by Jayne Castle
"Except for food," Reva said with a resigned sigh. "I was so looking forward to a hot toddy and a lovely big wedding-night dinner."
"Worried about your next meal already? Shades of South America!" Josh teased, striding over to a cupboard and opening it expectantly. Sure enough, a range of canned food stood arrayed on the shelf. "There you go," he grinned. "And so much easier than catching chickens!"
"I knew all I had to do was complain and you'd come through. Josh, the great provider!" Reva murmured, walking over to stand beside him. She put an arm around his waist and was immediately hauled close against his side.
"It comes from being an expert on marriage. A related field," he told her, dropping a husbandly kiss on the top of her head. "I suppose I'd better see about the water and a fire while there's still some light left. Your northwestern days sure are short!"
"Only during the winter," Reva laughed as he disengaged himself and started toward the door. "During the summer we'll have daylight until nine at night!"
"Promises, promises."
"You'll adapt," she smiled.
"Yes," he said, his hand on the door. "I will."
Reva turned interestedly toward the tiny kitchen as Josh disappeared. This was the night, she vowed to herself as she investigated the canned goods in detail. The night she would tell Josh about his real wedding present. She hummed gently as she dug out an old pan and discovered a can opener in the drawer.
"I must say," Reva murmured a long time later as she reclined beside her husband in front of a roaring fire, "you certainly do things in a first-class fashion. Leave it to Josh Corbett to turn up what is probably the only cabin within miles and have it well stocked into the bargain!" She saluted him with the paper cup of wine in her hand. "And that was a nice touch bringing along a bottle of my best wine."
Josh settled more deeply into the lumpy cushions of the old sofa and smiled blandly. "I had planned to open it in private tonight in our luxurious room at the lodge. A little something with which to toast my new bride." He lifted his own cup and met her eyes over the rim.
Reva met the honey-gold gaze and felt the now familiar tremor of response. She looked back at him, seeing the stirring of the male hunger there and that strange, almost hidden watchfulness which she hadn't been able to erase during the past three days.
"Do you know," he went on softly, breaking the small, curiously tense silence which had developed. "I'm seriously considering not beating you for that error in map reading this afternoon." There was a teasing quirk to his mouth and the crinkles around his eyes deepened.
"I'm so relieved," she smiled. "To what do I owe my deliverance?"
"To the fact that all this," he waved a hand vaguely around the cabin, "brings back memories of four months ago."
"I'd call it a definite step up," Reva observed, taking a
sip of wine. "At least you won't be sleeping with a gun within reach tonight!" ,
"No, thank God," he agreed with a genuine touch of fervor. "That's all behind me. All I want beside me in bed is you." He toasted her silently with the paper cup, watching the warmth climb into her cheeks as he swallowed the wine. "No more nightmares, Reva."
"No," she agreed softly, thinking that there had been none since the night she had asked him to marry her. It was as if something nervous and restless deep inside had been pacified at last. She had a feeling she would never again be troubled by the grim, recurring dream.
"Trust me?" he asked lightly. But there was something else in the question.
"I've always trusted you, Josh," she replied honestly.
"Except about the matter of me coming home to you when I'd finished in South America," he pointed out quietly. The firelight danced on the planes of his face and Reva couldn't quite read the expression there.
"Oh, I think I always knew you'd come after me," she admitted wryly. "Why do you imagine I changed apartments without leaving a forwarding address?"
"You did that deliberately," he agreed in an even tone. "Were you so afraid of taking another alley cat into your home?"
"No," Reva smiled and drew a deep breath. The time had come. "I was afraid of admitting that I loved that alley cat."
There was a stark silence as Josh stared at her. Was he really so surprised? she wondered dimly. Would he know what to do with her love?
"Reva," he whispered, setting his paper cup down on the old wooden table in front of the couch with unnatural care. His eyes never left hers and there was a sudden
intense vulnerability and demand in them that made Reva want to do anything necessary to comfort him. Never had a man looked at her with so much longing, she realized.
"Reva, honey," he repeated a little thickly, not touching her although they sat so close. "Are you telling me that you do love me?"
"Yes," she whispered, blue-green eyes full of her emotions. "Why in the world do you think I married you?"
He licked his lower lip once before replying. She could feel the tension in him and wondered if perhaps she'd been precipitous in telling him. But this was her wedding night and what bride didn't want to be able to confess her love?
"Compassion, tenderness, gratitude," he replied slowly. "Any of the emotions I tried so hard to induce in you in order to get you to marry me."
Reva's small smile widened as she shook her head in exasperation. "I've got news for you, Josh Corbett, I would never marry a man for reasons like those!"
"You were so sure I was wrong for you," he said won-deringly, searching her face as if he still couldn't believe what she had said.
"Well, you'll have to admit, we do seem a bit mismatched," Reva said with gentle humor. "If it wasn't for your great adaptability, I'm not sure how we'd manage!"
"You and I," he told her with an abrupt fierceness, "can adapt to anything! Reva, why the hell haven't you told me?" He did touch her now, his large, competent hands reaching out to pull her tightly against him.
