Sunset Embrace (33 page)

Lydia couldn't imagine what was happening to her or where this feeling of weightlessness was coming from. On the one hand she felt that she could fly. On the other, her whole body seemed anchored to his by a delicious lassitude she hoped never to recover from. She felt more alive than ever in her life, but wasn't sure how she was to respond to this new awareness of her being. Naturally her arms curled around his neck and she pressed closer to him.

"Ah, Lydia," he groaned and resealed their lips with a blistering kiss that bespoke his leashed passion.

He maintained enough reason to realize that anyone venturing out early to get water would see them. He lifted her with him as he half stood, half crouched, and stumbled toward a clump of honeysuckle. The vine had climbed to the lower branches of a post oak and draped down to the ground. When they were on the other side of that natural, fragrant screen, he lowered her to the ground.

The damp chemise detailed her form for his avid eyes. It clung to the full mounds of her breasts. Through the sheer fabric he could see the darker areolas and the sweetly puckering nipples. His eyes followed the row of dainty buttons down her body, over the narrow column of ribs to the concavity of her abdomen. The cloth dipped alluringly into the dimple of her navel, then molded to the gentle mound of her sex and outlined its V shape and curly down. Her slender thighs didn't escape his rapacious eyes.

Her eyes were wide and dilated as she watched him unbutton his pants. He could see the agitation in her breasts as they vibrated with each heartbeat that matched his own in tempo.

"I won't hurt you again."

"I know."

He felt compelled to justify the act, to justify himself. "I married you. You're my wife."

"Yes, yes."

Her hair was fanned out on the grass beneath her head and on either side of it lay her hands, palms upturned, fingers slightly curled, defenseless. Ross knelt above her, straddling her legs. He leaned forward and placed his palms against hers. His large hands covered hers completely. With that discovery, he smiled, and she answered it.

Moving slowly, he rubbed her palms with his, caressing. The contrast electrified them both. His were rough and callused, hers fragile and soft. He matched the length of his fingers to hers and moved them up and down, marveling over how small hers felt against his. His middle fingers trailed into the hollows of her palms and massaged them gently.

He felt her sudden intake of breath, saw her violet eyelids flutter and her lips part. Lacing their fingers together tightly, he levered himself down to cover her. Belly cushioned belly and her breasts absorbed the weight of his chest. He nestled hard and throbbing in the cradle her thighs formed for him. He bent his neck, letting his head fall against her shoulder. His mouth found her ear.

"You feel good against me, Lydia. Goddammit, but you do."

"Didn't you want me to?" she asked. Was her voice wavering because she was afraid of what was going to happen, or because she was afraid it wouldn't happen?

"No," he rasped. "No, I didn't."

She wanted to know why, but he had begun moving his mouth against her ear and she forgot to ask. His moustache tickled along the rim. His breath rushed in. Her earlobe was flicked by his tongue, wet and frisky.

"Ross . . . ?"she gasped, gripping his hands tighter.

He squeezed her hands, then released them. Cupping her jaw in one hand, he pressed his lips against hers. "I couldn't forget how it was. God knows I tried. I couldn't." He kissed her then, deeply and thoroughly, making love to her mouth with his brazen tongue, darting and delving, promising and granting.

"I couldn't forget it either." She sighed when his mouth began to meander over her cheekbones and his fingers stroked her neck.

"Please forget it. I was drunk and had no right to come at you violently like that. Forgive me."

"Forgive?" she asked, not understanding.

He touched the corner of her lips with his tongue, then let his moustache caress the spot. "I raped you, Lydia."

She wasn't familiar with the term and was about to ask its meaning when his mouth claimed hers once again. This time her arms came around his back and he moaned when he felt her first tentative caresses with shy fingertips on his hare skin.

He propped himself up on one elbow and dipped his head to scour her throat with voracious kisses. Hungrily his mouth moved over her, as though she might disappear and he would be left wanting. He examined the fragility of her collarbone with his fingertips. His hand closed around the upper part of her arm gently, remembering the bruises he had left there before. His thumb rubbed the sensitive underside of her arm and she quivered reflexively. Encouraged, he let his hand coast down, over her chest to her breast.

