by Anne Stuart
He moved away for a moment, and she watched in sudden panic, afraid he was going to send her away after all, but instead he slipped off Shaitan’s bridle, dropping it in the long grass, and slapped the big horse on the rump. Shaitan moved away, toward the fast-running stream, and began placidly to lip the long grass.
Tanner took a few steps that brought him back to her waiting side. He scooped her up in his arms, effortlessly, as his mouth once more took possession of hers. But there was a difference this time, a joyful, almost lighthearted acceptance that burned through her nerves and shattered them. Past failures were fast disappearing. She was alone in the moon-drenched meadow with the man she loved.
The sleeping bag was soft beneath her back. The night smelled of wildflowers and Montana grassland, of blue sage and June nights and Tanner. As he loomed over her she smiled up at him, a brave, tremulous smile, and reached out to pull him closer.
His fingers were deft on the row of tiny buttons that traveled down the front of her gown. He bared her breasts to the moonlight, and then, shockingly, put his mouth on one, while he cupped the other in his big hand.
She made a small, whimpering noise, half panic, half pleasure, and her hands clutched his shoulders. “Tanner,” she said, her voice husky in the still moonlight, the first words to break the silence. “Wait,” she pleaded. “I’m frightened.”
He raised his head to look down at her. “I know,” he said softly, regret and determination in his voice. “I know.”
“Couldn’t we just...”
“No,” he said, pushing the nightgown off her shoulders and down her legs, ignoring her half-hearted attempts to stop him. She lay there naked in the moonlight, and fear was beating all around her. “We’re not going to spend another night locked chastely in each other’s arms,” he said. “We’re not going to lie here and neck until you run away. We’re going to make love, here, tonight, on this mountain.”
His breath was warm and sweet on her upturned face, his expression implacable. “What if I say no?” she asked. “Will you force me?”
It was a very small, very wry smile that danced around the corners of his mouth and lit the cool depths of his eyes. “I’ve never forced a woman in my life,” he said gently, “and I’m not about to start with you. If you say no, I’ll let you go. But you have approximately sixty seconds to make your choice. Once it’s made you can’t change your mind.”
“You’re pushing me,” she cried.
“Damned right. I’m pushing you off your pedestal and bringing Saint Ellie down among the living,” he said. “Yes or no, Ellie. The time is now.”
If only he’d kiss her again, kiss her so she wouldn’t have to think. But he held himself away, watching her, the warmth of his body lying alongside of her, his jeans rough against her silky skin.
A thousand doubts and questions sang in her mind. She ignored them. Slipping her arms around his neck, she pulled him over her. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
It was nothing like the books she’d read, nothing like her limited, fumbling experiences. Tanner took his time, slowly, languorously learning her body, discovering what tickled, what aroused her, learning almost by instinct just how to caress her small, sensitive breasts, learning just the right amount of pressure, enough to make her gasp and cry out, not enough to hurt. Until the pleasure became so exquisite that it was a pain of its own.
She learned him too, the shape and texture and contours of him, of places that had been a mystery to her, one that became even more awesome as it grew familiar. She learned the taste of him out of pleasure and her own desire, and learned the joy of his barely controlled response.
When the time came she was barely aware of it. He entered her, pulling back, pushing forward, gently rocking against her, until she was wet and slippery with longing. When she was ready, when he was ready, he braced his arms around her and increased the pressure, pushing all the way in till he rested, deep and tight inside her.
She lay beneath him, accustoming herself to the strangeness of it all, the tiny shivers of delight that were dancing through her body, the mild trace of pain that was rapidly receding into a haze of pleasure.
He lifted his head up to look at her, and she could see the film of sweat bead his forehead, the barely controlled passion that he was keeping in check. “Are you all right?” His voice was hoarse, strained. “Did I hurt you?”
She smiled up at him dizzily. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “Just... fine...”
