Fire and Rain (15 page)

 "Why?" Carla asked without warning, as though only seconds had intervened since Luke had stood with her and looked out over the late afternoon on the promontory half a mile up September Canyon.

 Not turning around, Luke answered in the same way. "Why did I grab you three years ago?" He laughed roughly. "Hell, schoolgirl, you're not that naive.

 "And I'm not a schoolgirl anymore. Didn't Cash tell you? I went to college year-round so I could graduate in three years."

 Luke said nothing.

 Carla persisted, unable to help herself, needing to know about the night that had changed her life, the night that apparently had scarred Luke, too. "Why do you regret what happened so much?"

 For a long time there was only silence and the sinuous dance of fire and rain.

 "It was the sweetest offer I've ever had," Luke said finally. "You deserved better for it than I gave you. You deserved slow dancing and candlelight kisses and candy wrapped in fancy foil. You deserved a gentle refusal or a gentle lover, and you got … me."

 Carla was too surprised to speak. She watched Luke's shoulders move in what could have been a shrug or the unconscious motion of a man readjusting a heavy burden.

 "There was nothing gentle or civilized in me that night. I wanted you until I shook with it. I'd wanted you like that for years. When you seemed to want me, I lost my head."

 Luke turned, snapped his wrist and sent the dregs of his coffee hissing into the fire.

 "It's just as well," he continued. "Once I was sober I'd have hated myself for taking you. You were so damned innocent. It was better that some other man got to be your first lover. At least he didn't hurt you."

 "What?"

 Again Luke laughed roughly as he bent over the coffeepot, refilling his cup while he talked. "If your lover had hurt you, it would have made the front pages – 'Cash McQueen Avenges Kid Sister.' But there weren't any headlines."

 "Not surprising. There wasn't any lover, either."

Luke's head snapped up. For the first time since they had come to camp he looked directly at Carla. Firelight outlined his shocked expression.

 "Are you saying that you're … that you haven't…?"

 "You needn't look at me like I just fell out of a passing UFO," Carla said uncomfortably. "Has it ever occurred to you that all the studies saying half or two-thirds of girls have lovers before they're married also means that between one-third and one-half of the girls
don't
? What's so shocking about that?"

 "One-third of you are saving yourselves for marriage, is that it?" Luke asked as he set aside the coffeepot and straightened up again.

 Carla shrugged, but Luke didn't notice. He had turned his back to the fire again – and to her.

 "I don't know what their reason for waiting is," Carla said. "I only know mine."

 Silence, a sip of coffee, then Luke asked slowly, "What's your reason?"

 "The flame isn't worth the candle."

 "What?"

 "More pain than gain," Carla said succinctly. "You see, the older I get, the more I realize that I don't like men being close to me. Not like that. Breathing their breath. Tasting them. Not able to move without touching them. Close."

 Slowly, as though pulled against his will, Luke turned around to face Carla again. He looked at her for a long, taut moment before he said, "You had a funny way of showing it that night in the dining room when you gave me the sweetest dessert a man ever had."

 The memory of those few, incredible moments in Luke's arms went through Carla like lightning. She tried to speak but was afraid to trust her voice. She licked her lips, looked away from him and tried again to talk.

 "It's different with you," she said huskily. "It always has been. I can't … help it. That's just how it is."

 Although Carla tried to speak casually, her voice trembled. The honesty of her words hadn't come without cost; but then, neither had Luke's confession that it had been desire rather than contempt for her that had driven him three years ago.

 Abruptly Luke turned away and began prowling the perimeter of the overhang as though he were a cougar measuring the dimensions of its captivity. Half a creature of fire, half a creature of night, wrapped in the elemental rhythms of rain, Luke was a figure born from Carla's dreams. Unable to look away from his lithe, powerful, restless movements, she simply sat and watched him with a soul-deep hunger she couldn't disguise.

 And then he turned and looked at her with a hunger as deep as her own.

