Rivals

by Janet Dailey

  “The pure white of your skin against the velvet dark of your hair, it’s perfection.” His voice was as soft as a caress.

  Yet there was perfection, too, in the noble straightness of his nose, the rise of his cheekbones, and the sculptured slant of his jaw. Secretly she thrilled to the intimate messages his eyes so frequently sent her. He made her feel things she shouldn’t. She was a married woman. Yet, looking at the well-shaped line of his mouth, she understood why the apple had looked so very tempting.

  “Ann.” That was all he said—just her name. But how many times had he said it just that way and made her feel that she was the most desirable woman on earth? Wicked thoughts she had. Wicked, wicked, wicked thoughts. But, oh, they felt so good.

  She wanted to be kissed. He saw it in the tension of her, the motionlessness. The signal was always the same whether given by the most proper of ladies or the most pocked and painted of whores. All women were at the mercy of the same signals. Most men expected a difference, but Jackson Stuart knew better.

  Her lips felt cool beneath his, chilled by winter’s breath. As he went about warming them, he felt her hesitation and that vague, never completely formed impulse to turn away, but she stayed with the kiss. Soon she was reaching into it, bending like a supple willow, her lips all eager and soft. He pressed the advantage, taking her beyond herself, taking her farther than she wanted to go, until she broke away suddenly heavy, her gloved fingers clutching at the front of his coat, her face averted from him.

  “No.” Her faint protest was near a moan. “You mustn’t—we mustn’t.”

  “I know.” He sought her temple, grazing his lips over it. Satisfaction, smooth as the best whiskey, ran through him at the swiftly indrawn breath she took. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself for days now, but it doesn’t change the way I feel.” He continued to brush his mouth over her, speaking all the words against her skin and feeling the faint tremors of longing. “Ann, you must know—you must have guessed—that I came to Kansas City because you were here. I wanted to see you again, talk to you—if only for a moment. I couldn’t believe my luck when you said your husband was away. But was it luck, Ann?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “Neither do I. I only know that I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  “No.”

  He ignored her faint protest, his hands tightening to check her feeble attempt to pull away from him. “It’s true. I love the look of you and the glow of your smile. I love the fragrance of your skin and the perfume of your hair. I love the sound of my name on your lips and the beat of your heart next to mine. I love the feel of you and, yes, the taste of you. Ann, my sweet, my darling.”

  There was such agony, such aching intensity in his voice that she was enthralled by it. These last days he had flirted with her often and said bold things, but she never dreamed she had inspired such a depth of love. The discovery was heady and thrilling, just as his kiss had been. She turned her head slightly, letting him find her lips again, no longer frightened by the desire that had flamed within her, now welcoming the forbidden feelings and the excitement of them.

  His mouth was all over her lips, not like the last time with a tenderly persuasive ardor, but with hunger—tasting, eating, devouring until she felt wholly consumed by his kiss. But what a delicious feeling it was—so beyond her experience, leaving her completely bereft of thought and breath, her heart pounding until she was quite weak.

  When he lifted his mouth from hers, she sagged against him and rested her head against his shoulder, limp with feeling and aware that it had never been like this with Kell—never. The band of his arms remained tight around her, keeping her close until his restless, kneading hands moved over her shoulders and back, alternately pressing and caressing.

  “What am I to do, Ann?” he murmured, his lips brushing the elaborate coil of her dark hair. “I can’t bear the thought of letting you go back to Morgan’s Walk. I know how miserable and lonely you are there. Yet, how can I ask you to come away with me when I have nothing to offer?” A groan of despair came from his throat. “When I think of the fortunes that have passed through my hands at the gaming tables, I curse myself for not realizing the day would come when I’d meet an enchanting creature like you. What money I have is enough for me, but not enough to lavish you with the beautiful gowns, the jewels, the furs you deserve to have—or to take you to all the beautiful places you deserve to go. I would give anything to have your husband’s wealth—anything but my heart, for you already have that. Ann, Ann.” He murmured her name in husky urgency as he lifted her head, cupping her cheek in his hand and gazing at her. Her face had a dreamy sensuousness, her lips parted, eyes heavy. He’d won her over. “What a fool Morgan is. What a fool.”

