Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) (32 page)

Muscles she’d forgotten even
existed clenched and somersaulted. Lust rushed through her and dampened her
thighs.

He ran his lips over the
plain of her belly, and the moment his kisses reached the juncture of her
thighs, her legs, already unsteady, buckled completely.

She pitched forward onto her
knees.

“Jessie.”

She trembled, her hands
shaking so violently she had to fist them to keep them steady. Luke kissed her
mouth, and she lost herself in a kiss that stole all coherent thought from her
mind.

When he broke away, she
traced his kiss-slicked lips with trembling fingers. “Luke.”

“Say my name like that any
time.” He kissed her gently and rose to his feet. He pulled her into his arms
and ran his fingers down her spine. Tremors eddied out from the places he
touched.

Her heart galloped like wild
horses. Her pulse fired, her blood a conflagration burning out of control, and
she didn’t care. She lost herself in his kisses, and she didn’t care about
that, either.

Because she had him.

Luke.

She sank into a cloud of the
finest cotton and down when he placed her on the decadent featherbed.
Stretching over her, bearing his weight on his forearms, he spread her thighs
with his body.

She felt the length of him,
nestled in the vee of her thighs, and she shivered again.

He kissed her neck, running
his tongue over her collarbone. His hands caressed her breasts, tracing her
nipples with his thumbs, teasing them. He took one of the tender peaks into his
mouth and suckled.

Jessie gasped at the
intensity of the moment, of the desire and the love she experienced in his
arms. Her fingernails scored his bare back, pulling him closer until they were
skin to skin.

He kissed her, and she
thought she’d die.

He rolled to his side. His
fingers traipsed down the length of her body, lingering over the swell of her
breasts and the hollows of her stomach. And then they dipped lower, teasing her
thighs apart, toying with the coarse hair at the apex. He slipped a long finger
inside her, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out.

Her legs spread and she
lifted her hips to accept more of him, and another finger joined the first.

He kissed her greedily, his
tongue tangling with hers as his fingers pumped inside of her.

She had waited so long with
this moment.

“Luke,” she begged.

“Tell me.” His breath was hot
against the sensitive skin of her neck.

Jessie arched up against his
hand, her body achy and needy.

Beneath her palms, his
muscles bunched as she ran her hands down his back. She moved her hands to his
trousers and undid the buttons, and ran her fingers along the length of his
erection.

“Give me my wedding night.”

Groaning into her neck, he
removed his hands from between her legs. He bent to kiss her and suddenly he
was inside her, filling her up, stretching her to her limits.

Her other half. The fire that
melted her ice. Her opposite and her likeness. They were everything, Luke and
Jessie.

Her heart swelled and
expanded, as if it could encompass the entire world. She was as delicate as
butterfly wings and as hard as steel.

When he kissed her, she was
perfect. He touched her and she was eternal. He breathed and Jessie lived.

He made love to her, and the
peace she had with him was greater than any peace her ancestors had ever
offered.

Luke pushed inside her slowly
and withdrew, his touch achingly tender. He kissed her mouth, her neck, sucked
gently on her earlobe, his lips warm against her flesh.

In his arms, she was whole.

Her blood heated and suddenly
her body was convulsing around him, trembling and wild, as pleasure so intense
it bordered on pain coursed through her.

He bucked into her and Jessie
heard someone cry out.

It took a moment for Jessie
to realize the voice belonged to her.

He lowered his body and
kissed her gently. He moved inside her, long, slow strokes, and pressure built
and exploded as another wave hit her.

Leaning up, she nipped at his
collarbone and he shuddered. Tenderness washed over her, and she pulled him
down to kiss him.

“I love you.”

Luke flinched as if she’d
struck him, and his silver eyes searched hers.

“What?” he whispered harshly.

Jessie arched up against him
and pulled him deep. Tangling her fingers into his wavy, dark hair, she kissed
him again.

“I love you.”

