by Beverly Bird
He closed the distance between them again, scraping his fingers through her hair on either side of her head. “It was always my choice, Sergeant,” he said roughly. “I only let you think you were leading the way.”
Then he kissed her again, hard, punishingly, until her knees felt weak and she had to dig her fingers into his waist to hold on. She didn’t believe him, but she would worry about it later....
Later. When later came, she thought she would probably have a lot of thoughts that haunted her for a very long time.
But now he was pulling her down the canyon, at first only tugging on her hand, but then they were running. She laughed huskily at the sheer joy of it. Why was it, she wondered, that when you grew up you never simply ran anymore unless something was chasing you, unless something was wrong? He felt it too—she could see it in the almost surprised look on his face. Then he grinned and it took her breath away.
He swung her close as they reached the switchback, one arm hard around her waist, holding her, even as he worked at the button on her shorts with the other. He let her go to push them down her legs with both hands. Shadow kicked out of them and yanked her shirt over her head. When she looked again, Mac was naked and he was pulling her into the stream right where they stood.
He wasn’t grinning anymore. He wore an intent expression that made her heart chug in anticipation.
The first icy touch of the water was a shock after the sun, curling frigid fingers around her calves. But his skin was warm, so warm.
“Here,” he rasped. “Right here. I want you just the way you were the first time I saw you naked, in the water.”
Her heart spasmed as she remembered the look in his eyes that day. She dove into him again as she had wanted to from the first, but this time she did it purely for him, all for him, giving what he found it so difficult to reach out and take for himself. Pleasure, she thought, just pleasure, and maybe it would glow inside him long after she had to let him go.
She wouldn’t cry.
Her hands framed his face and she brushed his mouth again and again, using her tongue and her lips and her teeth, whatever it took until she felt him tremble with the goodness of it. She bit his lip, holding it as her tongue stroked there, until he groaned her name and his arms tightened around her, urging her down into the water.
They sprawled together with a splash. He lowered himself on top of her and she drove her hands into his hair, taking all his mouth this time. The force of his response was instant and raw.
Suddenly Mac’s breath was a hard, painful rock in his throat. Her lips and her tongue slid down his neck, licking up the water, warm following cold...she seemed to savor the feel of his body, and she soothed his soul. He realized that no one had ever given to him like this before, and knew that no one would again.
Her tongue found one of his nipples through his chest hair and her teeth dragged at it. Sensation shot through him. He straightened his arms, bracing his weight on them to rise above her. He had to be inside her, had to find that home he knew waited within the wet, welcoming heat of her, but this time she wouldn’t let him. Her hands, cold from the water, slid over his waist and belly, over skin that his own blood had heated. The contrast made him shudder...or maybe it was her, only her. Her fingers closed over his rigid male flesh until the heat of him warmed her touch, and then he knew that the trembling inside him had nothing to do with ice and fire at all.
He was going to lose the last tenuous grip he had on control. He caught her hand to stop her but then he only found himself moving his hips against her grasp. Her hand tightened, and something growled from his throat. It might have been her name or it might have been a plea. Everything he knew about life and loving shattered into a million pieces inside him until he found himself enjoying for the sake of pleasure, until he gave himself up to her without wondering how he was going to get away when it was done.
“Now,” she gasped. “Now take me.” Now, when there were finally no defenses in his eyes.
But he didn’t, at least not as she thought he would. He didn’t slide into her with a groan and a giving in. He thrust hard and fast and completely so that her breath shot out of her, then he lifted her at the same time until he was kneeling.
“Wrap your legs around me. Hold on. That’s it.”
She did and he got to his feet, taking them, still joined together, the rest of the way to the waterfall. Then he eased her down again without leaving her, covering her, absorbing the freezing spray of the water with his own body, giving her only his heat. Then and only then did he begin moving inside her, penetrating, then withdrawing until she moaned and moved her own hips to capture him more fully.
Maybe he was only letting her think she was leading the way, but it didn’t matter, because now they were together and even as she groped for his shoulders, he tangled his hands in her wet hair. This time when she took, he gave. This time as she surrendered, he demanded.
The water crashed over them and she was as she had been the first time he had seen her here, the time he had first wanted her with such sudden force that he had almost forgotten to breathe. He watched her arch beneath him, her head falling back, her hair sleek and streaming and pooling in the water beneath them. Her nipples were tight and hard from the cold and from the fire inside her. Her legs were wrapped unflinchingly around him, so strong and slender. He wanted this time to go on forever, but she gave a rippling, throaty cry of release and the sound tore into him. He felt his own completion roar through him, pulsing, pouring, and he gave himself into her keeping.
Chapter 12
Two more days.
Shadow shifted in her sleeping bag, half rolling over so she could watch him as he slept. He remained just close enough that she could see him despite the impossible light, not near enough to touch. The moon had gone and the sun had not arrived yet, and the sky was thick, dark gray against the blacker canyon walls.
He was snoring slightly, and that almost made her want to smile. How long since she had been close enough to a man, had wanted to be close enough to hear him snore? Never, she realized. And she knew with a pang that she never would again.