His answering smile was lopsided. “There’s more to it,” he said. “Lots more.” And he began to move. His hands reached down, caught her legs and pulled them up around him, settling in against her. She’d scarcely gotten used to him when he pulled away, then pushed back again, the relentless ebb and flow of love and desire washing over her body. She began to shiver in anticipation of some distant, unapproachable delight, and she felt Tanner, slippery with sweat, tremble in her arms. She wanted to cry, but she didn’t know what for. For the moon, still shining down on the entwined lovers? For the stars, glittering in the sky beside their sister moon? Or cry for herself, lost and seeking, shivering and reaching and aching and longing?
Her head thrashed back and forth in mute negation of something she couldn’t begin to understand. She wanted to tell him to stop, it was useless, it was more than she could bear. He thrust all the way into her, holding her with the pressure of his hips, and his hands caught her head, holding her still.
“Not without you,” he muttered obscurely. And setting his mouth on hers, he reached down between their sweat-slick bodies and touched her.
Her body arched, convulsed around his. Her mind, her emotions shattered, like the thousand stars of the Montana night, and she was gone, lost, floating, and Tanner was with her, his strangled cry swallowed in their last, desperate kiss, his body rigid in her arms.
It was a long time before either of them could speak. Ellie lay beneath him, listening as their hearts hurtled against each other, as their breathing rasped into a labored silence, as the stray tremors danced across her moon-silvered flesh. She looked up into the vast canopy of the sky, and watched a star fall in a blaze of light. She felt the warm breeze lift Tanner’s hair and toss it against her flushed face, heard the distant, peaceful sound of Shaitan drinking from the mountain stream. She wanted to lie forever beneath Tanner’s strong, protecting body. But she knew there were no forevers for her. Not with Tanner.
He moved, pulling away from her, his hands still possessively on her. She started to speak, but he put his fingers against her mouth.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice as husky as hers. “No clever remarks, no jokes, no demands, no vows of undying love.”
He looks as though he’s in shock, Ellie thought. There was little doubt she looked exactly the same. Slowly she nodded, and he moved his hand from her mouth. Not before she had a chance to kiss his fingers.
He pulled her into his arms again, rolling onto his back and bringing her with him. “Hold me,” he muttered, his words an unconscious echo of her own plea the night before. “Just hold me.”
And thoroughly content, Ellie held him close against her, slowly relaxing into sleep.
* * * * *
It was the longest night she had ever spent; it passed in the wink of an eye. The moon was sinking lower in the sky when they awoke in the darkness, and they made love again, more slowly this time, drawing it out until they were both shaking and crying and shivering and dying with the wonder of it. Tanner even tried to talk her into swimming in the icy mountain pool, promising to warm her up afterward. When she was still hesitant he lifted her up and chucked her in, and when she emerged, sputtering and furious, he turned that heat and fury around, into a fiery passion that left them too stunned and weary to move.
The sun rose early, not much after four o’clock that close to the summer solstice. They lay on the rumpled sleeping bag, the smell of crushed wildflowers filtering through their dreams, and watched the color streak across the sky as one by one the st
ars disappeared.
“You know,” she observed in a lazy, sleepy voice, “I never realized what I was missing. If I’d known, I would have done something about it earlier.”
“It isn’t always like this.” Tanner’s voice was a deep bass rumble beneath her ear. She had her head on his chest, and her hand was drawing lazy circles on his smooth, sun-darkened skin.
“Isn’t it?”
“Take it from a man who knows,” he murmured.
Ellie giggled. “I just did, didn’t I?”
He laughed, and the sound was soft and comforting in the night air. She sighed peacefully, snuggling closer. There was just the faint trace of early-morning chill in the air, but she didn’t mind. Nothing short of the legendary Montana winters would have made her put her nightgown back on. “Were you really leaving?”
“No. I changed my mind halfway up here, but I thought I’d like a night without someone watching me.”
“I can always shut my eyes.”
“Not you, woman,” he said lightly.
