Denim and Lace

by Rice, Patricia

  "Maybe we should keep on riding tonight. The steamboat has already left so we can't take the river, but if we ride hard across country, we could be in bed by midnight."

  She was staring at him again. Amusement rose up in him as it never did with any other woman. She didn't blush prettily or look away shyly or smile at him boldly. She just stared at him, as if he were something new and amazing and altogether wonderful. Sloan knew he wasn't that, but he still liked the feeling it gave him. He rubbed a finger along her lips. "Sam?"

  She shook her head and pushed away. "You said you didn't want me sore," was all she said before turning back to unsaddle the horses.

  Hell, right now, he'd take her any way he could get her, but it wouldn't be much fun for her. He still had this wild idea of teaching her to enjoy sex. Sloan knew he'd offered her a crude bargain, but he thought she might get a little bit more out of it than the terms specified. If she ever did decide to marry, she could go to her husband with more confidence than she had now. He didn't think himself particularly conceited in the matter. He just had reason to know more than the average man.

  "What do you think those railroad men would do to my father if that's where he went?" she asked carefully as they prepared camp.

  "Put him on a slow boat to China." That's sure as hell what he would have done, given the opportunity.

  She frowned, uncertain of his seriousness. "They wouldn't hurt him, would they?"

  Sloan shrugged and threw coffee grounds into the pot. "The men building the railroad aren't exactly patient, understanding types. You can't blow up mountains and drive hundreds of workers to their deaths and be kind and understanding, too." He caught a glimpse of her face and regretted his harshness. "But your father wouldn't mean much more to them than a buzzing gnat, unless he's inclined to bellow his views in newspapers to foment public outrage. He wouldn't go buying a newspaper, would he?"

  "He never has before." Samantha stirred the corn mush she was making. "Mostly, he just invents things. He sees something needing to be done, and he works on it until he figures out how to do it. It's just he always has an opinion on everything and isn't afraid to voice it."

  "Yeah, I noticed." He gave her a curious look. "He's not going to appreciate it if you show up in my company."

  Sam shrugged. "What matters is knowing he's all right. I don't think we'll find him in San Francisco. He always writes, and he's never been gone this long. Something's happened. I want to know what it is."

  "I went ahead and hired Hawkins. He'll follow behind us. You'll have to give him that picture you're carrying before we leave."

  She nodded, and the sadness of her expression tugged at the heart he no longer had. Grimacing, Sloan turned away and occupied himself elsewhere. He didn't have time for sympathizing with a wildcat.

  Later, when they had settled themselves down in their bedrolls, he lay awake listening to her breathing and creating pretty fantasies of what he would do to her once they got to that hotel. If he could just concentrate on the real reason he had her out here, he wouldn't have to think about how it must feel to have a father disappear off the face of the earth. She was holding up pretty well. The Neelys were a self-reliant lot. They didn't need that rabble-rousing maniac they called father and husband. He shouldn't feel the least bit ashamed of what he was doing.

  But some small piece of the man he used to be lived inside him, and that piece nagged at his conscience every time he thought about the sadness on Samantha's face. He couldn't drive it away, so he finally gave up his fantasies and fell asleep.

  The next day dawned bright and unusually warm for the time of year. They both tied their coats up in their bedrolls and set out to enjoy the sunshine. After inquiring if they would reach town today, Sam had donned her gray gabardine dress again. He still hadn't gotten a good glimpse of what she wore under it, but today she had covered the top with some kind of foolish pink jacket that came to her waist and tied at the neck. The wide sleeves gave her ample room for movement, and the flowing material covered too much of her figure for Sloan's taste. He scowled at it, but said nothing as they set out.

  He decided to avoid the civilized areas along the river where they could catch the steamboat into 'Frisco. Uncertain of his reasoning, he preferred thinking he was saving Sam's reputation. In truth, it was more likely that he preferred to keep her to himself a while longer.

  But by noon he knew they approached the bay area. Samantha seemed to sense it, too. She asked constant questions about the sights around her and practically bounced in her seat with eagerness.

