Love Song For A Raven

Chapter 3

„Do you have a knife?“ muttered Janna. Raven heard the disgust in her muffled voice. Beneath his black mustache, his lips shifted into a smile at the picture she made. She was kneeling over the freshwater creek and wringing out her soapy hair. The long, curving lines of her body were revealed through the water-splashed flannel of one of his shirts. Below the trailing ends of cloth, her calves were pale and smooth, tautly curved, glowing in the misty light that was characteristic of the Queen Charlottes.

„Yes,“ Raven mumbled. „I have a knife.“

„Good. Cut off this mess, would you?“

„I have a better idea.“

„Shaving it off?“ she retorted. „Sold!“ Janna felt as much as heard Raven’s laughter when he knelt next to her on the moss-covered ground. His chest rubbed against her back as his fingers slid into the soapy, slippery mass of her hair.

„I didn’t mean that you had to wash my hair.“

„Your arm is still sore, isn’t it? Rest. I’ll take care of it.“

„I’ve done nothing but lie around and let you take care of me since you fished me out of the inlet,“ Janna protested.

„A whole thirty hours,“ Raven said gravely. „Such laziness. I’ll have to report you to the tourist bureau.“

„But-“

„Hush,“ rumbled Raven. „I love a woman’s long hair. Let me play with it.“

Janna couldn’t have answered if her life had depended on it. She was too caught up in the feel of Raven’s big, gentle hands massaging her scalp. Chills went shivering over her flesh in response.

„Are you cold?“ he asked, concerned. To him the day wasn’t chilly, despite the wind that blustered and shredded clouds into sudden bursts of rain.

„I’m fine,“ Janna said quickly, suppressing another shiver. And it was true. She wasn’t cold despite the fact that she was wearing only two layers of clothes – both of them Raven’s.

The soft cotton T-shirt held in her body heat and the heavy flannel shirt turned aside the occasional gusts of wind that reached the forest floor. It was Raven’s touch that made her shiver, not the temperature.

„I’ll hurry,“ he said.

Janna caught herself just before she told Raven to take his time, that she hadn’t shivered because she was cold. In the end she said nothing, because she was afraid to open her mouth. If she did, she would probably whimper from the sheer pleasure of feeling his hands so strong and gentle as he washed her hair.

Your brains really must be at the bottom of the inlet, she told herself in disgust.

Her brains, yes. Her nerve endings, no.

Think of Raven as one of your brothers.

Janna tried to take her own excellent advice. It didn’t work. The only times her brothers had had their hands in her hair was to give it a good yank. Never had they massaged her scalp with strong, slow, sensual motions.

So think of Raven as your hairdresser. He has his hands in your hair all the time.

Janna tried to think of Raven as her hairdresser. It was impossible.

Raven was… Raven. He was the most intriguing man she had ever met. Beneath his rough exterior he was a man capable of tenderness, laughter and the kind of silence that made her feel peaceful rather than uneasy.

And in him there was a promise of male sensuality that sent tiny streamers of fire through her. It should have frightened her. He should have frightened her. She hadn’t been attracted to anyone since her divorce. She had been too vulnerable, too uncertain. Too afraid. Despite the assurances of her family and Mark’s family, that none of it had been her fault, she still had the deep, never-spoken belief that if she had somehow been more of a woman, Mark would have been more of a man. It had taken almost two years before she could look in the mirror without silently asking herself if she had been bigger or smaller, lighter or darker, fatter or skinnier, Mark wouldn’t have somehow been more attracted physically to her.

She had just gotten to the point where she could see herself in the mirror as a woman who might sexually interest a man, when she had found herself upside down and sinking fast in a cold sea. She had awakened naked in the arms of a man who was also naked. In short, she had had the best chance to attract Raven that any woman ever could, and what had happened?

He had all but chucked her under the chin, that’s what.

Janna bit her lip against the thought that maybe Mark and her family and Mark’s family had been wrong. Maybe there was just something lacking in her when it came to arousing a man.

