Her response snapped apart the tight leash on his control. He groaned and pulled her closer, his blood a wild pulse in his ears.
All he could think about was how perfect she felt in his arms.
They kissed for a long time until he was beyond thought, far past reason, until he pressed her back against the tree trunk and her fingers tangled in his hair and his at the bare skin under her shirt, just above the waistband of her jeans.
She made tiny little sounds of arousal that turned him on more than anything he’d ever heard in his life and she pressed her soft curves more tightly to him. Tenderness and hunger and emotions he didn’t want to face twisted around inside him and he was just sliding his thumbs up her rib cage when, through the haze of awareness that surrounded them, the high, distinctive screech of a red-tailed hawk pierced the afternoon.
One of the horses whinnied in response and at the sound, Cisco froze, jerked sharply back to awareness.
What the hell was he doing? He eased his mouth away and stared at her, his breathing ragged and every nerve ending on fire for her.
Her eyes were wide, her lips swollen. Self-doubt coiled through him, as sharp as barbed wire.
He was an animal. A filthy, rutting beast. After everything she had just told him, how could he treat her like she was one of the eager cantina girls?
He slid his hands away and stepped back a pace.
“I’m sorry. Damn. I’m so sorry.”
Her color was high and her hand trembled as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, but somehow she managed a cool look out of eyes that were still red from her crying earlier. “Sorry for what? Returning a kiss I started?”
His body burned for her and he couldn’t even look at her without having to fight the powerful urge to yank her back into his arms, to plunder that soft, delicious mouth again. To kiss away every trace of tears.
“I have no right.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not…you’re not…”
“What, Cisco? Because we basically grew up together? Or because of…because of Chance?”
“All those reasons.” And more. He would only bring her more unhappiness and she had already suffered enough, damn it.
He screwed his eyes shut. She deserved so much better. She deserved a man who could protect her, who could make her happy. A man who could sleep at night.
“What about Bowman? I thought you were dating him.” He was grasping for straws and he had a feeling they both knew it.
She shook her head. “Trace is a great guy. But he’s not you.”
She stepped forward, her eyes a soft, stunning blue. “I wanted you to kiss me, Cisco. I wanted you to kiss me five years ago, I wanted you to kiss me when you came back three days ago.”
She paused and despite everything, heat curled through him when he saw the tiny smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“And I want you to kiss me again now,” she whispered.
She moved across the space he had created between them, until her high, firm breasts were touching his chest.
“Kiss me, Cisco,” she murmured, her breath soft and sweet against his mouth.
What else could he do but obey?
He groaned and closed his eyes for just a moment before he lowered his mouth to hers.
Finally.
Oh.
Finally. She shivered as he deepened the kiss, as his arms pulled her tightly against his hard strength.
Even with the lingering sadness that twined around and between them—their shared sorrow over both Belle and little Chance—she wanted to savor this moment.
He was here in her arms again, after all the years she had spent without him, and she wasn’t about to waste an instant. She closed her eyes, surrendering to the wonder, to the taste and scent and feel of him.
His mouth trailed from her mouth to the pulse that fluttered at the base of her throat and then back up to just below her ear. She twisted her fingers in his hair, unbearably aroused as he licked and tasted her skin.
His hands moved to the buttons of her shirt and her knees wobbled as his hand covered one lacy cup of her bra. When his thumb slid the cup aside and teased her nipple, her thigh muscles shook and she sagged against him.
“We can’t do this here,” he growled, and she realized they still stood together in the meadow near the lake. Her gaze fell on the small shelter twenty yards away and with a sweet sense of the inevitable, she gripped his fingers and tugged him toward it.
The shelter was too humble even to be called a cabin, only four bare walls and a roof, but this was where they had spent their one and only night wrapped in each other’s arms and she had always loved it for that reason alone.
She came here sometimes in her weaker moments and she kept blankets and pillows in an old metal critter-proof trunk for those moonlit trips to the lake she still sometimes managed to steal.
Cisco watched her, his eyes hooded, as she released the trunk latch and lifted the lid. The sweet summer scent of lavender drifted up from the sachets she had slipped inside the last time she was here.
She pulled out two soft, worn quilts and spread them on the wood floor. Then, nerves still fluttering through her, she smiled at Cisco.
“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice low, intense. “After everything, are you sure?”
“Kiss me,” she demanded again and everything inside her seemed to shiver and sigh with delight when he finally complied.
For five years, she had relived the night they spent together hundreds of times. She thought nothing could compare to the heat and the magic of it.
As he touched her again, his hands warm on her bare skin, she discovered her memory was a pale shadow compared to the reality. She had forgotten the silky taste of his mouth and the scent of him, musky and male. She had forgotten the soul-wrenching intensity of his touch, of his warm skin against her. She had forgotten the delicious hunger thrumming inside her and his consummate skill at building it ever higher.
They kissed and touched for a long time, relearning each other’s bodies, until they were both breathing heavily. He was battered and bruised, this man she loved so desperately. She was careful of his recent injury, but she could see in the slanting afternoon light that he had others. A puckered scar here, a jagged one there.
