Widow Woman (19 page)

"To watch you when I bed you."

Rachel gasped at the images his devastating bluntness sent rioting through her mind.

He started with a kiss that she had no thought to fight. Instead, she welcomed the flames by opening her mouth to his possessing tongue.

And while she burned, he stripped away her clothes in unhurried seduction, so the fewer layers of cotton and wool and whalebone that covered her from the chill breezes that sifted through the tiny shack, the hotter she felt.

He laid her on the bunk, and stepped back.

For a moment, she luxuriated in that fiery glow in Nick's eyes; he was a man who liked what he saw before him. Until innate curiosity pushed her to try to see what he saw. She looked down.

Her, naked. Lying on the worn blankets like the naked woman reclining on velvet she'd once seen in a painting over the bar in a Cheyenne saloon.

Abruptly and screamingly aware of her nakedness, she scrambled up the bunk to a half-sitting position as she drew the covers over her. Her crossed hands held them tightly to her shoulders.

Nick's eyes never left her as he stood at the end of the bed and deliberately stripped away his clothes, with not a hint of self-consciousness. It was like watching him rise from the water. Only this time, instead of standing still, he drew nearer, moving to the edge of the bed.

One knee compressed the mattress by her right foot, shifting the coverings from her feet. Before she knew what he was about, he'd wrapped one hand around her bare ankle.

He tugged. Not hard enough to dislodge her, but strong enough to make her know what he wanted of her.

Slowly, she slid her spine lower. He brought his other knee onto the mattress and nudged at her feet, clamped tightly together. Rather than separating, she drew them up by bending her knees, making room for him at the end of bed, watching him warily.

He watched her as closely, with no hint of wariness.

"I want to see you."

She tightened her hold on the covers at her shoulders. He slid a hand up from her ankle, over her calf, to her knee, drawing the shielding blanket with it. With an easy motion, and undeterred by her strangled protest, he flipped the loose end of the coverings aside, and she was entirely exposed to his gaze except for the angle of cloth stretching from her still rigid hands to the disposed pool of material by her hip.

His hands stroked across her thighs, hips and abdomen. Long, even slides, then shorter, brushing movements. His calluses set up a friction that brought her skin to nearly the state of heat building inside her. Breaths came short and a little desperate.

When his hand skimmed across the entrance to her body, she gasped. When he slid a finger inside her, she nearly sobbed.

He pressed deeper and she moaned.

"Bend your knees more.” The staccato words proved his lungs were no more regulated than hers.

She bent her knees, no longer clamped together, but opening to allow him greater access. A low groan came from his throat. He shifted around to replace his hand with his hips between her thighs, moving more quickly than wisely in the narrow bunk. She watched his face split into a grin wicked with mischief and lust as they seemed to teeter, together, on the edge, threatening to tumble out. Then he grasped her hips, steadying them both before he slipped his hands under her thighs, opening her legs wider yet.

Just the tip of him entered her before he held again.

In that moment, Rachel knew what she had been so afraid of with this man, why she had resisted, all these months, the draw to him. It was because his power was not that he could take from her, but that he made her want to give.

She tilted her hips, and he pushed deeper.

For the first time he closed his eyes, raising his chin to the heavens, and a fierce, exultant look drew his face taut in a way that made her think of a thousand strains of warrior blood, all coming to rest in this man.

"More.” It was no more a command than a plea, yet it was both.

She slid her hands down his back until her fingertips pressed into the hard muscles of his buttocks at the same time she lifted her hips, and took him completely.

"I want you, Nick."

His eyes opened as he bowed his back to take her nipple with his mouth, circling it with his tongue then drawing strongly. Sensation crackled through her, out to the ends of her fingers and toes and in to the deepest part of her. He grew even fuller and harder there, and she knew he had felt her reaction.

He kissed her mouth, slow and thorough, then braced himself on straightened arms by her shoulders, and began to move. He never took his eyes off her, or them, watching the movements, the joining that strained to express the tumult in their bodies.

