When The Heart Beckons (38 page)

“Maybe it’s the detective in me,” she told
Cade, as he stroked her hair with gentle fingers, “but I can’t stop
thinking about this man Boxer. Even though Cobb wouldn’t admit it,
I’d be willing to bet that Boxer and Lucas Johnson are one and the
same. Boxer must have hired Cobb to kill Brett after Brett refused
to help him ruin your father.”

Annabel closed her eyes, enjoying the feel
of his hands on her hair, reveling in the warmth and strength of
him beside her. But her mind wouldn’t shut down and after a moment
she continued. “Boxer must be a monster, a monster so bent on
revenge he wouldn’t hesitate to kill even his own son for crossing
him—if Brett is his son,” she added quickly.

“We’ll find out.”

“We will?” She twisted in his arms and
peered eagerly into his face, searching it for his intent. “Does
that mean—you’ll go back to St. Louis and help unravel this? You’ll
try to work things out with your father? You are worried about him,
aren’t you?”

“Ross McCallum can take care of
himself.”

But doubt was gnawing at him, much as he
tried to push it away. And so was the past, the past he’d been
running from, refusing to face. The time was coming when he would
have to face it, he sensed that deep in his soul. But right now
there were more immediate problems to deal with. Namely Red
Cobb.

“Don’t.” Annabel’s soft voice and her hand,
light as a dove’s feather, on his cheek, broke into his dark
reverie.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t look so ... merciless. Or so
troubled. It will all turn out all right.”

“You could have died up here. Cobb might
have killed you.”

“But I’m safe. I’m going to be fine, because
once again, you found me and saved me,” she said, beaming. “I’m
getting pretty tired of it, too.”

She grinned as he tried to keep the smile
from his voice, but his eyes gleamed down at her in the way that
made her heart skip a beat. “Cade,” she whispered shyly, a softness
threading through her as her hands reached up to wrap intimately
around his neck, “there’s one place that is still really cold. It
needs warming badly and I was wondering if you could oblige
...”

“Anything to oblige a lady,” he murmured,
his eyes glinting into hers.

“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” she
breathed in delight and slowly pulled him down toward her and
inched her lips toward his. “My mouth,” she whispered, her lips
tantalizingly brushing his as she formed each word. “My lips feel
as if they must be blue with cold ...”

“Hell, we can’t have that.”

She started to giggle as he dragged her to
him, but when his mouth caught and claimed hers, the giggles
ceased. The breath locked in her throat. She quivered all over.

His kiss was full of tenderness. She
wondered at it, tasted it, and gave herself up to it, to the sweet
pummeling sensations that swept her into a oneness with him, that
made her savor his taste, his scent, the rough feel of his lips on
hers. His mouth was hard, his muscled body taut with coiled desire,
and yet he was so gentle, his hands caressing her hair, sliding to
her back, pressing her closer, closer still ...

Her blood heated and blazed along her veins
like rich potent wine. “Cade, there’s something I have to tell you
...”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No, it cannot ... wait,” she gasped, as
relentless kisses rained down upon her cheeks, eyelids, and throat,
blinding her to everything but the surging need inside her. “I ...
love ... you....”

He was trying to find her breasts beneath
those damned blankets, and finally, swearing, he yanked the
blankets away, revealing her lovely pearl-skinned nakedness.
“You’re a damned fool if you do, Annabel.” He dropped a kiss to one
breast, and cupped the other one. “But if it makes you feel any
better, I love you, too.”

“If it makes me feel any better?” she
panted, incredulous, yet too stunned with delicious sensations to
do anything but close her eyes and see what he said, what he did
next. “What kind of thing is that to say when you’re about to ...
to ...”

“Make love to you? Because that’s what I’m
going to do, Annabel, unless you don’t want me to, and if you
don’t, you’d better speak up right now or ...”

“No, no, I want you to ... I do want you to
...” she moaned, clutching his hair as his tongue began doing
marvelous things to her nipple, tormenting it into rosy hardness,
while his other hand slid lower, to her belly, and then lower still
...

