A Man Without a Haven

by Beverly Bird

  “Me?”

  “There’s less of you. You’d make it before I would. You can go for help.”

  Unless the thief is out there. Then she would surely be killed, and Mac would die in here waiting for her to return.

  “There’s got to be a way we can both go,” she said stubbornly. “Lift me up on your shoulders. Maybe the ceiling moves. So far we’ve found two slabs that have. The Anasazi obviously used these rooms for something—She Who Waits is here. They probably had a lot of hidden ways to get in and out.”

  “I like the way you think, Sergeant.”

  “Don’t call me—” She broke off again, this time with a little gasp as he lifted her effortlessly over his head. For one breath-robbing moment, she remembered the way he had carried her to the waterfall yesterday, then she pushed the memory grimly out of her mind.

  There would be time to remember later. There would be nothing but time in which to remember. Now that it appeared they might get out of here alive, all her desperate determination grew shaky again. They weren’t going to die, and there was no way to follow him for the rest of her life.

  He wouldn’t let her.

  Her head spun badly as she scissored her legs, helping him to settle her on his shoulders. “Can you get me any closer?” she asked tightly.

  He inched them nearer to the fissure. She braced her shoulder against the ceiling and shoved.

  There was a shrieking, grinding sound, but no appreciable difference in the size of the crack. “Try putting pressure the other way,” he suggested. “You might be pushing it closed.”

  He moved around, allowing her to try. Shadow gritted her teeth and braced her shoulder against the rock again.

  “Ah!” It slid, slowly at first, then more and more as she leaned steadily into it. “Yes!”

  “Good. Okay, now come on down from there. I’m going out first, just in case.”

  So he wondered if their tormentor would be out there, too. It frightened her, but then she felt his hard hands capture her waist. He eased her slowly to her feet again, too slowly. Her body slid down his until her heart pounded painfully.

  She closed her eyes, shaken by her immediate response. She had gloried in his touch, in his body, for days now, yet she still hadn’t gotten used to it. Still he could make something heat inside her with a simple, unintentional caress. How am I ever going to live without him?

  She shuddered, then her eyes flew open again as she felt the brush of his mouth over her own.

  “Hey, sweetheart, I told you there would be one more time in the sunshine. And I never break my promises.”

  He always seemed to know what she was thinking. She managed a thin smile.

  He moved away from her, looking around the chamber. He found a boulder too heavy even for him to lift, but he managed to work it away from the wall, into the middle of the room.

  “Look away,” he said tersely.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve got to do something I don’t want to do.”

  Suddenly she understood. “Wait!”

  She looked around wildly for something to wrap the child in. There was nothing. Finally she yanked her T-shirt over her head. Mac made a hoarse sound in his throat as though she had punched him. She looked to find him staring at her bare breasts, then slowly he moved his eyes up to hers.

  The pain she saw there took her breath. She knew then that he would go away, but he would ache for her sometimes when the night was at its darkest. He would ache for what they’d shared.

  She dragged her gaze away first. “I know it’s the only way for us to get out of here,” she acknowledged, “but not her baby, Mac. The baby doesn’t have to be disturbed, too. It was...it was what made her die happy.” And I owe her this much, she thought wildly. She couldn’t have said why, but she felt some sort of kindred link with the long-dead woman.

  Maybe because she would wait, too. She had been right. She would be more like Kokopelli’s mate than like the barren, sex-starved maidens he had serviced.

  She swallowed carefully and knelt to try to ease the fabric beneath the smaller skeleton. Suddenly Mac was beside her.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “No.”

  “What about its chindi?”

  “Newborns don’t have them either. Life isn’t born evil. And I don’t think this baby was very old. She might have died having it. I...I have to do this,” she insisted. Her throat tightened hard.

  Mac watched her chin jut stubbornly. He eased away from her, not understanding, yet afraid that he did.

  “Shadow...”

  “I’ve got it,” she said tightly. She had the T-shirt half under the tiny skeleton and was sliding it the last little way, beneath its legs. Very gently she lifted it from its mother’s breast. When he glanced at Shadow’s face again, he saw that her eyes were shining too brightly.

  A rush of pain nearly staggered him. She had never cried, not even when he had been trying to hurt her. Yet the skeleton of a long-dead child moved her past control.

  He tried to remember all of the reasons he had come up with the night before for letting her go, and she didn’t allow him time to consider any of them.

  “Go ahead. Do the rest,” she said hollowly.

  Mac looked grimly at She Who Waits. Somehow, he thought she might understand this travesty. At least he prayed to God that she would.

  He noticed that Shadow kept her back turned, unable to watch. He moved the boulder through the skeleton, disturbing it as little as possible.

  “I’m sorry,” he said gutturally.

  Shadow flinched and whipped around, but she knew without looking that he wasn’t talking to her and she was right.

  She wondered how she had ever thought him to be cold.

  He finally got the boulder to where he wanted it. He stepped up on it. It gave him just enough height and leverage to work himself through the narrow hole. Shadow laid the baby gently on the skeleton’s chest again and stepped on the rock as well, reaching her hands up to him.

