by Sandra Brown
She stared at the frown of his head, which reflected the lamplight like a new sun. She could feel his breath falling lightly on her stomach. "What?"
"About the doc."
"Yes."
"I brought him here at gunpoint." Her lips parted slightly but she had been rendered speechless. Jake felt the need to elaborate. "He came willingly enough when I told him who the patient was. But once he had examined you and diag-nosed stomach fever, he was ready to dose you with laudanum until you died."
"He wasn't going to do surgery?"
"Not until I pulled a gun on him and threatened to kill him if he didn't."
She put her hand on his shirtfront. If she didn't love him for any other reason, she would now. She owed her life to him. He covered her hand with his own and pressed it against the hard curve of his breast.
"That damn quack was going to do nothing but let you die and then console your parents afterward," Jake said tightly, his eyes going hard and cold with the memory. "When it was over, he scuttled out of here like a possum. He didn't give me any instructions about your recovery because he didn't think there would be one."
"But you did."
His eyes delved into hers. "Yes."
Their gaze held for long moments, then she said, "The doctor might press charges of assault later, Jake."
"Let him. I'd do the same again. I would have killed him if he hadn't done that surgery."
Her eyes filled with tears. "You went to all that trouble to save me, Jake. Why?"
Cupping her face in his hands, he scanned her face, taking in every lovely feature. "I wasn't going to let you die. I would have given my own life to save yours."
Then, surrendering to the craving that had plagued him for days, he slanted his mouth over hers. His lips were parted, damp, and she matched hers to them. His tongue probed her mouth with slow, gentle thrusts that pitched her senses into chaos.
Her arms curled and locked around his neck. He pressed her deeper into the pillows and covered her upper body with his. Her breasts felt the urgent pressure of his chest. The pounding rhythm of his heart echoed hers.
His lips plucked lightly at hers, lifting the dew of their kiss off her mouth. "Banner, Banner," he whispered into her neck, "I wasn't about to let you die. I need you too much."
They kissed again tempestuously, heads twisting, mouths nibbing hard, tongues mating, until they were breathless. Jake raised his head, saw the full, bruised look of her mouth and smiled. It was a mouth designed to give and receive passionate kisses and he planned to see that it was granted its due often.
"I almost forgot to ask if you were hungry." He picked up a strand of her hair and watched as it wound around his finger, as surely as she had wound an invisible cord around his heart.
"I'm starving. Do I get some real food tonight?"
He got off the bed and headed for the kitchen. "Hot soup."
"Jake?" He turned around. "I didn't need Dr. Hewitt or anyone else to take care of me. You've done a wonderful job."
His eyes filled with emotion, but he only bobbed his head once before going out to prepare their dinner.
* * *
Things changed between them after that night. They didn't hide their feelings from each other. He kissed her good night, but the caresses went no further than that. Nor did either of them suggest he sleep beside her. The time for them to make love wasn't right, but it was coming. Both of them knew it. In the meantime, they were waiting and letting the anticipation build.
Each morning with her tea she was given a kiss. Whenever he moved close to the bed, she reached for his hand and held it as they gazed into each other's eyes. He continued to shave in her room. He brushed her hair. They shared innumerable small intimacies.
In the evenings he sat in the chair within arm's reach of her bed, reading books about cattle breeding he had purchased in Fort Worth. She worked on needlepoint cushions for the dining room chairs she hoped to have someday.
"Jake?" He raised his head from his book. "Is it interesting reading?"
"Not when I can talk to you instead."
"I don't want to distract you."
He smiled roguishly. "Miss Coleman, you've been distracting me for months." She blushed.
He closed the book and laid it aside. It had been a special night. She had walked as far as the kitchen and back twice, standing up straight. There was only a remnant soreness in her abdomen when she moved too hastily.
"When did you learn to read?" she aked him. "'Don't be insulted, please, but most cowboys don't know how."
