Reason To Believe (44 page)

This time he'd made a furry bed for her beside a rock hearth. Smoke drifted toward the tip of the cone, where the lodgepole ribs poked past the canvas into the night.

"Take your coat, ma'am?"

She handed him her jacket, and he dropped it on the canvas floor along with his.

"You know, it's not easy, putting one of these things up in the winter, clearing a spot for it, pegging it down. We're kinda cheatin', havin' people prepare the campsite for us." He added wood to the fire as he spoke, and she hovered close, soaking up the heat along with his every word, exactly the way she had when she had first begun to love him.

"You think about Sitanka's people," he said. "They were runnin' for their lives, pushin' as hard as they could, lookin' for food along the way, while we've got people feeding us. But those guys long time ago, they still had to set up their own camp on ground frozen just as hard as this. They started out traveling at night, but later they marched in daylight. Sad part is, they were headed for disaster." He sat back on his haunches and poked at the burning logs with a stick, seeking just the right order. "What do you think they did at night, when they were camped like this?"

"Rested." She put her hands on his broad shoulders and knelt behind him, kneading the hard muscles she knew must be aching far more than hers did after the day he'd put in. "And sat around the campfires, the way we have been, talking and making plans."

"They couldn't have big campfires that would have attracted attention. Little ones like this were okay. I suppose the men got together for a while. The women tried to comfort their hungry children, rock them to sleep. God, that feels good."

"The rocking?"

"The comforting arms," he murmured. "Comforting hands." And he enjoyed them several moments longer before he reached up to his shoulder, took her hand in his, and pressed it gratefully to his lips. He turned to her, smiling. "Then I think they crawled into their beds and made love. I hope they did, because they weren't gonna get too many more chances." He took her by the hand and drew her to his own bed. "That's what I have in mind for us tonight."

"I know."

He took her boots off, then his. Between tender, almost shy kisses he draped them both in blankets and peeled away layers of clothing until only the silk remained. They slipped into the warm buffalo-hide nest, building the heat of their kisses, relishing one another like two devout pilgrims breaking a long fast. They were hungry, but more important, they were determined to savor, to appreciate, to memorize the taste of restoration.

And the touching was equally delectable, luxuriant silk abetting lips and hands with the tempting, the teasing, the plying of tingling, timeless magic on erogenous flesh. Every nerve was alerted. Legs wound around each other, thigh rubbing thigh, knee nudging groin. Her nipples tightened and strained, yearning for direct intercourse with his tongue. His nipples tightened and strained, yearning to be nibbled away by her harrowing teeth.

Just the feel of him threatened to liquify her senses and send them sluicing through her body's corridors.

Just the feel of her threatened to turn him into a human torch, incapable of resisting the impending flameover.

But first he would feel more, as would she. The silk finally fell by the wayside, and they touched skin to skin, lips to skin, tongues to skin, until neither could breathe anything but the air the other had warmed, neither could hear anything but the pleasured sound the other made, and neither could taste anything but the warm, erotic juices of the other's body.

"I need you, Ben," she gasped, choking back tears. "I need you now. I need you always."

He pressed his thigh between her legs, and she rubbed her mound against it, whimpering piteously.

"I can make you come," he whispered into the hollow of her neck. "With my hand, with my tongue. If you don't want my—"

"I do," she groaned, slipping her hand between his legs, seeking him. "I need this, too, and this needs me."

"Very much," he whispered, driving himself crazy just by pumping his aching rod against her palm. "Very, very much."

"Then let it love me."

"Then let yourself forgive me," he said as he rose above her on arms trembling with the need to do exactly what she asked. "Forgive me and take me inside you."

"I love you," she said breathlessly.

"Is that the same thing?"

She nodded, tears coursing into her hair.

"Can't you say the other?"

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Oh, God," he groaned. He didn't know if he could draw breath against the pain that pierced his "chest. Neither could he draw back or move away or...

"I need you," she said softly. "I've always loved you, and I need you now."

"I need—" loving her with his eyes, he thrust his hips, probing gently "—to give you anything you need. Lay your hands on me, Clara. Touch me and heal me."

She slipped her arms around him, slid her palms down his warm, corded back, filled her hands with his hard buttocks and urged him to fill her deeply.

"Say you love me," she begged.

"I love you. I want you to love me."

"I do."

"Without hating me," he said, still holding back, still rubbing the tip of his penis against her moist portal. "Forgive my worthless body with your loving touch."

Trembling with want and love and free-flowing tears, she brought her hand up between them, tenderly touching his belly, his chest, his neck, his face, all the while opening her thighs and lifting her hips, arching herself to him.

"Tell me you belong to me tonight," she said, weeping.

"Tonight and always." He lowered his head and sipped her tears. "Sweet Jesus, I've been so lonesome for you, Clara... so damned miserable without..."

He couldn't expect her to give him the solace he'd begged for. What he'd done was not forgivable. The very fact that she lay there in his arms, sated with lovemaking and watching the fire with him, was more than he had a right to expect. He watched her silky hair sift through his fingers, catching the firelight. "If we'd never met, Cady's the kind of guy that you might have married," he said, feeling a little sorry for himself out loud.

She looked at him curiously. "What kind of guy is that?"

His apology was couched in a warm smile. "The kind that's anything but a cowboy. The kind that might have made you happy."

"I'm happy right now. Tonight." She closed her eyes and nuzzled his bare shoulder. "With you."

"I'm happy, too." He kissed the top of her head. "I almost forgot what it was like."

