Brides of Prairie Gold

by Maggie Osborne

  One powerful hand caught her waist and pulled her roughly against him. The sudden shock of his lean body hard against hers burned the breath out of Perrin's lungs and she gasped. Lifting her hands, she steadied herself against his chest. His muscles went rigid at her touch, and she felt herself dissolve in the heat of the night and the heat of his arousal.

  The instant his arms closed around her and she felt the power of his need, his hips pressing hard against her skirts, her head spun and she knew she was lost. Vibrating with her own need, she gazed up into his blazing eyes, unable to speak, unable to breathe. A surge of pent-up desire flattened her resistance. She had waited a lifetime for this moment, this man.

  "I've imagined holding you in my arms a thousand times," he whispered in a thick voice. "If you tell me to stop, I will. It will be the hardest thing I'll ever do." A sound like a sob scraped her throat as she let herself fall into the pool of desire darkening his eyes almost to black. The movement of his hips drove her mind to frenzy.

  "Cody," she whispered, his name husky on her lips. His breath in her hair, his hot hands on her waist made her mind reel and she couldn't remember why this was wrong. How could anything this exciting and wonderful be wrong? The slow grind of his hips ignited a flash fire deep within her stomach. A light dew of perspiration appeared on her brow as she felt a wildness building inside. The intensity of her response melted her knees to straw and she might have fallen if he hadn't caught her against him.

  "I want to make you call my name," he said, tilting her head up to stare into her eyes. "I want to feel your legs wrapped around me and watch your eyes widen." A low groan rumbled from his chest as his fingertips stroked her throat, following the heat of her skin to the first button of her shirtwaist.

  His touch burned through Perrin's blood and bone, as if her body had been only kindling awaiting the flame of his fingertips, as if she had needed merely a touch to ignite her. Gasping, she realized that no man had ever drawn this heat or this sense of wild urgency from her. If he didn't kiss her now, she would burn to cinders in his arms, consumed by her own need and frantic desire.

  When his head lowered, her arms flew around his neck and her lips opened hungrily beneath his. Lightning shot through her body like damp flame. She had not expected that his kiss would be gentle, not after this long a wait, and it wasn't. His mouth was almost savage on hers, as fierce and demanding as the emotion that rocked her senses.

  They had been rushing toward this moment from the beginning. Walking into his arms had been as inevitable as sunrise. They had fought their attraction for each other, had erected barriers to no avail. Neither of them wanted this complication, yet neither could have stopped it. Their passion was as hot and electric as the lightning that opened the black night along the horizon.

  "Oh, my God," she whispered when his mouth released her, leaving her weak and trembling with desire. She pressed her forehead against his shoulder. Her fingers tightened into fists on his chest and she squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating on the hard heat of muscle and bone. Her body molded against his length, returned the hot insistent pressure of his hips. She could no more have turned back her hunger for him than she could have altered the spin of the earth.

  "I can't get you out of my mind," Cody murmured, kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her mouth. "Damn it, you've possessed me."

  Perrin moaned and arched her throat. "I start the day thinking about you; I go to bed thinking about you." The dizzying scents of smoke and soap and male perspiration filled her nostrils, mixing like an elixir that she drank into her own body, filling herself with the essence of him. Beneath her bodice, her breasts swelled and ached, a hot tension climbed her inner thighs, moving toward the flooding dampness of readiness.

  When his hands moved up her waist to cover her breasts, she sucked in a sharp breath. Long before her mind would admit her desire for him, her body had recognized this man, wanted him, and now claimed him.

  Leaning over her, Cody gazed into the starlight and desire reflecting in her large dark eyes, then he lowered his mouth to hers in a hard, possessive kiss that ignited mind and body. His kiss was almost cruel in its fierce need. His mouth claimed total ownership, insisted on total surrender. Anything less would have left Perrin reeling with disappointment. The powerful urgency between his legs hardened against her, seeking the hot wetness between her own.

  His eyes were smoky with passion, his voice thick. "Say my name," he murmured against her lips, commanding her.

  "Cody," she whispered in a throaty voice made full by the desire that rocked her body in waves. "Cody, Cody."

