Harper's Bride

by Alexis Harrington

  Melissa caught her breath and squirmed under the unexpected pleasure of Dylan's hot, moist mouth at her breast. Every nerve on her skin seemed alive and sensitive to the lightest touch. With each light pull of her nipple, she felt spears of fire shoot through her belly to the place that even now prepared the way for their joining. Everything female within her responded to him, and her desire sizzled like an electric current.

  She breathed in the scent of his clean hair, and the smell of his skin that she had come to know so well in washing his clothes. Abandoning demureness, she wanted to touch him too, to feel his skin against hers. Reaching down, she struggled with his shirttail, but it was tucked in too tightly and she couldn't pull it out. She yanked harder. The sound of ripping fabric interrupted them.

  "Oh, no," she cried, feeling the tear along the front of his shirt.

  Grinning at her, Dylan bounced off the bed and looked down at the three-inch hole, then back up at her. "Hooee, woman, I'd better take charge of the undressing. You're one hell of a fiery she-lion, Melissa. Don't know your own strength, huh?" He cast off the shirt and his boots.

  She stared at his shirt and up at him. Fiery—she'd certainly never thought of herself that way. She'd spent most of her life trying to remain inconspicuous. Mortified, she started to apologize. "Oh, dear, I'm so sorry—"

  "I'm not." The teasing tone left his voice, and straightforward hunger glinted in his eyes, increasing Melissa's own craving for him. His belt buckle clanked as it hit the plank flooring, and he kicked his pants across the room. He stood naked before her then, the beauty of his muscled form emphasized by shadows and golden lamplight. She let her eyes trail over his broad chest, down his lean flanks and hips, to his powerful erection.

  Feeling a little timid, Melissa sat up and made a move to pull off her gown.

  "Not yet," he said softly, stopping her with a hand on her shoulder. He put one knee on the mattress. "Not yet. I want to do it."

  His hand brushed over her hair, down her back, along her leg, a caress of infinite gentleness. Grasping the hem of her nightgown, he slid it up her thigh and like a magician, swept it away from her. It landed in the corner, fluttering over the rice sack.

  He eased her to the mattress and let his gaze touch her here and there. She felt awkward under his scrutiny and tried to cover herself with her arms. He nudged them to her sides.

  "No, let me look, Melissa," he murmured. "I've wanted to look at you, touch you, for so long. Like I figured"—he kissed her forehead and her eyelid—"you're beautiful." He buried his mouth against her neck, thrilling her with soft, slow kisses that made her nipples stand erect.

  Melissa forgot her shyness.

  Running his hand up her ribs, he skimmed the side of her breast with his palm. His kisses made a leisurely path down her throat, and his hair brushed lightly over her skin, sending tantalizing shivers through her. Then he dipped to suckle her again and groaned as he took her milk greedily from each breast. His erection, heavy and full, pulsated against her thigh.

  An insistent throbbing began between her legs, one that she had never known before. With it grew a demanding desire to have Dylan inside her, because she knew that only he could ease the ache. But too shy to tell him so, she shifted slightly and drew up one knee, hoping he would understand.

  Instead, he let his hand drift downward across her flat belly, downward to delve her sensitive, swollen flesh with gentle, searching fingertips. Melissa gasped and arched against his hand. He began slowly, with a careful, deliberate touch. Soon though, she felt his breath coming fast and hot against her neck as he stroked her with increasing speed and intensity.

  What was he doing to her? she wondered, half delirious. Nothing in her limited experience with Coy could compare with this feeling of excruciating pleasure and torment.

  As if by instinct, she reached for the hard length of him resting against her thigh. He was hot and smooth and pulsing in her grip. When she closed her fingers around him, he made an inarticulate sound deep in his throat and sucked in a breath. He pulled his hips away, but she held fast, and he pushed back.

  "Dylan," she moaned. Her voice sounded far away to her own ears. Helpless against his sweet onslaught, she could only press against his hand.

