The gentle patter of the rain sang against the sturdy timbers, filling the room with the scent of the earth’s welcoming. Firelight bathed Jenny, huddled on the floor beneath the window. Motionless, her mind was locked in the moments before Charmas had violently released her and abruptly left her alone. It was late, although she didn’t notice the time passing. The house had been quiet for a long while and she heard no one moving about now. Robby had long since gone to sleep under Charmas’s soft murmuring voice warning him to be quiet so his mother could rest.
Why didn’t he come to her? Why couldn’t she simply ask him to? And how could he deny her need to leave here and stop the torture between them?
She couldn’t cry; there were no tears left. She felt empty inside and yearned to have him near. His angry words resounded in her mind again and again. His face reappeared, etched with fury and pain and hopelessness, crying out that she was killing him, knifing him day by day, and didn’t seem to care.
Charmas. His name became the litany her heart and soul and mind joined together in wanting, in crying out to and for. Hugging her flexed knees, rocking slowly back and forth, despairing of ever healing herself, she heard no sound until he stood behind her.
“Jen? I came to tell you I’m going. You and Robby can stay here.”
She listened to the sparse words, to his voice barren of feeling, and felt the love and need in him. Yet she tensed, afraid he would dare touch her again.
“Don’t be frightened, Jen, I won’t touch you,” he stated coldly. “I need to say I’m sorry. More than sorry. I … lost … yes, I lost,” he repeated wearily, and with a whisper-soft brush of cloth he dropped to his knees beside her. “I packed my saddlebags. I want to leave before first light, so you tell Robby I needed to go to the fort. And you won’t argue with me. We both know you were right. It can’t go on. I was crazy to try.”
For a long moment, Jenny said nothing. She listened to the crackle of the fire, the soft patter of the rain, his uneven breaths, and she remembered another rain, another fire, and Charmas. Closing her eyes, bits of crystal-clear moments came and haunted her. The very light and gentle touch of his hand cupping her cheek, his eyes, amber fire bright then darkening, his husky voice lingering in sweet memory, calling to her with his promise: “Warm me, Jen. All the warmth in the world to me. My woman. My life.” And now she was cold and hurting and Charmas would go and take the fire with him again. She had given him more than a gift of herself once; he claimed all she was.
His breath caught in his throat when she turned to face him. He didn’t let the hope flare, he didn’t dare, but the ache inside him encompassed his being with the need to love her now and forever bury the pain.
But her silence drove his fury to the surface. “Don’t you care about hurting me and destroying yourself? You’re not the only one haunted by nightmares and regrets. But I can’t take any more. I won’t let you bury me along with all the hope I had left. Jonas won. He left me with broken dreams and a broken woman,” he went on ruthlessly. “I can’t fight anymore.”
His words lashed at the veil of self-pity she had wrapped around herself. Jenny tried to close out the sound of his voice, but there wasn’t any place left to hide.
“I’ve loved you and you’ve taken everything I had to give and gave me nothing in return.”
“What do you want from me!” she cried.
“Look at what you’re doing to us!”
“If you leave now, you’ll take any hope, any chance—”
“Hope? Chances? For how long, Jen? When does it end? Next week? Tomorrow? When? What the hell do you think I’m made of? Stone? I loved—”
“I’ve tried,” she protested, realizing she wasn’t losing him; she’d already lost. And without him … “Charmas, please—”
“You’re right,” he cut in. “This is no way for us to part.”
His pent-up sigh was released against her cheek. “Forgive me, sweet lady,” he whispered. “Kiss me, Jen? Just let me leave with the taste of you filling me.”
She could not speak to deny him. She could not move when he touched her cheek with one callused finger. A ripple of pleasure shot through her at seeing the tenderness lighting his eyes when she couldn’t begin to forgive herself for hurting him, but sadness replaced it too quickly.
“I’ll carry the scent of you inside me, Wildflower. I’ll know you’re here and safe, and someday I’ll come back to you. And we’ll love again, I promise you that. But you, well, I know you need more time and it’s all I can give you, Jenny. It’s all you’ll take from me now.”
Into the whisper of rain-soft night, his voice faded and she closed her eyes. Her lashes were dark, shadowed crescents, fluttering, then stilled just as her lids stopped trembling. Touched by his words and voice, and weak with a flooding desire that made fear and nightmares tangle together, she could not stop shaking. And her soul cried for the love he offered, a love beyond the healing her body needed, a love that would bring her to dreaming again.
And Charmas waited, watching her. The soft folds of cotton rose and fell with her erratic breaths; her hands, tensed, kneaded the sleek length of her legs, and he sighed, resigned to leaving her.
His warmth surrounded her. Small darting fires licked inside her, teasing her now with too many memories.
Inside him a knife churned with the need to reach out and touch her, to hold her, and once again he tested all that made him a man and waited.
