Chapter Nine

The jugs of whiskey had been among the Gawrylows’ supplies. Cooper had discovered them the day they cleaned out the cabin. He had smacked his lips with anticipation. That was before he tasted the whiskey. He had tossed back a healthy gulp and swallowed it without chewing—the stuff had looked viscous enough to chew. It was white lightning, moonshine, rotgut, and it had crashed and burned inside his stomach like a meteor.

Rusty had laughed at his coughing, wheezing spasm. He wasn’t amused. After he’d recovered the use of his vocal cords, he had darkly informed her that it wasn’t funny, that his esophagus had been seared.

Until now, he hadn’t touched the jugs of whiskey. This time, there was nothing funny about his drinking it.

After he had built up the fire, he uncorked a jug of the smelly stuff. Rusty was surprised, but said nothing as he took a tentative swig. Then another. At first she thought he was drinking it in order to get warm. His expedition outside had been brief, but long enough to freeze his mustache. He was no doubt chilled to the marrow.

That excuse didn’t serve for long, however. Cooper didn’t stop with those first two drinks. He carried the jug with him to the chair in front of the fireplace and drank what must have equaled several cocktails before Rusty called him to the table. To her irritation, he brought the jug with him and poured an intemperate amount of the whiskey into his coffee mug. He sipped from it between bites of the rabbit stew she had cooked.

She weighed the advisability of cautioning him not to drink too much, but after a time, she felt constrained to say something; the regularity with which he drank from the tin mug was making her uneasy.

What if he passed out? He’d have to lie where he fell because she’d never be able to lift him. She remembered how much effort it had taken to drag him out of the crashed fuselage of the airplane. A great deal of her strength then had come from adrenaline. What if he ventured outside and got lost? A thousand dreadful possibilities elbowed their way through her mind.

Finally she said, “I thought you couldn’t drink that.”

He didn’t take her concern at face value. He took it as a reprimand. “You don’t think I’m man enough?”

“What?” she asked with bewilderment. “No. I mean yes, I think you’re man enough. I thought you didn’t like the taste of it.”

“I’m not drinking it because I like the taste. I’m drinking it because we’re out of the good stuff and this is all I’ve got.”

He was itching for a fight. She could see the invitation to one in his eyes, hear it in his snarling inflection. Rusty was too smart to pull a lion’s tail even if it was dangling outside the bars of the cage. And she was too smart to wave a red flag at Cooper when his face was as blatant a warning of trouble as a danger sign.

In his present mood he was better left alone and unprovoked, although it was an effort for her to keep silent. She longed to point out how stupid it was to drink something that you didn’t like just for the sake of getting drunk.

Which was apparently what he intended to do. He nearly overturned his chair as he pushed himself away from the table. Only trained reflexes that were as quick and sure as a striking rattler’s kept the chair from landing on the floor. He moved back to the hearth. There he sipped and sulked while Rusty cleaned up their dinner dishes.

When she was finished, she swept the floor—more to give herself something to do than because it needed it. Unbelievable as it seemed, she’d come to take pride in how neatly she had arranged and maintained the cabin.

Eventually she ran out of chores and stood awkwardly in the center of the room while deciding what to do with herself. Cooper was hunched in his chair, broodily staring into the fireplace as he steadily drank. The most sensible thing to do would be to make herself scarce, but their cabin had only one room. A walk was out of the question. She wasn’t a bit sleepy, but bed was her only alternative.

“I, uh, think I’ll go to bed now, Cooper. Good night.”

“Sit down.”

Already on her way to her bed, she was brought up short. It wasn’t so much what he’d said that halted her, but the manner in which he’d said it. She would prefer a strident command to that quiet, deadly request.

Turning, she looked at him inquisitively.

“Sit down,” he repeated.

“I’m going—”

“Sit down.”

His high-handedness sparked a rebellious response, but Rusty quelled it. She wasn’t a doormat, but neither was she a dope. Only a dope would tangle with Cooper while he was in this frame of mind. Huffily, she crossed the room and dropped into the chair facing his. “You’re drunk.”

“You’re right.”

“Fine. Be ridiculous. Make a fool of yourself. I couldn’t care less. But its embarrassing to watch. So if you don’t mind, I’d rather go to bed.”

