McCrory's Lady (29 page)

      
The incredible loneliness his bitter statement evoked stung Eden's heart. “You've survived so much all alone. I couldn't have endured what happened to me without Father and Maggie, and Eileen and Riefe. Have you…have you ever thought of going back?” she asked hesitantly.

      
“I heard Hessia died a couple of years ago and Pa was looking for me. Hell, I thought about it, but he made his choice when she was alive. Nothing can ever undo that. Like father, like son, I guess. I'm a hard man, too.”

      
“Not so hard, I think. You've hidden your softer side, that's all. Saved it for helpless animals like Rufus here.”

      
At the mention of his name, the dog cocked an ear, then rose and trotted over to the water. Soon, he was busily engaged splashing through the creek, barking at pine squirrels that teased him from high in the trees.

      
“I'm not a nice man, Eden. Don't deceive yourself just because I rescued an abused mutt.”

      
“You're wrong!” she defended hotly. “You're good and decent and strong. After all that's been done to you, you still do care about other people...even me.” Her face heated and she looked away, too shy to meet those fathomless ebony eyes.

      
“You're a fine lady, Eden. Beautiful and kind. Every man's dream.”

      
Her head jerked up and her expression was strained, one of intense pain. “Every man's dream. More like a nightmare. I'm ruined, Wolf. Pawed over by a filthy piece of offal while his men watched him take me!” Her voice broke and she sobbed.

      
Wolf reached out and took her in his arms, comforting her with soft words, holding her as she cried. “You are Eden McCrory—beautiful and good—a real lady, no matter what was done to you.”

      
She shook her head in misery. “No, no, you don't understand. I'm not a lady, I'm a whore. I let him... Judd Lazlo told me he loved me, that he wanted to marry me. I ran off to elope with him—he didn't kidnap me.” She forced herself to look up into Wolf's face, expecting to see the same scornful condemnation everyone in town had shown her.

      
Wolf felt gut kicked. So that was what she had been so hysterical about in Lazlo's camp—her own guilt. He held her fast, one hand caressing her cheek gently. “Eden, Eden, he used you—deceived you. You were an innocent who knew nothing about men like Lazlo.”
Or me
. Wolf ached with the desire to lay her on the soft earth and make love to her, even now in this moment of wrenching emotional outpouring.
I really am a bastard.

      
“I'm not innocent anymore, Wolf,” she whispered, seeing the warm light in his eyes, feeling the gentleness of his touch. He had not turned in disgust from her. He was not like the rest.

      
Wolf lowered his mouth to her tear-streaked face and lightly brushed her thick golden lashes, releasing more silvery droplets that his tongue then softly laved from her cheeks. “Eden,” he whispered hoarsely as his lips sought hers in a yearning kiss. It began very gently, grazing, whispering, but when her lips responded, parting slightly, his tongue rimmed her soft pink mouth and entered the heavenly sanctum inside. He could feel her hands clutching at his neck and shoulders, holding him fast, pulling him closer. He tasted her sweetness and felt the hesitant dart of her tongue against his. He was lost.

      
Groaning, Wolf reclined on the soft grass of the stream bank as he continued the fierce joining of their kiss, feeling her ardent response as she clung to him, pressing that soft, delicate body the length of his own. How long had he dreamed of this? He had spent months tossing in his lonely bed, thinking of her silvery beauty when she had bathed in that Sonora water hole. And now she was his.

      
Eden felt his passion, the heat and hardness of his body as he pressed her so closely to him. He was nothing like Lazlo, this quiet, bitter outcast who hid such pain beneath his slashing white smile. She could see her hand, cradling his cheek as he rained soft, wet kisses down her throat. How pale her hand looked against his burnished skin. How erotic the feeling of the forbidden. She must surely be wanton, depraved to entice him to do this to her—and to enjoy it so! At first, Lazlo had also excited her senses and pleased her hungry young body, but then he had hurt her with his uncaring roughness. Would Wolf do the same?

