Sunset Embrace (43 page)

"Why?" she asked breathlessly.

He pulled off his boots and pants. The ridge of flesh pressing against the front of his underwear was more than a little obvious. "I like the way you look in them."

She did as he bid, catching her bottom lip with her upper teeth as she smiled up at him impishly. Ross groaned and began tearing at the buttons of his shirt. "Here, let me do that before I end up having to sew all those buttons back on."

She batted his hands out of the way and began undoing the buttons. Off came his shirt. First her eyes, then her fingertips found the puckered scar. Lovingly she touched it and whispered, "You almost died." She raised herself to tiptoes until her mouth was level with the scar. When her lips moved, they lightly caressed the pinkish skin. "I'm very glad you didn't."

Shedding her last vestiges of modesty, she kissed him there, dipped her tongue into the misshapen hollow. A soft moan issued out of his throat and his arms came around her. Gaining confidence, she let her lips trail over his chest. The crinkly hair tickled her lips and nose, but she liked the feel of it against her face. Her breasts grazed his stomach and the silky column of dark hair that bisected it. His nipple contracted when her fingers ghosted over it and she found that so worthy of attention that she touched the nodule with, her tongue. Daintily she licked it.

Ross was amazed by the hot sensation that raced through him. "Goddammit," he cursed through his teeth and began fumbling with his underwear. "You're teaching me things I didn't know."

Lydia fell back onto the sleeping pallet, but then she began to giggle at his frantic efforts to get rid of his underwear. He glared at her threateningly through slitted green eyes.

"You think it's funny?"

She tried to stifle her laughter, but couldn't. It came out rich and full and spontaneous. As she rolled from side to side in her hilarity, Ross couldn't help but smile himself. Naked, he lay down beside her and smothered her in a bear hug. "You think it's funny?" he repeated, tickling her ribs.

"No, no. Stop, please," she gasped, fighting off his hands.

"That laughter at my expense will cost you," he said, nuzzling her neck roughly.

"What?"

"You have to leave your stockings on." He was lying between her legs now, sprawled above her, his hardness cushioned between them.

Their breath mingled as the laughter subsided. They gazed hotly into each others eyes. He saw the fluttering heartbeat in her throat. When she felt his masculinity pulsing against her mound, her eyes dilated glassily.

"I guess 1 can leave my stockings on. If you like them."

"I like you." She was surprised no less than he by his unhesitating declaration. Their eyes flew together and stilled, boring into the soul and mind of the other.

"Do you?" Her voice was so low he could barely hear her.

"Yes."

If he hadn't realized it before, he was convinced now. He had fought it every step of the way, but she had come to mi-sin more to him than he ever could have imagined. The jealousy that had consumed him the night before was only a mild harbinger for the emotion that now seized him. It shook him to the very foundations of his being.

He couldn't ignore it. He thrilled to it. He was terrified of it. He no longer wanted to combat it.

He didn't know what to say. Demonstrations of affection would have to be his language. His finger wandered idly over her breasts, circling the nipples that pouted for him prettily. "I've never had such closeness to a woman's body before," he said self-consciously.

Knowing the pride it had cost him to say even that much, she caught him behind the neck with her hand and drew his head down to her breast, lifting it to him with her other hand. "It feels wonderful when you touch me with your tongue."

A hungry sound rumbled in his throat as he sponged her nipples with his tongue, sliding the matching textures together until she was whimpering with escalating passion.

"Ross, nothing else could feel that good," she panted.

Only the tip of his shaft had been introduced into her moist cleft. He was savoring the growing anticipation of total possession. "Yes," he mouthed against her breast. "Some things could."

"What?" she asked in a soft moan as he pressed a fraction of an inch deeper into the smooth, wet confines. "Show me."

His breathing came in rasping shudders as he raised his head and stared into her eyes. He read only an honest curiosity in them. There was no fear, no self-sacrifice. Certainly no previous knowledge.

He levered himself up so that he was kneeling between her thighs. Still watching her face for signs of revulsion or fear, he ran his palm down her shin, still encased in the black cotton stocking. Then he turned his head and kissed the inside of her thigh just above the garter, rubbing the sensitized skin with his whole mouth.