"I don't want another man, Ben." She lifted her arm, propped her head on her hand, and looked into his eyes. "There's something I need to be able to tell you without you flying off the handle. Will you listen calmly?"

She was going to tell him she'd had to prove something to herself, and then she was going to tell him just what it was. He probably didn't want to know. It was a choice he hadn't given her when he'd made his unforgivable confession. He eyed her warily, but he nodded.

"Robert suggested that we stay in town tonight since the weather was getting bad. He suggested sticking to the highway, finding a motel."

His eyes glazed over. His throat went dry, and he couldn't swallow. His gut churned.

But he listened.

"The roads were bad," she reminded him. "It was probably a sensible suggestion."

"But you—" He willed himself to look only at her, think only of her, regard the look in her eyes and hear the clear, honest tone of her voice. She had her faults. She had her weaknesses. She wasn't perfect, and maybe she was just too damned stubborn or righteous to go along with such a proposition. But she was his Clara. And he didn't have to ask. He knew. "You wouldn't go along with it."

"No. I told him I'd find someone else to drive me back. I really didn't care whether it was sensible or not. I had to get back." She shrugged. "So he brought me back."

"He was just fishing to see how far he could get with you."

She nodded. "It surprised me. It was almost but not quite subtle. I'm not even sure he was actually suggesting anything really
specific,
but if he was, it was totally out of line, totally uncalled-for." She scowled suddenly. "Why would he do that?"

"To see what you'd do." God, she was beautiful. How could any man resist trying to catch her eye? He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled. "I oughta wrap his camera strap around his scrawny neck and give it one quick jerk."

"No need. I defended my own honor."

"How? Did you smack him?"

"I said no." She gave him a simple-as-that look. "I wasn't sure I should tell you, but I didn't want to feel like I was hiding something from you. I don't have anything to hide."

"I know."

"I don't want another man. Sometimes I wish I did. Or that I could just let you think I did, so you'd know how it feels." She laid her hand on his chest. "But I don't. And even if I did, I wouldn't."

"I know." He pulled her into his arms and wrapped his leg around both of hers. "I know all that in my head, Clara, but there's some part of my gut that's always in doubt when another guy comes around. 'She really doesn't think you're good enough for her,' it says. "This guy's gonna take her away.' "

"Not if I don't want to go. How could anyone take me if I didn't want to—" She drew back. "How did that woman manage to take you? What kind of magic did she use?" In a quiet, somber tone, she wondered, "How was she better than I was, Ben?"

"It was more like she was as bad as I was. She was easy. And I was more worried about somebody makin' me
look
like a fool than about me actually being one. And that's what I was,
a
goddamn fool. I didn't believe..." He touched her bow-shaped lips with an adoring finger. "Nobody's better than you, Clara-bow. There may be some few things about you that I don't like sometimes, but there's nobody better."

She pouted. "What few things?"

"Right now I can't remember, but I know there were
a
few little things." He smiled. Talking about this stuff was getting easier, and that amazed him.

"There was a time when I thought you could do no wrong," she confided. "I fell in love with you first, you know. Way before you fell in love with me."

"Can you do it again?"

"That doesn't seem to be the problem, does it?" She rolled to her back. "The problem is trust. I no longer believe that you can do no wrong."

"And I no longer believe that what you don't know won't hurt you." He propped himself up and adjusted the bedding around her shoulders as he spoke. "Or that doin' wrong is just as easy as doin' right and more fun to boot. It's not fun." His gaze drifted to the dying fire. "It's not fun to wake up the next morning pukin' up everything but the guilt. The guilt stays with you. It poisons your blood and makes you go back, maybe a day later or a month later, but you go back because the poison hurts, and you figure your soul is already so black that one more time can't make it worse, and maybe you can get it out of your system this time, or maybe..." He closed his eyes and let the loathsome memory fill his head. "Maybe some miracle will happen and you can start over again, clean and new, good enough to be loved."

And maybe it finally had, because something told him now that he
was
good enough. It wasn't something new, either. Whatever it was, he was comfortable with it. It had been part of him all along. Buried under all the bullshit.

He laughed. He wasn't sure what he was laughing at. Himself, probably. But it felt good.

"Jesus, Clara, if you can't love me unless I can do no wrong, I guess I'm sunk."

"The loving isn't a problem. That's a given. I love you, and that seems to be irreversible." She lifted her head, touched her lips to the comer of his suddenly boyish grin, and whispered, "It's the trust."

"How can I earn your trust?" The grin vanished, replaced by the sincerity aglow in his eyes. "By being honest with you, right? Telling you the rock-bottom truth was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, but I gotta tell you, it taught me one thing. I can't live with my own lies. Lying is part of the sickness. I lied to myself first, then I lied to you. I built a wall out of lies, and when I tore that down—" he smoothed her hair back, as though he were uncovering treasure "—there you were, staring at this awful, ugly truth. Staring at the face of the sorry bastard that did you wrong."

"Oh, Ben..."

"Sinful, but honest. And I like the honest part because it gave me a new start. And I think I stand a chance of doing better. I can't live with my own lies, but I have reached the point where I can live with the truth. The question is, can you?"

She glanced away.

Softly he amended, "I guess the real question is, do you want to try?"

"I've lived with the truth for two years. I can't help caring about you. I can't help loving you. Obviously, I
can
have sex with you." She looked up at him. "The
real
question is, can I live with you?"

"Yeah. I guess that's the real question."