Heart of the Hawk (27 page)

She trembled slightly, but her jaw was set. “For four years, Arly told me what I meant, what I wanted, what I was to do. And for the rest of my life before that, my father told me what I wasn’t to do, what I couldn’t do. I promised myself if I was ever free, it would never happen again.”

“Kate, I’m not the kind who stays around. That lawyer wants to marry you, and even if you don’t want him, there are others—”

“Did I ask you to stay? Did you ever think that maybe . . . maybe that’s part of the reason why? Besides . . .” She gulped, then went on in a rush, “the book says you’ll be dead soon.”

He scowled. “All the more reason this is crazy.”

“I’ve never done anything . . . crazy before. Maybe it’s time.”

“But . . . why?”

She gave him a look that was desperate but determined. And it struck him then, the irony of it; he’d been aching for her for days on end, and now that she seemed to be offering exactly what he’d been dreaming about, he was trying to talk her out of it.

“Because I think Deborah was right,” she whispered. “It’s meant to be gambled, not hoarded.”

His brows furrowed. “What is?”

She shook her head. Then she drew herself up rather stiffly. “I know I’m not anything to look at, and I understand if you don’t want—”

He cut her off with a growl. “Oh, I want, all right. And I’m damned tired of hearing you say that. But why me?”

“Because . . . I know you can be gentle. Because no one has ever made me feel the way you do. Because no one has ever made me want to know if it can be something other than cruel. Because you won’t . . . talk about it. Because you’re going to move on to find the woman you’re supposed to find. You won’t stay and try to own me, and I won’t have to face you every day . . . after.”

God, all those reasons; how long had she been thinking about this? Had all his nights spent in painful longing not been as solitary as he’d thought?

“I thought I was supposed to die,” Josh said, seizing on that somewhat desperately.

“And if you do . . . I’ll never know. I’ll always wonder.”

“The lawyer,” he began, but stopped when she shook her head.

“He doesn’t make me feel all tingly inside just by looking at me. He doesn’t make me forget to breathe.”

Josh nearly forgot to breathe himself. “I don’t understand,” he said slowly. “After . . . your husband, you should be . . . running away from this, not after it.”

“You’re not Arly,” she said simply, using his own constant reminder to defeat him. “And I need to know that . . . not all men are like him. Or I’ll be afraid the rest of my life.”

His head was reeling. His body was already thoroughly aroused to the possibility of getting what it had been clamoring for for weeks now, and the cold, calculating part of his mind was telling him he was crazy for resisting an offer freely made, but his gut was tied up in knots; Kate had been hurt so much already.

But she’d said she knew he’d ride on. That he wouldn’t stay. She’d even seen that as positive, not a negative reason for this wild idea. She’d taken every objection he could have placed before her and turned it around.

Except one.

“Kate . . . what if you . . . get pregnant?”

She paled, and despite knowing it had had to be said, he wished he could call back the words. She lowered her head, and he saw her hands plucking at the folds of her faded calico dress.

“I . . . won’t,” she said at last. “Arly, he . . . twice after he . . . got really angry . . . I lost babies. Deborah says I probably won’t . . . that I can’t . . .”

So the bastard had taken that from her as well, Josh thought. Damn him.

“So you see,” she said, her voice steadier now, “I knew all along I wasn’t the woman in the book. But I thought . . . perhaps that wouldn’t matter to you. Men need—”

“Men need,” Josh agreed, tight jawed, “but only boys
take.
”

She was silent for a moment, honey-gold eyes searching his face. He wasn’t sure what she saw in his expression, but she lowered her head.

“I’m sorry. I was a fool to think you would want . . .”

She turned away. As fast as if he were drawing his Colt, before he even thought about it, he reached out and took her arm, stopping her. He turned her around, gently but purposefully, and pulled her against him.

“I want,” he repeated, his voice a little thick. “I’ve wanted ever since you faced me down with more nerve than half the men I’ve ever known.”

She stared up at him. He lowered his head swiftly, taking her mouth without preamble, sparing only a moment to trace the soft line of her lips with his tongue before he probed forward, tasting again the sweetness that had been torturing him every night. He tilted her head back, threading his fingers once more through the thick mass of her hair, suppressing a shudder as he wondered yet again what it would feel like trailing over his skin.

He deepened the kiss, careful not to crush her lips, yet unable to go slowly. She seemed startled, then a sigh escaped her as she seemed to go soft in his arms, soft and warm and willing.

