"Give me your word," he interrupted, "or so help me God I'll turn around right now and walk back to Wyoming and to hell with that damned black stud."
"But he's your future, the only way you'll get a chance to buy your silken-"
Ty interrupted with a burst of language that was both savage and obscene. It was a mile before Janna had the courage to break the silence that had followed.
"I promise," she said finally. "I don't understand why you won't let me help you, but-"
"You don't understand?" Ty demanded fiercely, cutting off Janna's words once more. "You must have a damned poor opinion of me if you think I'd build my dream on top of your dead body!"
"I never meant anything like that!" Janna said instantly, shocked that Ty had misunderstood her words. "I know you'd never do something that awful. You're much too kind and gentle and generous."
Ty's laughter was as harsh as his swearing had been, for he knew that a man who was kind or gentle or generous wouldn't have eased his violent hunger at the cost of Janna's innocence. But Ty had done just that and now she was no longer innocent… and worst of all, he couldn't bring himself to truly repent his action. The ecstasy he had known within Janna's body was too great, too consuming, to ever be repudiated.
If he had it to do all over again, he would no more be able to preserve Janna's virginity than he had been the first time. She was wildness and grace and elemental fire, and he was a man who had hungered a lifetime for all three without knowing it. She had sensed his needs, given herself to him and had required nothing of him in return. Not one damn thing.
And he felt the silken strands of her innocence and generosity twining more tightly around him with each moment, binding him.
"Do you do it on purpose?" Ty demanded angrily.
"What?"
"Give everything and ask nothing and thereby chain me to you tighter than any steel manacles could."
Janna felt as though she had been struck. The cold rain that had been making her miserable became her friend, for it hid the tears and disappointment she was too tired to conceal. When Ty had swept her up in his arms and held her as fiercely as she had held him, she had begun to hope that he cared more for her than simply as a sexual convenience. When he had held her hand and walked in companionable silence with her through the storm, she had been certain that he cared for her.
What she hadn't realized was that he would resent that caring, and her.
"Well, you're by God going to take something from me," Ty continued. "Lucifer is half yours."
"I don't want him."
"I didn't want you to risk your neck, either," Ty shot back, "and a lot of good my wanting did me."
Janna jerked her hand free of his. "Did you ever think that the reason I didn't ask for anything from you was that there was nothing you had that I wanted?"
"Nothing?" Ty asked sardonically. "You could have fooled me."
The tone of his voice told Janna that he was remembering her hands caressing him, her lips clinging, her hips lifting in silent pleading that his body join with hers. Shame coursed through her.
"Don't worry," she said, her voice strained. "You won't have to lose any sleep on my account tonight. I won't seduce you again."
"Seduce me? Is that what you think happened? You seduced me?" Ty laughed. "Sugar, you don't have the least idea how to seduce a man. A woman seduces a man with rustling silks and secret smiles and accidental touches of her soft, perfumed hands. She seduces a man with her conversation and the sweet music of her voice when she greets her guests for a fancy ball. She seduces a man by knowing fine wines and elegant food, and by her special grace when she enters a room knowing he'll be there." Ty shook his head and added, "You well and truly bedded me, but you sure as hell didn't seduce me."
Janna remembered what Ty had said about her last night…suited to be nothing except a man's mistress, but you lack the social graces for even that profession.
Without a word Janna turned away from Ty and swung onto Zebra's warm back, ignoring the pain that mounting the horse without aid gave to her bruised arm.
"Janna? What the hell…?"
She didn't answer. Her heels urged Zebra forward until Janna could see and hear only the rain.
Chapter Thirty-One
"Come on, it's just a little bit farther," Ty said to the stallion, hoping he wasn't lying. Neither Ty's voice nor the steady pressure he put on the hackamore revealed the weariness that had settled into the marrow of his bones, turning his muscles to sand.
For a moment Ty was afraid that the stallion wouldn't respond, but the pressure on the hackamore eased abruptly as the horse resumed his awkward walking gait.
"That's it, son," Ty said encouragingly. "She said the slot was at the top of a little rise."
And that was all Janna had said through the long hours of intermittent rain and wind. When it wasn't raining she rode far ahead of Ty and Lucifer. When it rained she rode in close enough that her tracks were always clear for Ty to follow. When it became dark she rode closer still, ensuring that Lucifer wouldn't get lost.
Ty was certain that it was the stallion's welfare rather than his own that concerned Janna. Not once since she had mounted Zebra had she said anything to Ty. He missed her conversation. In the past weeks he had become accustomed to her insights into the land and its animals, her uninhibited response to the wind and sun, and her shy smile when he touched her. He missed her laughter when she talked about hiding from Cascabel in the same way the renegade had once hidden from the soldiers-out in plain sight. Ty missed the snippets of plays and poetry and essays she liked to talk about with him, drawing from him the missing parts of her education. Most of all he missed the warm, companionable silence they had shared while they walked hand in hand in the cold rain.
The silence Ty and Janna had shared since she had ridden off was anything but companionable. It was as chill and empty as the night.
"Maybe you can tell me," Ty said to Lucifer. "Why would a woman get all upset because I told her it isn't her fault that she's not a virgin anymore? Because it sure as hell isn't her fault. Janna didn't have the faintest idea of what waited for her at the end of that primrose path. She could no more have known when to say no to me than she could have walked down the plateau trail carrying Zebra on her back.
"But I knew where we were going. I knew the first time I kissed Janna that I should stop myself right there or I wouldn't be able to quit short of burying myself in that sweet young body. But I didn't stop. I wanted her the way a river in flood wants the sea. Just plain unstoppable. And God help me, I still want her just like that.
"I knew what I was doing every inch of the way… and it was every inch the best I've ever had. I'll die remembering the beautiful sounds she made while I was inside her, pleasuring her with my whole body."
Ty's voice thickened as memories poured through him in an incandescent tide. Despite his exhaustion, his blood beat heavily at the thought of being sheathed within Janna's fire and softness once more.
"She didn't have a chance to refuse me," Ty continued, his voice rough. "Not a single damned chance in hell. It should have made her feel better to know that what happened was my fault, not hers.
"So why won't she speak to me?"
Lucifer didn't have any answer for Ty. Not that he had expected one. If the stallion had known how to handle the supposedly weaker sex, Zebra wouldn't have been racing around the plateau with Janna for the past few years. Muttering to himself, Ty walked up the rise, urging the limping stallion along with a steady pressure on the hackamore.
At last a low nicker came floating out of the darkness in front of them. Lucifer nickered in return. No verbal welcome came to Ty, however. Nor did Janna say anything when she dismounted and walked around the stallion. Frowning, peering into the coldly brilliant moonlight that had replaced the wind-frayed clouds, she tried to gauge Lucifer's condition.