The lure of Eve’s body was too great to withstand. When she twisted slowly, repeatedly, against him, Reno felt the world unravel in a series of soft explosions. With her name breaking on his lips, he came undone a single heartbeat at a time, giving himself to her in a long, rippling current of fire.
Eve’s breath caught and sighed out in wonder as she held Reno, savoring the gentle shuddering of his body. For long, sweet minutes, her slender fingers caressed his back and shoulders. The breadth and power of him were obvious even now, when he lay with his head between her breasts, breathing slowly, utterly relaxed.
Smiling, Eve stroked Reno’s back with slow sweeps of her hands, savoring the strength of him and the knowledge that she had never been so close to anyone.
It was more than the fact of their interlocked bodies. She loved Reno as she had never loved anyone in her life.
Eve didn’t know she had spoken her thoughts aloud until Reno lifted his head and turned it from side to side, stroking her breasts with his cheek as he spoke.
«Love is an illusion, sugar girl,» he said. «But passion isn’t.»
She felt the slow drawing of Reno’s tongue over her nipples. With each delicious movement, his body stirred within her, redoubling the effect of his caresses. An answering heat splintered through her, making her breath break audibly.
Reno heard Eve’s response and felt it in the swift rise of her breasts. His laughter was velvety, dark, exultant.
«Passion is very real,» he said, biting delicately at Eve’s taut nipples. «We’re good together, you and I. Hell, we’re better than good. There’s no word for what we have when we’re like this.»
«What do you mean?» she whispered.
«Little innocent,» Reno murmured, drinking the tender shivering of her flesh as his teeth raked lightly. «You don’t even know, do you?»
«What?»
«This.»
His hips moved and he drove into her as though he would fuse their bodies into a single seamless whole. A throttled cry and an urgent twisting of her hips answered him. Laughing with sheer pleasure, he twisted against her in turn and listened to his name come from her lips in a rush.
«Yes,» Reno said. «It’s me. Again. But don’t blame me, gata. I’ve never been like this before in my life.»
Another twist, another cry, another sultry wave melting through Eve to lick over Reno, fueling his passionate fire, driving him higher, urging him to drive her higher as well.
Reno moved heavily, sparing Eve nothing of his power. Nor did she ask for less. She moved in urgent counterpoint, meeting strength with fluid grace, hunger with desire, fire with searing fire.
When sweat misted her skin, he bent his head and licked salty drops, bit flesh that strained to become part of him. He seduced her breasts with his teeth and tongue, demanding and receiving a hard bud from each while his hips moved relentlessly, demanding a different kind of flowering.
His hand slid down between their slick, hot bodies until he found the satin bud. He circled, pressed, raked with shattering delicacy.
«What are you…» Eve said brokenly. «Dear God…Reno.»
Pleasure burst in her with the force of a blow, arching her body as fierce currents swept through her, driving her even higher.
Reno held Eve wild and shivering while he moved over and within her relentlessly, riding the fierce passion he had called from her. He punctuated each heavy thrust with a savagely restrained caress that demanded everything of her, plucking at the delicate bud until it began to flower one dark petal at a time.
Eve cried out as her body experienced an ecstasy that had no beginning and no end, shattering her, transforming her. If there had been room in her for fear, she would have been terrified; but there was room only for Reno’s driving body and the dark words of desire and demand he poured over her.
She cried out in abandon, sinking her nails heedlessly into his back as she arched like a drawn bow, succumbing to the sweet violence he had called from her.
Reno’s smile was as untamed as Eve’s cries. He held himself utterly motionless, absorbing her violent trembling into his strength. When she was still once more, he bent his head, drew his teeth over her shoulder in a fierce caress, and began moving inside her again.
Eve gasped as passion ravished her body once more.
«Reno.»
«I warned you,» he said in a low voice. «Until we can’t even lick our lips.»
Reno moved powerfully, pulling the night down around them like a cloak of black fire.
And like fire, they burned.
18
The jumbled waste of rock, sand, and tough shrubs looked like it went on forever in all directions, but Reno knew it didn’t. It was simply another wide step down in the long descent from the Rockies to the place more than a hundred miles to the west, where the mysterious, powerful Rio Colorado coiled invisibly between stone banks.
If it weren’t for Slater hovering on the horizon like a vulture, I’d be happy to camp by fresh water and not move for a few weeks.
Or months.
Reno smiled wryly at his own thoughts. For the first time in his life, he was in no real hurry to find Spanish treasure. He was having too much pleasure in other explorations, charting the undiscovered territory of a dual sensuality that was both savage and sublime, violent and tender, demanding and renewing. He didn’t want it to end until both of them had drunk the dark wine to the last heady drop.
Until we find the mine, you’ll be my woman whenever I want you, however I want you.
Eve had kept her end of the bargain with a generosity that was as unexpected and consuming as the sweet violence of their joined bodies. The thought of never again reaching for her in the darkness was unsettling to Reno. Whenever the thought came, he pushed it away.
Sufficient unto each day the troubles thereof.
The old advice echoed in the silence of Reno’s mind. He had no argument with it. He had enough troubles for this or any other day.
By now, word of the presence of a man and a woman riding along the edges of the stone maze would have gone out along the mysterious, efficient grapevine that existed throughout the West wherever strangers met at a water hole or crossroads, or shared a cup of coffee over a tiny campfire.
Hope Rafe hasn’t forgotten all the old signs we used to leave each other when we hunted as boys.
And I hope Wolfe hears I’m out here with a woman looking for gold. He knows the country. He’ll know I need a good man at my back if I find the mine.
Damn Slater and his hawk-eyed half-breed tracker. Anybody else would have given up a week ago.
By the end of the following day, Reno and Eve were camped at the base of a red sandstone formation that rose against the sky like a sail hewn from a single piece of stone. High up on the side of the cliff, rock had weathered away more quickly than in other parts of the formation. The result was a window set like a gem in the solid rock wall. A shaft of light from the setting sun speared through the opening, gliding everything it touched with deepest gold.
Yet even more astonishing than a window in stone was the muted murmur of fresh water nearby. They had climbed out of the stone maze and were riding once more through a landscape where mountains were close enough to make out individual peaks. The camp they made was between a series of sunny river bends.
Reno had been right about Eve’s reaction to water after having ridden through a rock desert. The first time she saw a trickle of water twisting through the center of an arid valley, she talked excitedly about riding next to a «river» again. Reno had teased her about it, but he hadn’t objected when she asked to camp at the point where the small stream spread out into a series of sunwarmed pools bordered by whispering cottonwood trees.