She rose to her knees, never taking her eyes off his. With trembling fingers she loosened the laces at his throat. The buckle of his belt was tight, even when he sucked in, and she had to work at it a moment before the prong slipped free. All the while his body thrummed like a fiddle string harshly plucked.

"You'll have to sit up," she said, once the tail of the shirt was free of the wide belt which held it folded against his waist.

He rose and pulled the shirt over his head with a quick motion. Her breath caught as he did, sending another immense wave of desire through him. Tossing shirt and belt aside, he caught her again in his arms.

Her mouth was sweet and hungry. Chest to breast he held her while he plundered.

Her skin was hot against him, burning hot.

This time he didn't stop at her chin. He kissed his way down the fragile column of her throat, dipped his tongue into the hollow where her heart fluttered under delicate skin.

Her hands gripped his head, fingers thrust through his hair as he found her breasts, full and heavy with milk. He had watched her, many times, as she fed the babe, wondering if her milk was sweet and rich.

He tasted and it was! He molded the fullness of her breasts in his two hands, burying his face between them and smelling her faint scent of lilacs. Only yesterday he had heard her tell Flower that she had but a sliver of the fine French milled soap left and he had thought of bringing her more--a barrel of the white, scented bars, so that she would always smell of lilacs.

"Emmet," she said, half gasp, half cry of desperate hunger. "Oh, Emmet, please!

Please!"

"You like this." Not a question but a statement of fact. "Great God, but so do I!" He tasted again, teased, flicking his tongue against the swollen nipple.

Her hands tightened against his scalp. "What... what are you doing to me?" Her legs flailed against his, wrapped and held. "I can't stand it. I can't...."

He gave up her breast. Sitting up, he slid out of his pants, cursing the tight buckskin as it clung to his legs. Hattie tried to help him, but her frantic tugs and pushes only complicated matters. He had one leg free when her help brought her hand against his manhood, halting all their movements.

"Touch me," he commanded. "Touchme!"

Slowly her fingers touched. Stroked, retreated, stroked again. Closed about him.

And that was all. He reared against her and exploded. Nothing mattered. Not that she was stiff in his arms. Not that his seed was smeared across her thigh. Nor that he'd intended their first time to be gentle and sweet and memorable, for he knew women needed all those things.

Those thoughts came to him later, when he lay gasping against her, relieved but not sated. "Hattie, girl," he said, "I'm sorry."

She kissed him, softly, kindly. "Don't be." She stroked his hair back from his forehead. "It's all right."

But he heard resignation in her voice, and acceptance. That was worse than shock or disgust.

Did she think he cared nothing for her pleasure?

He held her while his body recollected itself. She lay passive, her breathing erratic. He could tell she was exerting control to stay inert.

The wanting was still there, inside him, like a smoldering fuse. Pure physical release wasn't enough. He'd feared it wouldn't be. He wanted more of her. All of her. And he was afraid he'd never get enough.

Slowly he began stroking his hand along the curve of her spine. She was still stiff, resisting the seduction of his touch, but gradually she relaxed. His hand cupped a buttock, slid over the roundness of her hip.

She moved restlessly. "You don't have to do this," she said, attempting to pull away.

He found her nipple and teased it with his teeth into full awareness. "I want to do this," he told her. "I want to keep doing it and doing it, as long as I can."

He suckled briefly, feeling her body fighting her will, trying to respond.

"How can you? You've had your pleasure. Aren't you sleepy?"

"Sweetheart, I've never been more awake in my life," he said, laying a palm across her belly, firm now with a womanly curve to it. Slowly he moved it down, toward the delta of curly brown hair hiding her feminine secrets. He sought carefully, feeling her need to resist.

Hattie held herself rigid in his embrace as his hand explored her belly.Oh, God!

This felt even better than his mouth at her breast.

She had imagined this, time and again. Night after night, her in the lower bunk and he in the upper, she had lain awake and imagined his hands and his mouth upon her.

Karl had never touched her more than he had to. Once her nightgown was up to her waist, he'd gone about his business with no more to-do than if he'd been shaping a cabinet molding--less, actually, for she'd seen his hands caress fine wood, touching it with a sensuousness he never brought to their bed.

Her body liquified as Emmet's hand rubbed slow circles. The fire in her belly burst into full flame and she writhed, wanting, needing.... "Emmet!"

His fingers slipped lower and he touched the fire.

"Emmet,please !" She wanted him and she wanted him now!

