"In that case…" Blaze smiled a slow, lingering smile. She wasn't being refractory or imperious in her initial refusal. Far from it. She was only blissfully sated— a new and wonderful sensation she didn't want to lose. She was content. No, too mild a word, she decided. It should have shiny ornaments hung around it and golden garlands and fireworks for emphasis and then it would be the contentment she was feeling.
Kissing her lightly, Hazard left the bed, her eyes following him, absorbing his naked beauty, noting the fluid perfection of his lean, wide-shouldered body. Her gaze traveling slowly down his muscled back was startled to see the bloodied scratches her nails must have left. His voice refocused her glance as, facing her now, he said, "You make me very happy, bia-cara, even"—he paused, his smile turning into a wicked grin—"if you're the laziest woman I know."
She threw a pillow at him, which he deftly sidestepped, her smile as wicked as his. "I'm not either," she remonstrated. "I've just spent an hour entertaining you, and before that I cooked your supper—"
He groaned. "Don't remind me, I'd forgotten about supper. I don't suppose you'd want me to bring one of my clanswomen down to cook."
Her eyes narrowed. "You suppose right."
He laughed, charmed by her jealousy. "It may be," he said, still smiling, "a close thing, bia-cara, whether we starve to death first or you learn how to cook."
"Hazard Black!" She was a little indignant now, because she'd really been trying at supper. "I can too learn how. Get me a cookbook and I'll show you."
"You're on, puss."
Carrying the boiler over to the tub, he filled it again, placed it on the stove, and stoked the fire. If anyone in his clan had seen him then, he would have been teased unmercifully. Absarokee warriors didn't wait on women. At least not in public. In love, of course, they were like other men. Jon Hazard Black, while accommodating to women, had never waited on a woman before. This was a first. Yet he didn't even notice.
While Blaze lay abed, resting, warm, happy, utterly in love with the man she watched, Hazard rummaged through a leather pouch buried under some trade blankets on a shelf and, taking out a handful of dried grasses threw them in the boiler. "Lemon grass," he said, responding to Blaze's questioning look. "You'll like the fragrance in the water."
"How do you know all that?"
"I grew up here, bia," he said, sitting at the table. "I know every inch of ground from here to the Wind River, every bird and tree and animal. Every blade of grass and sighing breeze. Every mountain peak and riverbank. This is my land." The last sentence was like poetry, softly muted.
Would she ever, she wondered, understand his sense of oneness with nature? She only knew things—acquisitions. He knew the earth, the planet they lived on, as though it were an extension of himself. "What did you do as a child?" she quietly asked, wanting to know the man she loved, wanting to understand this land of his, his culture and people.
Hazard glanced up, having drifted away in his own thoughts, and he looked at her for a moment as though she were a stranger. Her hair shouldn't be red-gold, but black and straight, he thought, her skin darker. Why was she lying on his buffalo robes? Then recognition came and with it a sinking sense of recall. Miss Blaze Braddock —his surety against dying. At least temporarily. The reason he still held his claim; the tenuous link between his tribe's survival and extinction. He should hate her. He did hate all she represented—the privileged wealth, the casual taking, the amusement in acquisition.
She lay on the fur robes with a natural abandonment, her right arm thrown over her head, bent gracefully, her back arched slightly, one slender leg raised, the other extended languidly. "What did you do as a child?" she repeated, not certain he'd heard her, his eyes so remote and distant.
"What most children do," he vaguely replied, his mood suddenly drenched with melancholy. There was something intensely familiar in the way she lay; it summoned up an old memory of another woman lying so in a young boy's lodge in a mountain pasture many summers ago. Staring at the woman, he moved to curb the memory, knowing he didn't want Blaze Braddock to become another indelible keepsake in his mind. She had, in her beauty and whimsy already engaged far too much of his present. Intuitively, he withdrew, regaining his sense of what was proper, reestablishing his mental redoubts against emotion. Putting Blaze Braddock back in her place: a hostage; his guaranty he'd see tomorrow; and after tonight, having relinquished his honorable attempt at celibacy, she would take the position she'd wanted from the first, the one he'd perfunctorily disputed—that of mistress. Now that his mental wrestling was resolved, he intended to make use of her—often. "Come here," he said, holding out his hand. "Sit on my lap and tell me about your childhood instead. Mine was uneventful."
He held her while she talked, only half listening, the sound of her voice soothing the morbid creatures that threatened his future. He heard every few sentences, smiled occasionally, kissed her lightly on the cheek, the ear, ran his hands lazily down her back, her warm flesh the immediacy in his life at the moment—the scented talisman keeping the evil spirits at bay.
She glanced at him while she talked, casting sated, adoring blue eyes over the strong face so close to hers.
His eyes were half wild and restless and so beautiful beneath his fine arched brows, she found herself staring at them often as one might admire a flawless rose over and over for the pleasure it gave. And his high-bridged nose was a perfect sweeping line drawn with a sure hand. She reached out and slid a fingertip down its smooth length, as if by touching the pure, true straightness, she might feel a sensation akin to its perfection.
Absently, his hand came up and brought her errant finger to his lips. It was the casual courtier who languidly dropped a kiss on it.
"I love you, you know."
