Two Alone (13 page)

If h
e wanted to. Rusty wouldn'
t stop him. She knew that posi
tively. Her body was warm and moist and receptive to the idea. She was ready for whatever happened. No, she wasn't.

Because what happened was that Cooper came to his feet hastily. "You'd better get to bed."

Rusty was stunned by his about-face. The mood had been shattered, the intimacy dispelled. She felt like arguing, but didn't. What could she say? "Kiss me again, Cooper," "Touch me,"? That would only confirm his low opinion of her.

Feeling rejected, she gathered her belongings, including the pile of dirty clothes she'd left beside the tub, and walked around the curtain. Each of the two beds had been spread with sheets and blankets. A fur pelt had been left at the foot of each. At home her bed was covered in designer sheets and piled with down
y
pillows, but it had never looked more inviting than this one.

She put her things away and sat down on the bed. In the meantime, Cooper had made several trips outside with bucket
u
of bathwater. When the water level was low enough, he dragged the tub to the door and out onto the porch, then tipped it over the edge and emp
t
ied the rest of it. He brought the tub back into the room, replaced it behind the curtain, and from the pump in the sink began filling the pots and kettles again.

"Are you going to take a bath, too?"

"Any objections?"

"No."

"It's been a while since I chopped firewood and my back u sore. Besides that, I think I'm beginning to stink." "I didn't notice."

He looked at her sharply, but when he could see that she wa
s
being honest, he came close to smiling. "You will now tha
t
y
ou
're clean."

The ket
tl
es had begun to boil. He lifted two of them off the
st
ove
and headed toward the tub.

"Do you want me to massage it?" Rusty asked guilelessly.

He stumbled, sloshed boiling water on his legs, and cursed.
"What?"

"Massage it?" He gazed at her as though he'd been hit between the eyes with a two-by-four.

"Yo
ur back.
"

"Oh, uh..." His eyes moved over her. The tank top left her throat
a
nd shoulders bare, cloaked only with a mass of reddish-brown
cur
ls. "No—" he refused cur
tl
y "—I told you to go to sleep. We've
got
more work to do tomorrow." He rudely returned to his task.

Not
only was human courtesy impossible for him, he wouldn't let anybody be nice to him. Well he could rot, for all she cared!

Rusty angrily thrust her feet between the chilly sheets and lay
dow
n, but she didn't close her eyes. Instead she watched Cooper
sit d
own on the edge of his bed and unlace his boots while he was
wait
ing for more water to boil. He tossed his socks onto the pile
of
dirty clothing she had made and began unbuttoning his shirt.
He
was wearing only one today because he'd been working so hard
outside
. He pulled the tails of it from his jeans and took it off.

Rusty sprang to a sitting position. "What happened to you?"
H
e
fl
ung his shirt down onto t
he pile of clothes to be washed. He
didn't have to ask what she was referring to. If it looked as
bad as
it felt, the bruise was noticeable even in the dim light.

"
My
shoulder came into contact with the barrel of Reuben's
r
i
f
l
e
.
I
had to deflect it that way
, so my hands would be free to get
my own rifle up."

Rusty winced. The fist-size bruise at the outer edge o
f
his
collarbone was black-and-blue and looked ext
r
emely pain
f
ul "Does it hurt?"

"Like hell."

"Did you take an aspirin?"

"No. We need to conserve them."

"But if you're hurting—"

"You aren't taking them for the bruises on your butt."

That remark shocked her speechless. But it didn't last long. After a moment she said stubbornly
,
"
I
still think two aspirin would help."

"
I
want to save them. You might have fever again."

"Oh,
I
see. You don't have any aspirin to take for your shoulder because I wasted them on my fever."

"
I
didn't say you wasted them. I said, oh—" Then he said
I
word that described something neither was in the mood to d
o,
a word that should never be spoken aloud in polite compan
y.

"Go to sleep, will you?"

Wearing only his jeans, he went to the stove, apparently decided that the water was hot enough even though it wasn't quite boiling, and emptied it all into the
t
ub. Rust
y
had lain back down, but s
he
watched his shadow moving on the curtain as he shucked of
f
the
jeans and stepped naked into the tub. Her imagination got the nig
ht
off
becaus
e
hi
s shadow left nothing up to it, especially in profile.

She heard cursing as he
lowered himself into the water. The
tub didn't accommodate him as easily as it had her. How h
e
expected her to go to sleep with all that splashing going on, sh
e
didn't know.
H
e had splashed more wa
t
er on the floor than left in the bottom of the tub by t
he time he stood up to rinse off.

