Outlaw m-3

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Diana clenched her teeth and forced herself to let out the breath she had instinctively held at the first instant of tearing pain. Silently, gradually, she took in air and let it out again, bringing strength back to her body. After a few aching breaths, her ears stopped ringing. The words from the other room began to have meaning again, Nevada speaking in tones that were like Ten’s but without the emotion.

  “Heard anything from Utah?”

  “He’s tired of jungles,” Ten said.

  Nevada grunted. “Anytime he wants to swap sea-level tropics for Afghanistan’s high passes, he can have at it.”

  “Thought the country calmed down after the Russians left.” Ten gave Nevada a measuring, gray-eyed glance. “Thought that was why you decided to come home.”

  “The Afghani tribesmen have been killing each other for a thousand years. They’ll be killing each other a thousand years from now. They’re fighting men. They’d take on Satan for the pure hell of it.”

  “So would you.”

  Nevada’s pale green eyes locked with Ten’s. “I did. Lost.”

  Ten held out his right hand. “I don’t know of any man who ever won. Welcome back, brother. You’ve been a long time coming home.”

  The deep affection in Ten’s voice went through Diana, shaking her all over again, telling her that she was jealous of Ten’s brother. The realization appalled her, and the pain.

  All the old wives’ tales are true: the landing is worse than the fall.

  Diana looked around almost wildly. She had to leave, and leave quickly, before she was discovered. She couldn’t face Ten with jealousy and despair and pain shaking her.

  “Never thought I’d say it,” Nevada said quietly, “but it’s good to see your ugly face again. Now maybe you’ll introduce me to the lady standing behind me.”

  Ten leaned sideways, looking around his brother’s body toward the front door.

  “Kitchen door,” Nevada said, stepping aside.

  Diana heard the words but took another step backward anyway, wondering bitterly how Nevada had known she was behind him. She hadn’t made a sound. In fact, she had barely breathed, especially after hearing Ten’s matter-of-fact summation of his lack of enduring appeal to women. And theirs to him.

  “Diana? Is that you? Come on in, honey. I want you to meet my brother Nevada. Nevada, this is Diana Saxton.”

  Nevada turned around and Diana knew she couldn’t flee. The pale green eyes that were examining her were as passionless as Nevada’s voice. She had an unnerving sense of looking into the eyes of a wolf or a cougar.

  “How did you know I was here?” Diana asked almost angrily.

  “Your scent.”

  Nevada’s neutral tone did nothing to calm Diana. The man’s unsmiling, measuring aloofness overwhelmed all other impressions she had of him, even the obvious one of his dark, hard, male appeal.

  Nevada looked from Diana to the baby sucking industriously on Ten’s finger. “Yours?”

  “No,” she said in a strained voice. “That’s Logan MacKenzie.”

  “Luke’s baby?” Nevada asked, looking at Ten.

  Ten nodded.

  “You mean that long-legged little girl you told me about finally ran him to ground?”

  “She sure did. Then she let him go. He decided he didn’t want to go anywhere without her.”

  Nevada shrugged. “To each his own. For the Blackthorns, that means single harness, not double.”

  Ten looked at Diana’s tight, pale face and at his brother, who was a younger, harder reflection of himself. Ten looked down for a long moment at the baby in his lap, then he met again the unsmiling eyes of a warrior who had fought too long.

  “Hope you haven’t lost your taste for sleeping out,” Ten said. “Jervis is getting damned tired of weekends in September Canyon.”

  “I don’t sleep much, so it doesn’t matter where I lie down.”

  Ten’s eyes narrowed as he remembered the years he had spent relearning how to sleep like a civilized man instead of a wild animal, coming alert with even-unusual noise, waking up in a single rush with a knife in one hand and a man’s throat in the other.

  “It will pass,” Ten said quietly.

  Nevada said nothing.

  Logan began to fret, no longer pacified by Ten’s unyielding fingertip.

  Nevada watched the baby for a moment, then said, “Company coming from the barn. Man and a woman.”