Suddenly anger closed her throat. It was all so stupid! She wanted to spend all her days beside him, all her nights rolling with him, skin to skin. She knew that he enjoyed her company as well—he certainly seemed to enjoy making love with her. Why couldn’t that be enough? Why couldn’t she twist this situation, wrestle with it, make it workable?
She tried. She thought she could go back to work on Monday and return here next weekend—after all, it was only a five-hour trip. They could spend a couple of days laughing, touching, loving beneath the broiling sun again, then they could do it all over the following weekend and the one after that.
Until he finished his work in the canyon. Until he moved on to continue his quest for She Who Waits.
Sooner or later it would have to end, Shadow realized. She knew it was best for both of them if it happened now—like a Band-Aid being yanked off suddenly instead of by small, painful degrees. He would move on and she would find other broken doves, ones she could truly save. And there would be memories.
Mac Tshongely was who he was, and it could not end any other way than that. She doubted if she would have been drawn to him in quite the same way if he had not been broken, wary, if each of his kindnesses had not been so rare and pure.
She rolled back the other way, trying to sleep a little more until dawn came.
* * *
Mac knew the instant she rolled back over, but he cracked one eye to make sure. He fought the ragged sigh in his throat, fought against altering his breathing, against doing anything that might let her know that he was awake.
He didn’t want to talk anymore. He’d had enough of moonlight confessions. He couldn’t give her anymore. Still, questions tormented him.
He realized that he didn’t even know her last name. Where would she go when she left here? Back to what kind of life? He had a strong instinct that she’d be surrounded
by family—steady, stalwart people who bolstered her. She’d tried to leave them before, and had ended up running from the man who’d taken her from them.
There was no future for them. He couldn’t give her a home. He didn’t have one, didn’t want one, but she was the kind of woman who needed just that. She had said as much. If she tried to follow him from dig to dig, she would end up leaving him as well, lonesome and aching for all those anchors she had left behind.
He could ask her to come back next weekend, but he wouldn’t because he couldn’t bear that ultimate ending. Better, he thought, that they just have this time in the sun. The shock of its abrupt ending would shake them both for a while, but then they would go on.
He would go back to a past that endured.
She would go home to a family that loved her, something he didn’t trust, couldn’t even begin to comprehend, even now that he had found his way into her warmth. After all, he had known from the first that warmth was transient.
He forced his eyes closed, wondering if he would be able to sleep again until dawn.
* * *
By the time Shadow woke fully, Mac was already digging again. She heard the sibilant sound of his brush moving against sand and rock and she looked up at the new site in the cliff dwellings. He was already in there, and her skin crawled. He was in the rear of one of the center rooms. All that lingering evil. She stood up shakily.
The coffeepot was sitting on top of his flickering, dying fire. Normally she would have taken him a fresh cup. She couldn’t bring herself to do it under these circumstances. She couldn’t go up there.
She wondered suddenly if he had counted on that.
She thought of a bath and vetoed that idea, too. She didn’t want to go back to the waterfall alone.
She gave a choked, hoarse laugh. All things considered, it was better if she left today instead of dragging it out.
She went to his fire and poured herself a cup of coffee, then she carried it back to her sleeping bag and settled down there with her notebook. She flipped through all the pages filled with her notes about what he had taken out of the first dig. Her mouth twisted wryly.
Well, it was about time she admitted that it had just been an excuse. She had been running from Cat and Jericho’s baby, from her own lost sense of self. And she had tumbled straight into the arms of a jaded man who vastly preferred to be alone.
She put the notebook down again with a slap. If Mac heard it, he didn’t look down from the new dig. She shot a surreptitious glance at him, but he kept working. She started to roll up her sleeping bag and realized her hands were shaking.
Think about practicalities. She would have a hard time getting everything back down the mountain again. Her tent was gone—and with it her backpack frame and the nylon sack itself. But for the first time in her memory she couldn’t think how to adjust to the circumstances. Something was choking her breath off, and with it the blood to her brain. Something was burning at her eyes, blurring her vision. It wasn’t tears. She never cried. She gave a wretched curse and settled back on her haunches, rubbing them.
That was when she heard Mac give a strange, strangled sound.
She looked up but didn’t see him. Her heart plummeted. For one breathtaking moment she had thought that maybe he had seen what she was doing and would try to stop her. But he wasn’t watching her because she couldn’t even see him.
His voice came again, too quiet, too strained and tense. He was saying something, but she couldn’t quite make out his words. She stood again, scowling, her eyes searching over the cliff dwellings.
She saw a spot of blue in the apartment farthest to the right—undoubtedly his clothing. But if it was Mac, he was standing very, very still.
“What?” she called up to him. “What’s wrong?” Chindis, she thought again, but she remembered that he didn’t believe in them before her knees could go weak.
“My gun,” he answered quietly. She had to strain to hear. “Snake load. In the chest.”
Snake load? They were small, flat-tipped bullets loaded with tiny pellets that would spray upon contact to take out a skinny, sliding enemy. So there was a rattler up there. Her heart steadied. She could handle that.
