by Beverly Bird
He started to turn away from her. Impulsively, she shouted after him.
“Why? What have I done here that’s so wrong?”
He moved back to her and came close, too close. Catherine fought to hold her ground.
“It’s not what you’ve done. It’s what you are.”
“You don’t know what I am,” she retorted. “You can’t get to know someone by sniping at them all the time.”
“Is that what you think I do?” he asked quietly. “Then how should I go about it?”
Touch me again.
The thought leaped crazily into her head. She backed away from him, shaken by it, and came up hard against the Jeep. She was trapped.
He watched all this with his sharp shaman’s eyes, then he followed her.
“I think,” he said silkily, “you can tell a good bit about someone from the way they fight back.”
“So how do I fight?” she managed, struggling for flippancy.
“Not like I thought you would.” She fought with treacherous things such as shivers and sighs and wide, cat eyes, he thought. She fought with the tenacity of a pit bull and the urgency of a summer storm.
His mouth was inches from hers, and she couldn’t back up any more. She looked wildly for his eyes, to see if he was really going to do what she thought he was going to do. He was studying her lips. Her heart slammed.
“Do you want me to kiss you, Cat Eyes?”
She tried to shake her head and couldn’t do it.
“Is that what all the shudders and the wide-eyed stares have been about?”
“I don’t...shudder.”
“No? Then it shouldn’t matter, should it? But you’ve got me damned curious. Let’s give it a shot. We’ll find out you don’t shiver and that will be that.”
“You are so insufferably arrogant—” She broke off as his mouth closed over hers.
Her breath plummeted, leaving a painful hole inside her. And then she trembled. He felt it, and they both groaned at the same time.
He didn’t touch her with anything but his mouth. He braced his hands against the Jeep on either side of her and his tongue dove past her lips, her teeth, intrusive and demanding, proving something. He was not gentle, but after a moment his mouth softened, turning provocative.
Daring her to respond.
He moved his head slowly, slanting first one way then the other, making her body change with nothing but the kiss. Something hot and weakening slid through her, taking her strength. Still his tongue glided—slowly, then with more force—until she found herself kissing him back, moving her tongue over his, trying to taste him.
She groaned again and dug her fingers into his waist, hanging on as sensation spun through her. He tasted of hot winds and dark secrets. This is insane, she thought again, and found herself moving into him, away from the Jeep, wanting to feel him, wanting the intimacy of his hard body against hers. Something coiled inside her, something painful and tight, something treacherous that wanted more.
Jericho felt her inching closer and didn’t dare allow their bodies to meet. He needed to keep control over this. But at some point he stopped taunting her, and she drove him past memory. He forgot what she was, who she was, and that he needed to keep her at arm’s length.
He felt the heat flare inside her, the heat he had sensed but now knew was real. As long as he kept his hands on the Jeep it wouldn’t burn him, he thought again. It was a kiss, only a kiss...but he felt himself getting hard and hot and suddenly he realized that his hands were buried deep in the thick, wild curls of her hair. He was falling into her like a man drowning.
His mouth moved to her cheek, to her ear, to her neck, hot and wet. She tilted her head back and groaned, then she turned her face into his again, seeking his lips with her own. They met, slid away, came back, and he covered her mouth again.
“Oh, God,” she moaned.
Then something about her changed. It took him a heartbeat to realize that she was fighting him now, struggling. He stepped back, his own heart pounding hard.
She literally reeled away from him, turning back toward the Jeep. She leaned against it for support and looked over her shoulder at him wildly.
“Why?” she breathed. “Why did you have to do that?”
It seemed an odd thing to ask, then Jericho understood. He recognized her fear because he knew it so intimately himself.
It shook him. “Just testing,” he bit out.
“Testing what?”
“Life in this country is like that kiss, Cat Eyes—hard and hot and dangerous. Just wanted to see if you have what it takes to handle it.”
“And do I?” she said tightly.
Yes, oh yes. “We’ll see.”
He moved away, back toward the fires, before she could realize that his own voice wasn’t quite steady, before he could ask who the man had been who’d left her scarred and scared. He didn’t want to care.
Catherine watched him go, but it was a long time before she trusted her legs enough to let go of the Jeep door.
Chapter 7
Catherine used the roads to get home. It was no time to try to navigate the desert.
Her hands shook and she still felt dizzy. But even though her head spun, her thoughts veered stubbornly, again and again, to the same tormenting question. She had been so wretchedly wrong about Victor’s character. How could she even begin to trust her responses to a man such as Jericho Bedonie?
She couldn’t. She shouldn’t. And yet she had never been kissed like that before.
He was hard, uncompromising, openly angry, and he left her no defenses at all. Yet all her instincts told her he was a good man. She trusted him intuitively—she knew that if he ever truly hurt her it would only be because she had hurt or damaged something dear to him.
But she had once thought the same thing about Victor. She had seen in him a man of charm and wit and sophistication, a man who could not possibly stoop to crass and vicious cruelties. Then he had shot her—and God only knew how many others.