Pale, slender fingers dug into the moss until Janna’s knuckles went white. She forced herself to stop thinking about Mark and the sad mistake of their marriage. It was in the past. All of it. Mark had accepted what he was and was not and had made a better future for himself. She had to do the same.

Streamers of cool lather fell softly into the creek and dissolved immediately, vanishing. The lather that stayed behind on Janna’s face was equally biodegradable, but it was running in the wrong direction. She swiped ineffectually at her cheek, angry at herself for fighting battles of self-esteem that she thought she had won or, at the very least, had stopped fighting herself over. She had a lot to offer a man. She could talk intelligently, cook very well, clean well enough, and identify things that crawled and swam on beaches all over the world. She was healthy, had all her own teeth, loved children and animals – and she had a great sense of humor.

Why did that list of virtues sound so depressing?

Janna sighed and squirmed unconsciously, as though trying to get away from her own thoughts.

„Hold still or you’ll get soap in your eyes.“

„How would I know the difference?“ she mumbled, swiping at her face again.

„Sorry,“ Raven mumbled. „Guess I should have kept my clumsy paws out of it. You were doing fine without me.“

He started to ease his fingers from the sudsy mass of Janna’s hair, only to have her grab his wrists, holding him in place.

„Don’t stop,“ she said. „Please. It feels wonderful,“ she said, turning her face toward Raven. It was a mistake. The weathered tan of his skin, the slashing black lines of mustache and eyebrows, and the endless mystery of his eyes all sank into her like a series of blows that took her breath away. She drew air in raggedly and tried to explain to him what she didn’t understand herself. „I don’t know why I’m being so snarky. I guess my usual good nature got left out in the inlet along with my brains. I’m sorry.“

Raven looked down at Janna’s lather-streaked face and earnest, silver-green eyes. Her moist, slightly parted lips were the same raspberry color as the tip of her breast had been. The realization made heat and heaviness sweep through Raven’s body, settling in the part of him that was even now nestled against her lovely, firm bottom. He wondered what it would feel like to be naked with her right now, his hands rubbing through her hair, sliding over her body, arousing her until she opened herself and cried for him to come to her.

Even as the thought swept through Raven, he denied it, ignored it, discarded it. He had spent too many years torturing himself over a woman he couldn’t have. He wasn’t going to start all over now, not even in the smallest way. Janna was here by accident, not by choice. Under normal circumstances she would never have agreed to stay in the lonely inlet with a man who looked as rough as he did. Not if she had a choice. The storm had taken choice from her, stranding her with him in Totem Inlet’s isolation. If he took advantage of that and of the gratitude that softened Janna’s magnificent, silver-green eyes when she looked at him, he would hate himself. As soon as the storm broke, he would take her to Masset. They would stand on the dock and shake hands and smile rather uncomfortably as they parted, two people who never would have met under normal circumstances.

„Raven?“

He smiled sadly, slid one hand from Janna’s hair and picked up a nearby towel. With immense gentleness he held her still and wiped the lather from her face.

„Put this over your eyes while I rinse you off.“

Janna wanted to protest as Raven covered her eyes with the towel, but she didn’t. She wanted to ask if it was something she had done that had made him so sad, but she wasn’t going to do that, either. At least, she told herself she wasn’t going to, right up to the instant when she heard her own words.

„Is something wrong?“ she asked, staying Raven’s hand when he would have turned her.

„Nothing new,“ he said simply. „And nothing wrong, really. Turn around. If you get soap in your eyes, you’ll cry.“

„I feel like crying right now, and I never cry,“ Janna said, searching Raven’s midnight eyes.

His big, blunt fingertip touched her nose lightly. „That’s just the last echoes of the adrenaline from yesterday. It will pass.“

Gently, implacably, Raven turned Janna away from him. He stripped soap from her hair into the stream, moving with swift economy, no longer lingering to enjoy the sensual weight and texture of her hair in his hands. He rinsed her hair first with cold water from the creek, then finally with the bucket of water he had warmed on the galley stove and carried to the stream.