"Ross." She sighed.

"You have beautiful legs, Lydia," he whispered. His hands ran up and down the supple skin and slipped beneath the garter to tease the back of her knee. He rolled the stocking down far enough to kiss her knee, to touch the back of it with his tongue.

He practiced the same erotic rite on the other leg. A prisoner of carnal pleasure, she turned her head to one side and watched as he walked his hands up her thighs, massaging, caressing. When his eyes met hers, their intensity burned into her soul and she, whispering his name, closed her eyes against it.

"You're so pretty here." His fingers combed through the russet tuft. "A beautiful color." His voice had changed pitch and resonance. It was gruff, thick with passion, laden with desire.

Lydia thrilled to the sound of it and to bis touch. His finger outlined her mound, traced the gullies at the tops of her thighs to where they flowed together. He touched her then in that most intimate of places, stroking lightly, taking up her creaminess on his fingertips, and praising her in whispered adoration for the quantity of it.

Her lassitude vanished and her eyes flew open wide when she felt the damp caress high on the inside of her thigh. His hair tickled her skin silkily, his beard stubble scratched deliciously, but she couldn't believe what he was doing until her eyes verified it.

"Ross!" she cried in shock and closed her fingers around strands of his hair to lift his head. But it was too late. He was kissing her, and rather than bringing him away, her hands pressed him closer. Her head fell back on the pillow with a spasm of ecstasy.

He Kissed her with the same finesse as he kissed her mouth.

And it was wonderful and he couldn't stop.

His thumbs tenderly parted the protective folds that housed the center of her womanhood. Deftly he applied his tongue. Each lavish stroke was his tribute to her sweetness, her youth, her innocence despite the abuse she had Buffered. His caressing mouth healed her of the emotional wounds left behind; he kissed them away. His suppliant lips expressed his gratitude for the generous way she shared her body with him. For never had he been granted the privilege of such loving.

The waves of bliss washed over her in ebbing currents until she was gasping for breath. What was happening was beyond anything she could have conjured in her mind. And while it shocked her, she knew it to be a rare gift from Rossi to her and that the pleasure was in accepting it with equal unrestraint.

The overwhelming pleasure continued with each agile movement of his tongue, with each loving caress of his mouth, until she quickened and her womb contracted. Just when she lost control, he positioned himself over her and held her shuddering body close. His manhood was a thrumming pressure that filled her completely. He drove deep in one swift thrust before his seed rushed into her in a scalding torrent.

Long moments later, when she had regained her senses, she realized that they were lying perfectly still and that her hands were gripping the backs of his thighs. He was still hard and full inside her.

"Ross?" she queried softly.

"I'm sorry. It wasn't enough."

He began to move, slowly at first and then with the thorough, mind-stealing, gradually accelerating thrusts that robbed her of thought and brought her again to the brink of that unfathomable sphere. This time they were hurled into it together, swallowed into its black satin oblivion, swathed in its warm velvet embrace.

He joyfully sobbed her name as they sank into that golden, languorous aftermath, his lace buried in her neck.

* * *

"I'm tired, but I don't want to go to sleep. I'm afraid I'll wake up and this will all have been a dream." Lydia was tweaking clumps of his chest hair between her fingers.

Ross sighed with contentment. "I know. I don't want to sleep either. It feels so damn good to hold you." His arms tightened around her and he touched a soft kiss to her temple. "Lydia, living as you did, how did you come to speak so well? As Ma pointed out to me one night in a blistering lecture about how foolish and pigheaded I was being, your manners are refined. I imitated Victoria and her father. Who taught you?"

"I didn't always live there. We, my real papa and Mama and I, lived in a town. I don't remember much about that town, but I do remember our house. Mama grew flowers in pots on the front porch. I had a room upstairs with a window. I remember in the summertime sitting in that window at night and letting the curtains blow against my face. They were white and ruffled and you could see through them."

Ross's hand lazily fondled the curve of her buttocks. "When we build our house, I'll get you some white ruffled curtains." She snuggled closer. "What happened to your papa?"

