And still there was no end, no peace, no safety, for he was still moving inside her in a rhythm as relentless as it was savage, driving her higher and yet higher until Eden felt as though she were going to die, as though she had been ripped from one world and thrust into another and in this one she was on fire. With a wrenching moan she arched into Nevada, burning fiercely, needing even more of him, telling him what she needed with words that also burned.

"You're feeling it now, aren't you?" Nevada said darkly as his teeth scored Eden's ear. "This is what you did to me the first time I saw you, before I ever even touched you, a burning all the way to the marrow of my bones. And then I had you and still it wasn't enough, it's never enough, because there's always more and it's always just out of reach, a rainbow on fire against a black sky, untouchable and so damned perfect it tears at your soul until you bleed but it doesn't make any difference because your blood is on fire, too, and you just keep burning."

Twisting, burning, caught between heaven and hell, hearing Nevada's dark voice and fiery words, Eden fought for the embrace, for the fulfillment she knew blazed just beyond her reach. Nevada bent down to her, holding her motionless while he caught her mouth with his own. She drank his wild hunger, matched it, demanded more and yet more of him until he drove into her, pinning her beneath him, grinding against her as though he would become a part of her or die.

Impaled on ecstasy, consumed by wildfire, Eden would have screamed but she had no breath, no voice, no being. She felt Nevada shuddering beneath rapture's savage blows, heard him cry out as though in torment, but she could not help him for she was him and he was her and together they were the rainbow stretched between heaven and hell, burning.

When the searing fire finally released Eden, she lay spent beneath Nevada, stunned by the passion that had consumed both of them, feeling their bodies fight for breath, for reality. When their breathing finally slowed, Nevada eased himself from Eden's body, caught her face between his hands and looked down into the many colors of her dazed hazel eyes.

"All the colors of life," Nevada whispered, brushing Eden's lips with his own.

As one person, they felt his heartbeat deepen as he quickened against her body once more.

"Nevada?" Eden whispered.

"I can't stop it. I don't even want to try. It's as new to me as it is to you. Fairy-tale girl, all sweet golden fire," he whispered. "Burn with me, fairy-tale girl."

Gently Nevada joined his mouth with Eden's, caressing her sweetly, drinking her with the slow, shared rhythms of remembered hunger and release. The kiss was like his heartbeat, deep and unhurried, certain. Urgency was a distant echo, pleasure a shimmering companion, and their breath whispered as softly as flames in the hearth.

The kiss ended as gently as it had begun, drawing a murmured protest from Eden, for she didn't want it to end. Nevada's lips brushed hers once more, stilling her with a gentle caress that promised things he had no words to say, only a certainty whispering deep inside him, shimmering with pleasures as yet untouched, unknown, unnamed, waiting for them, ecstasy burning as softly as his kisses.

The brush of Nevada's lips closed Eden's eyelids. She sighed as the moist tip of his tongue traced her eyelashes, her hairline, her temples, and his breath caressed her sensitive skin. His words sank gently into her as his teeth and tongue caressed her earlobes, the soft line of her neck, the hollow of her throat, tasting her, sipping her, discovering her. His mouth moved slowly from her shoulders to her fingertips, her breasts, her belly, then down her long legs to the soles of her feet.

Nevada was a warmth moving over Eden, his caresses telling her that she was more beautiful than life, more perfect than fire. The velvet warmth of his tongue was heightened by tiny bites so gentle they made her softly moan. When he knelt between her legs, touched her, cherished her, she wept and gave him what he asked for, opening for him like a flower. He whispered her name and her beauty against her skin, asking for yet another gift, and she gave him that, too, softly bathing him in her fire.

With a gentleness that made Eden tremble, Nevada kissed her, slid his hands beneath her knees and slowly raised her legs, moving them apart with soft pressures and whispered words. Then he lifted his head and looked into Eden's eyes, asking that she trust him in this as she had trusted him in so much already.

The contrast between the heavenly gentleness of Nevada's hands and the shadowy hell in his eyes tore at Eden's heart. She trembled and gave her body to his keeping, heard her name wrapped in the dark velvet of his voice as he gently curled her legs back upon her, leaving nothing secret from him.

There was no embarrassment in Eden this time when Nevada looked at her, kissed her once, twice, and then brought himself to her undefended gate, watching the union as he pressed into her. The taking was so gentle, so slow, his eyes so black, so wild, that Eden unraveled in shivering ecstasy. She saw her undoing echoed in the shudder that rippled through Nevada, but his slow claiming of her softness did not speed up in the least. He took Eden the way dawn takes the night, moment by moment, breath by breath, leaving nothing unclaimed, nothing hidden.

And when he filled her, all of her, sealing their bodies while she watched, she softly moaned at the completion. Tiny convulsions stole through her to him as she shimmered and burst soundlessly into fire. He rocked slowly against her, his movements as gentle and overwhelming as her body unraveling, bathing him in soft flames, rocking, rocking, and she wept and still ecstasy came to her, repeatedly, and each time the gentle rocking, rocking of Nevada's body breathed life into her once more.

And still he rocked gently, filling her, bathing in her fire as they gave themselves to one another in secret molten pulses, burning away the world, leaving only their interlocked bodies and an incandescent ecstasy that had no ending, only beginnings, renewing and consuming and burning until finally they fell asleep, still intimately joined, their interlocked bodies gleaming in the firelight.

Yet even in sleep, Eden wept, for she had seen the darkness in Nevada's eyes and knew she would wake alone.

12

Baby found Nevada's tracks at the base of the ridge that overlooked the cougar's den. The realization that Nevada had been so close to Eden and hadn't so much as said hello drove black splinters of pain into her. Even as Eden looked frantically around, hoping to find Nevada, she knew it would be futile. If he had wanted to talk to her, he would have. He hadn't. He had been very careful not to alert her to his presence, avoiding the keen edge of Baby's senses.

Eden looked at Nevada's tracks and fought not to cry out with loneliness. It had been two weeks since Nevada had come in from one kind of storm, only to create another in the cabin's firelit intimacy. The memories of being joined with Nevada haunted Eden, bringing tears to her eyes even as her body shivered with remembered ecstasy. Blindly she looked at the indentations Nevada's boots had left in the newly fertile earth, then tilted her head back and called into the wind.

"Nevada! Nevada, can't you hear me? I love you!"

Nothing answered. Nothing would. Nevada was gone.

For the first time Eden admitted to herself that her warrior would not come to her again. Her love had not been able to heal Nevada. Even worse, her repeated offerings of love had undermined the peace of mind he had won at such terrible cost in the burned-out villages of Afghanistan.

The real world is a place where all you can do with your prayers and medicine and rage is hold the babies until they die and then bury them and walk away, just walk away, because any man who cares for anything enough to be hurt by its loss is a fool.