Janna let out a long sigh. „That feels wonderful.“

Raven smiled and continued to work the warm water through her hair, rinsing away the last traces of soap. AsJanna’s hair lay wet between his hands, it seemed almost sable, yet it gleamed with hints of mahogany and gold. He wondered what her hair would look like in sunlight. Would the long strands be reddish brown or richly cinnamon? Would they be as straight as his own or they would curl seductively around his hands?

With a silent inward curse, Raven caught his glittering thoughts once again in the net of his will. He squeezed excess water from Janna’s hair and began drying it with the towel. Her hair felt very soft, very clingy, and gleamed like wet silk in the stormy light.

„I can do that,“ Janna said, feeling guilty about causing Raven so much trouble. „You came here to be alone, not to be a lady’s maid.“

Raven removed his hands from Janna’s tempting hair and stood up in a surge of controlled strength. „I’ll wait for you on the shore. Do you like clams?“

„Nope. I love clams. Different thing entirely.“

Raven grinned suddenly. „Raw?“

Janna stopped rubbing her hair with the towel and looked up. Her face was flushed from bending over the creek. Her eyes had the brilliance of sun-shot mist. „Raw clams?“ she asked carefully, wondering if she had understood him. She loved clams, but had never brought herself to eat them raw.

„Umm,“ he said.

„Is that a rumble-yes or a rumble-no?“ she retorted.

Raven laughed. „Just a rumble. How about clam chowder with raw oysters on the side?“

„Sold,“ she said promptly, diving back into the towel, trying to ignore how she had gone weak just looking at Raven’s wicked smile. From the depths of the towel, she asked, „Are they any good raw?“

„Oysters?“

„Clams.“

„Raw?“ he asked innocently. „I don’t know. Are they?“

„Good?“

„No. Raw.“

Janna’s hands stilled as she heard the laughter vibrating in Raven’s voice. Surrounded by a cloud of flying hair, her face emerged from the towel. „Do you know my brothers by any chance? I used to have this conversation with them all the time.“

„Was it good?“

„And raw!“

„Then they weren’t clams.“ Raven’s smile flashed whitely, changing his face from brooding to amused in a single instant.

„Oh, help,“ Janna groaned, diving back beneath the towel.

„Thought you wanted to do that yourself,“ he said, reaching for the towel once more.

Janna’s answer was muffled beneath strategically placed folds of towel. Raven’s laugh wasn’t. By the time he finished with her hair, she was laughing, too. She stood patiently while he combed out tangles with a gentleness that kept surprising her in a man of his size. In his broad hand the comb looked like a half-scale toy. It seemed impossible that such a powerful man could have such precise control of his every motion.

„Braid?“ he asked.

„If I do, it will never dry. Sure you won’t let me use your knife?“

„Positive. How about blow-drying it instead?“

„Sure. And a manicure, too, while you’re at it,“ she retorted wryly, thinking Raven was teasing her again.

„Don’t know about the nail polish. Angel never used it.“

The way Raven’s voice softened as he said the word Angel told Janna more than she wanted to know.

„I take it that this Angel is of the wingless, two-legged, earthbound variety?“ Janna asked lightly.

He smiled. „So she keeps telling me. Never believed her, myself.“ He smoothed his palm over Janna’s hair. „I should have thought of it yesterday.“

„You were too busy rescuing me to think of angels.“

„I meant the box.“

„Help.“

Raven tugged very gently at a damp stand of hair. „Quit teasing me. Angel left some stuff on the boat last summer. I’d forgotten about it until I saw your hair shining beneath my hand.“

Silently Janna wondered if Angel was a summer resident like herself, here today and gone in September. Had Raven loved Angel only to lose her at the end of the summer? Was Angel coming back? Was that why she had left a box of things on his boat?