  "Are we near the coast yet? Will we see the ocean?"

  It hadn't occurred to him, but she probably had never seen the ocean. Sloan knew this area, and he scanned their location briefly. "We're just south of the bay. The ocean is a bit out of the way, but I can take you there if you want."

  "Really?" She turned those brilliant wide eyes to him, and Sloan couldn't have refused her anything.

  He led her off the main trail and through waist-high acres of wild oats. She should get her first sight of the water from a natural viewpoint and not that of the homely wharves of San Francisco with their rickety warehouses and derelict boats. Even he relaxed and felt more at home when buffeted by the ocean breezes and surrounded by nothing but the natural splendor of this wild coast.

  Sloan found a protected spot behind a dune out of the wind. While he hobbled the horses, Sam took off running through the sand, lifting her skirt so high he could see not only her ankles, but glimpses of her legs. It was a hell of a thing when a man with his background was straining for a glimpse of leg, but with Sam it seemed the thing to do. She wasn't a child to be indulged, he'd seen ample evidence of that. Yet she wasn't the stiffly proper lady of his former acquaintance either. And whatever else she might be, she wasn't one of the loose females of his more recent acquaintance. She wasn't any of the things he thought a woman might be, so he felt free to act with her as he wished. She didn't seem to object.

  By the time Sloan strolled over the dune and into sight of the breakers, Sam had already reached the water's edge. She'd managed to dispose of her shoes and stockings as well as her dainty jacket, but she seemed to have forgotten her skirt as she stood where the waves could splash around her, damping the heavy material to her knees. Sloan shoved his hands into his pockets, resisting the urge to join her.

  Gulls screeched overhead, and the winter sun gleamed against the rich red of her hair as she stood, entranced, her arms wrapped around her waist. The wind caught her loosely pinned curls and sent them streaming behind her. The waves splashed and puddled and seeped away around her feet. The gown clung to her like seaweed, and Sloan had the instant vision of some sea goddess arisen from the deep. She was so much a part of the nature around her that he couldn't separate one from the other, and his longing for something he could not see intensified.

  Only then did he note the massive swell rolling in from beyond the line of breakers. Sam had never seen the ocean and knew nothing of its power, but he did. He'd grown up in Boston, sailed the Atlantic, and knew the Pacific to be even more treacherous. He didn't know the slope of the ground beneath those deceptively innocent waves. And Sam knew nothing at all.

  Sloan took off at a long lope across the shifting sand. Sam didn't even hear him coming. Her eyes were wide and as blue as the sea beyond her as she watched the wave build and foam and crest. With a shout of triumph, Sloan caught her just as the breaker crashed, dragging the sand out from beneath their feet and soaking them from top to bottom.

  They stumbled and fell in retreat, hitting the sand hard, and Sam's delighted laughter filled his ears. They were soaked and shivering and coated in sand, and she laughed as if this were the highlight of her life. Her arms had instinctively clung to his neck when he grabbed her, and they remained there now. Breathless from the fall, Sloan kept his eyes closed and absorbed the feel of her beneath him.

  It wasn't enough. Somehow, their salt-crusted lips found each other. He kept his eyes closed, savor
ing the moment of this untarnished surrender. Waves crashed not inches from their feet, but the heat of Samantha's proximity was all that mattered. Sloan slid his tongue between her teeth, felt the furnace of their desire, and quit thinking of anything at all.

  Her gown was drenched, and so was he. But instead of feeling the cold, he felt the hardened points of Sam's breasts pressing through the cloth, begging to be touched, he obliged, taking one between his fingers and rolling it lightly. She groaned beneath him, arching eagerly into his palm. Shattered by a surge of lust so great he could barely control it, he ground his mouth against hers and filled his lands with the mounds of both breasts.

