Winter Fire (21 page)

“Never done this?” she managed finally.

“Not like this.”

“How is it different?”

“I want to take all the pain and leave sweetness in its place. Before now, all I wanted was…”

His voice died as he kissed the inner curve of Sarah's breasts, then raked his teeth with exquisite care over each nipple. The jerk of her response and her fingers clenching suddenly in his hair told him just how much she enjoyed his caresses.

“Hell,” he said huskily. “I can't even remember how it was before. I just know it wasn't like this.”

He lowered his head and delicately consumed her breasts, lingering over the hard pink tips.

“There's more of you I want to pet and pleasure,” he said. “Will you let me?”

Her only answer was a dazed sound and her fingers silently urging his head back to her hungry breasts.

“You'll like it even more than what I've done so far,” he said. “Let me touch all of you, honey. Let me.”

“It won't…hurt?” she asked raggedly.

“Have you ever felt something so good it almost hurt?” he whispered.

“You mean, like the song of the first meadowlark in spring?”

Her words made him clench with pain and pleasure combined. He had never guessed that anyone else felt like that about hearing a meadowlark for the first time after winter's long, icy silence.

Until this instant, Case had forgotten what it was to feel like that himself.

“Yes,” he said unevenly. “Like a silver needle stitching through your soul. That's not a real hurt, is it?”

“No. It's beautiful. Like you, so strong and yet so careful of me.”

Case kissed Sarah very gently.

“I'd give my soul to take back what that savage old man did to you,” he whispered.

Tears came suddenly to her eyes. She touched his mouth tenderly with her fingertips.

“You can't go back,” she whispered. “You can only go forward.”

With a hoarse sound, he put his forehead against her heart and let the steady beat of her life sink into him. Slowly, very slowly, his mouth slid down to her navel. He probed the sensitive hollow with his tongue.

She gasped in surprise at the sensations radiating through her with each movement of his tongue. His hands circled her breasts and plucked the aching peaks. At the same time he repeated his velvet probing of her navel. Her back arched and she cried out in a low voice.

An answering wave of passion swept through him, shaking him. Knowing that he was bringing her pleasure for the first time in her life was like a drug to him. He
repeated the caresses again and again and again, tenderly, recklessly.

He didn't want to stop. He didn't even want to try.

With trembling hands he unfastened her pants and eased them down her hips. Beneath doeskin and muslin, the scent of roses and feminine arousal combined in a heady perfume. He inhaled deeply, dizzy with the sensual possibilities of her body.

“Case?” she asked, her voice uncertain.

“The sun, the moon, the stars,” he said thickly, looking at her. “Nothing is more beautiful than you.”

The pale fire of his eyes devoured her, yet his hands and mouth on her body were as gentle as the golden shadow of flame.

Torn between embarrassment and a heat she had felt only once before, in a dream of sunlight, she watched him caressing her. She didn't object when he slid her pants completely off her legs and tucked the clothing under her. She didn't object when he laid his cheek on her body and stroked her belly as he had once stroked her breasts, teeth and tongue and hands combined.

Then he began smoothing his forehead and bearded cheeks over the top of her thighs. His silky mouth and sensuously hard hands followed. The sweetly conflicting textures were heightened by the tender raking of his teeth.

Gently he seduced her legs as completely as he had seduced the rest of her body. She forgot that she was vulnerable to his much greater strength. She forgot the cold wind and the hard rock. She forgot everything but the pleasure gathering deep inside her with each kiss he gave her, each caress, each husky word telling her how much he cherished her body.

The stiffness of her legs melted away before his tender assault. Distantly she realized that he was kissing and stroking the inside of her knees, her thighs, her—

“
Case
.”

He made a hungry, questioning, oddly soothing sound.

“You're inside me,” she said in a high voice.

“God, yes. You're pure honey.”

He moved his hand again, slowly.

Satin heat flowed once more.

“Honey and fire enough to melt winter itself,” he whispered.

She tried to speak. She couldn't. A wave of intense pleasure was bursting through her, arching her back like a drawn bow.

With heavy-lidded eyes, Case watched shock and surprise and sensuality overwhelm Sarah. She no longer protested his hand moving so intimately between her legs. Instead, she gave herself to his caresses with a trust that humbled and savagely aroused him at the same time.

