reminded her too much of her own seething turmoil. In any case, Reno was right. Baiting him hadn’t made Eve feel better. It had made her feel worse, on the breaking edge of her own control. She felt like biting and clawing and screaming. The depth of her own wildness was frightening.
«And that’s all you’re doing,» Reno added. «Baiting me. We both know you’re not a slut.»
Eve said nothing.
The temptation to push Eve until she agreed with him nearly overwhelmed Reno, but he managed to keep his silence. Barely. He scooped up more water, letting it fall in sparkling liquid necklaces over Eve until her camisole and pantalets were drenched.
Eve closed her eyes and pretended that she was washing herself beneath one of the barrel showers Don Lyon had rigged before his hands became too crippled for such things.
The cool glide of the water down her body made her shiver, but not with cold. The day was too hot for that, and the sun’s heat was both absorbed and reflected by the high rock walls.
Eve flinched at the first touch of Reno’s hands on her shoulders. He whispered her name unhappily. Through a screen of thick bronze eyelashes, she saw the painful line of Reno’s mouth.
«I won’t hurt you,» he said with aching control. «I would never have hurt you the first time, if I had known. …»
Eve’s breath came out in a long, ragged sigh. She nodded, believing him, for it was the simple truth. She had sensed that about Reno the instant he sat down at her table in Canyon City; despite his size, despite his strength, despite his lethal speed, he wasn’t the kind of man who enjoyed cruelty.
«I know,» she said in a low voice. «It’s why I dealt cards to you. You weren’t what Slater and Raleigh King were.»
Reno let out breath that he wasn’t aware of having held. He brushed his lips over Eve’s forehead in a soft caress that ended before she could be sure she had felt it at all.
«Let me bathe you,» he said.
She hesitated, then reached up to remove her camisole. Hands sleek with lather closed over her wrists, holding her gently.
«Let me,» Reno said.
She hesitated again.
«I won’t take you,» he said. «Not unless you ask me to. I just want to make you…hurt less.»
Unable to bear the intensity of Reno’s eyes, Eve closed her own and nodded. For several moments she waited in an agony of suspense, but when Reno touched her, it was only to wash her face as gently as he had his nephew’s.
Yet Eve didn’t feel like a baby. Reno’s touch made an almost painful pleasure course through her. She hadn’t known how sensitive her face was. The ritual of soaping and washing and rinsing made frissons of pleasure ripple over her.
«Was that so bad?» Reno asked.
Eve shook her head. A long tendril of hair floated free. Reno tucked it behind one ear.
«How about this?» he asked.
He bent and began tracing every clean curve of Eve’s ear with his tongue and then his teeth, biting with exquisite care, enjoying the ragged intake and breaking of her breath. When the tip of his tongue probed and tested, spiraling down, retreating, returning, caressing, she made an odd sound in her throat and clung to his arms for balance.
Reno lifted his head and looked down into Eve’s wide, surprised eyes.
«Is something wrong?» he whispered.
«I…» She swallowed. «I never know what to expect from you.»
«Your boyfriends must have been, er, unimaginative.»
«I never had one, imaginative or otherwise.»
«No boyfriend?» Reno asked. «Not even for a few stolen kisses out by the barn?»
Eve shook her head. «I never wanted a male near me. Until you.»
«My God.»
The realization of just how innocent Eve had been went through Reno in a shock wave of pleasure and surprise. So innocent, yet she had been a passionate spring welling up at his touch, his word, his lightest caress.
So innocent…so passionate. The possibilities for mutual pleasure were enough to make him light-headed. He hardly knew where to begin.
Reno’s glittering green glance swept over Eve. Her underwear was nearly transparent, clinging to every curve and valley of her body. The taut crowns of her breasts stood out clearly, as did the luxuriant triangle of bronze hair that both shielded and outlined her essential femininity.
«My God,» he said again, reverently. «No man has ever touched you at all, has he?»
«Not quite,» she whispered.
«Who?» he demanded.
«You’ve touched me,» she said simply. «Only you.»
In a hush that seethed with the small songs of water, Reno washed Eve to the waist. He tried not to linger over her breasts, but it was impossible. The velvet hardness of her nipples lured him irresistibly. He returned to them again and again, until they stood out urgently against the camisole, drawn taut by more than the cool water.
Saying nothing, Reno pulled Eve under the gentle waterfall, rinsing her. When he was finished, he slowly pulled off her camisole and tucked it into the waistband of his pants. Then he bent and tasted the freshness of her skin until she made small noises and clung to him.
«I shouldn’t let you do this,» Eve said huskily.
«Am I hurting you?»
«No. Not…yet.»
«Not ever,» Reno said, nuzzling her breast. «Not ever again.»
Eve couldn’t answer. The sight of Reno’s mouth so close to the rosy peak of her breast took away the ability to speak. The tip of his tongue circled her, stabbing softly. He sheathed his teeth with his lips and bit down.
The ragged sound Eve made owed nothing to pain and everything to a sudden, bright pleasure. Before she could become used to it, the caress changed. Heat surged through her, making it hard to hang on to her anger, for her body sensed a different outlet for the emotions churning beneath her control.
Eve didn’t know whether to be relieved or unhappy when Reno finally, slowly, lifted his head and resumed washing her.
«I should have taken the time to tell you how beautiful you are,» Reno said. «You have the kind of skin poets write sonnets to. But I’m not a poet. I never wanted to be, until now.»
Reno bent and brushed his lips over first one breast, then the other. «I don’t know the words to describe you.»
Long fingers smoothed soap over Eve’s pantalets, waist and hips and thighs. When his palm rubbed against the lush delta, she made a frightened sound.
«Easy,» he murmured. «That doesn’t hurt you, does it?»
Her lips were trembling. She shook her head.
«Move your legs a bit,» Reno said, pressing gently. «Let me wash all of you, especially there, where I hurt you.»
He waited, watching her face, wanting her to give so that he wouldn’t have to take.
Slowly Eve shifted position, giving Reno the freedom that he wanted. In a silence seething with memory and possibility, he bathed away every last trace of the virgin she had been and would never be again.
«If I could take back the hurt, I would,» he whispered. «But I wouldn’t take back the rest of it. I’ve dreamed all my life of finding a passion like yours.»
Eve shivered and bit back a throaty sound as Reno’s fingers unfastened her pantalets and eased them down her legs until he was kneeling in the pool at her feet.
«Brace yourself against my shoulders,» he said huskily.
He felt the trembling of her hands as they settled on his naked shoulders, and wondered if passion or fear
