The Sheriff (Historical Romance) (19 page)

I
n the sweet afterglow of lovemaking, the sated pair lay in each other’s arms, talking, laughing, yawning.

And kissing.

Travis lay flat on his back in the middle of the bed with his arm around Kate. Her head resting on his shoulder, she lay on her side, snuggled close against him, a knee bent and resting on his flat belly. Her hand languidly explored the firm muscles of Travis’s chest. “When you went outside, I wanted you to come back in and kiss me again.”

“I know,” he replied.

“You’re conceited, Sheriff,” Kate accused, and playfully pinched him.

“No, I’m clairvoyant,” he said, sweeping a hand over the curve of her hip and down over her soft rounded buttocks.

“Oh, really,” she said, lifting her head to look at him. “What am I thinking right this very minute?”

Travis grinned, then screwed up his face and closed his eyes as if concentrating deeply. “Wait…it’s…it’s coming to me. I’ve almost got it. Yes, yes, I have it!” He opened his eyes. “You want me to make love to you again.”

“Why, you’re a genius,” she said with a happy smile.

“What’d I tell you?”

When Travis walked through the door the next evening, Kate tossed off the covers and scrambled up onto her knees to greet him. As soon as he’d hung his hat, heavy jacket and gun belt on the coat tree, he came directly to the bed.

“I thought this day would never end,” he said. Putting his arms around Kate, he drew her up into his embrace.

“Me either,” she murmured, just before he kissed her.

For a time Travis stood there beside the bed holding her, kissing her, urging the long tail of her nightshirt up. When his eager hands touched bare, warm flesh, he lifted his lips from hers. “Hey, what happened to your underwear?”

Her arms looped around his neck, her blue eyes aglow, Kate said, “I took it off before you got here.” She smiled, catlike, and playfully licked at his lips. “Just in case.”

“Brazen woman,” he accused, “I do believe you’re meaning to seduce me.”

Travis carefully lifted the nightshirt up over Kate’s head and tossed it aside. He lifted the bandage, checked her shoulder wound, asked if it hurt. She shook her head and shivered deliciously. He stepped back and gazed at her pale, slender body for a couple of heartbeats, then wrapped a hand around the back of her neck beneath her hair, drew her to him and kissed her again.

The smoldering sexual fire between them quickly blazed to life. Kate sighed when she felt Travis’s warm hand cupping her breast. When his lips left hers and slipped down over her chest, she emitted a shriek of eager anticipation.

With her breath coming in quick little spurts, she continued to kneel on the mattress and watch, entranced, as his dark face joined his caressing hand at her breast. She held her breath when his heated lips enclosed a tingling nipple. Travis harmlessly bit and nibbled on her. It felt so good, but her pleasure increased when his mouth closed more securely over the nipple and his tongue fluttered back and forth and swirled around and around.

“Oh, Travis, Travis,” she murmured, holding the back of his bent head and pressing him to her, mindless of her wounded shoulder.

Kate’s eyes slid closed with bliss and her sense of touch and hearing increased dramatically. She was
intensely aware of the texture of his lustrous hair in her clasping fingers, and the abrasive brush of his gabardine shirt against her naked flesh. The unmistakable pressure of his silver sheriff’s badge rubbed against her ribs. The unbelievably pleasurable sensation of his burning lips tugged forcefully on her stinging nipple.

A chorus of pleasing sounds added to the intense delight of the moment. The snapping and crackling of the fire in the grate. The soft purring of Cal as he dozed and dreamed in front of the fireplace. The provocative sound of Travis greedily suckling her.

When at last he released her wet nipple and raised his head, Kate eagerly kissed him and began unbuttoning his shirt. When it was open down his dark chest, she swept it apart, put her arms around his neck and confided, “Since that hot day last summer when you came to my place and hung the front door at the mansion, I have wanted to feel your bare chest against me.”

