Lady X's Cowboy (25 page)

“Will!” she could not help crying as he lowered his head again.  His hands held the outside of her thighs.  And his mouth found her, a different kind of kiss, more private, more full.  She gripped the edge of the table as a scream climbed through her.  She briefly worried the servants might hear, but then all rational thought fled under Will’s exquisite onslaught.  She couldn’t have silenced herself if she wanted to.  No, it was impossible.
 
How could he make her feel this?  And she didn’t even know what to call what she was feeling because it was everything, it was her, it was Will, and her body couldn’t know such intoxicating pleasure.  She never thought she had the capacity, but she was bursting with it, replete.

Then she hooked her legs behind him as the tremors overtook her, the fine, diamond seizures moving through her body.

These had barely subsided before she felt him lifting her gown up completely, over her shoulders, stripping her in a fluid motion as he stood.  The nightgown joined the china dustcatchers on the floor.  He shrugged out of his braces and tossed aside his own shirt right after that. 

Evidence of his desire was written across the gleaming sculpture of his muscles.  He was immaculately crafted, an ideal of form and function, yet living and hungry.  For her.  Impossible, but real.

She hooked her fingers into the waistband of his trousers and brought him closer.  As they came together for another fevered kiss, she undid the buttons of his fly.  And then there he was, in her hand, hard and pulsing with life, with need.  She stroked him.

“God
damn
,” he growled.  She loved to see the way her touch affected him, the look of almost pain that tightened his handsome face, knotted his jaw.  Here was a man who felt his lust and reveled in it.  The pagan pleasure of his own body, and hers.  The uncertainties and disunities that plagued her were gone now in the conviction of desire.

She wanted to touch him more, but he was busy getting his legs out of his trousers.  They were flung across the room by a sharp kick, and now she and Will were both naked.  Her hand wrapped around his shaft again as their mouths intermingled; his fingers located and shaped the slickness between her legs.  She was shivering, shuddering, overcome as she continued to sit at the edge of the table.  His fingers pulled her open, just a little, just enough to accommodate, while his other hand came around to support her and hold her upright.  But she could feel the tremors in his arms and down through his hands.

His hips surged forward, she moved to meet him, and they were locked together.  Will inside her.  She around him.  They cried out in unison, almost surprised, unbalanced by the exquisite pleasure they found together.  She wrapped her arms around his shoulders.  She was no longer the brewery owner, or the
haute monde
widow.  She was Will’s, and he was hers. 

They set up a rhythm.  She forgot the world, forgot everything she knew of herself.  She had one memory, one present, one future, and that was Will, moving inside her with a friction and cadence so acute and magnificent she nearly wept from it.  And while they moved, Will growled in her ear, whisky warm, animal and possessive.

“Darlin’,” he panted, “I’m so goddamn close and I want you there with me.”

Even as he spoke her body clenched and tightened.  She gripped him hard, contracting around him.  She moaned, overwhelmed again, shot through with an agony of pleasure because this time she wasn’t alone; he was in her and she was full, so full.  He groaned her name as he gripped her, becoming rigid, and she could feel the soft, interior pulses of him emptying into her.  Such a blessed feeling.  Satiated, together. 

They gasped for air together, their bodies slick and heaving.

“Maybe someday,” she breathed, “we can make it to the bed.”

He gave her a wolfish grin.  “Honey, I believe that day is at hand.”

In due course, they did make it to the bed.  But before then, there were a lot of very interesting places to explore—a little, stiff-backed sofa, a plush footstool—and even more interesting places on Olivia that got his attention. 

Will was drunk on Olivia and couldn’t get enough.  He’d had enough of wanting Olivia, killing himself because he couldn’t have her, and now that they’d finally given in to their need for each other, he was determined to soak her up like the desert floor in rainy season.

And she was eager, too, which to his mind was the best part.  She laughed, grew serious, then frisky, as fascinated by his body as he was hers.  She whispered things to him that would make the oldest sinner blush, things she’d read about and wanted to try, and he was more than happy to oblige. 

They had themselves a fine old time.

If sometimes he found himself wishing for a little more, a small piece of her heart to go with her willing body, he made himself remember that time on earth was short, his time with her even shorter, and he needed to be glad for what he got. 