“Why did you change your mind?”
“Too much unfinished business.”
“Was I part of that unfinished business?” Her question was delicately phrased. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer, whatever it was.
“Yes.” he said.
“Am I finished now?”
He reached down and put his hand under her chin, tipping her face up to his. “I don’t think I’ll ever be finished with you,” he said softly, and then a spasm of pain crossed his face. “Damn,” he swore. “Why the hell did I say that?”
“Tanner...” She half rose, but he pushed her back down, hiding her face against his chest.
“Don’t say it,” he said bitterly. “I don’t want to hear it. For God’s sake, don’t tell me that you love me.”
She stayed where she was, her face pressed against him, inhaling the rich, earthy scent of him. “Why not?” she asked quietly.
“Because I don’t need your love. I don’t want it, I don’t want the strings and ties and responsibilities of having you love me.”
She pulled away from him, sitting up, wrapping her arms around her bent knees. She was bone weary, physically and emotionally, and a part of her wanted to scream and cry at him.
But the greater part knew better. She looked down at him, at his stubborn, beautiful, beloved face, and carefully wiped all expression from her own, leaving only mild regret. “Sorry, Tanner,” she said softly. “The warning comes too late.”
“Ellie...”
“Shut up, Tanner,” she said a little fiercely. “Stay as long as you can, walk away when you have to. In the meantime—” she took a deep breath “—there’s nothing you can do about it. I love you, and there’s no changing it.”
“Until you look at your knee and remember whose son I am,” he said, still stretched out on the ground, apparently at ease. But even in the dawn-lit shadows Ellie could see the tension threading through his strong body. “Do you realize you never refer to him as my father? He’s always Charles Tanner. Well, he was my father, Ellie. He sired me, even brought me into the world, and he killed thirty-three people. At least seventeen in Korea, and another sixteen here in Montana. He ruined your life, Ellie, and I’m all he left on this earth. Do you really think you love me?”
She slid forward on her knees, leaning over him, her chestnut hair hanging down in a curtain around their faces. “I’m afraid so, Tanner,” she said. “Charles Tanner, Jr.,” she added for emphasis. “And while you can try your damnedest to convince me otherwise, I’ve waited thirty years for you. It’s going to take more than a harmless old ghost like your father to stop me.”
“Harmless old ghost…?”
“That’s all he is, Tanner. He’s dead, long gone. Pain and evil live on, but your father’s dead, his goodness and evil dead with him. Someone else is doing things, but it has no connection with you.”
“Does that mean I could leave?”
She bit her lip. “You can always leave,” she said evenly. “I wouldn’t hold you against your will.”
“And what if it’s not against my will?”
“I don’t think you know what you want,” she said.
He reached up and brushed her cheek with one hand, sweeping it under her mane of hair. And then he was pulling her down, down to him, and his mouth was waiting for her. “Yes,” he said, “I do.” And right then she believed him.
* * * * *
They made their way slowly down the mountain. Neither of them wore a watch, but the early-rising sun had been up a couple of hours, putting the time somewhere between six and seven. Tanner rode Shaitan astride, with Ellie draped sideways across his lap, partly for the horse’s comfort, partly for her own. A long, soaking bath, she promised herself. She was sore in places she hadn’t realized existed, and her face was flushed from the rough stubble that adorned Tanner’s lean cheeks.
Tanner was still very quiet, as he had been since dawn. She hadn’t convinced him, Ellie knew that. Nothing would convince him, nothing except time. She could only hope they had enough of that scarce commodity.
In the meantime, she swore to herself that she wouldn’t push him. She wouldn’t tell him again that she loved him, wouldn’t throw herself at him, wouldn’t make a nuisance of herself. She’d be patient, as she’d learned so well to be. She’d waited thirty years to find the right man. She could wait a while to be sure of him.
