Her hand wandered around to his back and encountered ridges of hard, gnarled flesh instead of the smooth masculine flesh covering banded muscles on his chest. The moment Shane became aware of her fingers there, he froze.
His tongue withdrew, as did his lips. He straightened, reaching for both her hands and pulling them in front of his chest. She tilted her head to study his face, focusing on a tiny tic beside his mouth, jumping and twitching. With a grin, she caught him by surprise and licked the tic with her tongue tip.
Something told her being serious about what she had felt on his back would send him running for Blackjack. Leave her alone her with no more idea than she had before about the depths to this man. The feelings he buried deep inside that huge body, which contained plenty of space for buried feelings.
As inexperienced as she was, she all at once knew how to hold him here, almost as though something whispered it to her. When he frowned at her, she giggled and slid onto his thigh, settling herself and cocking her head at him until her braid slid over her shoulder. Eyes locked with his, she tossed her hat to the ground and reached for the yarn holding the braid at the end, untying it and tossing it fluttering into the creek breeze.
Shane rewarded her unspoken speculation as to whether what she had in mind would succeed in keeping him with her. He licked his lips and unblinkingly watched her fingers unplait the braid. She took as long as she wanted, then ran fingers through her hair, which the shampoo Fatima supplied made even silkier and heavier than normal. Tossing her head, she scattered the platinum locks around her shoulders.
“Well?” she asked at last.
“Well, what?” he growled in a dry voice.
“What happened to your back, of course.” It wasn’t a question; it was a demand for information, and she tossed her head once more. This was rather nice, knowing she had such power over such a huge man. “If it bothers you for me to touch it while we’re touching each other, I can avoid it. There’s plenty of the rest of you to touch.”
He closed his eyes to elude her perceptive gaze. He still held her hands at chest level, and since she couldn’t use them to get his attention, she moved her leg. Still rigid and hard, as she knew he would be since her own pleasure lingered close to the surface, he appeared ready to explode with one new touch.
And that touch got his attention.
“Ellie—” But he bit off anything else.
So she stroked her leg against him like a cat seeking to be petted.
He groaned, and the object of her attention jumped against her leg.
“Ellie, you’ve got no idea what you’re doing to me.”
“I don’t,” she agreed. “But you yourself called me a woman a while ago. I guess I have the right to explore what that means.”
Releasing her hands, he grabbed her leg when it made another tentative foray. When he glared at her, she reflected perhaps she might be confronting an unmistakably wild lion this time, instead of the aged escapee from its cage the night they met. Sensing danger, she nonetheless welcomed it, because beneath everything lay the sure serenity that this man would never physically hurt her.
Maybe he might hurt her emotionally, she conceded. Worlds separated them, just like the tame lion and its free-roaming counterpart. But she was drawn to him with a fierce need, leaving no room for denial. It went well beyond the loneliness of her growing-up years. It went into her burgeoning desires to become her own woman, make her own life instead of existing on the fringes of someone else’s family.
“You haven’t even begun to explore, Ellie,” Shane breathed at last. “There’s a new world here that you have only touched the surface of.”
His hand on her thigh moved, his fingers stroking and inching upward. Her mouth dropped in astonishment and her eyes rounded in wonder. But only for a moment. The lassitude accompanying the return of pleasure spread over her body and her eyes drooped lazily.
“No, you don’t,” Shane murmured. “Open up and look at me.”
When she did, the sensation stunned her into near immobility. Between the fingers inching their way to the deep yearning between her legs and the depths of the longing and need in Shane’s gold-dust eyes, she nearly exploded with pleasure. At least, that’s what she thought was going to happen, and the fact that she didn’t set her wiggling on his thigh.
Then his fingers reached their mark, and she found what she hadn’t even known was missing. Found it with a vengeance, and never wanted to leave it. When she regained her senses, she lay over Shane’s arm as weak and helpless as a new-born kitten.
“Like that?” he whispered.
“Lordy, is that what it’s all about?” she forced out.
“Not completely,” he told her, an evil grin that didn’t scare her one iota on his face. “There’s more.”
“More?” Darn, she even sounded like a tiny kitten now, her voice meek and squeaky.
“Want me to show you?”
“Please.”
He picked her up as though she were a leaf floating down the creek and carried her over to a shady, grass-covered spot on the bank. Laying her down as though she were a precious bundle, he settled beside her and kissed her. Immediately she fell into a world containing only the pleasure of their two bodies. Shane kept her upper body occupied with his caresses and tongue, while he somehow removed her clothing at the same time. When she was naked and writhing against him, she demanded he take off his clothing in turn. Demanded it in a hoarse whisper she didn’t recognize at first as her own voice.
She never saw a man able to remove his boots so fast, but he only unbuttoned his shirt and let it hang. Through passion lazy eyes, she saw him reach for his jean buttons, and nimbly beat him to the mark.
“Ellie!” he growled in clear warning not to toy with him.
Which she ignored completely. Smirking, she slowly took her leisure with each individual button. By the time the last one was free—along with what they had hidden from her—her trepidation had her wondering if she had made a mistake. Surely the two of them would never fit together. It would be like trying to mate a pony and a draft horse.