Despite his scars, he was beautiful, wild and masculine. She was especially drawn to the compass rose tattoo on his forearm, intricate and old-fashioned like something off a Renaissance sea captain’s charts. It might have been a symbol of a wandering man, but somehow she sensed it meant more, that it was somehow connected to here and to the bond between Jo’s Four Winds.
She trailed her mouth down and pressed her lips to the center of it and when she lifted her gaze to his, the heat in his dark eyes scorched down every nerve ending. He growled her name and leaned over her, twisting her so her body was under his.
His hands gripped hers and he kissed her with a raw concentration that took her breath away. He kissed her until she was trembling and weak, until her body shifted restlessly against him. Finally, when she didn’t know how she could endure another moment, he slid between her thighs and entered her.
She clutched him to her, burning the moment and the memory into her mind. Her throat ached with the words of love she had carried inside her for so long, but she couldn’t say them. Not here. Not now.
Not yet.
Instead, she showed him with her body, with her touch, with her kiss. His mouth found hers and she sighed his name against his mouth and then gasped as he reached between them to touch and tease her.
She held back her climax as long as she could, desperate to savor every second with him, but finally the heat and the hunger roared out of her control. The world blurred around her and on a ragged cry, she found release.
When she came back to awareness several seconds later, she found him watching her with brown eyes that blazed with emotions she couldn’t read.
“You’re so beautiful, East. The most beau
tiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
He kissed her fiercely, his mouth hard and demanding, and she arched to meet him until a moment later his body went taut as he found his own release.
He fell asleep almost at once. Even though his eyes were closed and his breathing even, she still sensed tension in him, as if his muscles were coiled and ready for trouble at any moment. Her heart grieved for the life he must live and she wanted fiercely to soothe him.
Acting on instinct, she slid her arm across his chest above the white bandage and curled it over him, nestling against his side.
“East,” he breathed softly, pulling her closer. He didn’t open his eyes and she was almost positive he hadn’t awakened. Still, his arm tightened around her and some of the tension seemed to ease from his features.
She had to tell him the rest. She sighed as nerves fluttered through her like the azure butterflies out in the meadow.
The words she hadn’t been able to say in the heat of the moment, as it were, pressed hard to be spoken. She had to tell him how very much she loved him. Chances were, he still wouldn’t be willing to accept the gift, but she had to offer it to him just the same.
Would she have the nerve, knowing she could be risking everything? Or would she chicken out, as she had done the night before.
If she revealed just how deeply her feelings ran, she might be left with not even his infrequent visits and rare e-mails.
A tiny, fretful part of her urged her to stay silent. Better a few morsels than nothing at all, right?
She sighed. No. She had to tell him. She knew she would never be free of this love in her heart that she had lived with since she was a girl. But Trace had been right, she had been tightly clutching the barest thread of hope that perhaps Cisco might some day stop wandering.
Her fingers traced his forearm and the intricate compass ink there. That meant something. She knew it did. Even when he was far away, he had kept this connection to his home, always within his sight.
She would tell him. Not right now, but soon, she promised herself.
Until then, she would savor the miraculous gift of these few moments with him, even if that was all she would ever have.
She awoke some time later to a completely unaccustomed languorous sense of well-being. Her muscles felt loose and comfortable and she wasn’t sure she could move, even if she wanted to.
The air had cooled slightly, but underneath the blanket, absorbing all his body heat, she didn’t feel the chill.
She blinked her eyes open and found Cisco lying beside her, his gaze intent on her features.
“Hey.” She smiled but felt a tiny chill sneak through her when he didn’t smile back. Instead, something haunted and dark flickered in his eyes.
No. She wouldn’t let him ruin this with stupid, pointless regrets. She had dreamed of this for far too long. Since she didn’t know what else to say or do, she wrapped her arm around his neck and pulled him down to her. At least when he was kissing her, he wasn’t thinking about all the reasons why he shouldn’t.
When her lips brushed his, she tasted his reluctance, but she refused to let him surrender to it. She kissed him softly, tenderly.
“This is good between us, Cisco. Why won’t you trust me?”
“You’re not the one I don’t trust,” he answered, a ragged edge to his voice.
“Trust this, then,” she answered and deepened the kiss with a wild, almost desperate passion. His hesitance lasted only a moment, and then he made that sexy low sound in his throat and returned the kiss and she felt his body rise to join hers.
Both of them stayed awake after the second time they made love. Easton didn’t want to waste any more of their precious time together with something as mundane as sleep when she could be savoring each moment with him.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, his fingers tugging the end of her disheveled braid. “I made a couple of sandwiches before I rode out after you.”
She was touched that he would think of it, especially since she hadn’t eaten much breakfast, too upset over Belle’s impending departure The reminder of the baby sobered her and her heart gave a sharp twinge. How was she? Had she fallen asleep on the drive? Had they reached her new home in Boise yet?