Travis clasped the twin cheeks of her bare bottom and drew her closer. Kate pressed her breasts against his chest, watching as her shiny wet nipples disappeared in the crisp, ticklish raven hair. Playing, brushing back and forth against his muscled torso, Kate smiled and sighed and enjoyed herself immensely.

So did Travis.

While she rubbed her soft breasts against his chest, Travis let his hand glide down her back to her
bottom. Grasping the cleft of her buttocks, he reached down and under, to meet his other hand coming from the front. Lean fingers met and quickly began to work their magic.

Kate suddenly stopped her own sexual game to be a willing participant in his. “Travis, what…what are you doing to me?”

“Making love to you, sweetheart,” he said, touching and toying with her in such a shockingly carnal way that she momentarily wondered if she was allowing him to do something perverse.

Then all at once she didn’t care. This darkly handsome lover was coaxing liquid heat out of her with his stroking, probing fingers. And she was loving it. It was strangely erotic to be kneeling naked on the bed facing the fully clothed sheriff, while he stood there doing such lovely things to her.

With the hand in front, Travis cupped her groin, and his forefinger circled that point of raging desire. At the same time a skilled finger that came from behind was inside her, thrusting rhythmically. Kate gave herself up to the blinding passion.

She grabbed at the strong column of Travis’s neck and clung to it while he masterfully caressed her with his lean, artistic hands. While she sighed and gasped and threw her head back, Travis teased and toyed and stroked. And all the while he murmured endearments in low, rich tones that added fuel to the flame.

When Kate felt the dam of desire about to burst,
she grew anxious and frantic, afraid she could wait no longer, and equally afraid she couldn’t fully climax. Would she remain in this highly agitated state until pleasure turned to pain?

She needn’t have worried.

Travis knew the frantic state she was in. He took loving care of her, and Kate soon cried out with joy and gratitude as he dexterously took her all the way to the top, his magical fingers coaxing her nearer and nearer to sexual nirvana.

And when her powerful orgasm came, she screamed at the intensity of it. Her body spasmed and she tossed her head, her unbound hair whipping into her face and his. When at last the tempest had passed, she weakly collapsed against Travis. He held her against his solid chest, stroking her back, her tangled hair, calming her, telling her everything was all right, that he had her and wouldn’t let her go.

When finally she had stopped shaking, Kate raised her head, looked into his dark, flashing eyes and said, “Sheriff, don’t ever do that to me again.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“I liked it too much,” she candidly confessed.

Travis grinned. “Now how would you like a nice hot bath?”

“I would,” she said. “And then?”

His grin widened, then disappeared, and his expressive dark eyes softened. “There are so many
ways I want to make to love you, Kate. So many things I want to do to you. For you. With you.”

Awed by the look in his eyes, she said, “Travis, I can hardly wait.”

Half an hour later, a serene Kate sat in the suds-filled wooden tub directly in front of the fireplace. Her golden hair was pinned atop her head and a glass of red wine was in her right hand. She sighed with contentment as Travis, on his knees beside the tub, gingerly washed her back.

“You’re too good at this,” she said. He smiled. She ventured further, “And you’re too good, as well, at removing a bullet from a foolish woman who got herself shot.” Travis made no reply, but carefully swirled the washcloth along the top of her left shoulder, taking care not to get her bandage wet. “Travis?”

“Yes?”

“I know you’re from Virginia. Doc Ledet told me. And he told me that you once studied to become a physician.” She stopped speaking and held her breath.

“It’s true, I did.”

“What happened? Why didn’t you become a doctor?”

“Squeamish stomach,” Travis said flippantly. “Couldn’t stand the sight of blood.” He dropped the washcloth and rose to his feet. “How would you like for me to go across the street and pick us up a couple
of sizzling steaks from the Bonanza Hotel dining room?”

Knowing she was not—at the present time—going to get anything further out of him regarding his past, Kate smiled and said, “Hurry back.”

“Fifteen minutes at the outside.”

