Only His o-1

by Elizabeth Lowell

  «Actually, I’m kind of slow to figure some things out, but I’m learning.»

  «Want to flip a coin?»

  He blinked. «Whatever for?»

  «To see who gets the first bath.»

  Caleb caught himself just before he said something foolish about bathingtogether. Rememberthe trout. Slow and sweet and easy. No sudden moves. No impatience. All the time in the world.

  «You go first, honey. I’ll groom the horses.»

  «That isn’t fair to you.»

  «I like working with horses.»

  «Then I’ll wash our clothes. Deal?» Willow asked, holding out her hand.

  Caleb took it, brought it to his lips, and gently bit the pad of flesh at the base of Willow’s thumb. «Deal.»

  He released her hand and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  «What are you doing?» she asked.

  «Taking off my clothes. Unless you planned to wash them with me still inside…?»

  «Er, no.»

  But the thought intrigued Willow. It showed in the deepening of color on her face. Caleb smiled and pulled off his shirt, enjoying the widening of Willow’s eyes and the flush in her cheeks when she looked at him. She might have been reluctant to make love with him, even afraid, but she made no effort to hide her approval of him as a man. It was one of the many paradoxes about Willow that both lured and baffled Caleb.

  Curious about her response, Caleb began unfastening his pants. Willow made a shocked sound and jerked her glance back up to his face.

  «Same problem as with the shirt,» Caleb said blandly.

  Willow swallowed hard and said, «I’ll get you a blanket.»

  She turned and ran across the grass toward camp with Caleb’s deep laughter following her every step of the way.

  12

  Willow floated in the warm pool, wondering if she had died and gone to heaven despite herunangelic nature. Thirty feet above her, water gushed out from a crack in the black rock of the mountainside. The crack ran in a steeply narrowing V that ended in a waterfall. At the top of the V, the water seethed with steam. By the time it leaped and cascaded into the deep pool, the water had cooled enough not to scald naked skin. To Willow’s surprise, the pool had proved to be sweet rather thansulphurous.

  «Caleb is indeed a very special kind of dowser,» Willow said softly to the pool. «If Matt found a valley like this, it’s no wonder he never came back to the farm. All we had were cool creeks and sun-warmed, mud-bottomed ponds.»

  The nearby aspen and evergreens mademurmurous sounds of agreement, whispering to Willow of the seductive, savage beauty of the western land. She whispered back, but it was Caleb she was thinking of, not the land. The thought of the liberties she had allowed him made her blush…and the passion he had tapped within her made her ache.

  «What has he done to me?» Willow whispered, shivering, remembering.

  «Not enough,» she answered herself softly. «Dear God, not nearly enough.»

  If Caleb hadn’t been so gentle with her, Willow would have been frightened by her own thoughts, by her own hungers, by the desire to lie in the midst of clean, seething water and feel Caleb’s hands on her, touching her everywhere the water did.

  A sweet arrow of sensation shot through Willow’s body, charging her as though it was Caleb’s mouth rather than warm water caressing her breasts. She trembled again, but not from fear. Once the shock of newness had worn off, she very much enjoyed the feelings he called from her body.

  «I could say no to a man who was cruel or cowardly or stupid or selfish,» Willow whispered to the pool. «But Caleb is none of those things. He’s a hard man, but a soft man wouldn’t last very long out here. And Caleb is no harder than he has to be. He takes no pleasure in gunfights and killing. He treats his horses kindly. Not once has he used a whip or sharp spurs.»

  «He didn’t think much of me when he first met me,» Willow admitted softly to the steaming water, «but he wasn’t rough with me even then. And he was kind to Widow Sorenson, though I suspect Eddy is her paramour. Caleb must know, yet he defended both of them when they couldn’t defend themselves.»

  «But most important,» Willow said, shivering again, remembering, «no matter how hot his blood was running, Caleb hasn’t taken me when other men would have. Other than that first time, he wasn’t even angry when I said no. He’s a gentleman even when I’m not quite a lady.»

  Willow was relieved at Caleb’s self-control. She still felt cold when she remembered the barely leashed fury in his eyes when she had begged him not to touch her so intimately.

