Odd, but the quiver in the pit of his stomach had nothing to do with passion. Even though he was still half asleep, Jack felt vibrant and alive, open to the new challenge Amber LaBelle presented him with. He’d always considered himself respectful of women, yet knowing he was responsible for shaping a mind—that was a promise he now yearned to keep for her, a joy that shimmered inside him like a prism. He himself had been an able, if sometimes reluctant, student and he recognized an innate curiosity and quickness in Amber that would make her pure pleasure to teach.
Teach, and what else?
He pondered this predicament. No getting around the fact that she was an accomplished flirt, and that her exotic looks alone tugged at his manhood. Recalling how uninhibited she’d been while making love didn’t help, either, because the memory would play in the back of both their minds even if vowels and consonants were their conscious focus.
So? You’re a man, not some dried-up Ichabod Crane of a schoolmaster. And Amber’s a woman, hardly the type who wants protection from what goes on between consenting adults. Use those forces of attraction to your advantage, and she’ll love you forever.
The thought made Jack shift a little uncomfortably. Where he’d once been determined to leave her and not look back, he now realized that the bond between them had become too tangible to shake off so easily.
He suddenly regretted being a hunted man. Frustration and loneliness choked him until it felt like the noose was already around his neck. Throwing away his future as a respected attorney when he fled Dodge City had caused him an emotional turmoil that the past year of hiding out had dulled somewhat. Amber and her noble mission, however, made the pain of his lost profession seem like the inconsequential throbbing of a pimple, by comparison.
What if that detective caught him? Rafferty didn’t have it in him to kill another human to escape his fate. He’d take his licks like a man . . . but the anguish he’d feel as he looked down from the gallows, or from between prison bars, at Amber’s tear-streaked face, was more than he could stand to think about.
And what if he didn’t get caught? Could he run forever and expect her to flee with him? It wasn’t fair to deny her the home and the love and the acceptance she’d craved all her life, yet he’d be lying if he promised her any of those pretty dreams. He was in a hell of a mess: he was a man whose future had been stolen by one moment of drunken, irrational fear in his past.
Jack’s heart was now hammering so hard he thought the woman in his arms would probably wake up from the racket. He held her tightly. He hoped her childlike optimism would calm him, knowing that if she asked what was bothering him he could never explain what a dilemma his feelings for her were creating. It wouldn’t be fair to dull the brightness in her eyes, now that she had a chance at a whole new world that reading would open up to her.
And you thought Amber was childish for believing a bogeyman would grab her in the dark. Who’s lurking in YOUR shadows, Rafferty?
A man in a charcoal hat with a thick mustache and ice blue eyes came to mind, but Jack shook the image off. If he couldn’t face this darkness in his soul, he’d make damn good use of the light: he’d make this a day Amber would recall with fondness for the rest of her life. He’d unlock the magic door of learning within her, and he’d share a glorious autumn day with her to the fullest, and he’d give her everything Jack Rafferty had to offer as a friend and a lover.
And he’d be a better man for it, come what may.
During their early breakfast, Amber saw a secretive sparkle in Rafferty’s dark eyes that had her wondering . . . did he have some wonderful surprise up his sleeve for today? Or was he plotting how to be rid of her so he wouldn’t have to teach her how to read?
She made quick work of their dishes and then said, “I’ll repack your saddlebags, so we can be off. I know it’s risky, camping out here where Minnit and that detective might—”
“We’re staying. Some things shouldn’t be rushed, and your education’s one of them.”
Amber saw a new depth in his eyes as he answered her, felt his quiet strength when he grasped her hand to make his point. His gaze felt infinitely personal . . . compassionate. Around them, the birds began their morning twitter and the fragile light of dawn made their breath shine white in the space between them, and Amber knew it would be a rare, perfect morning. ‘‘All right, if you’re sure it won’t—”
“I’m sure.” Jack grinned at her, giving his mustache that devilish angle she loved. “Besides, there’s a full moon to travel by tonight. We won’t be getting much sleep, I suspect, so we may as well be on the move. Come down to the creek when you’re ready. I have something to show you.”
