Kit Gardner (25 page)

“Rance—”

“Let me savor you, Jess, every sweet, round inch.” His lips brushed over the lace edge of her camisole to poise just over one nipple. Even as he watched, the peak swelled and thrust against the thin linen, as though reaching for his mouth. Still not touching her, he breathed hot upon the nub, and it distended even further.

Her nails dug into his shoulders. “Rance—”

He moved to the other breast, the touch of his breath alone tightening the pale pink bud into a fully distended nub that seemed to quiver for his touch. Only then did he ease the camisole’s straps from her shoulders.

“Easy,” he purred thickly, when her fingers tugged at the ribbon binding the top of the camisole. “Savor me.” He pressed her hands to his chest and eased the ribbon apart with deft fingers. Inch by leisurely inch, the linen parted beneath the gentle pressure of his fingers, until the camisole slipped to rest upon the very peaks of her breasts.

Rance licked his parched lips. Jess clutched at his shoulders, drawing swift breaths. Her lashes fluttered over her eyes. “Rance, I’m dying for you.”

“Such a sweet way to go,” he murmured, lowering his head. With one nudge of his lips, the linen slid slowly over one nipple. The peak sprang into his mouth, bringing a low rumble to his throat, and he filled his hands with the taut, heavy fullness of her breasts. He took the nipple deep in his mouth, then sucked gently, slowly, in deep, long pulls, pausing only to brush his lips back and forth over the dewy peak before again drawing the sleek nub against the length of his tongue.

She quivered against him like a fragile butterfly opening its gossamer wings for the first time. Tonight, she would soar.

“Rance...”

Easing himself from one breast, he watched the moonlight pearlize the wet, swollen peak, then curled his tongue around the other nipple, and was duly rewarded with her swift intake of breath. “So damned responsive,” he growled, then rose and captured her mouth again with a savage hunger he could barely contain. She arched up against him, flattening her breasts against his bare chest. Her hands slid around his waist, molding his back, then delving, palms down, into the back of his waistband, seeking.

He filled his hands with the lushness of her hips and buttocks, then slid one knee between her trembling legs and lifted her high against his thigh. Through the thin cotton of her pantalets, at the apex of her thighs, damp heat seeped into denim, branding him. Cupping one breast, he lifted the lush fullness to his mouth, a satisfied rumble filling his chest when her hips began a rhythmic rocking of her pelvis against his rock-hard thigh.

“Tell me you’re on fire, clear to your sweet honeyed center.”

“Yes,” she sighed, her breaths coming swifter, harder, with each seductive roll of her hips. She flung her head back, her fingers clutching at his shoulders, the tension building in her.

In one motion, he lifted, turned, and laid her beneath him upon the dew-laden grass. “So hot...” he rasped against her quivering mouth. “You’re almost there, aren’t you? One touch and you’ll fly for me, little butterfly.”

With one swift tug of his hand, he stripped the pantalets and camisole from her. His hand slid slowly up one impossibly long, sleekly curved leg, feeling the trembling just beneath the skin’s fevered surface.

Moonlight and shadow spilled over her tightened features, lengthening her lashes, pearlizing her luminescent skin. She’d never looked more beautiful, more trusting, more innocent of the ways of love.

He brushed his thumb over the damp nest of blond curls between her legs. She gasped and lifted her pelvis, nestling her womanhood against his hand. “Touch me, Rance...”

“You’re like a tightly strung violin.” He parted the curls and again softly brushed his fingers over the moist flesh, then cupped her entirely, feeling the honeyed heat searing his palm and fingers.

He rose up on his knees, shrugged quickly out of his shirt, then began unfastening his Levi’s, his gaze feasting upon every moon-bathed curve and hollow of her. She gazed up at him with passion-hooded eyes, admiring him, loving him as no other woman ever had.

“Rance—” she breathed as his hands curved around her thighs.

“Next time.” He lowered himself over her until his chest flattened her breasts. “Next time I’ll take off my boots and my pants. I...I can’t now... I can’t wait any longer.”

She slipped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his throat. “I wasn’t looking at your boots.”

“What were you looking at, little cat?” One flex of his hips, and she parted for him, allowing him entrance to the sleek softness of her.

