A Man Without a Haven

by Beverly Bird

  “Okay,” he breathed, “we’ll do it your way again. But take your hair down.”

  “What?” she gasped.

  “Your hair.” He didn’t wait for her to do it. He found the band with his free hand and tugged at it. It spilled into his face, puddling on his chest as she bent over him. It smelled of something like lavender, faintly floral. The scent teased him, barely filling his nostrils, tempting him to want more.

  Her mouth moved to his neck and he felt her nails digging little trails across his chest. She was in control, always in control, but he needed that now. He needed to be driven beyond sanity because he was too frightened to follow that road on his own. He had the distinct sense that this time, this second time, was going to change everything, all his remaining fragile rules. He was afraid that if he made love to her again now there would be no pulling back, no pretending that his life wasn’t radically altered forever.

  He couldn’t lead either of them into that. He didn’t have the guts. So he followed her.

  He let her slide down him, pushing his legs apart, making a space for her body between them. He found the strength to bear the slow friction of her body against his, her nipples, hard and tight, dragging their own little paths across his belly. He was excruciatingly aware of the sensation even through the T-shirt she wore. Then she was tugging at his shorts, and heaven help him, but he lifted his hips to help her. He felt her mouth close over his hardness and he plunged his hands into her hair again, grabbing handfuls of it, thinking he couldn’t hurt her, didn’t dare hurt her because maybe she wouldn’t come back the next time. But then he crossed the line between will and insanity.

  When he felt himself losing control, he gave a guttural groan and sat up, dragging her up with him. Her eyes were smoky with desire and he felt an even stronger need of his own crash through him again. He pulled at her T-shirt, her shorts, like a man seeking salvation, finding her mouth again. He sank into her, searching for her tongue with his. She met him, giving, saving him.

  He was hard to the point of pain. He needed to plunge himself into her, to feel that sense of joining, of belonging with her even for a few precious moments out of time. But it had been so long for her. She would be tight, sore after their previous night. She would have undeniable needs of her own.

  Shadow did. She wanted him inside her again—now—so that she ached with his fullness the way she had before, until that glow came back within, pushing her doubts and fears into the deepest, darkest recesses of her soul. She felt shudders of longing working through her as soon as he touched her, as soon as his fingers slid against her most sensitive flesh, finding entrance, but it wasn’t enough. She pushed him back and straddled him again, fitting herself over him before he could protest, before he could try to make her wait.

  He gave up then, driving himself into her the way he’d wanted to at the start. He found that she was ready for him after all. It amazed him and he needed—wanted—to examine that, but not now, not here. He caught her hair again and pulled her down to him, seeking her breasts this time instead of her mouth, moving his tongue over her small, tight nipples, closing his mouth over one, then the other, sucking them hard and deep. On some distant level he was aware that she was gasping, a harsh, half-moaning sound that came again and again as she dug her nails into his shoulders as if to hold on.

  She felt him plunge into her again and again. She moved to help him, and finally it was everything she needed, more than she could bear. If she had to live a lifetime in these days, then she knew in that moment that it would be enough and the memories wouldn’t fade if she grew to be ninety.

  Her climax hit her in a stunning, unexpected ambush, as violent as the emotion that had driven him to hurt her earlier. Mac felt it as if he were part of her, felt the clenching and the spasms, then he groaned and followed her, even as something inside him protested, not yet, too soon.

  But just as she had from the moment she had plunged down the canyon wall to land at his feet, she left him absolutely no alternative.

  Chapter 11

  They lay quietly for a long time, then something rustled in the darkness. A shadow darted near the canyon wall and Mac felt her stiffen in his arms.

  “Just an animal,” he said.

  His voice sounded strangely unlike his own. He felt changed, altered on some very deep level, but Shadow didn’t seem to notice anything amiss.

  “Let’s move,” she suggested, her fingers digging into his skin just a little deeper. “I don’t like it down here.”

  He was about to point out that she was the one who had run to this place, then he thought better of it. She hadn’t run. He had driven her.

  “It hurt coming out again.” He wondered if she would understand.

  “I know,” she answered softly. “But maybe now you’ll be free of it.”

  He wondered if anything could be as simple as that. In her neat, orderly world where rules were easy, maybe it was.

  She slid off him, groping around in the dark for her clothing. He had barely pulled his shorts back on before she was hurrying off down the canyon, back toward the place where their campsites were.

  Their campsites. What was he going to do about that? He followed her more slowly, raking a hand through his hair. He stood beside his tent for a moment, then he grimly began dismantling it.

  Shadow watched from beside her own sleeping bag. “What are you doing?” she asked finally.

  “You’re too vulnerable when I’m sleeping in here.”

  She thought of pointing out that it might be safest if they were both in there, but she knew he still couldn’t handle that. The deepest wounds were the earliest ones, and he had been protecting his since he was ten. The deep ones took the longest to heal and they had to do it from the inside out.

  She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “That’s no reason to take it down. Just sleep outside again.”

  “I don’t want to leave him any doubt as to where I am.”

  Shadow scowled. “What difference does it make?”

