Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Her whispered plea nearly drove him to his knees. But he couldn’t back down. For his own sake and hers, he wouldn’t. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Serena tugged on the tie of her wrapper and paced the width of her bedroom for surely the hundredth time since dressing for bed. She barely noticed the difference between the soft rag rug next to her bed and the smooth oak flooring that stretched from the edge of the rug to the door as she padded back and forth barefoot. Preoccupied with Matt’s plan to leave the ranch, she barely noticed anything.

  Tomorrow her father would take the herd to San Carlos. He’d be back in a week. Then Matt and Joanna would leave.

  It was so unfair. Matt shouldn’t have to leave the ranch. He loved it there; it was his home, his birthright.

  Serena stopped in the middle of the bare floor. She couldn’t let him leave. If anyone had to go, it should be her.

  At the thought of giving up her home and family—everything she held dear—pain stabbed deep and swift into her chest. But she would go if she had to. Why should Matt be the one to suffer for what was her fault?

  Surely, surely there was another answer, some way to make things right again. If she and Matt talked—really talked—surely they could figure out something.

  She clenched her fists in determination. There was no time like the present. With everyone in bed for the night, she and Matt could talk without interruption.

  And if he’s in bed?

  Heat flooded her at the thought. Then she scolded herself. She would ignore the heat and ask Matt to meet her in the salon.

  She turned toward the door, then caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. With a grimace, she changed directions and walked to the dresser. If she intended to sneak into Matt’s room late at night to talk, there was no point in looking like a hag while she did it.

  Her hands shook while she brushed the snarls from her hair. What would she say to him?

  She paused and stared at herself as her mind went blank. She had no idea what to say to him, but surely she would think of something.

  She took a final glance in the mirror. Refusing to look into her own eyes for fear of the uncertainty she would find, she pinched some color into her cheeks, then turned out the lamp and made her way to the door in darkness.

  Amazing, she thought, how her hands could suddenly be so steady while her knees shook like jelly. What if Matt didn’t want to talk? How would she make him listen?

  I don’t know, she admitted, terrified he would tell her to leave. I don’t know, but I have to try.

  She eased out of her room and across the hall to Matt’s. The thin strip of light beneath his door told her he was still awake, but if she knocked, someone other than Matt was sure to hear.

  God, her palms were sweaty. She swiped them down the sides of her wrapper. The trembling spread from her knees to her whole body. She took a deep breath and opened his door.

  She must have make a sound, for when she closed the door behind her, he turned slowly from the bootjack next to the wardrobe at the foot of his bed. His boots stood beside the jack; socks dangled from the fingers of one hand.

  But it was the four-inch strip of skin revealed by his unbuttoned shirt that made her gasp. Brilliant variations of yellow, green and purple spread in splotches across his chest and stomach. The fading bruises exactly matched those around his eye.

  Serena reached out a hand toward him. “What did they do to you?” she cried softly. She raced across the floor and pushed his shirt aside.

  At her touch, he flinched.

  “Did I hurt you?” her gaze shot to his face.

  His eyes revealed a pain so deep she nearly backed away. He ignored her question. “Why are you here?”

  She didn’t know what to say. She lightly stroked another bruise.

  “Don’t,” he said harshly. “Please, Rena. Don’t touch me unless you mean it.”

  Serena closed her eyes to hold back tears. With the feel of his warm skin beneath her fingers, she forgot she had come to talk. Just then, touching him seemed much, much more important. “I’ve never meant anything more in my life.”

  “Open your eyes and look at me.”

  Slowly, Serena complied.

  “Are you sure?” he asked? “Really sure?”

  She met his gaze head on and let him see everything in her eyes. “I love you, Matt Colton. I love you more than anything.”

  Matt felt her words clear through to his soul. On a ragged breath, he hauled her into his arms and covered her gasp with his mouth, letting her taste his pain of the past weeks, the fierce hunger for her that had nearly starved him, the love he hadn’t been allowed to give her.

