“Will you take the gold on Lucifer?” Janna asked after a silence. She forced her voice to be almost normal, although her palm still felt his caresses as though his beard had been black flames burning through her flesh to the bone beneath.
“He’s strong enough to take the gold and me both and still run rings around any other horse.”
“Then you’ll have to use a surcingle on him, too, either for stirrups or to hold the saddlebags in place or both.”
“The thought had occurred to me,” he said.
“First time he feels that strap bite into his barrel should be real interesting.”
Ty shifted the gold on his shoulder again and said no more.
In silence they continued toward the camp beneath the red stone overhang. Janna felt no need to speak, for the simple reason that there was little more to say. Either Lucifer would accept a rider or he wouldn’t. If he didn’t, the odds for survival against Cascabel were too small to be called even a long shot.
“We have to talk Mad Jack into leaving the gold behind,” she said finally.
Ty had been thinking the same thing. He also had been thinking about how he would feel in Mad Jack’s shoes—old, ill, eaten up with guilt for past mistakes, seeing one chance to make it all right and die with a clean conscience.
“It’s his shot at heaven,” Ty said.
“It’s our ticket straight to hell.”
“Try convincing him.”
“I’m going to do just that.”
Janna’s chin came up and she quickened her pace, leaving Ty behind. But when she strode into camp, all that was there of Mad Jack was a piece of paper held down by a stone. On the paper he had painfully written the closest town to the farm he had abandoned so many years ago. Beneath that were the names of his five children.
“Jack!” she called. “Wait! Come back!”
No voice answered her. She turned and sprinted toward the meadow.
“What’s wrong?” Ty demanded.
“He’s gone!”
“That crafty old son of a bitch.” Ty swore and dropped the heavy saddlebags with a thump. “He knew what would happen when we found out how much gold there was to haul out of here. He took our promise to get his gold to his children and then he ran like the hounds of hell were after him.”
She raised her hands to her mouth. A hawk’s wild cry keened across the meadow. Zebra’s head came up and she began trotting toward them.
“What are you going to do?” Ty asked.
“Find him. He’s too old to have gotten far in this short a time.”
Ty all but threw Janna up on top of Zebra. Instants later the mare was galloping on a long diagonal that would end at the narrow entrance to the valley. By the time they arrived at the slot, Zebra was beginning to sweat both from the pace and from the urgency she sensed in her rider. Janna flung herself off the mare and ran to the twilight shadow of the slot canyon.
Heedless of the uncertain footing, she plunged forward. She didn’t call Mad Jack’s name. She didn’t want the call to echo where it might be overheard by passing renegades.
No more than fifty feet into the slot, she sensed that something was wrong. She froze in place, wondering what her instincts were trying to tell her.
There was no unexpected sound. No unexpected scent. No moving shadows. No sign that she wasn’t alone.
“That’s what’s wrong,” she whispered. “There’s no sign at all.”
She went onto her hands and knees, but no matter how hard she examined the ground, the only traces of any passage over the dry stream course were those she herself had just left.
Zebra’s head flew up in surprise when Janna hurtled back into the valley from the slot.
“Easy, girl. Easy,” she said breathlessly.
She swung onto the mare. Within moments a rhythmic thunder was again rolling from beneath Zebra’s hooves. When she galloped past Lucifer, he lifted his head for an instant, then resumed biting off succulent mouthfuls of grass, undisturbed by the pair racing by. In past summers, Zebra and Janna often had galloped around while he grazed.
“Well?” Ty demanded when the mare galloped into the campsite.
“He’s still in the valley. You take the left side and I’ll take the right.”
Ty looked out over the meadow. “Waste of time. He’s not here.”
“That’s impossible. There’s not one mark in that little slot canyon that I didn’t put there myself. He’s still here.”
“Then he’s between us and Lucifer.”
Janna looked to the place where the stallion grazed no more than a hundred feet away. There wasn’t enough cover to hide a rabbit, much less a man.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Wind is from that direction. Lucifer stopped testing the wind and settled down to graze about ten minutes ago.”
Janna’s urgency drained from her, leaving her deflated. If the stallion didn’t scent Mad Jack it was because he wasn’t around to be scented.
Grimly she looked at the heavy saddlebags, an old man’s legacy to a life he had abandoned years before. It was too heavy a burden—but it was theirs to bear. Her only consolation was that Ty’s share, plus her own, should be enough to buy his dream.
She didn’t know how much silken ladies cost on the open market, but surely sixty pounds of gold would be enough.
Ty’s expression as he looked at the saddlebags was every bit as grim as Janna’s. His consolation, however, was different. He figured that her thirty pounds of gold, plus his thirty, would be more than enough to ensure that she would never have to submit her soft body to any man in order to survive.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lucifer’s ears flattened and he screamed his displeasure, lashing out with his hind feet. Ty made no attempt to hold the mustang. He just ducked and ran for cover. The stallion exploded into wicked bucking as he tried to dislodge the surcingle Ty had cut from the buffalo robe in Janna’s trunk. When bucking didn’t work, the stallion tried outrunning the strap and the flapping rope stirrups.
