Fire and Rain (17 page)

 The slow consummation wrung a low moan from Carla. She had never felt anything so exquisite as the merging of flesh with flesh, the elemental fire of her lover's body blending with her own equally elemental rain. A lightning stroke of pain flashed through her, but it swirled away and was lost in the glittering, gathering storm that was consuming her – Luke's mouth on her neck, her throat, her eyelids, and his fiery words licking over her. She arched upward again and again in the primal rhythm of the union. His body enfolded her, surged deeply within her, a part of her. She tried to tell him that she could take no more, the pleasure was too great, she was dying; but the only word she could say was his name. A glittering darkness swept over her, followed by a wild shimmering of her body that shook her to her soul, hurling her into ecstasy.

 Luke heard his own name called again and again, a passionate litany that echoed the rhythmic tightening of Carla's body beneath him, around him, demanding all that he had withheld, all that he was, all that he had. Her name was a hoarse cry torn from his throat as passion exploded into a release that was unlike any he had ever known, violent and tender at once, ecstasy convulsing him savagely, softly, endlessly, as he gave himself to the woman he had sworn never to take.

~14~

Carla stirred and reached out for the muscular warmth she had become accustomed to during the night. When her hands found nothing but cool air and emptiness rather than Luke's big body, her eyes opened. An instant later she saw him. Wearing only jeans, he was standing at the edge of the overhang, sipping coffee, watching a land swept clean by rain. As though he sensed that she had awakened, he turned around. The hot cascade of sunlight pouring in behind him made it impossible for her to see the expression on his face.

 Without a word Luke came and sat on his heels next to Carla's sleeping bag. Light illuminated half his face, leaving the other half in darkness. For long moments he watched Carla with tawny, enigmatic eyes. Cradled between his hands, the metal camp cup sent fragrant steam into the air.

 "Are you all right?" he asked finally.

 She nodded and slid her hand from the sleeping bag's warmth to touch the smoothness of Luke's freshly shaved cheek.

 He closed his eyes. "Are you sure?"

 "Luke, what's wrong?"

 "When I washed this morning…" His voice faded. "You bled last night."

 "It didn't hurt then. Or now."

 Luke said something rough underneath his breath and stood up with an abrupt surge of power. "
You were a virgin
."

 "You knew that before you – we—" Carla stammered. "Luke, I told you. You knew!"

 "Yes," he said savagely. "I knew. But I didn't really
know
until I saw your blood on my body this morning. Then it all became real. Too real." He raked his fingers through his hair. "God, what a mess!"

 Carla felt as though she had been struck. Stunned, she said nothing.

 Without looking at her, Luke stalked back to the overhang and stared broodingly out over the uninhabited land.

 "Well, schoolgirl, you got what you wanted," Luke said after a moment, sending the dregs of his coffee arcing into the sunshine with a brutal snap of his wrist. "I hope to hell it was worth the price."

 "I don't – don't understand."

 "No, I don't suppose you do. That's what being young is all about. Doing and not understanding. But I understand. I should have walked away from you. I knew it the same way I know fire is hot and rain is wet." Memories tightened Luke's body, echoes of a passionate night he would never forget. "But I didn't have the strength to walk away from you."

 Carla felt cold seeping into her flesh, settling in an icy lump at the pit of her stomach as she remembered what Luke had told her weeks before:
Stay away from me, sunshine. I'm afraid I won't have the strength to say no. Then I would take you and hate you…

 "Get up, Carla. I've got water warmed for you. After you wash we'll go into town and make a bigger mistake than we made last night. But there's no help for that, either."

 There was no inflection in Luke's voice, nothing to tell Carla what he was thinking.

 "What will be doing in town?" she asked warily.

 "Can't you guess, schoolgirl? This is your lucky day. You're getting married."

 There was a long silence while Carla measured the hard features of the man she loved.

 "Why?" she asked.

 Luke made a savage, impatient gesture. "Last night, that's why, and you damned well know it. You came to September Canyon a virgin. No man worth the name would take that from you and give nothing in return."

 A slow, complex anger blossomed in Carla. She had dreamed of marriage to Luke, but never under these circumstances – duty and honor, not love.

