by Diana Palmer
He pulled Rance up from the floor and knocked him through the open bunkhouse door and out into the dirt, and was going after him again when one of the older hands stepped in front of him.
“He’s had enough, boss,” the man said gently, keeping his voice low and calm. “You got the point across. No need to tear his arms off. None of us listened to his venom. A blind man would know that Miss Hathoway’s a lady.”
Gene was breathing heavily. He looked from the half-conscious man on the ground to the one who was speaking, his green eyes hot and wild. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “If anyone else asks, Miss Hathoway is my fiancée,” he emphasized the word, looking at each cowboy’s face individually with an expression that was calm and dangerous all at once. “I may deserve that kind of malicious gossip, but she doesn’t. She’s a missionary. A man who is a man doesn’t belittle a woman of her sort!”
The men looked shamefaced. They stood uncomfortably congregated with downcast eyes.
“Rance told some reporter she was here,” one of them said. “We did try to reason with him, Mr. Nelson, but he was half lit and out for blood. Dale Branigan fed him a lot of bull about you and he’s sweet on her; not to mention him drinking like a fish half the time when you didn’t see him.”
“He can be sweet on her from a closer distance from now on,” Gene said, trying to cope with all the new developments at once. He’d been lax on the job a lot. It was just coming home to him how much time he’d spent wallowing in self-pity over his parentage while he let his stepfather’s ranch go to hell. Well, there wouldn’t be any more of that. He stood over Rance, watching the man open a swollen eye to stare up at him with evident fear.
“Get off my land,” Gene said coldly, and without raising his voice. “If I see you again, I’ll break your neck. I’ll send your check along in care of Dale Branigan. But if you’re counting on a little romance with her, you’ll have to get past Ben Hardy. He’s all but engaged to her, in case you didn’t know.”
Rance looked shocked. “Ben…?”
“She played you for a fool, didn’t she?” Gene asked with a mocking smile. “You poor stupid fish, that will be all over town by tomorrow, too. I promise you it will, along with the news of my engagement to Allison and the damage you tried to do to her reputation.”
Rance dragged himself to his feet, considerably more sober now. He wiped blood away from a cut lip and shivered a little with reaction and muscle strain as he reached for his hat and put it back on.
“No need to beat a man half to death over some woman,” Rance said angrily.
“No need to make her out to be a tramp because she won’t let you touch her, either,” Gene said dangerously, his temper kindling again. “You’re finished in Pryor, Rance. I’ll see to it, no matter what it takes.”
Rance straightened. “I’ve had my fill of Wyoming, anyway,” he said shortly. “You can have it.”
He hobbled into the bunkhouse to pack. Gene turned on his heel and walked away, ignoring the murmurs of comment from his men as he stalked toward the house with blood in his eye.
He went straight up the staircase without a word to Marie and Winnie, who’d been standing speechless at the window, watching the byplay.
Dwight was asleep when he peeped in the door, so he went straight along to Allison’s room.
He knocked and waited for her to answer. It only took a minute. She was surprised to see him, and he wondered absently if she’d have opened it if she’d known it was him. She looked terrible.
He rubbed his fist against the corner of his mouth, feeling the cut there as he stared down at her furiously. “Why didn’t you tell me what Rance was saying about you?” he demanded without preamble. “Why didn’t you tell me what you’d gone through in Central America, and what you and your parents were doing there?”
She was looking at his bruised, cut face, hardly hearing the words. “You’re hurt,” she said worriedly. “What happened to you?”
“I’ve been out in the backyard beating the hell out of Rance before I fired him,” he said icily. “And I enjoyed it. Does that shock you? I wish I’d hit him twice as damned hard!”
“You know…all of it?” she asked hesitantly.
“All of it,” he assured her. His broad chest rose and fell jerkily. “Oh, God, why didn’t you trust me?” he asked huskily. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
Her eyes fell to his shirt buttons. “I couldn’t. It hurt too much to talk about it, at first. And then I knew you’d take off like a shot if you knew, well, what I did for a living. I lied because I wanted to be alive, just for a little while. I wanted to be someone else, I wanted to be like other women, to be…loved.” She almost choked on the word and her eyes closed. “But I had no right.”