By the time Lucifer realized that he couldn’t outrun the contraption clinging to his back—and that he wasn’t being attacked by whatever was on him—the stallion’s neck and flanks were white with lather and he was breathing hard.
Janna wasn’t surprised at the horse’s signs of exertion. The stud had been racing flat out around the valley for nearly half an hour.
“Lord, but that’s one strong horse,” she said.
Ty grunted. He wasn’t looking forward to the next part of the stallion’s education, the part when he felt a man’s weight on his back for the first time. he approached the big mustang slowly, speaking in a low voice.
“Yeah, I know, it’s a hell of a world when you can’t outrun all of life’s traps and entanglements. But it isn’t as bad as it seems to you right now,” he murmured, stroking the stallion. “Ask Zebra. She took to the surcingle and stirrups like the good-hearted lady she is.”
Lucifer snorted and butted his head against Ty as though to draw the man’s attention to the irritation caused by the unwanted straps.
“Sorry, son. I’ll rub away the itches but I’m not taking off that surcingle. I had enough trouble getting the damned thing on you in the first place.”
Janna had a hard time not saying a heartfelt “amen.” Watching him risk his life under Lucifer’s hooves in the process of getting the surcingle in place had been the most difficult thing she had ever done. She had both admired Ty’s gentle persistence and regretted ever asking him not to use restraints on the powerful stallion.
He continued petting and talking to Lucifer until the horse calmed down. Gradually Ty’s strokes became different. He leaned hard on his hands as he moved them over the horse, concentrating mainly on the portion of Lucifer’s back just behind the withers, where a man would ride. At first the stallion moved away from the pressure. Ty followed, talking patiently, leaning gently and then with more force, trying to accustom the mustang to his weight.
So was the fact that some horses broken that way weren’t trustworthy. They tended to wait until the rider was relaxed and then unload him with a few wicked twists.
Yet Ty had to be able to trust Lucifer with his life, and he had promised Janna to treat the stallion as gently as possible and still get the job done.
Breath came in sharply and then stuck in her throat while she watched Ty shift his weight until his boots no longer touched the ground. Lucifer moved nervously, turned around in a circle rapidly several times, then accepted the fact that Ty’s soothing voice was coming from a new direction. After a few minutes the stallion began grazing rather irritably, ignoring the fact that a man was draped belly down over his back.
By the time two more hours passed, Ty had gotten Lucifer to the point of not flinching or even particularly noticing when Ty’s weight shifted from the ground to the horse’s back. Janna had seen Ty creep into position, moving so slowly that every muscle stood out as he balanced against gravity and the mustang’s wary, mincing steps. When Ty finally eased from his stomach to a rider’s normal seat, Janna wanted to cheer. All that kept her quiet was an even bigger desire not to spook the mustang.
For the stallion’s part, Lucifer simply twitched his ears and kept grazing when Ty sat upright. The horse’s whole stance proclaimed that the bizarre actions of his human companion no longer disturbed him.
Elation spread through Ty when he felt the calm strength of the stallion beneath him. More than ever, he was certain that Lucifer had been gently bred, raised by humans, and then had escaped from his owners to run free before any brand of ownership had been put on his shiny black hide.
“You’re a beauty,” Ty murmured, praising the stallion with voice and hands. “Does part of you know that you were born and bred to be a man’s friend?”
Lucifer lipped grass casually, stopping every few minutes to sniff the wind. Ty made no attempt to guide the stallion with the hackamore. He simply sat and let the mustang graze in a normal manner. When the stud moved in the course of grazing, he walked a bit awkwardly at first, unaccustomed to the weight settled just behind his withers.
By the time the sun was tracing the last part of its downward arc in the west, Lucifer was moving with his former confidence, adjusting automatically to the presence of a rider. Occasionally he would turn and sniff Ty’s boot as though to say, “What, are you still here? Well, never mind. You’re not in the way.”
Ty’s answer was always the same, praise and a hand stroking sleek muscles. When the stud responded to a firm, steady pull on the hackamore by turning in that direction, the praise and the pats were redoubled. When the pulls were accompanied by gentle nudges with Ty’s heels, Lucifer learned to move forward. When the pressure on the hackamore was a steady pull backward, the stallion learned to stop.
“That’s it for now, son,” he said, sliding carefully from Lucifer’s back. “You get the rest of the day off.”
The stallion snorted and sidestepped at the release of the pressure from his back, but that was all. When Ty raised his hands and tied the hackamore lead rope securely around the black neck, Lucifer didn’t even flinch.
“You’re a shining wonder,” Ty murmured.
Lucifer promptly put his head against the man’s chest and rubbed hard, trying to dislodge the hackamore. Laughing softly, Ty began soothing away the itches that came from wearing leather against hot, sweaty hide.
“Sorry, son. I’m going to leave all this gear in place. It won’t hurt you and it will save me a hell of a lot of trouble come tomorrow, when the lessons resume. But right now you’ve earned a good graze and I’ve earned some time in the Tub. Get along, son. Go over and berate Zebra about the crazy humans she sicced on you.”
A few minutes later Janna looked up from sorting herbs and saw that Lucifer was riderless. For a moment her heart turned over in fear. Then she realized that Ty had probably dismounted of his own accord, giving both himself and Lucifer a rest.