  Seconds seemed like hours to her as the heat within her escalated until she was sure she could stand no more. Suddenly, Dylan batted her hand away from his own flesh and grasped her writhing hips. Melissa looked up at him, at his heavy-lidded eyes and the sheen of sweat on his face as he loomed over her.

  "You've never made love in your life, Melissa," he ground out, his voice low and rough. "But tonight you will with me." Still holding her, he took her with a single thrust that filled her so completely, she nearly wept with the poignancy of their joining.

  She felt as if there were a tightly wound spring inside her, and with each forceful thrust he gave that spring another twist. She looped her arms around him, consumed by the raging need that threatened to consume her.

  She lifted her hips to him so that he could reach deeper into her. His thrusts came faster, harder, pushing the throbbing between her legs to a nearly painful extreme. If this didn't end—

  "Dylan," she cried, "please—"

  He lowered his head to kiss her again, and with the next desperate stroke he drove her over the edge, tumbling her into a dark gulf of sensation. Fierce spasms wracked her body as muscles contracted and pulled Dylan into her.

  Melissa thought she called him again, but she was sure of nothing except him inside her and the feelings he'd ripped from her.

  Rearing over her, his hair almost hiding his face, he plunged forward again and again, shorter, harder, more desperate. Finally, with one last fervent thrust, his own release gripped him. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she pulled him close. A low, tortured groan escaped him and his face contorted. The tendons stood out in his neck as he strained against her body, and she felt the hot, rapid convulsions that poured from him into her.

  Dropping his weight to his elbows, he rested his head on her shoulder for a moment and panted against her neck. At last he breathed a sated, exhausted sigh.

  Utter silence fell over them, and for a moment the ticking of the clock was the loudest sound in the room.

  Dylan closed his arms around her and rolled them over together, so that he lay on his back and she was nestled against him. The sheets were in a tangled wad around their legs, and he reached down to cover them, enfolding them in a warm cocoon. Melissa thought she had never felt such security. In Dylan's arms, she was safe from the world.

  He chuckled. It was a full, satisfied sound that reverberated under her ear. "This beats trying to cuddle up to that damned sack of rice anytime."

  "Yes, it does," she admitted with a smile. Her heart brimmed with so much emotion, she wished she had the courage to say more, to tell him how much she loved him.

  His chuckle bloomed into a laugh. "You're a different kind of woman, Melissa," he said, repeating the compliment he'd once paid her. He tightened his arms around her. "I wish I'd met you years ago, when I was younger."

  She laughed now, too. "Ah, yes, I can see that you're an old man."

  The amusement faded from his voice. "Not old, I guess. But I'm not naive anymore, either. I don't assume that everything will work out just because I want it to."

  Melissa had the distinct, uneasy feeling that he was talking about them, and she didn't want to pursue it. Never had she once suspected that a man's bed could be a place of such communion and sharing. It all felt so perfect she was afraid to ask any questions and break the spell surrounding them.

  Their future was a mystery. They had tomorrow to face, and the days after that, and she didn't know what those days might bring. For now, she was content to lie here, with his arm holding her close to his warm body.

  Dylan felt Melissa sigh. Her soft, smooth limbs tangled with his, and her head fit perfectly in the hollow between his neck and his shoulder. This . . . this sense of completion, of joining hearts and
spirits instead of just bodies, this was what he'd missed. And the warm, unselfish woman who lay beside him had given that to him.

  It lifted his heart. It scared the hell out of him. He stared up at the dark, timbered ceiling overhead. He had to decide two things.

  Would he spend another winter in Dawson? And if he did, would he keep Melissa and Jenny with him? Money was no longer the issue—he'd made enough to buy the land he wanted. He would have to make his decision soon. September was on them and winter came early to the Yukon.

  But as Melissa burrowed drowsily against his shoulder, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and pulled the wolf hide over them. Basking in the peace and contentment that had been strangers to him for most of his life, he let his eyes drift closed.

  He didn't have to make any decisions tonight.

