Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  She gazed at him just as greedily as he stared at her. Weeks of supporting his weight on crutches had brought back the muscles of his chest and shoulders. Her eyes slid hungrily over the curves and bulges usually hidden beneath his shirt. She longed to run her fingers through the golden curls on his chest, to follow them down to where they narrowed to a thin line and disappeared beneath his belt.

  She studied every inch of his tanned flesh. She visually traced the scars on his chest, put there by the bear all those years ago. She knew there were matching scars on his back. Her gaze traced the final scar, the one on his cheek, then traveled to meet his eyes.

  Their gazes locked. For one brief instant, their minds touched. Hers rushed forward eagerly. His retreated in panic.

  Pulled by the magnetism of his eyes, Serena slowly rose from the water.

  Matt tried to leave. He really tried.

  He couldn’t.

  Her long, wet hair plastered itself to her back and shoulders, draping down and clinging to her breasts, where it parted to reveal dark nipples, shriveled and hardened from the cold water. Crystal water droplets slid down golden bronze breasts to fall from the dusky peaks, drawing Matt’s gaze like a beggar to a feast.

  Tempting. So damn tempting. His breath rasped in his throat. His heartbeat thundered in his ears.

  He took a hesitant step toward her, then stiffened. “No!” He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his back. A deep shudder ripped through him. He forced himself to head for the house. If he could have run, he would have. He had to get away from her. If he didn’t, he knew he would do something unforgiveable, something horrible. Something forbidden.

  Serena’s dry, burning eyes were open wide. She stared at the streaks of moonlight on the wall next to her head, not daring to close her eyes. If she closed them, she would see Matt turning his back on her and walking away. Again. He only did it once, but in her mind it kept happening over and over every time she closed her eyes.

  He wanted her. This afternoon at the creek he had wanted her. The way a man wants a woman. When their eyes had met, he knew then that she wanted him. She should be glad it happened, but she wasn’t. He hated himself for what he was feeling. His body and his mind were at war, while his heart still grieved for Angela.

  Serena buried her face in the pillow to stifle a moan. She didn’t want him fighting himself. She wanted him to be at ease. In her heart, she knew she could give him the peace and happiness he needed, if only he would let her.

  There didn’t seem to be much chance of that, though. Ever since she had returned from the creek he refused to even look at her. When she tried to talk to him, he walked away. She cooked a meal, more out of habit than hunger, and he refused to eat.

  Now he was outside somewhere. It was late, the moon rode high, but he wouldn’t go to bed in the same room with her. He was out there sleeping on the ground, if he slept at all.

  Oh God. Was what she wanted so terrible? So wrong? It can’t be wrong, her heart cried. There had to be a way! There just had to. She loved him so much.

  The tears she’d been holding back all day suddenly gushed forth and soaked her pillow where she hid her face. She couldn’t let him hear her crying, but she couldn’t hold back the tears or sobs that shook her shoulders and stole her breath.

  A warm hand closed around her upper arm, heating her skin through the thin cotton of her nightgown. She flinched.

  “Rena?” Matt’s voice was husky as he knelt beside her. “Rena, don’t cry.”

  His tender request had the opposite effect, and she only cried harder.

  He lowered himself to her side and took her gently in his arms. She melted against the comfort of his broad, bare chest and wrapped her arms around him.

  He buried his face in her hair and murmured, “Don’t cry anymore, please Rena. I can’t stand it when you cry.”

  Her tears finally stopped, and Matt stroked her back and kissed the top of her head. His hand continued its lazy, comforting rhythm up and down her spine while his lips traveled down her brow to sip the tears from her eyes, then her cheeks.

  Serena tilted her head back until his lips hovered over hers. His eyes were no more than dark pools in his shadowed face. She wanted him to kiss her so badly that a tiny whimper escaped her throat.

