Megan

by Linda Lael Miller

  While he continued to tease her nipples with one hand, Webb slid the other down over her bare belly, leaving the nerve endings jumping under her skin as he went. He made a circle around her navel, with just the tip of his finger, and continued to nibble and nip at her earlobe. Involuntarily, Megan thrust her hips forward, and that was when he reached beneath the waistline of her petticoat and bloomers and found the warm, moist delta where her thighs met.

  She stiffened, her back curved.

  “Shhh,” he murmured against her ear, and she sagged against him, gave herself up to the fierce pleasure of his touch. Surely, she thought, half-blind with need, it must be a sin to feel like this, to want something—someone—so badly.

  He eased the dress down over her shoulders and let it fall to the floor in a rustling circle, soft as flower petals. Then, because her knees were threatening to fail her, he curved one arm around her middle and held her against him. Now, in addition to the fury he was stirring with his fingers, she felt the length and heat of him pressing into her lower back. She began to thrust her hips into his hand, seeking something she couldn’t have explained.

  He kissed her bare shoulders, one and then the other. “Not so fast,” he said in a rasp. He turned her to face him once more and began removing his own clothes, his eyes linked with hers the whole time. She ached to have him touch her again but was too proud to say so. Instead, she raised trembling hands to take off her few remaining garments.

  She had no memory of lying down on the bed, no idea whether she went under her own power or Webb carried her. She was aware only of her own responses, and of Webb, and of the pinkish-gold light of a fading sun pooling around them.

  Webb was naked, and he was glorious. She wanted to touch him everywhere, not only to give him pleasure, though she certainly wanted that, but because he fascinated her. In the combined glow of sunset and her love, he looked like some gilded creature, more of heaven than earth. He was strong, and yet he handled her with infinite tenderness, even reverence.

  He kissed her, again and again, and she kissed back. Webb’s lovemaking was not something to be endured but something to be reveled in, surrendered to, celebrated. When he cupped one of her breasts in his hand and tasted the nipple, already taut from stroking, Megan arched her back and gave a long, shuddering sigh. Groping, she plunged her fingers into his hair, then let them wander up and down his back in a frantic search.

  He moved to her other breast and enjoyed it thoroughly before finding his way to her belly, where he dipped the tip of his tongue into her navel as though he’d found honey there. She shivered again, moaned in her throat.

  She thought it was over then, that he would take her, because he moved her knees apart and centered himself between them. She closed her eyes and braced herself for pain, and instead encountered an ecstasy so forbidden that she had never even imagined it before, let alone experienced it. He found her most delicate and private place and took suckle there, on the nubbin of flesh that throbbed against his tongue in frantic welcome.

  She cried out, a great, triumphant, groaning shout, and wove her fingers into his hair again, holding him close and closer, even as she tossed her head back and forth on the pillow like a woman in a fever. If he didn’t stop, she would die, and if he did, she would die. She’d raised herself onto the soles of her feet, seeking him, and he braced his hands under her buttocks and held her high to his mouth. He was insatiable, relentless, and utterly wonderful.

  Fierce satisfaction swelled and billowed, swelled and billowed within her, like the sails of a ship catching the wind. On and on it went, while Megan flung back her head and tried to stay with her bucking body. Webb slipped her legs over his shoulders and took her to what was surely the end of the journey. Sobbing, her body still flexing long after all her strength was spent, Megan held nothing back.

  It was not the end, she was startled to discover when Webb finally lowered her gently to the bed, but merely the beginning. He lay as close as a second skin, his arms around her, and soothed her while she regained her senses. Then he gently spread her legs again and mounted her, and she was amazed to feel herself catch fire again the instant he entered her. As his thrusts grew more urgent, more powerful, she moved with him, stroking his back, holding his face, drawing him down, again and again, for her kiss.

  When release came, it swept them both up into a golden fury, and, for a time, their bodies belonged neither to them as individuals nor to each other but to the same forces that spawned stars and fires, mountains and floods. Megan was flung so far heavenward, so fiercely, that she never expected to return from the skies and be herself again.

