by Texas Lover
His lips grazed her temple. When he settled behind her once more, he folded her inside the sweetest, most tender embrace she'd ever known. Sickness, worry, and resistance melted from her mind, leaving her free to relax in his arms and to let his heartbeats lull her.
She must have dozed. Her eyes flew open with a start, and she realized the candle had guttered. Or maybe Wes had blown it out. She could see him standing bare chested and barefooted, gazing pensively out her window. The sickle moon, curving like a knowing smile among the magnolia leaves, threw his chiseled features into silver and charcoal shadows. She guessed the sound of the folding shutters must have woken her, for he'd pushed them back to join the curtains, which fluttered on a breeze. She couldn't help but notice how that whisper of wind stirred his hair, riffling the neatly cropped strands like harvest grasses.
He must have sensed she was watching him. When he turned, one short, damp curl fell endearingly across his forehead.
"I was hot," he explained sheepishly.
She realized she'd kicked off the quilt. Although she was clothed in nothing more than her chemise and bloomers, the room was just warm enough to make her want to strip naked for added coolness. The thought of him watching her made her flesh burn.
"What time is it?" she asked.
"Nine, I reckon."
"I thought you'd be gone by now."
He padded closer. "And leave you here sick?"
Sitting beside her, he stretched his big, callused hand to her forehead. The idea of the ferocious Ranger playing nursemaid made her smile.
"I'm feeling better. I must have slept."
He nodded. "How about your belly?"
His palm shifted to the waistband of her bloomers. In spite of the innocence of his touch, the weight of his hand stirred her stomach in ways that had nothing at all to do with illness.
"I'm fine," she said a little breathlessly. "Really."
"Good."
She decided she'd be wise to sit up, but his arm wrapped her waist, folding her against him as he lay behind her once more. This time, she wasn't quite as weary... or relaxed. The intimacy of his naked chest against her bared shoulder blades jolted sensations of pleasure—and warning—down her spine.
"You... don't need to stay with me anymore," she said, her throat constricting as she forced out the words.
"I want to, darlin'." His fingers strummed her ribs, massaging the last of the sore spots left by the whalebone corset. "I want to very much."
His lips brushed her cheek. She shifted uneasily as heat pooled between her buttocks and his thighs. She remembered the last time he'd held her, and how his gentleness had wooed her beyond all reason.
"Wes..."
"Hmm?"
His thumb slyly brushed the muslin shielding her nipple. She bit her lip, feeling the forbidden tingle as she hardened and jutted with wanton abandon into the welcoming warmth of his palm.
"We can't become lovers, Wes."
She imagined his smile as he nuzzled her hair.
"We already are."
His answer disconcerted her for a moment, and he took unfair advantage, tugging with enticing slowness on the drawstring of her bloomers.
"No, I mean—" She broke off, shivering with delight as his tongue snaked inside her ear.
"What do you mean?" he prompted in a husky whisper.
"I mean... not now."
She gritted her teeth. She had meant to say, "not again," but her tongue had betrayed her somehow. "Wes, please. The children—Shae—they'll be home soon."
"Then I'd say 'now' is the very best time, darlin'. Wouldn't you?"
His hand slid beneath her waistband, his warm palm gliding over her goose-prickling flesh. She tried to catch his wrist to end his provocative prowling. Her upper arm, though, was barred by the bicep that stretched across her hips, and her lower arm had tangled in a corner of the quilt. Desperately she fought off the languorous heat lapping at her.
"Wes, please—" In spite of herself, she loosed a throttled groan, feeling the telltale dampness on his fingertips as they teased the lush, swollen folds of her womanhood.
"I want you, Rorie."
She squeezed her eyes closed. She wanted him too. But she wanted so much more of him than stolen moments in a barn or on a mattress.
"Spread your legs for me," he urged.
She swallowed, but the lump in her throat remained.
"I know what you want, Rorie," he crooned in that same insidiously seductive voice. "I know what you like, and what you need. Let me love you."
"Oh, Wes." Tears stung her eyelids, threatening to steal her vision. "Then what?"
