Rafe was silent a moment, then simply said, “You’d better wait until tomorrow morning.The area around Rushton will be full of riders tonight, and they probably won’t ask too many questions.After losing their prey last night, they’ll be shooting first, asking questions later.”He hesitated.“We still need something to eat.You any good at fishing?”
Randall looked grateful for the change of subject.“I can manage.”
Rafe looked toward McClary.“And get him out of sight.”
Randall nodded.
Rafe knew Shea would be at the pool.At their rock.
She was sitting, her knees bent and her head resting on them.He approached quietly, but she knew.She looked up at him, her eyes desperately unhappy.“How can you even bear to look at me?”
He smiled, the first real smile in a long time.“It’s easy.It always has been.”
“I don’t understand how he could have done it.”
“He just saved your life, maybe mine.”
“It’s too late,” she said.“I don’t think I can ever forgive him for what he did to you.”
“I’m finding out,” he said, “that you can’t allow the past to rule the future.”
“How can you ever look at me and not see him?”
“Because you’re not him.Because what happened years ago had nothing to do with you.”
She took his hand and held on for dear life.“Then …”
Grief seeped through him.He was slowly letting go of that life-draining hate, but he knew he could have no life with her, or with any woman.He would always carry that brand.He would always be suspect.Just as he had been here.
He wouldn’t subject her to that kind of life.But he needed her now.He needed her more than he knew it was possible to need anyone.He had almost been killed twice in the past twenty-four hours: once at the hands of a lynch mob, the second by McClary’s gun.He was surprised to discover that life was still precious to him.
He leaned over and did the worst possible thing.He kissed her and tasted the saltiness of her tears.Tears for him.It was still incredible to him that anyone would care that much, that a woman would risk everything that she had risked for someone who had so little to offer.
Her arms went around him, gently, careful of his arm but with a certain desperation, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.He felt that desperation straight through to his soul.He ignored the pain in his arm.He ignored all the warnings in his mind.He even ignored the conscience that was finally making itself known after being quieted, dampened, hidden away.He would send her away tomorrow with her father, and then he would disappear to some faraway place and live haunted by her for the rest of his life.
Their lips met with such tender wistfulness that Rafe felt an exquisite agony that surpassed any other feeling.It filled him, cleansed him, renewed him.It made him feel like a man again, a whole being worthy of being loved.
The kiss deepened, his tongue roaming deep in her mouth, seeking to possess her in an elemental way.He wanted to live at this moment, to throw off the last of that intense hatred that had maimed him even more than the scar had.It was seeping from him now, like sand from an hourglass, and he felt the first real freedom since he had been accused all those years ago.That hate, he knew, had been a more brutal prison than the one of bricks and iron.
Her hand was roaming, and he stopped thinking.He only felt.
Her fingers teased and loved as they roamed along his skin, stopping and taking special liberties here and there, like the back of his neck and muscles along his shoulders.They tensed under her touch, just as he felt the growing arousal in that least-disciplined part of his body.He groaned with the growing expectancy there, with the glorious heat that burned in him with such insatiable need.
Her hands unbuttoned his shirt and slid up and down his chest, until he felt as if he’d been struck by a dozen lightning bolts.Piercing streaks of need sliced through him, and he sensed her desperate urgency; he knew she suspected this was a good-bye.His heart slammed against its rib cage as he felt the love flowing from her, the giving, wordless plea that he give more than he had any right to give.She wanted forever, and he had no forever to give.
He could only give this moment, and he was desperately afraid that he would be doing more damage if he did that, but he needed it so badly.He needed her warmth.He needed the knowledge of being loved.He needed love itself.
Shea sensed the battle waging inside him, his sudden hesitation even as his body strained toward her and hers toward him.She saw the raw, naked longing on his face and knew it was far more than the physical hunger that also ran violently between them.
“I need you now,” she whispered.She needed his strength, even that odd and unexpected compassion he’d just showed toward her father, a compassion that, at the moment, was lacking in her.She needed a grounding when all the ground beneath her had been swept away, the foundation of trust and honesty she had thought her heritage had been made into mockery.
Shea’s hand went up to his face, traced its outlines with tender possessiveness, and then his mouth returned to hers with a fierce need.His kiss deepened, his tongue moving slowly and sensually inside, each caress prolonged before proceeding to the next one.She knew he had surrendered, in this one moment at least, and she intended to make the most of it.Her own hand moved to the back of his head, her fingers entwining in his thick hair.To touch and be touched was enough at first, but then each movement fired the urgent expectancy inside her, the rising need that was exploding between them.
His right hand moved along her cheek and to the back of her neck, so delicately for such strong fingers.And then they moved to the front of her dress, slowly unbuttoning the front before moving inside the chemise and cradling her right breast.Her skin was alive with feeling, with wanting, and the core of her was a mass of writhing nerve ends, the pain sweet and exquisite in anticipation.
She helped him take off her dress and underclothing, and then her own fingers started unfastening his trousers.Without actually taking them off, he pulled her body close to his, and the combined friction of cloth and skin against her own naked body caused her to shudder with anticipation.She felt herself trembling with a need that went beyond the fierce passion she also felt.She wanted him inside her.She wanted him a part of her.She wanted to make him understand that they were one, could always be one if only he would allow it.
Their bodies came together, and he entered, deep and throbbing but still carefully, tenderly, as if each touch was to be savored and treasured and remembered, every movement like a sensual dance of love.Her legs went around his as she answered that dance with one of her own, moving with him, helping him to reach the very core of her, giving him every piece of her body and heart and soul.“I love you,” she whispered, knowing he didn’t want to hear those words but unable to hold them back.