 
He didn't love me years ago. He didn't love me last night. He doesn't love me now.

 Nothing has changed.

 Then Carla realized that something had changed; she wasn't a child to run from Luke's anger anymore. Nor was she childish enough to cross her fingers, marry a man who didn't love her and hope that it would all work out.

 "The rest of your life seems an excessive price for a fast toss," Carla said evenly.

 Luke gave her a sharp look but saw only a feminine reflection of his own lack of expression. That surprised him. He had become accustomed to watching moods and emotions move across Carla's face.

 "I knew the stakes when I took cards in the game," Luke said curtly, looking away from the elegant feminine curves rising above the sleeping bag's dark green material. "Hurry up and get dressed. If we don't get out of here quick, we might not get out for days. It's already raining in the highlands. Won't be long before it gets wet here."

 "Don't let me keep you."

 "Your baby pickup won't get one hundred yards the way the road is now. You'll have to come with me. We'll get your truck later."

 "No."

 "What?"

 "No," Carla repeated coolly. "N-o. A word signifying refusal. A negative. The opposite of yes." Each syllable was clipped, unflinching. "I'm not going with you in your truck. I'm not going into town with you. I'm not marrying you. I came to September Canyon for a vacation. I'm going to have that vacation. If you don't like it, you're free to leave."

 Luke's head snapped around. He had never heard that precise tone from Carla, smooth and remote and utterly controlled, telling him that he had no right to order her around.

 But she was as wrong as she was naive. He knew what had to be done. "Listen, schoolgirl—"

 "I've listened," Carla interrupted, "which is more than you have. One. I'm not a schoolgirl. Two. You've made it very clear that you don't want to marry me. Three. There will be no marriage."

 "Four," he shot back. "You might be pregnant. Ever think of that, schoolgirl? Or are you on the pill?"

 "N.Y.P., cowboy," she said with a calmness she didn't feel.

 "What does that mean?"

 "Not Your Problem."

 "What the hell are you talking about? Of course it's my problem! Or didn't you know that it takes two to make a baby?"

 "And only one to carry it. Guess which one of us that is? N.Y.P, cowboy."

 Luke glared at Carla. She didn't back up one inch, giving back a stare as level as his own. He measured her determination and realized that the deep well of passion he had discovered in Carla wasn't limited to making love. The girl who had fled from his passion three years ago had become a woman with cool blue-green eyes and hot flags of anger flying in her cheeks. The combination was … exciting.

 Angrily Luke felt his body respond as it had always responded to Carla. His lack of control over himself made him furious.

 "What are you planning on telling Cash when you start losing your waistline and your breakfast?" Luke asked coldly.

 "
If
that happens – and it is by no means a certainty – I'll tell Cash that he'll be an uncle along about May of next year."

 Luke's breath came in swiftly. An odd feeling twisted through him at the thought of Carla having his child.

 "After you tell him, Cash will do his best to kill me," Luke pointed out. "Is that what you want? Revenge?"

 "Don't worry. I'll make it very clear that I turned down your generous offer of marriage."

 "That won't be good enough. He'll want to know why. So try out your so-called reasoning on me. Why won't you marry me?"

 "Unlike you, Cash is bright enough to figure out all by himself that I don't want to spend the rest of my life as your jailer."

 Luke's breath came in sharply. "Funny you should put it that way. I sure as hell don't want to spend my life as your jailer, either. And that's how you would come to look at the Rocking M – as a jail."

 "You're wrong. I love the ranch."

 "For a few weeks. In the summer. What about in the winter, Carla? What about the day I come back from breaking ice in the watering troughs and find my children sobbing and terrified because their mother is screaming in god-awful harmony with the wind? What then?"

 The past haunted Luke's topaz eyes and his deep voice. The sight of his pain took away Carla's anger, leaving only her love. She ached to take the darkness from him, healing him, giving him hope for the future; but she couldn't change the past and she didn't know how to make him believe in their future. In her.

 "I'm sorry. Luke. I'm so sorry." Carla's voice thinned with the effort of controlling her tears. "Please believe me. I'd give anything to be able to change your past. Except last night. I wouldn't trade last night, Luke. I have a whole life to live. I want to live it knowing that once, just once, I touched the sun."