  Chapter Fourteen

  To Melissa's great relief, Jenny continued to make steady improvement over the next several days. Her rash had begun to peel like a bad sunburn, but Dr. Garvin told her that was part of the recovery process. Fortunately, both she and Dylan showed no signs of coming down with scarlet fever themselves.

  After their night of lovemaking, Melissa felt a shift in her relationship with Dylan. Because she stayed upstairs to care for Jenny, she noticed that he found any number of reasons to come up from his store. He would claim to be searching for a ledger book, or a particular pocketknife, or a whetstone. One time he even came for the sack of rice, declaring he had a buyer for it. She suspected his true intention was to guarantee that it wouldn't be used again as a barrier between them in his bed.

  With the Yukon's early autumn settling over Dawson, one afternoon Dylan brought Jenny a cashmere baby blanket. He'd traded a half case of whiskey to a Russian merchant captain for the costly, petal-soft white wool. It was the finest fabric Melissa had ever seen, and her love for Dylan grew accordingly.

  As much as she wanted to believe that he actually came upstairs to see her, she refused to give in to the temptation. The lingering glances they exchanged, the half smiles, and brushes of hands and arms in passing meant nothing much, she maintained. They were only the natural results of their nights together.

  Their nights . . .

  In the evenings, with Jenny tucked into her cradle, they staved off the chill under the wolf hides on his bed. Dylan brought her body to heights of pleasure that she had never before imagined, and taught her wondrous ways to satisfy him. It gave her a heady sense of power to watch him lying next to her, groaning and struggling to maintain control as she caressed and stroked him to the point of near-climax.

  "You're a heartless tease," Dylan said one night through gritted teeth. He lay with one arm thrown over his eyes and his hands clenched.

  She took no offense at his accusation. "No, I'm not," she murmured with a sly smile next to his ear, "I only want to please you, and you showed me how to do it."

  At that, he made an inarticulate sound that resembled a low growl, and rose from the mattress to flip her on her back. Then he parted her thighs and took her with slow, torturous thrusts to get even with her. He reduced her to whimpering his name over and over before he finally decided she'd suffered enough sweet torment and pushed them both to completion.

  As much as Melissa delighted in making love with him, though, she liked it best when she brought the baby into bed with them. It was then that she let herself pretend they were a real family, and that Jenny, their daughter, was snuggled safely in the embrace of her two doting parents. It was a fairy tale, she knew, and probably the most dangerous kind because it involved her child's heart as well as her own.

  And despite all the secret glances exchanged and the nights spent in fierce, breathless passion, Dylan spoke no words of love and said nothing about their future.

  Melissa didn't need Dylan for support. Between the gold she had hoarded from her laundry business and the bequest Rafe had left her, she knew she and Jenny could go back to Portland and have a safe, comfortable life for the foreseeable future. She was far from wealthy, but with careful budgeting, the financial independence she had strived for would be hers. If the day came that she needed to earn a living again, she now had the confidence to do it.

  No, she didn't need Dylan to keep the wolf away from her door.

  She needed him for love.

  *~*~*

  He was doing it again.

  His thoughts were drifting like slow-moving clouds across a summer sky, drifting to a blond woman and the child in her arms, drifting to cool nights under warm blankets, to a face whose prettiness he had not seen when he first set eyes upon it, a face he now couldn't get out of his head.

  Dylan pulled himself out of his reverie and straightened away from the counter where he'd been leaning on his elbows, daydreaming like a kid with his first crush. He had all kinds of work to do—accounts to go over, stock to put on the shelves, a new shipment to check—and he'd done none of it. Every time he began a task, some distracting thought would cross his mind, like the way Melissa angled her head when she looked up at him, or her graceful hands, or the feel of her arms around him when she took him into her body.

  This morning he'd heard her humming to Jenny again with a soft, mellow voice. He'd been so damned glad to hear it, his heart had felt as light as a feather. Disgusted, he kicked a ball of twine across the floor.

  What was wrong with him, anyway? He was twice as distracted as he'd ever been over Elizabeth, and look what trouble she'd gotten him into.