Was that why Raven wasn’t attracted to Janna?

Janna bit her lip against the words crowding her tongue. If Raven wanted her to know about his Angel, he would tell her without being prodded by unsubtle questions such as: Were you married to her? Are you married still? Are you in love? Engaged? Who are you, Carlson Raven? Why does your sadness and your laughter tear at me until I want to cry and laugh, too?

Janna watched as Raven bent down, loaded shampoo and other items into the bucket and turned toward her. Every movement was both enormously powerful and oddly beautiful. It was like watching the tide flowing, strength both smooth and endless, supple and potent. She had been raised among big men, strong men; male strength had always thwarted and irritated her, not fascinated her. But Raven was different. She could not stop watching him.

„Ready?“ Raven asked, holding the wire-handled bucket in one big hand.

Silently Janna turned and walked from the creek through a screen of windswept, mist-spangled cedar to the rocky margin where sea met land. The path she followed was overgrown, barely visible, older than the thick evergreens lifting to the sky. She wondered if Raven’s people had come from the abandoned village whose rough-hewn cedar houses and savage totems were slowly being engulfed by the resurgent forest. Had his ancestors carved the eerie, powerful images that faced the sea like human cries frozen within time?

„Careful,“ Raven said, clutching Janna as she stumbled on a mossy rock. „We’re going to have to tie up your socks.“

Janna felt Raven’s breathtaking, casual strength as he steadied and then released her. She looked down at her feet. Her tennis shoes had survived their dip in the inlet and their subsequent drying in the galley oven, but her socks had been kicked aside and forgotten in Raven’s haste to warm her. As a result, today she was wearing a pair of his wool socks while hers decorated the galley railing. She had rolled and rolled the borrowed socks, but the heel still came above her ankle. It was the same for her shirt. Raven’s shirt, actually. The cuffs engulfed her entire hand and the tail came below her knees.

With a sigh, Janna conceded that the islands had reduced her to looking like a refugee from a low-budget circus. All she needed was thick makeup and a painted-on smile.

Watching Raven didn’t make her feel any better about her own appearance. He looked as elemental as the land itself. Wind and wet cedar boughs had combed his hair into an untamed black pelt that gleamed darkly with every shift of his body. It was the same for the rest of him; he was perfectly suited to the place and the time, as though he had always been here, a part of the island’s savage perfection. She was a ragged urchin – and he was the mist and the rugged mountains, the wind and the wild sea. It was there in his fathomless eyes, in his immense strength, in his silences.

Shivering with reaction to Raven’s elemental presence, Janna rubbed her hands up and down her arms. The knowledge that Raven had worn the very shirt that was warming her flesh didn’t soothe her. Nothing about him soothed her. Yet even as that thought came, she knew it wasn’t completely true. Nothing in her life had ever felt as right as the instants before she fell asleep with his powerful arms around her and his big body radiating heat into her own chilled flesh. She had never felt safer, more at peace, more cherished.

Raven looked back over his shoulder in time to see Janna shiver and rub her arms as though trying to warm herself. He frowned, wondering if she were coming down with a fever. He held aside the last evergreen barrier between himself and the beach and motioned Janna forward. As she brushed by him he looked intently at her. Other than the subtle sadness that came over her face at times, there was nothing obviously wrong with her. Her skin didn’t look dry or pale.

„Wait,“ Raven said, releasing the cedar bough.

Janna turned. „ Is something – “

Her breath hissed in as he put one hand on her shoulder and the other on her forehead. The fragrance of evergreen clinging to him teased her nostrils. She knew that she would never smell cedar again without remembering this instant, Raven so close to her that she couldn’t take a breath without drawing in his scent, primal man and evergreen combined.

„You were shivering,“ he said, his voice rumbling gently. „You feel fine, though. No fever.“

That won’t last if you keep touching me.

