Wind Shadow (9 page)

Moving on in her quest, she took great care to explore every contour of his body. Even the furrowed scars on his calf sent a ripple of pleasure up her spine.

“Silky,” he called, his voice husky with need. Opening her eyes, she looked down at him. His face was tense and, with his lashes lowered to watch her, she could see nothing of his dark eyes but an occasional liquid glisten. Lifting a hand toward her, he ordered softly, “Come here.”

Willingly, she came into his arms. As he turned her onto her back, she opened herself to his passion with a relish that she would never have imagined. He had made her crave him. When they came together, he filled her beyond all her imaginings. The blossoming of primeval feelings in her core tore outward, thrilling her whole being, and she gasped. Opening her eyes wide, she looked up into his face. His eyes were closed, his features a mask of intense ardor. “Silky, Silky,” he moaned as he began to move within her.

With every thrust he threw her into an unstable orbit somewhere beyond the heavens. He knew just how to touch a woman. His movements were deliberate, beginning very slowly and then building, until she was clinging to him and crying. She had never been this far before, in this rarefied atmosphere where there was little air, but an unimaginable amount of spectacular color and sensation. She let the last vestiges of control slide away, and she cried out into the vast night.

“O-O-Ohhh!” It was a half-sigh, half-moan as he drove himself faithfully home. Encircling her with his arms, he held her tightly, his body quaking with its own climax. She hugged his shuddering back and unaccountably began to sob into his shoulder, crying from the depths of her soul.

“Sweetheart?” he questioned, tasting the salty dampness on her face with gentling kisses. “Why tears?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and curled her legs possessively over his thighs, gasping. “I—I don’t know. Just, hold me, please.” Did she really not know, or did she just not want to know?

He brushed a damp strand of hair away from her cheek and nuzzled the place it had been, whispering into the hollow of her throat, “I will.” He was kissing her throat now, and his words became an extension, an added dimension, of the intimacy. “Don’t worry, sweet Silky. I will.”

They were quiet for a time, but Silky remained tensed, her arms and legs holding Wade prisoner within her. A gnawing feeling that something was very wrong was growing, billowing out of control inside her—a feeling that she had put aside and flagrantly ignored when Wade had pressed her down beneath him. But now, reason had returned and she could no longer disregard her foolishness. What could have possessed her? Did she dare excuse her sexual abandon merely because this was a wild, primitive land? Hardly! No, it seemed more likely that this
thing
that had happened between her and Wade had happened because she hadn’t been touched by a man for over a year. Simply, and logically put, Wade had just been in the right place at the wrong time!

Another tear slid out of the corner of her eye and was lost in the damp hair at her temple. And what about Rex? What about her plans to get him back? Surely she could still do that, with Wade’s promise of silence. The damage was not irreparable.

She let her arms slide away from Wade’s back, opening her eyes. Wade would understand. He would help. After all, he probably did this sort of thing all the time. Men did. No doubt he would be relieved that she expected nothing from him—except his discretion. No strings. It had just been a roll in a blanket—a one-time thing.

She grimaced. She’d never been just that to a
man, and it wasn’t a pleasant thought. But it was done, and there was no use crying or making excuses about it. She had to put this behind her and go on with her life!

That resolved, she cleared her throat a little weakly. “Wade?”

Chapter Six

Y
es?” He lifted his head, his smile as gentle as the breeze that ruffled his black curls.

Placing her hands on his shoulders, she whispered weakly, “I’m sorry.”

He drew back just slightly. “What?”

Ever so lightly, she pressed against his shoulders. “Could we talk?” Unable to look him directly in the eyes, she followed the broad contour of his shoulder to where it curved downward to become a muscular arm.

“Of course.” He lifted himself slowly away, and Silky found herself closing her eyes and expelling a sigh at the wealth of feeling that warmed her core, even in their uncoupling.

