Explaining Herself (12 page)

She tried to draw breath to ask what was wrong, but he covered her parted lips with his own, kissing around the edges of her open mouth. He startled her with his tongue on her lower lip, hot and improper and wonderful.

Now
she
had trouble breathing, trying not to remember why this wasn't right. She felt dizzy, confused, pleasured, frightened. He seemed to want this so badly. Moans ground out of him with each breath. He held her so tightly... .

And she wanted this too. Didn't she? Even if she'd never known she did until now, how could she not?

Victoria let Ross frame her face with kisses, bless her
eyelids with kisses, trace a necklace of kisses across her throat. She savored the pressure of his fingertips against her scalp as he buried a hand deep into her hair. She liked the feel of
his
hair, thick and clean, when she mimicked the gesture. She held his head still so she could stretch upward on her toes to kiss his mouth some more, to see what it felt like to touch
his
mouth with
her
tongue.

He tasted warm, and salty, and he shuddered against her. The hand at her waist slid behind her, lower, to where she should not have felt him through all her petticoats, but she did, and of course this was not right. Somehow, with more effort than she'd ever had to give a single word, she forced a question from her throat into his mouth. "Why?"

And she wasn't even certain what she meant.

The word he groaned back was "Please."

He sank with her to his knees then, in the dirt and dry willow mulch. Trapped in his embrace, she sank with him, unable to fight, not wanting to. She ached to be whatever it was he needed, to do that, be that, dissolve into him.

But she had an existence outside him, too.

Her lips felt swollen under his greedy kisses; his cheek rasped against hers. And something else, something short and furry, bumped Victoria's elbow and whined.

Ross drew his hand upward, toward other forbidden parts, and of course she wasn't him at all. She was Victoria Garrison. And no matter how good it felt,
this was wrong.

"Wait," she gasped, muffled from kissing Ross.

He wasn't waiting. He was cupping the curve of her breast, over her white frock, and it should have frightened her. It didn't. How good it felt
—
that
was what frightened her.

She twisted her head sideways, to escape his kisses, and repeated more firmly,
"Wait!"

And Ross fell still.

He still held her, very tightly, and that should have frightened her too. So should his gun, his boot knife. So should his size, his strength, his hardness, his very maleness, and the certainty that if he wanted to push her to the ground and muffle her cries . . .

But he didn't frighten her at all, and not just because of Duchess standing beside them, looking concerned. The idea of what he
could
do didn't frighten her because he was Ross, and he wouldn't. Something instinctive, deep inside of her sensed something vulnerable, deep inside of him, and she trusted it at least as much as she trusted herself.

Which wasn't implicit.

He was still cupping her breast, after all. And she was, she realized, arching into that touch.
Heavens!

Feeling clumsy and lost, she planted her hands on his shoulders and pushed back from him, pushed him off her. He sat back in the dirt, staring downward. His eyes burned, but not at her. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.

Victoria sank back against die big rock's support, dizzy and flushed and excited about what had just happened, even if it shouldn't have. Even if it must not happen again.

Ross Laramie, sitting on the ground, looked mussed, and lean, and handsome. Even now her palms, her fingertips, tingled with the memory of him. But he did not look excited.

When finally he lifted his burning gaze to hers, he looked hurt, accusing
—and almost suicidal.

Clearly, she would have to speak first. She licked her lips in preparation
—and tasted him on them.
Golly.

Words had never failed her before, and they did not this time. Not exactly.

"No wonder you clench your fists."

Chapter Nine

Laramie stared at her for several long, shuddering breaths before he was sure he'd heard her correctly. Even once his ears were sure, his mind wasn't.

His lips felt strange, traitorous as he tried to shape them into a word. His voice only half complied. "What?"

Wasn't she going to slap him? Sic the dog on him?

If she sat up, reached across to him, drew his pistol and shot him with it, he doubted he would fight her. It was a double-action. She wouldn't even have to cock it.

What had he done? Worse, what
would
he have done if she hadn't stopped him? Clearly there was no purity powerful enough to cleanse him
—only more innocence for him to ruin.

"The way you clench your fists when we get close." Victoria pushed brown curls from her face, and Laramie truly saw what he'd done to her hair. "You were
trying not to let yourself do just this, weren't you?"

Trying
not
to?

His breath rasped from his chest, the rush of his blood nearly deafening, and what he felt
—

What he felt. . .

He'd been safer feeling nothing, because this was just too much.
Soft hair and skin and lips and tongue and starched, white dress and round, warm curves
—and that was just from
her.
The sensations that surged up from inside him, past the discomfort where her fingers had clutched at his wounds, past the ache he'd never admitted, deep in his chest. . . past the needs that had surged up from inside him were hungry and greedy and debased.

It was far too much, so he only let himself feel numb. He'd learned long ago how safe numbness could be. He could think through numbness. And what he thought was,
I've been trying
not
to let myself do this?

For a reporter, Victoria Garrison wasn't always terribly observant.

"I have to go," he murmured, rolling onto his heels. He didn't know where. He didn't care. He just had to get away from this, his latest and most monumental mistake.