Except she was going to have to go in there to take the gun to him. She swallowed dryly.
“Hurry,” he ordered with more force.
She couldn’t think about chindis now. With sheer force of will, she pushed them from her mind. He had left the gun near his sleeping bag and she grabbed it as she jogged to the place where his tent had been. She found the bullets in his chest and exchanged them for the real ones, ramming them home. Then she ran back to the opposite cliff wall.
She shoved the gun into her waistband and climbed up. When she reached the first apartment where he had been working, she fought the urge to hug herself against a chill that was surely all in her mind. She began making her way carefully to the right, to the place he was now, then she froze.
Not a snake. A lot of snakes. “Oh, my God,” she breathed, her blood draining.
Her voice was almost lost beneath the chhhhhhh of all their tails. There was a huge, shifting knot of them, heads gliding gracefully up, tongues flicking for a moment before they sank again into the morass. Shadow fought the urge to scream.
She was not afraid of snakes. But this...this was too much.
“Shoot,” Mac said quietly.
“I...I can’t.”
It was impossible, she thought wildly, and surely he knew it. If she shot from where she stood now, the snake load would spray into his flesh as well. If she moved to aim around him, the snakes would sense her motion and strike him. Why were there so many of them?
He would probably survive one bite, she thought. He might even survive two, if she could get him to one of their trucks without moving him too much. But there were easily twenty-five rattlers in there, in an oval depression against the far wall that might once have been a shrine.
A thin cry came from her throat, one of such horror it made him stiffen. He waited helplessly for her to get a grip on herself, knowing she would, sooner or later, knowing she was that kind of woman. But later might not count. Later he might already be dead.
Believe, Shadow thought. All she could do was believe. It was the only thing that might save him. In the end it was the only thing she could truly give him. Life, so that he could move on. Breath, so that he could drink in a solitary sunrise even one more time. If she didn’t do something, she doubted if he would ever walk out of this canyon.
She sank slowly down to her haunches, closing her eyes. Remember. It had been so long since she had thought of the chant she needed now, an ageless one taught to her by her uncle and brother. Oh, sweet Holy People, how did it go?
Suddenly it filled her mind, seeping into her the way light filled the sky at dawn. She stood again carefully, and in that moment there was not a doubt in her mind that the Holy Ones had heard her, had felt her desperation, were with her, by her side.
Mac sensed her movement and his breath caught. What the hell was she doing?
She came up beside him, then moved past him, closer and closer to the nest—but not a nest, he thought in some still rational, functional part of his mind. He was torn between that sudden realization and the urge to grab her back. The need to protect her was suddenly a violent, clawing animal within him, and if he died in doing so, then he died. But something about her stopped him.
Her face. It was so...serene. Her eyes seemed unseeing.
His hands clenched at his sides but stayed there. Somehow he knew that if he moved now, if he shattered her concentration, he would destroy both of them.
She was murmuring something softly, some spell.
“I cast over you the magic formula to make an enemy peaceful. Put your feet down with pollen. Put your hands down with pollen. Put your heads down with pollen. Then your feet are pollen, your hands are pollen, your bodies are pollen. Your mind is pollen, your voice is pollen. The trail is beautiful. Be still. You are at
peace.”
Gradually, the rattling stopped. Mac stared disbelievingly.
“Go,” she murmured. “Find warm rocks to sun yourselves. It is cold here. There is death here. Go away.”
She moved again so that her toes were no more than inches from them. A sharp pain screamed behind Mac’s eyes, trying to make him shout in protest, but they didn’t strike her.
One slid up the wall of the niche, going higher. Another wound its way over the side of the cliff dwelling, heading for the canyon floor. “There is nothing good here,” Shadow whispered. A few more split off. Mac felt his heart shift in alarm as one wove its way between his planted feet, but it passed by him without biting.
“I am your friend. I tell you the truth.” She moved into them even farther. His eyes bugged as they brushed past her ankles, moving on.
“Goodbye.”
They were all leaving now, slithering, bright, beady eyes darting about as they sought some other place to rest. Shadow closed her own eyes, relief making her weak. She sagged against the back of the alcove, adrenaline rushing out of her too fast.
“It’s okay now,” she began, but then her voice choked off in a scream.
At first he didn’t understand. He thought one had bitten her after all. But they were all past them now, and he heard the sharp, grating sound of moving rock. She brought one hand up, grasping blindly at the air, and then she was gone.
Gone?
Mac lunged forward but it was too late. Her scream faded as she fell. Where the back of the alcove had been, there was nothing now but a black, gaping hole.
He roared her name and dropped down beside it, feeling disassociated and dazed. In the next moment, his brain cleared into sharp, cutting clarity. There would be time later to think about what she had just done. Now the pieces of what had happened afterward came clicking together in his mind.
No, the snakes hadn’t been nesting. There were too many of them. They had been planted here, like deadly watchdogs. Rage streamed hotly into his blood. They had been meant for him, but she had gotten past them and God only knew what had happened to her now.