Gold Dust (35 page)

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to get warm.”

“You can have one of the blankets.”

“I’d rather get warm with you to keep me company.”

She gasped as his leg slipped between hers. A surprised jolt of desire set her heart to pumping at twice its normal rate.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Sure it is. It’s a great idea.”

He grinned down at her, his eyes the same dark blue as the morning sky. The short beard that curled around the strong
line of his jaw gave him the look of a pirate or gunslinger. Katy couldn’t suppress the answering smile that curved her lips.
“You look absolutely nothing like a city boy from Chicago.”

“Us city boys have a lot of surprises up our sleeves.”

“You certainly do.”

His muscular thigh rose to press against the already-throbbing flesh between her legs. She closed her eyes, wanting him so
badly that the wanting was almost pain. Somehow in the last few days, logic and common sense had slipped away. She couldn’t
quite recall the reasons that she couldn’t be with Jonah. The reasons were still there, she was sure, but they melted in the
heat of desire awakened by blue eyes and a wicked grin, by the knowing pressure of Jonah’s hard thigh against her tender flesh.

“Jonah,” she managed to say. “What are you doing?” As if she didn’t know.

He answered with lips pressed warmly against her ear. “I know an excellent way to get warm.”

“We shouldn’t,” she objected against the crying need of her heart.

“Yes. We should. I won’t hurt you, Katydid. I want to love you.”

His lips moved down her throat, left a warm trail over her collarbone, and forayed onto the upper swells of her breast.

“Ooooh!” Katy half laughed, half shrieked as cold air invaded their blankets. “That’s freezing!”

“Now who’s the sissy?”

Somehow he managed to preserve the integrity of their warm cocoon as he worked his way down her body. His teeth gently grazed
her nipple, which was already pebbled hard with desire. His tongue laved the lower curves of her breasts, and his breath tickled
her ribs.

“I could eat you alive,” he said when he surfaced for air.

“I thought that’s what you were doing.”

He chuckled low in his throat. “Sweet, innocent Katy. If I
did to you what I really wanted to do, you’d wake every Klondiker in ten square miles with your yelling, and you wouldn’t
be yelling from pain, sweetheart.”

The glitter of his eyes made her insides turn to warm syrup, and that syrup slowly trickled downward and pooled between her
legs. She closed her eyes to shut out the sight of him looking down at her, half-afraid of the feelings he stoked. “I’m not
nearly as innocent as you think.”

“My love, you’re as innocent as spring grass is green. You just don’t know it.” With his finger he traced circles around her
nipple, then drew a fiery line to her navel, and lower, until he tickled the soft nest of curls between her thighs. “Someday
I’m going to take you to a warm island in the Caribbean. We’re going to spread a blanket on the sand where no one can see,
and with the hot sun beating down on us and the waves pounding on the sand just beyond our toes, I’m going to show you just
how much you don’t know about what men and women can do together. And I’m going to show you just how much I love you.” His
finger slipped inside her and stroked gently, deeper and deeper in a steady rhythm that made her body grow as taut as the
string of a drawn bow.

She fought to free her hands from the restraint of the blanket. A hunger raged in her—to touch him, stroke him, feel supple
muscle and sinew beneath her hands. She ached to take his erection in her hands and glory in his size and hardness, knowing
that it was she who inspired his need. He gasped when she brushed her fingers against a flat male nipple and stroked her palms
along the breadth of his shoulders.

“Katy…” he half whispered, half groaned.

She discovered his trim buttocks and kneaded the muscle there with admiring hands, then slipped around his hips to let her
fingers walk the length of his erect penis.

“Christ Almighty, woman!” he breathed. “What are you doing to me?”

“I don’t know,” Katy admitted honestly in a husky, confused voice.

He kissed her, all the while rearranging blankets, legs, hips, and torsos so that they fit neatly together with him pressed
between her open thighs. Katy felt his need in the pounding of his heart. His kiss was wild and devouring, mouth slanting
across hers in eager possession, tongue stroking deeply, tasting her fully and leaving the tang of himself in her mouth. The
hard tip of his erection parted her, and she wanted to surge upward, impale herself, suck him inside her and drain him until
she was full.

