by Beverly Bird
“It is terrifying,” she whispered, placing her palm against the glass. “It’s so...much.”
“I wanted to give her privacy and seclusion. She felt isolation.”
“I feel like God looking down on the world.”
A corner of his mouth kicked up and he closed the distance between them. “Maybe a small forgotten part of it.”
“Not so small, and I couldn’t forget it.”
She was still staring out the window. He put his hands to her waist and turned her to face him. “Is that why you came back, Cat Eyes?”
She traced her fingers carefully over his jawline, over the hard, rugged lines of it, so like the land he loved. She could tell him about the CDC later. Now there was only one thing that was important.
“I came back because it gave me a miracle. It gave me me, something I could do and feel good about, and it gave me you in the very same place. I thought about it, and love doesn’t work when you compromise on the big things. Then you each have to give up a piece of yourself. The giving might be sweet, but by definition it has to leave an emptiness. So this was something I had to do for myself first.” She hesitated, but she saw in his eyes that that was exactly what he’d needed to hear.
“It’s not always twinkling lights and gathering shadows,” he warned, pulling her closer.
“I know.”
“Sometimes I look out and the horizon is cold and hard.”
“And sometimes it rains.”
“Not very often.”
“Tell that to the old brown Ford.”
She wasn’t sure if he chuckled or not. His mouth came down slowly on hers and his tongue moved sinuously past her teeth, searching again. Then he made an odd sound that was half sigh, half groan.
“I’ll believe it won’t destroy you because I love you, and to love is to hope.”
“I’ll survive it because I love you and it’s an integral part of you.”
“Good enough.”
This time his mouth came down hard over hers. For a long moment he only took her, tasting her, invading her. Then he tore himself away. “Hungry? Do you want something to eat?”
“No,” she gasped, and he kissed her again.
“Tired?”
“No.”
His lips gave that almost-smile. “Amorous?” he murmured finally.
“Now you’re getting somewhere.”
“I’d hoped so.”
She caught his mouth fiercely with her own this time. savoring the dark, warm depths of him again. “For you.” She sighed. “Just for you. It’s so...right.”
His arms tightened around her until she could barely breathe. Then he shifted her weight, easing her down to the floor with him without releasing her mouth. She gave a husky cry and moved against him until he covered her, the hard ridge of his flesh pressing intimately against her through their clothing, telling her better than words how much he had needed her to come back. And all the while he kept kissing her, hard and deep, relentlessly. Finally, he moved his mouth to her breasts, biting the tip of first one, then the other through the cotton of her T-shirt with shattering care.
No bra, he realized again, and this time he did chuckle, knowing that the land had touched her on some hidden level even before he had. He felt full with the sense of her, of this perfect woman he had stopped hoping to find. But he wouldn’t hide her away and simply take her out at night to stroke her. He knew she would never allow that. She met his urgent hands on her body with smooth, hungry strokes of her own, pulling at his clothing, and he knew she would always be there, her temper sparking, stubbornly invading every corner of his soul, even the dark ones.
Without lifting his mouth from her breast he pushed her T-shirt up, releasing her tight nipple only at the last moment to slide the cloth up to her neck. She gave a low, broken moan as the warmth of him left her, but then his touch was back again, his hands this time, covering her, cupping the warm weight of her breasts in his palms.
She tried to hold them there with her own but they slid away anyway, pushing her jeans down, shaping her hips and her thighs with a caress that was no more gentle than the man. Catherine didn’t object. When his fingers slid up between her legs, she opened for him with a gasp of hungry pleasure.
His fingertips slid through her soft tangle of firelit hair until she wept his name, begging for more. “This,” he said quietly, “is how I remembered you most when you were gone, Cat Eyes. Naked and warm and wet, wanting me enough to shudder, all those times before I even succumbed to insanity and touched you.”
His finger penetrated the waiting heat of her body hard and suddenly. He moved into her again and again, watching the gathering tension transform her face until the moment it began exploding within her. As her back arched and her hands clawed for him, trying to pull him closer, he wrestled fast out of his own jeans and plunged himself into her.
