With his mouth like a brand on hers and his tongue slashing across her lips like liquid fire, her gasp of shock became a whimper of need. Her lips opened; giddy and intoxicated, she sipped, savored, drank him in like a fine fiery brandy, with a little gasp at the first heady taste of him, then a deep-throated moan, a primitive sound of pleasure.

He growled in response and withdrew-but only for a moment, and only to search for a better fit, a truer melding. His lips returned to nip and tease. His tongue tormented her with gentle mastery. She heard her own voice whisper-not words, just sounds, sounds of encouragement and pleading-and his voice, guttural in response, soothing, promising.

She felt his hand, so gentle in her hair, so warm on her throat. Felt its moist heat seeping through the fabric of her T-shirt, its palm perfectly nesting her breast. She felt her knees begin to buckle, felt his arm there supporting her as they both began to sink, in a wholly natural way, toward the pine-needle carpet at their feet.

And then-just then-she heard another voice, a husky whicker. As if it was a signal bringing him out of a trance, Bronco drew a shuddering breath and turned away from her. The man who a moment ago had held her in an embrace the likes of which she’d never known and kissed her as she’d never been kissed before, kissed her and made her believe in heaven, the promised land, El Dorado, leaned now across the saddle skirt and supported his bowed head. He muttered something she couldn’t understand, until he gave his head a violent shake and repeated it in a louder harsher voice: “I can’t…do this.”

“No!” Lauren cried in shocked and trembling protest. “You can’t…you can’t undo it.”

He threw her one fierce black look, then gripped the reins and, ignoring a strident little whinny of protest, began to walk the stallion deeper into the timber. Tense and fighting for control, she hurried after him. “Don’t you dare walk away!” She sounded like a jilted schoolgirl and didn’t care. “You can’t do something like that and just…pretend it never happened.”

Without looking at her he mumbled thickly, “Yeah, well, it never should have happened.”

“Yeah, well, here’s a news flash for you-it did happen.” Oh, she was furious-breathless with fury. And frightened. Terrified that he meant it and that what had just happened to her might never happen again. “So what now, huh? What now?”

He stopped and turned his face to her, and it was like an effigy carved in stone. “I should never have let it happen. It’s my responsibility to see that it doesn’t happen again.”

For a few moments Lauren was speechless. Not even when he’d first kidnapped her had she felt such rage; she wanted to fly at him, scratch his eyes out, rip at that impassive face with her fingernails-until she looked again, more closely, at his eyes. For once unshielded, she could see reflected in them everything she was feeling and more-pain and passion, frustration, sorrow and bitter regret.

“Because of them?” she asked, her voice still high and taut, but with ebbing anger, the beginning of understanding. “Because of Gil? The cause? The…whatever you call ’em of Liberty? They barely exist anymore! Why should it matter?”

Why should it matter. Gazing at her, Bronco felt all but swallowed up in heaviness and turmoil. The storms in his soul were as violent as any he’d ever faced; he felt himself becoming lost in them, desperately in need of a compass. What had he done? He’d sworn to protect this woman, and instead, he’d done her grievous harm. Now she stood before him wanting to know why, and he couldn’t even offer her an answer. Not one that would make sense to her.

Still, he felt compelled to try, with as much of the truth as he could possibly give her. “It matters to me,” he said stiffly. “It’s personal-a matter of honor. I took you away from your family. I’ll see you’re returned to them in the same condition as when you were taken.”

“Too late,” she said softly, her smile small and crooked.

Too late. He returned her gaze in silence, while the turmoil inside him grew. Somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled, and he felt its echoes deep in his own belly.

She spoke, suddenly, in a voice too loud, too harsh. “Do you think this makes any sense to me?” Her eyes glistened dangerously. He watched them in dread, desperately afraid of what it was going to do to his heart when the first tear fell. “It makes no sense to me at all! Everything logical and reasonable in me tells me I shouldn’t feel what I feel for you. By all rights you should be the last man I’d ever find myself mixed up with. And believe me,” she added with a strange note of bitterness in her voice, “if ever there was a one for doing what she’s supposed to do, it’s Lauren Brown. Which doesn’t alter one bit the fact that I do feel…something for you-God, don’t ask me what!” She threw her hands up as her voice broke finally with a choked helpless sound. After a moment she drew a ragged breath and whispered, “All I know is…I don’t know how I’m going to get back on that horse with you.”

A growl came from deep in Bronco’s chest, barely audible even to him. But Cochise Red turned his head toward him and bumped his shoulder with his muzzle, then nibbled and snuffled his hair in mute sympathy. Something shivered through him-part laughter, part physical desire-and holding the breath that would have betrayed those things to her, he silently took Lauren’s hand and began to walk, bringing her along with him.

Presently he jerked his head toward the horse ambling beside him and said gruffly, “You can ride-I’ll walk.”

A high liquid sound of pure frustration made him glance at her in alarm, his heart thudding hard and fast against his ribs. But she had her head down and he couldn’t see much of her face, just the warm pink stain of sunburn, and the strands of blond hair that had worked loose from her ponytail, sweat-darkened and sticking to her neck and temples and the sides of her cheeks. He jerked his eyes away from her and held his breath while desire rumbled again in his belly and the turmoil inside him grew.

