River's End

by Nora Roberts

  “I don’t like to be handled.”

  His gaze flashed back to her. “Neither do I.”

  “We both know you wanted to come up here so I’d talk to you about your book without distractions or interruptions. But you haven’t said anything about it.”

  “I wanted to give you a day, to give us both a day. I wanted you.” He ran a finger down her arm. “I still want you. I’d like it better if you were more comfortable with that.”

  “I’d like it better if you’d keep it simple.”

  “Well.” He poked at the fish. “One of us isn’t going to get what he or she wants. Better get the plates, partner. These boys are nearly ready.”

  “Noah.”

  “Hmm?” He glanced up, a tender look on his face, and her heart wanted to melt. So she shook her head. “Nothing,” she said and reached for the plates.

  Later, when the meal was finished and the forest dark and full of sound, it was she who turned to him. She who needed arms around her to chase away the dreams that haunted her and the fear that stalked with them.

  And he was there, to hold her in the night, to move with her in a sweet and easy rhythm.

  So when she slept, she slept curled against him, her hand fisted over his heart, her head in the curve of his shoulder. Noah lay awake, watching the play of moonlight over the tent, listening to the call of a coyote, the hoot of an owl and the short scream of its prey.

  He wondered how it was possible that he’d never stopped loving her and what either of them, both of them, were going to do about it.

  the monster

  Deep into that darkness peering, long

  I stood there wondering, fearing,

  Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal

  ever dared to dream before.

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  twenty-seven

  Groggy, achy, Noah woke to birdsong. He sat up, tugged his jeans on and thought vaguely of breakfast. Through the sharp scent of pine and earth, he caught the wonderfully civilized aroma of coffee. And could have wept with gratitude for Olivia’s consistent efficiency.

  She’d built the morning campfire and had the coffeepot heating nicely. He burned his fingers on the handle, hissed a mild curse, then snatched up the cloth she’d left folded nearby to protect his hand.

  One long sip had his eyes clearing and his system revving up. God bless a woman who appreciated strong black coffee, he thought, then stepped closer to the river to look for her.

  Mists climbed up from the water to twine with sunbeams into silver and gold ribbons. A herd of deer drank lazily at the point where the stream curved like a bent finger and vanished into the trees.

  And he saw her, hair wet and gleaming as she floated through the gilt-edged mists upstream, watching him with eyes as tawny as a cat’s and just as wary.

  She looked as though she belonged there, in the wild, in that unearthly, shimmering light.

  The water rippled as she moved her arms, her shoulders rising over the surface. The mists seemed to open for her, then close again.

  “I didn’t expect you up so soon.” Her voice was quiet, but her eyes seemed full of storms.

  “I’m an early riser. How’s the water?”

  “Wet.”

  And freezing, he imagined. Still, he drank down the last of his coffee, then set the cup aside to pull off his jeans. He saw her eyes waver, then steady. What worries you, Olivia? he wondered. That it won’t be the way it was between us last night? Or the possibility it will be?

  The water was dazzlingly cold on his bare skin, and he saw her lips twitch when he winced. For no other reason than that, he bit back a yelp as he let himself slide in. He imagined his body going blue from the neck down.

  “You’re right,” he said when he was reasonably sure his teeth wouldn’t chatter. “It’s wet, all right.”

  It surprised her that he kept two arm spans’ distance between them. She’d expected him to move toward her, move in. He never seemed to do exactly what she expected. That, she could have told him, was what worried her most.

  He was never precisely what she anticipated.

  And her feelings for him were anything but what she’d planned.

  When he closed the distance between them, she was almost relieved. This followed logic. Morning sex, basic human need. Then they would get along with the business of the day on equal footing.

  But he only curled his fingertips around hers and watched her face. “You make great coffee, Liv.”

  “If you can’t dance on it, it isn’t coffee.”

  “Where are we going today?”

  She frowned at him. “I assumed you’d want to get started on the interview.”

  “We’ll get to it. Which trail do you like from here?”

  It was his party, she reminded herself, and shrugged. “There’s a nice route up into the mountains from here. Wonderful views, some good alpine meadows.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Do you want me to touch you?”

  Her gaze jerked back to his. “What?”

  “Do you want me to touch you, or would you rather I didn’t?”

  “We’ve had sex,” she said carefully. “I liked it well enough.”

