Anita Mills (24 page)

“Don’t—I’ll leak,” she protested weakly.

“I don’t care, Laurie—all I care about is you. I want to be good for you.”

His hand cupped her breast, and his thumb rubbed over her nipple, eliciting an intense, exquisite agony. As milk flowed into his palm, she felt the aching wetness between her thighs. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please …”

“Please what?” he murmured against her breast. ‘Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I don’t know—I just don’t want you to stop.”

Feeling as if he’d burst, he kissed her lips again. “Are you sure?”

“It’s been so long, Spence—love me now. I want it all,”

Nuzzling her throat, he reached down to unbutton his pants. He could feel himself grow as the buttons gave way. Lifting his hips, he worked his pants down to his ankles, then kicked them off. “Touch me, Laurie,” he said hoarsely.

“I … I can’t … I’ve never done that before.”

She had her eyes squeezed tightly shut, and her teeth held her lip. He could see the rise and fall of her breasts through her open bodice. Working feverishly, he pushed the dress and thin chemise down from her shoulders, tugging them past her waist, over her hips. Loosening the waist of her drawers, he got them and everything else to her ankles. His fingers caught the laces of her shoes, untying them, pulling them off.

Instead of parting her legs, he nuzzled the crevice between her breasts, while his hands stroked the curve of her hip, moving over the nearly flat plain of her belly until his fingers found the soft fold below, then glided inside.

He felt her body tauten under his hand, her heels dig into the feather mattress. As he stroked the wet flesh, she began to move, opening and closing her legs as the pleasure intensified. More than ready to give her what she wanted, he eased his body over hers, and as her legs splayed to receive him, he guided himself inside.

“Oh, yes!” she gasped, clinging to him as he rocked within her. “Don’t stop now!” Her legs came up, and her body joined his rhythm, bucking beneath him, demanding satisfaction. Grasping her hips, he rode hard, straining to reach that ultimate peak. Pounding blood roared in his ears, and her breath was coming in great gasps, drowning out the primordial cries of the woman beneath him. He felt the explosion, the intense pleasure of release. Wrapping, his arms around her, he lay within her, floating back to earth.

For a time, she hugged him, catching her breath. She felt utterly, completely sated. Finally, he rolled off her, drew her into the crook of his arm, and stared at the cabin ceiling. He was so quiet she could hear his heartbeat under her ear. She lay there, thinking dreamily that she never wanted to move from the warmth of his body.

He hadn’t meant to do this, it had just happened, he told himself. No, he was lying. He’d wanted her more than anything, but that still didn’t make it right—nothing could. He’d wanted her, and he’d taken advantage of her loneliness, and when she came to her senses, she’d probably hate him for it. Or herself, and he couldn’t stand that. The blame was his, not hers—he’d thought of little else these past few weeks, so much he d tried to run away, but he hadn’t made it. No, he was leaving with the railroad rep crew tomorrow, one day too late.

He looked down at the silky soft brown hair spilling across his bare shoulder, wondering what she was thinking, if he’d given her as much pleasure as she’d given him. If she had any idea how good her woman’s body had felt, how much better than the others. The thought threatened to rekindle his desire, making him feel no better than an animal. If things had been different, if he’d met her before Jesse, before Lydia …

She was probably too mortified to face him, and he didn’t want that. His hand crept to stroke her hair as his mind sought words. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

The regret in his voice struck her like a slap, telling her she’d been a fool. It’d been lust, not love in his mind. She’d given her body wantonly, wanting to believe he could somehow love her. He probably thought her little better than a whore now. Somehow, she managed to whisper, “It’s all right—the blame is as much mine as yours.”

Nothing was worth the shame he heard in that whisper. “I guess you’re as sorry as I am, aren’t you?”

What was she supposed to say to that? Not wanting to lower his opinion or her any further, she swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yes.”

“It’s not your fault, you know. At least I knew where I was headed.”

“I was married—I had a notion.” Pulling away from him, she sat up with her back to him, acutely conscious of her nakedness now. “You didn’t exactly have to ravish me.”

