She shook her head, the sharp, negative movement a denial of his horror at the thought of bringing pain to her lissome body.
And then he spoke to her, his whisper harsh, his words a prediction of what might come to pass. “I will, I fear,” he said, barely capable of holding the reins on his passion, feeling already the pulsing rhythm that preceded his release. “It’s been three years, Faith.”
“For you? Three years without…” Her voice was soft, the words demanding his reply as blue eyes opened to swallow him in their depths, and he nodded in a silent response, knowing he had no reason to query her in the same manner. Faith was as faithful a woman as the day was long. She had not strayed from her wedding vows, no matter her anger with him or her disappointment in the hash he’d made of their marriage.
And he had not sought out another, had not slaked his desire for Faith in the body of a stranger. She was all he wanted, all he had ever yearned to possess.
And now he reached between their bodies, sensing her indrawn breath as she stilled beneath long fingers that fondled her soft folds. His index finger moved gently, with tender care around the pulsing bit of flesh that cried out for his touch. She was damp there and he stroked with a circular movement of that lone finger, his eyes intent on her face.
Her hips lifted to his caress, and as he watched, soft color bloomed across her skin, her nostrils flared and she murmured beneath her breath. It was a revelation, a glimpse of the heaven he had once held as his own and then allowed to escape. Now he bent to her, savoring these moments of loving, with the sunshine pouring through the open window, the breeze cooling his hot flesh.
His gaze feasted on her, adoring the woman he held beneath him, the wife he’d come so close to losing forever. Now, for whatever reason, the Fates had smiled on him this morning, granting him the exquisite thrill of watching as she allowed him access to her moments of release.
And then she cried aloud, and he leaned closer to hear her words. “Not without you,” she whispered. “I need you, now, Max.” Her breath caught, and her head tossed to one side, then the other, as a thin, wailing cry rose from her lips. He sealed them with his own, swallowing the gasping, passionate pleas.
And then, as she fell back against the bed, he rose to kneel above her, placing her thighs over his own, leaning forward as he slid one large hand beneath her to lift her for his taking.
Chapter Nine
His hands were warm and familiar beneath her, yet Faith knew a moment of panic as Max lifted her to him. It had been so long—three years since she’d been this close to him, long enough to blur the memories of the pure ecstacy of their coming together in that bed in Boston. Now, even though she ached for his possession, she felt a pang of unease as he nudged against that most feminine part of her and then leaned forward.
“Faith?” His whisper was harsh in her ear, his unspoken query loud in her mind. Are you sure? And she could only nod, gripping his shoulders as his penetration registered, at first a moment of taut resistance as her unused body rebelled against the invasion.
“Please, sweetheart. Relax for me. I don’t want to hurt you.” He murmured the words against her ear, and then he groaned aloud and shifted, easing back from the dominant position he’d chosen. He rolled with her until she was sprawled across his big body, her legs straddling him. His chest heaved beneath her as he struggled to control the automatic flex of muscles.
She nestled her face against his throat. “I’m sorry, Max. I thought—”
“It’s all right, sweet,” he murmured. “I rushed you too quickly. You’re not ready for me.”
“I thought—” His mouth halted her words as he lifted her and clasped her face between wide palms, touching her lips with soft kisses and hushed phrases of comfort.
“Don’t think,” he told her. “Just feel how much I want to please you, sweetheart.”
He lifted her above him and nuzzled the fullness of her breasts as they hovered just above his face, his mouth feasting on one tight, nubbed crest, then the other, until she cried out with the aching need his lips and tongue brought into being.
With another quick, smooth movement, he rolled with her until, side by side, they embraced and he found once more the sensitive peaks of her breasts, those nubbins of flesh that seemed attached by some slender, shimmering bridge of nerves to the even more responsive parts between her thighs.
His hands moved over her, caressing her back, her waist, the smooth curves of her bottom, and then he lifted her leg and sought the hidden folds that lay open to his touch. She was surrounded by him, by hands and mouth and the pressure of his manhood resting firmly against her belly, reminding her of its aching need.
And yet the man who was even now spending long minutes patiently wooing her reluctant flesh seemed capable of ignoring that firm part of his body that surely was craving a satisfaction her taut flesh had denied him. In all of their times together, he’d never been so long-suffering, so ready to please her, and she sighed with the pure pleasure of knowing he would have her find satisfaction before he sought his own.
His hands were deft, knowing where to touch, how to press firmly and then with tender, teasing skill as he searched out each crevice and fold of her womanhood. His fingers slid with ease wherever he chose to explore, and she felt the wet, heated response that came from deep within her body to ready her for his final taking.
A spiraling warmth possessed her, and he whispered soft words of encouragement against her throat. Then, opening his mouth over her breast, he suckled deeply and she shivered with the corresponding quiver of female flesh where his hands formed her to his purpose.
As the waves wash the beaches and then reform to splash again on the sand, so his coaxing touch brought her wave after wave of perfect, ascending sensation, building to a final climax so sharp, so piercing, she cried aloud.
