Outlaw (22 page)

As though Diana had spoken her hope aloud, Ten shook his head. "This is a big storm. Carla will fret and then Luke will send men out in hell's own rain to look for us. I don't want anyone getting hurt looking for people who could have and should have gotten back."

The sky exploded into twisting, wildly writhing forks of lightning. Barely four seconds later, thunder hammered down.

"Time to go, honey."

Diana closed her eyes against the pain that was lancing through her as surely as lightning lanced through the clouds.

Thunder filled September Canyon, followed by a gust of rain-scented wind that made pinons moan. No rain was falling, but there was no doubt that it would. Soon.

Ten opened the passenger door for Diana and helped her up into the cab. Her breast pressed against the lean male hand that was wrapped around her upper arm. Though the contact was accidental, it made every one of Diana's nerve endings shimmer. When she tried to fasten her seat belt, her hands were clumsy with the sudden rush of her blood.

Ten climbed in, saw Diana's difficulty and said, "Let me. That belt mechanism is getting kind of cranky. First you have to slack off and let it retract all the way. Like this."

He took the metal tongue from Diana's fingers, then followed the retreat of the harness across her lap. The sound of her indrawn breath was as much an inadvertent caress as his hand skimming across her body in the wake of the buckle's metal tongue. When he pulled the harness across her lap once more, his hand skimmed, hesitated for a breathless instant, then moved on. He inserted the metal tongue slowly into the locking mechanism. A subdued
click
broke the taut silence.

"See? Perfect fit." Ten's voice was low, gritty.

He touched Diana's mouth with his thumb and swore softly, wanting her. And she wanted him. It was in her eyes, in the tightness of her body, in the huskiness of the few words she had spoken. He gave her a quick, hard kiss and forced himself to concentrate on other things.

Ten drove to the wash, studied the roiling water carefully and bit off a vicious curse. There was no doubt about it, no ignoring it. The wash was definitely still safe to cross. He put the truck in gear and drove into the water. As soon as he reached the other side he spoke without looking at Diana.

"Hang on. I'm going to drive hard to get ahead of the storm."

The road was dry and familiar, its occasional vagaries and hazards well-known to Ten. He held the big truck to a punishing pace, boring through the predawn darkness, outrunning the storm outside the truck, ignoring the one within as long as he could.

Finally the truck climbed up for the long run across Wind Mesa. For a time the road snaked along the very edge of the highland, giving a breathtaking vista of predawn light locked in luminous embrace with a high, slowly seething lid of clouds. The tenuous light was eerie, astonishing, flawless, utterly without color.

Ten stopped the truck at a point where the road gave an uninterrupted view of the dark land below.

"We're at least an hour ahead of the rain," Ten said, releasing his seat belt. "Want some coffee?"

Diana made a murmurous sound of approval that could have meant the view, the idea of coffee or both.

By the dim illumination of the dashboard lights, Ten opened a thermos and poured coffee. A clean, rich fragrance filled the cab. He handed the half-full cup to Diana, who refused it with a shake of her head.

"You first," he insisted.

"Afraid of poison?" Diana asked huskily. She forced herself to smile, concealing the sadness that had grown greater with each mile flying beneath the truck's broad tires.

Ten's own smile flashed briefly. "No, but I've discovered that coffee tastes sweeter if you drink out of my cup before I do."

Diana said his name softly, then bent her head and sipped the hot liquid. Ten flicked off the lights, killed the engine and rolled down his window. Cool air breathed across the cab, air redolent of distance and unfettered land. In silence they passed the cup of coffee between them while spectral light slowly filled the space between clouds and earth, transforming everything, infusing the very air with radiance.

"Spirit light," Ten said finally.

Diana looked up at him questioningly.

"That's what Bends-Like-the-Willow, my grandmother, called it. The kind of light that enables you to see right through to the soul of everything."

"She was Indian?" Diana asked.

Ten's smile was a thin, hard slice of white in the truck's interior twilight. "Honey, there aren't many families that were in America before the Civil War that don't have Indian blood in them. The first Blackthorns came over from Scotland more than two hundred years ago."

"Did they marry Indians?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes they just slept with them. Sometimes they fought with them. Sometimes Blackthorn women or children were taken in raids." Ten shrugged. "There has been a lot of mixing and matching of bloodlines, one way or another. If children were the result of a town marriage, they were raised white. If children were the result of no marriage, they were raised Indian."

Ten sipped coffee from the shared cup before he resumed talking about the past, because anything was better than talking about the unshed tears in Diana's eyes and the turmoil in his own mind.

"By now there's no way to tell who got which genes, native or white or everything in between. Nevada and I have black hair and a copper tone to our skin. Utah has skin like ours, but he has blond hair and black eyes." Ten shrugged. "In the end, it's the quality of the person that matters, not the rest. That's what Bends-Like-the-Willow had. Quality."

"Was it a 'town marriage'?"

He shook his head and smiled oddly. "The Blackthorns were warriors. They leaned toward informal marriages. Up until the last generation, we were raised mostly in Indian ways. Bends-Like-the-Willow was quite a woman. Her father was a MacKenzie."

"As in the Rocking M MacKenzies?"

Thunder belled again, filling the canyon.

"Probably," Ten said. "Her mother was Ute. Her father was a wild young white who rode out one night and never came back. Luke has a few like that in his family tree. One of them disappeared at about the right time and place."