  A groan issued from deep in his throat. His lips took hers with passionate force, demanding, possessive, conquering her mouth as he would conquer her body, with hard rough need.

  His mouth, his tongue his hand buried in her hair. His body, lean and hard and taut his arms like iron cords crushing her body to his the pressure of his manhood, powerful and thrusting. These images swirled and mixed with the starlight and the night and the passion that rocked her body and set fire to slumbering desires she had thought long dead.

  Lips locked to each other's mouths, hands flying over faces and hair and shoulders, fingers exploring, stroking, caressing, they sank to their knees on the rocky starlit ridge. When his hands again covered her breasts, Perrin gasped against his lips at a caress that scorched through thin calico and chemise. Her nipples rose like pink stones, hard and aching with need.

  He bent her to the ground, piling her shawl beneath her head, and she pulled him down on top of her. Passion fired each gasping breath. Her need for him blinded her to everything but his mouth, his burning eyes, his body. And his touch. His touch inflamed her; each fiery stroke was a skilled tease that whirled her deeper into blind need and wanting him.

  Drunk with starlit kisses, they rolled on the rocky ground, striving to thrust and meld, closer, closer, until Perrin was almost sobbing. Only then did his hand drop between them to jerk at his belt and fumble with the buttons on his trousers. Only then, when she was shaking and dazed, did she lift her skirts and kick out of her pantaloons.

  They came together with explosive, cataclysmic force. When his hot fullness penetrated her, Perrin cried out and a momentary weakness of intense pleasure pervaded her body. Then she lifted to meet each hard exciting thrust, her fingers flying over his face, tangling in his hair. She whispered his name over and over, mindlessly pleading, encouraging, needing him.

  Pacing himself, Cody ravaged her lips, staring deeply into her wide eyes. Again and again he brought her to the brink of release, teased her until she thrashed beneath him in a drenched frenzy, clawing at his shoulders, sobbing his name. Never in a hundred tortured dreams had Perrin imagined lovemaking could be this rapturous, this fiery, this thrillingly exciting. Not once had she considered that a man might focus on her pleasure or elevate her satisfaction before his own.

  "Cody! Oh, Cody!" Sweat dampened her temples, soaked her bodice. She was drowning in the hot liquids of passion, burning with fires that leaped higher until finally, finally he led her soaring to the rim of the precipice and then and then his body took her over the edge and spun her out among the stars that burned overhead.

  A moment later Cody's shoulders convulsed and he clasped her so tightly that Perrin would have cried out had her joy been less intense. His head dropped to her breast, and they both struggled for breath.

  Rolling onto his back, he pulled her close and cradled her head against his shoulder, stroking the hair that spilled out of her bun. Gulping for breath, they gazed up at the stars, listening to the hum of insects and the distant murmur of voices in the camp.

  "Are you all right?" he murmured gruffly, his lips in her hair, his arms around her.

  Sudden tears glistened in Perrin's eyes. He had ruined her for any other man. Never again would lovemaking be like this. Never again would her passion be so intense that she would surrender to a man because she felt as if she would die if she didn't. Never before and never again would
her arousal be as intense, as selfishly focused, nor would she ever again know a man who cared for her pleasure as well as his own.

  Closing her eyes, she inhaled the mingled scents of their cooling bodies and wondered how she could have been one man's wife and another man's mistress without ever knowing that she too could experience a release so rapturous that for an instant she had believed her body was flying apart.

  She tilted her face up to him and Cody kissed her, gently now. "You taste like apples and raisins," he murmured, smiling. Laughing softly, she kissed him back. "This isn't how I imagined it," he murmured, stroking her cheek. "I imagined a featherbed, you with your hair spread across a pillow___"

  "I imagined" But she bit off the words and stiffened in his arms. Someone climbed the ridge, sending small stones skittering in the darkness.

  "Mr. Snow?" One of the new teamsters paused, then called again. "Mr. Snow!"

  They lay perfectly still in each other's arms, hardly breathing. The teamster halted not ten yards in front of them, slapped his hat against his thigh, cursed, then headed back down the ridge, shouting Cody's name.

