Man From Tennessee

Chapter Nine

Stumbling a little awkwardly on the rocky path, Trisha crested the rise and stopped. The camp was chaos: three makeshift tents with army-cot beds, kerosene burners where huge coffee pots steamed in the middle of the sun, a pair of Red Cross Jeeps. There was one long picnic table where some twenty people or so were eating, and another table where two men were standing making sandwiches, their fingers like fan blades in ceaseless motion. Each face had the same story to tell: physical and mental exhaustion. Soot-stained foreheads, ripped clothes, a mixture of uniforms and regular locals, a few with bandages in one place or another that gleamed white against the general grime of everyone’s person. Trisha let out her breath when she was certain Kern was not among them. For another full sixty seconds she stood surveying the scene, unnoticed, and then she strode forward and rolled up her sleeves.

At dusk a new shift of women came. Trisha barely noticed. The why, when or how of people coming and going was long irrelevant by then. There was always a reason. Hunger, rest, transportation, first aid. Very little talking went on because no one had that kind of energy, and after six hours Trisha knew she looked no different than anyone else-vacant-eyed, exhausted, dirt-smudged, harassed by mosquitoes. It didn’t matter. It was two hours after that before the workers were assured the siege was over. The fire was well and truly out and it was just a question now of hauling in the people involved. Trisha was refilling a heavy pot of coffee with both hands when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She whirled, “Kern” on her lips before she even saw who it was.

“Sorry, not Kern,” Rhea said with a wry tone that was not without compassion. “He’ll be here in an hour or two from now, I should think. Do you know I’ve been working next to you for over half an hour without even recognizing you?”

Trisha smiled ruefully in greeting, wiping a damp strand of hair from her forehead. “There’s hardly been time to worry about looks,” she admitted. “He’s all right?”

Rhea, setting out cups in front of her so that Trisha could pour, looked at her curiously. “Well, you’ve probably seen him since I have. I caught two minutes of him this morning when he got a spot of breakfast here. Said hello to him and had my head bitten off-not that we’re not all tired. But he wasn’t talking to anybody, like he was fighting his own personal war.”

Trisha frowned. It didn’t sound like Kern, who was always cool in a crisis. And obviously from her comments Rhea was unaware she had left, so it was all the more awkward to try and talk. “I don’t know the last time you saw Julia,” she said, probing carefully.

Rhea laughed. “She is something, isn’t she? So determined not to leave, you could have heard her in California yesterday afternoon. But the Carolina coast’s only a couple of hours’ drive, and that professor from the camp looked like more than a good Joe. A full week on the ocean and everything will be back to normal around here, Kern had said.”

So Kern had packed Julia off with Mr. Michaels, out of harm’s way and in safekeeping. Her heart was suddenly singing. They were all right, both of them…

Rhea moved off and Trisha switched jobs. The drinks were poured but the last mountain of sandwiches, almost impossibly, was gone again. It was time to make more. Someone set a lantern down on her table, a beacon of welcoming light as the night darkened.

Her hands kept moving but the smile on her face suddenly stilled. All right. She knew almost for certain that he was well; she was not nearly as certain that she could actually face him. It would be altogether easier on both of them for her to just slip away again…

“Hey, sweetheart, we have any more sugar stored anywhere?”

Sugar and dry cream. It hadn’t taken even the first hour to know where supplies were stored.

Well, in a while she would go. She was caught up in the scene, the tales of horror and the tales of heroism, the faces so exhausted, laughter without complaining, a community caught up in its cause. The discomforts were mounting: mosquitoes and aching limbs, the smoke smell burning in her eyes after so many hours of it, sticking clothes and light-headedness from sheer exhaustion. But there was joy, too, at being needed. It was her cause, her country, too.

“One more group coming in. Should be the last. Hey, has anybody looked straight up recently? Clouds!”

And there were restless white-gray swirling patterns low in the night sky. Trisha’s hands served a dozen more makeshift dinners, but her face kept flickering up. A breeze suddenly whispered through the camp, tossing up a paper cup and sending it soaring.

“That has to be the last group,” Rhea said wearily from behind her. “And it’s nearly midnight, high time. I didn’t see Kern, Trisha. You want to ride out with me?”

