Defiant Rose (23 page)

“My God, Rosemary, whoever would have thought that beneath that clown suit you hid a body like this? You are so beautiful, so damned beautiful.”

Relief flooded through her, coupled with a new surge of desire, as he kissed her again, this time more urgently. He released her only long enough to remove his own clothes. Rosemary sank down to the sweet-smelling hay, watching him come to her with a tingle of anticipation that sent her already inflamed senses on fire.

He removed her chemise, then his mouth returned to hers with a kiss that made her reel. All logic was gone; all reason a distant memory. Her senses came keenly alive, and she was aware of little things, the delightful prickle of the hay against her bare thighs, the incredible heat from his body, the steamy waves of pure pleasure that floated through her and grew more unbearable with each new touch or caress of his lips. It was even better than before, and she gasped with a sharp sense of passion as his mouth tugged on her breast and sent shuddering waves of desire all through her.

This time she shyly tried to return the pleasure he gave her, uncertain even as she touched him if her hands could produce the same magic his did for her. His hoarse groan of encouragement gave her her answer, and with a heady feeling of erotic power, she stroked his hard body without inhibition. She was filled with a new sense of wonder as she explored the planes and contours of his chest and thighs, and when she shyly touched him where he was pulsing and hard for her, he pushed her onto her back and kissed her roughly. Her eyes opened and she saw the hot passion in his eyes, and she knew the time of waiting was at an end.

She had been intoxicated by a love potion before; this time he demanded her trust as he parted her thighs, that raw, male urgency devouring her. But as she looked up into his face, Michael’s face, saw every well-known line and feature, her doubts evaporated. She wanted this, wanted him. With the awesome and total surrender of a first love, Rosemary held back nothing and gave herself to him with a tenderness that he’d never experienced before.

It was pleasurable torture, but he held back, keeping masterful rein over his starved senses, teasing her into a mindless wanting. He entered her slowly, one small bit at a time, giving her body a chance to adjust to his intrusion. Rosemary welcomed him into her, wrapping her legs instinctively around his hips, her hands memorizing every inch of bare skin on his back. Groaning with unadulterated pleasure, he withdrew and drove into her carefully, skillfully, bringing her with him on a wave of pure ecstasy. Rosemary cried out as he lifted her hips, increasing her pleasure, making her arch beneath him as need overcame everything else. Together they were fused in mind, body and spirit, man and woman, softness yielding to hardness, until the ultimate pleasure took them both with a white-hot explosion of sweet joy. Time ceased to be for those precious seconds, then slowly they drifted back to earth.

Rosemary felt the heady passion subside, replaced by the wonderful warm afterglow of lovemaking. A delicious sense of well-being permeated her spirit. Snuggling closer to Michael, she giggled as the straw pricked her bare bottom and her breasts bore his weight. Lovemaking was marvelous, and being a real woman, incredible.

The wagons didn’t stop until late afternoon, and even then just long enough to cook a decent meal and give the horses a rest. The clowns cautiously unlocked the wagon door where they’d trapped Michael and Rosemary, then they sprang back, as if afraid of what they’d find.

Clara cackled gleefully as the young couple emerged, arm in arm, their hair tussled and their bodies visibly relaxed. Rosemary stumbled as she reached the ground, but Michael held on to her, keeping her from falling. She wasn’t even aware of her interested onlookers as she gazed up into Michael’s face with an expression of dazed adoration that made the clowns burst into applause.

“What the hell—” Michael glanced around, seeing Griggs and Zachery, Clara and Rags, Biddle and Jake, all watching with open approval. He looked down at Rosemary, seeing her blush as she smoothed her dress and tried to fix her hair. Frowning, he turned to the clowns.

“All right, who was responsible for locking us in there?”

Each guilty face turned to the one beside him, until Clara laughed out loud, clapping her hands.

“We all were. Had we left it up to you, you two would have murdered each other and us along with you. But I see you’re friends again, and that’s what counts.”

