She had never dated in her teens and only infrequently since then and, as she’d told Noah, no one had waved a blue ribbon at her.
Until him.
The blue ribbon was between them now, acknowledged for what it was. More than a beginning.
Alex was testing her wings at twenty-six, but she more than half-believed she had flown before … with this man. Her only certainty was that she loved him and needed him.
She didn’t know what Noah felt, except for desire. He cared for her, she knew; the warmth in his eyes was more than passion, more than simple need. Her instincts told her he was not a man who cared lightly or incautiously. Knowledge of him these last weeks told her he was an honest man, an intelligent and humorous man.
Old memories—or dreams—told her even more. A soldier had gazed at her with gray-blue eyes reflecting the quiet dignity and weary devastation of a man who hated war, but fought. A man who loved. And the son of an earl had looked at her with the incredulous tenderness of a man grasping heaven against all odds.
But they had left her. One had gone back to his hated war. One had paid gold to be rid of her.
Restless, Alex fixed herself a cup of coffee and went to sit on the top step just outside the open front door of the cabin. Cal and Buddy came outside to sprawl on the porch, sleepy and peaceful in the warmth of the day.
She gazed off but looked inward, ignoring the view. She wanted to convince herself that those past “lives” she “remembered” held no real meaning, no connection to herself or this life. She wanted to believe that they were no more than bizarre instances of a creative subconscious, somehow triggered to spin tales in dream.
She couldn’t convince herself.
Shifting her cup to her left hand, Alex stared down at her right palm for a moment. She shook her head slightly, willing the line to change, or her memory of another palm to fade. She had had only a glimpse of that other hand, after all, and perhaps … No. She remembered.
Alex sighed and once more turned a blind gaze to the view. For the first time she felt certainty. Mad she might very well be, but she believed she had lived at least twice before. And twice before she had loved Noah.
And lost him.
She frowned. Once he had returned to a hated war, leaving her to stare down an empty, dusty road. Then there was that other man, the one who had paid to be rid of her. Or … had he? Alex could vividly remember those gray-blue eyes looking at her with something very like adoration; would that man have paid her brothers to take her away?
It didn’t ring true somehow, and yet she had no way of knowing. Unless and until her wayward memory told her how the stories ended.
Alex badly wanted to know. She thought of two adages, only one of which was slightly comforting: the third time’s the charm; three strikes … and you’re out. And how could she know this was indeed the third time? She wondered if her entire history was a series of lives during which she had lost the same man.
She felt her shoulders stiffening in determination. All right, then. Maybe she had lost. But that didn’t mean she had to lose again. She had learned a kind of strength few women ever knew—the strength to master and control wild animals. If she could stare a tiger down, she could certainly look fate in the eye.
She might even throw a saddle on the beast and tame it.
“There’s that whip and chair.”
At the sound of Noah’s soft voice Alex looked around quickly and felt a curious lurch of her heart. He was standing in the doorway watching her, and the flesh-and-blood reality of him made her even more determined.
She wouldn’t lose him.
Not again.
“I wasn’t even out here,” Noah complained.
Alex got to her feet and set the empty coffee cup on the railing that enclosed the porch. “I wasn’t waving them at you,” she said mildly.
“Oh? Who, then?”
“Not who. What.” Alex took three steps and slid her arms around his waist, smiling up at him. “Fate.”
Instantly his arms went around her, and his answering smile was both whimsical and bemused. His eyes were bright. “Fate. And to what do I owe this newly affectionate sprite? Fate again?”
“Let’s call it a disagreement with fate.”
“Ah.” Noah grinned down at her. “Alex, that makes no sense at all. But I’m not complaining. I’d shake hands with the devil if he’d promise to make you smile at me like that again.”
Unconsciously Alex smiled again—like that. “No need to sell your soul. I’m not cheap, but I don’t cost that much.”
His smile faded, and his eyes darkened suddenly. “Don’t you?” he murmured. “Well, I’m like that man who found a pearl beyond price; I’d sell everything I have for you.”
