The Touch of Fire

by Linda Howard

  She looked pale and dazed. She didn’t glance at him, but instead stared fixedly at the fire. He saw her slender throat move as she swallowed.

  “It was just a kiss,” he murmured, moved by an impulse to comfort her, since she seemed to need it. He scowled as he had an unwelcome thought. Though she had seemed to respond to him, it was possible she was afraid he would assault her. She had opened her mouth for him, but he couldn’t say that she had returned the kiss. It infuriated him to think that maybe he’d been the only one feeling that buildup of heat and tension inside, but the possibility was there. “I’m not going to attack you.”

  Annie struggled to compose herself. If he thought her reaction was caused by fear, that was much better than him knowing she had wanted him to continue what he’d been doing. She looked down at her hands, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Her mind felt sluggish, and her heart was still racing.

  Rafe sighed and sought a more comfortable position, dragging his saddle over to lean against. It looked like he needed to get her settled down as he had the night before. “What made you want to be a doctor? It’s not the usual thing for a woman.”

  That was the one subject guaranteed to bring her out of herself. She gave him a quick look, grateful for something to talk about. “That’s certainly been impressed on me time and again!”

  “I can imagine. What made you do it?”

  “My father was a doctor, so I grew up around medicine. I can’t remember when I wasn’t fascinated by it.”

  “Most doctors’ little girls play with dolls, not medicine.”

  “I suppose. Papa said it really started when I fell out of a barn loft when I was five. He was terrified that the fall had killed me; he said that I wasn’t breathing, and that he couldn’t find a pulse. He beat on my chest with his fist and started my heart again, or at least that’s what he always told me; now that I’m older, I think I was probably only stunned. Anyway, I was very taken with the idea that he had started my heart, and from then on all I talked about was being a doctor.”

  “Do you remember the fall?”

  “Not really.” She gazed at the fire, raptly watching the small yellow tongues of flame tipped with palest blue as they wavered back and forth. “What I remember is more like a dream about falling, rather than a real fall. In the dream I had fallen, but I got up by myself, and there was a lot of light and people coming to get me. I don’t remember what Papa says happened. I was only five, after all. What do you remember from when you were five?”

  “Getting my ass tanned for letting chickens in the house,” he said bluntly.

  Annie hid a smile at the image. She wasn’t shocked by his language, for after working in a boomtown for so many months, she thought there was very little that she hadn’t already heard. “How many chickens?”

  “Enough, I guess. I couldn’t count very well at that age, but it seemed like a lot of them.”

  “Did you have any brothers and sisters?”

  “One brother. He died during the war. How about you?”

  “No, I was an only child. My mother died when I was two, so I don’t remember her at all, and Papa never remarried.”

  “Was he happy that you wanted to be a doctor too?”

  Annie had often wondered that very thing. “I don’t know. I think he was proud, but worried at the same time. I didn’t understand why until I entered medical school.”

  “Was it difficult?”

  “Just getting into school was difficult! I wanted to attend Harvard, but they wouldn’t accept me because I’m a woman. I finally attended medical school in Geneva, New York, where Elizabeth Blackwell got her degree.”

  “Who’s Elizabeth Blackwell?”

  “The first woman doctor in America. She got her degree in ’49, but little had changed in the years since. The instructors ignored me and the other students harassed me. They accused me to my face of being nothing more than a loose woman, since any decent woman wouldn’t want to see what I’d be seeing. They told me that I should get married, if anyone would have me after that, and have babies as women were supposed to do. I should leave medicine to people who were smart enough to understand it, namely men. I studied alone and ate every meal alone, and I stayed.”

  He looked at her thin, delicate face, outlined by the glow of the fire, and could see fierce stubbornness in the set of her soft mouth. Yes, she would have stayed, even in the face of violent opposition. He didn’t understand the fervor that drove her to work herself to the bone in the name of medicine, but her instructors and fellow students had certainly underestimated it. She was the only female doctor he’d ever seen, but during the war a lot of sick and wounded men would have died if it hadn’t been for the women volunteering to work in the hospitals and take care of them. It was damn certain those women had seen a lot of naked men, too, and no one thought any less of them for it. More, in fact.

  “Don’t you want to get married and have babies? Seems to me like you could do that and still be a doctor.”

  She gave him a quick smile, then shyly returned her gaze to the fire. “I’ve never really thought about getting married. All of my time has been taken up with being a doctor, with learning everything I can learn about it. I wanted to go to England and study with Dr. Lister, but we couldn’t afford it, so I’ve had to learn any way I could.”

  Rafe had heard of Dr. Lister, the famous English surgeon who had revolutionized his profession by using antiseptic methods, greatly reducing the number of deaths by infection. Rafe had seen too much battlefield surgery not to realize the importance of Dr. Lister’s methods, and his own recent bout with an infected wound had impressed him with the seriousness of it.

