The Touch of Fire Read online

His face was grim. “We’re going to talk about it.”

  She shook her head in a quick negative movement, then glanced away.

  “We have to, or neither one of us will be able to sleep tonight.”

  Her gaze strayed toward the rumpled bed, then darted away. “No.”

  He didn’t know if she was agreeing with his assessment or rejecting the very thought of lying down with him again.

  Deliberately he released her and braced himself on his right hand, drawing his left knee up and letting his wrist dangle over it. He could sense her acute attention to every move he made, even though she wasn’t looking directly at him, and she let herself relax a little as his casual posture reassured her.

  “I had dozed off,” he said, keeping his voice low and even. “When I woke up I was hard, and half asleep. I just reached out and pulled you to me without thinking. Then by the time I woke up, I wasn’t thinking about anything except getting inside of you. I was on the edge. Do you understand what I’m saying?” he demanded, putting his finger under her chin and forcing her to look at him. “I was almost ready to climax. I was that hungry for you, sweet-heart.”

  She didn’t want to hear his endearments, but the gentleness in that last word almost undid her. The expression in his gray eyes was piercing, turbulent

  “I won’t rape you,” he continued. “Things wouldn’t have gone as far as they did if I’d been good awake. But you were responding to me, damn it. Look at me!” His voice cracked like a whip as her eyes shifted uneasily away. She swallowed and returned her gaze to meet his.

  “You wanted me too, Annie. It wasn’t all on my part.”

  Honesty was a burdensome thing, she found, a goad that wouldn’t let her take refuge behind lies. It would be better if she could keep such knowledge to herself, but he deserved the truth. “Yes,” she admitted raggedly. “I wanted you.”

  An expression of combined bewilderment and frustration crossed his face. “Then what happened? What scared you?”

  She bit her lip and looked away, and this time he permitted it. She struggled with how much to tell him and how to phrase it. Her thoughts were shattered by the enormity of what she had just admitted to him, and the power of the weapon it gave him. Had he been a little slower, a little more careful—had he been awake—he would likely have accomplished her seduction, and now he had to know that was all that was required for success, for she had confessed her vulnerability.

  “What happened?” he prompted.

  “It hurt.”

  His face softened and a little smile curled his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, reaching out to brush her hair back from her face. He smoothed the strand over her shoulder, his touch lingering, caressing. “I know it’s your first time, honey. I should have been more careful.”

  “I think it would have to hurt under any circumstances.” She bent her head on her drawn-up knees. “I treated one of the prostitutes in Silver Mesa once. She had been brutalized by one of her customers. I couldn’t help remembering.”

  It occurred to Rafe that an inexperienced woman whose exposure to sex had been limited to the seamier, rougher aspects of it could be excused for being wary of the act. “It wouldn’t be like that. I won’t lie to you and tell you it won’t hurt, because it probably will, but any man who would deliberately tear a woman apart like that is a bastard and should be shot. I’ll take it easy with you,” he promised. With a shiver she realized that to him the outcome wasn’t in any doubt. He had taken note of the weakness she had exposed and doubtless planned to take full advantage of it. If he got her back on that bed.. . . She couldn’t allow it to happen.

  “Please,” she said. “Just take me back to Silver Mesa without doing that. Take me back untouched. I have to live with myself. If you have any mercy at all—”

  “I don’t,” he interrupted. “You won’t wake up branded. For a little while we’ll be as close as two people can get, and I swear I’ll make it good for you. Then I’ll get out of your life and you’ll go on as before.”

  “And what if I ever want to get married?” she challenged. “I know it’s unlikely, but it isn’t impossible. What would I tell my husband?”

  Rafe’s hand fisted with a deep-burning rage at the thought of some other man having the right to touch her, make love to her. “Tell him you rode horses astride,” he said roughly.

  She blushed, her face turning fiery red. “I do. But I won’t lie to the man I’ve married. I’d have to tell him that I’d given myself to a killer.”

  The words hovered between them, as sharp-edged as a razor. Rafe’s face went cold, and he got to his feet. “Get in the bed. I’m not going to stay awake all night because you’re a coward.”

  Annie regretted her last sentence, but arousing his anger had been the only defense she could find. Her virginal fear hadn’t been any protection at all, against either him or herself; he had known it, and had been slowly wearing her down. Only her shock, combined with the threat of pain, had enabled her to fend off his seduction the first time. When he had returned to the cabin she had been in despair that she would give in to him when next he touched her, he had mistaken the cause and labeled it fear, but she could still feel the throbbing need he had aroused deep inside her, and she knew better.

  At her hesitation, he leaned down and grabbed her arm, then hauled her to her feet. Quickly she put up her hands to ward him off. “At least let me keep on my clothes! Please, Rafe. Don’t make me take them off.”

  He wanted to shake her and tell her that a pair of cotton drawers wouldn’t protect her from him if he decided to take her. But maybe his unruly loins would behave better if she was encased in cloth, if he couldn’t feel her soft skin against him. “Lie down,” he snapped.

  Gratefully she crawled between the blankets, and curled up on her side away from him.

  Rafe lay down and stared at the shadowed ceiling. She thought of him as a killer. A lot of other people did too, and there was a huge price on his head. Hell, yes, he’d killed; he’d long ago lost count of how many men had fallen from lead he’d put into them, way before he’d started running for his life, but that had been war. The men he’d killed since then had all been after him, and when given the choice between the other man’s life and his own the other man had always come up a distant second.

  He wasn’t an upstanding citizen, the type a woman could dream about marrying and settling down with. Since he’d been on the run he had lied, stolen, and killed, and would do so again if necessary. His future looked pretty damn grim, even if he did manage to stay ahead of the law. He had kidnapped Annie and dragged her up here into these mountains, scaring her half to death. Looking at it like that, why would any woman want to bed down with him? Why should it sting so bad that she had hurled the word “killer” in his face?

  Because it was Annie. Because he wanted her with every bone, every ounce of blood in his body.

  Annie lay awake too, long after the fire had burned down, long after she had finally felt his tense body relax and his breathing deepen with sleep. She stared into the darkness with dry, burning eyes.

  She had to get away. She had thought she could resist him, and protect herself, for another few days, but now she knew that even one more day would be too long. The only safeguard around her heart now was the fact that she hadn’t fully belonged to him; once he took her, the heated intimacy would erode even that feeble shield. She didn’t want to love him. She wanted to pick up the threads of her life where they had fallen, and find everything unchanged.

  But if he took away that last tiny protection, nothing would be the same. She would go back to Silver Mesa, and she would spend long days trying to heal the sick and wounded, but inside she would be nothing but raw pain. She would never see him again, never know if he was safe and unharmed, or if the law had finally caught up with him and he had ended his life on a gallows with a noose around his neck. He might lie dead of a bullet wound, unburied and unmourned, while she spent her life waiting to hear from him, eagerly looking at