  “If he knows I’m outside, then he probably won’t try anything new.”

  “If he thinks you’re inside and you’re not, maybe we could catch him.”

  “Considering what his tricks do to you, it’s not worth it.”

  “You still think it’s just someone playing pranks?” she asked dubiously.

  He twisted it around in his mind and couldn’t come up with anything else that made sense. He nodded.

  “Oh,” she said absently, still watching him. Suddenly her heart thumped.

  He picked up his sleeping bag and moved it, closing almost exactly half the distance between them. Just half. She wondered if he even knew himself what he was doing. She didn’t think he was worrying about their tormentor. She thought he was just prying excuses up from shaky ground the way he pulled the past from the earth, wanting to come closer and not daring to, settling for an alternative halfway.

  Her heart thrummed, but then she suddenly felt like crying, although she couldn’t even remember the last time she had done that. It would take time, so much time, for him to close that last little bit of distance, and they had so little time left. She wanted that distance gone more than anything in the world, she realized suddenly, more than she had ever ached for anything in her life. And for the first time in her life, there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. It was out of her control. It was something Mac could only do for himself.

  She lay down in her own sleeping bag, careful to keep her back to him. But it was a long time before she slept.

  * * *

  When the first new sun speared into her eyes in the morning, she looked immediately to where Mac lay. His sleeping bag was empty. Shadow sat up quickly, feeling stricken, feeling life and love and hope slide through her fingers like sand.

  Had he spent the night prowling as he had that first time, unable to bear even this small closeness?

  Then she remembered. He had said he would go up the mountain to hunt this morning. Sh
e let out a shaky breath and kicked her sleeping bag off her legs.

  Her relief lasted only a short time. She looked around the canyon and realized it had an isolated, abandoned feeling without him. Despite the gathering heat, it seemed cold and threatening. She shuddered. She really didn’t want to be here alone.

  Hurriedly, she pulled on a pair of shorts and socks and boots. At the last moment she hesitated and changed her white T-shirt for a bright red one. If he was hunting, then it wasn’t smart to move in on him when he wasn’t expecting her. She didn’t want to leave any doubt that she was of the human persuasion.

  She climbed up the slope in the switchback, then she stood, waiting for the sound of a gunshot, for something to tell her where he was. There was only silence, but Uncle Ernie had taught her how to track. It had been a very long time since she’d had need of the skill, but she finally picked up fresh boot prints and followed them up the mountain.

  She came up on him from behind, then her heart skipped. His hair was pulled back again, and she realized for the first time that it was a style reminiscent of her ancestors. Navajo warriors had once knotted their hair at their napes because braids got in the way of hunting, raiding, fighting for their lives and their people. But even more startling than his hair was the bow and arrow he held. He aimed silently, tensely, at some deer that were nuzzling the water at a nearby hole.

  Shadow gasped just as he shot. He turned back to her sharply, then his face relaxed when he saw her.

  “Wh—what are you doing?” she asked hoarsely.

  He lowered the bow, resting it neatly against a boulder. “Fresh meat tonight. We had a deal.”

  He went to the fallen animal. The others had flown when the small buck he had chosen had fallen.

  “I know...I mean, I didn’t even know you had that thing with you.” She motioned at the bow.

  “It’s kinder, assuming the hunter knows what he’s doing. An arrow to the heart is instant death. It’s fast and it’s silent. This guy never even saw it coming. There was no time for him to know fear, for his instincts to kick in, for them to urge him to run.” He worked the arrow out of the buck. “A bullet isn’t always as accurate. It can deflect off bone more easily if your aim’s half a breath off. Even if it’s not, there’s less guarantee that death is going to be immediate.”

  “Wait,” she said as he started to pick the deer up.

  “For what?”

  She felt dazed. The bow and arrow had given her a jolt, still had her pulse moving oddly. In contrast to that was a warm feeling that tried to squirm inside her at the kind of compassion it would take to make a man worry over the way he killed a deer.

  She finally closed the distance between them and stooped near the animal, murmuring quickly in Navajo, thanking the animal for his life that they might eat. Then she sent him on to the afterworld as Uncle Ernie had taught her to do.

  “Now you go on your way alone. What you are now, we know not. From now on, you are not of this earth,” she said, finishing in English. She straightened again and realized that Mac was watching her with a strange expression.

  Her chin came up. She more than half expected him to mock her, the way Kevin had always done. It was rare that she reverted to her own heritage in the presence of anyone who wasn’t Navajo, at least in spirit.

  “You use your arrows, and I make sure he knows his death wasn’t in vain,” she said stiffly. “It’s more or less the same thing. It’s just a matter of respecting something that’s weaker and dumber than we are.”

  He didn’t answer for a long time. “Can I pick him up now?” he asked finally.

  He wasn’t being sarcastic, she realized. Something moved inside her. He simply didn’t want to do anything that would interfere with what she wanted to accomplish.

  Shadow nodded. “I—yes. His spirit is gone now.”

  He lifted the deer and slung it over his shoulder. “You’re not afraid of it, of his chindi?”