Janna crushed her thought before it became incautious words. She had learned with her husband that if a man didn’t want you, he didn’t want you. Period. She had read an entire shelf full of books whose sexual instructions were both explicit and frankly boggling. She had gritted her teeth, taken a deep breath and tried some of those „surefire“ methods of arousal on Mark.

It had been about as arousing as a bucket of ice water. For both of them.

„I’m fine,“ Janna said with determined cheerfulness, stepping away from Raven’s touch before she shivered again in response to his closeness. „Actually, I’m disgustingly healthy. No feminine fits of the vapors, no delicate squeamishness, no interesting pallor. Just hearty, wholesome American girl. All I need are gingham checks, patent shoes and a puppy dog pulling at my anklets.“

Raven heard the unhappiness underlying Janna’s wry words. He looked intently at her, wondering what had happened to her that she so underestimated her own appeal to men. It would take a blind man not to respond to her. Her hair was a silky wildness framing her oval face. The forest green of his flannel shirt made her skin glow like mother-of-pearl on a sunrise beach. Her eyes picked up the green of cloth and forest, changing it, silvering it with emotions the way the wind changed the surface of the sea. Even the oversize shirt couldn’t hide the womanly promise of her breasts, the allure of hip and thigh, the feminine curves leading down to ankles that looked ridiculously slender rising out of his bunched socks.

Watching Janna as she stood framed against the ancient forest made Raven want to smooth away all the coarse masculine clothes, to brush her with satin and incense, to caress the essential femininity of her. He wanted to arouse her until she cried out his name and wept and left passionate marks on his body. He wanted to give her a pleasure to equal the courage and determination he had seen when she had pushed herself beyond exhaustion, driven by the bitter imperatives of survival, and, then, still in the grip of those imperatives, she had let go of fighting and given herself to him, trusting him as no one ever had, even Angel.

Emotion went through Raven like a gust of wind through the cedar forest, stirring everything, leaving restlessness in its wake. Through narrowed eyes he watched as Janna picked her way over slippery rocks toward the log he had lashed to old, rotted cedar posts jutting up from the beach. The makeshift dock bobbed unpredictably. Years ago he had been a logger; for him, the erratic motions of a log floating on water were as easy to walk on as a stairway. Janna, however, lacked the experience to know how the log would react to a push here and a nudge there. Several times she had almost come to grief.

Janna stood on the shore, eyeing the bobbing log distrustfully. She tested the dampness of her hair, hesitated and shrugged.

„It’s not worth it,“ she muttered, turning away.

„What isn’t?“

„Dry hair. I’ll slip on that log and take a header into the inlet,“ she said in a resigned tone. She shivered again. This time it was the wind off the inlet rather than Raven’s presence that drew the involuntary response. „On second thought, it’s worth it for the jeans alone. If they’re dry by now?“ she added, looking up at Raven.

„Should be.“

„I was afraid you’d say that.“

„Wait,“ Raven said, touching Janna’s arm. „I’ll get your jeans for you. And a scarf,“ he added as the wind lifted her hair in a damp, silky cloud. A few of the flying auburn strands caressed his face. They felt cool and smelled sweet against the tangy, salt-laden wind.

„Afraid you’ll have to fish me out again?“ Janna asked wryly, eyeing the log.

Raven felt his body kindle at the memory of drying Janna off and wrapping her in a warm blanket. Naked. With a muffled sound of exasperation at his unruly thoughts, he walked the log to the Black Star. Moments later he returned with her jeans, still warm from the oven, and a scarf that was the clear blue-green color of the sea under full sunlight. Janna took one look at the fine, delicate cloth and knew that it was Angel’s.

„No,“ Janna said, refusing the scarf. „I’ll ruin it.“ She stared at the glorious, blue-green wisp and had a depressing thought. „I’ll bet it’s the same color as her eyes.“

Raven’s black eyebrows shot up. „How did you know?“

Janna sighed. „She’s blond, too. Right? Small boned, willowy, graceful, a figure to break your heart, with a smile that hints at passion and tragedy?“

„Are you a witch?“ he asked, only half joking.

