Elizabeth Lowell (35 page)

“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.”

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.

His clenched thigh muscles barely gave beneath the testing of her teeth. Feeling the intense strokes of desire that shook him with each of her moist caresses was intensely arousing to her, but she was too consumed by her sensual explorations to realize that her own body was as hot as his. She only knew that bursts of pleasure went through her when she rubbed her breasts over his hard thighs and brushed her cheeks over the rigid evidence of his desire.

“Janna,” Ty said raggedly. His voice when she turned her head and her lips brushed over him in a caress that nearly undid him. “Sweet God, you’re killing me. Love, don’t, I’ve never...you’ll make me...”

The intimate touch of her tongue was a liquid fire that burned away his words, burned away his thoughts, burned away everything but the incandescent instant when she first tasted him.

Speech unraveled into a cry that was torn from deep in Ty’s throat. The harsh sound made Janna stop. She looked up. The green blaze of his eyes made her tremble.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.”

“But you...cried out,” she said hesitantly.

“So did you when I touched you that way.”

Her eyes half closed as sensual memories burst inside her, drenching her with heat. She looked at him and remembered what it had been like to feel his mouth loving her, enthralling her, devouring her in steamy intimacy. She looked again at the potent male flesh that had felt so hard and smooth and intriguing to her tongue just a moment ago.

“Don’t,” he said huskily, biting back a raw sound of need. “You’ll make me lose control.”

“But I’m not even touching you,” she whispered.

“You are in your mind. And in mine. Satin butterfly, hot and sleek and perfect. When you took me into your body it was like being taken into a fiery paradise. You burned me to my soul. You’re still burning in my soul, burning in my body, everything burning. You don’t know what you do to me.”

Ty saw Janna’s shivering response to his words and thought he would lose what little control remained to him.

“You burned me the same way,” she said, touching him with the tip of her tongue. “I’m still burning.”

Restlessly she stroked her hands over his clenched leg muscles, trying to tell him something for which she had no words, seeking something she couldn’t name. One of her hands caressed the inside of his thigh until she could go no higher. She felt him shudder, heard his ripping intake of breath and knew she had found another way to touch him with fiery paradise. Fascinated by the difference between his body and her own, she caressed the flesh suspended so tightly between his thighs.

Ty watched Janna with eyes that were no more than green slits set against the stark tension of his face. He had thought he could want her no more without losing control. He had been wrong. He wanted her more now than he ever had.

Yet he made no move to take her, for he was learning more about himself and her with every instant, every caress, each sweet glide of her tongue as she discovered the changing textures of his masculinity.

The sight of her loving him, enjoying him, pleasuring him and herself at the same time was unlike anything he had ever known. Slowly his legs gave way, unable to bear the weight of his passion any longer. He sank to his knees, then onto the grass, and she moved with him, loving him in silence, displaying that love with every caress.

When her mouth circled him, accepting and cherishing him with a shattering intimacy, a cry was ripped from him once again. This time she didn’t stop loving his hot flesh, for she knew that he had but given voice to the savage, overwhelming pleasure that was shaking his body.

“
Janna
...
”

Her answer was silent, a changing pressure of her mouth that dragged a hoarse sound of ecstasy from his throat. He tried to tell her what she was doing to him, consuming and renewing him with each clinging movement of her lips and tongue. But no words came, for he had none to describe the shattering beauty of being loved without inhibition, without bonds, without expectations, nothing but the sultry heat of her mouth cherishing him.

“Janna,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t. I’m going to...” Words became a groan of ecstasy dragged from his as his hips moved in helpless need. “For the love of God... stop.”

“Am I hurting you?” she asked, knowing the answer, wanting to hear it anyway.

He laughed brokenly, then made a low sound when her hands and mouth slid over him once more, caressing him, burning through his control, burning him alive.

“Love...stop. I can’t take any more without losing control.”

He felt the shiver that overtook her in the instant before she stroked him and whispered, “Yes, I’d like that.”

He clenched against the pulses of ecstasy that were bursting through his body, not knowing how to give himself in that elemental way.

“Please,” she whispered. She touched the tip of her tongue to the blunt masculine flesh that was no longer a mystery to her. “You taste like life itself.”

Watching her, he made an anguished sound as he fought the tide of ecstasy that was surging through him. Deep within his soul he realized that he would never forget the picture she made as she loved him with a generosity that was a kind of ecstasy in itself, a giving and a taking that became a profound sharing he had never imagined possible. She accepted and cherished him without restraint, teaching him that he had known nothing of true intimacy before he had known Janna.

Ty felt his control being stripped away with each loving instant, each sweet and wild caress. Pleasure convulsed him, shaking his body and soul with each primal pulse of rapture; and the word he cried out at the shattering peak of ecstasy was Janna’s name.

The cry pierced her soul, bringing tears that were both hot and sweet, an overflowing of her joy in the certainty that she had given the man she loved such intense pleasure.

When Ty could again control his own body, he caught Janna between his hands and pulled her into his arms, needing the feel of her close to him. She closed her eyes and held him as strongly as he was holding her, savoring the closeness and the sound of her name repeated over and over by her lover as the aftermath of ecstasy shuddered through his powerful body. When he finally tilted her face up to his own, she smiled and nuzzled against the masculine lips, which were resilient and soft and...insistent.

“Ty?”

Her husky voice was like a caress on his hot skin.

“I need to be part of you,” he said simply. His hand slid from her cheek, skimmed down her shirtfront, below her waist, seeking and finding the soft mound at the apex of her thighs. He made a deep sound of discovery and satisfaction when he felt the sultry heat of her. “And you need me, too. I can feel it even through all the clothes you use to conceal your beauty. My own satin butterfly, waiting to be freed of your cocoon.”