Schulze, Dallas (36 page)

“I...” He shook his head slightly, like a fighter who’d just taken
a solid punch to the jaw. When he spoke, his tone held a deep weariness that
went straight to Lila’s heart. “Go back to bed, son.”

“Leave her alone,” Gavin said again. Beneath her hand, Lila could
feel him trembling. She had to put an end to this confrontation before
irreparable harm was done to his relationship with his father.

Stepping between them, she forced Gavin to look at her. “Your
father would never hurt me, Gavin.”

“He broke the door.” The boy’s eyes darted to the shattered lock.

“That was my fault for locking it. He had every right to be
angry.” She realized as she spoke that she’d wanted to make Bishop angry
because dealing with his anger would be easier than dealing with the wild
tangle of emotions that churned inside her. “He would never hurt me.”

Gavin shot Bishop an angry look past her shoulder. “He murdered
that man today.”

“No, he didn’t!” It would have been difficult to say which of the
three of them was most surprised by Lila’s quick defense of Bishop. “He acted
in self-defense. That man wanted to kill him. It was a terrible thing that
happened, but it wasn’t your father’s fault. You saw what happened. What do you
think he should have done?”

Gavin looked at her uncertainly. “I don’t know,” he admitted slowly,
suddenly looking very much like the boy he was rather than the adult he so
often seemed.

“It’s been a long day for all of us,” she said softly. She dared
to reach out and brush back a lock of silky black hair that had fallen onto the
boy’s forehead, her smile tender. “Go back to bed now. Things will seem clearer
tomorrow.”

Gavin hesitated a moment longer, glancing uneasily between her and
his father.

“Go on, son,” Bishop said tiredly. “I won’t lay a hand on her.”

Contradictory as it was, his father’s words seemed to be the final
reassurance that Gavin needed. With a last uncertain look at Lila, he slid past
her and Bishop and left the room. Lila turned to watch him go. The barely
audible
snick
of his bedroom door closing seemed unnaturally loud in the
silence he’d left behind.

Alone with Bishop, Lila’s voice deserted her. She wanted to
explain Gavin’s feelings, but how could she when she didn’t understand her own?
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Dobe Lang’s look of surprise when the
bullet found him, the horrible boneless way his body had fallen to the dirt.
And Bishop’s cold, still expression as he watched him die.

She hadn’t believed any of the stories she’d heard about her
husband. She’d dismissed young William’s awestruck admiration as a case of
somewhat misplaced hero worship. The boy’s father was a banker. While it was a
perfectly respectable profession, it wasn’t the kind of thing that was likely
to excite a young boy. But a dark and dangerous lawman was something else
entirely. She’d assumed that William had simply exaggerated Bishop’s reputation
to fit his own notion of excitement. And when other people had alluded to the
same things, she’d shrugged it off as part of the peculiar need that westerners
seemed to have to emphasize the differences between the “wild” West with the
more civilized East. The idea that she was married to a ... shootist was just
too ridiculous to entertain.

Yet today she’d seen the lethal speed with which he’d drawn his
gun; seen him kill a man in less time than it took to draw a breath. It had
frightened her. But what had frightened her nearly as much was the relief she’d
felt when she saw Lang fall. When she’d realized what was happening on the
street, it had hit her that she might be about to see Bishop die. Hard on the
heels of that thought had been a gut-deep feeling of panic. Despite her
resentment of his occasionally high-handed ways, he was important to her, an
integral part of her life. She could no longer imagine her life without him,
could hardly remember what it had been like before she knew him. When the
shooting was over, there had been one terrible moment when she’d actually been
glad that Lang was dead. Glad because his death meant Bishop’s life. The
realization that she’d offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for a man’s death
had filled her with self-loathing. And she’d hated Bishop for making her feel
that way, for bringing her face to face with a part of herself she’d rather not
have seen.

Perhaps Bishop read something of that in her face now because his
expression grew even more distant.

“I’ll sleep at the jail tonight,” he said expressionlessly.

He started to turn away and Lila knew, on some deep, instinctive
level that, if she let him go now, it would be an end to any chance they might
have of making something real and lasting of their marriage. The ties that
bound them were too new and too fragile to draw them back together. If there
was any chance of creating the kind of marriage she’d always dreamed of having,
a marriage based on trust and respect, and, God willing, love, they had to get
past this.

“Don’t go.”

Bishop turned to look at her, his expression still and waiting.
Lila stared at him, at a loss for words. Her emotions were tangled and
confused. A part of her hated him and everything he represented. She’d seen a
side of him today that had frightened her. She’d seen a man who could kill with
frightening ease. Yet she also remembered the sometimes awkward gentleness he
showed to Angel, his patience with Gavin, his concern for her own comfort and
safety. Pulled in too many directions, she felt tears start to her eyes.

Bishop saw her eyes fill with tears and felt something pinch tight
and hard in his chest. He’d never seen Lila cry. She always faced life—and him—
with her chin thrust out, ready to take them both on without giving an inch.
Though her stubborn spirit and her temper had, more than once, exasperated him
beyond all bearing, he’d much rather have dealt with her anger than her tears.

He started to reach out to her and then realized that he was
probably the last person from whom she’d want to take comfort. But a ragged sob
broke from her as she came into his embrace. His arms closed around her
automatically, drawing her close, feeling the soft warmth of her body against
his like a gentle balm to his soul.

“It’s going to be all right,” Bishop murmured against her hair.
He’d rather have faced a band of marauding Apaches unarmed than listen to Lila
cry. The sound of her tears tore a hole inside him. “Don’t cry. Everything’s
all right.”

