Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) (32 page)

Move on.
Panic seized Angel. He was there to say goodbye. Her mind reeled at the prospect.

“But what about the Hacienda?” she clamored, grasping at straws, any reason that might hold him.

“What about it?”

“You’re his son, Rane. His only heir.” She reached into the pocket of her riding skirt and held up the sheet of paper she’d rescued from the floor of Horace’s office. “Look. He put it in writing. He’s leaving the Hacienda to you!”

“¡Sangre de Cristo!”
He crossed the room with quick strides and snatched the document from her hand. “Don’t you understand? This is his idea of a joke. His
own
retribution. He’s left me nothing except his debts. Well, no, thank you!” He tossed the will onto the dresser.

“You were born there,” she persisted. “It’s where you spent your childhood.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “as an outsider.”

Before he could move away again, she reached up and slid her hands inside his collar. Against her fingertips, his skin sizzled, his pulse throbbed wildly at the side of his throat. Somehow, she had to comfort him, alleviate his pain. She wanted to hold him there. With her. Forever.

“What about me?” she demanded, though she feared his answer.

He grew so still, she thought he had stopped breathing.

“Are you just going to ride away from me, too?”

His chest quickly rose and fell. “Aren’t you forgetting? You asked for no promises, and I made none.”

“To hell with all the things we didn’t say! I love you, Rane! Don’t you know that by now?”

She could have sworn she saw white-hot flames leap in the depths of his eyes. Just as quickly, they died. Suddenly he reached out, startling her, and clasped her face between his hands. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it.”

Angel’s confession of love sent wild, desperate hope flaring in Rane’s heart. Vain longings. Dreams of things that could never be. He dashed them all with vicious, cold reality. She had her world, and he didn’t belong there. Gun for hire. Drifter. Even to the mixed blood flowing through his veins, he was all the things her father and his kind despised. His own father had scorned him. Eventually, she would reject him as well. She was meant for better things.

But her eyes, as they looked at that moment, would always haunt him. Blue as sapphires, she watched him through a sheen of tears that swelled and broke, streaking down her cheeks, wetting his thumbs. Heartbreak. His restraint, already tenuous, snapped and he roughly pulled her to him.

She clung, her strength bordering desperation. He brushed her hair with his lips, breathing in her scent. Subtle flowers. Warm female. Her taste, her smell, the feel of her body, all so familiar now.
“Lo siento, mi querida.”

He could have spared them both and headed straight for the border. Impossible. He couldn’t go. Not without seeing her one more time.

Tender whispered words of comfort slipped easily from his tongue. He didn’t know when their desperate embrace changed, only that it did. With parted lips, he dragged over her skin, igniting heat that dried her tears and had her cleaving to him in a different way. He trailed from her cheek to her ear and felt her shiver.

“Just for tonight, Angel. I don’t want to spend this night alone.”

She captured his face between her hands and aligned her eyes with his. “Oh, Rane. For tonight, or a million nights, you never have to be alone.”

But he would be, his soul cried. After tonight.

He devoured the sweetness she offered with a hunger that only intensified each time they came together. Hands splayed against her back and rounded bottom, he pressed her closer. She shoved her hand between them and found his arousal. He sucked in a breath when she palmed his swollen head and squeezed. Raw pleasure leaped along his nerve endings, and he ached for more.

He melded the lower half of his body to hers and backed her against the dresser. A moan welled in her throat. He covered her mouth with his and smothered the sound, absorbed it with a deep thrust.

While she worked the buttons on his trousers, he opened her blouse, tugged loose the satin ribbons closing her camisole and released her breasts. He stepped back long enough to allow her to drop her split riding skirt to the floor, until she stood before him in only her gaping shirt and undergarments.

He lingered on her heavy breasts, then moved to her face. He wanted to absorb the sight of her. To remember.

The intensity behind Rane’s veiled gaze touched Angel’s soul with a longing sorrow that went beyond the physical. She swallowed against the teary, burning ache in her throat and reached up, threading her fingers into the silken ebony tangle of his hair. Urging him forward, she pressed a kiss to each side of his sensuous curving mouth.

His kiss scorched her, left her breathless. And then he lowered his head, and his heat seared her as he closed over the peak of one aching breast. He drew her pliant flesh deep inside his mouth. The tugging sensation of his suckling struck a sympathetic throb between her thighs.

He fumbled with the slit in her lace-trimmed drawers until he found what he sought. He sucked in a breath and cupped her, gently kneading. He moved upward and glided back down, parting her moist petals with two fingers. The heel of his hand dragged over her swollen bud with just enough pressure to send her straining against him.

Needing to touch him, to feel his feverish skin beneath her hands, she unbuttoned his shirt and stroked across his rigid muscles. A faint quiver ran through him. She knew he fought for restraint. But just then, she needed him to lose himself. She wanted to possess him. Needed him to take her. Only when he joined his body with hers did they form an unbreakable, perfect bond that made him truly hers.

“Love me, Rane,” she urged in a breathless groan. “Now.”

“Hold onto me,” he said, just as breathless.

Bracing her against the dresser, he lifted her leg and curved it behind his waist, leaving her open and positioned for him. His fiery heat, the hard thickness of him nudged through the opening in her drawers. She swallowed in anticipation and clung harder around his waist.

He filled her, slow and deep. And then deeper still, until his engorged sex nudged her womb and touched off waves of mind-numbing pleasure.

She nearly wept when he started to withdraw, until he surged upward again and set a torturous rhythm meant to drive her mad. As he moved inside her, she knew she would remember the elation, the ecstasy of this moment for the rest of her life. Moisture seeped from her eyes. Only now, her tears were shed in joy.

Her muscles tensed, wound tighter still when he moved harder within her. Faster. She met his thrusts, sending the lotion pots and perfume bottles standing atop the dresser into a jiggly dance.