      
Wolf felt her stiffen and pull away the tiniest bit; but he was so sensitive to Eden's every movement, every feeling, that her withdrawal brought him reeling to his senses. Struggling for breath, he put her gently from him, holding her carefully at arm's length.

      
“I'm sorry, Eden, I never meant to take advantage of you. God, you've been through enough already with one rotten bastard. Your first instincts about me were right. I should never have sullied you with so much as a glance.”

      
She pulled on the lapels of his open-necked shirt. “No! How can you say such a thing after it was me? I did it. I enticed you. I'm the one who's sullied you, Wolf. I'm just a whore who leads men on—”

      
“You did nothing wrong!” He cut her off angrily. “You trusted me—just like you trusted Lazlo. We both took advantage. You are not a whore, Eden McCrory, and I don't ever want to hear you say that again! You're the woman I love and—” He stopped abruptly after the words tumbled out, startled that he had spoken them aloud, for he had never dared to admit them to himself before that very moment.

      
Her pale, tear-streaked face took on a tender radiance as she reached up and cupped his jaw in her hands, raising her face to meet his. “Could you, Wolf? Could you love me? Even after what I did—what was done to me?” She held her breath.

      
“Oh, Eden, you are as far above me as the stars. From the first moment I saw you in that outlaw camp I was struck by your beauty, your courage...I could never stop thinking about you, wanting you...and I never dared hope you would look at a lowly breed, a nobody, a hired killer.”

      
“Shh...” She placed her fingertips on his lips, those wonderful, magic lips that had spoken the words she most longed to hear...and this time knew to be the truth. “Now, who's denigrating himself without a reason on earth for it? I don't ever want you to say you're a breed and a nobody—never again, because you
are
somebody. You're the man I love, Wolf Blake!”

Chapter Thirteen

      
They sat gazing into each other's eyes, seeing something shining and wonderful that their vows of love had just released. Both were too overwhelmed by the circumstances to speak for several moments, content just to hold one another, communicating silently, drinking in the newness of their love.

      
Wolf broke the spell at last as he raised his hand, letting his fingertips graze her face and comb through the silver-gold curls at her nape. “Eden, I want to marry you, but I can't offer you the kind of life I've been living—drifting, in constant danger. You deserve better—”

      
“Nothing is better than this,” she whispered, reaching up to place a soft, lingering kiss on his lips. “I'll go anywhere with you. I don't care if we have money—only that we have each other.”

      
“I won't risk your life by letting you live with a hired gun, Eden,” Wolf said with finality in his voice. “I'm a walking target unless I quit.”

      
“Then quit. I know Father can—”

      
“I won't accept charity. I'm not marrying the boss's daughter so everyone can say I did it to get your money.”

      
Eden stiffened in his arms and her chin went up defiantly. “I don't care a fig what anyone says. Why should you?”

      
“A man—if he's any kind of a man—doesn't live off his woman,” Wolf said stubbornly.

      
“Then...then what's to become of us, Wolf?” She held her breath, afraid to meet his eyes. It couldn't end this way, not now, not after all she had been through.

      
Wolf let out a long, slow breath, then said, “Maybe there is a way. I don't know. I told you I'd never go back after my father's wife died. He sent out word that he wanted to see me. I got a couple of letters…but I never opened them...”

      
Eden studied his proud face, the shuttered expression covering a lifetime of pain. “Maybe he needs your forgiveness as much as he wants an heir, Wolf. Did you ever think of it that way?” she asked softly as hope once more bloomed in her heart.

      
“I don't want his money—for me, but...hell, Eden.” He couldn't look at the rapt love shining from those clear golden eyes and not feel his resolve melt.

      
“You're his only son, Wolf. It belongs to you...and so do I,” she said, moving closer, letting her body speak where words failed.

      
Wolf felt the pressure of her soft breasts on his chest as she melted against him. Her hands clutched his shoulders, and her mouth, oh God, her mouth kissed the hot, salty skin of his throat, then moved lower where his shirt collar lay open to brush and nuzzle against his chest.

