Ride the Thunder (26 page)

“Hello.” Her voice was slightly breathless, tinged with a huskiness that caressed the ear like a cat’s purr. “I was trying to get my bed fixed while there was still enough light to see.”

“We’re only going to camp here one night. You’re going to a lot of work.”

His comment seemed to confuse her. She began smoothing out the pile of pine needles he’d brought, adding them to the rectangular collection of her own. Brig felt a need to conceal how very vulnerable he was with her.

“I know,” she admitted. “But it doesn’t seem to matter how much goosedown there is in a sleeping bag. After you lie on it for so long, the body weight packs it down and you start to feel the cold ground beneath you. I used to haul around an air mattress, but pine needles work just as well for insulation.”

Brig had the impression she was talking to hide her nervousness. He disturbed her as much as she disturbed him. Or was she being self-conscious because of the conversation he’d overheard with her father?

His gaze probed her. Bundled up in that heavy parka
with a pair of corduroy jeans tucked into her boots and gloves on her hands, her body was hidden from him. All there was for his eyes to see was a slim but shapeless form. Even her sun-kissed brown hair was hidden under the wide-brimmed hat she wore. The only part of her that wasn’t covered was the classic purity of her face. Brig almost resented the fresh, unspoiled beauty of her features, clear and smooth, adult and not falsely innocent. As if aware of his scrutiny, Jordanna looked at him.

He had to say something, “You look like a boy, with your hair tucked under your hat like that.”

“Something must be wrong with your eyes, I hope.” With a laugh, she swept the hat from her head and combed her fingers through the touseled silk of her hair, its flames hidden in the curtain of nut brown.

Her expression sobered under his narrowed look. Brig wanted to drown in the murky green depths of her eyes, never to surface and face reality.

“Are you planning to sleep here alone?” he heard himself ask.

“I . . .” She faltered and glanced through the opening of the tent flap to the cluster of men at the fire, among them her father. After another second’s hesitation, her gaze touched the ground near his boots, then lifted to meet his eyes with unabashed candor. “I don’t want to.”

“I don’t want you to.”

When Jordanna swayed toward him, Brig met her halfway. Cupping a hand behind her head, he bruised her mouth. He wanted to crush those soft lips, but it didn’t work that way. Her ready response to his brutal kiss revitalized the deeply rooted emotion. He broke off the kiss before his desires burned out of control.

Without a word, he left the tent and walked to the larger one. Inside, Brig took his duffle from the pile of the others and carried it back to her tent. He was aware that the men at the fire had observed his action, but no one said a word. It had been years since he had so blatantly defied convention. But his needs were
primitive and uncontrollable. Jordanna was his woman and he would take her—physically, if he couldn’t have her any other way.

Ducking inside the opening, he tossed his dufflebag onto the ground beside her. Brig saw her attempt to hide a sudden rush of vulnerable sensitivity.

“I’ll need some more pine needles to put under your sleeping bag,” she offered.

“Don’t bother,” he smiled stiffly. “I’ll spend most of my time on the side where you are, anyway.”

With fingers clasped behind the back of her head to act as a pillow, Jordanna lay inside the two sleeping bags zipped together to form one. She stared into the darkness at the roof of the tent, where the hard rain hammered at the canvas. A clap of thunder seemed to break over her head and rumbled ominously, vibrating the ground beneath her. The portent of the cloud cover that had followed them all day had finally unleashed its fury in a mountain storm.

Where was Brig? Her heart pounded as she listened for the sound of his footsteps outside her tent above the wild drumbeat of the rain and the crashing thunder. Jordanna found her eagerness to see Brig—her total lack of inhibition—vaguely frightening. She didn’t seem to have any shame. She couldn’t discern right from wrong anymore. But how could it be wrong when being with him made her feel so good? So right?

The tent flap lifted and Jordanna saw his silhouette outlined by a flaming bolt of lightning. The air crackled with the storm’s electricity and something more. He stepped inside, dropping the tent flap. The action fanned the cold night air that slipped inside the canvas structure. Jordanna shivered as the icy, wet breeze touched her face.

