by Carol Finch
“I need you now, Irish,” he whispered breathlessly.
She withdrew slightly, holding him gently in her fingertips. In the moonlight he could see her impish smile, see the challenging tilt of her head.
“Do you indeed?” she asked in an exaggerated Irish brogue. “I think perhaps you need to know just how desperate need can truly be.”
Her hand glided down his rigid flesh, and John swore he was going to explode if she didn’t stop arousing him. “I know my limits,” he said raggedly.
She smiled as she lowered her head, sending that waterfall of silky hair tumbling over his thighs. “And I think you misjudge yourself. Shall we find out for certain, O great and mighty Apache warrior?”
Again she stroked him with her hands. John howled in maddeningly sweet torment. His body was so sensitive to each touch, each kiss, that the pleasure raging through him left him shaking with urgent need. His heart skipped several beats. His breath jammed in his lungs.
If it had been possible to speak—which it wasn’t—he would have told her that she had taken him so close to the yawning abyss of rapture that he was going to die—right here, right now, at this very moment. So there was no need to test his limits further. He’d passed them about a thousand incredible sensations ago.
Helpless, frantic, he surged upward, and she settled over him, welcomed him into her body, rode him into mindless abandon. John clutched at her hips, trying to hold her still so he could regain his control, but the erotic cadence she set drove him right over the edge.
“Not like this,” he said, then groaned as the world spun out of control.
“Exactly like this,” she assured him as she met and matched each hard, penetrating thrust.
John felt the universe explode, felt the billowing heat of passion burning him to cinders. But most of all, he felt Tara’s body secretly caressing him as he shuddered against her. He clutched her to him, knowing he should roll away and spill his seed in the straw. Yet that innate sense of belonging, of rightness was so overwhelming that he couldn’t release her from his arms.
John wasn’t sure he could have let go even if his life depended on it. He simply shuddered in helpless release, again and again. He struggled mightily to draw breath, and held her to him—body to body, heart to heart, soul to soul.
“When you come to say goodbye, Irish, you don’t mince words, do you?” he said a long while later.
She tittered softly as she moved sensuously above him. “Better to be precise and to the point, I always say.”
He grinned at the double meaning. This Irish leprechaun had a bit of deviltry in her. He had seen evidence of it during their stolen moments together. She was passionate and playful and altogether irresistible. Some lucky man would come along and win her love….
John winced at the unwelcome thought of Tara spinning her web of Irish magic around another man. He was the one who had introduced her to passion. He had been her instructor and guide, although, admittedly, she had taught him things he hadn’t known about desire.
He was sure she had ruined any future sexual encounters for him, because he was pretty certain that if he ever dared to touch another woman he’d be making comparisons to the mystical pleasures he shared with Tara. Having sex with one woman while mentally making love to another, didn’t sound the least bit appealing. He didn’t think that nonsense about a man forgetting about one woman by losing himself in the arms of another was going to work effectively for him.
John’s thoughts trailed off when the aftereffects of sublime passion, compounded with the physical and emotional rigors of his last day at the ranch, caught up with him. He eased Tara down beside him, then nestled her spoon fashion against him. With his arm lying possessively over her waist, he drifted off to sleep.
Tara felt John’s breath stirring against her neck and knew that he was asleep. Carefully, she inched away, although there was nothing she wanted more than to awake in his arms. But she had discovered the first time they made love that she slept too soundly in his embrace. She couldn’t chance the children showing up at the crack of dawn to interrupt them.
Quietly, Tara retrieved her gown and made her way down the ladder. Guided by a full moon and a dome of twinkling stars, she ambled across the grass. When she crept in the bedroom window, Derek didn’t move a muscle, thank goodness.
Tara lay on her pallet for a few minutes, recounting every sensual pleasure, reveling in the wondrous sense of belonging she experienced each time John held her in his arms. He completed her. He was the other half of her soul. Watching him ride away would be like dying inside while forced to go on living.
Yes, she’d have the children and her home, but the place she truly belonged would be wherever John Wolfe traveled by day and where he slept at night. But if giving her heart and soul to him would ensure that he remained twice as alert and provided him with the additional strength to counter the dangers that prevailed in his world, then she’d gladly do without her heart and soul. As long as John Wolfe lived, as long as he survived, she could exist for the sake of the children. She’d go on loving John and she’d have these sweet memories to store in that hollow place where her heart had once been.
A faint noise brought Tara’s head up. She glanced toward the window to see a shadowed figure looming outside. Her defensive instincts immediately sprang to life as she rolled quickly from her pallet and tiptoed to the window. No one would get past her to hurt the children. If all else failed she’d send up a shout of alarm to alert the other children to the danger.
Tara’s good intentions flew out the window when a steely hand clamped over her mouth. She was all set to sink in her teeth—until she recognized the familiar scent of the man who whisked her outside and set her on her feet.
“I thought you were asleep,” Tara whispered as John took her by the hand and led her away from the cabin.
“I was asleep, until I realized you were gone,” he murmured without breaking his long, graceful stride.
“Where the devil are we going?”
“To the spring.”
“Now? In the middle of the night? What for?”