He probed deeper, searching, until his tongue met the hot, wet velvet of hers. She made that sound, that tiny, throaty sound that sent a shiver down his spine and made his already aroused body surge to full attention.

He shifted his hips, pressing himself against her, knowing she had to be able to feel him even through the layers of cloth between them. He heard her gasp, and pressed harder, rubbing this time.

Then, with the greatest of efforts, he broke the kiss.

“Be sure, Kate,” he said between the panting breaths he couldn’t seem to stop. “And if you’re not, say so now, before I carry you upstairs and—”

“No!”

Josh shuddered. He’d known she’d change her mind, that she’d drop this insane idea as soon as she was confronted with the reality. Kate might think she wanted to know what sex was like with someone less brutal than her late husband, but thinking and doing were two different things.

He made himself release her, and backed up a step.

“I didn’t think you really wanted this.”

“No,” she said again, then added hastily, “I mean . . . I do, but . . . not there.”

Josh stared at her. “What?”

“Not in . . . his bed.”

All his breath left him in an audible sigh. “Ahhh, Kate.”

“I don’t want to be reminded of him. Ever.” She looked up at him, her eyes wide with so many emotions Josh couldn’t begin to name them all. He knew then that he was lost; he didn’t need her words to convince him. But when they came, when she looked at him with those eyes and pled softly, he resolved that he would do whatever he could to make her plea come true.

“Make him go away Josh. Make him go away forever.”

Chapter 19

“LEAVE IT ON.”

Kate looked at Josh in surprise. “You want the lamp on?”

He gave her a look so hot she nearly gasped aloud. “I want to see you,” he said.

She did gasp then. “Arly always said . . . this was only done in the dark—”

“We wouldn’t be here if I was Arly,” he said softly. “He forced you. I want you willing, wanting. He was fool enough to hide you in the dark. I want you in the light. He took his own pleasure, and cared nothing at all for yours. I want you to learn that it can be
more
than good between a man and a woman.”

His words rocked her, and Kate held her breath as he took that last step toward her. He’d done everything she’d shyly asked; he’d locked the back door, checked the shades, and of his own volition restoked the fire and added half the store’s stock of blankets to his bedroll, trying to make it as comfortable as possible. He’d even taken off his vest, and then his precious Colt, although he kept it close to hand.

But then he’d made it clear he had his own ideas about how to proceed.

“Take down your hair, Kate.”

She blinked, startled. “What?”

“I’ve wanted to see it for so long. Please.”

The soft, quiet plea made her shiver; she felt more helpless in the face of his gentleness than she’d ever felt when facing Arly’s cruelty. She’d been able to deny Arly, though it had often cost her dearly; she was powerless to deny Josh.

She reached up and began to pull out the pins that held the tight bun at the back of her head. She felt the moment when the heavy weight of her hair shifted, and it spilled down over her hands to her waist. She heard Josh let out an audible breath.

He reached out, slowly, stroked his fingers over her hair, then threaded them through the long mass, pulling some of it forward over her shoulders.

“It’s beautiful. It feels like silk. I knew it would.”

She stared at him, disbelieving; it was plain brown hair, not dark, not light, nothing special. She lowered her hands to her sides, afraid he would see them shaking.

Then, as if in time with the pounding of her heart, he began to unbutton the high neck of her dress. She lowered her eyes in humiliation, for the first time in longer than she could remember embarrassed by her poor, shabby, and worn clothes.

“He kept you in rags,” he said huskily, as if he’d read her mind. “I’d dress you in silk and lace.”

She laughed nervously. “I’m not a silk-and-lace kind of woman.”

His hands stopped for an instant, and Kate held her breath again as his fingers slid inside the opening he’d made, stroking across her skin.

“Perhaps not. You’ve silk of your own,” he whispered.

She shivered as he undid more buttons, slowly, so slowly.

“Why . . . why are you taking so long?” she whispered, her voice shaking.

“Because this is half the pleasure,” he said, his fingers taking a very long time at the tiny buttons over her breasts.

Kate went still, trying to absorb yet another startling idea, that a man could find pleasure in anything other than the act itself. But there was no denying the expression he wore as he continued to tug at the buttons, nor the fact that he lingered over her belly, then below, so close to that part of her that she knew she would soon have to surrender to his will.

That she thought of that without the fear of bruises to follow was a measure of how much she had come to trust him. She knew it would hurt—it always hurt—but she was beginning to see why women apparently tolerated the pain for the closeness. That must be the good part Deborah had spoken of.

