by Cindy Gerard
Her eyes were closed. Her arms limp, her palms upturned where they lay on the table by her head. He bit back another oath when he saw the delicate flesh of her breasts reddened and swollen from his rough treatment.
“Did I hurt you bad, green eyes?”
Her eyes fluttered open. Her kiss-swollen lips lifted in a sultry little smile. “You hurt me good...so good,” she murmured and let her eyes drift shut again. “I don’t believe I’ve ever known anyone who enjoyed frosting as much as you do.”
He told himself it was relief that let the small smile get away from him. Then he reined it in, reminding himself that no matter what she said, he’d treated her badly.
“Don’t move,” he ordered as he left the kitchen to get a blanket, suppressing another smile at her mumbled “Don’t worry.”
He hadn’t intended to attack her. He’d woken, found her gone and gone looking for her. He wasn’t entirely insensitive. His concern had been that she might be feeling self-conscious about their lovemaking. He’d wanted to offer some assurance that she’d pleased him—and to assure himself that he hadn’t been too rough with her.
Instead of finding a timid and contemplative little sparrow, he’d found a summer bird in full feather. And he’d been blown away. Everything about the look of her—from her tiny bare feet to her tousled hair, still studded with wisps of crushed baby’s breath, to the sight of his shirt covering her to her knees and trailing provocatively off one shoulder—had tempted him to steal another kiss, induce a shivery sigh.
It wasn’t supposed to have gone any further than that. He’d just wanted a kiss. Just a promise of more pleasure, until after she’d rested and he’d gotten himself under control. But a kiss hadn’t been enough.
She’d been incredible. An intoxicating blend of wide-eyed innocence and pagan seduction.
When he returned to the kitchen with the blanket, the pleasure of seeing her in all her pink, naked glory almost waylaid his resolve to back off and let her be. With a grim set of his mouth and a determination to see to her needs, he eased her up, bundled her in the blanket, then carried her to the sofa in front of the fire.
“Don’t go,” Her voice was small, her eyes soulful when he’d turned toward the kitchen.
“I’ll be right back,” he assured her, troubled but not surprised by his need to reassure her. “You need something to eat.”
Her eyes narrowed, then glistened with a sweet, seductive fire.
“Something more substantial than cake,” he added, and got the hell out of there before he gave in to the temptation to unwrap her and take her one more time.
She ate with the enthusiasm of a lumberjack. Either he’d never noticed or she’d kept herself in polite control until now. She dug into the sandwich he’d made her like she hadn’t eaten in a week—or like a woman who’d lost more than her sexual inhibitions.
He’d never dreamed she’d be such a delicious little wanton. And he’d never factored in this insatiable need to make love to her.
He didn’t want to explore the reasons why. He sure as hell didn’t want to dwell on them. He wasn’t a kid whose hormones led him around. He was a man who prided himself on his control.
And she was a woman who had the ability to strip that control to the bone.
He glanced at the clock. And swore. It was barely seven o’clock. There was a lot of darkness left in this night. And a lot of woman on his sofa, willing to let him take advantage of it and her. He couldn’t let it keep happening. He hadn’t hurt her yet, but if he gave in to every erotic craving she brought out in him, they’d both be in need of medical attention by morning.
He had to get away from her. Or at least get them both out of the cabin. The last thought sounded far better than the first.
“Are you up for a little exercise?” he asked, when she’d polished off the last of her sandwich.
Her head came up. She flushed, then gave him a sassy little grin he had a hard time keeping himself from answering.
“I’ll rephrase. Are you up for a little outside exercise—and some fresh air?”
She toned down her smile, cast a glance toward the windows. “It’s dark out there.”
He rose, taking her plate with him. “Not that dark. The moon is full. There’s plenty of light.”
She considered, then shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”
He took one last look at her, all rosy and dewy soft and undeniably tempting and set his jaw. “Go ahead and get dressed while I let Nashata out and check on the pups.”
Mackenzie felt foxy and female and invincible. Even though she recognized that lust was a far cry from love, equal measures of both stirred her as she walked out of the cabin and into the December moonlight beside her husband.
He was right. The light was soft but plentiful. A big yellow moon hung low over the tops of the snow-laden pine forest. Shadows tumbled and shifted with a gentle winter wind. Starlight glittered with a brilliance unlike any she’d ever seen beneath the smog-clogged skies in the city.
She stopped. Shoved her hands deep in her pockets and stared in awe at the canvas of moonlight and star fire.
“It’s...awesome,” she managed finally.
He was quiet beside her, then surprised her by letting go of a piece of himself.
“I think this is what drew me back to the lake more than anything else. These quiet nights. The clarity. The silence so acute you can hear a snowflake fall.”
“Were you gone a long time?” she asked softly, afraid to push, but afraid to lose the moment if she let this chance go by. She wanted to know. Why had he left? Why did he return? What made him so afraid to let someone in?
He started walking again. She fell in step beside him not knowing if her wait would yield an answer or more silence.
They reached the stable before he spoke. “I left here when I was eighteen. I decided to come back five years ago.”
She wanted more, but decided to wait until he chose to give it freely. “Wise decision,” she said, and answered his considering look with a soft smile.