But his whispered reassurances had no affect. She continued to
cry—slow, painful tears that dampened his shirt front and burned like acid
against his skin. At another time, he might have recognized her tears for what
they were—a much-needed release of tension. But all he could think of was that
he couldn’t bear the sound of her unhappiness.

Winding his hand around the thick rope of her hair, he tilted her
head back. He caught a quick glimpse of the tear-drenched green of her eyes and
then his mouth was closing over hers. He tasted the salt tang of her tears
against his tongue, swallowed her soft gasp of surprise. He kissed her as if he
could somehow take her pain into himself and make it his own.

He had no thought except to comfort her, but then Lila seemed to
melt against him, her fingers clinging to his shirt front, her mouth opening in
an invitation Bishop had neither the strength nor the will to resist. The
hunger he’d been suppressing for weeks was suddenly a clawing need in his gut.
As he opened his mouth over hers, deepening the kiss, tasting the answering
need in her, a hunger to equal his own, the last traces of his control
shattered.

But he was not alone in his lack of control.

His fingers speared through her heavy braid, loosening her hair
until it spilled over his hands and arms in a thick silken curtain. Lila’s
fingers were impatient with the buttons on his shirt, tearing one loose in her
rush to bare his chest. Bishop shrugged out of the garment and pushed her
wrapper off her shoulders at the same time she was reaching for the buckle on
his belt.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Bishop recognized what was
happening. Death had brushed against them today, laying ghostly fingers on his
shoulder, revealing a grim, unsmiling mask to Lila. If he’d been a half second
slower or Lang a half second faster, Death could have swung his scythe in a
different direction. The elemental hunger that gripped them both now was, in
part, a need to affirm life in the most basic of ways—by touch and sight and
taste.

But the reason it was happening was not important. All that
mattered was the feel of Lila’s skin heating beneath his hands, the moist
warmth of her mouth, the gentle yielding of her body beneath his. He had no
memory of pushing the ruined door shut behind them and sliding a chair in front
of it, no memory of easing her back on the bed. His hands raced over her body,
exploring the changes in it. Her breasts were fuller now, filling his hand like
the most exotic of fruits, and they’d grown more sensitive. When he bent to
taste the pouting darkness of her nipple, she cried out softly, a keening sound
of pleasure that went straight to his gut. His fingers gentled as they traced
the solid bulge of her stomach. There was something strangely erotic in the
thought that his child was cradled inside her, a child created in one night of
passion that was like nothing he’d ever known before. Until now.

He wanted to explore every inch of her, to savor the feel and
taste of her. But his pulse was beating in his ears, deafening him to
everything but the need to sheath himself in her, to feel her body take his
into the most intimate embrace possible between a man and a woman. He raised
himself over her and Lila’s thighs parted in welcome. A tiny, unwelcome flicker
of sanity made Bishop hesitate. He wanted no regrets, no recriminations thrown
at him in the morning. If he took her now, this would be the end of all
bargains between them and the beginning of a real marriage.

His eyes met hers, electric blue clashing with smoky green.

“Tell me this is what you want,” he said, his voice raspy with
need. The feel of him pressed against her was a sweet torture for them both.

Lila stared up at him, seeing the hunger that burned in his eyes,
the need that tightened the skin across his cheekbones. She saw, also, the same
crossroads Bishop had seen. After this, there would be no going back to the way
things had been. He wasn’t going to let her pretend to be swept away by
passion. She was going to have to admit that she wanted this as much as he did.
Her hesitation lasted no more than a heartbeat.

“This is what I want,” she whispered.

It was all Bishop needed to hear. He completed their union with
one slow thrust that sheathed his aching hardness in the yielding warmth of
her. Lila arched to take him deeper still, her hands clinging to the thick
muscles of his upper arms. She hadn’t realized how empty she’d been until this
moment when the emptiness was filled, until she felt herself completed by their
joining. This was what she’d been waiting for her whole life.

The hunger was too great to allow for soft touches and gentle
sighs. It was hot and hard and fast. They moved together, their bodies in
perfect rhythm, one with the other. Lila found herself spiraling upward at
dizzying speed, desperate to find the fulfillment she knew awaited her, the
pleasure only he could give her.

Though she thought she knew what to expect, she was caught off
guard by the power of her own completion. It was like standing in the middle of
a Fourth of July fireworks display, lights and sound exploding around her,
inside her. Her body arched beneath his, delicate muscles contracting around
him, pulling him into the vortex of her pleasure. There was only Bishop, her
husband, the father of her child, the man who’d taught her how to live again.
Only the two of them alone in all the world.

As she floated slowly back to earth, Lila suddenly remembered the
words of the wedding ceremony, words that had filled her with terror a few
weeks ago.
Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.
Listening to the ragged beat of Bishop’s heart against her ear, feeling the
heavy weight of his body over hers, she found the words comforting, a promise
for the future.

***

The first pale-gray fingers of dawn were sliding through the
muslin curtains when Lila woke. Her eyes still closed, she stretched out one
hand in sleepy inquiry and found Bishop gone, the linens on his side of the bed
cool. She opened her eyes to confirm what her touch had already told her, but
before she could decide whether to feel relief or disappointment, she saw him
standing near the window, the curtain pulled partially open as he watched the
sun edge its way over the shoulders of the mountains. Though the air carried a
distinct chill, he was shirtless and barefoot, his only concession to modesty
and the temperature a pair of half-buttoned pants that rode low on his hips.

Blinking sleepily, Lila let her eyes linger on the corded muscles
of his shoulders and back, the rumpled thickness of his dark hair. Her fingers
curled into the cool linens. She knew how those muscles felt beneath her hands,
knew the surprising softness of his hair sliding between her fingers. She’d
never realized it was possible to know another person’s body better than you
knew your own. Certainly Bishop’s hands had mapped her body with a thoroughness
that made her blush to remember.