Frontier Bride (Harlequin Historical)

by Ana Seymour

  He kissed her then, gently, just on the lips, soft touches again and again until she wanted him to deepen the caress as he had earlier that night. She opened her mouth, but he pulled away and moved lower to lavish the same restrained kisses on her breasts.

  He lay almost on top of her, one of his legs between the two of hers, and an ache had centered there where his hard thigh rubbed against her. She arched her back and moaned.

  “Shh, sweetheart,” he murmured. Molding her right breast with his hands, he brought her peaking nipple to his mouth.

  Hannah felt a spike of heat through her middle. So this was desire, she thought dazedly. She looked down at Ethan’s dark head as he moved against her breast. Her fingers moved into the waves of his hair. He lifted his head.

  “I’ve been fighting this since the day I saw you bending over your candles in Philadelphia,” he told her. “But there’s something between us that won’t go away.”

  “I don’t want it to go away,” she said.

  He slid up to her mouth, and this time made his kiss as deep as she wanted. It lasted for several minutes, while her bare breasts chafed against his linen shirt.

  The line had been crossed. All his doubts and arguments aside, Ethan knew he had to have her, but he wanted to make it good, and he wanted to be sure that there would be no regrets. He rolled to one side, leaning on his elbow, his other hand still covering one of her breasts.

  “You’ve not done this before, Hannah,” he said gravely.

  It was a statement, not a question, but Hannah answered with a shake of her head.

  “I want to make love to you, but you know that I…you know that I’m not a settling-down kind of man. This may not be the wisest move for your future.”

  Hannah found it hard to listen to his words when all her being was centered on the feeling of his hand on her breast. She knew that she was making a momentous decision. She knew that she should appreciate the control it took for Ethan to have pulled away to remind her of what she was doing. But she felt only impatience at the interruption. He had been fighting this since Philadelphia, he’d said. In a way, she realized, she had been fighting it all her life. Not fighting Ethan, of course, but fighting the idea that she couldn’t be a woman and enjoy the natural feelings and pleasures of her womanhood. Her mother had tried to tell her that those feelings were wicked. But what she felt with Ethan was not wicked. It was extraordinary and beautiful. And she wanted more.

  “I thought frontiersmen were supposed to be strong and silent,” she chided him gently. “Do you want to talk or do you want to make love?”

  It was all the permission he needed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ethan made a bed of their clothes. Hannah marveled at how natural it seemed to be naked with him, to have him run his hands over her lithe body. And after just a touch of shyness, to do the same to him. From the beginning he urged her participation, helping her learn the feel of the hard muscles and rough hair of his thighs, the silkier, longer hair of his chest, the smoothness of his belly, hard and flat, not soft and gently rounded like hers. When he began to move her hand lower on himself she pulled it out from under his. He instantly let her go and moved back over her to touch her swollen mouth with his, time and again, until she felt she would drown in kisses.

  And then as she sank farther beneath the waves of sensation, his hand touched her between her legs, just the softest of touches, but it jolted her like the touch from a burning brand. There was a certain place he massaged with his fingers, and Hannah hissed cold air into her mouth as an explosion of feeling radiated upward. Her limbs grew stiff, then melted, feeling trembly and odd.

  Ethan was watching her, his eyes different, hooded. “You’re quick to passion,” he said with a sensual smile.

  Hannah closed her eyes, trying to come to terms with what had happened to her. There were no terms, she decided. Ethan was gently nibbling at her breasts.

  She opened her eyes and reached for him. “Now let’s try it together,” he said, taking her lips in a demanding kiss that swirled her back into a fever of waiting, wanting. And then he was inside her, with one inexorable thrust that made her gasp in pain.

  “It’s all right, my love,” he murmured between kisses. And soon, his words were true. The pain subsided and in its place was the buildup of feeling, as before, but this time reaching so deep inside her that she wanted to cry out in wonder. She clung to him and let him move, strong and slow, until suddenly his breathing deepened and he began a series of frantic thrusts. This time the explosion was not just hers. It was his and theirs, a fusing of flesh and a melding of spirit.

