His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) (28 page)

His hands took on a will of their own. He wasn't sure how her gown slipped off her shoulders. Or how his shirt wound up crushed on the grass beneath her. He delighted in the feel of her skin, peach velvet. She tasted as sweet as she smelled. She groaned when his mouth steamed through her chemise; he took the sound as permission to continue, to slip the straps and bare her breasts to his tongue.

She arched, gasping. Her naked calf somehow brushed his arm; he recalled the vision of elfin feet kicking up butterflies, and he couldn't deny himself the pleasure of exploring that coltish limb: pearl-shaped toes, exquisite ankles, bashful knees... bloomers.

The unmentionables should have come as a white flag. They didn't. When her fingers roamed lower, kneading the musculature of his spine, his hands trembled, pushing higher. To his visceral satisfaction, he found the slit in her bloomers. She wore nothing else beneath the cotton. She squirmed as he touched the silken down that shielded her innocence. His mouth swooped, sealing off her moan.

She was all woman now, fiery moist, riding the instinct of her own pleasure. As he petted her, it thrilled him to realize she would take as much as she gave, that she would be a lover who reveled in the unleashed power of her own femininity. He was a man who needed such a lover, a woman unfettered by the chains of a guilt-ridden upbringing or the religious beliefs that would make her view the most sacred act of love as something dark and twisted.

She thrust her tongue into his mouth, and a low, needy growl welled up from the most primal part of his being. He blamed the sound for deafening him to the world beyond Eden. In that moment, there was only her heart drumming time with his, her panting echoing his labored breaths, her body singing the same siren's song that shrieked through his veins.

Something wooden creaked. Vaguely, he heard a horse's snort. He forgot them instantly, swept away by the rhythm of Eden's hips against his hand, knowing she was close, so close to her first avalanche of desire. It was the light, airy sound of female laughter that finally punctured the fog in his brain.

Eden sucked in her breath. Somebody emitted a strangled gasp. Long-legged shadows obliterated the sun from the sky.

"Merciful God," came Henry Prescott's unmistakable baritone.

Another male coughed. Eden turned to petrified wood. Half dazed by unslaked desire, Michael let instinct prevail. He grabbed his shirt, shielding her naked breasts from the voyeurs who'd stumbled across their fevered petting. Somehow, he marshaled his nerve, rallying thirty-one years of repressed antagonism toward the Almighty.

Rolling over, he tossed the hair from his eyes, prepared to defend Eden from the neighbors who loomed over them like God's own jury.

That's when he spied his kid sister, her blue eyes wider than the whole damned sky above the hand she'd pressed to her mouth.

"M-Michael," she stammered.

Shame splashed like ice water against his loins.

Bonnie was standing with Luke Frothingale, the mayor's son and the town's attorney. She looked ready to lunge at Eden's throat. Luke fidgeted, staring uncomfortably at Bonnie's picnic hamper in his fist.

Claudia elbowed her way forward with Abner Buckbee, who toted her hamper like a man dragging leg irons. Prescott, meanwhile, had waxed a cherry shade of righteous. He dropped Sera's basket with a clatter.

"May God have mercy on your soul, Eden Mallory," the young cleric sputtered, doing his best to cover Sera's eyes with his hat.

Claudia harrumphed, thumping her gunstock on the ground as she halted to stare down at her niece's dishabille and her niece's debaucher.

"Hallelujah's more in order, preacher." Claudia smirked, and Michael's humiliation burned as her cagey gaze fastened appreciatively on his bare torso. "Looks like these two young 'uns are gonna have one heck of a weddin' night."

Chapter 9

Michael's bedroom clock knelled the eleventh hour as Eden paced the wedge of moonlight that splashed the hand-loomed rug. How she'd managed to survive her hasty wedding ceremony and the ten hours since she'd been labeled the town whore was a mystery, although she suspected Aunt Claudia's wine had helped.

On second thought, maybe the wine had been to blame.

Her stomach churned.

Beyond the open window, crickets chirped raucously, making the utter stillness of the house feel like a tomb. The sticky summer air begged for a breeze, but Eden shivered anyway, hugging her arms to her chest. Her new lace and cotton nightdress had sat on Claudia's store shelves for weeks because no woman in town had dared to purchase an unmentionable that everyone else had fingered or seen.

Bonnie had snidely suggested it was the perfect gift for Eden's wedding night. Claudia had told Bonnie to dunk her head in the pickle barrel, but she'd given the gown to Eden anyway with an awkward pat and the disgruntled promise that they'd round up a proper trunk of "girlie things" the next time they visited Louisville.

Sera had been only slightly more enthusiastic. After her initial shock, she managed to generate a spark of excitement for the scandal-steeped marriage.

"I guess this makes us sisters now. I always wanted a sister, you know, so... here. It was Mama's ring. A bride should have a ring on her wedding day, and I know Michael didn't, um, have time to buy you one."

Eden's hand shook as she stared down at the battered gold band that branded her a Jones.
Eden Jones.
Michael's wife.

She wondered if her husband hated her.

The lamp flickered in the sconce on the wall, chasing voluminous shadows across the Spartan, hand-hewn bed. No posts adorned the pine headboard, although a pair of scratches, like a dog's claws, marred the footboard. The quilt bore faded blue chintz squares, patched with an occasional piece of denim or gingham. It was so tightly tucked around the straw-filled mattress, she could have bounced a marble off it. Above the headboard, across the sun-faded wheat sheaves that papered the wall, a discoloration clearly marked the space where a cross had once hung.