“What’s wrong with me?” she moaned softly.

Slowly he sank into her. The raw pleasure of it made her eyes open wide and her breath stop in her throat.

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” he promised. “You’re just in love.”

“No,” she breathed as he drew himself out, then thrust again.

“Yes, Katy. You love me.” His voice was honey pouring into her, smooth and sweet as the deep, slow strokes that he courted
her with. “You love me,” he told her softly. “How else would we be doing this?” His penetration deepened as Katy strained
to open fully to his loving. Soft, silky words echoed in her mind in time with the rhythmic beat of their bodies. “You love
me. Love me. Love me.” I
love him, love him, love him.

The tightly wrapped blanket held her captive as Jonah thrust into her. Finally she managed to wrap her legs around him, taking
him deeper, moving with him, clenching herself around the hard, thick flesh that she wanted to hold prisoner within her.

“Christ!” he groaned. “Oh lord, Katy, I love you.” With a fierce final thrust and a low growl he spent himself within her.
Katy’s whole body tightened around him, drawing him with her into a warm explosion that had every nerve in her body singing.
For a moment she felt so relaxed and content she could scarcely bother to breathe. Then her heart started again,
her lungs filled with air and released a sigh of joyous contentment.

The blue sky above them, the crunch of spruce needles beneath them, the distant roar of Whitehorse Rapids, and the smell of
drifting woodsmoke slowly made their impressions on Katy’s returning senses, reminding her of their whereabouts. She closed
her eyes with a wry smile. “I really am a shameless fool.”

He laughed, sending himself slipping out of her. He didn’t move from his intimate position between her legs, however. “You
can’t say that about my future wife, Katy O’Connell.”

“Oh, Jonah. Jonah. I didn’t say I’d marry you.”

“You’ll marry me, someday.”

She shook her head, grasping for logic and good sense. The feel of him pressing against her most private, feminine flesh almost
drove those things beyond reach. Even now she could feel her body ache in need of him. “You don’t have to be a gentleman,”
she whispered feebly.

“I’m not a gentleman.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “As you well know.”

“Jonah! I mean you don’t have to marry me.”

“I never thought I did.”

“I mean… dammit, Jonah! Do you know how hard it is to talk with you… with you… you know!”

He chuckled, tightened his arms about her, and rolled them over, blankets and all, so that Katy rested atop him. “There, my
love. Do you enjoy looking down instead of up?”

Her legs still encompassed him, and the constricting cocoon made shifting to a more modest position impossible. “I can take
care of myself.” Her breathing quickened as he moved slightly beneath her.

“I know you can.”

“You don’t want me as a wife.”

His hand stroked her back, teased her buttocks, slipped between her legs to softly caress her love-swollen flesh.

“You don’t want a wife at all.” She gasped as he found that most tender of spots. “You told me so back in Willow Bend.”

He teased and stroked and touched. She closed her eyes as the warmth of his touch melted her.

“Needs change.” His voice was thick with desire. He was growing thick and hard again. “Wants change. I want you.”

“No,” she gasped, knowing there was a reason why, but not able to remember it right now. She could feel the hot swell of him
between their bodies.

“You can’t live without me,” he assured her with a slow grin.

She shook her head.

“You just don’t realize it yet.”

“We’re friends,” she reminded him. “Good friends.”

“The very best friends,” he agreed.

He shifted her slightly and fitted himself into her, pressing her down until she took all of him. “No, sweetheart, don’t move,”
he warned, cradling her against him. “This is rather precarious at best.”

He rocked them together. The slight movement fired an acute need through every part of her. She moaned against his bare, warm
shoulder.

“I know, my love,” he crooned. “I know.”