  The teamster brought with him a chill wind of sobering reality. Heart pounding in her breast, Perrin sat up abruptly in the darkness and pushed down her skirts. If the teamster had arrived five minutes earlier, she and Cody would have been so engrossed in each other, so lost in passion that neither would have noticed if the teamster had sat down beside them. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she dropped her forehead to her knees, shaking at the knowledge of near-disaster.

  "Perrin?" He touched her hair, the nape of her neck.

  "This cannot happen again," she whispered. "It must not."

  All the reasons against them flooded her mind. The bridegroom who awaited her in Oregon. The women who would be her neighbors. A reputation she struggled to overcome. Raising her head, she stared blindly toward the cook fires in the distance. But for the span of a few minutes, her future might have been destroyed.

  She felt Cody watching her, felt the tension in his hand on her neck. "After tonight, do you really think you and I can stay away from each other?" he asked.

  "I wanted this as much as you did," Perrin admitted in a low choking voice. She was thankful the night was moonless, that he couldn't see the scarlet firing her cheeks. "Wanting you makes me shameless," she whispered, dropping her head. "And letting myself get swept away maybe I am the harlot Augusta says I am."

  "Perrin, for Christ's sake!" He stood abruptly, tucking his flannel shirt inside his pants, reaching for the buttons.

  "This was an accident, that's all it was." She watched her fingers pushing at the rocky soil. "I'm going to be married at the end of this journey. That hasn't changed." Her heart fluttered, then crashed when he didn't deny what she was saying. Silently she stood and found her pantaloons, rolled them into her shawl. She wanted him to hold her, to tell her that tonight had not been an accident, that it had meant something. But he didn't reach for her. He kept glancing toward the squared wagons, searching for the teamster who had come looking for him.

  "This happened because"

  "You're wanted in camp," she interrupted abruptly. Holding her shawl and pantaloons tightly against her chest, she faced him across the granite boulder. "What happened was inevitable." She drew a breath and made herself sound indifferent, as if she didn't care what he thought, as if she didn't care that he didn't step forward to take her into his arms. "Now it's over. We can put this behind us and pretend it never happened."

  She felt his stare and sudden coldness. "What the hell are you saying? Are you telling me to leave a gold piece when I go?" Sarcasm roughened his voice.

  Perrin jerked as if he'd slapped her.

  Striding around the stone, he grabbed her chin and lifted her face, his eyes burning down at her. "Was that all this was to you? Scratching a sudden itch?"

  "What else?" she snapped, jerking away from him. Lifting a hand, she tested the bruises he'd left on her chin. "I can recall at least six times that I've heard you tell someone that you don't plan to remarry. I was meant to overhear, wasn't I?"

  "You think that because we" he waved toward the ground and the spot where they had lain together. "You expect me to propose marriage?"

  His incredulity wounded her like a knife thrust in the breast. "What would follow if you'd taken a decent woman? A respectable woman?" The accusation lashed out of her, propelled by pain and sudden anger. "What would you do then?"

  "Perrin, for God's sake. We're adults. You're an experienced woman."

  Her eyes closed, and she reeled backward a step. If she lived to be a hundred, she would never outlive Joseph Boyd. She had been a fool to hope that she could polish a reputation tarnished beyond salvation. She would always be an "experienced woman." And it would always be said in that knowing voice.

  "A whore, you mean," she whispered, swaying on her feet.

  Trembling, tears glistening in the starlight, she started to say more, choked, then spun in a whirl of calico and ran blindly down the rise.

  Mem rested on the heavy stick she was using to stir the laundry boiling in a large pot hung over the fire pit. She shoved at a wave of hair falling forward on her forehead, then shaded her eyes against the harsh morning sun.

  "Why in the name of heaven are you trying to help Augusta Boyd?" she asked quietly, curiosity deep in her brown eyes.

  "Cody is going to send her home."

  "No one is going to weep if Augusta leaves the train."

  "If it were anyone else, we'd all help," Perrin said stubbornly, inspecting the gray water boiling around Mem's and Bootie's skirts. Since she had not slept much anyway, she'd risen before dawn to wash her own accumulated laundry.