  His arms tightened around her, crushing her aching breasts against his tear-soaked chest. “This is wrong,” he whispered hoarsely his lips only a breath away from hers. “I know it’s wrong, but…God help me, Rena…I have to do this.”

  Neither was prepared for the sudden spark that shot through them when their lips only barely touched. Matt drew back sharply and sucked in his breath. Then, in the next instant, his lips lowered to hers with a will of their own.

  At first it was a tentative touching of lip to lip, a gentle, beautiful hello, miraculous, wonderful, soothing. But soon, it was not enough. Matt’s tongue drew a line between her lips and she opened them for him eagerly. He dipped into her mouth and tasted every surface. His tongue tutored hers, slowly, carefully, until the kiss deepened. Hands clutched, heads tilted, lungs heaved, hearts pounded.

  Serena was floating on air, drifting on a sea of sensation she never knew existed. Every nerve in her body screamed out the rightness of what he was doing to her. She tingled from head to toe and never wanted it to stop. When Matt tore his mouth away, she cried out in protest.

  Matt pushed her head down to his shoulder and held it there. He was stunned. He’d never expected to feel this way again after losing Angela. Rena’s response to him excited him beyond the point of reason.

  Eventually his heart slowed and his breathing returned to normal. “I’m sorry, Rena. I…didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  Serena pulled her head back to look at him. “I know,” she whispered. “But it’s not wrong, Matt. Nothing that feels so right could ever be wrong.”

  Matt swallowed heavily. That was the problem. It did feel right. Her body pressed up tight against his felt right. His lips against hers felt right. Their breaths mingling together felt right. Everything in the whole world felt right when he was holding her.

  And it was wrong.

  “You’re so trusting, so innocent,” he murmured, running a calloused thumb across her swollen lips. “I shouldn’t be teaching you these things.”

  “Who else should teach me?” she curved her hand around his cheek. “You’re the one who taught me how to ride a horse, how to shoot a gun, how to do a dozen different things. You taught me how to survive. Now teach me how to live.”

  Her lips captured his and Matt succumbed to their magic.

  Serena’s emotions nearly overwhelmed her as she clung to him. She scarcely knew when he rolled her onto her back. She arched against him trying to get closer, wishing she could somehow crawl inside his skin and become part of him. When his hand cupped her breast, she moaned and arched herself more fully into his palm.

  Her response nearly drove Matt out of his mind. He tore his mouth free and trailed hot, moist kisses down her neck and over the mound of flesh that begged for his lips. He closed his mouth over nightgown and nipple.

  When he sucked the hard nub into his hot, wet mouth, Serena’s back rose clear off the mattress. She cried out his name and clung to him, one hand on the back of his head to hold him closer.

  Silver threads connected her breasts and the juncture of her thighs, and Matt was pulling those threads, plucking them, with every move of his mouth on her nipple. She thrust herself against his hips in an unconscious effort to end the torment she never wanted to end.

  She moved so provocatively against him he groaned. Her hands, first fluttering across his back, then clutching his shoulders, did wild things to his heartbeat, to his mind. He sipped at her breast again before moving up to recapture her lips in a kiss hungrier, hotter than the one before.

  He rolled onto his back and took her with him, their lips still seared together. She fit perfectly in the cradle of his hips. He moved beneath her and she answered by pressing herself m
ore firmly into his loins. His hips taught hers that ancient rhythm, as old as time itself, shared by lovers since the first dawn.

  But soon it became too much. And not enough. Matt felt his control slipping away faster and faster. With what little remained of his sanity, he tore his mouth from hers and forced her head down to his shoulder again. With his other hand, he pressed her hips firmly against his to still her erotic movements that drove him wild.

  “Don’t move,” he gasped.

  She squirmed beneath his hand.

  “For God’s sake, Rena, don’t move, or I’m liable to disgrace us both.”

  It wasn’t his words that stilled her hips, for she barely heard them over her own labored breathing and pounding heart. It was the ragged edge of hysteria she felt in his shaking hands that penetrated the fog of passion in her brain.

