by Jill Gregory
“Mama, don’t go ...”
* * *
Cade had been riding through the storm for hours. Fear whipped at him with every long stride of his horse. He’d been fighting all night, fighting a sense of horrible hopelessness and cold fear for Annabel which was far more painful than anything inflicted by the elements. But as night crashed on toward morning, he knew deep in his heart that he would never find her, not until this damned rain let up and the darkness ebbed, and by then, he knew, it could well be too late.
He bent his head against the silver torrent which ran off his slicker in flowing rivulets. He had to keep going.
He’d gone looking for her after shooting Lowry, but when he’d found only her reticule in that upstairs bedroom he’d known what must have happened. Tracks leading away from the Lowry hacienda had headed east. But all the tracks that could be seen at all by torchlight had quickly been obliterated by the start of the storm. And so had the torch.
All he had to go on was Conchita’s advice. She knew of two places where Cobb might have taken Annabel with a storm brewing—both of them had numerous caves, both were less than an hour’s ride east of Lowry’s place. Brett had veered off toward the other canyon; he had chosen this one. But as he forced Dickens up yet another twisting trail, slippery and treacherous with slimy mud and rain, Cade’s heart weighed heavy.
He should have seen this coming and protected Annabel. Cobb had obviously caught on to her trick and had come back for revenge. How could I have been so stupid not to have seen her danger? Why in hell did I leave her alone?
He gritted his teeth and forced back his fear. Impossible as it seemed, he would find her. He wouldn’t quit until he had. And Cobb ... well, Cade thought with grim, deadly calm, I’ll take care of Cobb.
But an hour later, he shook the water out of his eyes and squinted around the looming, rain-swept mountains in despair. He’d found two caves, neither of them occupied. There were probably dozens more here in these rocks, tucked into unseen crevices, hidden beneath overhangs that jutted out over the dizzying canyon below. But his horse was bone weary and cold, and Cobb could have Annabel hidden anywhere, anywhere ... or he might have headed toward the other canyon after all ...
Then he saw it. It ... her ... he couldn’t be sure. A shimmering figure—female—glistened against the rocks just above. He blinked, shaded his eyes, and looked up into the rain. There it was again, for only a moment, glowing like a falling star, and then it vanished.
It seemed to have beckoned to him.
He blinked, saw nothing, and swore. Why the hell not, he muttered then, and turned Dickens onto the path which led in that direction. It was worth a try. At this point, anything was worth a try.
For some reason as he bore down on the place where he thought he’d seen someone, he thought of Annabel’s lost brooch, the one her mother had promised to her on her wedding day, the one Savannah Brannigan had claimed would protect her from harm. Maybe if she’d had that brooch, Cobb wouldn’t have gotten his filthy hands on her. Maybe she’d be safe right this minute instead of trapped with the gunslinger in the midst of a New Mexico thunderstorm.
He reached the ledge and glanced all around and down at the ground. Suddenly, beneath the swirling rain and mud he saw something and bent to retrieve it. Hope pounded through him. He clenched the object tightly in his fist.
Annabel’s amber earbob. Lying here, covered with mud.
Quickly he perused both directions, and saw at once from the shape of the rocks that there must be a cave ... right there.
He tethered Dickens beneath a small overhang and approached the opening of the cave with his gun drawn. If Cobb has hurt her, I’ll break every bone in his body before I shoot him, he vowed, a grim whiteness about his mouth. He stooped and crept into the cave. Silence. Dead silence. He waited a moment, listening, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. But as the irregular outlines of the rocks and cave roof began to take shape, and the pitch black dissolved into murky gray, he saw a figure lying on the cave floor.
Annabel. He rushed to her and knelt down, feeling for a pulse. Her skin was ice cold, clammy and wet, and she was spattered with mud and bruises, but she was alive. Thank God, he whispered as he lifted her and cradled her in his arms. He pressed his mouth to the chilled pale skin of her cheek, and something inside him trembled with unspeakable pain. What had happened to her? Had she escaped Cobb or had he hurt her and left her here to die?