“No, I’m fine. But thanks, Rhea.”

Only a half dozen people were left after that to handle the last of the cleanup. The Red Cross cleared out and the tents were being taken down; paper plates and cups had to be stacked in boxes, the food organized. A sudden gust of wind brought the first hint of dampness-and a joyous shout from one of the men. Rain would destroy the last threat of fire, bring relief from the heat and oppressive haze; they all understood.

The sky seemed to hesitate, and then it happened. Drip to sprinkle to spray to downpour. Trisha dropped the folded blanket in her hands and was helplessly caught up in the laughter of the rest. From adults with weighty responsibilities one minute to children the next-they were all the same, punch-drunk tired, arms spread wide to embrace the rain, tongues out to lap up the taste.

Trisha’s blouse soaked to her skin, the cool liquid dribbling down her neck, down her breasts. Her hair was matted to dark gold, her face raised to the dark sky for the blessed freshness. Like silk on her skin, just like silk. The others forgotten, she inhaled the new fresh air, her eyes closed in sheer sensual enjoyment…

The fingers that clenched her arms bit. Trisha’s eyes blinked open, lashes too matted with rain and mascara even to see. Her heart lurched, recognizing Kern.

His shirt gaped almost to the waist, smudged with soot and grime and torn. He smelled of sweat and smoke, and Trisha had never seen such hollows beneath his eyes, such a white pallor of exhaustion beneath his tan. The rain pelting down matted his hair; even his beard and shaggy brows were dripping. Black coals for eyes seared down to her face and the fingers clenching her shoulders half shook her. “What are you doing here?”

She drew back, almost frightened by the towering rage that vibrated from him.

“Don’t you pull that trembling act with me! If I had you alone right now-”

“Kern…” Her voice was soft to his roar. She had expected anger when he saw her again and perhaps she was even prepared for it. But that was hours before, when she wasn’t limb-aching tired, emotionally strung out herself. The rain kept streaming down on both of them, but what a moment ago was blessedly cool now chilled. Soaked, wary, exhausted, Trisha trembled and raised her hands to release his from her shoulders.

“We ready to get moving, Kern?” someone called out from behind them.

“Right now,” Kern snapped back, but he was still staring at Trisha. Her eyes flickered, scanning his features for any sign of tenderness, but the dark night and rain blurred his expression.

“You have to drive the others,” she said awkwardly.

“Everyone who’s left.” His hand on her shoulder slid down to her wrist, his grip so tight that it bit into her tender skin. She shivered again, holding back when he tried to pull her behind him.

“I’m not coming, Kern. I didn’t walk here. I rented a car. Just-”

“Don’t bother. You must be basket-case tired if you think you’re getting away like that.”

“No-”

“I’m too damned tired to argue.” His mouth silenced her with raw emotion that bruised her like a punishment as he picked her up. She was vised to his chest so tightly she could hardly breathe, a fire of protest and panic racing through her bloodstream as he strode toward the Jeep with her.

Enthusiastic catcalls greeted them from the five men packed inside, even more enthusiastic when she was all but threaded through the opening and deposited onto a variety of male laps in the back, deserted while Kern vaulted into the driver’s seat.

The ride was a nightmare. A Ray and a John identified themselves; the rest of the names she didn’t catch. The rain kept pouring down on the canvas top to the Jeep and the air was all but steaming from the packed damp bodies in such a close space. She couldn’t balance without touching someone’s thigh or stomach, and the four men packed in the back with her were just as exhausted as they were momentarily boisterous, teasing the lone lady in their midst. They’d have to share her, they said. And then it was thank God she was just a bit of a package, and Kern, how did he manage at night with such a squirmer?

The Jeep was finally braked in front of the neon signs of a motel in Gatlinburg. Kern grabbed up the keys and finally looked back at her. “You’re going to keep her safe for me for a moment, boys?”

“We decided to keep her, period,” one of the men quipped and the others laughed. Kern, expressionless, simply strode off into the motel office and returned a few minutes later to hand the room key to the man sitting in the passenger seat. “I took care of your transportation in the morning, ten o’clock. And breakfast’s on the house. It’s only one room, but there’ll be extra blankets. You guys can make do.” His words were clipped, and then the others were rapidly unfolding from the Jeep, following the lead of the first from the passenger seat.