  Ten shook his head at the acuity of Nevada’s senses. “I’m glad I don’t have to live like that anymore, every sense peeled to maximum alertness.”

  “Beats dying.”

  The very faint sound of a woman’s laughter floated into the living room. Logan’s fretfulness increased in volume.

  “Honey,” Ten said to Diana without looking away from the baby, “go tell Carla to get a move on it. Logan is getting set to cloud up and rain all over me.”

  There was no answer. Ten glanced up from Logan’s rapidly reddening face. Diana was gone.

  “How long was she standing there?” Ten said, his voice as hard as Nevada’s.

  “Long enough to know you’re not interested in marrying her.”

  Ten closed his eyes and hissed a single, savage word. It would be a long drive to September Canyon tomorrow, and all the way Diana would be tight, angry, thinking of a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t melt and run like hot, wild honey at his touch.

  Logan began to cry in earnest, gulping in air and letting it out in jerky squalls.

  “That’s a strong baby you have there,” Nevada said. He bent down. A long, scarred finger traced Logan’s hairline with surprising delicacy. “It’s good to hear a baby cry and know its distress is only temporary, that food and love are on the way.”

  “Less volume would be nice.”

  Nevada shook his head and said in a low voice, “The ones who are too weak to cry are the hardest to take.”

  Ten looked up quickly. His brother’s eyes were hooded, unreadable. The front door opened and Carla rushed in.

  “I’m sorry, I thought Logan would be all right for a few more minutes.” She saw Nevada, noted the similarity to Ten in build and stance and smiled. “Nevada Blackthorn, right?” she asked, reaching past the bearded man for her hollering baby. “I’m Carla. Welcome to the Rocking M. We’ve never met but I’ve heard a lot about you.” As she hurried from the room with Logan in her arms, she called over her shoulder. “Luke, look who finally got here. Now Jervis can go back to chasing cows.”

  Soon after Carla disappeared into the next room, the sound of the baby’s crying ended abruptly, telling the men that Logan had found something more satisfactory to suckle than a man’s callused fingertip.

  Luke shut the door and walked across the living room. For a few seconds there was silence while Nevada and Luke measured each other. Then Luke nodded and held out his hand.

  “Welcome back, Nevada. The Rocking M is your home for as long as you want it.”

  After a moment Nevada took the hand that was offered. “Thanks, MacKenzie. You won’t regret it.”

  Luke turned to Ten, measured the expression on his face and asked rather warily, “Something wrong, ramrod?”

  “Not one damn thing.” Ten stood and crossed the room in long strides. “Come on, Nevada. I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.”

  The front door closed behind Ten. Luke looked questioningly at Nevada.

  “Woman trouble,” Nevada said succinctly.

  “What?”

  “Five foot three, blue eyes, a fine body she tries to hide underneath a man’s sweater.”

  “Diana?”

  Nevada nodded.

  “Did you say Ten’s woman?”

  Nevada shrugged. “She will be until she tries to put a permanent brand on him. Then she’ll be looking far another stud to ride. Blackthorns don’t brand worth a damn.”

  15

  Ten was right about the length of the drive to September Canyon. And the silence. Diana slept most of the way despite the
roughness of the road, telling Ten two things. The first was that she trusted his driving skills, but he already knew that. The second was that she must have slept damned little the night before to be able to sleep so soundly now in the rolling frost seat of the pickup truck.

  When Ten could take it no longer, he said, “Diana.”

  Her eyes opened. They were dark, clear, and then-color was an indigo as bottomless as twilight.

  “Pounce’s purring must have kept you up all night,” Ten said, watching the road. One look at Diana’s eyes had been enough.

  “Pounce hunts at night.” The thought of the cat gliding through darkness in search of prey reminded Diana of Nevada. “Like Nevada.”

  “He lived as a warrior too long. Like me. And like me, Nevada will heal,” Ten said matter-of-factly. “It just takes time.”

  Diana made a sound that could have meant anything.

  Ten waited.

  No more sounds came from the other side of the truck.

  “I was glad to see that Nevada and Luke didn’t have to sort things out the hard way,” Ten continued. “They’ll get along fine now that life has knocked some sense into both of their hard heads.”