She turned back to her herbs, testing the leaves’ dryness. Fragrances both pungent and mild rose from the rustling herbs as she set some aside to be taken from the valley and designated others to be made into tinctures or lotions or balms. She knew that she wouldn’t have time to properly prepare more than a fraction of the herbs and seeds she had collected, but that didn’t stop her. Working with them gave her hands something to do besides remember how it had felt to touch Ty and her mind something to do besides think about leaving the valley behind and then leaving Ty behind, as well.
Stop thinking about it, she told herself urgently. And don’t think about Mad Jack probably being sick or Cascabel probably waiting to kill me. Don’t think about anything but these herbs. I can’t affect Mad Jack or Ty or that cruel renegade. I can make lotions, though. I can make a batch of stomach medicine and leave it behind. I can do the same with the other medicines. I can do anything I want while I’m still here.
Except seduce Ty.
Herbs and seeds tangled and fell to the ground as her hands jerked at the thought of seducing him. She bit back unhappy words and picked up the mess. The second time she thought of making love with him the same thing happened. Her fingers were just too shaky to deal with anything as finicky as preparing medicines.
“Well, I can at least get some of that sulfur water from the high spring,” she muttered to herself. “Surely that shouldn’t be too difficult for my clumsy hands.”
She grabbed a small metal pot and set off toward the Tub. In the past weeks the trail had become rather well beaten. Both she and Ty loved to float in the warm water and watch the clouds change shape overhead. They did their floating alone, but the thought of what had happened the one time they had been together in the Tub nearly made her drop the small pot. She would have given a great deal to be allowed again to touch him so tenderly, so intimately, so wildly. Just once more.
Just once before they left the valley and never saw each other again.
When she entered the narrowest part of the valley, the hot springs’ steamy silence brought an onslaught of memories. The lush profusion of soft-leaved plants, the sparkling condensation of water on black rock, the vague sulfur odor underlying that of earth and sun and greenery, everything combined in her mind to create a dizzying mixture of memory and desire.
And then she saw Ty rise out of the nearest pool and stand naked on the sandy shore. Silver streamers of mist lifted from his hot skin, moving as he moved, their fragile grace in sharp contrast to the bunch and ripple of his powerful muscles.
Unable to move, she simply stared at him, transfixed by his pagan beauty, memorizing every pattern of water curling down through the dark hair of his chest and torso and thighs.
She didn’t have to look at his face to know that he had seen her. The visible evidence of his maleness stirred into life, growing rapidly, insistently, rising from its dark nest of hair as inevitably as Ty had risen from the steaming pool.
The pot she carried made a sharp sound as she dropped it onto a rock. She didn’t even hear it. She had attention for nothing but the man who stood naked before her. Without knowing it she began walking to him.
The expression on Janna’s face was the most potent aphrodisiac Ty had ever known. A savage, elemental need twisted through him, black lightning tightening his body until he could barely speak; and with the lightning came an even blacker despair.
He had fought so hard to keep from touching Janna, from taking her, from making her feel like a convenience with no value beyond the passionate moment. He had lain awake night after night in the willows, his body on fire, his mind determined not to allow himself the surcease he knew waited within her generous, sensuous body. But he had
also known that whatever private hell of deprivation he suffered would be worth it if he never again had to listen to Janna describe herself as a whore.
Yet there she was, inches from him, and her gray eyes blazed with the same need that burned within him.
“Janna,” Ty said hoarsely. “No.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Janna’s slim fingers covered Ty’s lips, preventing him from saying any more.
“It’s all right,” she murmured. “I just want to...” Whatever she was trying to say was lost temporarily when she bent her head and kissed the hard swell of his biceps. “Yes,” she breathed, shivering with the exquisite pleasure of brushing her lips over his naked arm. “Let me...”
When the tip of Janna’s tongue traced the shadow line between Ty’s arm and the flexed muscles of his chest, he made a sound as though he were in pain. And she knew that it was need, not pain, that had dragged that sound from his body. The cry sent piercing needles of pleasure through her, making her tremble with the intensity of her response. She turned her head and found the dark, flat disk of his nipple with her tongue and lightly raked the erect nub with her teeth.
His hands closed suddenly around her upper arms as though to push her away, but the attempt never was made. His hands refused to take the commands of his mind. He simply couldn’t force himself to push her away. He had wanted her too much for too long. He held her closer and shuddered as though each gliding caress from her tongue was a harsh blow rather than the most tender kind of caress.
“Yes,” she whispered, feeling the lightning strokes of desire wracking the man she loved. “Yes, you need this. You need...” She shivered and her teeth pressing into the hard muscles of his torso became less gentle. “You need to...be tasted. And I need to taste you. Please, Ty. Let me. Please.”
She didn’t wait for an answer before she flowed down his body. The flesh beneath her caressing mouth was hot, misted with sweat, tasting of salt and passion and the indefinable flavor of masculinity. Touching him was a pleasure so great it was nearly pain. A shivering ripple of sound came from her lips, for she had dreamed of being given the gift of his body once more.