Anita Mills (28 page)

As her hands slipped under his waistband, he caught his fingers in her silken hair, imprisoning her face for his kiss. He tasted her warm lips eagerly until she parted them, giving him access to her mouth. While his tongue explored its depths, his pants loosened, then slipped down his legs, followed by his drawers.

There was no other time, no other place than this, no other woman beyond the one in his arms. His hot mouth devoured every part of her he could reach, while his hands moved over the thin lawn, smoothing it against her back and hips, molding her body into his. His blood coursed through his veins as though it were liquid fire, igniting every sense with total desire.

She pulled away to whisper breathlessly, “Tell me what you want, Spence, and I’ll want it, too.”

“I want to know every inch of you.”

He could see her throat move as she swallowed, the rise and fall of her chest beneath the thin cotton lawn, and his own breath caught as she untied the satin ribbon over her breasts, then quickly released the row of tiny buttons, revealing the white skin, the pink nipples. Her arms came up, her hands grasped the crocheted neckline, and she pulled the nightgown over her head slowly, letting the hem linger at her knees, her thighs, her waist, before her gleaming body emerged whole. For one brief moment, her composure wavered under his gaze; then she managed a smile.

“Here I am.”

“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered hoarsely.

Stepping out of the trousers and drawers at his ankles, he followed her as she backed toward the bed. The naked desire in his eyes fueled her own. As the back of her leg touched the edge of the bedstead, he caught her and they sank into the depths of the feather mattress. Her last rational thought was that he was hers, that she didn’t have to hold anything back now. There’d be no shame in giving him anything he wanted.

As his mouth explored her ear, her throat, her breasts, her hands opened and closed restlessly in his hair. Turning her away from him, he nuzzled the nape of her neck, her shoulder, while his arms circled her, his palms brushed her nipples, his fingers stroked her belly to the thatch below. Parting her legs, she gave herself over to his probing fingers until her breath came in great panting gasps, her low moans rising into a crescendo of cries. As his hand left her, he rolled her over him, and her whimpered protest died as she took him inside.

“I’m all yours now,” he panted. “Do what you want.”

She moved tentatively at first, savoring the feel of him. When she looked down, his eyes were closed, his expression intense as his body anticipated every twist, every rock. “Ride,” he urged her. “Ride hard!
Now!
” Grasping her hips with both hands, he bucked beneath her, pounding into her as she ground her body against his, seeking ecstasy. Biting her lip, she worked harder, until she felt it build, until the flood sated her. Drawing her knees tight against his sides, she curled forward into his embrace, exhausted.

Despite her weight on him, he felt as though his mind floated, buoyed by the languorous peace of utter physical fulfillment. He didn’t want to leave her. He didn’t want to move. He just held her, listening to her ragged breath, feeling her heart pound above his chest. Finally, he reached to stroke her damp hair back from her temple.

“I love you, heart, body, and soul,” he whispered, giving her own words back to her. “I swear it.” The back of his hand brushed her cheek. “Laurie, are you crying?”

“Yes, but I can’t help it—I just love you so much I can’t stand it.” Turning her face into his shoulder, she confessed, “I’m a crier, Spence—sometimes, I cry when I’m too happy to laugh.”

“I guess you had a good time,” he murmured.

Her fingers crept to caress his bare shoulder.

“What makes you think that?” she managed to ask.

“Well, for one thing, you were howling your head off,” he teased her. “I thought Jessie’d wake up and think I was killing you.”

“I did not.”

“Oh, yes, you did. I never heard such caterwauling in my life before tonight.”

She could feel her cheeks redden, and she was grateful he couldn’t see her face right now. “Well, it was probably from shock—I … uh … well, I never . . . ,” Her face was so hot she couldn’t go on.

“Never what?”

“Well, Jesse wasn’t … I mean, I was never on top before. But I liked it … I just didn’t know anybody did this quite that way. I guess he just wasn’t one to spend much time courting—he …” Her voice trailed off guiltily. “One man doesn’t want to hear about another, does he?”

“Only if he’s better.”

“Much, much better.”

“Then it’s all right.”