  She was here. He couldn’t believe she was really here in his arms. “Rena, Rena,” he whispered against her lips. “I love you, need you. God, how I’ve missed you.”

  She trembled against him.

  He couldn’t blame her. He was none too steady himself, and that stunned him.

  “Love me, Matt, love me.”

  “I do, Rena, you know I do.”

  “Show me. Show me now.”

  Her whispered plea sent fire shooting through him and nearly cost him his control. He couldn’t lose control. Not this time. She might think she knew what she was asking for, after what he’d shown her of loving in Mexico, but she was still innocent. Still a virgin. He had to take care. He would cut out his eyes before he knowingly hurt her by his own impatience.

  He kissed her again, this time savoring her taste slowly, carefully, before pulling back. When she bent her neck and pressed her lips to his shoulder, a quiver ripped through him.

  Serena felt his reaction but was too distressed over the bruise beneath her lips, and the dozen or so other bruises that marked his flesh, to take much pleasure in making him shiver. “I can’t believe they did this to you. I’m so sorry.” She kissed her way from bruise to bruise across his wide chest.

  “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”

  Serena raised her head to argue, but he covered her lips with a calloused index finger.

  “No,” he said softly. “It was my fault, Pace’s, maybe Dad’s. But not yours. I’d hoped by your coming in here like this, it meant you’d finally stopped blaming yourself.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, and he wondered at the fierce pain in her expression.

  “I’ll never stop blaming myself,” she whispered.

  “Not tonight.” He kissed her forehead, then her nose. “No blame tonight, Rena. Say it.” He kissed her cheek, her lips. “Say it.”

  “No…”

  He kissed her again. “Say it. No blame.”

  “No…blame.”

  “Now say, I love you.”

  She smiled against his lips. “That one’s easy. I love you.”

  Her fingers threading through the hair on his chest made his muscles twitch with excitement.

  “I love you,” she said again.

  Matt was too distracted by the realization that she was pushing his shirt over his shoulders and down his arms to be able to answer. He shook free of the shirt and tried to pull her back into his arms.

  She resisted and stepped back.

  Before he could wonder if she’d changed her mind, she tossed her wrapper to the floor beside his shirt. Then her slender fingers gripped her gown and pulled it over her head. It landed in a soft heap alongside the wrapper.

  She stood before him, proud and more beautiful than a woman had a right to be. Her skin glowed pale copper in the lamplight. Her long black hair sleeked itself down her back nearly to her hips, with that streak of white teasing him to sink his fingers into it.

  But he resisted, for the call of her firm round breasts, narrow waist and slender hips lured him just as strongly. So many temptations, enough to lose himself in for a lifetime. Temptations he had no desire nor strength nor will to resist. And she was deliberately, boldly offering them to him.

  Then she said the words
again, those words he could never get enough of. “I love you.”

  With a low growl, he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. “And I love you,” he told her, his gaze locked on hers. “I adore you. I want you. God, how I need you.”

  She wrapped her silky arms around his neck as her lips reached for his. “I’m right here, and I need you, too.”

  Arms trembling with the strain of holding back, Matt lowered her to the bed. As he straightened to stand over her, their lips clung until the last possible second. Frantic, afraid she might disappear if he took too long, he shucked his pants and lay down beside her.

  The feather tick sagged with his weight, rolling Serena against him. Right where she longed to be. Where she belonged.

  Was she doing the right thing, giving herself to him while so much was left unsettled?

  Even as the question tore at her heart, his hands and lips and tongue burned it from her mind. There was only Matt. His gentleness, the need that made his hands shake, stirring a hot quaking deep inside her.

  This was right. Too right to question, to worry over. Now, here in his bed, he was hers. She would worry about tomorrow when it came. And it would come soon enough, she knew. Too soon.

  “You look…sad. Tell me why, Rena,” he coaxed.

