Into the Shadow by Christina Dodd

his need and fed her own.
    As if she had spoken, he said, ‘‘All right!’’ and rolled over, bringing her to the top.
    His black hair spread out on the green grass. His face beneath the beard was harsh, and his eyes were narrow slits of demand.
    He loosened his grip. ‘‘Ride, then!’’
    He was a big-boned man. She couldn’t straddle him and have her knees touch the ground. So, with her hands on his bare belly, she pushed herself up, put her feet under her, and rode.
    It was decadent.
    It was luscious.
    She serviced him.
    She serviced herself.
    She listened for his groans and made him suffer. She probed for her own pleasures and repeated the movements that worked for her.
    The sun beat down on her shoulders. The breeze caressed her nipples.
    Beneath her he writhed. Inside he stretched her to the limit.
    He was a beautiful animal, with long, wiry muscles and strength in his big hands.
    And something about him slipped under her skin, into her blood, while at the same time he breathed deep, as if her essence fed his heart, his soul.
    Her thighs burned with exertion as she rose and fell, rose and fell. She panted harshly, fighting to draw in enough of the thin, cool air to sustain this race to the finish. She moved faster and faster, dragging them toward completion.
    Orgasm took control of her, a brief, glorious, pulse-pounding climax that expanded her senses to include the whole world, and shrank her focus to him—and her. She thought he was beautiful as he bucked beneath her, fierce, undisciplined, wild with passion.
    They finished too soon. Throwing her arms out in an excess of jubilation, she laughed out loud. She’d never been so alive, so happy. She had escaped Mount Anaya. They had escaped death.
    She wilted down on him, panting, exultant.
    He wrapped his arms around her back and rolled once more.
    She was under him, the heat of his body between her legs, the cool earth below her, and around her head tiny white flowers blossomed.
    He stared at her as if she bewildered him.
    She stared back, smiling, recovering from her folly. Slowly his dark gaze recalled her to normalcy, then to wariness.
    She had had sex with this man, held him in her arms while he slept beside her, trusted him to save her life. Yet she knew nothing about him, and his eyes . . . his eyes chilled her with the same sense of impending disaster she’d experienced on the slopes of Mount Anaya.
    With the fingers of one hand he pushed her hair away from her face. ‘‘You shouldn’t have done that.’’
    ‘‘What? What do you mean? I shouldn’t have had sex with you?’’ In a tart tone she said, ‘‘I didn’t know I had a choice.’’
    ‘‘You shouldn’t have done me. You shouldn’t have loved it. Most of all you shouldn’t have laughed.’’
    She stared at him.
    He looked so stern, like a revivalist minister preaching the Old Testament.
    She struggled to divine his meaning. ‘‘I wasn’t laughing at you, if that’s what you mean. I was laughing—’’
    ‘‘—for joy. I understand.’’
    He observed her so closely, she felt as if his gaze scoured her face, revealing more than she wanted him to know, and he made her aware of his weight pressing her into the grass, her widespread legs, her risky vulnerability. She shifted uncomfortably.
    He stroked her hair again. ‘‘Someday I would like to hear you laugh again.’’
    ‘‘I don’t laugh like that very often.’’ She didn’t do any of this very often.
    ‘‘Nevertheless.’’ With every sign of reluctance he pulled away from her. He stood and stripped, a swift, efficient elimination of clothing and boots.
    He tossed everything on the ground, then stood over her, looking down at her, his fists clenching and unclenching.
    To suspect him of lifting weights was absurd; he led a life on the edge of civilization, doing God knew what for a living, yet he was long and lean, a sleek predator with coiled strength in the bunching muscles of his arms, in the bulk of his