“I do mind. Stay where you are.”

“Why? What difference does it make? What do you want?”

He took a sip from his cup, staring at her over the dented rim of it. “While I’m getting plashtered, I want to sit here and shtare at you and imagine you...” He drank from the cup again, then said around a juicy belch, “Naked.”

Rusty came out of her chair as though an automatic spring had ejected her. Apparently no level of drunkenness could dull Cooper’s reflexes. His arm shot out. He grabbed a handful of her sleeve, hauled her back, and pushed her into the chair.

“I told you to shtay where you are.”

“Let go of me.” Rusty wrested her arm free. She was as apprehensive now as she was angry. This wasn’t a silly drunk’s prank, or an argumentative drunk’s unreasonableness. She tried convincing herself that Cooper wouldn’t hurt her, but then she really didn’t know, did she? Maybe alcohol was the catalyst that released his controlled violence. “Leave me alone,” she said with affected courage.

“I don’t plan on touching you.”

“Then what?”

“Call this a masochistic kind of...self-fulfillment.” His eyelids drooped suggestively. “I’m sure you can substitute the correct name for it.”

Rusty went hot all over with embarrassment. “I know the correct name for you. Several, in fact.”

He laughed. “Save them. I’ve heard them all. Instead of thinking up dirty names to call me,” he said, after sipping from his mug, “let’s talk about you. Your hair, for instance.”

She crossed her arms over her middle and looked toward the ceiling, a living illustration of supreme boredom.

“You know what I thought about the first time I saw your hair?” He was undaunted by her uncooperative spirit and refusal to answer. Leaning forward from the waist, he whispered, “I thought about how good it would feel sweeping over my belly.”

Rusty jerked her eyes back to his. His were glazed, and not entirely from liquor. They didn’t have the vacuous look of the seasoned drunk. The dark centers of them were brilliant, fiery. His voice, too, was now clear. He wasn’t slurring his words. He made it impossible for her to misunderstand him—even to pretend to.

“You were standing in the sunshine out on the tarmac. You were talking to a man...your father. But then I didn’t know he was your father. I watched you hug him, kiss his cheek. I was thinking, ‘That lucky bastard knows what it’s like to play with her hair in bed.’”

“Don’t, Cooper.” Her fists were clenched at her sides. She was sitting as tall and straight as a rocket about to be launched.

“When you got on the plane, I wanted to reach out and touch your hair. I wanted to grab handfuls of it, use it to move your head down even with my thighs.”

“Stop this!”

Abruptly he ceased speaking and took another draught of whiskey. If anything, his eyes grew darker, more sinister. “You like hearing that, don’t you?”

“No.”

“You like knowing you’ve got that kind of power over men.”

“You’re wrong. Very wrong. I felt extremely self-conscious about being the only woman on that airplane.”

He muttered an obscenity and took another drink. “Like today?”

“Today? When?”

He set his cup aside without spilling a single drop. His coordination, like his reflexes, was still intact. He was a mean, nasty drunk, but he wasn’t a sloppy one. He leaned forward, beyond the edge of his chair, putting his face within inches of hers.

“When I came in and found you bundled up naked in that blanket.”

“That wasn’t calculated. It was an error in judgment. I had no way of knowing you would come back so soon. You never do. You’re usually away for hours at a time. That’s why I decided to take a sponge bath while you were gone.”

“I knew the minute I came through the door that you had bathed,” he said in a low, thrumming voice. “I could smell the soap on your skin.” His eyes moved down over her, as though seeing bare skin rather than her heavy, cable-knit sweater. “You favored me with a peek at your breast, didn’t you?”

“No!”

“Like hell.”

“I didn’t! When I realized the blanket had slipped I—”

“Too late. I saw it. Your nipple. Pink. Hard.”

Rusty drew in several uneven breaths. This bizarre discussion was having a strange effect on her. “Don’t say any more. We promised each other not to be abusive.”

“I’m not being abusive. Maybe to myself, but not to you.”

“Yes, yes, you are. Please, Cooper, stop this. You don’t know—”

“What I’m saying? Yes, I do. I know exactly what I’m saying.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I could kiss your nipples for a week and never get tired of doing it.”

