Corbin's Fancy (6 page)

Fancy began to rise and fall beneath him, instinctively allowing him to lead her. And yet he moaned a soft plea, as though it were she who commanded.

As his thrusts increased in power, so did Fancy’s passion. She was delirious with it now, clutching at the muscled curves of his buttocks, driving him deeper and deeper. Their separate bodies became fully one, heaving with the exertion demanded of them, glistening with a sheen of perspiration.

Fancy seemed to burst through the barn roof, spinning. She clutched at Jeff in a beautiful sort of terror, but his cries and the ceaseless thrusts of his fierce manhood only drove her higher. She was certain that if she could only turn her head, she would find herself looking down on the house and the river and the apple orchard.

Suddenly, his great body stiffened and he rasped her
name as his seed rippled into the depths of her, again and again. She spoke softly and soothed his broad back with her hands as he shuddered upon her.

Finally, Jeff sank to her, his breath harsh, his frame still quivering with the brutal force of his release. “God—Fancy—oh, my God—”

Reality came crashing down on Fancy in that moment. She realized what she had done, what they had done together, and struggled beneath his inert frame, a choked sob coming from her throat. “Let me up!”

Jeff eased away from her, still breathing hard, his eyes glazed and distracted. He watched without apparent emotion as Fancy frantically grabbed for her clothes, stood up, and struggled into them.

“You were a virgin,” he observed in a flat voice, while Fancy grappled with her underthings.

“I tried to tell you that!” she burst out, tears streaking down her face.

One powerful, burn-scarred shoulder moved in a shrug. “I didn’t believe you,” he replied matter-of-factly, as though that made everything all right. “You used to work on the
Silver Shadow
in Port Hastings. I remember you.”

“Does that make me a whore?” hissed Fancy, tangling one foot in the hem of her cherished lavender dress and nearly toppling back onto the straw again.

Idly, Jeff reached for his trousers and shirt. He was almost fully dressed before he answered, “It certainly doesn’t make you respectable. The place is a brothel, after all.”

Fancy wanted to strike him, but she knew that he would restrain her easily, perhaps even laugh at her. And right then she couldn’t have borne that. “My
father works in a coal mine!” she shouted senselessly, as she struggled with the buttons Jeff had found so easy to manage. “He’s dying of lung fever! My mother washes other people’s clothes and they’re still in debt to the company no matter what they do! Therefore, Captain Rich-and-Spoiled Corbin, I’ll work anywhere, as long as I’m paid a fair wage!”

He stopped buttoning his straw-flecked shirt to watch her. “To send to them?” he prompted.

“Yes!”

Jeff chuckled, low in his throat. “You’re certainly worth your wages, Nurse Jordan.”

That did it. Fancy lunged at him, still only half-dressed, a furious animal sound rattling deep in her throat. She flung both fists at an impervious, rock-hard chest, frantic to hurt Jeff Corbin, to make him bleed.

He caught her wrists in a firm hold and, to her eternal surprise, pulled her close. His arms were around her instantly, the palms of his massive hands cupping her small bottom, kneading the still-tingling flesh there into a submission that soon spread throughout Fancy’s being. “I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I was only teasing you.”

Fancy was determined not to be caught in his trap again. “I came out here to build a rabbit hutch!” she yelled.

Jeff threw back his head and laughed uproariously. When he finally sobered, he looked down into her flushed, furious face and said, “Lord, woman, the way you build rabbit hutches could send a man to an early grave.”

“Wretch!”

He bent and kissed the tip of her pert little nose.
“You’d better go inside, Miss Jordan, and repair your appearance. At the moment, you look as though you’d just been deflowered on the barn floor.”

Fancy broke free of him and strode toward the house. It wasn’t until she reached her room and forced herself to look into the mirror, that she realized how right Jeff had been. Her hair was full of straw and falling around her shoulders in untidy loops, her dress was mussed and not properly buttoned. A telling apricot blush pulsed in her cheeks and her eyes were as bright as the sunny heights where she’d soared.

Trembling, Fancy took the pitcher from her wash stand, stomped to the kitchen sink, and pumped cold water into the vessel so vigorously that her arm ached. Then she swept back to her room, poured the water into the waiting basin, and splashed her face until some of the heat faded away and her heart slowed to its normal pace.

After that, she took her hair down and brushed it, causing it to crackle and flare around her face. She exchanged the lavender dress for her own gray woolen, unsuited as it was to the warm weather, and then pinned her thick tresses into a severe coronet at the back of her head. Maybe she wasn’t innocent anymore, but she certainly looked the part, and that was what mattered now. If Keith and Mrs. Thompkins had seen her in her earlier, scandalous state, she would have been mortified.

Jeff was in the kitchen when Fancy dared to return to that room. He’d stripped off his shirt and he was washing industriously, noisily at the sink, the sparkling water flying in every direction.

Of course, Fancy took in the long scar stretching
across his broad back and her anger softened, just momentarily, into tenderness. She longed to walk across that room and touch the mark with her fingers, tracing its path from his shoulder to his hip.

He turned to see her frozen there in the doorway, his face and hair dripping water from his impromptu bath. Mirth danced, deep blue, in his eyes. “How very prim and proper you look, Miss Jordan. I liked you better with hay in your hair.”

Fancy blushed but she did not avert her eyes, though she longed to. This was a contest of wills and even if she could not win, she had no intention of being cowed, either. “I’ll thank you not to refer to that—that indiscretion again!”

One toasted-gold eyebrow arched in eloquent amusement. The muscles in Jeff’s furred chest rippled as he reached for a towel and began to dry himself. “Is that what it was, Frances? An indiscretion?”

Fancy’s cheeks ached and burned. “Yes!”

