Elizabeth Lowell (30 page)

I
’
ll tell you what would happen.
You
’
d spend the night hungry and freezing your butt off in the cold and Lucifer would spend it belly-deep in food with Janna
’
s warm hands petting him. So who do you think is smarter—you or that
stud
?

With a muttered curse Ty followed Lucifer over the wet, rocky ground to the invisible opening in the plateau’s wall. The face of the plateau at this point was made of broken ranks of sheer rocky cliffs punctuated by dark mounds of black lava. As though to make up for the precipitous nature of the land, the cliffs were only a tenth of the height of the heavily eroded wall Janna and Ty had descended earlier.

Even so, she had discovered no trail up onto the plateau itself from this area. If she wanted to go back up on top, she had to walk much farther south, following the ragged edge of the plateau as it rose and fell until she reached the gentle southern ascent. That would have been a full day’s ride on a good horse. The east path, while steep, was only a few hours by foot.

Ahead of Ty both horses stopped abruptly. Zebra snorted nervously when Janna waded into the water gushing from the slot, but the mare didn’t balk. She followed Janna into the ankle-deep runoff stream, for she had done this before and not been hurt by the experience.

Lucifer hesitated, lowered his head and smelled the water, then limped into the stream in the manner of an animal who was too exhausted at the moment to do more than go where he was led.

Inside the slot, moonlight was reduced to a pale glimmering over the surface of the water.

The horses were better off than the humans, both by reason of four legs and superior night vision. Even with those advantages, the horses didn’t have an easy time of it. Janna, with her greater experience in negotiating the slot, managed not to slip and fall more than twice. Ty fell four times and considered himself fortunate that it wasn’t a lot worse.

When they emerged into the valley, humans and animals alike were soaked by a combination of rain, runoff water, and sweat.

“That’s it, girl,” Janna said tiredly, slapping the mare on her muscular haunch. “We’re home.”

Zebra trotted off into the moonlight, heading for the sweet grass and clover she had discovered on her previous visit. Ty considered hobbling Lucifer, then rejected the idea. Even if the stallion wanted to leave Zebra, Lucifer was too tired to take on the slot again.

With a few smooth motions Ty removed the hackamore. When it was off, he rubbed away all the marks the leather had left on the horse’s head. Lucifer leaned into the touch, obviously enjoying it.

“Yeah, I know. It doesn’t take long to get spoiled, does it?” murmured Ty, thinking of Janna and the night before. “Tomorrow I’ll give you a good rubdown, but right now you need food more than you need petting. Go follow Zebra, son. She knows where all the sweet things are in this place.”

After he removed his hand, it took a moment for the stallion to realize that he was free. When he did, he snorted, shook his head and limped off after Zebra. Ty looked away just in time to see Janna vanish into the willows that grew alongside the stream.

By the time he got to the cliff overhang she called home, a small glow of flame was expanding into the darkness. Sitting on her heels next to the fire, she fed in fuel from the supply she kept dry in one corner of the overhang. Once the fire took hold she added wet wood from the pile that was stacked beyond the protection of the rock.

Only when water was warming over the fire did she turn away and go to the small trunk she had laboriously tugged through the slot three years before, when she had discovered the secret canyon. Most of the trunk was filled with books. A small part of it was taken up with the last of her father’s clothes. Only one ragged shirt remained, one pair of Sunday pants, three socks, and the moccasins she had traded medicines for last spring.

“I took three shirts from Preacher’s store. Do you want one of them?”

The sound of Ty’s voice startled her. She hadn’t realized that he was in camp. But there he was, standing on the other side of the fire, stretching muscles that were tired from carrying the heavy backpack that now rested against the stone cliff. He peeled off his hat and slapped it against his thigh, driving water from the hat rim in a fine spray.

“No,” she said, turning away from him again, refusing more than his offer of a shirt.

She unlaced her soggy moccasins and set them aside to dry. With cold hands she worked beneath the poncho, unwinding the cloth that bound her breasts. The motions sent stabbing pains through her bruised arm. She set her teeth and continued. She had suffered worse injuries in the past. Likely she would suffer more in the future.