"Then I'll love you again," he murmured, dipping his finger inside her heating mound. "And again," he said when she arched, gasping. "I'll sheath myself inside the molten honey of your body." His plunging, serpentine strokes were milking away the last of her restraint. "I'll fill you with the life of me until we're both too tired to breathe."
He hooked a heel around her ankle, opening her thighs wider. She squirmed in sinful delight, her hips pitching helplessly against the steamy prison of his arousal.
"When you fall asleep," he promised, his voice sounding ragged above her harsh breathing, "you'll be fused to my body. You'll dream of my scent and my tang, only it won't be a dream, sweetheart, 'cause you'll wake to my wooing. Then I'll love you again 'til you flame, crying out my name in your wild, burning need for me."
"Oh, God," she gasped. She couldn't help herself. She didn't know what made her hotter: the words he'd growled into her ear or the spark he'd fanned into a bonfire between her legs.
She was quaking now, the cries of her reason consumed by a raging wildfire. "Wes, please," she whimpered. "Let me touch you."
He rolled her over, his mouth crushing hers as his weight pressed her down. The short, swift stabs of his tongue mimicked the snaking rhythm below that was driving her to a forbidden frenzy. Feverishly she groped for his belt, then slipped the buckle and shimmied his jeans from his hips.
"That's it. Make me yours, Rorie. I'm all yours."
He rose on his free arm, kneeling above her as she quivered, satiny wet with his expert petting.
"Now take off your bloomers."
She didn't think twice; she simply obeyed. His lips slanted once more across hers, sucking her tongue deep into the velvet pressures of his mouth. She tried to peel off her chemise, but his body weighted her down again. His left hand stretched her opposite hand above her head, and his fingers twined through hers, much like the first time they'd made love. This time, however, she dimly realized her right hand was useless, trapped outside their bodies.
"Wes—"
"Yes, lover?"
He rubbed his hips against hers in an ancient enticement. He was slick and hard, like satin steel, sliding with merciless patience against the moist, soft tangle of her hair.
"Please... don't... tease," she panted.
"No teasing," he agreed, the words throbbing with an earthy cadence. "But first, you have to make a promise."
"A promise?"
With catlike delicacy he kneaded the twitching knot he'd coaxed from her pool of satin fire.
"Just a little promise," he amended silkily, his breath hot and wet against her ear. "Meet me tomorrow at midnight. In the springhouse."
"Wes, I can't—"
The rhythm of his hand changed: hard, deep thrusts, followed by leisurely withdrawals. She nearly crawled out of her skin at the sensation. When she tried to bring herself to climax, he changed his motions again. He seemed to know exactly how much to snake or thrust without pushing her over the edge. No matter how she twisted or strained, she couldn't get his dancing fingers to rub her pleasure bud again.
"It's too dangerous," she croaked, helpless to loose the volcanic explosion that steamed and seethed inside her.
"I'll protect you, sugar. You just come. Or rather," he taunted, his voice raspy, "I'll see to that. You promise to be there. I promise you'll be blissfully happy afterward."
/> She half sobbed at his wicked banter. God forgive her, she wanted him so.
But there was more at stake now than ever before. She had thrown her heart to the wind the first time, and it had come back to her in pieces. She couldn't bear to pick the fragments up again.
"Wes, I want... to meet with you. I do," she admitted between shuddering gasps. "But I'm... too afraid to let myself care for you."
"I know," He gentled his petting, giving her the tiniest reprieve. "Me too."
"You are?" She blinked, trying to see past her smoking desire. Was he speaking truth or more lies to raze her defenses?
His smile was dark and potently male, a feral, flesh-tingling expression with just a trace of entreaty.
"Baby, you've got me so tangled up inside I don't know which end is up. But I do know one thing: We've been given a chance. A moment in time. That's all anyone ever gets, Rorie."
She trembled, dangerously swayed by his reasoning, while he continued to caress her. A glittering starburst splintered through her. Like fragments of suns, it dimmed before it was allowed to shine. He kept dipping, milking, teasing her out of her mind, giving her glimpses of heaven while she teetered on the brink of hell.
