Everywhere their bodies touched, she felt his desire. He pressed her into the mattress, crushing her breasts, her belly, his weight a pleasure against her clit. There was something comforting about having his arms support her, having his breath against her head.
Inside her, his penis seemed to warm and throb, sharing with her his exultation in this joining. Pleasure came in waves, gently lapping at the shore of her consciousness, easing the pain and painting her mind in subdued shades of violet, jade, and rose.
As she relaxed, he nudged closer, opening her more.
She felt the hurt, she truly did, but she was awash with a desire that grew more demanding as his joy increased, as the colors grew stronger, more pure . . . Then he was all the way inside, and she was so full of John Powell she couldn’t imagine living without him. He began to move, in and out, a large, vital, forceful man. Her man . . .
She wrapped her legs and arms around him, caught up in the primitive glory. She was seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling John inside and out, accepting his passion and radiating it back at him. She knew—she knew—he was losing his discipline, driving into her faster and longer; felt his balls tightening, preparing for orgasm, while his mind grappled for mastery.
She didn’t want him to regain control. She wanted to know they had made the leap together.
Gathering the fragile shreds of her restraint, she tilted her hips—and deep inside, she stroked him with her inner muscles.
For a split second he paused, shaking.
Then his control splintered. He gathered her close, thrust hard and fast, driving inside with desperate need.
As his powerful desire surged through her, climax flared in her veins and, behind her eyelids, colors burst into fireworks that lit the darkness of her lonely soul.
Tears slid out of her eyes—tears of pleasure and of pain, tears for her lost innocence, and tears of joy because, for the first time in her life, someone was a part of her.
Slowly the tide of pleasure receded. Slowly, she came back to the bed and the cabin and John.
“Are you all right?” He remained on top of her, dominating her, but he brushed her hair off her forehead and the tears off her cheeks. “I was rough. I didn’t mean to be. I just . . . I always thought I could stay in control, but you . . . I just wanted you too much. No excuse, of course. I shouldn’t have . . . are you all right?”
She repressed a smile at this man who so rigidly took responsibility for his actions, and gave himself no leeway. “I’m fine. More than fine. I wish I’d met you a hundred years ago and we had spent all that time in bed.”
He grinned, quick and brash. “So I’ve got permission to love you for a hundred years?”
Again, he’d said, Love. Worse, this time, he’d added something that sounded like Forever.
“Sure. A hundred years sounds about right, although sooner or later, I’m going to need some serious sustenance.”
“Are you hungry?” With the sensitivity of a man who didn’t fault her for her trepidation or dismiss the newness of her experience, he gradually moved out of her, slid to the edge of the bed, and stood. “Let me feed you. It’s the least I can do.”
“Not the soup on the fire,” she joked. “It’s got commando carrots and pissy potatoes, and it’ll never actually finish cooking.”
“We’ll eat it later. In the meantime, how about some stew?” He stood, glorious in his nakedness, and walked to the locker at the foot of the bed.
She watched him as he opened the locker and brought out a bulky, crinkled envelope.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“An MRE. Army rations.”
“Oh.” She watched as he poured water into the packet and placed it on the woodstove to warm. “You’d think I could have found that in the first place.”
“You were busy . . . taking care of me.”
As he dressed, she wrapped her arms behind her head and scrutinized him.
Before she knew John, she had dreamed of a man like him. As she got to know him, her admiration for him had grown—and so had her desire for him. When he sickened and lost control of his power, she hadn’t been afraid; she had been compassionate.
Never had she been afraid of him. Not until tonight, when he said she had absorbed a part of him, and again when he mentioned love.
Then she’d been torn—she wanted to back off, to run away, to think before she leaped. But he had teased her, tempted her, used every weapon at his disposal to make her yield.
She had more than yielded. He had taught her the depths of her own passion, and showed her the depths of his. Now she was afraid, more afraid than she had been before.
She flung her forearm over her eyes.
What had changed? What had happened during their lovemaking to rock her to the core?
Nothing at all, except . . . except now she couldn’t deny the truth.
For the first time in her life, she loved someone with all her mind and soul.
She loved John Powell.
Chapter 30
On the table by John’s bed, Genny placed a bowl of soup wrapped in a towel, a cup of water, and a note. The note read,
Am going into town to shower and change. Be back as soon as I can.Her hand hovered over his head, wanting to give him one farewell caress.
But she loved him. And she didn’t want to feel this way about him or any man. She pulled her hand back, and wished this love she felt could be as easily withdrawn. Trouble loomed between them, and it was a trouble of her own making.
Going to the cabinet, she looked again at the pile of letters sitting on top. They were from New York City, and the postmarks stretched back almost two years. The first ones, from the Gypsy Travel Agency, had been read, then stuffed back into their envelopes. Then came a series of unopened letters from the Gypsy Travel Agency. Finally, the latest envelope, still sealed, was from a name she recognized—Irving Shea, former CEO of the Agency and one of the men who had been adamant about removing her father from his position in the company.
Ever since, her father had cursed his name.
Yet he’d been willing to sell her services to Irving and the Gypsy Travel Agency. She had to wonder at his change of heart.
