by Vonna Harper
"I don't know," she belatedly remembered to answer. "I can't say because you didn't give me the chance."
"Let me tell you about Aaron," he said. His horse shifted its weight, causing him to adjust his position to accommodate the change. He seemed one with the animal and so much a part of the wilderness that she believed he'd carry that wildness with him for the rest of his life. She wanted nothing to do with what was happening right now and yet. . .
"We grew up together," he went on, "learned to ride bikes at the same time. When we were nine, we decided to run away from home. We filled our backpacks with junk food and tied our jackets around our waists and took off. When it got dark, we pushed our bikes into a barn and slept in the hay although I'm not sure either of us got any sleep. By morning, we'd gone through half of our food. I was ready to go home and take my lumps, but Aaron was afraid of his stepfather and wanted to keep going. I wouldn't leave him." He ran his hand over his horse's neck, caressing, reassuring the animal who acted as if it had absorbed Devin's mood.
"That day we made it to the county line and were heading south because Los Angeles was in that direction, peddling along the side of a narrow road when the pickup hit us."
She opened her mouth, but how do you say I'm sorry for something that had happened twenty years ago?
"I got the worst of it."
"In…what way?"
"Broken leg. I don't know whether the driver didn't realize what he'd done or just wanted to get away. The bone was poking up through my jeans, but I think I must have been in shock because it didn't hurt…then."
"Aaron, what happened to him?"
"Scrapes and scratches. The skin torn from his knuckles." He ran his fingers through his gelding's mane, but she didn't think he was aware of what he was doing. In her mind's eyes, she clearly saw two scared and hurting boys in the middle of nowhere, exhaust fumes from the pickup still invading their lungs, and birds and insects oblivious to the accident.
"You both survived," she said when his silence had gone on for the better part of a minute. "Did someone come by and take you to the hospital?"
He shook his head, and in his eyes she saw the lingering memory of that long-ago day.
"The road was off the beaten path and not very well maintained," he told her. "I think no one except a few farmers used it. Our bikes were trashed. I couldn't walk so Aaron did."
"He left you?"
"He had no choice. It was nearly dark by the time he returned."
But he had. Aaron hadn't abandoned his friend.
"I'm sorry you were alone for so long. Your leg? It healed all right?"
"It doesn't have quite the stamina of my other leg, but it's fine. Aaron had walked maybe five miles before he reached a farmhouse. Then he watched for awhile until he was sure the driver who'd hit us wasn't there. Finally he knocked on the door."
Although she hadn't believed herself capable of thinking of anything except what Devin had endured, she now imagined a scared, tired, and hurting boy waiting for someone to open the door and then trying not to cry as he asked for help, not for himself, but for his best friend.
"What an awful experience." She brought her horse close to Devin's, then took his hand. He let her hold it long enough to give him a squeeze, then pulled free. His hand became a fist.
"The farmer drove to where I was and loaded me into his truck. Then he took both of us to the nearest hospital. My parents came as soon as they found out." Devin glanced away, then back at her; his eyes were full of fire. "Aaron's stepfather hauled him home. I didn't see him again until several days after my bone was set."
She couldn't help it; she shut her eyes. "What happened to him?"
"Aaron showed me where that bastard had taken a strap to him."
"Oh God."
"Do you get it?" he demanded. "Do you! Aaron's childhood was hell. I knew he needed me. I was the only one he could talk to, the only one he trusted. But I couldn't keep him alive. He died out here. Alone. More alone than I'd been while he was getting help for me or even when I was lost."
She opened her eyes and stared at the man who'd ejaculated inside her last night. She didn't know who he'd become and yet…damn it, and yet this dark stranger excited her. She felt flushed, and despite her best efforts, she couldn't kill the fantasy of his hands on her, tearing off her clothes, taking her hard and fast and uncivilized.
It wouldn't be rape. It'd be…mating.
"What do you want me to say?" She still couldn't get her voice above a whisper.
The way he blinked and frowned, she believed he hadn't expected the question.
"Devin? I don't understand what's happening here, what this is all about. You act—damn it—you're acting as if your friend's death is my fault."
Chapter 8
Fourteen kinds of a fool!
Unable to take his gaze off Ana, Devin fought to free himself from that long-ago day when his and Aaron's friendship had been sealed. He hadn't meant to use this tactic to reveal why he'd insisted on being guided to Crystal Creek. Unfortunately, his initial plan to force her to confess everything she knew about her husband's activities had flown out the window the moment he laid eyes on her.
He didn't believe in spells or psychic connection, and no one would ever convince him that there was such a thing as love at first sight—lust yes but not the other 'L' word—something was going on that he couldn't begin to understand or control. Nor was he interested in making it go away.
Hell, he knew about the element of surprise, and his interrogation of more than one suspect had led to a confession, but not only weren't he and Ana sitting in some windowless room in a police building, but she wasn't a suspect.
Hell, no. Some of his sperm was probably still inside her.
"Don't try to tell me I'm wrong," she said. "That was an accusatory tone."