  "It isn't anyone else," Mem said flatly. "Of all people, why is it you proposing this nonsense?"

  "Maybe I know how it feels to be alone, to feel helpless and outcast," Perrin said, her voice sharper than she had intended. "Maybe I want to prove to Mr. Snow and to all of you that I meant it when I said I'd be fair as the representative. Maybe I won't like myself very much if I'm willing to help Winnie and Cora, but not Augusta. Maybe I did something recently that I'm not proud of, and I'll feel like I've atoned somewhat if I do something right even if I don't want to do it." She hadn't wanted to say any of that. She covered her eyes with a hand. "Everyone else has refused to help. I hoped I could count on you."

  "Augusta is petty and selfish and insufferable. She treated Cora like cow flop. She treats Bootie like a personal servant."

  "She must be frightened and suffering, and she's alone."

  Mem returned to the stirring stick and gripped it hard. "Send her home. I say good riddance to bad rubbish."

  That's exactly what Perrin longed to say. But a mulish sense of justice wouldn't let her. Plus, she did know what it felt like to be outcast and alone.

  Augusta carried two heavy buckets of water from the river and hung them over the fire to boil as Cody or Webb or someone had instructed eons ago. When the water had boiled, she would fill her water barrel, then wash the grime off her hands and face.

  Tears of pain swam in her eyes as she gazed down at her hands. Blisters formed on top of blisters. Bloody fluid leaked from those that had burst. Her hands hurt so much that she couldn't make a fist without weeping.

  Even her face hurt; the wagon had become so disorganized that she couldn't find her long-brimmed bonnet or the salve that might have offered some protection from the burning sun. For the first time in her life, she had a severe sunburn.

  Dropping her head, she wiped her eyes, agonizing over raw hands and the skin peeling off her forehead and nose, disfiguring her. Thank heaven her mother had not lived to see this. Or to see the soiled clothing she wore, another first in her life. Her mother would have disowned her.

  A tear leaked from beneath pale eyelashes. She was so tired, so bone-dead fatigued. She hadn't known a person could be this exhausted and still survive. Her stomach rumbled; she was sick with hunger. Beneath her dirty clothing,
her dirty skin chafed; she itched all over, tormented by insect bites.

  She couldn't go on. The panicked realization settled over her like a chunk of marble about to drop and crush her life.

  "Here." A hand reached down, offering a bottle of milky liquid. "This will soothe your sunburn and ease the sting of the insect bites. From now on, rub spit on the bites first thing."

  Shoving at stringy loops of hair, she rocked back on her heels and gazed up at Perrin. Old instincts died hard. Her first impulse was to summon her pride and slap Perrin's hand away.

  But her face was blistered and burned; she had scratched the insect bites until they swelled and bled. She hurt. Wordlessly, she accepted the bottle, shook it once, then began to slather the nasty-smelling stuff on her face and the back of swollen hands. Immediately the fire diminished on her cheeks and her shoulders. She collapsed in a long sigh of gratitude.

  "Are you boiling that water for laundry?"

  Augusta stared at her lap and drew a deep breath. A dozen scathing replies died on the tip of her tongue.

  "I don't know how to do laundry," she whispered, imagining that she heard her pride crashing in little pieces around her. "I'm trying to get more drinking water, and water to wash myself. I'm dirty." The amazement of it thinned her voice. Tears pooling at the back of her throat threatened to drown her.

  "The teamsters set up a bathing area at the river."

  "No one told me!" Tears glistened in the sunlight. She could have spared herself the handles of the heavy buckets cutting into her wounded palms.

  "Go take a bath." Perrin scanned the disarray of Augusta's camp. "I'll tidy up here. When you return, I'll teach you how to put up a wash. You can eat with Hilda and me tonight. We'll show you how to bake bread and make a basic stew."

  Shock widened her gaze. "Why would you do that?"

  Perrin stared at her. "Mr. Snow asked the same thing when I wanted to help Cora. The answer is, I don't know. Maybe because it's the fair thing, the right thing to do. It kills me to say this, but you deserve a chance just like anyone else."