With her father, she always had to wonder at his motivations.
What had changed that now Irving himself approached John Powell? Was this because she hadn’t produced results in the time he had allotted?
Again she glanced at John, asleep on the bed.
He had an obligation to the Chosen Ones to finish his contract.
She had an obligation to the Gypsy Travel Agency to try to convince him it was the right thing to do.
Yet the unopened letters were a testament to how deeply he resented the commitment. And she had never seen reason to believe that love could overcome any difficulty. If anything, her parents had taught her that love could be withheld. Love could be wielded like a weapon. If Genny wasn’t careful, John Powell could hurt her as she had never been hurt before.
Opening the front door, she strode out into the crisp morning air—and stopped.
Under the tree, the lynx Lubochka called Nadja and John called Mama Cat sat waiting, her gaze fixed on the hut. Her eyes narrowed on Genny, demanding an accounting.
Genny sat down on the step.
The great cat strolled forward, smooth and graceful. Reaching Genny, she turned and sat beside her, and together they gazed across the panorama of forest and hills toward the Seven Devils.
“He’s okay,” Genny told her. “He was pretty sick. I guess you know that. But once he started releasing all that energy, he got better.” Once he’d started making love to her, he’d gotten magnificent . . . but Genny suspected the lynx knew that, too. “The scratches you gave him are almost healed”—Genny had never seen a recovery so miraculous—“although the scars will never disappear. No harm done, and John and I are both very sorry Brandon found your den. I swear, I don’t know how he did it. But I pray the kittens are safe, and when I return to civiliz
ation . . .” She was pierced by the knowledge that all too soon she would have to leave this wilderness, this forest, this man, this cat . . . these feelings, this freedom. Anguish made it hard to breathe.
But she had to leave. She had earned a degree and managed to earn a job offer. She had a father who depended on her. Duty inevitably summoned.
So she cleared her throat and continued to talk to the lynx as if the cat could comprehend every word. “When I return to civilization, I will do everything I can to protect you and your habitat. Eventually, in my own way I’ll be powerful. Just survive until I can come back. Promise me you’ll survive.”
The lynx leaned against Genny’s shoulder, leaned hard.
“Okay. Good.” Genny leaned back, giving support and getting it. “Do you know what he said to me? He said, You don’t have to do anything except lie there while I show you what love is.” It made her throat scratchy to repeat it. “That makes me really uncomfortable. He didn’t really mean love, did he? Because if I love him, well, that’s my problem.”
The lynx turned her head and looked at Genny as if she were spouting nonsense.
“I know it’s stupid to fall in love with a guy who spent two years dressed in furs and covered with hair, but I can’t do anything about it. They’re my emotions and I have the right to feel them. What I want to know is—was he saying that he loved me? Because if he does . . . I’m simply not used to that. I wouldn’t know what to do. I think I’d be afraid, especially because he’s so big and so smart and so . . . much.” Genny used her hands to indicate a man and a presence that overwhelmed her. “I do value myself. I do. But I’ve got issues. If John loves me and I love him, as long as I tell him I came to talk to him, I suspect we could work out the breach of integrity. But what do I do about my father? What do I do about the fact that I . . . since I’ve been here in the Ural Mountains, I feel as if I’ve found myself. I should be a forest ranger or at least a veterinarian. Can I force myself to go back to New York? Can I be my father’s savior and the woman John loves? I don’t know who I am!”
The lynx stood and brushed against Genny like a giant house cat.
Genny ran a hand over her fur, not so much giving comfort as seeking it.
Mama Cat looked into Genny’s eyes, placed her paw lightly on Genny’s knee, then strolled away, her tail moving in a hypnotic rhythm—and she disappeared into the forest’s shadows.
Genny pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, pushing back yet more tears, and wondered why everything felt so new, so raw, why the world looked fresh. . . . Determinedly, she ignored what she had already realized.
The world looked new because she was new. Inside and out, she’d been swept clean by John’s energy, pouring through her, reforming her, making her part of him.
He had used the word love, the one word she had longed all her life to hear, yet now she was torn by the weight of the expectations on her shoulders, and she almost wished he had never spoken.
She didn’t know what she should do. She only knew . . . she loved John, and the emotion was too raw to contain.
With a quick, longing glance at the hut, she started toward Rasputye. She wanted to get there and back before he woke up.
She knew exactly how to find the town, her newfound confidence in the woods likely a result of John’s teachings. She couldn’t have suddenly developed an inner compass, yet she moved swiftly, tirelessly. Her vigor was probably a result of the energy that had poured through her the night before. . . .
But she didn’t want to think about that.
She should discover whether Brandon had returned from their confrontation, whether Lubochka’s team was searching for him . . . or for her.
Possibly—in fact, probably—Lubochka didn’t care if Brandon had returned safely. Lubochka despised Brandon, and for good reason. For that matter, so did Genny . . . although she supposed she shouldn’t hope that Mama Cat ate him. The truth was, Genny knew Mama Cat had let him go, and she also knew he had made up some story about her and the lynx and told it to anyone who would listen.