Jonah worked his hand between them and found the tender hub of her desire. With gentle expertise he sent her climbing rapidly
toward the stars, the rocking of his hips a magic carpet carrying her to the sky. Precarious as their tangle of bodies was,
the ride was swift, the climax hard and hot.

“Best friends,” Jonah whispered as they drifted back to earth. “Very, very best friends.”

That dawn loving was the only good-bye Katy got, for as the sun rose brightly on the morning after the disaster, the Klondikers
who had been reluctant to brave Whitehorse Rapids on the same day it had taken a man’s life were ready to move again. A trio
of brothers, ex-lumbermen from Portland, made room for Jonah on their boat for the trip downriver to Dawson, but they had
room for only one. A minister and his son took Camilla into their care, and Katy, Andy, and Hunter were taken on by a grizzled
prospector who looked old enough to have dug gold in the rush of ‘49. By a careless swat of fate, Katy and Jonah were yanked
apart to go their separate ways.

Camilla accepted the minister’s guardianship with apathetic placidness, but the blood drained from her face when she realized
she would have to ride once again through the dangerous chaos of Whitehorse Rapids. The understanding minister suggested the
new widow hike around the rapids and meet the boats at the smooth water below. Katy hiked the two mile trail up the cliffs
and back down to the river with her, as did Andy, whose gender was once again indistinguishable.

Katy was glad to have an excuse not to ride the rapids again, but the necessity for quickly gathering what little gear
she had and hitting the trail left no time for long good-byes with Jonah. As she stood high above the river and watched the
lumberjacks’ boat carry Jonah through the white water, her heart pounded so hard she thought it might hammer its way right
out of her chest. When they were safely through the worst of the rough water and rounded the bend out of sight, she waved
good-bye, even though Jonah couldn’t see her. The emptiness inside her had little to do with her missed breakfast.

John Stanley Sanders—“call me Stewpot,” the old prospector had told Katy and Andy when they first stepped onto his boat below
Whitehorse Rapids—was skilled at the business of handling a boat on a treacherous river. They made good time. The fish Andy
and Katy caught and the rabbits and squirrels run down by Hunter, who was jubilant to be in an area of plentiful game once
again, added enough to the old man’s supplies so that his provisions didn’t suffer from the addition of two people and one
wolf. The prospector himself certainly didn’t suffer. He talked their ears off, filling the long days and weary evenings with
stories of gold camps and frontier towns, famous badmen and lawmen that Katy doubted he’d really met.

Jonah should have made the acquaintance of Stewpot Sanders, Katy thought more than once. He could have filled his big-city
newspaper first page to last with the blarney tales the old man spun.

Jonah. His absence seemed to make the wind colder, the rain wetter, the mud stickier. Evenings around the fire were empty
without him, and memories of their time together waited around every bend of the river.

Sailing Lake Laberge, just downriver from Whitehorse, Katy recalled the long, lazy drift across lakes Bennett and Tagish,
the sound of Jonah’s laughter as he’d minded the rudder with Patrick at his elbow. The rough, rocky stretch of river beyond
Lake Laberge, known as Thirty Mile River, called to mind their first experience with white water in Miles Canyon,
how Jonah had caught her eye and laughed just as she’d concluded he was so scared he’d pop his suspenders.

Nighttime always brought memories of the quiet stargaze she had shared with Jonah while talking about Napi and Old Woman,
the mountains, and the dubious wonders of his Chicago. Frosty mornings made her think of the goose-bumps on Jonah’s skin when
they bathed together in the frigid river—and of his sweet, determined seduction. She wondered if she would ever again be completely
warm without his arms around her.

Below Thirty Mile River, the Yukon gained volume and momentum as it gathered the waters of the Tahkeena, Hoota-linqua, Big
Salmon, and Little Salmon rivers. The Teslin River joined the Yukon with such a load of silt that the stuff hissed against
the side of the boat as if they sailed through sand, not water. The Teslin also deposited a load of Klondikers onto the river,
for this was the point at which goldseekers who’d followed the Stikine River trail from Canada joined the headwaters of the
Yukon.