She pulled off her boots and socks, then unbuttoned the dusty jeans and slid them down
. To continue washing off the stain of Hamby’s touch.
She shuddered, thinking of the outlaw, somehow sensing that eyes were on her now
. She glanced into the window, saw the silhouette behind her of a man — the upper half of a tall man framed by the window. The filmy curtains blew around him like a shroud.
Spinning rapidly, she stooped to snatch up her clothing, to try to cover her nude body.
“Too late, bitch” he said, climbing through the open window. One brown eye stared at her; the other angled sideways. “I’ve seen everything I want.”
He was on her then; she saw the bright blade flashing
. His hand tightened around her throat, choking back her screams.
Her screams that came from somewhere, fighting past sleep’s barrier.
She fought wildly, fists slamming into his chest, his face. She was struggling on . . . the bed? He pinned her hands down, shouting past her terror.
“Anna
! Anna! It’s just me! Stop fighting — please, stop fighting!”
Quivering with terror, her scream changed to a sob
. The sheets were drenched with sweat, as they always were after one of her nightmares. At last, she recognized the handsome face above her, Quinn’s. Her flailing limbs grew still.
She saw the swelling smudge beneath his left eye
. “I hit you?”
He released her shoulders and nodded, than sat against a pillow he propped up on the headboard. “I came when I heard you screaming
. You didn’t know me. Your eyes were open, but you were seeing — something else.”
She sat up and leaned her head against his bare chest
. She wanted him to hold her, to help her stop her trembling, to make the fear recede.
“I’m sorry that I hurt you,” she whispered, conscious for the first time of the thinness of the nightgown she had borrowed once she’d washed
. Conscious of the difference in the shadows of the room, the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the open window. She must have slept for hours before she’d dreamed.
“What did you see, Anna?”
She shook her head against him. His few coarse chest hairs tickled against her chin, but otherwise, he felt so warm, so solid. She never wanted him to let her go.
“I don’t want to talk about it
. I just want it to go away.”
He stroked her hair, as if she were a small child, then softly kissed the top of her head
. She arched her neck back, slowly, until his kisses fell upon her mouth.
His strength flowed into her, skin to skin and lips to lips
. A strength so gentle that it soothed her body’s shaking, so natural that it felt like coming home.
He broke off the kiss first, though he held her so close she felt his words fan warmth against her cheek
. “I want you, Anna. I have always wanted you, but never more than I do now.”
She stroked the stubble of his cheek
. “This won’t change anything between us. It won’t change what’s past.”
“But
we’ve
changed so much. We’re not who we were then. What happened was another life, another woman. You’re so much more than she was.”
“It still hurts, just the same
. Too many reminders, too many regrets.” She turned to lean her back against his chest.
“What I regret is letting you go back to the cabin, not admitting to myself — or you — the way I feel
. I could have lost you, Anna. For a while, I thought I had. It was dark when I rode back, but I could see you. I could see them killing you inside my mind.”
Fear prickled up her neck, and she shuddered at the echo of her nightmare in his words.
He wrapped his arms around her, held her. “I realized then, I love you. What I saw and loved of Annie Faith was only her potential, the woman she was destined to become.”
“‘My only love sprung from my only hate,’” she quoted, her voice trembling as it had with the nightmare.
“But this time,” he continued, reaching forward, his hands settling gently on her breasts, “this time it’s not too late.”
Her head rolled back and she leaned against him, enjoying the fire his touch provoked
. The way he cupped her breasts, the way his thumbs stroked her nipples. She ached with need for him and longing. Longing to possess and be possessed.
He rolled her over, pinioning her gently on the bed, and she could not stop his kisses, could not stop herself from kissing back, her mouth opening as if to drink him in.That served only to inflame him, and his lips trailed moist kisses down to her neckline, which he pulled down to expose her breasts
. She felt the heat of his mouth suckling, and her body arched, wild with its want.
He paused to pull off his clothing, and in those moments, she peeled away her borrowed gown
. When he returned to her, she touched him. Her hands remembered all the things he’d taught her long ago. Her heart remembered the long-forgotten joy of pleasing him.
And as she caressed him, his fingers and his lips did not forget her either
. He consumed her with his kisses, stroked the source of all her heat. Then he pulled his body above her, and satisfied the craving he had been meant to fill. Again, again, he thrust deep inside her. Her hips arched toward a rhythm that both felt but neither heard. Faster, faster, like the hoof beats of the swiftest racehorse, the pounding of their hearts.
Faster, until it roared into full flame that brought a rush of heat, a cataclysmic light . .
. She heard him cry out with it, and she smiled, feeling powerful and overpowered all at once. Feeling complete, for the first time in all her life.
That was when she realized she had abandoned her reserve
. That secret place she’d fled to while a man was using her. Sometimes she had felt things — as the Quinn of old had moved her — but this time, she’d been present, equally involved. Risking her heart, not just her body.
The thought frightened her so deeply, she wanted to retreat
. To go back to her safety, back to the canyon where both heart and soul belonged.
April 9,1884
Quinn watched Anna ride ahead of him and wondered what he’d done to cause her to withdraw into herself. Ever since yesterday, when they’d made love, she’d barely spoken a score words to him.
It could not have been the physical act that distanced her, not when she had given herself so eagerly
. Nor could it have been the fear that that was all he’d wanted. In an attempt to reassure her, he’d told her half a dozen times how much he loved her, how he would never let her go. But that did nothing to thaw the barrier he’d felt rise up between them, nothing to explain her wall of ice.
