The Outlaw and the Lady by Lorraine Heath Page B

have the luxury of coating her lips. She handed the canteen backto him and heard him put it away. She swallowed. “I didn’t hear you drink.”
    “I’m not thirsty,” he rasped.
    “Lee, you have to drink some water.”
    “It is not a hard thing to do without when you have grown accustomed to it,” he said.
    “I’m very sorry.”
    With his palm, he tenderly cupped her cheek. “I have told you before, you have nothing to apologize for. You are courageous, querida. You make me wish…”
    “What do you wish?”
    “For things that can never be. If I do not see the riders today, tomorrow we’ll head home and toward fresh water.”
    Home. His home, not hers, although now she had absolutely no fear. She knew as surely as she knew the moment twilight arrived that he would return her to her family.
    He was not a soft man, yet he gave her moments of softness. She sensed he’d been shaped more by the one night he’d watched the murder of his family than all the years that had come before. What would his life be like now if no one had killed those he loved? She had a thousand questions to ask him, and a throat that hurt with each word spoken. The time would come, soon, when she would gain the answers she sought.
     
    A lightning bolt quickly zigzagged across the midnight sky. A slow smile eased over Lee’s face as some of the tension that had been mounting for days left him. Thunder resounded.
    “We’re in luck, querida . A storm.”
    “I can smell the rain.”
    “It will be here soon.”
    He urged his horse into a gallop. With any luck, he could cover some distance before the first raindrop fell, and the drops that followed would wash away his passing.
    Because he had grown accustomed to being with Angela he had a difficult time imagining riding alone. He knew a time would come when again he would, but he did not welcome it. He wondered about the men who had passed through her life. Although she claimed to have no one waiting for her, surely many men had courted her.
    A raindrop splattered on his thigh. Another hit his hand. Lightning burst through the blackened clouds, thunder boomed, and a torrential rain deluged them. Lee slowed the horse to a walk, swept his hat from his head, and removed hers. “Enjoy the rain, querida .”
    She tilted her face up, her head nestled within the crook of his shoulder as though it had been specifically created with her in mind. It amazed him whenever he studied her, which he did with increasing frequency, to realize that every aspect of her complemented him. Where she was soft, he was hard. Where she was curved, he was flat.
    For no more than a heartbeat, a sheet of lightning illuminated her features and he committed each one to memory. The rain hitting her face, her lips spread slightly apart, her tongue darting out to capture the water, the droplets clinging to her eyelashes like tiny pearls.
    The freckles over her nose tugged at his heart, made her seem younger, innocent. But she was no child. She was a woman who had fought, beguiled, and shot him. She had slept in his arms, touched the loneliness in his heart with soft words, and impressed him with her courage.
    All his life, he’d thought he was incredibly strong, and now he was learning that he was humbly weak. Where she was concerned, he seemed to have no willpower, no strength to resist the enticing temptation she offered.
    Skimming his thumb along her cheek, cooled by the rain, he gathered the fine dew of moisture that remained. The heat of her breath warmed his hand. Like a desperate man he slowly lowered his mouth to hers, not with the heated passion that had burned through him before—that had done nothing to sate his desires—but with a patience born of needing one moment in his life where time stood still.
    The rain eased up just enough that the gentle patter mingling with the humming of the slight wind became a melody. Her lips yielded to his. With one arm, he drew her more closely into the curve of his body,