Ty didn’t bother to ask if Janna wanted any help, for he knew she would refuse him. Without a word he lifted the cumbersome poncho from Janna’s shoulders and threw it aside. The sight of the bruise on her arm made his breath come in with an audible hiss. Even though experience told him that the bruise looked much worse than it actually was, he hated seeing the dark shadow of pain on her skin.

“Don’t you have something for that?” he asked.

“Yes.”

She tried to step away.

His hands closed around her lower arms in a grip that was gentle but unshakable. “Hold still, sugar. Let me help you.”

Afraid to trust her voice, she shook her head in a negative.

“Yes,” he countered instantly. “You’ve patched me up often enough. Now it’s your turn to be patched.”

Janna looked up into Ty’s eyes. They were very dark, yet alive with flames reflected from the campfire. The warmth of his hands on her chilled skin was shocking, but not as shocking as the heat that uncurled in her loins at the thought of being cared for by him. She shivered in a combination of cold and remembered desire.

And she hated it, both the memory and the desire, hated wanting a man whose feelings for her teetered between pity and contempt, lust and indifference.

“You’re chilled through and through,” he said, frowning as he saw her shiver violently. With quick motions he began unwrapping the cloth that bound her chest. “Where’s the medicine you need?”

She shook her head, refusing him, refusing her memories, refusing everything.

“Janna, what in hell is the matter with you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. She felt cloth being stripped from her body by his big hands. Suddenly she couldn’t bear the thought of her naked breasts being revealed to him again. He would touch them, kiss them, and the heat that was spreading from the pit of her stomach would flare up, burning away everything, even the knowledge that she loved a man who loved only his own dream.

And she was not that dream.

With an inarticulate cry she tried to push away his hands. It was like pushing on warm stone.

“It’s too late to be shy,” he said flatly, ignoring her attempts to stop him from unwrapping her breasts. “Hold still while I get this wet stuff off you.”

“
Let go of me.
”

The quality of her voice was chilling. His hands froze in the act of unwrapping her.

“Janna, what’s wrong?”

His voice was gentle but she didn’t hear that, or the emotions churning just beneath his control. She heard only her own memories, his voice echoing and reechoing in her mind as he listed all her shortcomings as a woman—nothing to offer a husband, too unskilled to be a mistress, good only for the male need that built up inexorably when no other woman was around.

“Little one?” he asked, tipping her chin up and brushing a kiss over her lips. They were as cold as her voice had been. “What did I do to make you so angry with me?”

When he would have kissed her again, she jerked her head away. “Don’t touch me. I don’t feel like being your whore tonight.”

Ty’s tightly held emotions exploded into a fury that was unlike any he had ever felt. He stopped trying to peel off layers of wet cloth and grabbed Janna’s shoulders instead.

“Don’t say something like that about yourself! Do you hear me, Janna Wayland?
You are not a whore.
”

Angry, ashamed, defiant, she stood shivering within his grasp. “Just what would you call it?”

“We’re…lovers.”

“I don’t think so,” she said distinctly. “To be someone’s lover suggests a certain affection mixed in with the lust. I’m not your lover. I’m a convenience until you take Lucifer and go off to buy your silk—”

“Don’t say it,” Ty interrupted savagely. “I’m sick to death of having those words flung in my face.”

“Then stop flinging them in mine.”

“I’ve never—”

“The hell you haven’t,” she interrupted, her voice as savage as his. “‘I’ll have my silken lady or I’ll have none at all for longer than it takes to pleasure myself,’” she quoted, each word clipped. “‘You’re the least female female I’ve ever seen.’ Then you said that Cascabel looked more like a mesquite bush than I looked like a woman, and the comparisons didn’t stop after you had me, either. You couldn’t wait to tell me that it was a woman you’d needed, not me.”

Ty was took shocked to speak.