  He walked to the open door and, slouching against the jamb, looked out at the cold gray rain. It seemed almost profane to compare the two women—they were nothing alike. Even his own feelings for Melissa were not the same. She wasn't the mindless fever in his blood that Elizabeth had been. She touched him more deeply, reaching down to the corners of his soul he'd let no one into before.

  Overhead, he heard her footsteps crossing the floor. Drawn to her, Dylan started down the duck-boards and almost headed for the stairs again before he pulled up short in front of her abandoned washtubs.

  She wasn't part of his plans, he argued with himself, gazing at the web of clotheslines. She had nothing to do with that plot of land he'd dreamed of and worked for all this time—not a damned thing.

  Why, then, could he no longer think of it without picturing her in every room of the house he would build? He had to decide his future, and soon.

  "Morning, Harper."

  Dylan turned to see Big Alex McDonald lumber down the side street, carrying a bundle under one arm. He moved slowly and spoke even slower, as if talking were a difficult, unaccustomed thing he practiced. His heavy brown hair and enormous mustache concealed most of his face, making him look like a rendering of a Neanderthal. But while he seemed like a giant, awkward rube, Dylan knew that no shrewder man lived in the North. He'd amassed most of his fortune with the lay system Belinda had tried to interest Dylan in, the one Big Alex had introduced into the Klondike that reaped a portion of the gold that others mined.

  "Hi, there, Alex. I haven't seen you in a while." Dylan propped one foot on a soap crate. "What brings you by?" The towering Scotsman gestured up at Melissa's black and gold leaf sign."I've been looking for your missus, the singing laundry woman, but I haven't seen her for a while. I brought her some shirts to wash."

  Dylan shook his head. "The baby's been sick, and she's taking care of her. I don't think she'll be opening her business again."

  The big man looked disappointed and paused before speaking, as if mentally stringing the words together. "That's too bad. Nobody in town does such a good job with shirts, or sings so nice." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully with a huge hand. "I got used to seeing her down here, working and singing to the babe."

  He wasn't the only one, Dylan thought.

  "Well, give her this for me, anyhow." Big Alex reached under his tidy bundle and withdrew a dog-eared newspaper. "She told me she grew up in Portland. I got it from a cheechako who just came into town."

  Dylan glanced down at the masthead and read Oregonia
n. "Thanks, Alex. I'll tell her you stopped by."

  Big Alex nodded and trudged back to Front Street. Dylan watched him go, then looked at the paper again. It was more than three months old, but it was good to see something from home. He was glad, too, for the diversion.

  With a last glance at the stairway, Dylan walked back to the store and spread the yellowed newspaper on the counter in front of him. He'd never followed the goings-on in Portland, where the paper was published—the city was too busy and brash compared to The Dalles—but some of the topics were familiar to him. He turned the pages that looked as if they'd been soaked and dried in the sun, taking vague note of advertisements placed by general stores, carriage makers, and haberdasheries. He skimmed headlines concerning shanghaiing on Portland's docks, political disputes, and the war with Spain.

  Then, just as he was about to fold up the thing, one particular item caught his eye. It was a small piece, located down in a corner and could have been easily missed, or dismissed, by a reader. But Dylan stared at it in stunned disbelief, reading and rereading the headline.

  The Dalles Father-Son Banking Magnates

  Perish In Carriage Accident

  He jerked the paper closer and read that Griffin Harper and son Scott, majority stockholders in Columbia Bank, were killed when the carriage in which they were riding apparently plunged into a deep ravine and overturned. The elder Harper suffered a broken neck, while his son appeared to have died of extensive injurious insults to the body.

  Lowering the newspaper, Dylan swallowed and swallowed, but his throat was suddenly as dry as talc. God—his father, at least the only man he knew as his father, and his brother were dead? Forcing himself to finish the article, he read that Scott Harper was survived by his widow, Elizabeth Pettit Harper. The eldest Harper son, Dylan, had departed from The Dalles some years earlier, and his whereabouts were unknown.