She arched up against him, her soft belly a smooth undulation against his. Her mouth opened with deep gasps, her hips lifting as if she ached to take him completely into her, almost as much as he burned to be there. “You’re like a thick blade....” she whispered. “Too much for me—”

“No, love,” he rasped. Then, in one gentle stroke, he buried himself entirely within her. Their breaths came out in one long sigh against each other’s mouths. “Don’t...move...” he managed.

In her innocence, she stiffened, and tightened exquisitely around his shaft. “What’s wrong?”

He clenched his teeth, swallowing a groan of pure agony. “Nothing that a few days spent like this wouldn’t cure.”

Like a sleek cat, she stretched and curled beneath him, nuzzling her breasts into his chest and curving her palms over his buttocks. “I feel so full of you.”

Rance swallowed thickly and buried his face against the warm curve of her neck. “Please, Jess—”

“You’re like one long, magnificent muscle.”

Lifting his head, he said through his teeth, “Jess—”

“You’re pressing into my womb,” she murmured, brushing her lips over his, then sliding her tongue slowly over his mouth until a tortured groan tremored through him. “If you move the slightest bit, I feel like I’ll tumble again over that mountaintop.”

“Never like this before,” he heard himself rumble, realizing with no small amount of chagrin that he was lost. He’d never had a chance. He might as well have been a greenhorn. And yet, despite this, he knew as he eased slowly out of her, only to plunge to the hilt again, that there had never been another woman for him but this woman. All that had come before was gone.

She was too much for him...this time. Only for this time. Yet he knew she would be. She was there, in moments, it seemed, dissolving like a rush of warm honey that he would gladly drown in. And then, sooner than he would have ever thought possible, he succumbed. Arching against her with a savage cry, he spilled himself in one long torrent deep within her.

“What have you done to me, woman?” he said at length, his voice sounding thick and hoarse, muffled against her throat.

“Rance—” Her fingers stroked tentatively over his shoulders, slipping over the fevered sheen that bathed his torso. “Are you all right?”

“Give me a minute.”

“I knew it. This is awful. You hurt yourself.”

He felt his lips curve. Such innocence would require much in the way of tender education. He could envision years. “Jess—”

“Don’t try to deny it. I saw you...your face...you looked like you were in tremendous pain, and you made that awful sound, like you were dying.”

“I was.” Gathering her close, he rolled onto his back, nestling her snugly astride him. Curving his palms around her buttocks, he lifted her up against his length until her breasts just rested upon the highest planes of his chest. Lifting his head, he pressed his face to the fragrant fullness, feeling himself swelling once more within her. There were, apparently, tremendous benefits to finding oneself bewitched and soundly slain by a woman.

Tiny hands pushed vainly against his shoulders. His Jess was rational, logical, once more. But not for long. “Rance, good grief, perhaps you should rest. This can’t possibly be good for you.”

“There’s only one cure for it,” he murmured, brushing his lips over one nipple, then the other. A primal satisfaction flowed through him when she sighed deeply, then cupped one hand about a breast and lifted the dewy peak again to his mouth. Such wanton, passionate response he’d never before imagined possible in a woman, much less envisioned what it would do to him. How he would forever enjoy stripping all logic from her, making her his, day and night, for the rest of his life.

“One cure...” she breathed, as he suckled gently.

“We have to do it again.” Before she could reply, he filled his hands with her soft buttocks and guided her up the turgid length of him, then down again, in a gentle stroking of her womanhood against him.

“Rance.”
She arched her back and threw back her head, the sleek cat once more, and tousled blond ringlets spilled over his hips and thighs like warm, fragrant silk.

Bewitching temptress, dream lover...aglow, as though bathed in milk by the silvery moonlight...offering herself, body and soul, to some pagan god of the night. To him. She moved with him in fluid, undulating strokes that went beyond a mere joining of bodies, a passing taming of passions. In all her guileless innocence, she had claimed him...perhaps centuries before. And when they both found surcease once again, and she collapsed against him, he felt not the characteristic desire to remove himself from her, to seek a solitary haven away from her, as he’d forever done after being with a woman. Instead, he rued the moment their bodies would part, and wrapped his arms fiercely about her, pressing her against the swelling in his heart.

“You’re mine,” he said simply.

“Yes.”

“Always.”

“Always.”

