Child Bride (8 page)

Some time later, she wasn’t sure how long, the delicious smells of frying meat, onions, and potatoes stole into her consciousness, awakening her. Chase stood at the two-burner stove, his back to her as she opened her eyes. He had a couple of cast-iron skillets going, and they were both sizzling and sending up clouds of steam.

Her mouth began to water, and her stomach seized up painfully, closing on its own emptiness. Fighting off dizziness, she pushed herself to a sitting position and stayed there a moment until she felt steady enough to try to change into the shirt he’d left her.

It took considerable effort to peel off the damp shift and fumble her way into the shirt, particularly since she was determined to do it within the tentlike confines of the quilt. She had no desire to distract Chase. Now that she’d had a whiff of real food, the only sort of consummation she was interested in was at the dining table.

First things first, she told herself, redoubling her efforts to do up the shirt’s buttons. Clearly it took considerable stamina to seduce an unwilling man, and she would have to get her strength up for the task. She certainly didn’t want to keep fainting every time he got near her. They wouldn’t get anything accomplished that way.

Moments later Chase set two bowls of steaming food and a loaf of warm sourdough bread down on the red checkered oilcloth. When he saw she was awake, he said, “Come and get it,” pulled back a chair, and beckoned her.

He’d put his own shirt back on, but he hadn’t bothered to button it up. The jeans riding low on his hips and dark hair curling down the nape of his neck made him look nonchalant and recklessly sexy. More like a gunslinger taking a break from the action than a mountain man who’d just cooked her dinner.

She rose to her feet unsteadily and noted with some relief that the shirt she wore was long enough to be a short dress. The tails fell practically to her knees.

“What’s this?” she said as she sat down across from him.

“If you mean the food, it’s corned-beef hash. Sorry, I don’t do fancy.”

“Looks like a feast to me,” Annie said.

Those were her last words for some time. She ate voraciously, delaying each heaping spoonful only as long as it took to chew and swallow. When she was done, she glanced up, spoon still clenched firmly in hand, and saw that Chase hadn’t eaten a bite. He’d been watching her with rapt disbelief, apparently the entire time.

She tipped her spoon toward his bowl. “Are you going to finish that?” It seemed a sin to waste good food, especially since the mound of steaming ambrosia in his bowl was sending up an irresistible aroma.

He pushed the bowl over to her side of the table without a word. Annie could feel his eyes on her as she started in on his portion, and it occurred to her that the nuns would not have been pleased with her manners. At the very least she ought to have complimented Chase on his cooking skills or inquired on his lack of appetite. But she couldn’t spare the time from her food. It seemed as if some ravenous, foraging animal had taken over her will. She was absolutely drunk on the mouthwatering smells and tastes. Consummation was a wonderful thing, she thought, smiling at the awareness. She felt as if she could consume Chase’s corned-beef hash forever and never be full, never get enough to satisfy her hunger.

“Exquisito,”
she said, some moments later after she’d finished every morsel of the food and was polishing the inside of the bowl with a chunk of bread. “Really, it was exquisite. I’ve never had hash before. Is it a local delicacy?”

Chase nodded, a wry smile surfacing. “Ranks right up there with prairie chips and Rocky Mountain oysters. Remind me to whip you up a batch of those sometime.”

“Oysters? Here in the mountains?” Annie couldn’t restrain a skeptical headshake as she finished the last of the bread. “Wonders never cease,” she murmured.

“No ... they never do.”

Something in his voice made her glance up, and as she did, she caught the fleeting appreciation that moved through his expression. A lightness buoyed her heart as she registered his recent kindnesses—and wondered what they meant. It seemed too good to be true that he might have changed his mind and decided to help her prove her citizenship. She’d lived so many years in a country ripped apart by insurrection that deprivation and fear had become a way of life. She’d thought of herself as inured to the pain. And yet now, even anticipating that the nightmare might be over brought her a sense of relief so powerful, it felt almost joyous.

“You get enough?” Chase asked, glancing at the empty bowls and bread crumbs, the only evidence that there’d been food on the table. “Looks like I should have thrown a side of beef on the stove.”

