Vella Munn - The Return of Cord Navarro

Cord smiled, feeling incredibly close to her again and knowing how fragile it was. “Every part of this earth is sacred to my people,” he continued for her. “Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. Those were Chief Seattle’s words. At least, I’d like to believe they were. He was trying to explain to President Pierce why his people would never understand the concept of selling land. Matt told you about that?”

“Yes.” Her voice trembled slightly. “He said that’s the way you feel. He knows you very well, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Better than I do.”

Because he couldn’t let her go, he pressed her close to him and hoped that his body would say what he didn’t have words for. After a long minute of holding, rocking, giving, he caught the softest of sounds escape her lips, a sound far different from the sobs that had claimed her a few minutes ago.

The whisper told him everything, let him believe what he wanted. She’d let him place his arms around her because she was weary of carrying her burden alone. He’d been able to assume enough of that weight that she could now listen to what else was going on inside her. He struggled to find the words to tell her that everything and anything she felt was right, but no matter how he worked them, they seemed inadequate and half formed.

Maybe the truth was that with her pressed against him, no words would come.

Without regret, he gave up the fight and, beyond that, the need to learn whether hunters had found their son. Her mouth had once belonged to him; she’d given it to him freely. He’d lost any claim to her years ago, but for this moment, time had been stripped away and he could bury himself in what her body offered.

She couldn’t close her mouth. He sensed the tiny tremble that signaled her effort. Then she gave up and accepted. Invited.

So long-he’d waited so long for this. He had his arms firmly on her so that her arms were half trapped between their bodies. She pulled them free and wrapped them around his neck in an incredibly graceful gesture that made him hungry for something he hadn’t allowed himself to think about for too long-maybe forever. He felt her fingertips on his sunburned flesh. Somehow they cooled and heated at the same time.

Twisting slightly to the side, he eased her cheek against his shoulder and began stroking her hair. His groin pulsed in need, but the rest of him-heart and head-needed more than sex.

Needed to love this woman.

Shannon. Shannon. Slight, strong, built for climbing mountains and making love and raising children and watching eagles and-and loving me. Making me feel whole, no longer alone.

She repeated her chest-deep whimpering sound. He pulled it into him through his pores. Physical need grew, and he knew the folly of fighting that. He’d been sleeping by himself for a long time and no matter what he demanded of his body through his work, it wasn’t enough to still that primitive need.

If-they could-she would-

He opened his eyes, only dimly comprehending that he’d shut out the world. A desperate need to lay himself open to her surged through him and for a. few beats of his heart separated him from years of work and training. After what they’d gone through and still had to weather, self-preservation didn’t matter. With Shannon he would be vulnerable, more open than-

No.

His heart and body screamed at him to close his eyes again and lose himself in the sensual, equally needful woman who waited for him, but the father part of him, the scared father part had just seen something that turned him cold.

The sun glinting off something in the distance-a rifle barrel?

“Cord?” Shannon clutched at him with insistent fingers. “Cord, what is it?”

“What?” He couldn’t take his eyes off the horizon. Again that deadly dancing shaft.

“What? You-you’re like steel.”

He felt tension radiating throughout his body and knew he couldn’t do anything about it. How could she not be aware of it? What should he say, that he’d just seen something that scared the hell out of him and was going to do the same to her?

Instead he said, “We have to get going. Now.”

“Now? You’re- Without lunch?”

She’d already pulled out of his embrace and was staring up at him, her need-hazed eyes filled with question, doubt, a return to fear, distrust of everything about him. She didn’t care any more about food than he did.

“Go ahead. Eat. I’ve got-”

“You’ve got to what? Damn it, Cord! For once in your life be honest with me! I can’t take any more of this!”

It could be a hiker, a ranger. The human or humans out there weren’t necessarily killers. “Don’t you want to find him?”

Her look, hard and cold and hot all at the same time sliced into him. He already regretted what he’d said, but the words had spewed from him in a knee-jerk attempt to distance himself from her outburst. Although he readied himself for more of het anger, she whirled away and stood with her back to him, fists knotted at her side. “Do it, Cord,” she snapped. “Find him so I can get away from you.”

Although her head pounded, Shannon gave no thought to asking Cord to stop and allow her to rest. Something had happened to him, changed him, just as they were on the brink of-On the brink of what? If only she could think beyond her own emotions, but she should know better than to even try. Cord brought out so much in her, made her crazy.

Maybe, she thought without seeing any humor in it, she was already crazy and had been since the day he walked into her life.

There was incredible danger in thinking back to what had nearly happened between them earlier today, but putting their embrace and what went with it, and the words she’d thrown at him, behind her was impossible. She should know that by now.

They’d come close, so close that it scared her. She’d needed his understanding and compassion and love, needed it desperately. She no more could have kept that from him than she could have once not told him she loved him.

When he’d trusted her with what he carried inside him of the wisdom of the Taos Indians, he’d given her a precious gift she’d just begun to understand. She’d acknowledged his offer in the only way her heart had known, by showing him that she, too, believed in the wisdom of his people.

And then something had happened. He’d heard, or seen, or remembered, and something had ripped him from her and she’d lashed out.

Only something to do with Matt could have done that.

She’d thought his pace relentless earlier but his determination now frightened her so much that she couldn’t remember what she’d said to him, just that those words had been the last they’d spoken to each other. His forward progress was only slightly faster than it had been before because every few feet he had to search and reassess.

During those times when his entire attention was focused on the ground and his hands knotted and his knuckles turned white, she almost begged him to tell her the truth. But every time the words pushed their way to the surface, she held them back.

She didn’t want to know.

Instead she watched Cord and wondered when she’d have the words to ask his forgiveness. Not until he could concentrate on her. He moved so quietly that if she hadn’t been directly behind him, she wouldn’t know he was here. Because he said nothing, he left her free to listen to the voice of the earth around her. Its sound reached her as an ebbing and flowing wave, notes both high and shrill from a scolding chipmunk or deep and low as the wind worked its ageless way through the trees. Her world smelled of hot bark and dirt. They’d recently gone through a burned area and she’d been struck by the earth’s ability to repair and renew itself. She could spend her life here surrounded by the colors of the wilderness-finding herself.