This Calder Range

by Janet Dailey

  “Will you look at me, Lorna?” The firm insistence of his voice made her open her eyes, but she fixed her gaze steadfastly on his face.

  In the periphery of her vision, she was conscious of the muscled width of his shoulders and the dark hair on his bare chest. The dark light in his eyes burned down her body with ravishing force before it came back to her face.

  His hand circled her wrist to pull her in the direction of the bed. Overcome by a surge of modesty, she resisted its pressure.

  “I’ll need my nightgown,” she whispered.

  “No, you don’t,” Benteen stated in husky denial. “Nightgowns are for sleeping. We aren’t going to sleep for a while. Not for a long while.”

  A little sound trembled from her throat as she allowed herself to be drawn to the bed. The soft mattress offered blessed support for her shaking limbs. Her gaze clung to the contoured planes of his face as the bed took his weight as well as her own. The taut, queasy feeling in her stomach became worse, but she couldn’t let Benteen know the extent of lust in her flesh. She didn’t want to shame herself in his eyes.

  With her head on the feather pillow, Lorna was careful to keep her body stretched out straight and her arms at her side. She didn’t want to show any awareness of the heat that radiated from his body across the few inches that separated them. Benteen was lying on his side, angled toward her. His breathing had thickened. The look that smoldered in his eyes contained a potent force that shook Lorna all the way to her toes.

  When he let that look wander to her high, firm breasts, the tense flatness of her stomach, and even lower, Lorna couldn’t suppress a shudder. Again she closed her eyes, trying to shut out her brazen thoughts.

  “It isn’t wrong for me to look at you. I’m your husband,” Benteen reminded her needlessly, because she was fully aware of the multitude of rights the gold band around her finger gave him. The anticipation of them was tearing her apart. He reached over and dragged the pillow from under her head, then remained partially leaning over her, the hair-roughened texture of his chest brushing the naked curve of her breasts. A tingling sensation started over her skin, prompting Lorna against her will to look at him. His face was very close to hers, filling her vision until she could see the pores of his tanned skin and the faint scar on his temple.

  “I’ll be as gentle as I can be.” His warm breath fanned skin that was already hot. “There’s no need to be frightened of me.”

  Her mute nod of understanding was a hesitant movement of her chin. She heard his breath catch as his dark eyes probed hers. Her own glance drifted to the hard male lips, waiting for their touch with a fast-beating heart. Then they were coming down.

  His mouth moved onto her lips in an unhurried and sensuous exploration, warm and without pressure. It teased her for a response, lightly brushing her lips, going away and coming back until her lips parted to invite the kind of deep kiss that had so thrilled her once before. The taste of him filled her mouth.

  The flat of his hand spread itself onto her rib cage, so warm against her bare flesh. She felt the swelling thrust of her breast anticipate the possessive encirclement of his hand. When he took its weight, the sensation was so much sharper, skin against skin, without the protective barriers of dress and undergarments.

  The solid outline of his male body was pressing along her length. She didn’t dare touch him as she ached to do, so she curled her fingers into the mattress cover to keep them from sliding up and down the sinewed flesh of his rib cage where his heart was thudding so strongly.

  When his mouth slid hotly down her throat, Lorna turned her head aside, pressing her cheek against the mattress and biting her lip to silence the moan of raw pleasure. But the downward journey continued, and she stiffened in vague alarm when his lips moved onto the peak of her breast.

  Babies suckled a woman’s breast, but it had never occurred to her that a man did. A spasm of erotic quivers splintered through her as his mouth opened to take her nipple into it. His tongue turned it into a hard point of pulsing sensation, until Lorna was driven nearly mindless. When he did the same thing to her other breast, his thumb rubbed the wet peak of the abandoned nipple, keeping it aroused.

  A keening sweetness nearly shattered her control. She felt the moan building in her throat and pressed a tightly curled fist against her lips to smother it. His hand came to drag it away as Benteen shifted his attention back to her face, roughly brushing his mouth over her cheek.

