The Lover

by Genell Dellin

  He could not have asked May to quit all that and get Susanna out of her clothes when, after all, everyone thought he was her husband, and there was no reason a husband couldn’t do that. But he did wish he hadn’t had to do it because, try as he would, he couldn’t get the brief—he had tried, gallantly, to keep his glance averted—glimpse of her naked beauty out of his mind.

  Which was a travesty and totally unworthy of him as a human being, considering the upset state she was in.

  He cradled her head in one hand and pulled her closer with the other, caressing her back in circles. She was shaking all over, more than just trembling, clinging to him as if this were the moment she could drown.

  As if he, and only he, could save her from this river of tears.

  It made him feel helpless and all-powerful both at the same time.

  “Poor Tolly,” she said, muttering the words against his neck, “he worked so hard on the bridge.”

  Her lips moving against his skin stirred him, made him gather her even closer.

  “He was always so cheerful,” she said. “He shouldn’t have died.”

  “Tolly was going up the trail,” he soothed. “He knew there’d be rivers to cross.”

  She tilted her head back suddenly, to look at him. In the darkness of the tent, he couldn’t see into her eyes, but he could see them flash.

  “I don’t care,” she cried. “I’ve spent five years learning how to be strong.”

  Her vehemence surprised him.

  So did the fact that she pulled away and scrambled to sit up. She pulled her quilt around her and sat looking down at him. He sat up, too.

  “Everett always tried to make me think I couldn’t live a month without him, but I have done everything and I have survived on my own.” A deep sob racked her but she wouldn’t let it stop her. “I have even held on to my ranch,” she said, in a fierce tone he’d never heard before, “and I know now that I can take my own cattle up the trail. But I couldn’t save Tolly.”

  “Susanna, you’re not God,” he said.

  “I know that,” she cried, “but I had him in my hand! And he was good to me! He treated me like an equal. I should’ve been able to…”

  The tears began again, in earnest.

  He wanted to hold her again. He ached to take her into his arms. He felt lonesome without her closeness.

  He reached out to brush back her hair. Loose and wild, her hair was beautiful. Even here, with no light, it caught some moonlight through the wall of the tent.

  “You did all you could,” he said. “It’s ridiculous to blame yourself.”

  She hit her knee with her fist.

  “I saved myself, didn’t I? Well, then, I should’ve held on to him…”

  He touched her cheek, beneath the swinging curtain of her hair.

  “This isn’t like you,” he said. “Usually you’re pretty sensible. Like when you hired me. You knew that you had to hire a man for your trail boss.”

  “That wasn’t sensible,” she said. “It was nothing but sheer, stupid necessity because nobody would work for me…”

  He tried to look at her, but she hung her head and her hair swung down.

  “‘Now I know I can take my own cattle up the trail,’” he said, quoting her. “Don’t you agree that it was sensible to hire someone who’d been up the trail before? Isn’t that the reason you think you know how to do it now?”

  She looked up and tossed her hair back over her shoulder.

  “Well, yes. And I am a sensible person.”

  “I know you are,” he said.

  “But I should’ve saved him,” she repeated stubbornly.

  Eagle Jack wanted to shout his frustration. He wanted to grab her and kiss it away.

  He wanted to hold her again and kiss all the words in the world away.

  “This conversation’s going nowhere,” he said roughly. “It’s stupid. You nearly got killed trying to save Tolly.”

  She began to cry again.

  “I just…”

  “It’s a terrible thing when any man dies,” he said impatiently, “especially a good man. It unsettles us all. But you didn’t even know Tolly.”

  “That’s not even the point,” she cried. “That’s not it.”

  “Then what is? Why are you blaming yourself for his death?”

  She looked down again and shook her head.

  “I just think that…”

  The answer hit him then, coming together from the echoes in his head. Everett. Her ranch. She’d survived. On her own.

  He thought about that for a minute.

  “Susanna,” he said softly.

  She turned her face up to his.

  “You can still survive on your own,” he said.

  “You swam to the bank and saved yourself. No matter whatever happens, you can survive as long as you believe you can.”

  He leaned to her and cradled her face in his hands. “You just can’t work miracles, that’s all.”

  She made a tantalizing little sound, deep in her throat, like a cross between a laugh and a cry. “Oh, Eagle Jack,” she said, “you’re such a comfort to me.”

  When she threw her arms around his neck he was already kissing her, bending down to find her mouth with his, gathering her into his arms. He drew her onto his quilt and pulled hers around them with one hand, falling deeper and deeper back onto the grassy-smelling earth with her into the magical world of her bare skin against his.

  Her warm, smooth body quivered against his, called to his, greeted his with the galloping drumming of her heart. And with the sweet, honeyed taste of her tongue.

  Susanna’s blood began a deep, vibrating rhythm in her veins that she had never known lived there before.

  “Susanna,” he murmured, “sweet Susanna.”

  The low, ringing tone of his voice stroked her body as surely as his hands were doing. It floated in the tent and wrapped around her like the smoke.