Travis rebuttoned his open shirt, strapped on his gun belt and thrust his long arms into the sleeves of his heavy woolen coat. He shoved his hat on his head, opened the door leading into the jail, then closed it and stepped back inside. He came to the tub, laid a hand atop her head, bent from the waist and brushed a kiss to her lips. “Anybody bangs on either door, ignore it, you hear me?”

“Who would…?”

“You heard me. I’m locking you in,” he said, then turned and left.

T
ravis locked the door between the jail and his private quarters. He walked through the darkened space with its empty cells and went on into the front office, where a lone lamp burned atop his scarred desk. Buttoning his heavy jacket, he glanced out the glass-paned windows.

The sun had set more than an hour ago, but it was light as day outside. It was snowing. Hard. And the winds were howling, forcefully blowing the large white flakes in a southerly direction. Travis laughed.

Apparently while he and Kate were making love—oblivious to everything but each other—an early autumn blizzard had roared down out of the Sierras to blanket the town of Fortune.

Travis squinted through the frosty windows. The street was completely covered in white and the sidewalks were deserted. Which suited Travis fine. A
raging winter storm generally meant a peaceful night, as miners and hustlers and gamblers alike were more interested in seeking a warm place to escape the elements than causing trouble.

Travis turned up his collar and stepped out into the wind-driven snow. He headed directly toward the Bonanza Hotel. With the icy crust crunching under his boot heels, he started across the street. Before he reached the hotel, he automatically glanced up at the third floor suite of Winn DeLaney.

The window shades were all pulled down, but lights shone inside. Someone was pacing back and forth before the windows. It had to be DeLaney.

Travis frowned.

There was little doubt in his mind that DeLaney had something to do with Kate getting shot. Not that he’d meant for that to happen. The shooting was undoubtedly a screwup on the part of DeLaney’s two hired thugs.

Ducking his head against the blinding snow, Travis hurried on. His biggest concern was that DeLaney might pack up and leave town before Jiggs and the posse could find Kelton and Spears. Travis ground his teeth in frustration. He knew if he could have ten short minutes with the despicable pair, he could get the truth out of them.

This wasn’t the way they had planned it that night in San Francisco. It had seemed like such a fool-proof
plan. He had supposed that by now he would be Kate’s husband and that she would eagerly sign over the Cavalry Blue to him.

But nothing had gone as planned and now, restless and worried, Winn DeLaney wondered if he should hastily check out and leave town as Melly kept insisting they do. They could just slip away in the midst of this raging snowstorm and give up his dearest dreams. It would be the wise thing to do.

No, damn it! Why should he leave? Why behave as if he had something to hide? With every passing day, the odds of a posse locating Spears and Kelton lessened. Surely they were long gone and would never be brought in.

Winn brightened a little at the thought. His secret was safe. No one had reason to suspect he had anything to do with the shooting. Kate VanNam was his treasured sweetheart, the light of his life. And the whole town knew it.

All he had to do was remain calm and behave as though he was innocent. Then, when Kate was better and back in her mansion, they would pick up where they’d left off. He would ardently court her and marry her as quickly as possible. And once he had properly—or improperly—made love to Kate, his swooning bride would be more than willing to sign over all her property to her adoring husband.

Smiling now as he anticipated the wealth that would soon be his, Winn stopped pacing. He impulsively
raised a window shade and looked out to check on the storm. He caught sight of someone crossing the snowy street. He lifted a hand and rubbed at the ice crystals forming on the inside of the glass.

And cursed under his breath.

The sheriff was crossing the street against the wind. Winn quickly sank back, but continued to watch McCloud. How he hated the arrogant, nosey, small-town lawman. The bastard was keeping Kate in his quarters behind the jail, and not allowing anyone in to see her.

Winn scowled.
If that handsome sheriff ever gets his hands on Miss VanNam, we’re sunk!
Melly’s words came back to him and he involuntarily shuddered as he muttered an oath.