“You’re sure?” he demanded, his mouth
crushing down once more upon her lips, silencing her for a long
minute until they both came up for air. His hand was exploring part
of her no man had ever breached before and she was beginning to
think she would go mad before he’d finished with her.

“I’m sure ... oh, Cade, what are you
...”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” he went on, as
if she hadn’t spoken, intent on the glazed glow in her eyes, on the
sweat beginning to sheen upon her lovely face, “but as for loving
me, I think you’re making a big mistake ...”

“I’m not ... I mean I do ... love you, oh,
Cade, what in heaven are you
doing
?”

“If you think this is heaven, just wait,
Annabel ...”

“Cade!”

“Don’t you like it?”

“I ... love it, I love you, Cade, but ... do
you really love ... me?”

For answer he held her chin in his hand and
stared into her eyes with the full vivid intentness of that searing
black gaze. “God help you, Annabel, I do. I do. And I’m going to
show you how much.”

His mouth claimed hers. It was an urgent,
demanding kiss, rough enough to bruise her lips, and yet there was
an underlying tenderness and need in it which touched a flame to
her soul. He needed her. Cade McCallum, alone in this vast brutal
West for so many years, cut off from his family, from any close
human connections, needed her, wanted her—loved her—and her heart
and body responded to the shattering desire that poured from him.
As he forced her mouth open beneath his warm lips and plunged his
tongue inside with quick possessive thrusts, she felt an answering
need blossoming riotously inside her. She shivered with delight,
and ardently pulled him closer, and she didn’t hold back the little
whimpers of pleasure that rose in her throat.

Cade covered her body with his own, stroking
her sides, caressing her breasts, his powerful thighs spreading her
legs without resistance. She shuddered as she felt his powerful
manhood pressed against her, a shudder of pleasure and half-anxious
anticipation, but Cade kissed her cheek and then each of her
eyelids, and soothed her with his strong, stroking hands.

“Don’t be afraid, Annabel. Don’t be afraid
of me....”

“I’m not ... I’m not afraid of you ... I’m
afraid of ... you know what I’m afraid of ...”

He laughed, this handsome, relentless
gunslinger, a low, growling sound deep in his throat, and his face
was dark with passion and his eyes gleamed with an intensity and
tenderness that made her ache inside.

“I’ll try not to hurt you.” His mouth
claimed hers gently. “Trust me, Annabel.”

“I do, Cade, I trust you,” she murmured, and
clutched his back with a little gasp as his strong hand slid
between her thighs. “If I didn’t trust you completely ... I
wouldn’t be here right now ... doing these things ...”

He laughed again, and Annabel closed her
eyes and surrendered to the wild things he was doing to her, to the
intense sensations he was arousing, to the ache that was growing,
growing inside of her, becoming an almost painful tingling
need....

Her breasts were crushed against his chest,
her mouth against his throat when he at last plunged into her,
eliciting a small scream that she muffled against his neck. The
first sharp pain gave way to a slow aching pleasure that built and
built as he eased in and then stopped and then eased in farther,
his movements so strong and sure and yet careful that she forgot
her trepidations and was soon caught up in the wild sweet
sensations erupting inside of her.

His movements grew faster, more demanding
and violent. So this is what it is to make love with a man, she
thought in ardent surprise and delight, and then all thought
vanished as the pleasure intensified, and her eyes widened in pure
carnal need. She strained toward his taut, powerful body, her own
body on fire, soaking up the strength of him, the heat, the raw
power. And she gave herself over to the piercing ecstasy that was
flowing through her. It ignited her breasts and her belly and her
hips and the damp secret places inside her.

As Cade’s sweat-filmed face loomed over her,
watching her, she gazed up at him with delicious frantic desire and
love-glazed eyes and arched her back to meet his ever more powerful
thrusts.

Streaks of joy burst through her, coming
faster and faster, until a sweet raging chaos enveloped her. She
dug her fingers into his shoulder blades and bucked demandingly
against him, as the cave and the fire and the universe became a
blur, and a fierce explosion rocked her to the depths of her soul.
Again and again, gasping and shuddering, the explosion stunned her,
and she clung to him, crying out, until she was lost and then found
and then whirled away as one with him, and in his strong, enfolding
arms she knew at last the blissful release of fulfillment.

