Kit Gardner

by Twilight

  Logan...

  Just once, to hear his name from those sweet lips...to know this night would be cherished, not tarnished by the stain of deception. When he took her, it would be as Rance Logan, no other. She deserved no other.

  “Jess—” He gripped her slender upper arms, resisting the need to crush her against him, to seek all that promised softness. She would be heaven beneath him. “Listen to me. I can’t—”

  Her fingertips pressed against his lips, cool and trembling against the heat of his mouth. “No. I understand. You needn’t say anything. I am a woman full grown, Logan, responsible for my actions. You bear no responsibility toward me.”

  “The hell I don’t,” he growled. “I take full responsibility for anything that happens to you. I want to possess you. I want you as mine. Only mine, in every sense that a man can want a woman. His mate. My need for you is all-consuming. It’s become a living thing in my blood and in my soul. I can no more deny it than I can my next breath. You’re everything that I want to keep and protect.”

  “Oh, Logan—” She swayed into him and brushed her lips over his. “My heart aches when you talk like that. Swells and aches as though it will burst from my chest. I never thought love and desire could be so painful, so unsettling, yet so joyous and fulfilling, all at once.”

  His teeth met, and he set her from him, at arm’s length once more. “Jess, that man, Bartlett...”

  A calm settled over her features. Moonlight glittered like diamonds in the fathomless depths of her eyes. A wind-tossed curl fluttered against her lips, unheeded. “He was looking for Rance Logan,” she said, so softly the breeze immediately snatched her voice.

  “Yes, he was.”

  “The man who killed my husband.”

  “Yes. Bartlett was sent by a man named Cameron Spotz.”

  “It was self-defense, wasn’t it?”

  A ringing filled his ears. An unseen hand shoved hard into the center of his chest. “Jess—”

  Her proud chin came up, and her shining eyes tilted into the moonlight. “Frank drew his gun first, didn’t he?”

  “Jess—”

  “He would have shot you if you hadn’t shot him. Kill or be killed. Isn’t that the code in the West?” Her whisper was like the wind. “You were gambling with him. He gave you the locket. Probably as a wager. That’s how you came to have it.”

  The strength of this woman drove like a blade through his heart. “Jess...” he whispered.

  Her voice quivered faintly. “That’s what brought you here. The locket.”

  “I couldn’t stay away. Your face in that picture, Jess— I couldn’t believe a man could leave a woman like that.”

  “You never meant to stay here.”

  “I never meant to do a lot of things.”

  “You knew Bartlett would find you...somehow. You were a wanted man. And yet you stayed.”

  His throat was closing up on him, his chest compressing. “I couldn’t leave you once I’d found you. The way things were for you here, with Halsey, I had to make it right for you and Christian.”

  “No matter the risks.”

  “A man doesn’t think about risks sometimes. Other things become more important than his own damned hide.” He lifted one hand, fingers stretching toward her. She didn’t move, didn’t flinch, and his fingers curled around the nape of her neck. The agony of thinking he might lose her now... “Jess, I’m sorry.”

  She stiffened, and for one horrific moment he thought she would flee him. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t ever say you’re sorry.”

  His arm flexed, crushing her against him, trapping her there with the pressure of his arms. If she struggled against him, if she fought him, by God— “There isn’t an excuse in the world for what I’ve done to you,” he rasped into her hair, reveling in the softness of her against him. “The words could never exist, in any combination, to justify it. Maybe that’s why I let it go for this long, and that, too, was a damned foolish thing to do. Because now I’m in love with you like a madman, and I’m never going to let you go. Even if you hate me for what I’ve done. You came to love me once. Dammit, you will again.”

  “Don’t you know—?”

  His fingers bit into her upper arms, and his teeth bared with his words. “I know nothing at this moment, Jess, except that I took a man’s life.”

  “You saved mine.”

  His eyes narrowed. A blossoming hope stirred in his chest, and then a deep shudder shook him when her fingertips barely touched his beard-stubbled cheek. Grasping her hand, he pressed his mouth to her palm, his breath coming fast now. Her voice flowed over him like softly falling summer rain.