  “Animals don’t have chindis,” she explained, stepping in beside him as he headed back down the mountain.

  “But you said his spirit left.”

  “Spirits and chindis aren’t the same thing. A chindi is everything that was bad and evil about a person in life. Animals are pure. Only people have the intellect to be evil. That’s why I’m so scared of the dead. It’s not a matter of a simple ‘boo!’ in the dark. That I could handle.”

  Mac thought about it and realized it made perfect sense. Her terror at those arrows and at Kokopelli’s shadow had been extraordinarily deep. Now he understood.

  He had given up on any religion, Hopi or white or otherwise—too many gods had let him down. But he thought that this chindi premise might deserve some pondering.

  Later. When he was alone again, with only his thoughts for company, he could think about it. Now he felt a driving, totally uncharacteristic need not to squander a single moment of her remaining time here.

  They reached the canyon again. He found an unobstructed expanse of wall and lowered the deer to let it slide down. “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Starving,” she admitted. The cakes last night had been good, but they weren’t filling and she’d barely touched the stew.

  “So we’ll roast some of this meat now,” he decided.

  She looked at him, surprised. “Don’t you have to start digging in the apartments?”

  That was another thing that could wait a little longer, he decided...until he was alone again. “Those rooms aren’t going anywhere.”

  But she was. He felt a strange, sharp pain in the area of his heart.

  Shadow didn’t understand what was happening, but as the day unraveled she knew that it was precious and rare. Mac was apparently going to take time off from the dig. There was almost a forced easiness about him—an uncharacteristic laziness as palpable as something she could reach out and touch.

  They skinned the deer together and she took the offal back up the mountain for the coyotes. When she returned she settled down beside him to take some of the meat he had cooked. She felt the sun warming her skin—gently at first, then with a burning intensity.

  “I thought you Navajo had a grudge against those guys,” Mac said finally.

  “Against who? Coyotes?” She grinned and shook her head. “Coyote’s the Trickster. But he’s smart and he’s helped us out of more than a few jams. You wouldn’t want to call a Navajo a coyote—that would be an insult. But we owe the Trickster a few favors, so we provide for his kin when we can.”

  “What kind of jams?”

  Shadow chewed, thinking. “Well, he brought us fire, for one thing. Back in the beginning, when we first came up into this world, we didn’t have any. The nights were like pitch and the People were cold and we had to eat our food raw. The fire was up on top of one of the sacred mountains that watch over our land, and it was guarded by birds. So Coyote went up there—we couldn’t, I don’t remember why now—and he tricked one of those birds into sitting on one of the fires. Its tail went up in flames and it panicked and flew right down to us. One of our warriors caught the bird and we’ve been warm and cozy ever since.”

  He cracked a small smile. “Interesting.”

  “How’d the Hopi get it?” she asked deliberately. From the inside out, she thought again. Perhaps, if there wasn’t time to give him anything else, she could give him back what few good memories he’d had.

  But Mac’s smile faded. “I don’t remember. I only lived on the Mesas for a couple of years.”

  “You remembered the skinny cakes.”

  “They have a practical advantage. I need to eat. Cheap, easy fixings came in handy almost from the time I left.” He stood abruptly, kicking sand over their fire. “I’m going to take a bath, get some of this crud off me.”

  Shadow looked at his strong, muscled body and felt the urge to touch him again—as urgently as if she’d never had that glory at all.

  “You should try the waterfall,” she suggested carefully.

  “I intend to.”

&n
bsp; Her jaw dropped. “You do?” He didn’t seem the type to wallow in sensual pleasures—at least not of the solitary kind.

  Then something shot through her blood, something hot just beneath her skin. He reached down and grabbed her hand, hauling her to her feet. He didn’t intend the pleasure to be solitary, she realized.

  His hands moved to her waist. He didn’t pull her close. He didn’t have to. He simply held her, watching her, his rugged face inches from hers.

  “I’m not going to let you hog it,” he said quietly. “Didn’t those Navajo ancestors of yours teach you to share?”

  Her pulse skipped. “No...I mean, sure...but you...you could have used it anytime. I didn’t even show up until a few days ago.”

  It had been the wrong thing to say. His face closed down and he pulled away from her. She watched him, something frantic pushing up in her throat as she wondered why her simple words had struck him so hard.

  Then she understood and it rocked her.

  He hadn’t used the waterfall before because he hadn’t known then how to reach out and touch pleasure, hadn’t wanted to, had closed himself off from everything sweet because it might not be there tomorrow. She was sure he’d had some cold, logical excuse for bathing at the cave side...and she knew that he would probably go back there when she left. But this time, on some level, he would know what he was missing. He would remember that icy spray, the life in that tunneling water, and the quiet, tepid stream on the other side would be somehow lacking.

  For the first time she realized that maybe the kindest thing she could have done was just to have left him alone from the start. Despite all her best intentions, she was giving him something that would be taken away again, if only by his own hand.

  When she didn’t move, Mac looked back at her. And impossibly, though it blew his mind clear to heaven to realize it, he knew exactly what she was thinking.