Keegan's Lady (48 page)

For a second, Caitlin wasn't sure where she was. Softness beneath her. Ace's strong hands gripping her by the shoulders. With a dim awareness, she concluded that he'd put her on the bed, that he was holding her upright. She opened her eyes and concentrated on his face, etched by moonlight and defined with shadow. His expression was so grim. Her heart caught at the way he avoided looking into her eyes.

She had told him . . .

Something inside her tightened like a fist. Her darkest secret—the one thing she'd never told anyone. What on earth had possessed her? Every time he looked at her now, he would think of it. He'd never feel the same about her. Never. A shiver ran through her body. She wanted to hug herself to ward off the sudden chill, but her arms felt like strips of wet rug hanging from her shoulders.

Coolness brushed over her shoulders, then across her breasts. She blinked and glanced down, surprised to see that Ace was tugging her arms from her dress sleeves. Numb. No hands. No legs. No feet. There was only that awful fist of pain inside her stomach. Suddenly the world seemed to turn topsy-turvy. A pillow embraced her cheek. Lying down. She was lying down.

Tap, shuffle. Tap, shuffle. She peered through the gloom, watching as Ace stepped into the dressing room. He returned a moment later with something white trailing from his hands. As he bent back over her, he said, "I'm going to pull your nightgown on over your head before I completely undress you, honey. No need to feel embarrassed. Okay? I'll keep you covered."

No need to feel embarrassed? All Caitlin felt was the hurting. A huge, awful kind of hurting that radiated upward from her middle into her chest. Her head fell back as Ace lifted her to a sitting position again. She struggled to put some starch in her neck, to help hold herself upright with her hands. No part of her body seemed willing to cooperate.

Up went one of her arms. She felt her hand double over as he tried to stuff it down a sleeve. Her wrist panged.

"Christ. I'm not very good at this. I'm sorry."

Caitlin watched as he tried to push his own hand up the sleeve from the opposite direction so he might grasp her fingers and fish her arm through. But, of course, his hand wouldn't fit. The cuff formed far too small an opening for that large fist of his. He struggled to unfasten the three pearl buttons.

Suddenly it all struck Caitlin as being funny. The fearful Ace Keegan, trying to undress a woman without baring any part of her body? She remembered all the times she'd trembled in fear of him, and a shrill laugh burst from her. He glanced up, his eyes filled with questions.

"What?"

Caitlin slumped forward, bumping her brow against his. "You ..."

His mouth twisted in a smile. "Yeah, I'm pretty amusing, all right. A damned bungler, that's me." He finally managed to draw her arm down the sleeve. Then, keeping a firm grasp on that shoulder, he turned his attention to her other cuff. After fumbling for a moment, he popped the buttons free. Within seconds, he got her other arm into the gown, and the next thing she knew, her upper body was swathed in white cotton.

Jerking the quilt and sheet aside, he flipped her over onto her back and proceeded to divest her lower body of clothing, tugging off the dress first, then her petticoats, and lastly her bloomers and stockings. The cotton drawers, ribbed hose, and garters ended up in fat rolls at her ankles, which he jerked off over her feet, taking her unlaced shoes along with them. That done, he drew the rovers over her and tucked them in around her shoulders.

Caitlin stared up at him, longing to ask him not to leave, but unable to articulate the thought. Planting a hand on either side of her, he leaned down over her, his dark eyes glinting.

"I'll be right back. Okay?"

She tried to reach for him, but his weight on the quilt held her arms anchored to the mattress at her sides. The next thing she knew, he had gone. She turned her gaze to the open door, where the faint glow of lantern light coming from the front room cut an amber swath across the floor. She could hear voices, but her mind wouldn't locus sharply enough to make sense of the words.

When Ace returned to the bedroom, Caitlin wasn't in the bed. When he'd left her, he would have sworn she was too emotionally spent to move. He spun in a half-circle, his gaze searching the shadows. He spotted her standing at the window, barely visible against the backdrop of white curtain.

"Caitlin?"