„If I were, Angel would be a warthog,“ Janna muttered under her breath.

„What?“

„Nothing,“ she said brightly.

Janna glared at her jeans and looked around for a place to sit that wasn’t wet. The closest one was on the boat. She muttered one of her brothers’ favorite words. Life simply wasn’t fair. In order to put on her jeans without getting wet, she was going to have to hop around on one foot and then the other, looking about as graceful as a pig on roller skates. Meanwhile Raven could watch and compare her with the oh-so-delicate Angel.

Mentally Janna sorted through her brothers’ vocabulary of locker-room epithets. She found some truly appalling phrases and spoke them in the silence of her mind. Finally she smiled, feeling better. She’d always known her brothers were good for something.

„Here,“ Raven said, realizing Janna’s difficulty as she tried to balance on one foot on the slick pebble beach. „Brace yourself against me.“

She hesitated, then mentally shrugged. He’d had her naked in bed and hadn’t turned a hair. He was hardly going to be affected if she braced her fanny against his thighs while she put the jeans on in the only way possible to mortals – one leg at a time.

Leaning against Raven wasn’t quite enough to make the job easy. The jeans were a little overcooked; they had shrunk in the oven. Now they fit her the way bark fit a tree – faithful to even the tiniest curve and hollow. Wriggling into the stubborn cloth was the only way to get the jeans on. With her tennis shoes catching every inch of the way, she had to do some major wriggling to get the jeans up her legs.

Raven suffered the innocent bump and grind of Janna’s sexy bottom against his thighs as long as he could before he slipped an arm around her rib cage and braced her firmly, hoping that she would have to squirm around less that way. The strategy was partially successful. She did indeed have to squirm less. On the other hand, her breasts inevitably rested on his forearm, their sweet weight swaying with every movement of her body. Raven didn’t know whether to regret or applaud the fact that Janna’s bra, like her socks, had been lost in the first frantic moments of undressing her and getting her warm.

He remembered finding the bra that morning. The sheer midnight-blue lace had looked incredibly fragile in his hand. The thought of undressing her again had come to him like lightning; only this time it would be the heat of his tongue that transformed her nipples into tight pink crowns. He could almost see them pushing against the delicate lace, rising to the caress of his mouth.

The sensual images glittered through Raven’s mind, impossible to control, like salmon schooling in the sea’s mysterious darkness, gathering for the freshwater culmination that sang to them from their deepest instincts.

With a barely stifled groan Raven turned, using his hip to brace Janna rather than his thighs. The speed and intensity of his arousal surprised him. He told himself forcefully that he was no boy to go crazy over a woman’s un-confined breasts brushing against his arm. He had solved the sexual mystery of male and female long ago. He knew his own needs, knew when to control them and when to appease them. Now was definitely not the time for appeasing.

In the most primitive analysis, Janna was helpless against him – and they both knew it. He was far stronger. He knew the land, knew the sea, knew how to survive on both. He had saved her life. She was utterly dependent on the civilized veneer that covered his elemental survival calculations. She knew that, too, at some unconscious, primitive level far deeper than language and culture.

And she was too damned vulnerable because of it. If he asked, she would give herself to him. He could see it in her eyes as she watched him almost secretly – admiration to the point of hero-worship. Or was it simply fear? Was that why she sometimes trembled when she brushed against him? Had she instinctively sensed what he had only just realized?

He wanted her with an intensity that bordered on violence.

He had wanted her since he had seen her refusal to give in against overwhelming odds. He had saved her life, and now some savage, ungovernable part of his mind insisted that she was his for the taking.

Even as the realization came he fought against it. He didn’t want her like that, a woman coming to him for all the wrong reasons, gratitude and a primitive survival reflex driving her into his arms. He wanted Janna to come to him willingly, when she had all the alternatives of civilization open before her.

And if he kept telling himself that often enough, he might even believe it.