The whiskey huskiness of his voice barely made the words audible, but Rusty heard them. They intoxicated her. She swayed unsteadily under their impact. She whimpered and shut her eyes in the hopes of blocking out the outrageous words and the mental pictures they inspired.

His tongue moving over her flesh, soft and wet, tender and ardent, rough and exciting.

Her eyes popped open and she glared at him defensively. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like it.”

He gave her a smug and skeptical smile. “You don’t like me telling you how I’ve wanted to put my hands all over you? How I’ve fantasized about your thighs being opened for me? How I’ve lain in that damn bed night after night listening to your breathing and wanting to be so deep inside you that—”

“Stop it!” Rusty leaped from her chair and pushed past him, trying to make good an escape out the door of the cabin. She would survive the bitter cold far better than she would his heat.

Cooper was too quick for her. She never reached the door. Before she’d taken two steps, he had her locked in an inescapable embrace. He arched her back as he bent over her. His breath struck her fearful features hotly.

“If it was my destiny to be stranded in this godforsaken place, why did it have to be with a woman who looked like you? Huh?” He shook her slightly as though expecting a logical explanation. “Why’d you have to be so damn beautiful? Sexy? Have a mouth designed for loving a man?”

Rusty tried to wiggle free. “I don’t want this. Let me go.”

“Why couldn’t I be trapped here with someone ugly and sweet? Somebody I could have in bed and not live to regret it. Somebody who would be grateful for my attention. Not a shallow little tart who gets off by driving men crazy. Not a socialite. Not you.”

“I’m warning you, Cooper.” Gritting her teeth, she struggled against him.

“Somebody far less attractive, but useful. A woman who could cook.” He smiled nastily. “I’ll bet you cook all right. In bed. That’s where you cook. I’ll bet that’s where you serve up your best dishes.”

He slid his hands over her buttocks and brought her up hard against himself, thrusting his hips forward and making contact with her lower body.

“Does it give you a thrill, knowing you do that to me?”

It gave her a thrill, but not the kind of which he spoke. This intimacy with his hardness stole her breath. She grabbed his shoulders for support. Her eyes clashed with his. For seconds, they held there.

Then Rusty broke their stare and shoved him away. She despised him for putting her through this. But she was also ashamed of her own, involuntary reaction to everything he’d said. It had been fleeting, but for a moment there, her choice could have gone either way.

“Keep away from me,” she said in a voice that trembled with purpose. “I mean it. If you don’t, I’ll turn that knife you gave me on you. Do you hear me? Don’t lay a hand on me again.” She strode past him and threw herself face down on her bed, using the coarse sheet to cool her fevered cheeks.

Cooper was left standing in the center of the room. He raised both hands and plowed them through his long hair, painfully raking it back off his face. Then he slunk back to his chair in front of the fireplace and picked up the jug and his tin cup.

When Rusty dared to glance at him, he was still sitting there morosely sipping the whiskey.

She panicked the following morning when she saw that his bed hadn’t been slept in. Had he wandered out during the night? Had something terrible happened to him? Throwing off the covers—she didn’t remember pulling them up over herself last night—she raced across the floor and flung open the door.

She slumped against the jamb in relief when she saw Cooper. He was splitting logs. The sky was clear. The sun was shining. What had been icicles hanging from the eaves the day before were now incessant drips. The temperature was comparatively mild. Cooper wasn’t even wearing his coat. His shirttail was hanging out loose, and when he turned around Rusty saw that his shirt was unbuttoned.

He spotted her, but said nothing as he tossed several of the split logs onto the mounting pile near the edge of the porch. His face had a greenish cast and there were dark crescents beneath his bloodshot eyes.

Rusty stepped back inside, but left the door open to let in fresh air. It was still cold, but the sunshine had a cleansing effect. It seemed to dispel the hostility lurking in the shadows of the cabin.

Hastily Rusty rinsed her face and brushed her hair. The fire in the stove had gone out completely. By now she was skilled at adding kindling and starting a new one. In minutes she had one burning hot enough to boil the coffee.