  She buried her face against his neck and shivered. “We’ve wasted so much time apart.”

  He cradled her, stroked the hair from her face with such tenderness she felt tears form.

  It was all Matt could do to keep from crushing her in his arms hard enough to ensure they could never be apart again. “No more,” he told her. “No more blame, no more waste.”

  Her skin felt like silk beneath his touch. With every kiss he trailed down her neck her breath came faster, and so did his. Whatever sadness she might feel, Matt vowed he would burn it to cinders with the fire she ignited in him.

  Needs and wants, so many different kinds, tore at him until he nearly groaned aloud at their fierceness.

  Slow, he reminded himself. He had to go slow. But it was hard. He was hard. Yet just knowing she would answer his breathless need gave him a miraculous sense of peace. Peace, in the middle of the raging storm brewing inside him.

  He cupped her breast in his palm and met it with his lips. Her sharp intake of breath gratified him. He laved and nipped and suckled on the sweet, sweet taste as the bud pearled beneath his tongue.

  The skin he crossed on his way to her other nipple was just as soft, just as sweet as the rest of her. He fed hungrily, starved for every taste of her.

  If he had thought, he might have worried about her being shy this first time of loving.

  He would have been wrong. Her hands greedily clung to him. Her legs slid restlessly against his. He shook with the need to plunge himself into her and ease the hot torment in his loins. He ached to take her hard and fast, yet yearned to give her tenderness.

  His name came from her lips on a sigh that went straight to his heart. Somehow, the whispery sound of it eased his urgency and gave him the strength to slow his own driving need as he built hers.

  But Serena didn’t want him to go slow. She was on fire, and it was glorious. Never had she dreamed such intensity existed. As Matt’s heated kisses trailed from her breasts down across her stomach, a throbbing emptiness opened inside her and begged to be filled. By him. By Matt.

  His hand slid up her thigh to the center of the flames consuming her and did shattering things that made her quake with need. Then his mouth replaced his fingers. All on their own, her hips thrust to meet his searching, shocking tongue.

  Suddenly her world tilted and went black. Streaks of white burst through her mind as the wave of release shook her.

  Her climax tore through Matt’s restraint, ripped away his control. He slid up her soft, supple body and positioned himself at her entrance, resisting, with his last ounce of strength, the urge to plunge inside with one wild, driving thrust.

  Instead, he eased into her, and she welcomed him, still in the grip of her climax. God, but the very rightness of being inside her shook him. He had never felt so alive in his life.

  It had been so long since he’d known the pleasure of a woman’s body, the sweet surrender of a woman’s love.

  Yes, the feelings were familiar, but at the same time, new. As if he’d never loved before. Serena’s welcoming arms healed the hurts inside him he had thought were gone.

  Breathless, the heat of urgency searing him, he moved inside her. Her answering gasp of pleasure stirred a primal rhythm in his blood. He surrendered to it and gave her everything he had.

  He drove into her again and again, feeling her answering urgency, holding back now, waiting for her to come again. When she did, he let himself go. His release was shattering. All-consuming. A miracle.

  With no words between them, Matt and Serena lay wrapped in each other’s arms, letting their bodies cool, their hearts slow. Then they loved again, slower this time, yet deeper. It was even more shattering than before.

  And then they did it again. And again.

  Finally, Matt rested his head against Serena’s breast and whispered, “I love you. We’ll be married as soon as Dani gets home.”

  Serena lay perfectly still, too shocked to even breathe. My God, what have I done? Instead of talking to him, trying to find a way to solve their problems, she had let him believe she would marry him!

  And now, incredibly, after those startling words, he was asleep, as if uttering them released his hold on consciousness.

  She couldn’t marry him! No matter what it cost her, no matter how desperately she longed to do just that, she couldn’t give in and be the cause of his total alienation from the family.

  My God, what have I done?

  And the next question—What do I do now?