The last hesitated. “Kern, I thought you were coming with us. There’s still no power beyond the valley, is there? And the roads weren’t clear…”

“We’ll manage,” Kern said curtly. “Just go on, get out of the rain. Get some rest. We all need it.” When the door closed and the last of the men were racing for the cover of their room, Kern turned back to Trisha, huddled and shivering in the backseat. “Get up here, Tish.”

She crawled forward obediently, not willing to be bounced any more than she had to be in the crude back compartment, too tired to argue anyway, and wordlessly grateful she did not have to pass the night in a room with the five other men. It didn’t take much intelligence to gather that there were simply no rooms left in the valley. Emergency accommodations only stretched so far in the thinly populated area, and the rain would have made it that much worse.

She glanced at Kern as he started the engine and put the Jeep in gear. Her arms were huddled across her chest from the increasing chill of damp clothes, but the real shivering came from inside. Her nerves felt like rubber bands, stretched to the breaking point, an absolute wretchedness that was beyond tears and beyond trying to calm herself down rationally. There’d been three days of stress and high-powered emotions, and she simply couldn’t cope with anything more.

He didn’t talk. He glanced at her once and switched on the heater, his face almost gray-white under the few streetlights they passed. They passed through the town and started the familiar climb of the mountain road. It was less than half an hour before they came to the spot where she had parked her rented car. It seemed a year.

“Kern…”

He must have seen it, too, for his answer was rapid and his speed didn’t alter. “We’re going home. If I were you, I wouldn’t argue.”

It wasn’t that. In her car were clothes and her purse-and she looked back, watching the little red car disappear when they rounded the curve. And then just ahead there was a barricade where rocks had fallen. Kern stopped the car and she saw his figure by headlights pushing aside the barrier so they could get through. A huge rock had tumbled in the road along with other debris; the Jeep vaulted over them obediently, cocked just for one minute at a tilted angle that made her clutch the seat for balance.

They had just cleared that and turned a curve when Kern jammed on the brakes, throwing a hand in front of her to keep Trisha from falling forward. “Damn it,” he murmured as he slammed out of the vehicle again. It was a tree this time, stretched too far across the road for him to get over or around. She saw again his towering figure in the headlights trying to push the bulky obstruction, and something-finally-calmed inside. With a flick back of her hair she opened her door and ran out to help him, the rain drenching her all over again.

“Get back in there!” Kern shouted at her.

She paid no attention, trying to see in the darkness what they had to do. The trunk of the tree wasn’t so very large, but it was tall, and the little mountain of wet black branches seemed insurmountable, far too heavy to actually move for two or even four people. But they didn’t have to move it, just get around it…if they wanted to get home. And Trisha felt a momentum inside that brooked no other rational thought: she was going to get home.

Kern was pulling from the opposite side and Trisha waded in to help, involuntarily calling out when a rough sharp branch caught and scratched at her side.

“If you get hurt, I’m going to darned well murder you, Tish!”

“That was the intention anyway, wasn’t it. Kern? To murder me when we get home?” she shouted back. “Why don’t you tell me what to do instead of just glowering at me?”

Gasping, breathless, fifteen minutes later she raced back again for the cover of the Jeep with Kern just beside her. When she slammed the door she reached with both hands to lift the heavy weight of drenched hair from her face, but there was exhilaration in her expression. They had managed to move enough debris to get through, and Kern beside her sat a ridiculously long minute just looking at her before he started the Jeep again. There was just a twist of an unwilling smile guarded in that dark beard, the first she had seen since he’d found her, but it was there.

“You look like absolute hell!” he said, growling.

“Next time I’ll wear something more appropriate for a fire,” she promised lightly.

He started the Jeep. “Pardon?”

“Nothing, Kern. I don’t understand what all of this is about-why everything’s in the road-”

“A good-sized fire makes its own wind; trees start crashing into trees. There can even be an earthquake effect if it’s a good enough blaze. This one, thank God, wasn’t that bad. But bad enough.”

