She needed to come.
He scooped up her thighs, used the crooks of his arms to spread them wider, higher, and thrust again.
"d.a.m.n you!" She was helpless against his strength, helpless to stop the blaze that entered her bloodstream and slid through her veins. She grabbed at his arms, digging her nails into his leather jacket, and used that leverage to lift herself over and over, small movements that collided with his need and fed her own.
As if she had spoken, he said, "All right!" and rolled over, bringing her to the top.
His black hair spread out on the green gra.s.s. His face beneath the beard was harsh, and his eyes were narrow slits of demand.
He loosened his grip. "Ride, then!"
He was a big-boned man. She couldnat straddle him and have her knees touch the ground. So, with her hands on his bare belly, she pushed herself up, put her feet under her, and rode.
It was decadent.
It was luscious.
She serviced him.
She serviced herself.
She listened for his groans and made him suffer. She probed for her own pleasures and repeated the movements that worked for her.
The sun beat down on her shoulders. The breeze caressed her nipples.
Beneath her he writhed. Inside he stretched her to the limit.
He was a beautiful animal, with long, wiry muscles and strength in his big hands.
And something about him slipped under her skin, into her blood, while at the same time he breathed deep, as if her essence fed his heart, his soul.
Her thighs burned with exertion as she rose and fell, rose and fell. She panted harshly, fighting to draw in enough of the thin, cool air to sustain this race to the finish. She moved faster and faster, dragging them toward completion.
o.r.g.a.s.m took control of her, a brief, glorious, pulse-pounding climax that expanded her senses to include the whole world, and shrank her focus to hima"and her. She thought he was beautiful as he bucked beneath her, fierce, undisciplined, wild with pa.s.sion.
They finished too soon. Throwing her arms out in an excess of jubilation, she laughed out loud. Shead never been so alive, so happy. She had escaped Mount Anaya. They had escaped death.
She wilted down on him, panting, exultant.
He wrapped his arms around her back and rolled once more.
She was under him, the heat of his body between her legs, the cool earth below her, and around her head tiny white flowers blossomed.
He stared at her as if she bewildered him.
She stared back, smiling, recovering from her folly. Slowly his dark gaze recalled her to normalcy, then to wariness.
She had had s.e.x with this man, held him in her arms while he slept beside her, trusted him to save her life. Yet she knew nothing about him, and his eyes . . . his eyes chilled her with the same sense of impending disaster shead experienced on the slopes of Mount Anaya.
With the fingers of one hand he pushed her hair away from her face. "You shouldnat have done that."
"What? What do you mean? I shouldnat have had s.e.x with you?" In a tart tone she said, "I didnat know I had a choice."
"You shouldnat have done me. You shouldnat have loved it. Most of all you shouldnat have laughed."
She stared at him.
He looked so stern, like a revivalist minister preaching the Old Testament.
She struggled to divine his meaning. "I wasnat laughing at you, if thatas what you mean. I was laughinga""
"a"for joy. I understand."
He observed her so closely, she felt as if his gaze scoured her face, revealing more than she wanted him to know, and he made her aware of his weight pressing her into the gra.s.s, her widespread legs, her risky vulnerability. She shifted uncomfortably.
He stroked her hair again. "Someday I would like to hear you laugh again."
"I donat laugh like that very often." She didnat do any of this very often.
"Nevertheless." With every sign of reluctance he pulled away from her. He stood and stripped, a swift, efficient elimination of clothing and boots.
He tossed everything on the ground, then stood over her, looking down at her, his fists clenching and unclenching.
To suspect him of lifting weights was absurd; he led a life on the edge of civilization, doing G.o.d knew what for a living, yet he was long and lean, a sleek predator with coiled strength in the bunching muscles of his arms, in the bulk of his shoulders, the ripped power of his belly. His c.o.c.k and b.a.l.l.s hung between his legs, and although he was limp, she knew only too well the size and power he wielded there.
Charcoal black smudges etched jagged lines down his chest and arm. The marks seemed to form thunderbolts, but they were shrunken, pulling at the edges of his skin, eating into his flesh. She couldnat ignore them, and compa.s.sion made her ask, "What happened?"
Leaning down, he grasped her wrists and brought her to her feet. "Itas nothing."
"Nothing?" She touched one lightly. "It looks like a burn, but thereas a form . . . isnat there?"
"Itas a birthmark."
"Is it painful?"
"No." He pulled away from her.
Whatever those marks were, he was sensitive about them. And the way he looked at her, like a man who had reached a decision, made her think.
She didnat want to think.
But she was, above all, a woman of good sense, a woman made tough by necessity, a workaholic who spent her life completing one job and going to another. Until this man had visited her tent, she hadnat bothered to take a lover for years. A lover was too much trouble. A lover always required attention, and she didnat have the time to waste.
Now she felt as if shead been reborn to this world; too open, too raw, too new. She was like a child experiencing a swarm of new emotionsa"or were they old emotions set free? She didnat know.
But she did know her lack of discipline would have consequences.
Her pants hung around one leg. Her T-shirt was twisted around her waist. She stood lop-sided in one boot. Shead just had unprotected s.e.xa"oh, G.o.d, what had she been thinking?a" and his come wet her thighs.
She had never done anything so outrageous in her life.
The sunshine streamed down on them now. She could see him all too clearly, and questions hummed through her mind.
What now?
What if Iam pregnant?
