He could give her peace, he could give her tenderness, and he could give her freedom from the worries that plagued them. Not forever but for the next ten minutes, and sometimes ten minutes could carry you into forever if you played it right. If you remembered it right.
The memory of his mother’s last smile flashed before him. She’d waved him off from the window of their home. It was the last time he’d seen her in a recognizable state. Before the Comancheros had wiped out everything, changed everything, taught him about impermanence. The next time he’d seen her, he’d been burying the charred remains of her body and wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now.
Blade’s words came back to haunt him. Do you want her to live without you?
No. He didn’t want that for Miranda. This time her fingers touched his cheek. He looked up.
“What is it?”
He shook his head. “Just a ghost skipping across my grave.”
“I’ve always hated that expression.”
“Then I won’t use it again.”
She shook her head and opened her mouth. He shut her up by picking her up in his arms.
“Hold that thought.”
She frowned at him as he dropped her on the bed. “For how long?”
“Until it doesn’t matter anymore.”
He didn’t want that part of his life touching her.
He came down over her, pinning her with his weight, pressing her hands beside her head in the way he knew she liked, tucking his feet around hers, using his knees to edge hers apart.
“I can’t give you forever, Miranda, but we’ve got now, and I can make now pretty damn good. Will you let me?”
She nodded, and her softly whispered “Yes” stoked his desire as he realized she really would let him do anything he wanted with her, and there were a lot of things he wanted to do. More than anything, he wanted a lifetime in which to do them, too. A Reaper’s lifetime. But he was a Cameron; he’d been born that way, and he’d die that way. Human. At least in his heart. So his lifetime maybe wasn’t going to equal hers, and she was going to have to go on without him eventually, but he’d send her off rich with memories of them to carry her until she found someone new. The thought of someone new ripped a snarl from his throat.
Another whispered “What is it?” and another shake of his head.
“Just come here, china doll.” He bent down, and she leaned up. As always, her thoughts were in sync with his, her energy stroking along his, her passion fueling his. Her lips bit at his. He slid his hand behind her head, holding her still, gentling the kiss, easing her back. The passion always took them so hard. It was wild and wonderful, but it wasn’t what he wanted this time.
He remembered Wendy on the swing, her hair flying around her as she looked at him uncertainly over her shoulder and the joy on her face when he told her he was staying. She believed he could work miracles. He wanted to work miracles for Miranda, too.
Her tongue licked across his lips, and he smiled. “Impatient?”
She nodded.
“Get used to it.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Why should I?”
“Because I want you slow tonight.” He threaded his fingers through hers. Raising her hands, he pinned them to the mattress above her head, stretching his torso along hers, giving her a bit of his weight, catching her gasp in his kiss as his cock snuggled against her pussy through all the layers of clothes.
“What’s wrong with hot?”
“Not a damn thing, but tender’s better.” He pushed her legs farther apart with his. She moaned. A flex of his hip and his cock slid up along her pussy, and even through clothes, the shock was electric. He did it again and again, a slow, easy seduction to a passion already roaring out of control. It was bittersweet. It was good.
She tried to rush him, pressing her mouth harder against his, but he leaned back, keeping it slow and easy, nibbling along the edges of her lips from one corner to the other, from the top around to the bottom, stroking with his tongue. Her mouth opened immediately, and he took possession not with the hard thrust she was expecting but with a gentle glide, for once in his life letting his soft side out. She moaned, and her nails dug into the back of his hand.
“Easy.”
“I don’t want easy,” she protested in a soft exhale.
“I do. Sweet, easy, and slow. A memory between us.”
Her eyes opened. This close it was hard to miss the darker flecks among the brown. Chocolate eyes, delicious eyes, eyes that could steal the soul, eyes that had stolen his the first second he’d seen them, eyes that watched his expression as he pushed her dress off her shoulders with one hand, as he slid his fingers down her arm and back up, as he dragged his hands over her shoulder until he could cup her breasts in his palms. The cool flesh heated immediately. The nipples hardened into points.
He smiled. “You’ve got the sweetest little breasts.”
Her thank-you was a bit off expulsion of sound. She didn’t know what he was doing and was cautious. It didn’t matter; he’d show her. Leaning down, he followed the path of his fingers with his lips, coasting over the soft white skin until he reached that pink tip, brushing it with his lips before kissing it a little harder, opening his mouth, bringing her nipple into the heat, rubbing the hardening nub with his tongue before flicking it. He knew he was doing it just right when her nails dug into the back of his neck and she tugged him to her.
He smiled down into her eyes. “Pay attention now. I want you to feel what I feel. Know what I know.”
He let his mind open a little, just a little. Letting her feel the passion, the desire, the want. He sucked a little harder on her nipple, experiencing the jerk that went through her, her energy wrapping around him, her lust taking hold of his, and just below that a softer emotion. She loved him. He heard the whisper in his head, felt the echo in her touch. Fuck, he wished he could say he loved her, too, but he didn’t know what love was. So he cherished her with his mind, with his hands, with his mouth. It had to be enough.
