Claudia Dain (38 page)

"This is what a man looks like, Anne. This is what he looks like when he wants a woman and, Lord Almighty, I want you. And I'm going to have you and you're going to like it. Understood? You speak up if you have any questions about what's going to happen to you tonight, 'cuz, Lord knows, I don't want you scared. But I do want you. And, darlin', you want me."

Jack pulled her to the edge of the bed and stripped the gown off her arms and threw it on the floor; she wasn't going to crawl back into that thing when he wasn't looking. While she was sitting there, naked as the day she was born, he kissed her. Kissed her hard and fast and deep while he spread her legs and kneeled between them. With his hands, he enjoyed the weight of her breasts and he toyed with her nipples until she moaned into his mouth and wrapped her arms around his neck, holding his head to her. It didn't look like she was in the mood to fight him off. Was she ever?

He wrapped his arms around her good and tight and pulled her up against him, forcing her legs wide. Still kissing her, he trailed one hand down her and fondled her womanhood till his fingers were wet with her. She started to shake, her whole body quivering as if she had the chills of fever. He knew what fever shook her.

He eased her torso down on the bed, her legs still hanging over the side, where she thrashed and moaned, turning her head from side to side as if she were looking for something. He knew exactly what she was looking for and he knew where to find it.

He knew how to get her where she wanted to go.

Still fondling, still caressing, teasing, he sucked hard on her nipple. Her fingers clutched at the bed and she had the sheets fisted in her hands. One of her hands found a pillow and she grabbed for it, throwing it over her face. As soon as it was there, she groaned, loud. That pillow did a fine job of muffling the sound.

He eased himself into her, gradually stretching her to fit him, letting her adjust to the feel of him. Her legs jerked and she grabbed for his shoulders, pulling him in to her, down to her. He slid his hands down her thighs and pulled her legs up, knees bent. She opened up, was opening up, to him; he could feel the easing, the tight space, hot and wet, that she made for him inside her. He was halfway in and knew that the rest would not be easy. Better quick than slow, he decided.

Thumbing the tiny nub that pressed against his hand, he brought her quickly to her release. As the contractions gripped her, he pushed in, hard and quick.

She screamed. He didn't know if it was from pain or pleasure. He couldn't see her face. The pillow covered where her head was supposed to be.

While she clung to him, he rode her, with her legs and arms wrapped around him, grunting with each thrust. It didn't take long before he felt the contractions of his own release and when they passed, he laid his body on hers with a sigh of contentment. She held him to her as her legs relaxed and her feet came to rest on the floor.

He leaned up on his elbows to study this woman whom he had made his. All he saw was the pure white of a pillowcase.

"First time I've made love to a pillow," he muttered as his head dropped back down next to hers.

* * *

Later, when they were snuggled in bed together and modestly tucked under the blankets, he held her in his arms. The house was quiet; of course, it had been quiet since his pronouncement. But this was the quiet of peace, of sleep, of rest. A dog barked somewhere out in the night, distant and mournful. The house creaked as Dammit walked down the hall, nails clicking on the wooden floor. Far off, a train whistle blew, signaling its location and its purpose.

Anne shifted her arm and tucked the blankets more firmly around her, shutting Jack out. She was naked, they both were; Jack had said he wasn't going to allow that nightgown back in this bed the whole night long. If he had meant to sound anything but sweet, he had failed. He had taken a cloth and wiped the blood from her legs, apologizing for hurting her when he was being as tender with her as a mother with her babe. He had held her, tucked her in bed, and climbed in and enfolded her in his arms. If he thought she needed comforting, he was wrong. Not about that. It was as good as she'd feared, stronger and more binding than she'd ever let herself imagine.

The train whistle blew again, farther off now, the sound just a cry in the night that drifted off and was gone.

Gone.

She had thought and planned all her life to avoid this moment, but it was one thing to plan around a faceless and nameless man, it was much harder to do it when the man had a face and the face was Jack's. Besides, it was too late for all that now. She'd made her choice; she'd gotten herself married. How long it would last was the only question now.