With her eyes still closed, she could feel her T-shirt being slipped back down to cover her breasts, cool and glistening with the sheen of
their mingled pleasure. With loving fingers, he adjusted her robe about her hips, tying it. Opening her eyes, she looked up into his smile.

“I don’t want you to catch cold,” he murmured in explanation as he reached for his shorts.

He was being so solicitous, so caring. At least he was going to be a gentleman about this, even if he did consider her nothing but a vacation conquest. She was grateful for that.

When he had his shorts on, she cleared her throat. Sitting up, she felt around for her panties but couldn’t find them. Putting aside that problem until later, she smoothed her robe over her lap and sat back on her heels. “Wade, listen to me. I really am sorry.” She watched him settle beside her. A curious twist of his brow altered his features.

Lacing her fingers nervously, she went on, “Nobody’s to blame here—not really.”

“Blame?” He shook his head and chuckled. “What are you talking about, Silky. We just made love, and it was wonderful.”

She touched his hand, silencing him. “I thought you’d feel this way. After all, for men, these things are like—playing poker or going bowling.”

His brows lifted in surprise. “What things are like going bowling? Silky, you’re not making sense.”

When he covered her hand with his, she withdrew hers abruptly. This was no time for body contact, not considering what contact with his body had just done to her. She answered rather
breathlessly, “Things—you know, brief encounters with women.”

“Brief encounters with—?” His lips curved upward in humor. “Silky, you aren’t trying to compare what we just did with bowling, are you?”

“Well”—her cheeks went fiery at his intimate tone, and her eyes fluttered away toward the glowing embers for a moment of high embarrassment before returning to his face. “Well… I suppose if they were that similar, there would be more bowling alleys.”

A completely irresistible laugh rumbled deep in his chest. “Woman, if bowling was anything like loving you, there’d be nothing on the face of the earth but bowling alleys!”

She stiffened at the exhilaration in his tone. He didn’t sound like a man who’d just made love to a woman he never intended to touch again. And the fire that had leapt to life in his dark eyes simply did not communicate that he’d lost interest in making love to her—not yet, anyway. On the contrary, Wade looked like a man who had just been given an unexpected, but satisfying, gift.

Good Lord! Could it be that he expected this little
mistake
by the fire to happen again and again during this trip? Did he expect her to allow herself to become involved in a wilderness affair? No! She would have to squelch that notion right now, before it got out of hand.

Lifting her chin, she sat straight, trying to appear regal in her attempt to remain unflinchingly
aloof. It wasn’t easy, considering the turmoil of her emotions. “Wade,” she began gravely. “I was terribly vulnerable—more so than I realized, I guess. This was just as much my fault as yours. I mean, it’s been a long time since a man …” She came to a floundering halt, feeling her face grow hot. With a great sense of relief, she realized that Wade couldn’t see her blush in the darkness.

“I’ve been alone a long time, that’s all. When you kissed me …” She let that sentence, too, die away, struggling for something more solid, more logical to blame her loss of control on. Nothing plausible came to her rescue. Crossing her arms self-consciously across the taut tips of her breasts, she tried again, this time edging her words with a firmness she didn’t feel. “Try to understand, Wade. My life is completely planned. I’m here on this trip to get my husband back. I’m sure, by now, you’ve guessed that.” Even in her hasty attempt to explain, she stumbled over her words as she saw the hardening in his expression. Clearing her throat spasmodically, she forged ahead. “I—I don’t know how this—this thing between us happened, but it won’t happen again. Believe me.”

With his eyes locked on hers, he slowly pulled one knee up and draped an elbow around it. Nervously, she crossed and then recrossed her arms before her in an unconscious, protective gesture.