For a change, she opened a canned ham and fried slices of it in a skillet. The aroma of cooking pork made her mouth water; she hoped it would tantalize Cooper’s appetite, too. Instead of oatmeal, she cooked rice. She would have traded her virtue for a stick of margarine. Fortunately she didn’t have an opportunity to barter it, so she settled for drizzling the ham drippings over the rice, which miraculously came out just right.

Splurging, she opened a can of peaches, put them in a bowl, and set them on the table with the rest of the food. She could no longer hear the crunching sound of splitting logs, so she assumed Cooper would be in shortly.

She was right. He came in moments later. His gait was considerably more awkward than usual. While he was washing his hands at the sink, Rusty took two aspirin tablets from the first-aid kit and laid them on his plate.

He stared down at them when he reached the table, then took them with the glass of water beside his plate. “Thanks.” Gingerly he settled himself into his chair.

“You’re welcome.” Rusty knew better than to laugh, but the careful way he was moving was indicative of how severe his hangover was. She poured a cup of strong, black coffee and passed it to him. His hand was shaking as he reached for it. The log-splitting exercise had been self-imposed punishment for his whiskey-drinking binge. She was glad he hadn’t chopped off a toe. Or worse.

“How do you feel?”

Without moving his head, he looked over at her. “My eyelashes hurt.”

She held back her smile. She also resisted the compulsion to reach across the table and lift the sweaty strands of hair off his forehead. “Can you eat?”

“I think so. I should be able to. I spent what seemed like hours, uh, out back. If the lining of my stomach is still there, it’s all that’s left.”

While he sat with his shoulders hunched and his hands resting carefully on either side of his plate where he’d planted them, she dished up the food. She even cut his ham into bite-size pieces before scooting the plate in front of him. Taking a deep breath, he picked up his fork and took a tentative bite. When he was certain that it was going to stay down, he took another, then another, and was soon eating normally.

“This is good,” he said after several minutes of silence.

“Thank you. Better than oatmeal, for a change.”

“Yeah.”

“I noticed the weather is much warmer.”

Actually, what she had noticed was that the exercise had caused the hair on his chest to curl damply. He’d rebuttoned most of the buttons on his shirt before coming to the table, but it was open far enough for her to get a glimpse of that impressive chest.

“We might get lucky and have a few more days of this before the next storm blows through.”

“That would be nice.”

“Hmm. I could get a lot done around here.”

They’d never had a pointless, polite conversation before. This exchange of meaningless chitchat was more awkward than any of their arguments had been, so both dropped it. In a silence so profound they could hear the water dripping off the eaves outside, they finished their meal and drank their second cups of coffee.

When Rusty stood up to clear the table, Cooper said, “I think the aspirin helped. My headache’s almost gone.”

“I’m glad.”

He cleared his throat loudly and fiddled with the knife and fork he’d laid on his empty plate. “Look, about last night, I, uh, I don’t have an excuse for it.”

She smiled at him with understanding. “If I could have stood the taste of that whiskey, I might have gotten drunk myself. There have been numerous times since the crash when I’ve wanted that kind of escape. You don’t have to apologize.”

Moving back to the table, she reached for his plate. He caught her hand. The gesture, unlike anything else he’d done since she met him, was unsure, hesitant. “I’m trying to apologize to you for the things I said.”

Staring down at the crown of his head, where his hair grew around a boyish swirl, Rusty asked softly, “Did you mean them, Cooper?”

She knew what she was doing. She was inviting him to make love to her. She wanted him to. There was no sense in fooling herself any longer. He appealed to her like no man ever had. And apparently the attraction was mutual.

They would never maintain their sanity if they didn’t satisfy this physical craving. They might live through the winter without becoming lovers, but by spring they would both be raving maniacs. This passionate wanting, unreasonable as it was, could no longer be suppressed.

A relationship between them would be unworkable under ordinary circumstances. Their circumstances were far from ordinary. It simply wasn’t practical to examine whether their life-styles or politics or philosophies were compatible. It didn’t matter. What mattered—very much so—was a basic human need for intimacy with the opposite sex.

Cooper raised his head slowly. “What did you say?”

“I asked if you meant them—the things you said.”

His eyes didn’t even flicker. “Yes. I meant them.”