“Laura—”

“Please don’t.” Her hands gripped the edge of the bed. “Since I’m still nursing Jessie, I won’t be having another baby, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“God, Laura—it wasn’t like that at all.”

Leaning down, she retrieved her clothes from the floor, grateful he couldn’t see her face. “Mama told me that, you know. I wasn’t old enough to be thinking about such things, but she knew she wouldn’t be there to tell me later.”

He took a deep breath, then expelled it slowly, knowing he was about to pay the piper for the dance. “If you want to, we’ll get married. While you get yourself cleaned up, I’ll go down and make arrangements with the preacher in camp.”

Humiliated, she could barely whisper, “I want better than that.”

Mistaking her meaning, he said, “There’s not time for anything else. I told Hawthorne I’d be ready to leave tomorrow, and I don’t know for sure when I’ll be back—probably in a couple of weeks—so it’s got to be today. When I head for San Francisco in May, you can either go with me, or I can come back through to get you after I find Josh.” When she didn’t respond, he told her, “Look, it may not be what either of us wanted, but I don’t mind. It’s probably the best thing, anyway—Jessie will get a father, and Josh a mother, so it’s not a bad bargain. At least you’ll have somebody to take care of you this way.”

Fighting tears, she pulled her dress over her head, thrust her arms into the sleeves, and yanked the bodice down to cover her breasts. Standing up, she dropped the skirt down over her hips. “Those aren’t exactly the things a woman wants to hear, Spence. I married for Danny the last time, and if there’s a next time, it’ll be for myself. And it’ll be to somebody who loves me, not somebody who thinks he’s doing something honorable.” Turning away so he couldn’t see her face, she added, “I’ve got to want to be your wife, Spence, and right now, I don’t.”

“I thought you and I had a pretty good time, but I guess I was mistaken.”

She swung around at that and looked him in the eye. “I had a real good time, all right,” she said evenly, “but that’s not enough for me to promise my life away. If it’s a good time you’re after, go to the hog ranch—the whores down there can probably give you a better one than I can.”

“I didn’t say that’s what I was looking for. I said I thought you—”

“I’m looking for somebody who wants to spend his whole life with me, who won’t mind growing old with me. I want to be everything to somebody, Spence. Any man that asks me had better be ready to convince me he’s got his heart set on me and nobody else. Otherwise, I’m going to be a widow for the rest of my life. That’s all I’ve got to say about it.”

“Well, that was quite a speech.”

“It came from my heart,” she said simply. Her eyes took in his tousled black hair, his strong, masculine shoulders, and she condemned herself for being a fool. A man like that could never love her. Looking down to button the front of her dress, she told him, “Since you’re leaving in the morning, you can stay tonight, but when you get back, I think you’d better figure on staying somewhere else. Jessie and I’ll miss you, but what we did just now wasn’t right. And since I don’t think I’ll be likely to forget it happened, having you around would be just plain awkward.”

The look on her face would haunt him a long time. “I see,” he said heavily. “I don’t think I’ve been sorrier for anything in my life.”

“Yes—well, I’ve got to get busy, or I won’t get the laundry finished up and ironed by tomorrow. I’ll try to have your shirts ready before I go to bed, but if I can’t I’ll get up early.”

“Is there anything I can do to help out?”

“I guess if you get your packing done, you could chop wood. I’ll probably be needing a lot more before warm weather gets here.”

As she walked away from him, he felt drained, utterly empty. “I’ll chop what I can, then leave you money in case you have to buy some. It’s the least I can do.”

She whirled to face him furiously. “Don’t make me feel any worse than I already do, Dr. Hardin!” she snapped. “I may be a sinner, but I’m not a whore! I don’t want to hear any more talk about money—now or ever!”

He finished dressing in silence, telling himself he’d tried, that there wasn’t much more he could do to help her. When he sat down to pull on his pants, he saw she was punching down the bread dough with a vengeance. And he felt as though he’d just lost his best friend.

The other members of his railroad crew, most of whom had wintered on the plains before, claimed that as long as it didn’t snow, they didn’t mind being out in weather like this. A body got used to it, they said, but so far he hadn’t. And if he ever got out of Nebraska, he damned sure wasn’t coming back to give the place another try.

