by Jillian Hart
They were not.
Affection filled her up. There was no need for words. They rode in silence beneath a sky strewn with a thousand stars—white, blue, yellow, red. The faint pinpricks of color and light sparkled overhead, as they did every night. Nothing had changed, but her.
Because of Dakota, she was never going to be the same.
* * *
He was starting to think of this place as home, he realized as they crested the slope that brought the yard, barn and house into sight. That was always risky, in the past that feeling had never lasted. But tonight, the sheriff hardly looked at him. There had been no long, curious looks trying to place him, no head-scratching, nothing.
Maybe his luck really was changing. Finally.
"I'll put the horses up." He dismounted and reached for Blue's reins. "You go in and get some sleep. Tomorrow's a big day."
"I owe you forty-one dollars." She swung down, landing in the dark beside him. "I'll pay you back."
"I'm not worried about it. I've seen you play poker."
"I won't forget what you did for me tonight."
He wanted to believe in the affection he heard in her voice. He wanted her with a need he couldn’t rationalize or explain. "It was nothing you didn't deserve, Kit. I've never met anyone like you."
"Good thing, too." She might be teasing, but he heard what she didn't say. Maybe what she couldn’t. It was hard to open up when you've been guarded for so long.
He knew exactly what that was like. It was why he didn't reach for her when he wanted to.
Blue whickered low in his throat, an affectionate sound, and tried to examine Kit's mustache with his lips. She laughed. "I forget I left it on. No wonder my lip is hot."
She said her goodbyes, leaving him alone. He watered and curried the horses, stabled them with the palomino mare. When he was done, he grabbed his bedroll, pillow and Winchester and dropped them in the grass within eyesight of the corral. With the wild life around, he had to keep an eye on Renegade and her filly. Not to mention possible trouble from the two-legged variety of predators.
"Hey, girl." He leaned his forearms against the corral rails, peering in between the slats. The mare flinched, fear radiated from her. Her nostrils flared as she scented the air, poised to break into a run should he move. She was beautiful, this wild thing. She watched him, taking him in, but her spirit wasn't open to his. Not close to trusting, but curious. She lifted her head, as if she were debating stepping closer, but her ears swiveled and she broke into a hard run to the far reaches of the pen.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt the spell you were putting on her." Kit traipsed closer. "Is there anything you can't do?"
"Sure. Lots of things."
"You tame wild animals. Handle Tannen with ease. You've even made me think that having a man around isn't such a bad thing." Her long hair shimmered, luminescent in the star shine, cascading freely over her breasts, which swayed slightly. She wore no corset beneath her nightgown, and his physical reaction was immediate and strident.
She wasn't making this easy on him. He cleared his throat and kept to the shadows. "Didn't you once say you could take better care of yourself than any man could?"
"I do remember making that statement." She flashed him a sweet smile with dimples, coming ever closer. "But I could have been slightly wrong."
"Only slightly?"
"Slightly is all I'm admitting to." She swayed closer, carting the folded blanket she carried. "I sort of like having you around."
Her soft smile gave her away.
"Sort of, huh?" He felt his mouth twist up in the corners, and he wanted her. Desire surged through him. Yes, he wanted her. He wanted to believe she could always be his. He wanted to be the man she looked up to—just like this. "Why are you out here?"
"It was lonely in the tent. Everyone was asleep." She shook out the blanket and spread it on the grass next to his bedroll. "After everything that happened tonight, I can't settle down and sleep. I thought we could talk until I start to get sleepy."
"Talk." That wasn't what he wanted to do with her. He swallowed hard, trying not to shatter with need.
"I know you like being a mystery, but where did you come from, Dakota Black?" She sat down and patted the blanket beside her.
"I was born and raised in Virginia." That one truth felt torn out of him. He didn't want to admit that much. He didn't want the past to find him, the way it always had, destroying anything he'd tried to build. He had to believe it might be different now.