Alex had never realized that love could be declared without the word itself, but she realized it then. And the breath caught in her throat. She stood on tiptoe even as his head bent, her lips meeting his fiercely, tenderly.
Noah’s arms tightened around her as something exploded, a detonation as raw and powerful as a solar flare. It was a savage release, a wild abandon tempered only by love, its sharp edges smoothed but its force undiminished.
His lips slanted hungrily across hers, taking what she offered with a need very nearly intolerable in its yearning torment. The weeks of patience had banked an essential fire, and it burst its bounds hotly. The slender body pressed against his fed the fire, built it into a flame that engulfed them both.
Alex thought she cried out when his lips left hers, a cry that was older than any memory could ever be and aching with emotions spiraling out of control. Her arms went up around his neck as he lifted her into his arms, and she felt a fierce eagerness that surprised her mind, but didn’t surprise her heart. She knew he was carrying her through the cabin to his bedroom, but her gaze was fixed on his lean face and she saw only gray-blue eyes shot with silvery flames.
“The whip and chair won’t help you this time,” he said huskily, kicking the bedroom door shut behind them and setting her gently on her feet by the bed. “I’ve found my lioness … and she is mine.”
“Maybe you’re hers,” Alex whispered, giddily aware that his hair was still damp from a shower, that he bore an herbal scent like a rainwashed forest in the spring.
“Promise?” Noah asked, his lips feathering over her cheek and down her throat as Alex tipped her head back. His hands slid to her shoulders, probing gently, and then he was slowly parting the buttons of her blouse.
Alex couldn’t force an answer past the pounding lump in her throat. Dizzy, she closed her eyes, feeling her pulse racing and her body quivering. A part of her mind was aware that her own hands had risen to cope with the buttons of his shirt, the movements as natural and familiar as if this were something she had always done. His shirt fell away as he shrugged, and hers followed a moment later. Alex kicked her shoes away without thought, her eyes drifting open when she felt the lacy bra smoothed away by his hands.
She found herself gazing into eyes that evoked a wrenching surge of emotion from deep inside of her. For a flashing instant she was looking into other gray-blue eyes in strange yet familiar faces, and her body told her they belonged to him.
She might have cried out again, but Alex didn’t know and didn’t care if she had. She knew only that familiar hands, hers and his, rid them both of clothing that was a barrier between them. The bed was soft beneath her, and the afternoon sun slanted through the window to cast a glow in the cool room.
“Alex …” His voice was hoarse, driven, but the hands touching her were achingly gentle. “God, you’re so lovely!”
Her fingers bit into his shoulders and a moan lodged somewhere within her as he stroked and shaped her quivering flesh. Eyes half-closed, she watched his absorbed face, a sense of wonder filling her: there was a tremor in his hands because of her, and she was incredulous that she could affect him so. Then his lips found the pointed need of her breast, and she heard the soft, wild cry that escaped her throat.
He seemed to
be starving for her, for the touch and taste of her, and Alex felt the hot, restless ache building intolerably within her. Her shaking hands moved to touch his back, fingers tracing the rippling muscles and the clean line of his spine. Then she was holding his shoulders again as his caresses slid lower, tension spiraling until she could barely be still. Every touch of his mouth caused heat to radiate outward, the tiny wildfires spreading until she was aflame and the burning was a sweet, breathless agony.
“Noah …”
He murmured something inaudible against her flesh, soothing and stirring, his lips tormenting her striving body. Alex was only barely aware of anything but his touch and her own building need, but what she was aware of was an elusive, purely feminine realization. Noah had a strength and power she could never overcome, because he was stronger and she knew it. But she had a power all her own, and her determination to hold this man set alight instincts older than memory.
She could tame a beast; it remained to be seen if she could also tame the beast in a man.
