“But,” she said in a jerky voice he could barely hear above the noise of the slackening rain, “you’re wet, too.”

“I’m fine,” he said, as gruff and macho as he could make it, valiantly suppressing his own shivers.

Apparently not well enough. Because the next thing he heard was, “You’re freezing.” And then, with shivers bumping the words, “I’m…c-cold.” He turned slowly to look at her. In the waning light beneath the overhang her face looked small and drowned, her eyes huge. “There’s room for both of us,” she said.

He held his breath as she tossed the T-shirt toward the nearest rock, then slowly bent and pulled off one of her boots. After a moment, almost in imitation, he pulled one off, too.

Then suddenly it seemed as if they couldn’t get their clothes off fast enough-either of them. Her breath came in desperate whimpers, his in soft grunts, and their shivers seemed to intensify even as the storm around them slackened. When they were both naked, she lifted the poncho and he ducked under it and came up with his mouth hard on hers, his arms wrapped around her chilled body and her breasts firm and cold against his chest.

What happened then he didn’t expect-could never have even imagined, much less prepared for. He felt something inside him, some fragile vessel of sanity and self-control, break, shatter, burst or simply disintegrate. And suddenly set free were all the feelings, all the passion, all the emotions he’d been keeping there, locked safe inside, set free to pour through him in a raging, devastating, terrifying flood. What was he to do with such feelings? He couldn’t possibly contain such emotions, control such passion. Not since he was a child had he been called upon to try.

Fear and longing tore through him and erupted in a gut- wrenching groan. Her body was so strong and vibrant, so soft and fragile in his arms. He couldn’t hold her tightly enough, touch her completely enough. Oh, how he wanted her. Wanted to be inside her, wanted her inside him, wanted her with a wild and desperate hunger. But how could he bear it if he hurt her now?

Her breath gushed in helpless whimpers as he reached for her, cupped her with his hand, felt with his fingers for her wet yielding softness. He drank in her whimpers with a growl of masculine triumph as he pushed deep, deep inside her, aching inside himself, needing to be inside her, needing…needing…

Her whimpers became a high continuous keening, and he felt her body come apart in his hands. He would have used those same hands, then, to hold her together and comfort her while she collapsed against him with soul-stirring sobs. That’s what he would have done. But the next thing he knew her arms were twined around his neck and her legs clasped around his hips, and her warm and still-pulsating feminine softness was pressed against his hot and throbbing shaft, and he desperately feared, was utterly certain, that he was lost.

No! With one wild anguished cry he summoned all his strength, all the tattered remains of his will and his honor. Throwing his head back until the cords of his neck felt like cast iron, he wrenched himself away from that sweet comfort and raised her high in his arms, lifting her onto a chest-high boulder and pulling her legs over his shoulders. Holding her open to him, he sank into her softness, buried himself in her, his face, his mouth, his tongue.

He held her while her body bucked and writhed, arched and tightened like a drawn bow. And then she screamed, a cry of feminine terror, total surrender and a wild and savage joy.

Shaken, he clutched her to him, rocking her and murmuring words of comfort and contrition into her hair. But sobbing, she slithered out of his grasp and downward along his body, and he felt the coolness of her tears on his fevered flesh-and then her mouth. And with a groan he gave himself up to her, knowing his only salvation lay in a quick and cataclysmic release.


Bronco watched the first rays of the sun streak across the shoulders of the Sacred Mountain and tried to think whether he’d ever done such a thing before-ever slept all night with a woman in his arms and watched the sunrise with the sweet scent of her in his nostrils and her warm breath pooling on his skin. He didn’t think so; if he had, he’d have surely remembered it.

He wasn’t aware of having made any noise, but Lauren stirred and gave a vocal yawn, a good-humored waking-up sound. She raised her head and looked at him with the untroubled gaze of a small child, and then casually, as if it was something she did every day of her life, leaned down and kissed him.

Before he could identify the unfamiliar flutterings that action generated in his heart, before the first drumbeats of response deep in his belly had time to find their own rhythm, she lifted her head and looked beyond him at the vista of the plateau spread out below and breathed a single word. “Wow.”