  Fancy lady, some day you’ll be on your knees in front of me again — but you won’t be begging me to stop.

  She had never seen a man so angry and yet so much in control of himself. She was grateful for that steel discipline of his. It allowed her to venture into the sweet, seething waters of passion without fear of drowning.

  Yet even the thought of drowning in Caleb’s arms pierced Willow with a pleasure that was also pain, the ache of hunger awakened and teased but not soothed by his smile, his hands, his mouth moving over her, burning through her inhibitions to the deep passion beneath. She wanted more of his kisses, his caresses, his taste, the intense sensuality that burned beneath his control.

  Unable to bear her own thoughts any longer, Willow rolled over and lowered her feet to the rocky bottom of the pool. The water came up to her chin. Slowly, she half-swam, half-walked the short distance to shore, seeking the long ledge of rock that ran down into the pool. After a brief search, her toes found the ledge. It was warm and nearly smooth from the restless water rushing over it. The stone itself was clean, scrubbed by the constant turmoil of water leaping down the dark cliff into the pool.

  After wringing out her hair and blotting herself dry, Willow dressed in the camisole andpantelets she had brought to the pool. Other than the faded, everyday dress she had stuffed into the carpetbag at the last minute — a dress she had worn so often she couldn’t bear the sight of it — the fine cotton underwear was the only clothing she had that was clean. She didn’t even have Caleb’s shirt to pull on over the thin cotton, for the shirt was spread out in the meadow to dry along with the rest of the clothes she had washed.

  Willow shook out the cotton blanket she and Caleb had been using as a sheet and wrapped it around herself, securing it under her arms. Holding it up like a narrow skirt, she picked her way through a hundred feet of forest to the meadow where Caleb was grooming the horses, wearing one of the heavy blankets around his hips.

  At least, Willow hoped he was wearing a blanket. As hot as the day was, she wouldn’t have blamed him for stripping to his underwear.

  What underwear? I washed it all and spread it out in the meadow.

  The thought of encountering Caleb naked among the horses was both daunting and…exciting.

  Willow’s damp hair felt cool on her flushed cheeks as she walked out into the meadow, taking care to stay in plain sight. The horses’ heads came up as they spotted her. Ishmael nickered, catching the familiar scent of lavender on the breeze.

  Caleb gave the stallion’s back another stroke of the brush before he bent down and retrieved the blanket he had thrown off as soon as Willow had vanished into the forest that fringed the meadow. He wrapped the blanket around his hips and went back to grooming the stallion. It wasn’t Caleb’s modesty he was interested in preserving, it was Willow’s. She had blushed like a virgin at the sight of his naked chest. She would go scarlet to her heels if she saw the rest of him bare.

  «Your turn for a bath,» Willow said as she walked up to Caleb.

  He nodded, but didn’t stop grooming Ishmael.

  Willow tried not to admire Caleb’s powerful shoulders, long arms, and the tapering of his body into narrow hips. As he brushed the red stallion, she also tried not to stare at the supple flex and play of skin and muscle, and the wedge of chest hair that tapered down to a finger’s width at his flat navel, then flared once more where the blanket rode low on his hips.

  Sh
e tried not to stare, but she didn’t succeed. When she realized that he was watching her watching him, she looked away hastily.

  «I don’t mind,» Caleb said.

  «What?»

  «I don’t mind having you look at me.»

  As Caleb spoke, he realized it was the simple truth. He never would have guessed how satisfying it could be to have a woman look at him shyly with admiration and sensual hunger in her eyes. Perhaps it was because the few women he had known were older widows to whom a man’s body was nothing remarkable. They had enjoyed his strength around the house and praised his self-control in bed, but they had never looked at him the way Willow was looking, as though the sun rose and set in his eyes and the moon lay cupped in his hands.

  «In fact,» Caleb said, «I like having you look at me. It makes me feel like a special kind of man.»

  «You are,» Willow said simply.

  His crooked smile flashed briefly as he shook his head. «I’m just a man, honey. Smarter than some, dumber than others, and harder than most.»

  «I think you’re special,» she whispered.