"Take it how you want," he retorted. Shit, he sounded more like a pouting kid than a man in charge of the situation. In charge? What a joke that was.
It was her fault…not. Not her fault, her doing. She was lonely and vulnerable and fighting her way free of the unhealthy relationship she'd had with her husband. No wonder she'd contrived for them to have sex last night.
Contrived? No, not that.
Shit, he couldn't think straight around her.
Determined to put an end to that, he backed his horse and turned it so he didn't have to look at her any more. Even with her riding behind him, he couldn't deny that his cock was hard, and he ached to bury it inside her. But he'd learned that with her pussy wrapped around him, trapping him, he couldn't think. And if he wasn't clear-headed, he'd never have closure for Aaron.
Crystal Creek. There'd been amusement in Aaron's voice when he'd called and told him about where he was going.
"You'd think they'd come up with a more inspired name than that, wouldn't you?" he'd said. "How many Crystal Creeks do you think there are? At least one per forest." His voice had turned serious. "But I know I'm going to the right place."
"You trust your informant?" Devin had asked, frustrated by the miles separating them and the poor cell phone connection. "You're sure about that?"
"That joker's too stupid and wasted for anything except the truth. It's amazing what a few drinks will buy. No sweat. I want to do a little out-of-season hunting? He knows a man who'll get me there."
So Aaron had gone to Crystal Creek deep in the Siskiyous because that was part of his job, but instead of stopping a poaching operation, he'd been murdered.
Ana was behind him, undoubtedly studying him with her vulnerable and wary eyes, turning him on despite his determination not to let that happen.
That joker's too stupid and wasted for anything except the truth, Aaron had told him. Only, he'd been wrong. Instead of milking some idiot for information, Aaron had been led to his death.
A death maybe caused by Ana's husband.
"You want to know what this is all about, do you?" He dismounted and stalked toward her. Looking up at her, he was struck by the way
she blended in with the trees. If Aaron's voice wasn't settled inside him, he'd never be able to fight this woman's impact on him; he'd spent too many years in a career where one mistake could kill him. He wouldn't make one now.
"Get down." He punctuated his order by reaching up and grabbing her around the waist.
She leaned away, but he roughly jerked her out of the saddle. Off balance, she was forced to clamp her hands on his shoulders to keep from falling. She slid off the animal and down his chest, the contact burning them both. For a moment they stood chest to chest, belly to belly.
Then he shoved her from him. "All right," he bit out. "I'll give you the rest of the story of Aaron's death." Or at least another chapter. "He was working undercover. The nature of what he was doing made him vulnerable because he didn't know who, if anyone, he could trust."
She removed her backpack and rotated her shoulders several times. Then she wrapped her arms around her waist and leaned forward as if trying to protect herself. She put him in mind of a newborn fawn who instinctively knows that only gaining strength and speed, quickly, will keep it alive. He didn't want to feel protective toward her, damn it, and yet he did. Only his cock's response had nothing to do with that emotion. What, he wondered despite himself, would angry, hostile sex between them be like?
Mind blowing. Body blowing.
"I was in a similar situation once," he continued. His voice sounded as hard-edged as he felt; but why did she have to be wearing a soft flannel shirt that draped her breasts and reminded him of what he'd explored last night.
"What kind of situation?"
"Not knowing who I dared rely on and yet not willing to risk cutting myself off completely from help. Because we couldn't depend on anyone else, Aaron and I devised a system for staying in touch. Regular cell phone calls." He pulled his back pack off his horse. "Cell phone locations can't be traced, did you know that?"
She shook her head. Her gaze flickered to the hardly subtle bulge in his jeans, then back to his eyes. He expected to see a superior smile. Instead, her tongue flicked out, and she licked her lips. Shit.
"Sometimes," he continued, "when we had important information, details, names, that sort of thing, we left it on each other's mail boxes."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"I still have his last six messages." He indicated the back pack. "A year after his death, I can repeat what he told me, word for word."
That wary look was back in her eyes and in the way she held her mouth in a straight, firm line as if determined not to let him past her barriers. At the same time, she drew her legs together, and he swore she was tucking her butt into her, maybe in an attempt to quiet whatever she felt in her cunt. Shit. Couldn't either of them control whatever the hell was taking place between them?
"Your husband's name is on two of those messages," he said.
Her head snapped back. But instead of accusing him of lying or insisting he had no business linking her husband with Aaron's murder, she took a long, deep breath and rammed her hands into her back pockets. He was glad she no longer believed she had to protect her body from his attack. At the same time, her stance pushed her breasts against her shirt. Challenged him to try, just try to touch them.
He wasn't that much of a fool.
"My husband's name?" she said slowly. "In what context?"
"Aaron was here in an undercover capacity because there'd been poaching in the Siskiyous," he said, refusing to back down from her hard stare. "Deer, elk. You'd be surprised how many people want to display antlers; at least I guess you'd be surprised."
Her glare intensified, but she didn't speak.
"There's a damn market for bear gall bladders," he went on. "Do you get that? A bear is shot and left to rot so some old man can get his pecker up…at least he hopes that eating dried gall bladders will make it happen."