So it was not impossible, then, to talk for two and a half seconds. She closed her eyes and huddled down in the seat for the last of the ride, finally almost too tired to care that she was soaked and cold and frightened. She was not wanted and he was still angry, and she hadn’t even an inkling of an idea how she was going to cope, the thread of her heartbeat saying she simply couldn’t.

When the Jeep stopped again her eyes flickered open. They were home. No lights shone from the shadowed house and there was no sign of life, but the rain was finally dwindling to sporadic sprinkles, and the clouds shifting above were letting through the light of a crescent moon. She felt a sense of relief so intense that she simply closed her eyes for a moment, her limbs finally feeling like dead weight, and she was barely aware that Kern had gotten out until the passenger door opened beside her.

Obediently she turned her legs out, and just as obediently she told her mind to unfold the rest of her body, to get out and walk. All systems balked inside, as though to say, Sorry, Tish, we’ve just had enough. Large hands suddenly reached in and pulled her out, and for one insane minute she felt her forehead suspended to his chest as if that were her only contact with reality.

“You’re worse than a basket case!”

“You can’t hit a lady when she’s down,” Trisha murmured vaguely. Limbs like water were shifted and she found herself carried again, unable to protest, her eyes insisting on staying closed. She was dipped down so that his hand could reach the door handle, and then they were out of the endless moisture-dry, warm and close in the back hall. He set her tentatively on her feet, one arm still supporting her under her shoulder. “If you can stand for just a minute, Tish, I can get a lantern. We’re out of power at least until tomorrow…”

“Of course,” she murmured, “I’m perfectly fine.”

It sounded good, but the moment his arms left her her knees promptly buckled. Before she could fall she was swooped up again.

“They don’t seem to work,” she told him, apologizing faintly.

“You’re making it damned difficult, Tish,” he murmured in her ear. “You know damn well I still feel like murdering you.” But it really no longer sounded that way. And it really no longer felt that way as he carried her blindly through the house, groping at doorways up the completely black darkness of the stairway. His grip before had been rough, communicating anger, dominance and a kind of frightening awareness of the physical power of the man. But that same power now was simply holding her, sheltering her. The limpness in her mind and body she no longer minded, stopped trying to fight it, curling to the safe haven of his chest.

The mattress suddenly met her back. Vaguely she was aware of his hands tugging at her jeans, shrugging them off her. She was shivering again suddenly, aware of him in a different way. He leaned over her to work at the buttons on her shirt, fumbling with the wet material. Then with exasperation he arched up and pressed a swift kiss on her lips. “You know I’d never hurt you,” he murmured. The blouse ripped open, the buttons an effort he was not willing to make. From a long way off she knew she was shivering violently, and then a warm blanket was curled around her, her hair smoothed back with his palm, and another kiss brushed on her lips before he got up from the bed. “I’ll get you warm, Tish. I’ll be right back.”

And he was there again soon, though by the time he curled next to her, snuggling the blanket over both of them, she was asleep, only instincts guiding her to move her body back into the warmth he offered.

Trisha woke once for a drink of water and a second time for a call of nature. She remembered neither, and her first real awakening to reality was reluctant, a shaft of blinding sunlight hot on her sleep-laden eyes. Lazily she turned from it, burrowing back into a pillow, vaguely aware in some gray netherworld that every muscle ached, that her body simply craved sleep forever, and that nothing could conceivably feel as good as the coolish soft sheets and downy pillow.

“Tish. Wake up, love. Just to eat. You can go back to sleep, I promise.”

“No.”

Vaguely she heard the faint velvet chuckle, muffled from where her head had burrowed beneath the pillow. The cocoon of sheet was gradually stolen from her body, and then two palms snuggled at the sides of her neck, smoothing out the muscle cramps that even sleep had not been able to penetrate. Her eyes blinked open into the pillow as the gradual massage took in shoulders and spine, stealing to her sides where just the edge of her breasts were available to his hands. It was such an incredible effort to move, yet she curled just a little so that his hand could massage her breast, what he obviously wanted to do, and then did, kneading a pulsing rhythm into the firm flesh until her sluggish heartbeat changed rhythm…

She groped startling awake then, jerking away with wide eyes to lean back up against the headboard, feeling completely disoriented as she stared warily at Kern.