He placed his hand over it, loving the way it fit. Even through the covering of her chemise, he could feel her skin's warmth, feel the irregular beats of her heart which his palm absorbed. Easing his hand lower, he molded it around the undercurve and pressed upward, causing her breast to swell above the top of her chemise.

His lips were waiting to graze the sweet plumpness. Lydia shivered at the scratchiness of his moustache and beard stubble on her skin. The sensations that were foreign to her only weeks earlier, but were now achingly. blissfully familiar, feathered up from the depths of her body into her breasts, to the back of her throat. Her femininity flowered open, scandalously moist and throbbing. But she felt no shame as she instinctively arched against his male counter-part that offered to assuage this vague longing that plagued her.

He whispered a garbled curse and rubbed her nipple with his thumb, at the same time parting his lips to touch her cool skin with his tongues wet heat. Her back bowed off the soft grass and she called his name plaintively. She closed her arms tighter around him as she pressed against his hardness. Her thighs opened and Ross settled himself firmly between them. He kissed her as if he wanted to draw all of her into himself.

His hand worked its way down between their bodies to; raise the hem of her chemise. As he withdrew his hand, the backs of his fingers brushed her mound. The hair was fleecy soft, tightly curled, lavish. Lydia's breath stopped at the same time Ross's was slammed back into his throat.

His head began to ring clamorously. He wanted to go on touching her. He wanted to sift his fingers through that sweet nest, to explore what lay beyond. But he had sworn to treat her like a wife. And wives didn't like to be fondled there. No decent woman would let a man touch her there unless he was an old and trusted physician. Victoria would have pretended the accidental touching hadn't happened. Regretfully Ross withdrew his hand.

The head of his shaft probed her hesitantly and he felt the tensing of her thighs around him. "I won't hurt you," he whispered. He thought that if he waited much longer, he would likely die.

Slowly her thighs relaxed, parted wider. He penetrated her slowly with one long, steady stroke. Her name broke over his lips as he sank into the wet, silken casing of her womanhood. It surrounded him, entrapped him, housed him, and he knew such peace and exhilaration that he wanted both to weep and shout.

It hadn't been a product of his drunken imagination. It was as euphoric as he remembered. Better. Because this time she was moving with him and her hands were delicately scaling his back. In random whispers that caressed his ears, she repeated his name.

She opened her eyes when he braced himself above her on stiff arms. Her small, white hand came up to touch lovingly the scar on his chest, and he groaned and clenched his teeth with the intense pleasure that engulfed him. He rocked his hips against her, plowing ever deeper into her receptive warmth. Striving for control, for endurance, he moved slowly. It wasn't enough.

He knew his climax was upon him and he submitted to it. Gathering her close, he held her tight as his body went rigid and he bathed her womb with molten fire.

When it was over, he lay heavily atop her. The scent of the new day, the dewy grass, the honeysuckle, and the issue of his own body filled his nostrils. He breathed deeply of her, burrowing his nose in her hair and letting his body relax. Silence prevailed. Nothing stirred in the wilderness setting they had converted into a temple of love, nothing but the rushing shallows of the river. Its gurgling was a song, a lullaby that lulled them into deeper languor.

He had almost fallen asleep when he felt her fingers touch his hair. "Ross, Lee will be waking up soon."

He sighed and eased out of her. Sitting up, he turned his back. The waistband of his pants fell low on his hips. Lydia noted the indentation of his waist, the slight flaring of his buttocks, the dusting of hair on the small of his back.

"We've stayed too long already," he said shortly.

She sat up, adjusted her chemise over her thighs, and touched the smooth skin of his back, unmarred save for the scar beneath his left shoulder blade. "Not for me."

He jerked his head around to pierce her with eyes the same brilliant shade of green as the grass on which they had lain. Her skin was rosy with the aftermath of loving. The dark amber eyes were limpid, and her lips were swollen' and moist from his kisses. Her expression was guileless, innocent, unselfish.

Ross knew in that moment that he didn't give a damn about her past or how many men she had had. He only knew that no woman had ever satisfied him more. Not just with her body had she touched him, but with a kindred spirit that would draw him back to her time and again.