“Do you think I did?” he groaned. He stepped into the room and slammed the door, jerking her hungrily into his arms. He held her against him, rocking her gently, folding her to his heart in a silence that was broken only by the sound of her soft weeping.
“The worst of it is that I was so wrapped up in my own problems that I was blind to your character,” he said bitterly. “I deliberately overlooked all the telltale signs of your innocence because I wanted you so badly. I deserve to be shot!”
“But, I wanted you, too,” she whispered at his ear, feeling his cheek warm and rough against hers as he held her. “It’s not all your fault. You were hurting. I understood.”
“That doesn’t excuse it. And to have that redheaded vermin gossiping about you in town!” he groaned. “I’m sorry.”
“I won’t be here much longer,” she reminded him miserably. “And if that reporter just doesn’t find me…”
His arms tightened. “It won’t matter if he does,” he said curtly. “I’ve just told the men that we’re engaged. I’ll make sure that gets around town. Dale will wind up with egg on her face from her damned gossiping.”
“Engaged?” she gasped. “But I can’t!”
He drew back, scowling. “Why can’t you? You’re a missionary, not a nun. Marriage is permissible.”
“But not like this, Gene,” she said quietly, her hazel eyes sad and regretful. “Not to spare my reputation. It will be all right. I’m a qualified nurse. I can still get a job.”
His eyes searched her face, down to her soft mouth. “Marriage is a job, isn’t it? Dwight and I are switching responsibilities, and we’ll both be happier. That means I’ll be home more. I can spend time with you and the kids.”
She flushed. “There aren’t any kids.”
His lean hands smoothed down her hips and one of them lightly touched her belly. “Yet.”
She shivered and tried to pull away.
But he held her, gently, firmly. “I know. I hurt you, didn’t I? Your first time was a nightmare that you don’t want to repeat, especially with me.”
She nodded slowly, without looking at him.
He bent and suddenly lifted her in his hard arms, his eyes searching her frightened ones as he carried her toward the bed.
“If I can make you want me, in spite of what happened before, will you agree to marry me?” he asked softly.
“But, I don’t…!” she protested.
He covered the frantic words with his mouth, gently this time, using every shred of skill he possessed to coax her set lips into a shy response.
He laid her down on the coverlet and stretched out beside her, his lips teasing hers in a gentle, exquisite kind of exploration. His fingers traced her cheeks, pushing back the wispy strands of long black hair that had escaped from her bun while the seconds lengthened into minutes.
“I like your hair long and loose,” he breathed against her yielding mouth, one lean hand disposing of pins and combs before he arranged her loosened mane of hair around her flushed face.
She looked up at him nervously, her body already taut from the threat of his, her memory all too vivid of the last time.
“There’s a barrier,” he whispered deeply, holding her eyes while he traced
a long forefinger around the swollen contours of her mouth. “It’s called a maidenhead. It protects a woman’s chastity. The first time, it has to be disposed of, and that’s why I hurt you. It won’t ever be like that again. Now that I know how innocent you really are, I’ll make a meal of you, Miss Hathoway. When I’ve finished, fear is the last thing you’ll feel when you look at me.”
She colored. “I’m a nurse,” she reminded him, trying to sound worldly. “I do know something about my own anatomy.”
He brushed her open mouth with his. “I was in too much of a hurry to wait for you. I lost my head. I won’t lose it with you again until I’ve satisfied you.”
“Please,” she moaned, “you mustn’t talk to me like this!”
“You’re my woman,” he said, lifting his head to hold her eyes. “We’re lovers, Allison. We’re going to be married. You’ll have to face the implications of that, sooner or later.”
“I won’t marry you!”
“Like hell you won’t marry me,” he said with quiet determination. He searched her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said as he bent. “But this is the only way, now.”