  His arms had tightened around her so that the skin now felt tender where they had pressed. Yet she had not felt confined, indeed, she had more of a sensation of flying free like the hawk they had seen over the river yesterday. Their bodies were moist. His head fell heavily on her chest and she put a weak hand on his soft hair. Neither spoke for a very long time.

  “Are you all right?” he asked finally, without raising his head.

  She gave a watery laugh. “I have no idea.”

  He lifted his head with a look of concern. “I didn’t mean to be so…I lost control,” he admitted with a frown. He reached up to her cheek to wipe away tears she didn’t know she had shed. “I’m sorry.”

  The chills were subsiding and strength was coming back into her limbs. She stretched underneath him, relishing his heaviness on top of her.

  “Don’t you dare be sorry.” She lifted her head to give him a quick kiss on the mouth, then lay back down again and smiled at him.

  His frown turned into a relieved grin. “You liked it, then?”

  “That’s a rather mild word for it, wouldn’t you say?”

  Ethan’s heart seemed to expand inside his chest as he looked down at her. Her expression was one of sheer elation, relaxed and uninhibited. There was not the least hint of reproach. No timidity, no posturing to keep some of her feelings to herself. Here was a woman who, in spite of her inexperience, was able to indulge her own passion in full measure and share it with him without reservation. Ethan felt as if he’d just conquered a continent.

  “I rather enjoyed it myself,” he said nonchalantly.

  She pounded lightly on his arm. “Only ‘rather’?”

  He laughed, feeling carefree and young. “I don’t know if I’ve ever enjoyed anything quite so much. Is that better?”

  “Much,” she said with a happy nod.

  He pulled himself up and nestled her in his arms.

  “I can’t believe I’m lying stark naked in the middle of a forest,” Hannah said dreamily.

  “Like Adam and Eve.”

  Hannah giggled. “Isn’t that blasphemy, Captain?”

  Ethan rubbed his hand along the smooth curve of her side. “I figure…the Lord’s the one who gave us this equipment. He probably meant for us to use it.”

  “So this is our own Garden of Eden?”

  “Complete with delicious apples,” he said with a mischievous grin as he ran his palms once again over her full breasts.

  Hannah laughed and hid her blushing face in his neck. How could it be so easy? she wondered with amazement. And so much fun? How could she be glorying in this act that she had been warned against so sternly all her life? Lovemaking was wonderful. Life was wonderful.

  She put her hand on top of Ethan’s. “What about the serpent?” she asked with a silly grin.

  Ethan looked down the length of his body and shook his head with a smile. “The serpent’s all tuckered out, I’m afraid. For another minute or two anyway.” He nibbled at her ear and whispered, “You could probably wake him up, though, if you wanted to.”

  “I’d never dare awaken a serpent,” she said with an impish smile.

  He moved himself above her again and looked up and down her white, moonlit form. His expression grew serious. “I’m afraid, Hannah Forrester, that you already have.”

  They slept in a jumbled mixture of his clothes and hers, some und
erneath and some on top, but in between, their bodies stayed entwined throughout the night. Hannah awoke once just before dawn and smiled dreamily to find herself still wrapped in his arms, then she drifted back to sleep.

  The morning already had a good head start when she finally came fully awake. Ethan was gone. His buckskin jacket still covered her and his shirt lay on the ground beneath her, but the rest of his clothes were gone, too. She sat up just as he appeared through the trees carrying a makeshift basket of leaves with two hands. His chest was bare, and for the first time she saw in the daylight the sculptured strength of his body—strong, wide shoulders and chest tapering to a narrow waist, cinched by a broad leather belt.

  “Good morning,” he said softly, not bothering to hide the fact that his eyes were also roaming freely over her half-naked body.

  She pulled his jacket around her and tucked her long legs up under it before she answered, “Good morning.”

  “Don’t cover up on my account,” he said with a grin. “You’re as beautiful in the sun as you were by the light of the moon.”

  “But it’s…daytime. And we’re out-of-doors. Out…” She looked around her.

  “I thought we were in Eden,” he said, walking over to kneel next to her. “Or at least, you sure had me convinced last night.”

