Just as she had been at Reno’s mercy, reaching for love and getting nothing in return but pain.
Pity I had to learn the lesson all over again.
Reno looked at the crescents Eve’s nails had cut in the soap and in her own skin. Then he looked at her eyes. There was nothing of laughter or passion or curiosity in them now. Her eyes were as bleak as a winter sunset.
“Eve,” he whispered.
She simply watched him out of yellow cat’s eyes.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said. “But I’m not sorry about having you. You were silk and fire.…”
Reno’s voice died. Eve’s innocent passion had been a revelation that his mind still had trouble accepting.
His body had no such problem. Though he had just had her, he wanted her again. She wanted him, too. He was certain of it. Her body was crying out its hunger and frustration.
But Eve was too innocent to understand the source of her anger. Reno knew better than to try to convince her with words. She was in no mood to listen to him on any subject, least of all the subject of her own needs as a woman.
Besides, there were better ways than words to teach an innocent like Eve, more pleasurable ways. For both of them. All he had to do was convince her to trust him with her passion again.
A difficult task, but not an impossible one. Her body was already on his side.
“Since you’re feeling shy, I won’t undress you,” he said calmly.
Surprise widened Eve’s eyes. She hadn’t expected Reno to allow her any slack at all.
His smile told her that he knew very well the source of her surprise. He tucked the washrag into the waist of his pants and shoved the soap into a pocket.
“Into the pool,” Reno said.
“What?”
“Come on. You’ll feel better after a bath.”
Eve said nothing. She just waded until the waterfall’s cool silver braids twisted down less than a foot away from her. Water lapped to midthigh and swirled around her legs in patterns of rainbow bubbles.
To Eve’s surprise, Reno walked into the pool right behind her. He didn’t undress, as she had feared he would. He looked just as he had when he had rolled off her—half-buttoned shirt, bare feet, and dark pants.
At least his pants were fastened now.
Heat climbed Eve’s cheeks as she remembered how Reno had looked before, his pants undone, the evidence of her virginal stupidity gleaming scarlet in the daylight for everyone to see.
“Your hair is as clean as sunshine,” Reno said, “but I’ll wash it if you like.”
Eve shook her head tightly.
“Then I’ll tuck it up out of the way.”
“No,” she said instantly, not wanting to be touched. “I’ll do it.”
Hurriedly Eve caught up her long hair and twisted it into a knot on top of her head. A few tendrils slithered back down. She ignored them. The look on Reno’s face as she lifted her arms and dealt with her hair told her that he liked watching her breasts shift and sway with each movement of her body.
And if the look on his face weren’t enough, there was the frank bulge in his pants to give away his thoughts. Hastily she glanced away.
“Ready?” Reno asked.
“For what?”
He bent and scooped up water in his cupped hands.
“To get wet,” he said simply. “You can hardly take a bath when you’re dry, can you?”
Reno’s reasonable tone of voice was at odds with the smoldering sensuality of his eyes.
“I don’t need any help getting wet,” Eve muttered.
He laughed softly and let water from his hands trickle down the front of her camisole.
“Some things are better when they’re shared,” Reno said in a husky voice.
“Baths?” she asked sarcastically.
“I don’t know. I’ve never shared one.”
Eve looked surprised.
“It’s true,” he said.
“I believe you.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
She shivered as water that was neither warm nor cold trickled down between her breasts.
“Why?” he asked, curious.
“You wouldn’t bother to lie to a slut.”
Reno closed his eyes and grappled with the rage that stabbed him like black lightning, threatening to rip away his control.
“I suggest,” he said distinctly, “that you never use that word again in my hearing.”
“Why not? You’re so damned fond of the truth.”
He opened his eyes. “Baiting me won’t make you feel better. I can guarantee it.”
Eve made an involuntary sound and looked away. The grim shadows and raw fury she saw in his glance reminded her too much of her own seething turmoil. In any case, Reno was right. Baiting him hadn’t made Eve feel better. It had made her feel worse, on the breaking edge of her own control. She felt like biting and clawing and screaming. The depth of her own wildness was frightening.
“And that’s all you’re doing,” Reno added. “Baiting me. We both know you’re not a slut.”
Eve said nothing.
The temptation to push Eve until she agreed with him nearly overwhelmed Reno, but he managed to keep his silence. Barely. He scooped up more water, letting it fall in sparkling liquid necklaces over Eve until her camisole and pantalets were drenched.
Eve closed her eyes and pretended that she was washing herself beneath one of the barrel showers Don Lyon had rigged before his hands became too crippled for such things.
The cool glide of the water down her body made her shiver, but not with cold. The day was too hot for that, and the sun’s heat was both absorbed and reflected by the high rock walls.
Eve flinched at the first touch of Reno’s hands on her shoulders. He whispered her name unhappily. Through a screen of thick bronze eyelashes, she saw the painful line of Reno’s mouth.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said with aching control. “I would never have hurt you the first time, if I had known.…”
Eve’s breath came out in a long, ragged sigh. She nodded, believing him, for it was the simple truth. She had sensed that about Reno the instant he sat down at her table in Canyon City; despite his size, despite his strength, despite his lethal speed, he wasn’t the kind of man who enjoyed cruelty.
