If There Be Dragons (11 page)

“I’m glad.”

“I love you, Cody.” Before he could respond, she added distractedly, “That’s not enough, somehow it’s not enough just to say that!”

“I know.” He was smiling, his golden eyes darkening to sweet honey. “I feel the same way. Words aren’t enough.”

She looked down at him, and suddenly, like the words, savoring her feelings just wasn’t enough. Her mind flew back to the night before and Cody’s stark vulnerability; he’d shown her his love, stripped bare for her a part of himself she knew no one else would ever see. Not mere words invented by man, but the raw and frenzied emotions themselves.

No—words weren’t enough. Words would never be enough….

Cody sat up and turned to face her on the couch, puzzled by her sudden stillness, by the distant green eyes. And then she gazed at him, and the green eyes weren’t distant anymore; they were bottomless and greener than green could ever be, and they reached out toward his soul.

“Brooke…” he breathed, feeling a quickening, a breathless suspension of every muscle and nerve in his body.

She touched his face as if she were blind, tracing the handsome planes and angles with fingers that quivered. Deep, deep inside her, in that wild place where fires had raged since his first touch, the flames scorched walls holding them captive, demanding release. Brooke leaned forward slowly until her lips met his, her eyes gazing into his, watching them blaze. Then her eyes drifted closed.

And she loosed the fire.

His arms went around her blindly, fiercely, responding to the need in himself and in her. There was no restraint, no caution or hesitation, no uncertainty. There was only desperate need, the mutual reaching for something violently, compulsively
necessary
to them both.

Lips still imprisoned, Brooke dimly felt herself floating, the arms that had lifted a two-hundred-pound wolf holding her as if she weighed nothing. She tangled her fingers in his thick hair, a hunger beyond thought, beyond reason, building toward the critical point. And she gave herself up to it completely, allowing its turbulence to snap the gossamer threads of reality.

Neither of them noticed the wolf lying on the hearth as he raised his head and watched with yellow eyes the man carry the woman from the room. And neither of them heard the almost human sigh as Phantom lowered his head again to the bearskin rug. Adjusting his splinted leg more comfortably, the wolf drifted off to sleep.

Cody carried Brooke into her bedroom without conscious thought. The room was dimly lit by the fire he’d built only an hour before in the hearth, its flickering flames warming, casting shadows. He set her gently on her feet by the turned-down bed, his fingers going immediately to the back zipper of the caftan she’d changed into after supper.

Brooke, her eyes still closed, felt his lips rain warm kisses over her face, her throat. Absently she stepped out of and kicked aside her slippers, going up on tiptoe to fit herself more firmly against his hard body. She heard a faint whisper of sound, felt cool air against the flesh of her back, and then the warmth of his touch was chasing away the chill.

Frantically she found the buttons of his flannel shirt by touch alone, desperate to have no more barriers between them. Her eyes opened at last as he released her long enough to shrug the shirt off, and her own hunger doubled, tripled, erupted, as green eyes met gold.

There was a sudden stillness, an abrupt cessation of all movement. Only eyes touched and probed; even their harsh breathing seemed to have stilled. They gazed at each other for a timeless moment, the crackle of the fire in the hearth a tame thing compared to that winging in human eyes. And then the spell shattered and they reached for each other with one mind.

Brooke was only dimly aware of clothing falling to the floor and kicked aside, hardly conscious of being lifted again and placed on the bed. The covers were pushed aside as Cody joined her, his eyes flitting hungrily over her fire-golden body

“Oh, God, you’re beautiful,” he rasped, the sound raw and torn from his throat. “Brooke…my Brooke….”

Green eyes as enigmatic as those of a cat stared into his, the siren song within them again reaching for his soul, calling to him. He saw the wildness there—the unleashed, uncontrolled, soaring urgency of need stripped bare, and the breath caught in his throat harshly. “Brooke…”

“I love you,” she whispered, her fingers touching his face again blindly. “I love you, Cody!”

His lips hot and shaking, he kissed her hand, her shoulder, her throat. Her skin was satin beneath his touch, satin inflamed. “I love you,” he murmured jerkily, his heart beating so hard and fast that it was a drum roll inside his chest. He couldn’t stop touching her, never wanted to stop; he was aching for her.