She groaned. Her breaths fragmented over his name, and he kissed her voraciously, possessing her mouth with a tender violence that left her gasping and begging for more. Maybe he was right, she realized dimly. Maybe it was time to steal some happiness for herself, to hold the man she loved in her arms, to make memories that would last through the years after he rode away forever.
"Be my lover, Rorie," he insisted. "Fill my arms like you fill my dreams. Come to me. Promise. Promise me now."
"I promise, Wes."
"Finally."
The swift, silken hardness of him thrust deep. Wave after wave of white-hot fire ripped through her, and she cried out, straining upward. He silenced her with his mouth, taking her again and again with his tongue. Shuddering, she sank, dissolving into tiny, erratic sparks of sensation.
Finally, he set her mouth free, and she gulped greedily at air. Several minutes passed before she could gather her wits enough to realize he was watching her, every part of him bow taut with stillness except for the hammering of his heart. When their eyes at last locked, his heavy lidded and gleaming, he gave her his devilish, off-center smile and shifted inside her once more.
Her breaths unraveled all over again.
"You... You're still—"
"Powerful hot," he drawled, his voice rolling through her on an ocean wave of sound. "Not that I'm complaining. I love to watch you go all shameless and wild."
Her cheeks flamed, and he grinned, lowering his head. His dancing, hypnotic eyes held hers prisoner.
"A beauty like you can sure take a lot of pleasure from a man. I reckon I'll have to conserve my strength to keep all my promises. Even a young whippersnapper like me can only do this three or four times a night."
She knew her eyes had bugged out. "Three or four times?"
"My record is five."
"Five?"
He chuckled at her embarrassment. She didn't know whether his boast was a tall tale or not.
"But you must have been making love all night long!"
"Uh-huh."
He moved again, sweetly, seductively, his eyes alight with a mischievous glow that stole into the cracks of her heart and mended the pieces. "You weren't planning on getting any sleep tonight were you, lover?"
Later, as they lay twined and sated, they listened to the thunder of tiny footsteps on the porch and a childishly loud, "Shh!"
They had to smother giggles as Po, undaunted, ran up the stairwell shouting "bang bang," and Topher muttered an oath. A thud and a clatter was followed by a suspicious "ribbit" and a scrabbling from somewhere near the landing.
Ginevee caught up with the boys then, demanding the surrender of both the toy gun and the bullfrog.
Merrilee whispered something about catching flies for Elwood on the morrow, and Topher sullenly agreed.
The general commotion of clothes shedding was shortly followed by the murmur of prayers, the closing of doors, and the creaking of mattresses. At last the house was quiet.
Rorie released the breath she felt like she'd been holding for a quarter of an hour, but her guilt ebbed magically away when she ventured a glance into her lover's eyes. Behind his amusement glowed a warmth and a yearning that made her heart turn over.
"Thank you, Rorie. For letting me stay," he murmured, holding her close and kissing her with a lingering trace of passion.
Smiling contentedly, she lay her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, letting his gentle hands soothe her into sleep. She dreamed she saw Apollo dressed in a Stetson and spurs. He climbed out her window with the coming dawn, leaving her with flowers and the sweetest good-bye:
"I love you, Rorie."
When she woke at last, sighing happily from her dream, the sun had risen and Wes was gone.
But on the pillow, in the hollow where his head had rested, lay one perfect, dew-kissed magnolia—the first of the season.
Chapter 19
For the next two weeks, Rorie fairly floated through her days. Never in her life had she dreamed of such happiness. Making love to Wes was the most exhilarating, blessedly uplifting experience she'd ever known. She looked forward to their nights with a giddy, schoolgirlish excitement that left her too intoxicated for guilt or shame—or for practical considerations of the future.
At the stroke of midnight, without fail, she would sneak out the door, her blood fizzing through her veins like cherry sarsaparilla. Sometimes they'd meet in the springhouse. Other times they'd meet well out of sight and sound of the house, making love beneath the vast diamond field of the sky.