  “How can I think of what you took from me, when all I see and feel is what you’ve brought me? How can a woman hate the man she was born to love? I was half-alive, sleepwalking through my life, more wounded by events than I could have ever imagined, until you came. And it was as though the sun finally rose upon the night. You brought passion into my life. You awakened me to sensuality, and an awareness of myself as a woman I would never have known. You’ve shown my son more compassion and tenderness than any man ever has. And you’ve stirred in me a love that makes me ache clear to my soul. If Frank had to die by his own foolish hand to keep you alive and bring you to me, even for a short time, then God knows I’m content that he did.”

  “I didn’t shoot to kill him, Jess.”

  “A man like you never would.”

  It was as though she’d known him a lifetime. “You knew,” he said softly. “Tonight, with Bartlett and the sheriff, you knew I was the man he was looking for.”

  She turned her eyes toward the muffled gurgle of the stream, one brow curving wistfully. “I suppose I suspected for quite some time you had something to hide. Instinct, I guess. Even though I’d been so cruelly deceived by my husband, somehow it didn’t seem to matter that you kept something from me. Somehow I trusted you implicitly with the reasons, and with telling me, in your own time. And if you didn’t, if you rode off down that rutted trail and never returned, I would never have regretted one moment we’d spent together. Beneath your hard, callused surface, I sensed tenderness and an innate fairness in you. When I found the locket—” She pressed a hand to her heart and gazed up at him with eyes wide and glimmering, withholding nothing. “I feared for you like I’ve never feared for anything before. I thought nothing of myself. I felt no anger. Not a trace of betrayal or remorse. Only this deep sense of foreboding that you would be taken from me. There was never a need to forgive you, you see. I love you, Rance Logan. I always have, and I always will.”

  His hand caught at the back of her head and drew her softness full against him. “Say it again,” he said thickly, smoothing a blond curl from her cheek.

  Her arms slipped around his neck, and she tilted her lips up to his. “I love you, Rance Logan.”

  “I want to hear my name on your sweet lips...again and again.”

  “Rance,” she breathed against his mouth. “Rance, please, make me yours. I cannot bear another moment like this...waiting. We’ve waited so long as it is...entire lifetimes...”

  “Then open for me, love,” he rasped, brushing his thumb over her mouth. He took her lower lip between his teeth to test its plumpness. He sucked softly on the tender fullness, until it grew swollen and throbbing, then swept his tongue over the dewy rim of her parted lips, drinking of her honeyed taste. “Before we’re through, your taste will be mine, and mine yours. No difference will remain.”

  Silk burned beneath his palms as he molded the upthrust curve of her full buttocks and gently eased her woman’s core against the burgeoning evidence of his desire. Her resulting gasp of awareness brought her mouth open to the first thrusts of his tongue, deep into the farthest, warmest recesses. From deep in her throat came a moan of the purest pleasure.

  “Yes, purr for me, my little cat.” His fingers twisted into her hair, freeing it from its pins. Fragrant curls spilled about him like flaming shards of sunlight. “The faintest touch
of you on my skin is like a blade. Sweet torture...yet pain can be the basest form of pleasure. I’ve come to live for that pain...all that I’ll find when I burn inside of you, Jess...and when I make you burn for me.”

  “Yes—” Taking his hand in hers, she drew it to her breast. “Make it stop hurting. All of me. Please...ease the ache for me, or I shall die of it.”

  “We may both die of it yet,” he murmured, spreading his fingers wide over the fullness of her breast. A deeply felt satisfaction flowed through him when she sighed his name and her breast swelled beneath his hand. “The barest touch—” He lowered his head, his mouth hovering just over her skin, without touching, and breathed warmth upon the high, lush curves. In the silvery moonlight, her flesh quivered in response. “It’s the same for you, isn’t it?”

  Her sigh was like a ghost’s murmur in the night.

  “I could ravish you without even touching you.”

  “Yes...”