~13~

Slowly Carla came to her feet. Without looking away from Luke she skirted the fire, scarcely aware of the flames, for it was the golden blaze of Luke's eyes that consumed her. Motionless, waiting, every muscle taut with his inner struggle, he watched her slow approach. He knew he should turn away from her, walk out into the rain and keep on walking until the heavy running of his blood slowed. He shouldn't stay rooted to the land while she came closer to him. He shouldn't watch with eyes narrowed against the pain of wanting and his whole body rigid from battling his endless hunger for the girl who could arouse him with a word, a look, a breath.

 The girl he had promised himself he would never take.

 Carla stopped only inches away from Luke. She looked into his eyes until she could bear no more. She leaned forward, speaking his name in a voice as murmurous as the rain. When there was no answer, she raised a trembling hand to his cheek. The gentle touch of her fingers made him shudder as though he had been brushed by lightning. She felt the violent currents of restraint and passion coursing through him as though they were her own. She knew if she touched him again there would be no more turning back for either of them, no more frustrated desire, nothing but the sweeping reality of a man's hunger and a woman's answering love.

 Where once the depth of Luke's passion had frightened Carla, it now sent wild splinters of sensation through her. She had never felt the sweet violence of her own sensuality with any other man. She doubted that she ever would – not like this, her body shaking as she reached toward the man she had loved before she understood what a man needed from a woman who loved him.

 Delicate fingertips traced Luke's dark eyebrows, the blunt Slavic thrust of his cheekbones, the knife straightness of his nose, the heavy bone of his jaw, caressing him as she had a thousand times in her dreams. When she touched his mouth he made a raw sound and she trembled. That, too, had been part of her dream, his wanting her until he would feel the same tearing pain at not having her that she felt at being separate from him.

 "Love me," Carla breathed against Luke's mouth. "Teach me how to love you."

 "Baby," Luke said hoarsely, shuddering, unable to force himself to step back from her. "Don't do this to me. I've wanted you too long."

 "Please, Luke. Oh, please, don't turn away. I've dreamed of you for so many years."

 Luke looked down at Carla's haunted eyes and trembling lips and suddenly knew that he could no more turn away from her now than he could walk out on his own skin. With that bittersweet realization an odd calm swept through him, a feeling of potency and certainty combined. In no longer battling himself he had redoubled his own strength. That was good. He wanted that extra control. For Carla, not for himself. For Carla he wanted to be the kind of lover he had never been with any woman.

 A small movement of Luke's wrist sent his coffee cup in an arc that ended out in the rain. Slowly his big hands came up and framed Carla's face with a tenderness that stopped her breath. Only in that instant did she admit to herself that she had been expecting a passionate onslaught from Luke of the kind that had frightened her three years ago.

 "I've dreamed, too," Luke said, his voice deep, watching Carla with eyes that reflected the warmth and heat of flames. "I've filled so many empty hours dreaming of living that night all over again, of having you stand in front of me again, offering yourself, looking at me and trembling with hope and desire. And now you're standing in front of me again, and you're trembling … Is it fear, sunshine? Tell me it isn't fear."

 "I don't know why you make me shake," Carla said, trying to laugh, making only an odd, ragged sound. "But I know it isn't fear."

 Luke's slow, essentially male smile made Carla's heart turn over with desire. The leashed hunger in his eyes stopped her breath. Gently he turned her until her back was no longer to the fire. Without moving, hardly even breathing, he looked for a long time at the silken curves of her hair, the elegant arch of her eyebrows and the silent dance of flames reflected in her eyes. And then he began looking at her all over again.

 She didn't understand why he had turned her profile to the fire, why he made no move to touch her now. "L-Luke?"

 "I want to see you," he said simply. "I want you to see me."

 The warmth of his hands enveloped Carla in a gentle vise. His lips traced the graceful margin between her hair and her face, smoothed her eyebrows, breathed warmth against her eyelids, outlined the hollow of her cheeks, whispered along her chin. She stood enthralled, unable to move even if she had wanted to, unable even to breathe, suspended between fire and rain and the unexpected, exquisite tenderness of Luke's passion. When his lips finally brushed her mouth, her pent breath came out in a moan.

 Luke froze, lifted his head and saw the glitter of tears caught in Carla's long lashes.

 "Does my kiss really mean that much to you?" he asked, his voice strained.