She didn’t understand what he meant at first. He covered her mouth with his and his hands smoothed down her body while he built the kiss from a slow caress to a blazing, raging statement of intent. She shivered as the heat exploded in her body when his mouth suddenly went down hard over her breast and began to suckle it through the fabric of her dress. She arched and gasped, at the same time that one lean hand found the fastening of her jeans and slipped expertly inside against warm flesh.
“Gene, you can’t!” she whimpered.
But he touched her intimately then, and his mouth became as insistent and rhythmic as the hand invading her privacy with such slow, sweet mastery. She began to shiver. Her eyes closed. She couldn’t fight this sweet tide of pleasure, she couldn’t! She heard her breath shuddering out in little gasps, felt her body lifting, yielding itself to whatever he wanted. His face nuzzled under the fabric of her blouse and nudged her bra aside so that he could find the hard, aching tip of her swelling breast, hot and moist against the silky bare flesh.
“Gene,” she whispered, her voice breaking on his name as he quickened the rhythm and increased the insistence of his mouth on her body. “Gene! Oh, Gene, please—!”
Her voice broke and he gave her what she begged for, feeling her release with pride and indulgent pleasure. He lifted his head and watched her convulse, her face a study in rigid ecstasy, her body completely his. She wept afterward, and he comforted her, kissing away the tears, lightly caressing her trembling body until she was completely still in his arms.
“That’s what it feels like, Allison,” he said softly, holding her shocked eyes. “That’s what it was like for me, that night in the cabin. I wanted you to know, because next time, I’ll give you this same pleasure with my body. Only it will be an agony of a climax, I promise you. This will be nothing by comparison.”
She blushed as she met his eyes. “Why?”
He kissed her nose. “I told you. I want you to marry me.”
“You don’t have to go that far to spare my reputation, or salve your own guilt. I told you, I don’t blame you…Gene!” she gasped sharply.
His body had levered over hers in midsentence and he’d coaxed his way between her long legs, so that she felt him in blatant intimacy, became shockingly aware of the power and need of his body.
He moved deliberately, balancing himself above her on his forearms, smiling down at her with the slow, deliberate shifting of his lean hips.
“Say, yes, I’ll marry you, Gene,” he instructed very slowly, “or I’ll peel you out of those jeans right now and make you scream like a banshee under me. If you think your reputation’s in shreds already, wait until that unholy crew in the bunkhouse hears the noises I drag out of you now.”
She shivered, because she was vulnerable and he knew it. Worse, the window was open, she glanced at it and saw the curtains moving.
“Better say it quick, cupcake, before I get too involved to roll away,” he said huskily and pressed his lips down hard over hers. “It’s getting worse.”
Yes, it was, and her face registered her knowledge of it. She swallowed, sensations in her lower belly making her hot and weak all at once. Her legs trembled under his. “You can’t do that…to me,” she protested. “Marie and Winnie—”
“Are downstairs,” he said, “and the door is closed. Neither of them is likely to walk in without an invitation since they know I’m up here with you,” he said in a deep, husky tone. “Open your legs, Allison,” he whispered, his mouth poising over hers to brush at it with soft, sensual intent. His own long, powerful legs began to edge out and she felt him against her in a hot daze. She gasped softly and looked up into his glittering green eyes, feeling a kindred recklessness. With a faint moan, she let him shift her legs, let him fit his lean body intimately to hers while he watched her face with unblinking intensity. His jaw tautened and she felt his body swell even more in the stark closeness. She shivered.
His hand went between them and ripped open his shirt and pushed hers up, easily unclipping her bra and moving it out of the way. He looked down as he brushed his hair-roughened chest blatantly over the hard tips of her breasts and watched her shiver with reaction. His hips began to move upward over hers, throbbing with building passion as his eyes bit into hers.
“Tell me you don’t want to be filled,” he whispered at her lips. “Filled hard, and deep.”
She made a helpless sound and shivered again, totally helpless.
His hands went to her jeans, and then to his own, and seconds later, she felt his muscular, hair-roughened nudity against her softness with a sense of wonder. His body echoed the soft shiver of hers.