Rachel knew he watched. But shyness had no room in her. She was too intent on this other ... on this sensation that she was reaching for something, striving somehow to match him, to be his partner.

She caught another flash of that fierce exultation in his face. The constraints of uncertainty slid away as she moved stronger, rocked against him, met his thrusts.

It felt right and powerful. And yet she knew somehow there was more. And she wanted to give it to him.

"Nick...?"

"Bend your knees.” He panted. “More."

She did, and gasped at the deeper sensation of his penetration. So deep that she raised her legs even more, and instinctively locked them over his thighs.

"
Yes
.” He sucked in a breath.

He shifted his weight to one arm and slid his free hand over her body, stroking her breast before traveling lower, to where they were joined.

"What...?"

And then she didn't care what. Or how. Or why. She cared only where, and not even where where was, but that she was reaching it, climbing it. To the top, to the very highest point where sun and wind met earth in a whirl of elements that came together for a glorious, suspended instant of perfect balance, then collided in a deafening cacophony of sensation. Nick above her, in her, with her.

She floated easily to rest, to lie in the narrow, simple bunk with Nick pressing into her, in complete contentment. When her weighted eyelids at last rose lazily, she found Nick watching her.

"That never happened for you before.” No question crept into his voice. He knew it.

"No."

"There's more."

She didn't believe him. But it didn't really matter. She stood once more on level ground, yet could look at the height she'd reached, content to know that what had been hidden to her for so long was now something she had seen.

And to know that Nick had taken her there.

They spent all that afternoon, the night and the following morning wrapped in each other in the narrow bunk.

They left it only when Nick dressed and tended to the animals. Rachel would fix simple food, wash up and put clothes on. Nick would take them off her first thing.

The talk was sporadic, but the loving wasn't. Rachel immersed herself in sensations. She had never imagined so many ways to find pleasure in the joining of a man and a woman. She had never imagined so much contentment in simply stroking the dark-haired arms that encircled her.

That next afternoon, though, when Nick came in, he said without preamble, “Weather's breaking. You'll get through to the main ranch in a couple days."

Her gaze jerked to his. His dark eyes regarded her inscrutably. She'd become so used to the desire in his eyes that this old look struck her like a dash of cold water.

"You'll come with me to the shed this evening, and be out a while tomorrow. Start getting you out before you make that ride."

Over the next thirty hours, as Nick put his words into action, Rachel sensed something slipping away from her. Or someone.

Nick's touch hadn't changed, and the effect of his touch had only strengthened. But she could feel him withdrawing from her. As the time before her leaving dwindled, she became more direct in trying to get him to give her something of himself beyond passion.

"You never talk about your family."

Silence.

"Your sister, where's she?"

"Texas."

"Is she ... is she all right now that ... now?"

"Yes.” The next words seemed to drag out of him. “I took her to the sisters at a mission there. They cared for her, healing her leg. It's where she went to school as a girl after ... It's familiar. Safe."

Heartened that he'd answered, she kept on. “What's she like?"

He shrugged, the movement a muscled wave under her head. “Dark. Dark hair, eyes—"

"Like you."

"Like me.” A solitary thread of amusement entered his voice. “But she's pretty. And gentle.” The amusement faded, replaced by something almost fragile. “A gentle woman. Like our mother."

He gave a sharp, deep breath, and she knew the mood was gone.

"You mother taught you to read, didn't she?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Something in your face when I said about Mama teaching me."

"Yes, she taught me. Then I taught my sister."

She smoothed a palm over his chest, gentling even before she asked, “Because your mother had died?"

"Yes."

"How old were you?"

"What does all this matter?"

"I want to know you. Nick,” she said simply.

"To know me? You already know I killed my sister's husband.” He threw off the covers and swung his legs over the side, twisting to stare at her furiously. “You know I'm wanted in Texas. You know I've followed the cattle, like a lot of other nobody hands."