  He let out a short laugh. “No need to pump up my ego,” he said and brushed a wet strand of hair from her cheek. “Besides, that’s not what I asked you. I asked if you wanted me to touch you now.” With his eyes locked on hers, he skimmed his finger down her throat, over her shoulder. “To make love with you now.”

  “You’re already touching me.”

  Her skin shivered as he traced his finger down the center of her body, slicked it into her. “Yes or no,” he murmured when her breath snagged.

  The liquid weight settled low in her stomach, urging her hips to move, setting a pace for her own pleasure. Heat ran up her body in one long, shuddering roll. Giving in to it, to him, she gripped his hair, dragged him to her. “Yes,” she said against his mouth.

  She opened to him, clamping her legs around his waist, prepared for that fast, hard race to climax. Craving it. But he used his hands on her, drove her up and over, up and over until she was gasping out his name.

  He wondered that the water didn’t simply churn red and burst into flame from his need for her. He wondered how he could have lived all his life not having her wrapped around him just like this. Long limbs, slim and strong, soft, slippery skin that sparkled with wet in the sun. He drew her head back so that the kiss could go deep and deep, spin out endlessly while the sun broke through the mist with a burst of light, turned the water to a clear moving mirror around them.

  He found purchase on the rough riverbed, braced, then slid into her in one long, slow stroke. “Hold on to me, Liv.” His breathing was ragged, and he buried his face in the curve of her throat, nipped there to hear her moan. “Come around me,” he murmured, and felt her muscles clamp him like a hot vise as the climax shot through her.

  Through the drumbeat of her heart, in her head, she heard him murmur to her, but could no longer separate promises from demand. His voice was only one more velvet layer, one more source of fogged pleasure. But when she felt his body tighten, she curled herself around him, holding fast so they could tumble off the last edge together.

  He didn’t let her go. She waited for him to release her, to drift back, aim a quick, triumphant grin and climb out of the water for a second shot of coffee.

  But he held her fast, held her close, his lips rubbing lightly from her temple to her jaw in a sweet and soothing motion that left her more shaken than sex.

  She had to get away, she thought, ease back before she let herself slip into intimacy. “The water’s cold.”

  “Cold, hell. It’s freezing.” He nibbled his way to her ear, enjoying the way her heart continued to riot against his. “You know, the minute your mind clears, your body tenses up. Why do you do that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. We have to get out. We need to get started if—”

  He turned his head, crushed his mou
th against hers. “We’ve already started, Liv. We started a long time ago.” He cupped her chin in his hand, then released her to turn to the bank. “We have to figure out where we want to finish.”

  She fixed powdered eggs, and they polished off the pot of coffee. He agreed with her plan to keep camp where they were and consider the hike she outlined a day trip that could be managed round trip in an easy five hours.

  Carrying light packs, they started the climb on a rough track that led to rougher ridges. The valley fell away to their right, the forest marched toward the sky to the left. With the river winding below, they moved up into cool, crisp air where eagles soared and no sign of man could be seen.

  He thought she maneuvered the dizzying switchbacks as other women would a ballroom floor, with a kind of casual feminine grace that spoke of supreme confidence.

  She was patient when he stopped to take pictures, and he stopped often. She answered his questions—and he had more than she’d expected—in clear and simple terms. And she stood by, silently amused, when he drew to a halt and stared as the trail curved and the sky was swept by mountains.

  “If you planted a house here, you’d never get anything done. How could you stop looking?”

  Why couldn’t he be shallow and simple as she’d wanted him to be? “It’s public land.”

  He only shook his head, taking her hand to link fingers. “Just think of it for a minute. We’re the only two people in the world, and we’ve landed here. We could spend our whole life right here, with our brains dazzled.”

  Blue, white, green and silver. The world was made up of those strong colors and just the blurred smudges of more. Peaks and valleys and the rush of water. The feel of his hand warm in hers, as if it was meant to be.

  And nothing else, no one else existed. No fear, no pain, no memories, no tomorrows.

  Because she discovered she could yearn for that, she drew away. “You wouldn’t be so happy with it in the dead of winter when you’d freeze your ass off and couldn’t get a pizza delivery.”

  He looked at her, quiet, patient and made her ashamed. “What would you miss most if you could never go back?”

  “My family.”

  “No, not people. What thing would you miss most?”

  “The green,” she said instantly and without thought. “The green light, and the green smell of the forest. It’s different up here,” she continued as they began to walk again. “Open, cool, with the forest well past peak.”

  “Not as many places to hide.”