  After several such encounters, sleep finally claimed the lovers, and when Megan awakened in the morning, she was alone in their marriage bed. She sat upright, unaccountably frightened that Webb had abandoned her, but he was standing at one of the windows, hands braced against the sill, gazing out. He wore trousers and boots, but his chest was bare, and his suspenders dangled below his hips. Megan thought he looked delicious.

  “Good morning, Mr. Stratton,” she said, stretching.

  He turned his head, grinned at her. “Don’t tempt me,” he warned. “I might just come back to bed and have my way with you.”

  Megan did not lower her arms. Although she was covered by the top sheet, she was naked underneath, and, of course, Webb knew that. “Do you suppose we’ve started that baby?” she asked, batting her lashes once or twice. She knew they were thick, and one of her best features.

  He crossed to her, leaned down, and placed a noisy kiss on her mouth. “Stop it,” he growled. “I’ve got a ranch to run. I can’t be lolling around in bed with my wife all day.”

  She slipped her arms around his neck. “Can’t you just—loll—for a little while?”

  He laughed. “No,” he answered firmly. He touched the tip of her nose with an index finger. “Tonight, however, is another matter.” With that, he tugged down the sheet, took a leisurely sip at each of her breasts, and then left her to contemplate her situation.

  She got up, muttering, and hastily washed and dressed. Webb had already started breakfast when she got downstairs, and Augustus, waiting for his share of the sausage and the eggs from Bridget’s chickens, spared her only a single glance, the ingrate. Apparently, he’d already forgotten the piece of wedding cake she’d given him.

  “Shall I bring dinner up to the meadow?” she asked Webb. Although the sun was up, it was still very early, and there was a kerosene lantern burning in the middle of the table. It gave the room a cozy glow, as did the small fire Webb had built on the hearth, and Megan felt sinfully contented.

  Webb gave her a sidelong glance, skillfully turning sizzling sausage patties in the big iron pan. “The men have probably got a rabbit stew or a pot of beans on the fire,” he said. “Why don’t you just spend today resting up for tonight?”

  Megan moved behind her husband, slipped her arms around his waist, let her cheek rest in the space between his shoulder blades. He’d put on one of the shirts she’d sewed for him, and she could smell his singular scent through the cloth. “You are confident,” she said, and laughed softly.

  He turned, drew her close, kissed her. “Last night, you seemed to think that confidence was justified,” he drawled. “If I remember correctly, you were tearing my hair and sobbing and pleading for more.”

  It was all true, of course, but it was insufferable of him to remind her in the broad light of day. “Webb Stratton!” she gasped, mortified and flattered and excited, all of a piece.

  “Just wait until tonight,” he said, and when, laughing, she flailed at him with both fists, he grasped her wrists and subdued her with a kiss that left her sagging against him. Then he swatted her bottom, seated her at the table, and served her breakfast.

  *

  Christy and Bridget sat in Bridget’s parlor, their eyes swollen, hankies clutched in their hands. “They’ve been this way for days,” Skye confided in a theatrical whisper. Megan had been married a full month, a
nd well occupied most of that time. Now, seeing the state her sisters were in, she felt guilty for being so happy.

  “Caney told them,” Megan guessed.

  Skye’s brown eyes widened. “You knew? About Diamond Lil and—and our papa?”

  Megan nodded, then sighed. “Lillian told me the day I went to see her about our partnership.”

  “And you didn’t say anything?” Skye hissed.

  Both Christy and Bridget were glaring at her accusingly, and Megan realized that they had overheard. She straightened her spine, squared her shoulders, and marched across the room to stand between their two chairs. She rested her hands on her hips, feeling very matronly now that she was an old married woman of thirty days. “Stop feeling sorry for yourselves,” she said crisply. “You’re a disgrace, the pair of you!”

  For once in their lives, her elder sisters were speechless.

  “Your mother is alive.” She gestured wildly with one hand in the general direction of town. “She’s barely two miles from here. Don’t you have questions you want to ask her? Don’t you have things you want to say?”