Setting a bottle of liquor and tumbler on the bedside table, he stepped over to grasp her shoulders. She was trembling. "Sweetheart, what are you doing out of bed?"

"Just thinking," she said hollowly.

From somewhere at the front of the house, Ace heard a door slam closed. He'd asked his brothers to retire early, and he guessed they'd just left. "Come on," he whispered. "Let's get you back under the quilt before you catch your death."

As usual, the chill Colorado night wind had dropped the temperature in the room. At the bed, he released her wrist to fumble with the bedcovers. After giving the sheet and quilt a sharp snap, he drew both back out of the way. Moonlight from the window fell over her as she submitted to his guiding hands and lowered herself into a huddled ball on the mattress. He drew the covers over; her and tucked them snugly around her.

He stepped quickly to the bedside table and lit the lamp. When the light flared, he went back to sit beside her, then reached for the whiskey jug. After sloshing out a measure into the glass, he slipped a hand beneath her neck and lifted her head. "Drink."

She wrinkled her nose at the smell. "Whiskey!"

"Drink," he said firmly. "I mean it, Caitlin. Drink or I'll pour it down you. Your choice."

She took a large gulp of the liquor, then wheezed for breath. Ace pressed the rim of the tumbler back to her lips. "All of it."

She shot him a look, her eyes quickening with tears, "It burns."

"Keegan's remedy for whatever ails you," he said softly. "Drink."

She took two more swallows, nearly draining the glass, Ace figured he'd gotten one or two shots down her. It I wasn't much by his standards, but he guessed it would be enough to relax her and help her get a good night's sleep. She shuddered as the whiskey settled on her stomach. Then she sank back against the pillow and closed her eyes.

He set the tumbler and jug back on the table. Then he touched a fingertip to the column of her throat. "A penny for them," he whispered.

She lifted an arm and angled it over her eyes. Ace studied her for a moment, then hauled in a deep breath. "Caitlin, won't you look at me?"

The corners of her mouth tightened. "I shouldn't have told you," she said.

"I'm damned glad you did. I can understand you a little better now, at least."

She kept her arm over her eyes. "Every time—" She broke off and swallowed, the muscles along her throat convulsing. "Every time you look at me now, you're going to think of it."

Ace pushed up off the bed and stepped around to douse the lamp, unbuttoning his shirt en route. When darkness cloaked the room, he divested himself of his clothing, leaving on only his drawers. He felt her gaze on him as he walked back to the bed. He knew by the sudden tensing of her body exactly when she lowered her gaze to the region of his hips.

"Ace?"

"There's nothing to be afraid of," he told her huskily.

He drew back the covers and lowered himself onto the mattress beside her. She tried to scoot away as the quilt settled over them, but Ace was determined to have none of that. He clamped a hand over her side. The touch of her cool skin through the worn nightgown burned his palm.

"You're freezing, sweetheart." He drew her toward him, moving halfway to meet her. "Let me get you warm."

She gasped and tried to rear back when the chilled tips of her breasts touched his hot chest. "Don't!"

He angled an arm beneath her head and pulled her even closer. "Don't what?"

"I'm naked under my nightgown."

He smiled slightly, recalling all the times she'd come to bed wearing nearly enough clothing to attend church. His wife, the temptress. "I think that's the way you're supposed to be, Caitlin."

"But it makes me—nervous not having anything else on."

He had noticed that, yes. "Caitlin, am I hurting you?"

She ceased her wiggling and fastened accusing eyes on his face. Realization had struck. Ace refused to feel like a skunk.

"Well, am I?"

"No," she admitted faintly.

"Then stop squirming."

"I'd really like my pantalets, please."

"And I'd really, really like to feel my wife for a change, instead of layers of cotton." He pushed up on his elbow and bent his head to kiss her. She planted the heels of her hands on his shoulders to hold him off. "Caitlin, you promised. No objections unless I hurt you."

"Not tonight," she pleaded in a pitiful little voice. "Please, not tonight."

"Why?" he countered. "So you can imagine I'm looking at you and thinking you're anything less that perfect? Or so you can slip out of bed after I'm asleep and chill yourself to the bone, gazing out the window and thinking things that have no basis in fact? I don't think so."

