Trail of Kisses (29 page)

He paused and inched away from her.

“
Marry me, Lynne,” he said. “Say
you’ll marry me, say you’ll let me make an honest woman of you.” A
grin tickled the corner of his kiss-hungry lips and he added, “Over
and over and over.”

“
Yes,” Lynne answered with a
giggle that rose up from deep in her throat. “Oh, yes.”

Joy more beautiful than anything he’d ever
felt swirled through Cade. She was his. This fearless woman was
his. And he was hers in every way. He worked the hooks of her
corset open as quickly as he could, bending to kiss the swell of
her breasts.

“
Yes,” she repeated, tilting her
head back.

He traced his lips over the line of her neck
as he reached for the hem of her chemise and tugged. She was like
water in his hands, flowing smooth and graceful as he pulled the
flimsy, wet garment up over her head and tossed it aside. When he
filled his hands with her breasts, grazing his thumbs across her
nipples, she moaned. The sound shot straight to his groin, making
him hotter, hungrier.

He let her go long enough to find the nearest
bedroll and spread it hastily across the boards of the wagon bed.
It was nothing to the fine feather bed he planned to buy for her as
soon as he could. She deserved a bed worthy of a queen, worthy of a
wife. She shed her drawers as he worked, and when he was finished
he shucked his trousers, already bunched around his
knees.

When he lowered himself over her as she lay
sprawled on her back, legs parted for him, he hummed with delight.
Bold and fearless, open and eager. His wife. In time, God would
join them properly, but for now love would bind them to one
another. He kissed her lips, making his promise without words. She
responded with an eager sigh, lifting her hips to invite him in. He
answered her by sliding a hand between them to play in her
curls.

“
Cade,” she gasped as he slid his
fingers into her hot wetness. She was more than ready for him. He
slid a finger inside of her folds, humming in tune with her as her
inner muscles clenched him. She was so sweet that it hurt not to be
inside of her, but he wanted to give her all the pleasure possible
first.

He slipped a second finger inside with the
first one and proceeded to circle and stroke her nub with his
thumb.

“
Come for me, sweetheart,” he
whispered against her open, panting mouth as he worked her. “I want
to feel my wife come.”

“
Ooh,” she moaned, bearing down on
his hand. “Say that again.”

He pressed his fingers into her inner wall as
his thumb continued its patient work. She was so hot he felt
himself breaking out in a sweat.

“
My wife,” he said, circling
steadily, steadily. “My wife. My wife.”

She came with a cry that bordered on weeping,
her inner muscles clenching his fingers over and over.

“
I love you,” he murmured against
her ear, his thumb still working. “I love you forever.”

Her inner tremors subsided slowly, as if she
was determined to milk as much pleasure from his touch as she
could. Of course she would, she was Lynne, fearless and strong.
When her body relaxed into the afterglow of the pleasure he’d given
her, he repositioned himself and pressed inside of her. She gasped
as he filled her, entering inch by inch until he was as deep as he
could go. It was glorious to be inside of her, exactly where he
belonged.

He moved, using tender, long strokes at first
to keep her fires flamed. It was futile for him to resist the call
of instinct, though. His every fiber and sinew wanted to join with
her, be one with her. He moved faster, his long strokes becoming
shorter, harder, headier. As intense as his desire was, she didn’t
shrink from it. She raked her nails across his back, panting and
moaning with each stroke. She wanted him with all that that
meant.

He let himself go, pouring his whole heart and
soul into mating with her. When the irresistible pressure of his
climax began to sneak up on him, it filled him with happiness more
potent than anything he’d felt before, and when he released into
her, it was with a cry of sheer bliss. The pleasure of it flooded
him, possessed him. It was more than pleasure of the body. His
whole being rejoiced.

The world grew hazy as he relaxed, every
muscle in his body loosening. He collapsed to her side, spent in
every way, a smile on his face. Lynne exhaled with a happy sigh and
shifted to fit herself against his side. He opened his eyes long
enough to see the wicked smile on her kiss-swollen lips.

“
I will never grow tired of loving
you this way,” she said, resting her head on his
shoulder.

He laughed in spite of himself. “There are so
many ways we can love each other like this, sweetheart.”

“
Then I want to learn them all,”
she answered.

They were silent for a moment as the rain
continued to beat on the wagon cover. Somewhere outside voices were
raised, but it was only a distant buzz in the back of Cade’s sated
mind. He was warm and relaxed and his eyes felt heavier than they
had in months. The world was slowly slipping away with a peace he’d
forgotten existed. As long as Lynne was by his side, it encompassed
him like an embrace.

“
Go to sleep, my love,” she
whispered, lifting herself to stroke his hair. “Go to sleep. You’ve
earned it. I’ll stay here and keep you safe.”

She kissed his forehead, and for the life of
him, he couldn’t open his eyes.

“
Go to sleep,” she said again,
“and when you wake up, we’ll find whoever is hunting me. We’ll stop
him, and then we’ll be together forever.”

Chapter Sixteen

For a few blissful hours, everything in
Lynne’s world was just right. She had pulled a blanket from her
things and laid it over her and Cade, snuggling against him, her
soon-to-be husband. Her father would be surprised—her Uncle George
as well—but she knew it was meant to be. She knew because after
they made love, Cade fell asleep, safe in her arms.

While he slept, she pondered her situation.
More than that, she plotted. It was time she stopped running from
the danger haunting her. That danger had chased her away from her
family and her home and dragged her across the prairie, but it
would stop here, it would stop now.

It wasn’t until the following morning—after
the rain had stopped and the wagon train had pulled itself back
into some sense of normality—that an idea for how it would stop
came to her.