Slowly she turned to look at him. Pain pooled in the blue darkness of her eyes. “Charmas,” she whispered softly, catching her breath, touching his lips with fingertips that trembled, “I can’t bear hurting you like this. I can’t let you go from me now. You were wrong, I don’t want to remember any of it. I want to love with you again. I want only you.”
He stilled, hunger alight in the brilliance of his eyes, his lungs expelling a harsh breath, his mouth softening under the touch of her.
And Jenny remembered her strength and called upon it now as she never had before. She would not run from him. She knew there would be no other chance if he left her. Yet fear was not easily set aside, not when he was silent.
“Don’t say we have no chance! I‘ll…” Gripping his arm, making him look at her, she knew he wouldn’t make it easy. “You were ruthless and brutal, but I can’t lie to you and say you’re wrong. But you hurt me. I … oh, please, don’t leave.”
“Once before I asked how could I leave you, Jen. I ask it again now. How can I?”
“I needed you then and you came to me,” she whispered in a tear-choked voice. “I need you now, Charmas. Will you come to me?”
“Just tell me, Wildflower. Just say…”
Her lips answered with the lightest and softest of touches. Her hand rested on his shoulder, the blue cloth warm from the heat radiating from his skin. With a painstakingly slow move, he leaned back, resting on his heels, drawing her against him. Rippling shudders encompassed them both.
“Jen?” he groaned against her mouth. “Jen, please don’t let this be a dream.” But it was, she wanted to whisper, digging her fingers into the hardened curve of his shoulders. It was their dream. Their love. The wildness and the fire coming slowly together.
Her kiss molded the heated softness of his mouth, her fingers slid upward to brush the hair on his neck. She let her sense of touch guide her, fingertips tracing the shells of his ears, the fullness of his lobes, gliding down to the pulse in his throat. Whispered sighs had their breaths mingling, a caress of building heat, and Charmas shook against her.
They called out to each other then, with slightly parted lips, joining, slanting, tasting, in the brush of body against body that sent passion’s need flaring high. Very slowly, very gently, Charmas raised one hand to slide over the silken sheen of her hair, its shorter strands bringing again the agony of his memory to him.
And Jenny knew. She knew his thoughts and withdrew. “You can’t forget any more than I can. So go from me, Charmas. It’s too soon.”
“No. I need to ease my pain, too. I want,” he whispered, “to show you how love can heal us both. Never,” he stressed softly, “never hurt. Not between us, Jen. You’ve said that too many times to me. Remember? Remember how I wanted, no, needed to hear you tell me to stay.” The heated curve of his lips brushed her temple, amber fire smoldering in his eyes. “And I need to stay…”
Shaken words spilled from her lips. “The fire. Oh, Charmas … I’ve wanted to love you by the fire again. Come with me. Find me again, for I can’t do it alone.”
His words were tom from him. “Never alone, Jen. Never, never that, love.” With his kiss of heat blazing to flame, he moved as the sun, slowly, so slowly, and with each turn his lips eased and soothed the planes of her face. Shaking fingers opened the tiny row of buttons on lace and cotton cloth, and he slowed, dying a little, knowing at any moment he could lose her forever.
Fighting the hammer blows of desire thudding inside him, he knew he could wait under the gentleness of her searching fingers touching his face, lips lingering to kiss the scar slowly fading from his cheek.
Tenderly, possessively, he threaded his hands into her hair, moving to savor, with tiny forays of tongue-licking assaults, the fullness of her mouth. Drinking in the scent of her with senses poised sharply, tasting the sweetness of her mouth, he slid his hands down to her neck. Tipping her head to take his deepening kiss, holding the power of his need buried, Charmas eased the cloth open with a light brushing motion of his forearms. Tensing for the span of a breath at the touch of warm satin skin against his hair-roughened flesh, he released a groan. He denied the fierce urge to taste all of her sweetly heated skin now trembling against him.
“Touch me,” she breathed into his mouth. Swallowing the fear shaking her, she gave herself to the power of blazing healing flowing between them. Long, long moments passed before her skin felt the chill of air with the whisper-soft slide of cloth moving down her shoulders, freeing her arms, feathering across her bare back.
With the warm touch of his palm cupping her shoulders, a shiver of intense pleasure washed over her and her sigh turned into a moan of need.
And Jenny began to remember Charmas. Deepening kisses showed the depth of his love. The lightness of his touch, his caring. The sound of his laughter, his warm smile, and his strength kept the dark at bay.
With every kiss, Charmas saw her smile: shy, open, just simply his Jenny. Every slow hardening thrust of his tongue brought the taste once again of the passion he could call from her. And he prayed that it all would be his to claim again and still again.
Closing his eyes, cheeks flushed, his hands proved the memory of her was real. A half-sighed groan filled his ears when she nestled eagerly toward his touch. And he cradled her against him for long moments.