In a heap, they fell together onto her bed, and both took long drinks of water from the pitcher on her bedside table to cool themselves.  Then, quietly, they lay cupped against each other.  He couldn’t recall the last time he stayed with a woman after they’d gotten their pleasure, but he just couldn’t make himself put his clothes on and leave.  His body was a little worn out, yet he stayed because he wanted to be near her for as long as he could.

“I can’t believe you don’t have any sweethearts back home,” she murmured.

He shrugged, neither a yes or no.

Olivia rolled over to face him, propping her head on her outstretched arm.  “Hasn’t there been
one
girl you courted seriously?”

“Darlin’,” he drawled, “I’m lyin’ here with you as naked as a cat.  I don’t want to talk about other girls.”  His eyes moved over her, and he was struck again by how goddamn lucky he was to have found her, this mouth-watering willow of a woman.  Slim, but lush, white and pink and made for loving.

“I don’t mind,” she said.

It meant something to her.  She wanted to know about him, not just his life riding the range and driving cattle up, but the other side, too.

“There was one girl,” he finally said, “in Colorado Springs.”

“Oh?”  She looked both interested and a bit put out.  He could have laughed and punched himself.  “Tell me about her.”

“Not much to tell.  We’d courted for a while, and I was thinkin’ ‘bout maybe askin’ for her, then I hit the trail.  When I got back, she’d married someone else.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding particularly sorry.

Will shrugged again.  “If I’d been serious, I would’ve acted sooner.  But I kept puttin’ it off, and puttin’ it off.  It wasn’t a big surprise that she’d found herself somebody better.”

“Better than you?” she asked, her dark eyebrow as arched as her voice.  “Impossible.”

“Quiet, woman.”  He gave her behind a playful swat.  She laughed and punched him in the arm.  “There were plenty of gals who found ol’ Will Coffin to be quite a catch.”

Her dusky violet eyes serious, she said, “You are.  Any woman would be fortunate, indeed, to win you.”

Kitty, the girl he’d met the other night at the pub McNeil’s, had said almost the same thing to him, and it hadn’t meant much.  But hearing those words coming from Olivia was like drinking the best whisky—warming and dizzy-making. 

“You should have no problem finding a wife when you return,” she continued.

Frowning, he asked, “Why this fever to get me gone and hitched?  Tryin’ to tell me something?” 

She lowered her eyes, staring at his chest.  “Trying to tell myself something,” she said lowly.  “I have to keep reminding myself that you’ll be leaving, maybe soon, and you’ll find a woman more...suitable.”

As confessions went, this one made him want to snarl and cheer at the same time. “I ain’t thinkin’ about tomorrow or the next day,” he said.  “Just right now, with you.  Ain’t that enough?”

It seemed to be.  She smiled, both sad and content, and let her eyes drift shut.

His hand ran up and down the curve of her hip, a woman’s hip, full and rounded, despite her slenderness.  He spread his palm over the slight swell of her firm belly.

“Liv?”

“Mm?”

“How come you ain’t got children?”

Her eyes opened and an old shadow passed over her face.  “Yes,” she murmured, “my empty house.”

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

“You should know.”  She traced her fingers along his collarbone, the edge of the scar he’d gotten a long time ago, but her gaze was far away.  “David and I tried for several years.  Finally, I became pregnant.  He was so happy, and I was, too.  But five months into the pregnancy, there was a problem.”

He’d seen those problems before, in the ranchers’ wives, the sodbuster women having baby after baby, and soiled doves who weren’t cautious.  Sometimes the babies didn’t make it, and sometimes the women didn’t.  Or both mother and child were taken away in pine boxes.

“We called the doctor right away,” Olivia went on, “but it was too late.  I miscarried.  It was...ugly.  So much blood.  The doctor told me,” she said, her voice thickening, “that I was lucky to be alive, but there would be no children.”

“Aw, Liv,” Will said, wiping a tear away with the pad of his thumb as it trailed down her cheek.  “I’m sorry.”

She nodded, then leaned into his palm as his other hand stroked the dark silk waves of her hair.  “We asked for a second opinion, and a third, but the doctors all said the same thing.  The miscarriage had left me barren.”