  He balanced his leaf basket in one hand and reached out the other to stroke her cheek and draw her near for a brief, sweet kiss. “Perhaps we were there,” she said wistfully. “A moonlit Eden.”

  “But one that disappears in the harsh light of day, is that it?” His hand held her chin and his compelling eyes questioned her.

  She looked away. “I don’t know,” she murmured.

  He sat back on his heels with a sigh. “I warned you about regrets.”

  “Oh no. I’m not regretting anything, Ethan. I’m just…a little confused, I guess.”

  He ran a finger down her neck and along the slope of her shoulder where it was bare above the jacket she held clutched around her. “I like to hear you say my name.”

  Hannah shivered. The slow trail of a single finger was enough to bring the night’s memories flooding through her. “I’m cold, I think,” she said lamely.

  He drew back from her. “I suppose I’ll have to let you get dressed, though they didn’t wear clothes in paradise, you know.”

  Hannah bit her lip. She didn’t know if the sound that wanted to come out of her mouth was a laugh or a sob. She had told Ethan the truth. She didn’t regret her action of the previous evening. She would never forget the incredible things she had learned about physical love and about herself. But it was also true that in the daylight things did not appear as simple as they did under the spell of the moon. She now had to go back to the boats and face everyone. Face the children and, dear God, face Randolph. Would they know? Would Randolph somehow immediately know that she had spent the night in Ethan’s arms?

  “I’ve brought us breakfast,” Ethan said lightly. “Berries.” He indicated the leaves full of dark red fruit. He did not seem any different this morning. But then, he had made love to many women. The night had not been momentous to him as it had been to her. It didn’t seem fair, and a little worm of anger gnawed at her.

  “Hadn’t we better get started back?”

  Ethan noted the lack of warmth in her voice. He had anticipated her remorse, but he was surprised by the degree of regret it caused him. He had experienced something with her last night that he had not thought was possible with any woman. It had been a dimension beyond normal physical pleasures. He didn’t know what it all meant, but now, as he had said, in the harsh light of day, it didn’t seem that he would have the chance to find out. He and Hannah must leave their little Eden behind and return to their real worlds. And those two worlds did not coincide beyond the span of this short trip down the Ohio. Then he would leave her to her new life. A life in which all that sensual energy, that natural zest for loving, would someday be Randolph Webster’s possession, not his.

  He reached over and put the basket of fruit in her lap. “I’ll leave you alone to get dressed,” he said. “Try to eat something to give yourself strength for the trail.”

  “Hannah! Thank God!” Randolph was the first person they saw as they neared the campsite. It appeared that he had been waiting for them to appear. When he saw her, he sprang forward and took both her hands in his. He looked, Hannah thought guiltily, as though he had not slept all night.

  There was not time to say anything before they were joined by all four children, running. Jacob scooted around his father and threw his arms around Hannah’s legs. She bent to hug him. Behind them Seth appeared with Eliza.

  “You made it back all right, I see,” Ethan said to Seth.

  “I’ll make a woodsman yet,” the older man said proudly.

  Ethan stepped past Hannah to pat Seth on the back. “That you will, my friend,” he told him warmly.

  “We were so worried, Hannah,” Peggy told her. “Why didn’t you come back last night?”

  Hannah felt that all eyes were on her as they awaited the answer to her question. She hoped her cheeks did not look as red as they felt. “The Indians didn’t want to let us go,” she said, unsure of how much of the story she should tell.

  Ethan had no qualms about revealing that part of their ordeal. “They wanted to buy Hannah,” he said flatly. “Made me a good offer of mink and otter furs.”

  “To buy you!” the three young girls chorused.

  Hannah nodded. “Captain Reed had to bargain so that they would let me go. He gave them his pack and his rifle.”

  “Not the Sure Shot?” Jacob asked in dismay.

  Ethan squatted down next to him. “The very one,” he said lightly. “So I reckon I’ll just have to name my other gun Sure Shot, too.”

  “Sure Shot Two, I get it.” Jacob’s round face regained its normal cheerfulness. “Anyway, I reckon it’s the person that makes the shot sure, not the gun.”

