She gazed at him, at the tangled gray-streaked hair, at the mouth that had so recently claimed hers, and at his eyes that widened with something almost like fear. That alone got through to her. It brought with it the first stirrings of rational thought. Suddenly she was aware of the cool evening air, the vast emptiness around them, and how thoroughly she had forgotten herself.
But she had no time to feel any of the emotions that struggled for attention. Luke was backing away, he had released her arms and stared at her now as if she were some terrible apparition and not the woman he had wanted only moments before. Every last hint of grace and confidence and power had deserted him. He half-stumbled over a hidden rock, righted himself without a glance, his eyes never leaving hers.
Belatedly Joey found her voice “Luke, wait.” She struggled to shape her confusion into words that made sense, that would make him explain—but before they came to her, he was gone. Between one moment and the next he had spun on his heel and bolted, and she was left with nothing but empty air to hear her questions.
For a long, endless span of time she stared after him.
“Why, Luke?” She let her knees give way and dropped onto the rock to bury her face in her hands.
Nothing made sense, nothing was clear anymore. “Why?”
Only the wild geese answered.
Luke ran. He ran until the sobbing of his breath forced him to a more reasonable pace, until the darkness challenged even his keen vision. He ignored the crashing tumult of his progress through the woods, unashamed of clumsiness he never would have tolerated in himself at any other time. At the moment he cared for nothing but the cleansing freedom of unfettered physical exertion.
The forest fell silent at his passage. He was not part of it now, not a natural element it accepted and welcomed. His run trampled ground unbroken by any human footfall, and he came as a despoiler, not a friend. Only the gradual return of sanity reminded him of his proper place.
The frenzy of his flight dropped to a new rhythm. His muscles relaxed into a lope that he could maintain for many kilometers, tireless and even. His mind found its balance again, a harmony with nature that gradually restored some portion of peace. Not entirely, that, it seemed, had been taken from him forever.
His feet unerringly chose the easiest path over broken ground, through thick stands of fir and pine and over open slopes where night-browsing deer stared after him. They knew his thoughts were not for them.
She still filled his senses. Though he ran now by instinct, she was with him. For those incredible moments when she had been in his arms, he had paid very dearly. It had been a most terrible revelation.
He had not guessed the half of it before, that first time he’d seen her. She was different—far, far more different than even his dreams had intimated.
He slowed as he approached a familiar arch of bare rocky ground, stopping at last just as he reached the place where it fell away into a deep valley. Here the land stretched out vast and wild, he dropped into a crouch and gazed at the mountains where they caught the light of a quarter-moon.
There was no man-made barrier here to sully the perfection of Nature. No sign of habitation, no ravages of clear-cutting and human carelessness. His own cabin was well hidden, where the lake glittered in the reflection of a perfect, star-laced arc of sky.
Luke allowed his breathing to steady and his thoughts to clear. It didn’t seem as if they could ever be entirely clear again—but for now, for this moment, he had to remember who he was. What he was. Perhaps in so doing, he could forget everything he had come to realize about Joey Randall.
A lone, clear cry rose above the subtle noises of the night and the thud of his own heart. He raised his head to listen. They were near, speaking to him in their way. The single howl became a chorus. He wondered what she would think if she heard it. Perhaps she did hear it, even now, from the safety of her civilized world.