"I wasn't sure you wanted my love," she whispered, her head tilted back on his shoulder so that she could meet his eyes. "All you ever seemed to want was a home and a comfortable little woman."
"Comfortable little woman!" he repeated with a growl, his hands tightening. "That's about the last way I'd de-
scribe you! The only time you're comfortable is when you're lying in my arms, showing me how much you want me!"
"Thanks!" she muttered tartly.
"I knew I could make you want me, Reva," he went on, ignoring her comment. "But I thought it would be ages before you slipped over the edge and realized you could love me, too! And that's what I've wished for since the beginning, you little idiot. Why the hell do you think I married you?"
"You told me often enough," she pointed out politely. "You wanted a home."
"A home with you," he corrected feelingly. "Only with you." He rocked her gently against his strong, hard body and Reva nestled close, hope burning very brightly in her heart.
"Are you trying to tell me that you love me, too?" she asked him.
"From the first time I saw you. You were mine, Reva, from that moment when you took my hand and followed me out of that damned kitchen. I told you that before. You can't say you didn't know how I felt!" he husked deeply as he lifted a hand to stroke her cheek.
"Desire isn't... isn't the same as love, Josh." She tried to smile.
"You think I don't know that? At my age?" he chuckled. "My God, woman! I haven't exactly led a sheltered life up until now!"
Reva smiled with love. "But you will henceforth!" she promised.
"Sheltered by your love? Yes," he nodded with great certainty. "Just as you will be sheltered by mine. You won't hold my, er, checkered past against me?" He was
smiling but the tiniest hint of wariness had crept back into the lion gaze.
"Is it a very badly checkered past?" Reva asked teasing-
ly.
"Would it matter?"
"No." She smiled up at him with complete honesty and was rewarded by a small kiss on the nose.
"Thank you, sweetheart," he whispered, and then his mouth quirked again. "I won't pretend to have been a saint, but there isn't any great, dark secret hanging over my head, either. I was always just a bit"—he hesitated— "restless, I guess you'd say. I kept looking for something and one thing led to another. Eventually I wound up working for the firm in Texas."
"Where all the female personnel are convinced you've either been an intelligence agent or a gunrunning pilot!" Reva murmured.
"Elaine told you that?" he grimaced.
Reva nodded.
"It's a wonder you didn't run out on me altogether at that point," he growled.
"Exactly what you'd deserve for trying to use another woman to manipulate me!" Reva told him mercilessly.
"It worked, didn't it?" he grinned back unrepentantly.
"I suppose it did hasten my decision," she groaned wryly. "I couldn't stand the thought of you going back to that awful job and that equally awful woman! Were you, Josh?" she added more soberly.
He didn't pretend to misunderstand. "I did a little flying for a time," he admitted quietly. "But it wasn't guns and it wasn't drugs. Mostly food and medical supplies. The only thing that made it a bit tricky was that some of the destinations were more isolated than others." He shrugged. "It provided me with a lot of contacts, though,
and they eventually became useful when I decided to seek more regular employment!"
"And the intelligence thing?" she pressed carefully, needing to know the whole truth.
He smiled offhandedly. "Sometimes I'd come back from the cargo-hauling trips with a few observations that were useful to certain people, but that was the extent of it."
"And there won't be any more of that?" Reva insisted tensely, a small frown narrowing her eyes as she watched him.
"Word of honor!" he vowed. And she believed him. She could trust Josh.
"Good," she breathed thankfully.
"Reva," he went on with an intent passion, "when I met you I found what I'd been looking for all those years. There was never any doubt in my mind from the first day that I had to have you. That I needed you. I love you, little one, and knowing that you love me makes me the most fortunate alley cat in the whole world!"
He kissed her with that huge, enveloping gentleness Reva responded to so instinctively and so quickly. This kiss was a soft thing to begin with, full of tenderness and restraint, as if he wanted desperately to convince her of his love. Reva stirred warmly as she sensed the tightly leashed need in him. Why hadn't she understood about his love before? Perhaps a woman always needed to hear it first in words. But having heard it, Reva knew she would always recognize it in his kiss. There was nothing else on earth quite like it for her.
"Josh, my darling, Josh," she breathed, circling his neck with her arms and holding his head close to hers. Her mouth opened like a flower beneath his lips and she felt the passion in him begin to slip the leash.
"Love me, Reva," he commanded, lifting his head for
a moment to seek out the expression in her love-softened eyes. "For the rest of our lives! I waited so very long for you, my darling."
"We've both waited a long time for love," she told him, her fingers threading through the silver at his temples. "But I don't regret it. I think it will mean more to us this way. I'll do everything in my power to make you happy and to make sure you don't regret giving up so much for me."
"I gave up nothing for you," he smiled, "but if you want to feel guilty about it and lavish a little extra attention on me, I won't complain."
"You and Xavier have far too much in common," she groaned feelingly. "Both out for all you can get!" That reminded her of something. "What would you have done if my best offer had been an affair instead of marriage?"
"Taken it," he sighed. "I'd have moved in and put my slippers under your bed. The only reason I didn't agree to it when you did offer was because I still had another ace up my sleeve to try!"
"Elaine?"