She groaned aloud as she found the short side road to the trailers. She turned onto it hard and came to a skidding stop in a shower of spattering gravel. It had been foolish of her to go to the sing, she thought. There was a certain safety to their encounters in the clinic; even if he was only a shaman, there was a sense of professionalism about working together within those four walls. She had known better than to risk meeting up with him in moonlight, but she had done it anyway. She had played with fire, and she had gotten burned.
But oh, she thought, what glorious flames.
She sighed and made her way toward her trailer. Then she came up short, staring. Even in the darkness, she could see that her door was open.
She closed her eyes, trying to think. She had left for the sing directly from the clinic. Had she locked her own door when she had left her trailer that morning?
She couldn’t be sure. Though autumn was half over, this torrid land was still warm at midday. She had gotten into the habit of leaving the place open to catch whatever freshening breezes there might be.
She backed up, away from the trailer, inching quietly up the clinic steps instead. She tried that door and found it tightly locked. She was just spooked then, her nerves unraveled by the events of the evening. If anyone was going to break in anywhere, she reasoned, then it would be the clinic, with its plethora of drugs and expensive equipment.
Unless it wasn’t your average burglar. Victor?
But no, that made no sense. He wouldn’t leave the door open, warning her away, nor would any of his goons. They would close it and hide inside in the darkness, waiting for her to stumble into their deadly arms.
Catherine forced herself to go back to her own trailer. She stepped carefully inside, hitting the light switch, looking around. The generator growled into life, and it was a comforting sound.
Everything looked the way it should. Shadow’s curtains stirred restlessly in the thin breeze that came inside. Beside the crooked table, the old refrigerator chug
ged as though getting ready to draw its last breath, but that was normal, too.
She looked the other way, at the bed, then she scowled.
Something dark sat on the woven blanket she used for a spread. Some sort of animal. Her nape prickled and she wanted to run. Then, preposterously, Jericho leaped into her mind again. That was exactly the sort of thing he would expect her to do. She forced herself to cross to the bed instead.
It was a bird, a small owl. When it didn’t move, she picked it up by the wing with her fingertips, then a thin, mewling sound escaped her throat. It had been shot. Her free hand went unconsciously to the bullet scar at her own side.
The wounds were in the same place, she realized, but the one in the owl still bled.
No. From deep within the recesses of her mind, logic reared up through her panic. The substance seeping from the wound was bright red, but the bird was cold. If it were blood, it would be brown and oxidized by now. The red stain was only paint.
There was a tiny piece of cloth wrapped around its beak, tying it shut. Catherine’s mouth went dry and she dropped it again. Someone knew.
It seemed incredible, impossible, but the message of the bullet hole, and especially the cloth, was unmistakable. If you talk, Catherine, you will die. Either someone on the Res knew what she had run from and was taunting her, or Victor had found her and was warning her.
Who on the reservation hated her enough to do this, to try to make her cower and run and leave? She laughed a little wildly. Ellen, of course. And though she was suddenly loathe to admit it, Jericho.
No. She shook her head unconsciously and pressed her fingers to her temples. Jericho had been at the sing. Her lips still felt tender from his sweet assault. And he tackled things head on. He wouldn’t stoop to such childish, evil pranks.
Would he?
Catherine stumbled backward, for the door, then she hesitated. She didn’t want to go outside. The night held too many shadows. On the other hand, she couldn’t stay in here either. That bird... She shuddered and wondered if she would ever be able to sleep in that bed again.
She went outside. She stood for a moment, poised, her heart thumping, but nothing happened. No one shot at her, and no one stormed at her out of the night.
She scurried down the steps and saw a stick lying half under the trailer. She grabbed it and went back to the porch, sitting carefully with her back to the door. Shaking, feeling sick, she laid the stick over her knees.
Whoever it was, they would have to come at her from the front now.
She waited for them.
* * *
Dawn was a smear of lavender and pale pink on the eastern horizon when Jericho stopped his Land Rover in front of Ellen’s trailer. He thumped his fist against the horn impatiently. A moment later, she stuck her head out the door and came sleepily to the street.
“What’s going on?”
“I need to get to the clinic. If you want a ride, get moving.”
His voice was clipped, tense. Ellen scowled and looked up at the murky sky. “Now?”
He didn’t want to waste time explaining, but he knew that his behavior was just odd enough to make it necessary. “I’ve got a bad feeling,” he said finally.
Ellen’s face changed. “About that Anglo doctor.”
“That’s right.”
“Why?” she burst out suddenly. “Why are you doing this to yourself after what happened the last time you got involved with someone like her?”
He didn’t look at her.
“Jericho, for God’s sake! Anelle nearly destroyed you! Didn’t you learn anything from that?”
“I learned to trust my gut feelings,” he snapped. He had done it too late, but he had learned. If he had listened to his heart all those years ago, he would never have asked Anelle to live here on the Reservation. He wouldn’t make the same mistake now. His heart was telling him something was wrong at the clinic. Maybe the isolation of the place had finally broken her the way it had Anelle. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Either way, he was going over there.
