Daisies In The Wind (35 page)

It was only one tiny, square room, but to her
weary eyes it was a beautiful, snug haven. It needed a good
sweeping, but otherwise it was surprisingly clean and neat. Besides
the table there was a wooden bench, a pile of logs in a crate
beside a blackened hearth, and an old cast-iron stove over in one
corner.

But she noticed there wasn’t a bed.

The wind wailed mournfully against the
cabin’s two small rawhide windows. The log walls creaked beneath
the force of it.

“I’ll get my saddlebags and start a fire.”
Wolf studied her lovely, cold-reddened face. “You look like you
could use some brandy, Miss Rawlings. As luck would have it, I’ve
got a flask in my pack.”

“You certainly come prepared for everything,
don’t you?” she said lightly, for now, more than the ordeal she’d
gone through with Russ and Homer, it was the idea of being alone
here in the dark woods with him all night that made her tremble.
She tried to keep the conversation casual. “And I suppose you’ve
forgotten my high susceptibility to spirits?”

“I haven’t forgotten anything about you,” he
returned with a cool grin that made her eyes widen and her heart
spin like a top. “I have every intention of taking full advantage
of your ‘high susceptibility to spirits’—so consider yourself
warned.”

He disappeared into the bitter night.

A short time later they spread a heavy woven
Indian blanket before the blazing fire and sat side by side a few
feet from the flames. They sipped from steaming mugs of coffee
generously laced with brandy. As the snowfall tapered to a gentle
tumbling of lacy white bits and the brandy-flavored coffee tingled
down her throat hot and potent and comforting, Rebeccah felt her
cares slide from her shoulders.

He’s doing this on purpose
, she
thought, feeling her body grow warm and relaxed, her skin begin to
glow, and all the remaining tension melting from her limbs.
He’s trying to make me forget about those other women forever
hanging around him, trying to make me forget about all the reasons
we do not suit each other, trying to make me forget that whenever
we are together, one of us always ends up angry with the
other.

It was working. Whatever his plan, whatever
his intentions, as she sat there beside him in that tiny firelit
cabin hidden away in the woods, protected by rocks, trees, and a
secret gully, she felt herself growing increasingly warm, felt
every worry and objection and doubt rinsing away as though she
stood with dust-caked skin beneath a softly sparkling
waterfall.

She turned her head to gaze at him. He was
looking into the flames, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully, the thick,
burnished hair so like the color of fine mahogany tumbling
carelessly over his brow.

He was so different from that carefree young
man who had discovered her under the bed in that hideout cabin so
many years ago—so much had befallen him since. His brother’s death,
the hard years as a lawman battling the worst savagery of the West,
Clarissa’s desertion ... and now Caitlin’s death.

Rebeccah didn’t know if it was the brandy
warming her and stimulating her blood or the rush of feelings long
kept dammed, but she suddenly wanted Wolf Bodine more than she had
ever wanted anything before: she wanted to reach out to him, to
chase his demons away, to soothe his troubled soul. For she knew
once and for all that beneath the steely veneer of the professional
lawman, beneath the hard set of his features and the keen
flintiness of his gray eyes, there lurked a lonely man.

A strong, courageous, decent, and ultimately
lonely man—a man who would risk his own life for others, who would
be strong for them and brave when no one else would be. But she
knew a secret about him, something she felt certain he did not
suspect she knew. Beneath the steady strength and courage of his
everyday life, he felt an emptiness, a long-standing sense of
pained betrayal that was all Clarissa’s doing.

Rebeccah wanted suddenly, yearningly, to
pervade that emptiness, to fill that void. But there was something
she needed to discover first.

“Wolf?”

At the husky note in her voice he turned his
head. She nearly took his breath away, she was so beautiful. Her
delicate face aglow in firelight, her hair shining blue black, like
the finest, glossiest sable. But it was the expression in her
brilliant violet eyes that was his undoing. Soft, rapt, glistening
with something that could only be tenderness.

It seemed impossible that the cold and
haughty young woman who had stepped off the stagecoach a few short
months ago with a chip on her shoulder and a grudge against lawmen
could be looking at him this way now ... her eyes begging him to
kiss her, her lips seeming to beckon and summon his to taste of
their sweetness.