Brooke felt his hands caressing, learning her, and her own hands searched out and molded the rippling muscles of his back and shoulders. Feverishly, her breath coming in little gasps, she touched him and touched him because it fed the fire inside of her. And then his hands and mouth found the pointed need of her breasts, and a moan jerked from her.

A fiery, shivering tension spread outward from some central core within her, its ripple effect sending wave after wave along her nerves. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, and then she had to move because she couldn’t be still. She felt his tongue swirling erotically around the bud his mouth held captive, the starving hunger of him branding her forever.

His caresses slid lower, lower still, lips following the fiery trail blazed by his hands, and some dim and distant part of Brooke wondered if she’d died, because, she told herself, she couldn’t be feeling this, it wasn’t possible to feel this and not die of the sheer pleasure of it. There couldn’t be more, but there was, and she wanted to beg him to stop, to never stop, because she was dying; the frantic pounding of her heart was smothering her and she was burning from head to toe.

She heard a stranger’s breathless voice calling to him, pleading wildly, and the stranger’s body moved restlessly with a need too great to bear. His face was taut as he rose above her, another stranger because she’d never seen that face before. But it was fascinating, riveting, that face, because it held imperative need, essential hunger, and love was blazing savagely in two golden fires that threatened to consume her.

There was a moment, a split second during which sanity lowered the flames in those eyes, when awareness sought to find gentleness in the act of possession. Brooke saw that moment, was moved by it, but the primitive woman unleashed with the fire was wildness incarnate.

Fiercely she caught him within herself, branding him as hers, the brief shock of possession an answer to her body’s craving.

And the moment for gentleness was gone, dissolved, consumed by rampaging need. It built within them, compelled them, drove them as moths to a flame to burn in a glorious death. They were stripped of everything but that need, their souls laid bare by it, their deepest selves revealed to each other. And they were lost…and found…and lost again….

The firelit room might have been the eye of a hurricane, and the two shipwrecked survivors clung to each other with the breathless feeling of having gone through something no human had been meant to survive. They held each other as anchors, as lodestones. Drained, they rested together, conscious of the dimly terrifying sensation of having shared an experience too vast to ever forget.

There were no words at first, no thoughts. Only an instinctive and overpowering wonder needing no expression. Not even sleep could claim exhausted bodies or ease stunned minds.

And then for a while there were murmurs not especially noteworthy for their originality or sense. Murmurs of love, murmurs using the inadequate language of words that could never express the depth of what they felt but helped them to find solid ground again. Until finally they were back, they were themselves once more, the bond between them forged in fire and cooled now to something stronger than either of them.

“Wildcat,” Cody whispered, somehow managing to pull the covers up around them without losing his possessive hold on her.

Brooke decided it was a compliment. “Thank you,” she murmured, wondering idly how she’d ever managed to rest all these years without the comfort of his shoulder pillowing her head.

“I may never move again,” he added, yawning hugely.

She traced an intricate pattern in the hair on his chest, fascinated by the way the firelight glinted off the golden strands. “We’ll starve,” she said finally, thoughtfully.

“There is that,” he agreed.

Silence.

“Cody?”

“Hmm?”

“Will you respect me in the morning?”

Caught in the middle of another yawn, Cody choked on a laugh. “Oh, I’ll try,” he responded, chuckling.

“I was just wondering,” she explained.

“Being inexperienced in these matters?” he asked politely.

“Something like that.”

“Mmm. Well, I’ll respect any woman who knocks me flat on my back, love,” he said, adding, “in the snow, no less.”

“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Why?”

“I have to keep you in your place, don’t I?” he asked, aggrieved.

Brooke wound golden hair around a finger and tugged sharply. “And just what is my place?”

“Ouch.” He sighed. “Undiplomatic of me, wasn’t it?”

“To say the least.”

“Sorry. Uh—maybe I should have said—”

“What?”

“I’m thinking.”

“A very wise person said once that if you have to think about it, you aren’t going to answer honestly.”

“Who said that?”

“Me.”

“Oh.”

“Well?”

“Let’s strike my ill-advised remark from the record, shall we? We’ll pretend I didn’t say it.”

“I don’t think I should pretend that.”

“Please?”

“Stop sounding pitiful.”

“Didn’t work, huh?”

“I know you better than that.”

“Ah. Well, then—why don’t I just apologize?”

“You can try.”

“My darling Brooke, I’m desperately sorry I made that stupid, sexist remark. Forgive me?”

