Only Love (14 page)

“There,” Whip said. “That should do it.”

Shannon let out a sigh of relief and tried to relax. She didn’t know her own body when Whip was this close to her, moving against her, sharing the very air she breathed.

“Lean back against me,” he said.

“Why?”

“Do you want that hat fixed or not?”

Grumbling, Shannon leaned back until she felt the hard coils of the bullwhip on Whip’s shoulder. Her hat loosened, shifted, and was tugged firmly back into place on top of her head by Whip’s hand.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Better. But now my hair is in my face.”

“You’re more trouble than a sack full of puppies.”

Despite his complaint, Whip was smiling as he reached around Shannon, caught the lock of hair, and tucked it behind her ear.

“All set?” Whip asked.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Nothing else bothering you?”

“No.”

“Good. I want you to be able to concentrate on what you’re feeling.”

“Right now I’m feeling—
Whip!”

“Hang on to that tarpaulin, honey girl. The hail is damned cold.”

Shannon barely heard Whip’s words. His big hand had slid inside her jacket and cupped her right breast. Slowly, tenderly, he caressed her until her nipple peaked. He caught the hardened tip between his fingers and pinched lightly.

A gasp came from Shannon as fire licked out from her breast, consuming her. The flames leaped higher as Whip kneaded her soft flesh and tugged at the nipple until it stood proudly against her worn shirt.

“There are times when leather gloves are a real nuisance,” Whip said. “Help me, honey girl. Set your teeth in the leather and pull.”

“But—”

“I’m just giving you the answer to your question
about how you can learn without being touched. You can’t. So I’m touching you. If you don’t like the way I’m doing it, tell me what’s wrong and I’ll change it.”

Shannon bit down on her lip, trying not to cry out as Whip’s fingers teased and delighted her at the same time.

“Shannon?”

The low word was her name and a question and a caress spoken against the nape of her neck.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

“Yes. No. I don’t know!”

She took a swift, wild breath. The movement pressed her nipple against Whip’s hand. Pleasure rippled through her.

“Yes,” Shannon whispered. “Touch me. Teach me.”

Whip tried to still the elemental response of his body to her husky words.

It was impossible.

Thank God it’s the middle of a hailstorm,
Whip thought ruefully.
I’m going to have a hell of a time stopping at a little petting.

“Help me with this glove,” he said in a low voice. “It will feel much better. For both of us.”

Whip’s hand lifted from Shannon’s breast and slid up to her chin, then her lips. Blindly she found the tip of one of his fingers, bit down on the leather, and tugged. She did the same with each finger until he was able to free himself of the glove.

Instantly his hand returned to her breast. Beneath her unbuttoned jacket, his fingertips circled the rigid peak without touching it.

“Does this feel better for you?” Whip asked huskily. “It damn well does for me. You make me
think of hot satin and sunlight and a slow, aching kind of lovemaking.”

Shannon bit back a cry. Her back arched as she tried to bring Whip’s hand closer to her hungry nipple.

With a smile that Shannon couldn’t see, Whip bent his head and nudged her hat upward until he could set his teeth against the nape of her neck.

The primitive caress dragged a low sound from Shannon’s throat. She bent her head to give Whip greater freedom and was rewarded by another hot, tender bite. At the same time, his fingers caught her nipple and plucked.

Fire blossomed in Shannon’s belly. She didn’t know that her shirt was giving way a button at a time, making room for Whip’s big hand. She only knew that her skin was on fire and his fingers were hard, cool, delicious in their blind caresses.

Whip felt the shiver that went through Shannon’s soft breast, felt the rigid crown he had drawn from her, and wished that they were naked in a warm bed rather than fully clothed with a hailstorm beating at their frail shelter.

With a throttled groan, Whip eased his hand over to Shannon’s left breast. It was already firm, pouting for his touch, and when he plucked the nipple, it became a velvet dagger thrusting against his palm.

“You have the most responsive breasts,” Whip said. “A touch, and they harden.”

“I don’t—they don’t usually—I mean—unless it’s cold—wet—oh Lord, I can’t think.”

Whip smiled to know that he had taken the sharp edge off Shannon’s wit and replaced it with the scattered words of a woman whose body was focused entirely on pleasure. It was worth the ache
in his crotch to hear her ragged breathing, to feel her writhe slowly against his hand, to sense the sweet violence of the heat gathering between her legs.

“Passion,” Whip said huskily.

“What?”

It was a sigh as much as a question. His hand slid from satin slope to velvet crown and back.

“You,” Whip said. “It’s passion that draws your nipples so tight.”

“It’s—your fingers.”

