Rexanne Becnel (38 page)

Her hands slid wonderingly along his shoulders and then down the rigid muscles of his arms. When he propped himself up on his elbows, she met his burning gaze, searching out every emotion he hid inside, wanting to know if what they contemplated meant as much to him as it did to her. And for a moment she was sure it did. For a moment some light sparked in his eyes, something more than just the heated gleam of passion.

Then he lowered his head and captured her mouth in a harsh, demanding kiss, and every other thought was driven from her mind. The man she loved was in her arms, making love to her, and nothing else mattered.

Nothing else mattered to Tanner either. All his moralizations—about the sort of woman she was and the kind of man he wasn’t—meant nothing once he took possession of her mouth. Abby was his, at least for the moment. And there was nothing in the world he wanted more.

His lips parted hers and his tongue delved deep, exploring her sweet mouth, staking a claim. Branding her as his. The touch of her hands was light and yet demanding as she stroked his arms and up along his shoulders and neck, urging him on though he needed no urging. If anything, he was careening out of control too fast. Way too fast.

“Slow down, sweetheart. Slow down.” He broke their kiss by only the most stringent exercise of control. When he saw the clear desire burning in her eyes, however—the dark heat there—he nearly lost that control all over again. Here was a woman who would match him in passion, who would meet him in total honesty. Total love—

He broke off before he could finish that thought. If they were different people, maybe. But they were who they were.

He slid down on the bed, until his face was just above her breasts. Her hands stopped when she anticipated what he was about, but Tanner deliberately prolonged the moment. The single oil lamp on the dresser cast a golden glow over her, a soft, surreal quality that suited her perfectly, he realized. His sweet, serious Abby, who nonetheless wove tales of mice and their adventures. Her face was flushed with desire, her body tense with longing. Ah, but she was like no other woman he’d ever known. Despite the whiskey that dulled his senses, he knew he would never find another like her. But that just intensified what he felt. He would make this memorable for her. He would make her swoon with passion, faint with the pure physical pleasure of their joining.

And he’d make sure she never, ever forgot him.

With a sense of resolve he lowered his head to rest the side of his face against her breasts. Soft and warm, yet the tightened peaks of her nipples revealed her excitement to him. She shifted restlessly beneath him, and one of her hands slipped beneath the collar of his shirt.

“Tanner?” she whispered, husky and needy.

In answer he rubbed his bristly cheek along the crest of her breasts. He heard her labored breathing, and her other hand tangled in his hair.

Damn, but he was already about to explode!

With a groan he cupped her breasts in his hands, then took first one, then the other in his mouth, kissing, sucking, tugging until she was squirming and panting beneath him. The thin fabric of her chemise was no barrier to his pleasure or to hers, it seemed.

Still, he wanted to taste her flesh, to feel the precise texture and particular flavor that was his Abby. With a single tug he opened her chemise.

“Sorry,” he murmured as he ruined the brand-new garment. But he wasn’t really sorry, and she knew it, for she gave him a tremulous smile.

“I don’t care,” she answered, meeting his bold stare.

Incited by her answering boldness, he rid her of her petticoats with just one sweep of his shaking hands, so that she lay naked and oh so inviting before him. His eyes ran over her, marking everything as his, committing it all to memory. She was exquisite, and for tonight at least she was his. Suppressing an overwhelming need to state that possessive thought out loud, he kissed her belly instead and then tasted the indentation at her navel. But he needed more, he knew. He was so hard for her, he hurt.

With an effort he pushed himself to his knees, though he still straddled her long, pale legs. No man but he had ever seen those sweetly shaped limbs. No man but he had ever felt their supple strength wrapped around his hips.

But someday some other man would.