Slowly, steadily, he doubled his presence inside her body, testing and stretching her in the same sensuous motions.

She made a ragged, throaty sound.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

She couldn't answer, but her body could.

Her sultry response was even more irresistible to him than the call of the first meadowlark after winter's silence. He shifted until he was kneeling between her legs. Then he repeated the caress slowly, deeply.

In that instant Sarah realized she was completely vulnerable to him. She started to protest her helplessness, but words became a husky cry of pleasure as his hand moved again. When he was deep inside her once more, his thumb rubbed over the sleek bud that rising passion had revealed.

Intense, shocking pleasure burst inside her, drenching her with heat.

He shifted again, moving over her in a gentle, overwhelming wave. He was everywhere, hot and powerful, tender and caressing, surrounding her.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” he said huskily.

She barely heard the words. She knew only a sense of heat between her legs, and a stretching that went on and
on, delicious, frightening, endless, sensuous beyond belief.

Case made a throttled sound as he felt the sultry resistance of her body both pushing against him and at the same time inviting him to penetrate more deeply.

“Sarah?” he asked hoarsely. “Am I hurting you?”

“I feel so…strange.”

She shivered rhythmically. The fragile movements were like a mouth moving over his aroused flesh, kissing him intimately.

“It doesn't hurt,” she said. “Not exactly.”

He rolled over, taking her with him.

She made a surprised sound when she found herself on top of his hips.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You're so sweet and tight,” he said, his voice thick. “This way you can decide how much of me you want.”

“I don't understand.”

The corner of his mouth lifted.

“Look down,” he said.

Sarah did. Her eyes widened when she saw that their bodies were joined in the most elemental way possible.

“We're…” Her voice dried up.

“We sure are. Well,” he amended, “we're halfway there. The rest is up to you.”

“How?”

“If you want more, settle down on me a little, then lift up a little, then come back down.”

Hesitantly she moved her hips.

Sultry silk tugged at him.

He clenched his jaw against the temptation to spend himself right then and there.

“How does it feel?” Case asked through his teeth.

“I think I…like it.”

She moved again, then again.

He made a hoarse sound.

Sarah froze.

“Does it hurt you?” she asked.

“Like a meadowlark singing.”

She hesitated, then smiled, understanding.

“You like it, too,” she murmured.

“I'm not sure,” he said, lying through his teeth. “Try it a few more times.”

Slowly she slid up and then down, then up again.

His hand moved. Fingertips searched through her slick auburn thatch until he found the swollen knot of passion. He circled it, retreated, circled, retreated, spreading the liquid heat of her response between them.

Eyes closed, shivering, whimpering with each breath, Sarah tried to get closer to his maddening, wildly arousing fingertips. Her hips rocked less tentatively over the aroused male flesh between her legs. He was a hard, full presence that wasn't hurting her at all, not any longer.

He felt incredibly good.

Eyes smoldering, watching her, Case teased Sarah until her pleasure drenched both of them. Then he retreated.

Her hips moved sharply, sinking him so far into her that his hand was pinned between their bodies. Only then did he give her what she needed, teasing and teaching her with every driving motion of his hips.

Something both wild and beautiful spread up from their hot, joined bodies. Sarah's eyes widened. There was no color in them, only dark centers dilated with pleasure. She shuddered and rocked hungrily, wanting more of Case, wanting to feel every bit of him as deep into her as he could get.

Suddenly his whole body corded. With repeated, throttled shouts he spent himself inside her sleek heat.

When the sounds and throbbing pulses went on and on, she became still, afraid that she had somehow hurt him. Anxiously she looked down at his face.

It was drawn as though in pain. Sweat glistened on his forehead.

“Is it your wound?” Sarah asked.

He didn't understand the words. All he knew was that her weight was lifting from him. He didn't want that. He wanted to stay a while longer inside the tight, welcoming heat of her body.

“Don't move,” he said thickly.

“It
is
your wound,” she said, lifting herself away from him.

With a hoarse sound he slid his hands across her thighs and buried himself inside her once more. Then he rolled his hips against her.

Hard.

Pleasure burst through her. She couldn't move her hips in response, but she discovered she could move secretly, measuring and caressing him even while he pulsed deeply inside her.

