Reese (27 page)

The entire town poured into Mary's house, or so it seemed. The bodies were removed, the blood wiped away. Mary sat on the bed next to Reese, still in shock at all that had happened and how fast things had changed.

In taking responsibility for defending Rock Creek, the people had solidified into townsfolk. In destroying El Diablo, they had answered a threat to their homes and won. The victory would keep them there regardless of future threats, and the town would grow because it was now a home for everyone rather than just a place to live until things got too bad.

With all the people in her house, fixing, cleaning, talking, she could not talk to Reese. He lay on the bed, so pale and quiet, she was terrified he would take a turn for the worse again, just when he'd begun to get better.

"I didn't see them until it was too late," Jo said. "I was watching the river. They must have thought we would be unprotected without the men."

"Hey!" Brown protested. "There are men in town."

"You never would have known it before today," Jo muttered. "I ran to Sutton's and sent the twins to round everyone up, then snuck to your window to listen in. When I heard that gunshot, my heart nearly stopped."

"Mine too," Mary said.

"El Diablo said he was taking Reese out of town, so we lined up to wait. Brown insisted he had to be alongside the house just in case. I wasn't sure what we were going to do when El Diablo refused to give up, then Mary came barreling out the door...." She threw up her hands. "And it was all over."

"That's usually the way these things go," Reese said, dryly.

Mary glanced at him. Those were the first words he'd spoken since El Diablo died. He still looked ill, and she understood why. If El Diablo had told the truth, his men were dead because they'd gone on a vengeance mission. And she'd let them go without saying a word because she'd wanted the old bastard dead.

Vengeance should be left to the Lord. Earthly attempts always seemed to end badly.

"Reese has to rest," Mary announced, suddenly needing to hold him close, to soothe him, and in doing so, soothe herself.

Everyone filed out, and Mary shut the door. The silence they left behind was almost deafening after the noise they had brought.

She returned to her room and found Reese staring at the ceiling. "Appears you didn't need us, after all."

Mary sat on the bed. "Of course we did. Until y'all came to Rock Creek, everyone minded their own business. No one cared about anyone else. No one did anything more than they had to do to get by. People left as soon as things got tough. They had no reason to stay."

"And now they do?"

"They fought for this town. They won't give up so easily the next time there's a threat because they stood together and they earned this place."

"They would have stood up for something eventually."

"I don't think so. In you and your men they saw honor and loyalty and unselfishness at work."

"Because of honor, loyalty, and me, five men are dead."

"You don't know that."

"If they aren't dead, then where are they? Do you think they'd let El Diablo and Jefferson double back here unless they were dead?"

"I don't know."

"I do. Those buzzards wouldn't have gotten within ten miles of Rock Creek if my men were alive."

"Then where are the rest of El Diablo's gang?"

"I'm sure he had them waiting outside of town, figuring he and Jefferson could ride in and kill me without too much trouble. Maybe no one would even notice. But once they saw it happened the other way around, hyenas like that would run. El Diablo was right. Without a leader, followers scatter. But if they find anyone else with grit, you're gonna have trouble. Bastards think there's gold in Rock Creek."

"If there was gold here, do you think the town would look like this?"

"Mebe." Reese closed his eyes. "I'm so tired, Mary. I feel like I want to sleep away eternity. But I've got to find my men."

"Not tonight," she murmured. "Sleep."

"No." He struggled to open his eyes, to sit up, but she pushed him back with ease.

"You aren't going anywhere until you can make me let you."

"What if they need me?"

"They don't need you like this."

"Suppose you're right." His eyes slid closed. "They might come back by morning."

He sounded like a child who'd lost his mother but continued to hope that she might come back if he only believed strongly enough.

Mary ran her fingers through his hair, then across his brow. "Maybe so," she agreed.

"I sleep better when you're here." He caught her hand. "Don't go."

"I won't," she whispered, but he was already asleep.

Mary's eyes burned, and her head bobbed with fatigue. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept all night. When she tried to disengage her hand from his, Reese held on and made a sound of distress that broke her heart. Did she hold him close, just for tonight?

Why not? She'd done far more than that on another night. This might be the last chance she had to rest at his side.

Mary was able to free herself long enough to strip down to her chemise; then she slipped beneath the sheet and curled against him. Immediately, his arm came around and held her closer. His breathing slowed, evening out into a deeper sleep.

The soothing cadence lulled her, and within minutes Mary followed him into the void.

* * *

Reese awoke in the darkest hour of the night. His left side was warm, his right side cool, and a weight across his legs had him afraid for a moment that he was back in the Confederate hospital.

Wounded, alone, dying. Had he lost his legs this time?

Then the sweet scent of Mary calmed him as nothing else ever had. He shifted against the weight, and one of her legs slid between both of his.

His poor battered body kicked into a familiar dance. Reese was surprised he could feel such desire, but if he could want Mary with a force that was nearly overwhelming, then he could get up in the morning and search for his men.

She sighed in her sleep and murmured his name. The sound only served to make him hard—or rather harder. Her breasts, barely covered by her chemise, brushed up, then down, his ribs. Her foot ran down his calf, and their toes tangled.

Reese's teeth ground together. This was getting out of hand. He glanced at her face and found himself captured in the glow of her eyes.

"I thought I was dreaming." Her breath brushed his chin.

"You were."

He didn't realize he was touching her until she shuddered. His fingertips brushed the tops of her breasts—full and ripe and nearly bursting from the neckline of her undergarment.

He pulled away, but Mary caught his hand and drew it back, pressing his palm to her chest. "Feel that?" Her heart thudded, fast yet sure, against the flutter of the pulse in his hand. "That's what happens every time I look at you. When you touch me, sometimes I think I might die. What I feel for you is like nothing I've ever felt before."

