The Ruination of Essie Sparks (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 2) (23 page)

For a long moment, she just stared at him, her look changing from stark to something much more complicated. A look that warned him not to take anything for granted with this woman. He started to turn, but she lifted her chin and arched a brow, wordlessly daring him not to as she let the blanket fall away from her shoulders and drop to the ground.

"I will go in, if you will come with me."

As he watched, she loosed the rope she'd tied like a belt around her waist and tugged the shirt he'd given her over her head, leaving her in her damp underthings. His gaze fell, against his will, to the thin cotton fabric of her corset cover that clung to her breasts, where the dusky peaks of her nipples showed through the dampness.

A hunger, sharp and uncontrollable, knifed through him. He clenched his fists.

"I am not a girl, Cade, I'm a woman. Fully grown," she said, pulling the corset cover off over her head. Her auburn curls tumbled damply about her shoulders and that gold locket she loved so much dangled at her throat between her breasts. "If you think you can ruin me, then you're too late. I was ruined when you met me. And you can take me back tonight, as I am, and leave me and never see me again. But if, as you say, I'm to be shunned for the rest of my life"—she slid a petticoat off her hips—"never to know a man's warmth against me, or inside me, well, then I'm asking you. Give me something to remember. Some memory I can pull out when I'm old and can hardly recall what it was like to feel this. At least then I'd know what it's like to be held by a man who really wants me."

He wished he could look away, but she refused to allow it.

"And if I'm wrong about that," she went on, "couldn't you... just pretend?"

Pretend?
Do you have no idea what you do to me?

The last of her petticoats slipped to the ground. "Pretend that you care about me and that we'll see each other again when this is all over? That you and I will not be saying goodbye tonight?" She reached behind her and unfastened the button on her last petticoat and let it slide down her slender hips. All the while, she refused to release him from her steady gaze. So he watched and got achingly hard as she let her underthings drift to the damp ground, one at a time.

The rain continued to fall. Water clung to her cheeks and lashes and she glanced up at him through that dark, wet fringe. He felt his mouth go dry. "I do not have to pretend to want you, Essie. I have wanted you since the moment I saw you in that room. Since the moment you flashed those eyes at me and warned me not to cut you again."

She released some breath she'd been holding and her eyes, already damp, glistened with tears. "That seems like forever ago."

He nodded. "This can only end badly."

"It's already bad. What can it matter now?"

"You tempt the darkness to ask such a question."

"Then let us tempt it." With a flick of her fingers, she undid the first hook on the corset with a pop. Then the next and the next, until it, too, fell away and her small breasts bobbed free of the contraption. "We should do everything in our power to fight back against what they expect of us."

He'd learned long ago that the fates were nothing to be toyed with. But if tomorrow was, indeed, his last day on earth, would he not regret pushing her away? Would he always wonder what it would feel like to cup her breasts in his hands? Dip his fingers into her and taste her everywhere? Yet could he imagine himself walking away from her after?

Seáa!
He would think of that later.

His fingers found the hem of his deerskin shirt and he pulled it up and over his head, tossing it aside. Then he dragged her up against him and kissed her deeply. Shifting her mouth against his, she made a sound of need, there in the rain, and flattened herself against him, curling her hands around the back of his neck and threading her fingers in his long hair, pulling him closer. And after he'd ravaged her mouth, he slid the gathered top of her shift down over her shoulders and undressed the last of her.

Naked, her body was everything he'd imagined. Slender and pale, with the womanly flare of her hips where he rested his hands. His gaze drifted from her perfectly shaped breasts—whose nipples were puckered from the cold or the kiss—to the nest of auburn curls at the apex of her long legs.

"Get in the water," he told her, turning her by the shoulders toward the pool. Without further argument, she did as he asked. He tied Náhkohe to a tree and, with a quick tug, undid the leather drawstring on his own leggings and dropped them to the ground. He followed her in.

She didn't even pretend not to watch or that she didn't notice his erection. There was nothing shy in her gaze as it followed him until he'd sunk to the neck in the steaming pool and swam to her.

He pulled her close, anxious to feel the press of her breasts against his chest again. "You are so beautiful," he murmured against her ear.

"You don't have to say that."

"I only speak the truth."

She slid her hands over his shoulders under the water then pressed the flats of her palms against his chest. Her mouth found his neck and he exhaled as she tortured him with her tongue. Beneath the water, she wrapped herself around him and he cupped her bottom in his two hands, drawing her up against his hard length.

Floating with her, he closed his eyes, his heartbeat stuttering at the feel of her there. She moved her hips up and down him, sliding over him. He pulled her harder against him. He could take her right now, for the longing of the past few days peaked in him like an avalanche, crashing over him in wave after wave of hot desire.

Steam rose between them and eddied between their bodies where it could find a space. Her mouth moved up his jaw and then to his lips again for a quick peck before drifting to the scar on his cheek to linger over it with soft kisses. He nearly pulled away from her, but she held him there and met his gaze intentionally. "This," she said, kissing the scar again, "is your history. And that makes it part of you." She arched a teasing brow at him. "It makes you dangerous and a little roguish and I like it."

After years of despising his scar, he was hard pressed to believe it could be anything but ugly. But as he studied her eyes, he realized he believed her. He sent her a devilish look. "Is it a rogue you crave?"