“Oh, no.” Annie settled back in the chair and allowed herself a deeply contented sigh. “Don’t bother, really. I don’t think I could eat another bite. What about you?”

He grinned ruefully at the empty bowls and tilted back in his chair, his unbuttoned shirt falling open. “I’m watching my figure,” he said, cocking his head in a way that made his powerful neck muscles stand out.

Annie was riveted by his tone of voice. She didn’t know how to describe it except that there was an undercurrent of sensuality in his cowboy drawl that had her feeling faint all over again. She knew without doubt that if he ever spoke words of love to her in that slow, rusty voice, even if all he said was “Come here, Annie,” she would have no choice but to go. He would own her, body and soul.

“Your figure looks fine to me,” she said, drawing in a breath as she surveyed the muscular landscape that his open shirt revealed. She supposed she ought to be blushing and fanning herself at the sight of so much naked masculinity. It seemed like a natural enough inclination, and probably what a woman intent upon seduction would do. But now that she’d noticed his body, she simply couldn’t take her eyes off it.

His upper torso looked as hard and unforgiving as the badlands she’d just crossed. His skin glowed with burnished gold tones that made her think he must have spent some time working without his shirt on. And the lean, aggressive flare of his stomach muscles were something to behold. A swath of chest hair dusted his pectorals and cut a narrow path toward his jeans, streaking like a dark river over sinewy ridges and planes.

The quickening beat of Annie’s heart confused her. Raised as she had been among the Indians, she’d seen plenty of half-naked male bodies, some of them extremely well developed. And Chase Beaudine, magnificent as he might look at the moment, had basically the same equipment. Pectorals were pectorals, weren’t they? The collarbone was still connected to the shoulder bone, no matter what the body looked like. And yet try as she would to analyze the situation dispassionately, nothing in her parents’ anatomy and physiology texts had prepared her for the collarbones of the man sitting across from her.

“You sure you got enough to eat?” Chase interrupted her survey with an inquisitive smile. “If I hadn’t seen you finish off two bowls of hash and a loaf of bread, I might think you wanted to start in on me.”

Annie blinked with surprise, and the blush she hadn’t been able to summon earlier swept her face and throat full force. “Chase Beaudine,” she said softly, “what are you doing? Flirting with me?”

She did have an interesting way of putting things. Chase pushed back from the table, chair and all. The movement was as slow and deliberate as his feelings were hot and impulsive. There’d been enough “flirting” going on since he met her to make up for the last five years of his life. But he wasn’t lighting the brushfires and sending up the smoke signals. She was. If ever a woman wanted to be taken advantage of, this one did.

“I think we’re past the flirting stage,” he said, his voice tellingly husky. It was plain where the conversation was headed, and common sense alone told him not to pursue it, but he couldn’t resist. What red-blooded man could resist when the woman sitting across the table from him was wearing his work shirt and nothing else? Besides, he was almost beginning to like the challenge of seeing how far he could go with her and still pull back. There was something irresistibly seductive about walking that close to the edge. Maybe it was a sad comment on his life these days, but very little else made him feel so alive, except possibly staring death in the eyes.

“Past flirting?” She shifted nervously and tried with no success to smooth back her hair. “What stage are we in then?”

“I don’t know. The getting-down-to-it stage, maybe?”

“Getting down to it?” She stared into his eyes for several seconds, and then her shoulders rose as she took a deep breath. “What does that mean exactly?”

“You want the truth?”

After a moment of hesitation, she nodded.

“It means that ever since you sat down, I’ve been thinking about lifting those shirttails of yours and using this table for a bed.” He watched her breathing quicken and her color go from deep pink to scarlet. Without any effort at all Chase could imagine sweeping all the dishes aside, picking her up, and laying her down on the cool, slick oilcloth.

He tipped back, his creaky wooden chair precariously balanced on its back legs. The scene flashed through his mind ... her hair in wild disarray as she opened her arms to receive him, her fingers tangling urgently in his hair ... her thighs soft and opened, inciting passion, and both of them too crazy with desire to bother with preliminaries.

