4

Kristin felt Zachary’s hand come to rest on her shoulder. Gently he turned her over onto her back and, with a thumb, he caressed her cheek.

He didn’t ask why she was crying—he was just arrogant enough to assume he knew—and his lips brushed her forehead lightly.

A violent shudder ran through Kristin’s exhausted body, and it was as though she’d been thrust back through time, into happier, less complicated days. The barbs they’d exchanged and Zachary’s cold looks faded from her memory like golden leaves in autumn.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and snuggled closer to him, needing his warmth and strength.

With a groan, Zachary found her mouth with his own and possessed it fully. Again Kristin was electrified, with nothing to ground her. Her hands moved frantically up and down the muscular expanse of his back, seeking a place to hold on, a way to anchor herself.

He left her mouth to taste her neck, pushing aside her damp hair, and one of his hands closed lightly over her breast. Kristin arched her back and whimpered as he stroked the nipple with the pad of his thumb, causing it to harden in anticipation.

Zachary kissed her again, then went to her breast and boldly took the puckered morsel into his mouth.

Kristin groaned as she felt his tongue circle its prey, cried out when he began to suckle. He brought his hand down over her belly to the fevered mound where her womanhood was hidden, one finger creeping through tangled silk for a preliminary conquering.

While Kristin’s bottom rose and fell on the flannel lining of the sleeping bag, her knees falling wide, Zachary treated her other breast to the same thorough loving he’d given the first. Then he began kissing his way lower and lower, and her moist flesh quivered under the passing of his lips.

She pleaded with him, softly, senselessly, and gave a strangled shout of triumphant surrender when he parted the damp curls and took her. Her legs went over his shoulders, her hands flailed wide of her body then raced to his hair.

His strong hand cupped her bottom, holding her high, and she felt his hard back under her heels.

“Zachary,” she wailed, and he lashed her lightly with his tongue, rendering her nearly mad with need. Her head flew from side to side, her flesh was wet with perspiration from her hairline to her toes, and outside nature built toward a crescendo to parallel the one Kristin’s body strained for.

He gave her two kisses, soft as the touch of a butterfly’s wing, and then nipped her gently with his teeth.

She cried out as the torrent broke within her, her body stiffening to align itself with the ferocious flow of pleasure that came from Zachary. She was gasping with exhaustion when he finally lowered her back to the sleeping bag and praying he would give her what she needed most of all, but he wasn’t through pleasuring her.

He set her on her knees and brought her down onto the warm moistness of his mouth. His hands reached up to cup her passion-heavy breasts and, while he toyed with her nipples, Kristin writhed on the tip of his tongue, her breathing ragged and harsh.

“Please,” she whimpered, “oh, Zachary, please…”

But still he teased her, mercilessly. She danced to the tune measured out by his tongue and lips.

At last, even he could no longer hold back the tide of Kristin’s response. She bucked violently as satisfaction overtook her, wringing hoarse, repeated cries from her throat, causing her body to curve into a supple rigidity as everything was demanded of it.

She fell down beside Zachary, convinced she had nothing more to give. But when, after several minutes of slow, tender caresses, he entered her, Kristin’s very soul was aflame.

Perhaps because she’d been so thoroughly tamed, she was the first to achieve the pinnacle. She knew immense satisfaction as she used her voice and her hands to guide Zachary through the treacherous territory of his own release, and his gruff cry made her heart catch.

They lay entangled afterward, the sleeping bag twisted around them, their hair and flesh soaked. Outside the little hut the storm continued to rage. Inside, the lovers slept, leaving regrets for the morning.

And Kristin had plenty of regrets when she awakened in the drizzly dawn and remembered.

Zachary, fully dressed, brought her a mug of coffee, made in a small enamel pot on the stove, and kept his eyes averted.

His voice was rough, like the sound of two pieces of rusty metal being rubbed together. “You and the prince weren’t planning to have a family right away, were you?”

She knew what he was asking—whether or not she could have gotten pregnant the night before—and she was annoyed by his assumption that birth control was her problem. “No,” she said coldly, “I have an IUD.”

He turned away, still without looking at her. “The rain’s slacked off, and it’s a nasty day out all the same.”

Kristin squeezed her eyes shut, fighting for control. What was it about this man, that he could injure her so deeply just by what he said or didn’t say? “We’re moving on, aren’t we?” she managed to ask.

“Yeah.”