  He grabbed her wrists and pulled her. Then she breathed in clean, sweet air and sunlight. They saw not another human soul.

  She looked around dazedly. They were back in the initial room Mac had been digging in, the one she had first climbed into with his gun. It seemed a lifetime ago now, and she wasn’t sure at exactly what point she’d lost the weapon.

  “How’s your head?” he asked quietly.

  She put her hand to the gash. There was a good-size egg there now, but the bleeding had stopped. “I’ll live. I don’t think I’ll need stitches.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She looked at him curiously. A hard, urgent tone had crept into his voice again.

  “Relatively,” she answered. “Why?”

  “Because I figure I can do one of two things now. I can take you to the nearest doctor, or I can keep my promise.”

  Something hot and liquid pooled at the deepest center of her. “Keep your promise,” she suggested.

  “Yeah,” he said, pulling her to her feet again. “Let’s celebrate. It’s pretty damned good to be alive.”

  Chapter 14

  Shadow thought they’d move down out of the cliff dwelling. She thought they’d go back to the canyon floor where she could touch him, love him, fill him with herself yet again. And she knew before she drew even a single breath that it wasn’t going to be like that, not this time.

  He lifted her off her feet right where they stood, bringing her breasts level with his mouth. He licked the tip of first one, then the other, drawing each in, biting gently. Heat burst through her and she clutched at his shoulders.

  He drew his mouth away immediately, leaving her empty and wanting.

  “Put your hands down,” he said roughly.

  Confused, she let them slide off his shoulders. But then, finally, his mouth came back and she couldn’t think anymore. She gave a broken sigh as he drew her nipple in between his teeth again. Now the heat rushed there, making it so excruciatingly sensitive.
She thought she would die if he didn’t stop, knew she would die if he did. She drove her hands into his hair.

  He pulled away again. “Hands down.”

  “W-why?” she asked.

  “Not this time, sweetheart. This last time we’re going to do it my way.”

  This last time. But she had known that—of course she had known that that was what this was. Tears burned at her eyes; she could feel them trembling on her lashes. But there was at least some small part of her that couldn’t cry at something so beautiful. She ached at losing it, and knew she couldn’t tarnish this last memory with despair. So she accepted with greedy need, with sweet satisfaction.

  He let her slide down his body again until she was molded against him. He pulled the band from her hair and buried his face at her neck, beneath it. His hands were at her breasts now, kneading them, cupping them, claiming them for his own...although she knew he’d never do that.

  She couldn’t stand it. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “You don’t listen, do you?” He disengaged her grip, not quite gently, not quite roughly. “I’m going to take care of you this time, Sergeant. I’m going to pour myself over you without taking anything back for myself. I’m going to make you lose all that control. So keep your hands to yourself.”

  He wondered if he had ever heard anything sweeter than her low, hitching moan. But he knew suddenly that this was the one thing, the only thing that he could give back to her. She had shown him light and warmth and pleasure. He would make her finally know the release of full surrender. By her own admission, it was something no other man had ever given her. It was something nearly impossible for her to take. He understood that now. But she would take it from him. He would see to it.

  He found the button on her shorts and slid the zipper down, but then he stepped back from her again. “Take them off.”

  She looked at him a little wildly. What was he doing to her?

  “Go on,” he urged.

  She pushed them down over her hips, her eyes searching his. He saw something frantic start to grow there. It wouldn’t be easy for her, but in the end she would know it for the gift it was, something wild and vibrant that would stand out in her memory long after the image of those other times between them had faded.

  At least he prayed to God that was what would happen. Because those other times were going to stand out in his.

  “Panties too,” he said roughly, stepping back even more when she would have reached for him. “Boots and socks.”

  She sat down hesitantly and struggled out of her footgear. Then, finally, he touched her again, but it was only to grasp her hand and pull her back to her feet. He caught his thumbs in the top elastic of her panties and slid them down to her ankles.

  She stepped out of them numbly, wonderingly, and hugged herself. They had splashed naked in the waterfall, and groped and touched each other in various stages of undress. Yet this was different. It was the way he just stood there, watching her. It was the way he was still fully clothed. She felt too vulnerable...exposed. As if she were riding a horse and had suddenly lost the reins. As if she were at the mercy of the beast. Her heart raced crazily. The sun was so hot on her bare skin, and his eyes burned her even more as they coasted over her. She felt self-conscious and aroused, embarrassed and hungry for more.

  “No,” he said quietly. “Not like that.”

  “Like...what?”

  He pried her hands loose from her shoulders, making her drop them to her sides again. Without her arms to shield them, the kiss of the faint breeze made her nipples tighten again, just as they had when they had been in his mouth. Without even touching her, he made her almost unbearably aware of her own body, of each and every inch of her flesh. She felt her bare skin begin to tingle.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “That’s better.”

  He closed the distance between them again, his hard hands capturing her hips. Then his palms slid upward, into the warm valley between her breasts. He spread his hands wide, capturing them again, lifting them for his mouth. Shadow groaned.

  “Yes, please, touch me.”

