Only 04 - Only Love

him. He hoped if he worked long enough, hard enough, his body wouldn’t stand up and howl every time he thought of Shannon crying out with hunger, opening herselfto him, shivering with pleasure at his touch.
    Sun-warmed honey in my hands.
    Steel pick slammed into the mountain of stone.
    A virgin.
    Whip swung harder. Rock chips exploded.
    Hotter, sweeter, wilder than any woman I’ve ever known.
    Steel met stone and rang like a bell.
    A goddamned virgin!
    Whip tried to drown out the endless circling of his thoughts with the sound of steel hammering into rock, but it was impossible. He hadn’t been in control of his own mind since two days before, when he had knelt between a virgin’s legs and learned more about sensuality than he had since he was a man-sized fourteen and a widow woman had hired him to make repairs on her hayloft.
    The pick struck, stone shattered, and new rock surfaces appeared. They looked even less promising than the stone Whip had been hammering on.
    With a weary curse, he stopped, wiped sweat and rock dust from his face, and lifted the pick again. He didn’t want to go back to Shannon with more bad news about Silent John’s useless gold claim. He didn’t want to watch her trying to hid her fear of being alone and broke. He didn’t want to fight himself not to take her in his arms, comfort her, kiss her until cold fear became wild, searing oblivion….
    Rock chips exploded, scoring Whip’s skin. He barely noticed. He was too busy wrestling with his conscience and his body’s driving need for a virgin widow who would give him everything he asked for as a man and take from him everything he had to give to a woman.
    And never ask for more.
    That was what was riding Whip with long spurs, digging into his pride and conscience. If Shannon had played the age-old feminine game of baiting the marriage trap with her own honeyed body, Whip could have played the age-old masculine game of stealing the honey without being caught in the trap.
    The pick whistled down, sliced through air and slammed into the unyielding stone. The shock of the impact rang in the silence and traveled up through the hickory handle with numbing force.
    Whip barely noticed. Whatever punishment the mountain delivered was lost in the larger punishment of the vise of hunger and conscience that was squeezing him mercilessly with every breath, every heartbeat.
    He knew that Shannon wasn’t playing the marriage game of tease and retreat and leave the quarry wild with hunger. She didn’t expect—and no longer even wanted—marriage with the man called Whip Moran.
    What possible use is a man who puts a baby in you and then flits off around the earth until it’s time to come back and put another baby in?
    I will never marry a man who wants me less than he wants a sunrise he’s never seen.
    Whip believed Shannon’s words. He had seen the pain and bafflement in her beautiful eyes as she spoke, a darkness that couldn’t be faked by even the most accomplished coquette.
    And Shannon was far from a coquette. Her honesty was as unflinching as the land itself.
    Someday I’ll thank you for teaching me how to build a cage of sunlight. But not today.
    Shannon might not understand why Whip would leave her, but she knew that he would. Theknowledge was there in her eyes, in her words, in the fine trembling of her hands when she spoke about it.
    Whip didn’t want Shannon to love him, but she did.
    Now she didn’t want to love him, either.
    Go away, yondering man. You don’t want my body, you don’t want my love, you don’t want anything but the sunrise you’ve never seen. Go chase it and leave me be.
    Whip planned to do just that. But first he had to be certain of Shannon’s safety after he left.
    The pick attacked cold stone, rang harshly, and retreated only to return again, even more violently. Yet no matter how hard Whip worked, no matter how much solid rock he reduced to rubble, the Rifle Sight claim showed about as much hope of gold as a mule’s hind end.
    With a searing word of disgust, Whip stopped hammering and leaned on the pick handle. He talked to the ungiving stone the way a teamster talks to his animals, describing in harsh, profane, and inventive detail just how aggravated and disappointed he was with life in general and this chunk of mountain in particular.
    When Whip ran out of breath, he wiped his forehead, set aside the pick in favor of his rifle, and headed back to camp even though there was still plenty of sun in