Tender Touch (24 page)

“I ache, too, sweet woman. Sometimes I ache just looking at you. Let me love you, let me end this torture for both of us.”

“I can’t. It’s adultery, and a sin.”

“I told you, that bastard you’re married to forfeited his rights.”

“God didn’t.”

Col groaned. How could he argue with her when she brought God into it? To his way of thinking, the Lord had to be more understanding than that . . . and more forgiving. But he couldn’t seem to convince her. “Then let me give you a release you can’t dispute.”

“How?”

“By touching you. That’s all, just touching you.” He moved his hand to the inviting valley between her legs. “Here, where you most need it.”

“I-I don’t know. I—”

He silenced her with a kiss. Slowly, with his hands and his lips, he brought her back to fever pitch. His body screamed for its own release, but he ignored its needs. When she was once again writhing beneath his hands and moaning with the agony of withheld satisfaction, he slipped his hand beneath her gown and gently caressed her thigh. Gradually, he worked his hand higher until he reached the moist heat he sought.

Groaning at the bliss of feeling her like that, so hot and eager for him, he took her nipple between his teeth, let it slide free, then suckled it hard while his fingers delved for the sweet secret recess his body so longed to plunder.

Brianna moaned as her body carried her to a higher plane of sensation. Like a star, she soared through the sky, clear to the very peak of existence. Her legs opened to him of their own accord. She arched and stiffened, expecting pain and finding only rapture. Her nails bit into his shoulders and her hips met the timeless rhythm of his caressing hand.

Col felt her shudder as the spasms of release took her over the edge into Eden. His lips stretched taut against his clamped teeth as he fought to maintain control over his own body. The need to take her was so strong; it was all he could do to keep from stripping off the confining clout and driving into her until he could find his own Eden.

As their pulses slowed he cradled her in his arms, kissing her face and murmuring to her in Shoshone. Her eyes peering up at him, dazed yet with passion.

“Is .
.
. is what I felt. .
.
. Is that what happens when a man—?”

He laid his palm against her cheek and smiled down at her. “If the man knows what he’s doing and cares for the woman, it is.”

She turned her face into his palm and kissed the callused flesh. Then her fine brows drew together. “But you didn’t. . . Do you hurt no
w the way I did before . . . ?”

He closed his eyes and nodded. “But what you felt would be better, more intense, if we were joined as we should be.”

That was something too difficult to imagine. What concerned her more was knowing he was in pain. “I-I don’t want you to hurt, Col.”

He opened his eyes and tipped up her chin so he could see into her heart. “Do you trust me enough to let me show you how much better it can be?”

How many times had her trust been violated? Even though—or perhaps because—her mother had died giving her life, she had trusted her father never to leave her the way her mother had. Yet he did. She had trusted the man who offered her his name, his fortune, and his love. Only to learn that the Wight fortune had suffered greatly at Barret’s hands, and what he truly wanted was her inheritance to refinance the Wight Brewery. All he gave in return was pain and terror. She had even trusted. . . . Who? God?

Fate? There, too, she had been let down when the child she’d prayed for so hard never came.

But she knew now that she didn’t deserve anything good in life. Hadn’t Barret told her that often enough? She was nothing but a big, ugly woman no one else wanted, a woman even life had seen fit to deny the normal feminine joys.

Well, if there was one thing she could handle in life it was pain. So what did she have to lose?

Brianna gazed up at Columbus Nigh’s handsome face. For once the expression in his gray eyes was as clear and open as a summer sky. In their depths she saw need, but she also saw honesty and caring. Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, she summoned up her courage and nodded.

Totally aware—even if she was not—of the priceless gift she offered, Col’s heart squeezed. He felt a tenderness for this woman deeper and stronger than he had believed possible.

He used that tenderness to make love to her, with his lips, his hands, and every fiber of his heart. Carefully, he stoked the fires still smoldering within their bodies, taking his time and feeding the flames bit by bit until they raged, leaped and roared.