The shivering sweetness doubled. She clenched her body around him again and again, and gasped at the expanding pleasure. It was like talons of fire sliding into her, pulsing, releasing, pulsing again.

She groaned and moved against him, trying to get even closer, desperate for something she couldn't name. But like a hooded hawk, she knew it was there, the freedom of the sky calling wildly, just beyond her reach.

She wept with need of it.

Case put his hands on her hips, jerked forward and drove into her.

A wild heat pulsed through Sarah, beating like the wings of a newly freed hawk.

And then she, too, was free.

Each broken breath she took was a cry of ecstasy that was also his name.

He heard her pleasure, probed deeply the pulsing of her body, and felt the hot rush of her release. He could no more resist her flight than he could stop breathing. A shocking pleasure raked through him, cording his body again. He thrust deep and hard and let go of everything
but Sarah and the shattering, endless pulses of ecstasy she had brought him once again.

Only when the last drops of passion were utterly spent did Case realize what he had done.

What if I got her pregnant?

The thought was like being dumped naked into a snowbank.

Abruptly he lifted her off his body.

Talk about locking the barn door after the horse is stolen
, he thought savagely, but he set her aside just the same.

“Case?” she asked, startled.

“Get dressed before you catch a chill.”

She shivered, but not from the wind. His eyes were as cold as the winter moon.

“
W
onder what
changed their minds?” Conner asked. His voice sounded unusually loud in the cabin. Probably because supper had been unusually silent.

In fact, everything had been real quiet since Case and Sarah had ridden in a few hours ago. Both of them were strained and not at all talkative. Conner assumed it had something to do with the ambush by the raiders.

“Sarah?” he pressed.

“I'm sorry. Were you talking to me?”

“Hell—er, heck, no, I was talking to the rabbit stew. What do you think changed their minds?”

She blinked, obviously confused.

“Why did the raiders go after you?” her brother asked slowly. “They haven't been bothering us lately.”

“I imagine it's getting damned cold of a morning in Spring Canyon,” Case said.

“Is that any reason to kill a woman from ambush?” Conner asked in disbelief.

“It's a better reason than some I've heard of.”

His voice was cool and clipped. It advised a change of subject. So did the look in his eyes.

Conner ignored the signals.

“Seems like Ab is having trouble with his kinfolk as well as with Moody,” the boy said.

Case chewed food and didn't say a word.

“What do you mean?” Sarah asked.

“You told me you heard Ab telling Moody to raid three days' ride from Spring Canyon and no closer.”

She nodded.

“The canyon you were in isn't that far away,” her brother said, “and neither is this cabin, yet there was at least one Culpepper along on each of the raids.”

“So?” she asked.

Conner gave his sister a disgusted look.

“So,” he said clearly, “it's obvious as warts on a pickle that Ab doesn't have control of his own kin, much less Moody's bunch.”

While Conner spoke, he reached past Case for the frying pan full of cornbread. The boy's chair, recently constructed of cottonwood and buckskin, creaked alarmingly.

“Ask for the bread to be passed,” Sarah said sharply.

“Why? I didn't even have to lean very hard.”

“It's good manners.”

“Seems like it would be better manners not to bother a man who has eating on his mind,” her brother retorted.

“Pass me the cornbread when you're finished with it,” she said through her teeth.

“Please?”

“
Please
.”

Case looked at the boy. “Quit baiting your sister. She's had a hard day already.”

Sarah hoped her flush would pass unnoticed in the flickering light of the lamp.

Conner looked contrite.

“Sorry, sis,” he said, his voice cracking in mid-word. “It's no fun spending your afternoon hugging cold stone while—”

“Pass the cornbread,” Sarah interrupted. “Please.”

She didn't look at Case. She hadn't looked at him even once after she realized that she had somehow disgusted him that afternoon. She didn't know what she had done.

She wasn't going to ask.

It was enough to know that he didn't want to look at her either.

“Thank you,” she said distinctly as she took the cornbread from Conner.

“You're welcome,” he said. “Do you think Ab and Moody will shoot it out?”

She shrugged.

“What about you, Case?” Conner asked.

“I think Ab will haul his kin back into line by bringing in some women. Then the boys won't be so restless.”