His hands moved, in an agony of control, to the tenseness of her quivering thighs, which had the power to lock him deep inside her. He gave but a second’s brushing to the swell of sweetly curved buttock that teased him with the remembered warmth of her but inches away. Burned, he brought his hands up to trace the length of her arms clinging to him, his feathered touches changing her breathless sighs to tiny moans that had his breathing labored, filling him with the welcome sounds of her wanting.
And again, he waited.
Jenny lost herself in the skipped heartbeats that mingled with her breath, drawing her hands to press flat against his firm chest. Fire. Heat. Heat and power and strength and curving muscle came under her hesitant touches. She wouldn’t allow herself to think of what was in the past as she began opening the buttons of his shirt. She focused on every tiny stitch she had taken to join this cloth and the love that desiring this man above all others had once brought her. She thought of her needs, of how he had come from lonely dreams and filled them. And she wanted so much to love him. Her lips swept the length of his shoulders, pushing the cloth from his arms. Under her palms, the stoned tips of his flat male nipples invoked the twin response to her own.
Breathing his name in never-ending sighs, her fingers spread wide to knead his chest, and she closed her eyes in contentment.
“Don’t close them, Jen,” he huskily groaned. “Look at me. See that it is me you’re touching, Jenny.”
Obeying him, she raised her head. Within the enfolding embrace of his arms, she found his throat with wildly clamoring lips that butterfly kissed each bit of flesh and then found his mouth. Her neck arched back as he moved to the curve of her shoulder, playing a song of love in gentle assault, kissing her until she moved restlessly against him.
“Hold me, Charmas,” she whispered, “Oh, Charmas, touch me. Touch me and love me,” she sighed.
“Please, Charmas, make me yours again.”
His wild hunger heard her velvet cry of fire and longing, and his mouth moved in raging heated need to find her own. A muffled groan fell before his plunging tongue found the sweet, hot crevice of her mouth. Soft, supple flesh came up against him hard, rocking him with the force of her passion coming free. Jenny. All the wanting … wanting him again.
“Jen, I’ve never loved a woman the way I love you. It’s more than wanting, it’s the needing to share everything with you.”
He swelled with need, lips, tongue, rigid muscles straining to taste and delve deep, deep inside her where the fire and wildness came together. Jenny. He whispered her name over and over. And he savored. Stroking dampened skin that tasted of flowers seeped in honey with a hungry tongue until she was a mass of heated ripples that flowed over and through him, his arms swept her up against him.
“Open your eyes, Jen.”
Her lashes fluttered, then opened. Licking her lips, drying with each erratic breath, she could only question him with the midnight blue of her eyes.
“Just don’t close them again,” his husky voice ordered, capturing her mouth before lowering her in his arms to the bed. Cradling her in the nesting of his powerful legs, he sat holding her, kissing her until her hands began stroking his back.
It was the frantic pace of those touches that signaled him. Dragging his mouth free, her head fell back, the arch of her throat an invitation for him to sweep the trembling expanse of skin that curved to the swell of her breasts. Open, hot desire flowed through her as she brought both her hands to his cheeks and drew his lips down to the peaked dusky rose nipple aching for the soothing his lips alone would bring.
Only it was not soothing. Charmas brought the flames of passion to blaze against the skin he loved, kissed, and teased till she was burning up. Encompassed, Jenny felt the cresting warmth carrying her on a tide of sheer, splintering sensations. Her arms crept around his neck to caress the soft hairs at the back of his head, kneading the muscles of his shoulders. His mouth was liquid, circling her taut nipple with his tongue, nibbling the peaked hardness till whimpers of desire broke from her in incoherent cries.
Arching toward the light but searing touch of his hand sweeping from her shoulder to the length of her taut leg, she cried out, pleading, as his lips, with maddening slowness, showered first one, then the other taut pebbled peak with kisses.
And he denied her. Denied her till she was mindless with the fire song of loving want, yearning for his hard, lean, rippling length against her.
“Charmas … love me. Love me now. I need you so … I need you.”
Those breathless, tiny whispers of raw ache in her voice found their answer. His mouth made a hot, slow path that led to the frantic pulse in her throat, then claimed her parted lips, lowering her to the waiting softness of the bed beneath them. Gentling his mouth to a kiss of giving and savoring, one hand stroked the sweat-dampened points of her hair, which clung to her face as he carefully lay on his side, barely touching her.
“I’ve waited so long to love you again, Jen. I need to love you now, too. But I need to love you the way I dreamed I would—touching you … and kissing you … and tasting you, here and here.” His husky, coaxing voice fanned the words over her face. He smiled, half-closed eyes sweeping the meld of hands and lips that moved with a silken touch over her flushed skin. She twisted to be closer and he gently stilled her.