  She let herself run her palms over Eagle Jack’s skin, as helpless to stop learning the rise and fall of his muscles and the strong, angled structure of his bones as she was to take her mouth away from his. His tongue, his lips, talked to her without words and she answered in the same ways, openhearted.

  Then he pulled away, just far enough to speak.

  “Susanna,” he said, “are you sure you want this? Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes! I need you, Eagle Jack.”

  He stroked her sides with his open hands, hands rough with calluses on the outside, yet gentle as a falling leaf. His thumbs brushing, barely brushing, her breasts, then his fingers warming her ribs and firmly caressing her hips, once and twice more, he seemed to be laying claim to her.

  That’s what she thought until his mouth left hers and his hands tangled in her hair and he began to plant a trail of kisses down her throat. Burning his brand onto her skin, it must be that, he was so deliberate about it.

  Helpless, she arched her body up for more, her breasts begging for the touch of his hands, for the pleasure of his mouth, her whole self trembling beneath him. He trembled, too, then, and gave a great sigh of longing as he rose up above her, bending his head to take her distended nipple into his mouth.

  She thrust her fingers into his hair and held him there, she could not get enough of this closeness, this intimacy, this far-gone purest pleasure that she had ever felt. She would never move again because this, this was all she would ever want.

  “Eagle Jack,” she murmured, “yes. Oh, yes.”

  Her hands became voracious, wanting all of him, needing to explore every inch of him, demanding to claim him as he was claiming her. Dimly, a thought flashed that that might not be a good thing. Then it was gone.

  Eagle Jack was hers and she was his.

  This was right. She was more alive at that moment than she had ever been in her whole life before and that was true because she was with Eagle Jack. This was meant to be.

  That was her last conscious thought. He moved his mouth to hers again, despe
rately, insistently, while his hands brought her breasts to ecstasy, and they went rushing headlong into the night.

  His big body wrapped around her, his hands and mouth set fires intensely burning, and she was melting, flesh and bones, until she no longer had the strength or the sense to breathe. He slipped one of his long thighs between her own.

  He gathered her to him, and held her closer than close before he pressed his mouth to her ear.

  “I have to do this,” he said urgently, and then buried his face in her hair, kissing the side of her neck and then lifting the mass of it to spread across the blanket beneath her head. “Your hair is like moonlight and sunshine,” he whispered. “The moon and the sun both let you wear some of their light.”

  He leaned over her, on his elbows, to kiss her again. The hard peaks of her breasts brushed his harder chest.

  She moaned.

  “Eagle Jack…”

  “Not yet,” he said, and planted a line of kisses down the side of her neck and over the curve of her shoulder.

  It made her cry out. Her breasts needed his mouth, and her belly, and her thighs—they needed his hands.

  “You’re torturing me,” she said, and he smiled against her mouth and kissed it again.

  Then he stopped and looked down at her. Dimly, she could see his smile.

  Vaguely, somewhere in the far reaches of her mind, she realized that it was lighter in the tent. The moonlight was getting brighter because the moon had dropped lower in the sky. Morning would be here soon.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but that she was aching for him and reaching for him and he was teasing her.

  She lifted her head and nipped his lower lip, then she traced its shape with the tip of her tongue.

  His mouth fell onto hers and devoured it, her hand took his and put it on her womanhood. He traced his own golden fire there.

  “Eagle Jack,” she demanded.

  He came into her as unerringly as that Grandfather Moon of his washed light over the land. They melded in that very same, sure and eternal way.

  Susanna clung to him and buried her face in the hollow of his neck and moved with him to leave the earth itself. She wrapped herself tighter around him and they rose higher and higher to meet the moon in his path.

  When it was over and they lay sated, gazing into each other’s eyes, his leg thrown over hers as if to pin her to the earth again, she traced the line of his cheekbones with her thumb. She was cradling his cheek in her hand.

  “The cattle drifted downriver,” she said. “Where are we, Eagle Jack?”

  He smiled a slow, slow smile.

  “Together.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. Tears stung her eyes.

  All she could do was drop a kiss into the hollow in the middle of his chest and smile back at him.

  He gave a great sigh and gathered her to him and he held her while he began to drift off to sleep. She felt his heartbeat slow beneath her ear and his breath go deeper and deeper as his body relaxed against hers. All but the iron bands of the muscles in his arms, because those never wavered. They folded her close to him and kept her there as if they’d never let her go.

  They suffused her whole body with what felt like a golden glow, a warm safety that she’d dreamed of all her life. Everett had never held her like that.

  Everett had never made love to her like that, either. He couldn’t have done so, even if he’d known that such a different world existed.

  Eagle Jack had held her and touched her and talked to her as if he loved her. It scared her to even think the word, but it was the only one that even came close to describing this new experience that he had given her. This must be what it was like when people really loved each other.

  He’d certainly been hurting right along with her about Tolly. Not only that, but Eagle Jack had looked into her heart and seen the fear that she was keeping silent—the fear that she was weakening, that she wouldn’t be able to survive on her own anymore.