  She was making weak cries—whether of protest or desire, he couldn't discern. It didn't matter. The wind swept over them, but he kept her covered with his body. The air smelled of salt and Sam. Sloan would recognize her distinctive scent anywhere: sweet and rich and all his. Her hands roamed his back, clinging to his waist when he pulled at her skirt, sliding upward to clench his arms when his fingers brushed her bare leg. He didn't have to force his mind to quit functioning. His body had already taken over. That happened so seldom he made no effort to regain control.

  She writhed beneath him, making him frantic. Sloan blessed the looseness of her bodice when he discovered he could slide his hand beneath the waistband through the gathered folds of the skirt he'd shoved up to her waist. He pushed aside the frail covering of her chemise and discovered the satin of her flesh. She moaned, and this time he knew it was in pleasure as he captured her bare breast.

  Her kisses were nearly as frantic as his passion. He didn't dare meet the clarity of Sam's eyes just yet. The moment was still too innocent, too spontaneous to be broken by lies or truths. Their bodies responded of their own accord, as naturally as the waves breaking against the sand and rocks. He didn't want anything to interfere.

  Sloan untied her drawers and pushed aside the flaps so he could touch her there. Sam gave a high, keening cry as his fingers found the place he meant to violate, but she was wet and moved eagerly with the motion of his hand It was still right. He wasn't doing anything wrong. She wanted this as much as he did.

  He wanted to suckle her breasts, but the hampering bodice stood in his way. That, too, didn't matter. There would be time for that later, when they lay between the sheets he'd promised her. She was sculpted beautifully, of delicate lines and slender curves. He cherished her breast and slid his hand downward to the slope of her waist, then around to the fullness of her buttock. She whimpered and lifted herself, and Sloan finally opened his eyes to look at her there, where her hair was a darker red and her unblemished skin shone like fine porcelain in the noon sun He touched her again, and her thighs parted for him, and he knew he couldn't wait any longer. He had the whole world around him, and this was all he could see. He wa obsessed. He knew it and didn't care.

  He moaned a sigh of relief as he unfastened the button of his pants and released his hardened flesh. If the wind still whipped around them, he didn't mind. He had found the harbor he needed.

  Sloan covered Sam with his body, seeking her mouth as well as reassurance, teasing the crests of her breasts beneath the hampering cloth. Her fingers dug into his back through the dampness of his shirt, but they didn't push him away. He shifted his hips to slide between the warmth of her thighs, and she gasped at the sudden abrasion of something thicker and harder than his finger, but still, she returned his kisses.

  It was right. The ocean crashed against the shore behind them. They were wet inside and out and all over. The heat of their bodies chased away the chill of the wind. There could only be one moment more perfect than this.

  He needed to be inside her.

  Gently, Sloan pushed her legs apart. Concentration came naturally to him, but he was on the verge of losing it when he felt Sam quiver and resist slightly. He touched her again, searching out the swollen place that made her quake and moan while his own body roared in protest. He couldn't hold off a great deal longer. It had been much too long already.

  She was moaning and writhing again, her hips rising in a natural rhythm that made him breathe easier with relief. He caught her in his hands, sliding her drawers further downward, lifting her until she was free. Her skirt fell upward, and he no longer had to wait.

  He plunged deep and sure and true—and heard her scream as tissues tore.

  Sloan cursed. He cried. But his body couldn't halt its plunge any more than it could halt its bucking motion afterward. He'd waited too long, held himself back too hard. He couldn't stop.

  And to his surprise, she joined him. She rose to meet his thrust, gasped in wonder as he filled her, and clung to him when he withdrew. He repeated the motion and so did she, until he knew he couldn't withhold his response any longer.

  With a groan of regret, Sloan jerked himself from the welcoming warmth of Samantha's body and spilled his seed in the sand.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Samantha kept her eyes closed and felt the sea breeze cool her heated face as well as other unmentionable parts of her. She ached with a pain so intense that she wasn't certain it was physical. For a moment she had come so close to bliss that she could almost touch it, and Sloan Talbott had been the man who had taken her there. It defied belief. Somehow, he had entered her and done something to her soul, and she would never be the same again.

