Dancing With the Devil (26 page)

His heart slammed against his rib cage, and his lungs threatened to explode if he didn’t release the breath he’d been holding.

“Sorry,” she murmured, “but I don’t want to open them again.”

Deacon expelled the breath in a long whoosh. “It’s fine.”

“Liar.” Her whisper breathed against his back, but though it nearly killed him, he didn’t allow himself to shiver.

An eternity later, the last of the bandage came free and he sat there bare to the waist, once again dreading her reaction.

“How much do they hurt?” It wasn’t pity he heard in her voice, but worry.

“They’ll be fine,” he said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.

She felt around the top shelf in the room until she found the bottle of laudanum and handed it to him. The water in the pot hadn’t boiled, but it was warm enough, so she poured some into a small bowl and went to work cleaning the areas around the slash marks. It was slow work, and it seemed so much slower in the silence.

Deacon studied her face as she cleaned his sides. Her bottom lip was clamped between her teeth; she rarely blinked, but when she did, it was three or four times in rapid succession, and then nothing for a long time. Her fingers, moving gently across his skin, barely touched him, yet still managed to drive him half mad.

And everything was made twice as hard by how much her cheeks pinked each time their eyes met. At least he wasn’t the only one suffering.

She couldn’t finish fast enough for him. And at the same time, he would have happily sat there forever, listening to the rain splatter against the glass pane and feeling the whole cabin shudder with each slap of thunder.

“That should do it,” she murmured. “But we should leave them open for a while before we bandage them again.”

“I’d rather—”

The look she gave him, half warning, half pleading, froze the protest on his tongue.

“Fine,” he grumbled.

She collected up the old bandage and the rest of the supplies and set them on the table. Using the same bowl of water, she took a bar of soap and scrubbed the old bandage until the stains were all but gone.

“They’ll need to be changed again in a few days,” she
said quietly as she wrung it out and draped it over the other chair. “You should go see Kwan at the bath house. He’s good with healing, or you could go straight to Doc Jamieson.”

Her spine was too rigid, her words too brittle. Deacon was behind her in a heartbeat, his arms around her, his chin resting on her head.

“What are we going to do?” He hadn’t meant to give voice to his question, but there it was.

Rhea wrapped her hands around his arms and laughed quietly. “You’re the expert on getting in and out of trouble,” she said. “Don’t suppose there’s anyone you can summon to help delay the judge? Or better yet, take us back a year?”

He tightened his hold on her. “That’s not funny, Rhea.”

“I know.” She leaned her head back on his chest and sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“We have the rest of today and half of tomorrow,” he said. “There are things I need to tell you—”

“Deacon.”

“But now’s the perfect time,” he said. “There’s no one here to distract us, or bother you with helping them find the perfect blue button.”

Rhea turned in his arms, careful of his wounds, and flattened her hands against his chest.

“You’re right,” she said. “Now
is
the perfect time. For us.”

Deacon’s mouth went dry as dust. He couldn’t have spoken if he tried, and Rhea used his silence to her advantage.

“We can’t do anything about tomorrow,” she said quietly, snaking her fingers around his neck. “But we can use the time we have now to—”

“Rhea.” Her name came out as a raw plea.

“We don’t know how many nights we have left, Deacon. Even if Judge Hicks agrees to marry us tomorrow, how much longer can you stay here with me?” She pulled him closer, her lips whispering against his. “Make love to me.”

He shouldn’t…it wasn’t the right time, it certainly wasn’t the right place, and she would probably regret it in the end.

But her fingers tickled the back of his neck, her body was pressed up against his and her lips were a breath away, waiting for him to kiss her.

She didn’t have to wait long.

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

I
t couldn’t have been more than a second, but it felt like an eternity before Deacon kissed her. This was what she needed. Talking about tomorrow wouldn’t solve anything, worrying about what was to come would only make the waiting worse and doing nothing would drive her stark raving mad.

But this…

This was the only thing that mattered.