  The blood thundered through his veins, testing every last ounce of self-control he’d ever thought to possess. He’d never dreamed a woman could be so responsive, as much a slave to her passionate nature as he had become with her. Instinct demanded he ease himself on her in one magnificent onslaught. The pain that had settled in his loins required it. The restraint he’d shown thus far decreed it, by God. He couldn’t withstand a lingering seduction with such a woman. Surely no man could endure such exquisite torture and think to keep his sanity. And yet the pleasure he could achieve in arousing her to limits unknown, in plucking and playing her supple, passion-sensitive body until she, too, was consumed by these unforgiving flames...yes, his will could withstand such a test.

  He might well have been holding a virgin in his arms. The thought swelled his shaft to agonizing limits, as did the gentle fingers stroking through his hair and over the back of his neck. Just a simple touch. He could only imagine what those fingers were capable of doing to the rest of him.

  “I’m burning,” she murmured huskily.

  “So am I.” He brushed his lips back and forth, again and again, over the highest curves of her bosom, keeping his hands around her waist. “Tell me where it burns, love. Here, where my mouth is?”

  “Yes, and lower...”

  His long fingers slid up her back and worked the tiny hooks of her dress free. Silk rustled and parted. He flattened his palms, molding the sleek curve of her warm skin, then drew the silk wide. In a whisper, the capped sleeves slipped from her shoulders, and the dress spilled to the ground in a soft rustle.

  “Finally,” he murmured against her neck. “I’ve been wanting to take the damned thing off since you first put it on.”

  His actions were deliberate, his pace slow and leisurely, for he was intent upon savoring. His mouth took hers in a gentle kiss, his lips drawing deeply of her nectar until a whimper reverberated in her throat. He felt her fingers at the buttons of his shirt, the urgency of her palms spreading the cotton wide to caress the breadth of his chest.

  “Mmm...” she breathed. “I could never tire of the feel of your skin. It’s so rough, so entirely masculine and different from mine. I want to feel it against all of me.”

  He cupped her jaw and brushed his thumbs over her lower lip, then dipped his head to taste of her again. “And all I can think of, dream of, day and night, is your woman’s softness beneath me, and the taste of you...like warmed honey...” With agonizing slowness, he moved his hands up and down the length of her upper arms until she shivered and sighed his name. “Are you still burning for me?” he rasped, pressing his mouth to the pulse beating at the base of her throat. “Sweet honey...” He lowered his head and slipped his tongue deep into the valley between her breasts. “Such softness a man could drown in.” Sliding his fingers beneath the narrow straps of her camisole, he rubbed his knuckles along her skin beneath the length of the straps, pausing just where the strap met with the first tender curve of her breast. He watched her eyes dilate with sweet desire. She placed her hands over his and squeezed with burgeoning impatience.

  “Rance—”

  “Let me savor you, Jess, every sweet, round inch.” His lips brushed over the lace edge of her camisole to poise just over one nipple. Even as he watched, the peak swelled and thrust against the thin linen, as though reaching for his mouth. Still not touching her, he breathed hot upon the nub, and it distended even further.

  Her nails dug into his shoulders. “Rance—”

  He moved to the other breast, the touch of his breath alone tightening the pale pink bud into a fully distended nub that seemed to quiver for his touch. Only then did he ease the camisole’s straps from her shoulders.

  “Easy,” he purred thickly, when her fingers tugged at the ribbon binding the top of the camisole. “Savor me.” He pressed her hands to his chest and eased the ribbon apart with deft fingers. Inch by leisurely inch, the linen parted beneath the gentle pressure of his fingers, until the camisole slipped to rest upon the very peaks of her breasts.

  Rance licked his parched lips. Jess clutched at his shoulders, drawing swift breaths. Her lashes fluttered over her eyes. “Rance, I’m dying for you.”

  “Such a sweet way to go,” he murmured, lowering his head. With one nudge of his lips, the linen slid slowly over one nipple. The peak sprang into his mouth, bringing a low rumble to his throat, and he filled his hands with the taut, heavy fullness of her breasts. He took the nipple deep in his mouth, then sucked gently, slowly, in deep, long pulls, pausing only to brush his lips back and forth over the dewy peak before again drawing the sleek nub against the length of his tongue.