“Max.” She repeated his name, whispering, then sobbing incoherent phrases as she repeated that beloved name. As if she could not speak it enough, could find no other single syllable to express the joy he brought her with the magic of his touch, the caress of teeth and tongue and lips against her flesh.
He turned her beneath him then, and lifted her legs again, this time seeking and finding the welcome he’d insured by long moments of loving. Faith clung to him, her legs circling him, her arms clutching at his back, as if she could not be close enough to the solid, muscular form that pressed her against the bed.
He was deeply within her, and she knew a moment of panic as his possession of her body threatened to seek out the very limits of her womanhood. He was there, at the entrance of her womb, and she sensed the moment when his seed was deposited, knew the instant he began within her another precious bit of humanity.
I’m going to have his child. As surely as she knew her name, so she was aware in that moment that Max had once more bequeathed her with the most priceless, beloved gift of all.
He would leave her. That was a given. But when he did, when he was gone from her, she would forever be in possession of a part of him. Whatever their future, she would receive another chance, another child to love.
“Faith? Are you all right?” His words were slurred, his breath escaping in great gasps as he lifted to look down at her. His hair was damp with perspiration, his eyes dark and exultant, and his face was set in harsh lines that told of passion spent, and desire sated. Even as she watched, his lids dropped to half cover his piercing gaze.
“I’m fine. More than fine,” she managed to whisper. And she was. He’d taken her with care, with tenderness, with all the skill of a man well-versed in the art of loving, and she had been the recipient of all that was good and gentle in Max McDowell.
“I was too fast,” he muttered, rolling with her, and cradling her as though he could not conceive of releasing her from his embrace.
“You were wonderful, Max,” she said, lifting her face to reach for his lips, kissing him with a mouth that was soft and swollen from his touch. He tasted just a bit salty, and his scent
was of a man spent and satisfied. She nuzzled his chest, touched the puckered nipples with her tongue and tightened the muscles deep inside her body, lest his manhood leave her empty.
“You’re going to be in trouble,” he murmured, sliding his hands to hold her bottom tightly, so their bodies remained linked.
“I think I like the sort of trouble you’re offering,” she said, leaning her head back to send him a look of challenge. “You are offering, aren’t you?”
He rolled her to her back and seated himself deeply within her once more, adjusting to her as she lifted her hips to capture him. “Can you already?” she asked, pleased at his obviously quick recovery.
“It seems I can,” he answered, withdrawing and then sliding forward to fill her again.
She was taken prisoner by his skill, unable to deny him his place there, where she had been hollow and empty for so long. It would not last forever, she thought, turning her face up for his kiss, but while he was here, she would accept what he offered, and be glad. She’d been a fool to hold him off so long, to deny herself this pleasure, given on her behalf with all the generosity he possessed.
And then her thoughts were set aside, replaced by the pure joy of this moment, a gift from the man who knew her body and used that knowledge to grant these moments of ecstacy and passion. She closed her eyes, reveling in his possession, her hips rising to meet his every thrust, her hands clutching at his shoulders. Her legs holding him fast, and her soul singing a silent melody as she knew again the thrill of loving the man who owned her heart.
They slept, curled in the middle of the bed, and when Max awoke it was to the wakening murmurs of the woman beside him. She roused from sleep slowly and he curved her against himself, his hand buried in the length of golden hair, tilting her head back to rest his lips against her brow.
He felt her breathing quicken as she woke fully and then she lifted a hand to his face, her palm curved against the length of his jaw.
“Can we talk about the baby?” he asked, and Faith stilled, her hand clenching as it dropped from his face to rest against his chest. He’d put it off since his arrival, yet had recognized that the time would come when they must face the death of the baby boy who had lived so short a while. And left such pain behind with his passing.
Perhaps now was not the ideal moment to face her with it, but while he held her close, while their hearts still beat as one, he pursued the subject he’d set aside during the past weeks.
“What can we say?” she asked, and he heard the sorrow she made no attempt to hide. “What is there to discuss? We had a child and he died. I failed you and I failed our baby.”
“You have it backward, Faith. I was the failure. I didn’t realize it then, but I see now that I should have insisted on bringing things out in the open, on telling you how I felt. Instead, I grieved alone and left you to do the same. I can’t forgive myself for hurting you that way.”
“Did you grieve?” she asked, and then lifted her hand to press her fingers against his mouth when he would have responded. “Of course, you did, Max. I didn’t mean for that to come out the way it did.” She seemed to shrivel in his arms, and he tightened his hold so that she could not escape, then reached for the sheet to cover her.
“I grieved,” he answered, the whisper slipping past her restraining fingertips. “But I know you must have felt a deeper sense of sorrow than I. It was only later, when you’d gone, that I realized how devoid of feeling you seemed, how vacant your eyes had become. I remembered then how listless and helpless you were in those days, after it was too late to repair the damage I’d done with my neglect.”
He sighed deeply and felt that same hopeless, empty emotion he’d lived with during the years without Faith in his life.
“And then I regretted all the words of comfort I hadn’t said, all the long nights I’d left you alone because I thought you had forbade me from your bed.”