  “Don’t hold it in, Lorna.” There was a groaning quality to his half-mumbled words. “Let me hear you.”

  “I can’t.” It was a moaned response that contradicted her answer.

  She turned to seek his kiss and let his demands hold sway with her. The need to withhold her touch was forgotten as her hand curled into the thickness of his hair. Her sanity seemed threatened when his hands began to stroke and manipulate other parts of her body.

  Primitive instinct held sway, wiping out the discretion that had dictated her reactions. Lorna yielded to the fiery sensations burning her loins and let her hips arch against the stroking pressure of his hand and the release of raw tension it offered. Sensation built upon sensation, until there wasn’t room for conscious thought in her mind. No directive was sent to keep her legs tightly together, so the space was invaded.

  A wildness gathered force inside her, lifting Lorna into a frenzy. Distantly she heard Benteen murmur, “Enjoy it, my love.” Then she was convulsed by an eruption within, so intensely pleasurable that it rocked her.

  Several minutes passed before she could open her dazed eyes. She lay there panting and exhausted, yet feeling absolutely wonderful. Benteen was smiling at her while his hands made slower work of their caressing moves. Lorna was conscious of a faint sheen of perspiration covering her skin. She wasn’t sure what had happened to her, but he seemed to know.

  “Lorna, you have so much to give,” Benteen declared thickly, and began kissing her.

  She had thought she was beyond feeling anything again, that all ability for sensation had been drained from her. Yet as Benteen started kissing her lips, her throat, and her breasts again, and his skillful hands resumed their stroking caresses, the threading excitement began knotting inside her again.

  This time, his knees forced their way between her legs to spread them as he raised himself atop her. There was a vague awareness that the moment of coupling had come. Something warm and hard rubbed against her moist valley in search of its entrance. Unconsciously her gaze was drawn to the lower part of him.

  A tingle of alarm ran down her spine at the sight of him. He wasn’t soft and small like the little boy baby she’d seen once. She hadn’t realized that part of his body grew over the years as well. The discovery was followed by a moment of panic, certain that she was too small to ever mate with him. The initial probe seemed to confirm it.

  “No, please.” Her hands pushed at him, trying to lift his weight off her.

  “It will be all right, Lorna,” Benteen tried to calm her, but she sensed his inability to control his lust as he continued to hold her down.

  “No.” Her eyes appealed to him not to go through with this. Hot color filled her cheeks as she tried to explain what should have been obvious to him. “It’s … it’s too big.”

  “No, it isn’t.” The corners of his mouth twitched before lust overruled the attempt at a smile and dragged a groan from his throat. His mouth opened her lips with hungry force and smothered any further protest.

  There was a stab of pain as he miraculously entered her, but it gradually lessened under the rhythmic thrusting of his hips. Soon the pain was forgotten as those waves of sensation began to build to a climax within her again. His tempo increased to a faster rate, driving Lorna to that crazy, golden moment of explosive pleasure. There was a shower of aftershocks. Then a series of violent shudders quaked through Benteen before he relaxed onto her, breathing hard.

  After a minute he rolled onto the mattress and opened his eyes to look at her. His serious expression made her
uncomfortable. When his hand reached over to idly cup the underside of her breast in his palm, Lorna became shy about his wandering gaze. She groped for the bedcovers and pulled them partially across her body and his.

  There was a crooked slant to his mouth. “We are married, Lorna,” he murmured. “You don’t need to be ashamed to look.”

  “I know.” But it was hard to break long-ingrained habits of modesty.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, and let his hand slide onto the quivering muscles of her stomach.

  “All right.” Lorna was conscious of blushing at his frank question.

  “You were wrong, weren’t you?” His hand moved possessively onto her hipbone as he quietly mocked her. “I wasn’t too big for you.”