He was a man of action, not of words. He reached up and curled his fingers around the back of her neck, pulling her head down for his kiss. He made a sound like that of a feasting wild animal as he used his lips to rub hers apart. His tongue went searching inside her mouth. Rusty welcomed it.

He stood up, stumbling and off balance. This time his chair did topple backward. It landed on the floor with a crash. Neither of them noticed. His arms slid around her waist, hers around his neck. He drew her body tightly against his. Where hers was bowed, his arched to complement it.

“Oh, God.” He tore his mouth from hers and pressed it against her neck. The fingers of one hand ravaged her hair, threading through it and weaving it between his fingers. It became hopelessly ensnared in his grip, which was exactly what he wanted. He pulled her head back and stared down into her face. His was taut with desire.

She met his gaze without shyness. “Kiss me again, Cooper.”

His mouth claimed hers again, hotly and hungrily. It drew breath from her. As he kissed her, his hand moved to the front of her slacks. He fumbled with the button and zipper until they were undone. When his hand slid into the elastic waistband of her panties, Rusty gasped. She had thought there would be a sensual buildup, a flirtatious progression, extended foreplay.

She didn’t regret that there wouldn’t be. His boldness, his impatience, was a powerful aphrodisiac. It set off explosions of desire deep within her. She tilted her hips forward and filled his palm with her softness.

He muttered swearwords that were in themselves arousing because they so explicitly expressed the height of his arousal. Like a Rod Stewart song, they were viscerally sexy; one couldn’t hear them without thinking of a male and a female mating.

He struggled with the fly of his jeans until his manhood was freed—a hot, hard fullness probing between her thighs. “I feel your hair against me,” he rasped in her ear. “It’s so soft.”

The erotic message made Rusty weak. She leaned back against the edge of the table and lowered her hands to his hips, inside his jeans. “Please, Cooper, now.”

One swift and sure stroke planted him solidly inside her. She gasped at the splendid pleasure and pain. He caught his breath and held it. They clung together like the survivors of a catastrophe—which, in fact, they were—as though their very existence depended on never letting go of each other. Oneness was essential to survival.

It was impossible to say who moved first. Perhaps it was simultaneous. After that initial instant of sheer delight in his total possession, Cooper began to delve deeper yet. He ground his hips against hers, extending himself, stretching her, his goal seemingly to be to reach the very nucleus of her soul.

Rusty, crying out in ecstasy, flung her head back. He randomly kissed her exposed throat and moved his mouth over her breasts, though she was still wearing her sweater.

But love play was unnecessary. Nothing could heighten this fire. Cooper’s plunging body became hotter and harder with each savage thrust.

Then he had no choice in the matter.

“You’re a very beautiful woman.”

Rusty gazed up at her lover. One of her arms was folded beneath her head. The other hand was draped over his shoulder. Her pose was provocative. She wanted it to be. She didn’t mind that her breasts were fully revealed and wantonly inviting. She wanted to display them for his entertainment. She enjoyed seeing his eyes turn lambent every time he looked at them and their pouting tips.

Maybe he’d been right all along. She’d shown a marked lack of modesty since she’d met him. Maybe she had been deliberately seductive because she had wanted him from the beginning. She had wanted this—this languishing aftermath of a coupling that had left her replete.

“You think I’m beautiful?” she asked coyly, running her fingers through his hair and smiling like the cat who had just lapped up the cream.

“You know I do.”

“You don’t have to sound so angry about it.”

His fingers trailed down the groove between her ribs all the way to her navel. “I am, though. I didn’t want to give in to your charms. I lost the battle with my own lust.”

“I’m glad you did.” She raised her head and kissed his mouth softly.

He dusted his fingertips over her navel. “For the time being, so am I.”

Rusty didn’t want them to be restricted to a time limit. “Why ‘for the time being’?”

It hadn’t taken them long to undress and make up the pallet in front of the fire. Stretched out naked on the pile of furs, hair a rumpled heap of reddish curls, lips rosy and wet from frequent kissing, eyes drowsy with lovemaking, Rusty looked like a conquering vandal’s battle prize. Cooper had never waxed poetic, surely not right after having sex. The thought brought an involuntary smile to his lips.

He surveyed her alluring body. “Never mind.”