He rolled atop her, holding himself above her with stiffened arms. Hattie wrapped her legs around his hips, raising herself to meet him.

But he was not to be hurried. With tantalizing slowness, he pushed against her, his sex hard and insistent against her yearning flesh.

Then he was within. Still moving slowly, he entered her, each tiny thrust driving her ever higher, ever wilder.

Hattie moved and he answered, pressing himself even deeper. Another movement and she felt him against her womb. When he withdrew, she followed, arching up, crying out her protest.

He returned, faster, and withdrew again. Now he moved in a timeless rhythm, and she with him. Until the fires broke free and consumed her.

As she burned, she heard his shout of completion, felt the spilling of his seed within her.

She didn't feel him pull the comfort over them, but it was there when she woke in the palest dawn. He was warm beside her, warm and safe. His arm was across her middle, his hand lying lightly on the bundle of furs containing her daughter.

They were safe with him, she and her child. He would never let anything happen to them that he could prevent. Not while he was with them. He instinctively protected those weaker than he, dependent on him. This past winter she had seen how he fought his need to be free, to wander, because she needed him.

But once she was in the Willamette Valley, she would no longer need him, at least not in the ways he was willing to be needed. Then what?

Then she would just have to go on living a life without color, without laughter, without love, for she could not imagine ever finding a man who could replace this one in her heart.

But she would have her memories. They would be enough to warm her soul for the rest of her life. They had to be.

Ellen stirred, her mouth moving in a suckling motion. She would be awake soon--Hattie was surprised she'd slept through the night. But until she woke, the time was hers--and Emmet's.

She turned to him, slipping a hand across his bare chest. How could he sleep thus, without cover on half his body? And stay so warm, too, for her hand was colder than his skin.

He woke with no confusion, turning to take her into his arms. As his mouth touched hers, his hands were moving down, to tempt her, to ready her for him.

"I've dreamed of this," he said, sleep making his voice thick, "for a long time."

Emmet found her ready for him, wet and soft. Unable to wait, he sank into her humid depths, feeling her tighten around him.

She met him, thrust for thrust, as he lost himself in her. And when completion came, he collapsed atop her, as if he could hold her next to his heart by the sheer mass of his body.

Their cries woke Ellen. She fussed for a few moments, then stated her demands vociferously. Emmet rolled away, freeing Hattie, who pulled her babe to her breast.

Ellen suckled hungrily, making little grunting-pig noises and kneading tiny fists against the blue-veined flesh of Hattie's breast. Emmet rose to his elbow and watched, enthralled as always, at the miracle of this woman and her child.

His mother had borne her children with difficulty, when she bore them at all.

She had never had enough to feed them, neither from her own body nor from their always meager larder. Nor had she been able to give her children love, as Hattie so clearly could.

He reached out and lay a hand on Ellen's head, almost bald now, for she'd lost the thatch of silky black hair she'd had at birth. "You're beautiful," he said.

"She is," Hattie agreed.

"I meant her mother." He smiled up at her, wanting to tell her how he felt at this moment, but not having the words. His heart was full to bursting with unfamiliar emotions. "I watch you with the babe, and I think I've never seen such a sight." His hand moved from Ellen's head to Hattie's breast, touching lightly. "Sometimes I envy her, the way you hold her, look at her."

"Don't," Hattie said. "Don't envy her. She's my child. You're my husband, and I... I feel different things for you."

"What kind of different?"

Clearly flustered, not meeting his eyes, she said, "Oh, just different."

"Tell me." He touched her breast again, catching a droplet of milk and bringing it to his mouth. Yes, it was indeed sweet!

"You tempt me," she said, still looking away, "and I'm afraid of you."

"Afraid." He grasped her chin and forced her to look at him. "You're afraid of me?"

She nodded.

"Why?" Of all she could have told him, he could think of nothing that would cut deeper. "Why are you afraid of me?"

"Because you're going to hurt me," she said, "and because I can't stop you."

"Hattie, I'll never do anything...anything to hurt you. Not on purpose."

Hattie smiled, because this was the closest he'd come to telling her he cared for her. "Someday you'll go," she said, clasping his taut wrist. "Someday you'll leave me."

Letting go of her chin, Emmet turned his gaze into the woods behind her. She kept her hold on his wrist, for she needed to be touching him. Although there were words she wanted to say to him, she kept her lips pressed firmly together.

She would not beg.