He drove that unbearable thought away, tearing off his shirt as he did so. When Abby reached for his belt buckle, however, he stilled his impatience, though his chest heaved from the effort. He’d meant to prolong her enjoyment, to tease and torture her and make certain her pleasure was complete. But as she unfastened the silver buckle, all the while holding his gaze with her own wide green stare, he realized the tables had turned. Her fingers worked slowly, promising him all sorts of rewards with every button undone. One of her hands slid tentatively along the loosened waistband of his denim trousers, caressing skin he’d never thought particularly sensitive and certainly not erotic. Yet when she touched him there …

“Where have you learned …” He trailed off when her nails raked low, very near his groin. “How do you know what—Hell’s bells!” He grabbed her hand before she pushed him right over the edge.

She smiled, clearly pleased with the effect she was having on him. “I’m a fast learner,” she replied without a hint of coyness in her voice. Somehow that lack of artifice made her sexier still. “And I’ve always had a vivid imagination.”

She tried to free her hand from his, but he tightened his grasp. “It would be better if you saved your imagination for your books,” he muttered, fighting desperately to regain some semblance of control.

But the sudden gleam in her eyes, followed by a faint, knowing smile warned him it was a futile effort. “Perhaps this is only research for my books,” she mused, reaching her other hand up to lightly trace the tensed muscles of his stomach. “Maybe Tillie and Snitch shall someday fall—make love,” she amended with only the slightly change of expression. “Snitch is so unwilling,” she continued in an even huskier tone. “I fear Tillie will need to convince him. To seduce him …”

He was lost. Tanner released his death grip on her hand, then groaned out loud when she used both her hands to explore his waist and hips. His trousers parted beneath her curious fingers, while the rest of him—muscle, skin, and other parts—grew painfully taut. He was going to embarrass himself here and now, before he’d given her even the least semblance of the pleasure he’d intended.

“Dammit, Abby!” In a trifling he jerked away from her touch and the unimaginable feelings she roused in him. He peeled off his trousers and drawers, then without giving her a change to spur him on farther, flung himself full-length over her. Her sweet flesh was hot and firm, yet soft and yielding too. Was it the whiskey that had him so drunk or simply her intoxicating presence?

“You think you know so much,” he growled, catching her roving hands in his and pinned them above her head. “You read your damned Song of Solomon and make up your pretty little stories. Then one time—one time!—you join with a man, and you think you know so much.”

He opened her legs wide with his knees and pressed the hard proof of his raging need against her belly. “But you’re so innocent,” he accused, angry even though he knew it made no sense. “You’re so damned pure and innocent.”

Then as if denying the words he’d just muttered, he raised his hips and without preamble thrust himself fully within her.

He heard her gasp, and gritted his teeth against the all-consuming pleasure he found in her. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.” For emphasis she moved her hips against his greater weight, gasping again. “No,” she breathed the word, managing to impart an impossible amount of emotion in that single syllable.

It was all he needed to hear. Like the dark tide of a buffalo herd thundering across the plains, devouring everything in its path, his lust overwhelmed him. He could be neither subtle nor gentle with her. She’d pushed him too far.

Damn her for dominating his every thought, day and night. Damn her for being so irresistibly sexy behind that prim facade she wore. Damn her for being too good for the likes of him.

“Damn you,” he swore as he thrust with frantic need into her warm, accepting depths over and over again. “Damn you. Damn you. Damn you.”

T
HEY WERE ON THE
train by six-twenty, sitting opposite each other in the half-filled passenger car, each of them pointedly avoiding the other’s gaze. How much easier it would be if she could sleep, Abby thought wistfully. Just to sleep and then wake up in Chicago and thereby ignore everything that had happened between her and Tanner. And everything that never would.

But Abby was unfortunately completely wide-eyed, despite the fact that she’d slept at most an hour or two—and that in snatches between their torrid rounds of lovemaking.

A telling wave of scarlet rose in her cheeks and she swiftly averted her face. In the dark of the night, in the heat of the moment, it had all seemed so right, so absolutely essential. Yet now … Now he avoided her gaze and had said no more than ten words to her the entire morning. Was he so sickened by her wanton display last night? He even looked ill, if the pasty color beneath his tan was any indication.

He’d cursed her even as he’d made wild and furious love to her. Now she wanted to curse him.

