A muscle in his jaw bunched in suppressed anger; Steven knew Emma meant what she said. “All right, then, we’ll compromise. We’ll be married when we get to Spokane. That’ll give you some protection against Macon, but remember this, Emma—if they hang me, don’t wait around for the funeral. Macon wasn’t bluffing—the minute the life goes out of me, he’ll take you to bed, whether you want to go or not.”
Emma was bruised inside. She was in love, really and truly in love, for the first time in her life. And her marriage might last no longer than a murder trial. Her eyes filled with tears. She embraced Steven even more tightly and looked up into his face. “There’ll be no funeral, Mr. Fairfax,” she said fiercely. “At least, not for forty or fifty years.”
He kissed her forehead. “Promise me you’ll leave New Orleans the same day, if the verdict goes against us. I have to know that you won’t even go back to Fairhaven for your things, Emma. Do I have your word?”
She nodded, albeit grudgingly. “We’re going to win,” she insisted.
“I’m staking everything on that,” Steven replied. And then he kissed Emma thoroughly, and she wanted him to make love to her, right there where they stood. She needed to be as close to him as possible, needed to be totally absorbed in her passion for him, so she wouldn’t have to think about the very real possibility that they would soon be parted forever.
She began unbuttoning his torn, dirty shirt, and his eyes twinkled in the light of the moon. He pretended to be shocked. “Miss Emma!”
She spread the front of his shirt and laid her palms against the gritty, down-covered expanse of his chest, her fingers splayed. “I want you to love me, Steven. I want your baby growing inside me.”
He moaned and closed his eyes for a moment when she found his nipples and began stroking them lightly with the pads of her thumbs. “Emma, I’ve been on the trail for three days—”
She laid the tip of her tongue to one of the taut brown buttons, tasting dust and sweat and Steven, and not caring. He was delicious to her. “Make love to me,” she said again. “Right here and now.”
Steven’s eyes seemed to blaze as he looked at her, and behind him, the stream sparkled and glimmered in the light of the moon and stars, like a wide ribbon touched by magic. He eased her blouse out from under the waistband of her skirt and began undoing the buttons. Reaching her camisole, he pulled the delicate fabric upwards until her breasts were bared.
Emma whimpered in pleasure as his thumbs passed lightly over the nipples, preparing them. Her fingers were already grappling with the buttons of her skirt; in another moment she was stepping out of it. She kicked off her boots, one by one.
“You’d be more comfortable on the ground,” Steven murmured, his lips dangerously close to her breast by then, his breath fanning warm over the distended peak.
“I don’t want to be comfortable,” Emma gasped, as his mouth closed over her and he began to suck with a slow, soft hunger. “I want to be taken, not seduced.”
“So be it,” he said, and grasping the waistband of her drawers, he ripped them asunder and tossed them aside to lie like a fallen bird on the moonlit grass. He took off his gunbelt and then opened his trousers.
Emma felt the bark of the tree press its imprint onto her back as he plunged into her, catching her cry of shocked welcome in his mouth. All the while he was kissing her, Steven’s hips executed a steady rhythm against hers, and his manhood stroked her furthest depths.
When Steven could no longer contain himself, he broke away from her mouth, his head back, his eyes closed. His hands gripped the trunk of the tree and the sweet friction his rod generated grew more intense with every passing moment.
Emma was panting, unable to catch her breath. Her whole being, her every sense was fixed on the act. She and Steven might have made love before, but on that night they mated, not just for life, but for all eternity.
The bargain was sealed in a heated fusion, invisible to the eye but blindingly bright to the spirit. Steven nibbled at Emma’s lower lip as she poured out a long, low cry of final surrender, her body buckling against his. He buried his face in the quivering flesh of her neck and moaned as he gave up his seed.
They had both forgotten the cowboys and even the herd. After a few moments Steven righted his trousers, lifted Emma into his arms, and carried her down to the side of the stream. There he laid her on the soft, mossy bank, and gently washed her with the clean, cold water. This experience had a sensuality all its own, and Emma lay dazed when Steven went back to find her skirt and boots.
