Chapter Thirty-Two

Ty's tightly held emotions exploded into a fury that was unlike any he had ever felt. He stopped trying to peel off layers of wet cloth and grabbed Janna's shoulders instead.

"Don't say something like that about yourself! Do you hear me, Janna Wayland? You are not a whore!"

Angry, ashamed, defiant, Janna stood shivering within Ty's grasp. "Just what would you call it?"

"We're… lovers."

"I don't think so," she said distinctly. "To be someone's lover suggests a certain affection mixed in with the lust. I'm not your lover. I'm a convenience until you take Lucifer and go off to buy your silk- "

"Don't say it," Ty interrupted savagely. "I'm sick to death of having those words flung in my face."

"Then stop flinging them in mine."

"I've never-"

"The hell you haven't!" Janna interrupted, her voice as savage as his. " 'I'll have my silken lady or I'll have none at all for longer than it takes to pleasure myself,'" Janna quoted, each word clipped. "'You're the least female female I've ever seen.' Then you said that Cascabel looked more like a mesquite bush than I looked like a woman, and the comparisons didn't stop after you had me, either. You

couldn't wait to tell me that it was a woman you'd needed, not me."

Janna's voice broke, then steadied as words rushed out. "And then you told me that my virginity was all I had to offer to a husband because I had no family, no profession, no money. You said that you had ruined me, because now I wasn't good enough to be a wife and wasn't educated enough to be a mistress and that meant that I wasn't good enough to be anything but a 'toy of many men, not one.' That's a whore in any man's language."

"Janna-my God, I never meant-"

"I'm not finished," she said, cutting across Ty's shocked words. "Or maybe I should say you're not finished. You've had a lot to say about my shortcomings as a woman. As woman hungry as you were, I couldn't even seduce you. You said, 'Sugar, you don't have the least idea how to seduce a man. A woman seduces a man with rustling silks and-'"

Ty's hand clamped across Janna's mouth, cutting off her bitter recitation of his words.

"You don't understand," Ty said urgently. "I didn't mean any of that to belittle you. Especially after we made love."

The mute defiance of Janna's eyes and the hot rain of her tears said that she had understood him all too well.

"Janna," he whispered, kissing her eyelashes, tasting her tears, "please believe me. I never meant the words as an insult to you. You're a young girl alone in the world and I seduced you, knowing I shouldn't. That's all the words meant. My shortcomings, Janna, not yours."

She trembled as she felt Ty's caresses and soft words stripping away her anger, revealing the despair that was the other side of her fury. Nothing he had said or could say would change the heartbreaking reality: she was not the silken lady of her lover's dreams.

"Do you believe me?" Ty asked, the words as soft as the repeated brush of his lips over Janna's eyelids, her cheeks, her mouth. "I never meant; to belittle you. Satin butterfly… believe me… I never meant…"

Gentle words became tender kisses, which lingered and deepened until Ty's tongue touched Janna's for just an instant. Then he withdrew.

"You're so cold you're shivering," he said huskily.

With a volatile mixture of despair and tenderness and desire, Janna waited for Ty to suggest the obvious way to warm her.

Ty looked from Janna's clear, fathomless eyes to the fire whose flames were licking against a huge wall of stone. "And that fire has a lot of rock to warm before it will do us any good." Suddenly he smiled. "But there's a better way."

Janna's answering smile was bittersweet as Ty's hands went to the soggy material that was still wrapped around her breasts. She could refuse him when she was in the grip of anger, but she could never refuse the man who had kissed her so gently just moments before.

When Ty saw the sad acceptance of Janna's smile, he felt as though a knife were turning within his body. He knew that he could have her now, that she would give herself to him once more with all the sensual generosity that had been such a marvel each time he had experienced it; but this time, after the shattering ecstasy had passed, she would believe herself a whore once again.

Nothing he could say would change her mind, for he had said too much already, heedlessly, not knowing that his words were wounding her. He had never meant to strip her pride away. But he had, and he finally knew it.

Too late.

Janna felt the world tilt as Ty picked her up and carried her away from the fire. She made a startled sound and threw her arms around his neck.

"It's all right, Janna. I won't drop you."

Although Ty's voice was as gentle as his kisses had been, in the moonlight his face was a portrait composed of harsh planes and angles, and the line of his mouth was as sad as Janna's had been. At first the clammy fabric of his shirt made Janna shiver with renewed chill. Caught between two bodies, the cloth quickly warmed, and so did she.

Neither of them spoke while Ty walked down the path that led to the hot spring. As the stone ramparts closed in and the valley narrowed, the temperature rose due to the heat radiated by the hottest pool. Ty stopped well short of the first pool, choosing instead the one they called the Tub. There he knelt and lowered Janna into the water without bothering to remove the rest of her clothes. She made a long sound of pleasure as the water's heat penetrated the chill that had come from hours of riding through the storm with only the haphazard protection of the poncho to turn aside the cold rain.

"That feels wonderful," Janna murmured.

With a sigh she sank up to her chin in the water, all but disappearing beneath the veils of steam lifting from the pool's surface. Automatically she searched out the water-smoothed ledge that she usually half floated and half lay on while she soaked in the pool's heated water. Closing her eyes, she eased down the ledge to make room for Ty to join her. When minutes passed and there was no splash or displacement of water from his entry into the pool, she opened her eyes.

She was alone.

"Ty?" she called softly.

No one answered.

"Ty?" This time Janna's call was louder. "There's room here for both of us. You don't have to wait to get warm."

Words that Janna couldn't distinguish came from the direction of camp. She listened intently but no other sounds came. She started to get out of the pool, only to begin shivering immediately. Experience told her if she stayed in the pool for a long enough time her body would absorb so much heat that the walk back to the campfiie wouldn't chill her, even in the middle of winter.

Janna took off her remaining clothes, slid back into the pool and let the hot water claim her body once more. Eyes closed, half-floating in the gently flowing water, she wondered why Ty hadn't gotten into the pool with her. Surely he had to be as cold as she was, for he hadn't even had the protection of the makeshift poncho against the rain and wind.

Gradually Janna realized that she was no longer alone. She opened her eyes and saw Ty sitting cross-legged at the edge of the pool, fully clothed, smiling as he watched her. She didn't know that her answering, half-shy smile was another knife of regret turning within him; she only knew that for an instant he looked so sad that tears burned behind her eyes.

"Ty?"

"I'm here, little one."

Janna didn't hesitate or withdraw when Ty bent over the pool. She turned her face toward him, expecting to be pulled into his arms for a kiss that was as steamy and deep as the hot spring itself.