“Since the rain held off, this spot will do us for the night,” Teddy said.
Rhys nodded and gladly pulled his horse to a stop.
Teddy dismounted and looked the place over. Given options, she preferred camping on higher ground, but the valley they were in was little more than a hollow and was the best place for the horses if she wanted them ready to ride in the morning. A small ribbon of a stream curled lazily between the hollow’s walls. Along its banks grew enough vegetation for the animals to get a good feeding.
As soon as the saddles and bridles were removed and hobbles put in place, the horses waded into the shallow stream and began drinking. Teddy and Rhys trudged upstream from the animals, to refill the canteens and to wash some of the dust and grit from their faces. With little aplomb they prepared a cold and sparse supper for themselves. Both were reflective. Rhys sensed that Teddy had too much on her mind to think of conversation. Later, when they shook out their bedrolls, Teddy spoke up and he learned one thing she had been thinking.
“Don’t get it in your head I want company under this blanket.” She had her gun in hand and twirled it around her finger several times.
Rhys yawned. “The only company I seek is sleep,” he assured her. “Your virtue is safe.” Never having considered himself soft, Rhys had not, admittedly, spent an entire day on a horse in several years. He ached in every muscle, and though it had crossed his mind he’d like to spread his blanket next to hers, he was willing to save the pleasure for a later time.
“Well, your vitals aren’t safe if you come crabbing over here.” Teddy was grateful the deepening darkness made it impossible for him to see that she was too tired to put up a fight with a feather. She watched as he eased down on his blankets and methodically pulled off his boots. When she was sure he was settled where he lay, she spread her blankets a few yards away and slowly slid between them. She placed her gun at arm’s reach. Halfheartedly she wished he would disregard her warning, for the weapon did not give the comfort she needed. A gun, though it might save her life, had no tenderness, no warmth, no ability to soothe away shock or sorrow. Rhys quietly watching the climbing moon, looked as if he could offer all she longed for, even make her forget she had no use for the kind of closeness a man and woman could have.
She bit down sharply on her lip and told herself that seeking solace with Rhys Delmar was one of the dumbest and most desperate thoughts she’d ever had. He was almost as much her enemy as the men who had attacked the stage. She had no idea why she had let him ride out with her. None at all.
As she looked up at the sky, she felt as if an enormous, heavy ocean of darkness was pressing down on her. She felt terribly alone and terribly confused about what she was doing out on the desert with Rhys Delmar.
She found it easy to blame him directly for most of the confusion. Being around him kept all her feelings so knotted up she couldn’t think straight. But that wasn’t so bad, maybe. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think straight. A clear head meant deliberating on Strong Bill’s death and the almost-sure demise of the Gamble Line as soon as word of the holdup reached Cabe Northrop.
Soul weary, saddle weary, Teddy rolled to one side so she wouldn’t have to look at Rhys or that endless, leaden sky. But a change of position only brought her to another avenue of worrisome thoughts. She kept picturing the people who had believed in her, Felicity, Rope, Strong Bill, Bullet, most everybody who had stayed on with the stage line after her father died. She had told them all she wouldn’t fail them. Worst of all she had believed what she said. She had been so sure she could finish the job her father had started.
Thinking, somberly, that nothing had gone right for her in a long time, Teddy drifted off. Sleep, however, offered no comfort. She tossed about so much that she had her blankets in a snarl. She moaned and mumbled so loudly that Rhys lay awake long after she had closed her eyes. He was ready to go to her should she cry out for him. If he’d thought his efforts would have been well received he’d have forgone the waiting and awakened her and tried to comfort her as best he could. But guessing what reaction he’d get if he did, he let her continue in unsettled sleep. He was hoping that even though she was restless and troubled, she would feel better by morning.
She missed the fireworks, the distant blaze of blue-white light splitting the sky. The brilliant spectacle lit the horizon for a full hour but occurred so far away Rhys could barely hear the rumble and crackle of the thunder and lightning. He judged the distance to be dozens of miles off, so it was with no concern for a dousing that he eventually fell asleep.