Maybe because he cared about her. Maybe this time the sheriff wouldn't remember. There would be no one visiting from his hometown or no one who recognized him from the newspaper long ago. Maybe this time around he wouldn't talk during a nightmare and be overheard. He had to hope. Hope was all he had left. Losing her would be to lose everything.
"Virginia? That explains it." She sparkled up at him. "Your gentlemanly charm."
"I have charm?" He settled down next to her.
"More than you realize."
Her tender words teased his poor lonely heart, making him wish, making him dream. Heck, he had no more will. She shattered it, cracked it into little pieces.
"I don't know what happened to you." She framed his face with both hands. "I can see someone hurt you once."
"Hurt me?" Muscles worked in his jaw, a struggle between holding in and letting go. "Worse. Someone couldn’t see the man I was. The man I am."
"I can." Her gaze turned luminous, unprotected, as if she were opening to him completely. "I don't know much about you, but I see the good in you. It's all I see."
She defeated him. Her words touched him where he was most vulnerable. Emotion shot through him and he hauled her against him. His mouth covered hers with an urgency he couldn't control. She clutched his shirt, clinging to him. She kissed him with a matching need, the satin heat of her lips caressing his own.
This had to be a dream. He deepened the kiss, and she opened to him with a soft moan. The sound fractured him, and he lifted his lips from hers, pressing her back onto the blanket with him.
"I've never been like this—" she whispered. Although it was too dark to see, he could hear the shyness in her voice.
"Me, either." His lips brushed hers, speaking instead of kissing. He ran a hand along her face, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "I've never let anyone this close."
"Or me." Her hand trailed up his throat to rest against the line of his jaw. Comforting and claiming and tender all at once. "I'm glad it's you."
He brushed soft tendrils from her face, searching her eyes to make sure she wanted more. Her answer, silent and sure, came as her lips found his, her free hand resting on his shirt.
Nothing he'd known had ever compared with kissing her in the night. Her fingers twining in his hair, pulling him closer to her and he covered her more completely with his body. There was no way to hide his rock-hard shaft pressing into her stomach. He felt her intake of breath, perhaps startled by the feel of it but her kiss became a smile.
And he smiled, too.
There was no need for words as they kissed under the stars. Every stroke, every kiss, every sigh deepened the connection he felt for her. He went slow, his lips stroking and nipping hers with excruciating pleasure along the curve of her chin, the line of her throat and the hollow between her collarbones.
"Maybe this is as far as you want to go." He eased up on one elbow, breathing hard. "I want to make you promises, Kit. Swear to you I'll never leave. But I can't."
"That's okay. One day you will trust me enough to tell me why." She pressed her mouth against his neck, tasting salt and hot male skin. "Right now there's only one promise I need."
"What's that?"
"To be gentle with me."
"You can count on that." He slipped one hand beneath her nightshirt. His breathing hitched, proof of how much he wanted her as his hand swept slowly across her belly, rising higher with each half-circle.
It was the dark flash of caring in his eyes that h
eld her captive, more than his touch, more than the addictive pleasure as his fingertips feathered over her breasts. She held her hand to his whiskered jaw, locked in his gaze. When he lowered his mouth to hers, she shivered, soul deep.
Her pulse skipped two beats when she felt her buttons give. He pushed the fabric away, exposing her breasts to the night air. He studied her, drinking in the sight as if she were the most awe-inspiring thing he'd ever seen. She shivered in anticipation as he lowered his mouth to her nipple. The first tug of sensation coiled tight from breast to womb. She wound her fingers through his hair, holding him to her. She wanted more of this, more of him. As if of its own accord, her body strained, arching against the press of his arousal. She parted her thighs, bringing that part of him against her. A moan tore from her throat at the contact. Sharp, spiraling pleasure throbbed through her.
He rose up to shuck off his shirt and trousers. Wow, she thought, mesmerized by the impressive sight. Not sure how that was going to fit, but she decided not to worry about it. She had other things on her mind. Like the way he skimmed her drawers over her hips and down her legs. She quivered, naked before him. She'd always thought she would be too embarrassed to lay like this before anyone, but with Dakota it felt natural, comfortable, utterly safe.