Sarah felt all the blood leave her face.

Restless
, she thought.
Is that what it was all about this afternoon?

What was it Case said? Something about how long it had been since he had been with a woman
.

I suppose I should be grateful he was tender with me
.

She sighed and picked at her food.

I just wish
, she thought wistfully,
I could have done right whatever it is that I did wrong
.

Instead of chewing on the cornbread, she gnawed on her lower lip.

“Women?” Conner asked into the growing silence. “Won't they just cause trouble?”

“It's what they're best at,” Case said sardonically. “But there are times when nothing else will do.”

“Huh,” the boy said, and turned to his sister. “What do you think?”

“I think,” she said, standing up, “that I've had enough.”

Conner looked at his sister's plate.

“Enough?” he said, startled. “A bite of cornbread and a bite of stew is enough?”

“Yes.”

Out of habit Sarah folded the tattered cloth that served as a napkin and put it on the table. She grabbed her jacket and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Conner asked.

“Out.”

“When will you be back?” her brother persisted.

Her only answer was the sound of the cabin door shutting firmly.

Frowning, Conner looked at Case. The older man was watching the closed door with an impassive face and eyes that changed from gold to pale green with each shift of light.

“What's wrong with her?” Conner asked.

“She's got a lot on her mind.”

“She always does, and she has never acted like this.”

“Looking for silver you don't find can be wearing on a person's soul,” Case said.

“Hell, she enjoys looking. I think it's just an excuse for her to go out and roam the land.”

Case fiddled for a moment longer with his stew. Then he set aside his fork and pushed back his chair.

“You, too?” Conner asked.

“What?”

“No appetite. Honest, it's rabbit, not snake. I made it myself.”

“I've eaten snake more than once. It's not bad, once you get past the idea of it.”

Conner grimaced.

With quick motions Case slung his holster into place around his hips. He fastened the buckle and he headed out the door. As the door shut behind him, he wondered what he could say to Sarah to make her understand why they shouldn't be lovers.

It shouldn't have happened even once
, he thought grimly.
My fault, all of it
.

I never should have touched her
.

He still didn't understand how she had slipped past his guard. His own sexuality had never ruled him, even in his wildest days.

God, she could be carrying my baby
.

The thought sent a wave of cold through him. He didn't want to feel responsible for another tiny life.

Not ever again.

“Case?”

He spun around, six-gun drawn. Even before the motion was finished, he reversed it and holstered the gun, for it was Conner who stood in the doorway.

The boy whistled admiringly. “You're fast!”

“Sorry,” Case said, his voice rough. “I didn't hear you open the door behind me. I'm a little touchy after today.”

“Could you teach me to do that?”

“Not with that hog-leg you're wearing. It's damned near a two-handed rig.”

“What about the guns the raiders had?”

Case looked all around. Sarah was nowhere in sight.

“She probably went off into Deer Canyon,” her brother said. “That's her second favorite place.”

“What's her favorite?”

“That overhang with the little seep where you first found her.”

“Why does she go there?”

“She says it soothes her soul.”

Case's eyelids flinched.

“But since the raiders came,” Conner added, “she gets her soothing in Deer Canyon. If she's going there now, the ambush must have upset her more than she's letting on.”

The ambush, or what happened after
, Case thought bitterly.

Judas priest, why did I do that? I could have pleasured her from her head to her heels without risking a baby
.

No answer came to him except the ache in his gut that started whenever he thought of Sarah's silky, passionate, generous response.

He had just had her, and he wanted her until he all but shook with it.

“Get one of the raiders' belt guns,” Case said curtly.

His tone made Conner hesitate, but only for a moment. He had about given up ever finding Case with time to teach him how to handle a six-gun. Between hunting silver, hauling firewood and water, standing guard, repairing the cabin, and scouting for timber for the floor planks, Case was busier than three men.

“I'll be back before you know I'm gone,” Conner said eagerly.

Case didn't answer. He was staring off toward Deer Canyon. In the late-afternoon light, every shrub and branch and blade of grass stood out clearly.

So did the quick, graceful shape of Sarah climbing up a rubble slope to the mouth of a nearby canyon.

He was still watching her when Conner returned.

