The Secret Sister

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Let me,” she said, taking the packet and opening it with fingers that were trembling. “That’s one thing I do know. I’ve never done this any other way.”

  “Neither have I. But I came real close about two seconds ago. Wait. Let me take off my—”

  His breath wedged and his thoughts scattered as slender fingers smoothed over him, caressing and sheathing him at the same time. Then she stroked down his length again, openly enjoying him, feeling just how much he wanted her.

  “Honey, unless you want to be flat on your back with a half-dressed man between your legs, you better—”

  A groan ripped from Cain when Christy’s fingers eased between his thighs, caressing the violently sensitive parts of him that were still naked.

  An instant later she was flat on her back with his half-dressed body between her legs. He parted her with his fingers, testing her readiness and increasing it at the same time. Her legs wound around his. The rough feel of denim between her naked thighs sent more wild sensations racing through her.

  She tried to tell him how good he felt, but words became a moan as his hips flexed and he pressed into her until she thought she could take no more. Then he moved and a sensual rain swept through her, softening her even more. Her legs circled his hips, opening her body completely to him as she unraveled with a shuddering cry.

  The heat and scent of her wild response burned away what little restraint Cain still had. His arm went beneath her hips, holding her so hard against him that he could feel the bones beneath her soft flesh. He took her mouth as he took her body, absorbing her wild cries, driving deeply, repeatedly into her, sparing her none of his heavy arousal.

  Suddenly she arched like a drawn bow, shivering wildly, crying deep in her throat with every broken breath.

  For an instant he was afraid that his unrestrained passion had hurt her. Then he felt the rhythmic pulses of her body and knew he’d given her ecstasy rather than pain. He drove into her again, burying himself in her. His head came back and his body went rigid and he knew nothing but the deep, heavy pulses of his own release.

  Spent, fighting for breath, they held each other for long minutes. She stroked his sweat-slicked back beneath his shirt, savoring the muscular heat of him while her breathing slowly returned to normal. He turned his head and bit her gently on the curve of her neck. Echoes of ecstasy shook her unexpectedly, making her moan and clench around him.

  Laughing softly, he bit her again. Her breathing unraveled even as her body did.

  “I didn’t know…until now,” she said.

  He lifted his head and looked down at her with luminous eyes. “Know what?”

  “Why women put up with men.”

  Laughing softly, he kissed her eyelids, the hollow of her cheeks, the corners of her mouth.

  “It works both ways,” he said against her lips as he slowly withdrew from her. “Pleasure like that is damned rare.”

  He rolled onto his side, taking her with him, holding her close, stroking her gently, being held and stroked in return. For a time there was no sound but the whisper of the fire.

  Her fingers combed gently down his chest, enjoying the masculine textures of hair, muscle, resilient skin. When her hand drifted below the waistband of his briefs, she discovered that he was no longer sheathed.

  And he was fully aroused.

  “Don’t tempt me, honey.”

  “Tempt you? It’s a little late to be worrying about that, isn’t it?”

  The husky combination of laughter and sensual pleasure in Christy’s voice made his heartbeat visibly quicken.

  “I was afraid it was going to be like this,” he said thickly.

  “What?”

  “You and me. The first time I saw you in the gallery I wanted you.”

  “And I couldn’t stop looking at you.”

  “I know. It made me feel like I’d grabbed lightning. If it hadn’t been for Danner…”

  Cain closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath, trying to still the hammering urgency of his blood. He pulled off the rest of his clothes and turned to her, gathering her against his fully naked body for the first time. They fit each other perfectly.

  “Damn, that feels good,” he said.

  Her answer was half laughter, half the low, purring sound that set his blood on fire. She pulled his mouth down to hers and kissed him slowly, deeply.

  “You want me as much as I want you,” he said, surprise and pleasure in his voice.

  “Of course.”