Shane scooted his jeans down, then lay back beside her.
“You’re so tiny,” he said, voicing her fears. “But it will work. I promise you.”
“Oh, I surely hope so,” she breathed.
“God, it has to,” he said in return.
He bent his head and settled warm lips on her breast, and once again crawled his fingers to that spot between her thighs. The twin sensations sent her into a whirlwind of writhing once again, and when she next was aware of anything except her own body, Shane poised over her. Nudged her where his fingers had been a second ago.
“I’ll try not to hurt you any more than I have to, Ellie, my love. But I need you so badly, please don’t ask me to stop.”
An instinct as old as time wrapped Ellie’s legs around his hips. Shane nudged harder, his constraint and control so well in place, a drop of sweat fell from his forehead and hit Ellie on her cheek. His effort heightened her need for him to possess her completely rather than slacking it with fear.
She wrapped her legs tight, and Shane groaned with a sound so filled with craving it sated her sense of femininity and dominion over this huge man. She barely noticed the pain of his final thrust. But she felt his possession inside of her, felt it and gloried in it and willingly participated in his complete ownership of her entire being.
“Are you all right?” he asked through gritted teeth.
She answered him with her body, and he showed his gratitude by sending her pleasure swirling with his retreat and advance back inside her. She peaked once, then clenched her legs so tight around him that he couldn’t escape when he started thrusting faster. He rode with her this time, the sounds of their pleasure mixing and filling the world their bodies created for the two of them.
Chapter 15
Shane rolled to his back and gripped Ellie’s hand in his. His stentorian breathing calmed about the time Ellie comprehended how cl
osely her own exhalations matched his.
Were his eyes closed, too?
She opened hers, but without moving—an effort she couldn’t dredge up just then—she could only see high-up treetops and leaves against a brilliant blue, cotton-cloud dotted sky. It would take far too much additional effort to turn and study Shane.
He turned, but not a bit guilt at his generating that action when she couldn’t invaded her. After all, he was much larger.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Physically? She thought about it for a few seconds, mentally scanning her body. It lay collapsed with satiation around her mind, a testament to her femininity and Shane’s masculinity.
Emotionally? Ah, emotionally. To be honest, she didn’t want to deal with that right now. So many repercussions could result from the last hour or so.
“Physically or emotionally?” she responded.
“Both.”
She focused on a trembling cottonwood leaf, spotted, dry and dusty in the heat. “Physically, I never knew or even imagined it could be so beautiful. Emotionally? Scared to death. I never knew it could be so beautiful. You?”
“The same, although I’d add that I’ve never felt better in my life.” Shane traced her cheek with a tentative caress from his index finger. “Are you sorry?”
Finding her energy slowly seeping back, she turned toward him, cupping her cheek on a palm.
“Physically or emotionally?” she asked.
“Both,” he repeated.
“Physically, no. I’m very, very glad I became a woman at your hands. Emotionally? That remains to be seen, I guess. I just crossed a lot of lines, which I’ve been told would make a girl into a fallen woman if she crossed over them without the benefit of marriage.”
“We could—”
She slammed her hand over his mouth. “Don’t you dare offer to marry me.” Sitting up, she looked around for her blouse. She found it within retrieving distance, grabbed it and slipped it around her. Feeling a whole lot less exposed—physically and emotionally—she gazed at Shane again.
“I’m not blaming you for what happened, so don’t start carrying that load of guilt on top of whatever else you have on your mind.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Ellie.”
“No—”
He placed a finger on her lips. “Yes, you are. You were a virgin, and you had no idea that what we were doing could send us over the edge beyond stopping that quickly.”
Wiping his finger away, she frowned at him. “How many times have you practiced?”
“All of them were before you, so they don’t matter,” he replied, then chuckled wryly. “For that matter, it’s never happened that quickly with me, either. But...I knew what could happen. My only excuse is that I’ve never in my life wanted to make love to a woman as much as I wanted to make love to you just now. And I wanted it because it was you, Ellie. Not just because it was any woman, but because it was Ellie Parker I was holding. Ellie Parker I wanted to make love to so badly.”
She gazed at him solemnly, his words whirling in her mind. “Still, we’ve...well, put the cart before the horse, I guess,” she said with a sad smile. “We’ve made love before we courted and got to know each other. I supposed I could use the excuse that you weren’t going to be here that long. From what I do know about you, you’ll be going back to New York just as soon as you can complete your business here.”
Without answering, he brushed a long white curl of hair behind her shoulder with a tender caress, then lay back down beside her. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out cigarette makings, which he held negligently on his flat belly.
Wrapping her arms around her legs, Ellie propped her chin on her knees. His nonresponse—no, she admitted, his non-denial—cut her to the quick. Though what did she expect? She told him not to ask her to marry him, and that’s about the only way she would have a future with Shane Morgan.
Shane Morgan, though, had no use for a poor orphan girl from Texas for a wife. Especially one who might be suffering preliminary derangement.