“Tell me.”

“It has something to do with you and me and who we are. But I really don’t want to talk about that now.” He bent his head low and kissed the ginger curls between her thighs. They were damp. They smelled and tasted of himself and he felt his body respond. Her low moan worked as surely as a velvet-fisted caress on his rising sex. He sighed his pleasure. “Did you know that you’re very small?” he whispered into the fleecy delta. Her thighs relaxed and parted. His fingers slipped inside her.

“I am?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not all that experienced.”

He gazed down at her doubtfully, but her face was guileless. Abruptly he asked, “How many?”

“How indelicate!”

“How many?”

Rusty wrestled with her decision to tell him. Finally, eyes evasive, she said quietly, “Less than I could count on one hand.”

“In a year?”

“Total.”

Cooper stared down at her, searching for any trace of duplicity in her eyes. God, he wanted to believe her, but couldn’t. His probing caress was telling him what his mind wasn’t ready to accept, what he should have known the moment he entered her, but couldn’t reconcile with his image of her.

“Less than five?”

“Yes.”

“Less than three?” She looked away. “Just one?” She nodded. His heart did an odd little dance, and the emotion that surged through him felt like happiness. But he’d known so little of it, he couldn’t be sure. “And you didn’t live with him, did you, Rusty?”

“No.” She tossed her head to one side and bit her lower lip at his thumb’s indolent stroking. The callused pad of it had been gifted with a magical and intuitive touch that paid honor to a woman’s body.

“Why not?”

“My father and brother wouldn’t have approved.”

“Does everything you do have to meet with your father’s approval?”

“Yes... No... I... I... Cooper, please stop,” she gasped breathlessly. “I can’t think while you’re doing that.”

“So don’t think.”

“But I don’t want to...to, you know...oh, please... no...”

After the last shimmering beam of light had finally burned out, she opened her eyes and met his teasing smile. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

She discovered that she had just enough energy to answer his smile and reach up and touch his mustache with her fingertips. “I didn’t want to do that so soon. I wanted to look at you some more.”

“I guess that ends the discussion of you and your father.”

Her brows drew into a frown. “It’s very complex, Cooper. He was devastated when Jeff was killed. So was I. Jeff was...” She searched for the all-encompassing word. “He was wonderful. He could do everything.”

Cooper brushed her lips with his mustache. “Not everything,” he said mysteriously. “He couldn’t—” He bent down and whispered what Jeff couldn’t do with him, using a street word that brought color rising all the way to Rusty’s hairline. But she blushed with pleasure, not with affront. “So, see? There’s no reason for you to feel inferior to your brother.”

Before she could expound on the subject, he sealed her lips closed with an arousing, eating kiss. “Now, what was that about looking at me?”

Her breath was insufficient. She drew in a deep, long one before saying, “I haven’t looked my fill.” Her eyes, shining as brightly as copper pennies, roved down his chest. She lifted her hand to touch him, glanced up at him as though asking permission, then laid her fingers against the springy hair.

“Go on, coward. I don’t bite.” The glance she gave him was eloquently sensual. He laughed. “Touché. I do. But not all the time.” He leaned down and whispered, “Only when I’m buried inside the sweetest silk I’ve ever found between two thighs.”

While she explored, he nibbled her ear and took love bites out of her neck. When her fingers flitted across his nipple, he sucked in a sharp breath. She jerked her hand back quickly. He recaptured it and pressed it back against his chest.

“That wasn’t alarming or painful,” he explained in a hoarse, thick voice. “It’s like connecting two live wires. I wasn’t prepared for the shock. Do it again. All you want.”

She did. And more. She dallied with him until his breath became choppy. “Something else needs your attention, but we’d better not,” he said, catching her hand on its downward slide. “Not if we want to take this one slow and easy.”

“Let me touch you.”

Against such a breathy request, he exercised no willpower. He squeezed his eyes shut and withstood her curious caresses until he couldn’t bear anymore. Then he lifted her hand off him and satisfied them both with a fervent kiss.

“My turn.” One of her arms was still bent behind her head. Her breasts rose off her chest, perfect domes crowned with delicate, pink crests. He covered each with a hand and squeezed. “Too hard?” he asked in response to Rusty’s change in facial expression.