  “I wish—” She was afraid to say the rest, afraid to admit she had chosen wrong when she married Kell. He loved her, and, in his way, he had been good to her. It was selfish of her to want the life Jackson had described—and it was sinful of her to enjoy his kisses, but, oh, she did. She did.

  “I wish it, too, my love,” he declared. “But I can’t ask you to leave your husband when I can offer you so little. But—if I should find a way—tell me that I have cause to hope.”

  “You do, yes.” She couldn’t deny it.

  Again she was swept away by his kisses, carried off by their languorous heat that produced such feverish longings. All too soon the carriage stopped in front of her father’s house. One more time they kissed within the shadows of the closed carriage, then Jackson walked her to the door and bid her a proper goodnight.

  She swayed toward him, not wanting him to go, but he stayed her with a smile and a promise. “Till tomorrow.”

  “Yes, tomorrow,” she whispered, and watched him walk away amid a swirl of falling snowflakes. In that instant, she was convinced there was no feeling stronger than the sweet ache of love.

  The next two days were the happiest Ann had ever known, filled with secret looks, whispered words of love, and stolen kisses—and every moment heightened by the risk of discovery. But that only served to make the rest that much more exhilarating. Truly it was an enchanted world.

  But on the morning of the third day, the spell was broken—shattered—sending Ann into a thousand scattered pieces. Distraught, she hurried down the hotel corridor, checking the room numbers on the doors and constantly glancing over her shoulder, fearing that she might be seen—or worse, recognized, despite the veiling net of her hat. At the door marked twenty-two, she paused and looked down the hallway once more, then rapped lightly and quickly.

  “Just a moment,” came the muffled but impatient reply, the voice unmistakably Jackson’s.

  She waited anxiously outside the door, the seconds ticking by with interminable slowness before she heard the approach of his footsteps. She leaned toward the door in nervous eagerness as it swung open.

  “Yes, what is it?” The instant he saw her, Jackson Stuart halted in the middle of pulling on his white linen shirt. “Ann?!”

  He sounded as shocked at seeing her as she felt at seeing him in a state of partial undress. She stared at the smattering of dark chest hairs, then turned her head away, hot with embarrassment at the prurient thoughts that raced through her mind.

  “I—I shouldn’t have come.” She made a halfhearted move as if to leave, but he stopped her, catching at her arm and drawing her back.

  “Don’t go. Come inside before someone happens by.”

  She didn’t resist when he pulled her into his room and closed the door. The front of his shirt swung together, hiding his naked chest, but she continued to keep her eyes downcast, her heart pounding like a mad thing.

  His hands gripped her arms near the elbows, just below the exaggerated pouf of her coat’s velvet sleeves. “Ann, you’re trembling. What is it? What’s wrong?” He bent his head to look under the brim of her hat and through the screen of its black veil to her face.

  “I—I didn’t know what to do.” She hesitated, then pulled the fol
ded telegram out of her muff. “This came early this morning. It’s from my husband.” He released her to take the telegram, a stillness coming over him. She didn’t wait for him to read the message. “He arrives on the afternoon train.” The raw feeling of desperation that she’d managed to hold in check thus far now broke from her. “I had to let you know. I couldn’t let you come to take me to the Willets’ reception and find Kell there. I had to see you. I had to—”

  “I know,” he said, stopping the rush of words.

  She looked up, her gaze clinging to his. “I won’t be able to see you anymore, Jackson.”

  He smiled lazily, unable to believe she was actually here in his hotel room. Although why he doubted his luck, he didn’t know, considering the way he’d bucked the tiger last night and walked away from the faro table a big winner.

  “What time does his train get in?”

  “It’s scheduled to arrive at two-ten this afternoon.”

