In another moment the mail boat was chortling away on its journey to Onion Creek, and Emma was alone on an island with Mr. Fairfax. She couldn’t think why on earth she’d agreed to do such an outrageous thing, and glanced nervously toward town.
Sure enough, there were people gathered on the docks—Emma couldn’t quite make out who, given the distance and the glimmer of sunlight on the water, but she knew why they were there. Within twenty minutes everybody in Whitneyville would know Emma Chalmers was out there alone with a gunslinger.
“No sense in looking back, Miss Emma,” Steven said, his voice low and husky.
Emma made herself meet his eyes, but she couldn’t speak for the life of her. There was something about him that made her breath catch and her heart miss a half-beat.
Steven took her arm. “I think we’d better get off this wharf before it collapses,” he said practically.
Emma was jarred out of her reverie. She whirled, one arm in the air to flag down the mail boat. She meant to get herself straight back to Whitneyville before everything was lost, but Tom misread her gesture. He waved exuberantly and then turned back to the wheel again.
Fingers curled around her elbow, Steven led her over the wharf, which shifted and groaned beneath them, to the shore. Tiny pebbles crunched under Emma’s feet as she advanced up the beach with Steven, toward the inner part of the island.
Nervousness made her smile too brightly and speak in a voice that was a touch too loud. “Couldn’t we just have our picnic on the wharf?”
Steven continued up the grassy embankment, pulling Emma behind him, and all she got in answer to her question was a look of moderate disdain and a slight shake of his head.
There was a tumbledown shack a few yards up ahead, with just two weathered walls left, and a fireplace. Some small creature had made a nest in the hearth, and green grass poked up between the remaining floorboards.
“Who lived here?” Steven asked, slowing his pace now that they’d reached level ground.
Emma reached back to be sure her braid wasn’t coming undone. “Just some homesteaders. I don’t know what their names were.”
Steven released her hand and gave the remains of the house a thorough assessment, as though it might be important to remember what he saw. “It must have been nice, living out here—just a man and his wife, and maybe a couple of kids.”
“It must have been lonely,” Emma countered. “Besides, you don’t know what this lake is like in winter—it freezes solid in some places. These people might easily have been marooned here for weeks at a time.” She shivered, even though there were bees buzzing in the warm May air.
“I imagine they found things to do,” Steven said quietly. He held out a hand to Emma, and she went to him, just as she always did.
Emma flushed as she lowered her eyes, unable to help picturing herself and Steven in such a situation. “I imagine,” she conceded.
Just past the old house was a privy, leaning decidedly to the right and almost completely covered by a wild rose bush sporting the tiniest pink buds. Beyond that was a split rail fence, turned a dirty coffee-brown by the weather, like the privy and the house.
Steven set down the picnic basket ad released Emma’s hand to take down the two upper railings. Lifting her skirts as modestly as she could and still get over the lower bar of the fence without snagging them, Emma climbed awkwardly to the other side.
Steven immediately handed over the picnic basket and folded blanket and followed.
“Just how far do we have to go?” Emma wanted to know. “Most people like to picnic by the water, you know.”
He grinned. “Do they, now? Well, we’re going to have a good look around before we choose a place.”
Emma thought of that crowd of people on the wharf across the water at Whitneyville. Heaven only knew what speculations they were up to by now. “Fulton might be rowing over here at this very instant,” she warned, just in case Mr. Fairfax had any ideas. And she was dead certain he did.
His smile confirmed it. “You don’t need to worry about him, Miss Emma. He wouldn’t confront his own grandmother unless he was sure he could get the drop on her.”
Emma’s cheeks reddened as she followed Steven through the deep grass and between towering fir and pine trees. “I resent your insinuation that Fulton is a coward,” she said. “He’s a very fine man.”
Suddenly, Steven stopped right in the middle of the trail. Emma, who had just built up a good head of steam, collided with him—hard.