      
With a groan he pulled her down with him, onto the cool, mossy earth. They lay, arms and legs entwined, as their kisses grew more voracious. She unfastened his shirt and slid her hands against the hard expanse of his chest as he slipped the buttons open on her soft blouse and pulled it down, baring her creamy shoulders for his kisses. The lacy camisole beneath barely concealed the rose and porcelain perfection of her breasts. His tongue teased the pale pink nipples through the sheer eyelet batiste until she cried out her pleasure.

      
Wolf heard her moans and felt the hardening of those perfect little buds until he could no longer endure the cloth separating them from his questing mouth. He freed the camisole from her skirt, then eased it over her head. She raised her arms, helping him bare her upper body.

      
When he cupped and kissed her breasts, he murmured, “So perfect, so soft and pale and perfect.”

      
Eden arched against him while her hands tore at his shirt, pulling it from his body. As he threw it aside, he stopped and looked down at her. “Are you sure, Eden?”

      
“Yes, Wolf, I've never been so sure. Please love me,” she whispered.

      
Slowly and gently, giving her every chance to change her mind, he began to methodically strip off their clothing, starting with her boots and stockings, kissing the perfection of her silky legs, then easing her heavy riding skirt down until she had on only her thin cotton pantalets. His eyes devoured the beauty of her body while his hands touched her as reverently as a priest touches a chalice.

      
Boldly, she reached for Wolf's belt and whispered with flaming cheeks, “Let me?”

      
“My greatest pleasure,” he answered, his voice trembling and hoarse. Her hands went eagerly to work sliding the leather belt loose, then unbuttoning his fly and tugging his tight denims down over his narrow hips.

      
Her hand brushed against the hardness of his staff as she freed it. With a small gasp of surprised pleasure, Eden touched it with wonderment and felt him groan in pleasure, letting her do as she would with his body. Lazlo had never given her this sort of freedom, to caress, to explore. She felt bold and wanton while at the same time shy and virginal, for this was so utterly different than her crude deflowering had been.

      
Somewhere in the dim haze of consciousness, he finally dredged up the words, “Boots. Boots first,” and rolled up to tug them off, followed by his denims. Then, his hands slid to her hips and he plucked the drawstrings to her pantalets and peeled them over the soft curves of her derriere, leaving her as naked as he was. Wolf studied her small, sleek body, even more intoxicatingly beautiful up close than it had been from a distance that day in Sonora. “You are too beautiful,” he murmured, bending down to kiss her as his hands caressed her body.

      
Lying by his side, Eden reveled in his soft caresses of discovery, feeling the stark contrasts of male and female, hard and soft, dark and fair. His skin was bronze all over, with a light sprinkling of ebony hair over his forearms and legs and more on his chest, lowering in a narrow vee to bloom again thickly around his hard, heavy sex. “You're beautiful, too,” she whispered as her mouth followed the quest of her hands, tracing the cunning patterns of masculine body hair.

      
Wolf cradled her in his arms, rolling onto his back so that she lay on top of him. He wanted her to feel in control, to set the pace of their union. Her breasts hung enticingly above his face. He suckled one, then the other as she cried out her pleasure; but when he raised her hips and positioned her over his phallus, her eyes opened wide with surprise.

      
“Take me into you, Eden,” he whispered hoarsely, “please.”

      
She sensed that a narrow thread of control held him in check; yet he did not impale her, but waited for her to respond. Uncertain of how to proceed, she moved slowly onto him, letting his hands guide her hips until she felt the heat of his sex pushing at the damp, aching core of her body. Every nerve, every fiber of her consciousness seemed to coalesce in that place with such sudden hunger that it took her breath away. With a moan of need, she sank down onto his rigid staff, feeling him fill her.

      
Wolf trembled and gritted his teeth until the tendons stood out on his neck. He must keep from spilling himself at once as her tight wet sheath enveloped him in a blinding rush of ecstasy.

      
Eden felt a fullness and the stretching of her flesh that made her starved young body move of its own volition. She could not remain still. Tightening her knees as she straddled his hips, she rolled hers experimentally. He let out a ragged sigh.