He grinned. "That was Lydia's doing. She started teaching Anabeth on the wagon train. Once we got to our homestead, Anabeth was damned and determined that I learn, too." His eyes drifted toward the window as he recalled the intensity with which his sister had taught him and the others their letters and the confusing combinations that fashioned them into words.
"At first I thought it was a waste of time, but she reminded me that Ross knew how to read. Anything Ross did was what I wanted to do."
"Why did you go to her?"
The question was so out of context and asked in such a broken voice that his head snapped around. "Who?"
"That Watkins woman. Why did you leave me in the hotel after that lovely day we spent together and go to her?"
He was both baffled and alarmed by the tears standing in her eyes. He went down on his knees beside the bed and took her hands.
"You saw me leave?"
"Yes."
"I didn't go for the reason you think, Banner."
"What other reason could there be for a man to sneak off to a whorehouse in the middle of the night? You could have had it with me. All you had to do was ask."
"Shh, shh, Banner. No, I couldn't. Not then. It wasn't right."
"And it's right with a whore?"
"Listen to me," he said forcibly, shaking her hands. "Micah and Lee came in. I woke up. Micah told me he had seen Grady Sheldon in the Garden of Eden. It bothered me that he was in town. I had warned him to stay away from you. For all I knew he had followed you to Fort Worth and planned on kidnapping you or something. I left immediately and went to Priscilla's place to see if I could find out what he was up to." He felt it wise not to mention at this point that Grady and Priscilla had been keeping such close company.
"And that's the only reason?" she asked gruffly. "You didn't..."
He laid his hand on her hair, filled his hand with it. "No, I didn't."
"But the next morning she made it sound like, well, you know."
His mouth thinned with irritation. "Whatever she said was a lie. She only wanted to hurt you to get back at me."
"I thought you were friends."
"Not in the way you think. I've told you before I didn't sleep with Priscilla."
She tweaked a loose thread on the quilt. "Grady said the girls in the bawdy houses talk about you. That you're a legend."
He showed his amusement with a smile. But when he saw Banner's shattered expression, he drew a serious face. "Banner, I haven't had another woman since that night you came to me in the barn."
"Is that true?" she asked in a hoarse whisper.
He carried her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm. His lips moved against it as he spoke. "I can hardly believe it myself, but I swear it's true."
"But is that the extent of it? That one night?"
"That depends on you," he said quietly. "What do you want?"
"I haven't made a secret of it, Jake."
He studied the floor between his boots. Days ago, when she lay on the brink of death, he had realized that it wasn't just physical desire that had a stranglehold on him. He longed to lose himself in her body, yes, but he wanted a merging of their hearts as well.
She had long ago ceased to be Ross's and Lydia's daughter. She was Banner, a woman, the woman he needed to fill the emptiness in his soul. If anyone could heal him of cynicism and bitterness, it would be Banner. He was tired of fighting himself. Besides, their future together was already
sealed, though only he knew it.
When he looked up again, he was smiling. "Would you like a bed bath?"
TWENTY-ONE
"A bed bath?"
She watched with unblinking eyes as he went to the vanity and returned carrying a washbowl of warm water and two soft cloths. These he set on the bedside table. He lowered himself to the edge of the bed. His eyes roved her face. He reached out and touched the tip of her impertinent nose with the end of his finger and smiled.
"Have I ever told you what I really thought about you that night in the barn?"
Speechlessly, she shook her head. Silence permeated the house. She was aware only of the sound of his breathing, the rustle of clothing when he moved, the hypnotizing gruffness of his voice.
"I thought you were one helluva woman. Not many would come to a man and ask him to do what you did."
"You were shocked."
"Yes, I'll admit that. To me you had always been little Banner, the cute tomboy with untidy braids and skinned knees. Even the day of your wedding I was thinking of you like that."
His fingertip settled on the point of her chin and skimmed down the center of her throat to its base. "But that night, I saw you in a new light. You were all woman, Banner. I knew that I would never again mistake you for anything else. It's been hell, living near you and remembering that night. I've regretted it."