  Diana said nothing.

  With a hunger Ten wasn’t aware of, he watched her for a few instants before the road claimed his attention again. Telling himself to be patient, he waited for her to speak. And he waited.

  And waited.

  Ten was still waiting when they forded Picture Wash and bumped up September Canyon to the overhang. It wasn’t the first time he and Diana had gone for hours without conversation, but it was the first time the silence hadn’t been comfortable. Getting out ofthe truck didn’t increase Diana’s desire to talk. They unloaded supplies with a minimum of words, each doing his or her accustomed part around the camp.

  Without a word, Ten carried the two bedrolls to the edge of the overhang, dragged two camp mattresses over and began making up the single, oversize bedroll he and Diana would share. He sensed her watching him, but she said nothing. When he straightened and looked around, he saw Diana shrugging into her backpack, clearly preparing to go out and sketch in the rapidly failing light. His arm shot out and his fingers curled hard around her wrist.

  “Dammit!” Ten said. “You were the one who came to me! I never promised you anything!”

  Diana’s eyes were wide and dark against her pale face. For a long, stretching moment she looked at Ten, letting the truth echo around her like thunder while painful lightning searched through her body and soul.

  “Yes,” she said huskily. “I know.”

  Ten’s hands tightened. Her agreement should have made him feel better, but it didn’t. He kept remembering the moment when she had looked at him with eyes still dazed by her first taste of sexual pleasure and whispered that she loved him. Now her eyes were filled with pain. He had never felt another person’s pain so clearly, as clearly as his own.

  “Listen to me,” Ten said roughly. “The pleasure you feel when we have sex-that isn’t love. It will wear off. It always does. But until it does, there’s no reason you shouldn’t enjoy it to the fullest.”

  The slight flinching of Diana’s eyelids was the only betrayal of her emotions, “That’s very kind of you, Tennessee.”

  Her soft, even voice scored Ten like a whip.

  “Kind? I’m not some damn charity worker. I’m a man and I enjoy sex with you a hell of a lot more than I’ve ever enjoyed it with any woman. What we have in bed is damned rare and I know it even if you don’t!”

  Diana looked up into the blazing clarity of Ten’s eyes. She didn’t doubt that he meant exactly what he had said. She drew a deep breath, drinking his complex truth to the last bittersweet drop. Pleasure, not love. But a rare pleasure, one he valued.

  “I’m glad,” she said finally.

  And that, too, was a complex, bittersweet truth.

  Ten should have been relieved at Diana’s acknowledgment that what they shared in bed wasn’t love. But he wasn’t relieved. She understood, she agreed-and somehow she had never been farther away from him, even the first day when she had turned and run from him.

  Swearing beneath his breath, Ten stood with his fingers locked around Diana’s wrist and wondered savagely how he and she could be so painfully honest with each other and yet somehow allow an important truth to slide through their fingers like rain through sand, sinking down and down and down, farther out of reach with every second.

  “To hell with talking,” he said savagely.

  Ten bent his arm, bringing Diana hard against his body. His tongue searched the surprised softness of her mouth with urgent movements. The hunger that had been just beneath his surface blazed up, shortening his breath, making his blood run heavily, hardening his body in a rushing instant that he felt all the way to his heels; but Diana was stiff in his arms, vibrating with emotions that had little to do with desire.

  “Don’t fight me, baby,” Ten said heavily against Diana’s mouth, his voice as dark and hot as his kiss had been. “What we have is too rare and too good to waste on anger.”

  Ten probed the center of Diana’s ear with the hot tip of his tongue, feeling her shiver helplessly in response. He probed again and was rewarded by another sensuous shiver. With a low sound of triumph, he caught the rim of her ear between his teeth and bit delicately, repeatedly, demanding and also pleading for her response.

  The intensity and need within Ten reached past Diana’s pain to the love beneath. She tried to speak didn’t trust her uncertain hold on her emotions slid her arms around Ten’s lean waist instead. His breath came out in a barely audible sigh of relief when he felt her soften against him.