For a long moment, Steven held her to him without even using his arms. No, it was the look in his eyes that gripped her, that made her feel as if something warm was spilling over within her. “If he’s such a fine man,” he reasoned, his voice hardly more than a rasp, “how come you’re out here with me?”
Emma was so flabbergasted by the question, and by the obvious answer, that she just stared up at Steven’s face. She felt like a field mouse looking into the eyes of a tomcat.
“Well?” Steven prompted, his lips just a hair’s breadth from hers.
Coming to her senses at the last second, Emma leaped backward, causing her handbag to thump painfully against her thigh. “I’m here with you because we have a bargain, Mr. Fairfax,” she blurted out. “You promised to leave Whitneyville forever, remember?”
“If you still want me to,” Steven pointed out, and then he was forging his way through the wilds of that overgrown island again, dragging Emma after him.
He finally settled on a grassy rise on the opposite side from Whitneyville. There was a fine view of the lake, and far behind them a conglomeration of hemlocks, cedars, and Douglas fir made a horseshoe shape. The trees harbored a clearing where a multitude of white daisies with centers as yellow as pirate’s doubloons rippled in the breeze.
Looking at them, Emma forgot her troubles. “There must be one for every angel in heaven,” she breathed.
Steven, who had been spreading the picnic blanket on the ground, came to stand behind her. His hands rested lightly on her shoulders, and he bent to plant the lightest of kisses on her nape. “Today they all belong to just one angel—you.”
Sturned to look up at him, and his arms slipped naturally around her waist. He’d tossed his hat onto the picnic blanket, but the imprint of the band showed in his glossy brown hair, and Emma couldn’t resist touching it with the fingers of one hand. “Why did you have to go and get yourself blown up in Whitneyville?” she asked softly. “Life was so simple before I met you—I knew what I thought about everything.”
A trace of a smile touched his lips. “And now?”
“I’m confused, Steven. I’ve spent all my time with one man over the last few months and now here I am, standing in an ocean of daisies with quite another.”
He brushed her mouth with his own. “If it helps, Miss Emma, I’m as muddled up as you are. A few weeks ago I just wanted to keep on moving. Now it’s like I’ve got lead in my boots.”
Emma knew what was going to happen if she didn’t break away, and she used every shred of her willpower to turn from Steven and run through the daisies, her arms outspread. She’d gone only a few yards when she stumbled over something and went sprawling.
She was laughing when she rolled over and started to sit up, and her plump breasts strained against her bodice. Before she could begin the arduous process of untangling herself from her skirts and struggling back to her feet, Steven was kneeling beside her on the ground.
He reached out slowly to touch her braid. “God in heaven, but you’re beautiful,” he rasped, and it was as though he begrudged the words. “Who are you, Emma? Where did you come from?”
She smiled, even though her stomach felt just the way it had once long ago, when she’d raced down an icy hillside on a runaway sled. Speaking softly, her words interspersed with small sighs, she told him how her mother had decided three daughters were too much trouble and sent them west on an orphan train. Her throat tightened as she recounted being separated, first from Caroline, then from L
ily.
Steven shifted so that he was straddling her hips, but there was nothing threatening in the motion. He’d listened to every word Emma said with genuine interest and carefully veiled sympathy. When she was finished, he told her about growing up as the bastard son of a land baron and his mistress.
The first kiss seemed to flow naturally from there, like a river from its headwaters.
Emma knew she was lost, but to her credit, she did put her hands behind her and tried to scoot backwards; the motion only served to bring the neckline of her dress to the very perimeters of her nipples.
Halting her escape with pressure from his knees, Steven reached out and plucked a single daisy from the host surrounding them. Holding it by its sturdy green stem, he slowly drew the white petals across the upper curves of her breasts.
Emma trembled, even as that strange, familiar heat began pulsing deep within her, and her breath came quickly, making her bosom rise and fall under Steven’s eyes.
He drew the daisy lightly from the base of her chin to the deep plunge of her cleavage then, and Emma’s nipples leaped to attention beneath her dress.