“Annabel. Sweetheart, what did he do to you?”
She stirred in his arms, the slightest of tremors shivering through the length of her body. Cade held her close, trying to warm her with his own body. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”
“Cade?”
Fierce joy swept through him at the single word, and when she opened her eyes a moment later, the relief that surged through him washed away every other thought.
“Don’t try to talk.”
“I’m cold, Cade. So cold ...”
“Yes, sweetheart, I know. Wait just a moment and I’ll get you a blanket.”
“Don’t leave me!”
She clutched at him with feeble fingers.
“Only for a minute. Hold on, Annabel, don’t slip away from me.”
The next hours were a blur to him, a series of frantic activities as he tried to get her warm and dry. He stripped off her wet clothes and wrapped her in both of his saddle blankets. He made a fire and held her in his arms before its opal glow, and later, when she slept, limp and warm and trusting in his arms, he looked at her with an awed tenderness that sliced more painfully than an ax through his gut. He settled her as comfortably as he could on the floor of the cave while he brought Dickens inside and rubbed him down.
When Annabel awoke just before dawn, the rain was letting up to a steady crystal drizzle from a sky of dark pewter. Deep within the snug depths of the cave he held a tin cup filled with coffee to her lips while she sipped at the steaming rich brew.
And something in his heart turned over, lifted, and soared with gladness as she at last smiled at him and her gray-green eyes took on something of their familiar sparkle.
“I could have used that slicker last night,” were her first words as she glanced past him at the slicker he’d tossed down in the corner of the cave. “Remind me never to wear silk in a thunderstorm again.”
“I’ll remind you never to get mixed up with a snake-eyed varmint like Red Cobb again,”
Her eyes darkened to emerald. A shadow passed across her face. “He’s still out there,” she whispered, suddenly paler. “He said ... oh, Cade, you can’t imagine what he said.”
“Yes, I can,” he told her grimly. “But you tell me anyway.”
Afterward, he held her against him, his arms tight around her delicate frame, and thought of the pleasure he would get from ending Red Cobb’s worthless life. Sometimes he felt regret when he was forced to kill a man; sometimes, he felt nothing; but this time he would feel pure satisfaction.
Cobb had threatened Brett and had done far worse to Annabel, and he would pay in the only way animals like him understood.
“Tell me what happened with Lowry,” she urged, her head on his warm chest, for he had stripped off his shirt and lay beside her clad only in his trousers. His boots, shirt, and gun belt were heaped in a pile beside the dying fire. Her slender fingers curled against the crisp black hair of his chest as she peeked up at him. “Is he dead?”
“Yep.”
“Is everyone all right?”
Cade’s arms tightened protectively around her. “Everyone is fine. You’d have been proud of Brett. He faced Hank Ellis in a showdown and he did just fine.”
He told her how they’d thwarted Lowry’s plan by getting rid of the three cowhands who were supposed to shoot him in the back, and of how, after he had killed Lowry in a fair gunfight for everyone to see, the other ranchers and townspeople had been hard put to conceal their delight that their host, who had probably stolen from all of them, was dead.
“Folks were
rushing up to Conchita and Adelaide and shaking their hands. As for Lowry’s men, they scattered pretty quick. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about them anymore—that outfit is all broken up.”
They lay there together for a while, watching the fire, listening to the sounds of the diminishing storm, which sounded pleasantly distant from deep within the rock walls of the cave. But tired as she was, Annabel couldn’t sleep.
“Maybe it’s the detective in me,” she told Cade, as he stroked her hair with gentle fingers, “but I can’t stop thinking about this man Boxer. Even though Cobb wouldn’t admit it, I’d be willing to bet that Boxer and Lucas Johnson are one and the same. Boxer must have hired Cobb to kill Brett after Brett refused to help him ruin your father.”