  “I’m not hiding. This is iceland-moss,” she told him, gesturing to a curly clump of yellow-green. “It’s the best-known lichen in human consumption. In Sweden it’s sold as an herbal medicine.” She caught his look and lifted her eyebrows. “What?”

  “I just like that snippy tone you get when you’re annoyed and start a nature lecture.”

  “If you don’t want to know what you’re looking at, fine.”

  “No, I do. Besides, when you start talking about lichens and fungi, I get this urge to make wild animal love with you.”

  “Then I’ll have to switch to wildflowers.”

  “It won’t help. I’ll still want to jump you.” A flash of pink caught his eye. “Hey, are those bleeding hearts? Growing wild.”

  “That’s right.” Her annoyance didn’t have a chance against his honest enthusiasm as he scrambled over some rocks to get a closer look. “Very much like your garden variety in appearance. Don’t touch,” she warned. “We maintain low impact here.”

  “I don’t have the right shade or soil to grow these at home. Tried them at Mom’s, but that was the next thing to murder. I’ve always liked the look of them.”

  “We have some nice specimens in the garden at my grandparents’. We’ll go this way.” She climbed over the rocks and chose a new heading. “I think I know a spot you’ll like.”

  The track moved inside the edge of the forest, a steep incline with tumbles of rocks to one side where flowers forced their way through cracks and rooted ruthlessly in thin soil.

  He heard the sound of drumming and grinned like a boy when they passed a cliff face sheared with a roaring fall of water. A dozen times he had to resist the urge to stop and pluck up handfuls of the hardy wildflowers.

  His muscles began to burn, his feet to beg for rest. He was about to give in to both when she clattered over a hunched fist of rocks and turned to give him a hand up.

  “That five hours was round trip, right, bwana?” Puffing a little, he gripped her hand and hauled himself up. “Because otherwise I’m just going to—Oh, Jesus.”

  He forgot his aches and pains and fatigue and filled himself on the view.

  It was an ocean of flowers, rivers of color flowing through green and washing up toward a slope of forested peak that shot into the blue like the turret of a castle. At the highest points, curving pools of snow shimmered through the rock and trees and made the flowers only more of a miracle to him.

  Butterflies danced, white, yellow, blue, flirting with the blooms, or settled delicately onto them with a quiet swish of wings.

  “Amazing. Incredible. This is where we put the house.”

  This time she laughed.

  “What are those, lupines?”

  “You have a good eye. Broadleaf lupines—the common western blue butterfly prefers them. Those are mountain daisies mixed with them. Those there, the white with the yellow center, are avalanche lilies.”

  “And yarrow.” He studied the fernlike leaves and flat white blossoms.

  “You know your flowers. You don’t need me up here.”

  “Yes.” He took her hand again. “I do. It was worth every step.” He turned and caught her unprepared with a soft and stirring kiss. “Thanks.”

  “At River’s End you get what you pay for.” She started to turn away, but he had her arms, eased her back around. “Don’t.” She closed her eyes before his mouth could capture hers again.

  “Why?”

  “I—” She opened her eyes again and could do nothing about the emotions that swirled into them. “Just don’t.”

  “All right.” Instead he lifted her hand to his lips, pressed them lightly to the knuckle of each finger and watched confusion join the clouds in her eyes.

  “What are you looking for, Noah?”

  He kept his eyes on hers, opened her fisted hand to press his lips to the center of her palm. “I’ve already found it. You just have to catch up.”

  He was afraid there was only one way for that to begin. “Let’s sit down, Liv. This is a good spot. It’s a good time.” He shrugged off his pack, sat on a rock and opened it to find his tape recorder.

  Seeing it in his hand, she felt her breath go thick and hot in her lungs. “I don’t know how to do this.”

  “I do. I want to tell you something first.” He set the recorder beside him, then hunted out his notepad. “I considered giving up the idea of this book. Setting it aside, as I did when I hurt you before.” He opened the notebook, then looked at her. “It wouldn’t have done any good, this time around. It would’ve been in the back of my mind. Always. Just as it would be in the back of yours. I can’t quite figure out, Liv, if that’s standing between us or if it’s why we’re here together. Why we’ve come back together after all this time. Why we’re lovers now. But I do know that if we don’t finish it, we’ll keep running in place. I need to go forward. So do you.”

  “I said I’d do it. I keep my word.”

  “And hate me for it? Blame me for being the one who brought it to the surface? Just the way you hated me that day in the hotel?”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I know I did. I’ve never been sorrier for anything in my life.”