"I know."
"You know?"
"About that particular reason black bears are being targeted."
"You do?" He hadn't expected that.
"Devin, I'm not just a simple country bumpkin trying to keep her homestead from being foreclosed on. I know what's going on around me, the dangers to the forests."
Some of the dangers, he wanted to tell her. She couldn't possibly know everything, even if her husband had told her what really happened during those so-called innocent fishing trips. "You know where I'm going with this, don't you?" he asked.
She started to take a backward step. Then—and he swore he read every nuance of her decision in her eyes—she closed half the distance between them. "Let me guess. Aaron told you that he suspected John was helping poachers find animals to kill." She reached out and clamped her fingers around his forearm. "Did your friend have proof?"
"You don't sound surprised," he said as his arm heated. "And you're not calling me a liar." It took everything in him not to take hold of her wrist and pull her toward him.
"If I did, there'd be even more of a barrier between us than there already is." She pressed down. "And whether you believe me or not, I want the truth. I need it."
"You don't think your husband was a saint?"
"He was a human being." Her eyes closed. "A man with a death sentence hanging over him. Maybe—maybe that changed things for him."
To hell with it. If she didn't know enough to release him, let her pay the consequences.
Propelled by the thought and a raging desire to have her, he snared her wrists and yanked her toward him. "Maybe you're right. Maybe he was no longer the man you married. We all change."
Change. The word ran through Ana, spreading through her veins to heat her flesh. She tried to hold it up and examine it so, maybe, she'd understand what the word had to do with her, but Devin was drawing her arms around his waist and holding them against the small of his back so she was kept off-balance. Afraid to look into dark eyes filled with confrontation and danger, she struggled to go deep inside herself for the strength that had gotten her through the months of her husband's dying, but she couldn't find it with Devin's penis pushing into her belly and the smell of him invading her nostrils.
Giving up, she let him support her. Her breasts were pressing against his chest, her cheek flattened against his collarbone. She breathed in his essence and recorded the beat of his heart.
He shifted his grip, increasing his hold on her. Her shoulders ached from the strain of trying to span his greater size. His chest seemed huge, inhuman, all powerful and potent. The back of her thighs burned, and her toes carried most of her weight. The handgun strapped to his waist added to the sense that she was in over her head, and yet the danger it represented excited her.
"What is this about?" Her voice was small and uncertain.
"I don't know. That's the hell of it; I don't know."
Neither do I. "Then let me go."
"Is that what you want?"
I want you inside me. For us to be so close together, our sweat blending, that I can't think about anything else. "Let me go."
He pushed her away from him but didn't release her. Now he held her hands in front of her, low and near his penis. She wanted to lock eyes with him and let him know she wasn't impressed by his damn Tarzan game, but she couldn't pull her gaze off his penis. The sad truth was that she'd always been intimidated by men's penises. Maybe it wouldn't be like that if she'd ever seen her father naked, but that kind of thing simply didn't happen while she was growing up.
Their things, her mother had dodged. Once, only once and probably because she'd been too young to weigh the wisdom of what came out of her mouth, she'd asked if it was uncomfortable for a man to have his thing always flattened against him by whatever he was wearing. Her mother's stammered response that that wasn't the kind of thing little girls talked about had come through loud and clear.
Now, however, the question returned. Wouldn't Devin rather release his cock? It certainly didn't fit where it was.
"That…that's not what I had in mind." She tensed her forearms and tried to jerk away. "What are you trying
to prove?"
She thought he sighed but maybe the sound, if there was one, came from her. When she gave up trying to match her strength to his, he slowly, so damnably slowly drew her fingers toward the bulge in his jeans. In her mind, she resisted, but the truth was, she could hardly wait for the contact. Damning herself for what she was doing, she stretched her fingers toward him. He was hard all right, not that she didn't need to cop a feel to know that. What caused her to shiver was the knowledge of how much more there was to him than what showed beneath the jeans. They'd had sex last night. Fucked if they were getting down to basics.
Now she was hungry again.
All right. If she couldn't have control of her arms, she'd do what little she could to let him know he hadn't won the round, at least not yet. Smiling, or maybe doing whatever it took to keep from panting, she curled her forefinger against her thumb as if preparing to shoot marbles, then snapped her finger at his penis…not sharp of course but enough to get his attention.
"No, I don't think so," he warned.
He pulled up on her left wrist. Then he brought it toward his open mouth. She rocked back on her heels so she could watch him without his features blurring. When he slid her fingers between his teeth and gently closed down, heat washed through her groin. Eyes at half mast and knees threatening to give out, she lost herself in the sensation of Devin's teeth being drawn over her fingertips, his tongue washing under, over, and around her fingers.
She had a physical woman's hands, complete with short, unpainted nails and calluses. She'd spent much of yesterday and that morning gripping a rein, not indulging in a manicure. On the day of her wedding, she'd presented her left hand so John could slip on her wedding ring, but as soon as he'd done that, he'd released her so he could concentrate on what the minister was saying. Not once in their married life had he given any indication that he considered her hands an erotic zone.