A Reckless Encounter

When her cape was nearly dry, he spread it over the same rock that held his coat and rummaged in a sack for food, producing cold meat, cheese and hard bread.

They ate silently as the fire died down and dwindled to only glowing embers, leaving the cave in shadow and cold. Near the entrance, the horses settled, heads lowered, legs braced for sleep. The smell of smoke was faint now, acrid, and left a haze in the damp air.

Celia heard Colter rise, saw his vague shadow move again to the gear he’d removed from their mounts. Then he came to her and reached down.

“We might as well get some sleep for a few hours. It smells like snow, and we need to press on soon.”

A few hours? Dismayed, she let him lift her to her feet and guide her to the rear of the hollow, where he spread out wool blankets on a rocky shelf. When she stretched out on the lumpy pallet, he lay beside her, ignoring her suddenly stiff body and tense mu

scles as he pulled her back against his chest so that they fit snugly together.

“It’ll be warmer this way, princess,” he said softly, his warm breath against her neck making her shiver. His arms held her tight and close, and shortly the heat began to penetrate despite her reservations.

Outside the wind was constant, a keening sound like strange moans. Inside, the smell of horses, old smoke and dampness permeated everything. She closed her eyes when Colter’s hand spread across her abdomen, and a peculiar knot loosened inside, an odd quiver that seemed to ease through her entire body so that the trembling was not from cold, but from reaction.

He must have sensed it, for he began to stroke her with light circular motions, fingers splayed upward to cup her breast in his palm. She recognized the pattern, the steps as of a dance in his caresses, and knew when he would move his hand next. She turned into him as he urged her to her back with a gentle nudge upon her shoulder.

Yes, this was becoming so familiar, the same sweet, wild sensation of his hands on her bare flesh, the thunder of blood through her veins in response to his mouth on her lips, eyes and breasts. As if in a dream, she became aware that they were both undressed again and he was between her thighs, fitting to her as if made just for that very purpose. Perhaps he was. Perhaps this was what life was all about, the coming together of a man and a woman this way, in mutual desire and need, the communion without speech but with touch.

And then it was difficult to think coherently. All she could do was feel. Nothing else mattered, not the cold or the isolation, nothing but the intense passion that flared between them.

Despite the cold in the cave, or maybe because of it, she clung to him with an almost desperate intensity, not wanting to think about where they were going or why, wanting only to feel him inside her again, his hard male body so vital and strong. It was all that could take away memories that were too painful to bear at times, this forgetfulness he summoned with his mouth and hands, the plane where she could float as free as a bird on waves of oblivion.

“Hold me, Celia,” he muttered against her mouth, and she wrapped her arms around him as he pounded into her with a fierce, driving rhythm that took her beyond the cave and beyond even herself.

It was difficult to breathe, to think, to even hear, and she knew she must be mistaken when she heard him say, just as he went still and deep inside her, “God, I hate to leave you.…”

When they slept at last, he held her in his arms so that she was almost a part of him, joined together as one.

Colter woke first, when it was still dark outside and there was nothing to see but shades of black. He nudged her awake, and when she moaned a protest, he pulled her to a sitting position.

“It’s nearly daylight. We’ve slept too long. Come on, princess.”

Still grumbling protests, she let him help her dress, but frowned when he held out a pair of trousers.

“What are those?”

He gave them an impatient shake. “Put them on, Celia. I don’t have time to argue. That dress is almost in rags, and you need to worry more about warmth than appearances. These are compliments of a stable lad. Put them on so we can go.”

They were much too large, and he belted them around her waist to hold them up, stuffing a voluminous shirt into the waist so that she resembled a rather portly lad wearing his father’s clothes.

Despite feeling ridiculous, Celia was admittedly warmer in the trousers than the taffeta gown, and had no regrets when Colter wadded it up and stuffed it into a bag they took with them.

The blackness of night slowly lightened to gray as they rode, and she hoped Colter knew where he was going since it seemed to be little more than faint tracks that led through wood and then into marsh. Traces of light snow powdered the ground as the sun rose higher, dull light barely penetrating the clouds that seamed sky and earth together in an unending anonymous horizon.

It smelled of the sea here; terns rode air currents, and the marshy ground gradually changed to harder chalk. Was he taking her to Harmony Hill? It seemed far too obvious.

Hunched against the cold, Celia rode numbly now, and when she saw through the trees faint welcoming lights, she sagged with relief.

But it was no house they approached, only some kind of camp, with wheeled houses shouldering beneath the shelter of spiny leaved yews. Smoke rose from a central fire, flames cheery in the gathering dusk.

She stiffened when she recognized the man who came out to greet them, and shot Colter an accusing glance.

The gypsy, Santiago, grinned widely, speaking in the dialect that was only partly Spanish, and beckoned them down from their mounts. Celia would have refused, for she saw beyond the fire the gypsy girl Marita staring at her with a strange expression, but Colter lifted her down to stand her beside him, his arm draped in casual possession across her shoulders as if to proclaim that Celia belonged to him.

It was only partly gratifying, and with sudden dread, she knew what he intended. He meant to leave her here with these people who spoke a foreign language, to abandon her.

“No,” she said when Colter turned to pull her into one of the brightly painted wagons. “I know what you’re going to do and I refuse! Do you hear me? I won’t stay here with these people. It doesn’t matter what you say.”