  She quivered against him like a fragile butterfly opening its gossamer wings for the first time. Tonight, she would soar.

  “Rance...”

  Easing himself from one breast, he watched the moonlight pearlize the wet, swollen peak, then curled his tongue around the other nipple, and was duly rewarded with her swift intake of breath. “So damned responsive,” he growled, then rose and captured her mouth again with a savage hunger he could barely contain. She arched up against him, flattening her breasts against his bare chest. Her hands slid around his waist, molding his back, then delving, palms down, into the back of his waistband, seeking.

  He filled his hands with the lushness of her hips and buttocks, then slid one knee between her trembling legs and lifted her high against his thigh. Through the thin cotton of her pantalets, at the apex of her thighs, damp heat seeped into denim, branding him. Cupping one breast, he lifted the lush fullness to his mouth, a satisfied rumble filling his chest when her hips began a rhythmic rocking of her pelvis against his rock-hard thigh.

  “Tell me you’re on fire, clear to your sweet honeyed center.”

  “Yes,” she sighed, her breaths coming swifter, harder, with each seductive roll of her hips. She flung her head back, her fingers clutching at his shoulders, the tension building in her.

  In one motion, he lifted, turned, and laid her beneath him upon the dew-laden grass. “So hot...” he rasped against her quivering mouth. “You’re almost there, aren’t you? One touch and you’ll fly for me, little butterfly.”

  With one swift tug of his hand, he stripped the pantalets and camisole from her. His hand slid slowly up one impossibly long, sleekly curved leg, feeling the trembling just beneath the skin’s fevered surface.

  Moonlight and shadow spilled over her tightened features, lengthening her lashes, pearlizing her luminescent skin. She’d never looked more beautiful, more trusting, more innocent of the ways of love.

  He brushed his thumb over the damp nest of blond curls between her legs. She gasped and lifted her pelvis, nestling her womanhood against his hand. “Touch me, Rance...”

  “You’re like a tightly strung violin.” He parted the curls and again softly brushed his fingers over the moist flesh, then cupped her entirely, feeling the honeyed heat searing his palm and fingers.

  He rose up on his knees, shrugged quickly out of his shirt, then began unfastening his Levi’s, his gaze feasting upon every mo
on-bathed curve and hollow of her. She gazed up at him with passion-hooded eyes, admiring him, loving him as no other woman ever had.

  “Rance—” she breathed as his hands curved around her thighs.

  “Next time.” He lowered himself over her until his chest flattened her breasts. “Next time I’ll take off my boots and my pants. I...I can’t now... I can’t wait any longer.”

  She slipped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his throat. “I wasn’t looking at your boots.”

  “What were you looking at, little cat?” One flex of his hips, and she parted for him, allowing him entrance to the sleek softness of her.

  She arched up against him, her soft belly a smooth undulation against his. Her mouth opened with deep gasps, her hips lifting as if she ached to take him completely into her, almost as much as he burned to be there. “You’re like a thick blade....” she whispered. “Too much for me—”

  “No, love,” he rasped. Then, in one gentle stroke, he buried himself entirely within her. Their breaths came out in one long sigh against each other’s mouths. “Don’t...move...” he managed.

  In her innocence, she stiffened, and tightened exquisitely around his shaft. “What’s wrong?”

  He clenched his teeth, swallowing a groan of pure agony. “Nothing that a few days spent like this wouldn’t cure.”

  Like a sleek cat, she stretched and curled beneath him, nuzzling her breasts into his chest and curving her palms over his buttocks. “I feel so full of you.”

  Rance swallowed thickly and buried his face against the warm curve of her neck. “Please, Jess—”

  “You’re like one long, magnificent muscle.”

  Lifting his head, he said through his teeth, “Jess—”

  “You’re pressing into my womb,” she murmured, brushing her lips over his, then sliding her tongue slowly over his mouth until a tortured groan tremored through him. “If you move the slightest bit, I feel like I’ll tumble again over that mountaintop.”