Her voice broke, then steadied as words rushed out. “And then you told me that my virginity was all I had to offer to a husband because I had no family, no profession, no money. You said that you had ruined me, because now I wasn’t good enough to be a wife and wasn’t educated enough to be a mistress and that meant that I wasn’t good enough to be anything but a ‘toy of many men, not one.’ That’s a whore in any man’s language.”

“Janna—my God, I never meant—”

“I’m not finished,” she said, cutting across his horrified words. “Or maybe I should say
you
’
re
not finished. You’ve had a lot to say about my shortcomings as a woman. As woman hungry as you were, I couldn’t even seduce you. You said, ‘Sugar, you don’t have the least idea how to seduce a man. A woman seduces a man with rustling silks and—’”

His hand clamped across her mouth, cutting off her bitter recitation of his words.

“You don’t understand,” he said urgently. “I didn’t mean any of that to belittle you. Not after we made love.”

The mute defiance of her eyes and the hot rain of her tears said that she had understood him all too well.

“Janna,” he whispered, kissing her eyelashes, tasting her tears, “please believe me. I never meant the words as an insult to you. You’re a young girl alone in the world and I seduced you, knowing I shouldn’t. That’s all the words meant. My shortcomings, not yours.”

She trembled as she felt his caresses and soft words stripping away her anger, revealing the despair that was the other side of her fury. Nothing he had said or could say would change the heartbreaking reality that she was not the silken lady of her lover’s dreams.

“Do you believe me?” Ty asked, the words as soft as the repeated brush of his lips over Janna’s eyelids, her cheeks, her mouth. “I never meant to belittle you. Satin butterfly...believe me...I never meant...”

Gentle words became tender kisses, which lingered and deepened until Ty’s tongue touched Janna’s for just an instant. Then he withdrew.

“You’re so cold you’re shivering,” he said huskily.

With a volatile mixture of despair and tenderness and desire, she waited for him to suggest the obvious way to warm her.

Ty looked from Janna’s clear, fathomless eyes to the fire whose flames were licking against a huge wall of stone. “And that fire has a lot of rock to warm before it will do us any good.” Suddenly he smiled. “But there’s a better way.”

Her answering smile was bittersweet as Ty’s hands went to the soggy material that was still wrapped around her breasts. She could refuse him when she was in the grip of anger, but she could never refuse the man who had kissed her so gently just moments before.

When he saw the sad acceptance of her smile, he felt as though a knife were turning within his body. He knew that he could have her now, that she would give herself to him once more with all the sensual generosity that had been such a marvel each time he had experienced it.

But this time, after the shattering ecstasy had passed, she would believe herself a whore once again.

Nothing Ty could say would change her mind, for he had said too much already, heedlessly, not knowing that his words were wounding her. He had never meant to strip her pride away. But he had, and he finally knew it.

Too late.

Janna felt the world tilt as Ty picked her up and carried her away from the fire. She made a startled sound and threw her arms around his neck.

“It’s all right. I won’t drop you.”

Although his voice was as gentle as his kisses had been, in the moonlight his face was a portrait composed of harsh planes and angles, and the line of his mouth was as sad as hers had been. At first the clammy fabric of his shirt made her shiver with renewed chill. Caught between two bodies, the cloth quickly warmed, and so did she.

Neither of them spoke while he walked down the path that led to the hot spring. As the stone ramparts closed in and the valley narrowed, the temperature rose because of the heat radiated by the hottest pool. He stopped well short of the first pool, choosing instead the one they called the Tub.

There he knelt and lowered her into the water without bothering to remove the rest of her clothes. She made a long sound of pleasure as the water’s heat penetrated the chill that had come from hours of riding through the storm with only the haphazard protection of the poncho to turn aside the cold rain.

“That feels wonderful,” Janna murmured.

With a sigh she sank up to her chin in the water, all but disappearing beneath the veils of steam lifting from the pool’s surface. Automatically she searched out the water-smoothed ledge that she usually half floated and half lay on while she soaked in the pool’s heated water. Closing her eyes, she eased down the ledge to make room for him to join her.

When minutes passed and there was no splash or displacement of water from his entry into the pool, she opened her eyes.