Memories flooded over him. He remembered how
gentle she had been with Caitlin at the end, how she had soothed
her with music, and how openly and understandingly she had talked
with Billy. She was not the same brittle girl who had come to
Powder Creek—or was it he who had changed, he who now saw beneath
the stony pretense she paraded for the world, he who now recognized
her softness, her goodness, her inner beauty. ...

“Wolf,” she breathed again, as he continued
to stare at her, drinking in the sight of her, a sight warmer and
more potent than a gallon of brandy-laced coffee.

He couldn’t drag his gaze from those
bewitching eyes.

“What, Rebeccah?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did.”

The bewitching eyes smiled. “Tell me if the
rumors are true,” she murmured, trying to sound casual, trying to
disguise how much depended on his answer, how the direction of her
life, her dreams, all hinged on what he replied.

“Rumors are almost never true,” Wolf
commented ruefully. He lifted one brow. “Which rumors do you
mean?”

“That you are either already betrothed or
about to become betrothed to—”

“False.”

“False?” Rebeccah’s normally dulcet,
low-pitched voice actually squeaked with excitement. The rapt
sparkle suddenly returned to her eyes.

Wolf stared at her in disbelief, wondering
who had filled her head with such stories. “False,” he reiterated
firmly. “No way. Anything else?”

She nodded, so relieved and overjoyed by this
abrupt dismissal of her worst fears that she said the next thing
that popped into her mind.

“Make love to me.”

Wolf reached out and gently touched his
finger to her lips, tracing the tender shape of her mouth as
lightly as a butterfly. “Rebeccah, you shouldn’t say a thing like
that to a man if you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it.”

Damn it
, he thought, every muscle
heating, his loins growing hard and heavy at her words and at the
eager invitation in her eyes.

Was she drunk? Despite what he’d said
earlier, he couldn’t take advantage of that. One man had already
taken advantage of her in the cruelest way imaginable and he
couldn’t add to her pain.

But she was leaning toward him, sliding her
delicate hands around his neck, murmuring against his lips as she
closed the distance between them with a little wriggle. “I’m not
drunk, if that’s what you’re thinking. And I’m not going to change
my mind. I love you, Wolf. I want you. I hoped you wanted me too.
Maybe I was wrong.”

“You loco little she-devil, I do want
you—more than I ever wanted any woman—more than I ever wanted
Clarissa.” He gripped her wrists. “You’re in my blood, woman, like
gold fever or whiskey—only worse. Hell, much worse. I can’t think
of anything but you. The other women I know—women I thought I could
care for—can’t hold a candle to you. When I’m with them, I think of
you. When I’m alone, I think of you. And when I’m with you, God
help me, I think about the things I’d like to do to you.”

“Do them,” she urged breathlessly, and
ignited his mouth with hers.

The kiss was soft, dazzlingly sweet, but
after a few moments it became heatedly intense. His lips seared and
tormented hers with a devouring urgency that left her moaning and
gasping for more. Holding her head firmly between his hands, he
deepened the kiss still more. His tongue touched hers, caressingly
at first, then more boldly, possessively. Rebeccah felt her senses
spinning out of control.

“I love you, Rebeccah, every single beautiful
thing about you,” Wolf breathed, his voice low and husky. Rebeccah
could feel the heat and hardness and strength of him, she felt also
the whipcord tension vibrating through his broad shoulders, his
muscled arms and legs.

“I love you, Wolf. I want you. Need ...
you.”

She murmured incoherently as his hands found
her breasts and cupped them through the layers of her garments,
sending delicious spirals of delight straight down to her knees.
Desire sprang eagerly through her, soft as sunshine, intense as
flame. While he kneaded her breasts, his fingers moving ever more
arousingly as little squirms and moans of pleasure came from her,
his lips, warm and sensuous, seared kisses down the side of her
neck.

Sweet, sweet torture. Rebeccah gave a low
moan deep in her throat as he lowered her onto the blanket. He
straddled her, gazing with glinting purposefulness into her
passion-glowing eyes. Slowly, letting the tension and suspense
build between them, he began unbuttoning her blouse. His fingers
were sure and knowing, his eyes full of determined promise, while
all the while he brushed kisses across her eyelids, her cheeks, and
inside the fragile, exquisitely sensitive hollow of her throat.

