He shook his head. “They’ll know we’re here. They can probably see Storm from the camp.” He took her hand then and led her toward the trees. “You’re cold,” he said as his big fingers closed around hers.
“No, I’m not,” she said with a little shiver.
He stopped and walked back a step to pull a rolled-up blanket from the back of his saddle. “Here, put this around your shoulders.”
They walked in silence to the group of trees. “I’m not really cold,” she said more emphatically. “But we can sit on this if you like.”
He nodded approval and she spread the blanket over the tall grass. It made a cushiony bed beneath her as she sank to her knees. Jeb tied Storm to a low hanging branch, then lowered himself beside her.
“So, here we are,” he said, clearing his throat.
The domineering wagon master was nowhere in evidence. It made her feel more self-confident. “Yes,” she said pleasantly.
“As I was saying…”
“You weren’t saying much of anything, Captain,” Kerry said with a touch of humor.
He rubbed a hand against his chin. “No, I reckon I wasn’t.” Then he turned to face her and said, “Would you mind calling me Jeb?”
His face was only inches from hers. “I wouldn’t mind,” she said, her voice growing softer.
“Good. Now I reckon what we have to get past here is the fact that we let ourselves get carried away the other night…”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Well, you know what I mean. We were both tired and overwrought from Molly’s illness…”
Kerry’s amusement faded. “Captain—Jeb, I most assuredly did not let you make love to me because I was tired and overwrought.”
“Damn it,” he said, striking his leg with his palm. “I’m trying to apologize, woman, and you keep interrupting me.”
“Apologize? Is that what this is all about?”
He let out a deep breath. “That night, I didn’t know you were…” He seemed to be struggling for the words. “I didn’t know that you’d never done that kind of thing before.”
“I guess you could have asked if you’d wanted to know.”
He nodded. “I should have asked. Or rather, I had no business putting us both in such a position, no matter how much experience you might have had.”
The features of his face were drawn taut with strain. All day long she’d been angry with him for his seeming indifference to what had passed between them. Now it appeared that he was anything but indifferent. In fact, he appeared to be suffering from a soul-searching far more painful than her own. She put a tentative hand on the sleeve of his buckskin shirt. “It wasn’t that bad, Jeb,” she said gently.
He groaned. “Your first time with a man and you have to say ‘it wasn’t that bad.’ Lord, Kerry, it’s not supposed to be bad at all. It’s supposed to be wonderful—magical. It’s the most intimate experience that a man and woman can share.”
She gave a half smile. “Well, actually, it was rather nice—most of it anyway. I’m not angry about it.”
“You should be. I’d feel better if you’d just slap me across the face and call me a bounder.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or to offer him comfort. This remorseful side of him was harder to deal with than his arrogance. It set off tender feelings inside her that she didn’t want to have—not for Jeb or any man. “I’ll call you whatever you like, but I refuse to slap you. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe in violence.”
Her words brought a reluctant smile. “You’re a forgiving woman, Kerry Gallivan,” he said.
“And am I forgiven for our mule excursion?”
His eyes held hers. “Yes.”
“And you won’t make any more wild accusations about me running off with Scott?”
“Is he in love with you?”
“I hope not. I think he felt protective toward both me and Patrick, and that made him think he should make his offer of marriage. But what he really wants is to get to those gold fields.”
“The lure of the mythical Golden Fleece.”
Jeb’s voice again had that tinge of bitterness. “You don’t like prospectors very much, do you?”
Jeb hesitated a moment, then pushed back with his long legs to rest against the tree trunk behind them. “No,” he said.
It was as if a shutter had closed across his face. Kerry had seen it happen before, but this time she wasn’t going to let the matter go. “Why not?” she asked, turning around on her knees to face him.
He rolled his head against the bark of the tree, stretching his neck. The headache that had been pounding at him since John Burnett had told him that Kerry had left camp was blessedly beginning to recede. In answer to her question, he said, “Because I know what blamed fools they are.”
Kerry pursed her lips. “Well, there is gold, right? Why do you say they’re fools?”
“From firsthand experience.”
“You were a gold prospector?”
Jeb nodded. “I had the fever as bad as any of those young idiots.”
“But you didn’t strike it rich?”
He gave a contemptuous sniff. “Hardly. I couldn’t even pan out enough to eat most days.”
“Maybe you didn’t keep trying long enough.”
Jeb closed his eyes, his expression once again tightening. Kerry felt the breath stick in her chest as she realized that he was about to tell her something that would not come easy in the telling. She waited, and finally he opened his eyes and looked at her with an expression that sent a chill down the back of her neck. “I kept trying long enough to give a band of marauders time to rape and murder my wife.”
The blood pounded in waves at Kerry’s cheeks and she had the feeling that she might faint. She shifted from her knees to a more stable sitting position. “Lord have mercy,” she breathed.
Jeb stared past her out at the dark night. “Yeah. Well, He didn’t. No one had any mercy on my sweet Melanie. Starting with me.”