“Are you going to let me?” he whispered, drawing his hips against hers.
“We shouldn’t…Gene,” she choked.
“Yes, we should,” he whispered tenderly. His hands smoothed down her silky hips, under her thighs, and he lifted them, eased them apart with such gentleness that she couldn’t find a single protest.
He moved then, fitting himself to her in a silence that smoldered with promise.
She looked straight into his eyes and gasped softly as he began to possess her, with exquisitely gentle movements.
“Yes,” he whispered tenderly. “You see? It doesn’t hurt. No, don’t tense up. That’s it,” he coaxed. He took her mouth under his and cherished it. “That’s it, little one. I’m only going to love you. Isn’t that what you said you wanted? To be loved?”
She’d meant another kind of love entirely, but this was heaven. She wondered if he’d ever been so tender with anyone else, but he moved then, and she couldn’t think anymore.
He probed her body softly. “Yes, watch my eyes, Allison. You watched me, that night. Now I want to watch you.”
As he spoke, he moved, slow and easy movements that brought them first into stark intimacy, and then into contact, and then totally together. She gasped as she felt her body absorbing his, stunned with the ease of his passage, the readiness of her own body. She stared into his eyes with wonder, trying to feel guilt and shame, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t have imagined the expression on his lean face in her wildest dreams. His eyes were soft and warm, full of secret knowledge and tenderness and excitement.
He moved lazily against her, smiling as he settled on her body in a soft rhythm that lifted her very slowly to an ecstasy she’d never dreamed possible.
She cried out and pushed at his chest, frightened, but he continued the steady rhythm, increasing it now, his breathing suddenly changing as he watched her eyes.
“Don’t look away,” he said huskily. “I’m going to watch. Now, Allison. Now, little one. Now. Now!”
She made sounds she’d never made in her life as the sensations gathered and suddenly exploded. She wept in what sounded like anguished pain, her breath trapped in her throat, her face contorted like her convulsing body. He went with her
every step of the way, only giving in when she was almost exhausted. He laughed even as his body corded over hers, laughed through the vicious ecstasy that suspended him above her in a shuddering anguish of satisfaction.
He ground out something and went rigid before he collapsed on her body, his heartbeat shaking both of them. He trembled, as she did, long afterward.
“I really should have closed the window,” he murmured dryly, feeling the heat in her cheeks. “Don’t curl up. We’re too far from the bunkhouse and the living room for anyone to hear you, and Dwight’s asleep. Did it hurt this time?” he asked, smiling as he lifted his head to search her eyes, knowing the answer already.
She swallowed. “Oh, no,” she whispered. She was still trembling a little, and so was he. They were both drenched with sweat, but her body felt deliciously boneless, although it still tingled with pleasure. “No, it was…” She searched for the right word as she looked into his soft eyes. “It was beautiful.”
“That’s how it should be,” he breathed at her ear, gathering her legs in the muscular cage of his as he kissed her tenderly. He lifted his head. “I hope you weren’t disappointed this time.”
“You were…watching,” she whispered, coloring. “Couldn’t you, well, see?”
“I saw, all right.” His face hardened with the memory and he kissed her roughly. “I’ve never watched before. I’ve never been satisfied like that before, either. If you don’t marry me, so help me, I’ll move in here with you until I shame you into saying yes.”
She swallowed. “Gene…”
He brushed back her damp hair. “Your conscience will beat you to death over this,” he said quietly, drawing her gaze along their bodies until she flushed and averted her eyes. “I didn’t force you or coerce you. It was mutual. We’ve got a lot going for us. I want to live with you, cupcake.”
“Sex wouldn’t be enough for you,” she whispered sadly. “And you’d have a long time to regret it.”
“I won’t regret it.” He brushed his mouth over her eyes. And he knew he wouldn’t. He was awash with new feelings, with a tenderness he’d never experienced before. He studied her quietly. “You’ll be everything I ever needed, or wanted. I’ll take care of you until I die. And someday, somehow, I’ll make you glad you said yes.”