Lubochka wouldn’t believe him . . . but would she worry when Genny didn’t arrive back at the inn?
Perhaps. But Lubochka was dedicated to the science of the lynx. Genny didn’t fool herself; Lubochka might be very pleased with Genny’s lynx sightings, but she would be just as displeased that Genny had taken time off, and wouldn’t give a damn that she had only done it to aid a sick man.
Although not sick at all now. As he had said, he sickened quickly and now he slept deeply, without fever or restlessness.
So if Genny’s timing was good, she could sneak into the inn without Lubochka seeing her.
She fervently hoped her timing was good.
As she approached Rasputye, she noted changes in the forest: dead branches broken out of the trees, flowers flattened by some unseen force. She reached the first house, and walked across a sheen of straw spread across the track like a golden carpet. When she entered the village, it seemed oddly empty, as if everyone had evacuated. One of the homes had had shingles from its roof peeled off. On another, the shutters dangled. She stepped on something that crunched under her foot, and realized it was a pane of glass, broken out of a window.
Later, Genny wondered how she could have let her happiness blind her to truth, but as she walked toward the inn, she thought only that a great wind had blown through Rasputye.
In a way, it had.
But really, who would have thought that John could project his power from so many miles away?
Genny slipped into the inn as quietly as she could; she didn’t want to meet anyone, to explain where she’d been.
No one was in the traktir, although she could hear voices in the kitchen, and she met no one as she climbed the stairs to the attic. There she gathered clean clothes and made her way back down to the bathroom.
As usual, the shower changed temperature constantly, the soap was harsh, and the towel was thin and rough, but after the events of the past thirty hours, being clean was glorious. Or perhaps she didn’t mind because last night had been awful and frightening, awesome and splendid, and now she was going back to John.
Despite her misgivings, she wanted nothing so much as to return to his side.
She dressed as quickly as she could in the military-type khakis with her ankle-height boots. She headed toward the stairway. If she could collect that meal from Mariana . . .
But a rumble rose from the traktir, voices speaking angrily, one over another, and Genny slowed, wondering what was going on. It didn’t sound like one of Rasputye’s nightly drinking parties.
And, anyway, it was morning.
But she’d found Rasputye to be an odd little village, a place out of time where housewives worked beside their thin farmer husbands, then cooked their dinners and at night told stories about monsters in the woods. Nothing they did should surprise her.
Mariana called out, bringing them to order, so it was a meeting of some kind.
Genny waited at the top of the stairs, thinking that once the meeting was in session, she could slip through the crowd and out the door.
Then Mariana said, “What are we going to do about John Powell?”
Chapter 31
Genny froze.
Mariana continued. “We all felt those waves of power last night.”Genny swallowed her gasp of dismay.
“We all know what that kind of disturbance means. He’s out of control. He’s targeting us. His presence is creating havoc, destruction!”
Genny had never heard Mariana sound like that—hard and cold, angry and vindictive.
“So I ask again,” Mariana said, “what are we going to do about John Powell?”
Grumbling rose into the stairway like oily smoke up a chimney.
Genny leaned against the wall and slid halfway down the stairs. There she could huddle and peer into the traktir. The village was there en masse—farmers, hunters, the baker, the grocer, the husbands and wives, the beggars and thieves. Genny’s team stood at t
he back of the room. Misha, Lubochka, Reggie, Thorsen, Avni, and Brandon. Every one of them stood with their arms crossed over their chests. All of them looked grim and concerned—except Brandon.
Brandon looked triumphant.
One of the farmers lifted his pitchfork. “John Powell blew over my haystack. He spread it everywhere. It’s ruined, no good to anyone!”
An elderly woman spoke, her voice quavering. “The window in my living room shattered, and the handles on my china cups popped off.”
An angry murmur rose, and Mariana said, “Of course he would target you, Tanja. John Powell was never grateful that you saved him from the orphanage and raised him.”
Tanja? Genny scooted farther down, far enough to view the front of the traktir.
There sat a woman who looked like Jabba the Hutt.
She was the one who had sold John to the circus, and these people of Rasputye believed—or pretended to believe—that she was the heroine of this incident. Because the handles on her china cups popped off.
Genny was sickened.
Tanja hefted herself to her feet. “I’m old enough to remember what it was like when John Powell’s mother thought she had been betrayed by her lover. She wreaked havoc in Rasputye before she went off and killed herself, and tried to kill her baby. Do we want those horrors to happen again?”
“No!” the villagers howled like a single hungry beast.
In this hamlet of tall, slender, hardworking people, Tanja was rolling with fat. She lived richly off the moneys she had made exploiting John and other people, other children.
These people of Rasputye gave their allegiance to her. They should be ashamed. They probably were ashamed. Yet they would go to hell for her rather than face a new day with John.
“My wife left me today.” The baker stood there, his ham-sized fists clenching and unclenching. “When Powell was . . . was rutting like an animal, she started wanting things. Lewd things. When I hit her like she deserved, she walked out. Took the train to Moscow.” He looked around at the other men and roared, “John Powell is ruining our women for work!”
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