"He died. His name was Joseph Bryant." She sat up suddenly and announced proudly, "That's my name, Lydia Bryant."

He pulled her back down and kissed her soundly on the mouth. "Not anymore. It's Coleman now."

"You know what I meant," she murmured, settling drowsily against him again. "Papa wrote stories for the newspaper. Sometimes he was angry because people didn't like what he'd written. I think it was about the slaves. He told Mama he was going to the North to find us a new place to live. We were excited. But he got sick up there and died. We never saw him again. I barely remember him."

"Imagine never even knowing who your father was. Not that any of my mother's clientele was prime father material."

She looked into his embittered face and soothed away the tautness with her finger. "To have sired you, he must have been extremely handsome and strong. But it doesn't matter to me who he was."

His features softened and he kissed her hand. "Go on. When did your mother remarry?"

"I'm not sure. I was about ten, I guess. We had had to move out of our house and leave everything in it.
I
don't think folks treated Mama nice because of the things Papa had written."

Ross filled in the missing pieces. Bryant had been an abolitionist. He went North, probably couldn't take the change in climate, and died of some bronchial ailment. Lydia's mother, a widow, had lost everything.

"I remember a dark room at the top of an old house. That's where we lived. Mama sewed, doing embroidery on I other ladies' handkerchiefs and things. One day she came in and told me she had met a man who lived on a farm in the hills."

She sighed. "They got married and he said he was taking us to his house. His house wasn't a house at all, but a shack that was cold in winter and hot in summer. I had to sleep in a loft and the only way to get up there was by climbing a ladder. The place was filthy and Mama had to work hard every day just to get meals and keep the shack livable. I know now she must have been desperate, to marry him. She thought there would be plenty to eat on a farm, that it would be a healthier place for me to grow up in than an attic. He had boasted and Mama had been ready to believe his exaggerations. He got himself a free slave."

"And the stepbrother?"

"He was older than me. He was grown when Mam, and I moved there. He and the old man were always fighting with each other and with their neighbors, whom they hated. And everyone hated us, too. When we would go in to town for supplies, people would call us names. Mama cried and soon refused to go in to town anymore, so I didn't get to go either. I was afraid to be with the men by myself."

Ross hugged her close. "That life is over, Lydia. I'm glad you told me. It explains a lot of things. And it was a relief to tell you about me. You're the only living soul who knows the truth. My secret died with John Sachs. I never told anyone else."

She wasn't the only one who knew about him. Clancey knew. There were others looking for Sonny Clark too. But they would never find him if she could help it. Her arms tightened around him. "You never told Victoria?"

His hands stilled their caressing. "No," he replied softly. "I never told her."

Lydia smiled privately. Victoria might have had his love. Had it still. But she had something Victoria hadn't had. His faith.

"Ross?"

"Hmmm?" He was marveling over how soft her stomach was. The backs of his fingers were strumming the skin lightly.

"What you did a while ago ..."

He became still. "Yes?"

"Nothing, never mind."

"What? Tell me."

"It's . . . I don't know . , . You'll probably think ..."

"I won't know what to think if you don't tell me."

"Well, I was wondering if ..." She rolled over to prop herself against his chest and peer down into his eyes. "If that could be done to you."

J
efferson was teeming with activity. Second only to Galveston as the largest city in Texas in 1872, it was a hub of commerce and travel. Multileveled paddlewheelers were lined up at its docks, disgorging passengers who would continue their trek west in wagons, unloading merchandise, taking on vast quantities of cotton bales to be shipped down to the markets in New Orleans.

The streets were thronged with people, mostly transients, who were buying, selling, trading, bartering, loading, or unloading. Money and goods exchanged hands. Freed Negroes kept a low profile. Aristocrats who had lost everything during the war kept up the pretense that the conflict hadn't changed their lives, particularly their place in society. Carpetbaggers were spat upon or graciously received, depending upon the amount and color of their money and how ebulliently they were spreading it around. Respectable family men rubbed shoulders with the most feckless adventurers who roamed the wharf area at night. It was a good place to meet and be met ... or be lost in.