Outlaw Carson (12 page)

“Sha-sha, Mancos. Sha-sha.”

Mancos let out a grumbly whine, but did as
he was told, passing his mistress in a dull dog daze to flop back
down in the living room. Kristine didn’t notice his change in
loyalties. She was too busy working herself up again. Finally she
could hold it no longer.

“You would have let them have me?”

Kit lowered his head against the
refrigerator door and sighed, long and hard. She’d accomplished the
impossible. She’d gotten under his skin, rattled the patience he’d
spent years honing to a fine shield of composure. She’d made him
angry.

He slowly turned to face her, forcing his
voice to remain calm. He failed. “No, Kreestine. I would not have
let them have you. I will not let anyone
have
you, not in
the way they wished.” He took a long draw off the beer, then set
the bottle aside and started toward her. “Not now, not ever,
because,
patni
”—he stopped in front of her and captured
her face in his hands—“you are mine.”

His mouth covered hers before she had time
to think, and afterward she had no need to think, only desire for
more of his kiss. She squeezed her hands into small fists, fighting
the temptation to hold him, but temptation won. Her fingers
trembled as she touched either side of his waist, and he slanted
his mouth over hers again, pulling her higher, drawing her closer.
She clutched at his tunic and felt the heat of his body spread
through to her palms. Growing bolder, she slid her hands up his
chest and traced the breadth of his shoulders. The strength of the
muscles bunching in his arms made her feel weak and wanton, not
helpless, not vulnerable, but waiting.

His low groan mingled with her sighs, and in
one powerful move he lifted her to the table top and pulled her
snug against him, his hands splayed around her waist, his hips
pressed between her thighs. Kristine began to melt from inside out,
overwhelmed by the intensity of his passion. His mouth roamed from
hers to the tender triangle where jaw met ear and neck, and she
discovered a heretofore unknown erogenous zone. In truth, he was
turning her whole body into an erogenous zone.

She tilted her head to taste the nape of his
neck, but his hand cupped her chin, stopping her.

“Don’t,” he whispered into her ear, and
kissed her again. “Unless you are willing to come to my bed.”
Another kiss followed the last, lower on her neck, gliding down to
the curve of her collarbone. His braid slid over his shoulder, so
close to her hand. “Will you come, Kreestine?”

Yes
. . .

“Good.” He moved to gather her in his arms,
and a cold dose of reality splashed into her fantasy.

“No! I mean . . . no. We hardly know each
other. We’ve barely met. I can’t just fall into bed with—with you.”
Her voice softened in dismay. She didn’t know what to think
anymore.

“Ah, then you only want to play at love.” He
kissed the corners of her mouth, teasing her with his tongue, and a
bold hand slid up to caress her breast. “I like to play, too,
Kreestine, but—” He paused to graze her lower lip with his teeth.
“I’m quickly losing patience with the game. Come to me when you are
ready.”

He kissed her once more, a lingering
exploration of her mouth she couldn’t resist. When he pulled away
she found his braid sliding through the hand she’d wrapped around
it in an attempt to hold him longer and closer.

Thoroughly embarrassed by the betraying
action, she released the plait and lowered her gaze only to have
her blush heighten. She watched his large, rough hand slide slowly
up her body, leaving a trail of heat along her thigh, over her
belly, her breasts, and up to her throat. The tips of his fingers
tilted her chin until she was looking at him.

He was smiling, his eyes dark with a slumber
to match his voice. “It’s a good game, though, Kreestine. A very
good game.”

He was crazy. She was crazy. The whole world
had gone crazy.

Kristine pulled more papers out of the
office wastebaskets, muttering silently to herself. Pencil shavings
dusted her knees, making grimy lead stains on her
blue-and-white-striped jeans. She’d already spilled coffee on the
matching T-shirt, and the sun hadn’t even come up yet.

Without including her workplace, the office
was immaculately organized, thanks to Kit, but she more than made
up for his tidiness with her small area of intense clutter. The man
was obsessed with order. She bet he’d never lost anything in his
life—until he’d met her.