Peeling the clothes from her body, revealing the perfection of her form, he moaned when she was fully naked. She was so beautiful to him. As usual her hands went to the scars on her face and her stomach. He moved them aside.
“You’re beautiful, china doll. So fucking beautiful. You make me forget how to breathe.”
He meant what he said, Miranda realized. With his mind touching hers, there was no way she couldn’t know the reality of his feelings. When this beautiful man looked at her, all he saw was beauty.
She took her hand away and put it on his shoulder, reveling in the muscle, letting his mood lift hers. As he’d done to her, she unbuttoned his shirt one button at a time, caressing the flesh as it was revealed, feeling his breath catch, his passion spike. She smiled, pushing the material off his shoulders. With a growl he stood, shrugging out of it while she dragged her nails down the muscles of his abdomen. Hooking her finger beneath the waistband of his pants, she gave a tug. Growling, he shoved her hands away.
“I do love your growl,” she whispered, watching him strip with brisk efficiency. She would have lingered a lot longer over the task, nipping and teasing. When his pants hit the floor, he stood back, hands on hips, his heavy cock straining forward. Cupping the thickness in her palm, she admired the man who was her husband. Broad shouldered and lean hipped with the well-developed muscles of a man in his prime, he had scars of his own. A knife wound on his shoulder, a bullet crease on his side. Other scars she couldn’t so easily identify decorated the hard planes of his body, reinforcing his humanness and his frailty, but also that rock-hard core of toughness that was so much a part of him. More than he was human, he was Cole, and he was hers.
“Does it bother you?” he asked.
She must have been thinking too loudly “No, I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
He came down over her, and
she welcomed the heat of his body, wrapping her legs around his hips, her arms around his shoulders. She pulled him to her, and his arms were around her, holding her as tightly as she held him. For a moment they were Reaper and human, man and woman, lovers.
“It’s going to be all right,” she told him.
He didn’t respond, just held her tighter. Brushing his lips across her cheek, he found her mouth with his and kissed her with the soul-deep tenderness that was so beautiful it made her want to cry. Wiggling her hands free, she cupped his face between her palms and stroked her finger over his eyebrow, memorizing the lines of his face, the hint of crow’s-feet at the corner of his eyes, the strength and the passion there. He was such a hard man she never expected him to display tenderness so blatantly, but he was now, and she had to wonder why.
Before that thought could form into words, he was kissing her again, stroking his hands down her sides, tugging her bloomers down, stealing the last of her control. He had such wonderful hands; rough yet tender, they drove her crazy as they glided over her skin and teased to life nerve endings she’d never known she had. When he patted her hip, she lifted, and he whisked her bloomers off and across the bed. His fingers brushed across her skin, stroked between her legs, and found the center of her passion. She braced herself for the onslaught that didn’t come. With a butterfly touch he slid his finger across her clit, centering her attention. Her breath caught in her throat. Her pussy clenched. With the utmost delicacy he stroked, tempting her passion rather than driving it. The shiver started at her toes as his fingers just grazed, then just pressed, and then lightly, ever so lightly moving in a gentle rotation that coaxed her passion higher.
She didn’t know what to do with this Cole, how to handle him, so she did the only thing she could and laid back and let him have his way, moaning as his teeth nibbled on her skin. His lips brushed across her breast so gentle, so sweet, so like nothing she’d ever experienced before. She realized it was fire and passion blended with tenderness and caring. He was telling her the only way he knew how that he cared. Tears welled in her eyes; she blinked them back, not wanting an explanation to ruin the moment because she’d never been cherished like this, as if there were nothing more important in the world than her smile and her pleasure.
He looked up at her from between her legs, his breath teasing her pussy as he moved down. “There isn’t.”
The words trapped in her throat were lost forever as his tongue skimmed her clit with the same delicacy as his touch, snapping nerve endings to attention, leaving her straining upward against his hands and wanting more. Desire pulsed and throbbed under her skin. Her breasts swelled; her canines split her gums. She was Reaper, and she wanted; he was human, and he was giving. It shouldn’t work. It couldn’t work, but at the next stroke of his tongue she knew with blinding clarity that it did. Perfectly, wonderfully, just the way they were, two imperfect beings coming together. They worked, and she wouldn’t change a damn thing.
Another stroke of his tongue sent her thoughts skittering. There was so much she wanted to enjoy, so much of this man she wanted to experience. She’d seen his strength, felt his lust, but this, this was so much different. This was loving.
She closed her eyes and spread her thighs. She couldn’t help but smile as he said, “That’s my girl.”
She had to dig her claws into the bed so as not to rake his skin as he laved her over and over, top to bottom, bottom to top, circling, prodding, nibbling, easing her to orgasm, holding her with his hands and his energy as her world exploded. His mouth and mind whispered incoherent praise, soft words that melted into her skin, into her heart, into her soul, and anchored her through the chaos.
And when it was over and she was still shivering and weak, he came over her, his eyes holding hers as his body merged with hers, slowly, inch by inch. Until there wasn’t a breath of space between them, not a speck left to be filled. Until all the empty want and need had been squeezed out, and there was only him and her. Until it was perfect.