When they set out this morning, Anna had claimed the half-breed’s dark bay gelding, a scrawny but less temperamental mount than the roan she’d ridden yesterday
. When they’d found the Cortéz family walking among the scattered white-barked aspens, her reticence dissolved into another flood of Spanish conversation, hugs, and shared tears. From outside the circle of their friendship, he’d suggested that they give the couple the roan gelding, as well as their gray horse.
Anna’s nod was quick, her smile fleeting
. He’d thought his offer might touch her, but now, hours later, her silence was complete.
He jogged his mare past a thicket of stunted live oak to catch up with Anna’s bay horse
. Unlike the tall aspens of two hours before, the forest of the chaparral grew no taller than a man on horseback. He disliked it, knowing how easily it could harbor dangerous surprises. The thought of animal predators scarcely concerned him, but the human type was often on his mind.
“We’ll need to make camp soon,” he said
. “We have a long ride tomorrow if we’re to get home by nightfall.”
She turned her head toward him, and he wished she’d take her hat off, so he could see her eyes.
“Your home, not mine.” Her words floated soft and sparse between them, like the seed of milkweed or suspended notes from an old song.
Like her words, the day was fading softly toward its close.
“Home is not a place. It’s with a person, or the people, you love best.” Why couldn’t she see that? Why couldn’t she come with him and be happy?
The late afternoon sunlight slanted between a pair of gnarled trees to light her face, to touch her eyes at last
. But it availed him nothing, for her expression showed him only pain.
“Ryan . . . Quinn
. I can’t give back what you deserve.”
“I’ve told you, I love you
. You give me everything already.”
“You know that isn’t true
. I can’t. I’m too afraid.”
“Afraid of me?” he asked her.
“Afraid of everything. Afraid if I give you my trust, my heart, you’ll break it. Afraid of Hamby and his men. Afraid . . . afraid.” Her eyes rounded abruptly, as if another nightmare gripped her, as if she saw — and felt and heard — things far beyond his reach.
“What is it?” He asked as the horses walked.
“I’d forgotten — I’d forgotten what he said!” She whispered, as if she spoke only to herself.
“Anna, answer me.”
“When Hamby tried to hurt me, he said that Cameron — Judge Cameron wants me dead.”
“Cameron
? But why? Why after all this time?”
She shook her head
. “I don’t know. I’ll admit it makes no sense.”
“How would he even know you’re alive?”
“I can’t imagine. Wait. Could he have read the papers for the change of ownership?”
“What change?”
Twenty yards ahead, Notion barked, sending a startled jackrabbit bounding past their horses. Titania whinnied in fear and danced to one side, but Quinn quickly calmed her. The bay laid back his ears and snorted, but otherwise ignored the chase. Notion, still limping slightly, drew up short, sat on his haunches and whined once, as if a show of frustration might make his prey turn itself in.
“This looks like a good spot to make camp.” Quinn motioned toward a bald hillock partly ringed by an arroyo
. Several deeper pockets in the gully held water for the horses and themselves. If they camped on the hillock, they could see above the undersized trees, so no pursuers could surprise them.
Anna nodded, then dismounted
. As they unsaddled their horses, she continued with her explanation. “Señora Valdez left her land to me. Eduardo Rodriguez — Catalina’s husband — filed papers for me witnessing the fact that she had died and transferring the land into my name. He said he took them to the county clerk of Agua Fresca. Isn’t that in Copper Ridge?”
He nodded
. “What was it she left you?”
“Her husband’s Mexican land grant, the whole of Cañon del Sangre de Cristo and a bit of the surrounding area.”
“Didn’t you worry that the judge or the sheriff of Mud Wasp would still be looking for you?”
She shook her head
. “Not really. Annie Faith was left for dead. Who was to know she’d turn up again years later as Anna Bennett? And who’s to care about some remote land grant that this Bennett woman owned? The canyon’s beautiful, but what’s it good for?”
What’s it good for
?
The phrase brought back a snatch of conversation he’d overhead while he was waiting to talk to the judge one morning about six weeks before. The assayer was just leaving, telling Cameron, “You see a worthless wilderness, and you wonder what’s it good for, ’cept as spawnin’ grounds for redskins and a coupla sorry Mexican
ranchos
. Then all a sudden like, it’s a place that turns men into kings. It’s a modern miracle, it’s that.”
The two had laughed, and afterward, Judge Cameron had emphasized that Quinn was paid to see to law and order only within the bounds of Copper Ridge
. He’d spewed out some legal nonsense regarding jurisdictions, but Quinn didn’t pay much heed. He’d ceased to care much about anything since he had learned his family died.
The memory of those black years fell upon him like a shroud, but he shrugged aside the dark and forced his mind to focus on the conversation he was having now.
He used a curved pick to clean his mare’s hooves. “Cameron must have somehow found out who you are, or he would have never sent Hamby after you this late.”
“But how?”
He frowned at her, hating to bring up the possibility. “Wanted posters? They would give your name and alias.”
“But I never —” she began, then stopped abruptly.
“Never drugged and robbed anybody besides me?” He let go of Titania’s near foreleg, and she stamped on his big toe. Stifling a yelp, he watched for Anna’s reaction to his question and moved on to the next hoof.
Her back stiffened, and her voice grew defiant
. “Back in Virginia City. I hired on to be a singer, but he tried to force me to be a whore!”
“Where else, Anna?”