His breath grated to a ragged pant, his motions grew jerky, out of control, telling her he was almost there. She hovered at the edge of bliss, needing only his hot, rushing release to send her free-falling through the white, blinding heights where he had lifted her.

****

Rane lay flat on his back with Angel draped halfway across his body and watched the circle of yellow and white lampglow fluctuate on the ceiling. The wavering light played hell with his eyes. Not to mention, he still felt half blinded in the aftermath of his and Angel’s last bout of lovemaking.

The first time they’d climaxed together with such intensity it nearly dropped them both to the floor. It wasn’t until after when he realized he’d taken her while still wearing his gun and holster.

The second time, they’d moved to her bed. Which proved to be no less strenuous. Or shattering. Now, he felt drained.

He was lost. Doomed by the love of a woman. This woman. Somewhere, somehow, she had breathed life into the cold emptiness of his heart, and he had given it to her.

But how easy it had been to convince himself the attraction went no deeper than physical lust. Angel’s fiery nature seemed to thrive on danger, which he amply supplied. Her forbidden beauty had lured him from the very first time he saw her. But it was her rare and caring spirit that finally captured him.

If he left—when he left—his heart would remain here, in Angel’s keeping. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make. He had no choice, because he lacked the willpower to stay away from her. With each tryst, they risked discovery, which would surely be her ruin. He’d harmed her too much already.

How much time had passed? He lifted his head. No clock sat on the dresser or anyplace else that he could see. He knew it had to be sometime after midnight. Each moment he lingered now, put them both at risk.

He dropped his head back on the pillow. “I need to go.”

She stirred. Her deeply drawn breath molded a bare breast more firmly against his ribs. She lifted her knee beneath the tangled sheet and raked her foot down his shin, turning the movement into a caress. “I don’t want you to go.”

“What would you do?” he asked. “Hide me here in your bedroom the rest of my life?”

A movement against his chest told him she was smiling. “Mmm. Now there’s an idea.”

“Seriously. I need to go. Before it’s too late.”

The sheet rustled, slithered up his legs and carried the earthy scent of their lovemaking to his nostrils. Angel slid to her side next to him, propped her head on her hand, and lay there looking down at him. “Rane, I—”

He pressed a fingertip to her lips. “Don’t say it, Angel.”

Sorrow smudged her eyes. She reached up and pulled away his hand. “Take me with you.”

The impulsive plea stopped him for a moment. “As much as the idea appeals to me, you know it’s not possible. Your father would come after us.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do. You know what it’s like to be on the run. It’s no kind of life.”

“What kind of life do you think I’ll have if you leave me?”

“Better than what I could give you.”

She shook her head. “No. You’re wrong.”

The argument would do neither of them any good. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with finality. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

The bed springs creaked. “Fine, then. Just go!”

He stood and dressed, aware of her behind him, watching, and the muffled sounds of her sobs. He dared not look back. He was already dangerously close to doing something even more stupid than sneaking into her room tonight.

When he strapped on his gun, she scrambled up, taking the sheet with her, and came around the bed. Though her lips trembled, she didn’t speak. He reached out and caught a tear as it rolled down her cheek. Leaning in, he whispered, “
Está bien, mi querida. Siempre
,” and then placed one last kiss on her tremulous lips.

Though his heart pounded like a war drum in his chest, he walked out of the room without once looking back. It wasn’t until he’d gotten clear of the house that he realized there was some kind of extra bulk in his shirt pocket. He reached in and fished out the folded piece of paper he’d tossed onto Angel’s dresser. That’s where he’d last seen it, and where it should have stayed, but she’d somehow managed to slip Horace’s tainted legacy into his pocket when he wasn’t looking.

Chapter Twenty-one

Angel could count on one hand the number of times she’d been sick in her life. Once, she’d had a cold that left her with an annoying cough that hung on for more than a month. On her tenth birthday, she’d consumed too much cake and lemonade and suffered a tummy ache that kept her awake an entire night.

Just minor ailments, but this seemed different.

Bent nearly double, she sat on the side of the bed, and clutched her arms tighter around her waist. The few sips of honey-laced tea she’d swallowed threatened to come back up. She sucked in slow, careful breaths, but her nausea persisted.

Thank God for Carmella. For the past thirty minutes, the woman had tended her with all the care and diligence of a concerned mother. Just the thought of trying to drag herself downstairs and rustle up breakfast for her father sent Angel’s stomach into another violent heave.

Carmella steadied the bucket, gathered her hair back from her face and held it while she vomited. When it was over, even her ribs felt sore. She sat back and gratefully lifted the cloth Carmella placed in her trembling hands. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Maybe something you eat,” Carmella suggested.

“No, I don’t think so. I ate the same things as you and Pa at supper last night.”

Carmella took the cloth from her hands and rinsed it in the basin on the bedside table. After wringing the excess water, she handed it to her again.

Angel applied the cool cloth a second time. She felt better, steadier. She reached for the cup of tea and dared another sip to wash the sour taste from her mouth.

“This is the second time within a week this has happened.” And that’s what worried her.

The housekeeper stared at her a long moment with concern etched on her face. “You did not tell me. When was this?”

“The morning of Horace’s funeral. But it wasn’t nearly this bad.” She shrugged. “I figured it was just nerves.”

Yes, nerves. Horace’s burial had turned out to be more of an emotional ordeal than she anticipated. Throughout the small service, she’d held out the hope, had prayed, that Rane would suddenly appear and stand in his rightful place as Horace’s son and heir. When he didn’t, her broken heart had finally splintered into fragments. Everyone assumed she shed tears of grief for their dead neighbor. They had no way of knowing she mourned her own loss. Hope. Love. Rane had taken both the night he walked out of her bedroom.