He was not so troubled as Teddy and slept soundly. Even so, he was awakened after only a few hours by a strange sound. His eyes blinked open to darkness confirming that his rest had been brief. The noise grew louder, humming like a gigantic swarm of bees descending on the valley, roaring like pent-up ocean waves. Lying still, listening a few moments more, he tried to define what he heard but found his sleep-sogged mind reluctant to cooperate.
What was it? Not wind. He’d never heard the wind sound that way. He’d never heard anything that sounded like the ever-nearing roar. Or felt the air quite so still. Or the earth quiver beneath him. One of the horses whinnied nervously. Rhys sat up and jerked on his boots.
“Teddy!” He ran to her and shook her awake. “Something is wrong!”
She came to, sputtering and cursing. “Bastard! Get your hands off—My God!” she cried and came flying to her feet. “Cut the horses loose! Then run! Run like hell! This place is about to be under water!”
Rhys sped toward the horses and cut them free. He saw one of the bays go racing down the canyon, the other found a climbable slope on the canyon wall and scrambled up. Teddy grabbed Rhys’s hand and ran after the climbing horse. Before they gained the top, an aquatic snare lassoed their legs and dragged them down the slope into the raging flood.
Teddy, screaming, pitched headlong into the torrent. Rhys jumped in after her, managed to maneuver his way to her and shield her from the rocks and limbs the water cast them into. As they were carried around a bend he fought the rising currents and ragged canyon wall, eventually shoving her toward a wind-twisted pine whose roots were locked in a rocky ledge.
She gasped for breath. Her eyes were wild with fear. She caught hold of a spindly bough and saved herself from being swept on. Rhys caught hold too, and would have been as safe as she had not his desperate hold on the pine branch been broken when the rushing of water hurled a piece of debris that hit him squarely in the back. Stunned, he fell into the brutal waters a second time and was carried off down the canyon.
He could hear Teddy scream, “Timmy! Timmy!” as he was swept around another bend in the canyon. Mon Dieu! She was thinking of her brother, thinking he was her brother. As the current latched onto him and carried him away, he got a last fleeting look at her agonized face and saw the absolute terror in her eyes.
He prayed he wouldn’t drown. She would need someone after this was over.
Thankfully the powerful wash of the flash flood tossed him near the edge of the canyon. Fighting to stay above water he grabbed for any stationary object clinging to the muddied banks. A hundred yards downstream from Teddy the sturdy root of a single tree offered him a lifeline. Knocked breathless by a hard slam into gnarled wood, he clung on with nothing but determination. A few seconds later, air again began filling his lungs, and he began the arduous climb to safety.
The distance to the flat ground above wasn’t far in feet. But the rocks were wet and slippery and his hands had been cut and bruised from grabbing at the craggy bank during his watery ride. Rhys snaked his way up, progressing only an inch at a time, knowing that a misstep could send him back into the deluge of water below. Only once did he look back. That was when a rattling crash came from where he had been moments before. His lifeline was gone by then, ripped from the wet canyon wall by the crushing impact of a small boulder.
When his feet were once more on firm, dry ground he thought of Teddy. Had she managed to get uphill or was
she still clinging to the skinny tree branch where he had last seen her? Calling her name, he started to run, hoping she could hear him above the roar of the water.
She did hear him as he neared. His voice, welcome as a song, brought her momentarily out of the shock of reliving the horror she had experienced the day her brother had drowned. She was up to her shoulders in the rising water. Though her tree branch held fast, the tree itself was losing the battle with the water. When it broke loose she would be carried down the canyon with it.
Shouting to Rhys for help, she kicked against the current for a foothold but could not control her legs in the rushing water. She saw Rhys drop to the ground four feet above her, but at that very moment, the tree broke loose. Part of the upended trunk struck her shoulder, to end any chance she had of reaching out for Rhys’s help. In an explosive instant she was underwater, swept down deep, as Timmy had been. She would be beaten to pieces against the rocks before she drowned as her twin brother had done.
