down the house.
But she was not. Her fingers grazed his nape, and she felt absurdly
comfortable in his arms. He was dragging her out to the hay, she
thought, and she did not care.
Nor was there anything secretive or furtive about his action. He moved
with long strides and went down the stairway with little effort to be
quiet. He opened the front door, bracing her weight with one arm, then
let it close behind him. He stood on the porch and looked out into the
night. Then he stared at her, and she knew that she was smiling.
"Where am I heading?"
"I don't know."
"Where do the hands sleep?"
"In the bunkhouse, by the far barn."
"Then I want the first barn?" he demanded softly. She couldn't answer
him.
She wasn't sure what the question was. All she could think was that he
meant her to sleep in the hay.
She wasn't sure what else he meant for her to do there, but though she
was in his arms now, and though he carried her with a certain force, she
suddenly knew that what happened would be her choice. Still, he had
caught hold of something deep within her, and she wasn't angry.
She smiled again as she looked at him and told him primly, "You, sir,
are completely audacious." "Maybe," he said, and smiled in return. Then
it seemed they were locked there in the night, their eyes touching, and
something else touching maybe, with the tenderness of the laughter they
shared. Then the laughter faded.
He pulled her more tightly against him, higher within his arms. And as
she watched him, fascinated, in the glow of the moonbeams, his lips
parted upon hers, and the world seemed to explode as his kiss entered
into her.
Darkness swirled around her, and sensation took flight. She had to get
away from him. and quickly.
No. she had to stay. She was where she wanted to be. Exactly where she
wanted to be.
Chapter Eight.
He carried her, in the moonlit night, to the barn. He entered it and
laid her, in her cocoon of covers, in the rear of the building, where
soft alfalfa lay freed from its bales, ready to be tossed to the horses.
The smell of the hay was sweet, almost intoxicating.
He lay down beside her and brought the back of his hand against her
cheek, touching the length of it, as if he studied just her cheek and
found the form and texture both beautiful and fascinating. Then his
finger roamed over the damp fullness of her lip. He watched the movement
as he touched her, then his eyes met hers. She could still feel, in her
memo~j, in the pulse that seemed to beat throughout her, the touch of
his lips against hers. And yet when he kissed her again, though the feel
was poignant, she knew that he would move away when he did.
He lay back against the hay, staring at the rafters and the ceiling.
He groaned softly, then rolled suddenly, violently, to face her again.
He didn't touch her, but leaned on an elbow to stare at her
reproachfully.
"You couldn't have just arranged a room, for me, huh?"
"You couldn't have just stuck around for a while, huh?" ahe retorted.
He was ruining it, dissolving the moonbeams, destroying the moment she
had imagined and waited for.
He rolled on his back again.
"Go to your room," he told her.
"I had no right to drag you out here."
Tess leaped to her feet, her cheeks flaming, her body and soul in
torment.
She stared at him furiously.
"You have no right to do what you're doing now! To ruin everything!"
"To ruin everything?" He scowled.
"Tess! I'm trying damned hard to do the decent thing!" And she would
never know what an effort it was taking. He felt on fire, as if he
burned in a thousand hells. It had been all right before he touched her,
before he felt her lips parting beneath his.
Before he sensed her innocence and the sweet wildness beneath it, the
passion, the sensuality that simmered and swept beneath it all, that
promised heaven. She was different. He wasn't sure if he dared take her
all the way, because he knew it would mean fragile ties that might bind
him forever. He couldn't find a simple fascination in her beauty; it
would be more, and though he couldn't begin to define it, it was there.
He already slept with dreams of her haunting his mind; he never forgot
for a moment the way she had looked upon the rock, as naked as Eve, as
tempting as original sin.
"Tess, don't you see? I'm trying to let you go!" She paused, and it
seemed that she waited upon her toes, as if she would go or stay
according to the way the breeze came.
There was a curiously soft smile on her face, almost wistful, a look he
had seldom seen.
"What if I don't want to be let go?" she asked him very quietly, with a
breathless, melodic whisper. He wasn't sure he had really heard the
words.
Real or not, they ignited embers within him. He came to his feet and
looked at her across the small, shadowed distance that separated them.
He could almost reach out and touch her. If he did, he would be lost. If
he put his hands upon her now, he would never let her go.
"You have to make up your mind." He almost growled the words.
"No strings, no promises, no guarantees. You should run. You should run
from me just as fast as one of those thoroughbreds of yours."
"Why?"
She didn't move; she hadn't taken a step. There was a note of amusement
and challenge in her voice. Her chin was raised high; her eyes were
brilliant, nearly coal-black in the shadows. He forced himself to walk
around her, but that was a mistake. The moon was filtering through the
windows, and the light played havoc with the flannel gown she wore.