The flower touched her lips, making a feather-light circle around them. The sensual side of Emma’s nature, hidden away behind a prim facade until this man’s appearance in her life, took over completely. Her head went back, as though an invisible fist gripped her hair, and her nipples sprang free of their tenuous bonds.
Emma was shocked back to her senses by this occurrence, but before she could cover herself, Steven’s daisy came to rest against one hardened morsel and turned like a velvety pinwheel. The sensation was one of delicious abandon, and Emma’s brazen side was in command again.
She arched her neck and gripped the sweet green grass with both hands as Steven touched the flower to her other nipple in just the same way. He leaned over her and found her mouth with his, shutting out the sun with his shadow.
Emma’s lips opened for him, so easily trained to his bidding, and their tongues writhed like lovers locked together. His fingers gently pulled down her bodice until her breasts were fully revealed.
She felt herself straining brazenly against his hand, but there was no going back. It belonged to Steven, this kingdom of daisies, and his rule was absolute.
He withdrew his mouth from Emma’s, finally, but his hand still cupped her breast. His thumb shaped her nipple for a gentle conquest. “Where is the perfume?” he asked huskily.
Emma blinked, barely able to speak for the lump tightening in her throat. “Perfume? Oh—it’s in my handbag—”
“I want you to wear it,” Steven said.
She was confused, impatient. She lifted one arm to show the pretty drawstring bag dangling from her wrist, and the movement would have made her fall to her back if Steven hadn’t supported her by sliding his free hand around between her shoulder blades.
With groping, awkward fingers, she found the small crystal bottle inside her bag and brought it out. The facets trapped the sunlight in tiny bits and transformed it to rainbow colors.
Steven laid Emma gently on the carpet of daisies to take the little flagon from her hand. She watched, half bewitched, as he removed the stopper and touched it ever so lightly to the pulse point at the base of her throat.
The lush woodsy scent rose to her nostrils, and Emma closed her eyes to savor this new pleasure.
Steven stretched out beside Emma and kissed the place he had just perfumed, one hand resting brazenly on her bare breast. She swallowed a moan, for there was still some vestige of pride held prisoner in a dark part of her heart.
The perfume touched the sensitive place beneath her right ear then, and as before, Steven followed the scent with his lips.
Emma’s pride rattled the bars that confined it, but its protest went unheeded. Another part of her—the part that was a harlot’s daughter—had taken her over, body and soul.
When the stopper touched between her breasts, Emma was fevered. Her back arched, her nipples reached. She entangled her fingers in Steven’s hair, trying to guide him to the sustenance she needed so badly to give.
He brought her skirts and petticoats to lie around her waist in a billow of white, drew her right knee up and wide of her left. Through the taut cloth of her drawers, he teased that moist junction that was already preparing itself for him.
“Listen to me,” he grated out, grasping her chin in his hand. “I’m going to take you when you’re ready, Emma Chalmers, and make you into a woman once and for all. If you have any objections, you’d better speak up now, while I’ve still got enough control to stop myself.”
Emma bit down hard on her lower lip, lest her pride escape and save her from the fate her body craved.
“All right, then,” Steven said in a tone of gentle finality. And he began unlacing Emma’s shoes.
The spring sunshine warmed her breasts and her face as she lay in the field of daisies, surrendering her clothes garment by garment. Soon she lay before Steven wearing nothing but the freckles God had sprinkled over her body like gold dust.
Steven took off his own clothes and lay beside her on the bed of flowers, one hand splayed on her belly. His other arm lay under her shoulders, and his fingers played with her braid.
Emma gave a little whimper as he took the silky end of her plait and brushed each nipple with it. She stretched both arms above her head and gripped handfuls of daisy stems, laying them before him like Vikings’ plunder.
He rolled a nipple between index finger and thumb until Emma, remembering that pleasure only too well, begged him in a breathless gasp to take it into his mouth. He did so greedily, lustily, and the hand that had been under her shoulders shifted to lift her hips.