Dizzying sensations electrified her
everywhere he touched. His mouth was heat lightning, his fingertips
pure fire. And what she saw in his eyes filled her with a
half-joyous, half-fearful anticipation. When he at last tugged the
blouse free from the waistband of her serviceable navy wool skirt
and tossed it aside, leaving her soft, rose-peaked breasts all but
exposed except for the dainty lace camisole, Rebeccah’s pulse
quickened painfully. Her heart was beating so rapidly, she thought
it would explode through the wall of her chest.

Wolf’s keen gray eyes gleamed with pure
sensual appreciation as they roamed over her, seeming to drink in
the exposed sight of her beneath him.

He smiled down at her, a hard, yet oddly
tender smile, as he noted the glowing sheen of her skin, hot to his
touch, the quickness of her breathing, and the delectable rise and
fall of her breasts as she reached up to pull him down to her.

She was so lovely. So warm and giving and
innocent, he thought he would die with the wanting of her. He
inhaled the sweetness of her hair, letting the dark, satiny strands
trail through his fingers. He lowered his head and licked at one
impudent, hard-peaked breast, his own excitement growing as she
gave a startled gasp. His mouth closed over the nipple even as his
hand firmly captured its twin and began a deliberate torment.

Her body was so hot and soft and willing.
Passion ruled this dark-haired angel, however cool and starched a
facade she might present to the world. Whatever Neely Stoner had
done to her, at least it hadn’t destroyed this part of her, the
capacity to feel passion and love. As Rebeccah’s body arced and
writhed beneath the expert torment of his lips and hands, Wolf knew
that he would never get enough of her, not until the end of his
days.

Moaning softly, Rebeccah wrapped her fingers
in the silk of his hair even as her mouth demanded attention from
his. His body pressed upon hers felt as much on fire as hers did,
and his manhood felt huge and powerful. Her effect on him filled
her with a curious, surging sense of power. Without thinking,
acting only on need and instinct, she arced to meet the hard angles
of his form and with insistent arms, entwined him ever closer.

“You’re beautiful, Rebeccah. You’re so
unbelievably beautiful,” he whispered, his breath warm against her
lips. “I promise you I won’t hurt you, sweetheart. I’ll never let
anything hurt you again.”

What followed between them was a blur of
taut, sweet sensation. Rebeccah only knew that she wanted him with
a fierceness that would not be denied, and she sought to give him
the same savage pleasure he was raining ruthlessly down on her.
They were naked before the firelight, their garments flung in
little careless heaps, and the woven blanket rough against their
burning skin as they thrashed together on the floor of the
cabin.

She wrapped her legs around him and fluttered
kisses across his shoulders and his chest. Lively hands played with
the muscles that rippled across his supple back. With her head
flung back, she found herself clinging to him, submitting to the
pleasures of his hands, his tongue, and his teeth, which stopped
just short of inflicting pain as he kissed the satiny length of her
body and gently, surely, probed the moist, sweet depths of her
womanhood.

When he spread her legs and lowered himself
upon her, she instinctively welcomed him, but as he eased his
manhood into her, she tensed. Her eyes flew open, wide with
apprehension in the flickering firelight, and Wolf could only guess
at the ugly memories crowding to intrude.

Damn Neely Stoner. Damn him to hell.

“Don’t be afraid, sweetheart. Trust me.”

Trust. Staring up at his flushed, leanly
handsome face poised above her, Rebeccah nodded. She did trust
Wolf, she trusted him completely. Only ... panting, she braced
herself for pain. But Wolf soothed her with kisses, and touches,
and with seemingly infinite patience he eased into her, inch by
careful inch, until at last the muscles of her body relaxed, and
the aching need returned to her, and he slid into her fully,
watching her eyes. The fear had gone from them, and now they were
magnificent violet stars burning up into his with love and wondrous
eagerness, and at last he allowed his terrible restraint to loosen.
Pressing his hungry mouth to hers, to soothe and reassure her, he
began to move and thrust.