  “There’s no ‘of course’ about it. Even people who want each other aren’t necessarily suited as lovers. Different needs. Different speeds. Different—”

  His thoughts scattered as Christy’s hand slid down his body, exploring him gently. He groaned and searched blindly in the pocket of his discarded jeans.

  “I like the ways we’re different,” she said, cupping him.

  “So do I. Put this on me, honey. I’ll show you the way I like us best of all.”

  Chapter 50

  Pueblo Bonito

  The next day

  Cain awoke an hour before dawn. The sky overhead was black and icy with stars. He and Christy were warm, lying like nested spoons inside the sleeping bags he’d zipped together. For a long time he didn’t move, savoring her softness and warmth, trying to ignore the rational part of his mind.

  The part that told him he was still a long way from cleaning up the mess Jo-Jo had dumped on her loving older sister.

  He gathered Christy even closer and gently kissed her bare shoulder, wishing he didn’t have to wake her at all. She looked so peaceful sleeping in his arms.

  And he doubted that the coming day would have any peace.

  People dying, dead. People gonna die.

  Cain would do whatever he could to keep Christy alive.

  “Good morning,” he said gently as her eyes opened.

  “Morning?” she said vaguely, rolling over to face him. “Looks more like night from here.”

  She burrowed against his warmth with a sigh and kissed his chest sleepily. Within seconds her breathing changed as she sank back into sleep.

  He slid his fingers into the silky tangle of her hair, tilting her head back. He nuzzled her lips and kissed her again.

  “Morning is on the way,” he said. “Listen.”

  Deep within the willow thicket around the water tank, birds were beginning to rustle, singing soft fragments of song, getting ready for the day.

  She propped herself on one elbow and looked over him to the east. The sky had begun its slow transformation from black to the limitless blue-gray that precedes dawn. Shivering, she ducked back down into the sleeping bag and pulled him against her like a living blanket.

  “She Who Faces the Sun will be waiting for you, honey.” He kissed her hair. “Time to get up.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m already up,” he said.

  When Christy shifted against him, she realized that he was indeed up.

  “When did you say dawn was?” she asked, her voice suddenly husky with more than sleep.

  “Too soon,” he said bluntly, shifting so that his erection wasn’t rubbing against her.

  “Oh.” She sighed. “Do I get a rain check?”

  “Anytime. Do I get one?”

  “This is the desert. How about I give you a sun check instead?”

  Laughing softly, he hugged her close, kissed her hard, and then shot out of the sleeping bag like his ass was on fire. Or something. He cursed steadily as he pulled on clothes chilled by a night on the ground.

  “You make getting dressed sound irresistible,” she said.

  “At the moment, it’s right up there with an icy shower.”

  Without getting out of the sleeping bag, she gathered up her clothes, drew them beneath the warm cover, and began dressing.

  Five minutes later, shivering, she followed the circle of Cain’s flashlight to the ruins of Pueblo Alto. By the time they reached the tumbled stones and low walls of the anc
ient settlement, the sky in the east was light enough to reveal the outlines of mesas and the ragged rise of mountains behind Santa Fe.

  A pair of meadowlarks burst from cover alongside the trail. For a few instants the world was full of the rushing sound of wings. Then one of the birds landed. An intricate, heartbreaking song rose into the dawn.

  Motionless, Christy listened as the lark called again. It was a sound from her childhood, when life had been limitless. Joy and sorrow twisted through her like a double-edged knife. Tears filled her eyes, blurring the lines between night and dawn.

  “I found the path,” Cain called softly over his shoulder. “Light is coming on like thunder. We have to hurry.”

  She blinked, releasing the hot tears. Then she hurried to catch up with him.

  The path led downhill from the ruins toward the rim of Chaco Canyon. The trail had been cleared and marked for tourists with small piles of stone in strategic places. Even in the half-light, Cain and Christy made good time.

  Ten minutes below the remains of Pueblo Alto where they’d slept, the trail dropped over a small sandstone ledge. From there it skimmed along the broad stone lip of the canyon itself. Putting his arm around her, Cain stood with her on the brink. For a few hushed moments they watched the miracle of light emerging from darkness.

