before?”
She felt his forefinger rubbing against the back of her hand, a strong, yet gentle gesture. “Maybe what I felt was caught too deep.”
Someone else might have laughed at his hesitant explanation, but she understood. It went back to Gray Cloud and before that a mother overwhelmed by the responsibility of a child. In her mind and heart she saw the little boy he once was, a boy desperate for love and clinging as best he could to what was given him. Or maybe he’d been born self-contained, self-confident. It didn’t matter, did it? “Why is it different tonight?”
By way of answer, he looked upward. The moon had just begun its journey over the tips of the shadow trees. The cool, distant source of light was a little more than half full with a gentle rounding on one side that gave promise of more to come. It struck her that Cord was like that, much more than a thin sliver of emotion but not yet having reached what he was – she hoped-capable of.
“It still isn’t easy for you, is it?” she whispered. “Talking about emotions.”
He grunted.
“Cord, nature speaks to you. Shares its secrets with you. Sharing with another human being isn’t any different, not deep down. I’m trying to be that person, at least for now, listening in ways I didn’t…wasn’t capable of before.”
He was fighting within himself, at war with something she could only guess at. She wondered if he understood how much she wanted to give him of herself, now. Finally. For long, hungry minutes she waited for him to give her another glimpse of himself so she could do the same in turn and damn the consequences.
Instead, “He should have enough food. Kevin said-”
“Kevin? We’re talking about you, not Kevin.”
“We’re here because of Matt.”
His words, his undeniable words, stripped her of anger as quickly as the emotion had assaulted her. “I know,” she said. “Oh, God, I know.” The sounds eddied and she didn’t bother repeating herself. No longer caring-or maybe caring too much, about everything-she reached out as if to grab her pack with its food supply.
He stopped her. Filled with the strength that had brought him here, he gripped her arms and pulled her close. She should have been prepared for her body’s reaction. Hadn’t she felt the contrast of heat and cold twice already tonight and known of the danger? But when he touched her, she became nothing and everything just the way she had all those years ago when she blindly, naively loved him so much she didn’t know if she could stand it.
“We can’t fight,” he whispered. “We don’t dare.”
She knew that, but with the sound of his heart pulsing through her and his capable hands holding her so near, she was aware of precious little except him.
“Shannon? Please, I need to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Is it my fault?”
“Your fault?”
“That Matt’s out here? Never mind. I don’t have to ask. I’m the one responsible for his wanting to prove himself and not having the necessary skills to accomplish that. What I need to know is, how do you feel about it?”
She struggled to make sense of his words. He’d opened himself up to her and was asking for honesty in return. She wanted to give him that and erase a little of the distances that separated them.
But another distance, or rather the lack of one, had made its impact.
He felt far warmer than any summer night she’d ever known. Cooler than the moon that had briefly vied for her attention. There he sat with his incomplete and yet incredibly honest words, his life-hardened body, his mouth so close that its very nearness robbed her of a certain will and made her desperately hungry. She hadn’t exorcised him from her body after all, had she? What had made her think that possible?
He sat there looking as if he didn’t quite believe he’d taken hold of her, his eyes saying he was ready for her to resist him. But night sounds and sights and smells had begun to sweep over her and claim her for their own.
Most of all, there was him.
She leaned into him, asking with her body, shutting off her mind, accepting the truth about herself. He answered by standing and pulling her against him until they were pressed together chest to hips. So long-how long had she wanted this?
He hadn’t moved and his body continued to call to her and there wasn’t a half inch of her that didn’t know what that call of his felt like. She had only one answer in her.
She felt the stretch in her neck as she rose to meet his mouth. He covered her lips with his, a simple, complex, life-giving kiss that raced through her until the message in their embrace touched her heart. She was instantly flooded with memories-memories of that other lifetime when youth and wonder and love and physical hunger had her in their grip.
He’d met her with barely parted lips, but that soon changed. She felt his mouth open, slowly, tantalizingly. To give herself strength, she clamped her arms around his neck and waited. On fire, she waited.
He gave her access. Still mindless, she touched her tongue to his teeth and asked entrance. Something cool lapped at the back of her neck, but she ignored the unexpected breeze. For the past hour, her feet had been aching. Now the warmth boiling from deep inside her laced a slow trail down her legs until even her toes felt the impact.
Trusting that he wouldn’t leave her, she released his neck and slowly ran her fingers into his thick, coarse hair. In silent response, he pressed his palms into the small of her back. He’d done that a thousand times in the distant past when just looking at each other had stripped away the world. She arched herself toward him, stopping only when his hard body gave no more.
Sealed together.
Could she remember what he needed most in a kiss? She tried to put her mind to the massive question but it snaked out of reach.
His exploring tongue slowly worked its way into her. She closed her teeth gently around him and gave herself up to the magic of the other ways she’d once surrounded him.
Lovemaking. The promise was within her grasp-a teasing, testing memory that felt like hot coals applied to the heat already pulsing through her.
He’d once known her body, explored it as he explored his beloved wilderness. Maybe cherished both in the same way.
But that was yesterday. Years ago. Tonight his fingers and hands and tongue and lips felt totally new. Surely he’d never filled her so full of life before. She would have remembered that.
She would have learned how to control her reaction.
But those lessons, if they’d once been hers, rushed away like butterflies caught in the wind.
She felt fingers along the side of her neck. She leaned into him, thinking to surround him, but went weak instead.
With her hands still in his hair and her palms resting over the pulsing veins at his temple, she covered his mouth and chin and cheeks with hummingbird kisses. Her body, needing more, fought her, but she refused to listen to its cry.
“Shannon?”
Her name on his lips. She touched her tongue there as if doing so could draw the sound deep inside her. She wanted to be able to say something that might reach him in the same way, but years of silence and distance stood between them, and she didn’t know how to begin to bridge that. What she could do was let him know how she felt about him at this moment-gentle and tentative and frightened and eager, wondering if there was a journey to begin, asking him to help with the decision.
He didn’t speak again. His hands inched lower until he’d cupped them around her buttocks and pulled her against him. He was ready to capture her, hard and alive and urgent.
She fought her own urgency, her mind nearly screaming in its need for that precious first step.
First step? A mountain to climb? Maybe. A bottomless ravine? Maybe.
With an awful wrench, she resisted him. At the same time, fighting herself, she continued her whispering
