by Diana Palmer
She felt him move again, and her skirt fell around her ankles once more.
"There," he said, his voice vaguely tender. "You may be uncomfortable, but you won't stain that lovely gown."
He held her afterward, without a word, until the trembling stopped. His hand smoothed over her bare back, and he murmured words she couldn't quite understand into her ear.
She stared across his chest at the dark lake, shocked and dismayed at what they'd just done. She'd never experienced anything so outrageous, even if she'd heard women talk of these experiences. Having no way to prevent children, many women indulged in such love play with men to whom they were pledged. But Tess had never dreamed of doing such a thing, until tonight, with the one man she loved most in all the world. She moved a little closer to him, shivering with pleasure.
Matt lifted his head and looked down at her. Gently he pulled her gown back up, covering her cold breasts. He found her wrap, shook the sand from it, and draped it gently around her shoulders.
"We…should go," she said in a strained tone.
"Do you want me to apologize?" he asked quietly.
She made a gesture with her head and turned back toward the carriage, so shattered that she couldn't even pretend to be calm and collected.
On the way back down the beach she paused and turned to look at him. He was as immaculate as ever, and just as remote. Nothing showed in those black eyes.
"What are you looking for in my face?" he asked.
"Regret. Guilt. Shame."
He smiled faintly. "You won't find them. I regret nothing."
"Did it mean…anything," she asked, "or was it an inconvenient itch that you used me to scratch?"
"Why, Tess, you shock me."
"I couldn't possibly shock you. Don't tease me now, Matt." Her eyes searched his. "Tell me."
"Allright. Yes, it meant something," he replied. "I've wanted you for as long as you've wanted me. But I haven't changed the way I feel about half-breed children."
She couldn't hide her dismay. She began to walk again, holding Mrs. Mulhaney's wrap closer around her cold body. "Then you want a Sioux wife, I gather?" she asked impatiently.
"Ican't marry," he said, unsettled as he remembered a secret that he couldn't share with her.
"Will you be happy, living alone forever?"
"As happy as you will be," he replied. "You've never wanted to marry, have you?"
"What good would it do to wish for the moon?" she asked sadly.
"You're exquisite, Tess," he said abruptly. "All that fire and passion—waiting…"
She lifted her eyes to his stony face. "You wanted to share it tonight, didn't you?"
"Yes," he replied honestly. "I'll always want it. But what we did tonight is all we could ever do."
Her heart leapt into her throat. She stopped and faced him. "That might be enough, for both of us."
His breath caught. He stared at her, the whip of temptation on his back, until he wanted to scream.
"Yes," she whispered, reading his face in that instant, "you want it, too."
"Desire is a powerful force," he began.
She moved a step closer. "I want to lie naked in your arms, in my bed," she whispered. "I want to see you again, as you were that morning just after you were wounded. When I look at you now, I know you want me. I can see it."
His face tautened. "Tess…"
"We could lie in the light. We could…love, as we just did, with no risk of a child."
"If I had you naked in my arms, do you think I could be satisfied with what we did back there?" he asked incredulously. "God in heaven, I'd be inside you before I had your clothes off."
Her lips parted. "Inside…me." The imagery made her shiver.
"Deep and hard and hot inside you," he ground out. "I'd lay you out on my bed and drive into you until—" He stopped, his head spinning. He could almost feel the heat of that soft, moist sheath around him, enveloping him, welcoming him. He closed his eyes and shuddered. "We have to go. Right now!"
He took her arm in a grip that hurt and half dragged her back toward the carriage.
She wondered if her feet were even touching the ground. She was on fire for him. Why oh why wouldn't he admit that they had so much more together than simple desire? They were already part of each other, but he was willing to throw it all away because she wasn't Sioux and he wasn't white.
«^»
She didn't try to talk to him. He'd become completely unapproachable. There was bridled fury even in the way he walked in the cold, rising mist back to the carriage. By the time they reached it, a light rain was falling.
The driver jumped down to open the carriage door for them. "Too much wind and cold to walk far, sir." He chuckled. "But it's fair warm in the carriage."
Matt gave him directions to the boardinghouse.
"Tuck yourselves in cozy-like," the driver said, "and I'll take you on to where you want to go."
"I think we're both more than ready to go home," Matt said as he climbed in beside Tess and the driver closed the door.
Tess drew inside herself, too sick with shame to look at Matt. She huddled by the window, staring out, Mrs. Mulhaney's wrap pulled tight over her bodice. There were very red marks there now, she knew, and not from buttons but from Matt's hungry mouth.
Matt fingered the cane he'd left in the carriage along with his top hat. He didn't know how to excuse what he'd done. He hadn't meant it to go so far. He'd simply lost his head. Having her so close, and so hungry for his caresses, had pushed him right over the edge.