For a few minutes she didn’t say anything more, while the sun splashed gold across the purple land and edged the tattered scraps of last night’s storm clouds with coral, pink and mauve. And then she caught her breath. “Look. Is that…?” Far out on the lightening plateau, a cloud of dust rose and caught the sunlight and became a plume of gold.

“Looks like the wild horse herd,” Bronco said just as a piercing whinny from directly below them confirmed it.

“Oh,” Lauren whispered, “it’s so beautiful.”

Something clutched at Bronco’s heart-a longing for, a hope of, a tiny glimpse of heaven. With tightening throat he muttered, “I’ve always thought so.”

Her eyes came back to him, bright and full of smiles. Since he was beginning to realize she was one of those people who woke up fast, fresh as a daisy and ready to meet the day, he put a warning hand on her shoulder and said gruffly, “Careful-don’t sit up too suddenly.”

She cringed in the process of doing just that and squinted over her shoulder at the solid rock just inches above her head. “Oh, wow,” she said. “We’re a rock sandwich.”

Bronco laughed; he supposed she hadn’t realized when he’d squeezed them in here last night how narrow the crevice was. He’d forgotten himself. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “When I was a kid you could sit up in here. It’s gotten a lot smaller. Here-if we move farther out, we’ll be okay.”

He’d made their bed in the narrow space where a second slab of rock overlapped the upper side of the protruding boulder, leaving the sheltered place below for the horses. There hadn’t been a flat space large enough for two to stretch out under the overhang, anyway. The crevice had made a cozy enough bed, once he’d eliminated any possibility of rattlers.

Now, on his elbows he scooted himself and the blanket backward out of the crevice and onto the ledge. Lauren moved with him, pulling, tugging and straightening, until they were clear of the overhang. Then she stretched her arms over her head and drew her legs into a cross-legged sitting position.

“So,” she said, looking around with bright-eyed curiosity, “this is another one of your childhood haunts.”

He couldn’t answer immediately, distracted as he was by the incredibly arousing vision of her long pale legs and firm round breasts just barely covered by the drape of one of his old undershirts. As sudden and breathtaking as a punch in the gut came the memory of those legs coiled around him last night, and the whisper-soft brush of her thigh against his cheek, the scent and taste of her, that wild primitive cry.

“Let me guess. I’ll bet you called this Lookout Rock.” She was smiling at him, fresh and sweet as the new day.

Bronco shook his head, and not only because she’d guessed wrong about the name. He was feeling a little light-headed and having some trouble reconciling this morning’s Lauren, wholesome as milk and cornflakes, with last night’s mind-blowing, self-control-shattering wanton.

“In a way I guess it was a lookout,” he said, struggling to a sitting position himself. “But my cousins and I used to call it the Smoking Rock-not in the presence of any grown-ups, though.”

“Really? Smoking Rock…” She tilted her head, intrigued.

“We called it that,” Bronco drawled, half smiling, “because this is where we’d come to smoke the cigarettes we’d stolen from our elders. And eat the cookies we’d swiped from Grandmother Rose’s kitchen so she wouldn’t smell the tobacco on our breath.”

“Dang,” exclaimed Lauren, laughing, “you were a wild child.”

“Told you I was. Most all the stories you’ll hear people tell about me are true-and a lot more nobody knows about but me.” He listened to his own words and felt a cold shell creep back around his heart. After a moment he threw her a smile that now felt strained and tight. “What about you, Laurie Brown? You ever do anything bad when you were a kid? Not even bad, just…you know, naughty, a little wild and crazy.”

“Before I met you, you mean?” she said dryly, then frowned at her hands, laced together across the open space between her knees. “I think I was a spoiled brat when I was very small. But-” she drew herself up straight, in ironic demonstration of what she was saying “-I grew up fast after my folks split up. I became the classic ‘good girl,’ a model child. I did everything that was expected of me-valedictorian, college, law school…” She stopped, alarmed and suddenly fragile. She feared, if she spoke one more word, her face would crumple into tears.

The wave of emotion had taken her by surprise, coming out of nowhere just when she’d been feeling so happy, so carefree. But thinking of the child, the girl, the woman she’d been… So much had happened in so short a time, and she wasn’t that person anymore! And never would be again. And that realization filled her with a sudden sharp sense of loss, of regret and fear. Somehow, in her rush to escape from her old familiar life, she’d run herself into a blind alley, and now she didn’t know where to turn.