She pulled her pack close and went through it until she found the food packets Zachary—or someone—had put there for her. In one was a biscuit, hard as a hockey puck, in another, dried fruit. She choked the rations down, not because she had any discernible appetite but because she knew she would need all the strength she could garner for the day ahead.

“About last night…” she began. But her voice died away; there were no words.

Zachary tossed the grounds from the coffeepot out the door, rinsed it with water from the kettle he’d apparently refilled at the stream, and flung it into his pack. “Let’s not talk about that, okay?”

Kristin felt a surge of anger. That had always been Zachary’s stock statement whenever the conversation got too heavy for his liking. She heard echoes from the past.

It bothers you, doesn’t it, Zachary, that my social background is so different from yours?

It’s not important, Kristin. Let’s discuss it some other time….

I think I’m going to have a baby, and I’m really, really scared.

We’ll talk about it when I get back from this mission.

When will that be, Zachary?

Soon.

She reached for her pack and pulled out jeans and a T-shirt, the only outfit she had besides the pajamalike garb Zachary had put on her before they left the palace. After a few awkward moments had passed, she was dressed, and she climbed out of the sleeping bag to face him.

“It’s interesting that you haven’t changed in all this time,” she observed, her voice betraying no emotion at all.

Zachary, wearing his jacket and hat, turned slightly to watch as she combed her hair. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

With deft fingers she wove her hair into a French braid and tied it with a tiny piece of string she’d found in the pocket of her jacket. “I mean you still deal with everything you find difficult or distasteful by refusing to talk about it. Don’t look now, secret agent man, but that’s the coward’s way out.”

She watched as a muscle tightened in his whisker-bristled cheek, then relaxed again.

“What did you expect, Kristin? A few stanzas of poetry? A declaration of my undying love?”

The words wounded Kristin far more cruelly than she would ever have guessed they could. “No, Zachary,” she answered, with a calmness that surprised her. “Not from you.”

Outside she tried to saddle her horse, but Zachary said she didn’t do it right and elbowed her aside. Her ire simmered and bubbled, but she wouldn’t let him see.

“I wouldn’t have let you make love to me,” she said stiffly once they were mounted, their backpacks in place again, “if I hadn’t been so scared. It won’t happen again.”

He tossed her a cocky grin underlaid with cold steel. “We’ve got a long way to go before we’re out of Cabriz, princess,” he replied. “So don’t be too sure of yourself.”

Kristin wanted to run him down with her horse, but since he was mounted she had to settle for the fantasy. “You are so arrogant!”

He touched the brim of his hat. “Just self-confident,” he countered with an obnoxious grin. “You didn’t seem to mind my being sure of myself last night, princess.”

Her face went crimson. “You go straight to hell, Zachary Harmon. I would have responded that way with anybody.”

Zachary laughed and reined his horse into the woods, and Kristin had no choice but to follow. Impossible as he was, Zachary was her ticket out of Cabriz, and she wanted desperately to go home.

“Did you ever finish college?” Zachary asked when the hut was well behind them.

The branches of trees hung low over the narrow path in a green arch, filling the crisp morning air with their scent and dripping moisture left from the rainstorm in the night. Kristin ducked. “Yes,” she answered in a stony voice. When she and Zachary had lived together, she’d been attending UCLA—the third college in her academic career—finishing up her master’s. On more than one occasion he’d accused her of being a professional student.

He glanced back at her with an expression of wry annoyance. “Now, there was an answer abounding with pertinent information. I was thinking about that paper you wrote for one of your journalism classes—‘Chauvinists I Have Known,’ or something like that.”

Kristin couldn’t help smiling. “‘A Chauvinist’s Profile.’ It was about you, and I got an A.”

“So,” he went on, apparently content to ignore the gibe, “once you got your sheepskin, you thought you might as well marry a prince.”

“I had a job at Savoir Faire magazine,” she pointed out in self-defense.

“Did they fire you?”

“No. They sent me all over the world on photojournalism assignments.”

“Tracking the diamond-breasted embassy bird, no doubt.”

His good-natured contempt hurt, but she was determined not to let him know. “Somebody has to cover those parties,” she said.

Before he could make a comment on that statement, which Kristin already regretted wholeheartedly, the sounds of laughter and gunshots rang through the air.

Zachary immediately put up a hand, signaling Kristin to halt and be silent. He took off his hat and put it on again, then spoke in a raspy whisper. “Stay here,” he said.