Every night since he’d left Laura’s cabin, he’d rolled himself up in four heavy blankets and shivered himself to sleep so he could wake up before dawn, gulp a cup of scalding coffee to wash down his share of hardtack, then head out to tear up pieces of broken track for twelve or thirteen hours. She’d been right about that, like just about everything else.

It wasn’t the hard work that bothered him. At night he was almost grateful to fall into bed too tired to even think. No, it was the damned, unrelenting wind—and Laura Taylor. That wailing, otherworldly wind swept the bitter cold down from the mountains and bore it across the plains, driving everything but wolves and railroad men into dens and lairs. It made him long for the warmth of that tiny cabin. It made him miss her.

But tonight he was going to be warm, he promised himself. He’d already cut a small vent hole in the roof of his tent to draw the smoke, and as soon as he had enough wood and tinder to make one, his water bucket was going to hold a fire instead of ice. He was going to show these Yankees some good old Rebel engineering he’d seen in. the Tennessee campaign. Once he got a bucket full of red-hot coals, the metal’d give off at least enough heat to keep him from freezing, maybe enough that four wool blankets could keep him warm. And if he could keep the fire going until morning, he’d throw an extra buffalo chip on it, put some holes in an old rusty pan he’d found, and cover the bucket with it to make himself a cook-stove. Instead of hardtack for breakfast, he was going to have soda biscuits and fried potatoes with his coffee.

As he twisted dead twigs from a limb, he couldn’t help wondering how she was. By now, she’d have Jessie asleep, and she’d have that rocker pulled up close to the hearth. She’d probably be reading one of her books again, wearing her eyes out in that yellow light, or if she was trying to save on kerosene, she’d be knitting in the dark. He just hoped she wasn’t running low on wood or anything else. He didn’t want her trying to split logs or walking down to camp by herself.

He had to wonder if she missed him, or if she was doing just fine without him. She’d say she was, anyway, and she’d try her damnedest to believe it. She was the stubbornest woman of his memory, determined to take care of herself, refusing to go back home poor. He guessed he understood that—if he hadn’t had to wait for Pinkerton to answer, he sure as hell wouldn’t have spent those last months in Georgia, pretending not to notice conversations turned to furtive whispers whenever he entered a room. Pity wasn’t anything either of them could stand.

He hadn’t thought much about Lydia lately, or Ross either, for that matter. It was Joshua who occupied his thoughts. And Laura. Lydia didn’t matter anymore. The speculative gossip that had probably found him wanting as a husband was a distant memory that no longer stung. It was the here and now that plagued him.

He just didn’t know what to do about Laura, and he knew she wouldn’t help him any. She wouldn’t go home, she couldn’t stay where she was, and she’d refused to go to California, too, which was going to make it damned difficult for him to leave when the time came. As if he didn’t have enough on his plate, she was haunting his waking thoughts, seducing him in his dreams.

He’d go to bed telling himself he’d already been deceived by one pretty face, that women were all more or less faithless creatures, and he would vow he’d never make a fool of himself over a woman again. Then, before he could get across that hazy netherworld leading to sleep, rational thought would slip away, and he’d relive every word, every movement, every touch that had passed between them in that bed, and he’d ache for her—not just lust, ache.

Her response to him had been a revelation, showing him yet another way Lydia had cheated him. He’d mistaken lying words for passion, accepted it as fact that a decent woman wasn’t supposed to pant and writhe under him like a whore pretending to enjoy it, that she’d be shocked and repelled by what a man really wanted. Lydia had done her best to plant and nurture that notion. Looking back, he could see now that there hadn’t been much about marriage she’d liked except the Mrs. in front of her name. It made him wonder why she’d turned to Ross—or Ross to her, for that matter. They must’ve made quite a pair, two beautiful people intent on deceiving each other.

He could close his eyes and feel Laura’s warm skin, taste her mouth, and he could hear her whisper, “Yes, I want it, too.” And her body had proven her words. The only thing she’d been unwilling to do was touch his manhood.
I can’t
—
I’ve never done that before.
It made him wonder if Jesse had cheated her as Lydia had cheated him. He didn’t guess he’d ever know that answer either.