Only when she whimpered and begged did he move over her, nudging her thighs apart with his knees. Then he took her hand and placed it on the rawhide thong that kept his clout tied about his hips.

Her eyes full of torment, she stared up at him. She knew what he was asking of her. He wanted her to prove her trust by releasing that thong.

Only Col knew that more would be bared than his masculine flesh. To do this would bare her soul, leave her wide open for all the pain she had come to expect from life. But only by forcing it to stand naked in the sun’s burning rays could her fear be seared from her heart and the door be opened to the love and joy she sought.

Brianna felt for the end of the tie, and pulled.

Quickly Col swept the clout away. Then she felt the hot prod of his flesh between her legs. Supporting himself on his wrists he lifted himself above her and let his eyes take their fill of her. He bent and kissed each breast, the pulse in her throat as rapid and fragile as hummingbird wings. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth.

With the care and ease of that same tiny bird, seeking nectar from the ruby throat of a Rocky Mountain rocket flower, he entered her. He smiled at her gasp of pleasure. Smiled wider at her whimpered protest as he drew back.

Teasing her with the tip of his penis, he whispered, “This is the only key that can open your door to heaven, woman.” Then, baring his teeth in an expression of sweet agony, he threw back his head and plunged, whispering as he did so. “And it’s mine.”

Instinctively, Brianna met his thrusts with thrusts of her own. She wrapped her legs about his hips and her head thrashed from side to side on her pillow, moans issuing from deep inside her chest as time and again she was impaled on a burning shaft of the sun. When, teetering on the brink of the sun’s inferno, she opened her mouth to scream, Col swallowed the sound with his mouth.

“Go on,” he urged hoarsely. “The door to heaven is open. Escape. Now, woman! Now!”

Together they burst free.

When the spasms finally began to fade, he collapsed on her, burying his face in her hair. His heart pounded against her breast. He breathed in shuddering gasps. “Now, Bri,” he ground out, “even you can’t argue that you belong to me. I swear I’ll never harm you. But I’ll kill any man who touches you.”

The next morning the wagons started up the high point of land called Windlass Hill which separated the South Platte from the North Platte. Sweeps of flowering blue lupine tinted the rolling land, complimenting the purple clouds scudding across the sky.

Col smiled lopsidedly and winked at Brianna. He laughed when she blushed, knowing she was remembering the pleasure he had given her the night before.

Ahead, at the summit, Jeb Hanks, Edward Magrudge, and others from the lead wagons were staring out across the vast plain, visible for the first time since leaving the valley of the South Platte.

It was like staring into the onslaught of night.

Col rode up to join the men, leaving Brianna behind. Overhead the light took on a dirty-yellow cast. The wind whipped Brianna’s skirts about her legs in spite of the buckshot sewn in her hems. She laughed as she fought to hold them down.

In the distance, dark clouds rushed in wild confusion toward the hill where the emigrants stood watching. At the heart of the storm, lightning stabbed through the air, followed immediately by the loud crackle of thunder. Brianna gasped at the sight. The display was magnificent, savage and frenzied, like nothing she had ever seen before. The wind increased, tearing away her bonnet and loosening the hair from its knot at the back of her head. The roar grew in pitch until she thought she would go deaf. Then the rain began.

***

At the head of the wagon train, a few hundred yards from Brianna, Col pointed to a whirling funnel, black as ink, at the heart of the storm, the small end pointed at the earth. “Tornado!” he shouted in Jeb’s ear.

“Best get the folks to shelter,” Jeb shouted back. “We’re sitting ducks on this hilltop.”

“There isn’t time to get the wagons down off of here,” Magrudge said.

Col was already heading for his horse. “I’m going after Brianna. Ride down the line fast as you can and tell everybody to get down to those trees in Ash Hollow. It’s their only chance.”