“Tonight…when we stop, wherever we stop, what then?” she asked softly, and without looking he knew her eyes were on him again. He didn’t answer, and she went on in a gentle musing tone, almost as if she was singing to him, a sad sweet song. “Will you do what you did last night-leave me your blanket and go off somewhere? I hardly think to sleep, so…what? To stand watch? Keep your lonely vigil? Only tonight, there won’t be any sleep for me, either-do you seriously think I could? Do you think I won’t lie awake counting my own heartbeats, straining my ears for your footsteps, every nerve jumping at the slightest sound? Will you do that to me?”

She finished in a choked whisper, and he realized then that he was no longer walking, that he had stopped and was facing her, still holding her hand. He realized, too, that although desire still boiled inside him, the turmoil had left his mind, and in its place, like an old familiar friend, had come that inner peace, the quietness he’d felt just before he kissed her.

In that quiet he heard the splash and chuckle of water, and knew he was very near the place where the stream that flowed down through the canyon began, cascading over boulders from springs high on the shoulders of the Sacred Mountain to pool temporarily here in natural basins. It was a place he knew well, a place to which he’d come many times before in search of refuge and healing for his soul. What he didn’t know was whether it was fate or purpose that had brought him to this place, at this time. It didn’t seem important for him to know.

He lifted his hand to her face and felt the warm velvet of her skin against his fingertips, the moist flow of her breath across his thumb. “No,” he said softly, “I won’t do that to you.” And silently added, Or to me.

He drew his hand down the side of her face to her neck and gazed deeply into her eyes, and saw in them the same storms that raged inside him. Taking her hand once more, he made a soft wordless sound and a slight head movement of encouragement, and they walked on together in silence, leading the stallion.

When they came near to the bottommost of the series of basins, Bronco secured Cochise Red to a fallen tree with a short lead rope. He untied the saddlebags, the poncho and bedroll and hitched them under one arm, then turned again to Lauren and silently held out his hand. She reached for it without a word or a moment’s hesitation, eyes clinging to his as if it wasn’t just her hand but her life she was giving into his keeping.

Her eyes were large and dark-and yes, there was fear in them, but the fear didn’t trouble him now that he understood what it was she was afraid of. And because along with fear, he also saw hope. And trust. Somehow, against all logic and reason, she trusted him, this woman he’d taken and held by force and against her will. That knowledge both exalted and humbled him.

How can I trust him? This makes no sense to me! Confusion was an aching mass inside her; she wanted to weep with it.

The truth was, she placed her hand in Johnny Bronco’s only partly because she did trust him, because at the center of the storm of confusion within her was a tiny core of certainty that he, and only he, could make the confusion go away. But the honesty in her forced her to admit the truth-she went with him mostly because there was a fire inside her, a pounding in her belly and a melting in her knees, a wanting so fierce she’d have given him her hand whether she trusted him or not and walked into hell with him, if that was where he chose to take her.

But it wasn’t hell he led her to. It was Eden.

Farther up the side of the mountain, sunlight shimmered on rocky cliffs and a hawk soared and screamed against a backdrop of billowing thunderheads. But here on the lowest level of the cascade, virgin forest crowded against the cliffs, creating a moist and shady bower where new young pine trees fought the decaying carcasses of their fallen elders for growing space between the moss-covered boulders, and ferns and wildflowers sprang from every crack and crevice.

Bronco led her through the rocks and fallen logs, following a trail he obviously knew well, then out onto a rocky apron where, over countless eons, water falling from a ledge above had worn away the rock to form a natural basin. Here he paused to lay the saddlebags and blanket down, then slowly turned her toward him.

Gently, so gently it hardly seemed as though he touched her at all, he took her face between his hands. Slowly, so slowly it seemed as if it would take her entire lifetime, he lowered his mouth to hers. His lips were soft, so soft on hers, his tongue sweet as sun-warmed honey. Her breathing stopped; her breath backed up in her lungs, and her body rocked with the force of her heartbeat. And then he pulled away.

Left suddenly bereft, she opened her eyes-and her wordless whimper of protest died. His black and glowing eyes were locked on her face while his fingers worked their way down through the buttons on the front of his shirt. Like one in a trance she watched him pull the shirttails from the waistband of his jeans, unbutton the cuffs and let the shirt drop to the ground in a pile of soft sky-blue. His chest glistened with sweat; she swallowed, certain she would experience the salt-slick taste of him on her tongue, and was surprised to find her throat as dry as dust.

One by one, never taking his eyes from her face, he removed his boots, his belt, his jeans, until he stood splendidly naked before her. Then he turned and walked to the edge of the basin. When he was ankle-deep in the water, he lifted his hands and pulled away the band that held his hair in its neat tight knot.

Utterly motionless, Lauren stood and watched him stride deeper into the pool. He walked without a trace of self-consciousness, his body so straight and strong, buttocks hard as rocks and all the muscles in his back glistening in the sun, and long hair streaming over his shoulders like strands of black silk. He’s beautiful, she thought, with no sense of surprise. So beautiful. She felt her legs trembling, and for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand, the sting of tears in her eyes.

He seemed to glide through the water to where the cascade fell from the rock overhang far above and then, standing with feet braced apart, lifted his face to the sky and flung his arms wide. Lauren caught her breath in awe as crystalline water drummed and splashed over his head and shoulders to ripple and foam away from his powerfully muscled thighs. It seemed a long time that he stood there, with the water streaming over his face and body like a veil, holding himself absolutely still, as though, she thought, he were making of himself some kind of holy offering. Then he turned to her and silently held out his hand.