Brig wasted no time in stripping out of his wet, dripping clothes down to his thermal underwear and slipping inside the pocket-like opening of the sleeping bag. His hands reached for her and Jordanna turned into his arms as thunder rumbled the ground. She felt
the hesitation of his caress when his hand came in contact with the coarse material of her insulated underwear. The warmth of his breath was near her lips, mingling with hers. The feathery dampness of his mustache tickled the tip of her nose.

“What are you doing with all these clothes on?” Brig grumbled next to her mouth.

“The same thing you are,” Jordanna murmured. “Keeping warm.”

His mouth came down hard to part her lips as lightning flashed from the sky, illuminating the canvas walls of the tent. “I can think of a better way,” he said against her teeth, and slipped a cold hand under the top of her underwear to warm it against the heat of her soft flesh. Jordanna quivered with longing when his hand surrounded her breast. A fire flamed through her veins, despite the coolness of his caressing fingers, a fire as hot and brilliant as the lightning outside.

“So can I,” she agreed.

Outside, the storm raged on the mountaintop. Dark masses of clouds rammed together, raining fire from the heavens while thunder rolled, vibrating the earth and the air. The elements collided, combined, then withdrew to meet again in raw splendor, building to a crescendo.

His hands couldn’t seem to get enough of her. The storm outside the flimsy tent had abated, but even now, after he’d satisfied his lust—and hers—his hands continued to roam her body, lazily caressing her hips, breasts, and shoulders. The driving rain that continued to pelt the canvas roof emphasized the need he felt. She lay inside the circle of his arm, her head resting on his shoulder, the silken texture of her hair near his chin. Her arms hugged his stomach and a knee was bent across his legs. He burned with an ache that couldn’t be satisfied with physical possession.

“Tell me,” Brig summoned words to quench the emotional thirst within, “do you favor all your hunting
guides with this particular brand of compensation for the long, stormy nights on a mountaintop?”

Thunder rumbled distantly as she rubbed her cheeks against his chest in a feline caress. “Let’s see, there was that white hunter guide in Africa and that Spaniard in Argentina . . . and a French-Canadian in Alberta.” The lilt of amusement in her voice said she was teasing. She concluded the list with a mock sigh. “I just can’t remember them all.”

He didn’t find it funny. “I’ll bet you can’t,” he muttered.

Jordanna tipped her head back, but the unrelieved darkness hid his face. “I was only joking,” she insisted.

His finger traced the smooth line of her jaw. The nagging memory of her father’s admonition to “be nice” to him chose that moment to return. Not that it mattered, Brig decided He was secure in the knowledge that he had aroused feelings in her that no other man had.

“Did I forget to laugh? Sorry,” he feigned an absent apology. “It’s time we got some sleep.”

“I suppose,” she murmured and snuggled into her former position.

The occasional flashes of lightning were growing less frequent as Brig listened to the patter of rain. Jordanna fell asleep long before he did.

The next morning, all that was left of last night’s storm was drizzling rain and a few gentle rumbles of thunder. Shortly after dawn, they broke camp and started for the site of their base camp. The riders wore a variety of rain gear—yellow slickers, ponchos, rain suits. The clouds hung like a shroud on the mountain peaks, gay wisps drifting across the trail. The rough terrain was sometimes slick beneath the horses’s hooves. There was little talking back and forth among the riders as they followed the wet gold rump of the buckskin leading the way.

By the middle of the afternoon, they had reached
the more substantial accommodations of the base camp. A large, lodge-pole framed tent, complete with wooden table, benches, and a shepherd’s stove offered them warmth and shelter from the misting rain. The manta from the packs served a double use as the tent floor. While Jocko put a match to the kindling to start a fire, Tandy finished unpacking the horses, and Brig pitched the small tent where he and Jordanna would sleep, preferring the natural heat of her body to the artificial warmth of the stove.

The next morning, the drizzle turned into a steady downpour as Jocko started dishing up stacks of flapjacks. The hard rain continued throughout the day, confining the hunting party to the base camp. Max took advantage of the opportunity to rest his weary muscles while Fletcher, ever the hunter, checked his gear. Tandy had brought along a deck of cards and the cribbage board, and he and Kit were soon locked in a game.