“There wasn’t anything
wrong
with him, but he wasn’t much for hugging and kissing.” She felt his arms tighten around her, holding her even closer. “Most nights, I didn’t know he was interested until he pulled up my nightgown and put his knee between my legs.”

“He probably would’ve suited Lydia better than I did. I don’t know what Ross thought he was getting with Liddy, because she wasn’t exactly a passionate woman—she liked being admired by men, and she enjoyed flirting with them, but she was pretty repelled by where it led.”

“But she was so beautiful.”

“No more than you—no more than you,” he said softly. “And you’ve got a hundred times more heart than she did. But unless you’ve got an overwhelming interest in her, I’ve said about all I want to on the subject. I just want to lie here with you.”

“Yes.” She felt him slip from her as she eased off him. “But I almost feel sorry for her, because she didn’t know what she could’ve had with you. That’s the last thing I’m going to say about her—she cheated herself as much as she cheated you.”

“That’s two things,” he reminded her, turning against her. “Did anybody ever tell you, Mrs. Hardin, that you have the most incredible eyes?” he murmured.

“No, but I always wished they were darker.”

“Now that would be a pity. There’s nothing I’d change about you but your hands, and that won’t take long.”

“They’ve always been pretty rough. And hanging wet clothes out in this weather doesn’t help them any,”

“Wait here—I’ll be right back.” Picking up his shirt, he covered himself before he walked over to the table. When he returned, he had the mysterious sack, and he had a smug grin on his face. “I’ve got the real wedding present on order from Omaha, but this will have to do for now,” he said, climbing back into bed.

“But I didn’t give you anything.”

“You just did.”

“Yes, but that’s not—”

“Go ahead—take a look inside.”

“Well, one’s a jar of something,” she observed curiously. Holding one to the light, she read, “ ‘Mrs. Holland’s Recipe for Soft Skin.’ I sure need that.”

“Go on,”

She took out a flat, tissue-wrapped package. As she unfolded the paper, she gasped, “It’s beautiful!”

“It’s just a comb.”

“But it’s silver—and it’s got little roses on it.”

“There’s one more.”

It was a stoppered bottle. Holding it gingerly, she removed the glass top and sniffed the contents. “It smells a little like lilacs—Spence, this is French perfume! Real French perfume!”

“I thought it smelled pretty good,” he admitted.

“Good! It’s lovely, that’s what it is. I’ve never had
any
perfume in my life—ever.”

“Then it’s about time.”

“But you must’ve spent a fortune!”

“No.”

“I’ll bet it was close to ten dollars.”

“It was a tad more than that.”

“Then I didn’t need it.”

“Well, since I won’t be buying you a ticket east, I could afford a lot more than this. I would’ve, too, but the sutler didn’t have much to choose from.”

“But these are women’s things, so I wonder who he thought he could sell them to.” She wet the stopper, then dabbed the perfume behind her ears. “How do I smell?”

“Good enough to kiss,” he answered, taking the bottle from her. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never tell her it had been ordered by someone at the hog ranch. Reaching past her, he set the bottle next to one of the burning candles. “You know,” he murmured, nuzzling the nape of her neck, “there are more than two ways, if you’re interested.”

As his warm breath caressed the sensitive skin there, she felt a shiver of excitement, and she knew exactly what he was talking about. “How many?” she asked weakly.

“Probably dozens.”

Turning over to face him, she slid her arms around his neck. “Oh, then, I want to learn all of them,” she whispered huskily.

“It’ll take a little time,”

“We’ve got the rest of our lives, don’t we?” With the scent of French lilacs rising from her skin and the flickering light of a candle reflected in her eyes,

Laura settled deeper into the feather bed. “But I expect we’ll need some practice.”

As he lowered his head, Laura’s lips parted, inviting him to love her again, and he felt whole in heart, body, and soul.

To mark her new life with Spence, she’d started this journal the day after her wedding, and she intended, to keep writing in it until she died or went blind. Someday, it would belong to Jessie, so she filled her account of each day with descriptions of what she’d done and seen, observations of people she met, the little joys and hardships of travel in the prairie schooner Spence had bought for this journey, daily recipes, and whatever advice struck her mind. While Spence teased her, saying she was writing so much she’d need a whole library just to store her journals by the time she was done, she wrote in the hope Jessie would cherish them as much as she’d cherished those her own mother had kept for her.