Laughing, Whip bit the nape of Shannon’s neck again. Then he licked the indentations where his teeth had tested the sweetness of her skin.

She moaned and pushed back against him, increasing the force of the caress.

A torrent of heat went through Whip, focusing him in the aroused flesh that now was pressed against Shannon’s hip. His teeth raked over her nape less gently than he had intended, but she didn’t complain. Instead, she moved against him again, and again he let her feel the lover’s caress of his teeth against her nape.

“Like that?” he murmured.

Shannon’s answer was a sound that had no meaning, but the slow rocking of her hips between Whip’s thighs told him all that he needed to know. He bit her with savage restraint as his hand swept down her body and burrowed between her thighs.

Her breath came in with a swift, ripping sound. Her whole body stiffened as though struck by lightning.

“Easy,” Whip murmured.

The advice was as much for himself as it was for Shannon. Through the old trousers she wore, Whip could sense the steamy heat between her legs.

A blast of hail hammered over the tarpaulin. Neither Shannon nor Whip noticed. They were both riveted by the sultry flesh that throbbed only inches from his hand.

“I won’t hurt you,” Whip said in a low voice. “I just want to feel the fire I’ve started. I want you to feel it, too. Open your legs, honey girl.”

With a shudder, Shannon leaned against Whip fully and gave him what he wanted. Long fingers slid over her, pressed teasingly, cupped her, and held her in the palm of his hand. Slowly his hand rocked back and forth, opening her legs wider, pressing suddenly, urgently, sending a shock of pleasure surging up her body.

Shannon whimpered.

Whip’s hand gentled, simply holding her.

It wasn’t enough. Instinctively Shannon moved her hips, wanting more of the pleasure he had given her.

Whip unfastened her pants, smiling as he realized that he had never undone a fly before and found a woman’s very different flesh awaiting him.

“Whip—your hand—”

“Yes. My hand. Your softness. God, you are soft. Creamy soft and so hot it makes me want to—”

With a curse Whip bit back his incautious words. If he thought about how good it would feel to press into Shannon’s sultry, clinging heat, he would probably do something stupid like open his pants and slide her soft little rump into his lap and himself into her at the same time.

Not yet. She’s still too naive. She’s got to know what she’s asking me for when she watches me and smiles and crosses the room to stand next to me.

When she knows what she wants, I’ll give it to her. Every hot, aching inch of it.

Shannon made a ragged sound as she felt Whip’s palm nestling deeper and deeper between her legs, rubbing over her while pleasure coiled and coiled and coiled until it burst and spilled hotly over his caressing hand.

“I didn’t mean—I’m sorry—I don’t—I can’t—help it—” Shannon said jerkily.

“Help what?”

His hand moved and satin fire pooled again in his palm.

Shannon moaned as pleasure coiled even more deeply for having known just a small release.

“That,” she said raggedly.

Whip smiled despite the need raking him. He stroked Shannon again, pressing against the satin knot that stood out from her lush flesh. She shivered and heat licked over him in sultry caress.

“That,” Whip said huskily, “is the purest kind of honey.”

Shannon looked down and saw Whip’s hand moving inside her loose trousers, between her legs, touching her as she had never been touched.

“I shouldn’t—let you.”

“We’re just playing, honey girl. Men and women do this all the time. It’s a way of finding out if you want to play for real.”

Slick fingertips circled the knot Whip had drawn from Shannon’s softness. Instantly she stiffened and shuddered and cried out with surprise.

“Am I hurting you?” Whip asked.

“No,” she said, her voice ragged. “It feels—strange.”

“Strange bad or strange good?”

As Whip asked, he plucked and felt the hot rush of Shannon’s response spilling over his hand.

“Your body says that it feels good,” he said, biting her neck. “Damned good.”

Shannon’s only answer was a whimper and a jerk of her hips with each deft motion of his hand. Pressure coiled and coiled and coiled, driving her toward something she had never known.

“Whip! I can’t—stop! Stop! I’m scared!”

“It’s all right, honey girl. You’re nearly there. Lie back against me and let me take you the rest of the way.”

Shannon tried to answer, but Whip was caressing the lush, soft flesh between her legs. She whimpered as pleasure clenched tightly, summoned by his fingers and the pressure of his teeth at the nape of her neck. Helplessly her hips rocked and lifted, seeking something she couldn’t name.

Whip knew what Shannon sought. He circled the knot of her passion, caressing her with fingers slick from her wild response. He heard her whimpers come more quickly, felt the tension drawing her body until it was rigid, shaking.