  “Please.” She didn’t think she should be talking about such things, even if they were married.

  “You liked it, didn’t you?” It was more statement than question, and Lorna was immediately worried that she had found the lovemaking too enjoyable. She didn’t want Benteen to think she was a common street tramp.

  “No,” she lied.

  “What?” He levered himself onto an elbow and studied her with a narrowed skeptical look. “I didn’t get that impression.”

  “I can’t help that.” She tried not to look at him.

  “If you disliked it, why did you seem so willing … so eager?” Benteen challenged quietly.

  “You are my husband. I can’t deny you the rights of the marriage bed,” Lorna murmured.

  He caught her chin and forced her to look at him. “Why are you lying?” he demanded with curious intensity. “I was watching you the first time. You’re too innocent to fake a climax.”

  She turned red with shame and tried to squirm away from him, but Benteen held her fast, quickly pinning her to the mattress. She tried to hide her face from him, but he wouldn’t permit it.

  “I didn’t mean for anything like that to happen,” she whispered tightly. “I didn’t know how to stop it.”

  “Why would you want to?” he asked incredulously.

  “Because …” Lorna hesitated, confused by his question. “I don’t want you to think that … I’m bad.”

  His gaze narrowed still further, probing deep into her eyes. “You surely don’t think that feeling passion makes you bad?” The accusing question was barely spoken when his features smoothed out. “My God, you do,” Benteen murmured. “Who put that thought in your head?”

  “It’s what I thought.” She remained wary and unsure. “Although it was never said in so many words.”

  “I knew you were young, but …” The rest of the sentence was dismissed with a shake of his head. “Passion is a feeling that occurs naturally between a man and wife—or a man and woman, for that matter. It isn’t wrong to like sex.” Her glance fell at his blunt use of the word. “Can you even say it?”

  “Of course.” But a heat invaded her.

  Benteen tipped his head down to look at her, a warm amusement lighting his eyes with patience. “Then say it. Better yet, say that you enjoyed having sex with your husband.”

  “I … enjoyed having sex with my husband.” After a faltering start, Lorna rushed through the sentence.

  “Did you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she admitted in a faint murmur, still doubting that it was something she should acknowledge.

  “Maybe if I had you say it a thousand times, it would sound more like an expression of love instead of a confession of guilt,” Benteen suggested dryly.

  “I do love you.” Lorna never intended for him to think otherwise.

  “You damn well better not love anyone else,” he declared on a mock threat, and reached over to turn down the lamp’s wick.

  “Wait.” Lorna stayed his hand. “I have to get my nightgown.”

  “No.” He turned the wick down and cupped a hand to the glass chimney, blowing out the flame. Then he was gathering her naked body into his arms and pillowing her head on his chest. “We’re going to sleep in the raw tonight. I don’t want you to be self-conscious about your body—or mine.”

  “I’ll try.” But it wasn’t easy when his body was so vitally hard and warm. She doubted if her awareness of it would ever permit her to relax enough to sleep.

  His hands rubbed over her. “You don’t belong anywhere else but right here, Lorna.” It was a firm statement of ownership. “This is only the beginning, with a lot more to come. Woman was made to give a man pleasure.”

  Something in his remark prompted Lorna to remember the advice given to her by that sporting lady, Pearl Rogers. It started a whole chain of thoughts.

  “Benteen?” Her hand made an absent exploration into the curling hair on his chest. “Have you had … sex with many women?”

  “What’s this?” There was a smile in his voice. “An investigation into my sordid past?”

  “Have you?” Lorna persisted.

  “I’ve known some women in my time,” he admitted.

  “What kind?” she asked.

  “I don’t see that it makes any difference.” He attempted to avoid the question. “You’re my wife now. My woman.”

  “But these women, were they respectable?” She had to know if he was comparing her to the right kind of women.

  “I respected them,” he stated. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “But …” She lifted her head to question him further, suspecting that she was really like the loose women he had known.

