Swimming in the heat, she felt him shift, felt him press at the core of her. She opened her eyes, struggled to focus, watched his face, the intensity of those crystal blue eyes.

It hurt. For a moment the pain was so shocking through the pleasure she went stiff with denial.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t know if he intended to stop or go on, but knew she was on the brink of something unimagined. She gripped his hips, and reared up to find it, to know it.

The pain struck again, another shock and burn-and he was inside her. With her.

“It fit,” she managed.

He dropped his head on her shoulder with a breathless and choked laugh. “Oh, God, Lil. Oh, God. I don’t think I can stop now.”

“Who asked you to?” She dug her fingers in, lifted her hips again, then felt him move in her.

He trembled above her, and it seemed to her the ground trembled beneath. Inside her, everything opened, everything filled, and she knew.

She cried out with pleasure as she hadn’t with the pain, and rode the crest of it with him.

5

They played in the stream, washing in the cool water, teasing and tormenting each other’s bodies until they were breathless.

Wet and half naked, they fell on the food Lil had brought like a pair of starving wolves. With the horses tethered and dozing, they donned light packs to hike a short way along the trail.

Everything seemed brighter to her, clearer and stronger.

She paused among the shelter of the pines, pointed at tracks. “Wolf pack. The cats compete with them for prey. Mostly they leave each other alone. There’s a lot of game, so…”

He gave her a poke in the belly. “I should’ve known there was a reason you picked this way.”

“I wondered if the female I spotted covered this ground. She’s probably more west of here, but it’s good territory, as the wolves would tell you. We’re going to build a refuge.”

“For what?”

“All of them. For endangered and injured and abused. For the ones people buy or capture as exotic pets then realize they can’t possibly keep. I’m still talking my father into it, but I will.”

“Here? In the hills?”

She gave a decisive nod. “Paha Sapa-Lakota for Hills of Black, a sacred place. It seems right. Especially right for what I want to do.”

“It’s your place,” he agreed. “So yeah, it seems right. But it seems like a lot.”

“I know. I’ve been studying how other refuges are built, set up, how they run, what it takes. I have a lot more to learn. We’ve got some overlap with the National Park, and that could work in our favor. We’ll need some funding, a plan, some help. Probably a lot of help,” she admitted.

They stood on the trail of a world they both knew, but it felt to him as if they stood at some kind of crossroads. “You’ve been doing a lot of thinking, too.”

“Yeah. I have. I’m going to work on it in school. Build a model, I hope. Learn enough to make it happen. It’s what I want to do. I want to be a part of protecting all this, learning and educating. Dad knows I’m never going to be a beef farmer. I guess he’s always known.”

“That’s where you’re lucky.”

“I know it.” She ran her hand down his arm until their fingers linked. “If you decide being one of New York ’s Finest doesn’t suit you, you could come back and give us a hand with it.”

He shook his head. “Or sheriff of Deadwood.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Cooper.” She turned into his arms.

So she felt it, too, he realized, and he only held her tighter. “You couldn’t.”

“I don’t want to be with anyone but you. I don’t want anyone but you.”

He turned his head to rest his cheek on top of her head. Looked at the tracks they’d left behind. “I’ll come back. I always come back.”

She had him now, and tried to hold on to that as tightly as she held on to him. She would will him back if need be. Back to her, back to where he was happy.

One day they’d walk through this forest again, years from now. Together.

As they walked back to camp, she put everything between now and then out of her mind.

That night, while the stars seared the sky overhead, she lay in his arms, and heard the cry of the cat.

Her talisman, she thought. Her good-luck charm.

Because she couldn’t understand why she felt so weepy, she turned her face into his shoulder and lay quiet until she could sleep.

JENNA WATCHED OUT the window. The hard, hot day threatened storms with a mottled bruising in the eastern sky. There would be other storms, and more bruising, she thought as she watched her girl and the boy she loved ride back from checking fences with Joe and Sam.

Even at that distance she could see what they were. Lovers now, so young, so fresh. All they could see were the summer blue skies, and not the storms blowing in.

“He’ll break her heart.”

“I wish I could say otherwise.” Behind her, Lucy put a hand on Jenna’s shoulder and watched as she watched.

“She thinks it’ll all fall into place, the way she wants, the way she plans. That it’ll be what it is now forever. I can’t tell her different. She wouldn’t believe me.”

“He loves her.”

“Oh, I know. I know. But he’ll go, just as she will. They have to. And she’ll never be quite the same again. There’s no stopping that either.”

“We hoped he’d stay. When he told us he wasn’t going back to college, I thought, Well, that’s all right. You’ll stay here, and take over the farm one day. I had just enough time to think it-and to think how he might’ve given his education a better try if his father hadn’t pushed so hard. Then he told us what he aimed to do.”

“The police force.” She turned from the window to study her friend. “How do you feel about that, Lucy?”

“Scared some, that’s a fact. Hopeful he’ll find his feet, and some real pride in himself. I can’t tell him any more than you can tell Lil.”

“My biggest fear is he’ll ask her to go back with him, and she will. She’s young and in love and, well, fearless. The way you are at that age.” Jenna walked over to get out the pitcher of lemonade to give her hands something to do. “She’d just let her heart pull her along. It’s so far away. Not just the miles.”