Maybe it would depend on how badly he needed her. She'd believed that yesterday, hearing the lonesome pain in his voice when he had spoken of his life before becoming a man. He needed a wife, a woman to hold his place in the world, a woman to give him a home. Maybe he wanted her for that. Maybe it really was something as strong as need, what he felt for her.

If he needed her, she'd stay.

If he needed her.

But if he left, if he lit out like her pa and her uncle and her grandpa had done... Well, he wouldn't leave, not first. She'd do it first. She'd leave him. She wasn't going to sit around and wait for a man to come back anymore. There'd been enough of that. She wouldn't be the kind of woman who sat and waited for her man to come back. She wouldn't be the kind of woman she'd been all her life.

But if Jack left today, tomorrow, in a month or a year, would she wait? Would she? No lies, not to herself; the weight of lies a man told when he was promising a woman the sun for a bonnet was a heavy enough weight of lies. She wasn't going to add to it by lying to herself.

Would she wait for Jack? For a day? A week? A month?

She would.

She would and that was her misery.

Loving him would only make it worse. She couldn't love him. If she did, the leaving that was sure to come would kill her.

"Did I hurt you?"

Anne closed her eyes and whispered, "No."

"You're quiet," he said, reaching out his hand for hers and interlocking their fingers.

"It's the middle of the night. I don't usually talk much in the middle of the night."

"You could start," he said softly. "I'm here. I'm listening."

"For how long?" she said and then wanted to bite her tongue in half. It was too vulnerable a question to throw at a man; it left her feeling more naked than she already was.

"What do you mean, 'how long?' For as long as it takes."

"And how long is that?"

Jack leaned up on one elbow and stared down at her, his face pale and chiseled in the moonlight. "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing," she said.

"Now I know I'm married," he said under his breath. He turned her to face him with gentle hands. For a killer, he was the most gentle man she'd ever known. "Look at me, Anne."

She looked at him and pulled the blanket up to her chin, hiding underneath the covers.

"Talk to me," he said. "I don't want to hear what's 'right' or what's 'polite,' just be honest, with me and with yourself. Trust me, Anne," he breathed.

She wanted to, that was the worst of it. She wanted to bury her head against his chest and sob her worry away, but that wouldn't work because she'd only sob him away with it. Hadn't she cried and cried every time her daddy had left and hadn't he just stopped coining back? There was nothing to cry about now anyway. Nothing had changed. Still, her throat closed against the pain of tears trying to find a way out. There was no way out.

"If you can't trust me now, when can you trust me?" he urged.

Never. She could never trust him.

But maybe she could talk to him. She could talk to Jack like she could talk to no one else; he let her talk, without judgment, and listened. When he got mad, it was honest anger that didn't belittle her, not fury over who she was or how she behaved or how she made him look. Talking with Jack left her feeling clean, sometimes confused, but never ashamed. Maybe she could tell him what she was thinking. Maybe she could trust him with her thoughts. Just a few.

"Anne? What is it?" he said, brushing his lips over her brow and holding her close.

"Someday," she said against his chest, "someday you'll leave."

"What do you mean?" His breathing slowed and he held himself still.

"There's no other way to say it," she said in a choked voice, pressing down the sting of unshed tears.

His arms stiffened around her and he opened a space between them. "You think I'd do that? You think I'm the kind of man who chucks his wife when he decides he's got somethin' better to do somewhere else?"

He was mad.

"If you think that little of me, why'd you marry me?" he asked hoarsely, backing up from her to lean against the headboard. He wouldn't touch her, not even under the covers. "Oh, I know. Those kisses. I got you so hot and bothered that you couldn't see straight."

"That's not true!" she said, clutching the sheet to her breast and sitting up to face him.

"Right," he said sarcastically.

That made her mad; here she was trying to tell him her thoughts, her
fears,
and he was getting his back up because she liked his kisses? Would he be happier if she
didn't
like his kisses?