Winn shook his head as if to clear it. He was being foolish. Kate felt nothing for McCloud. She didn’t even like the marshal.

Kate reached for a large white towel and rose from the tub. She got out and stood before the fire, languidly drying off. She wrapped the damp towel around her slender body, carefully tucking it in over her breasts.

She pivoted about and stood with her back to the fire. She looked curiously around at the big warm room where she had been for the past five days and nights. Spartan, totally masculine quarters in which she had spent the happiest moments of her life.

Beside the door opening into the jail stood the tall coat tree. A heavy greatcoat hung there, and an old battered straw hat. A black leather vest. A pair of big roweled spurs. A coiled length of rope.

At the center of the room was the table, with a straight-back chair pulled up to it. The chair’s twin was beside the bed, where Travis had spent long hours watching over her.

Beside her and just to the left of the fireplace was a much used overstuffed easy chair and matching ottoman. A discarded gabardine shirt was tossed over the chair’s back. Directly across from the fireplace was the big double bed with its heavy iron bedstead. The sheets and blanket were badly rumpled from her kneeling there, squirming, as Travis made love to her.

Kate shivered at the vivid recollection of what he had done to her, of the ecstasy she had experienced at Travis’s masterful hands. Before this night was over, she wondered, would he make love to her again? She hoped so. He probably would. After all, he hadn’t even undressed yet….

Blushing, Kate looked away from the bed and focused on the tall bureau standing against the wall by the back door. In need of a freshly laundered nightshirt, she tiptoed barefoot across the cold wooden floor and stopped before the chest of drawers. She smiled when she saw a small stack of poker chips atop the bureau.

Beside the chips were a couple of thin black cigars
and box of sulphur matches. A brush with a comb stuck in its bristles lay on its side. A black silk bandanna was neatly folded. She touched a small pocket knife with a fancy pearl handle. And a leather-bound copy of Alexandre Dumas’s
The Count of Monte Cristo.

Kate glanced at herself in the mirror above the bureau, then opened the top drawer, looked inside and saw only neatly pressed shirts. She closed it, opened the second. Underwear and stockings. She closed that one and opened the middle drawer. She lifted out a white, neatly folded nightshirt, and started to close the drawer.

Kate stopped abruptly, her brow wrinkling. She laid the nightshirt atop the bureau.

She’d spotted the corner of a tintype peeking out from under a stack of nightshirts. Sliding it out from under the garments, she picked it up and stared unblinking at the smiling likeness of a strikingly beautiful woman with pale hair and glowing eyes.

Kate knew immediately knew who the woman was. The aristocratic Southern beauty over whom Travis had fought a duel! He had killed a man for the love of this woman. And he’d kept this tintype all these years.

Kate’s initial emotion was jealousy. Then anger. Both were fleeting.
She
had Travis now. Not Roxanne.
She didn’t hate Roxanne; she was grateful to the foolish woman. If not for the pampered beauty, Travis would never have come out West and she would never have met him.

“Thanks, Roxanne,” Kate addressed the woman in the picture. “I’ll take good care of Travis. Such good care he’ll forget you ever existed.”

She shoved the tintype back where she had found it. She returned to the fire, dropped the towel and slipped on the clean nightshirt, but she did not button it.

When Travis returned, Kate was standing with her back to the fire. Her hair was brushed out around her shoulders and held off her face with his black silk bandanna.

“Jesus, baby, what are you doing up?” he asked, snowflakes clinging to his shoulders and raven hair. He set the covered tray atop the table and said proudly, “Got us a couple of the best looking steaks you’ve ever seen.”

Kate came directly to the table. When Travis turned to look at her, she reached up and clasped the lapels of his snow-dampened coat and said, “Great. I’m famished, aren’t you?”

Before he could reply, she smiled saucily, rose up on tiptoe, drew his face down to hers and kissed him the way he had kissed her that first time. She wanted to kiss him with such passionate purpose that he’d forget every other woman, including Roxanne.