“Don't worry,” the boy said, closing the front door behind him. “There's no way into that canyon except through here. She's safe from raiders.”

Though Case nodded, he didn't look away until she disappeared into the shadows on one side of the canyon. Then, reluctantly, he turned toward the boy whose quick smile reminded him all too much of Sarah.

“Which one did you choose?” Case asked.

“This one. It draws real slick.”

He wasn't surprised to know that Conner had been trying out the raiders' belt guns. Neither was he surprised that the boy had chosen the quickest draw in the batch.

“It draws real slick,” Case said impassively, “but it doesn't aim worth a fart in a windstorm.”

Conner frowned down at the gun he was holding.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Have you shot it?”

“Ute would have my scalp for wasting bullets.”

“Learning isn't a waste,” Case said. “Follow me. No use in stirring up the chickens.”

“I wouldn't mind practicing on that big orange rooster,” Conner muttered.

“He's a mean son,” the older man agreed. “But he
sires the kind of chicks the land requires—quick and tough.”

“I know. I've chewed on more than one of them. And vice versa.”

The corner of Case's mouth lifted, shifting his beard just a bit. He enjoyed Conner's sharp mind. It was like listening to a masculine echo of Sarah's quick tongue.

“Run over and warn Ute that there's going to be some shooting,” he said. “I'll set up targets.”

Conner ran off to the wickiup and returned at the same headlong pace.

God, to be that young again
, Case thought as he walked back from the targets.
All fired up and raring to go at the thought of a little shooting
.

Hope Conner lives long enough to approach shooting cold, the way you would digging out a privy
.

“Ready,” Conner said, settling his hat firmly on his thick blond hair. “What do I shoot at first?”

“The little rock sitting on that big rock about a hundred feet away.”

Conner drew and fired in a startlingly smooth motion.

He missed both rocks.

In fact, he came closer to shooting off his toe than he did to hitting anything made of stone.

“Holy hell!” Conner said, staring at the gun. “This trigger is as touchy as a snake's tongue.”

“Has about the same range, too,” Case said dryly. “That piece of iron is all sawed off, filed down, and slicked up for drawing and shooting as fast as possible.”

While he talked, he drew his own gun. He reversed it and held the weapon out butt first to Conner.

“Look at the difference between the two guns,” Case said.

Conner took the gun and looked from it to the raider's gun.

“Yours has a longer barrel by at least an inch,” the boy said.

Case nodded. “A hair slower on the draw that way, but what I shoot at, I hit.”

“The front sight is filed off the raider's gun.”

“Same thing,” Case said. “Speed over accuracy.”

“May I shoot yours?”

“Holster it first. Then try for that little rock.”

Conner's second draw looked as fast as his first, but Case knew it wasn't. Not quite.

A chunk of stone flew out from the big rock.

“Missed again,” Conner said, disgusted.

“You weren't more than three inches off. Close enough to stop a man.”

The boy just shook his head and holstered the gun.

“Stopping a man is almost as good as killing him,” Case said matter-of-factly. “That way you can take a little more time with the second bullet, unless you're up against more than one man.”

“Is that what happened in Spanish Church?”

“Partly. Mostly those Culpeppers were just too damned fast. But they shot too soon, same as you did and for the same reason. Touchy guns.”

“They didn't get another chance?”

Case gave Conner a sideways look out of cool green eyes.

“If I'd given them another chance, I'd be planted out back of the bar instead of them.”

“How close were they to you?”

“Nearly twenty feet,” Case said. “If it had been ten, they would have killed me.”

“You don't sound as if the idea bothers you,” Conner muttered.

“Gamblers have a saying—scared money never wins. Same goes for shooting. The day you feel scared is the day you take off that belt gun and never put it on again.”

“You mean you're never scared?”

“Not when it comes down to it. Before or after, hell yes.”

Conner looked at both guns again.

“Let me try that raider's gun,” Case said, holding out his hand.

The boy held his gun out butt first to Case.

“I see Ute taught you good manners,” Case said dryly.

“With a gun, manners make sense,” the boy retorted. “At eating time, they just get in the way.”

Case holstered the gun, lowered his hands, then drew and with a speed that blurred everything into one motion. He fired three shots with a single rolling sound.