Acting purely on instinct and rampaging need, her body moved against his hot, taut flesh. Her fingers shaped his lean ribs as he rose above her, and her limbs moved to cradle him, imprison him. She caught him, a beloved thief, giving as he took, taking as he gave, holding him as only a woman could hold a man.
They were old lovers rather than new, moving in sync as if in a dance practiced through the ages. Green eyes and blue-gray locked together in an infinite shaft of time’s light, a moment stretching into forever. A fire crackled in a stone hearth and a stream rushed past a mossy glade … and a dozen other realities fused into a single blinding instant that rocked their universe … voices that were barely human crying out in the sweet devastation of a tiny death….
Alex didn’t know or care how much of the day had passed, but a part of her noted that the sun’s glow had faded. It was cool and dim in the bedroom, silent now, and utterly peaceful. She knew that a sheet covered their bodies, but her senses were tuned only to the touch of flesh on flesh. His shoulder pillowed her head in surprising comfort, and his arms held her in an embrace that made her feel a cherished thing.
“Know what?” she asked.
“What?” His arms tightened, and his voice was as hushed as hers.
Smiling a little she said, “You’re the best afternoon I’ve ever spent.”
Noah chuckled softly. “I’m glad. You’re my best year—and more.”
Alex managed to raise herself on an elbow, and gazed down at him with a lifted brow. “Coming from a man who’s gotten his feet wet several times, that’s quite a compliment, I think.”
“Bet on it.” His voice matched hers in lightness, but the gray-blue eyes were curiously stormy. “You’re quite a lady, Stephanie Alexandra Cortney Bennet.”
She smiled slowly. “Ladies don’t carry whips and chairs,” she reminded him. “Or attack men in the middle of the afternoon.”
“Was that an attack?” he mused. “I seem to remember doing a bit of roaring myself.”
“That was a by-product of my attack,” she told him solemnly.
“I don’t get any credit?”
Alex looked at him for a long moment, and her intentional lightness faded away. “My best year,” she said almost harshly. “And more.”
Noah waited, his eyes holding hers, wondering if she could hear or feel his heart pounding.
Her hand moved to touch his cheek, and she felt that harshness in her throat, the harshness of her determination to fight fate. “You get credit for that.” She was afraid, afraid to let go and love. Afraid of endings. But more afraid of losing … again. “I—I’ve never said it before,” she choked.
“Said what?” His voice rasped. “What, Alex?”
She was caught by the storm in his eyes, something within her rising to match its force, and the fear lost out to certain knowledge. “I’ve never said I love you. But I do, Noah. I love you.”
The storm turned to silver, and he pulled her head down gently to kiss her with a savage tenderness. “Sprite, my sprite,” he murmured hoarsely, his eyes so bright they warmed her anxious soul. “God, how I love you! You’ve haunted my days and nights since I heard your voice in the darkness….”
There was a moment of vertigo, and Alex was looking up at him, filled with the ridiculous conviction that she was smiling all over. Not that she cared. Loving and being loved was all that mattered, and her bottled hurricane certainly had a way of loving that was impossible to resist.
To say the least.
“Noah!”
“Yes, darling sprite?”
“If you don’t give me back that robe, I’ll burn supper!”
“Forest sprites never wear clothes,” he said firmly.
“I’m not a nudist! Give it back—Cal’s watching!”
“No, he isn’t. He very tactfully averted his eyes. I saw him.”
Alex unconsciously played her sprite role to the hilt when she placed her hands on her hips and glared at him. Her long blond curls flowed around her shoulders, and the rest of her was covered only in a golden tan.
Noah dropped the robe and lunged at her.
Warding him off with a long-handled wooden spoon, she managed to slip past and grab her robe. The fact that she also managed to get it on before he could steal it again spoke volumes for her dexterity.
“Spoilsport,” he grumbled.
“You’re a horrible man. Worse, you’re a sneaky, horrible man!”
“But you love me?”
“For my sins.” She twisted adroitly. “And get your hands off that sash!”