The problem was, now that he'd had such an intimate taste of her, he wanted more. Much more. Which was out of the question. Playing at lovemaking was one thing. Raw physicality and the risk of a half-breed child was quite another. He didn't dare make love to her completely.
"Yes,Ido," she said when they were almost home.
He scowled and glanced at her drawn face. "You do what?" he asked.
Her head turned. Her eyes glared into his. "Want you to apologize."
His head inclined. "Very well. I'm sorry."
"So am I." She looked out the window again.
"You realize, I think, that it was the only way we could indulge in any sort of intimacy at all."
She closed her eyes. "I never dreamed that people did things like that together."
"It becomes a necessity in our restrictive society, if pregnancy is to be avoided," he said shortly.
She turned and looked at him squarely, her eyes wide and curious. "Have you never taken the risk with a woman?"
"The women of my acquaintance have been sophisticated and wise in the ways of intimacy," he said, avoiding a direct answer. "Such women know how to avoid the risk of a child."
She hated hearing that, having him admit that he'd known other women. It shouldn't have come as a surprise, considering his expertise with her. But jealousy made her furious. "What a pity that such knowledge is denied to women who have more than twelve children at home and husbands too inconsiderate to leave them in peace!"
His dark eyes narrowed. "Perhaps their need of each other is such that abstinence is not possible."
She averted her gaze, flushing. She fiddled with her small evening bag, flooded with memories of how urgent and mad it had been between them just moments ago. Her eyes closed. She could easily imagine being in Matt's arms, naked in bed, having him touch her entire body with his fingers…with his mouth…
She swallowed, then took a deep breath. "Are we ever going to get home?" she asked impatiently when she saw how distant their street still was.
He crossed one long leg over the other and studied her rigid posture. He, too, was remembering how it had been. "It is ungentlemanly to mention it," he said brusquely, "but I would have stopped, had you asked me to."
She looked down into her lap, heated embarrassment in her face. "I didn't want you to stop," she admitted curtly. "I was curious."
"So was I," he confessed. "All these long weeks,withlittle tastes of you that haun
t me in the small hours of the night. I lost my head."
"As I lost mine." She lifted her face to his, fighting for a sophistication she wished she had. "Is it like that, Matt?" she asked, her voice lowered. "In bed, I mean? Does it feel like that?"
"Yes," he replied. His eyes searched hers in the semidarkness. At least, he thought privately, I think it does.
"Would it hurt now, after what you did?"
His dark eyes searched hers. "I don't imagine so," he said gently.
"I would like to know how it feels to make love completely with you," she said without shame. She met his shocked eyes. "I have heard of ways to prevent babies," she confessed. "Some are outlandish, but they seem effective."
He watched her without speaking.
"But I suppose nothing is without some risk, even so." She sighed and searched his face with growing hunger. "I must be a bad woman," she said in a choked tone, "because I long to lie nakedwithyou."
His jaw tautened. "Tess!"
"Are you shocked? So am I," she said wearily. "It makes me ache to remember the heat and pleasure of touching you and being touched so intimately."
Hisdark eyes slid over her body. "It should never have happened."
"Why not?" she asked with genuine curiosity."Ihave no betrothed, nor do you. We are adults, and we did nothing that was truly immoral."
One dark eyebrow rose. "Would you care to describe what we did for Mrs. Mulhaney and have her opinion of its morality?"
She shifted on the seat and clutched her small bag tightly. "It didn't feel immoral," she clarified.
He leaned back against the seat. "No," he agreed finally. "It didn't. It was almost reverent."
She glanced at him hungrily. "We were…like lovers."
"Weare lovers," he corrected.
Her eyes were sad and far away. "And nothing more."
His hand slid across the seat to claim her gloved one. "Tess, you can't imagine how it would change your life if there were a child."
She looked down at his hand. "And if there were some way to prevent a child? If I could find some solution?"
"That is a pipe dream," he said shortly. "Unrealistic and dangerous."
"There is a group of women, a secretive group for the most part, which advocates birth control," she whispered. "Perhaps they have answers."
His face hardened. "Any madam in a whorehouse has such answers," he told her flatly.
She jerked her hand back and looked at him in utter shock.
He turned away. "For God's sake, let it lie. I told you that I will not take the risk. And to indulge in any more such experiments as we shared tonight is playing with dynamite. I won't indulge this obsession a second time."
She could have hit him. A child between them would have been wonderful. Marriage would have been wonderful. But while he might enjoy her body, he wanted no more from her. Least of all did he want her love or a shared future. She'd hoped against hope that things would change when she came toChicagoand they met on a more equal basis. What a fool she'd been even to have such a dream.