She had successfully avoided Fatima the last couple days, but probably only because the fairy woman appeared to have her sights set on Withers and was busy with her own relationship. Ellie had a faint hope that, given the fact Withers also saw Fatima in her true state—evidently also watched her perform her magic and accepted it—perhaps maybe she wasn’t really going crazy.
She didn’t need that complication in her life.
She frowned. Of course, she only had Fatima’s word that Withers could see her true state.
She fervently wished Fatima would leave.
Suddenly a grating noise drew her gaze. The noise was a snore! Shane Morgan lay with his cheek pillowed on his arm, sound asleep. The cigarette makings scattered on his belly, and a gust of wind lifted the papers into the air like rectangular snowflakes.
Madder than a wet hen, Ellie scrambled to her feet. She slammed her hands on her hips and glared at him, realized her hips were naked and glared some more. Whirling, she splashed into the creek water and flung handfuls of water over herself, including the soreness between her legs. Despite her noisy bath, Shane never moved.
If this was how men acted after making love, she would be diddly darned if she ever gave him the chance again! At least, not with her.
Splashing out of the water, she dressed and went after Cinder. Even the gelding’s plodding hoofs when Ellie led him back to the creek bank to saddle him didn’t wake Shane.
Before she mounted, Ellie walked over and stared down at him, her teeth gritted in frustration. A sunbeam filtered through the cottonwoods, and she glanced at the sky. The sun was moving on its downward path, and shortly the cottonwood shadows would crawl past the creek bed, leaving the bank on this side unprotected from the heat. Shane’s body would burn in minutes.
Good, she told herself in satisfaction, noticing exactly where the sun would hit him first. Just then, he rolled over onto his stomach. Ellie gasped, and dropped Cinder’s reins to move even closer when she saw his shirt hem had caught on the far side of him, riding up to expose his back.
The livid scars and gnarled flesh looked too fresh to be very old. A sickly pink pucker against his untanned skin, they covered the right side of his back and shoulder, that hip and the underside of his arm. Whatever had happened also scarred his right hand, because she had already seen those marks. But these were much worse. Variegated ridges with smooth, nearly shiny areas interspersing them covered him, all the more repulsive because of the healthy skin on the other side of his body.
Once she had gone into the blacksmith’s shop on the outskirts of Fort Worth to ask him to fix a loose shoe on the horse she had ridden into town. The smithy, a freed Black slave, normally wore his shirt, but this day he had it draped around his waist and didn’t hear her approach. He had evidently been beaten as a young man, but thirty-five years after the war, he carried those whip marks, pale and gnarled against his ebony skin.
Shane’s scars looked similar, though enough different to make Ellie wonder how they had come about. Some of the areas almost looked like the spot on Cookie’s arm, where he inattentively spilled a pot of boiling water on himself one day.
Shane shifted in his sleep, and Ellie waited another few seconds to see if he would wake. When he didn’t, she bent forward and tugged his shirt loose to cover him. Then she mounted and rode toward the Leaning G.
Lately she shirked her duties an awfully lot. Seemed like every day she found some excuse to ride in off the range well before the day’s work should be over with.
* * * *
Shane stabled Blackjack in near darkness. He couldn’t believe he had slept so long. Why the hell hadn’t Ellie woken him?
Or had it all been a dream? A wonderful, beautiful dream.
No, it had been real—absolutely as real as possible. As real as the vibrant, wonderful sprite in his arms. The vibrant, wonderful woman in his arms.
But had she fled in embarrassment over her fir
st time at lovemaking and the loss of her virginity? He heard that women were like that the first time.
Or had she glimpsed his horror-filled body while he slept? He tossed and turned restlessly even in deep sleep since the accident, and he nearly always fell asleep after satiation. Especially a deep and satisfying satiation like he experienced with Ellie.
Crossing the yard, he walked around the side of the house to enter through the kitchen, assuming he would find Fatima there. He had noticed the buggy missing in the barn, so Elvina and Darlene must be gone into Fort Worth for the evening again. He didn’t know enough about their daily lives to figure out if this was normal for them or not, but seemed like they did a lot of gadding about while Ellie ran things and kept a roof over their heads.
He was going to have a talk with Ellie about that—among other things.
Entering the kitchen, he found it dark and empty, also. Hell, where was everyone? Where was Withers, whom he usually found fawning over Fatima?
The valet and the elderly housekeeper seemed an unlikely match, but who could understand Englishmen like Withers? Still, that fact actually made the match more surprising. Snooty, prim and proper Withers with a lowly housekeeper much older than himself.
“Withers!” His shout echoed emptily in the vastness. “Damn it, Withers—”
What was that? It sounded like a water splash. In the bathing room, off the kitchen. Moving toward the door, he caught a delicate scent on the air—a scent he had come to associate with Ellie.
Dear God, was she in there taking a bath? In a house empty except for the two of them? Naked—in the bathing tub? Water cascading over that delicate, rosy-pink, satin-soft skin? Droplets forming, which his tongue could lap off around her peaked breasts.
His erection made itself noticed, and he reached for the doorknob and turned it.
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