Brig found plenty to keep him occupied, from checking the horses and gathering more firewood to cleaning the saddles and tack and hauling fresh water. Jordanna was beginning to discover that the only place he didn’t disguise his interest in her was in the darkness of their tent. The rest of the time he held himself aloof. The way his gaze seemed to keep track of her made her think that he was trying to be discreet rather than brazenly flaunt their intimate relationship in front of her father. With that reasoning, she couldn’t find fault with his withdrawn attitude when they were in the company of others.

Jordanna passed the rainy time by helping Jocko. At first, he had started to refuse her offer to help with the meals until he realized that it was a means to occupy the hours. He had graciously accepted her assistance.

On the morning of the fourth day, the sun broke through the clouds. Within an hour after first light, Jocko and Tandy were left alone in camp as the party started out on its first day of active hunting.

It was mid-morning when they sighted their first bighorns. They had stopped on the rim of a barren plateau to glass the adjoining ridges. Max and Kit had stayed with the horses, using the animals as windbreaks against the swirling mountain air currents. Fletcher, Jordanna, and Brig had taken their binoculars and moved to a vantage point on the plateau.

After twenty minutes with no success, her father had lowered his glasses to rest his eyes. “It’s a natural area for bighorns,” he murmured.

“Yes,” Brig agreed and continued to scan the mountain basin to the right. “There’s plenty of graze and water in the stream. The steep cliffs behind offer the sheep a perfect escape route.” Brig sat comfortably on the ground, resting his elbows on his knees to support the arms holding the binoculars.

Jordanna detected a movement near some rocks and tried to zero her lens in on it. “I thought I saw something near that old landslide area.”

Both Brig and her father concentrated their glasses on the same area. “There they are.” Brig saw the brown-bodied rams first ‘They’ve stopped grazing and have laid down to chew their cud and rest.”

“They are young,” her father observed. “I only see one there with more than a half curl.” Glancing over his shoulder, he waved to Kit and Max. “Come have your first look at some bighorns.”

As the other two joined them, Jordanna offered her binoculars to her brother. While she and her father helped the two to locate the resting bighorns, Brig continued to glass the area for more, possibly older, rams.

“What now? Max asked.

“We’ll wait,” Brig said. “There might be more around that are out of our view at the moment.”

They waited another hour, periodically glassing the area, but nothing larger than what they had first seen appeared. Mounting, they rode to another section where Brig had spotted some good sized rams before.

An hour before sundown, they returned to base
camp without having seen a ram either Fletcher or Jordanna were interested in trying. Max had found the experience boring. Although he tried to hide it, it showed.

“I had barely recovered from the ride up in the mountains and I’m stiff and sore all over again,” he grumbled to no one in particular.

But Tandy took up the comment. “Aren’t your muscles used to all that riding yet?”

“We spent more time getting in and out of the saddle and climbing ridges and embankments than we did riding. The back of my legs are killing me,” he complained. “It was all a waste of time as far as I’m concerned.”

“Patience and persistence, Max,” Fletcher smiled across the fire and tamped down the tobacco in his pipe. “If a hunter doesn’t have those two qualities, he might as well give up and go home.”

The veiled criticism prompted Max to sit a little straighter. “I suppose, but I guess I’m used to a little more action.”

“We’ll have you participate more actively with us,” Fletcher declared. “I have a spare set of binoculars. Jordanna will them for you. Tomorrow when we go out, you can help us look for game instead of standing around.”

“That’s generous of you.” Max smiled tightly.

“After all, this is your vacation. I wouldn’t want you to be bored to death.” There was a mean taunt in her father’s droll tone that made Jordanna frown.

“It’s late.” Kit rose abruptly from his cross-legged position in front of the bonfire. “I think I’m going to call it a night.”

“I suppose we all should,” Fletcher straightened, too, to join the exodus to the large framed tent. “Good night, Jordanna.”

“Good night, Dad,” she replied and noticed that he said nothing to Brig. She had suspected that he didn’t exactly approve of her behavior, but this was the first indication of it. He was placing the blame on Brig.
She stared into the dwindling flames of the fire, unaware that all of the others had retired.