  “Diana,” Ten whispered, hugging her in return. “Baby, I don’t want to hurt you. When you gave yourself to me that first time, looking right at me, knowing to the last quarter inch how much I wanted you…” Memory lanced through Ten, making him shudder. “Yet you held out your arms to me. No one has ever trusted me like that. I was so afraid of hurting you I almost didn’t go through with it.”

  She looked at him with startled blue eyes.

  “It’s true,” Ten said, easing his ringers into Diana’s cool, soft hair. “I was arguing with myself all the way down into your arms. Then you took me so perfectly and I knew I wouldn’t hurt you. Your body was made for mine. And somehow you knew it, too, didn’t you? That’s why you watched me with such curiosity and hunger, day after day, until I thought I would go crazy. Then you asked me to kiss you and I was sure I would go crazy. You fit my hands perfectly, my arms, my mouth, my body. I knew it was going to be so damned good. I was right. It was good then and it’s even better now, each time better than the last.”

  The words caressed Diana even more than the heat of Ten’s body or the pressure of his fingers rubbing slowly down her spine.

  “Is it that way for you, too?” Ten asked. “Tell me it’s that way for you, too.”

  He bent to kiss Diana’s neck with barely restrained force, arching her against his body, letting her feel his length and what she had done to him.

  “Baby?”

  “Yes,” she said as she gave herself to his power. “You must know it is, Ten. Don’t you know?”

  “I do now,” he whispered against her hair, and then he whispered it again.

  Slowly Ten straightened. He held Diana gently against his chest, just held her, as though he were afraid to ask for any more than she had already given.

  And he was.

  “Go ahead and sketch while you still have light,” Ten said finally, kissing Diana’s eyelids, brushing his lips gently across her mouth, caresses without demand. “I’ll open the new box of shards and see what the grads found over the weekend.”

  Shaking, feeling like crying in protest when Ten turned away, hungry for him in a way that eclipsed anything she had ever felt before, Diana looked blindly out over September Canyon. She couldn’t force herself to walk away from the overhang and the man she loved more with every day.

 
And with every day she was closer to losing him.

  The pleasure you feel when we have sex-that isn’t love. It will wear off. It always does.

  But it wouldn’t for her. Diana knew that as surely as she had known she could trust Ten not to force anything more from her than she wanted to give. She had been right. He had taken nothing from her that she hadn’t given willingly. It wasn’t Ten’s fault that he didn’t want everything she had to give to a man.

  Though Diana knew sketching would be impossible, she took off her backpack, brought out her pad, opened it and sat down on the bedroll she would share that night with Ten. Adrift on the cool wind flowing down from the mesa top, she looked out over the canyon she loved. She saw neither trees nor cliffs nor even the wild beauty of the setting sun, only the image of the man she had come to love even more than the land.

  In her mind she saw Ten’s face with eerie precision, each line that sun and wind had etched around his eyes, eyes whose probing clarity had first unnerved, then fascinated her. The same was true of Ten’s powerful, unmistakably male body; first it had frightened and then finally it had fascinated her.

  Now, in the clear light of pain, Diana acknowledged what she had previously been too caught up within her own fears and needs to see-the shadows that lay beneath the clarity of Ten’s eyes, the reserve that lay beneath his passion, the internal walls he had built as carefully as an Anasazi cliff fortress, walls keeping her out, his own words describing solitude.

  He lived as a warrior too long. Like me. And like me, Nevada will heal. It just takes time.

  But Ten hadn’t healed. Not wholly.

  She wanted to heal him. She needed to. But there were so few weeks left to remove scars that were years deep, a wounding so old, so accustomed a part of the man she loved, that Ten himself didn’t even realize that he hadn’t healed. He had scarred over, which wasn’t the same thing at all.

  “Such a pensive look,” Ten said. Sitting down next to Diana, he glanced at the drawing in her lap. It was a close-up of September Canyon’s ruins, detailing the precarious eyelash of a trail that led from the cliff dwellings up the face of the cliff to the mesa above. “Are you thinking about the Anasazi again, trapped within their own creation?”