S
urely it was a dream. Jessica had never imagined reality could wash over her with such wondrous warmth, in such a blush-inspiring torrent of sensual awareness. Yes, she must be hovering just the other side of wakefulness, cradled in a contentment of spirit possible only in fantasy. Still, her cheeks warmed as though beneath the first gentle rays of the day’s sunlight, streaming through her sheer lace curtains.

Then this must be a dream. She never forgot to draw her shade every night before bed.

Her dream lover was whispering to her now, those heady love words he’d murmured throughout her dream, through what seemed an entire night. Even now, nestled in slumber, she felt the blush stealing through her, then the possessive touch of hands, callused and worn, moving over her skin. Hands capable of stirring fire in her blood.

He called her his heart’s love.

In her dream, her body curved to press against his. The heat of him leapt into her skin, searing her back and the curve of her buttocks, nestled snugly against his hips. Crisp, loose curls sprang against her fingers as she cradled his head to her shoulder. How real this now seemed...the seductive scrape of his beard upon her tender flesh, then the heat of his breath, his lips, his tongue.

She might never wish to wake from this.

The tingling seemed to begin at her toes, pulsating through her to pool in the tightening peak of her breast as he cupped it in one broad hand. Her naked breast.

“Good morning,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice.

Her eyes drifted open. “Rance.”

“You sound surprised,” he murmured against her ear, his fingers slowly encircling one nipple. “Where did you think I would go?”

Again, her eyes drifted closed, and a contented sigh drifted from her lips. Reality, she realized, was proving more wondrous than any fantasy. Memory flooded over her...the night spent discovering the pleasures of lovemaking. Rance...awakening her to sensuality, to the complete giving of herself, body and soul.

Her hair lay damp beneath her cheek. Misty, moon-dappled memory stirred, of lingering lovemaking in the stream, with cool black waters spilling over them...of Rance looming over her, moonlight glistening upon his wet skin like diamond shards as he whispered again and again that he loved her.

What had she ever done to deserve such a gift of happiness?

Her thoughts scattered like rose petals when his hand caressed the slight curve of her belly, then cupped her womanhood and delved deeper. Against her buttocks jutted the thick, hard evidence of the desire that fevered his skin, harshened his breath and roused the sleeping passion within her. She turned and curled into his arms. It was as natural and right a movement as the inching of the sun over the distant horizon. Her legs parted to receive him as eagerly as she clasped him to her breast.

Sometime later, she lay propped against his chest, threading her fingers through the smooth fur blanketing the jutting planes. Her slender fingers seemed utterly feminine against his darker, rougher skin, just as the tensile strength of his body forever heightened her awareness of her own soft, supple curves. She felt his gaze and lifted hers, her heart fluttering anew when their eyes locked. He wore his love boldly, with an abandon that brought an ache to the back of her throat. It shone in his eyes. It softened the rugged planes of his face, curved the brutal slash of his lips, and flowed through his fingers, brushing over the length of her spine.

“You’ve given me a lifetime of happiness in so short a time,” she said softly. “I find myself thinking I’m not worthy of it—or of you.”

“Stop talking foolishness, woman, or I’ll be forced to start kissing you again.” Hooding his gaze upon her lips, he swept his palms over the small of her back, stilling them upon the high curve of her buttocks. “If either of us is unworthy, it’s me. Not you. You’ve given me a greater gift than any man deserves. You’ve opened my heart, unlocked my soul, laid me bare and open...and still I can’t get enough of it. Maybe because I thought I’d never need it...ever again. Not since I watched the people I loved most die.”

Jessica barely breathed, as a shadow seemed to darken his features, and yet his grip on her remained firm and unyielding.

“They were taken from me,” he said woodenly, his voice rumbling harsh and deep in the morning stillness. “Taken from each other in the span of just a few seconds, at the hands of the Quantrill gang. We were in Lawrence. Late summer ‘63. The gang rode in just before dawn with a thirst for blood. They executed over a hundred people that morning, half of them in their beds, thinking to sway Kansas from sympathizing with the North. Hell, they did more for Northern sympathizing that night. Some think that raid was the worst atrocity of the whole damned war. I watched my parents die. I was helpless...holding a gun and firing shot after shot and missing with every one. I vowed then never to pick up a gun without making my shot. After, I couldn’t stay there, so I enlisted with the Union. I learned to shoot, and I vented myself on every Johnny Reb who found himself in my sights. Earned myself a name, I guess, and had little trouble finding high-paying work after the war. It’s a curse to survive sometimes, to be good at something, even if it’s hate that makes you good...makes you fearless of death. But I know now there’s no solace in killing, no matter how much rage you think you might vent. There’s nothing for a man who crawls inside himself and allows no one else in...nothing but emptiness and memories that refuse to die. I didn’t know all this until I found you, Jess, and your boy. And now—” Strong arms gathered her close against the fierce beating of his heart. “Now, I’ll never get enough of you...and all this sweet, gentle loving.”