But she had no true reason to, and that made things so much worse. She’d started it last night. She’d started it, knowing they would end up in bed together. Wanting them to end up in bed. Only she’d thought it might bring him around and force him to reveal deeper feelings for her.

Foolish, foolish hope, she now knew.

Yet everything he’d done …

She leaned her head against the padded headrest, keeping her eyes quite deliberately closed. The train let out a piercing whistle, two long blasts. Steam billowed with a rushing sound from the side of the engine, and Abby heard the snap of the iron steps as the conductor folded them up. The whistle sounded again, then with a series of lurches the heavy train got under way.

She should have been excited about such a trip. After all, she’d never before ridden on a train. She should have been nervous, too, for by evening she would meet her grandfather, her mother’s father and her only living relative, so far as she knew.

But Abby’s thoughts circled around and around one thought only: she had lost Tanner.

Not that she’d ever truly had him. Still, she’d been so convinced that they were good for each other. Right for each other. And after last night …

She shifted restlessly as erotic memories of last night flooded through her. He’d made love to her like a man possessed, and she’d responded in kind. A complete wanton had taken the place of the prim schoolteacher she used to be, but with Tanner it had felt so perfect. It had been so easy.

The train picked up steam as it left the bustling town of Burlington behind. Tanner stood up, and she heard the tread of his boot heels moving down the wooden floor of the train car’s center aisle. But Abby didn’t open her eyes. She was consumed with a need to understand where she’d gone wrong, what mistake she’d made. What she could have done differently, and perhaps still could.

They’d made love with utter abandon. He’d possessed her almost violently, pinning her to the big bed with his hands and the weight of his powerful body. And with the force of his thrusting, she added, swallowing hard. He’d plunged in and out of her with such ferocity, she would expect to have been torn completely apart.

But she hadn’t been. She’d been filled with joy, a total joy like nothing she’d ever known. Of the heart and the body and the soul. He’d driven into her in a blind passion that had seemed somehow needy, and she’d accepted every thrust with a need of her own that only grew greater and greater. He’d touched some rare part of her soul with that swift and desperate coupling. She trembled now to even recall the resulting explosion.

She’d cried out, she knew. She’d probably revealed her love for him again, for the excruciating intensity of it had pushed her beyond conscious thought.

Maybe that was what had turned him away from her, some inadvertent profession of love. She opened her eyes and stared unseeingly at the green countryside, the fields rushing by, the stands of beech and maple trees. He’d told her once that what she felt was not love, but lust. He’d also said that he was not looking for a wife. Perhaps he’d interpreted something she’d said to mean she wanted them to marry.

But then, that was exactly what she did want. She wanted to see him every day and to make love with him every night. And to give him strong sons and graceful daughters.

With a sigh Abby withdrew her hat pin, carefully removed her new bonnet, and set it on the empty seat beside her. Tanner wanted a lover, not a wife. He’d made love to her so cleverly, so thoroughly, that she could not doubt his experience. He’d had any number of lovers before her—and no doubt intended to have many more after her.

But she never would, she vowed as anguish threatened to overcome the feeble remnants of her self-control. How could she? No one could possibly take Tanner’s place. No one’s touch could ever thrill her so perfectly as did his.

A heated knot seemed to unfurl deep inside her, sending disturbing tendrils of lingering passion up and down her spine. Oh, but he did thrill her, she thought with despair. His fingers along her ribs and waist. His hand cupping her sensitive breasts. His mouth ever exploring and tasting her. His lips … his tongue …

She shuddered with latent passion, then cautiously peeped about. Did anyone notice? Could anyone guess?

But the other passengers were too preoccupied. Most of them stared out at the fast-moving countryside, enthralled by the speed of this new form of travel. Abby should have been just as enthralled too. They’d probably already traveled as far in an hour or so as the wagon and oxen could manage in a day. But today she simply did not care.

Tanner had done things to her with his lips and tongue, things she should be horrified by. Yet she remembered them not with horror but with a melting sense of completeness. He’d forced her to grip the bed’s iron headboard with both hands while he laid siege to her body the second time—or was that the third? She couldn’t remember the details, only the searing, soaring pleasure.