He lifted his hand, and began to rub the back of his fist along his chin, a solemn expression
creasing his brow. Picking up a pine cone that was lying near the bedroll, he fingered it without interest for a moment before turning away from her and tossing it into the embers. In the waiting silence, Silky listened to the dry pop and crackle of the fragile cone as it burned. When Wade finally spoke, his voice was harsh with an emotion she couldn’t quite define. “I believe you when you say you’re vulnerable. Hell, Silky, everybody’s vulnerable.” When he turned back to look at her, his eyes were empty and dark. “Just for the record, your interest in Rex didn’t enter my mind. If it had, I wouldn’t have—” Mercifully, he didn’t put what they were both thinking into words. Changing course, he asked quietly, “So, you want Rex back and your life is planned?” He watched her closely through narrowed eyes as she nodded. “Then do me a favor, Silk. The next time you feel… vulnerable”—there was a noticeable pause before he picked up the thread of his sentence—“would you mind picking on somebody else? What we had together was good, Silky, and I’d rather not get addicted to it.”

She stilled, and her breathing, if not her heart, stopped as her expression closed in uncertainty. “You make it sound as though
I
seduced
you.
”

His lips twisted in a rueful grin as he combed his fingers through tousled hair. “Do I?”

“Yes, you do.” For some unfathomable reason, she was unable to continue to look him in the eye, a phenomenon that highly unsettled her.
Dropping her gaze to her lap, she mumbled, “You can’t really believe I planned this?”

She felt a finger coax her chin back up, forcing her gaze to meet his. “Yes, I can.” Wade’s eyes hit hers with the impact of a fist. “Consciously or unconsciously, I think you wanted this to happen. I agree, we were both to blame ultimately. But, now that I know your game plan, I’ll be more careful about making rash invitations for you to sit by the fire with me.” Heaving himself up, he remarked through a ragged sigh, “I won’t try to change the mind of a person who has a cast-iron life strategy. Experience has taught me that much.” Catching her by the wrist, he pulled her bodily to her feet. “Maybe you’d better go to bed, Mrs. Overbridge. It’s late.” He seemed extremely tired, almost disinterested.

Why did she have this nagging sense of loss? Lifting her hand out of his grasp, she tugged her robe up around her shoulders. Straightening it with fluttery, nervous brushes, she belatedly remembered that she didn’t have her underwear. “Oh dear.” She would have liked to be able to turn and go, but she didn’t dare leave a trail of underthings to mark her passing. Her cheeks burned at the very idea of someone finding the lacy briefs in the morning!

“What’s wrong?” Wade interrupted her thoughts.

She lowered her eyes, searching the surface of the bedroll desperately. She’d rather not enlist Wade’s help in looking for underclothes that
moments ago she had allowed him to remove in a fit of passion. Keeping her eyes on the ground, she opened her lips to form a tentative explanation when he interrupted, “Never mind, I see.” With a graceful dip of his powerful torso, he scooped up the twisted froth of lace from a shadowed wrinkle in the bedroll and held it out to her. “Here. Take the incriminating evidence and go to bed.”

With a wince, she plucked the underwear dangling from his outstretched fingers. Turning away, she stalked into the distance, knowing full well that tonight her tent would be nothing more than a small, nylon prison where she would get little rest and probably no sleep.

With a bitter sigh, Wade lowered himself back to the bedroll. Hands laced behind his head, he stared up at the sky of a dying day, but saw instead Silky’s face just the way it tilted up when she talked to him. Her faultless teeth flashed beautiful and white when she smiled in the bright Alaskan sunshine, and her lips … His breathing was suddenly shallow, and his heart pounded like a jackhammer gone mad. He’d been struck by her loveliness from the moment he’d first seen her in the hospital. Of course, then, he’d thought she was married. But when she’d joined the bike trip and he had learned that she was single, he had allowed himself to hope that he might be able to build a relationship.

He closed his eyes. Why did he have to fall in love with her? It was now painfully apparent
that she only had room in her life for Rex. Wade gritted his teeth. What difference did it make what he thought of Rex? It was Silky’s opinion that mattered. Silky … his eyes flew open as a cruel flash of memory stabbed at his consciousness. Softly sighing, she was writhing in his embrace, her skin damp and warm beneath his touch. Muttering a curse, his hand jerked angrily up to cover his eyes in a vain attempt to block the moonlit vision of this woman who had so effortlessly, so damnably unintentionally, toppled the barricades he’d built around his heart.