  Ethan grinned at him. “You’re a wise boy, Jacob Webster.”

  He straightened up and addressed the rest of the group. “The Indians seemed satisfied with their loot. I don’t think they had any intention of circling back to trouble us, but just in case, I would suggest that we get back out on the river immediately.”

  Randolph cleared his throat. “Reed, I reckon I owe you a load of thanks for finding my boy, here, and taking care of Hannah.”

  Hannah watched the two men shake hands. It didn’t appear to be a comfortable exchange for either one of them. Ethan uncharacteristically avoided looking Randolph in the eye.

  “I’m not sure we can leave immediately,” Eliza said from the back of the group. Her kind, wrinkly face was drawn with worry.

  “Why not?” Ethan asked.

  “It’s Nancy. She’s not doing well. It was a terrible strain on her when Bridgett was lost all those hours.”

  Ethan rubbed his growing beard and thought for a moment while the others awaited his decision. This time no one was likely to question his authority. “I imagine her condition would be even worse if we suddenly were confronted by a bunch of hostiles. Let’s try to arrange a bed for her on one of the boats.”

  Randolph and Seth nodded their agreement, and without further discussion, everyone turned back to camp to prepare to pack up.

  Randolph took Hannah’s arm as she passed. “You can’t imagine how awful it was when I wasn’t sure if you would ever make it back, Hannah.”

  She tried to make her smile normal and reassuring. “Well, I’m back now, so we don’t have to think about it anymore.”

  He shook his head. “I did nothing but think about it, think about you, all night long. I’d like to share some of those thoughts with you, Hannah.”

  Hannah felt all the ups and downs of the past twenty-four hours crowding in on her at once. “We have to board the boats,” she said, almost in a panic.

  “Aye. But later…tonight, promise me we’ll find some time to talk alone.”

  “All right,” she agreed,
a sinking feeling in her stomach. “I promise. Tonight we’ll talk.”

  If Hannah had never had the chance to be courted like other girls, that day on the river at least gave her a taste of what she had missed. Randolph was rarely far from her side. When she wanted to stand up, his hand was there to help her rise. When she wanted to sit down, he was behind her plumping a sack of flour to make her a comfortable seat. At the midday meal, he filled her plate and cup, refusing to let her do so herself or to help the children “after her ordeal.”

  Her mother had begun her bouts of sickness when Hannah was only eleven, and since that time she had not had anyone caring for her, caring about her. Priscilla had tried, briefly, but she had succumbed too soon to the exigencies of her own illness. The kind of solicitous attention Randolph was lavishing on her was new, and it was a heady sensation. She only wished it weren’t tainted by a sense of guilt that increased as the day went on.

  She was glad that Ethan had taken his place in the other boat. She didn’t want to talk with him or even see him. He had made it clear this morning that the night she had found so magical had been simply a physical pleasure for him. He’d been detached and distracted on the trail back to the river, and had immediately stepped back and let Randolph take charge of her the minute they arrived. He’d not said another word to her before they all boarded the boats.

  She’d wanted what he had offered her last night. She wouldn’t pretend that she had put conditions on her participation. Ethan had, in fact, tried to warn her to think about the consequences of what they were doing. She had been the one who had let the emotions and the feelings and the moonlight overcome her good sense. So be it. She couldn’t change what had happened, but she could make sure that she acted with more wisdom in the future. And that meant staying away from Ethan.

  Seth was taking a turn at steering the boat when Randolph came to sit beside her. The section of river they were passing fulfilled all the expectations Randolph’s descriptions back in Philadelphia had created. The Indians had named it O-hi-o, Beautiful River, and with its sloping forests and bright green meadows and hills, it truly lived up to its name. Here and there redbud and dogwood dotted the vista like bright splotches of paint dripped from an artist’s brush. Birds in brilliant colors fluttered suddenly out of the trees—cardinals, blue jays, green and yellow parakeets. In spite of all the turmoil of the past two days, Hannah found that floating along and watching the passing landscape filled her with peace and contentment.