He touched his lips to her fair brows, then to her eyelids, smiling at the way her lashes fluttered. "You're beautiful, Caitlin. Sweet and absolutely precious to me." Nuzzling his way downward, he found the curve of her neck and traced it with the tip of his tongue. "You can't run away from the memories, honey. But I can love them away, if you'll only let me."

Love them away? Caitlin felt as if her heart might slam straight up her throat, yet for the life of her, she didn't have the strength or will to move. Her head had fallen back over his arm, giving him free access to her neck. He nibbled at the tender spot with firm, satiny lips that set her skin afire.

"Ace?"

She gazed at his dark head, at the blur of his chiseled features. Broad, muscular shoulders, gilded with moonlight, flexed and rippled every time he moved. His body made her think of carved walnut, rubbed with oil to a burnished sheen. She ran a hand from his chest, which felt so hard it really might have been carved from wood, to test the bulges along his upper arm. The strength she felt there was frightening. How could anyone have so much muscle and still move as fast as he did?

Somehow, the buttons of her nightgown had come unfastened. With expert fingertips, he parted the plackets. She felt cold air puckering her nipple. The next thing she knew, his mouth trailed to the beginning swell of her breast. Caitlin held her breath to keep from begging him to stop. Instead, she waited for the pain, certain it would come, absolutely convinced it would. Memories flashed. Of cruel hands, of biting fingers, of teeth torturing her flesh. As he trailed light kisses in a slowly diminishing circle around her nipple, her flesh shriveled in self-defense and she braced herself for an assault. Instead, Ace kissed only the orb of her breast, continuing to avoid its throbbing, expectant crest.

The agony of waiting soon had her arching toward him, her body responding even though her mind recoiled. He ran his hand from her side down over her hip. Then his fingertips blazed a swath the length of her thigh. Afraid he might thrust his hand between her legs, she forgot all about the gentle assault he waged on her upper torso and concentrated on clamping her knees together.

It was then that she felt the silken, wet heat of his mouth close over her nipple. She gasped. He drew on her sharply, teasing the tip of her breast into an aching, throbbing erection, which he then seized lightly between his teeth and flicked with his tongue. Caitlin felt as if every nerve in her body was being stroked. She jerked and quivered, unable to even think clearly, let alone anticipate what he might do next.

It was heaven. It was hell. She had been pinned to the mattress by a thick wall of warm muscle. Somehow, he'd insinuated a knee between both of hers, forcing her thighs apart. She reached down to grab his hand, only to forget her aim when he suddenly switched his attention to her other breast. He had a dozen hands, she thought dizzily. And all of them were eliciting responses from her body she'd never dreamed possible.

Fire pooled low in her belly. She heard herself moan. The next thing she knew, she had made fists in his hair, not to shove his head away, but to draw his wonderful mouth more firmly to her breast. Every time he flicked her with his tongue, she nearly cried out. Nothing had ever felt so good. Nothing. And yet it also made her ache. A frustrating, confusing ache for things she couldn't name.

She lifted her hips, wanting more of the grinding pressure of his hand on her pelvis. It was madness, this wanting, and yet she couldn't resist. Heat. Shooting little shards of sensation that took her breath. She arched higher, seeking more, needing to feel the hardness pressing against her.

Ace lifted his head to gaze down at Caitlin's face. Her lashes had drifted low. Her lips were softly parted, inviting his kiss. He bent his head to taste her mouth, then returned to suckle her breasts, enjoying the mewling noises she made when he drew on her and teased her with his teeth. God, she was sweet. He wanted to touch every inch of her, taste every inch of her.

He hadn't intended to actually finish the act when he'd first started to make love to her. But then, he'd never expected this kind of response. Shoving the hem of her nightgown higher, he ran his hand over the soft thatch of curls between her thighs, gently parting her folds with a fingertip. Moist heat. He closed his eyes against a rush of longing. God, he wanted her. He'd never wanted any woman this urgently.