 She opened her eyes and looked at him, unable to speak.

 "My God," he whispered, shaken.

 He bent down to her mouth once more, murmuring the nickname he had given to her the first time he had seen her smile so many years ago. The sound of his voice mixed with the fluid murmur of water sliding over stone in the darkness beyond the fire. He brushed her mouth once, twice, then again and again, touching her with the tip of his tongue each time, taking tiny sips of her until her lips parted helplessly, hungrily, and the tip of her tongue touched his.

 "Yes," Luke said huskily, encouraging her. "Do you want that, too? Do you want to taste me the way you did in the dining room?"

 Blindly Carla turned her face to follow Luke's teasing, gentle, maddening mouth, lips that kissed and lifted, kissed and lifted, never giving her what she suddenly, wildly needed. She made a sound of frustration and need that was too ragged to be a word.

 "I hope yes is what you're trying to say, sunshine," he murmured, flexing his hands, pulling her closer to his body. "I hope you liked the taste and feel of me, because remembering that kiss has kept me awake too damned many nights since then."

 Carla's eyes opened in surprise. "You, too? I would lie in bed and remember kissing you."

 She didn't understand what it did to Luke to hear that hunger for him had left her sleepless. She only knew that the powerful hands framing her face trembled for an instant. He breathed a word that could have been prayer or curse or both hotly mingled.

 "Show me the kind of kiss you wanted when you lay awake," Luke said against Carla's lips. "Show me your dreams. Let me make them come true."

 Her arms slid up around Luke's neck as she pulled herself up on tiptoe, balancing against his big body. His palms slid from her face to her shoulders and then around her waist, holding her close, but not so close that she would be frightened by the hard bulge of flesh beneath his jeans. Softly her lips brushed his and her tongue glided along his lower lip. He shuddered but made no move to take her mouth. Her arms tightened more and she trembled.

 "Please," Carla whispered against his lips. "Please, Luke. In my dreams I tasted you."

 Luke's lips opened on a low sound of pleasure-pain and suddenly there was no barrier to the kind of kiss Carla had both remembered and dreamed. Her tongue sought and found his for a wild, hungry tasting; and then his arms closed harshly around her, arching her into his body in helpless response to the naked, innocent demands of her kiss. Instantly he tried to pull back, cursing his own loss of control.

 But Luke found he couldn't pull back. An unexpected, fiercely feminine strength held him close, for Carla was placing no leash on her own response, her own dreams. She was kissing him as she had dreamed of being kissed, hunger and trembling, heat and sensual fire; and something more, something she couldn't name but knew waited for her within this one man's arms.

 Luke bent down, arching Carla's supple body more deeply, bending her into the curve of his own body, satisfying her instinctive urgency to match a woman's soft heat with a man's hard need. His arms tightened even more as he slowly lifted her until she had no support but his strength, no place to rest but against his hard flesh, nothing but his heat and hunger surrounding her. She was spinning languidly, turning, folded in hot darkness, sweetly consumed by fire, and Luke was spinning with her, the taste of him spreading through her, his arms locked around her, a dream coming true, wrapping her in ribbons of fire.

 A long time passed before Carla felt herself being lowered slowly to the ground, still held so close as Luke eased her down his body that she could feel each ripple of his muscles, the snaps of his shirt, the blunt metal of his belt buckle and the much blunter ridge of his arousal pressing against her. When her feet touched the ground she stumbled, taken unaware by the weakness of her knees. Instantly his arms tightened, supporting her. She felt the rock hardness of his thighs and then he groaned, locking her hips against his as he moved in the primal rhythms that had once frightened her and now sent an incandescent heat cascading through her, echoing the movement of his hips.

 Groaning, Luke tore his mouth away from Carla's and forced himself to loosen his hold on her. He was breathing roughly, all but out of control. His mouth felt empty, violently hungry for the sultry completion it had so recently known. He closed his eyes, caught between frustration and surprise.

 "Luke?" Carla asked shakily. "What is it? Did I do something wrong?"

 His eyes opened. Her breath stopped as she looked at the twin pools of molten gold. His smile was like his eyes, hot and restrained, bemused and very hungry.