And he had taken it.

«Get off me,» Eve said finally.

The flatness of her voice angered Reno. She had been so hot, so willing, and now she couldn’t wait to be rid of him. She couldn’t have told him more clearly how little she had enjoyed coupling with him.

Yet he had enjoyed it so much he had lost control too quickly. That had never happened to him before. The knowledge that he had wanted her much more than she wanted him made him furious.

Then Reno remembered the fragile barrier, the tearing an instant before he could take Eve completely. He remembered, but he could not believe it. He could not believe a saloon girl was a virgin.

It must have been a long time since her last man.

That would explain the sleek constriction of her body, a sensual pressure that still caressed him every time either one of them breathed.

Reno realized anew how slender Eve was, how delicately made. He wasn’t either slender or small. He was an unusually large, potent man. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but he must have. The knowledge simultaneously shamed and angered him, for it underlined the difference in their level of mutual desire.

«Don’t tell me you didn’t want it,» Reno said harshly. «Hell, you asked for it as plain as day.»

Color stained Eve’s cheeks as she remembered her own wanton behavior. He was quite right. She had asked for it.

«I’m not asking for it now,» Eve said tightly.

With a hissed word, Reno shifted to roll aside.

Eve’s breath wedged and a shudder went through her body as he caressed her violently sensitive flesh in the act of leaving her.

Blood glistened in the sun, scarlet testimony to a truth Reno could barely believe. She had felt like wild, sun-warmed honey. He had been so eager for her that he hadn’t even undressed her or himself. He had taken her wearing his boots and pants as though she were no more than a whore bought for a few minutes of ease.

And she had let him. She had begged him.

Reno looked at Eve as though he had never seen her before. And he hadn’t. Not the way he was seeing her now. He hadn’t allowed himself to look past the scarlet dress to the innocent girl beneath; because he had wanted that girl too much to turn aside, no matter what the truth of her innocence was.

«Virgin.»

«That’s right, gunfighter,» Eve shot back. «I’m a virgin.»

Suddenly her mouth drew down in an unhappy curve.

«Well, I was a virgin,» she said. «Now I’m just one more ruined girl who should have known better.»

The word rang in Reno’s mind. Ruined.

Like Savannah Marie had been ruined. Like Willow had been ruined.

A decent man marries an innocent girl if he ruins her.

Suddenly Reno felt cornered. Like any cornered animal, he fought to be free. His fingers wrapped around Eve’s shoulders.

«If you think you just traded your maidenhead for a husband,» he said, «you’re dead wrong. I won you in a card game. I took what was mine. That’s all the payment that’s required.»

«Thank God,» Eve said between her teeth.

For the second time, Eve had shocked Reno. He had expected an argument, a torrent of words telling him how it was his duty as a decent man to marry the girl his lust had ruined. It was an old trick, the oldest and most potent in the arsenal of the war waged between marriage-minded girls and freedom-minded men.

Yet Eve wasn’t using it.

«Thank God?» Reno repeated numbly.

«Damn straight,» Eve shot back. «Thank God I’ve paid off the bet fully and you won’t want to do that again, because —»

«What the hell are you talking about?» he interrupted.

«— now I know why women get paid for it!»

Eve’s furious words hung in the air for a long, taut moment before Reno trusted himself to answer.

«You liked it and you know it,» Reno said in a low, lethal voice. «I didn’t rape you.»

«You didn’t rape me. And I didn’t like it!»

«Then why did you beg for me?» he retorted.

Humiliation and anger burned on Eve’s cheeks. Her lips trembled, but her voice was as steady as her eyes.

«I’ll bet if you asked a baby bird how it liked flying, it would sing happily all the way down to the ground that breaks its stupid neck!»

For an instant Reno was silent. Then he laughed despite his anger at taking a saloon girl and discovering he had made a passionate virgin bleed.

«Flying, huh?» he asked deeply.

Eve gave Reno a wary look, not trusting the sudden, velvety darkness of his voice one bit. With small, subtle motions, she tried to ease away from his grip. His long fingers tightened just enough to let her know that she was well and truly held.

«Not flying,» she said in a clipped voice. «Falling. There’s a big difference, gunfighter.»

«Only in the landing. Next time you’ll land on your feet like the sleek little cat you are.»

«There won’t be a next time.»

«Are you going back on your word?» Reno challenged smoothly.

Eve’s smile was like a piece of winter.

«I don’t have to,» she said. «You can handle me until fire freezes solid. I won’t ask again to be hurt until I bleed.»

«It’s only like that the first time. And if I had known you were a virgin, I —»

«I told you I’d never let a man under my skirts,» she interrupted. «But you didn’t believe me. You thought I was a slut. Now you know I’m not.»

Then realization came to Eve. Her mouth turned down in a bitter curve.

«I wasn’t a slut,» she corrected. «But I am now.»

Anger coiled in Reno.

«I did not make you a slut,» he said, biting off each word.

«Really? How does it happen, then? One time is a mistake and two times makes a slut? Or is it three? Maybe four?»

«Damnation.»

«Precisely,» she hissed. «How many times does it take before a girl magically becomes a slut? Do tell me, gunfighter. I’d hate to use up more than my God-given share offun.»

«What am I supposed to do?» he asked furiously. «Marry you? Would that make it right again?»

«No!»

«What?» Reno asked, wondering if he had heard correctly.