Kerry searched for something comforting to say, but the enormity of his tragedy was so total that no words came. Finally she reached out and took his hands in hers. He hardly seemed to notice. Once he had established the worst, he seemed to have the need to tell the rest of the story. Reciting the tale with a voice that had grown curiously dead, he told her how he had left her as a young bride, in spite of her protests, in order to find his strike while the pickings were rich. Forty-niners were streaming into the territory daily, and the men who were there knew that they had to get their claims made before the gold was all gone. Gold fever had seized the minds of the young men of the territory like a disease. And Jeb Hunter had been another willing victim.
It had taken him a mere three months to realize that only a small, lucky percentage were ever going to realize the overblown dreams of wealth. Like thousands of others, he was hardly scraping enough to get by. But in the meantime, some of those others had formed themselves into bands of lawless thieves and plunderers. They’d decided if they couldn’t mine the riches of California one way, they’d take what they wanted by thievery and violence. He’d left his wife alone in their small cabin in the foothills at the mercy of such men.
By the end of his story, tears were streaming down Kerry’s cheeks. The terrible tale made it easier to understand the hardness that sometimes settled over his expression, the bleak look in his eyes. Jeb Hunter was living with two tragedies. The murder of his wife was only the first one. The second was his own, relentless, tormenting guilt.
Somewhere during the course of his recital, she’d moved closer to him, still holding his hands. He was clenching her fingers so tightly that they had gone numb, but she was sure that he wasn’t even aware that he held them.
“You couldn’t have known,” she said after a long moment of silence. “How could anyone imagine something like that?”
“I took her as my bride and said the vows to protect and cherish her. Till death do us part,” he added with a hollow, horrible sound
that was half laugh and half sob.
She moved against him and drew his head against her shoulder. It wasn’t sexual, only the normal human instinct of reaching out to another soul in pain. Not much different from the way she had comforted Dorothy the other night at Molly’s bedside. But after a few minutes, in spite of herself, she realized that her breasts had hardened against his warm body. He realized it, too.
He straightened back up against the tree and pulled her across his lap, seeking her mouth with his. She couldn’t heal the gaping wound of grief that still bled inside his heart, but she could make him forget the pain, at least for a while. She could make him lose himself in the sensations he had taught her the other night. She wanted to do that for him…and for herself.
Jeb’s reason was slowly returning just as his body began spinning out of control. He was once again aware of surroundings. He knew it was Kerry he held in his arms, not Melanie. He’d never hold Melanie again. It was sweet, lush Kerry with tears on her cheeks that she’d shed for him. Precious drops that seemed to be falling on a dusty, dry spot inside him that had lain fallow for years.
He kissed her with gratitude and longing that turned almost immediately to intense desire. He knew somewhere in the sensible, reasonable part of his brain that he should not let this happen again. But his heart and his senses were not willing to listen. He overruled himself with the simple argument that he owed it to her to make up for the other night when he’d taken her virginity so abruptly.
He forced himself to breathe deeply. He would stay under control, he vowed. He would show her what it was like to be thoroughly and properly loved. He would make her body sing.
He laid her down on the grass and started by covering her face with soft, gentle kisses. And when her eyes drifted closed, he opened her shirt and started to lavish the same attention on her breasts. “Look at me, sweetheart,” he said then, lifting his head. She opened her eyes to look straight into his so that he could watch them change and grow wider as his fingers gently tugged her nipples and then drifted down beneath the waistband of her brother’s trousers to find the dewy area below. He could tell from her still open eyes when he touched the right spot.
His slow, erotic exploration was sending waves of sensation radiating up her body. She wriggled a little beneath his hand and pushed against him, all of her being seemed to be focused in that one region and in the tawny depths of his eyes. Desperately, she tugged at her trousers and pushed them down her hips to give him freer access. He pulled back long enough to help her slide them off.
“Relax, sweetheart. Just lie back and feel.” And then she was totally naked on the rough wool blanket and he was kissing her from her toes to her neck and back down. His fingers were inside her again, stretching just slightly, and suddenly his mouth was there above the fingers, finding her, rolling that particularly sensitive place with his warm tongue. And she grabbed the blanket with her fists and gave a keening cry as her body exploded.
He held her, rocked her with an amused, “Shush, sweetheart. They’ll hear you all the way back to Fort Kearney.” Then after he had kissed the new tears on her cheek, tears of passion this time, he rid himself of his own clothing and lay back down beside her.
“That’s how it should be, how it should have been the first time—you, sweet and melting in my arms,” he told her.
His voice was thick and sensual in her ear. Kerry was already feeling the need building inside her again, even as the meadow breeze cooled the first flush from her body. Unlike their hurried experience of the other night, he was entirely naked against her, his body hard, his skin rougher than her own. With curiosity and daring, she reached out a hand to explore him. It only seemed fair. He’d already visited every part of her. Parts she hadn’t even been aware of herself, she thought with a smile.
“What are you purring about, kitten?” he asked her with an answering smile of his own.
“Happy kittens purr, I believe,” she said.
