"I teach grad students who are older than you," Cash said, his tone disgusted.
"So?"
"So quit looking at me with those big golden eyes and wondering what it would be like to kiss me."
Mariah's first impulse was to deny any such thoughts. Her second was the same. Her third was embarrassment that she was so transparent.
"You see," Cash said flatly, pinning Mariah with a look, "I'm wondering the same thing about you. But I'm not a college kid. If I start kissing you, I'm going to want more than a little taste of all that honey. I'm going to want everything you have to give a man, and I'm going to want it until I'm too damn tired to lick my lips. I get hard just watching you breathe, so teasing me into kissing you would be a really dumb idea, unless you're ready to quit playing and start screwing around." He watched Mariah's face, muttered something harsh under his breath, and threw a big handful of pine needles into the pot. "Call and raise you."
"I d-don't have that many needles."
"Then you lose, don't you?" he asked. And he waited.
How much is a kiss worth?
Mariah didn't speak the words aloud. She didn't have to. She knew without asking that a kiss would be worth every needle in the whole forest. In electric silence she looked at Cash's mouth with a hunger she had never felt before. The days of beard stubble enhanced rather than detracted from the smooth masculine invitation of his lips. And he was watching her with eyes that burned. He had meant his warning. If she teased him into kissing her, she had better be prepared for a lot more than a kiss.
The thought both shocked and fascinated Mariah. She had never wanted a man before. She wanted Cash now. She wanted to be kissed by him, to feel his arms around her, to feel his strength beneath her hands. But she had never been a man's lover before. She wasn't sure she was ready tonight, and Cash had made it very clear that there would be no way for her to test the water without getting in over her head.
"I guess I lose," Mariah whispered. "But it isn't fair."
"What isn't?"
"Not even one kiss, when you must have kissed a hundred other women."
"Don't bet on it. I'm very particular about who gets close to me." Abruptly Cash closed his eyes against the yearning, tentative flames of desire in Mariah's golden glance. "The game is over, Mariah. Go to bed. Now."
Without a word Mariah abandoned her cards, rushed to her feet and began arranging her blankets for the night. After only a few moments she was ready for bed. She kicked out of her shoes, crawled into the cold nest she had made and began shivering. The first few minutes in bed at night, and the first few out of it in the morning, were the coldest parts of the day.
Cash stood up and moved around the cabin, listening to the rain. When he had checked all the pans he turned off the lantern and knelt to bank the fire. Although Mariah tried not to watch him, it was impossible. Firelight turned his hair to molten gold and caressed his face the way she wanted to. Closing her eyes, shivering, she gripped the blankets even more tightly, taking what warmth she could from them.
"Here."
Mariah's eyes snapped open. Cash was looming above her. His hands moved as he unfurled a piece of cloth and pulled it over her. One side of the cloth was a metallic silver. The other was black.
"What is it?"
"Something developed by NASA," Cash said. He knelt next to Mariah and began tucking the odd blanket around her with hard, efficient movements. "It works as good on earth as it does in space. Reflects heat back so efficiently I damn near cook myself if I use it. I just bring it along for emergencies. If I'd known earlier how cold you were, I'd have given it to you."
Mariah couldn't have answered if her life depended on it. Even with blankets in the way, the feel of Cash's hands moving down her sides as he tucked in the odd cloth was wonderful.
Suddenly Cash shifted. His hands flattened on the floor on either side of Mariah's head. He watched her mouth with an intensity that left her weak. Slowly his head lowered until he was so close she could taste his breath, feel his heat, sense the hard beating of his heart.
"Cash…?" she whispered.
His mouth settled over hers, stealing her breath, sinking into her so slowly she couldn't tell when the kiss began. At the first touch of his tongue, she made a tiny sound in her throat. A shudder ripped through Cash, yet his gradual claiming of Mariah's mouth didn't hasten. Gently, inevitably, he turned his head, opening soft feminine lips that were still parted over the sighing of his name. The velvet heat of Mariah's mouth made him dizzy. The tiny sounds she made at the back of her throat set fire to him. He rocked his head back and forth until her mouth was completely his, and then he drank deeply of her, holding the intimate kiss until her breathing was as broken and rapid as his own. Only then did he lift his head.
"You're right," Cash said hoarsely. "It isn't fair."
There was a rapid movement, then the sound of Cash climbing fully clothed into his sleeping bag.
It was a long time before either of them got to sleep.
9
Mariah sat on a sun-warmed boulder and watched Cash pan for gold in one of the nameless small creeks along the Devil's Peak watershed. Sunlight fell over the land in a silent golden outpouring that belied the chilly summer night to come. Stretching into the warmth, smiling, Mariah relished the clean air and the sun's heat and the feeling of happiness that had grown within her until she found herself wanting to laugh and throw her arms out in sheer pleasure.
The first days at the line shack had been hard, but after that it had been heaven. By the sixth day Mariah no longer awoke stiff every morning from a night on the hard floor and Cash no longer looked for excuses not to take her prospecting. By the eleventh day Mariah no longer questioned the depth of her attraction to Cash. She simply accepted it as she accepted lightning zigzagging through darkness or sunlight infusing the mountains with summer's heat.
Or the way she had accepted that single, incredible kiss.
Since then, Cash had been very careful to avoid touching Mariah but his restraint only made him more compelling to her senses. She had known men who wouldn't have hesitated to push her sexually if they had sensed such a deep response on her part. The fact that Cash didn't press for more was a sign to Mariah that he, too, cherished the glittering emotion that was weaving between the two of them, growing stronger with each shared laugh, each shared silence, drawing them closer and closer each day, each hour, each minute. Their closeness was becoming as tangible as the water swirling in Cash's gold pan, a transparent, fluid beauty stripping away the ordinary to reveal the gleaming gold beneath.
Shivering with a delicious combination of pleasure and anticipation each time she looked at Cash, Mariah told herself to be as patient as he was. When Cash was as certain of the strength of their emotion as she was, he would come to her again, ask for her again.
And this time she would say yes.
"Find anything?" Mariah asked, knowing the answer, wanting to hear Cash's voice anyway.
She loved the sound of it, loved seeing the flash of Cash's smile, loved the masculine pelt that had grown over his cheeks after eleven days without a razor, loved seeing the flex and play of muscles in his arms, loved… him.
"Nope. If the mine is up this draw, nothing washed down into the creek. I'll try a few hundred yards farther up, just to be sure."
Before Cash could flip the gritty contents of the pan back into the small creek, Mariah bent over his shoulder, bracing herself against his strength while she stirred through the gold pan with her fingertip. After a time she lifted her hand and examined her wet fingertip. No black flakes stuck to the small ridges on the pad of her finger. No gold ones stuck, either.
Mariah didn't care. She had already found what she sought – a chance to touch the man who had become the center of her world.