"Aye," he said, finally. "I'll leave you. I... I have to." His voice was strained.

"You warned me," she told him, wanting, inexplicably, to comfort him. "I've never had any ho-- never believed you'd stay."

Emmet could stand no more of this. "I'll build up the fire," he said, rising to his feet. "As soon as you're ready, we'll start looking around."

She did not reply, only nodded, her face lowered and concealed by strands of silky hair escaping her thick braid.

Damn her! He had never promised anything beyond getting her to the Willamette.

Did she think to hold him with sexual ties? Was that why she had all but seduced him? She must have known what would happen, once she showed him her naked body.

A married woman would know what need did to a man, how it robbed him of all sense, made him a slave to desire.

Oh, yes, she had planned it well. All winter she'd seemed afraid to let him kiss her, hold her the way he longed to do, but now--now that it was only weeks until they would be on the last leg of their journey--now she was all sweet submission and warm kisses. Hattie was no fool.

Emmet blew on the smoldering tinder, wishing he'd banked the fire last night. He was a man, old enough and experienced enough to be far beyond being led into negligence by youthful randyness, yet he'd forgot the fire, forgot to watch for intruders, forgot everything in her arms.Damn her to hell! Slamming the coffeepot onto the two rocks he'd placed to hold it above the fire, he cursed again when it sloshed and spilled, wetting the wood he'd placed beside the tinder.

He heard the rustle of her movements on the bed. Resisting the urge to turn around and watch her dress, he pushed the wetted kindling aside and laid dry sticks in the firepit. Doing his best to ignore her, he nursed the fire until it was well started, then he strode to the creek, sixty yards away. "I'll be back,"

he called over his shoulder, still not wanting to look at her.

He wanted a deep pool for his bath. What he settled for was one in which the water barely reached his knees. But it was deep enough, and cold enough, for him to bathe his body and cool the intemperate desire that seemed almost a part of him anymore. That burned even stronger for having been eased--not once but thrice!

Great God! He'd been worse than a horny lad with his first woman. Going off like that at her slightest touch. But afterward--and the memory forced him to smile in spite of his seething anger--afterward they'd reached completion together, in a wild, free flight going nowhere he'd ever been before.

For an instant--just an instant--he'd actually thought of telling her he would never leave her. And that would have been the most damfool thing he could possibly do.

If he stayed with Hattie, sooner or later she'd see him for what he really was.

A man with no sand.

Hadn't he shown, time and again, how he could not be depended upon? Pa had asked only one thing of him, that he care for Ma and Sheila and Jon. And look what happened to them, because he wasn't man enough to keep his promise.

And his crew--no! He wouldn't think about that.

He flopped over onto his belly, sending sprays of water onto the bank. Dipping his face, he gritted his teeth, had a sudden, unbidden memory of hot towels and steaming water in a basin. He sat up, water streaming from his beard. He fingered it. Getting pretty long, and he'd bet it was straggly as hell. Hattie had a little mirror, just a scrap broken from a larger one, that she'd found on a shelf in Buff's cabin when she first started getting around. Maybe he should borrow it and shave himself. Or maybe he should just have her give him a trim, head and chin. He shook his head, feeling how long his hair had become.

He shivered. Not from the cold water in which he sat, but from the thought of Hattie's hands on his face, on his shoulders, as she snipped and shaped. Her breasts would press against his back. Her lower lip would be caught behind her teeth, a sure indication of her concentration. And she would step to the front to shape his beard, would stand between his thighs, her breath warm on his face, her scent filling his nose.

She would.... Emmet submerged his entire self, knowing it would do him no good.

He was well and truly aroused, and nothing but Hattie in his arms, himself buried in her, would calm the storm that engulfed him.

Well, he'd be damned if he'd let his body dictate his life. Rising, shaking himself like a dog, he strode to the bank, feet slipping on the cobbles lining the streambed.

And there it was! In a pool almost hidden under the overhanging bank, the water held a golden gleam.

He knelt, no longer caring how cold the water was, and reached.

Great God! It was like holding a handful of peas, except these particles were far from vegetable in origin. They had been born in the hot bowels of the earth, plucked from their rocky crypt by probing fingers of water, ice and wind.

Rounded by countless decades of tumbling and rolling along the bed of the stream when melting snow swelled the creek to a surging torrent.

He dropped the handful carefully on his shirt, then went back to sift the pool's lining again. Once more his hand was filled, but this time the particles were smaller, more like shot than peas.