Light touched fabric, molded it, saw through it. He felt again the
softness of the woman he had held, and his hands itched to touch her
again. A hunger took root inside him, one that made him long to caress
and taste and know.
"Why?" He repeated her question.
The reasons were swiftly leaving his mind. If she was willing, he was
more than anxious to drown in the sweet depths of her fascinating
waters. He clenched his fingers and kept moving casually.
"Because we're in a barn, because I've the distinct feeling you don't
know what you're doing, because you're young and because you're probably
the type of woman who ought to fall in love, deeply in love, with the
right man, and have a band of gold, and all the rest. Because I'm the
hardened refuse of an ill-fated war, and though I don't mind a fight, I
wouldn't be looking for more than a lover."
She smiled.
"Lieutenant, what makes you think I'd be looking for anything more than
a lover?"
He almost groaned aloud. If she didn't leave soon. "Tess, I don't think
you know" -- "I'm twenty-four, Lieutenant. And just as much the refuse
of an ill-fated war as you are. That war taught me a great deal. You
can't always wait to seize what you want. Life is too short, too quickly
severed."
She was smili
ng still, and there was something poignant about her words
that caught hold of his heart. He had never seen her more beautiful,
more feminine, more arresting. Her eyes were wide; her smile was gentle;
her still form was compelling in the flannel that was draped over her
shoulders, nearly falling from them, that conformed to the rise of her
breasts, then fell to the floor. Her hair was a river of dating, honeyed
light that caressed and embraced her, waving around her shoulders and
falling almost to her waist. Her eyes. When he came close, he saw that
they were not coal-black at all, but so deeply colored in the near
darkness that they appeared to be a rich and hypnotic purple.
He held still. He watched her and tried to find the fight words, the
words that would get her to leave. She would hate him for humiliating
and rejecting her, but maybe that would be better than what he wanted.
To own her, to have all of her, to teach her everything she wanted to
know so thoroughly that she would forget everything but the feel of him
beside her.
"Come here then," he said hoarsely.
She still seemed to pause. Like a sprite, like a night witch or angel,
he knew not which. A rueful curve came to her lips, and she said softly,
"Jamie?"
"What?"
"Where did you take your bath?"
He smiled, too.
"At the livery stables. Not at the saloon."
"Thank you," she murmured, then she took a step toward him, and another
step, and she was in his arms.
His mouth closed upon hers, and he let his hands wander where they
would. He had tried to do the decent thing. And it hadn't worked. So
now. She was fragrant, like a drug. He breathed in the scent of her hair
and the scent of her flesh. He kissed her lips and her earlobe, and he
pressed his tongue against the surge of her pulse at her throat, and he
took her lips again, savoring the caress of her tongue, feeling the rise
of heat and need and the rampant beat in his loins as the thrusts of
their tongues became ever more erotic and telling. He stroked her body
through the flannel, caressing her breast, finding the peak and
massaging it to a hard pebble with his thumb and fingers. Then he cried
out and lowered his mouth upon her, his teeth grazing the fullness of
her breast and the hard peak through the fabric, the dampness of his
mouth pervading it and bringing whispers and whimpers to her lips.
She braced herself upon his shoulders, and cried out, falling against
him.
Trembling, he lifted her and set her on the cocoon of sheet and quilt in
the hay. Then he stood over her, watching her. He ripped away the
kerchief at his throat and slowly undid the buttons of his shirt. He
watched her all the while, but her eyes did not close. He threw his
shirt upon the hay, and pulled off his boots and socks, unbuckled his
gun belt and then his pants belt and finally peeled away the last of his
clothing. Her eyes closed at last, but not before her cheeks had taken
on a dusky hue.
"You can still run," he told her harshly.
She shook her head. Her hair lay spread across the quilt and sheet and
dangled into the hay around them. He knelt before 'her and set his hand
upon the hem of her gown, pushing it up.
She had beautiful feet. Small, the toenails neatly manicured. Her ankles
were trim. Her calves were shapely.
He paused to press kisses against her kneecaps, then he continued,
thrusting the gown up to her hips where he paused because his breath had
caught. The entire length of her legs was fine and beautiful, and her
hips were seducflared. Her waist was very narrow, and she was endowed
with the same touch of honey hair to add even greater purity and
innocence to her beauty.
That very touch of purity seemed to be driving him insane. A ragged
pulse beat at his groin, and in his mind, and raged throughout his fin-
gem and his limbs and all of his body. He buried his face Ilgainst her
belly, and a harsh sound escaped him, a cry of ~onging, of need, of
desperate desire.