“Blast and be damned, Irish, you ask more questions than Flora.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” she reminded him. “Why are we going to the spring in the middle of the night? If there’s another Apache treasure buried out there I do not want to know about it.”
“No treasure, just a fantasy.”
Tara gave him another puzzled look. He smiled enigmatically as he tugged her along at a faster clip.
“A fantasy?” she repeated when he didn’t elaborate.
“The one I had when I saw you bathing at the spring and the intruders arrived to spoil the whole day. It’s there at the spring that I want to say my farewell.”
“But I already said—”
“Exactly,” he interrupted. “Now it’s my turn to say goodbye to you, Irish. And since I’ve overstepped every boundary, broken every rule I established where you are concerned, I’ve decided I might as well enjoy my forbidden fantasy.”
John halted beside the spring that was surrounded by a stone ledge and miniature waterfall. When he peeled off his breeches, Tara angled her head, stared boldly at the evidence of his arousal, then smiled elfishly.
“I could’ve sworn you said you had certain limits,” she teased him.
“You proved me wrong. I stand corrected. Now take off that gown, Irish. My fantasy has everything to do with you being naked.”
“I swear, John Wolfe, when you discard all those rules and regulations, which, by the way, no one except you wanted to observe in the first place, you really—”
Before she finished her long-winded sentence, he scooped her up and tossed her smack-dab into the middle of the silvery pool. She resurfaced amid moonlit ripples and spouted like a whale.
“You’ll pay dearly for that, Wolfe!”
“With what? Irish vengeance?” he taunted, undaunted.
He stepped into the pool at the
same moment she disappeared from sight again. A few seconds later her hand snaked around his ankle and she gave a hard tug. John flailed his arms for balance—not that it did a whit of good. He tumbled into the pool with a great splash and swallowed about a gallon of water.
Tara’s unrestrained laughter met him when he resurfaced. John caught his breath when she rose up like a genie to captivate him. Water droplets glistened on her exquisitely formed body like diamonds in the moonlight. John felt the urge to howl at the moon. And so he did.
While he sat there, bedazzled, bewitched, mesmerized, Tara sank beneath the surface once more. She reappeared to climb the stairway of rocks beside the waterfall. The mist surrounded her and rivulets of spray trailed over the peaks of her breasts, drawing John’s rapt attention.
“Am I fulfilling your fantasy?” she asked as she struck a seductive pose on the ledge.
“Not quite, but very close,” he purred as he waded deliberately toward her. “And very soon…”
There, beneath the canopy of stars and the glowing, silvery moon, John said his last farewell without uttering one word. He gave to this woman—who was unafraid to love him, who asked nothing but his acceptance of her love—all that he had to give, save the two promises he’d made to the man he called Father. Those two promises would take him away from Paradise Valley, but that part of him that he hadn’t acknowledged for two decades, those tender emotions he had ignored, he gave freely to Tara for safekeeping.
Again, as before, the phenomenal passion they ignited in each other flared to life, consumed them in its fiery blaze…and burned through the night.
Chapter Fifteen
Tara stood beside the group of solemn children who formed a semicircle around John. He was saddling his piebald stallion. No one uttered a word. She could hear Flora and Maureen crying quietly beside her, but she didn’t look down at the girls, for fear the sight of their tears would provoke her own.
Tara had decided last night, while she and John lived out a splendorous fantasy at the spring, that she’d watch him ride away and focus only on those playful moments when he’d let his guard down completely and displayed yet another fascinating facet of his personality.
When the horse was readied, John pivoted to face Tara and the children. He spoke not one word as he shook hands with Samuel, Derek and Calvin. He gave Maureen a quick hug, then lifted Flora off the ground to enfold her in his arms.
It was no surprise that the only one to break the stilted silence was Flora. “I wrote my name on this piece of paper so you could put it in your pocket. I don’t want you to forget me.”
“No chance of that, half-pint,” he said as he set her to her feet and tucked away the folded paper.
Tara lifted her gaze when John halted in front of her. She resisted the overwhelming urge to fly into his arms one last time, and then reminded herself that she had to keep her composure for the sake of the children, who had turned their attention to her. If she’d didn’t keep a firm grip on her emotions the whole group would be bawling their heads off.
“Irish, take care of yourself,” he murmured for her ears only, then bent to press a chaste kiss on her brow.
Tara blinked rapidly as he swung agilely into the saddle. The clip-clop of Pie’s hooves sounded like repetitive claps of thunder in the silence. Tara plastered on a smile she didn’t feel as John disappeared behind the boulders and trees that obscured the trail leading up to the canyon rim.
“How about a game of hoop and pole?” she suggested with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.
Five glum-faced children stared back at her.
“I don’t feel like playing,” Flora mumbled. “I’m going to walk the sheep.”
“I’ll help you,” Calvin volunteered.
“I’ll go check on the horses in the new pasture,” Maureen insisted.
“I’ll go clean out the stalls,” Samuel announced.
“I’ll go talk to the mustangs,” Derek decided.