Kristin opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. Zachary was already moving into the woods on foot, disappearing. She was suddenly terrified that he would be killed or captured, and her heart began to beat so hard that she could practically hear it.

She got off her horse and left it untethered beside Zachary’s. Then she made her way through the woods in the direction he’d gone.

She’d traveled only a few yards, catching not so much as a glimpse of him, when suddenly a strong hand reached out and closed over her mouth. An arm encircled her waist and hauled her backward, off her feet.

Thinking of bandits, and of Jascha’s revenge, she struggled wildly. Relief and fury clashed inside her when she turned her head and saw that her captor was Zachary.

She glared at him.

“Their camp is about twenty-five yards ahead, through those trees,” he breathed into her ear. “Maybe you’d rather I’d just let you stumble right in?”

Kristin’s eyes were wide as he set her on her feet and slowly lowered his hand from her mouth. “Bandits?” she whispered, curiously drawn to the noise even though she had the good sense to be properly terrified.

Zachary touched his finger to her lips and gave her a stern look, then started back through the trees, pulling her after him.

“I wanted to get a look at them,” she complained once she figured they were a safe distance away.

“You almost got more than a look, princess,” Zachary replied through his teeth, fairly hurling her up onto her horse. “You damn near struck up an intimate friendship. Now keep your mouth shut until I tell you it’s safe to talk.”

She bit down on her lower lip, chagrined but not cowed, and dutifully followed Zachary when he guided his horse in another direction. They’d probably traveled a full two miles before he turned to her and said, “There must have been fifty of them. We’re going to have to be extra careful tonight.”

Knowing that probably meant no camp fire, and thus no coffee, Kristin was deflated. “What do we have that’s worth stealing?”

“Although it’s debatable,” Zachary replied tautly, glowering at her, “some of them might consider taking you. Of course, once it was too late, they’d understand their error, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t help you much. Or me.”

Kristin sighed. “All right, I’m sorry. I was just trying to help, that’s all. I got to thinking what would happen if you were captured—”

“And you were going to save me, right? Listen, princess, just do us both a favor in the future and follow your usual modus operandi—which, of course, is looking after your own skin and letting the devil take the hindmost.”

Kristin bit back an angry response and fought to hold in the tears of frustration and pain that burned behind her eyes. She didn’t expect Zachary to like her, much less love her, as he once had, but she wasn’t prepared for hatred, either. And while she’d known the events of the night before would never lead to anything permanent, she’d hoped civility would be possible.

After all, once they were out of Cabriz, they could go their separate ways and forget they’d ever seen each other.

“I’m sorry, Zachary.”

He reined in his horse to ride beside her. “I shouldn’t have said what I did,” he admitted. “It’s just that when I saw you walking past me, headed straight for that nest of vipers, I lost it. I’m sorry, too.”

She smiled at him. “Thanks for catching me before I made their acquaintance,” she said, relieved to find that they could still talk without going for the psychological jugular.

After riding for several more hours they stopped again to eat more dried fruit and meat. Kristin would have given anything for a cheeseburger deluxe with fries.

In the distance they could see a small village huddled against the mountainside. Industrious Cabrizians in dark clothes milled around the huts, and smoke curled from the chimneys.

“Are they friendly, Kemo Sabe?” Kristin asked, crunching on a dehydrated apricot.

“They were the last time I came through, but things might have changed. I’m going to have a word with them, and I want you to stay here.” He glared at her, shaking one finger in a mock threat. “And I mean it—cross me again and I’ll take a bamboo switch to your backside!”

There weren’t many things Kristin could be certain of where Zachary was concerned, but this was one—he would never lay a hand on her in anger, no matter what she did. “Bamboo grows only in the south,” she reminded him, holding back a smile. “But I’ll stay put.”

His eyes widened and then narrowed, and Kristin knew he was trying to read her. “Really?”

“Yes,” she said, clasping her hands together behind her back, now that she’d been relieved of her pack. “Really.”

Zachary took his pistol from the holster under his jacket and extended it, butt first. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. If anybody gives you any trouble, shoot them.”

Kristin’s inner smile faded, and she felt the color drain from her face. “I don’t know if I could do that,” she answered, trying to hand the gun back.

He wouldn’t accept it. “Just don’t go looking down the barrel,” he grumbled, mounting his horse and setting off toward the village. Then he was gone.