Her favorite rendezvous of all was Ramble Creek. She had to play the odds, then—a titillating proposition in itself—trusting her feet could carry her fast enough through the flower-studded meadow before Shae or one of his friends noticed her fleeing in the moonlight. Wes and Two-Step would be waiting for her at the woods' edge, and frankly, she didn't always get much farther.
At other times, he'd launch an insidious assault on her senses while she, a sitting duck behind his saddle horn, would tingle and tremble and squirm in feverish delight between the steamy prison of his thighs. On those nights, it was she who begged him to rein in and lay her down beneath the cedar canopy. He, however, wicked prankster that he was, always teased her without remorse, making her wait for whatever "surprise" he'd arranged for her pleasure beneath the limestone cliff that guarded the grassy banks of Ramble Creek.
In truth, Wes was full of erotic surprises. She'd thought that touching him, kissing him, holding him deep inside her, could never be surpassed by any feeling known to woman. She'd been wrong.
That second night, in the springhouse, she'd been surrounded by the flickering glow of at least two dozen candles, and the sweet, heady perfume of crushed rose petals on his bedroll.
The fourth night, in the meadow, he'd presented her with the most exquisite white eagle feather she'd ever seen. When, in her wide-eyed innocence, she asked what the feather was for, he'd flashed his fallen-angel's grin and dusted the feather across the pouting, sensitized nub of her breast.
"Oh, I'm sure you can come up with all kinds of uses, lover," he'd drawled.
Then came their first night by the creek. Stripping her naked on his lap, he'd treated her to a feast of blackberries and cream. Rorie still flushed and shivered by turns whenever she recalled those velvet droplets oozing down her skin, and the hot, wet sizzle of his tongue against her flesh. When he pulled her down to sheath his arousal in her, filling her with the sweet, sticky fruit of earth and man, she'd felt like Eve with her very own garden serpent.
As much as she enjoyed his bawdy ingenuity, though, she enjoyed learning all the ways to please him more. Every time she watched his eyelids flutter closed with the pleasure of her petting, every time she felt the pulsing shudders of his life force, or heard him gasp and groan her
name, she soared to a new height in heaven. She didn't think it was possible to love a man so much.
She didn't think it was possible to fear losing him so much, either.
When he was apart from her, even during the most joyful moments, Rorie still struggled with the niggling doubt that he might never return. As midnight crept nearer, she would worry he might forget their rendezvous, that he would be detained in town—or worse, that the bullet of some wisecracking upstart would keep him from ever coming again.
When she dared to broach her insecurities, he'd laughed at them.
"Darlin', Satan himself couldn't keep me from you. Not for long, anyway."
He smirked, and her stomach fluttered. How could he speak so lightly of the permanence that was death?
"Aw, sugar." Pulling her across the rumpled wools and crumpled honeysuckle petals that covered his bedroll that night, he wrapped his big body around her. "Don't worry. I'm not about to let some two-bit moonshiner gun me down.
"Speaking of which..." His eyes danced like silver flames in the shimmering starlight. "We've got some celebrating to do."
She tried to put on a brave face. "We do?"
"Sure. I found young Dukker's still."
Her breath wedged in her throat. Considering that his discovery brought him one step closer to riding away forever, she found it hard to rejoice at his news.
"That's wonderful." She strived for a note of sincerity. "Where is it?"
He gave her a knowing, sidelong glance.
"Well..." Plucking a strand of meadow grass from her hair, he let it blow from his palm on a gust of westbound wind. "It's in a place near and dear to your heart, darlin'. Why don't you try and guess."
She didn't want to dampen his enthusiasm. "Cincinnati?" she joked weakly.
He chuckled. "Not this particular still, although I'm sure your Yankee neighbors have their fair share hidden on the Ohio River somewhere. Guess again, Queen City girl."
She smiled to hear him use the nickname of her birthplace. Most Texicans knew little about the lands beyond their borders, and they cared even less. How on earth had she ever let him bamboozle her into thinking he couldn't read?