She watched him pick up the nearly-empty coffeepot and walk through the trees, his gait relaxed and alluring. He was allowing her time to arrange her hair and apply the cosmetics that seemed to annoy him, yet suddenly her curiosity was stronger than the urge to primp. Amber glanced at the odd, unshapely array of skirts and blouses beneath her cloak, wishing she had warmer clothing, and with a shake of her head she was following Jack’s trail. He would have to take her as she was.
Rafferty heard her shuffling through the brittle leaves behind him and smiled. He knew without looking that she was as excited as a child, and he continued pouring water over the sandy soil along the creek bank. His supply of paper and ink was limited, and in his wakeful hours last night he’d thought of a way to make a blackboard of sorts for her first lesson.
He could feel her gaze on his back as he picked up a pointed stick and began to print A...B...C in the soft mud, leaving some space between each letter. When he turned, his face lit up with a slow smile.
She was watching him intently from a few feet away, her wayward chestnut waves floating on the breeze and her face devoid of the artful colorings she usually applied before he saw her in full light. Her skin still had a whiskey-like glow, but it was the brisk morning air pinkening her cheeks—the air, and the eagerness shining in her eyes—and Jack thought she looked indescribably lovely. Wickedly innocent, like a little girl who knew more than she should.
“You’re familiar with the alphabet?”
“Yes. Mama had me chanting and writing it as a child,” she replied meekly. “I just never put the letters into words on paper.”
“Then that’s where we’ll start.” He handed her the stick and gestured toward the letters in the wet sand. “As you practice forming each letter, we’ll talk about words that go with them.”
He paused to let her hunker down and grip the stick, wondering if his method would sound as foolish to her as it suddenly did to him. But it was too late to devise another teaching plan. “A is for Amber,” he began in a low voice. “Amber, and the autumn air ... and the ache my insides get when I look at you, honey.”
She let out a little gasp. “Rafferty, this is hard enough, without you teasing me!”
“I’m not. The reading methods made for children hardly seem appropriate, and I’m betting you’ll remember everything I teach you this way. Am I right?”
She finished a capital A that looked childish and shaky beside Jack’s model, and then stood up to challenge him. “What if you are? At this rate, we’ll never get through all the letters, for making good on these little hints of yours.”
Rafferty laughed. “B,” he went on purposefully, “is for brown and brazen, like your eyes when they snap at me. And it’s for breast, too. Lord, let’s not forget your breasts!”
Feeling the color creeping into her cheeks, Amber turned back to her writing. It was a laborious task after so many years without practice, yet she found herself tackling each letter with determined purpose. C was for color, and for the camisole he’d love to peel off her . . . D was for Gideon’s diamonds and the down between her legs. With any other man these word associations would’ve been too embarrassing to endure, yet she realized this was Jack’s way of getting her involved in the skills she should’ve learned as a child, without making her feel stupid. Not only was she vibrantly awar
e of the effect this lesson was having on her body, she was learning that her outlaw instructor’s feelings for her went deeper than she’d guessed.
“K is for kiss . . . and we’ll pursue that topic in greater detail later,” he continued. Damn, these lessons were backfiring! But Rafferty kept his hands in his pockets and remained behind his rapt student, occasionally coaching her as she formed the more difficult letters. The sunlight was playing in her hair now, lending a sparkle to the morning, and, realizing that all work and no play would make Amber a dull girl . . . he planned his reward for her.
Tirelessly she went on, giggling at his innuendo as she made her way through the alphabet. L stood for long, lovely legs . . . P stood for pecker—”the bird, of course,” Rafferty added with a laugh—while S began sexy and seductive smiles. By the time she got through Y for yes and Z for the zigzag path his mouth wanted to make across her body, Amber was beyond concentrating on her lesson.
She stood up, the stick still in her hand as she looked almost timidly at Rafferty. “Now what?” she whispered.
Her brown eyes, so hesitant yet bright with wanting, melted the last of his resistance. “Give me a K, Amber. A nice long one . . . and then maybe you’ll want to grip another kind of stick for a while.”