Shannon’s breath fragmented over Whip’s name and she convulsed with a pleasure that was beyond anything she had eve imagined. Helpless in the grip of ecstasy, she called his name again and again.

It took an act of will for Whip to stop caressing the honey and silk between Shannon’s legs. He wanted to sheathe himself in the fire of her body, to feel her softness caress him with every sweet surge of her release.

And then he wanted to spend himself in her fire until he couldn’t remember what it was like to go hungry, aching with each breath, each heartbeat.

Shannon made a broken sound and moved against his hand. Heat pulsed between their skin.
The air beneath the tarpaulin was steamy, mysterious, exciting beyond anything Whip had ever known.

“You’re everything your walk hinted you were,” he said roughly. “Honey and fire.”

Whip set his jaw against the temptation offered by the girl lying so seductively between his legs, her body open to his hand. Slowly, feeling as though he were tearing off his own skin, he forced himself to release the sultry, honeyed flesh.

He wasn’t nearly so slow about getting out from under the steamy intimacy of the tarpaulin. A few swift, savage motions of his hands tucked the tarpaulin around Shannon, protecting her from the violent weather.

“Stay here until the storm’s over,” Whip said.

“What about you?” asked a muffled voice.

“I’m hot enough to burn ice.”

Hail beat on Whip’s body as he went to check on the horses. Grimly he hoped it would put out the fire.

It didn’t.

“A
NY
better luck?” Shannon asked, looking up from the campfire.

“Same as yesterday,” Whip said, bending to scratch Prettyface’s ears.

Afraid that Whip would see her fear, Shannon looked away from him to Grizzly Meadow where the two horses and the mule were grazing, their tails lazily swatting flies. Golden, slanting light spilled over the land, infusing it with the first rush of true summer heat.

Six days.

For six days Whip had gone up to the Rifle Sight claim while she stayed in the camp. For six days he had hammered with pickax and determination on the stone shoulder of the mountain.

For six days all Whip had found was the sweat dripping down his nose.

“Tomorrow,” Shannon said. “It will be better tomorrow. Or the day after.”

Whip didn’t say anything. He simply slid his big hand under Prettyface’s chin and rubbed until the dog’s eyes glazed over with pleasure.

When Shannon turned back to Whip, she saw the dark smudges beneath his eyes and the trails perspiration
had made through the rock dust coating his entire body. Each afternoon she washed in a basin and rinsed in the stream before he came back. Then she heated more water for Whip’s bath. Each night she washed his clothes, and the following day they came back to her stiff with sweat and grit.

Whip had protested that he could work in dirty clothes. Shannon had simply shaken her head and scrubbed harder. It was all she could do to make his work easier. She wished she could do more.

“You should take a day off,” Shannon said softly. “You look tired. You work too hard. All day. Every day. You hardly even take time to eat.”

“It makes me sleep well at night.”

That was true, as far as it went. But it said nothing about how often Whip woke up during the night, sweating from forehead to heels, aching, his body rigid with a kind of hunger he had never known.

Whip wondered if Shannon felt the same.

He wondered, but he didn’t ask. Six days ago he had shown her what passion was all about. If she didn’t want more, he wasn’t going to push himself on her.

It was Shannon’s turn to do the asking, and to do it plainly. Blushes and longing looks were for virgins who didn’t know what they were asking for, much less how to ask for it. Pretty widows who had just had their first taste of pleasure knew enough about men and sex to recognize the signs of male hunger.

“Sit down on that log,” Shannon said. “I heated enough water so that you could take a basin bath.”

“Are you saying I smell like old Razorback?”

Shannon ducked her head and looked at Whip
from beneath her eyelashes, trying to decide if he was teasing her or simply asking a question. Since the hailstorm, her relationship with Whip had changed in ways she didn’t understand. He rarely teased her anymore.

And he never kissed her, held her, caressed her until the world came apart around her and she cried out with pleasure.

“You always smell good to me,” Shannon said hesitantly. “I just know that rock dust is uncomfortable.”

“Another thing Silent John told you?”

She shook her head. “I learned it the same way you did, at the dumb end of a pickax.”

Whip’s mouth opened but no words came out. He simply stared at Shannon, unable to believe that her slender arms had ever swung a pickax.

“Well, don’t look so shocked,” Shannon said. “I’m not nearly as helpless as you think.”

He grunted. “You’re not nearly as skillful as
you
think.”

“I can’t swing an ax or a pick like you,” she said tartly, “but I can get a job done if I stay with it, and getting the job done is what matters.”

With that, Shannon turned back to the fire. Irritation prickled through her. It had become a common sensation in the past few days. She was forever balanced on the razor edge of her temper…and she didn’t know why.

