Blaze studied him and wondered—had he changed? Her gaze took in the nakedness, the nervous, taut muscle and lean power, the pulsing strength, the unsmiling face. He was thinner, his hair a shade longer, his frame more spare and hard. And his strides had been almost pacing tonight. Fascinated by his restlessness, she was reminded of his predator namesake and experienced an unsettling sensation. She didn't know him. Didn't know this silent fierce man who was called her husband.
Hazard looked over after he'd secured his gun above his pillow and saw her eyes on him, dark and luminous in the dim light. "Good night," he said, his voice empty of emotion, and slid under the hand-quilted coverlet.
They both lay silent, the furthest extent of the large feather bed separating them, but each intensely aware of the other. The silence was unquiet, as if invisible fingers were drumming nervously. Hazard's hands were locked behind his head, his eyes surveying the papered ceiling, while the pulse in his neck signaled his consciousness of Blaze's nearness. How the hell was he going to sleep tonight?
A great despair came over Blaze like creeping fog smothering her last shred of hope, and she could no longer stop the tears swimming to her eyes. Silently, they slid down her cheeks and nose, dripping onto the pillow as she lay on her side, only inches from the only man she'd ever loved. She had never felt so miserably alone, and the tears were admission at last that all the wishing in the world was never going to bring Hazard back. He really didn't care. "Good night," he'd simply said; "Good night." Nothing more. As if they were chance acquaintances somehow thrown together by fate.
It was impossible to be strong any longer. It hurt too much. She'd been maintaining the fiction against tremendous stresses, and her resources were depleted. She'd been fighting Millicent and Yancy for weeks over the inheritance, the baby, her own life. And suddenly she was tired of fighting, tired of being torn apart emotionally, unable to face the world with her old determination. She had no one to turn to now. Even Hazard would never care.
So the tears came, but she bit back the sobs. She might not have much strength left, but she had a fragment of pride.
He lay there after he heard it and wondered how long she'd been crying. She was curled away from him on the far side of the bed and he hadn't realized, hadn't heard until the small sound escaped. The windows were open to the autumn night and a breeze stirred the plain muslin curtains. Maybe the night sounds had masked the quiet crying; more likely, knowing Blaze, she'd stifled it. She wasn't the kind of woman who welcomed pity.
He hesitated only a moment, then reached out and lifted her into his arms, sliding partway up the headboard so he was holding her, all muffled in yards of nightgown, like a young child. He felt the warm tears on his bare chest, the intimacy of her soft cheek smudging the wetness against his skin, and his heart went out to her. She was unhappy, and suddenly it mattered fiercely to him.
Having Hazard hold her, his strong arms cradling her close for the first time in weeks, only forced the welling tears into a gushing floods The revelation pervaded her mind and body and senses with awesome simplicity as she lay protected within his embrace, the sudden truth so astonishing and undeniable and frightening that she felt a transient moment of fear. For she understood at last how much she needed him, how much his caring mattered to her, how little everything in the world meant without him. How alone she'd been without him.
"What's wrong, bia? Tell me," said the soft, roughened voice. His long-boned fingers smoothed her fall-gold hair, brushed it back from her forehead with infinite care. Bending, he caressed the delicate curve of her temple. "Tell me."
She couldn't answer, overwrought, gulping for air like a child who's cried too long. He waited, holding her tightly, but carefully—infinitely less tightly than he'd like —for fear of hurting her. After so many weeks of being deprived of her warmth and softness and tangible presence, he wanted to crush her into his bones.
Her weeping quieted at last, her head resting on his shoulder, her fragile frame encircled by Hazard's strong body. "I'm tired," she said at last, bleakly, in a very tiny voice.
"I know, princess. The last days have been hell." He tugged the sheet up and wiped away her tears. Their faces were very close and Blaze's wet eyes were unbearably naked.
"I don't want to be strong," she whispered. "I can't anymore." And fresh tears flowed.
He comprehended: too many burdens too fast; more responsibility and uncertainty than a young woman should have to assume alone. "You don't have to be strong all the time, princess. Everyone gives up or falls occasionally. You were doing fine, only it was all too much, taking care of yourself and the baby, plus warding off Yancy's threats. I should have been there to fight him for you. But you're not alone anymore. I'm here now, to do the fighting. So rest; lean on me. I'll take care of you and the baby." He said it without thinking… and meant it, everything swept away except his need for her.
"Truly?" Blaze whispered, afraid to believe, afraid the words were only words. But hoping desperately that Jon Hazard Black was true to his character now—plain spoken, honest.
"Truly," he quietly replied. "There've been too many misunderstandings in the past. But it's over." He shook away the dark spirits. "I don't even want to think about them anymore." His hand came up and lightly brushed her cheek. "You say you don't want to be strong all the time. I, bia-cara, don't want to be dutiful all the time. I can't help it, I love you," he whispered. "And if I lose my protecting vision, my clan and my soul, I must have you."
"I'm yours… until the pines turn yellow," she softly assured him in the old Absarokee formula for infinity. "Don't ever leave me," she breathed from the safety of his arms. "Don't ever leave me…"
"Never… starting from this minute." He lifted her face tenderly from the curve of his shoulder and touched her lips with his. "Our first night together" he murmured, and swallowed hard to keep back his own tears, "on our long and enchanted trail." His dark eyes held a potent magic as they gazed into hers. "I can fight them all, princess… if you're beside me."