He extended his finger and grazed a spot on the top curve of her breast that his stubbled chin had abraded He raised his eyes to hers and smiled sheepishly. She smiled back, then out of sheer joy laughed. He began laughing. too, and they collapsed, holding each other as they fell back onto the grass. He kissed her mouth, richer, better-tasting now than before. She responded, closing her hands around his neck and sliding her fingers through the hair on his nape. She smelled of him and he wanted to taste himself on her skin.

"Oh, dammit, Lydia." He stood up and hauled her after him. "If I don't stop now, I won't be able to."

Shyly she looked away as he clumsily buttoned his pants over a growing bulge. "Come on," he said, taking her hand when he was done. "Let's get back before Lee sets up a howl and alerts the whole camp."

He retrieved his gun and dragged her into the river. They Waded in the waist-high water to the other side. When they came out, the chemise was plastered to her, revealing everything that Ross had recently touched. In the morning light, her breasts were creamy swells over the lacy border of the garment. Her nipples thrust blatantly against the wet batiste. The dusky shadow of her sex was clearly revealed through the cloth that sealed her like a second skin. "You'd better dress," he said thickly.

After gathering the fresh clothes she had brought with her, Lydia modestly slipped behind a screening bush and peeled off the wet chemise. She glanced down at herself and was amazed to see that she looked exactly the same except for the red marks his beard had made on her breasts. She felt totally different. Her body was tingling with life from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. But deep inside her there was a gnawing dissatisfaction that she couldn't pinpoint. An unnamed yearning was still with her. It wasn't unpleasant, but rather something to savor.

She stepped into her underwear and clean chemise, then her dress. Her shoes and stockings had been left at the wagon. When she came out from behind the bush, Ross was shoving his pistol back into his waistband. When he saw her anxious look, he teased her, saying, "Don't worry. I'm not going to let it shoot off anything valuable."

To the roots of her reddish brown hair, she blushed furiously.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yes." She was suddenly shy of him, and despite his Joke, she thought he was nervous, too, now that it had happened again. They didn't converse as they made their way back to the camp. When they broke through the trees, Ma was coming toward their wagon toting a pail of milk. She stopped in her tracks and surveyed them with open curiosity.

Ross was uncomfortably aware of the gun in his waist, his bare feet, and his bare chest with its incriminating scar. Lydia was holding the wet chemise she had wrung out. It felt like a hundred-pound weight in her hand when Ma looked at it.

"Excuse me," Ross mumbled and hoisted himself onto the tailgate to disappear into the wagon.

Ma watched him and then turned her inquiring eyes back to Lydia. "We ... we went swimming," she stam-mered, dropping her wet chemise onto the tailgate like it was something hot.

"So I see," Ma said.

"Ross is ... uh ... teaching me to swim."

"Is he now?"

She felt like a fool as she bobbed her head to confirm 1 her lie. "You shouldn't have bothered with Lee's milk this morning. I was planning to fetch it myself."

"We been doin' this for you for weeks. I see no call to change."

"I was thinking about Luke."

Ma sighed deeply as she set the pail on the tailgate. "I'll always miss him. Till the day I die, I'll miss him. But he's dead, Lydia, and nothin' I do can bring him back. For some reason the good Lord seen fit to take him and I ain't one to argue with Him."

Lydia thought she would do battle with any power in heaven or on earth that tried to wrest Lee or Ross away from her, but she didn't say anything.

"Life goes on. All of us talked about it and decided to leave our grief at Luke's grave. All but Rubba. The boy's in a bad way."

"I'll ask Ross to talk to him."

"Ain't sure it'll do any good, but I'll appreciate it. He's down there carin' for the horses." As Ma looked wistfully in; the direction of the corral, Lydia wondered if she knew Bubba had forgotten his chores last night. Ma shook off her worry and smiled at Lydia. "Git on in there to your' husband. He might need some help gettin' out of those wet pants." She was laughing softly as she walked off in the direction of her own wagon.

Lydia found Ross dressed and bending over Lees crib. "Is he still sleeping?"

"Just waking up. He's growing so big. I guess I'll soon have to invest in a regular cradle for him."