In a reasonable tone Noah said, “We’re all alone up here. There aren’t any people for miles. We came up here to relax and unwind.”
“I can do that dressed, thank you.” Alex stuck her nose in the air and turned back to the stove.
Noah slid his arms around her from behind. He kept his hands off the sash.
“How,” she started to say, “am I supposed to cook when you do that?”
“Am I getting to you?” he asked hopefully, nuzzling her neck.
Alex actually managed to keep her voice steady without first clearing her throat. “What you’re doing is making me burn supper. Stop roaring!”
“Lion can’t mute his roar,” Noah said.
Attempting to transfer the contents of a pot into a dish, Alex almost roared herself. “D’you want to eat this or wear it?” she demanded.
He sighed and released her. “I knew it,” he mourned. “This afternoon you were in the mood for a mind-blowing, teeth-rattling, heart-stopping, eye-rolling fling. It was just a temporary urge for my body, wasn’t it?”
Alex set the empty pot into the sink and then turned to face him, leaning against the counter. Holding laughter strictly at bay, she infused her voice with polite incredulity. “A temporary urge for what?”
“My body,” he prompted her, undaunted.
She studied the robed body in question from black hair to bare feet, then lifted her brows in gentle disbelief.
Noah’s suddenly crestfallen expression was belied by laughing eyes. “It wasn’t an urge for my body?”
“I didn’t get my teeth rattled,” she said.
“Oh.”
Alex burst out laughing, but still managed to evade Noah when he lunged again. “Oh, no! You have to eat to keep up your strength; I’m determined to get my teeth rattled.”
“Witch!”
“I thought I was a sprite.”
They watched night come over the tiny valley, building a fire in the river-rock fireplace to ward off the chill. Light teasing was the rule, but there were exceptions scattered here and there that rekindled their need as if it had never been sated.
It was still early when Noah began to bank the fire, and Alex headed for their bedroom, her heart beating in her throat and her body warm from within. She turned down the corners and climbed into bed after shedding the robe, smiling to herself. But her smile became suddenly half worried and half rueful when a four-hund
red-pound lion climbed up beside her, carrying a trusting white kitten in his mouth.
Alex watched Cal release Buddy, watched the kitten curl up between the broad forepaws of his friend. And she sighed. She looked up to see Noah standing in the doorway, and shrugged helplessly.
“He’s used to sleeping with me.”
Noah held the door and looked Cal straight in the eye. “Out, pal,” he said pleasantly. “There’s not room enough for both of us.”
She started to warn him that it was unwise to stare any lion in the eye, even gentle Cal. But something, a newer instinct, held the warning unsaid. Instead, she waited silently, looking from the lion to the man. A part of her was somehow aware that this was a purely male matter, a curiously decisive, silent battle that would need to be settled only once.
And it was.
Returning the stare for a long moment, it was Cal who gave in. He picked his Buddy up and climbed off the bed. And he butted Noah’s thigh gently as he passed by him and left the room.
Calmly Noah closed the door and came to join Alex in the bed.
“Very impressive,” she commented.
His eyes gleamed at her. “Not at all. Just a question of who got the lioness.”
Her arms slid around his neck as he reached for her. “Oh? Well, there’s more than one way to tame a lion….”
She watched the dusty road. For weeks now she had watched. She offered water and what food she had to the weary soldiers making their way back south. She bandaged old wounds and answered eager questions about the whereabouts of the families in the area.
She searched faces.
Most wore gray, but there were some in blue. The war had split families, tearing more than a country down the middle. Of the blue-clad men she asked hesitant questions.
They had no answers for her.
The war was ended. A tattered, bloody South defeated. She had known, in the beginning, that it would be so. She had lost everything in a hopeless cause. Her father, brothers.
Now … him.
Her heart told her he lived. He was safe. Her mind told her he would not return to her.
More weeks passed. The road became even more empty. Fewer soldiers came by her gate. She waited and watched. At night she lay before the stone fireplace and remembered strong arms and gray-blue eyes.