King's Ransom (23 page)

King's breathing
was coming in harsh, hurtful gulps as he struggled with the need to breathe and
have Jesse all at the same time. Finally, he reluctantly pulled away, and
gently ran his thumb across her lips.

"My God,
Jesse Rose. I nearly lost you today. I nearly lost you," he whispered
huskily, running his hands gently over and over her body, not believing that
she was still in one piece. "Nothing would have mattered to me if I'd
lost you, baby. Don't you understand that?" He leaned his head forward
until their foreheads were gently touching, and gripped her firmly around the
waist. "I love you, Jesse. I love you so much it makes my teeth ache. I
watch you laugh, and forget what I was going to say. I watch you walk, and
forget what I was going to do. I watch you sleep, and know that nothing in my
life is worth keeping unless you're beside me."

Then his voice
broke, and Jesse felt him shudder and begin to tremble beneath her.

"I need to love
you, baby. I've held back too long now. I want you, Jess." His eyes
darkened with emotion and he bent down and buried his face in the valley
between her breasts. "If you don't want this, you're going to have to stop
me, because I don't think I can stop myself."

Jesse slid from
his lap and began to walk away.

King numbly
watched his world coming to an end. He couldn't think as he watched her leave
him.

Dear God, no!
he thought. It
felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach.

Jesse reached out
and turned the lock on his bedroom door. She pivoted around to face him with
tears in her eyes, a smile on her lips, and began to unbutton her dust-coated
shirt and jeans.

"Bath
...
or shower?" she whispered, as she
walked out of the pile of blue denim at her feet and let her shirt drop beside
it.

She was in his
arms and off her feet, as King whirled her around the room.

Steam swirled
inside the walls of the shower, coating the sliding glass doors until Jesse's
vision was nearly obliterated. The water ran in a warm torrent down her body,
washing away the remnants of her wild ride through the burning prairie. She
reached up to the shelf above her head for the bottle of shampoo. Her hands
came away empty. King's deep, husky voice behind her stopped her search.

"Let me, honey,"
he coaxed, and pulled her away from the water's swift flow.

She smelled the
sharp, fresh scent of the lemon shampoo permeate the enclosure, and felt his
hands begin to knead through the smoky tangles of her hair, working the shampoo
into a rich, cleansing lather. She sighed, and leaned back against his chest,
letting those talented hands work their magic on her tired, aching body. Her
eyes closed in reflex as his hands continued down the back of her neck, then
around, cradling her breasts in each hand as he captured stray bits of lather.

"Feel
good?" he whispered against her ear, and was rewarded with a tiny moan of
pleasure that fired an answering echo within himself.

He didn't know
how
Jesse
felt,
but she felt
fine
to him. He stepped forward, placing them
both under the pounding force of the spray. Lather ran between their bodies,
swirling around their feet, before it disappeared down the drain. King quickly
repeated the process on himself, closing his eyes against the treacherous soap,
and nearly lost his footing when Jesse's hands began an intimate foray that
sent good sense down the drain with the shampoo.

"Wait a
minute, sweetheart," he begged, grabbing at a towel as he turned off the
water. "You don't know what you're doing." He smiled seductively at
the blue-eyed nymph with the curious hands.

Jesse leaned back
against the door of the shower and let her eyes continue what her hands began.

"Oh,"
she drawled, as she watched his body tense and harden with desire. "I
think I do."

King's sharply
indrawn breath and the fire that kindled in his eyes were Jesse's only
warnings. He had her out of the shower and dry before another thought had time
to form.

"So,"
he whispered, as he laid her down in the middle of his bed, then stood back and
feasted his eyes on the tantalizing thought of crawling in beside her,
"you think you know what you're doing?"

"No,"
she answered quietly, and her honesty shook his resolve. "But I know what
I want
you
to
do, King."

Breath
constricted in his throat as he knelt beside her and ran his fingers around the
instep of her foot, then let them travel the inside of her leg, up
...
up
..
.
until he paused at her threshold,
his dark eyes promising passion.

Jesse shuddered,
and shifted uneasily on the bed, mesmerized by the touch of his hands and the
knowledge that this magnificent man with the magic touch was finally going to
make love to her.

"I know what
you want, baby," he groaned, stretching full length beside her.
"That's what I want, too. I promised, remember?"

His mouth
captured a rosy nub, and his hand another, as he began a journey across Jesse
that would culminate in a promise kept.

His hands, his
mouth, and the weight of his body on hers drove sanity and reason away. Jesse
wanted to touch him. She needed to watch him watching her. But she knew if she
opened her eyes, or turned loose of the bed beneath her, or moved an inch away
from the seeking, pulsing pressure of his body, she'd fly away so far she'd
never come down.

Every promise he
whispered in her ear would then come true as he stroked and touched, nipped and
tasted. Spasm after spasm of building heat waves made an ache so fierce that
Jesse begged for release she didn't know how to achieve.

"King,
please," she moaned, "tell me what to do."

She moved beneath
him, seeking, pushing, yearning for something. Then she felt her lower body
lift off the bed as King's hand dipped past a boundary no man had ever passed.

She gasped, let
loose her grip on the bed, and dug her fingers into the still-damp tangles of
his hair.

King's breath was
coming in quick, painful draughts, as he struggled to hold back an overwhelming
need to disappear inside the woman beneath him. The softness below would soothe
his own aching body, but still he waited as he teased at the throb beneath his
fingers.