He reset his expression in that mask he thought he’d perfected so well and opened the stable door. Flipping the light switch, he urged her in ahead of him.
The pair of black horses lolled contentedly in their open stalls. She’d known of their existence, had heard Mark jabber about the way they’d dragged the Christmas tree home the day she and Maggie had gone shopping, but she’d never seen them close up.
“They’re huge,” she said without preamble, struck by the size of them. “What on earth do you feed them?”
She watched from a distance as he snagged a flat, round brush from a peg on the wall. “Oats. Hay. A little corn in this cold weather to generate body heat,” he said as he gave one of the horses a brisk brushing.
“So...what do they do...besides eat?”
He moved from one horse to the other. “Not much of anything. Occasionally I use them to drag logs when I can’t get to them with the Cat. Other than that, I just like having them around.”
Hands stuffed in her pockets, she walked a little closer as he set aside the brush and gathered armfuls of leather straps and silver metal.
“What are you doing?”
“Bridling them.”
A wave of unease rolled through her. “And you would be doing that because...” she ventured, afraid she already knew the answer.
He continued hooking and looping and walking around the horses’ heads. “I would be doing that because I thought you might enjoy going for a ride.”
What she might enjoy was trotting right back inside and burrowing under the covers in his big, soft bed. But she would eat some of that horse hay before she’d admit it. He was extending a gesture because he thought she would enjoy it—and she’d enjoy it if it killed her.
She looked up at the monster horses again and decided that killed, was, perhaps, not the best choice of words.
When he turned the pair around and led them by thick leather reins out the door, she jumped back until
at Abel’s urging, she inched over to stand beside one of the giants. It was even bigger up close.
“Not without a ladder, I won’t,” she blurted out before she could stop herself.
He cut her a look, then said in an even tone, “You don’t need a ladder. Just reach up and grab a handful of her mane. Then put your foot in my hand and I’ll give you a boost.”
She stared from the patiently waiting man in front of her to the house disguised as a horse. “And the reason we aren’t going to take this ride on a snowmobile is?” she prompted, hoping the mention of the snowmobile would inspire him into a change of plans.
“The reason is, so you can enjoy the night in relative quiet.”
Before she could say “Noise is good,” he circled her waist with his hands, lifted her high into the air and set her down on the horse’s broad bare back.
She hadn’t meant to scream. She wasn’t even aware that she had until she found herself hanging on for dear life as a ton of rippling muscle and prancing hooves danced across the hard, snow-packed ground beneath her.
With a calming tone and gentle words, Abel steadied the skittish animal.
Eyes wide, Mackenzie clutched the mane like a lifeline and prayed she didn’t get altitude sickness. “Not a good idea? The screaming, I mean?”
He shook his head, and—if her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her—let the slightest hint of a smile tip up one corner of his mouth.
She forgot all about her fear then. She’d made Abel Greene smile. A first. A miracle. And it enhanced her sense of invincibility.
“Are we settled now, do you think?” he asked, one hand on the bridle, the other on the thick black winter coat of the draft horse’s neck.
“Yes.” The warmth of that unbelievable smile and the heat from the horse’s body seeped through her clothes to take away the chill. “I think maybe we are.”
Without another word he grabbed a handful of mane and swung effortlessly up on the other mare’s back. After a quick glance her way to make sure she was steady, he nudged his horse into a slow walk. She was just beginning to wonder how to get hers going when it took a lumbering step forward and fell in step behind him.
“Are there brakes?” she asked Abel’s broad back. “And not that I’m complaining, but aren’t there supposed to be stirrups or something?”
He reined to a stop. Her horse plodded up beside its stablemate and stopped, too.
“This is just a wild guess,” he ventured, a lightness in his voice she’d never heard before, “but is it possible you’ve never been horseback riding?”
“Not unless carousels count.”
Again came that unexpected and breath-stealing whisper of a smile. “Not the last I knew.”
“Then, no. This is a first for me. It’s been a day full of firsts,” she added before thinking, then made a great show of patting the horse’s neck and smoothing its coarse thick mane so he wouldn’t see her face redden at the thought of all the firsts she’d experienced—especially the ones he’d introduced her to in his bed.
“You can relax and enjoy the ride, Mackenzie,” he said, misinterpreting embarrassment for hesitation. “She’ll do all the work for you. And as long as you don’t scream again, you’re as safe as sitting in a rocking chair.”
She looked from the horse to him. “She knows that, right?”
Gotcha again, she thought triumphantly as that magnificent mouth twitched again, then made a soft clucking sound that set both horses back in motion.
From that point on she did as he asked. She relaxed. She enjoyed—both the stark, snowy beauty of the forest and the company of the man at her side.
The woods were alive with whispered sounds and shadows of motion. She soon learned that when he stopped and pressed a finger to his lips it was her cue to follow his lead and sit very still. It wouldn’t be long before a deer and her spring fawn would appear, all senses alert, ears twitching, noses to the wind before they tiptoed delicately across their path.