He trailed his lips lingeringly to the other breast, where he sucked and teased until Emma was tossing her head from side to side. When her hands grasped at him, trying futilely to pull him close, to make him lay his weight upon her, he strung kisses down her belly in a velvety ribbon of sensation, then shifted, so he was between her legs.
Emma felt his hands on the insides of her thighs, stroking her, soothing her, setting her ablaze. Her heartbeat seemed to throb in her throat, her tongue, even her lips. “Steven,” she pleaded, and it didn’t matter that she didn’t know what she was asking for.
He touched the damp mound of tangled silk, and his thumb burrowed through to make a sensuous circle around the small, hardened nubbin he found trembling there.
Emma gave a soft cry and gazed at the sky, losing herself in its gentle blue. “Please—”
No plea would be enough, it seemed, for through the haze of an azure sky fringed with daisies, she saw Steven shake his head. “Not yet, sweetheart. Not before you’re ready.”
Emma was near to weeping with frustration when he fell to her, his head resting between her thighs, and drank the nectar no other man had ever tasted.
In her need, Emma bucked like a wild mare, her hips tossing up and down, back and forth, without pattern or reason. And Steven rode her until she hurled herself high in surrender, crying out in her triumph, and he extracted the last shuddering sigh of pleasure from her before letting her settle back to the soft ground.
Blindly, her breath a series of gasps tearing in and out of her lungs, she reached up and found his bare chest with her fingers. She found the tinbuttons hidden in downy maple silk, and teased them.
The groan this drew from Steven made her exultant. She laid her hands to his back as he came to rest between her legs, and there was no fear in her, only anticipation, when she felt his rod pressed between his belly and her own.
He kissed her ravenously and then whispered, “It’ll hurt just this once. But after that, there’ll be nothing but pleasure.”
Emma would have trusted him with her soul, let alone her body. Nothing else existed for her except Steven and herself, and their bed of wild spring daisies. She nodded, her hands resting on the small of his back.
The first taste of him was a surprise that made her widen her eyes and start a little. St
even stopped and soothed her with tender words and kisses until she lay back, feeling herself draw at him from deep inside.
He groaned and advanced again, and Emma felt something tear inside her and then give way. Steven rested, braced on his elbows, until she’d gotten over that momentous sacrifice, then eased full inside her.
Emma couldn’t believe the size and power and heat of him, and she pushed the pain to the back of her mind and gave herself up to the pleasure. Her fingers moved lightly from the bulging blades of his shoulders, over his middle to his hipbones and his buttocks. Briefly she registered that his ribs weren’t wrapped, but instinct told her that he was withholding something precious, and she clasped at the taut, rounded muscles beneath her hands, urging motion.
Steven groaned her name and withdrew slightly, and the closer he came to leaving her, the more Emma despaired. Just as he would have become a separate being again, he lunged deep into her again, and the friction was like the meeting of kerosene and fire.
Emma arched her back and thrust herself at Steven, wanting another stroke, and another. He gave them, but with excruciating slowness, pausing now and then to take suckle at her breasts, her lips, her earlobes. He savored her like a confection, and when she was sure she could bear no more delays, no more teasing, he sensed that and hoisted her upright, while he knelt.
She shuddered at the glorious splendor of his total possession, and her own. Her hair had come partly free of its braid, and tendrils of it rioted around her face, ablaze in the sun.
He caught her cheeks in his hands and kissed her roughly, for they were both savages in those moments, and his tongue swept her mouth and her lips before he moaned, “My beautiful, blue-eyed tigress—”
Emma began to rise and fall upon him because she craved the friction, and his moan of helpless pleasure filled her with a rush of sweet power. She wanted to shout her exultation, but she hadn’t the breath for it, so she simply gripped Steven’s shoulders and worked her instinctive magic.
She sheathed and unsheathed him, and felt the moisture on his flesh as he strained toward something Emma only partly understood.
Emma and the Outlaw Page 13