Teddy surfaced endless moments later and saw Rhys desperately reaching towards her. She shouted to him for help one last time. Then she was sucked down again, as water filled her open mouth and flooded into her lungs. Beneath the torrent, as she was twisted and spun about, she thought she saw Timmy’s boyish, terror-stricken face as it had been that last moment before he, too, had been carried under the black waters the day he had drowned.
Timmy. Timmy. She had relived the horror of his death a thousand times in her mind. Now she was following her brother to the same dreadful end, failing him too, failing everyone.
Pain stabbed into her as all at once her head seemed to have been wrenched from her neck. Beneath the dark water she opened her mouth to scream her rage. She had not thought dying would hurt so much.
Chapter 28
The soggy, tawny braid was the only part of Teddy that Rhys could reach. He hooked it with his fingers, grappling desperately into the long strands of hair until he had a tight, determined grip. He was fighting the current for her, pulling with all his might to hang on and beat the driving waters. He knew he had won when his savage, insistent jerk pulled her above the swirling deluge.
Hoping he hadn’t snatched the hair from her head, he hauled her to the bank and got a grip first on her collar, then her arm. Her eyes were closed when he got her clear, but she was sputtering and coughing. He knew she was alive. Taking no chances that the water might leap over the canyon wall he tugged Teddy up a rise some ten feet away and set to work pumping out the water she had swallowed. He welcomed her moans of protest as he rolled her to her stomach and pressed and lifted her back.
With her loose hair plastered to her face, she looked like a dunked tabby cat. She came to, with about as much fury as a bedraggled cat would have had. She began twisting beneath him so that she was face up instead of down. Her greenish eyes flashed like flames. Her scowl was so deep it looked as if it was there to stay. Her battered hands went to her head and gingerly felt it all over.
“Jeez!” She made a sound that sounded exactly like a growl. “Did you have to scalp me while I was out cold?”
Rhys didn’t care if she cursed him. He was too glad to be alive, too glad to have her alive and sound enough to complain. “I am sorry,” he said softly. “Your scalp is no doubt sore. I had to pull hard or lose you to the water.”
She found some gratitude then. “You caught me? By the hair?”
“Yes.” He reached out and brushed the limp, wet strands off her pale face. “The rest of you was underneath.” Her skin was cold, her face lined with scratches from the tree that had betrayed her to the water. His hands tenderly stroked her cheeks as he silently wished away the injuries. “I am sorry I had to hurt you. I would not have done so if there had been any other way. Not for the world.”
Teddy groaned softly, just then comprehending fully that Rhys had miraculously pulled her from the water. “You saved my life,” she said.
“I suppose.”
“No supposing.” She coughed, clearing the last remnant of her ordeal from her constricted throat. “If you hadn’t caught me I would be dragging along the bottom of that canyon with the rest of the debris that water is carrying. I would be dead.”
“I suppose,” he said more softly.
She recalled then that he too had been swept away by the fury of the water. He too had come close to the passageway between life and death and must feel as relieved, as buoyantly alive as she did.
Somehow he had managed to find the path back alone, and to save himself from the wild current and come to her aid. Considering the way she had badgered him, rebuffed him at every encounter, she wondered why he had bothered.
She was glad he had. Troubled as her life was, she wanted to live to know the satisfaction of having long, full decades of life behind her. She had survived her skirmish with death, thanks to Rhys. Quick as it was, the ordeal had changed Teddy, made her see that there is always another way to solve a problem, no matter the issue.
She sure had a new point of view for Rhys. Maybe her brain was waterlogged. Whatever the reason, he did not look like an enemy anymore. Poised above her, he appeared regal and proud as a pagan god who had spared one of his mortals and was waiting to be rewarded for his actions.
His eyes glittered bright as the stars that hung overhead. His taut muscles rippled through the soaked and ragged shirt that hung open from collar to waist. Her clothing had fared no better against branches and current. Her shirt was tattered, ripped away at one shoulder, hanging by a few frayed threads at the other. It covered little of her.
