As he rode into camp, he could see Monument Hill, a flat-topped mesa strewn with slabs and boulders of sandstone. Early trailblazers had marked this section of the Chisholm with red stones off the mesa, creating piles almost twelve feet tall.
After supper, he and Freddy walked out on the range, and he showed her the rocks. “The piles are about three hundred feet apart across this section of the trail,” he explained. “Somewhere in one of those piles is a stone with my initials. Shall I carve yours?”
“Thank you.” The setting sun bathed her tanned skin in tints of gold and orange. “And Alex’s and Les’s, too, if you don’t mind.”
Kneeling, he removed his knife and leaned over the soft sandstone. “How is Les holding up?” As he carved the initials, Freddy told him Les’s story, and his face turned grim. “It worked out for the best,” he said finally, standing away from the rocks.
Now that he’d folded his knife away and his hands were unoccupied, it was harder to be near her. He couldn’t look at the smooth column of her throat without remembering where it led. Couldn’t glance at her slender waist without recalling the delights above and below. When he saw the curve of her buttocks beneath her trousers, his palms grew moist. Desire was no stranger, but it had never been this consuming, this intense and constant.
Freddy held a wild daisy in her hand and plucked at the petals as she spoke. “How many beeves did we lose during the crossing?”
All day the drovers had been asking the same question, and each time the answer stuck in his throat. “Twenty-three.” He did the math for her. “Our margin is down to seventy-one.”
“Will that be enough?” she asked, raising eyes that looked like jade in the glow of sunset.
“I sure as hell hope so,” he said thickly, staring at her mouth. Something about this woman and this woman alone sang to his mind and body, calling to him like the sirens of myth. When she looked at him a dozen emotions churned inside his chest. He wanted her, wanted her to admire him. He wanted to be twice the man he thought he was for her sake. He wanted to win the inheritance for her, wanted to slay a dragon and lay it at her feet. He wanted to put his brand on her for the world to see, wanted to hold her close and never let her go.
“When you look at me like that, I can’t think,” she whispered. The daisy fluttered from her fingers.
“We should go back,” he said hoarsely.
“Is that what you want to do?”
A groan scraped his throat when he glimpsed the tip of her tongue. “I don’t want to take advantage of you, Freddy. I don’t want you to ever think I used you.”
“I appreciate that.” Then she surprised him by stepping close and winding her arms around his neck. “Now I need to know how offended you would be if I take advantage of you, and use you.” A mischievous grin curved her beautiful lips.
For an instant he didn’t think he’d heard her correctly. Then he laughed and pulled her roughly against his body. “I think I could put up with it.” Cupping her buttocks, he held her close and let her feel what the touch of her did to him. Then he said what he had to before he lost control. “We want different things, Freddy, different lives. I can’t promise you a future. Hell, I can’t promise you anything.”
“Just give me now,” she murmured, lifting her lips.
When he kissed her, he forgot about everything except her body curving into his and the womanly scent and heat and sweetness of her. A deep hunger shook his body and mind, and he could not have stepped away from her if his life had depended on it.
They came together with fire and urgency, needing each other and the joy they could take and give. Wild with desire, they sank to the soft grass beneath the high pile of sandstone and tore at each other’s clothing, frantic for the warm touch of smooth skin.
Dal told himself that he wanted to be gentle and tender with her, wanted to tell her all the things he could not say except through lingering caresses and long, slow kisses. But they had been too long apart, and the urgency to melt into each other ran at fever pitch.
They tore at each other’s boots, then threw off shirts and trousers and fell backward in the grass, locked in each other’s arms. He didn’t notice the small rocks beneath his bare knees, didn’t hear the distant notes of a harmonica drifting on the evening breeze. The only thing he saw were her eyes looking up at him, filled with desire and as green as the grass that surrounded her cloud of dark hair. All he heard was the music of their quick, ragged breath and the cadence of two hearts pounding as one.
When he entered her and felt her bare legs wrap around his waist, he paused and gasped and knew he would never come closer to heaven than he was this minute.