He put the Rover in gear.
“Okay, all right,” Ellen said. “Give me five minutes. I need a fast shower.”
“Use hers when you get there.”
“I’d rot first.”
“You know, if you weren’t so damned stubborn you’d be a real sweetheart.”
“Look in the mirror,” she snapped and hurried back inside.
Jericho studied the horizon. After a long moment he looked at his watch, then he closed his eyes.
Was she right? Was the black feeling swelling in his stomach telling him that something was wrong at the medical trailers, or was it warning him to stay away from Lanie McDaniel, to end it before it began, before this devilish fascination destroyed him? The ominous feeling had started not long after she had left the sing. It had dogged him all through the night, making sleep elusive until he had finally gotten up and dressed, knowing he had to go out there.
Because something was wrong there, or because he wanted—needed—to see her again, because each moment away from her was becoming one in which he thought of her and wondered about her?
He didn’t know and he couldn’t trust himself. He didn’t dare trust himself—Ellen was right about that. Once he had believed that Anelle only seemed fragile, that she could survive this land. And when she’d broken instead of bent in the hot desert winds he’d brought her to, the guilt had nearly killed him.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw as the sky lightened slowly. He was beginning to think Lanie was strong enough, too—feisty and tenacious and relentless beneath her soft, city-girl exterior. But he had been wrong before.
Ellen came outside again, her hair still wet, holding a cup of coffee in each hand. He leaned across the seat and pushed open the door for her.
* * *
By the time the sky was blue again, Catherine’s eyes felt as dry as the desert sand. Her back ached abominably, but her trembling had finally stopped, probably out of sheer exhaustion. When she heard a vehicle turn onto the side road, she waited dully for it to appear around the side of the trailer, too tired to even get to her feet, to be ready to run.
It was only the Rover anyway. Jericho.
A warm, pervasive feeling of relief filled her. Against all her better judgment, she felt safe now for the first time since she had returned from the sing. He was rock hard and capable, and no one could hurt her as long as he was here.
He got out of the Rover, saw her and threw his cup of coffee aside to jog in her direction. Catherine watched it roll in the dirt, oddly fascinated, then she looked back at him dazedly.
He was obviously concerned, and that made her feel warm inside too. She shook her head, clearing it. His alarm couldn’t be for her. More than likely he thought another of his people had succumbed to Tah honeesgai and another death had left her reeling.
She tried to stand to meet him, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. He reached her and his strong hands gripped her arms, lifting her to her feet. She stumbled against him and thought she felt him stiffen.
The night before, she had craved his body close to hers. The night before, the heat of him had been wild and alive. Now it was solid, comforting, yet still something curled inside her in response. She was acutely aware of their thighs touching, of her breasts pressed against his chest. Something tingled inside her, tightening, ready, wanting.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice strained. “What’s happened?”
She opened her mouth but couldn’t find her voice immediately. He shook her a little and she motioned inside.
He went into the trailer and Catherine followed him. But he stopped suddenly at the foot of the bed and she bumped into him.
“It’s dead,” she muttered, her voice raspy.
He bit out a dark curse. “No kidding.”
They heard footsteps behind them. They both spun about to see Ellen standing in the door. Her expression was jealous, pained, yearning as she watched them. Realization jolted
through Catherine suddenly.
Ellen was in love with him.
Now that Catherine realized it, it was as plain as the nose on her face. She flinched, an odd pain shimmering through her. Had they been together since the sing had ended? Why should it matter to her if they had? Kissing her had been nothing more than a taunt, a test. He had said as much himself.
“What’s going on?” Ellen demanded.
Jericho motioned to the bed. Ellen looked, then her face drained of all color. She backed up quickly.
“What the hell is going on here?” Catherine asked. It was her bird! What were they all shaken up about?
“Ellen, go get a box.” Jericho snagged the stick out of Catherine’s hand. “Give me that.”
He got no closer to the owl than he had to. He nudged it with the stick, rolling it over. “It’s been shot.”
“I could have told you that.”
“How did you know?”
She looked at him, perplexed. “I looked.” She reached out for it again. “Here—”
“Don’t touch it.”
She shrank back, her own skin crawling at the tone of his voice. “I...I don’t understand.”
He looked down into her face. A single muscle moved at his jaw.
“The Navajo believe an owl is an omen of death. If you dream of one, if you hear one at night, someone close to you will die.”
“But this one is already dead,” she protested.
He didn’t answer.
“I’m going to die?” she asked, jolting.
Ellen came back, carrying a box. She flung it at them. It landed on the floor, not far from Jericho’s feet, and he used the toe of his boot to slide it close to the bed. Catherine knew in that moment that neither of them had left the bird for her to find. They were both too purely, instinctively terrified of it, and tying its beak would certainly have necessitated touching it at some point.
Jericho nudged it off the bed with the stick and it landed in the box with a dull thump. “Who’ve you ticked off lately, Cat Eyes?” he asked.
She looked at him incredulously. “Present company excluded?”
His mouth quirked again. “Yeah.”