Annabel closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of his hands on her hair, reveling in the warmth and strength of him beside her. But her mind wouldn’t shut down and after a moment she continued. “Boxer must be a monster, a monster so bent on revenge he wouldn’t hesitate to kill even his own son for crossing him—if Brett is his son,” she added quickly.
“We’ll find out.”
“We will?” She twisted in his arms and peered eagerly into his face, searching it for his intent. “Does that mean—you’ll go back to St. Louis and help unravel this? You’ll try to work things out with your father? You are worried about him, aren’t you?”
“Ross McCallum can take care of himself.”
But doubt was gnawing at him, much as he tried to push it away. And so was the past, the past he’d been running from, refusing to face. The time was coming when he would have to face it, he sensed that deep in his soul. But right now there were more immediate problems to deal with. Namely Red Cobb.
“Don’t.” Annabel’s soft voice and her hand, light as a dove’s feather, on his cheek, broke into his dark reverie.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look so ... merciless. Or so troubled. It will all turn out all right.”
“You could have died up here. Cobb might have killed you.”
“But I’m safe. I’m going to be fine, because once again, you found me and saved me,” she said, beaming. “I’m getting pretty tired of it, too.”
She grinned as he tried to keep the smile from his voice, but his eyes gleamed down at her in the way that made her heart skip a beat. “Cade,” she whispered shyly, a softness threading through her as her hands reached up to wrap intimately around his neck, “there’s one place that is still really cold. It needs warming badly and I was wondering if you could oblige ...”
“Anything to oblige a lady,” he murmured, his eyes glinting into hers.
“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” she breathed in delight and slowly pulled him down toward her and inched her lips toward his. “My mouth,” she whispered, her lips tantalizingly brushing his as she formed each word. “My lips feel as if they must be blue with cold ...”
“Hell, we can’t have that.”
She started to giggle as he dragged her to him, but when his mouth caught and claimed hers, the giggles ceased. The breath locked in her throat. She quivered all over.
His kiss was full of tenderness. She wondered at it, tasted it, and gave herself up to it, to the sweet pummeling sensations that swept her into a oneness with him, that made her savor his taste, his scent, the rough feel of his lips on hers. His mouth was hard, his muscled body taut with coiled desire, and yet he was so gentle, his hands caressing her hair, sliding to her back, pressing her closer, closer still ...
Her blood heated and blazed along her veins like rich potent wine. “Cade, there’s something I have to tell you ...”
“Can’t it wait?”
“No, it cannot ... wait,” she gasped, as relentless kisses rained down upon her cheeks, eyelids, and throat, blinding her to everything but the surging need inside her. “I ... love ... you....”
He was trying to find her breasts beneath those damned blankets, and finally, swearing, he yanked the blankets away, revealing her lovely pearl-skinned nakedness. “You’re a damned fool if you do, Annabel.” He dropped a kiss to one breast, and cupped the other one. “But if it makes you feel any better, I love you, too.”
“If it makes me feel any better?” she panted, incredulous, yet too stunned with delicious sensations to do anything but close her eyes and see what he said, what he did next. “What kind of thing is that to say when you’re about to ... to ...”
“Make love to you? Because that’s what I’m going to do, Annabel, unless you don’t want me to, and if you don’t, you’d better speak up right now or ...”
“No, no, I want you to ... I do want you to ...” she moaned, clutching his hair as his tongue began doing marvelous things to her nipple, tormenting it into rosy hardness, while his other hand slid lower, to her belly, and then lower still ...
“You’re sure?” he demanded, his mouth crushing down once more upon her lips, silencing her for a long minute until they both came up for air. His hand was exploring part of her no man had ever breached before and she was beginning to think she would go mad before he’d finished with her.
“I’m sure ... oh, Cade, what are you ...”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, intent on the glazed glow in her eyes, on the sweat beginning to sheen upon her lovely face, “but as for loving me, I think you’re making a big mistake ...”
“I’m not ... I mean I do ... love you, oh, Cade, what in heaven are you doing?”
“If you think this is heaven, just wait, Annabel ...”