"You think I'd marry a man just for his kisses? What kind of woman do you think
I
am?"

"A woman who likes to kiss and lets too many men kiss her."

"You don't know a thing about me!"

"I know enough," he snarled, getting out of bed. Leaving her.

"And I know a few things, too," she said on a rising sob. "I told you you'd leave me. Men leave. It's all they do."

Jack stopped putting on his pants and turned to look down at her. She was sitting in the dark, holding the sheets around her as if they were her last protection against the monsters of the night. Looking at him as if he were one of those monsters.

"Anne, I'm not leaving," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and reaching for her hand.

"Yes, you are," she choked out.

"I
won't
leave."

"You're already half out the door."

Jack kicked off his pants. "I can't leave like this," he said with a soft smile. "See? I'm not leaving."

"Men can always leave; they don't need pants to do it."

"Well, I do," he said, stroking her hand with his thumb. "I've got a bad enough name in this town without stomping around in my boots and my hat and nothing in between."

Anne smiled past her tears and hung her head, her hair spilling down to hide her face. "I'm sorry. I never should have said anything."

"If there's one thing I'm going to do in all the years that I'm not leaving you, it's to get you to stop apologizing for everything. You get mad. I get mad. It don't mean anything. Nothing's broken here, Anne. I'm not going anywhere."

"How do you know?" she whispered, her hair hiding her face and her tears. Nothing could hide the pain in her voice.

"I just know," he whispered back.

Anne shook her head and swallowed hard against the pain in her chest.

"I know," he said, "because I know who I am. I'm not a man who leaves his woman."

"You don't know," she said. "I've seen it before. I've seen it my whole life."

He pulled her against his chest, letting her bury her head against his warmth, stroking her hair, absorbing her hurt, and offering her unrelenting comfort. It was wonderful, in a painful way, to be able to hurt and cry and have no one tell her to stop. No one tell her that she had to put a good face on it and keep her dignity at all costs. She didn't want dignity, not now; she wanted someone to love her and protect her. Someone who would stay. She wanted the impossible.

She wanted it anyway.

"I know what you've seen," he said softly, rubbing her back with long, firm strokes. "I know about all of it."

"No one knows all of it."

"I expect that's true, but I know enough to understand. Lane told me."

"When?"

"Back a few days, maybe last week; long enough ago for me to think on it. Long enough for me to figure out why you're always running to that train."

Anne froze in his arms, afraid of what he was going to say. She didn't want to hear him say it. She didn't want to be that exposed, like a side of beef quartered and skinned and left to hang.

"Don't say it," she said on a whisper.

"The pain's not in sayin' it. The pain's in livin' it, Anne," he said gently. "You go to the trains, not because you want to leave; but because you're hoping, wishing, that one of the men of your family will come home again. You want 'em to come back."

That was true enough. She could have gone anytime. There was nothing holding her here, except the hard ties of family and the wish that maybe her pa would find her here. It wasn't so hard to find a person if you were looking. All he had to do was look and she would have been here, waiting. But he hadn't come because he hadn't looked.

"They never will," she said softly. "They go. They don't come back."

She'd known it was true even as she waited, but saying it made it real. Her pa wasn't coming back. Her uncle and her grandpa weren't coming back. No amount of waiting was going to change that.

"That may be true of them, but it's not true of me." He lifted her off his chest and looked into her stinging eyes. "Those men were bastards, one hundred proof, to run off and leave their women and their kids. I'm not like that."

Looking into his eyes, she could almost believe him. Resting in his arms, she was halfway there. She'd never heard a man so mournful and solemn about family. In Jack's voice, she heard the echo of her own longings and her own dreams. Even, just a little, some of her own pain.

She wanted to trust him.

She was so very close to trusting him.

"Kiss me, Jack," she said, leaning toward him, wanting the comfort of his arms and wanting to give him comfort in return.

His kiss was gentle and full of heartbreak. She put her arms around his back, feeling the hard pull of muscle and the slick smoothness of skin. And heat. He was so very hot.