Jessica felt her soul swell near to bursting. She tilted her head, and their lips met with a sweet poignancy that swept away the last of the barriers, the mysteries. She traced her fingertips over the weathered creases slashing from his nose to the sides of his mouth, feeling a violent tremor gripping her insides. There was something in his look, a wistfulness in his eyes. She could barely voice her thoughts. “Y-you’re going after Bartlett, aren’t you?”

“I’m going after Cameron Spotz. The man will stop at nothing to secure the rights to as much land as he can for his cattle, even if that means condemning the right of passage across open prairie as trespassing. He’ll stretch the law or break it to suit his own purposes, even if it means hiring gunmen to run the farmers off, burn their crops and houses, or to kill them if they fight. I was one of the few hired guns who refused to kill innocent people settling on free land. I should have seen it all coming, knowing Spotz as I did. He’d tried that kind of thing with me before. Testing me, I suppose. I refused one too many times, I guess. Hell, I should have cleared out of Wichita altogether then. But a man never sees revenge coming, leastwise never sees that he’s setting himself up for it, like I did. Spotz owned the town, bought the jury, all the witnesses, and had me set to hang for Frank Wynne’s murder. It’s Spotz I want. Bartlett’s merely his lackey.”

“In the meantime, Bartlett could kill you.”

“I’m worth more to him alive. Fifteen hundred more.”

“That offers me little comfort. I’ve seen the man. On a whim he could kill you. I’m going with you.”

His hands cupped her face, lifting her clouding gaze to his. “Your delicious little backside isn’t moving one inch off this farm. You’re going to can your beets so I can eat myself silly on them this winter, and when you’re not cooking, you’re going to sit in that chair by the window and knit blankets and bootees,
mounds
of blankets and bootees, for all the children we’re going to have. After all, sweetheart, you could bear me a child in nine months.”

A blush stained her cheeks, and she lowered her eyes.

“That pleases you,” he murmured.

“Yes,” she whispered. “But a child needs a father.”

Again he lifted her face, with a finger beneath her chin. His eyes were twin flames in the golden morning sunlight, and his voice plunged deeper, thicker. “You think I’d let Cameron Spotz deny me the pleasure of seeing you grow ripe with my child?” His hands grasped her upper arms and lifted her flush against him, breast to hip. Deep masculine satisfaction shadowed his features as her swollen breasts nestled provocatively upon his chest and her damp loins nuzzled into his lower belly. “Even one night away from you will be more than enough penance to pay. Trust me, Jess, no man will deny me watching our children grow...or the lifetime of pleasure I will have growing old and very wise with you in this crumbling house.”

“You’re asking me to trust you.”

“You should. With my life and yours and Christian’s. I think you do.”

She arched a coy brow, knowing deep in her heart she had never had a choice but to trust him, implicitly. “Perhaps I do. I can still fear for your life.
Wives
do that sort of thing, you know. Are you, perhaps, in your own way asking me to marry you?”

He gave a wicked, utterly masculine shrug and lowered his smoldering eyes once more to her breasts. “Damn, but when God made you, Jess—”

“Rance.”
With a certain exasperation, she pushed against his shoulders, unaware that the movement lifted her breasts off his chest to dangle just inches from his mouth.

With a rumbling growl of satisfaction, Rance captured one nipple between his teeth and tugged gently. Surrender flowed through her like warm honey, and her nails curved into the sinew of his shoulders. “No interest in being a kept woman, eh?” he murmured, glancing up at her briefly, sinful in his sureness of purpose, then resuming his tender seduction. Her breath caught when he released her nipple, the nub swollen rosy and glistening in the dusky morning light. “I could drink of your taste the day through and never get enough,” he said thickly, then slipped one arm around her waist and rolled her onto her back.