"Is that how you came to own part of the Rocking M?"

Smiling sardonically, Ten shook his head. "Honey, a hundred years back, nobody gave a damn about part Indian kids born on the wrong side of the blanket. It's only in the last generation people have started to get all puffed up and sentimental over Indian ancestors whose skeletons have been rattling in white closets for a long, long time."

"Then how did you end up here?"

"When I got out of the warrior business, I was like Nevada. Hurting and not knowing what to do about it. Needing a home and not knowing how to get one. Luke's father was selling off chunks of the Rocking M to pay for his drinking. I bought in. The ranch has been my home ever since."

Diana waited, but Ten said no more. She followed his glance out the windshield. The land lay beneath the storm like a woman waiting for a lover. Though no rain had fallen, the storm had brought an eerie glow to the air, a timeless gloaming that made all distances equal. There were no shadows to define near and far, no sun's passage to mark hours across the sky, no waxing or waning moon to measure weeks, nothing but the eye and mind of man to draw distinctions.

"Spirit light," Ten said, his voice harsh. "When you see everything too damn clearly."

He looked at Diana and saw too much, his own hunger clawing at him, telling him that he would remember her too long, too well.

Diana looked away from the eerie clarity of the land and saw Ten watching her with silver eyes that burned.

"What are you thinking?" she asked before she could stop herself.

"I'm remembering.''

"What?"

"How you look when your skin is flushed with heat and you're as hungry for me as I am for you."

Knowing he shouldn't, unable to stop himself, Ten slid partway across the big seat, took the coffee cup from Diana and set it on the dashboard. Her dark blue glance went from his eyes to the clean, distinct line of his mouth. Even as she leaned toward him, he pulled her close, lifting her, turning her so that she was half lying across his lap. His mouth came down over her parted lips, filling her with his taste and his hunger, wordlessly telling her about the need that would make the coming days restless and the nights endless.

Diana gave back the kiss without restraint, loving the taste of Ten, coffee and man and passion. The kiss deepened even more, becoming an urgent mating of mouths. When she felt the hard warmth of his palms sliding beneath her sweater, she twisted sinuously, bringing her breasts into his hands. His fingers stroked, caressed, teased until exquisite sensations radiated from her breasts to the secret core of her, melting her in a few shuddering moments.

With a soft whimper Diana began to move against Ten's body. She felt rather than heard the rasping groan he gave when his hands released the catch on her bra, allowing him the freedom of her breasts. He pushed up her loose sweater and bra and looked at her. Flushed by passion, soft, creamy, resilient, tipped with tight pink buds of desire, her breasts begged for his mouth.

"Baby?"

"Yes," Diana whispered huskily, raising her arms and arching her back as she reached to remove her sweater.

Ten didn't wait for her to finish. He kissed one peak, licked it with catlike delicacy, then gave in to the need driving him. His mouth opened over her in a caress that sent sensual lightning glittering through her. With a ragged cry she threw off the sweater and held his head against her breast, asking for and receiving a different, harder caress.

Even as Ten's mouth sent forerunners of ecstasy shimmering through Diana, his hands closed on her hips, shifting her until she was sitting astride his lap. One hard palm slid between her legs, cupping her, stroking her, making her burn. Sweet cries rippled from her, cries like fire consuming Ten, cries that made him wild with need. He unfastened the front of Diana's jeans and pushed his hand into the scant space between denim and her body. Hungrily he forced aside cloth until he could search through the warm nest to find the sultry woman-heat he needed to touch more than he needed air to breathe.

And then Ten found what he sought. He took as much as he could of Diana's softness and wanted more, much more, his body straining and his breath a groan.

The hoarse sound Diana made and the feel of her struggling against his hand brought Ten to his senses. He closed his eyes and took a tearing breath, afraid to look at her, afraid to see the fear and horror in her eyes as she remembered another out-of-control man, the front seat of another vehicle.

"God, baby, I'm sorry," Ten said hoarsely. "I've never lost control like that."

He heard Diana take a broken breath, then another, and felt her incredible softness pressing intimately against the hand that was still tangled in her jeans.

Very carefully he dragged his hand free. Another broken sound from her scored him.

"Baby, I'm sorry," Ten whispered, looking at Diana's wide eyes, wanting to cradle her and yet afraid to touch her. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

"You—didn't."

The words were like Diana's breathing—ragged. Ten shook his head slowly, not believing her.

"I heard you," he said flatly.

"I wanted you—so much—it hurt. I didn't know— it could be like that."

The last word was spoken against Ten's lips just before he brought Diana's mouth over his own. The kiss was deep, searching, wild. She returned it with a hunger that made both of them shake.

"If you kiss me like that again," Ten said finally, breathing hard, "I'm going to start taking off those boots you're wearing."

"My boots?"

"And then your jeans," Ten said, sliding his hand inside denim once more, searching for Diana's softness, finding it, drawing liquid fire and a ripping sound of pleasure from her. "I want you. Right here. Right now. Do you want me like that?"

With fingers that trembled, Diana reached blindly for her bootlaces. Ten made a low sound as his hand slid more deeply into her jeans. He smiled almost savagely, savoring her heat and the ragged breaking of her breath. Each movement she made as she worked over her laces increased the effect of his hidden caress. Ten made no move to help with the boots, for his other hand was too busy stroking the firm curves of her breasts to be bothered with such unrewarding objects as boots and socks.