“I’ll think it over.”

“Hell.”

“You don’t get nothin’ for free, pal.”

“I’ll have to remember those deathless words,” he said thoughtfully.

Brooke punched him weakly in the ribs.

Cody retaliated by patting her gently on the fanny.

She giggled in spite of herself. “Such a gentleman.”

“Always.”

Brooke snuggled closer to him, the love so near to the surface now washing over her in a tidal wave. “I love you,” she told him fiercely.

His arms tightened around her. “I love you too, darling,” he said softly, intensely.

“Forever?” Her voice was unconsciously wistful.

“Forever,” he vowed deeply.

Brooke saw the last dragon rear its head before her, and slammed the door against it before it could destroy her newfound happiness. Later, she told herself. She’d deal with that dragon later. It wasn’t a very big dragon compared to those that had been faced and fought. Not a very big dragon with Cody’s love wrapped around her in warmth and ecstasy.

But it was there, it existed. Its name was loss and it haunted her.

“Don’t leave me,” Cody said suddenly.

“I won’t,” she whispered.

“You did. For a minute you did.” He turned her chin up, gazing deeply into her eyes. “You weren’t there.”

Brooke smiled at him slowly. “I love you.”

Cody looked into her eyes, those eyes that were greener than any green he’d ever seen, and the touch of coldness left him. He kissed her tenderly, held her close as sleep crept over them.

And he dreamed of fighting a dragon in the dark.

EIGHT

I
T WAS THE
sun that woke her, the sun and a niggling sensation of something being different, something being strange. She kept her eyes closed for a moment, trying to figure out what it was.

What was it?

Then she remembered; it all came back to her in a warm rush of memory. Her eyes opened slowly, and she turned her head to gaze at the face so close to her own. He was lying on his stomach beside her, his arm securely across her middle, and the sunlight striking across his face made him truly the golden man of her imagery.

Brooke looked at him as if she’d never seen him before, studied the classical planes and angles of his face with the total absorption of a brand-new lover. In the sane light of day she could hardly believe the turbulent emotions of last night; at the same time she didn’t doubt them. Her love for Cody welled up inside her, threatening to spill over, filling all the places in her that had been dark and empty before he came.

As she watched him Cody stirred slightly and tightened his arm across her, smiling. “Brooke,” he murmured in a satisfied tone without opening his eyes.

“At least you remember who I am,” she said solemnly.

“First rule in the book of gentlemanly manners,” he told her, golden eyes opening and glowing brightly at her. “Always remember in the morning whom you took to bed with you the night before.”

“Oh, is
that
all?” she mourned. “I thought I might have stood out in your mind for some reason.”

He chuckled softly, raising up on an elbow and gazing down at her. “You do, love. You certainly do,” he murmured. And proved it.

When Brooke got her breath back, she discovered that her arms were around his neck. “Good morning,” she said huskily.

“Good morning, darling.” He was smiling.

She reached to push back a lock of golden hair falling over his forehead, feeling a sudden surge of possessiveness that surprised her. Twentieth-century woman or not, liberated or not, independent or not, a cavewoman deep inside of her thrilled to the certainty of touching her man.

“You have a very odd look in your eyes,” Cody observed, watching her.

Brooke pushed the surprising thoughts aside and smiled up at him. “What would you like for breakfast?” she asked.

“You,” he answered promptly.

“Great minds…” Her smile slowly widened. “I was thinking along those lines myself….”

It was Cody who first noticed, sometime later, that nature seemed to have gotten over her stormy mood. The early-morning sun didn’t duck behind lowering clouds by lunchtime, as it had for weeks, but continued to shine brightly in a sky that shocked with its blueness. And, though neither Cody nor Brooke regretted the weather that had kept them indoors all this time, both were ready for fresh air and sunshine.

There was a foot of snow covered with a thick layer of ice and several more inches of snow on top of that outside, along with drifts of snow up to several feet that could easily catch the unwary by surprise. But the sunshine made of it a glittering white wonderland, and it beckoned to them.

So they bundled up for warmth and, accompanied by Phantom, went out to brave the unexpected drifts. It was Cody’s first real chance to see the lodge and surrounding property in the clear light of day, and the sheer vastness of it surprised him.

“Is that a pasture?” he asked once, pointing to a line of fence barely visible on the other side of the valley.