He’d seen a lot of death and loss over the course of his life.  A body couldn’t live out West and not meet up with sorrow, but still, Olivia’s fate stuck in his chest like cactus needles.  She had such a warm and generous heart, just right for loving children, and to have that taken away seemed hard and cruel.

“It took almost a year for me to get well,” she continued, drawing in a breath, “and David stayed out of my bed out of deference to my health.  But even when I was completely healed, he didn’t visit me at night.  Maybe a few times, but I could tell he was not particularly enthusiastic about the idea.  Finally, I got the courage to ask him about it, and he said that he didn’t really see the point any more.”

“What?”  Will didn’t think too much could surprise him, but this did.  Surprise quickly turned to anger.  He saw red, a sudden gut-punch of rage that hit him hard and fast.

She sat up a bit, letting her hair fall into her face as if to curtain her bitterness.  “If I couldn’t conceive, then there was no reason to continue sharing a bed.  That’s what David said.”

“Are you sure he’s dead?” Will growled.  “Because if he ain’t, I’d like to beat and bury him myself.”

Her smile was rueful.  “I am quite sure David is no longer alive.  It took me a long time to determine if I was, however.”

He was so mad he could spit.  “Listen to me, Liv.”  He took both her hands in one of his own.  With his free hand, he tipped her face up so she could look him square in the eye.  “That husband of yours was an idiot, a
schmuck
.”

“I don’t know—”

“If he didn’t realize that he was the luckiest son-of-a-bitch in England because you were his wife, then he deserved to have the tar beat out of him.  And if he didn’t make love to you on account of you being unable to have babies, then it really is good that he ain’t alive any more, ’cause I surely would kill him myself.”   

She looked at him for a long time.  “I believe you,” she finally said.

He exhaled loudly, trying to calm himself down.  He really was furious.  It enraged him to think that David Xavier had been given the greatest blessing, Olivia as his wife, and thrown it away.  Few men were so favored, but Xavier had wasted his gifts. 

“Now, if you were my woman,” Will said, a smile curving one side of his mouth, “things would have been very different.”

She smiled, too, knowing and heated.  “How different?”

“Well, for starters,” he said, “every chance I got, I’d do this.”  And he pulled her against him, bringing their mouths together, open.  He let himself pretend that he had all the time in the world to explore her, as leisurely as you please, the wet inside of her mouth, her velvet-rough cat’s tongue that met his own and stirred all the way down.  Even just kissing, she had so much heat in her, she could burn a barn and whole fields with it.  Lord knew, Will was on fire.

Then she pulled back.  “Surely, you wouldn’t stop there,” she prompted.

As games went, this one surely beat horseshoes by about three hundred miles.  “Nope.  Next, I’d do this.”  He gently pushed her down onto the bed so she lay on her back.  Propped on his side, he moved his hands all along her body, shaping and sculpting her, trying to learn her as well as he knew his mountainous home and the black glittering sky above.  He took his time, feeling the warm satin of her skin flushed with desire, the bow of her collar, each breast, small but full and tipped dark pink, the echo of her ribs that tapered down to her smooth belly, the dark V of silky-crisp hair between her legs, and the legs themselves, strong and sculpted beneath ivory flesh. 

I’m praying
, he thought to himself.  He’d never been one for church, preferring to take his divine inspiration from what surrounded him.  But lying here with Olivia, touching her reverently, he felt something shift inside him, something large and profound, as though he’d finally learned the answer to a riddle he’d been trying to solve. 

But he couldn’t touch her worshipfully for very long before hunger took hold.

“That can’t be all,” Olivia said breathlessly, as hungry as he was. 

“Then I’d do this.”  He bent down and took possession of her mouth again as his hand went between her legs, finding her as she opened for him.  They moaned together as he stroked her, bringing wetness from the inside out.  Her hips bucked, urging him to go faster, be quick, but he wanted to go slow.  He wanted to draw this out, draw her out, until time melted.

His other hand cradled her breast, then found the hard tip and rubbed.  She arched, offering herself up to him.  Will wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her, but he made himself stay beside her, touching her most secret places.  Several times, he brought her right up to the edge, then slowed his pace as she panted.