  “Then we have three hours.” He tossed the telegram onto the floor, then loosened her veil and rolled it over the brim of her hat. “Let’s not waste them with words, Ann.”

  The hat soon went the way of the telegram, to be followed shortly by the muff and the long velvet coat. Dispensing with her dress of striped changeable silk was easy, too, as long as his lips stayed close enough to smother the beginnings of any vague protest.

  She felt drunk with his kisses, a dreamy looseness taking over all her limbs. She clung to him for support, letting the arm hooked around her tightly corseted waist take all her weight and thrilling to the feel of his muscled flesh beneath the linen of his shirt.

  As he continued to shower her eyes, cheeks, and lips with kisses, his fingers moved to the lace-trimmed throat of her high corset cover. When the top button sprang free at his touch, Ann caught back a breath, aware that his deft fingers had already moved on to the next. She had never been assisted out of her clothes by anyone except her personal maid. Not even Kell had taken such liberties. At finishing school, she’d been taught that a woman of gentility didn’t expose her private areas to a man, not even her husband. Voluminous nightgowns with long sleeves and high necks satisfied the need for modesty in the marriage bed, however awkward and cumbersome they sometimes proved to be.

  But she would have no such protective garment with Jackson. She went hot at the thought, aware that just to be seen in her petticoats by a man was considered scandalous. Worse, the heat she felt wasn’t embarrassment. What a wicked woman she was to want to expose herself and excite him further. But that was exactly what she desired. Exactly.

  The corset cover hung loose about her. She moaned softly as he pushed her arms down to the side, then slipped the silk garment from her, his hands smooth against her skin, not callused and rough like Kell’s. Unerringly his fingers moved to the laces at the back of her corset. Some distant part of her idly marveled that the workings of a woman’s undergarments held no mysteries for him. Then she was drawing her first unfettered breath, a breath that ended in a tiny shudder.

  With the corset vanquished, he untied the strings to her rose-colored petticoat of quilted satin and let it fall about her legs in a rustling whisper. When he picked her up and lifted her out of it, she felt as weightless as a babe. Held close to him, she made another discovery. The fine muslin of her combination and its frills of torchon lace proved to be no barrier against the sensation of his hard-muscled body pressed against her flesh. She could feel every flexing ripple through the thin fabric as he carried her the few feet to the bed. There, he slowly lowered her feet to the floor, turning her to face him as he did so and letting her body slide upright against him, making her aware of every masculine contour in the process.

  She could hardly breathe, her senses assaulted on all sides by him. And the affliction wasn’t eased by the quick claiming of her lips in another intimately delving kiss. Its power was such that at first she wasn’t aware of the deft manipulations of fingers at the front opening of her combination. Then she felt the touch of his hand against her bare skin. Reaction splintered through her in needle-sharp tingles of surprise and delight. She sagged against him, letting him take all her weight, but he sank under it to sit on the edge of the bed, drawing her with him to stand between his spraddled legs.

  Dazed, she looked down, her hands clutching at the ridges of his shoulders for balance. A tension gripped her as she watched him spread the front of her combination open, starting at her stomach and gliding up through the valley between her breasts, then branching to expose the bones of her shoulders. She brought her arms down to her sides so he could slip it off, her breath now running shallow and fast, matching the ragged, quick-hammer beat of her pulse.

  As he pushed the one-piece garment over her shoulders, the fine muslin briefly caught on the hardened points of her breasts, then sprang free of them. She saw the way his eyes devoured her breasts, and closed her own, a melting heat starting somewhere in her midsection and spreading. She waited to feel the caress of his hands as he slowly pulled the combination chemise and drawers down her arms. Just below her elbows, he stopped and gave the back of the garment a twist, pinning her arms out straight behind her, throwing her shoulders back and her breasts forward.

  Startled, Ann looked down, her lips parting in a question that she never had a chance to form as he spread a hand over her flat stomach and moved it up, up, up, then finally reached the underswell of a breast. He glanced up and saw her watching him. The darkening light in his eyes almost made her want to swoon, but she didn’t want to miss any of the delights his eyes promised. And delight there was as he began to nuzzle her breasts, kissing and licking at their nipples until Ann quivered in reaction, an ache coiling ever tighter and centering ever lower in her stomach.

