She’s a card cheat and a thief, and she set me up to die.
Unhappily Eve finished her bath, dried herself, put on the shirt Reno had lent her, and walked back to camp.
Reno’s eyes burned with hunger when he looked at her.
«I left the soap there for you,» Eve said. «And the towel.»
He nodded and walked past her. She watched until he disappeared into the slot before she went to the clothesline that had been rigged between two pinons.
Eve turned Don Lyon’s black twill pants over on the clothesline. The white ruffled shirt wasn’t quite dry. She shook it out and draped it over the rope again. She turned Reno’s dark pants over as well, envying him the luxury of a change of clothing. Since her flour-sack dress had fallen apart, she had nothing but Don Lyon’s second-best gambling clothes to wear, for she had buried him in his best.
There’s always the red dress.
A grimace went over Eve’s face at the thought. She would never again wear that dress in front of Reno. She would rather go naked.
Then she wondered if Reno was naked now, bathing as she had bathed in the rainbow pool. The thought was unsettling.
Eve’s restless glance fell on the journals lying side by side on Reno’s bedroll. Eve grabbed them and sat cross-legged, tucking the long shirttails between her knees. Beyond the narrow slot that held the pool, the sun was still a hot, slanting presence across the late afternoon sky. The clear, pouring light made the journals easy to read.
The spare prose of Caleb’s father said much about the centuries the Indians had spent under Spanish rule…
Bones poking up through the desert pavement. Femur and part of a pelvis. Looks to be a child. Female. Scraps of leather nearby.
Bent Finger says the bones belong to an Indian slave. Only the children could fit into the dog holes the Spaniards called mines.
Spanish sign on the rock. Crosses and initials.
Bent Finger says the scattered stones were once a vista, a kind of small mission. Tiny copper bell found with the child’s bones. It was cast, not hammered.
Spanish didn’t call them slaves. Slavery was immoral. So they called it the Encomienda. The savages owed the Spanish for Christian teaching. Pay off in coin or pay off in labor.
War was immoral, too. So the King had a Requerimiento, a requirement that had to be read before fighting commenced. It told the savages that anyone who fought God’s soldiers placed himself beyond the pale.
Upshot of the Requerimiento was any Indian who fought the Spanish was declared a slave and sent to the mines. Since Spanish was gibberish to the Indians, they didn’t understand the warning.
Not that it mattered. Indians would have fought anyway.
Spanish priests ran the mines. Slave labor. Men lasted about two years. Women and children a lot less.
Hell on Earth in the name of God.
Coolness condensed along Eve’s spine as she thought of the ruins she had seen back up the valley. The descendants of the people who had built those many-storied dwellings weren’t dumb animals to be enslaved by other men.
But they had been enslaved, and no war had been waged for the sake of their freedom. They had lived, endured brutal labor, died young, and been buried like rubbish in unmarked graves.
Eve felt a kinship with the forgotten dead. More than once in the past few days, she and Reno had come close to dying alone and unnoticed, their graves no more than whatever piece of earth they fell upon when they drew their last breath. The lesson of mortality was as old as man’s expulsion from Eden. Life was brief. Death was eternal.
Eve wanted more from life than she had known so far. She wanted something she couldn’t name.
Yet even without a name, Eve knew that it awaited her within Reno’s arms.
14
When Reno came back to camp, Eve was dressed in camisole, pantalets, and one of his dark shirts. She was also curled up on his bedroll, asleep. Slowly he took the journal from her relaxed fingers and set it aside. She stirred sleepily and looked up at him with eyes that reflected sunlight and darkness.
«Move over, gata. I’d like a nap, too.»
When Reno stretched out beside Eve, she smiled.
«You smell like lilacs,» she murmured. «I like it.»
«You should. It’s your soap.»
«You shaved,» she said, touching a place on Reno’s neck where he had nicked himself. «I wouldn’t have cut you. Why didn’t you ask me?»
«I get tired of demanding things from you,» he said simply.
Eve’s eyes opened and she looked at Reno, hearing all that he wasn’t saying.
«I like shaving you,» she whispered.
«What about kissing me? Do you like that, too?»
The green of Reno’s eyes was hot enough to burn, yet he made no move toward Eve.
«Yes,» she whispered. «I like that, too.»
Slowly Reno bent and put his mouth over Eve’s. She made a soft sound of revelation and remembrance in one. The warm, hungry questing of his tongue made her shiver with pleasure. For long, sweet seconds she relearned the velvet rhythms of penetration and retreat, knew once more the textures of his deep kiss, felt again the heat of him spreading through her in wave after wave of pleasure.
Reno cupped Eve’s face in his hands, letting the warmth of her skin radiate through him in a shimmering rush that was hotter and sweeter each time he felt it. Her warmth, her taste, her soft mouth opening beneath his, set fire to him.
«Gata,» he whispered. «You burn me.»
Her only answer was a broken cry and a shiver of pleasure as his teeth scored lightly over her neck.
The passionate cry was a razor fraying the cords of Reno’s restraint. He wanted to strip Eve’s few clothes away and bury himself in the sultry softness he knew waited for him within her body.
But even more than that, he needed to bring her to the point where she wanted him at least as much as he wanted her. He needed her crying and clawing and demanding that he take her. He needed her to forget all her cold feminine calculations and come to him without restraint, a golden fire burning him to the marrow of his bones.
Then he would burn her in return, leaving a mark on her that she would never forget. No matter how many men she had known before, she would never take another without remembering what it had been to be Reno’s lover.
He didn’t ask himself why it should matter that Eve never forget him. He simply accepted it as he had the uncanny currents of the Spanish needles, a mystery that didn’t have to be understood to be used.
Slowly Reno lowered his mouth over Eve’s once more, letting the rising currents of passion swirl back and forth between them, joining them in a quest that ultimately could have only one end.
Eve’s fingers slid deeply into Reno’s thick, cool hair, seeking the elemental warmth beneath. Her nails drew lightly over his scalp. The low sound he made was both reward and goad. She flexed her fingers again, and again felt the response that rippled through his muscular body.
«Such sweet little claws,» Reno said.
He bit Eve’s lower lip with careful restraint. She made a sound of surprise and pleasure. Smiling, he released her lip so slowly she could feel the tiny serrations of his teeth caressing the smooth, sensitive skin.
She leaned closer as he withdrew, for she wanted more of the gentle torment. He laughed softly and turned aside, denying her his mouth. When she tried to follow him, he held her face still between his hands. Her lips were parted, glistening with sunlight and desire, trembling lightly.
«Reno?»
He made a questioning sound that was rather like a purr of satisfaction.
«Don’t you want to kiss me?» Eve whispered.
«Do you want to kiss me?» Reno countered.
She nodded her head.