“Uh-huh. It’s empty at the moment; a horse breeder a few miles from here leases it every summer for his stock.”

“How many acres?” Cody asked again absentmindedly as he cleared snow away from the barn door.

“Three hundred. Most of that small mountain, in fact.”

Cody leaned on his shovel and stared at the “small” mountain. To his Texas-bred eyes anything taller than a molehill was huge; that mountain looked like Olympus. “You own that mountain?” he asked carefully.

Brooke was kneeling in the snow massaging Phantom’s leg, they’d removed the splint this morning. She glanced over at Cody with a tiny smile. “Well, actually,” she murmured, “I own—uh—all the land you can see from here.”

Cody stared at her. Then he turned his gaze to all the land he could see. Counting the “small” mountain, there were four of them flanking the valley, and the valley itself must have covered nearly a hundred acres. He looked back at Brooke and said solemnly, “Marry me.”

“That wasn’t a very flattering proposal,” she reproved. “I feel like part of a package deal.”

“So sorry.”

“Mmm.” She lifted an eyebrow at his grin. then added conversationally, “You’d better not stand in front of the door when you lift the catch.”

Cody, who’d set his shovel aside and started to open the door, received the advice just a moment too late. He managed to avoid the door shooting outward by stepping hastily aside, but one of Mister’s rear hooves landed neatly on his instep as the burro charged out of the barn.

“Ouch!” Cody sat down rather hard in the snow, holding his foot and glaring at the faded gray burro that had halted a few feet away from the barn. Mister glared right back at him.

Brooke was maintaining a straight face through sheer effort. “I warned you,” she reminded with a saintly air.

Cody struggled to his feet, obviously unhurt, and gave her a look of mock appreciation. “So you did. Remind me to thank you for that.”

“I don’t think I will,” Brooke said warily.

“Smart lady.”

Mister discovered an additional enemy just then, braying raucously as his bleary gaze focused on Phantom. The burro lowered his head as if he were a bull getting ready to charge, an action that the wolf viewed with daunting disinterest and that made Brooke rise hastily to her feet.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” she warned the burro, stepping between them. “I’ll put you back in your stall, you bad-tempered animal, and not let you out until spring! Mind your manners—if you have any!”

The fact that Mister raised his head and proceeded to ignore the wolf was, of course, entirely unconnected with her warning. He proved that rather pointedly by feigning interest in Cody’s shovel and then by trying to take a bite out of Cody’s jacket.

Preserving his jacket with a neat sidestep, Cody kept a wary eye on the burro and addressed Brooke. “How old did you say he was?”

“Around thirty, I think. He moves pretty good for an old man, doesn’t he?”

“He’s part rattlesnake; you can see it in his eyes.”

“I told you he hated every living thing.”

“Would he really bite me?”

“If you gave him half a chance.”

Cody sighed. “Knocked in the snow by a woman and then a burro: I must be losing my touch.”

“Would you stop reminding me about that!”

“I was hoping you’d feel sorry for me,” he apologized gravely.

“Why for heaven’s sake?”

“So you’ll marry me, of course.”

“I’d never marry a man because I felt sorry for him.”

“Then I’ll have to try something else,” he said thoughtfully.

No mention of marriage had been made until these two light references, and Brooke passed them off as casually as possible. She realized that beneath the banter Cody was entirely serious, but she wasn’t yet ready to commit herself. The last dragon still remained to be faced and fought, the barrier of her fear defeated, and she wasn’t sure how to do that.

But in the meantime Cody’s lighthearted manner, his loving, teasing presence, went far in showing her what love was all about.

“Help!”

Brooke leaned against the barn and watched, totally deadpan, as Cody trampled a neat path around the barn. At her feet sat Phantom, and both observed the little game with detached interest. On his third circuit, Brooke helpfully noted that Mister was an old burro and probably wouldn’t be able to chase him around a fourth time.

But the burro, taking advantage of the beaten path, seemed to be gaining a bit on his quarry by the fourth go-round.

As Cody panted around the corner Brooke pointed out, “He wouldn’t chase you if you’d stop running.” She was trying desperately not to laugh, well aware that Cody was running because he was enjoying the game.

“There’s an old proverb,” Cody gasped as he passed her. “‘Better to say he ran here, and not he died here.’” He disappeared around the other corner with Mister almost literally breathing down his neck.