  “Well, what about now? You’ve learned how to be a fine doctor. Are you going to be looking for a husband now?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Not many men would be willing to have a doctor for a wife, and besides, I’m too old. I’ll be thirty my next birthday, so that makes me an old maid, and men would rather have someone younger.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Since I’m thirty-four, twenty-nine doesn’t seem so old to me.” He hadn’t been able to guess her age, and he was a little surprised that she had revealed it so easily, since in his experience women tended to evade the issue after they reached their twenties. Annie often looked tired and worn, with good reason, which made her seem older than she was, but at the same time her skin was as soft and smooth as a baby’s and her round breasts stood upright like a young girl’s. The thought of her breasts made him shift uncomfortably as his groin tightened. He’d only seen them through her shift, and he felt cheated because he hadn’t felt them in his hands, hadn’t seen the color of her nipples or tasted their sweetness.

  “Have you ever been married?” she asked, jerking his attention back to their conversation.

  “No. Never even came close.” He’d been twenty-four, and just beginning to think of the security and closeness of marriage, when the war had started. The following four years of guerrilla fighting with Mosby had hardened him, and after his father had died during the winter of’64, he’d had no family left and so had drifted after the end of the war. Maybe he’d have settled down, though, if he hadn’t run into Tench Tilghman in New York in ’67. Poor Tench, he hadn’t realized the terrible secret he’d been guarding, and it had cost him his life, but at least he’d died without knowing how they had been betrayed.

  Blackness welled in him at the memory and he struggled to quell it rather than inflict the ugliness of his mood on Annie. “Let’s go to sleep,” he muttered, suddenly impatient to have his arms around her again, even if it was in sleep. Maybe the peculiar sweetness of her touch would lighten his dark spirit. He stood up and began banking the fire.

  Annie was startled by his brusqueness, for she had been enjoying their conversation, but she obediently got to her feet. Then she remembered that she had been using one of their blankets as a dress and would now have to give it up. She froze, her pleading gaze fastened on him.

  When
he turned around he accurately read her expression. “I’m going to have to tie you tonight,” he said as gently as he could.

  She clutched the blanket to her. “Tie me?” she echoed.

  He jerked his head at their damp clothing, spread out over the floor of the cabin to finish drying. “I’m not going to sleep on a pile of wet clothes. Since I can’t keep the clothes away from you, I’ll have to keep you away from the clothes.”

  She had suggested the night before that he tie her rather than make her remove her clothes, but now it seemed that she was to be both tied and largely naked. It wasn’t the idea of being bound that disturbed her as much as the realization that she had to surrender the blanket. Granted, she was still wearing his shirt, and it covered more than her shift had the night before, but she was very aware of her bareness beneath it.

  He untied the piece of rope she had been using to secure the blanket around her waist, and it began slipping to the floor. She grabbed it, then clenched her teeth and let it drop. The faster he got her tied, the sooner she could lie down and pull the concealing blanket over her. This humiliating exposure would be over with faster if she didn’t protest.

  Rafe unrolled the sleeves of the shirt until the cuffs covered her wrists, to protect her soft skin from the abrasive rope. She stood motionless, her dark eyes huge as she stared straight ahead. He pulled her hands together and looped the rope around each wrist separately, then tied a quick, efficient knot in the middle. He tested both the knot and the tightness of the rope before he let her hands drop. Automatically, she pulled at the binding to discover the strength of it herself. The rope was snug rather than uncomfortably tight, without any give in the knot.

  Quickly Rafe pulled off his boots and gun belt and straightened out the blankets. “Lie down.”

  It was awkward with her hands tied in front of her, but not impossible. She knelt on the blanket, maneuvered to a sitting position, and managed to lie down on her side. Horrified, she felt the hem of the shirt slip upward with her movement and she made a panicked effort to pull it down behind, but her arms were so restricted that she couldn’t. She felt a draft of cool air on her bare bottom. Dear God, was she totally exposed? She started to lift her head to see, but at that moment Rafe dropped to the floor beside her and spread the other blanket over them. His big body pressed close to her back and his arm settled around her waist.

  “I know it’s uncomfortable,” he said in her ear, his voice low. “You might sleep better on your back, if lying on your side puts too much pressure on your arms.”

  “I’m all right,” she lied, staring into the darkness. Her arms were already hurting, and she knew he’d made it as easy on her as he could.

  Rafe inhaled the fresh sweet scent of her hair and skin, and a sense of well-being began to edge out his black mood. He snuggled her closer and slipped his right arm under her head. Her narrow body felt soft and wonderfully female against him, especially her rounded little bottom. He wondered if she knew the shirt had slipped up so much when she had lain down that he’d caught a glimpse of curved white buttocks. His shaft was painfully rigid, restrained as it was by his pants, but it was a good pain, the best.

  Within five minutes she was subtly shifting her shoulders, trying to ease them. The second time Rafe felt her move against him, he slipped his left hand around her hip and deftly rolled her onto her back. “Stubborn.”

  She took a deep breath and let her shoulders relax.

  “Thank you for not tying me up last night,” she murmured. “I hadn’t realized.” How strange that forcing her to take off her clothing, which had so terrified her, had in fact been an act of mercy.

  “It isn’t anything you’d have had any reason to know.”

  “But you have.”

  “I’ve been in a few tight spots. Tied others up, too, during the war.”