  With one final pull of the garment, he freed her arms. Immediately she dug her fingers into his hair and pressed his face to her breast, ending the teasing of his lips. She bowed her head against the awesome pressure that continued to build inside her. Through heavy, half-closed eyes, she watched him tug his shirt off and give it a fling across the room. Then his hands were back on her, rolling the undergarment down over her hips. She was aware of his actions, yet she wasn’t. As in a dream, everything blurred together, things happening without her paying attention to the how of them—like the way she ended up on the bed.

  Yet, as in a dream, too, certain things stood out very sharply, a single moment held in time—like the way he had left her to strip off his trousers and drawers, then came back to fill her vision. She had never seen a man unclothed before. She stared at his wide shoulders and leanly muscled chest with its smattering of curly dark hairs. Her glance drifted lower to the hard flatness of his stomach, then lower to his stiffened organ. A breath caught in her throat. She hadn’t known a man’s body could be so beautiful. Some distant part of her wondered if Kell looked like that beneath the long nightshirt she’d always insisted he wear to bed.

  But the thought no more than registered when it vanished as Jackson lowered himself onto her, using his legs to wedge hers apart. The fever that had heated her body cooled somewhat under the settling weight of him on top of her and the sensation of his bony hardness against her inner thigh. This part she knew all too well. She felt the first twinge of disappointment as his lips teased the corner of her mouth, his warm breath rolling across her skin. But there was no positioning of her hips, no awkward, probing attempt at entry. Instead, his hands were busy touching and stroking, moving over her with wayward ease, their path unencumberd by any voluminous nightgown. Ann began to relax and enjoy once more, taking advantage of the chance to run her hands over the bareness of his muscled arms and shoulders and revel in the sensation of skin against skin.

  When his mouth transferred its attention from her lips to her neck and the hollow of her throat, she moaned in soft pleasure, liking the little shivers his nibblings sent dancing over her flesh. And she arched in eagerness when he bent his head to suckle at her breasts again. But they didn’t seem to satisfy his hunger for
the taste of her skin as his grazing mouth wandered lower, feeding on each curve of her ribs. When his moist lips traveled onto her stomach, her muscles contracted sharply, that curling ache intensifying until she wanted to cry out at the tormenting sweetness of it. And Jackson was doing nothing to ease it. On the contrary, his only interest seemed to be in kissing every inch of her.

  When she realized his exploring kisses were taking him into a forbidden area, she made a panicked attempt to stop him. “Don’t. You—” Jolted by the sudden hot sensation that swept through her, Ann jammed a fist into her mouth and tried to bite back the animal sound that rose from her throat.

  A wildness claimed her. Unable to control it, she abandoned herself completely to it, writhing and twisting with eyes closed, fingers digging at the bedcovers beneath her, a sheen of perspiration breaking out all over her. When the pressure within built to an intolerable level, suddenly he was on top of her again, sliding effortlessly in and burying himself deep. This time she didn’t even try to check the soft cry—or any of the other raw sounds that rolled from her as he began to move inside her.

  Sprawled across the bed, a bedsheet halfheartedly draped across her hips, Ann felt gloriously limp and empty. Still faintly dazzled by the wonder of the experience, she turned her head to look at the man who had shared it with her. He was watching her, the glint in his eyes holding both a trace of satisfaction and amusement. She rolled onto her side and arched close to him, feeling like a purring cat as she threaded her fingers through the silken hairs on his chest.

  “Proud of yourself, are you?” she murmured, peering at him through the tops of her lashes. “Now that you’ve had me.”

  Reaching out, he snared her waist and pulled her closer still. “Aren’t you?”

  “Deliciously so.” She rubbed her head against his shoulder, feeling even more like a contented feline. “I didn’t know it could be like that.” She smiled, convinced she’d discovered the most incredible secret.