«Nothing would make what we did right but love,» Eve said bitterly, «and getting love from a man like you is about as likely as finding ‘a ship made of stone, a dry rain, and a light that casts no shadow. ’»

Hearing his own words come so harshly from Eve’s tongue told Reno that he had hurt her in more than the breaching of her maidenhead.

«You thought you were in love with me,» Reno said, shocked.

Eve went pale. «Does it matter?»

«Hell, yes, it matters! You responded to me because you’re very much a woman, not because of any girlish crap about love.»

With a twisting movement, Eve pulled free of Reno’s grasp. She drew his shirt closer around her body and watched him with feral yellow eyes.

It occurred to Reno that he could have been more tactful on the subject of love. A lot more tactful.

She had been innocent, and innocence believed in love.

«Eve…»

«Fasten your pants, gunfighter. I’m tired of seeing my blood on you and knowing how foolish I was.»

15

Eve knew without turning around that Reno had followed her to the pool where water danced and whispered. She had sensed him behind her every step of the way from camp.

Her hands hesitated as she began to peel off the shirt. Beneath it she wore only underclothes whose sheer cotton provided scant protection from Reno’s eyes.

It’s a little late for maidenly modesty, Eve told herself mockingly. Very much like locking the barn door after the horse is long gone.

With quick, edgy motions, Eve stripped off the big shirt and threw it aside.

Reno’s breath came in with a sharp sound as he saw the bright scarlet stain on Eve’s pantalets that had been hidden by the long tails of her borrowed shirt.

«Eve,» he said in a raw voice. «I didn’t mean to hurt you.»

She said nothing. Nor did she look over her shoulder at Reno.

Soundlessly he came up behind Eve and put his hands on her shoulders.

«Do you think me such an animal that I get my pleasure hurting women?» he asked harshly.

Eve wanted to lie, but saw nothing except more hurt in it for her. Reno was relentless when it came to the subject of truth and saloon girls.

«No,» she said flatly.

The rush of his expelled breath stirred the hair at the nape of Eve’s neck. Gooseflesh rippled down her arms.

The treacherous response of her own body infuriated her.

«Thank God for that much,» Reno muttered.

«God had little to do with it, gunfighter. More like the devil.»

«You begged for me.»

«How kind of you to remind me,» Eve said. «It won’t happen again.»

Her whole body was rigid beneath Reno’s hands. He cursed his quick tongue and the savage anger that came when Eve reminded him of how little she had enjoyed being his lover.

Yet for him, it had been a pleasure both sweet and violently intense, right up to the instant when he realized he had taken a virgin. Then there had been a fury as deep as his passion.

«Itwillhappen again,» he said, «but it won’t be a mistake. You’ll like it this time. I’ll be certain of it.»

«A no-account gunfighter once told me I’d like it so much, I’d scream with pleasure.» Eve’s shrug was a parody of her usual grace. «He was half-right. I screamed.»

Reno said something brutal under his breath before he managed to rein in his anger. Keeping his temper had never been so difficult. Eve had a way of getting underneath his control that would have frightened him if she had been coldly manipulative. But she wasn’t. She was the most passionate woman he had ever had the joy of touching.

Unfortunately, at the moment, she fairly radiated outrage and…frustration.

Reno took in a long breath and let it out in a soundless sigh as understanding came to him. He hadn’t meant to tease her and leave her raw and knotted with hunger, yet he had done just that. He could hardly blame her if she wanted a few strips of his hide to nail to the nearest tree.

Calmly Reno turned Eve around so that she faced him. He slid his hands beneath the camisole, preparing to lift it over her head.

«What do you think you’re doing?» she demanded.

«Undressing you.»

Eve said something that normally would never have crossed her mind, much less her lips.

Reno barely hid his smile beneath his mustache. His hands paused underneath the camisole on either side of her breasts. He could see the change in her nipples as they tightened in passionate reflex to his presence.

«We’ve both agreed that you’re the kind of girl who keeps her word,» he said. «And we’ve both agreed that you gave me your word I could touch you.»

Barely veiled mutiny glittered in Eve’s eyes. Never had she looked more like a cat than she did now, watching him without blinking, her lips thinned as though ready to draw back in a spitting snarl.

«You’re going to keep your word, aren’t you?» Reno asked.

Eve didn’t answer.

«I thought so,» he said.

Slowly he slid his hands from beneath the partially laced camisole.

«But the undressing can wait,» he continued. «Hand over the soap and washrag.»

She had forgotten the piece of lilac-scented soap and cloth she had brought to the pool. With difficulty, she forced herself to unclench her hands.

Reno took the ragged square of flour sack and the pale lump of soap from her.

The deep marks left by Eve’s nails on the soap and on her other palm gave silent proof of the effort she had made not to lose what little control she had over herself.

The evidence of her own uncertain temper appalled Eve. She had never thought of herself as a particularly passionate or violent person. The orphanage had taught her never to lose control of herself, for if she did, she would be at the mercy of others.

Just as she had been at Reno’s mercy, reaching for love and getting nothing in return but pain.

Pity I had to learn the lesson all over again.

Reno looked at the crescents Eve’s nails had cut in the soap and in her own skin. Then he looked at her eyes. There was nothing of laughter or passion or curiosity in them now. Her eyes were as bleak as a winter sunset.

«Eve,» he whispered.

She simply watched him out of yellow cat’s eyes.

«I’m sorry I hurt you,» he said. «But I’m not sorry about having you. You were silk and fire. …»