“Did I make you happy, sweetheart?” he asked more seriously.
“Mmm. That’s a small word for such a big feeling.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “I’m glad. That’s what I wanted to do.”
Her hand arrived at his stomach, which was flat and covered with silky hair. He gave a moan of pleasure and encouragement. “Are you purring, too, Jeb?” she asked archly.
He put his hand on top of hers where it had halted its progress and moved it gently downward to his erection. “Men don’t purr,” he protested, but as her slender fingers closed around him he gave another half groan.
“Sounds like purring to me.” She moved her hand on him in a motion she’d never been taught but that seemed to come to her naturally. As he swelled to her touch, she felt the answering response inside her own body. “But it’s fierce purring,” she continued, whispering in his ear, “like a tiger.”
He gave a growl much like the feline she’d described and rolled over with her, flattening her on the ground and spreading her legs with his own. Hurriedly his hands checked to see that she was still moist and receptive, then he entered her with a deep breath of satisfaction.
There wasn’t the least pain this time, only an exquisite sense of fullness, then a more urgent one of building passion that soon had her meeting his rhythm with a rocking motion of her hips. He kissed each breast until the nipples were wet, then picked up the pace of his motion and once again brought his face just above hers. “Open your eyes, sweetheart. Watch mine while I take you over the edge.”
She opened her eyes and then seemed to see herself spiraling into his as he stopped deep within her and the feeling began to rack her. At the very height he pulled away from her and she clutched at him, murmuring a protest. But he was gone, leaving her with a feeling of emptiness. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, his voice tight and breathless as he ended his own release.
Chapter Fourteen
She lay limp beneath him, thoroughly sated. Her body felt lavish and miraculous. What a feeling. No wonder people fought wars for love, she thought hazily. No wonder men and women did all kinds of foolish things in the name of romance.
Only the end had been a little disappointing when he had left her so suddenly. Was the pleasure still as great for him? she wondered. Was he able to experience the same kind of completion she did?
He seemed to be as satisfied and exhausted as she. He pulled her into his arms and rolled the blanket up around them.
“Let’s hope no one else got the idea to take an evening ride,” he said with a tired smile.
She chuckled. “I just hope that Scott and Patrick didn’t decide to turn back and look for us.”
Jeb’s smile faded. “I can’t believe I’ve let this happen again. I should be horsewhipped.”
Kerry pulled her head away to look into his face. “You said something like that about the first time we were together. Hasn’t it occurred to you that perhaps I’m the one who’s allowing it to happen, not you?”
“It’s the man’s responsibility…”
“Hogwash. Not everything important in life is the man’s responsibility, Jeb. Some things are shared propositions. And I would think that what we did together would most definitely be one of those things.”
She laid her head back down against his arm. “I thought it was beautiful.”
Jeb gave her a squeeze and said gently, “I thought it was beautiful, too.”
“So that settles that.” They lay quietly for some moments, each lost in thought. Kerry was trying to figure out what this whole new side of herself meant for her future, for the future she planned with Patrick. She wasn’t about to give up on her father’s dream, but for the first time she began to consider that she might be willing to share that dream with someone else—with Jeb. He’d evidently planned to settle down to his own place with his wife before her horrible death, perhaps after all these years of wandering he’d be ready to give the idea a try again.
If she was already carrying his child, he’d have no choice. T
he notion gave her mixed emotions. It didn’t horrify her as it had when she had first thought about the possibility. It would be hard to build a ranch if she were pregnant, but it could be done, especially if she had a husband helping her. Of course, she’d prefer that she and Jeb didn’t have to start out their lives together under those circumstances. Again she wondered about the actual mechanics of the matter. It was one of the many times when she missed not having had the counsel of a mother. Well, there was only one way to find out what she needed to know.
“Jeb,” she began tentatively.
“What is it, sweetheart?” He sounded almost asleep.
“There at the end…you were, you know, gone all of a sudden. Was that…” She took a deep breath and made herself say the words. “Does that mean we didn’t make a baby?”
Jeb boosted himself up on an elbow and looked down at her. “Didn’t you know what I was doing?”
She shook her head, embarrassed.
He let a long breath stream through his nose. “If I stay inside you when I…finish, then, yes, there’s a possibility we could make a baby. That’s why I pulled away.”
“Thank you,” she said with a soft smile. “I don’t think we should make a baby just yet either.”
Jeb’s hand, on his way to smooth back her ruffled hair, froze. Just yet? What was she thinking? He thought back over their encounters trying to decide if there had been a time when he’d led her to believe that he could be committed to her for any kind of future. He’d made love to her. He supposed that in itself was a statement of commitment to a girl like Kerry, But he’d never said it in words, of that he was certain. Those were words he never intended to say again in his life. He’d said them once and failed so miserably that he deserved to live with the sound of them ringing hollowly in his ears for the rest of his life.
“I was deliberately careful, Kerry,” he said slowly. “It was wrong of me to make love to you, but it would have been despicable for me to leave you with a child growing inside you.”
Ana Seymour Page 19