He’d pulled on an old pair of cutoffs; not bothered with anything else. He had the nerve to look not only wide awake but rested, the gray look of exhaustion gone and only a faint tinge of shadow remaining beneath his eyes. He radiated an awareness of her and a determination in the way he stood watching her that struck a chord of panic within.

“We’re going to spend the day in bed,” he drawled lazily. “But it’s been more than fifteen hours since either of us has had anything to eat. Now there’s a hunger and there’s a hunger, Tish, you can choose…”

“Kern…” There was a tray, she saw, on the floor.

“I built a fire for the coffee. There’s no power yet. That left bread and canned goods, but the coffee won’t stay hot forever. This is a one-shot choice, bright eyes, because just like you, the inclination is to sleep another twelve hours or so.”

Hunger suddenly gnawed at her stomach. Avoiding his eyes, she reached to cover herself with the sheet, awkwardly draping it over herself as she stumbled first to the bathroom where she found a pitcher of water. Something else he must have done whenever he had gotten up. The splash of moisture on her face helped, but she groaned when she looked in the mirror, grabbing for a brush. The golden hair was rain-softened and shiny, but hopelessly curly and unmanageable. Without makeup to cover the shadows, her eyes looked huge sapphires. It was just not the way she wanted to look, facing Kern again, with the sheet trailing behind her like a child playing house. She felt defensive and awkward, and it certainly didn’t help that she knew she had slept naked, curled to him the entire night.

He was crouched by the tray when she came back in, but he rose as she crossed the room. It was only when she had kneeled down on the carpet beside the tray that she heard the click of the lock behind her. She whirled around in time to see the key buried in the pocket of his cutoffs.

“That’s called nowhere to run,” he said deliberately.

“I’m not running anywhere,” she said, snipping back. “I left, Kern; there’s a difference.”

“The hell there is!”

She drew in her breath when he loomed closer, but he only crouched down again. The feast was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a plastic container of berries, lukewarm coffee served in paper cups. Sunlight streamed on all of it as they ate across from each other, the vibrations shooting across the little tray as if it were a magnetic field in a lightning storm, but their appetites were affected not at all. She was starving, so was he; nothing in heaven or hell could have tasted better.

When she was done, she crouched over to take care of the paper plates and empty cups, not looking at him. “I need to go out, Kern,” she murmured awkwardly.

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. I need to…” She faltered when his eyes finally captured hers. It wasn’t really a bathroom she had in mind but the road, but she couldn’t look at him and lie. She never had been able to.

“Need to,” he repeated gently. “Need to, Tish…what about want to? Tell me what you want to do…”

She shook her head, wishing desperately that the horrible, drained sensation would leave her, the weariness of so many days of stress that a few simple hours’ sleep simply hadn’t cured. “I can’t talk about it, Kern. Please…” she pleaded softly.

“Why can’t you?”

“Because I’ll just start crying.” A rueful smile trembled on her lips, her sapphire eyes haunted. “You wouldn’t be able to hear me then, anyway. Oh, Kern, just leave it-you know it’s best…”

The tray slid from between them as he shoved it to a distance. Both his arms lifted in front of him, simply suspended in thin air, waiting. The distance was so short to the cradle of his body; tears were already helplessly falling as he pulled her onto his lap, rocking her like a child, smoothing back her hair. “I couldn’t bear it when I found you gone, Tish. I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t. And when I saw you at camp, looking so dragged-out tired and so beautiful in the rain, I wanted to kill you for risking coming here, for being so close to the fire. If something had happened to you…”

“I had to know you were all right. I had to…” The tears choked in her throat. Her whole body was shuddering, curled into the circle of his arms. “All they’d say on the television was that the fire was west of the Smokies. What else could I do?” The tears finally lessened, and she cupped her palms tightly over her eyes.