When the children scattered in all directions, Tara was left standing alone on the grass. She glanced this way and that, wondering what on earth she was going to do to occupy her mind. She’d pick wild berries and grapes, she decided. But she’d definitely avoid the spring where she and John had lived out their secret fantasy in their space out of time. The memory was too fresh, the ache of loss too painful.
Tara ambled off to fetch an empty basket. She wondered how long it was going to take to settle into a routine now that John was gone. Life after John, she predicted, was going to take some getting used to.
Tara wasn’t sure she ever would.
Raven crouched in the underbrush on the canyon’s west rim and scanned the lush valley below him. He had returned to double-check the head count he’d made a few days earlier. From his vantage point he could see the flame-haired woman picking berries. The two small children were herding sheep toward a spring to drink. Raven frowned, wondering at the whereabouts of the strawberry blond girl he remembered seeing before.
Silently, he circled the cap rock and moved quickly past the stone spires that divided the Canyon of the Sun in half. His dark eyes narrowed when he spotted an adolescent boy sitting in a chair beside the corral, which held five mustangs.
Raven had intended to make a morning raid, but the lazy gang of outlaws was still sleeping off last night’s bout with whiskey. In disgust, Raven had gathered the liquor bottles and hurled them against the nearest boulder. Then he’d decided to double-check the canyon to ensure there were no other settlers who had escaped his notice a few days earlier.
Squatting down, he waited a quarter of an hour before he saw the teenage girl emerge from the cabin to join the injured boy sitting by the corral. A moment later another teenage boy appeared from the barn.
Raven smirked at the foolishness of this white family—one defenseless woman and five children who had invaded sacred Apache ground. There was no threat of force here, he decided. This raid would be easier than confiscating the supply wagon he’d stolen, single-handed, the previous day, while his cohorts were drinking themselves blind and senseless. The raid on the wagon had been a simple matter. Raven had disguised himself in a sombrero and serape, planned his surprise attack and made off with a full load of supplies and provisions that would last the gang for weeks.
Another quarter of an hour passed while Raven crouched in the underbrush. He scanned the homestead carefully, but saw no sign of other whites coming and going from the ranch. Only five children and a woman, he concluded. They would be no match for him and the bandits. By midday the family would congregate in one place, he predicted. It was then that he would strike. Six captives would bring a fine price from the Comancheros in New Mexico Territory or from the Mexicans.
The horses and sheep could be sold to the miners—if they lived long enough to enjoy their freshly butchered meat, Raven thought wickedly. It was not unusual for him to lure in unsuspecting prospectors, offering to sell them livestock, and then dispose of the trusting fools so he could sell the animals a second time.
Assured that he’d meet with little resistance during this raid, Raven retraced his steps along the canyon rim. There were no sharpshooters to pick off riders that descended into this panoramic valley, only a helpless woman and children. What would have been a natural fortress for the Apache—with posted lookouts on the cap rock—was nothing but a trap for these sitting ducks, who would bring a fine price.
Raven swung onto his pony and reined toward the secluded campsite south of the Canyon of the Sun. He scowled derisively when he arrived and found the four men sprawled on their pallets, just as he’d left them three hours earlier.
Dismounting, he strode over to nudge Hank Burton with his moccasined foot. “Get up,” he snapped in stilted English.
The burly man groaned miserably, then rolled to his side. “My head’s killin’ me. Go ’way, Injun.”
Raven gnashed his teeth. He tolerated the disrespectful name only because Hank Burton served a useful purpose. Hank and Gus Traber,
both army deserters, often made use of their military uniforms to lure in unsuspecting travelers, ranchers and miners. Although they were drunkards, both men were passable shots with rifles when they were sober.
Pivoting, Raven nudged Gus on the shoulder, jostling the man awake. “Time to get up.”
“Go to hell, Injun,” Gus grumbled crankily.
“Shudup, all ya,” Elliot Cunningham snarled as he crawled unsteadily onto all fours. He shook his bushy head and pried open bloodshot eyes. “What the hell’s goin’ on, Injun?”
“It is time to raid the farm that lies in the canyon to the northwest,” Raven announced.
Thanks to knowing White Wolf—and this was the only benefit Raven appreciated from that association—he could communicate in English with these ruffians who considered themselves his superiors. Typical whites and Mexicans, thought Raven. Without his perfected skills and expertise these fools would’ve been caught and hanged long ago.
“Wake Juan up,” Elliot ordered as he staggered sluggishly to his feet.
Raven strode over to the place where Juan Drego, the Mexican who made arrangements for the trade of captives, was still snoring loudly. Raven was certain the Mexican hadn’t moved since he’d pitched forward and fallen facedown in a drunken stupor.
Raven scooped up Juan’s sombrero—the one he’d borrowed when he decided to steal the supply wagon—then dipped it into the nearby stream. He poured water over Juan’s matted, coal-black hair, listening in wicked satisfaction as the man sputtered and cursed in Spanish.
Since Hank Burton and Gus Traber were still slow to rise, Raven used the sombrero to give the two army deserters a dash of cold water to bring them to their senses—what little they had.
“Get cleaned up,” Raven ordered brusquely. “We’ll ride in two hours.”
“Damn Injun thinks he’s in charge,” Elliot muttered as he raked the tangled hair from his eyes.