"Let go, Crawford." It was Merida, calling shrilly from behind him somewhere. "Jump, Crawford, please, let go, oh please—"
"No! no!"
Had he screamed it? Someone was screaming. His head rocked backward to a blow. Sensations spun in a kaleidoscope about him. The towering dominance of a cottonwood reeled around its orbit above him. Mesquite swept into his vision and out again. Sound and sight and feel became a confused pattern. Red-topped nopal swam past. The crash of chaparral dinned in his ears. The gnarled curve of a post oak reeled up and blotted out his vision with a stunning blow in the face. His own hoarse scream of agony. The drum of hoofs somewhere beneath him. The shrieking wind. White brush. Green toboso grass. Brown hackberries. Agony in his legs. The horse whinnying. White brush. Pain. Grass. Screaming. Trees. Shouting. Blood. Nopal—
"Crawford!"
He did not know he had left the horse till he found himself crouched there in a thicket of mesquite, his face against the wet, earthy smell of dampened grama grass, making small, incoherent sounds. He seemed in a void, only dimly aware of sound sweeping around him, his awesome fear the only real thing to him. It clutched his loins and knotted the muscles across his belly. His legs were still rigid and trembling with that pain. He was sobbing in a hoarse, choked way. He heard the creak behind him but didn't know what it was till the woman's voice came through the haze of primal panic.
"Crawford—"
"There. That's it. You've seen it now. All of it. Can we? Hell. How do you like it? Isn't it pretty?"
"You should have jumped." She had dropped to her knees before him and pulled his face up off the ground. The rain had soaked her clothes and when she drew his head into her arms he felt the soft, wet contour of her breast through the damp silk shirt. He was still shaken with that animal fright, and he had no control over his choked, guttural sobbing, or his words.
"I couldn't jump. It's always like that. I'm so scared I want to puke and the only thing I want to do is leave the horse and I can't." His voice sounded muffled against the supple heat of her body. He had never let it out like this before, and with the panic and pain and fear robbing him of all control, he heard all the agony and anguish and frustration of the last months flooding from him in a wild release. He was still crouched on the ground, bent into her lap, his face against her breast, his fingers clutching spasmodically at the grass on either side of her.
She soothed him like a child, stroking his head. Finally, the pain began to die in his legs. The knotted muscles across his belly began to twitch spasmodically, and then relaxed. It was no longer his hoarse, sobbing words against her body. It was only his labored breathing. The full realization of what had happened struck him, and he forced his head back in her arms till he was far enough away to see her face. The flush of a sudden shame swept darkly into his cheeks. She saw it, and her eyes widened with a tortured compassion.