The Touch of Fire Read online

  He wasn’t aware of the hard thrusting of his body. He knew only the vibrant energy pouring out of her, more intense than ever, tingling through him like a great underground current. He had never before felt so alive, so fierce, so purified. He heard her cry out, felt the violence of her completion, and his seed spewed out of him in a white-hot eruption of his senses. He thrust deep in a primal search for her womb at the pinnacle of sensation, and even before the last spasms had faded he knew he had made her pregnant.

  He sank weakly to the blanket beside her, still holding her to him with fierce possessiveness. She gave a little sigh and closed her eyes, and was asleep even before her breath had washed over his shoulder where she lay. He felt as if he had taken a huge blow to the chest, robbing him of breath, but for the first time in years he was seeing clearly.

  The four years he had been hunted had almost turned him into a pure killing animal; he had lived by his instincts, his reflexes cat-quick, his sole object to stay alive. But now he didn’t have just himself to consider, he had Annie to protect, and probably their child. Yes, he was sure there would be a child, and he had to plan for the future. He had lived in the present for so long that it felt strange to think of the future; hell, for four years he hadn’t had a future.

  Somehow he had to clear his name. They couldn’t just keep running, and even if they did find some remote spot and settle down, they would always be looking over their shoulders, living with the fear that some bounty hunter or lawman, smarter than most, had managed to track them. The running had to end.

  Knowing it and planning it were two different things. He was so tired, and the incredible clarity of vision was already fading. He couldn’t even think now, his eyes were closing despite himself. And, damn it, he was already hard again, though the urgency was gone. Half asleep, he shifted onto his side and lifted her thigh over his hip, then slipped gently into her sweet warmth. The perfection of it soothed him, and he slept.

  The noon sun penetrated the shade of the trees and was burning his bare leg. He opened his eyes and absorbed the details of reality. They had slept only a little over an hour, but he felt as rested as if it had been an entire night. Damn, what had he been thinking of, going to sleep like that with both of them naked and so close to the Apache camp? Not that they hadn’t needed the sleep, but he should have been more cautious.

  He gently shook her, and her eyes opened sleepily. “Hello,” she murmured, and snuggled closer to him as her lashes drooped again.

  “Hello yourself. We need to get dressed.”

  He watched as her eyes popped open. Then she was sitting up and grabbing her shift to cover her naked breasts. She blinked owlishly at him. “Did I dream?” she asked in bewilderment. “What time is it? Have we slept out here all night?”

  He pulled on his pants, wondering what she remembered of the night. He wasn’t certain he remembered that much of it himself. He eyed the sun. “It’s a little after noon, and no, we didn’t sleep out here all night. We made love here about an hour ago. Do you remember?”

  She looked at the tangled blanket and her face was radiant. “Yes.”

  He said cautiously, “Do you remember the baby?” “The baby.” She went very still. “The baby was very sick, wasn’t she? She was dying. Was that last night?”

  “She was dying,” he agreed. “And yes, that was last night.”

  Annie spread her empty hands and looked down at them with a faintly puzzled expression, as if she expected to see the baby in them and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t. “But what happened?” Suddenly she began jerking on her clothes, her movements frantic. “I’ve got to see about her. She could have died while we were out here. I can’t believe I just totally forgot about her, that I—”

  “The baby’s all right.” Rafe caught her hands and held them, forcing her to look at him. “She’s all right. Do you remember what happened last night?”

  She was still again, staring into his light gray eyes. An echo stirred through her, as if she were looking into a deep well where she had once fallen. The familiarity of it stirred other memories. “Jacali grabbed her, and ran outside,” she said slowly. “I went after her... no, we went after her. Jacali wouldn’t let me have her, and I remember being so angry that I felt like slapping her. Then you . . . you took her away from Jacali and gave her to me ... and you told me to concentrate.”

  The memories swirled around her, and her hands throbbed with the remnants of energy. She lifted her hands and found herself staring at them without knowing why. “What happened?” she asked blankly.

  He was silent while he pulled her shift on over her head, covering her in case anyone intruded on their privacy. “It’s your hands,” he finally said.

  Still she looked at him with a total lack of understanding.

  He took her hands and held them to his mouth, kissing her fingertips before folding them warmly in his hard palms and carrying them to his chest. “You have healing hands,” he said simply. “I noticed it the first time you touched me, back in Silver Mesa.”

  “What do you mean? I’m a doctor, so of course you can say I have healing hands, but then so does every doctor—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “No. Not like yours. It isn’t knowledge or training, it’s something you have inside you. Your hands are hot, and they make me tingle when you touch me.”

  She blushed fiery red. “Yours make me tingle, too,” she mumbled.

  Despite himself he chuckled. “Not like that. Well, yes, like that too. It’s your whole body, and it drives me wild when I’m inside you. But you have healing hands, true healing hands. I’ve heard of it, mostly from old folks, but I didn’t believe it until you touched me and I felt it.”

  “Felt what?” she asked desperately. “My hands are just ordinary.”

  He shook his head. “No. They aren’t. You have a special gift, sweetheart; you can heal where others can’t, and it isn’t medicine, it’s you.” He looked away from her, toward the distant purple mountains, but he was seeing deep inside himself. “Last night. . . last night, your hands were so hot I could barely stand to hold them. Remember? I was pressing them to the baby’s back. And I felt as if I were holding a hot poker, as if the skin was being burned off my palms.”

  “You’re lying,” she said. The harsh tone of her own voice shocked her. “You have to be lying. I can’t do that. If I could, none of them would have died.”

  He rubbed his face, feeling the rasp of his beard against his palm. God, how long had it been since he’d shaved? He couldn’t even remember. “I didn’t say you were Jesus,” he snapped. “You can’t raise the dead. I’ve watched you, and sometimes the person is too sick for even you to help. You couldn’t have helped Trahern, because whatever it is you have doesn’t stop bleeding, it didn’t even stop the bleeding when my shoulder was grazed. But when I was so sick, when we first met, just your slightest touch made me feel better. You cooled me, took the pain away, made the wounds heal faster. Damn it, Annie, I could feel the skin pulling together. That’s what you can do.”

  She was speechless, and suddenly panic stricken. She didn’t want to be able to do any of that, it was too much. She just wanted to be a doctor, the best doctor she could be. She wanted to help people, not—not perform some kind of miracle. If it were true, how could she not have known?

  She shouted that question at him, as angry as she was afraid, and he jerked her into his arms. The hard face that bent over hers was just as angry. “Maybe you’ve never wanted to save anyone as much as you wanted to save that baby!” he yelled. “Maybe you’ve never concentrated like that before. Maybe you were too young, maybe it’s something that grows stronger with age.”

  Tears burned her eyes and she hit at his chest. “I don’t want it!” Even to herself she sounded like a child protesting having to eat vegetables, but she didn’t care. How could she live with such a burden? She had visions of herself being locked away, with an endless procession of ill and wounded being brought to her, of her life never bein