Stepping into his arms, Amber giggled. “Are we talking about that P word?”
“Right you are, honey. And it knows it, too.”
She grinned slyly, rubbing against him. “As in pencil, right?”
“Well, you can write with it if there’s snow,” Rafferty answered with a laugh, “but I had something else in mind. Oh, Amber, just—”
His lips claimed hers in a kiss that made her forget the brisk weather and her bulky, layered clothes in the rush of heat that passed between them. Jack, too, had come away from their lesson aware of the other kinds of knowledge they could share, and even through her three skirts she could feel his arousal, feel the hard, male planes of his body as he embraced her.
“I want to make love to you,” he breathed. “I want to celebrate this day . . . want to show you how wonderful it can be when our feelings tug us along by the heartstrings and we delight in it.”
A jolt went through her and pooled in the pit of her stomach. The eyes a few inches above her own were ebony with desire, and Rafferty’s face had taken on the angular keenness of a man not to be denied. “But I look so—”
“You’re absolutely beautiful. Like a wicked little kitten,” he replied with a chuckle. “Your eyes and skin are aglow, Amber. Your soft, natural radiance appeals to me. Very much.”
Rafferty’s husky compliments made her heart pound, yet she held back. “I—I want to, but I’d feel better if—my hair’s so dusty and it’s been days since—”
“You want a bath.”
Amber smiled gratefully.
Accustomed to days of lone travel, Jack hadn’t considered that he, too, could probably use some freshening up before he showed this woman how much he cared for her. “I doubt you’ll want to try that stream,” he said as he glanced around, “but we could stoke the fire and heat you some water in the coffee pot. That’s about the best I can do.”
“That’s fine. I—I didn’t mean to act like a wet blanket, like I didn’t want—”
“Oh, I know you want it,” he said as he tweaked her nose. “And making me wait’s probably the best way to make me want you even more. While you clean up, I can catch us some dinner, all right? That way, we can spend all day under the blankets and not starve in the meantime.”
Amber was again overwhelmed by how easily this man saw to their needs in a land that to her seemed foreign and intimidating. It pleased her that he wasn’t scoffing at her wishes to be clean and fresh for him . . . and this little interlude would give her time to prepare her thoughts, too, for when Jack would reintroduce her to the intimacies a man shared with a woman—with great tenderness this time, she sensed, because he seemed so intent on making up for the thoughtless remarks he’d uttered in his private Pullman.
With a tight smile he filled the coffee pot and walked her back to camp; within minutes he had the fire leaping and crackling so she could wash herself without getting too cold if she stayed close beside it. Then he checked his ammunition and gave her a suggestive once-over.
“Take your time, honey. Just be ready for me when I get back, all right?”
Amber nodded, watching him stride into the woods, and when she could see the steam rising from the pot’s spout she let her cloak and clothing fall to the ground around her. Shivering wildly, she dashed into the cave to find her soap. It would be just like Rafferty to return before she was finished, and somehow washing herself in his presence seemed a far more revealing act than making love.
From behind a tree, Jack paused to watch his woman get ready for him . . . funny how he thought of her that way now. He gripped the bark of the tamarack’s trunk to keep from moaning audibly: Amber had returned to the fire, was pouring water into a pan, and then began to make a thick lather with soap and her camisole. She was shivering—her taut nipples teased at him, and he could all but feel the gooseflesh on her firm young body as he gazed at her, mesmerized.
With quick, thorough swipes she spread a lacy film of soap over her face and shoulders, making him hold his breath with the way her breasts rose and fell with each agile movement. She wiped the soap from her upper extremities and then lathered her lush behind . . . he’d never watched a woman wash her private parts, and the sight sent desire streaking through him like lightning.
Steam rose from her body into the morning air, and the subtle scent of honeysuckle soap drifted through the woods, sweetening the fire’s smoke and filling Rafferty with more than he could hold. He turned abruptly, unfastening his belt as he strode toward the stream. If he was to take any sort of aim at their dinner, he had to cool himself down or he’d be out here all day.