Friends. Michael watched as Clara took Rosemary’s arm and led her toward the campfire. Rosemary gave him a warm glance before getting too far away, and it was a look filled with such uninhibited joy that he felt a rush of good old-fashioned guilt. In the throes of her first real relationship, Rosemary didn’t have the skills of more sophisticated women who would have hidden the glance or acted as if their dalliance did not have such meaning. But Rosemary felt everything with a passion he’d long admired, and didn’t know enough to play games or to pretend she thought him anything but wonderful.

And that bothered him. Biddle joined him while the others prepared a meal. He heard the clowns’ jokes and Rosemary’s hooting laughter, Clara’s cackle, Rags’s guffaws. He could see her across the fire, her hair ignited by the flame, her profile innocent. She appeared…vulnerable.

“It seems you both have made up,” Biddle commented dryly, handing him his flask.

Michael’s mouth opened, then shut, then he drank deeply of the flask. His guilt cleared, only to be replaced by anger. He turned to Biddle, his eyes like cold steel. “You know, I don’t get it. You lectured me before that Rose has fifty fathers here, yet they lock us up inside that wagon for the better part of a day. What the hell are you trying to do?”

Biddle shrugged. “Rosemary wants you, and right now, that’s good enough for us. You see, we don’t have many of the same trappings and laws as your world. The circus life is too transient. Men leave the show, die from exhaustion, return to their farms, or just manage along like Griggs and myself. We’ve learned that joy is fleeting. It’s nothing more than a tumble in the dirt for the clowns, soaring from the ropes for the trapeze artists, hitting the target for the sharpshooters. All of us know that tomorrow it may be gone, so we’ve learned to take what happiness we find when and where we can find it. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Michael didn’t know if it was the whiskey, but he did understand. Two months ago he wouldn’t have had any idea what Biddle meant. But he’d learned that life in the show was very different from the civilized world it played to.

“So you see, all I ask is that you don’t hurt her. She’s learning, you know. And you’re the first man in her life. You have the experience—Rose doesn’t.”

“That I don’t understand.”

Biddle smiled. “You’ll leave here soon, when the season ends, and you’ll be taking her heart with you. But she soon will forget. Perhaps in time she’ll meet someone more like herself, someone more acceptable. In the meantime, if she doesn’t see this out with you, she may delude herself into thinking that you were the only man for her.”

Something about that didn’t sit right with Michael, especially the part about Rose being with someone else. But he didn’t have a rebuttal, especially with the deed already done. He’d tried to resist her, fought against it, but in the end it would have happened anyway, wagon or no wagon, and he knew it.

“That’s better. I’m glad we see eye to eye.” Biddle saw the cloud clear from his face. “But remember, I don’t want her hurt. And if it happens, you’ll answer to me.”

Michael glanced at Biddle, aware that the ringmaster had no trace of intoxication. The older man gazed back at him with clear unwavering eyes, and his expression was deadly serious.

“Then I think you should have taken that into consideration before meddling,” Michael replied. “I’ve never lied to her and don’t intend to start. However, if she does get hurt, we’ll all bear a collective blame. Especially after today.” He handed Biddle back the flask, his eyes like ice.

Biddle nodded as the tall, elegant city man walked away from him toward the campfire. He hid a smile as Michael was drawn into the circle of clowns and had to laugh at something Rosemary said. Carney the clown had a way of wriggling into the coldest of hearts.

And he wondered, in the long run, who would have the most regrets.

He was different when he came back to her. Rosemary had seen him talking with Biddle, and the intense, almost angry expression on his face when he returned. He didn’t look her way but helped himself to a plate of food and ate far away from her, as if he couldn’t stand to be near her.

Crushed, Rosemary glanced repeatedly at the ringmaster, wondering what the man could have said to create such a reaction. Michael had laughed shortly when she’d made a joke, but other than that, he didn’t respond to her at all. Yet Biddle seemed unconcerned and shrugged when she looked pointedly from him to Michael in a silent question.