“Did you find any gold while you were swinging that pick?” Whip asked Shannon.

“No, but I was working a landslide that covered most of the Chute. Rifle Sight is richer.”

“According to Silent John.”

“I’ve seen some of the ore he brought back,” Shannon said. “There was so much gold in the
quartz that the chunks came apart in your hands. He called it jewelry rock.”

“He must have cleaned out that vein. From what I’ve seen, you could work all summer in Rifle Sight and not find enough gold to pay for your supplies.”

Fear breathed coolly down Shannon’s spine. The gold claims were her freedom. Without them, she was at the mercy of strangers.

“The gold is there,” she said tightly.

Whip grunted.

From the corner of her eyes, Shannon watched Whip stretch his arms and shoulders, loosening muscles drawn tight from hour after hour of hard labor. The shirt he wore was dark with sweat, and it clung to every powerful line of his body.

Lord, but that is one beautiful man,
Shannon thought.
Just looking at him makes me all edgy and short of breath. When I think of him touching me again…

A delicious sensation cascaded through Shannon’s body at the memory of what had happened beneath the tarpaulin. She hadn’t imagined that pleasure like that existed short of paradise.

At first the experience had left her feeling shy with Whip. The fact that he hadn’t spoken about it in any way since then, or even so much as touched her in passing, had only increased her shyness.

And her irritation.

She didn’t understand what had happened when Whip touched her so intimately. She only knew that she wanted it to happen again. Soon.

But obviously Whip didn’t feel the same way. He hadn’t touched her.

Maybe I should try touching him.

“Would you like me to wash your hair?” Shannon
asked. “I know how awkward it is to do in a basin.”

The thought of how good her fingers would feel rubbing over his scalp made Whip’s body tighten despite the punishing hours of labor he had just finished. His own relentless sexual response to Shannon made his mouth flatten into a harsh line. He didn’t like wanting a woman to the point that his body wasn’t his own anymore, no matter how hard he worked to exhaust himself.

“No,” Whip said curtly. “I’ve managed my whole grown life without a handmaid. No point in taking up such foolishness now.”

“Well, do go and eat some wasps,” Shannon retorted. “It will make your tongue seem sweet by comparison.”

Whip grabbed the basin of hot water and stalked off toward a nearby grove of aspen trees, where there was an icy creek to use for rinsing off soap. Prettyface followed, leaping and prancing like a puppy. He loved playing tag with shots of water from Whip’s quick hands.

“That’s it, Prettyface,” Shannon called after them. “Desert me! Go follow the yondering man who smiles like a fallen angel and has a temper fully suited to hell!”

Both males ignored Shannon.

With a frustrated sound, she turned back to camp, looking for something to vent her irritability on. All that came to hand was the pickax leaning against the log next to her shotgun.

“I’m not mad enough to hammer stone…
yet,”
she muttered.

She tested the water in the bucket, which was hanging from a cast-iron tripod over the fire. The water was lukewarm. Barely.

“Go ahead, take all day to heat up,” Shannon muttered. “I’ve got nothing better to do than stand around sticking my finger in cold water.”

She hovered around the campfire, feeding fuel into it, testing the water, and wondering if fire burned colder in the high mountains. Surely it didn’t take this long to heat water at the cabin.

“I’ve got the hot spring at the cabin,” Shannon reminded herself. “It takes no time at all to get a bucket of hot water for washing clothes.”

Sighing, Shannon tested the water for the fifteenth time. It was passably warm.

“Finally. Now I can do the wash. Thunder and blazes, I can see why folks run around in dirty clothes a Comanchero would be ashamed to wear. Heating water for baths and such could make a body crazy.”

Just as Shannon bent to take the bucket from the tripod, Prettyface broke into a savage kind of barking that was more a snarling howl of rage than anything else.

A shot rang out.

Water sloshed as Shannon slammed the bucket handle back over the tripod and ran for the shotgun. The sound of another shot overwhelmed the dog’s furious sounds.

Whip’s shout came as Shannon broke into a run, heading for the aspen thicket. As she ran, she understood what her ears had been trying to tell her—the “shots” she was hearing were the sounds of a bullwhip at work, not a rifle.

The bullwhip cracked and then cracked again, splitting the air like lightning. Whip shouted something that Shannon couldn’t understand.

Then came a terrifying kind of chomping, snarling cough, as though the mountain was clearing its
throat. Shannon had never heard the sound before, but Silent John had described it often enough.

Grizzly.

“Whip!” Shannon screamed, running harder than she ever had before in her life. “Oh, God, you don’t even have a gun!”