“I know,” she said in a low voice. “It’s why I dealt cards to you. You weren’t what Slater and Raleigh King were.”
Reno let out breath that he wasn’t aware of having held. He brushed his lips over Eve’s forehead in a soft caress that ended before she could be sure she had felt it at all.
“Let me bathe you,” he said.
She hesitated, then reached up to remove her camisole. Hands sleek with lather closed over her wrists, holding her gently.
“Let me,” Reno said.
She hesitated again.
“I won’t take you,” he said. “Not unless you ask me to. I just want to make you…hurt less.”
Unable to bear the intensity of Reno’s eyes, Eve closed her own and nodded. For several moments she waited in an agony of suspense, but when Reno touched her, it was only to wash her face as gently as he had his nephew’s.
Yet Eve didn’t feel like a baby. Reno’s touch made an almost painful pleasure course through her. She hadn’t known how sensitive her face was. The ritual of soaping and washing and rinsing made frissons of pleasure ripple over her.
“Was that so bad?” Reno asked.
Eve shook her head. A long tendril of hair floated free. Reno tucked it behind one ear.
“How about this?” he asked.
He bent and began tracing every clean curve of Eve’s ear with his tongue and then his teeth, biting with exquisite care, enjoying the ragged intake and breaking of her breath. When the tip of his tongue probed and tested, spiraling down, retreating, returning, caressing, she made an odd sound in her throat and clung to his arms for balance.
Reno lifted his head and looked down into Eve’s wide, s
urprised eyes.
“Is something wrong?” he whispered.
“I…” She swallowed. “I never know what to expect from you.”
“Your boyfriends must have been, er, unimaginative.”
“I never had one, imaginative or otherwise.”
“No boyfriend?” Reno asked. “Not even for a few stolen kisses out by the barn?”
Eve shook her head. “I never wanted a male near me. Until you.”
“My God.”
The realization of just how innocent Eve had been went through Reno in a shock wave of pleasure and surprise. So innocent, yet she had been a passionate spring welling up at his touch, his word, his lightest caress.
So innocent…so passionate. The possibilities for mutual pleasure were enough to make him light-headed. He hardly knew where to begin.
Reno’s glittering green glance swept over Eve. Her underwear was nearly transparent, clinging to every curve and valley of her body. The taut crowns of her breasts stood out clearly, as did the luxuriant triangle of bronze hair that both shielded and outlined her essential femininity.
“My God,” he said again, reverently. “No man has ever touched you at all, has he?”
“Not quite,” she whispered.
“Who?” he demanded.
“You’ve touched me,” she said simply. “Only you.”
In a hush that seethed with the small songs of water, Reno washed Eve to the waist. He tried not to linger over her breasts, but it was impossible. The velvet hardness of her nipples lured him irresistibly. He returned to them again and again, until they stood out urgently against the camisole, drawn taut by more than the cool water.
Saying nothing, Reno pulled Eve under the gentle waterfall, rinsing her. When he was finished, he slowly pulled off her camisole and tucked it into the waistband of his pants. Then he bent and tasted the freshness of her skin until she made small noises and clung to him.
“I shouldn’t let you do this,” Eve said huskily.
“Am I hurting you?”
“No. Not…yet.”
“Not ever,” Reno said, nuzzling her breast. “Not ever again.”
Eve couldn’t answer. The sight of Reno’s mouth so close to the rosy peak of her breast took away the ability to speak. The tip of his tongue circled her, stabbing softly. He sheathed his teeth with his lips and bit down.
The ragged sound Eve made owed nothing to pain and everything to a sudden, bright pleasure. Before she could become used to it, the caress changed. Heat surged through her, making it hard to hang on to her anger, for her body sensed a different outlet for the emotions churning beneath her control.
Eve didn’t know whether to be relieved or unhappy when Reno finally, slowly, lifted his head and resumed washing her.
“I should have taken the time to tell you how beautiful you are,” Reno said. “You have the kind of skin poets write sonnets to. But I’m not a poet. I never wanted to be, until now.”
Reno bent and brushed his lips over first one breast, then the other. “I don’t know the words to describe you.”
Long fingers smoothed soap over Eve’s pantalets, waist and hips and thighs. When his palm rubbed against the lush delta, she made a frightened sound.
“Easy,” he murmured. “That doesn’t hurt you, does it?”
Her lips were trembling. She shook her head.
“Move your legs a bit,” Reno said, pressing gently. “Let me wash all of you, especially there, where I hurt you.”
He waited, watching her face, wanting her to give so that he wouldn’t have to take.
Slowly Eve shifted position, giving Reno the freedom that he wanted. In a silence seething with memory and possibility, he bathed away every last trace of the virgin she had been and would never be again.
“If I could take back the hurt, I would,” he whispered. “But I wouldn’t take back the rest of it. I’ve dreamed all my life of finding a passion like yours.”
Eve shivered and bit back a throaty sound as Reno’s fingers unfastened her pantalets and eased them down her legs until he was kneeling in the pool at her feet.
“Brace yourself against my shoulders,” he said huskily.
