The Touch of Fire Read online

  “I can’t either. When the war started, I found out I was much better at something else.”

  “What was that?”

  “Fighting,” he said simply. “I was a damn good soldier.”

  Yes, he would be. “You said you were in the cavalry?”

  “In the First Virginia, with Jeb Stuart, for a while. Until ’63.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I joined the Rangers.”

  The word puzzled her for a moment, for the only context she could put it in was the Texas Rangers, and of course that wouldn’t be right. She had heard the word “rangers” bandied about during the war, but it had been over for six years and she couldn’t bring the memory into focus. “What rangers?”

  “Mosby’s Rangers.”

  Shock reverberated through her. Mosby! His reputation had been legendary, and the gossip about him had been frightening. Even as absorbed as she had been in medical school, she had heard about Mosby and his devil rangers. They hadn’t fought like normal soldiers; they had been masters at deceit, at hit-and-run fighting that had made it almost impossible to capture them. She hadn’t been able to picture Rafe as a staid lawyer, but it was so terribly easy to see him as a guerrilla fighter.

  “What did you do after the war?”

  He shrugged. “Drifted. My father and brother had both died during the war, and I didn’t have any other family.” He shut out the surge of bitterness and concentrated instead on the erotic thrill of Annie’s hand as he brushed her fingertips back and forth over his nipples in lazy caresses. His nipples were so tight and throbbing that he could barely stand it. She had never touched him intimately, and he closed his eyes as he imagined her hand closing around his shaft. God! He’d probably go mad with frustration.

  “If you could, would you go back?”

  He thought about it. Back East it was just too civilized, and he’d lived too long observing no rules except his own, grown too used to the vast expanses around him. He had reverted to the wild, and had no desire to be tamed again. “No,” he finally said. “There’s nothing for me there. What about you? Do you miss the big cities?”

  “Not exactly. I miss the convenience of a regular town, but being able to practice medicine is really what’s important to me, and I couldn’t do it back East.”

  The temptation was killing him. He said, “There’s something else you couldn’t do back East.”

  She looked intrigued. “Oh? What?”

  “This.” He moved her hand under the blanket and folded her fingers around his manhood. A wild electricity shot through him, the pang so strong that he drew in his breath with a sharp hiss and his entire body tensed.

  Annie had gone very still. He could barely feel her breathing.

  She was both shocked and enthralled. The thick length surged in her hand; to her delight, she could feel it actually increasing in size. After she got over her shock, she realized that it felt marvelous, so hot and strong and pulsing with independent life, so hard under the smooth skin. She explored the thick bulbous tip, then trailed her fingers downward to his loose, heavy testicles. She cupped them, enjoying the soft, cool feel of them in her palm. They tightened almost immediately, drawing up toward his body. Her fascination made her forget that she should be shocked.

  Rafe arched on the blanket, his blood pounding through his veins. He could barely think. He should have resisted temptation, he should have known that the hot thrill of her touch would be unbearable on his genitals. His vision clouded with a dark mist as his climax surged ever closer to eruption. With a harsh sound he jerked away from her. “Stop!”

  The violence of his desire caught her by surprise, then the knowledge of her own feminine power flooded through her. She looked up at him, a very female smile touching her lips. She smoothed her hands up his torso, and he quivered like a stallion. “Make love to me,” she invited in a soft murmur, and that was all the invitation he needed. He shot up from the blankets and was mounting her all in one motion. Annie lifted her hips for his possessive inward thrust, accepting him with a wince at the discomfort but a great inner joy at the pleasure she knew she was giving him. He pumped deep inside her and shuddered as his seed emptied with a great rush that left him lying limply atop her.

  Desperately he sucked air into his heaving lungs. God, it had to ease up soon or he was going to kill himself making love to her. He’d thought that the intensity of it would fade to manageable levels, but so far it hadn’t. Every time the desire had been just as urgent, riding him hard.

  The danger was that he would let his lust for her cloud his thinking. Hell, he’d already done that. He should have returned her to Silver Mesa and gotten as far away from the place as he could, but instead he had deliberately delayed until they were snowed in. He’d planned her seduction well, but in the feeding of his sexual hunger he had himself been seduced. He couldn’t think beyond the next few days, secluded with her in this warm, dark cabin, greedily taking all of her special heat for himself.

  The days passed in a sensual blur. Sometimes it seemed to Annie that they spent more time naked than clothed; even during the day they were often entwined on the blankets, having just made love or about to make love again. Day and night blended for her, and sometimes when she woke from a doze she wasn’t certain which it was. She became so accustomed to his penetration that it felt more normal than being apart from him.

  When she thought of the future she was terrified, so she blocked it out. There was only now, these dark, sensual days together. On the day she watched him ride away from her—on that day, she promised herself, she would start thinking of the future again, of the long, endless trickle of time without him.

  For now she let herself be submerged by the physical. She’d never dreamed lovemaking could be so intense, so intoxicating. He made love to her in all the ways a man could use a woman, guiding her to pleasures undreamed of, completing his stamp of possession. The voluptuousness of it enthralled her, and her sexual self-confidence bloomed.

  It was a shock to get up on the eighth day of the snow to the sound of dripping water and realize the snow was melting. She had become so accustomed to the bitter cold that when the temperature surged above freezing it felt almost balmy, and indeed the first unmistakable signs of spring began to appear while snow still covered the ground. Over the next several days the little creek swelled with runoff, and Rafe took the horses to the small hidden meadow to let them work out their fidgets from being cooped up for so long and to paw the snow aside to find the tender green shoots of new grass.

  She knew they would soon have to leave, indeed could already have left, though the melting snow did make travel hazardous. She sensed that Rafe was using it as an excuse, but she didn’t mind. Every minute she could spend with him was infinitely precious because there were so few of them left.

  He had taken the horses to graze one morning and she was using the opportunity to heat water for washing. He had given her his spare pistol as a precaution while he was gone, even though he was only a few minutes away, and she kept it in her skirt pocket on her trips back and forth to the creek. The weapon was heavy and dragged at her skirt, irritating her, but common sense kept her from leaving it at the cabin. Bears were emerging from their winter dens, hungry and irritable; Rafe had said a bear wasn’t likely to bother her, but she wasn’t about to take any chances. She might not be able to hit what she shot at, but at least the sound would bring Rafe at a run.

  On her second trip back from the creek she was watching where she stepped, for the melting snow had left the ground muddy and slippery. A horse whickered and she looked up, startled, at the strange man sitting his horse in front of the cabin. The bucket of water slipped from her hand as panic shot through her.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” the man said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She couldn’t think of anything to say. Her mind had gone blank, her lips were numb.

  He eased back into his saddle. “I saw your smoke,” he offered. “Di