Cade McCallum had taken her beyond the
storm, beyond the cliffs and the canyons, to a world of silvered
colors all ablaze, and he had shattered her and made her whole.

The first glimmers of dawn found them dreamy
and comforted in each other’s arms. Annabel awoke to find Cade
watching her. She smiled because his eyes were soft with a
tenderness she’d never seen there before.

“Morning,” she whispered, and snuggled
closer. Her fingers reached up, no longer shy, to stroke and trace
at the dark mat of hair on his chest.

Cade kissed her mouth and swung a leg
possessively over hers. “Morning yourself.”

“How much time do you think we have?”

“Before what, sweetheart?”

“Before Cobb comes searching for me.”

She could feel the tension arc through him.
“Not much. Unless he’s sleeping it off—you did say he was going at
the whiskey pretty good, right?”

“Right.” She leaned across him and began to
nibble at his shoulder, then slid her lips and tongue across his
chest.

“And then there’s Brett,” he sighed, drawing
a hand gently through the wild bright mane of her hair. “He was
searching through the other canyon for you last night. He’ll turn
up pretty soon to see if I found you.”

“Which you very cleverly did.”

He was silent a moment. “Not without some
help,” he said quietly after a moment.

Annabel sat up at his tone, shoving the
cloud of her hair behind her, feeling perfectly natural and somehow
beautiful with her naked shoulders and breasts exposed to his
view.

“What do you mean?”

“It was strange, but last night when I was
searching for you and going loco because I didn’t know which way to
turn, I saw something. Something—or someone—showed me the way. A
woman—at least I thought it was a woman, who beckoned to me and
then ... disappeared. Like a ...” He hesitated, then added with a
curt laugh, “... like a ghost.”

Annabel’s hands flew to her throat. “Mama,”
she whispered. “I saw Mama last night out in the storm—she showed
me the way to this cave. She was just a light, I can’t explain it,
sort of a ... a glowing figure, but I knew it was she. Cade, she
saved me ... and she showed you how to find me.”

His gaze locked with hers. “I’ve heard too
much Indian lore and too many strange tales in these mountains over
the years to doubt it. Besides,” he added with a shake of his dark
head, “I know what I saw, and it sure wasn’t my imagination.”

Annabel sank down again and rested her head
against his chest, nestling close as she pondered this turn of
events in amazement. A surging, comforting warmth washed over her.
Mama was out there, watching over her. Mama had sent Cade to find
her, help her, love her....

“All these years,” Annabel mused at last, as
beside her Cade stroked his hand up and down her arm, “I thought I
was in love with Brett. I truly believed it, you know. But I think
I wanted to love him, because he was so good and so kind and so
dear to me. I had just made up my mind, without ever really
consulting my heart. I only thought I had,” she added with a laugh.
“But then, when I met you, I was so pigheaded I tried to ignore
what I felt, what my heart was telling me ...”

“Maybe you were right to ignore it. Maybe
this is the biggest mistake you’ll ever make.”

“Cade—how can you say that?”

He had just been about to touch her breast,
but he knew in that moment it was wrong, this whole damn thing was
wrong. He released her and sat up abruptly, lurching to his feet
and reaching for his trousers.

“Annabel, it’s time to face facts.”

“What facts?” she asked in bewilderment as
she watched him tug his trousers over his lean hips and fasten
them, then turn back toward her, bare chested, his hair tousled, a
day’s growth of beard stubbling his chin, making him look even
sexier and more dangerous and more irresistible than ever. Oh, God,
how she loved him. She ached and longed for him just looking at him
and he was telling her ... never mind?

“What facts, Cade?” she repeated softly,
when he just stared at her with his hard unfathomable eyes. He was
pulling away, at least, trying to—emotionally as well as
physically—and Annabel decided suddenly that she’d be damned if
she’d let him.

“I’m a McCallum.”

“I know.”

“We’re a ruthless breed. You know Ross,
you’ve seen for yourself. And you know the history, you know what
he did to my mother. He destroyed her.”

“We don’t know that for certain. And
besides,” Annabel said evenly, gazing back at him with calm, loving
eyes, “what has that to do with you and me?”