Night owls swooped, the wind stirred through their spread wings in a muffled shushing flutter. It was all so beautiful and foreign and new, like a world untouched by civilization, unmarred by progress. She hadn’t expected to, but she loved every stolen, moon-kissed moment—just as she hadn’t expected to love the man at her side.
She was so caught up in the pleasure of sharing this night with him that it took her a moment to realize the forest had disappeared.
“What happened to the trees?” she asked, as another marvel stretched out before her. A huge, empty expanse of nothing but white wavelike drifts had replaced the cocoon of snow-heavy pine and winter-barren birch.
“We’ve reached the lake.”
The lake. She’d known it was close to his cabin, but she hadn’t realized it would be so big or so starkly beautiful. It seemed to stretch on forever, mile upon mile of snowcapped ice bordered by forest, rock and wilderness.
“Legend Lake,” she murmured, caught up in a sense of wonder and awareness of a history that was the source of myths and legends.
She looked at Abel. His large frame was enveloped in a heavy Mackinaw jacket, his arms crossed over the horse’s withers as he surveyed the land he called home.
“Tell me a legend,” she said softly.
His expression was pensive as he glanced at her, then averted his gaze out over the ice again. “My mother used to tell me stories,” he said, his voice as reflective as his eyes. “Stories her grandmother and her mother before her had passed down.”
Her silence prompted him for more.
“At the source of most of them was the legend of the Manabozho, the great wonder worker of the Chippewa. He is not only himself, my mother would say, but he can turn himself into all kinds of animal shapes.”
“You make it sound like she believed in him.”
He shrugged. “I think she wanted to believe—at least in the myth. In the magic.”
“Do you remember any of her stories?”
She could see by the softening of his eyes that he did.
“Her favorite was the theft of fire.”
“Tell me.”
He shifted his weight, then began slowly. “Once, according to the legend, it was on this very shore that Manabozho’s family suffered a bitter cold winter. The wind was brittle. The lake frozen deep. And the sun had lost all its heat.”
He paused and she sensed that not only was he sifting through his memory for the words to the story, but to a place in his past he hadn’t let himself visit in a very long time.
“When he asked his grandmother why it was so cold,” he continued reflectively, “she told him that long ago the people had had heat within their wigwams but the fire had been stolen by a man who guarded it so no one else could have it. He told his grandmother he would find this man and bring back the fire. She said it couldn’t be done, but he left, anyway, to search for it. He turned himself into an eagle and soared the lake until he spotted smoke coming from the top of a wigwam on a faraway shore. Then he turned himself into a rabbit and hopped inside the wigwam where the old man slept and there it was—the fire. He was excited but soon realized that even if he stole it, he didn’t have any way to get it home. Then he came up with an idea.”
“What?” she prompted, caught up in the fantasy of the fable and the pleasure in his voice. “What did he do?”
“He turned his backside to the flame until his big cotton tail caught fire. Then he hopped as fast as he could, his fur singed and burning, and collapsed in his grandmother’s wigwam just before the last spark died. His grandmother fanned the flame, added tinder, and by the time Manabozho turned back into a boy, she had a warm fire burning in their lodge.”
“Which they shared with everyone and brought the warmth back into the sun,” she suggested, her heart full of the sweetness of the legend and thoughts of Abel as a little boy sitting by his mother’s side and begging her to tell the story again and again.
“Which they shared with everyone and brought the warmth back into
the sun,” he confirmed, and let his gaze drift across her face before turning back to the lake.
She felt the tenderness in his eyes long after he’d looked away. “It’s a wonderful story.”
“She was a remarkable woman.” The reflective quality of his voice confirmed that this was a memory he hadn’t let himself indulge in for a very long time.
She was a remarkable woman who had raised a young boy into a remarkable man, Mackenzie thought. Warmed by the events of the evening, but chilled suddenly by the coldness of the winter night. She hugged her arms around herself to stall a shiver.
He sent a concerned look her way. “You’re cold.”
She shook her head. “Maybe a little. I guess it’ll take some more time for my body to acclimatize from California heat to Minnesota cold.”
He didn’t say anything. He just slid off the Belgian’s back, walked to her side, then swung up behind her. Before she could figure out how he’d done it with such ease, he’d opened his coat and drawn her back against him. After bundling the coat around her, he took the reins from her hands and turned the horse back toward the cabin.
She snuggled willingly into his heat and the protective embrace of his arms around her. And like him, she surrendered to the silence that was accompanied only by the steady crunch of the horses’ hooves digging into the snow and the whisper of his breath near her ear.
Are you dreaming? she asked herself, as the moon peeked through the outstretched arms of the trees, and the stars played peekaboo with their branches. The night and the man and what they had shared seemed surreal, suddenly, like they were a part of one of Manabozho’s fables.
Here, blanketed by the night, enfolded in her husband’s arms, it didn’t seem possible that a mere week ago she’d been living in fear for her brother’s life. And more. There’d been more that she hadn’t wanted to admit to. More that she’d been struggling to overcome. She’d been tired. So very tired of always being the strong one, the one to fix things, to heal things, to right the wrongs she could no longer justify.
A week ago she’d been alone and defeated. And now she had moonlight and star glow and a savior by the name of Abel Greene.