  For a long time neither of them moved, except to gasp for air. Finally their heartbeats slowed and their breath came easier as the storm of emotions subsided.

  “Rena?” he whispered. “Are you all right?” His hand trembled when he smoothed the hair from her face.

  She raised her head and looked at him. The moon had moved, now bathing their faces in pale light. Matt saw the look of total wonder in her eyes. “God, don’t look at me like that.”

  She traced a finger across his full lower lip. “I can’t help it,” she breathed. “I didn’t know…it would be like this.”

  “I know you didn’t. You shouldn’t know it now,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Not with me.” It was a long moment before he could look at her.

  Her wide gaze searched his face, then a wicked smile teased her lips. “You’d rather I learned from someone else?”

  The mere thought of Rena with some other man was enough to choke him. Matt tightened his arms around her, nearly cutting off her breath, and pushed her head back to his shoulder. “No!” The word felt as if it were torn from somewhere deep inside him.

  God help him. What was he going to do now?

  Chapter Nine

  Serena ran her fingers lovingly over the indentation in the pillow where Matt’s head had lain. Her eyes drifted closed as she relived the sensations his touch had created last night in the moonlight. She unfolded them one by one, secret treasures she would cherish for the rest of her life. Precious memories of the man she loved.

  The smell of coffee sailed through the open door on the morning breeze. They’d been doing their cooking outdoors since the weather had warmed up.

  Serena threw back the covers with a burst of energy and climbed from the bed. She was suddenly starved for the sight of him. But what a mess she was! She didn’t want him to see her like this.

  She splashed cold water on her face and dressed carefully in a blue cotton dress with a scooped neck and elbow-length sleeves. The snug waist emphasized her breasts and the pale color matched her eyes. She’d always been told she looked good in this dress.

  With trembling fingers she brushed her hair, then coiled it on the back of her head. She stepped into a pair of soft kid slippers, ran her hands nervously down the front of her dress, and walked outside.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  Matt didn’t look up. He was seated on the flat rock, unwrapping the bandages holding his splint in place. “What’s it look like?” he said gruffly.

  Serena rushed to his side and put her hand on his shoulder. He stiffened, then shrugged her hand off. “Don’t.”

  A shaft of pain shot through her. She backed away and closed her eyes. After all that had happened, all they had shared last night, nothing had changed. She read him like a book. He blamed himself for everything and felt guilty as hell for letting last night happen in the first place.

  Her heart pounded, her hands trembled. She had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming. Can’t you see how much I love you? How much you need me? How right we are together?

  But he didn’t see it. Wouldn’t.

  As calmly as she could, keeping her gaze lowered, she knelt before him. “Let me do it,” she said, brushing his hands away.

  “I can do it.”

  “I know you can. But I don’t trust your judgment on whether or not it’s healed.”

  With swift, efficient movements, she finished unwinding the bandage and removed the splints, then the second bandage next to his skin that kept the splints from rubbing him raw. She’d removed his stitches weeks ago and the cut was no more than a faint scar.

  His skin felt warm and vibrant to her touch. At the first contact of her fingers against his flesh, Matt stiffened. She knew she hadn’t hurt him, but if he was that stiff to start with, how would she know if she did hurt him? She probed along his shin bone. “How does that feel?”

  “Like you’re trying to gouge a hole in me.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No.”

  The bone beneath her fingers felt whole and smooth and straight. “All right, stand up. But don’t put any weight on this leg ‘til I tell you. Use a crutch.”

  He did as she ordered, gradually putting more and more weight on the leg while she felt where the break had been. When his weight was equally distributed on both legs, she stood back. “Does it hurt?”

  He looked over her shoulder, at the ground—anywhere but in her eyes. “No.”

  “Would you tell me if it did?”

  His gaze jerked to her face as a guilty flush stained his cheeks. “It’s…uh…a little weak, that’s all.”