She stared out the window. "If that's the way you want it to be, Matt," she said.
"Yes," he said shortly. "That's how it has to be."
Nothing more was said. They went to their respective rooms, and Tess bathed her rawness away with a sense of desolation. She'd learned the lesson of love all too vividly tonight, and she had only a broken heart to show for it.
* * *
Tess went downstairs after a restless night, having relived over and over again the ball and what had happened afterward. Her body still throbbed with its first experience of passion and ecstasy. And even through the slight discomfort, it was hungrier than ever for Matt.
But if she were starving for him, there was not the slightest indication that he felt anything similar. At the breakfast table, they pretended successfully to be nothing more than cousins while Mrs. Mulhaney prattled on about how wonderful the ball must have been and how lovely Tess had looked.
It was a little surprising that as she left the boardinghouse on her way to the hospital, Matt fell into step beside her and suggested they walk. She agreed. They dismissed Mick, who smiled and winked before driving off at a clip.
"Aren't you going out of your way?" she asked.
"Not at all. I have business at a spot near the hospital." He glanced down at her with curiosity. "Are you all right?"
She lifted her head proudly. "Of course."
"I didn't…damage you too much?"
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked up at him belligerently. "You tore me," she said bluntly. "It is a natural part of becoming a woman and hardly merits such concern, especially from a man who only wanted it in such a way!"
"Tess!"
"I feel cheap, if you must know," she told him gruffly. "You feel nothing for me except lust. Had I understood that from the beginning, I should never have come toChicagoin the first place!"
He leaned heavily on his cane, aware of a man coming down the sidewalk toward them. "You don't understand why I feel the way I do."
"I know only that your stubborn refusal to lay aside your ghosts is destroying my life along with your own!"
"Ghosts, indeed!" he shot back.
"Yes, ghosts! You have no—" She paused when the man coming down the sidewalk suddenly stopped, frowned, and leaned forward to peer at Matt's rigid features.
The man was wearing a very smart suit and carrying a silver-topped cane similar to Matt's. After a moment he began to chuckle.
"Well, I'm damned! An Injun, right here in town! No wonder us poor soldiers couldn't find any to shoot out there on the plains! You all came running to the cities, like those big chiefs that travel around with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show! You in show business, boy?" He leaned on the cane, apparently discounting the stiffening of Matt's spine and the sudden glitter of his eyes. "What tribe you from?"
Matt's black eyes narrowed and glittered. His hand fell away from Tess's. "My private life is none of your concern," Matt said with exquisite diction.
The man's eyebrows went up. "Sassy, ain't you, for a redskin?"
"Let us pass," Matt returned.
The man gave Tess a thorough going-over. "Ain't you got no pride, keeping company with an Injun?" he demanded, almost spitting out the words. "No decent woman consorts with Injuns. What you planning to be, girlie, his squaw?" He laughed out loud at his own sick joke.
Tess didn't even think. She drew back and slugged him, right in the belly, right there on the sidewalk. It was a toss-up as to who was more shocked, the man or Matt.
It hurt her knuckles and she favored them, glaring at the man, who was holding his stomach and gaping at her.
"You just let that be a lesson to you!" she told him angrily. "No man talks to me in such a manner and gets away with it. What a pity you weren't in my general vicinity twelve years ago. I would have put an arrow right into your arrogant stomach instead of soiling my hands with you!"
The man was so flustered that he seemed to be beggared for a single word. He simply looked at her, babbling.
She told him then, in stoic Sioux, that he was a lowly snake with a little soul.
"What?" The man gasped to hear that language coming from her lips. "You speak…Sioux?"
"Sioux and English," she informed him, eyes blazing. "And a low dog of a murderous bluecoat soldier has less humanity than the lowliest dog in a Sioux camp!"
She turned, grasping Matt's sleeve, her facelivid withfury. "Shall we go, Matt?" she asked in a choked tone. She gave the little man one last look. "Pig!" she spat.
Matt was torn between howling amusement and outraged pride. He glanced back at the man, who was gaping after them. "Well, you've ruined his morning."
"I wish I had a knife; I'd skin him like a buck deer, the vicious loudmouthed little cretin!" she said, her voice carrying down the sidewalk. The man seemed to jerk erect. He turned and all but ran from them.
"Calm down," Matt murmured. "You're shouting."
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"Ican't abide a stupid man," she bit off. She glared up at Matt. "There are so many of them loose in this city, too!"
Still amused and vaguely angry, he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked down into her flushed face. Her aggressive behavior on his behalf would have been funny indeed, except that he disliked the feeling of impotence that came from having her defend him. "The insult was mine," he said. "The reply to it should have been mine as well."