Giggling, Brooke listened as a sudden curse tinted the cold air blue. Then she heard Mister bray triumphantly and watched as the burro came barreling back around the same corner, Cody’s wool cap in his mouth. A hatless Cody was in hot pursuit.

“You moth-eaten donkey!” he roared wrathfully. “Come back here with my hat!”

Brooke burst out laughing.

“I’m going to have that animal stuffed.”

“Cody—”

“I’ll tie branches to his head and with any luck a hunter’ll mistake him for a deer and shoot him.”

“Cody—”

“Sic ’im, Phantom!”

“Just because he stole your hat—”

“And buried it!”

“I—uh—meant to warn you about this habit he has of hiding things. He’s worse than a crow.”

“My darling love, d’you see a pained expression upon my face?”

“Uh…yes.”

“D’you detect a certain gleam in my eyes?”

“Now that you mention it—”

“Observe my hands reaching for you.”

“Cody? Cody, you wouldn’t—Cody? Help! Phantom, help!”

“That looks like a comfortable snowbank—”

“Cody!”

Days passed, days of beautiful weather and laughter and love. They played in the snow like children during the days, drawing even closer to each other through laughter. And at night they drew closer as man and woman, exploring the depth and meaning of their love.

They shared the daily chores of cooking and cleaning and getting wood for the fire. They argued spiritedly about the best way to renovate the old sled they had discovered in the barn, then took turns being buried in snowdrifts because neither one could steer the thing. They took long walks with Phantom, both to exercise his injured leg and to explore their surroundings. They found an old harness in the barn loft and managed to put it on an indignant Mister, trying for three days to persuade the old burro to pull a large piece of tin across the snow with them aboard.

They built a snowman. Then a snow castle. Then made unartistic stabs at snow images of Phantom and Mister. They got gloriously tipsy on Cody’s eggnog recipe and held a solemn conversation on the merits of eggnog to cure all ills. They called Maine to check on the progress of Thor, Pepper, and babies, discovering that Thor was still somewhat incoherent, Pepper blissful, and twins doing nicely, thank you very much.

They made love.

They were never bored with each other, never restless. There was always something to do or say—or both. Always the feeling that it was new, that
they
were new and fascinating. The world might have stopped and left them to themselves.

“You remind me of Venus.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“‘Venus thy eternal sway, all the race of men obey’—or something like that.”

“I thought you meant the planet.”

“Funny.”

“Well, how was I to know? You’re always comparing me to one odd thing or another.”

“I resent that.”

“
You
resent it?”

“I’ve never compared you to anything odd.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You compared me to Queen Victoria yesterday just because I said ‘We are not amused’ when you put that hat on Mister.”

“She may or may not have been an odd thing: the point’s debatable.”

“And you compared me to a Pekingese when I put my hair up last night.”

“They’re cute—not odd.”

“And van Gogh after my portrait of Phantom in the snow.”

“He was a very great man.”

“And then—”

Silence.

“Uh…what was that for?”

“I had to shut you up somehow.”

“I’ll talk more often….”

“You won’t be able to do it.”

“My darling love. Watch me.”

“Cody, you won’t be able to.”

“Remember the bit about impossible things.”

“Believing six of them before breakfast? Are we wandering through Alice’s mirror?”

“Exactly. Want to attend the Mad Hatter’s tea party?”

“Before or after I bury you?”

“You think he’ll kill me, huh?”

“I wouldn’t waste my money betting against the possibility.”

“Such faith you have in me!”

“It’s experience with Mister that I have.”

“Hey! I grew up on a ranch, remember.”

“Well, Mister didn’t.”

“So?”

“No respect for cowboys.”

“I’ll teach him.”

“I doubt it.”

“It just takes a bit of timing and—There! Hi-yo, Silver!”

Crunch.

“My darling love—”

“Uh-huh?”

“Want to stop giggling long enough to help me out of this snowbank?”

“I thought I’d go to a tea party….”

“The woman thinks she’s a comedian.”

“The man thinks he’s John Wayne.”

“The man thinks he’s freezing his—”

“Language!”

“…ego off.”

“I’m contemplating a new artistic creation.”

“What’s that?”

“
Cody in the Snow.
Thor would enjoy it, I think.”

“Did you read that story called ‘He Killed the Woman He Loved’?”

“Must have missed that one.”

“Just let me get out of this damn snowbank…”