She couldn’t think about that right now either.
“I am hungry, now that you mention it.”
“Why don’t we get dressed, then, and we can sit by the lake and eat?”
Do we have to? she wanted to ask. Why can’t we just stay here and pretend the rest of the world and all the pain and heartache down the mountain doesn’t exist?
Impossible, she knew. Eventually they would have to return to real life. After a moment, she slipped out of his arms and reached for her clothing as he did the same. She pulled on her jeans and was buttoning her shirt when Cisco winced as he pulled on his own shirt.
The bandage around his abdomen was stark against his bronze skin, one too many secrets between them and she suddenly couldn’t bear it.
“What really happened to you?” she demanded.
He looked up, his fingers on the buttons of his shirt. “What do you mean?”
She gestured to the wide bandage. “I’m not stupid, Cisco. I know you didn’t get stabbed in a bar fight.”
His mouth hardened and his expression grew shuttered. “What reason would I have to lie to you?”
“You tell me.” It hurt, more than she wanted to acknowledge, that he would deflect her questions now, after the heat and magic they had just shared.
She had to know suddenly. For once, couldn’t they have a dratted conversation without all the thick layers of subtext?
“Who pulled a knife on you? What were you doing? Why are you so determined to keep your life some big, spooky secret from me?”
He said nothing for a few moments. A magpie squawked at them from outside, then he shifted his attention to the buttons of his shirt. “Listen to me. You’re better off in the dark on this one, East.”
She couldn’t bear his damned evasions anymore. After everything—the revelation about Chance, the sweet peace of their lovemaking, all the tenderness she had tried to pour into her kisses—why couldn’t he just tell her the truth?
“I’m not nine years old anymore, some stupid little girl you have to protect from the world. I’m a woman. And not just any woman either. I’m the woman who gave birth to your child. Who buried him alone. I have the right to know who you are, don’t you think? Earlier you basically said you trust me. Why won’t you trust me with this?”
She stood in front of him so he had no choice but to look at her, to meet her gaze. “Are you in trouble with the law? Trace seems to think you are.”
A muscle flexed in his jaw, but she wasn’t sure if that was in reference to any wrongdoing on his part or her mention of the police chief.
He seemed to be waging some internal struggle and she wasn’t sure which side won when he walked out of the shelter toward the lake’s edge, where Guff had years ago erected a bench, situating it at the perfect angle to take in the granite mountains and the shimmering, silvery water.
Cisco seemed oblivious to the pristine setting. He sat down heavily, his features closed and his eyes murky.
She sat beside him, waiting for him to wrestle whatever demons her question had stirred in him.
“Jo loved this spot,” she said after several moments, sensing he needed more time. “Remember that?”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly.
She smiled a little at a sudden bittersweet memory. “She came here just a week or so before she died. It was the night of the harvest moon and she would not rest until she had been able to enjoy one more moonlit ride. By that point, she could barely hold her head up anymore, but she made Tess and Quinn bring her up here. Quinn rode double with her the whole way, holding her on.”
Quintessential Jo, determined to wring every drop of joy out of her life even as it faded away. Easton felt extraordinarily blessed in her life to been given the love and example of two strong wom
en—her mother and her aunt. She wondered what they would have done in her situation, how they would feel about the choices she had made.
“I was knifed by a Colombian drug cartel boss,” Cisco said abruptly, his words clattering between them like a rockslide down the mountain. “I’m a mid-level drug dealer.”
Chapter Eleven
Whatever she expected him to say, that wasn’t it. She inhaled sharply and for one brief moment, her insides seemed to shrivel with shock and dismay.
No. As quickly as her exhaled breath, reason and good sense and all her instincts intruded.
He was lying. She didn’t know why, but she knew without any trace of doubt that his words weren’t the truth.
The assurance was warm, comforting. Whatever he was involved with, she knew Cisco. She knew his heart and she knew he wasn’t the sort of man who would profit off other people’s misery.
She had always known he couldn’t be doing anything like that, she realized. She just hadn’t trusted her own instincts and hadn’t allowed herself to trust him.
She shifted on the bench to face him. Acting on instinct, she reached for his arm, the one with the compass rose, and held it in her hands. “No, you’re not. Now tell me the truth.”
An arrested expression flickered across his features. “How do you know that isn’t the truth.”
“Because I know you. The real you. This persona you’ve been creating these last few years, that you’re some kind of shiftless wanderer, isn’t real. I don’t know why you’ve perpetuated it, but I know it’s an illusion. You’re good and decent, Cisco. The kind of man who rushes back to his dying foster mother’s bedside, no matter how much effort or cost it takes, the kind who steps up to care for an orphaned little girl even when he’s injured himself. The kind who cries for a child he never even knew.”
He gazed at her for a long time, his eyes a deep, glittery brown in the sunlight reflected off the water. Finally his other hand reached for hers and they sat close together while the wind rippled tiny waves on the lake and the mountain breeze whispered in the trees.
A Cold Creek Baby Page 14