Teddy did not care that she was half-naked or that he was. What mattered was that they had survived a disaster and would live to see the glowing sun bring morning light. Another day.
A rivulet of water, clear and cold, fell from Rhys’s dripping hair to Teddy’s throat. It traversed the hollow between her collarbones breaking into silver droplets that flowed slowly between her softly rising breasts. Rhys watched the tiny droplets inch along, saw the dark crests of her breasts harden and rise against what remained of her shirt, felt her shudder as if the icy beads had penetrated her skin.
What had been a lifesaving posture, Rhys on his knees and straddle-legged over Teddy, became a prelude to something else in that moment. Electricity fired between them, hot and devastating, forging one strong, highly pitched emotion into another. Teddy felt as if a bolt of fire and light had hit her. Rhys felt as if he were filled with it, and had become uncontrollable heat and flame.
Rhys fought against it, told himself that he was wrong to want her, could not allow himself to do what he feared he would in another moment.
“Mon Dieu. Teddy,” he said, his hoarse voice not rising above a whisper, his breath like a flame as he bent close to her face.
The pressure of his strong thighs against her, the gentle stroke of his fingers on her skin sealed her fate. She wanted him—wanted to prove she was alive, wanted to prove she could live forever. Death be damned. She craved him as much as she had craved the clear, fresh air when he had pulled her from beneath the water.
“Oh hell,” she whispered, her arms going out to him, sliding up his broad, hard chest to lock like vines around his neck. She brought his mouth to hers, and felt his teeth graze sensuously upon her lips as his tongue shot possessively past them.
The roar of her racing blood pounded in her ears, drowning out the roar of the rushing water. A glimmer of moonlight fell across her face, a rare bedeviling red-gold light that brought her yearning for Rhys Delmar to a fever pitch. She cried out his name, with ragged cries that came in a breathless whisper as his hands tore away the shreds of her shirt exposing more of her to the magical light, more of her to his skillful mouth and hands. His fingers ran rampant and wild over silky flesh, caressing fullness and hollows, stripping away the clothing that had become as binding as chains. His mouth devoured her sweetness, tasting her as if she were luscious summer fruit, a banquet of delicacies laid out for him, him alone.
Beneath him she was soft as a
cloud, sweet as a meadow of wildflowers. Her hair made a veil around her, honey and gold spun out like threads of fine silk. Softly, gently he looped his fingers in the damp golden strands, brought a soft handful to his lips, trailed it like a mass of curling ribbon across his chest, down his bare thigh.
The touch of the silken tassels brought a quiver to his hard flesh that Teddy felt beneath her delving fingers as they wove into the inky, wet curls at his nape. Whispering her name over and over, Rhys stretched out beside her as they discarded wet clothing and cast it aside as they lay upon a smooth dry stone, an altar to their passion, a bed for their mating.
Sweet. She was sweet. Her kisses rained across his face warm as summer, as laden with promise as spring. He pulled her close so that she lay against the length of him, but she would not be still beneath his questing hands.
Hot, then cold, Teddy writhed and twisted beneath Rhys, wanting him, fearing her need for him, yet powerless to turn back what she had begun. His palms cupped her breast, molding, squeezing, shaping, stroking the flushed areolae until the peaks grew tight as rosebuds. Her breath caught in her throat and her skin flushed with heat, then yielded to a sweeping chill as icy as a winter wind. A single touch of his lips, hot as a brand on her throat, melted the cold away, fusing it into a burning ache for more, more.
She moaned helplessly, pleadingly, felt she was drowning again, this time swept beneath the surface of desire and need. Raggedly, softly, Teddy whispered his name, a confirmation to herself and to him that for once she would allow herself to be carried as deep as her latent, molten passions ran, as many fathoms down as his would take her. For long, dazed moments she twisted and shivered beneath his touch, euphoric, exultant, eyes heavy with the pleasure of lazily watching the one who had brought her to this heady state.
Devil Moon Page 23