A sheen of sweat broke out on his brow at the imagined pleasure. Things were getting crazy again, he told himself. He was getting crazy. But what amazed him most about his reaction to her was the defection of his legendary willpower. He’d never had a problem controlling himself with women. He’d gone without sex for months at a time on a mission, just because it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. But with her he was like a stallion waiting to be led to stud.

“Right here?” she said softly. “On the table?”

“I’m thinking about doing things that’ll make your toes curl, Annie. Pleasures so sweet, they’ll make you want to die just a little.”

“Die? On the table?” She raised a hand to her forehead as though she were trying to visualize such a thing. “Oh, my word,” she said, her voice thready and light. “Couldn’t we just—”

Chase’s eyes swept over what he could see of her body, searching out the gentle swing of her breasts beneath the loose shirt. It was time to pull back from the edge, he told himself. His nerve endings were flashing messages, thickening his muscles and teasing his senses with signals. His vision sharpened until he thought he could see her nipples hardening against the cotton material. His hearing was honed for the sexy rasp of her breathing.
It’s time, cowboy. Head off the thundering herd before it goes over the cliff.

But his heart was pounding like a jackhammer, and the darkening pull of her eyes was irresistible. He let the chair legs drop to the floor as he stood up. “Couldn’t we just do
what,
Annie? You got a problem with doing it on the table?” he asked softly. “You’re not sure you want it that rough-and-ready?”

Her fingers whitened against the edge of the table as she looked up at him. She could hardly get the words out. “I am sure, yes ... I—I do want that. If you do.”

Her vulnerability enflamed his desire. She was so nakedly willing to do whatever he asked of her that Chase felt a gut-punch of animal passion. Wonder and anger and violent need all raged inside him. God, he wanted her. He was
crazy,
wanting her.

He hit the chair with his leg, accidentally knocking it over. The clattering noise gave him the briefest jolt of satisfaction, and then he met her gaze. Her blue eyes were wide with alarm. She was obviously shocked by his suggestion, maybe even a little frightened, but still she was willing to go along with it. Why? What kind of cosmic joke was this? Who in the hell had sent Annie Wells to torment him?

He yanked the chair upright and slammed it to the floor, consumed by a wave of self-disgust. He was furious at himself for what he’d done. And furious with her for what she was apparently willing to do. Good Lord, was she ready to sacrifice anything? Was her birthright, as she called it, worth that?

“What the hell are you doing, woman?” he asked softly. “Don’t you know better than to bargain with bastards?”

He strode to the door and threw it open, needing the fresh, cool air. Heat was steaming through his veins and rising off the back of his neck as he stood on the threshold. Right. You tell her about bastards, cowboy, he thought acidly. You just do that little thing. Stink up the room with your nobility.

There was no equal distribution of blame in this situation. He was clearly the only bastard in sight. It was his fault, all of it, but knowing that didn’t make him any less angry. And it didn’t stop him from wanting to rail at the whole damn world. What kind of system was it where people like his parents had nothing better to do than abuse alcohol to the point of nearly killing each other? And what kind of madmen butchered a young girl’s parents and forced her into hiding?

What kind of woman traded her body for her birthright?

He turned back to her, ready to lash out, but he was struck silent by the bewilderment in her expression, by the glimmer of raw pain in her eyes. The truth hit him as he stared at her. She was a woman who’d had to survive, he realized, under the most brutal of circumstances. She’d done it by sheer endurance, and by a kind of surrender that he would never understand. She was the willow tree he’d once compared her to, fragile but enduring, with a root structure that would allow her to bend but never to break. Her spirit had been tested. And she was strong, stronger than he would ever be.

But why was she looking at him that way? As though he’d just flung her dreams back in her face. He studied her features, drawn by the mix of anguish and urgency. There was something in her expression that wrenched him, a tiny sparkle of light that held him prisoner. Even the dull sheen of pain couldn’t hide its stubborn glimmer. Hope, he realized. For God’s sake! Despite everything, she was still holding out hope where he was concerned. Suddenly he understood what he had to do, and it was unbelievably cruel. He had to blunt that emotion in her eyes, or he would never be free of her hold.