His smile deepened with satisfaction, hearing her ragged breaths become incoherent cries, feeling the shivering heat he called from her and the impatience of her hands tracing his ribs and denim-clad hips in an effort to bring him against her.
“God, Jen, how I’ve wanted you like this for me,” he breathed in an almost reverent tone. And he wouldn’t deny his own needs now. He kissed the tiny mole that beckoned, and the creamy silk of her slender back as he turned her and found it enticed another play of lips, teeth, and tongue. “I could lose myself in loving you, Wildflower.”
And lose himself he did, for with infinite patience he stilled her restlessness so his mouth could trace the length of her powerful legs. Turning her again, her arms fell sprawling on either side of him with his tender exploration of each bit of inner skin.
Jenny cried out as she felt the spirit of his love being reborn inside her, felt the gathering of the wildness that had her blood running like fire as he shared his needs with her, and she reached out to the man who went beyond what they had first known and held within his gentle hands the full power to heal her soul.
“Give yourself to me, Jen,” he urged in a velvet coaxing. “Let all the wildfire free for me, gentle flower.” His tongue was a wash of the silvered sun touching the pulse in her throat, the taut swell of her small, quivering breasts. Against the curve of her belly, his tongue teased the skin, his hand slowly drawing a cry of passion from her lips under the slow stroking touch into the liquid heat of her.
“Jenny … oh, Jenny, look at me. Watch me love you,” he pleaded, needing to see that no horror lingered in her midnight blue eyes. Sliding one arm to bring her against him, his eyes held her own.
Time and again, he caressed her with a sure probing deepness, only to withdraw with each shuddering cry that had her coming nearer and nearer to the emotion consuming him.
She couldn’t look into the amber eyes that probed her soul. Jenny’s cries were tom, ragged bits of sound filling her ears. She shuddered weakly this time, erratic breaths and heartbeats joining the sensation of longing pooling together to where he led, to where he touched and kissed and healed with his wanting.
“Oh, Gods of Fire and Earth, could any man want so much!” she cried out, her fingers locking into the thickness of his hair, melting and softening under the sudden delving hardened thrust of his tongue. And Charmas alone was real. She was flame needing air to bum, to spiral high, then higher still.
“I need you!”
And blessedly, when he knew her full pleasure again, Charmas heard.
“I told you there was a flame inside you that could consume a man, Jenny. I want that flame. I want it to be mine.”
His husky whisper lingered between them, her shuddering trembles still rippling over and over her body when he slowly rolled away from her. His legs were shaking as he quickly stripped away the cloth that clung to his skin. And then he came to her.
“Charmas.” His name floated from her lips, seeking the soft heat of his mouth, and she breathed in his promise as he lay full-length against each curving cry of woman’s flesh wanting him.
“I’m here, Jen,” his shaken sigh whispered. “I’m always here for you.”
“Come … take the wildness…”
“I will. Jen, I will,” he murmured against the comer of her lips. Yet he stilled himself for a last bit of control until her breathing slowed, until her heartbeats came together with his own, until she welcomed him.
His powerful fingers threaded the dampness of her hair, holding her for his kiss that made their joining complete.
And slowly then, filling himself with the joy of her splintering apart for him so that he was a part of her, he stroked her with careful, leashed moves. Jenny dug her fingers down the length of his body. Urging him, telling him … just simply needing.
Surrendering the total essence of all she was, all she could be with this man alone, Jenny welcomed him until they soared free. Again, and still again, they came together in complete giving, in the loving where she opened her soul to him.
She thought time was lost, and he showed her time had no meaning between them. She cried for his wounds, those that scarred him as deeply as her own, and he showed her the healing power of what they shared.
She was the burning ember that brought his body to the fullness of love that would never empty. She was the warmth that took his cold, she was a sharing that chased loneliness from his own soul.
And within the span of time none could measure, they experienced a storm of ecstasy that promised and pledged the deepest of sharing.
And it was later, in the aftermath of blazing passion, that Charmas held her against his chest, his pounding heart finally slowing, and he whispered, “Welcome home, Wildflower.”
And Jenny turned to him, as a flower to the sun, letting the tears flow along with the whispered, breathy words that would complete the healing of her soul.
When she closed her eyes, drained, his lips stole over the flushed warmth of her skin. He cradled her cheeks with his large hands and gazed deeply into her eyes.
“There is so much a man wants to tell the woman he loves. The very simple words ‘I love you’ will never be enough to say all you are to me. But when the rains come again, we will remember this, Jen, and this is all we will ever remember in love.”
Finding his lips, sealing a promise of love upon them, Jenny turned to him, feeling the seeding rebirth of his love bloom to bursting within. The wildflower had found its pocket of earth to send its roots deep that spring, and though the fierce mountain storms would come in winter, she had no fear. Charmas had promised her love and his love would nurture her to bloom again, and yet again.