With a sigh, Kristin plunked down on a large rock to wait, the pistol dangling between her knees, pointed at the ground. “I just hope I don’t have to shoot anybody, that’s all,” she fretted.

Her horse nickered in response.

A full hour passed before Kristin saw Zachary riding back toward her, and she was embarrassed by the extent of her relief. She’d begun by imagining that the villagers had proved unfriendly, then pictured herself storming the place to save Zachary from a fate worse than death.

She held the hateful pistol wide of her body by two fingers, like something that smelled bad, as Zachary approached.

He dismounted and took it from her with a chuckle and a shake of his head. “Here,” he said, tossing a parcel wrapped in some kind of skin into her hands.

“What is it?” Kristin asked, turning the bundle over. There was a low-grade stench coming from the package. “Don’t tell me what kind of skin it is,” she added quickly. “I don’t want to know.”

Zachary laughed. “It’s nothing worse than what you slept on last night.”

Kristin made a face as she unwound the twine that bound the package, rolled it neatly and tucked it into the pocket of her jacket. She might need it later to tie back her hair.

Inside the package was a gossamer yellow robe, of the kind Mai and the other palace women had worn, complete with a veil. The gown was beautiful, but hardly suitable for riding, and Kristin looked at Zachary in confusion.

“In case we run into a situation where you have to pass as a Cabrizian,” he said, averting his eyes.

Beneath the robe was a round, curious lump of something hard and white. Kristin’s nose wrinkled as she assessed the stuff.

“Cheese,” Zachary explained, flipping open his jackknife and cutting off a wedge. He laid the morsel, still resting on the edge of the blade, to Kristin’s lips.

“What kind?” Kristin asked, chewing. For all that it smelled like dirty socks, it wasn’t bad.

“You’re happier not knowing,” he answered, giving her another piece.

After Kristin had packed away the robe and, with considerably less enthusiasm, the cheese, Zachary fastened on her pack again and helped her into the saddle. They headed around the village and up the mountain.

They didn’t talk much, and Zachary was on the alert. Maybe it was just that they’d nearly stumbled onto those bandits that morning, but Kristin didn’t think so. She figured it was more likely that the villagers had warned him about something.

And she was nervous.

Late that afternoon her horse picked up a stone and started to limp.

Zachary lifted the animal’s foreleg and inspected the damage, talking with gruff gentleness to comfort the beast, and Kristin felt an unwanted tenderness rise within her.

She turned away resolutely, her arms folded. She couldn’t afford to let herself fall in love with Zachary Harmon again, knowing that he could never feel the same way about her. Maybe, for that matter, he never had.

There were some berries growing at the side of the path and she began to pick them, mostly for something to do. In a glance back over one shoulder, she saw that Zachary was using his jackknife to pry the stone out of the horse’s hoof.

She raised one of the purple berries to her lips and ate it, enjoying the tangy sweetness. She followed that with another, and another.

When Zachary had finished doctoring the horse, Kristin strolled back to him and held out her hand. “Berry?” she asked cordially.

He just glanced at the fruit at first, but then his eyes widened and he grabbed Kristin’s hand, lifting it so he could get a closer look. He muttered a swearword, wrenched off his hat and hurled it onto the ground.

“What’s the matter?” Kristin asked. But even as she uttered the words, a sudden spate of nausea overwhelmed her, sending her scurrying for the bushes. She retched violently, repeatedly, and Zachary stood at her side the whole time, one hand resting on her back.

“They were poison,” she managed, once her stomach was empty, and Zachary nodded, handing her a mug filled with spring water.

She rinsed her mouth and spat, then drank. “Am I going to die?” she asked shakily. The joke was awkward. Flat.

“No,” Zachary answered seriously, “but for the next few hours you’re going to wish you had. Weren’t you ever a Girl Scout, princess? You don’t go around eating whatever you find growing on a bush, you know—”

Kristin was sick again, and Zachary stood by her until the spasms stopped. Then he helped her onto her horse.

“Just hold on,” he told her gently, patting the elderly gray mare on the neck. “The Silver Bullet and I will do the rest.”

“But I need to lie down,” Kristin fussed. She was never at her best when she was sick. In fact, Zachary always used to say that a simple cold could regress her to the age of five.

Zachary had taken the reins from her. “We’ve got to keep moving until nightfall, princess,” he said reasonably. “There are rebels and robbers all over this mountain.”