  Caleb heard the soft words. His hand ceased making slow, sweeping strokes over Ishmael’s back. «You’re the special one, Willow.» Before she could speak, he slapped the stallion’s rump. «Go back to eating, horse. A bit of fat wouldn’t do you any harm.»

  Ishmael trotted off to count his mares and remind them of his muscular presence. Watching, Caleb said quietly, «You better keep track of them, son. They’re as spirited as they are graceful. Tough, too. I don’t know of any flatland horses that could have stood up to what those mares did.»

  «They were bred for stamina, loyalty, and courage,» Willow said.

  «How did the Arabs manage that?»

  «With rather brutal pragmatism,» she answered, watching her mares ignore the strutting stallion. «For century after century, the sheiks rounded up all the brood mares and drove them out into the desert without water. They kept going until the mares were mad with thirst, then they were driven toward an oasis.»

  Caleb looked from Ishmael to Willow, caught by the husky intensity of her voice as she spoke of the horses she loved.

  «When the mares scented water, they began to run,» Willow said. «When they were within a hundred yards of water, the battle horns were blown. Only the mares that turned away from water and ran back to their masters were bred.»

  Caleb looked back at the Arabians for a long moment, measuring the results of the sheiks’ harsh method of determining which mares were worthy of breeding. The test might have been brutal, but the results were extraordinary. Even worn to the point of gauntness by hundreds of miles of hard trail, the mares were still elegant, still alert, still responsive. If Willow saddled one of the mares and pointed it back toward the pass, the mare would go until she dropped.

  The Arabians were like their mistress in that. No give up in them. Caleb liked that in a horse. He respected it in a man. He valued it in a woman above all else.

  «Maybe the sheiks had the right idea,» he said.

  «Hard on the mares,» Willow said dryly.

  Caleb smiled and changed the subject. «You ever shave a man?»

  «Lot of times.»

  «Good. Bring my razor to the pool in about ten minutes,» he said. Abruptly, Caleb turned away, wondering why it irritated him that Willow had shaved men before when it worked to his convenience now. «I put a real edge on the blade, so be careful of your fingers.»

  «And your face?» she suggested innocently.

  Caleb smiled in spite of his irritation. He looked back over his shoulder at the girl standing in the meadow wearing little more than long hair and a thin cotton blanket.

  «If you don’t cut me,» he said, «I’ll brush your hair dry for you.»

  Before Willow could answer, Caleb turned again, walking swiftly toward the trees. She stared at his retreating back, her thoughts scattering at the idea of shaving a naked man in a warm pool.

  That wasn’t what hemeant, Willowassuredherself. Wasit?

  She went toward camp, stopping long enough to turn over the clothes that were drying in the meadow. She had to shoo Trey away from her Levis — the tall gelding apparently was intrigued by the scent of freshly washed clothes. Willow felt the same way herself. Whether denim or wool or flannel, the cloth smelled of sunshine and meadow and a hint of lavender. She inhaled deeply, loving the mixture of fragrances.

  By the time Willow got to camp, found the folding razor, and crossed the meadow again, more than ten minutes had passed. She hurried barefoot through the forest, watching for stones beneath the thick carpet of pine needles. When she saw the pool glimmering through the trees, she stopped.

  Caleb was still in the water.

  «Caleb?» she called. «Are you ready?»

  «Sure. Come to the far side of the pool.»

  With slowing steps, Willow approached the pool. Caleb was sitting at the opposite side of the pool, where a ledge formed an uneven kind of bench. Just behind him, the runoff from the hidden hot spring cascaded into the pool, sending water seething and swirling up to his breastbone.

  «Don’t you want to get out?» she asked.

  «I wouldn’t mind, but you would probably blush to your heels,» Caleb said calmly.

  «Oh.» Willow’s breath caught. «Should I go away until you can put the blanket back on?» she asked quickly.

  «Don’t bother. The water covers more of me than the blanket did.»

  Willow tried to speak but her voice had dried up. She took a slow breath. «Caleb?»

  «Hmm?»