“Your mother…” Faith allowed her voice to trail off, and stiffened in his embrace. “I’m sorry, Max. You’ll think I blamed her for everything. But in this one thing, she hurt me beyond measure.”
“I want to hear it,” he said, even as his mind rebelled at words of blame his mother could not refute because of the distance parting them.
“She told me it was my fault, that our son died because I couldn’t nurse him, that I didn’t have enough milk, and so he was forced to live on milk from the grocery store. Cow’s milk that surely was not fit for a baby to drink.” Faith ducked her head and Max felt her breath against his chest, knew the hitch in her breathing as she shivered. “I didn’t have enough milk for him. She was right about that. But the doctor told me that sometimes women who are under a great deal of strain have problems nursing their children, and that cow’s milk does very well for those babies.”
“And my mother didn’t agree with him?” Max asked quietly. Even as he remembered her words of censure when bottles were purchased and nipples boiled in a kettle on the kitchen range.
I never had a bit of trouble providing for my sons. He recalled her words as if she whispered them in his ear, even now.
“She was right, Max. He died of milk fever, and if I’d been able to feed him as a normal mother could, he—”
It was his turn to halt her words and he did it by placing his lips over hers and sealing the hateful, blame-filled phrases from his hearing. “I don’t want you to talk this way,” he said finally. “You were a good mother, Faith. If you weren’t able to produce enough milk, and if the doctor was right, that you were under a lot of strain, then it was my fault for not providing you with a home in which you could be safe from a woman who didn’t understand you.”
“Oh, she understood me, all right,” Faith said, bitterness filling her voice. “She knew exactly how to hurt me, how to make me feel the pain of my loss, and own it as my own fault.”
“Hush, sweetheart. Don’t let it cause you any more grief. Our next child will be born in a different home, with different surroundings, and we’ll be on our own, without anyone else there to cause you distress.”
“Our next child?”
“I want another child, Faith. I want it from you. I can’t imagine another woman in my bed or my home. I’m willing to buy a house for us, something outside the city, maybe, where you can have some land around you, instead of the sounds of passersby through the windows and the grocer’s cart rolling down the street.”
“Have you looked for such a place?” she asked, and he was pleased at the lift in her voice, the hope manifested in her query.
“I saw thirty acres just outside the city, with a large home and outbuildings,” he said. “The owners had been raising horses there, and they moved to Kentucky where they would be closer to the center of horse-breeding country.”
“Is it empty?” she asked, and he nodded. She snuggled closer and was silent.
After long moments he whispered the query that well might make a new beginning for them both. “Will you consider it?” he asked, then held his breath as he awaited her reply.
She sighed, then murmured against his chest, and he felt the soft brush of her lips against his skin, her fingers lifting to spread across his shoulder. Her eyelids fluttered and he knew their presence as if butterflies touched him there. And then she slept once more.
The setting sun found them, blessed their union as they dozed, and then sank below the horizon as Max reached for the quilt to draw it over the woman in his arms. She whispered his name and curled closer, and he smiled, closing his eyes as he joined her again in the restorative sleep that claimed them both.
They had settled nothing, but she’d given him much to consider, and even as he slept, his dreams were filled with the home he’d left behind, the woman who was his mother running the house he’d lived in as both son, then husband. It was time for sweeping changes, he decided.
Once he returned to Boston, with Faith at his side, he would form a new life in which his wife’s happiness would be uppermost in his heart and mind.
“I have?” Faith asked, surprise obvious in her words.
“No, ma’am, Miss Faith. It’s your husband who got a letter,” Titus Liberty said with a smile. “If his name’s Maxwell McDowell, that is.”
“That’s me,” Max said, striding up to accept his mail. He glanced at it for a moment, then stuffed it in his pocket. Bending, he whispered in Faith’s ear, “Let’s go on over to the bank first, and I’ll just sign over these papers to you so you can deposit your money in your account.”
“I don’t have an account, Max. I haven’t any money in the bank,” she told him, looking up into dark eyes that seemed to have become veiled, hiding his emotion. “I’ll have to open one.”
“You can do that without me, sweetheart,” he told her. “It’s all yours, anyway.”
With a wave at Mr. Metcalf, they left the store and walked across the street toward the wide doors of the bank. Max stepped up and held the brass panel for Faith to pass through the doorway before him, then walked to the high table provided. Picking up a pen, he dipped it in the inkwell. With a flourish, he signed his name in two places, then blew on the signature and handed her the papers.
“It’s all set. You go ahead, and I’ll step outside and read my letter.”
She shot him a curious glance, then nodded. “All right. I’ll be out presently.”
The president of the bank looked through his spectacles at her papers and nodded, then reached into his desk drawer for a form. He studied it for a moment, then pushed it across the desk, handing her a pen.
“If you’ll sign that right at the bottom, Miss Faith, I’ll open your account for you.” He glanced once more at the document he held, then at the bank check Max had brought along with him.
Texas Gold (Mills & Boon Historical) Page 15