He brought them to the creek bank and dressed her tenderly. When she kissed him, she put a hand on his upper arm and felt the blood seeping through his bandage.
Her eyes went wide with alarm, and Steven smiled and kissed her again, in no particular hurry to have the wound attended.
But Emma could think of nothing else. She hastily buttoned her blouse, tucked it back into her skirt, and grappled to her feet. Holding Steven by the hand, she half-led, half-dragged him back to the camp.
She paid no attention to the cowboys lounging around the fire eating their dinner, but pressed Steven to sit in the back of the cook wagon, his feet dangling. She left him there to find Sing Cho and ask for hot water and another bandage.
Steven sat quietly while she worked—by the light of a kerosene lantern—to stop> the bleeding, then bathed and inspected the injury.
“Some of the stitches have come out,” she fussed to Sing Cho, who was squinting in the darkness and giving his handiwork a solemn inspection.
“Should not ride,” Sing Cho scolded. “Should not herd cattle.” He trotted away to fetch his satchel from the supply wagon.
“Shoulake babies,” Steven whispered, bending toward a worried Emma and kissing her on the tip of her nose.
Emma was blushing, remembering how wanton she’d been—she the seducer, and Steven the seduced. It was probably her fault that his sutures had come open. “Be quiet!” she said, out of guilt and impatience.
He grinned. “I hope I put a child inside you tonight,” he said in a voice that was just a tone too loud for Emma’s comfort.
She lowered her eyes, hoping the same thing, and more. She wanted the baby, but she needed for Steven to be with her all the while it was growing up, too. She had borne so much loss in her life: Grammie, her mother, Lily, Caroline. She could not lose Steven, too; the thought was incomprehensible.
“We can’t go to New Orleans,” she whispered. “We have to run—make a new start somewhere else—”
He laid an index finger to her lips just as Sing Cho returned with the dreaded needle and spool of catgut. “I want my birthright, Emma,” he said with quiet sternness. “I want my share of Fairhaven.”
“Enough to die for it?” Emma said in a strangled voice, as Sing Cho edged her aside to sew up the place where Steven’s wound had split.
This time there was no whiskey to deaden the pain, and he grimaced as the needle bit into already tender, inflamed flesh. “I’m through running,” he insisted. “It’s time I fought for what’s mine.”
Emma turned away, unable to bear his suffering anymore, covering her eyes against the terrible images that flashed through her mind.
Ignoring the cowboys as best she could, she helped herself to one of the biscuits Sing Cho had made for supper and glumly bit into it. She didn’t feel the least bit hungry, but when she got weepy and overemotional, it was a sure sign that she needed something to eat.
Half the men were lying on bedrolls on the ground while the other half took the first watch, keeping an eye on the cattle. Emma wondered where she was going to sleep, and whether she’d be safe if Steven rode out of camp with the second watch.
She took another biscuit and wandered back to where Sing Cho was just tying off the last stitch. Steven looked wan in the light of the lantern, but he smiled when he saw Emma. That distracted him from the fact that Sing Cho was opening a large brown bottle.
Just when Sing Cho doused the long cut with alcohol, Em
ma stuffed the biscuit into Steven’s mouth and stifled what she was sure was a string of shouted curses.
His eyes narrowed, and his jaw moved angrily as he chewed and swallowed. “Damn it, woman,” he rasped, “when something hurts as bad as that, a man has a right to cuss.”
“You did enough cussing the first time,” Emma replied, watching as Sing Cho wrapped a fresh bandage around his arm. When the Chinaman was gone again, she dared to ask the question that was uppermost on her mind. “Where am I going to sleep?”
“Under the supply wagon, with me,” Steven answered. “We’d better turn in right now, because I want that herd moving at sunrise.”