"Tell you
what to do?" he asked, and took the question from her lips with one swoop
of his mouth. "You don't need to do anything. I'll tell you what
I'm
going to do,
baby," he whispered against her lips. "I'm going to make you forget
every man you've ever known, every man who's even crossed your path and wished.
I don't want anyone in your life now but me."

He lifted himself
over her, nearly blind with a need to dissolve into this woman below him.

Her soft whisper barely
penetrated through the blood thundering in his ears, but when it did, it
stopped him cold.

"I don't
have to forget what never was," Jesse said, and slid her hands down the
tightly bunched muscles tensing along his back. Her hands slid around his waist,
urging him to finish what they'd started.

King blinked,
shook his head slowly, then leaned forward, collapsing his entire weight as he
buried his face in the curve of her neck.

"What in
hell are you telling me, Jesse Rose?" he pleaded, then lifted himself
away, focusing on the clear blue gaze beneath him. He was falling into space,
weightless and out of control.

"That I love
you, King McCandless. And that I've waited a lifetime to show you how
much."

"No . . .
no, Jess," King groaned in disbelief, suddenly afraid to move, yet
knowing he had to. It was just that this gift was so much more than he'd
expected
...
so much more than he
deserved.

"Please,"
Jesse begged, and felt his silent answer as he slowly surged forward.

It was only a tiny,
fleeting pressure that erupted into one blinding flash of pain, and then the
sensation of emptiness Jesse had felt for so long completely disappeared as
King swelled within her.

King winced,
regretting the need for the tiny gasp he heard, and saw her eyes flutter as she
bit against her lower lip to keep from crying aloud.

"I'm sorry.
So sorry, baby," he muttered, and bent down, placing kisses of repentance
on her eyelids and down the sides of her mouth. "But I can promise you
this, it's the last pain I'll ever willingly give you. From now on, Jesse, it's
nothing but pleasure."

His body tensed
as he took a deep, agonized breath, then began to move slowly in a rhythm as
old as time. Just before words became more than he could form, he managed to
whisper his promise into the silence of the room before Jesse took him into
paradise. "Sweet, sweet, pleasure."

Duncan watched
the smoke from his window high above Tulsa, and judged the location to be near,
if not actually on, the Double M. He knew it was a grass fire—a big one,
judging by the size of the smoke clouds. His eyes narrowed, his lips thinned,
and the planes of his face angled and flattened until he was barely
recognizable. "The whole damn place can go up in smoke for all I
care," he muttered.

He walked to the
bar and poured himself another drink. It seemed these days that that was all he
was able to do—drink to avoid what he knew lay in wait. He walked back to the
window with his drink in hand and stood silently, debating with himself about
the wisdom of going out to the ranch to help. Finally, what was left of his
conscience rallied. He spun about, intent on driving to the ranch, when the
phone rang and stopped him squarely in the middle of the living room floor.

Now he had to
decide whether to answer it or let it ring. It could be a number of people, all
of whom he owed money, and he nearly didn't answer. But the persistent, shrill
tone won out over his jangled nerves.

"McCandless,"
he said shortly, then let his drink spill slowly from his glass onto the
carpeted floor.

"I know who
it is, Boss," the voice whined. "And you know who this is, too. Damn
it, you promised to come back. I got hungry, man. I needed to eat, and I needed
medicine."

"What the
hell do you want?" Duncan asked, his voice low and angry. "And where
are you?"

"You know
what I want. I need cash. I'm here . . . in town. And I ain't got no way to
disappear. They're lookin' for me all over. You got to help me. After all, this
was your idea," he said accusingly.

"It wasn't
my idea to hurt her," he said all too softly. "And it wasn't my
damned idea to go passing hot checks and get caught on video at the same time,
you stupid son-of-a-bitch. I don't
have
any money, thanks
to you. And you better get the hell out of Tulsa, because I'll finish what
Jesse started if you don't. Do I make myself clear?"

Lynch shuddered
at the still, ominous quality in the man's voice, and knew the moment of truth
had arrived. Now not only were the cops after him for attempted murder and kidnapping,
but this man, a formidable foe, also had good reason to want him dead. With
one last act of bravado, he whined, "Well, if the cops get me, you'll be
next."

"No, I
won't," Duncan sneered. "I'm not stupid. There's absolutely nothing
linking me to you, or the crime, except your word. Who do you think the cops
will believe—a concerned member of the family or a murdering crook?"

"You
bastard!" Lynch cried. "You got to help me."

"Where are
you?" Duncan asked quietly.

Suddenly, Wiley
Lynch knew he'd said too much. He had pushed a man he was mortally afraid of
too far.

"Never
mind," Lynch muttered. "I'll get myself out of town. I'll hitch a
ride . . . something. Just forget I asked, okay, Boss?"

Just then another
truckload of livestock pulled into the stockyards by the pay phone Wiley Lynch
was using. The constant bellow and lowing of the load of cattle and the truck's
shifting gears echoed into the receiver.

"Okay,
Boss?" he repeated. But the line went dead as Duncan McCandless gently
placed the phone back on the hook.

Lynch stood,
staring in horror at the milling crowd of people around him and began to shake.
McCandless knew where he was! He dropped the receiver, letting it dangle in the
wind and heat, and began to run in a scurrying fashion back to the pile of
shipping crates behind the sale barn, unaware of several people's curious,
suspicious stares. First chance he got, he would be on a cattle truck heading
west.