  Yet even as a huge lump formed in her throat, she knew what she had to do.

  Matt woke well before dawn. Alone. For one panicky moment he was afraid he’d dreamed his hours in Serena’s arms. Then he buried his face in the pillow next to his and smelled wildflowers.

  No. He hadn’t dreamed her. She had been there. She had loved him and let him love her. He got hard just remembering.

  With a lightness he hadn’t felt in years, he kicked the sheet aside and splashed cold water from the nightstand pitcher onto his face. Not that he needed the bracer to wake him. Thinking about last night sent his blood racing, his heart pounding. He needed the cold water a hell of a lot lower than his face. He couldn’t leave his room in his present condition.

  How many times had they made love last night before drifting off to sleep in each other’s arms? Three? Four? He grinned into the towel. Who cared how many? This was only the beginning for them, the beginning of a lifetime of love.

  He couldn’t wait to see her. He laughed ruefully as he dressed. Sitting across the breakfast table from her without letting everything they’d shared last night show on his face was going to take some doing.

  Then he frowned. What had wakened her so early? Why hadn’t she roused him and told him she was leaving?

  It didn’t matter. He knew she had to return to her own room before anyone found out where she’d spent the night. Jesus, Matt’s own father would string him up from the nearest tree if he had any idea…

  Matt closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Whatever happened, it was worth it. Anything was worth last night. Anything. The urge to see her, despite the lack of privacy they would have, drove him to dress in a hurry.

  Except for Rena, he was the last to arrive at breakfast.

  “Good morning, Pumpkin.” He kissed Joanna’s nose and took his usual seat next to hers.

  “Morning, Daddy. Where’s Aunt Rena?”

  Matt forced a casual shrug and poured himself a steaming cup of coffee. “Maybe she decided to sleep in.”

  “Serena?” Spence scoffed. “She gets up before the roosters.”

  Not when she’s been awake all night, Matt thought with a secret grin. She was probably exhausted, especially a
fter that last time, when she had pushed him to his back and straddled his hips.

  Heat gathered in his loins. He forced his mind to search for something else to think about before he embarrassed himself. He finally settled on that ornery string of mustangs he had yet to break. He and the dun still hadn’t come to an understanding. Today they would.

  Today, Matt could do anything. Give him a battle, he would fight it. Give him a war. He would win. Hell, give him the world and he could conquer it with one hand. One devil of a range-wild mustang didn’t stand a chance against him. Not today.

  By the time Matt finished his ham and eggs, Rena still hadn’t shown up, but Matt wasn’t concerned. After last night, she would probably sleep ‘til noon.

  Pace apparently had other ideas. As he stood, his chair scraped across the floor. “I’m going to check on Serena,” he said. “It’s not like her to sleep this late.”

  Matt tried for nonchalance and settled for speed as he followed Pace down the hall. “Why don’t you leave her alone? She’s been working extra hard, with Dani gone this long.”

  “Why don’t you go to hell?” Pace banged his fist on Serena’s door.

  Matt winced. Personally, he’d never appreciated being awakened by a fist on his door. He didn’t imagine Rena would, either. But he knew he couldn’t be standing in the hall when she answered the knock. Not if he expected to be able to keep from hauling her into his arms at the first sight of her sleep-flushed face, Pace be damned.

  “Serena?” Pace called. “You all right?”

  Matt rolled his eyes and turned toward his own room.

  “Serena?”

  Tired of waiting, Pace pushed open Serena’s door.

  Matt frowned. That crap was going to have to stop. Pace couldn’t just walk in on his sister whenever the hell he felt like it. Good God, what if he’d decided to do that last night? Not finding her, would he have walked into Matt’s room unannounced?

  “Sonofabitch.”

  At Pace’s sharp cry, Matt stepped back into the hall. “What’s wrong?”

  “Damn her.”

  Matt crossed the hall to Serena’s door. She wasn’t there.