“What else could you do?” he repeated dryly, and very gently shifted her to face away from him, his legs cradling both sides of her. Tugging the sheet to her waist, he pressed a kiss in the hollow between her neck and shoulders again. “Since you don’t give a hoot in hell, Tish, there wasn’t a reason for you to do anything. You left, didn’t you?” he whispered. “Put your head down. No, never mind.”

His fingers had started to knead her scalp but abruptly changed course. Before she could protest she found the rest of the sheet twisted from her and a bed of white linen made over the plush carpet. “Kern, please don’t,” she said helplessly. “Please-I don’t want this.”

“Yes, I know.” He untangled her from the tense curl as if she were clay to be remolded, and then he molded. Both his hands worked the length of the back of her right leg, then the left, working out tension, working like a sensual, possessive drug. Kern’s touch, the label on the drug, and the addiction she already knew she couldn’t fight. “You left the first time because you didn’t want this. Then I could understand, Tish. I rushed you into marriage; I rushed you into bed. I wanted to give you the patience you seemed to need so badly, but as soon as I touched you… I wanted you so badly. And to see that look of fear in your eyes…I know I hurt you, Tish, but I never, never meant to…”

A flush like fever warmed her skin as his hands strayed up, kneading at the firm curve of her hips and the base of her spine. Her eyes closed again, urging back tears of a different flavor. She felt, in his touch, in his words, the loving she had been so sure wasn’t there. He crouched over her, straddling her thighs as he worked the length of her back, smooth long strokes that vibrated with emotion from his hands.

“And you’re going to tell me that you left this time because you didn’t want this,” he murmured. “That’s all it could have been, Tish, because the rest was fine. You know it was. You love the land like I do and you took to the life. So you need more than a house, and there aren’t any buyer positions in seven-story department stores, but you’ll never convince me that really mattered. You were so happy that day we flew over the land. You took to decorating my mother’s room, and you knew you could take on that shop you said you wanted once…”

His mouth suddenly followed his hands, his lips caressing the long stretch of soft skin, his arms cradling the sides of her. Her body went silk for him, liquid silk.

A radiant feeling of life was in her flesh and she craved to touch him…

“So this time you loved the life, Tish, and that left only us. You care. It showed in your jealousy of Rhea. It showed the morning we talked in my office. And we still share the same dream-you would never have come back and worn yourself out working in that fire otherwise. And I saw you at that waterfall, Tish, before we made love. So that leaves us sex, just like it left us before. You want to tell me that you don’t want to be touched-not by me. There just isn’t any chemistry, is there. I just leave you neutral…”

Kern turned her beneath him, straddling now the front of her thighs. The tenderness in his eyes was touched with despair, a pain she could hardly bear to see, and there was anger in his voice she knew graveled over that pain. “You’re lying to yourself, Tish, not to me! I can just look at you-there’s need in your eyes right now, desire. Your pulse is racing like white-water rapids; your flesh gives in my hands; your breasts are already swollen and I haven’t even touched them…”

Gently her fingertips stroked his chest, soothing. “I love you, Kern,” she said softly. “I love it when you touch me. I always did. The only reason I left was because I thought you didn’t want me!”

He leaned over with his lips parted to say something, but she pressed her fingertip to his mouth to stop him, shaking her head, the barest sheen of moisture in her eyes. “I knew you wanted me-in bed. That didn’t mean you wanted me as a wife again, Kern, someone to share your time and your problems and, yes, our old dreams. If you’d asked me here, perhaps I would have read it all differently, but you didn’t ask. I was just forced on you because of your mother. So you wanted to make love to me-and, God, I wanted you to-and we did, Kern, and then I asked you. You said you’d never ask me to stay again-”

“I was trying to tell you that I said it all when I married you, Tish.” Kern almost growled as he leaned over her. “That that was a commitment for all time as far as I was concerned, but that I would never, never force or rush you into anything again. The choice had to be yours. I couldn’t ever again live with forcing you into something you weren’t ready for or didn’t want.”

“But I thought it had to come from you,” she whispered, “because I was the one who failed you before.”