The massive weight of him pressed her lusciously into the soft bed, the breadth of his shoulders all but blocking out the ceiling above her. Strong arms gathered her close, and then his lips moved over hers in a kiss aching with tenderness. He lifted his head, his eyes boring into hers with an intensity that caught her breath in her chest.

“It seems a bit superfluous,” he muttered. “Banal. When it feels as though you’ve been my mate since the moment I held that locket in my hand...and felt the heat of you even then. Even before...across time.”

“I know...” she whispered. “I feel the same.”

“But if you need to hear it, if it will make those sweet, full lips of yours smile...if it will make you the least bit happy... Hell, will you—could you—would you please marry me, Jessica?”

She curled her arms around his neck, her joy blossoming like a perfect rose. “Yes. Yes. A hundred times yes.”

Again his mouth moved gently over hers, parting, tasting, savoring the uniting of kindred spirits. “I suppose we should get dressed,” he murmured, despite his knee’s moving between hers to nudge her thighs apart.

She felt herself dampening with desire, opening to receive him. “Surely we don’t have to get dressed now?”

“You’re marrying me this morning,” he said with supreme authority. “Before I go anywhere.”

She blinked up at him. “Today.”

“As soon as we can find someone besides Halsey to marry us. If I have to ride to the next county to find a judge, I’ll do it.” His mouth curved into that beloved lopsided smile. “I have to make an honest woman out of you before you change your mind about spending the rest of your life married to a wheat farmer.”

“A wheat farmer...” she breathed, tears of joy suddenly springing into her eyes from nowhere. “I’ll never change my mind about us, Rance. I love you—”

“Say it again,” he rasped against her ear. And she did, again and again, as he caressed and kissed her breasts, her belly, his beard brushing like a prairie wildfire over her sensitive skin.

Jessica swallowed thickly, her eyes fluttering closed with deep pleasure when his tongue delved lower still.

“I want to drink of you.” He grasped her hips and lifted her against his parted mouth. “Beloved wife—open for me. I’m going to make you fly.”

It was too much, this upward spiraling of intense desires, peaking, cresting in one heavy tide after another, again and again, taking her ever upward, only to abandon her there, at the very summit, for one torturously long moment, then to release her in a torrent of tumbling spasms. Only when the last quiver left her limbs, only when he had his fill, did Rance rise above her, his mouth slack with desire. His was a savage, rugged maleness, imposing and daunting in its ferocity. And Jessica luxuriated in it, her gaze caressing the dramatic tapering of chest to narrow waist, where bronzed skin met with pale, and lower, into a midnight-black thatch from which thrust his swollen blade. He lingered there a moment, as though savoring her smoldering regard, and her fingertips reached to brush tentatively over the heated length of him.

Instantly he caught her hand and drew it to his mouth. “Curious, cat?”

“Very,” she replied, feeling the heat of a flush betray her wantonness. “Shouldn’t I want to touch you as I do?”

With one arm, he lowered himself over her, then drew her hand to his shaft. “No, love, touch me all you wish. Take me into you.”

She drew his head down to hers, tasted herself upon his mouth, and pressed his shaft to her moist center. In one swift thrust, he impaled her, driving the breath from her, again and again, until they both lay quivering and spent once more.

Sometime later, Jessica awoke with a start, considering that she lay curled against Rance as warm and snug as a sleeping rabbit. From the angle of the sun, she guessed it must be close to midmorning.

“You’re making me lazy as a slug,” she grumbled, stretching like a sleek, much-pampered cat in cream, until a muscled arm yanked her close once more. With a sigh, she again allowed her eyes to drift closed. In an instant her eyes snapped open at the unmistakable sound of buggy wheels approaching.

She half rose but Rance was already out of the bed and tugging on his Levi’s.

“It must be Louise,” Jessica said. “Perhaps Christian wanted to come home early.” Scooting from the bed, she reached for her white cotton wrapper, even as she cast a swift glance at herself in the mirror. She nearly groaned. The stark evidence was there for all to see, in the beestung fullness of her lips, the satiated flush staining her skin, the tumble of her hair that screamed of a night’s worth of impassioned lovemaking. Even her breasts bore the mark of Rance’s ardor, the peaks swollen and tender as they brushed against the soft cotton of the wrapper. She pulled the folds close about her and prayed that for the first time in her life Louise would choose discreetly to notice nothing at all.