She had almost been ready for his reaction this time, but even so it was a shock when the steel grip of his hands fastened on her shoulders and forced her back, back against the near wall, pressing her there with the full power of his body. The harsh lines of his face were rigid, the amber-green glow of his eyes lambent with a kind of madness.
“No, you won’t.” His words grated, breath hot against her forehead. “You won’t find a guide, and you won’t go up into the mountains. You won’t get yourself killed in my territory.” He pushed her against the wall so that every inch of their bodies touched; Joey trembled with rage and fear and yearning.
“Why do you care, Luke?” She made the familiarity of his name into a taunt. “You could have had what you wanted, and you didn’t take it. What does it matter to you what happens to me?”
A wordless growl rose from his throat, and he tossed his head back in a gesture of something like despair. His trembling vibrated in time to her own, Joey gritted her teeth as he dropped his feral gaze once again to hers.
“I won’t allow it. I will not a allow it.” The words came like blows. “You will not go Do you understand?” His fingers tightened hard enough to leave bruises. Joey felt her teeth bare in response, she struggled uselessly in his grip, nearly spitting with rage. No sane, logical response would come, nothing except irrational defiance.
“I can prevent you from going, Joey. Easily.” Luke’s tone had become almost even, almost reasonable, even as her own heart beat hard and fast in growing fury.
“You’d have to pass through my lands to get where you need to go, unless you want to spend a month doing it. And I won’t let you. Do you understand me? I won’t let you pass.”
The last of Joey’s tenuous control broke in a flood tide. The sounds that came out of her mouth were hardly words, they were cries of rage mingled with emotions that had heated to fever pitch. She beat at him with her fists, half-trapped as she was, and her feet struck blows on his shins and ankles. She tossed her head so that her hair came loose and whipped about her face in a frenzy, throughout it all he stood as unyielding and silent as one of his mountains.
As suddenly as it had come, Joey’s eruption of madness subsided, and she felt the tears on her burning face. They lay glistening on Luke’s, too, where she had flung them in her struggles, the sight shocked her more than his absolute stillness. Her arms and legs went limp, and had he not held her there she would have fallen. She lay against him, her head rolling on his shoulder in abject defeat. The tears came in earnest then, and she had no will to fight them.
Luke’s shoulder made a hard pillow to muffle her sobs, but nothing so trivial—not even his victory—seemed to matter. Her tears soaked his shirt, her body shook and jerked like a puppet controlled by some indifferent hand She hardly noticed when the pressure against her body eased, and arms caught her up and held her in the gentlest of embraces.
It was only after the final storm had subsided that Joey felt Luke’s stroking hand as it caressed her hair, pressing her face into the sculpted planes of his chest. He supported her as easily as he might a child, his arms dwarfed and protected her as his cheek rubbed the top of her head. The utter emptiness of emotion, the bone-weariness Joey felt, did not hold that awareness at bay.
When the last shaking had stilled, Joey struggled to summon the energy to wipe the tears away. Luke’s big hand came up to cup her chin, raising her face to meet his. She tried not to look at him, not to let him see the aftermath of her ignominious loss of self-control. Her eyes felt swollen, face stiff with drying tears, before she could gauge his expression, he lowered his head to kiss the wetness from her cheeks. The feather-light touch of his lips was infinitely tender, infinitely different from all that had gone before. His tongue tasted her tears and stroked her eyelids. She closed them, and the soft gasps that came now were not of furious grief.