He moved in her once more,
groaned and shuddered.

They lay in the tangle of bed
sheets and one another’s arms for a long time, and she listened as his heart
stabilized with hers. She breathed him in, the scent of desert rain on the salt
flats and leather she always associated with him. She didn’t know where he
ended and she began.

It didn’t matter.

He slipped to his side and
cradled her against him, catching one of her legs between his, his metal leg
surprisingly warm against her skin. His fingers twined with hers as he pulled
her close, his chest against her back.

She brought his hands to her
mouth and pressed gentle kisses against his knuckles.

As he brushed his lips
against the nape of her neck, she shuddered again.

“Jessie?” he whispered.

She turned her head to look
at him, but she stilled when he kissed the back of her neck. “Yeah?”

“I love you, too.”

The next morning, Jessie woke
alone.

She found Luke sitting at a
table with Jameson, Elizabeth, Whitfield, Snakeskin Boots, and a man she didn’t
recognize all hunched over the table.

Elizabeth waved her over.

Scattered around the table
were grainy pictures of a valley surrounded by mountains, with what might be a
river snaking through the lowlands, but the center of the picture was too
blurred for her to be certain. Next to the photographs lay a topographical map
of Deseret, Shoshone country, and the southern Idaho and southwestern Montana
territories. Beside it, Jessie recognized her father’s map.

Elizabeth patted the chair
next to her. “Join us. Did you sleep well, dear?”

Snakeskin Boots buried his
laugh in a cough, and Luke hit him on the shoulder.

Jessie decided to ignore them
and focused on Whitfield and Elizabeth. Though Elizabeth’s hair was lighter,
the familiar resemblance was impossible to miss

“You’re related.” Jessie
motioned to Whitfield.

Whitfield laughed at
Snakeskin Boots. “Took you a good week to figure that out. Maybe we should
replace you on the team, Solo.”

“Knock it off, Your Lordship,”
Snakeskin Boots retorted.

“No need to be sour.”
Elizabeth grinned. She turned to Jessie and motioned to Snakeskin boots. “This
is Solomon Parker. You’ve met.”

Parker nodded a greeting.

Elizabeth gestured to the man
standing beside Parker. “And this is my brother, Jonah Whitfield, Baron
Berkshire.”

Jessie turned surprised eyes
to Whitfield. “A baron? Like a real one? No wonder your accent sounded so odd.”

“Quit telling everyone I’m a
peer of the realm—I’m trying to fit in here, Lizzie. I’m still working on
the accent.” He frowned at his sister. “I’d like to get it right. Maybe you
could help me?” he asked Jessie.

“She’ll do no such thing.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed.

“My brother is fascinated
with the American West—cowboys and Indians and other such things,” Elizabeth
interrupted. “He was very excited to meet you.”

“Maybe that’s why she got the
better of him.” The corners of Luke’s mouth twitched. “Must be hard for you to
admit you were bested by a woman.”

“I was distracted.” Whitfield
rubbed his head. “She may have hit me with a skillet, but
I
wasn’t stabbed in the chest, nor did I require an extraction from
Fort Bastion. I came out of it with a knot on my head, but you came out of it
with a wife
.
Seems she got the better
of you, too.”

Luke laughed.

Elizabeth turned to the fifth
man in the room, a man with sandy brown hair, and round, wire-rimmed glasses.
He wore a tan suit and vest, a crisp white shirt and brown string tie, and
expensive boots. In his hands, he clutched a bowler hat. Attractive, with kind
eyes, he seemed overly refined among the men in the room. It wasn’t the cut of
his clothes, or even the filigreed pistol in the holster at his hip, because,
as far as she could tell, every one of them wore well-made clothes and carried
expensive weapons.

He possessed a certain
gentleness to him Jessie didn’t sense in the others.

“I’d like to introduce you to
Mr. Dupree, of the Pinkerton Agency. Mr. Dupree, this is… ah…” She cast a
glance at Luke. “This is Jessica White, George White’s daughter.”