“
Those fools who ran off when the
tea party disintegrated yesterday afternoon—Kyle, Reverend Joseph,
Elton Finch, and the Ryes—are still gone,” Mr. Evans told Cade and
a few others over breakfast. He was as gruff and angry as usual,
but concern underlined his every word. “We can’t move either train
on, to Oregon or Denver City, until we know what happened to
them.”

“
We should form search parties,”
one of his assistants said.

“
Three or four,” Mr. Evans agreed.
“That way we’ll cover more ground. Who knows how far they’ve
run.”

It was that plan that caused Lynne to light up
with ideas.

“
Cade.”

She tugged on his sleeve, drawing him aside
from the men as they began to talk about who should go with which
group and where they should begin their search. Half of the rest of
the wagon train was inching closer to see what they would decide,
including Mrs. Weingarten and Ben.

“
Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’m
not leaving you to go after them.”

“
Shh, keep your voice down,” she
whispered.

He frowned, then raised an eyebrow at her as
if he couldn’t decide whether she was being difficult. “If I ride
off to help them, there’s no telling what might happen to you
here.”

“
I know,” she said. “That’s
exactly the point.”

“
What do you mean?”

She glanced around to make sure no one was
listening. Mr. Evans had gathered a large cluster of men around him
and was speaking up so he could be heard. “We should set out as
soon as possible.”

Lynne took Cade’s arm and led him even farther
away from the group.

“
This is our chance,” she
whispered.

“
For what?” Judging by the twitch
of his lips and the twinkle in his eyes, he had a few ideas on that
account.

Lynne couldn’t help but giggle before wiping
the grin off of her face and getting down to business. “We can
catch the Briscoe Boy today.”

His teasing grin vanished, replaced by
seriousness that could teach her father a thing or two. “I don’t
know if I like this.”

“
You will.” She checked one more
time to be sure no one was listening. “If the man who is trying to
hurt me thinks that you’ve gone off to search for the others, if he
thinks that you’ve left me and that the other men have gone too,
he’ll come after me.”

“
That’s what I’m afraid of.” Cade
crossed his arms, solid and suspicious.

Lynne wasn’t deterred. “But if you didn’t
actually leave, if you only pretended to leave but, in fact, stayed
close, we could draw him out.”

“
I see.” His expression didn’t
waver, but she could see the interest in his eyes. “Go
on.”

“
I could make it known that I plan
to take a walk, to stretch my legs or some such. On my own. I’ll
let word get around the camp. Then I’ll walk out to a specific
spot, a spot where you’ll be hiding.”

“
I’m not sure—”

“
Then, when he attempts to attack
me, you can spring up from wherever you’re hiding and take him
down.”

Cade was silent for a long time after that.
His jaw was set, but his eyes flashed. Lynne took his arm, sliding
her hand into the crook of his elbow and walking with him away from
the camp. She put on a sweet smile and glanced up at him through
her lashes so that anyone watching them, any killer watching them,
would think she was just another cotton-headed woman mooning over a
man and taking a stroll with him.

“
I could carry that Cooper
concealed in my skirts,” she said when they were well out of
earshot of the rest of the train.

“
No. Absolutely no,” Cade
countered. He checked to the side to be sure no one was following
them or even interested in them. “You were terrible with that gun
when I gave it to you before.”

Lynne’s shoulders sank and her mouth turned
down in a pout. Just because he was right, didn’t mean she had to
like it. But the fact that he hadn’t dismissed her entire plan
outright was a step in the right direction.

“
I’ll need to have some means to
protect myself,” she said. She spied a copse of trees ahead that
would make a likely hiding place, another somewhat further past
that.

“
I’m your means of protecting
yourself,” Cade growled. “And you’d better believe that I’ll be
armed to the teeth.”

Lynne’s heart leapt in her chest. “So you like
the plan?”

He let out a long sigh, rubbing his face with
his free hand. “No. Not really. Not at all”

“
But?”

“
But right about now I’d be
willing to try anything to remove the threat.”

Lynne smiled. “We can make this work. I know
we can. As long as we’re prepared.”

“
I’d rather have back-up,” Cade
finished.

“
That’s a brilliant idea. I just
bet that Mr. Evans would loan you a few men to help,” she
brightened even more.

Cade paused, turning to face her and laying
calloused hands on her cheeks. He stared at her long and hard
before stepping in close for a kiss. It was a quick, possessive
kiss that said she was his and his heart belonged to
her.

“
I’m not going to do something
foolish and lose you,” he said. “We may not have known each other
long, but it’s been enough. I love you, Lynne, and I want to spend
the rest of our lives together. I’d just rather that ended up being
more than a few weeks.”

“
I won’t let him kill me, Cade, I
won’t,” she promised. “As far as we know, this Briscoe Boy only has
a knife. We have guns.”

“
We don’t know that he only has a
knife,” he corrected her. “In fact, he’d be a fool not to carry a
gun too, no matter how much he likes to slash things.”

“
But—”

He stopped her with another kiss. “It’s too
big a risk.”

“
This entire journey is too big a
risk,” Lynne argued. Deep in her gut, fear was trying to push its
way up through the excitement of taking matters into her own hands.
Fear and anger. “My Papa should have known. He shouldn’t have sent
me away at all. But,” she charged on before Cade could protest,
“but I’m so glad he did.”

She took his hands and squeezed
them.

“
I was so angry over being sent
away at first, but now I can’t wait to start our new life together.
Together, you and I. This wagon train and this trail are the best
things that have ever happened to me. I won’t let anyone or
anything stand in the way of the life we’re about to have, even if
it puts me in just a little danger. I love you.”