  Bridget’s jawline tightened. “You bet your bustle I do,” she said, rising out of her chair, then sitting down again.

  “Well?” Skye prompted, spreading her hands.

  Bridget’s lower lip wobbled, but only slightly. Her posture was as proud as ever. “I’m not sure where to start.”

  “Start?” Christy whispered miserably, and dabbed at her eyes again with a wadded handkerchief. “Our mother is a prostitute. That’s not a beginning, it’s an end!”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Megan said. “There are worse things, you know.”

  “What?” Christy sniffled, plainly mystified.

  “What if she’d kept you? Raised you in a series of saloons and brothels? She cared enough to give you both up, to give you a family and a good home,” Megan said, losing patience. Always the youngest, the pet of the family, she wasn’t used to taking charge in moments of crisis. She rather liked it. “Do stop behaving like a pair of babies!”

  “I’m going to town to speak to my mother,” Bridget said decisively, rising again, looking down at a profoundly stunned Christy, who was still in her chair. “Are you coming or not?”

  Never one to be bested, even at something she didn’t want to do in the first place, Christy bolted to her feet. “Of course I am,” she replied. Then Bridget turned to Megan and Skye.

  “Will you please look after the children?” she asked.

  Megan nodded. Since Christy had brought little Joseph and Margaret along to this crying fest, all the kids were close at hand.

  The two daughters of Lillian Colefield did not trouble themselves with a change of clothes, nor did they splash their faces with cold water or attend to their hair. No, they crossed the bridge over the creek in single file, then set out for town, arm in arm, like a two-woman army marching on an unsuspecting city.

  “You suppose they’ll be all right?” Skye asked, peering after their sisters as they ascended the steep bank on the other side of Primrose Creek.

  “I’m more worried about anybody who might get in their way,” Megan replied, and laughed. The morning was a happy one, spent playing games in the yard with the nieces and nephews, and when Bridget and Christy returned, after two hours, they were dry-eyed and introspective. Neither of them wanted to give an account of their interview with Diamond Lil, and Megan and Skye weren’t foolish enough to ask. In fact, they wisely took their leave, Skye with her two children, Megan with Augustus, who had come to escort his mistress back along the creek path. She was pleased by his attentions, as always, and stopped several times to throw a stick and then praise him outlandishly for fetching.

  She was smiling when she rounded the last bend and saw the familiar horse standing in the dooryard, reins dangling. Webb was home.

  Augustus ran to his master, barking with glee, and Webb laughed as he bent down to ruffle the animal’s loose, gleaming hide.

  “You’re back early,” Megan commented, quite unnecessarily. She was Webb’s bride, and she shared his bed, and still her heart leaped every time she laid eyes on him, whether close up or from a distance.

  He straightened, grinning. “I got to hankering for my wife,” he said.

  Megan bit her lower lip and waited.

  He extended a hand, and she crossed the distance between them without further hesitation. He kissed the backs of her knuckles, one by one, sending hot shivers throughout her body. Then he whisked her up into his arms and carried her not toward the house, as she had expected, but in the direction of the barn.

  “What—?” she managed.

  He gave her a long, deep kiss, without slackening his pace. “There are a thousand places I mean to have you,” he said when at last he raised his mouth from hers, “and the hayloft is one of them.”

  The inside of the barn was cool and shadowy, rife with the scents of animals and hay and saddle leather. Augustus, by that time, had lost interest in the activities of his master and mistress and trotted off on some errand of his own.

  Webb set Megan on her feet in front of the ladder leading up into the loft. She met his eyes, briefly, and then began to climb.

  Chapter

  12

  Megan stood in the dooryard, watching as the woman drove the livery rig, a dusty buggy, deftly across the shallow creek. There was a young, fair-haired boy on the seat beside her, about the same age as Bridget’s Noah and Skye’s Hank. Even from that distance, Megan somehow knew that the child’s eyes would be periwinkle-blue.

  As the wayfarers drew nearer, Megan could see that the woman was like a cameo come to life. Her skin was a flawless shade of ivory, her eyes some dark shade of purple or brown. Ellie, Megan thought, full of amazement and despair.