He didn’t ride with her that afternoon, nor later when they split up the wagons and prepared for camp. This time, beneath a starless night, he spoke softly with the men about business, going over figures and schedules, plans and implementations. Rosemary felt as if her insides were splitting as she tried to catch his attention and he studiously ignored her. She crawled into the wagon with Clara, choking down sobs, wondering what she did this time to create this distance between them.

“It’s nae you, child,” Clara had said, her voice disgruntled beneath the tattered blankets. “ ’Tis guilt, nae doot. He doesna’ want to hurt you. The man thinks he’s doing the right thing.”

“This is right?” Rosemary tried to stem the flood of emotions inside of her, feeling like she was trying to stopper a shaken bottle of beer.

“Nae, but why don’t you go to him? There he sits by the fire. The world doesn’a come to those who wait. You know that from the circus, dearie.”

Slipping down from the wagon was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Rosemary crossed the bare ground, feeling the cool Colorado dirt beneath her feet. He had his back to her, but he knew her as soon as she touched him. His shudder went all the way through her own body when she ran her hand along his shoulders. He looked up, his eyes dark and fathomless, his voice hoarse when he spoke.

“You should go back,” he whispered. In the firelight she could see the conflict on his face. Hope sprang up within her and that made her bold. Stemming her fear of rejection, she looked him straight in the eye.

“Why?”

“Because.” He stared once more into the flames, as if trying to fight her magic. “Where I live, men and women don’t have relations without being married. Unless—”

“Unless what?” Rosemary persisted.

“Unless the woman is being paid, like the saloon girls you’ve seen.” He sounded stern now. “You should go back now, if you know what’s good for you.”

Rosemary snorted. “That’s the biggest bunch of foolishness I ever heard. You mean it’s all right for the men, but not for the women?”

Michael grew uncomfortable. “Something like that.”

“Well, then, I don’t believe in it, and I’m glad I don’t live there. Here miners take a woman whenever they can find one. So do the trappers and hunters. Some of them even take squaws, when white women are scarce. And no one asks if they’re married. I guess out here it’s just more natural.”

Michael sighed, taking her into his arms. “You sure make it difficult to refuse you, you know that?”

Rosemary smiled. She was going to make it more than difficult. She was going to make it impossible.

The leaves of the hardwood trees had faded to a dismal green as fall approached. The late summer flowers bloomed riotously, knowing, somehow, that their time was near an end. The landscape changed subtly, from flat fields to gently rolling hills, and the wind held a sharp bite. In the distance the Rocky Mountains rose from the ground like an empress above the great valleys, her shoulders wreathed in a cloak of ermine clouds. Rivers flowed through those mountains like pulsing, living veins, carrying with them secrets of gold, silver, and precious ores, and the lives of the men who wrestled their wealth from the riverbeds.

Towns sprung up along the way, hastily constructed of clapboard or sod, their main streets made up of wagon ruts and well-tread paths from the train stations. Between these lay military forts and mining camps, the latter populated with a group of wiry, fearless men who rose with the first light of dawn to patiently pan the Colorado rivers or delve into the earth with a pickax, searching for gold. Poor men rubbed elbows with the newly rich at the saloons, while the assayers measured each man’s hope in terms of ounces and nuggets.

Rosemary loved it. The mining towns were home, for these people were just like her: displaced by choice, lonely, and in need of the color and excitement the circus could bring. After panning for months in snow-swollen rivers, their legs numb, their fingers raw from scraping mud, the miners were eager for any kind of human communication, whether it was from the show itself or the taproom afterward. It was the rare miner, no matter how poor, who could not scrape up the money required to see the show, and would not come back later to thank Carney.

This year the days took on a brilliance that Rosemary could only attribute to her feelings for Michael. Never before had the loss of summer seemed so poignant. It wasn’t that she believed Michael would leave her when the season ended; she didn’t allow herself to think that far ahead, nor to dwell on the possibilities of a tomorrow. It was just that the earth seemed to take on a new significance, the very air was spiced and sharp, the sky an obsidian blue.