Some soft sound esi~aped her, and she gasped when his lips moved upon
her fi~h, when he turned his head against her, his hair teasing the
flesh of her abdomen, then his kiss and lips caressing it As he kissed
her he continued to push the gown up. The flannel raked over her
breasts, over her hardened nipples.
He rose and knelt over her again, taking each breast fully into his
mouth.
She was alabaster, as perfect as marble with the dusky, rose-tipped
peaks, so hard, so compelling, drawing his body into a tighter, harder
knot all the while, exciting him to an ungodly high with the mere
whisper of her breath, the tiny gasps that escaped her, the sultry,
sensual way her body moved against him. Such little movements, as if she
was afraid, as if she discovered the haunting rhythms of making love.
He paused, meeting her eyes. Half-closed eyes--dazed, damp, luminous and
honest--meeting his. Her gaze fell upon his naked and aroused body, and
her eyes widened again. They met his again, and the beautiful flush of
rose came to her cheeks. He reached for her gown and pulled it over her
around him, but that served to press them together, all their nakedness,
and he felt her breasts upon his chest as thoroughly as he knew that she
felt the ripple of his muscle and the blinding heat that led him now.
He pressed her into the quilt, down, down, into the hay. He crawled over
her again, seizing hold of her lips, kissing her until her breath came
raggedly, until her breasts rose and fell heatedly in his hands, until
she trembled wherever he touched her. Then he kissed her breasts again,
fascinated by the shape and texture and by the perfect marble beauty. He
lowered himself against her, near blinded by his own need yet driven to
see that she felt no pain, that she savored this time between them as he
did, that she remember the passion; the desperation, the aching, longing
need.
He kissed her between her breasts, then strayed down the length of her
breastbone. He touched her ribs with the tip of his tongue and delved
deeply into her navel the same way. And then he dropped his head still
lower. He felt her legs quiver and a quickening within her and heard the
soft, 159 shocked protest on her lips. But he ignored her and made love
completely to her, delving into the very femininity of her. She cried
out, this time not so softly. He laced his fin gets with hers and
touched and delved ever deeper. He brought the searing, damp heat of his
kiss and earess to the very bud of her desire. Her fingers tightened
painfully around his, but he wedged himself firmly_ between her thighs
and tenderly caressed her. She whimpered, tossing her head so her hair
spread out like a burst of sunrise. And still he drank ever more deeply
of her sweet scent and taste, until he could feel the pulse of desire
rising within her.
He crawled atop her then, discovering her eyes dosed, her face ashen.
And yet her fingers dug into his shoulders, and when he carefully
lowered himself over her and pushed slowly within her, he found her damp
and welcoming. He watched her face even as he thrust past the portals of
her innocence, and she never cried out or murmured a single protest or
whimper.
He sheathed himself slowly inside her, then he held and caught hold of
her chin.
Her eyes flew open, so large and dark, then they fluttered closed again
as he took her lips and caressed her with long, slow, leisurely
kisses--taking all of her mouth, exploring, tasting, savoring. And as he
kissed her he began to move within her, strokes as soft as velvet, slow
and evoea- five, coercive.
He felt something give within her when the pain had ~ faded and the new
pleasure began. There was an easing of her arms around him, and her
long, enchanting legs wound tightly around him. Her fingertips grazed
his shoulders, the nails lightly stroking. Soft sounds of passion began
to escape her.
He thrust hard then, unleashing the passion that had grown and simmered
and become explosive 'within him. He moved like the wind and like the
earth, and he whispered to words that meant nothing, words that barely
found and yet words that meant everything. Their lips met again and
again, parted, fused and sealed together, as did their bodies. He felt
himself grow slick with the heat they ignited in the night, and he knew
that he could not hold on much longer. And still he fought the climax
that clamored in his loins, in his heart, in his mind. He fought it,
driving her ever upward, leaving her shivering in moonbeams, taking her
ever higher. Then he felt it. A wild stiffening in her body, a stark
moment in which she seemed to fight him, then she was trembling beneath
him in great shudders.
He cast back his head. He felt a groan rumbling in his throat just as
the heat and fever and excitement within him drew to a massive pitch.
The sound escaped him, the life and energy and heat of his body shot
from him, filling her.
Again and again, shudders seized him, and he filled her again and again.
Then he wrapped his arms around her and held her very tightly. He eased
to her side, taking his weight from her but keeping his arms around her
so that she fell atop him. She sighed softly. Damp tendrils of her hair
curled over him. He touched it and remembered wondering how it would