Who is he?
And, This man is savage.
She knew it in her bones. That had been, after all, why she welcomed him to her bed at night.
Clutching the waistband of her pants, she tugged it up over her thighs in what she hoped looked like a casual attempt to dress. "I know youave already done so much, but can you take me down to the nearest phone? Iave got to call my father, tell him what happened. Have him notify Philas next of kin. Make arrangements to pay for the rental equipment we lost." Worries and responsibilities returned to crowd her mind. "Do you think Mingma escaped? My cook and interpreter? She said she was going to run. She did escape, didnat she?"
"Mingma is fine," he said without expression in his face or voice.
"Really?" She winced at her own chipper tone. "How do you know?"
"Mingma is smart enough to recognize danger when she sees it. Which is apparently more than you can do." He knelt before Karen, untied her boot, and tugged at it and her pants.
Karen didnat know whether he was referring to the danger of Mount Anaya or the danger he represented.
She tugged back. "Look, I donat know what you think youare doing. . . ." Actually, she was pretty sure what he thought he was doing, but caution had reared its ugly head.
"Weare going to take a shower." He jerked his head toward the clear, cold waterfall.
"No. Way. I washed my face in that water. Not to mention I was raised in Montana in the Rockies up by Glacier National Park. When I was a kid I stood knee-deep in a creek just like that, building a dam out of rocks. So I know what Iam talking about when I say I am not using that stream for a bath." She backed away.
He used her momentum to strip away her pants.
"How else do you propose to get clean?" He sounded prosaic, not dangerous, like some guy shead met in college. "If the wateras that cold, you can hardly accuse me of dire intentions."
Mount Anaya had destroyed her last three monthsa work. Shead lost a man on the site. Shead finally glimpsed her lover and realized she wasnat mada"but perhaps he was. She didnat think she had an ounce of humor left. But now she found her mouth crooking. "Well. Thatas true." She looked around. They were on the edge of a lawless borderland, with the most meager glimmer of civilization at least a dayas drive away. There was no one to see them and, more important, no easy way to get cleaned up.
She looked down at herself. Her T-shirt was grubby. Her legs were bare. Now that he mentioned it, she felt sort of grainy.
One more hour would make no difference to the outside world.
A crisp breeze eased through the pristine mountain valley.
With a yell that echoed up the walls of the valley, she grasped the hem of her T-shirt, stripped it off over her head, and ran toward the waterfall.
Behind her she heard a similar shout. He ran past her, his bare feet lifted high, and he hit the stream seconds ahead of her. Icy droplets sprayed in the air. He skidded to a stop, and she plowed into him. He wrapped her in his arms and thrust her under the icy cascade.
She screamed in subzero agony, and laughed and splashed as he used his hands to scrub her entire body. She rubbed him back, feeling silly, h.o.r.n.y, free for one more foolish second.
They didnat linger; it was too cold.
But they got clean, and she knew why he always smelled so fresh and wild when he came to her bed.
First he came here to the waterfall.
He pulled her from the water and spanned her waist with his hands.
She looked up at him and laughed.
His face changed subtly, from shared amus.e.m.e.nt to a starkness, a bleakness that broke her heart.
Then he said them, the words that moved her from sorrow to rage. "I will never let you go."
Chapter Seven.
Karen stepped back from this man she didnat know . . . this man she knew so intimately. "What do you mean, you wonat ever let me go?"
Relaxed, confident in his decision, he scrutinized her, his black eyes impenetrable.
"Look. You saved me. Iam grateful. But that doesnat mean I want to stay here. Iave got a job to do, and I intend to do it." Deliberately she turned her back on him and walked to first one piece of her clothing, then another, picking them up and flicking the dust off them. She was wet and cold and she shivered, but she didnat lie to herself. She shivered because she was afraid.
What had she gotten herself into?
She jumped when he strolled past her, silent as a cat, then watched to see what he would do next. And, because she couldnat help herself, she observed the way the long, lean muscles of his back and b.u.t.t and thighs coiled and stretched beneath the golden skin.
He opened the saddlebags of his motorcycle. He pulled out jeans and donned them, Comanche-style, and pulled a T-shirt over his head. Reaching back inside, he dug around and pulled out another T-shirt and tossed it in her direction. "Itas clean. Put it on." He threw out another pair of jeans. "You can roll up the legs."
She stood still, trying to decide, for while his blunt commands offended her, her own clothes were dusty and sweaty.
Picking up his boots, he pulled them on, then reached back into his saddlebags. He turned to face her, a semiautomatic Glock steady in his hand. "Put my clothes on."
Her heart stoppeda"then raced. He didnat mean it. "You wonat shoot me."
"Because we had s.e.x? I wouldnat count on that." Those strange black eyes watched her, and she hadnat a clue what was behind them. "Iave had a lot of women, and I donat give a c.r.a.p about any of them."
That she believed. Oh, G.o.d. She really believed him.
Should she fight? She held a black belt in jujitsu; in her line of work, in the places in the world that she visited, self-defense made sense. But her master was Vietnamese, a veteran of the war with the Americans, and he had taught her to a.s.sess a situation. This looked grim.
This looked impossible.
"What are you going to do? Run naked through the meadow while I chase you down with my motorcycle?" Her lover straddled the seat and placed his free hand on the starter. "Climb the rocks while I use you for target practice?"
A recent memory blazed through her fear-frozen mind.