18
“You know I hate laundry day,” Addy said, wiping her arm across her forehead before grabbing the soap and pouring it into the cauldron of water set over a banked fire.
Miranda nodded and grabbed up the wooden paddle. “What’s to like? It’s hot work, it’s hard work, and I about catch myself on fire every time I do it.”
“It doesn’t help that it’s hot enough to fry an egg out here.” Addy shoved the layers of cotton that made up their dresses and skirts into the water. “It’d be so much easier if we could wear pants.”
Miranda gave the clothes a stir. “I don’t see why we can’t.”
“Maybe because, rather than getting anything done, our men would be standing around us all day, running off all the other men trying to ogle our posteriors.”
Miranda laughed. “You think?”
“I think.”
An echo of laughter came from the right. Miranda looked over to where Wendy was sitting on the swing that Cole had built for her last week, inexpertly trying to make her legs move in time with her body in order to get the swing going. She remembered Cole exhausted from a day of training, braiding that rope so her daughter would have the swing. She remembered Blade telling her Cole would be even more special if he’d take that third bite. She remembered as Cole had stood before the council, holding her hand as he slipped on the etched metal he’d made into a ring, promising her forever without a hitch in his voice. Miranda shook her head and rubbed her thumb on the ring. Cole was special just as he was. She would never let them change him.
Addy followed her gaze to the ring.. “Cole’s a good man, isn’t he?”
Miranda nodded. “But you already knew that.”
“Hard not to. After my parents died, he took me on, and he was only a young man. And when the Comancheros captured me, he came and fetched me home.”
“Fetched me home.” Such an innocuous turn of phrase to describe how hard it must have been to not only find Addy but to get her back. “He’s a stubborn man.”
Addy smiled softly. “He’d argue that.”
“He argues everything.”
“That he does. Does he plan on staying?”
Miranda shrugged and stabbed the pile of laundry floating in the cauldron, doing its best not to get wet. “I don’t know. But if he leaves I know he’s not planning on taking you with him.”
She hoped her smile didn’t look as forced as it felt.
A touch on Miranda’s arm had her looking up. “He wouldn’t leave you.”
She wasn’t so sure. In the week since they’d married, they’d talked about a lot of things: their favorite colors, their enjoyment of each other, how fast Wendy was growing, the emptiness of the council’s approval . . . everything but what mattered. Their future. “Thank you.”
Addy sighed. “You should know Isaiah and Blade are talking to him now.”
“About him changing?”
“Him being human is a weak link in our chain.”
Miranda stabbed at the air bubble keeping the clothing afloat. “There isn’t anything weak about Cole.”
“Nope.” Addy put her hands on the small of her back and stretched before glancing at Miranda out of the corner of her eye. “But that’s not going to stop them from putting a lot of pressure on you to convert Cole with or without his permission.”
“I’ve already felt it.” It seemed everyone had a little hint to drop.
“I’m not surprised. Having a human among us is a weakness. Cole being your mate, but not being Reaper, creates a lot of tension, a lot of competition.”
“It can’t be helped. Cole doesn’t want to be any more Reaper than he is.”
Addy nodded. “I know. Cole’s always been proud of who he is, where he came from, and how he made it to where he has without a hand up.”
Miranda poked down a fold of petticoat, watching the off-white color slowly dark
en as the water swept over it until all that remained was a small, stubborn peak. “That’s what makes Cole, Cole.”
“Cole would be Cole no matter what.”
Did she really believe that? Miranda looked over at Addy and saw the stubbornness in her expression and realized how hard it must have been for her to leave everything secure in her life, to leave her family, when she decided to go with Isaiah. Stirring the clothes, Miranda asked, “Was it hard for you?”
“It should have been.” Addy shrugged and poured a bucket of water into another cauldron. “It might have been if I’d had a choice.”
Miranda knew the story. All the Reapers of their pack did. Isaiah had been living with Addy in town, had taken on the role of baker—baker!—when the Reapers the high council had sent out had found them. They’d almost killed her. “And when you healed and found out what Isaiah had done?”
“Did I hate him, do you mean?”
Miranda nodded.
Addy sighed and stuck another piece of wood under the fire. “No, but I think Isaiah wanted to hate himself.”
“Why?”
“Isaiah always ran from who he’d become, fought the power, never explored it. He felt as if a beast lurked inside. Something that had to be exorcised.”
Miranda’s own abilities were so weak, she’d never seen as much of a benefit to being Reaper as others.
“Cole would fight it always.”
Miranda knew that in her soul. As much as she longed to have him forever, as much as the thought of holding him in her arms while she was young and he was old, of watching his life force slip away frightened her, making Cole into something other than what he was would tear the heart from him.
“Maybe,” Addy said, “but over time he’d get used to the powers and understand how they’d enable him to protect you and Wendy, to keep you safe, because, trust me, you two are the most important things in that man’s life. He’d be happy for it.”
No, he wouldn’t, but Addy didn’t want to hear that. Miranda settled for, “Maybe.”
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