>
Emma’s sense of propriety was a little belated, but it was strong nonetheless. “What will the men think?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
Steven grinned as he pulled blankets from the back of the wagon and tossed them at her. “I’m sorry to disillusion you, Miss Emma, but they’ve probably already figured out that you and I weren’t picking gooseberries down by the creek tonight.”
Once again Emma made the disturbing discovery that her hindsight was much clearer than her foresight had been. “Oh,” she said.
Steven got down from the wagon to stand beside her, his eyes dancing even though they reflected pain and a deep, long-standing weariness. “If you’ve got any business to take care of, you’d better do it now,” he told her in a companionable whisper.
Emma bit her lower lip. Tonight she could go in the bushes, but what would she do tomorrow, in the full light of day, when she was riding with a dozen men and a full herd of cattle?
“I’ll stand guard,” Steven offered generously, ushering her toward a cluster of bushes some distance from the camp. She only hoped they weren’t the kind with brambles.
Self-consciously, but nonetheless compelled by nature, Emma went into the bushes, undid her skirt, and squatted. Her face went red with embarrassment when a pattering sound filled the night air.
“What do cowboys do in a situation like this?” she called out cheerfully, in an effort to drown out the noise.
“Think about it, Emma,” Steven replied, with good-natured impatience.
Emma thought, and she felt envious. If there were no women around, they wouldn’t even have to get off their horses, let alone find a bush to hide behind. It wasn’t fair.
She dried herself with a clump of leaves, stood, and righted her skirt. When she came out of the bushes, Steven was just buttoning his trousers.
They walked back to camp in silence, and Emma was touched to find a basin of hot water and a rough towel waiting on the tailgate of the wagon. She knew Sing Cho had left it for her, and gratefully washed her hands and face.
Steven, in the meantime, was spreading the blankets out on the soft, verdant ground under the wagon. When she’d tossed her wash water into the grass, Emma dropped to her knees and crawled beneath the wagon’s floorboards to join him.
“How’s your arm?” she asked, to hide the fact that she was feeling suddenly and inexplicably shy. It was as though she hadn’t given her body to this man beside a creek only a short time before, or relieved herself within his hearing.
“It hurts like hell,” he answered, but there was suppressed amusement in his voice. He drew her close, his uninjured arm beneath her, and gave her bottom a brazen squeeze. “Oh, for a bath and a bed, Miss Emma. If I could have those things, I’d keep you busy comforting me until the sun came up.”
Emma arranged the blankets with one arm, her head resting on his chest. She could hear his heart beating strong and steady beneath her ear, and she didn’t let herself think that it would ever be stilled b a hangman’s rope. “You’ve had about all the comforting you can stand for one day,” she answered.
He chuckled, and it was a homey, cozy sound. Emma could almost imagine that they were lying in a featherbed at Fairhaven, with their children sleeping down the hall and all their worries behind them.
She laid splayed fingers on his chest, letting his heart thump against her palm. If You must take a life, she told God in silence, let it be mine and not his. It’s selfish and weak of me, I know, but I couldn’t bear to live without him.
“I love you, Steven,” she said.
He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “And I love you, tigress. Good night.”
Emma closed her eyes, certain she wouldn’t be able to sleep, and immediately lapsed into a dream she didn’t remember when Steven awakened her with a kiss hours later. He pressed the butt of a pistol into her hand—the one she’d borrowed from Henry back in Whitneyville.
“I’m going to ride second watch,” he told her. “If anybody bothers you, shoot them.”
That brought Emma wide awake. “What?”
Steven laid his fingers over her mouth. “You heard me,” he answered.
Emma didn’t want him to go. Without him there, she was conscious of the hardness of the ground, the chill of the night, and the strange, scary sounds that seemed to come from every direction. “But your arm—”
“My arm is fine,” he replied. He was lying half on top of her then, and he put one: hand boldly between her legs. Even through her skirt—her knickers were still in the bushes beside the creek—she felt the warmth of his hand and responded to it with a soft involuntary moan.
He gave her an insolent little squeeze and bent his head to kiss her, first sipping at her lips, then letting his tongue sweep the inside of her mouth.