“Too wonderful.” She sighed.

“That night I kissed you...here...” He touched the curving softness of her breast.

“Yes?”

“I meant to make the mark.”

Her sleepy eyelids opened wide. “You did? Why?”

“Because I’m mean, that’s why.”

“No, you’re not. You just want everyone to think you are.”

“It works, doesn’t it?”

She smiled. “Sometimes. Sometimes I’ve thought you were very mean. Other times I knew you were feeling a lot of pain and that being deliberately mean was your only way of coping with it. I think it goes back to your days as a POW.”

“Maybe.”

“Cooper?”

“Hmm?”

“Make another mark if you want to.”

His eyes darted up to hers. Then he moved above her and kissed her mouth thoroughly while his hands continued to massage her breasts. He brushed her wet and swollen lips with his mustache before dragging it down her neck, nipping her lightly with his teeth as he went. He kissed his way across her collarbone and down her chest until he reached the upper curve of her breast.

“I’m responsible for the bruises on your bottom. Then the passion mark. I guess in a primitive way I wanted to brand you mine. I don’t have to put a mark on you now,” he said, moving his lips lightly over her skin. “You belong to me. For a little while, anyway.”

Rusty wanted to take issue with his choice of words and tell him that she would belong to him for as long as he liked, but his roving lips emptied her mind of the correct phrases. He kissed every inch of her breasts, avoiding the nipples. Then he licked them all over and at once, like a greedy child with a quickly melting ice-cream cone. When Rusty didn’t think she could stand any more, she clutched handfuls of his hair and pulled his mouth directly above one of the achy, stiff peaks.

His tongue flicked over it, lightly, deftly, until her head was thrashing from side to side. He used his mustache to tickle and tease. When he closed his lips around her nipple and surrounded it with the scalding, tugging pressure of his mouth, she cried his name out loud.

“Oh, baby, you’re nice.” He moved his head from one side of her body to the other. His mouth was ravenous, but tender.

“Cooper?”

“Hmm?”

“Cooper?”

“Hmm?”

“Cooper?” She curled her fingers around his ears and pulled his head up even with hers. “Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

He avoided looking at her by staring at a spot beyond the top of her head. “You know what.” She wet her lips anxiously. “Why did you...withdraw...before...?”

She felt apprehensive and disappointed, just as she had earlier when, at the last possible heartbeat, he’d cheated her out of the ultimate high, that of feeling him come inside her.

He became perfectly still. For a moment she was afraid she’d made him angry and that he was going to leave the pallet. After a long, tense moment, he cut his eyes back to hers. “I guess you’re due an explanation.” She said nothing. He released her name on a sigh. “We might be here for a long time. I don’t think either of us wants or needs another mouth to feed.”

“A baby?” Her voice was hushed with awe. She played with the idea of having a baby and didn’t find it repugnant at all. In fact her lips formed a winsome smile. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, I had. We’re both young, healthy adults. I know you’re not using a contraceptive because I know everything that we brought into this cabin with us. Am I right?”

“Yes,” she said timidly, like a child confessing a small transgression.

“I didn’t pack anything to take with me to the hunting lodge.”

“But it probably won’t even happen.”

“We can’t be sure. I’m taking no chances. So—”

“But if it should,” she interrupted excitedly, “we’d be found before the child was born.”

“Probably, but—”

“Even if we weren’t, I’d be the one responsible for feeding it.”

This talk about a child had his stomach churning. His mouth was set in its familiar, firm, hard line. It softened now when he saw how earnest Rusty was. Almost naive. “That’s just it,” he said roughly, his mouth moving toward her breasts. “I can’t stand the thought of sharing you with anyone.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry. That’s the way it’s got to be.”

She wanted to protest and pursue the argument. But he used his hands and lips and tongue with such prurient talent that they dissolved in a mutual, simultaneous orgasm before she realized that once again he had withdrawn from her just in time.

They kept each other so sated with sex that they didn’t get hungry or cold or tired. They made love all that day and into the evening. Finally, exhausted, they wrapped themselves in fur and each other, and slept.

Only the unexpected rat-a-tat drumbeat of helicopter blades could have disturbed their dreams.