  It seemed to her that one person would nearly have to love the other in order to sense something like that. It was definitely true that he’d been interested in who she was, that he’d been observing her and learning her personality all along, every day, or he’d never have known what else she was feeling.

  But she shouldn’t be thinking about love. She didn’t want to think about love.

  Loving someone, especially loving each other, brought on questions and decisions about the rest of people’s lives and where they would live and it brought talk of marriage. She had her freedom now. She would never marry again.

  Susanna smiled to herself. She didn’t have to think about all that. She didn’t have to think at all.

  What she would do was close her mind to every future and past and just lie here and live in the present. Right now she would enjoy being safe and happy in Eagle Jack’s arms.

  The day was creeping up on them, for the camp was starting to stir. She heard the hiss of the fire and the jingle of spurs and somebody’s low-pitched voice.

  But none of it mattered. She was in a place that was safe and warm. She and Eagle Jack were together.

  When Susanna woke, Eagle Jack was gone. The flap of the tent stood open to let in a little breeze, and if it hadn’t been for that, she’d have been even sweatier beneath the heavy quilt. The sun beating down on the canvas felt as hot as the middle of summer.

  She sat up with a start. It was noon or thereabouts. Why weren’t they on the trail? Had the cattle scattered over a wide range?

  A cold hand clutched her stomach. Had they lost more men than Tolly?

  Wearing the quilt like a cloak, she scrambled up and looked for her clothes. The tent was empty except for the quilt Eagle Jack had used and Susanna’s leather hat.

  She ducked out through the open flap. Her chuck wagon was there beside the fire and the clothes and boots she’d worn the day before lay spread out on the grass nearby. She went to get them.

  “Well, it’s about time you got up, you lazybones,” Maynell said.

  Susanna turned to see her coming into camp with her apron full of wild onions. The smell of slow-cooking beef came from the pot. “Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked, snatching up all her articles of clothing and turning toward the tent. “May, why aren’t we getting back on the trail? How bad are they scattered?”

  Maynell proceeded calmly to the back of the chuck wagon and began washing the onions.

  “Bad enough,” she said dryly. “We’ve got cattle scattered from here to the Indian Territories.”

  “Then I need to be helping to find them,” Susanna said.

  Giving a little to her sore foot, she hurried back into the tent and started to dress. She pulled on her camisole and then raised her voice so Maynell could hear her.

  “I can’t believe Eagle Jack didn’t wake me and you didn’t, either!”

  She thrust her arms into her blouse and started buttoning it up.

  “He gave me strict orders not to wake you,” Maynell called back. “He said that you came to once in the night but you were so worn out and torn up about it all, you had to sleep some more.”

  Susanna felt the heat of a blush flood her face and neck.

  “I don’t think that man slept a wink for watching over you,” Maynell said.

  Susanna stepped into her pantaloons and riding skirt, then pulled on socks and stepped into her still-damp boots. Her foot did hurt, but it wasn’t really bad.

  “That was very nice of him,” Susanna said.

  Her boot was cut in the same place as the gash in her foot, probably by a tossing horn, but it would have to hold together until the drive was over. She had another pair, but not with heels high enough to stay in the stirrup.

  Ignoring the pain, she stepped outside again, fastening her waistband as she went.

  “Listen to me, Missy,” Maynell said, looking Susanna in the eye, “next time your husband spends the night in your tent, I don’t care how tired and wrung out you are, if you want to keep him,
you best stay awake and entertain him, you know what I mean?”

  Susanna looked back at her.

  “I haven’t been liking it one bit for him to sleep out with the men for night guard,” May said, “and now that we’ve thrown these two crews together he don’t have to do that anymore.”

  Maynell was half teasing and half serious about what she’d said but she was also trying to see Susanna’s state of mind. May knew her well enough to know Susanna was upset over Tolly and May was trying to find out how much so and to distract her from that.

  Well, there was work to be done, so she would let herself be distracted. And she would return the favor, for Maynell herself looked pretty drawn around the eyes.

  “Thank goodness you don’t know everything, Maynell,” she said.

  Maynell stared at her. “Now, just exactly what do you mean by that, missy?”

  “Only that if I told you everything I know, then you’d know as much as I do,” Susanna said.

  “Hmpf.”

  “I’ve got to get to work,” Susanna said. “Where do I go to find the remuda?”

  Maynell waited for more information, but when Susanna only smiled at her, she finally gave up. “Over that hill there,” she said. “And once you’re mounted, go in any direction you pick and you’ll find cows running around and men chasing them.”

  “Two of my favorite things in the whole world,” Susanna said. “It’s a beautiful day for both.”

  She pulled her hat down and walked away, whistling for courage.

  “Better watch out,” Maynell called after her. “You know the old saying: ‘A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to some bad end.’”

  Susanna laughed and waved good-bye without turning around. Somehow, today, the life force felt much stronger than death—maybe because of the bright sunlight and the fresh-washed fragrance in the breeze.