  «I’ve never been around a…» Her voice died as she remembered she was supposed to be a married woman. If she told Caleb she had never been close to a naked man, he would wonder what kind of a marriage she had. «That is, it’s been a long time since I…»

  «Shaved a man?» Caleb finished for her. «Don’t worry, honey. I’ll hold real still.»

  Uncertainly, Willow stood at the edge of the pool and nibbled on her lower lip. Caleb waited, seeing her ambivalence in the way she held her body. She was poised to flee, yet she was watching him with an expression close to yearning.

  Wary little trout. She senses me coming closer and closer and knows she should swim away. But she likes the feel of my hands on her body too well.

  God, so do I.

  What did that bastard Reno do to make her so skittish of a man?

  «Quit torturing your lip, honey,» Caleb said finally. «I didn’t mean to crowd you. Just leave the razor. I’ll shave myself. It won’t be the first time.»

  «But there’s no mirror.»

  «I’ll find a quiet piece of water.»

  «My — my hands are shaking,» Willow said, wanting to explain why she wasn’t going to shave him.

  «I can see that. Go on back to camp. I’ll be along in a few minutes.»

  She drew a deep breath, but couldn’t bring herself to leave. She wanted to stay too much. Lifting the blanket, looking only at her feet, she waded across the tepid creek that flowed from the pool into the meadow. Under Caleb’s watchful eyes, she picked her way around the pool until she could place the folding razor within reach of his long arm. Telling herself she shouldn’t look, but unable to keep from a single swift glance, she realized that Caleb was right. The water covered more of him that the blanket had.

  Most of the time.

  But sometimes, for just an instant, the froth would swirl away and offer a tantalizing glimpse of the man beneath the seething silver water. Before Willow could realize what she had seen, the currents would shift again, concealing everything but Caleb’s wide shoulders rising above the pool.

  Slowly, Willow settled by the edge of the water, rearranging the blanket so that she could sit without revealing more than her naked feet. After a moment of taut silence, Caleb reached for the soap he had brought and began lathering his wet beard. When he finished, he held his hand out for the razor. Willow put half of the folding blade in his hand, but held onto the other half.

&nb
sp; «If you trust me not to cut you, I would like to shave you.»

  Caleb closed his eyes, afraid that Willow would see the stark hunger in them. «I’d like that.»

  «I don’t think I can reach you from here. Can you move closer to the edge?»

  «Not without making you blush.» He hesitated before adding matter-of-factly, «There’s room for you to stand near me, if you don’t mind getting wet again. Your hair will cover whatever the water doesn’t.»

  Willow looked at Caleb. His eyes were closed and his body was relaxed on the wide ledge, as though the hot water hadunravelled the constant vigilance that was so much a part of him. Reassured by his casual acceptance of the situation, she pulled her hair forward until it covered her breasts, took off the blanket, and set it beyond the reach of the dancing water. Carefully, she eased into the pool. She had bathed on the other side, where the pool deepened gradually. It got deep very quickly here.

  Her foot slipped and she made a startled sound. Instantly, Caleb’s hands closed around her waist.

  «Hang on,» he said. He lifted Willow and settled her sideways across his knees, shifted his grip, and held her out in front of him. «There’s another ledge of rock somewhere close to my feet. Find it?»

  After a moment of fishing around with her toes, Willow nodded, looking everywhere but at Caleb. The instant of feeling his bare legs beneath her wet bottom had doubled her heartbeat.

  «Can you stand?» he asked.

  Willow tried, but the water was almost up to her breasts and quite turbulent, for she was in the direct flow of the cascade. After a few attempts, she managed to brace herself against the stone ledge and between Caleb’s knees.

  «All right?» Caleb asked.

  «I think so.»

  He smiled slightly, settled back, and closed his eyes. «Make damn sure, honey. I only have one throat.»

  Willow laughed and felt better. Caleb was so matter-of-fact about the situation that she felt foolish being nervous.

  «Hold still now,» she cautioned.

  As it had been during the battle with theComancheros, once Willow had a task for her hands, they stopped trembling. She shaved Caleb with quick, deft motions, washing the blade after each stroke. The lather vanished within seconds, torn apart by the currents that boiled softly throughout the pool.