The unleashed power of the storm was awesome. Brianna watched, mesmerized by the grand display. Electric fire rent the air in jagged bolts with such ferocity it ricocheted from cloud to cloud and earth to sky and back again in vivid zigzag patterns against the dark background. Thunder splintered the air and rumbled with a force that shook the ground beneath her feet, while the wind drove the rain against her in horizontal sheets. The snapping of the wagon covers over their heads added to the din.

Pangs of fear licked at Brianna’s nerves as she judged the power of the storm. She looked around to see the other people plastered to the sides of their wagons as she was. The storm resembled nothing she had ever seen, but she knew it carried danger and death in its midst. Everyone else was as hypnotized by it as she was. If they didn’t find shelter, they would surely all be carried off by that swirling black funnel. The noise was too great to make herself heard. She would have to go to the next wagon to deliver her warning.

She was working her way toward the back of her wagon, hanging on as best she could, when suddenly Col was beside her on the gray.

“Gotta get off of here,” he shouted as he reached for her.

“Tie the horse on the other side of the wagon,” she yelled back. “We can get underneath or inside.”

“That twister will blow these wagons to kingdom come. Give me your arm. We’re getting out of here.”

She grabbed the closed tailgate and climbed up. “I have to get Patch.”

He spurred the gray around the corner of the wagon, not about to risk losing her now that he had finally won her. “Forget the damn cat. There’s no time.”

At the same moment that his arm came around her waist to lift her from the tailgate, she spied the kitten lying in Col’s bedding and she scooped it up. In the next heartbeat she was seated in Col’s lap, the cat nestled against her breast.

Col bent forward, forcing her down, too, as he whipped the horse into a gallop. Wagons flew past in a blur as they rode hard for the valley below. By the time they reached the crest of the hill both their voices were hoarse from screaming for the people to get down into the trees. Then they themselves were plunging down, the gray sliding, stumbling, in desperate haste to reach bottom.

They made it into a thick copse and skidded to a halt. Col leaped down and lifted Brianna to the ground. They flattened themselves against the earth among wild rose bushes and chokecherries. Patch mewed and struggled to get free but Brianna clung to her.

Finally the wind and rain eased. The noise dimmed. Col raised up enough to see through the trees. “Tornado never even came near the hill. We’re safe.” He lifted her back onto the horse and they headed back to the wagon. The roar of the wind sounded more distant now. Brianna felt something hard strike her arm. “It must be hailing.”

“Black hail,” Col said. “Come on.”

Brianna bent her head to shield her face as they raced back into the trees. The hail hit with a force that stung their skin right through their clothes. Then Brianna screamed and began to flail at the biting pellets. It wasn’t hail at all, but thousands of grasshoppers falling out of the clouds in the wake of the tornado. They clung to her dress and tangled in her hair. A live one slid beneath her neckline into the valley between her breasts. Frantically she clawed at her bodice, trying to get it off so she could get to the insect.

“Hold still,” Col demanded. Quickly he tore the buttons from their holes and peeled the dress down. The hopper jumped free. “What’s this?” he lifted a large button that hung on a bit of yarn around her neck.

“It-it’s a button from Barret’s nightshirt. I found it in my hand the morning I left St. Louis. It came off while he was hitting me and I kept it to remind myself of all I was running away from.”

“Good idea.” He replaced it where it had lain against her camisole. “Why haven’t I seen it before?”

“I take it off at night when I wash up be
fore bed.”

He nodded. “Look at it a lot, Bri. I don’t want you ever forgetting what that bastard did to you.”

Another grasshopper struck her bare shoulder and bounced onto her breast. Col disengaged the insect from her camisole and pulled her dress back into place.

Within an hour the sky cleared, the air became still and the sun shone brightly, quickly drying what the rain had dampened. People emerged from their wagons, shaking their heads, muttering or chuckling about the strangeness of the storm. As they walked, dead grasshoppers crunched beneath their boots.