Maude’s remote farm was in sight before he spoke. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“About Maude? I promised her I wouldn’t. She still feels guilty about Marbella. She figured you wouldn’t talk to her if you knew who she was.”
“My mother hardly mentioned her, but when she did it was with love. It always sounded like it was my grandfather who was the problem.”
“It’s true,” Ellie said. “But Maude loved him.” She hesitated. “Ginger will have called her and told her, you know. She’ll be in the house, waiting to see what you’re going to do.”
He sighed. “I know what you want me to do. You want me to go in there and tell that old woman that Marbella forgave her.”
“Only if it’s true. Maude will see through it if it’s a lie.”
“I’ll go,” he said. “If you promise to let me ride Shaitan.”
“You are riding Shaitan,” she pointed out.
“Alone. Fast. With a saddle.”
“Personally, I like it this way,” she murmured. “But you’ve got yourself a deal. Just make sure she makes some coffee while you’re having your family reunion. I need something to get me going.”
“Tired, are you?” he inquired solicitously. “These busy nights.”
She smiled up at him, rubbing her already abraded cheek against his chest. “I’ll survive.”
It was the wrong thing to say. She could feel him stiffening, and there was nothing she could do to make it better.
“I expect you will,” he said in a distant voice. “You have a history of it.”
“And a future,” she said firmly. But deep inside, she wondered if there’d ever be a future for them. At that moment the odds didn’t look too good.
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
* * *
Ellie spent as much time as she could brushing down Shaitan’s sleek coat, feeding and watering him before turning him out to pasture with his two stablemates. He spent far too much time in the barn as it was, but she didn’t dare pasture him if she couldn’t be sure she’d be around to get him back in during the storms that terrified him. Jamie was useless around him—it was all the teenage boy could do to feed him without fainting in terror.
Things would be better when she could find a place where she could keep the horses. While her half-formed fantasies had usually involved city life, she knew deep down inside her that she could never be happy surrounded by the noise and bustle of a big city. She needed mountains, she needed wide, open spaces, she needed big blue sky and room to breathe. Most of all, she needed Tann
er.
However, dwelling on that thought would get her exactly nowhere. One day at a time, Doc had taught her when she was trying to get off the painkillers that had numbed her to life. One day at a time, and maybe, just maybe it would work out.
Her cotton nightdress was definitely the worse for wear. She stripped it off, pulling on her faded jeans and sweater, accepting her lack of underwear with equanimity. She crumpled up the nightgown, about to toss it into the trash, then thought better of it. Smoothing the soft, torn cotton with a gentle hand, she put it back in the bag that had held her clothes and stashed it back under the workbench.
Maude’s dark, snapping eyes were rimmed with red, and the smile she gave Ellie when she walked in the door was bordering on the tremulous. Not that there was ever anything that tentative about Maude. But whatever had passed between Tanner and his grandmother had apparently been satisfactory to both parties. At least as far as Ellie could tell. Tanner had that distant look about him, his blue eyes unreadable in the morning light as he sat there sipping coffee from an enormous blue mug that was chipped and cracked and oddly familiar looking. With a start Ellie recognized it. It had belonged to Jacob, Maude’s husband, and he’d used it every morning. When he died, Maude had put it away, and this was the first time Ellie had seen it in all those years.
“I wondered what was keeping you,” Maude said in a voice slightly hoarse from tears, both shed and unshed, as she handed Ellie a cup of inky-black coffee. Ellie doubted she’d even spared her a thought. “I was telling Tanner here that you can take my old car until yours is ready. It’s got to be better than that old pickup of Addie’s. I’m willing to bet it runs fine. You know I don’t drive anymore, and Jamie can take me out in his rattletrap if need be.”
“Thank you, Maude.” She could feel Tanner’s eyes sweeping over her clothes, could sense his hidden amusement. “You might tell Jamie I fed Shaitan and put him out to pasture. If he’s feeling particularly brave he could try to bring him into the stall; otherwise I’ll come back out later.”