His body thrummed beneath her fingers, his skin warm and tempting. Leaning into him, she drew his kiss deeper and his body closer, though it was never close enough.

Rhea stretched up on her toes, but dropped just as fast when Deacon sucked in a breath.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” he ground out. “It’s just the…”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I wasn’t thinking.” Every little movement must pain him, yet she’d been only thinking of herself. She made to step away, but before her foot hit the floor, Deacon was pulling her back.

“Take off the dress,” he said, his voice harsh and strained against her cheek.

Heat rushed up her neck and across her face. She
would have had to get undressed at some point, but this wasn’t how she’d thought it would happen. In her dreams, Deacon had undressed her, taking his time over each button and—oh!—just like he did with that one.

Rhea’s pulse pounded in her ears as he reached for the second button, then the third. With each button he released, he pressed a kiss to the skin beneath it. By the fourth button, her chemise prevented him from reaching her skin. Not to be deterred, Deacon kissed the fabric instead, drawing his tongue down between her breasts as she gasped for breath.

He moved lower, button by button, until he was kissing her belly—once, twice. Rhea’s legs threatened to buckle. She stumbled back into the table, grasping for something, anything to help her find some sort of balance.

When the last button had opened and he’d pressed his last kiss against her belly, he splayed his hands against her spine and slowly kissed his way back up to her throat.

“Oh my…” Her body responded on impulse, arching into his touch. She let her head fall back, savoring the sensation of his lips against her neck.

With one hand still pressed against her back, he used the other to slide one side of her dress down her arm and then the other until it slipped down her body and pooled at her feet.

Lightning crashed again, illuminating the room with its sharp fleeting white light.

Rhea wasted little time on her chemise; it was on the floor beside her dress in short order, leaving her bare from the waist up. She felt a moment of embarrassment, a moment when she wished the room was completely dark so he couldn’t see her uncertainty or the way her hips jutted out like that.

That moment vanished the second Deacon’s lips
found hers in a long, slow and all-consuming kiss. He eased her upright, tight against his chest. This time, there was no wincing, just long contented sighs as bare skin met bare skin for the first time and Rhea’s soul melted into a pool of love.

She slid her fingers through his hair and smiled when he moaned.

“Like that?” she whispered.

He pressed another long kiss against her throat and moaned again.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Her teasing was short-lived when Deacon’s fingers danced up her rib cage and over her breast.

“Oh,” she gasped, pushing herself deeper into his palm.

“Like that?” he teased.

She pressed her own hand on top of his as she gasped again. His hand was warm and gentle against her breast, his fingers like magic.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

He caressed her with gentle strokes as his lips left a burning trail across her collar bone, then lower. His teeth grazed her other breast before the tip of his tongue sizzled against her skin. She couldn’t breathe; all she could do was slide her fingers through his hair and hold on.

Thunder exploded outside. The window rattled and the dishes clattered on the shelf.

Something was threatening to explode inside Rhea, too. A strange heat rippled deep within her, radiating to every nerve, every cell of her body.

Deacon kissed his way across each breast, then down to her navel, dipping his tongue inside until she cried out.

“Deacon.” Her voice was not her own; it was ragged, harsh, desperate and nearly impossible to hear over the storm outside.

“Mmm?”

“I can’t stand—”

She was instantly swooped up in his arms, then settled on top of her quilt. Deacon leaned over her for a long minute, staring into her eyes as his fingers toyed with her hair.

“Damn, you’re beautiful.”

If she hadn’t already been burning hot, Rhea was certain she would have ignited right there.

“You are,” he said. “Let me look at you for a minute.”

“N-no,” she said, trying to sit up.

“Why not?” His voice was painfully quiet.

“Because it makes me feel…I don’t know…” How could she speak clearly when he insisted on trailing his finger between her breasts that way? Didn’t he know…

“Oh.” Rhea lay back on the quilt and gave in to the shivers he created with such a simple touch.

A wicked smile lifted his lips. “You don’t want me looking, but you don’t mind me touching?”