It was ironic that Silky would be the one woman who would assume their coming together tonight was nothing to him but an unthinking flash-fire of passion, when in reality it had meant so much more to him than that. For a year now, he had made sure that any relationships he had begun with women were strictly without emotional involvement. But here was a woman who, in unisex hospital greens, with one brave little speech on behalf of an injured police officer, had sent his tightly controlled emotions scrambling.

“Damn!” he groaned, turning restlessly to his stomach. Sleep never came for Wade, and when the bikers wheeled quietly into camp much later he had done a lot more tossing and turning. But he had also made one tough decision.

No matter how much he wanted it to be, Silky’s love life was none of his business. So with a strength of will that he wasn’t sure he could sustain, he promised himself that he
would honor her decision to mend her broken marriage. And, he would—and this was the intolerable part—he would try to convince himself that making love to her had
not
been the best thing that had ever happened to him. That piece of self-delusion was probably impossible, but no more so than trying to convince someone whom she should, or shouldn’t, love.

“Silky?” Wade was whispering her name. Why? She turned over, trying to block his memory from her mind; trying to squeeze the vision of his dark, supple body from her dreams. She wasn’t sure how many hours had gone by, but so far, every one of them had been a failure in that regard. The vision of Wade lounging naked beside her had burned into her deepest unconscious thoughts as surely as the road grit burned into her eyes when she was cycling. She only wished that his memory could be as easily removed with a good splash of cold water in the face.

“Silky.” Wade’s unmistakable masculine whisper intruded into her murky, half-awake world again, this time more insistently. Her eyelids fluttered open and she could see with some regret that it was morning.

“Hmmmm?” Turning onto her back, she stretched.

“Good. You’re awake.”

Lifting her chin, she raised moss-colored eyes to the kneeling shadow that darkened the zippered entrance of her tent. What did Wade think
he was doing? Irritation charged up her spine and she scrambled to her knees, crouching before the door. “Go away! Everyone’s asleep!” It was a stern whisper.

She heard his derisive snort. “Fine. If you can keep your voice down, we won’t wake everybody else. It’s just you I want to talk to.”

“Please go away, Wade. It’s too early for corrective criticism.”

There was a long pause before he suggested tiredly, “Let’s call a truce, Silk. Something happened last night that could cause trouble. I thought I’d better tell you first so that maybe we could do something about it.”

“You’re not going to tell me you’re pregnant, are you?” The remark was purposely flippant. She didn’t want him to think that the episode by the fire meant anything at all to her. Unfortunately, however, it wasn’t quite so easy for Silky to convince herself. The restless night she’d just spent told her that much. Even so, she was determined to put the rash mistake on a back shelf of her mind and try to forget it.

He was unzipping the tent flap. “No, I’m not, are you?”

“Go away!” she snapped.

“Listen, Silk, you’ve got to come with me and see something. I want you to know I had nothing to do with it. I’m afraid, after last night, you’ll think I did it out of spite.”

“Did what?”

He had the flap unzipped now. When their eyes met, he didn’t smile, but his expression was
so earnest, she felt a surge of compassion—or something equally tender—in the pit of her stomach.

He took her hand. “Will you come with me?”

Curiosity grasped her as securely as he did and she was unable to resist. Crawling out of the flap, she mumbled, “Okay. Where is this monumental problem?”

“By the bikes.” He did not release her hand as they strode briskly toward the colorful cluster of two-wheelers chained beneath a stand of blue spruce. Silky’s mood softened a small measure as she breathed in the fresh morning air and watched the sparkle of dew on the spiky needles.

She grimaced and hopped on one foot. “Ouch!”

Wade halted immediately. “What did you step on?”

“Pine cone.” She pushed her night-tousled hair back over her shoulder as she examined the unbroken skin. “I forgot my slippers.”