He stretched over her, between her thighs, to press a soft kiss to her stomach. His hands stroked over her hips and then oh, lower. Her toes curled at the exquisite caress, there, where she'd gone wet for him. His fingers parted her, and with each stroke, a fire began burning inside her. Her hips rose from the ground, her hands fisted in the blanket and she cried out for him. She needed that part of him, she needed his weight over her, pressing her down.
"Please," she begged, and suddenly she was in his arms, burying her face in the crook of his naked shoulder. His bare body covered hers, the tip of his shaft bumping her where his fingers had been.
"I'm the one who should be saying please." He kissed the side of her head above her ear, waiting to join them together until she met his gaze. His loving gaze.
"I've never wanted anything in my life more," he confessed.
"I know exactly how you feel."
They melted together slowly. She wrapped her legs around him, open to him. To the unhurried press of his body penetrating hers, stretching her. Pain snapped as he inched deeper and he kissed in sympathy until the discomfort passed. And still they were melting into each other, his thickness filling her until she could take no more and he was buried hilt-deep. He brushed the hair from her eyes, breathless, and began to rock her.
She moved with him, with each delicious, wonderful thrust and wrapped her arms tight around him. Whispering her name, he buried his face in her shoulder, as if overcome by emotion, too. They moved together in the darkness, lost in their love, two hearts beating as one. She surrendered to him completely, the fire within her building until the heat became unbearable. She shattered into a million pieces. Love burst within her so great it brought tears to her eyes and blurred the stars above. She held him as he came, too, burying his face in her neck and shoulder, whispering her name on a broken sigh.
What a sweet man.
Chapter Fifteen
His boots kicked up dust as he hiked down the rural West Virginia road. Sweat broke out on the back of his neck at the hot kiss of the late day sun. He'd been walking for days. Thirst tickled in his throat. Hunger gurgled in his stomach.
Maybe he should have stayed in the army. At least he would have had meals and a job, even if it was fighting Indians. His conscription had ended a week ago, and he'd been glad to leave the violence behind. With his time served, he didn't know what his future held. He hoped more than anything to earn a second chance with his parents.
He heard the town before he saw it. The clatter of horses, the creak and rattle of wagons and the thump of lumber being offloaded at the lumberyard. Shady trees lined the streets of the genteel shops, struggling to hide their shabbiness from the hardship the war had brought.
He turned up the street where houses sat surrounded by grass and leafy trees. He was nervous, meeting his parents. It wasn't easy knowing he'd be facing them for the first time since the end of his trial.
He tried to remember the good things. His father's strictness, how he smoked cigars and smelled of the grease he used at his wagon repair business. His mother liked to bake, liked pretty breakable things to collect for her what-not shelves, who always scolded him to take his boots off when he came into the house.
There it was. The little yellow cottage with the white trim. Fear trickled through him as he hesitated at the gate, trying to figure out what to say. A lot of time had passed. Maybe they'd regretted their decision.
Might as well do it, he thought. He'd come all this way, no sense in turning back now.
His boots tapped on the stone walkway. He hadn't been this scared since he'd been dumped on the front line with the other convicts, given a gun and told to start marching into battle. His knees wobbled a bit as he stood in front of the door and knocked, his pulse drumming in his ears.
The door swung open. Ma stood there, her sweet face rimmed by gray curls. Time had made its mark, but her apple cheeks were still the same, her eyes still bright. Until she recognized him.
"Hi, Ma." He felt awkward. Too big. Too tall. Like he was still wearing prison garb.
Her face crinkled with dismay. "What— What—" She seemed too upset to say anything more.
Whatever hope he had, it died. Her dismay turned to disgust. Disgust to revulsion.
There would be no reunion, no forgiveness, no mercy.