"I am—I will—oh, Jon, I love you so." Her voice was sweet with hope. "We can do it, you know," she added, the old vivacious gleam in her eyes.
Always charmed by her innocent and determined optimism, Hazard generously replied, his own gaze tender, "Of course we can, Boston. With you and me against the world, how can we lose?" His answer was like that of a war-worn, worldly veteran to a fresh young recruit, unblooded yet to the small viciousnesses in man. And while he dearly hoped she was right, privately, a cautious skepticism questioned both their sanities. "Tonight, though," he quietly murmured, "we've no dragons to slay. Tonight there's only us."
"That's what Lydia said. How did she know?"
Hazard adjusted her in his arms and squeezed her lightly. "We owe the bully a lot."
"Would you have stayed with me otherwise… tonight, I mean?" It was a woman's question, measuring love. It was a Blaze question, straight to the mark.
He was silent for a moment, then shook his head. But his grip tightened and she knew that while the chief answered no, the man said yes.
"I never wrote that note, Jon. I didn't."
His anger flared briefly; he could set aside the demons, but not forget. That time was never really gone, even though he wanted to believe her. "It's over," he said tightly, withholding all the convoluted fragments of doubt. "I don't want to talk about it."
"I could punch you," Blaze retorted, her own sense of injustice equally thin-skinned, "when you get so damned masculine and condescending." And she suited her actions to her words.
Hazard caught her small fist easily, lightly, just short of its mark, and enveloped it in his large hand. Smiling into her heated eyes, he pleasantly declared, "I've a better idea right now. But I promise," he murmured, his mouth descending to brush hers tenderly, "you can assault my condescension afterward, if—his tongue slid over the upper curve of her lips—"you still have the strength."
"Have you considered," Blaze whispered back teas-ingly, her lips wet from Hazard's leisurely roving tongue, "you might be consorting with a wicked evil woman who may have tried to kill you?"
Hazard's breath was warm on her throat as he nibbled her tender flesh. "Wicked sounds interesting," he exhaled softly, sending shivers up her spine, "and evil." His dark head came up, his long lashes brushing her chin, and he looked assessingly at her exquisite blue-eyed face, fair and fresh as a spring morning. His seductive glance turned beguilingly merry and he laughed softly at her teasingly and at his own ludicrous doubts. "With you and evil, fairy princess of the May, I'll take my chances," he sportively assured her. "And the only way you can kill me tonight, sweet-scented woman," he whispered, his dark fingers unbuttoning the collar of her nightgown, "is a sweet death I welcome." Unfastening the last of the buttons, he slid the loose gown over Blaze's shoulders, his fingers splayed and drifting like silken caresses down her arms. "I've missed you like hell," he murmured. "Do you know how long it's been?" His breathing had altered, and Blaze felt his arousal come to life, felt the heat and pulsing splendor.
Her hands were being slipped free from the sleeves and she thought, as she did each time Hazard touched her, that such gentleness was like liquid pleasure. How could a man trained to warfare have hands that moved on her body like velvet? "Too long," she softly sighed, reaching up to bring his face to hers. "Way too long," she informed him in a low voice lush with promise, and holding his face with her small hands lying fragrant on his cheeks, she kissed him as if the world were going to end in the next minute. When her tongue invaded his mouth, softly demanding, his arms locked around her, one curving around her neck and shoulders strongly, pulling her closer, smothering her hair, crushing her to him with a desire unrequited for so many weeks.
What happened tonight, he thought, was past judgment or analysis, whatever the cruelties or failures. It was inevitable. And that it might be hopeless too no longer mattered. With joy he held her. With joy and disquiet and aching tenderness.
She was his wife. There was no turning back.
It was the jubilant spring of his soul's hardest winter.
It was walking on air.
It was madness.
He entered her hesitantly as if he were a young boy, uncertain. And glided into her melting moistness so slowly she protested.
"Jon," she softly cried, arching up to draw him in, demanding more, pulling him closer. He resisted briefly; she could feel the strong muscles of his back beneath her hands contract. "Please…"
"I don't want to hurt you," he murmured, withholding himself.
"Oh, Jon, please, please. You won't hurt me. It doesn't hurt. I'm going to die, Jon, if you don't let me feel you. Jon, please!"
But the "please" ended on an explosive sigh as Jon Hazard Black did what he'd been wanting to do since he first set eyes on his wayward wife in New York. He buried himself in her silky sweetness. "Di awdtsiciky [I love you]," he breathed against her ear. He was home.
Blaze wouldn't let him go, wouldn't let him leave her. He was her lover, her friend, her husband. She wanted all his attention, and she got it. Much later that night, when Hazard rolled off her, he teasingly noted, "Only a rest, bia… don't get alarmed."
The bed was a shambles. They were both damp with sweat.
"I'd forgotten how demanding you were, puss," he mocked, stretching his arms high and flexing his back.
"Complaining?" Blaze purred, smoothing his hair slickly behind one ear.
He turned his head and looked at her. She was flushed, tousled, adorable… and his. "Do I," he said with a slow smile, "look like a fool?"
VERY early in the morning while Blaze still slept, Hazard bathed in the creek and then ate breakfast with Lydia.
"You look as though you were able to mend your differences," she observed. Hazard's smile was contagious.
"Thanks to you."
"No thanks needed. You would have figured it out sooner or later yourself. She sleepin'?"