Rusty
's throat went dry as s
he watched his shadow. He bent at the
w
aist, repeatedly scooping handfuls of water over himself to rinse off
t
he soap. When he stepped out, he dried with mas
cu
line carelessness. The only attention he gave his hair was to make one pass over it with the towel, then to comb his fingers through it. He finished by wrapping the towel around his waist.

He
went through the laborious procedure of emptying the tub
aga
in. Af
t
er the last trip to the porch, he left the tub outside
, Rust
y could tell he was shivering when he moved back to the
f
ire and added several logs. Using the chair as his ladder, he took
down the screen t
he same way he'd put it up. He folded the sheet, pl
ac
ed it on one of the several shelves against the wall, and blew
out
the lantern on the table. The last thing he did before sliding
i
nto
his bed was yank the towel from around his waist.

Du
ring all
t
hat
t
ime, he never looked a
t
Rusty. She was hurt th
at
he hadn't even said good-night. But then, she might not
have
been able to answer him.

H
er
mouth was still dry.

Cou
nting sheep didn't help.

Reciting poetry didn't help, especially since the only poems
he
knew by heart were limericks of a licentious nature.

So
Cooper lay there on his back, with his hands stacked
beneath his head, staring at
t
he ceiling, and wondering when his
stiff
manhood was going to stop tenting the covers and relax
e
n
oug
h
t
o let him fall asleep. He was exhausted. His overexerted muscles cried out for rest. But his sex wasn't listening.

U
nlike
t
he rest of him, it was feel
ing great. He felt like taps all
over,
but it felt like reveille: alert and alive and well. Too well.

In desperation, he put one hand beneath the covers. Maybe... He yanked his hand back. Nope. Uh-uh. Don't do that. Trying to press it down only made the problem worse.

Furious with Rusty for doing this to him, he rolled to his side. Even that movement created unwarned friction. He uttered an involuntary groaning sound, which he hastily turned into a cough.

What could he do? Nothing that wouldn't be humiliating. So he'd just have to think about something else.

But dammit, he'd tried. For hours, he'd tried. His though
t
s eventually meandered back to her.

Her lips: soft.

Her mouth: vulnerable but curious; then hungry, opening to him.

He clenched his teeth, thinking of the way her mouth had closed around his seeking tongue. God, she tasted good. He'd wanted to go on and on, thrusting his tongue inside her, sending it a little farther into her mouth each time, until he decided exactly what it was she tasted like. It would be an impossible task and therefore endless—because she had her own unique taste.

He should have known better than to kiss her—no
t
even for the sake of fooling the old man. Who had been fooling whom? he asked himself derisively. He had kissed her because he'd wanted to and he
had
known better. He had suspected that one kiss wouldn't satisfy him and now he knew that for sure.

What the hell? Why was he being so hard on himself? He was sleeplessly randy because she was the only woman around. Yeah, that was it.

Probably. Possibly. Maybe,

But the fact still remained that she had a knockout face. Sexy
as-hell hair. A body that begged to be mated. Breasts that were created for a man's enjoyment. A cute, squeezable derriere. Thighs that inspired instant arousal. And what lay nestled
between them—

No! his mind warned him. Don't think about that or you'll have to do what you have miraculously, and with considerable self-discipline, refrained from doing tonight.

All right, that's enough.
Finis.
No
mas.
The
end.
Stop thinking like a sex-crazed kid at worst and a redneck sexist at best, and go to sleep.

He closed his eyes and concentrated so hard on keeping
th
em
c
losed that at first he thought the whimpering sound that issued from the other bed was his imagination. Then Rusty sprang up out of the covers like a jack-in-the-box. That wasn't his imagination. Nor was it something he could ignore by playing possum.

"Rusty?"

"What is that?"

Even with no more to light the room than the dying fire, he
c
ould
see that her eyes were round and huge with fear. He
th
ought she was having a nightmare. "Lie back down. Everything's okay."

She was breathing erratically and clutching the covers to her
ch
est. "What is that noise?"

Had he made a noise? Had he failed to camouflage his

gr
oans?
"What—"

But just as he was about to ask, the mourning, wailing sound
came
again. Rusty covered her ears and bent double. "I can't
stan
d it," she cried.

C
ooper tossed back the covers on his bed and reached hers
i
n seconds. "Wolves, Rusty
. T
imber wolves. That's all. They're not as close as they sound and they can't hurt us."

Gently he unfolded her and cased her back until she was lying down again. But her face was far from restful. Her eyes apprehensively dar
t
ed around the dark interior of the cabin as though it had been invaded by demons of the night.

"Wolves?"

"They smell the—"

"Bodies."

"Yes," he replied with regre
t
.