But when the buttons of her dress were all loose and he moved to slip the bodice of the dress from her shoulders, she instinctively tightened, holding the thin, faded calico to her body as if it were a shield.

“Anytime,” Josh said softly. “Anytime you want to stop, you say so and we stop.”

“But . . . once you start . . .”

“I am not Arly, Kate,” he said again. “Nor am I a boy who can’t control himself. No matter how much I want you, I’ll stop.”

She didn’t know which stunned her the most, that she believed he truly would stop if she simply asked him to, or the other astounding thing he kept saying.

“You . . . want me?”

He groaned, a low rumble from deep in his chest that made her shiver. He grasped her left hand with his right, and slowly pulled her hand down his body. He placed her palm over the hardness that strained against his pants. Instinctively she tried to pull away. Arly had never wanted such contact; he’d wanted only to drive himself into her and spend himself as quickly as possible. But Josh’s hand was still holding hers, and turned her movement into an inadvertent caress of that rigid flesh. He groaned again, deeper now, and when she hastily looked up at him, she saw his eyes had closed, as if he wanted to concentrate solely on her touch.

He removed his hand to again grip her shoulder, but the startling thought that he might welcome such touching made her leave hers where it was. Carefully, always ready to pull away quickly, she repeated the motion that had been unplanned before. Josh groaned yet again, and she felt his hips shift, pressing himself against her hand as if he indeed sought more of her hesitant caress.

She did it again, a longer, firmer stroke this time, and when he let out a throttled sound and his fingers tightened on her shoulders, a thrill she’d never known before rippled through her. And this time, when his hands moved to push the dress off her shoulders, she didn’t stop him.

She heard him suck in a breath as he looked down at her. Belatedly she realized she had on one of her oldest cotton chemises—not that any of them were new—and that it was worn so thin it might as well not exist as far as concealing anything. She didn’t, couldn’t look at herself; she knew too well that he could see every curve of her breasts, and the darker rose circles of her nipples. Nipples that felt oddly tight, like they did when she was very cold, or in the days before her woman’s time.

He had her single, equally worn petticoat untied before she realized what he was doing; Joshua Hawk was no stranger to women’s underclothes, it seemed. She stood there in her thin chemise and underdrawers, shivering more from emotion than cold; the healthily stuffed wood stove had warmed the room nicely.

“Good God,” Josh said, reverently rather than profanely. “Maybe Arly wasn’t crazy as a loon after all.” Kate looked at him quizzically. “If the men in this town had known how lovely you are under those baggy dresses, he’d have had to fight them all for you.”

Kate stared at him. Lovely? Her? Plain, too-tall, strange-eyed Kathleen? He was mocking her; he had to be. Yet she could see nothing in his face except honest admiration, nothing in those vivid eyes except a fierce need that was like Arly’s in its urgency, yet tempered with a gentleness she’d never known before.

His hands moved, and her eyes instinctively followed the motion as he began to work at the buttons of his shirt. It took her a moment to realize he was going to take it off, and her gaze shot to his face. He shrugged the shirt off, then stopped in the act of dropping it to the floor. His brows lowered as he took in her startled expression.

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head mutely, so stunned by the naked expanse of his chest she couldn’t speak. Lord, she thought wickedly, she’d never realized a man could look so . . . so . . .

Josh let out a compressed breath. “Let me guess,” he said. “Arly never got undressed?”

She shook her head again. He was beautiful, she thought in shock. She’d never thought a man could be beautiful, but he was. He was so big, so strong, yet at the same time he’d been so gentle with her, and that made him even more beautiful to her.

“Did he undress you?”

Heat flushed her cheeks in a rush. She couldn’t tell him, couldn’t describe how Arly had merely pulled her nightdress up, draping it over her head so, as he’d so often told her, he wouldn’t have to remember how homely she was.

“He . . . said it wasn’t fitting,” was all she could manage to say. Josh growled something unintelligible. Suddenly possessed of a recklessness she didn’t understand, she added, “But I’m glad. He didn’t . . . look like you. He was soft, and . . . and ugly.”

“Stop talking about him. Stop thinking about him. He’s gone, Kate. He’ll never touch you again.”

He pulled her hard against him, and Kate let out a startled gasp at the feel of him as her hands came up against his bare chest. The first sensation of incredible heat, then of sleek skin taut over hard muscle, and dusted with just enough hair to make her fingers itch to move. Unlike Arly, who had been covered with a pelt of coarse hair—

Stop thinking about him.