  Gradually Pueblo Bonito condensed out of the night. Hand-hewn masonry walls made up a huge apartment block that rose two and three stories high. Countless rooms lay open to the sun and wind. The residential areas were laid out as a new-moon crescent with one curved and one straight side. The straight front was defined by a low wall. The body of the crescent was a plaza with open spaces the size of basketball courts. Within the crescent lay the circular ruins of kiva after kiva, an abundance of sacred places that announced the religious significance of Pueblo Bonito. In the shadows flowing out from the dawn, the circles seemed filled with the mystery of centuries.

  One of the kivas was much larger than the others, first among equals.

  As Christy’s eyes adjusted to the fluid boundary between dawn and night, she saw that some of the old masonry walls of the room blocks had slumped with the weight of sunlight and time. Those walls were braced like the ones she’d had seen in the alcove.

  “Twenty-four kivas,” Cain said quietly. “Once, Pueblo Bonito was the most important building in the empire.”

  “But why so many kivas? Wasn’t one church or temple or whatever enough?”

  “Maybe each clan had its own kiva. That’s the way some of the Pueblo people live now. Or maybe different kivas were used at different seasons.” He spread his hands. “No one knows. Or if they do, they aren’t talking to white folks.”

  She leaned forward, wanting to see into the past as well as into the dense shadows that remained like pieces of the vanished night. “What about the biggest kiva? Why is it different?”

  “I don’t know. It could be that’s where everybody prayed ten hours a day during the long winter for the safe return of the sun in the spring.”

  Cain glanced at the sky. Polaris was just fading. He turned back to the ruins.

  “When that straight wall was built,” he said, pointing, “it was less than a degree off a true north-south line.”

  At first she didn’t understand the implication of what he was saying. Then she remembered that the Anasazi had no metal, therefore no compasses. In ancient times, the polar star hadn’t been the beacon of true north that it was today.

  “How did they do it?” she whispered.

  “Ask She Who Faces the Sun. It’s one of the secrets she’ll pass on to Eunice.”

  “Eunice?”

  Cain gestured toward the ruins of the great kiva. Two human figures had stepped out of the shadows below the kiva’s circular rim. One of the people lifted a hand in greeting.

  Cain responded in kind.

  “That is Eunice,” Christy said after a moment. “How did you know?”

  “Eunice is Molly’s niece.”

  “Johnny’s sister?”

  “Yes.”

  Releasing Christy, Cain stepped away.

  “We’d better go,” he said. “She Who Faces the Sun wants to see you in the first light of day, when the sun first clears the rim of the canyon.”

  “After a night in the sack with you?” Christy said in a low voice, smiling but very serious.

  His glance roved over her, remembering and memorizing at the same time. He smiled gently and held out his hand. “The ancients weren’t strangers to the rhythms of life.”

  Lacing her fingers through his, she walked side by side with him until the path left the canyon rim. From there they had to walk single file. The trail dropped down into a narrow cleft between two rock faces that became a tunnel, recalling the trail to the Sisters alcove.

  Cain and Christy stepped into the shadows of the cleft and began a steep descent down what amounted to a rude stairway. The stairs were faint, uneven, almost imaginary. Yet in places the walls were smooth with the passage of many, many hands. They were walking along pathways that had been old before the first Europeans came to the Anasazi lands.

  She touched the smooth places on the stone walls and sensed time like a vast exhalation moving across the face of the land. Her skin shivered in primal response. When she looked up, Cain was watching her with eyes as ancient as fire.

  Together they emerged from the cleft onto the flat floor of Chaco Canyon. The first faint colors of day were gathering low in the eastern sky. As the two of them walked toward the great kiva, he let her walk apart from him. With that, he became more guide than mate. She accepted the distance with the same instinctive understanding she’d accepted the stones smoothed by and infused with ancient lives.

  The eastern sky was a radiant orange as they approached the long straight wall that ran along the north-south side of Pueblo Bonito.