No other signs of deity were visible in this room that, she was certain, had once belonged to Jedidiah and Catriona Jones. She wondered if Michael had changed anything else to make the space his own. The window seat was bare of cushions. The shaving stand was topped by plain white porcelain. The chest of drawers was little more than a giant box with black knobs. The Michael he liked to show the world, the brooding cynic who rarely smiled, haunted this space. But not the Michael from the animal orphanage. Not the Michael from the swimming hole... nor even Michael from the church chancellory.

Her heart quickened as she remembered him standing in the rainbowed hues that splattered the stone floor in a cross-shaped pattern. The stained glass had seemed so small and narrow to make such an impact upon the room—upon Michael himself. Facing that window, he'd awaited her arrival like a man bound for execution, his shoulders squared, his hands clasped at his spine. He'd changed from his rumpled gray suit into his habitual black broadcloth, and her heart bled to see the pallor beneath his newly formed tan.

"Please sit down," he'd said as she fidgeted on the threshold, uncertain whether to join him or flee on the first westbound stage. She'd been entertaining the notion of flight all the way from the swimming hole back to town. After all, Talking Raven had never married Papa. And Claudia had never married Henry Lucas. Eden reasoned she didn't have to marry Michael just because everyone expected it. Or because some preacher thought she was going to hell.

In fact, she'd been prepared to tell Michael the very same thing. Claudia had already said she'd stand behind whatever decision Eden made, even if it meant "losing the best dang store help I ever had."

In truth, Eden had seen no choice but to leave Blue Thunder: She'd realized she couldn't bear to live in Michael's hometown if she had to watch him hang his head each time he was forced to share a sidewalk with her.

But when he'd turned from the stained glass cross to face her, his eyes had blazed blue fire, and her nerve had vanished in a puff of smoke. She'd practically tiptoed across the chamber to take the seat he'd offered.

Even if she didn't think she was going to hell, Michael most assuredly did.

"Eden."

She swallowed as he came to stand before her, as solemn as a hanging judge. He must have intuited the uneasiness his mood was breeding in her, because he did try to smile. He even knelt on one knee, clasping her right hand tightly between both of his. She could see the effort he was making to remain calm while his world imploded.

"I am profoundly sorry," he said quietly, "for the shame my behavior has caused you. You deserve better, Eden."

Her throat constricted so forcefully, she had trouble breathing.

"I can offer you little in the way of consolation," he continued in that same, tightly controlled voice. "Of course, I will take you as my wife, if you desire it. But you must be made to understand, without illusions, what you will face, and... what hardships may arise."

She squirmed inwardly, longing for the inspiration to leaven his mood, for some quip about brides and grooms and their traditional feelings of impending doom. But the torment in his eyes paralyzed her tongue.

"You guessed correctly at the swimming hole. I am sick," he said flatly. "I may be dying. There is no cure."

Her heart completely stopped before heaving once more into an agonizing rhythm.

"For this reason, up until now, I have chosen to stop courting. Nobody knows about my condition except a few doctors. One in Chicago. One in Boston. One in Louisville."

Understanding flooded her mind. It all made sense now, his gruffness, his aloofness, his switch from witty, urbane companion to wintry stranger at the animal orphanage and his enigmatic reasoning for leaving her behind:
"It's better this way."

She managed, somehow, to wield her tongue. "What is the diagnosis?"

"None of them can say for sure. The symptoms—general malaise, lethargy, numbness in the limbs—are progressing. It's hard to say how much longer I'll be able to... function normally."

He spoke so matter-of-factly. So bravely. Only when he averted his gaze was she able to glean the depth of his despair.

"But there are other doctors—"

"Don't you think I would have followed every lead?"

She bit her lip as bitterness crept into his carefully modulated tone. She suspected that for him to admit he couldn't heal himself, especially to another physician, had galled him. It might even have humiliated him. She wondered how much of him took grim satisfaction in searching out colleagues who would diagnose his illness the way he had... and then tell him he was right.

"Advances are made in medical research every day, Michael. Perhaps—"

"Eden." His smile was bleak. "You must not enter into this arrangement hoping for miracles. You must be practical. Your entire future lies before you. It need not be dire. You are a young, beautiful woman capable of attracting any number of robust beaux. I hazard to guess that your dreams of marriage did not include nursing an invalid husband who should have been in his prime. I will not force you into any bargain that is repugnant to you. But... if you agree to become my wife, I will ask that you honor the vows you make before God. So if you pledge yourself to me in sickness and health," he added softly, his voice thickening around the words, "make your promise with your eyes wide open."

She blinked back tears. He shimmered before her, the powerful shoulders, the chiseled jaw, the hauntingly beautiful eyes. As he knelt there, so proud but so vulnerable, so noble in his despair, a flash of heat unlike anything she had ever known burst through her soul. In that moment, she was certain she fell in love with Michael Jones. How could she not care for this selfless, fiercely courageous man? And how could she turn her back on him?

She lay her hand against his cheek in a tender gesture.

"I will marry you, Michael," she said quietly, "because you are so very dear to me. Because you make me proud to know you. Because sharing your life now is more important to me than worrying about the future."

He blinked. She guessed she'd shocked him, and she smiled, hoping to touch him with all the warmth that fairly poured from her soul. In that moment, she'd never felt more confident about a decision in her life. She would be Michael's wife, not because she pitied him, but because she loved him. Because she wanted to spend every precious moment with him. Because she wanted to laugh with him, and see the hope kindle again in his eyes. She only prayed that someday, somehow, he would fall in love with her, too.