"Who's at the door, Marta?" Pa came into view. He stood in the threshold, weathered, wizened and smaller than the man Dakota remembered. John Black drew himself up like an affronted bear. "What are you doin' here?"
"I thought—" He swallowed, uncertain. "I missed you. I thought maybe you missed me, too."
"We haven't thought of you in years. You're dead to us. Dead and buried." Pa's face hardened. "After what you did to that girl? The man who did that couldn't have been my son."
His mother broke into a sob. She spun away and disappeared into the house. Dakota swallowed hard, his Adam's apple sticking in his throat.
"Never show your face around here again. Do you understand?" Cold, midnight blue eyes fastened on his own. Pa had always been a hard man with little forgiveness in him, but Dakota had hoped. He had nothing else in this world but hope.
Now it was gone, too.
A bruising hand grasped his shoulder from behind like an iron cuff. A lawman stood on the step. "You aren't welcome in this town, boy."
He supposed it was only a matter of time before the law showed up. He'd been asking directions in town. Lawmen always had a way of finding him.
"Don't worry, Deputy." He met the lawman's gaze. A tin badge and the assumed mantle of authority didn't intimidate him. He'd survived brutal prison cellmates, war, and when it was over, Indian battles. "I'll be gone by sundown."
"You'll be gone now." The lawman escorted him down the steps. "You've caused those nice people in there enough hurt. They moved here to get away from their lives in Green Bluff. They couldn't walk down the street for the shame you caused them. I don’t want that happening here."
"Neither do I." He couldn't get the sound of his mother's sobs out of his head. He stumbled down the walk and into the street, breaking the lawman's grip on him.
"Monster." The sheriff spat. "They should have hung you like you deserved. Keep going and don't look back. You should never be able to touch another girl again."
Dakota woke with a start in the twilight before dawn. Kit lay tucked against his side, her hand on his chest, her legs tangled with his. Still asleep.
Good. He hadn't disturbed her. He ran a hand over his sweaty face and let the crisp morning air cool him. The tangle of emotions took a while to dissipate. He watched the last stars fight against the coming day, fiercely twinkling in the gray sky. Kit slept on, breathing quietly, her thick gold hair tumbling acro
ss her shoulders and hiding the swell of her bare breasts.
Last night. He squinched his eyes shut, not wanting to face what he'd done. Loving her had been perfect. The highlight of his life.
But he had regrets. What had felt right in the dark looked differently in the morning. He'd wanted her mightily, and he still did. But what if he were wrong about his luck? The nightmare haunted him as he carefully untangled himself from her, slid out from beneath the blankets and stepped into his clothes, pulled on his boots.
She made the prettiest image sleeping in his bedroll, her hand on his pillow, bathed in pre-dawn light. He never wanted to leave. He'd give anything to marry her, raise a family with her, do his best to make her happy for the rest of her days. If it were a different world—if he were a different man—he could promise her those things beyond a doubt.
But he couldn't. He hung his head, made himself walk away from her. The memory of that day with his parents stole the joy he'd found last night in Kit's arms.
Birds began to awaken, singing their morning songs as he stood hands on hips at the corral. The mare slept heavily, but her foal lifted her perfect little head, ears up, bushy mane and bright eyes watching him above the grass tips.
"Hey, good girl," he crooned, determined to win her over.
She blinked her long curly lashes.
The eastern horizon changed from gray to hints of gold. Birds everywhere sang in a crescendo—the trill of larks, the tweet of sparrows, the caw of bluebirds, heralding in the dawn. Last night couldn't be undone, and he wouldn't want it to. Kit was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
* * *
She woke in the muted glow of dawn, tucked warmly in blankets, the wool coarse against her bare skin. A hint of Dakota's warmth remained, although she was alone. He must be with the horses. She stretched, her body sated and relaxed and wonderfully alive. Memories of last night drifted through her mind, of how he'd clung to her, her name on his lips during his release. How he'd held her and kissed her tenderly afterward. How they'd made love again until late in the night, making time stand still.