Just when Emma thought she could forget there were other people around, just when she longed to take Steven into her body and make him one with her, he withdrew and crawled out from under the wagon.
Emma curled up in the blankets, the pistol lying a few inches away on the dewy grass, and tried to ignore the sweet ache he’d stirred in her body and then refused to satisfy.
Presently she drifted back to sleep and dreamed that she and Lily and Caroline were all together again. Only she was an adult, and her sisters were still children. She awakened at sunrise with a feeling of sadness wrapped around her heart.
For the first time it came to her that to follow Steven to New Orleans, she would have to give up practically all hope of finding Lily and Caroline. Putting the thought out of her head, she crawled from beneath the wagon, washed as best she could in the water Sing Cho had once again brought for her, and followed the scent of frying pork, coffee, and potatoes to the camp fire.
Steven was there, laughing with some of the men while they ate. He was wearing a clean shirt. Emma felt a pang, wondering if she was the subject of their amusement.
But when Steven looked in herdirection, she saw gladness in his eyes. He nodded, and even though he didn’t approach her or even speak, something intangible and reassuring passed between them.
Emma helped herself to a tin plate and a hearty breakfast, which she ate quickly because it was nearly time to move on again. She was folding the blankets she and Steven had shared during the night when he rode up beside her, his hat pulled down low over his eyes so she couldn’t read his expression.
She tossed the blankets into the back of the supply wagon, and when Steven moved his foot out of the stirrup and offered his hand, she swung up into the saddle behind him.
“Hold on,” was the only thing he said to her before he gave a shrill whistle and spurred the agile gelding into motion.
Emma gripped his middle for dear life and pressed her cheek against his shoulder blade. It was going to be a long day.
Throughout the morning Emma breathed dust and bounced ignobly on the back of Steven’s horse. Her arms ached from holding on, and when her bladder was painfully full, there wasn’t a bush in sight. She had plenty of time to consider how worried Chloe must be, too, since Emma had forgotten to send a wire from Rileyton.
At midday the scout rode back from up ahead to tell Steven there were Indians to the east. He immediately got off the horse and then mounted again, behind Emma.
She looked back at him in question, and he kissed her lightly
on the mouth. “If anybody takes an arrow in the back,” he said, “it isn’t going to be you.”
Emma was frightened, but she also felt protected and valued, and there was a certain contentment in that. If she could be close to Steven, she could face anything.
Uneasily, she thought of Macon and the others, riding somewhere behind the herd. She was wildly afraid, but then she leaned back against Steven’s chest, felt his strength and substance. For now she would live only in the moment, cherishing the hardships as well as the pleasures.
The future could damned well take care of itself.
Emma lay huddled beneath the supply wagon, her muscles aching from unaccustomed long hours on the back of a horse, too exhausted to join the others at the campfire for supper. Images of Steven’s body spinning slowly at the end of a rope tormented her, and she hadn’t the strength to hold them at bay.
Turning onto her stomach, she began to cry with soft, despondent snuffles. The sound was covered by the bawling of cattle, the talk of the men, the distant howling of a coyote or wolf.
Emma tensed when she felt a small hand come to rest on her back and turned to see Sing Cho squatting beside the wagon, holding a plate of fried potatoes and meat.
“Missy eat,” he said kindly. His thin black queue rested over his shoulder.
Since there was plenty of room to sit up beneath the wagon, Emma did so, dragging one sleeve across her eyes to dry them. Her hands trembled when she took the plate. “Thank you,” she sniffled.
The Chinese smiled, nodded slightly, and started to rise.
Emma stopped him by reaching out and taking hold of his thin arm. “Where is Mr. Fairfax?” she asked. She hadn’t seen Steven since they’d made camp.
Sing Cho looked reluctant for a moment in the flickering light of the large bonfire and the kerosene lanterns set in strategic places around the camp. “He go back, talk to men who follow.”
Emma and the Outlaw Page 23