“Cade!”
“Don’t you like it?”
“I ... love it, I love you, Cade, but ... do you really love ... me?”
For answer he held her chin in his hand and stared into her eyes with the full vivid intentness of that searing black gaze. “God help you, Annabel, I do. I do. And I’m going to show you how much.”
His mouth claimed hers. It was an urgent, demanding kiss, rough enough to bruise her lips, and yet there was an underlying tenderness and need in it which touched a flame to her soul. He needed her. Cade McCallum, alone in this vast brutal West for so many years, cut off from his family, from any close human connections, needed her, wanted her—loved her—and her heart and body responded to the shattering desire that poured from him. As he forced her mouth open beneath his warm lips and plunged his tongue inside with quick possessive thrusts, she felt an answering need blossoming riotously inside her. She shivered with delight, and ardently pulled him closer, and she didn’t hold back the little whimpers of pleasure that rose in her throat.
Cade covered her body with his own, stroking her sides, caressing her breasts, his powerful thighs spreading her legs without resistance. She shuddered as she felt his powerful manhood pressed against her, a shudder of pleasure and half-anxious anticipation, but Cade kissed her cheek and then each of her eyelids, and soothed her with his strong, stroking hands.
“Don’t be afraid, Annabel. Don’t be afraid of me....”
“I’m not ... I’m not afraid of you ... I’m afraid of ... you know what I’m afraid of ...”
He laughed, this handsome, relentless gunslinger, a low, growling sound deep in his throat, and his face was dark with passion and his eyes gleamed with an intensity and tenderness that made her ache inside.
“I’ll try not to hurt you.” His mouth claimed hers gently. “Trust me, Annabel.”
“I do, Cade, I trust you,” she murmured, and clutched his back with a little gasp as his strong hand slid between her thighs. “If I didn’t trust you completely ... I wouldn’t be here right now ... doing these things ...”
He laughed again, and Annabel closed her eyes and surrendered to the wild things he was doing to her, to the intense sensations he was arousing, to the ache that was growing, growing inside of her, becoming an almost painful tingling need....
Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her mouth against his throat when he at last plunged into her, eliciting a small scream th
at she muffled against his neck. The first sharp pain gave way to a slow aching pleasure that built and built as he eased in and then stopped and then eased in farther, his movements so strong and sure and yet careful that she forgot her trepidations and was soon caught up in the wild sweet sensations erupting inside of her.
His movements grew faster, more demanding and violent. So this is what it is to make love with a man, she thought in ardent surprise and delight, and then all thought vanished as the pleasure intensified, and her eyes widened in pure carnal need. She strained toward his taut, powerful body, her own body on fire, soaking up the strength of him, the heat, the raw power. And she gave herself over to the piercing ecstasy that was flowing through her. It ignited her breasts and her belly and her hips and the damp secret places inside her.
As Cade’s sweat-filmed face loomed over her, watching her, she gazed up at him with delicious frantic desire and love-glazed eyes and arched her back to meet his ever more powerful thrusts.
Streaks of joy burst through her, coming faster and faster, until a sweet raging chaos enveloped her. She dug her fingers into his shoulder blades and bucked demandingly against him, as the cave and the fire and the universe became a blur, and a fierce explosion rocked her to the depths of her soul. Again and again, gasping and shuddering, the explosion stunned her, and she clung to him, crying out, until she was lost and then found and then whirled away as one with him, and in his strong, enfolding arms she knew at last the blissful release of fulfillment.
Cade McCallum had taken her beyond the storm, beyond the cliffs and the canyons, to a world of silvered colors all ablaze, and he had shattered her and made her whole.
The first glimmers of dawn found them dreamy and comforted in each other’s arms. Annabel awoke to find Cade watching her. She smiled because his eyes were soft with a tenderness she’d never seen there before.
“Morning,” she whispered, and snuggled closer. Her fingers reached up, no longer shy, to stroke and trace at the dark mat of hair on his chest.