  In her spotless traveling suit, made of lightweight, cream-colored linen, Ellie Stratton made Megan feel as though she’d stitched all her own garments together from potato sacks. She’d been meaning to sew some new dresses, but, what with one thing and another, she just hadn’t had time.

  The other Mrs. Stratton drew back on the reins and smiled, though there was a certain caution lurking in her eyes, as though she might be unsure of her welcome. “I guess you must be Megan,” she said.

  Megan barely returned the smile, and she could only speculate about what was visible in her own eyes. She felt such a tangle of things, she couldn’t begin to sort them out. Unfortunately, Christian charity wasn’t among them. Whatever Ellie Stratton wanted, she’d been Webb’s first love, and Megan dreaded seeing them together. “Hullo, Mrs. Stratton,” she replied.

  Ellie winced slightly. Augustus had ambled over to investigate, and the boy was looking at him with interest. Interest and those blue-purple eyes Megan had been so certain he would have. “Just call me Ellie,” she said. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Megan nodded and then smiled at the boy, who was still watching Augustus with fascination. “He’s friendly,” she said. “You can pet him if it’s all right with your mother.”

  “Go ahead, Tommy,” Ellie told the boy.

  Tommy climbed nimbly down and put out a tentative hand to Augustus. The dog responded with a long slurp of his tongue, and a delighted laugh bubbled from the little boy. Ellie alighted, much more gracefully than her son had done, and stood facing Megan.

  “You’re just as pretty as Jesse said you were,” Ellie said. “Is—is Webb at home, by any chance?”

  Megan was about to say that he wasn’t, when they all turned at the sound of a rider coming across the creek. It was Webb.

  Megan’s knees nearly buckled with relief at the mere sight of him, but, at the same time, she feared the moment when he recognized Ellie, the woman he’d once wanted for his wife, and the boy.

  Ellie was on her way to him even before he’d reached the yard. When he swung down from the saddle and embraced her, she put her arms around his neck.

  Megan stood rigid, watching. Waiting. She was only vaguely aware of the boy and dog, n
ow running round and round in a huge circle, both of them barking.

  Ellie and Webb parted, but she was beaming up into his face. Her joy in seeing him would have been obvious to anyone, although Webb’s state of mind was not so easy to read. He took her elbow in one hand and started toward Megan, leading the horse along behind.

  Megan called upon all her theatrical ability just to smile.

  “I guess you’ve met my brother’s wife,” Webb said. Was she mistaken, or had he put a slight emphasis on the last three words?

  “And I’ve met Megan,” Ellie said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for a first love to come calling at the hot tail end of a July afternoon. She gestured for the boy to come to her side, and he obeyed, albeit with reluctance. Seeing him with Webb took Megan’s breath away, so great was the resemblance. “Tommy, this is your Uncle Webb.”

  Webb crouched, facing the child. “Hullo, Tommy,” he said.

  “Hullo,” Tommy replied uncertainly. He might have moved a fraction of an inch closer to his mother, though there was no telling for sure.

  Webb stood up, and his gaze caught Megan’s and held on. No smile. “Let’s all go inside,” he said.

  Megan knew her fears were irrational, for the most part, but that didn’t stop the inward shiver that coursed through her just then. Was Webb going to tell her that this was his boy, his and Ellie’s? The resemblance was amazing, but then, Jesse looked very much like Webb. Perhaps Tom Jr. did, too.

  They entered through the main door, and Megan immediately made for the kitchen. She put on a pot of coffee and cut slices from a pan of yellow cake she’d baked earlier to serve at supper. She set a plate on the floor for an appreciative Augustus and put three others on an old cupboard door that she liked to use as a tray.

  Webb was seated in his chair near the fire, the very place where he’d often said, jokingly, that he meant to pass his old age. Ellie and Tommy sat side by side on the settee, and Ellie’s feelings for Webb were evident in her eyes in a way they had not been before. Try though she might, Megan still couldn’t make sense of Webb’s expression; it was closed, unreadable.