Her eyes flew open again in shock, but then her vision was filled with his own fathomless black eyes, penetrating her as deeply as his body. And impossibly she felt something quivering inside her again, coiling with each of his thrusts, winding tighter and tighter. The deep intimacy of his gaze stayed with her as her breath escaped her again on a shattered groan. She felt him stiffen as well, until he cried out hoarsely and eased weakly down on top of her.
His breath was warm and damp against her neck when he finally spoke. “A man could get used to this on an hourly basis.”
He rolled over and she went halfway with him, bracing her head on her hand. He hooked an arm beneath her waist to rest his palm against the small of her back.
“Hourly?” she mused. “I think the Service might have a thing or two to say about that.”
“No doubt.” He yawned. “At least you won’t have Tah honeesgai to contend with anymore.”
She looked down at him curiously. “So you’re finally conceding that it was organic?”
“No.”
“No? What about the mice?”
“I’ll go to my grave convinced that Becenti guy from Two Gray Hills blew some kind of corpse poison into them. They scurried out from that clan’s country, all over Dinetah.... Anyway, he’s gone now. He packed up the day after you left for Atlanta. I guess he knew when he was beaten. You proved too much for him, Cat Eyes.”
Catherine remembered the absurd thought she’d had when she’d been bending over her ravaged textbooks. She thought about mice that were shrewd enough and intelligent enough to fight back. And she thought about Richard Moss. She supposed it was entirely possible that he had read up on Navajo culture when he’d come out here to stalk her. He had certainly learned enough about medicine to successfully masquerade as a doctor. He could have known the native significance of that owl...but he couldn’t have turned himself into a possum.
In spite of herself, she shuddered.
“Mmm, not quite yet,” Jericho drawled.
She frowned at him, then she understood. “What happened to hourly?”
“It’s only been sixteen minutes. And now I’m tired. I need the other forty-four.” He looked at her more closely. “It’s been hell with you gone, Cat Eyes. It was hell staying away before you left. I wondered what was going to bring me back to myself this time, and I was pretty sure there was nothing that could. I wondered if I’d have to go after you.”
Her heart skipped. “Would you have?”
“And dragged you back by the hair?” He looked out the window at the stars that were beginning to gather. “I don’t know, Cat Eyes. I honestly don’t know. It was the one thing I swore I’d never do again, but you could have driven me to it. And then I would have lived in terror all the rest of my days, that it was going to turn out the same.”
“I’m stronger than that,” she murmured.
“I know,” he said simply. “You didn’t force me to make the choice.”
He caught a strand of her hair, tugging on it. There was a good inch of dark fire at the roots now. And he would be there to see the rest of it. Unless...
�
�Now’s a fine time to mention it, but we haven’t been using any sort of...protection. Have we?”
Catherine flushed. “Well, there’s the pope...”
“How does he feel about Navajo kids?”
“You’d have to ask Paddy. He seems to have his doctrines down pretty well, even if he doesn’t always abide by them.”
Jericho’s eyes narrowed. “You say that like I’ll have the chance.”
“I’m thinking of inviting them to come out for Christmas.”
“Them? Your sisters too? In two weeks?”
“Sisters and nieces. There are twelve of them now. And yes, in two weeks.” She grinned, then sobered. “Paddy and the pope don’t matter, you know. You’re asking the wrong person.”
Something hard crossed his face again, something wary. “Okay,” he said slowly. “So how do you feel about Navajo kids?”
“Do Navajo laws of excess apply to the Irish? How many can I have?”
His eyes cleared slowly. He reached to cup her face in his hard hands. “I love you, Cat Eyes. Will you marry me?”
She shuddered again and his arms tightened around her. “You let me go, so I came back,” she whispered. “Now just try getting rid of me.”
* * * * *
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8716-7
A Man Without Love
Copyright © 1995 by Beverly Bird
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