Kristin’s stomach clenched wildly, painfully, even though there was nothing inside it to expel. “Just shoot me, then,” she pressed, only half in jest.

They rode until they came to another stream, toward dark, and Kristin was so miserable that she would have fallen out of the saddle if Zachary hadn’t lifted her down.

“Can I sleep now?” she asked.

He chuckled and kissed her forehead. “No, princess. Not yet. But the horses need water.” He unfastened her pack and then went through his own. Finding his washcloth, he carried it to the stream and dipped it.

He was wringing the cloth out as he walked toward Kristin. “Here,” he said quietly, laying it across the back of her neck, under her bedraggled braid. “This ought to help a little.” He sat her down on a rock. “Wait here.”

Kristin was too woozy to wander off. She couldn’t keep her mind on anything except the unceasing pain in her stomach.

When Zachary returned, he was holding something in the palm of his hand. “Close your eyes and open your mouth,” he said. “And then swallow.”

She was trying to see what it was he was offering her, but he wouldn’t permit that. And the awful stomach spasms were getting worse. “What—?”

“Just do as I ask for once, princess.”

She drew a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s not that cheese, is it? I don’t feel like—”

Suddenly her head was pulled back and something cold and slimy slithered into her mouth. She tried to spit, but Zachary caught her lips between his fingers and held them closed.

“Swallow,” he ordered.

Kristin did so, having no real choice. “What was that?” she sputtered when he let her go, bolting off the rock.

“It was a raw egg.”

Kristin whirled away just in time to keep from throwing up on his boots. But this time was different. After the first spate of sickness, her stomach settled down and she almost felt normal.

“Do you need another egg?”

She gave him a look fit to kill and stomped over to the stream, where she knelt and splashed water over her face and into her mouth. Although she was still dizzy, the violent nausea was gone.

“I suppose I don’t want to know what kind of egg that was,” she said as Zachary squired her back to her horse, strapped on her backpack and helped her mount.

“You’re right,” he answered, giving her bottom a little swat before she plopped into the saddle. “You don’t want to know.”

They rode on and on, it seemed to Kristin, up slopes as steep as the side of a refrigerator, through trees so dense that it was hard to pass between them. She thought with longing of her old chenille bathrobe and a cup of hot, strong tea, but she didn’t ask Zachary to stop. Her pride had taken enough of a beating that day.

Finally, when it was not only dark but the moon was riding high in the sky, they reached another canyon, and Zachary instructed her to wait while he rode through the opening.

The minutes that passed before he returned seemed like generations to Kristin, but she waited as she’d been told, grateful that he hadn’t left his pistol as well.

“It’s clear,” he said, returning to the gap in the rock to take off his hat and lean slightly forward in the saddle. “Come on in, princess. This is the closest thing you’re going to get to luxury accommodations.”

With a slight frown, Kristin rode through the breach and looked around.

The moon seemed to be pouring its light into the canyon, where it collected in a silver glow. A spring or stream rippled in the background, but there were only a few trees.

Kristin took off her pack on her own, once Zachary had lifted her to the ground, and headed straight for the water. There was something strange about it, though she couldn’t quite decide what it was.

When she reached the pebble-strewn banks of the spring, she knew. It was as hot as bathwater, and steam billowed off the surface.

She whirled, full of weary delight. “We can stay—can’t we? We can spend the night here?”

He came to her, kissed her lightly on the forehead. “We can spend the night here,” he confirmed. “Go ahead and get a bath. I’ll build a fire and see what I can rustle up for supper.”

Kristin’s eyes went wide as she looked at the spring again. “There wouldn’t be any leeches, or anything like that—”

Zachary shook his head, grinning.

With a little whoop of joy, Kristin shed her jacket and bent to untie her work shoes. Only then did she remember that she had an audience. “You’ll turn your back, of course?”

Zachary was still grinning. “Of course,” he answered.

She took from her pack the robe he’d gotten her that day, along with a bar of soap, and made her way to the edge of the spring. Once she’d taken off her jeans and T-shirt and climbed into the water, she looked back and found Zachary standing in exactly the same place she’d left him, staring at her.

“You lied,” she called, but she couldn’t work up any real anger. Not when he’d done his best to look after her and had brought her to a place like this.

She was mildly disappointed when he didn’t offer a comeback but simply turned and started gathering twigs for a fire.

Kristin settled into the luscious water, soap in hand, and began to bathe.