She leaped a fallen log, staggered for an instant on landing, then gathered herself and raced on, cocking the shotgun even as she ran.

Shannon saw the grizzly before she saw Whip. The bear was reared up on its hind legs, taller than Whip, wider, terrifying in its strength. The enraged bear was snapping its jaws together. Saliva showed stark white against the dark muzzle. The grizzly’s massive paws swatted at the bullwhip that cracked again and again around its head.

Naked to the waist, Whip stood with his back against a thicket of aspen that was too dense for him to penetrate. It wouldn’t have done any good even if he could have hidden among the trees—the grizzly would have broken through the aspens at a gallop.

Nor could Whip outrun the bear, even if the terrain had been flat and open. On level land, grizzlies were as fast as horses. On broken land, grizzlies were faster.

Prettyface leaped and snarled behind the bear, fangs slashing, seeking the grizzly’s hamstrings beneath the thick coat of fur. With horrifying speed the bear turned and slashed at the dog with claws longer than Shannon’s hand.

The bullwhip cracked and the grizzly straightened. It spun away from the dog and raged deep in its chest, jaws working as though crunching through bone. Blood glistened redly above the grizzly
’s right eye, proof that the bullwhip had reached flesh despite the protective fur.

But rather than driving the bear away, the slashing bullwhip seemed only to enrage the grizzly further.

It was obvious that sooner or later one of the bear’s massive paws would tangle with the long whip, ending its usefulness. Or the grizzly could simply charge the man like an enraged bull. Then the uneven fight would end very quickly.

Shannon ran harder, knowing she had to get in close enough to be certain of killing the bear. Silent John had warned her that a wounded grizzly was the most dangerous animal on earth.

As Whip’s arm moved, launching the lash like a bullet right at one of the bear’s eyes, he caught sight of Shannon running at the grizzly from the side.

“Get back!”
he yelled.

If Shannon heard, she ignored him.

Whip worked the lash with startling speed, creating a high, ripping crackle that held the bear’s attention while Prettyface snapped at its heels.

Shannon kept running until the shotgun was almost touching the grizzly’s side. She triggered both barrels at a spot just under the bear’s left arm.

There was no time for Shannon to brace herself before she fired. The shotgun’s fierce recoil knocked her flat in an instant. The grizzly gave an outraged roar and swung a massive paw at the place where Shannon’s head had been only an instant before.

Deadly leather coils whistled and snapped tightly around the bear’s neck. Whip set his feet and jerked hard, making muscles stand rigidly all the way down his back. Grimly he dragged the
choking, mortally wounded grizzly off balance, forcing it to fall away from Shannon’s motionless body. The bear hit the earth, bucked and roared savagely, and slashed out with claws at an enemy it could no longer see.

Abruptly the grizzly jerked and went still.

The grove became silent but for the ragged sawing of Whip’s breath and Prettyface’s snarls as he stalked stiff-legged toward the unmoving grizzly.

“Get back!” Whip ordered.

Prettyface froze.

A deceptively lazy movement of Whip’s wrist sent the tip of the lash flicking over the bear’s open eyes.

The grizzly neither flinched nor blinked. It was truly dead.

Whip ran to Shannon’s side and knelt in a rush. He let out a rough sound of relief when he saw that her eyes were open and she was breathing.

“Where do you hurt?” he demanded.

Numbly she shook her head.

“The hell you don’t hurt,” Whip muttered. “I saw that grizzly hit you.”

Whip’s hands hadn’t shook during the fight, but they were shaking now as he gently touched the back of Shannon’s head, searching for the wound he was sure she must have.

“I’m—all right,” Shannon said jerkily, trying to catch her breath and speak at the same time.

“Easy, honey girl. Just lie still until I see how bad you’re hurt.”

“Just—breath. Shotgun—knocked me—”

Whip’s hands hesitated. He looked down into the beautiful sapphire depths of Shannon’s eyes.

“Recoil?” he asked.

She nodded and concentrated on breathing.

Saying nothing, Whip probed Shannon’s hair with long, surprisingly gentle fingers. When he found only the warmth of her scalp, he moved on down her body. His hands ran over every bit of her and found nothing but heat and a silky female softness that made him feel like he was caressing fire.

Abruptly Whip came to his feet. He looked down at the breathless but otherwise uninjured Shannon for a long, tense moment.

Then he held out his hand to her.

“Can you stand?” Whip asked quietly.

Too quietly.

Warily Shannon looked at Whip’s eyes. Where there had been tender concern a moment before, now there was only wintry gray. His eyes were almost opaque.