  “Keep a crutch handy ‘til your leg feels stronger. And for God’s sake, take it easy. The splint really should stay on another couple of weeks.” She turned and started for the house. She had to get away from him. The distance he’d put between them this morning was tearing her apart. He was so aloof, so cold. He wasn’t the same man who held her last night.

  They should have woken up together in each other’s arms. There should have been good morning kisses and touches and sighs. There should have been tenderness and sweet words.

  “Rena?”

  She halted and held her breath. “Yes?” she didn’t turn around.

  “We need to talk.”

  She clasped her hands at her waist to still their trembling. “If it’s about last night, I know what you’re going to say.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.” She turned then and faced him. “You’re going to tell me how wrong it was, that it shouldn’t have happened.”

  “I’m…glad you understand.”

  “I understand,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I like it or that I agree with you. You woke up this morning consumed with guilt, because sometime during the night you managed to convince yourself you’d been seducing your little sister. And if you dare say you’re sorry one more time, I’ll scream.”

  She felt his gaze on her like a warm caress. Like a soft good-bye.

  “You’re an incredible woman, Rena. Last night was…well, to be honest, I felt things last night I never thought I’d feel again. Never wanted to feel again. It was good. It was wonderful. For any other two people in the world it would have been perfect. But not for us, Serena.”

  His voice turned rough. “It’s not right for you and me to feel things like that for each other. Nothing could ever come of it. We’d only end up destroying ourselves, as well as the rest of the family. I can’t let that happen. I don’t ever want to be the cause of your pain.”

  “You think what you’re saying right now doesn’t hurt?”

  “Better now, like this, than to let things go any farther.”

  Serena bowed her head and took a deep breath, then looked him in the eye. “Okay, you’ve had your say. Now it’s my turn. I think you believe everything you’ve just said. And if that’s the way you feel, then that’s the way it’ll be. But I think you’d be saying about the same thing no matter who you were with last night. I think you’ve decided that if you can’t have Angela, then you don’t need anybody.”

  “This has nothing to do with—”

  “I say it do
es,” Serena interrupted, taking a step toward him. “I know how much you loved her, Matt. And I can only imagine what it was like for you to lose her. But you can’t spend the rest of your life alone, living on memories.”

  She took a shallow breath, all her lungs would allow. “Memories can’t hold you in the night and keep you warm. You can’t reach out and touch them when you’re lonely. They won’t laugh with you or cry with you or make that empty feeling in the bottom of your heart go away. If you can think of me only as your sister, there’s nothing I can do about that. But if not me, then find someone else, Matt. Find someone to share your life with before all that love you have trapped inside you shrivels up and turns you into a bitter old man.”

  Matt looked away to hide his discomfort. Some of her words struck a little too close to home to suit him. When he looked back, she was gone. He sat down again to take the weight off his leg. He wished he could get Serena off his mind as easily.

  What was she suggesting? That she spend the rest of her life with him? Did she fancy herself in love with him? Impossible. She was too young to have feelings like that.

  You weren’t, at nineteen. That’s when you met Angela.

  That’s different.

  Angela was only seventeen. You never thought she was too young.

  That’s different.

  If it were anyone else but Rena…

  Hell. Who was he trying to kid? He wasn’t ready for another woman in his life. Never would be. No one could take Angela’s place. No one.

  But if he were any other man…

  She came outside just then and he took in the perfection of her face, the temptation of her lips. With her beauty, her generous, loving nature, she could tempt a man to do about anything. Some other man, anyway. But not him. No. Not him.

  Then he noticed she had changed clothes. The blue dress she’d been wearing was replaced by a white blouse and brown skirt. She wore a low-crowned, broad brimmed hat, and boots instead of her usual moccasins or the slippers she’d had on earlier. In one hand, she carried her bulging carpetbag. Her face was carefully, deliberately blank.