  “Did you fight for the North or the South?” There was no mistaking his southern drawl, but that didn’t necessarily indicate which side he’d fought on, as the war had split states, towns and families.

  “For the South, I guess, though it came down, really, to fighting for Virginia. That was my home.”

  “What outfit were you with?”

  “I was in the cavalry.” That was explanation enough, he thought, though it fell far short of describing what the companies under Mosby’s command had been and done. For a relatively small group, they had tied up a hugely disproportionate number of Union troops dedicated to tracking them down, thwarting them at the least, capturing them if possible. The Union troops had failed. Mosby and his men had eluded capture time and again.

  He listened to the rhythm of her breathing slow as she relaxed and sleep edged closer. She turned her head toward him. “Good night,” she murmured.

  Desire slammed into his gut and he cursed his wounds, cursed the situation that made her fear him. She had said a simple good night, and he had imagined her saying it after he’d worn her out with some hard loving. Everything she said and did reminded him of sex. It would be a pure miracle if he managed to keep his hands off her for another couple of days. Right now, he’d say it was an impossibility.

  “Kiss me good night.” His voice was raspy with need and he felt her muscles tighten again in alarm.

  “We—we shouldn’t do that.”

  “Considering how bad I want to strip you naked, a kiss isn’t much to ask for.”

  She quivered at his rough tone. Beside her, he was as tense as she, though for a different reason. Heat emanated from him in waves, enveloping her, but it wasn’t the heat of fever. She sought reassurance, though she didn’t know why she should believe a man who had kidnapped her. “A kiss is all you want?”

  “Hell, no, a kiss isn’t all I want!” he snapped. “But it’s what I’ll settle for, if you’re not ready to let me between your legs.”

  Shock reverberated through her, making her dizzy. “I’m not a whore, Mr. McCay!”

  “Fucking doesn’t make a woman a whore,” he replied crudely, frustration eroding his control. “Taking money for it does.”

  The word battered at her. She had heard it muttered as an aside once when she had been summoned to care for one of the prostitutes who had been treated roughly—assaulted would be a better description—but had never imagined that any man would say such a thing directly to her. She flinched from the crudity, and her heart began to slam against her rib cage. Men didn’t talk that way to women they respected; did that mean he intended to—

  He slipped his hand onto her stomach, under her bound hands. The heat of it burned her, and her breath began coming in small pants. His fingers flexed a little, then began a delicate massaging motion. “Calm down, I’m not going to rape you.”

  She said on a gasp, “Then why are you saying such awful things?”

  “Awful?” He considered her reaction and the possible causes. Since she was a doctor he hadn’t expected her to be so missish about something he regarded as natural between men and women, and damn wonderful at that. He’d long since lost any inclination he might have had as a “gentleman” to shield women from any knowledge of sex. Her reaction made him think she either had been mistreated by some man or she was a virgin, and the best way to find out was to ask. He hoped she was virgin, because the idea of anyone mistreating her like that suddenly made him killing mad. “Are you a virgin?”

  “What?” Her voice went high and almost soundless with shock.

  “A virgin.” Gently he rubbed her belly. “Annie, honey, has anyone ever—”

  “I know what it means!” she interrupted, afraid of what he might say. “Of course I’m still a—ah—virgin.”

  “There’s no ‘of course’ to it, honey. You’re twenty-nine, not a silly sixteen-year-old with the dew still on. Very few women go through life without a man getting in bed with them, and a fair number aren’t married at the time.”

  She had seen enough in her years as a doctor to admit the truth of that, but that didn’t change her own situation. “I can’t say about other wom
en, but I’ve certainly never done—that.”

  “Have you ever wanted to?”

  Desperately she tried to turn away from him, but his hand pressed heavily on her stomach, keeping her where she was. Lacking any other means of evasion, she turned her head away. “No. Not really.”

  “Not really.“ he repeated. “What does that mean? You either have or you haven’t.”

  It was becoming difficult to breathe; the air seemed heavy and heated, laden with the musky scent of his skin. She was no good at dissembling, so finally she stopped trying to evade his shocking, persistent questions. “I’m a doctor. I know the facts of how people perform sexual union, and I know what men look like without their clothing, so of course I’ve thought about the process.”

  “I’ve thought about the process, too,” he said roughly. “That’s about all I’ve thought about since the first time I saw you. It’s been hell; I was so sick I could barely stand up, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to lift your skirt. My common sense tells me to leave you alone, to just take you back to Silver Mesa in a couple of days the way I said I would, but right now I’d give ten years of my life to have you under me. I’ve been hard for two solid days, Annie girl.”

  It was a bittersweet comfort to realize that he had felt some of the same helpless fascination she’d experienced since first meeting him. Touching him, even in healing, was a deep and glowing pleasure. And when he had kissed her earlier, she had thought her heart would burst. She wanted to know more. She wanted to turn into his arms and let him do the things about which she had only speculated with mild curiosity. Nothing of what she felt now was mild. Her skin felt hot and sensitive, and a low, deep throb tormented the secret places of her body. Her lack of clothing made the throbbing worse than if she had been encased in fabric, for she was tantalized by the knowledge that all he would have to do was slide the shirt up a few inches. . . .