The simple words shattered Hazard's inattentive, transient peace. His hand abruptly dropped away. Her eyes, he noted at first startled glance, were as serene as her expression. No, was his first wrenching reaction. No, it's all wrong!—a silent rebuttal ringing through his mind.
"Can you handle it?" she calmly asked, his reaction much as she'd expected. He was silent for a few moments more, one hand still light on her back, and warm. "You don't know what you're saying," he slowly replied, picking his way carefully between responsibility and conscience.
She only nodded her affirmation, her blue eyes placid and contained.
"Young girls always think they love the first man who—"
"Takes their virginity?"
"I was going to say makes love to them."
"Oh, really?" she said, her expression skeptical and manifestly suspicious.
"So I've heard," he quickly amended.
The skepticism vanished and the smile, the one like sunbeams over a field of golden poppies, appeared. "I don't care about anyone else. I love you. You needn't worry," she went on, her tranquillity unflustered, "I don't expect you to love me." While a novice at love, she was no novice at handling men; it would never do, she realized, to press for an answer so soon.
"Once your father comes back for you, we won't ever see each other again. You'll marry some young scion of equal wealth and class and raise wealthy young children."
"I may stay here," she refuted.
"What for?" It was blunt and almost discourteous.
"To oversee Daddy's mines," she said, unruffled by his sharpness. It was feeling at least, and she found it eminently more satisfying than cool detachment.
"And take over my country."
"Just the mines."
"It's the same thing. Someone says the word gold and the landscape's overrun."
"I could help you."
He smiled abruptly, a boyish smile, vivid with mirth. "I know. And you are, sweet bia," he said, his tone one of deepest admiration; "you really are." His mouth dipped and captured hers. He didn't want to talk about the mines and the white men and what they might be doing in a year, a month, a week… all the obstacles and impediments. He didn't want to remember any of it right now. He wanted to forget, if only for a night.
He pulled her close, his right arm around her shoulders, his slender fingers reaching up her neck, resting on her jaw, keeping her head immobile so he could taste her mouth, slide his tongue inside, and feel her respond— hold her like his own pet prize for as long as he wanted her. His other hand found the heavy undercurve of her breast, his palm drifting slowly upward over her cresting nipple, then back again, the tip hardening into his palm —the languid back-and-forth motion triggering the floodgates of desire for both of them.
"I love you," she whispered when his mouth left hers briefly to nibble at her lower lip.
"I know," he huskily replied, the nibble, sharpening suddenly. "And I need you, bia-cara … to put out the fire."
He placed her very carefully in the Morris chair, kissing her gently on her warm, soft lips, his hands like a jeweler's, brushing her curls away from her shoulders. Then, easing her legs apart, so slowly she felt a thrilling anticipation in the lingering movement, he knelt between her legs and bending forward kissed her breast. He sucked one pink tip very lightly at first, so lightly her senses were attuned to his merest brushing touch. She arched up in quivering expectation, but his tongue only languidly circled the stiff, tingling peak, then moved to fondle her other rosebud crest. The gentle feeling of his mouth, warm and teasing, was tantalizing promise, and each small nibble or grazing lick sent spirals of pleasure racing downward until she felt she must have him or die.
Reaching out, she tried to touch him; his arousal, she saw through a haze of desire, was as ready as hers.
"No," he softly said, pushing her hands away.
"I won't wait." It was the imperious tone even in her breathy demand, wanting what she wanted. She reached out again, but he stopped her easily, his fingers closing loosely around her wrists.
"You have to."
"I don't want to—" She struggled against his grip, but effortlessly, he held her away.
"You're going to be a handful for your husband, Boston," he playfully teased. "I hope he's got plenty of stamina, with your pressing need to give orders. What if you don't always get your way?"
"But I always do."
"Did," he corrected, his dark eyes impaling hers.
"You're tiresome." She pouted, her lush lips pursed invitingly. "Why does everything have to be some kind of challenge with you?"
"You haven't learned to be malleable, puss," he murmured. "That's why. You want to run the show, but I don't follow orders—especially from a woman."
"I don't mean it that way," she whispered, sliding a few inches down in the chair until she was enticingly close to Hazard's rigid maleness. "Would you like it better if I waited for you to ask me?" The poignantly innocent eyes she raised to him would have melted stone.
He laughed, amusement spilling out of his eyes. Laughed at her theatrics, at his misplaced scruples, at the beautiful adventuress with flamboyant hair and an extravagant temper he curiously felt he must master. "Oh, hell," he capitulated, his smile pure magic, "what's the damn difference…"
And when he carefully placed her legs around his waist, adjusted her comfortably in the chair, and entered her, they both felt the world tremble.
LONG moments later, stroking the dark head lying in her lap, Blaze softly declared, "The water's hot."
"Now I'm too tired." The words were muffled against her thigh. Hazard had collapsed on the floor beside the chair and buried his head in her lap, his damp hair like black ruffled satin on her legs.
"I'll get it ready." She attempted to rise, but his body was immobile.
"Give me five minutes," she heard in the same muted tone.
"Be my guest." She felt the chuckle rather than heard it. Five minutes passed, while both in their divergent ways were very much at peace. "I thought Ab-sarokees were the cleanest people on earth."