  So she lay here listening to the gulls squawking overhead, the ocean crashing gently against the shore, and pretending she was alone. She didn't want to imagine how she looked with her skirt hiked to her waist and the rest of her sprawled in wanton abandon. Sloan had left her. She would just lie here and die peacefully.

  A cold wet cloth slapped between her thighs where she still burned, and she squawked as loudly as the gulls. Her eyes flew open, and she tried to sit up, but Sloan's palm flattened over her stomach as he used his handkerchief to cleanse her tender flesh. She would no doubt have died of embarrassment if he wasn't so clinically efficient. The tight-lipped scowl on his face kept her silent.

  She could see anger burning beneath the dark flush of his jaw, and she wondered idly why he should be angry. He had practically raped her out here in the middle of nowhere, with gritty sand for a bed and their clothes wet and plastered to their bodies. It wasn't exactly the romantic moment she had quaintly envisioned. Yet oddly enough, she wasn't sorry for it. She was quite content to lie here and listen to the waves—if Sloan would just leave her alone.

  The wet linen of his shirt clung to his torso like a second skin. She could practically see through it to the ridges and bulges of his shoulders and chest. It would have been nice if she could have seen him without his shirt, perhaps touched him. A lot of things would have been nice, but it had all happened too swiftly.

  Well, she was no longer a virgin. She now knew what it was like to be with a man. Did that make her more of a woman? She didn't think so. She sat up and pulled her skirt over her legs as soon as Sloan released her. Her body felt different, open and vulnerable and aching, but it was still her body and not his. She gazed out at the ocean rather than meet his glare.

  "Why in damnation didn't you tell me you were a virgin?" he shouted against the wind, as if she weren't sitting just two feet away.

  "I can't remember your asking," she answered politely, trying not to let his anger get under her skin. She was shivering now, and she didn't think it was entirely from the cold. She had to fight back tears, and she never cried.

  "You told me you knew more men than you wanted!" He jumped to his feet and finished fastening the buttons of his soaked denims.

  Sam watched with undisguised curiosity as he covered the black swirl of hair arrowing down over his taut abdomen. She hadn't even seen him naked, but she could still feel him inside her. Their forty-eight hours had only just begun. She wondered if her inexperience had put an end to it.

  "I hadn't realized you were using the biblical definition." She tried to keep her thoughts around her, but it was increasingly difficult while watching him pace like a panth
er. "Actually, if I'd known, I would have been insulted and probably shot you. I probably ought to shoot you now, but I can't decide whether you're insulting women in general or me in particular by assuming we've all known more than one man."

  He gave her a look of controlled fury. "What in hell was I supposed to expect when you agreed to this damned bargain?"

  Sam sighed and stood up, brushing ineffectually at her sandy skirt. If it was a fight he wanted, she certainly could give him one. "I expected you to think I desperately wish to find my father, but I don't suppose a self- centered pig like yourself would understand that. Is it time to go yet, or do you want another roll in the sand to prove your manly prowess before we leave?"

  He looked as if he would strike her, and she took a step backward. She caught her heel in her skirt and stumbled, and he grabbed her elbow and jerked her upright.

  He was practically standing on her toes. Without her boots she had to force her head backward to look up at him. Her breasts burned where they rubbed against him, and she now had some knowledge of what the tingling between her legs meant at this sudden proximity to his hips. She took a hasty step backward, but he didn't loose his grip on her arm.

  "Don't pretend I was the only one who wanted what happened. You were there with me every step of the way." His eyes narrowed as his gaze fell to her bodice, finding the jut of her nipples pressing against the clinging cloth. "You're as ready as I am to have another go at it."

  She took a deep gulp at the sudden twinge of excitement in the lower part of her body at his words. Amazed, she looked down between them, at the way her breasts swelled. She was already swaying instinctively toward him, and she couldn't help but look at the place concealing his masculine secrets. She gulped and looked away again. The old cloth was too tight and too worn to disguise his desire.

  She jerked from his grasp and lifting her skirt, started over the sand dune. "First, we look for my father."