He felt the trembling of her hands as they settled on his naked shoulders, and wondered if passion or fear moved her.
“Lift your right foot,” Reno said.
The pressure of her hands on his shoulders increased. He slipped one leg of the pantalets free.
“Now the other.”
She moved, only to stop, frozen by the touch of his fingertips. When he traced the delicate skin, sweet lightning rippled through her. She closed her eyes and held on to his shoulders so hard that her fingers pressed deeply into muscle.
“Does that hurt?” Reno asked, looking up.
“No,” she whispered through trembling lips.
“Does it please you?”
“It s-shouldn’t.”
“But it does?”
“Yes,” she whispered on a rush of air. “Dear God, yes.”
Reno leaned his forehead against Eve and let out a long breath of relief. Only then did he admit how afraid he had been that he had irrevocably driven her away. That was why he had followed her to the pool. Fear, not passion.
“Such tight petals,” Reno whispered, touching Eve delicately, “yet so full. Like a bud in spring. And I was expecting a flower full-blown by a hundred suns.”
Eve didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Heat was sweeping through her body, making her forget everything but the rushing instant and the man who caressed her so tenderly.
Turning his head from side to side, Reno stroked her belly and thighs with his cheeks and the thick silk of his mustache.
“So smooth,” he whispered. “So warm. Open for me, sweet Eve. Let me show you what it should have been for you. No hurt, no bleeding, just the kind of pleasure you’ll die remembering.”
Eyes closed, Eve responded to the gentle pressure between her legs, allowing Reno greater freedom. A warm, lightly probing caress was her reward. Its silky heat astonished her, loosening her knees. She made a ragged sound of pleasure and tried to catch her balance.
“That’s it,” Reno said, smiling, urging her legs farther apart as he bent to her. “Hold on to me.”
Only when Eve felt the heat of Reno’s breath did she understand why the caress had been so sleek and hot.
“Reno.”
His answer was a tender movement of his tongue that dragged another husky cry from her.
“Don’t fight me,” Reno breathed. “You gave me what you had given no other man. Let me give you what I’ve given no other woman.”
“My God,” Eve whispered as his caresses turned her very bones to honey.
Reno made a husky sound of discovery and pleasure in one as he found the satin knot rising from her softness.
“The bud swells,” he whispered. “This time you will flower, too.”
Eve couldn’t answer. She had no voice, no thoughts, nothing but the sensual lightning licking up through her body, taking it from her control, giving it to the man who both cherished and consumed her in fiery silence.
Reno sensed the storm that was claiming Eve, convulsing her secretly. The scent of her was an elemental perfume singing to him of dark fires and wild release, luring him unbearably.
When the sensual storm broke, her taste was that of a desert rain, sultry and mysterious, bringing life to everything it touched. And after the storm passed, she was the earth itself, flushed with the miracle of rain, all contrasts heightened, radiant in completion.
Reluctantly Reno released the sweet, captive flesh and stood up, holding Eve, for she was barely able to stand. He tucked her head against his chest and rocked her slowly while she came back to herself.
After a long time Eve gave a shivering sigh and looked up at Reno with dazed golden eyes.
“That’s what it’s all about between men and women,” Reno said, kissing Eve gently. “The kind of pleasure you would kill or die for. Not a childish no
tion of love.”
A painful shudder went through Eve.
“You’re saying I’d feel that with any man?” she asked, her voice strained.
The violent denial that leaped to Reno’s lips made him uneasy. He had never been a possessive kind of man, yet even the thought of Eve allowing another man the freedom of her silky body enraged Reno.
“Reno?” Eve asked, her lips trembling and her eyes steady.
“Some people are better together than others,” he said finally. “You make me hotter than any woman ever has. I make you hotter than any man ever has.”
Reno looked down into Eve’s clear golden eyes. “That’s why you gave yourself to me. Not the poker bet. Not love. Just passion, pure and simple and hot as hell.”
“That’s why men and women marry?” Eve persisted. “Passion, pure and simple?”
Again, Reno hesitated.
“It’s why men marry,” he said after a moment. “Damn few women have enough passion in them to burn.”
“But—”
“Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to hold out long enough to get a man to the preacher,” Reno continued, ignoring Eve’s interruption. “But the little dears do somehow manage, don’t they?”
Reno saw the pain in Eve’s expression, and winced. He hadn’t meant to hurt her with his blunt declarations about the nature of men and women and the illusion called love. But he had hurt her.
Again.
“Sugar child,” he said, kissing her temple softly. “Would you feel better if I told you sweet lies about love?”
“Yes.”
Then Eve laughed sadly and shook her head.
“No,” she amended. “Because I’d want to believe you so much, I’d do it, and then I’d wake up one day and find you saddled up and ready to leave, and I’d know the words for the lies they were.”
“I’m not saddling any horses.”
“We haven’t found the mine yet, have we?”
Gently Eve pushed away and looked up at Reno with steady eyes and a smile that threatened to turn upside down. She stood on tiptoe to brush her lips over his.
“Thanks for the teaching, sugar man. Now maybe we better get to work finding that mine. I’ve had about all the learning I can bear in one day.”
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