"Mary, I—"

She put her lips to his, and he lost any capability of speech or intelligent thought. All he could do was feel—her, him, them. The last time they would ever have.

He wanted to give her pleasure—which was all that he had to give. He had no name, no home, no occupation beyond his gun any longer. The voices of children that had once brought him joy now only brought him nightmares in the daytime. He would never again be able to do what he had planned to do forever.

The man he'd been had died on a battlefield in Georgia. The man he had become afterward would die when he buried those who had given him something to live for ever since.

Then what? How many chances did one man get?

Reese had a feeling his last chance had died with the five men he'd refused to call friends. But he didn't want to think of them right now. He would be thinking of them for a long time to come.

Right now he would share one last night with Mary.

Reese deepened the kiss she had begun, parting her lips, teaching her a new rhythm with his tongue. How could she taste so good and smell so sweet? How could she feel so right when he knew this to be wrong?

He had been a fool once; he would not be again. He would make this night about giving, instead of taking, for a change.

They had kissed many times, and each time the burst of fire in his gut and the warmth in his chest were like the first time. The knowledge that she had never been kissed before him, never been touched before him, made him want to be the last man too. That was impossible, but it didn't make him want it any less.

She met his kiss stroke for stroke. Her hands roamed over his chest, across his belly, then lower. His fingers clenched on her shoulders when her palm curled around his length and tightened.

Temptation whispered, and he considered shoving her back, making them both mindless with want and need, then plunging into her, over and over until they both came gasping.

With a strength of will he had thought long lost, Reese reached down and took her hand from him. He swallowed her sound of protest with another long kiss, and when their mouths broke apart, she lay there smiling, all her trust visible in her eyes.

Reese turned away. He had seen that expression too many times before, and every person who had ever looked at him like that was dead.

Stifling a curse, he dipped his head and let his mouth wander over every visible curve and dip. Snagging a finger in the neckline of her chemise, he tugged, and her ample breasts sprang free. They shone like the pearl handles on Nate's guns.

He pressed his lips to the curve where a breast met a rib—full and soft, blending into sharp and hard. Her skin was warm, not cool like a pearl. He let his lips follow the slide of her chemise, downward on a journey past her waist, then across her belly.

Spending a good amount of time at her navel, he tested the dip with his tongue, lips, and teeth. When her fingers pulled his hair and the muscles beneath his mouth trembled and clenched, he murmured soothing sounds against her skin and moved lower.

"Reese?"

Her voice, that blending of the South and sin, would haunt him forever. She reminded him of things best forgotten and made his heart hope even when his mind knew there was no such thing for a man like him.

"Hush," he told her, continuing on his journey. "I know what I'm doing."

He kissed her where he'd wanted to all
along
.
Her body bowed, her mouth cried his name, he held her still, large palms against slim hips, and kissed her there some more.

Tasting Mary was heaven in the midst of his hell. He spread his hands down her thighs, let his mouth follow his fingers, to her knees, then back again. He teased the burgeoning bud with his thumb until she thrashed and moaned, watching her face as she went higher and higher.

When she cried out the beginning of her release, he replaced his fingers with his mouth and took her over the edge again and again with relentless fervor, until she lay beneath him, damp and spent.

His body perched on an edge of his own. Just watching her, touching her, tasting her, had been the most unbelievable experience of his life. He wished he could do it again, but he didn't have the strength to touch her and not take her. So he rested at her side, and when she took his hand, he held her fingers in his own and willed himself to do nothing more than that.

"Why?" she whispered. "Why did you do that?"

"You didn't like it?"

"Are you blind and deaf? Of course I liked it. But what about you?"

"I'm good."

"Yes, you are."

She sat up and stared down at him, an odd expression in her eyes. Then, before he knew what she was about, she leaned forward and licked all the way up his length of him.

"Mary, no." He tried to push her away, but she grabbed his wrists and held them apart.

"Let me touch you, taste you, feel you. Let me have a part of you I've never had before."

She had given him everything from the moment he'd met her, and he had done nothing but take. How could he deny her when she put it like that? Especially when he wanted nothing more than to have her touch him as no woman like her ever had?

His surrender must have shown in his eyes, for she smiled a siren's smile that had never been on her sweet face before, yet did not seem out of place.

He had ruined her in more ways than one. Then, slowly, holding his gaze all the while, she lowered her head and took him into her mouth.

Untutored she might be, but she was a fast learner, and bolder than he'd ever believed possible. She taught him things he'd never known about himself. That he could deny completion for a long, long time and that in denying, the pleasure became exquisite pain.

Rough and gentle by turns, she took him to the edge, then kissed him back down. His frantic fingers pulled her hair loose, and the locks made a curtain about her face, hiding the sight of what she was doing, making each brush of her lips, each touch of her tongue, each tug of her teeth, a surprise.

When he could bear no more, he yanked her up with his good arm and kissed her—tasting him, tasting her—as he pulsed against her belly.

She pressed her forehead against his. "Why did you do that?"

"Wasn't
that
what you were aiming for?"

"Yes. No. Um, what I mean is—"

"Why didn't I finish inside you?"

He saw her blush even in the semidarkness that announced dawn. He ran his hand over her back, down the slope of her rump, then up again. She pressed against him and sighed.

"I should never have touched you that first time. But I'm weak. I wanted you; I took you, and it was wrong. I didn't want to make another mistake."

"How could making love be a mistake?"

He sighed. "You're so damn innocent."

"Was it so we wouldn't make a child?"

"Partly."

"You don't have to worry about that. I know how these things work, and I can't be... uh, with child right now."

She appeared completely certain, and a weight lifted from his chest. Besides, Mary did not have it in her to lie.

Crazy as it seemed, the relief was followed almost immediately by disappointment. He'd have married her if there was a child, and she would have been his, if only for a little while.