Elizabeth Lowell - Only His

As always, the sun was hot. Willow was wearing only Levis and the buckskin shirt with most of its laces undone. The flannel underwear that had felt so good in the higher country was now folded and rolled into a blanket behind her saddle, along with the heavy wool jacket. The silver murmuring of the river had become a siren song promising cool, pure water to ease her growing thirst.

Just when Willow was certain Caleb was going to go past supper without stopping, he reined in, dismounted, and walked back to her.

«We’ll rest here for a bit.»

Willow began to dismount, only to be plucked from Ishmael’s back. Caleb lowered her slowly to the ground, letting her slide down his front. The look in his eyes and the frank arousal of his body made her heartbeat double. The uneasiness that had haunted her all day was replaced by a giddy sense of relief and a glittering rush of anticipation. Heat rippled through her, transforming her. In the space of a few breaths her body changed, preparing itself for the joining to come.

«Rest?» Willow asked, smiling, wanting so much to take the darkness from Caleb’s eyes. One of her hands drifted down his body. «Are you sure that’s all you had in mind?»

His breath came in swiftly. «I thought I might catch some trout for supper.»

«You might,» she agreed. Her hand moved slowly, measuring and pleasuring him in the same motion, glorying in the answering blaze of his eyes, all darkness gone. «Depends on the bait. Or is it the pole?»

«You,» he said huskily, «are one sassy little trout.»

«But I rise to your bait every time.»

«No, honey. I rise to yours.»

Willow’s soft laugh was as sensual as the slow movement of her hand. «Shall we argue about it?»

His answering smile was lazy and hungry at the same time. «Yes, I think we shall.» Long fingers worked over the fastening of her Levis. «Two falls out of three?»

«You’re bigger than I am,» she pointed out.

«Harder, too.» Caleb’s hand slid between layers of cloth. «But it’s too late to get cold feet now.»

The only answer Willow could make was a throaty sound of pleasure as his long fingers touched her. He knelt quickly, stripping away her boots and Levis. He had no patience for his own clothes. He simply unfastened his pants and pulled her to the ground astride him, wild with a need he couldn’t control.

«God,» he groaned when he teased and tested her, «you’re softer every time. Hotter. Sweeter.»

Willow tried to answer, but the feel of Caleb thrusting deeply into her body took away her breath. The hunger in him was almost violent, as though he must have all of her, know all of her, touch all of her in some elemental way. The first shattering wave of pleasure hit her as soon as they were fully joined, but it was the desperate need in him that stripped away the world, leaving only Caleb and the ecstasy that destroyed and created her in the same endless instant. Small cries rippled from her as she surrendered body and soul to the man she loved.

The depth and quickness of Willow’s response was as exciting to Caleb as the heat of her body melting around him, telling him that she was his woman, only his. It was what he needed, what he had sought through the long hours in which he had circled and circled the dilemma of Reno Moran and found no solution, no reprieve except this, the joining that was unlike anything Caleb had ever known. The passion in Willow was as hot as the sun and as deep as time, an intensity of feeling that reached down into his soul.

And soon she would hate him with a passion as deep as her love.

Willow’s name came from Caleb’s lips as a broken cry, for the passion he had called from her had claimed him as well, giving him more completely to her with each raking pulse of ecstasy, an elemental surrender of self that was not unlike her own.

He held her, praying that Reno would never be found…and knowing he would.

«MORE tracks?» Willow asked.

Caleb nodded. He hadn’t shaved since they left the hidden valley, but even six days of beard stubble couldn’t hide his grim expression.

«Shod?»

He nodded again.

«How many horses?»

Though Willow’s voice was no more than a thread of sound, Caleb heard. Sometimes he thought he could hear her in the silence of his mind, a woman crying passion, crying love, crying grief, crying hate.

«No less than twelve horses,» Caleb said roughly, preferring the unhappy truth of enemies to the thoughts that stalked him no matter how ruthlessly he shoved them aside. «No more than sixteen. Hard to tell. They weren’t picketed separately.»

Willow frowned and looked around. The days of cautious, relentless travel had brought them among the splendor of the San Juan mountains. At present, she and Caleb were in the midst of a high, grassy basin that was perhaps two miles across and circled by snowy peaks of breathtaking size and ruggedness. Slender aspen grew in the rolling folds of the basin, providing cover for deer and for people such as Willow and Caleb, who had no desire to be spotted from nearby peaks or ridges.

But the basin would soon be transformed as all other parks and meadows had been transformed by the rising of the land. Rugged peaks would close in, the meadows would shrink, and the creeks would race between dark walls of stone until a higher meadow was reached, a smaller meadow, and the cycle would be repeated again and again until they came to the headwaters of a tiny brook at the apex of yet another pass. Then the route would begin to descend, repeating the cycle in reverse, creeks becoming rivers and meadows becoming huge parks once more.

«Is there another pass we could take?» Willow asked.

«There’s always another pass somewhere.»

She bit her lower lip. «But not nearby, is that it?»

«That’s it. We’d have to backtrack a few hours to where the creek forked. Then we’d have to go three days out of our way to come in from the other side of that mountain.» Caleb jerked his thumb over his shoulder, looked at Willow, and waited.

«Are we close to Matt?» she asked finally.

«If he drew the map right and we read it right, yes.»

«While you were scouting ahead, I thought I heard gunfire,» she said.

«You’ve got good ears,» Caleb said. Nothing in his tone revealed that he had been hoping she hadn’t heard the shots.

