for the grads,” he said in a clipped voice. “We have to cross while we can. It’s raining Like hell up on September Mesa.”
She looked out into the encompassing blackness and saw nothing at all. “How can you tell?”
“Listen.”
At first Diana thought what she heard was the wind, a low, muttering kind of sound. Then she realized that she was hearing water. September Wash was filling.
“Is it still safe to cross?” she asked, unable to suppress the hope in her voice. If the wash weren’t safe, they would be forced to stay on this side until the water went down.
As though Diana had spoken her hope aloud, Ten shook his head. “This is a big storm. Carla will fret and then Luke will send men out in hell’s own rain to look for us. I don’t want anyone getting hurt looking for people who could have and should have gotten back.”
The sky exploded into twisting, wildly writhing forks of lightning. Barely four seconds later, thunder hammered down.
“Time to go, honey.”
Diana closed her eyes against the pain that was lancing through her as surely as lightning lanced through the clouds.
Thunder filled September Canyon, followed by a gust of rain-scented wind that made pinons moan. No rain was falling, but there was no doubt that it would. Soon.
Ten opened the passenger door for Diana and helped her up into the cab. Her breast pressed against the lean male hand that was wrapped around her upper arm. Though the contact was accidental, it made every one of Diana’s nerve endings shimmer. When she tried to fasten her seat belt, her hands were clumsy with the sudden rush of her blood.
Ten climbed in, saw Diana’s difficulty and said, “Let me. That belt mechanism is getting kind of cranky. First you have to slack off and let it retract all the way. Like this.”
He took the metal tongue from Diana’s fingers, then followed the retreat of the harness across her lap. The sound of her indrawn breath was as much an inadvertent caress as his hand skimming across her body in the wake of the buckle’s metal tongue. When he pulled the harness across her lap once more, his hand skimmed, hesitated for a breathless instant, then moved on. He inserted the me
tal tongue slowly into the locking mechanism. A subdued click broke the taut silence.
“See? Perfect fit.” Ten’s voice was low, gritty.
He touched Diana’s mouth with his thumb and swore softly, wanting her. And she wanted him. It was in her eyes, in the tightness of her body, in the huskiness of the few words she had spoken. He gave her a quick, hard kiss and forced himself to concentrate on other things.
Ten drove to the wash, studied the roiling water carefully and bit off a vicious curse. There was no doubt about it, no ignoring it. The wash was definitely still safe to cross. He put the truck in gear and drove into the water. As soon as he reached the other side he spoke without looking at Diana.
“Hang on. I’m going to drive hard to get ahead of the storm.”
The road was dry and familiar, its occasional vagaries and hazards well-known to Ten. He held the big truck to a punishing pace, boring through the predawn darkness, outrunning the storm outside the truck, ignoring the one within as long as he could.
Finally the truck climbed up for the long run across Wind Mesa. For a time the road snaked along the very edge of the highland, giving a breathtaking vista of predawn light locked in luminous embrace with a high, slowly seething lid of clouds. The tenuous light was eerie, astonishing, flawless, utterly without color.
Ten stopped the truck at a point where the road gave an uninterrupted view of the dark land below.
“We’re at least an hour ahead of the rain,” Ten said, releasing his seat belt. “Want some coffee?”
Diana made a murmurous sound of approval that could have meant the view, the idea of coffee or both.
By the dim illumination of the dashboard lights, Ten opened a thermos and poured coffee. A clean, rich fragrance filled the cab. He handed the half-full cup to Diana, who refused it with a shake of her head.
“You first,” he insisted.
“Afraid of poison?” Diana asked huskily. She forced herself to smile, concealing the sadness that had grown greater with each mile flying beneath the truck’s broad tires.
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