His eyes clouded, his palms cupping her face. “Tish, you never failed me in anything,” he said softly. “You were just young. I could have done it differently…”

“I never wanted you different and I never blamed you, Kern…” Like the waste of the fire, she felt the waste of so many years without him, so many years she could have loved him, been loved. She wound her arms around his neck and pulled him to her. Fiercely their lips met, an odd trembling in his body that communicated to her own, was matched in her own. If she had finally lost inhibitions with him at the waterfall, it was still nothing like now.

She reached for him in joy, caressing his neck and chest and back. It was all such riches-the way his heartbeat surged beneath her fingertips, the way his body was so beautifully male, his hard-muscled thighs no less arousing than the grainy skin of his tanned neck. A new rhythm kept beating inside, building; she didn’t want to give in to it yet. She wanted to savor the sensual sweetness of just freely loving him, and there was no part of him she didn’t want to touch, to learn all over again in loving…

He understood so well, loving her body with the same wonder that she loved his. But it was not the same. She could touch so easily, but not be touched so easily-there was a spot in the V of her throat where she could not bear the stroking caress of his lips. Her breasts had swelled before he touched them, but the languid lick of his tongue made her senses feel like velvet. Her back arched for closeness, rhythm inside beginning to sound in her ears, blocking out day and place and sunlight. The brush of his beard in the hollow of her stomach, and-

“No more, Kern, please…”

Sensations swarmed her senses. His lips covered the pleading in her throat, but he would not give in yet. His palm smoothed its way down her throat and breast and navel, to the silky down between her thighs until the rhythm was the only thing in her bloodstream, a surging love that craved completion.

“I love you, Tish, I love you, I love you…”

Her voice echoed the chorus, the song in her heart, the rhythm of passion rich in her blood and in her skin. When he moved over her, she felt his love, his cherishing in every motion he made. He took her with such sweet fierceness that she lost Tish completely, became part of Kern, their limbs and minds inseparable.

“Kern?”

Lazily Kern opened his eyes, inches from her own. They shared the same pillow, lying face-to-face, and Kern’s arm was draped over her shoulder. “I keep thinking about the fire,” she murmured. “I keep thinking of you close to it, if it had been our land, if…”

Gently she was tugged closer, sheltered next to his chest. “It started high, that was the problem,” he said quietly. “The sparks shot down, starting dozens of little fires. Anyone who could run, walk or crawl came to help, Tish, but not to play hero or try to do the firemen’s job. The area’s been so dry, and more sparks could have fallen. People were working as lookouts, to make sure that when one fire was out it stayed out.”

“And that was what you were doing? You weren’t any closer than that?”

“Mmm.” His eyes closed again, and Trisha rose up on one elbow, tugging at his beard. His lashes shuttered open again in response, but there was a deliberate effort not to meet her eyes. His gaze fell instead on the bare flesh in front of him. “The beard has to go,” he murmured as he rose up to kiss the tender hollow between her breasts. And it was tender, roughed from his love-play. “We can’t have you bruised, bright eyes…”

“You were in the thick of it, weren’t you?” she asked suspiciously.

“No one was hurt beyond the two in the beginning. Oh, cuts and scrapes, of course. The destruction could have been much worse.” He sounded as interested in talking fires as he would have about shuttling to the moon. She shivered all over when one finger stroked the hollow in her throat, and he looked up at her with a wicked smile. “You just can’t stand that, can you?” He leaned up to kiss the spot, one, two, three soft kisses, and then arched back, watching the goose bumps with satisfaction. “You’ve got one or two other little spots that seem to make you forget all about…”

“Kern!” Her flush made him chuckle, and she curled closer to him, slowly stroking the flat of his stomach that was just as susceptible to her touch. “I’ll find out,” she promised, as she nipped tiny bites into his shoulder. “Maybe not from you, Kern. Sooner or later you’ll have to unlock that door…”

“But not now.” He leaned over her, pinning her gently to the pillow, his eyes glinting devil-fire mischief on hers. “We need rest. We’ve both been up for more than two days straight with only a few hours’ sleep in between.”

“Rest,” she repeated innocently. “And that’s why you insisted on a day in bed, Kern?”

“It certainly is.”

“For another minute and a half,” she suggested as she ran her fingers gently down the slope of his back, urging him to her with the promise in her eyes.

“For thirty seconds,” he amended as his lips came down on hers.