"Yes," she said simply. "But only if that rogue is you." She gave a shy laugh then, as if her comment had startled even her.

This woman!
He swam with her to a ledge of rocks, lifting her onto them, just enough so that he could access her breasts. One at a time, he lingered over her dusky nipples, warm now from the steamy heat of the water. She let her head fall back as he sucked them, one at a time, just hard enough to make her moan in pleasure. Her breasts, he marveled, were small and perfect and fit perfectly in his hand with a weighty heft that sent a new kind of ache to his loins.

The rain continued to fall, and she slid down into the water and kicked away from the ledge, beckoning him toward the chest-deep middle. They ducked in and half out of the pool as they rolled through the water, kissing and half sinking below the surface, laughing when they ran out of air before starting again.

He forgot about everything but her. And he especially forgot all the promises he'd made to himself. Because who could not, in this woman's arms?

"I feel wicked," she murmured against his ear as they sank to their necks in the steamy water. "It must be the wildness of where we are."

His mouth explored her throat and the small hollow at the base of it. Her necklace with its gold locket floated at her breasts. "You feel wicked because you're naked with me. In a hot spring. Here, wrap your legs around me." He lifted her onto his chest underwater and she wound her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. The tip of his hard erection brushed the entrance to her. As he watched, she closed her eyes and shuddered.

"
Mo'onahe
," he murmured in her ear. "You are so beautiful." Pulling his hand from her back, he slipped it between her legs and touched her slick, sweet center. Her response only made him harder. She curled against him, squirming against his touch.

"Oh! Cade!"

"Do you like that?" he whispered. "What of this?" He lifted her in his arms until he could reach her breast with his mouth again and licked her pink nipple as he swirled his finger inside her.

"Yes," she breathed. "Oh, yes, Cade."

She pressed her mouth to the top of his head and brushed kisses down the side of his face until she reached his ear. Tracing the outline of it with her tongue, she tortured him there until he couldn't take it anymore and he caught her mouth again with his. He kissed her deeply. Her tongue swirled against his and slid against his teeth. She tasted of rain. He kissed the drops on her lashes then took her mouth again. He couldn't seem to help himself. She was like a thirst he couldn't quench. He couldn't get enough of her.

He lifted her, set her back up on the rock ledge again to taste the place he couldn't taste underwater. She watched, wide-eyed, as he nudged her knees apart and dipped his mouth to the soft curls between her legs to taste her there. Her shock was soon replaced by soft moans of pleasure and he felt her hands draw his head closer yet as he laved her with his tongue.

"Is this... oh! Is this even
legal
?" she murmured, head thrown back, welcoming the cool rain on her face.

"Do you care?" he said, lifting his mouth from her with a smile.

"Oh! Only if you stop!"

Essie had never imagined such a thing. Not in her whole married life had her husband touched her the way Cade did. So gently. So tenderly. Wanting her to feel pleasure as if that was his only goal.

But she wanted to touch him, too. She'd longed to run her hands along the strong muscles of his arms and now, with his arms stretched up and his hands around her waist, she did just that, exploring all the dips and hollows where the muscles of his upper arms contracted and relaxed. Drawing her closer to his mouth, he sucked at that sensitive nub, lifting her hips practically off the stone where she sat. Until she thought she might explode. But instead, he released her and climbed up to her there on the rock, his hard length meeting with the place he'd just abandoned.

Working up her nerve, she slid her hand downward until her fingers closed around the slick, velvet warmth of him. He shuddered into her hand, nearly losing control. He was big, bigger than her husband had been, and she suddenly longed to have him inside her. To feel what that would be like. But she moved her fingers along his shaft, teasing him with her touch until he could take it no longer.

He dragged her close to the edge and poised himself at her opening. The pressure of her need had her hips nearly bucking at his touch. "You are sure?" he asked.

"Oh, Cade, how can you ask? Please. Please."

And he obliged, sinking himself into her slowly at first, then with long thrusts that drove him deeply inside her. He filled her completely. She forgot to think. She forgot where she was. Neither of them had much control or even wanted it. Because the primal rhythm of his thrusts got faster and faster, his hips slapping against hers with a sound that only curled her want more tightly. She felt herself slipping off some metaphorical edge—as if to lose herself this way was to spin completely out of control. But she didn't care. She
wanted
to lose control. She
wanted
to disappear into him. She pressed her face to his shoulder and felt the clutch, deep in her belly, of some otherworldly pleasure she'd never felt before. Harder and harder he pounded against her until she spun over that edge and she cried out loud, feeling him spend himself inside her, hot and explosive.

After they came together, they collapsed against the ledge for a few breathless moments before he drew her back into the water to hold her tightly against him. He kissed her again and again and murmured things in her ear in Cheyenne that she didn't understand. But she didn't care if he was saying goodbye. She only wanted to hold on to this moment, this memory, and keep it with her forever.

Chapter 14

It took them until nearly sunset to reach the beginnings of civilization, riding through what was left of the on-again, off-again rain. But shivering and damp, wrapped in borrowed blankets, they stopped at the outskirts of what remained of Coulson, an abandoned hamlet less than a mile from Billings, or what many called Magic City. The new railroad town up ahead was alive with activity even at this hour and the streets were lined with kerosene lamps that were burning already.