  “The entrance to the great kiva is on the other side of the wall,” he said. “Eunice will show you.”

  With that Cain turned away, heading toward the ruined apartment block. He didn’t look back.

  Chapter 51

  Christy waited until Cain was out of sight. Only then did she turn toward the kiva and She Who Faces the Sun, a woman directly descended from the ancients.

  Eunice met Christy at a break in the north-south pueblo wall.

  “Come,” Eunice said.

  Christy followed her through the wall to a spot where the kiva wall had collapsed, making the climb down a matter of only a few steps. Eunice gestured for Christy to precede her to the center of the sunken circular room whose roof was the onrushing dawn.

  The woman who waited had the clothes and age of someone who could be Johnny’s Aunt Molly, but she was as small as he’d been big. Less than five feet tall, she wore a faded denim riding jacket over a long gray velvet skirt and new white running shoes. Her gray hair was covered with a bandanna that was tied in a knot at the point of her chin. Her face was wrinkled with the passage of years and pain. Her clear black eyes were ageless.

  She Who Faces the Sun.

  Eunice said something to the old woman in a language that was utterly alien to Christy.

  “This is She Who Faces the Sun,” Eunice said to Christy a moment later. “She is the keeper of our clan’s spirit.”

  “Good morning,” Christy said, for she knew no other polite way to greet the keeper of a clan’s spirit.

  She Who Faces the Sun stepped forward, touched Christy’s bright hair, and spoke in the language Christy couldn’t understand.

  “She likes your hair,” Eunice translated. “She said she’s seen sandstone that color in a small canyon near Mesa Verde.”

  Christy smiled.

  She Who Faces the Sun took Christy’s hand and tugged firmly. In response to the silent demand, Christy turned. Just as she faced east, the first direct rays of the sun lanced over the canyon rim, transforming everything in a single, sweeping instant.

  A primitive awe shivered through Christy. She felt like an entire world rather than
a day had just been born.

  The old woman’s hand tightened around Christy’s. A low, shifting chant poured from She Who Faces the Sun. Christy couldn’t understand the meaning of the words, but she sensed quite clearly that the prayer or incantation centered around her. When the chant finally came to an end, She Who Faces the Sun reached into a patch pocket on the front of her denim jacket. She brought out a pinch of pale yellow dust and scattered a trace of it over herself and Christy.

  “Corn pollen,” Eunice said quietly. “It’s our way of blessing people. She likes what the dawn showed her in you.”

  Christy looked at the old woman’s clear black eyes. “Thank you.”

  She Who Faces the Sun smiled. It transformed her face, making her Aunt Molly instead of an ancient holy woman. She said something rapidly in the alien tongue.

  Eunice smiled with sly humor as she looked at Christy.

  “Aunt Molly likes your man too. She Who Faces the Sun called him Kokopelli.”

  Christy grinned and blushed at the same time.

  Smacking her hands on her thighs with delight, Molly laughed with the vigor of a woman half her age. When she looked in the direction of the apartment block, she saw Cain sitting in the sunlight, watching the old kiva like a man watching a treasure room. She spoke rapidly again.

  “She says Kokopelli settles when he finds the right woman,” Eunice translated. “He looks pretty settled from here.”

  The old woman grinned, showing sturdy teeth. Then she turned and walked away from the center of the great kiva.

  “She will talk with you now,” Eunice said.

  “Who will speak, Aunt Molly or She Who Faces the Sun?” Christy asked.

  Eunice gave her a sharp look, then nodded as though Christy had just done something right.

  “Molly,” Eunice said. “Most of the time.”

  While they walked over to join the older woman, Christy spoke quietly to Eunice. “Please tell your aunt that we regret the death of Johnny Ten Hats.”

  “You tell her.”

  Christy stopped close to Molly and met her dark, clear eyes. “The sheriff blames Cain for Johnny’s death, but I was there. It wasn’t Cain’s fault.”