Elizabeth Lowell - Only Mine

The certainty in Caleb’s voice sent a stroke of unease through Jessica. She stood in her stirrups and looked past him.

Two big black horses and one smaller sorrel had broken from the cover of the forest and were running flat out toward her up the long sweep of the grassy divide. Only one horse carried a man. As she watched, the rider leaped from the back of one of the blacks to the sorrel without slowing the pace one bit.

«Dear God,» she breathed.

«Looks more like WolfeLonetree to me,» Caleb said dryly.

With watchful amber eyes, Caleb waited while the horses thundered closer. When he saw that Wolfe’s rifle was still in its scabbard, Caleb let out a silent breath of relief and gave Jessica a reassuring smile. Jessica didn’t notice. She sat on Two-Spot and waited, knowing her horse had no chance to outrun the Arabian stallion.

Wolfe didn’t even glance at Caleb when he galloped up and pulled Ishmael to a rearing, dancing halt. Wolfe had eyes only for the red-haired girl who was sitting astride Two-Spot with a spine as straight as a ramrod. Calmly, Wolfe dismounted, turned the hot horses over to Caleb, and then stood silently, watching Jessica.

«I’ll make camp in those trees,» Caleb said, gesturing toward a scattering of evergreens a mile back down the trail.

Wolfe nodded.

«You might keep in mind that she was only doing what she thought was best for you,» Caleb said as he took Ishmael’s reins. «The same as you were doing what you thought was best for her.»

«Adios, Cal,» Wolfe said flatly.

Without another word, Caleb reined his horse back toward the setting sun, taking with him all the horses but the one Jessica rode. Two-Spot stretched against the bit and whinnied at being left behind.

Without warning, Wolfe vaulted on behind Jessica, took the reins from her, and turned Two-Spot toward a nearby stand of aspens. Their delicate new leaves glowed an unearthly green in the slanting light. When the small breeze stirred, the leaves quivered as though alive and breathing.

Jessica felt as shaky as one of the leaves. She looked down at the dark, lean hand holding the reins, and at the arm that half-circled her without touching her. The temptation to trace the veins in the back of Wolfe’s hand with her fingertips was so great that she had to close her eyes against it. An almost hidden tremor went through her as she fought not to show her hunger and yearning to touch the life that beat so strongly beneath Wolfe’s controlled surface.

Wolfe dismounted and tied Two-Spot to a slender aspen. Then he stood and looked at Jessica for the longest minute of her life. She met his narrowed indigo eyes, refusing to show either the pain or the yearning that seethed beneath her outward calm.

«You looked surprised to see me when I rode up,» Wolfe said.

«Caleb wasn’t. He did everything but set fire to trees so you could follow.»

«I would have found you if you’d gone barefoot over solid stone.»

«Why?»

The question put the match to Wolfe’s temper. «You’re my wife.»

«The marriage isn’t valid.»

«Like Hell it isn’t. I had you so deep and so hard it’s a bloody wonder either one of us could walk afterward.»

Scarlet flags burned on Jessica’s cheekbones, but she didn’t back down. «You said you would withhold your fertility from the union despite my wishes otherwise,» she said carefully. «That is grounds for annulment.»

«I was trying to spare you the risk of childbed!»

«So you say.» Jessica shrugged casually despite the tension that made her body feel brittle. «A magistrate might view your actions as less than noble.»

«That’s just it,» Wolfe shot back. «I’m not noble. You are!»

No matter how hard Jessica fought it, she couldn’t prevent a scalding tear from falling. The combination of grief and rage in her voice made it shake.

«And there it is,» she said, «the one thing I can’t change and you can’t forgive.»

«You’re not making sense.»

Her eyes focused on him. They were as pale and bleak as the streamside ice.

«I can learn to cook and clean and launder,» Jessica said. «I can burn in your arms and you in mine…but it’s not enough. It will never be enough. You despise the aristocracy, and my father was an earl.»

«That’s not —»

«You want me,» she continued relentlessly, «but not as a wife. I’m not fit to be the mother of your children. I’m a spoiled, cruel child. I’m a —»

«Jessi, that’s not what I —»

«— girl, not a woman, as useless as teats on a boar hog, the wrong —»

«Damn it, that’s not —»

«Yes it is!» she said harshly, talking over him. «You have never lied to me, no matter how much the truth hurt. Don’t begin now, when there is no more need. I trapped you, I’m setting you free. Go back to the wild land you love, the land for which you were born, the land I’m not worthy to inhabit and never will be. I am what I am and —»

«Damnation.Will you listen or do I have to —»

«— you are Tree That Stands Alone and lying with me was the worst mistake of your life!»

«Wrong,» Wolfe said furiously. «The worst mistake of my life was promising Willow I’d try talking with you first!»

With no warning, Wolfe yanked Jessica out of the saddle and fastened his mouth over hers. She twisted and thrashed against him, but he was much too strong. He absorbed her struggles until the wild urgency of his kiss reached her on a level deeper than words.

Unable to deny Wolfe and herself any longer, Jessica yielded to him the softness he had already taken, sharing the kiss with him. It was a long time before he lifted his head.

«This is the only truth that matters,» Wolfe said finally, brushing Jessica’s tears away. «You are mine, only mine. And I am yours.»

«You are Tree That Stands Alone.»

«And you are the sun in my sky. Don’t take the sun from me, Jessi.»

She tried to speak, but was too moved by what she saw in his eyes to say more than his name.

«Wolfe?»

«Stay with me, Jessi Lonetree,» he whispered. «Share the wild land with me. Love me as much as I love you.»

In the following months, Wolfe showed Jessica his favorite places in the western land. Together they smelted the rain winds sweeping across the desert, wearing robes of lightning and bringing the miracle of water to a dry land. Together they stood among stone buttes anchored like great ships in a boundless sea of sand.

Together they saw a canyon so vast it could be crossed only by the sun, and at its bottom a river coiled like a silver medicine snake, untouched, untouchable. Together they stood in the sun-washed silence of cities built by men long dead. Ancient, enigmatic, set into sheer rock cliffs, nothing inhabited the stone cities but the wind. No paths led to the buildings and no paths came away, yet the cities remained, filled with mysteries and spirits of a time long past, unknown, unknowable.

Together they followed streams that had no name up the slopes of mountains that were also unnamed, climbing so high that angels sang in the ringing silence just before moonrise. Together they drank from lakes as blue as Wolfe’s eyes and fell asleep in each other’s arms, waking to find the aspens ablaze with winter’s first kiss.

Finally they followed the sunrise back to the SanJuans. An hour’s lazy ride from Willow and Caleb’s home, Wolfe and Jessica built their own home along the Columbine’s clear waters. There Wolfe talked to mustangs and Jessica stalked living rainbows through deep river pools. There beneath a sky as deep and wild as their love, they created new life where none had been before, boys with Wolfe’s fluid strength and girls with Jessica’s laughter and fire.

And through all the peace and storms of all their years, Jessica was the sun in Wolfe’s sky, bringing light and life to Tree That Stands Alone.