“Dammit.” She upended the wastebasket and
gave it a shake. He’d entrusted her with this breakdown lists of
the trunks he’d dismantled on Saturday, but with little else
concerning the
Kāh-gyur
. She’d entered three of the
handwritten lists into her computer, but the fourth had
disappeared.

Her mustard-yellow blouse fluttered out of
the bottom of the wastebasket, and she sat back on her heels and
covered her face with her hands. She wished she’d burned the damn
thing. She wouldn’t cry. She never cried. Crying would get her
nowhere.

She’d kept out of his way all day yesterday,
speaking only when spoken to, maintaining her veneer of
professionalism at the cost of her nerves and her sleep. He’d
worked in the garage taking apart the trunks, identifying each
printing block and taking a partial rubbing, numbering the pieces
and wrapping them for storage, and making the lists he’d then given
to her for safekeeping. He hadn’t asked for her help, and she
hadn’t found the courage or the confidence to go to his room and
offer it.

What was wrong with her? More prestige than
she’d ever dared to hope for was within her reach, and all she
could think about was the man who had brought the opportunity to
her. He was more than unorthodox. He was a law unto himself. Anyone
else would have been crushed by the responsibility he’d taken on,
with his daring escapade and flight into exile. She’d awakened
twice in the night, once in a cold sweat of fear, worrying over the
garage catching fire, or a freak tornado whirling out of the sky
and sucking up the
Kāh-gyur
, and she’d called herself a fool
for getting tangled up with his forbidden treasure. The second time
she’d awakened, she hadn’t known what to call herself except
overheated, overimaginative, and thoroughly frustrated.

Had he put a spell on her? Her every thought
turned to him. Kit Carson had become the bane of her existence. She
didn’t know him, didn’t understand him, had never met anyone even
remotely similar to him in looks or temperament. His mind worked in
unknown ways, and it worked on her. She was fascinated by him,
purely and simply fascinated. She’d understood her infatuation with
John Garraty. He’d been everything she wanted to be: well known in
his field, respected, intellectual, tenured.

Kit Carson was well known, but the rest was
up for grabs. He wasn’t at all the kind of man she would have
chosen for herself. He was civilized only to a degree, and that
degree in another culture; more sensual than intellectual, yet
highly intelligent in ways she couldn’t begin to comprehend.

But then, she’d chosen John Garraty with all
his tenure and respectability, and had done nothing but regret the
choice ever since. Maybe she didn’t know what was good for her. For
a moment, just a moment, when she’d awakened for the second time in
the middle of the night, she’d thought the only thing that could
save her and give her peace was climbing the stairs to Kit’s room
and rediscovering the sheer wonder of his kisses.

A muffled groan caught in her throat, and
she dropped her hands to her thighs. Damn him. When he put a
thought into a person’s head, he really knew how to make it
stick.

Come to me when you are ready
. The
arrogance alone in the remark should have been enough to turn her
off. Instead, it had created the exact opposite effect.

She looked down at the rubble piled around
her on the floor. The list had been there.
The
Lois
Shepard, and
the
Thomas Stein were coming to her house
tomorrow, and she and Kit had to be ready. If she screwed up the
deal, he might never leave.

Crazy, she thought again, slapping her hand
over her face. She was going crazy. A thirteenth-century antiquity
was slowly being dismantled in her garage and all she could relate
it to was the man who’d brought it. What had happened to her sense
of history? Her career goals? Her life?

Her hand slid down from her eyes to cover
her mouth, and she spotted it, a pale green piece of paper from his
journals lying on her desk. She almost collapsed in relief.

* * *

Kit laid a white piece of paper over the
eighty-eighth printing block and ran a two-inch square of charcoal
down one side. He numbered the paper with a fine-point pen, then
marked the blank side with his ink brush, stroking the ancient
Mongolian characters into place.

He’d worked throughout the cold night. Sleep
had proved to be more labor than rest. He’d waited as he had the
previous night for Kristine to come to him, and he would wait
longer, until their time ran out.