His mouth lifted in a wry grin. "I've relished it, too, wishing a thousand times that it would happen again." He leaned down and kissed her. His kiss was tender, but possessive. His mouth moved over hers, separating her lips for the gentle plunder of his tongue.
When he raised his head and gazed down at her, her eyes were lambent. "I want you to be comfortable. I thought I'd give you a bed bath."
"Do you want me to take off my nightgown?"
"No," he replied, smiling tenderly, "I want to take it off."
Her heart leaped to her throat as his hands moved toward the front of her nightgown. It had a row of buttons that extended from her neck to below her waist. He had buttoned her into it while she was unconscious. Even now, she blushed to think of that.
His nimble fingers undid the buttons, but he didn't open the nightgown. His eyes burned their way along the narrow ribbon of skin that showed through the opening, but he didn't touch her. Instead he said, "Can you sit up without it hurting?"
She came to a sitting position. He moved behind her, into the corner of the mattress as he had done the day he brushed her hair. He put his hands on her shoulders and lowered the nightgown inch by slow inch over her shoulders and down her arms. Banner pulled her arms free of the long sleeves, but held the fragile shield of embroidered batiste over her breasts.
Jake eased the garment down to the first gentle swell of her hips below her waist. Her skin looked creamy in the lamplight, golden and soft. He dipped the cloth in the washbowl and wrung it out. Sweeping her hair aside, he laid the cloth on her shoulder and washed in slow, measured circles. He moved it down the length of her back to the twin dimples on either side of the base of her spine, back up. Her head lolled to one side, making her hair fall forward in a black cascade over one shoulder.
"Feelgood?"
"Yes." She moaned. He increased the pressure, massaging away the soreness one acquires from days of lying inactive in a sickbed.
He exchanged the washcloth for a dry one and blotted her skin until it was again dry and glowing. The back of her neck was too vulnerable to resist. Leaning forward, he encircled her waist with his arms and laid his lips against the velvety skin.
"You're so beautiful," he whispered as his lips tasted and his tongue took liberties with her ear.
His mouth meandered around her neck, up to her cheek, to find her mouth. Her head fell back over his arm and he drew her down until she was angled backward, half across his lap and half across the bed. He kissed her hungrily, sending his tongue deep into the honeycomb of her mouth. As the kiss intensified, he eased himself around until she was lying fully on the pillows again. Her fingers were tightly gripping the bunched nightgown that covered her breasts, but not out of fear or modesty, out of passion.
She wanted more of his mouth. When he kissed her, she felt it all over her body. Sensations tingled along every nerve, touched her everywhere, stung, burned, stroked. The world and all its problems dissolved. She became entrapped in a chrysalis of rapture where adversity wasn't allowed and where Jake was master and donor of all joy.
But once again he dipped the cloth into the bowl. He washed her neck and chest, going no further than the nightgown she still clutched to her breasts. He lifted one of her arms and rubbed the cloth down its slender length. The other arm received the same meticulous treatment. Much to her chagrin, he even washed her underarms. Modestly, she turned her head aside. "All parts of you are beautiful, Banner," he whispered. "Don't be ashamed."
After he had dried her again, he lifted one of her hands to his lips. He kissed her palm, each finger, then startled her by closing his lips around her little finger and sucking it into his mouth. His teeth gently ground into the fleshy pad, which until now she had never known was sensitive.
"Jake!" Her cry was softly alarmed. The unheralded caress set off tiny explosions in me lower part of her body. Rivers of sensation swirled through her breasts, causing the peaks to stiffen. She would never have guessed that her fingertips were linked to the parts of her body that were throbbing warmly.