And then Josh was kissing her again, hard and deep yet gently, coaxingly, and she couldn’t think of Arly, of his ugliness, his cruelty. She could only think of herself, and Josh, and what he was doing to her, the incredible feelings he was causing in her.

His hands slipped up from her hips, over her ribs, and up to her breasts. Instead of kneading them cruelly, he cupped them tenderly, lifting their weight in a way that nearly made her dizzy. She felt her nipples draw up even tighter, until she wanted to cry out, although she didn’t know for what. And then, as if he’d known, Josh gave it to her. His thumbs moved upward to rub over the stiff peaks. Darts of fire shot through her, and she did cry out then, cried out in shocked pleasure; she’d never known such pleasure from that part of her was possible. All she’d ever known from Arly was pain from his roughness.

Stop thinking about him.

Josh broke the kiss, and Kate couldn’t help the little sound of loss that escaped her. But then he did something shocking. He lowered his head to her breasts and one after the other captured the nipples he’d just been teasing with his lips and flicked them with his tongue, hot and wet through the thin cotton.

“Josh!”

It burst from her helplessly as she stared down at his dark head. What was he doing, suckling her like a babe? Did he get some pleasure out of this? Could he possibly know how it made her feel? Why did she feel it so low and deep inside her, as if there were some unseen connection between her breasts and that hollow place Arly had invaded but never really filled?

Stop thinking about him.

Josh’s head came up then, and at her first look at his face she had to believe; his eyes were hot and his lips were parted as if he wanted to continue this forever. And Lord help her, she would let him; she’d never felt anything so lovely.

“Remember what I said about going slow?” Josh asked, his voice oddly thick. She nodded, a little frightened by his intensity. “Forget it,” he said.

She braced herself, knowing the gentleness was over, that now he would become as all men, rough, urgent, and in a hurry to hammer himself into her body until he reached his release. She told herself this was enough, that this was all the pleasure a woman could expect. More. It was certainly much more than she’d ever felt with Arly—

Stop thinking about him.

She gasped as Josh swept her off her feet. But he held her gently, cradled her easily, as if she were something precious, as if she were the tiny, normal-sized woman she’d always longed to be. But then she heard the rending of thin, worn cloth as Josh tore her undergarments away. Fear struck her as she lay naked in his arms; even Arly was too practical to damage her shabby clothing in his haste to take her. Had she been wrong? Would The Hawk be as savage as his namesake?

And then he was putting her down, laying her atop the pile of blankets as carefully as if he thought she might break. He knelt beside her, first looking at her, then touching her with such gentle care and reverence it almost made her weep. She forgot her embarrassment at being naked before him as his hands slipped over her, caressed her, stroked her, as if he truly thought her as lovely as he’d said.

She knew she wasn’t. There were places where Arly had marked her permanently, but even that didn’t seem to bother Josh; he merely kissed the marks, slowly, lingeringly, as if to ease that long-ago pain.

He cupped her breasts again, and bent his head to her. Even before his mouth closed over one nipple, she felt her pulse leap in anticipation of that burst of heat, and when it came she couldn’t help herself, couldn’t stop the utterly wanton response of her body as it arched, thrusting her breasts upward to him.

“Katie, Katie,” he murmured against her soft flesh. “Yes, that’s it.”

Kate trembled. No one had ever called her that; Arly never spoke, in fact had barely seemed to know or care who she was. Nor had she ever heard a voice that sounded like Josh’s did now, deep, rich, hot and husky. He laved her breasts, teasing the crests to a hardness that seemed almost unbearable. She couldn’t seem to stop the unseemly undulations of her body, and barely noticed his right hand sliding down over her belly until his fingers parted her and she felt him probing where no one had ever touched her before. She gasped in shock, reflexively clamping her thighs together.

“It’s all right, Katie,” he said soothingly. “Relax, just let me touch you.”

“But Arl—”

She broke off suddenly. Yes, Arly would never have touched her there, had been interested only in how fast he could get inside her. But again, Josh was not Arly.

Stop thinking about him.

Josh returned his mouth to her nipple and drew it deeply into his mouth. That heat rippled through her again as he pulled at the nub of flesh she’d never known could give such pleasure. He moved to her other breast and repeated his actions, and it wasn’t until she felt the slow, circling motion of his fingers between her thighs that she realized she had indeed relaxed them.