Only 04 - Only Love

water for Whip’s bath. Each night she washed his clothes, and the following day they came back to her stiff with sweat and grit.
    Whip had protested that he could work in dirty clothes. Shannon had simply shaken her head and scrubbed harder. It was all she could do to make his work easier. She wished she could do more.
    “You should take a day off,” Shannon said softly. “You look tired. You work too hard. All day. Every day. You hardly even take time to eat.”
    “It makes me sleep well at night.”
    That was true, as far as it went. But it said nothing about how often Whip woke up during the night, sweating from forehead to heels, aching, his body rigid with a kind of hunger he had never known.
    Whip wondered if Shannon felt the same.
    He wondered, but he didn’t ask. Six days ago he had shown her what passion was all about. If she didn’t want more, he wasn’t going to push himself on her.
    It was Shannon’s turn to do the asking, and to do it plainly. Blushes and longing looks were for virgins who didn’t know what they were asking for, much less how to ask for it. Pretty widows who had just had their first taste of pleasure knew enough about men and sex to recognize the signs of male hunger.
    “Sit down on that log,” Shannon said. “I heated enough water so that you could take a basin bath.”
    “Are you saying I smell like old Razorback?”
    Shannon ducked her head and looked at Whipfrom beneath her eyelashes, trying to decide if he was teasing her or simply asking a question. Since the hailstorm, her relationship with Whip had changed in ways she didn’t understand. He rarely teased her anymore.
    And he never kissed her, held her, caressed her until the world came apart around her and she cried out with pleasure.
    “You always smell good to me,” Shannon said hesitantly. “I just know that rock dust is uncomfortable.”
    “Another thing Silent John told you?”
    She shook her head. “I learned it the same way you did, at the dumb end of a pickax.”
    Whip’s mouth opened but no words came out. He simply stared at Shannon, unable to believe that her slender arms had ever swung a pickax.
    “Well, don’t look so shocked,” Shannon said. “I’m not nearly as helpless as you think.”
    He grunted. “You’re not nearly as skillful as you think.”
    “I can’t swing an ax or a pick like you,” she said tartly, “but I can get a job done if I stay with it, and getting the job done is what matters.”
    With that, Shannon turned back to the fire. Irritation prickled through her. It had become a common sensation in the past few days. She was forever balanced on the razor edge of her temper…and she didn’t know why.
    “Did you find any gold while you were swinging that pick?” Whip asked Shannon.
    “No, but I was working a landslide that covered most of the Chute. Rifle Sight is richer.”
    “According to Silent John.”
    “I’ve seen some of the ore he brought back,” Shannon said. “There was so much gold in thequartz that the chunks came apart in your hands. He called it jewelry rock.”
    “He must have cleaned out that vein. From what I’ve seen, you could work all summer in Rifle Sight and not find enough gold to pay for your supplies.”
    Fear breathed coolly down Shannon’s spine. The gold claims were her freedom. Without them, she was at the mercy of strangers.
    “The gold is there,” she said tightly.
    Whip grunted.
    From the corner of her eyes, Shannon watched Whip stretch his arms and shoulders, loosening muscles drawn tight from hour after hour of hard labor. The shirt he wore was dark with sweat, and it clung to every powerful line of his body.
    Lord, but that is one beautiful man, Shannon thought. Just looking at him makes me all edgy and short of breath. When I think of him touching me again…
    A delicious sensation cascaded through Shannon’s body at the memory of what had happened beneath the tarpaulin. She hadn’t imagined that pleasure like that existed short of paradise.
    At first the experience had left her feeling shy with Whip. The fact that he hadn’t spoken about it in any way since then, or even so much as touched her in passing, had only increased her shyness.
    And her irritation.
    She didn’t understand what had happened when Whip touched her so intimately. She only knew that she wanted it to happen again. Soon.
    But obviously Whip didn’t feel the same way. He hadn’t touched her.
    Maybe I should try touching him.
    “Would you like me