  “I intend to, sweetheart. Just stand still.”

  When she felt the warm wetness of his tongue and his lips on her again, her knees went weak. She understood that he didn’t want her to touch him this time, but she had no choice. She had to brace herself against him, and found herself holding his head against her out of some primitive, aching need instead.

  He allowed that for a moment, then he slid lower. His rough hands traced her spine, molded her hips, her bottom, her thighs. Then they came up again inside her legs.

  “Open to me, sweetheart. Come on. Let it go.”

  She had no real memory of doing so. Every thought that she had was centered on the feeling of his mouth on her belly, on the rough, velvety texture of his tongue at her navel. But somehow she shifted her feet, opening her legs to him. His fingers tangled into her triangle of midnight hair, sliding, searching, and all of her thoughts shattered.

  He would memorize her, he thought. He would remember all of her, always. When the nights got cold, he would pull each recollection out like a cherished snapshot. Then he could get by.

  He traced her layers with his fingertips, pushing them inside her until he knew her better than she knew herself. Then, slowly, he withdrew his hand again.

  “Come back,” she whispered brokenly, suddenly feeling too empty, too hollow without his touch. She thought she heard him chuckle hoarsely.

  But finally he did as she asked, and suddenly her world was nothing but his tender penetrations and sliding withdrawals again. Back and forth...in and out. Her legs started trembling. She had no control over them any longer.

  She was losing control over everything.

  She felt herself sinking, and he let her, easing her gently down onto the rocky floor of the dwelling. But his hand stayed with her, finding the hidden nub at the center of her, coaxing, teasing, until the heat within her burst like a thundercloud, pouring warm rain through her.

  It surprised her, left her weak and dazed, but he didn’t stop. Even before she recovered she felt his mouth follow his hands. He spread her legs farther and she felt his warm breath as exquisitely as a touch. She couldn’t take anymore, yet she needed more. She couldn’t bear anymore, but she would die without it.

  His tongue probed and sought as his fingers had done. She started clawing for his shoulders, but once again he pulled back, coming up over her, trapping her wrists against the rock above her head. He used his free hand to wrestle out of his shorts, and then he drove himself into her.

  He had not meant to take anything for himself, but he knew suddenly that it couldn’t end like that. It should end as it had begun, with them together, joined, sharing with sweet simplicity.

  Sensation exploded inside Shadow all over again, drenching her, until she cried out. He finally let go of her hands to lift her hips, sliding into her deeper, then deeper still, again and again until he felt her unraveling one more time. Still he stayed with her, rocking, moving within her, until his own control was gone, until there was only a small desperate memory of what he had been trying to achieve when he had started this.

  Shadow felt him stiffen above her. His voice ripped from him with a guttural groan. He buried himself within her with one last, final thrust, then he lowered his face to her neck again.

  He said something and she turned her face toward him, into his own neck. “Hmm?”

  She didn’t understand, but then she thought she did. She thought he said, “Remember me.”

  * * *

  By the time they got back down to their campsites, Shadow found she couldn’t talk. Her throat was a solid knot of pain.

  She would not cry.

  She walked ahead of him to her sleeping bag. It was rumpled and bunched from when she had tried to roll it up far too long ago.

  “How are you going to get your stuff back down the mountain?” he asked from behind her. His own voice sounded coarse, s
trangled.

  Shadow shrugged woodenly.

  Where there was a will, there was a way, she thought. Then a wild laugh nearly made it past the knot in her throat. Not always, she thought, not always. She flattened the sleeping bag again, throwing her possessions on top of it. She discarded a few pieces that were too bulky to be rolled over. Maybe someday she would come back for them.

  Probably not.

  She tied the sleeping bag with fumbling fingers, her gear wadded inside, then she finally stood to face him again.

  “You don’t have to rush out of here like a cat with its tail on fire,” he snapped.

  “Yes,” she rasped. “I do.”

  It was time now. It simply felt as though it was time to go. Her instincts had been right—something had been wrong in this canyon, although it had nothing to do with Mac. They had found it and now her mission—and all that it had encompassed—was over. He had been saying goodbye up in that cliff dwelling, and they both knew it.

  Besides, they couldn’t stay here now and she was sure he was aware of that as well. Sooner or later whoever had trapped them in the cave would come back. He would expect to find seven bodies inside. When there were still only five, he would be angry and frantic. When he realized what room they had escaped from, he would know they knew his secret. It would be best if they were both as far away as possible when it happened, and there was no way they would be going anywhere together.

  She finally got her voice back. “I’ll stop...at the Shiprock police subagency on my way home. They’ve got to be notified now.”

  Mac nodded. She noticed that he wouldn’t quite look at her.

  “Where will you go?” she asked, not really wanting to know. She thought if he said the Yucatán, she would probably die.

  “I’m thinking about driving down the Baja,” he answered, and she breathed again. “I’ll roast on the beach for a while and decide what to do next. It might be worth it to go back to all the old sites and try to restructure the life of She Who Waits more completely. I haven’t decided yet.” He hesitated, then finally glanced her way. “You should see a doctor about that lump on your head.”