He set the cotton-bond paper aside and
picked up a sheet of rice paper. He took greater care with the
second, complete rubbing, for these were his to keep, decipher, and
study. For him the words held more importance than the wooden
blocks used to make them. When the ink dried on the first piece of
paper, he filed it for Shepard and Stein, who would be arriving the
next day, then slid another brass bead on his abacus to the
right.

What did she want? What did she need from
him? The day he’d spent with her had been enlightening, but not in
the manner of his youthful enlightenments.

What did he want from her? He’d called her
patni
, wife, without forethought. Was there meaning in
this? he wondered. Sang Phala would have said yes, all of life was
rich with meaning, but his second father had passed beyond his
reach into the nothingness of Nirvana.

A wave of loneliness washed through his
mind, forcing his eyes closed. Jealousy and loneliness. What other
surprises did she have in store for him? The monastery had been a
haven from the crueler emotions, providing a spiritual oneness
against the emptiness he now felt so far from his home.

Patni
. Half of a whole, yin to
yang. He’d left the monks in search of his manhood and the life
he’d been born to live, rebelling against the life his father’s
death and Sang Phala’s promise had thrust upon him. For the past
fifteen years, since he’d run from the monastery, he had lived with
his convictions of freedom tempered by his own conscience, only to
reach this place and this time where he was suddenly half of a
whole. She was working mysterious magic on him.

He laid his brush aside and sighed. Work was
no balm for his distraction. Desire had grown beyond want. He
needed Kristine Richards, a very stubborn, creatively haphazard
American woman with more ambition than sense. Wanting to make love
with her did not surprise him. Wanting to make a life with her did.
He had plans she didn’t fit into.

He’d slipped out of Asia like a thief in the
night, two steps in front of the internationally recognized law of
the Chinese and one step ahead of the Turk, stealing away with a
hundred-odd pounds of ancient wood holding the translated words of
Buddha. He’d done it as a gesture of faith and, he admitted,
because no one had thought he’d find it, let alone get away with
it. He’d traded the last of his reputation for his adopted people
and his pride. He had no regrets, but neither did he plan on
remaining in exile for the rest of this life.

He needed to place the
Kāh-gyur
safely to put it forever out of the Turk’s reach. He needed to
publish his research and regain his legitimate standing. He needed
to bide his time, until the storm of threats and recriminations
died away. Then he’d go back to the Chinese. He’d go to them and
promise them anything if they’d let him back into Tibet.

He needed to return, for many reasons. He’d
been born in the frozen wastelands of “the roof of the world,” and
the stark purity of its light and the solitude it offered were
ingrained in his soul.

But what was solitude to a lonely man? And
was the sunlight of the high Himalayas any purer than what he saw
in Kristine’s eyes?

Questions, he thought, slowly rising from
the floor. Questions were so easy to come by. The temporal world
whirled on its axis in a flood of questions, drawing fools and
mortals in its wake. He was both, for the answers he sought lay not
in his heart and mind, but in Kristine.

He had vowed to protect her from all things,
except himself and the unexpected love he felt growing deep inside.
Why couldn’t she have been a concubine? Mere lust was easy to
conquer. Love, it seemed, could only be surrendered to.

The first light of day rimmed his
windowsill, then spilled into the room and spread across the floor.
He followed the path of sunshine with a quiet, barefoot tread to
look down on the house where she dwelled. Was she sleeping? Were
her dreams as troubled as his? Did she understand better than he
the forces drawing them together?

Questions. More questions. Weariness bowed
his head, and his loneliness grew.

* * *

Kristine squeezed another dollop of cheese
spread on another tiny cracker. Her house was clean by anyone’s
standards, even her mother’s; Mancos was chained in the backyard,
for everyone’s peace of mind; and her third batch of canapés looked
better than the first, which she’d consigned to the garbage
disposal. White wine cooled in her refrigerator. A fresh pot of
coffee brewed on the counter. She had mints, napkins, ashtrays,
coasters, and fancy nuts.

A quick glance at her kitchen clock proved
all of her worst fears. Shepard and Stein would appear at any
minute, and Kit Carson was almost out of her life. The two events
were inextricably bound.