«Was it you?» she asked.

«No.»

«Matt?»

«Doubt it. More likely someone from Slater’s bunch saw a deer. A bunch of armed men don’t need to worry overmuch about attractingUtes by shooting fresh meat.»

«Matt is alone.»

«He’s used to it.»

«I heard five shots. How many does it take to kill one deer?»

Caleb said nothing. He knew that more than one or two shots usually meant a fight, not a hunt.

«Matt might be hurt,» Willow said urgently. «Caleb, we have to find him!»

«More likely we’ll find Slater’s bunch if we head up that draw,» Caleb said, his voice flat. But even as he spoke, he was reining his horse around, heading into the canyon that rose on either side of the river. «I’ll ride ahead. You keep that shotgun handy. Unless we have Satan’s own luck, we’re going to need it.»

Despite Caleb’s grim warning, they found nothing that afternoon but tracks. The land began rising slowly beneath their feet. The river became faster, more narrow, more rocky, and mountains crowded in on both sides. Willow could tell from the horses’ breathing that the altitude was higher than the little valley had been, and they were climbing higher with each step.

The water course they had been following forked as the land rose once more. The tracks of shod horses followed the right fork. Caleb took the left, for it led toward the place where five lines had intersected on the map that he had burned to ash, wishing that he could burn the past with it.

But burning all the bitter yesterdays wasn’t possible.

So be it.

The words were like rifle fire in Caleb’s mind. Their echo came back as Wolfe’s warning.

You hear me, amigo? You and Reno are too well matched.

And Caleb’s own answer, the only one there could be, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, the past echoing into the present, the savage circle complete.

So be it.

Except that it could not be. Caleb could not leave Willow alone in the mountains, no one to protect her, a woman abandoned unwillingly by her man, but abandoned just the same….

Will she die the way Rebecca did, in agony and exhaustion, bearing her lover’s dying child?

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.

Bile rose behind Caleb’s clenched teeth as he rebelled against the very idea of hurting Willow. He could not do that to the girl whose only sin was to love too much. She had done nothing to earn such betrayal.

Nor had Rebecca. Yet betrayal had come, and agony, and death. The man who had brought disaster to her walked free, able to seduce another innocent, abandon her, and create another savage circle of betrayal and vengeance.

In an anguish that grew greater with each step forward, Caleb searched for a way out of the trap of duty and desire and death. He found none except to let the seducer live, and in so doing condemn some unknown girl to a seduction and abandonment she had done nothing to earn, and then another girl, and then another; for a man’s desire rose with the sun and set only in the dark warmth of a woman’s body.

As Caleb rode into the dark canyon, he wondered how he could let Reno live and still call himself a man.

Walls of rock loomed on either side of the narrow cleft, blocking out all but a thin swath of sky overhead. High above, the mountain peak was still washed with clear sunlight, but in the bottom of the ravine dark forerunners of night flowed out of every crevice. The dense shadows were exactly what Caleb had been seeking. He dismounted and went back to Willow.

«No fire,» he said in a low voice.

Willow nodded her understanding. She had heard the gunfire clearly half an hour before. Two rifle shots. It was impossible to determine the direction of the shots, for the sounds had echoed off stone walls too many times before reaching her ears.

«How close?» Willow asked quietly.

Caleb knew she was asking about the shots they both had heard. He looked up at the rim of the gully and shrugged. «Could be the next ravine over. Could be a mile across the basin and up on another peak. Sound carries real well up here.»

While Caleb picketed the horses fifty feet downstream, Willow rinsed the canteen in the tiny brook that leaped and foamed from a notch high in the rock wall. The water was so cold it made her hands ache. A chill wind blew down the gully from the hidden peak, making her shiver despite her heavy wool jacket.

«I’ve never felt water so cold,» Willow said as she handed Caleb the canteen. «It made my teeth ache.»

«Meltwater,» Caleb said briefly. He took Willow’s hands and rubbed them between his own, warming them. «Damn near ice. There’s a snowfield at the top of that notch.» He breathed heat over her fingers before he opened hisshearling jacket, pulled her hands inside, and smiled down at her. «Better?»

«Much.»

Willow smiled and made amurmurous sound of approval as she smoothed her hands over Caleb’s warm chest. Within a few moments, she had picked apart the button just above his belt buckle and eased one hand inside to rest against the heat of his skin. His breath hissed in as her fingers tangled gently in the line of hair that ran down his torso.

«You’re better than any fire,» Willow whispered as she turned her hand over to warm the other side. «Heat but no smoke to give us away.»

«Keep that up and there might be.»

«Really?» she asked softly, laughing up at him. «Where?»

«Don’t tempt me, honey.»

«Why not? I’m so very good at it.»

Caleb’s eyes narrowed and his heart beat with redoubled force. In the sudden, hushed silence between Caleb and Willow, the sound of the tiny creek was like a river, but it wasn’t loud enough to cover the break in his breathing when her cool fingers dipped below his belt. The width of thegunbelt defeated her attempts to touch him.

Smiling, Caleb removed hisgunbelt and big knife and set them aside. «Try it now.»

Willow nibbled at the dimple in his chin and the beard stubble that had grown once more. He caught her teasing lips in a hard kiss that made him forget for a few moments the bleak future that was coming closer with every moment they looked for Reno. When her cool fingers slipped inside the waistband of his pants, Caleb made a hungry sound.