Now he was kissing the inside of her wrist and his lips began working their way up her arm. He opened his mouth over the inside of her elbow and she felt the wet friskiness of his tongue. He turned her arm so that the underside was available to his nibbling lips. His teeth sank lightly into the soft, sweet flesh of her' upper arm and she groaned. He trapped that groan with a mind-stealing kiss mat started at her mouth and ended with a trail of fervent kisses down her throat and chest.
He sat up. His eyes looked extremely blue as he gazed into hers. Slowly he moved her hands aside. The cooler air caressed her fevered skin as he lifted the nightgown away from her breasts. "Good Lord, Banner," he said in a raspy voice, "you're so pretty."
What he had only seen by moonlight was now gilded by the lamp's wavering glow. So lovely. So milky white. So rosy pink. So perfect.
Gently he lifted her right arm and folded it above her head, then the left one, until her arms framed her head. Her hands lay open, vulnerable, with the fingers slightly curled toward the defenseless palms. Breasts, too, were without covering, easy victims.
Yet she wasn't afraid.
She lay quietly and let him adore her.
He could barely tear his eyes away long enough to dampen the cloth again. Then he bathed her, moving the cloth gently over the mounds of her breasts, her ribs, the plain between them. With the other cloth, he dried her. When he was done, he admired her as an artist does his lifetime's best work.
"I can't believe I'm here with you like this. That it's so damn good. Any minute I expect someone to come barging in here and take you away from me."
"I wouldn't go, Jake."
"I've never had a time like this with a woman, Banner. Tender and peaceful. I've taken them, used their bodies, but never enjoyed them. I might not be able to do it the way it's supposed to be done, loving like. I might be too old to learn how. But I'd like to try. Let me play with you."
Her heart swelled with love until it overflowed, just as her eyes did with tears of profound emotion. She was more to Jake than the whores he had had. He hadn't said he loved her. But he had spoken of loving and that was close.
Bach of his hands covered a breast and molded her to fit his palms. He squeezed, drawing all the fullness into twin globes that epitomized womanhood.
"Banner, Banner." She saw his lips move but hardly a sound came out.
"Does that mean you like me?" she asked timidly.
"Like you?" He laughed softly. "Yeah, I like you."
His eyes lowered to her breasts again. His ringers were combing over them tenderly now. He marveled at the
soft texture of her skin, the responsiveness of her nipples. When they became velvety pebbles beneath his caressing fingertips, he dipped his head.
She was transported with the first touch of his lips. She had been born for this moment, to give this moment's pleasure to Jake as a gift. For that's what it was. The sounds he emitted were whimpers of starvation and satisfaction, sighs of longing and appeasement, growls of desire and fulfillment.
Banner's head ground into the pillow with every rolling stroke of his limber tongue. The gentle tugging of his lips struck a chord in the heart of her womanhood. The yearning it engendered was akin to pain.
She lowered her arms and threaded her fingers through his hair, loving the feel of it against her skin. The sensations he evoked were exquisite. The place between her thighs was melting with want, aching with need, pulsing with pleasure.
She felt the trembling in his limbs and knew that his torment was just as great as hers. "I've needed you for so long, Banner. For years. All my life."
He levered himself up and stormily kissed her mouth again. When they fell apart weakly, he brushed soft kisses across her lips and ran his fingers through her hair. She looked up at him inquisitively.
"You're not going to—"
"No, I'm not. Not while you're still weak and there's a danger I'd hurt you." His lips were soft against hers. "But I would like to hold you through the night."
"Oh, yes," she murmured.
He left the bed and turned out the lamp. She heard the rustle of his clothes. When he lay down beside her beneath the cover, he was naked.
"Oh, God," he groaned into her hair. Rather than readjusting the nightgown, she had taken it off. His nakedness touched hers, the silkiness of her bare thigh caressed his. "Be careful," he urged as she stretched to get closer to him.
"You won't hurt me, Jake," she whispered, curling her hand around his neck and pressing her lips against the pounding pulse at its base.
His arms held her tenderly, but at tremendous cost to his sanity. "For godsakes, Banner, be still," he grated.