He had to get away from her before he destroyed her.

"Go? Don't be silly. I'll just let you keep your hands closed from now on. Now that I understand. I agree
— of course we can't be doing this. We hardly know each other, and even if we did, there's a right way and—"

She blinked, looking startled, but he didn't know why. She looked down at her lap and seemed to notice the bits of willow mulch stuck to her skirt at knee level. She brushed futilely at them, forging on. "If you were to call
o
n me, then maybe . .. well. . . Not that I'm assuming you would want to court me. But certainly,
that's the only time something like this should ever happen again. Assuming it
could
happen, with a chaperone, even if we were allowed, and I doubt we would be. On the one hand, I'd think I'd be embarrassed to behave so ... so ..."

Ardently? Graciously? Irresistibly?
he thought.

"Well, to kiss a man like that with someone looking on. Except maybe Duchess."

The dog, sitting beside her, cocked its head with a worried expression. Laramie glared at it. Did it realize just how miserably it had failed in its duties?

"But I guess we should be embarrassed even without someone looking on, shouldn't we? It's amazing how quickly I started to forget, well. . . everything."

Laramie stood and swayed unsteadily. He had to go.
Now.

"Is that even normal?" demanded Victoria Garrison, tipping her head entreatingly up toward him. With her hair half down, it made for a strange image
—an enchanting image, here in the grove, against the rush of the creek. "Is that normal, to stop thinking and just.. .just. .."

Dark or not, he could see her blushing. Had he allowed himself to feel, he might discover he was blushing too.

He must never allow himself to feel again.

"Not that I assume you would know," she added quickly, with a fetching little laugh. "I thought you seemed to, well, understand what. .. and ... but that doesn't mean ... well, does it? Not that you have to answer so personal a question. I'm just curious. You may have noticed that about me."

He'd also noticed that she was still talking!

How could she be talking to him after how he'd treated her? How he'd almost... almost...

Clearly it was her way of comforting herself.

Clearly he'd left her with a great need for comfort.

Laramie had to swallow, twice, before he could even manage two more words. "I'm sorry."

Then he turned and strode from the grove as fast as he could. Willow leaves snapped across his exit, like a whip.

"Where are you going?" called Victoria.

Keep walking,
he told himself. The kindest thing he could do for her, for
himself,
was to stay the hell away. He would quit the job with her father
—he wasn't making good on it anyway, hadn't found the rustler. He would stay someplace else until...

Until he was finished in Sheridan.

But it wouldn't be that easy; she was following him. "Wait! Don't be sorry
—or if you have to be, let me be sorry too, but at least stop and talk to me. You haven't even heard what I found out about Sheriff Ward!"

Laramie's pace slowed.

Keep walking,
he urged himself even as his next step faltered, even as he glanced over his shoulder, against his will, toward a flash of shadowed white.
Get away from her. Now. She's more important than your vendetta.

But she was not.

Clearly, she was not. Because despite what felt like his final dregs of decency, Laramie stopped and turned, and he waited on the path for her and her dog to catch up.

When she did, casually pulling pins from her hair so that it spilled evenly across both her shoulders, Laramie's hands remembered its softness. They longed to feel those locks again, to feel even more of her. Given too much chance
—

No, if Victoria Garrison really mattered to him, he would tell her good-bye, right now, and mean it. Instead Ross asked, "What about the sheriff?"

If for no other reason, this was why he must never behave so familiarly with her again. Because God help him, even a sweet beauty like Victoria Garrison wasn't
more important than vengeance. And that made
Laramie
no better than the man he hunted.

He'd waited for her.

Something that felt like panic eased when Vic saw Ross standing in the path, his hands loose at his sides, his gaze steady
—waiting. He wasn't leaving her after all. Not yet.

He'd stopped to hear Sheriff Ward's secret.

If only for that, Victoria would love Evangeline Taylor forever. "He's corrupt."

Ross stared at her, his haunted eyes showing no surprise. That was disappointing.

"He's
corrupt,"
she repeated, in case he hadn't understood. "He takes bribes! Can you imagine it?"

She never would have thought she could want to simply touch someone as badly as she wanted to touch Ross
—to make sure he was all right, to silently ask if he thought
she
still was. Her fingers ached for wanting him, almost as much as her mouth did. But she and Ross must not behave that way again.

She made herself stop several feet from him and linked her hands behind her. But instead of exclaiming "You must be crazy" or "How do you know?" Ross just said, "Yes."

'Yes?" He really wasn't the most forthcoming man in the world, was he? Except when it came to kisses.

Victoria squared her shoulders and tried not to think about kissing. 'Yes, you can imagine it?"

'Yes," he agreed with her. "I can imagine it."

Oh. "Well, I have a friend whose mother
—well, word is that he charges the, umm,
working girls
to do business. It's illegal for them to do ... what they do." His eyes were widening on hers, so she glanced away, toward the creek. "But he lets them, for a fee. And really, if something is legal it should
be
legal, and if it isn't, then it shouldn't be. Right? I do realize that
some foolish laws exist
—not that
those
laws are foolish, of course ..." Oh dear.