“No,” she murmured, half wishing he’d stop looking at her that way, and half wishing he’d
never
stop looking at her that way. “I don’t mind that at all.”

His kiss was hard and hungry, demanding and delicious, giving her no chance to catch her breath until she was reaching for him, scrambling to pull him closer again.

He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her drawers and kissed her right earlobe. “Lift,” he whispered.

Before she could draw her next breath, he’d tossed her drawers on the floor and ripped two buttons from her boots in his haste to get them off. All that was left were her stockings.

“Pull them off,” he whispered.

Rhea hooked her fingers into the first one and started pushing them down her leg, but Deacon stopped her.

“No,” he said, sitting up. “Do it slowly, just like the way you put them on the other morning.”

“What?” She started to protest, but the look on his face—one of deep and unfulfilled hunger—made her stop. She pulled it back up her leg, then scooted off the bed.

Swallowing her embarrassment, she bent her right leg, set her foot on the edge of the mattress and began to roll the stocking down her leg, making each new turn last longer than the last.

Deacon’s Adam’s apple bobbed hard. By the time she reached her knee, his mouth was open slightly and he’d all but stopped blinking.

Who knew she had so much power over him? Rhea continued to roll it down, stretching over her knee and trying not to laugh at him. Halfway down her calf, Deacon finally blinked and swallowed. It was then his gaze locked on hers and she was caught.

He’d seen her laughing at him, and the look that came over his face was a mix of embarrassment and revenge.

“You think that’s funny?” Before she could move, his hand wrapped around her wrist and dragged her back down to the bed. She squealed and laughed, but he didn’t release her. “It’s not wise to torment me, Rhea.”

He straddled her hips and grinned down at her with the most wicked grin she’d ever seen.

“But you told me to,” she cried.

“You didn’t have to enjoy it so much,” he growled over a grin, pressing her wrists to the sides of her head. He lowered his head slowly, keeping his gaze fixed on hers. Lower, lower, until he was a mere whisper away from her breast.

His breath tickled her sensitized skin, torturing a long groan from her throat. Rhea gave up struggling against his grip and tried to give him what he wanted, arching toward him, but he just laughed, low in his throat.

“Oh, no. Not yet.” He blew a soft breath over the tip of one breast, then the other. His tongue moved in slow, agonizing circles all around it, barely touching, yet somehow leaving a trail of fire in his wake.

“Ohhh.”

Again and again, he teased her, touching but not touching, tasting but not tasting, until he’d driven them both to the brink of insanity. Then, with a long moan, he gave in to what they were both desperate for and took her full in his mouth.

She dragged her hands out of his grip and fisted them in his hair. God help her if he tried to move…but move he did, right over to her other breast.

A long building rumble thundered outside, then another.

Burning hot and unable to lie still, Rhea’s hands were everywhere: in his hair, on his shoulders, bunching the blanket beside her. Deacon was a man starved, and she was the feast he’d been waiting for. Not an inch of her face went unkissed; not a hair on her head went untouched.

Still, she needed more. The heat inside her burned out of control, the ache deepened and her body quivered beneath his touch, begging for more.

But how much more could she take?

Deacon lifted one of his legs and nudged it between hers until he could kneel between her thighs.

“But you’re still—” Her breathing came in sharp gasps, so instead, she gripped the waistband of his trousers and tugged in a futile attempt to push them off.

He didn’t hesitate. In one fluid motion, he’d shucked his trousers, as well as his boots, until he was as naked as she. The sight of him should have given her concern, but all she could do was hold her arms out to him and welcome him back.

His kisses were slow, tender strokes that matched his touch against her hip. The ache inside her moved lower, making her shift beneath him, seeking the relief only he could give. Deacon slipped his hand beneath her and lifted, just enough to press her against the length of his desire.

It wasn’t enough. She needed more, but he wouldn’t give it to her. Not yet.

He caressed the inside of her thighs, easing them wider. She squirmed against his touch, her moaned pleas swallowed by his kiss until he slipped his finger deep inside her.