As his shirt fell to the shoreline, he glanced at their morning’s work, still fresh in the damp sand: his own bold lettering flanked by Amber’s awkward imitations, but what a start she’d made! What heart she had, to admit such a deep-seated need for learning and allow him to fill it.
Jack grabbed the stick and wrote a message in the mud. Then he quickly stripped off the rest of his clothing and dashed, gasping with exhilaration, into the icy, burbling stream. He was about to make that woman his own, knowingly this time.
He was about to start living again.
Chapter 16
Amber watched Rafferty emerge from the woods, her brush poised above her hair as she sat beside the fire. He carried another skinned rabbit, a less revolting sight than it was yesterday. But it wasn’t his prey that held her interest. Jack’s hair was inky black, clinging wetly to his collar, and his clothes were damp, too. Surely he hadn’t bathed in that stream—or walked around in freshly-washed clothes on this brisk October morning!
His actions gave no answers. Without a word he cut the meat into pieces, and then put their main course in a skillet on the edge of the fire to simmer in some water. Rafferty’s glances were quick and seductive, saying he was aware of her and wanting her badly. This knowledge sent shivers up her spine and she resumed brushing her hair, pretending to ignore him.
Jack played along by slowly peeling off his clothes. That got her attention, and as he walked over to the underbrush by the cave to dry these garments, he saw that Amber had also done a little laundry. Two sets of bloomers and matching camisoles were spread over top of the bushes . . . which meant she probably wasn’t wearing anything under that blanket she was wrapped in.
Prickles of heat surged through him and he forgot how clammy-cold his union suit was. He could feel her watching his every move as he laid his larger, heavier garments alongside hers. He thought about the lithe, olive-skinned body he’d sampled on the train, recalling the sleek curves and softness of her, and her quickening sighs as she surrendered, and the unusual texture of her hair as it fell around his face . . . it was all he could do to turn slowly and gaze at her, promis
ing himself her pleasure would be paramount to his own this time.
With her brush trailing through her wet waves, she made a fetching sight. Rafferty approached and knelt before her, eagerly inhaling her delicate honeysuckle scent while he watched the firelight flicker in her gypsy-dark eyes. Of its own accord his hand went to her hairbrush, and he felt the rush of anticipation pass through her as she returned his rapt gaze, her lips parted slightly.
“May I?” he whispered.
Amber nodded mutely. The man in front of her seemed oblivious to the morning chill: the damp, woolly scent of his long Johns, intensified by the fire, made for an unexpected aphrodisiac. He was taut and powerful. His broad shoulders and compact, muscled thighs stretched the garment, so he resembled a pale gray tiger poised to spring at her . . . except for that rakish, mustached grin.
“You’re shameless,” she rasped.
“You’re right. No need for shame out here, honey,” he replied as he drew her hairbrush slowly down her damp, cascading waves. “You and I are two of a kind, vagabond hearts, and it’s time we took our feelings a step further. You have to trust more than my ability to feed us out here, if we’re to have any sort of life after this manhunt.”
Rafferty’s words stirred her. His brief kiss hinted at yearnings he, too, felt and then he was slipping behind her to brush her hair with slow, thorough strokes. How did he know just the right amount of pressure to apply . . . just the right number of times to pull the bristles through each section of hair as he lovingly lifted it with his other hand? Amber’s scalp tingled. The sensation overtook her entire body as the rhythm of Jack’s movements relaxed her into swaying with each dreamlike stroke.
“Your hair fascinates me,” he said as he laid the brush aside. “It’s wonderfully thick and soft, in its way, yet it’s coarse.”
She turned slowly to face him, her dark eyes dancing between revelation and keeping the secret he sensed was there. “Mama was a mulatto,” she replied, watching for his reaction. “She was fair-complected and elegant, which I suppose attracted the man who fathered me. My dark, wiry hair was the most compelling reason he had for not letting on that his blood ran in my veins. Mama never said that. I just knew it, when I put all the pieces together after she revealed who Mr. Robidoux was.”
Outlaw Moon Page 16