"Right. And luckily for me you came to your senses," he grinned with satisfaction.
"You are a cunning sort of husband," Reva noted with admiration. "I don't know why I let you manipulate me the way I do!"
"I like to think it's because love's made you conveniently blind to a few things."
"Just the opposite, I think," Reva said softly as a log crackled on the hearth. "It's made me see a few things I was never aware of before."
He lifted her hand and turned his lips against her palm in a soft, moving caress. Then he enclosed her smaller fingers in his and looked at her tenderly. "Do you suppose
we owe all this to your having gotten us lost this afternoon?"
"No. I was going to tell you anyway tonight. It was going to be my wedding present to you, whether you wanted it or not!"
"I've wanted it, Reva," he assured her, pressing her slowly, heavily back against the worn cushions. "With everything that's in me, I've wanted it! But it was the one thing I was afraid to ask for!"
He stretched out on top of her, trapping her completely against the couch. She absorbed the beloved weight of him, thrusting her hands beneath his shirt until she could touch the warmth of his bare back.
The leaping flames of the fire flickered around them, bathing them in a heat that was as primitive as the passion which surged between them. Reva felt her clothes being removed slowly, lovingly, until she was warmed only by the fire and Josh's body.
"My sweet, loving, Reva," he murmured as he impatiently divested himself of his own garments. He wasn't satisfied until he had removed every barrier between them, but when he once again lowered himself along the length of her body Reva was aware of something different in his lovemaking.
And the difference made her smile with joy. The passion and the strength and the naked desire were still there, stronger than ever, but the wariness she had sensed in the past was gone.
"I love you, Josh, with every part of me," she managed breathlessly as his need overwhelmed them both.
"That's just as well," he declared with a kind of savage passion. "Because that's what I must have: every part of you!" He scorched her throat and shoulders with kisses no less fiery than the flames on the hearth.
"It works both ways," she told him thickly, her fingers clutched tightly in his dark hair as he bent his head to explore the small valley between her breasts.
"But you've had all of me from the beginning," he husked against her skin, his mouth now slightly below the curve of her bosom. "All you had to do was reach out and take it. I would never have given you less, little one."
His fingers touched one nipple, bringing it to life. Reva inhaled sharply and her hips moved instinctively.
"So loving and warm," he breathed, one hand reaching down to strain her against his hard thighs. "I lived with memories of your softness and your heat for four long months after I put you on that plane and I swore that when I found you again I would never let you go. The worst night I ever spent in my life was that first night back in your apartment, knowing you were so close at last!"
"And you thought everything was back to normal when I called out your name in my nightmare?" she teased huskily, her fingers dancing down his spine in a tiny, passionate exercise.
"Don't you dare laugh at me, witch," he growled, lifting his head to rake her face with lambent fire in the lion eyes. "You'll never know what restraint it required not to simply take you and have done with all the nonsense!"
"It wasn't nonsense!" she protested, vibrantly aware of his thumb stroking the sensitive inside of her wrist. She shivered in delight. "It was a self-defense mechanism. Besides, four months is a long time, Josh. We needed an opportunity to get used to each other again!"
"Excuses," he gritted, trailing his fingers from her wrist up to the inner part of her elbow and on to her shoulder. "But I can forgive all that now. I can forgive anything now. You're here in my arms at last with my ring on your finger and that's all that matters!"
"Love me, Josh!" Reva begged, feeling the magic and power in him set off on
e series of tremors after another.
"I will love you, little Reva," he vowed, responding to the urgency in her by pressing his weight more heavily against her softness. "I never had any choice," he added simply.
And then the words became less intelligible between them and the communication passed into that realm reserved for a man and a woman in love. Reva heard a voice cry out her husband's name at the violent and tender moment of union, felt him lay claim to her with a completeness which shocked her senses and which she knew instinctively she would never be able to escape.
But in that melding the claimer was as much the claimed. It could not be otherwise, for one cannot possess on such an intimate and far-reaching level unless one surrenders to the power of the possession. Reva sensed the depth of the mutual surrender and gloried in it. As it had been from the first, the act of love with Josh was an all-consuming thing, and tonight, with their love openly admitted, it bound completely. Neither would ever be free again.
Much later Reva opened her eyes as she felt Josh stir and slowly sit up beside her on the couch. She blinked sleepily up at him and smiled with all her love in her eyes.
"Where are you going?" she asked softly.
"To put another log on the fire. It's going to be cold tonight," he whispered, running a lazily possessive hand over her breasts and down to the swell of her hip. Her smile widened as she saw that he was reluctant to leave her long enough even to accomplish the small task. With a small groan he finally stood up, his strong, nude body reflecting the glow from the hearth.
Reva turned on her side, tucking a hand under one
cheek, and watched as he expertly banked the fire and fed it until it flamed brightly once again.
"We'll have to leave a note thanking the owner of this cabin," she remarked with a delicate yawn. He was so beautiful, she thought with pleasure.
"And some money to cover the cost of the food and wood," Josh agreed, coming back to stand beside her as she sprawled, totally relaxed, on the old sofa. "We'll tell them in the note that this was our wedding night. All the world loves a lover or something like that!"