He rose, as unabashedly naked as he had been that day at Jasper Pond, but with such different emotions in his eyes. Rachel sat, holding the covers to her breasts, watching him, as he took two steps, then demanded in a harsh voice, “Do you also want to know I've been a gambler and a horse trader? That my mother died too soon, weakened by my father's beatings and by having too damned gentle a soul? Do you want to know that my father barely tolerated my sister and me when our mother lived, and that after she died, he turned his fury on my sister? I'd reached a size by then I could give back a blow, so he stayed clear of me.

"Until the night he was so drunk he forgot to lock me out while he beat on her. And when I tried to put him out of the stinking room we had over the meat shop, he drew a knife and tried to kill me. Only he was so damn drunk, he fell backward down the stairs before he could cut out my heart the way he promised. Or do you want to know that my father did not die soon enough? Are those the things you want to know?"

His bitterness and pain battered at her, but she didn't bend.

"Yes, those are things I want to know."

Emotion bled from his eyes, and watching that was no easier than if she'd watched him shed his life's blood.

Desire had drawn him across the distance he kept from people, but now he retreated, perhaps even deeper than before.

"There is something about me you should know.” The quiet, cool voice of his first months at the Circle T chilled her beyond where the air touched her bare skin.

"What's that, Nick?"

"I bought the old Wallace spread. That's why Andresson's there this winter."

"Oh.” Thoughts and emotions tumbled and spilled into the yawning pit of her heart.

"I made an offer before I came to the Circle T.” He sat sideways on the edge of the bed. “The dealing took longer than I expected, but I got the papers during the drive to Hammer Butte. I was set to tell Shag when I got final wages, but..."

"But we asked you to stay on."

"Yes."

"I suppose you'll be leaving."

He gave her a sharp look, but said nothing.

"Stands to reason,” she said as steadily as she could. “You wouldn't have bought a spread if you wanted to spend the rest of your days working someone else's.” And he wouldn't have brought it up now if it hadn't been a means of putting something between them.

"No."

"So, I figure you'll have cattle of your own—"

"A cowhand's not supposed to own cattle."

"I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong."

He relaxed some. “I don't own a single head of beef cattle. There's a milk cow Davis is tending, a couple pigs and chickens. Not enough to keep a man alive if we hadn't put up supplies."

"Oh.” She went carefully. “Sounds like you have a ways to go before you're ready to work the place yourself."

"A ways,” he agreed.

"So, you won't be leaving just yet."

"No.” His voice changed, and he ran his fingertips down her bare arm. “Not just yet."

She released the covers and reached for him.

They set out the next morning.

Even with the horses picking their way around still-deep drifts, the journey didn't take much longer than usual.

They talked no more than necessary, and for that Nick was thankful. He didn't know how he would have stood up to Rachel asking her kind of questions, not this near to their returning to the way things had been.

Now, with the main ranch in sight, one thing needed saying. He brought Brujo beside the little chestnut she rode.

"Rachel."

She turned, and he had all he could do not to take her face between his hands and cover her mouth with his.

"Yes?"

"I want you to know...” He couldn't find the right, soft words. “The way things were at the shack, with us, that all stays there. I won't be trying to bring that here, or to have it change the way things are on the Circle T. I'll return to the shack first light, and when I come back to ready for spring roundup same as the others, it'll be just like before."

She said nothing, staring straight ahead between the chestnut's ears toward the main house.

"You understand, Rachel?"

"I understand. But there's no need for you to go back to the shack. You ... you could stay at the main ranch, Nick."

"No."

"It won't be long before the weather breaks for good and you'd be here anyway, so what difference does it make?"

The difference was she'd be sleeping in a second-floor bedroom, between clean, fresh sheets as befitted the Circle T's owner, and he'd be in the bunkhouse, too far to suit him but too damn close for his ease. At the shack, he wouldn't have to fight the urge to cover the distance between them every damn minute.