One thing she wouldn’t recommend was traveling so far in a wagon. Even with a new team of six mules pulling it, the cumbersome Conestoga was slow, grinding out the miles at a rate of three to the hour on flat road, less than two where it was rocky, and hours to the mile on the steep, winding grades of mountain passes. By the time she got to California, she was sure her behind would be made considerably wider by sitting all these days on the hard wooden seat.

Not that the trip so far was without interest. She and Spence had fallen in with a military wagon train headed west from Fort Kearny in Nebraska to establish a new fort of the same name in northern Wyoming, journeying with them between McPherson and the place where the Bozeman Trail left the Platte Road to head toward Montana. The army wagons had been accompanied by the remarkable old mountain man Jim Bridger, who’d had nothing good to say about Mormons, but was considerably more philosophical when it came to Indians, possibly because he was reported to have married more than one of them in the course of his colorful life. She’d duly recorded his observation, “Whar you don’t see no Injuns thar, they’re sartin to be the thickest.” Not a comforting thought given the ever-increasing hostility of the Sioux and the Cheyenne to the hordes of whites settlers, even though most of them were crossing the land, not moving in for good.

Indian troubles seemed to be on everybody’s mind as war parties shadowed the Platte and Bozeman routes, harassing wagon trains, running off horses and cattle brought along for milk and meat, and cutting off anyone who lagged behind. Well-armed men had to go out in groups to get firewood, and only fools strayed from night camps. A headstrong Miss Peake, declaring, “I refuse to be intimidated by the rumor of heathens,” had walked over a hill and disappeared two days out of Fort Casper, Laura had noted in the journal.

Unlike the military train, which had had seven hundred soldiers, more than two hundred wagons, and ambulances carrying officers’ wives and children, the group they were with now was terribly small—forty-two people in ten Conestogas, four supply wagons, sixty-four oxen, nine mules, and twenty-three cows, all guided by a former army scout and a half-breed Crow, who only spoke to the scout.

Several disputes had broken out since Fort Casper over Matthew Daniels beating his pregnant wife so badly she now walked with a cane. After a brawl between Daniels and the other men resulted in his being exiled, his wife and five children had refused to go with him, and the desperate family was now trying to survive on handouts and by living in one of the supply wagons. Every time Laura saw Abigail Daniels, she tried to give her something. She remembered too well what it was like to be dirt poor.

“You’ll be down to nubs and out of paper long before we reach California,” Spence commented.

“I don’t want to forget anything—since she’s too young to remember her journey, I want Jessie to know everything about it.”

“Everything?” he teased, raising an eyebrow. “How much have you put about me in there?”

“Not
quite
everything,” she admitted. “I try to keep it decent enough for her to read. Maybe someday she’ll have children who’ll want to know what life was like in 1866. As much as things have changed in the twenty-five years I’ve been living, there’s no telling what’s going to happen before I die. They might want to know about goose grease salve and willowbark tea someday. Or about what was in a Conestoga, for that matter. Once the railroad gets clear across the country, not too many folks are going to travel like this.”

“Is that the sort of thing your mother wrote for you?”

“Well, we didn’t go anywhere to write about, so hers was mostly how to take care of things, what to use, how to tell what ailments we had, how to make up her home remedies and special concoctions, things like that.”

“I’d still like to read it. I’d like to know what you were like as a little girl.”

“Daddy used to say I was ‘yaller-haired and skinny’—my hair didn’t start turning brown until I was thirteen or fourteen. And Mama didn’t write much about how I was—it was more about what I ought to do. Only thing she said much about me was I used to get sick a lot, and she was afraid my lungs were weak, and I’d get her consumption, she used to grease my chest up every night it was cold out with stuff she made out of turpentine, camphor, clove oil, and lard; then she’d wrap a long piece of flannel around me until I looked like one of those Egyptian mummies when I went to bed. I don’t know what it did for my lungs, but my nose never got stuffed up. She put that recipe in one of those journals, along with a lot of others. She had concoctions for everything from cleaning soot out of chimneys to making hair shine.”