  “No more questions.” He covered her mouth with his hand, then let it slide down to rub his thumb across her lips. “We’re going to have a long day tomorrow. It’s time we both got a little shut-eye.”

  A minor debate was waged in her mind before she shelved the subject for the time being and rested her head on his chest again. His arm tightened, to snuggle her closer to his side. Lorna started to crook a leg over his to get comfortable, but she jerked it back when she brushed something soft.

  “What’s the matter?” Benteen asked.

  “Nothing,” she lied in confusion.

  “You can put your leg over mine,” he invited.

  “No, that’s all right,” she insisted nervously.

  “What is it? I know there’s something.” The determined tone was in his voice. “What is it that you’re too embarrassed to say?”

  “It’s … small.” She couldn’t help feeling selfconscious about noticing that.

  Her discomfort wasn’t lessened by his low chuckle. “It’s only hard and erect when a man is aroused. You’ll soon learn how it’s done,” Benteen assured her.

  It seemed there was a great deal she had to learn. Lorna had always considered herself to be well-educated. She could read and do numbers, as well as sew and cook and keep house. She had thought she was moderately well-versed in the facts of life, but it seemed she wasn’t aware of the fundamentals. She didn’t like feeling ignorant.

  II

  Get them cattle movin.’

  Honey, dry your eyes,

  ’Cause that Calder range is waiting

  Under blue Montana skies.

  9

  The first light of dawn glinted through the dusty glass of the hotel window. In the street below, there was a small stirring of activity. Benteen lay awake in bed, watching Lorna sleep. The covers were down around her hips, exposing her high, firm breasts. Until last night, he hadn’t realized how much passion was locked inside that beautifully slender body, but he hadn’t been shocked by it. “Delighted” was a closer description.

  His gaze traveled down to her flat stomach and the bones of her hips. My God, how she had drained every ounce of life juice from his body! Just remembering made him grow stiff with desire. His eyes returned to her face, its innocence touching him as her modesty had last night. There was a slight curve to her lips as they lay warmly together, a hint of the pleasured satisfaction she’d also known last night. She stirred, turning a little toward him.

  It was time they were getting up, but he didn’t want to waken her. He wanted to look
at her, study every detail that he had missed last night and a few that he hadn’t. His hand moved to the bedcovers to inch them down a little farther, not wanting to disturb her slumber just yet.

  Her lashes fluttered, then were slowly dragged open. Benteen watched the sleepy confusion across her features as Lorna tried to place where she was. Her glance swung to him, startled recognition flaring in her eyes.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Calder.” The lazy smile matched his slowly drawled greeting. He saw the rush of modesty when she realized she was uncovered, and pulled up the covers that he was going to pull down. It was a pity, but in time she’d get over this self-consciousness.

  “Good morning.” Her voice was soft, a little husky with sleep.

  “Do you know you snore?” Benteen teased.

  “I don’t!” She was aghast at the thought, her fingers tightly clutching the bedcovers to her breastbone.

  “Yes, you do. And very prettily, too.” He leaned over and rubbed his mouth over her lips. Their instinctive response almost made him forget the late hour. Grudgingly he drew back. His control was tested when he saw the hesitant desire flicker in her eyes. He had to turn away or give in to the urge to erase the hesitancy. “It’s time to get up, so we can be on our way.”

  When he swung out of bed, Lorna’s head turned on the pillow so she could look at him, a little disappointed that he hadn’t wanted to make love to her again. For a brief second she had forgotten Benteen was as naked as he was, but the sight of him was a sharp reminder. Her first impulse was to look quickly in the opposite direction, but her curiosity was stronger. It made her feel a little bit wicked to run her gaze over his tapered back and the hard, lean flanks of his hips. Benteen didn’t bother with the privacies of the dressing room, pulling his clothes on right there in the bedroom. Not his wedding suit, but tough, durable workclothes.