“Bradshaw. Mrs. Bradshaw,”
Luke said. The smile he gave Jessie looked a little embarrassed.

Dupree laid a kiss upon the
hand Jessie extended to him, and she pulled away, startled.

“A pleasure to meet such a
lovely woman,” he said. “I regret we had to meet under such dire circumstances,
Mrs. Bradshaw.”

“Circumstances are always
dire these days.” The muscle in Luke’s jaw worked, and he crossed his arms over
his chest.

Dupree’s intelligent,
brandy-colored eyes appraised Luke. Though Luke was several inches taller,
Dupree didn’t seem to be put off by his demeanor.

“Indeed.” Dupree adjusted his
spectacles. “These are dangerous times.”

“They certainly are,”
Elizabeth said, her voice soothing and agreeable. She turned to Jessie. “Now,
once we got word from Luke about the Pinkerton Agency’s involvement with your
father at some point before his disappearance, we contacted the nearest field
office. They sent Mr. Dupree with the records we requested, and he has brought
us the information he has in regard to your father’s case. Mr. Dupree?”

Dupree gestured to the
pictures and papers scattered across the table, and motioned for Jessie to
follow him. He handed her the map she’d taken from her father’s study,

She studied it while Dupree
dug into his leather satchel. She traced the area her father had circled with
her finger like she would trace the lines of his face if she could. Beneath her
searching fingertips, she felt the slightest spark, the smallest sensation of
him, and the voices in the back of her head began to whisper.

Her father had known about
Hiram’s betrayal, yet said nothing to her. He’d hired the Pinkerton Agency to
investigate instead, and borne the burden alone.

Oh,
Pop, why didn’t you trust me
?

Jessie tore her eyes away
from the map and the memories of her father.

Dupree cleared his throat. “As
I’m sure you are aware, Mr. White had been working on another invention for
quite some time before his unfortunate accident. Approximately, uh…” He leafed
through some papers.

“Two years,” Jessie filled in
for him.

“Right. Two years, then,”
Dupree said. “As far as inventions go, he’d had a few missteps, and things hadn’t
come off quite as your father planned.”

“I know.”

There had been so many
failures, so many plans drawn up that hadn’t worked. So many of his ideas never
even made it past the pre-planning stages.

Dupree gave Jessie’s hand a
gentle pat and began again. “In any case, several months ago, we at the
Pinkerton Agency were contacted to investigate what your father called… ah,
here we go, ‘industrial espionage and treason.’ The case got kicked around for
a few weeks—I’m sure you’re not surprised to learn we receive a number of
reports of industrial espionage from these loony scientist types. The world is
full of them these days, and they’re forever contacting the agency with some crackpot
plot or another.” He studied Jessie and colored beneath his wire-rimmed
glasses. “Then someone in the company realized who George White was. He hadn’t
been forthcoming with such information. In any case, we immediately sent an
agent out to interview him and investigate his claims.”

“You,” Jessie said.

Dupree laughed. “Oh, heavens
no. I’m based out of Chicago. No, we sent an agent from our San Francisco
office.” He leafed through the papers and came out with what looked to be bank
statements. “During our interview, your father said he had an invention, but he
was terrified his creation would fall into the wrong hands if it were ever
built. He wanted our assurance that the device would go nowhere except the
Union. He wanted any machine he built to be used to win the war, not prolong
it.”

“Hard thing to promise.” Luke’s
tone was cold.

“Sure is.” Dupree turned to
Jessie. “Your father wasn’t certain whom to trust, and shortly after our agent’s
conversation with him, he found the bank accounts, and hundreds of thousands of
dollars in payments to various scientists over that last year or so.” Sympathy
lined his refined features. “You must understand, many of those scientists are
unsavory types. Men willing to work both sides for the sake of the almighty
dollar. Or, in the case here, British pounds sterling.”