 Thunder belled through September Canyon, following invisible lightning. The scent of fresh rain drifted beneath the overhang. There was a random pattering, like an orchestra warming up, and then the raindrops gathered and began falling in a gentle, consuming rhythm.

 Luke heard the sound and knew it was too late to go into town; but then, it had been too late the instant he had heard her describe the night she had first felt him within her body.

 I touched the sun.

 The knowledge that being his lover had meant so much to Carla disarmed Luke. He had taken something from her that she could give only once, yet she had no recriminations, no harsh words, no hints of the raw truth: he had been experienced, she had not. He had known where the kisses would inevitably end. She had not. He should have controlled himself.

 He had not.

 Gently Luke pulled Carla from the folds of the sleeping bag and into his arms. He wanted to tell her that knowing he had pleased her made him feel proud and powerful and oddly humble, but he had no words, nothing to give her in return, nothing to remake the unchangeable instant when elemental need had transformed her, taking virginity and bringing ecstasy in return.

 "I'm glad I brought you pleasure," Luke said huskily. "I would take back every instant if I could, but not that. It's so rare, sunshine. So damned rare."

 The feel of Carla's warm, bare skin against his body as she put her arms around him made Luke ache with more than sexual need. He held her close, rocking very slowly, smoothing her hair with the palm of his hand, knowing with a combination of sweetness and sadness that she had touched him in a way no other woman had, taking him to the sun, sharing the burning center of life itself with him.

 And he could not have her again.

 He must not. For her sake, and for his own. He was all wrong for her. She was all wrong for him, a modern woman on a ranch where time stood still, imprisoning women, breaking them. Carla was far too generous and beautiful to be destroyed like that. She deserved more than he had given her. She deserved to be cherished, protected, revered … sunshine in a world that knew too much darkness.

 Luke touched Carla's lips with a single brushing kiss before he loosened his arms and led her the few steps to the fire. Without a word he poured part of a bucket of warm water into a washpan, swirled a cloth around, soaped it and handed it to her.

 "If you're shy about washing in front of me, I'll take a walk," he said quietly.

 Carla's hand was shaking so much the slippery cloth eluded her fingers. Luke caught the warm, soapy cloth and looked questioningly at her.

 "Are you sure you're all right?"

 "I'm s-sorry," she said, trying to control her voice.

 But Carla did no better steadying her voice than she had her hands. She ducked her head, hiding her eyes as she tried to take the cloth from Luke's hand.

 He didn't let go. Instead he put his other hand beneath her chin so that she had to meet his eyes.

 "Sunshine, what's wrong?"

 "Don't you know?"

 Helplessly Carla looked at the tempting masculine pelt curling down until it narrowed and vanished beneath the jeans he had pulled on without bothering to button them more than halfway. As she saw the faint crescents and scratches on his skin, memories of last night swept over her. He had been so perfect as a lover and she had been so eager, so breathless, so inexperienced. No wonder he wasn't doing handsprings at having her naked in his arms again. She had clawed him like a cat, left marks on him, bitten him, demanding him, all of him.

 Carla sucked in her breath, closing her eyes, unable to face Luke with the memory of her own wantonness burning in her mind.

 "No, I guess you don't know," Carla said, her tone ashamed and almost bitter. "Why should you? I don't affect you the same way you affect me."

 "Look at me," Luke said, his voice deep, gentle, soothing. "Tell me what's wrong."

 Carla's eyes opened. She looked through Luke rather than at him.

 "In case you hadn't noticed," she said tightly, "I'm stark naked and you're nearly so, and you can make me tremble when you're fully clothed and clear across the room. It was bad enough before last night, but now it's worse. I want you. I still want you. And you don't … you don't want…" Her voice frayed.

 Blood hammered explosively through Luke, wrenching at his self-control.

 "Sweet God," Luke said harshly. "You do know how to push a man, don't you? I promised myself I wouldn't touch you that way again and there you stand naked and shaking. And then you tell me you want me! How the hell am I supposed to say no?"