“That’s a pity—that you feel that way, I mean. Because I intend to have you again, first chance I get.” He paused and his maddening, handsome face was speculative, mischievous. “It’ll be in the carriage next time, I think—”

Fancy swayed and groped her way to a chair at the table, falling gratefully into it. “The carriage!” she gasped, stunned at his audacity.

He nodded. “You’re a tasty little morsel,” he reflected, ignoring the new surge of color in Fancy’s face, the trembling of her clasped hands. “I’d like to set you on the carriage seat and—”

“Stop!” wailed Fancy, mortified.

“It would be delicious,” he continued, “for you as well as for me.”

“Nothing will be ‘delicious,’ Captain Corbin,” Fancy spouted. “I intend to leave this place immediately!”

He came to stand disconcertingly near, the towel stretched taut between his hands. Fancy’s heart fluttered wildly for a moment, for she thought that he meant to choke her.

As if to add credence to this idea, he caught the moist towel behind her neck and pulled until she was forced to stand, facing him, within inches of his conquering body.

But Jeff did not strangle Fancy; he merely kissed her. His lips were soft upon hers, cool from his washing, tasting of spring water and a lingering trace of her own soaring joy.

“Don’t leave me,” he muttered.

Fancy broke away from him, but with difficulty. And she was still imprisoned by the towel he held. “I was not hired to serve your base instincts, Jeff Corbin,” she managed to say.

He bent, caught her lower lip between gentle teeth, then tugged at it. A jolt of renewed need rocked Fancy. “Don’t go,” he repeated in a throaty voice. “Promise you won’t, or I swear I’ll carry you upstairs and demonstrate every single reason why you belong in my bed, Fancy Jordan.”

“I d–don’t belong in your bed!”

He let the towel go and bent as if to lift her. While Fancy knew that she could not permit such a thing, a part of her wished that Jeff would make good on his threat. “Oh, no?”

“I’ll stay!” she burst out.

His hands came up to brazenly cup her breasts. “Promise?”

“I pr–promise!”

“Good.” He plucked pert, woolen-covered nipples into prompt obedience. “Now, let’s try to look as though we’ve been good while the pastor was away, shall we?”

“H–How?”

In complete contrast to his own words, Jeff was unbuttoning Fancy’s prim gray dress at the bodice. “We’ll build a rabbit hutch,” he said. “But first, I want another taste of you. Nourish me, Fancy.”

Fancy willed her hands to rise up and stop the steady baring of her breasts, but they would not. “You can’t mean—”

“I want a breast,” he said, bending his head, closing his mouth over one camisole-sheltered nipple, leaving a moistness there to taunt the puckering treasure beneath. “Nothing more, but nothing less, either.”

His voice was sleepy and compelling and Fancy ached to grant him what he asked. “N–Not here—” she argued, in a choked little voice.

Jeff smiled and caught her hand in his; the towel was still draped over her shoulders and she arranged it to cover her gaping bodice. He led her into a small parlor off the kitchen, sat her down at the end of a long sofa, and then draped himself, on his side, across her lap.

And Fancy bared one plump breast to nurse him, loving every thrilling moment, every gentle nip of his teeth, every greedy suckling, every flick of his tongue. At the same time, she hated Jeff Corbin for being able to make her do such an outrageous thing so willingly.

Finally, when he’d had his fill, he calmly replaced her moistened camisole and buttoned her dress.

Fancy was both relieved and disappointed. While it would certainly have been imprudent to let him take her again, her entire being ached for just that.

Maddeningly, he knew exactly what she was thinking and feeling. He patted her cheek in a rather patronizing fashion and muttered, “You’ll be tender for a while.”

Fancy colored richly but said nothing. The gauzy fabric of her camisole clung to her well-worked nipples, giving rise to a frantic and very unladylike urge to scratch.

Jeff stood up, looking down at her, frowning slightly. “Why didn’t Temple make love to you?”

It was too much. Fancy was already mortified by what she had done with this man, what she had allowed him to do to her. She shot to her feet and glared into his rugged, aristocratic face. “Temple Royce is a gentleman, unlike you!” she shouted, and the fact that she was lying through her teeth mattered not at all.

To Fancy’s surprise, Jeff flung back his head and laughed a great, roaring, lion laugh. “Royce, a gentleman!”

“What’s so funny about that? He wanted me to save myself for marriage.”

Jeff continued to laugh.

Fancy stomped one foot. “Well, he did!”

Finally, Jeff’s amusement began to subside. Replacing it was something far more alarming—a glitter of dislike lurked in the dark blue eyes. “It’s far more likely that he was saving you for one of the backrooms on the
Silver Shadow,
Fancy, and we both know it.”

Speechless with humiliation and impotent rage, Fancy tried to press past Jeff Corbin. She would pack her things, collect Hershel, and leave this wretched, wonderful place before anyone could change her mind.

Except that Jeff caught her arm and pulled her back. “I’m sorry,” he said gruffly.

She gazed up at him, unable to speak for the torrent of conflicting emotions washing over her. She despised this man and yet she needed him, too. Perhaps she even loved him.

Fancy shuddered at the thought.

He drew her close; she felt again the hard strength of his chest and thighs, the warmth of his bare flesh. “Cold?” he breathed.

She pulled back. “Put on your shirt!” she scowled.

He chuckled and, incredibly, did as he was told. By the time Keith and Alva returned from church, a lovely dark-haired woman perched on the buggyseat between them, Fancy and Jeff were kneeling in the side yard—industriously building a rabbit hutch.

*   *   *

Keith was both pleased and unsettled by the change in his brother. It was nothing short of a miracle that Jeff was out of his room, actually doing something constructive, and yet there was an elusive element in his bearing, and Fancy’s, too, that boded ill.

With the softness of Amelie pressed so close to him, it was natural that Keith would consider the most unnerving possibility—that Jeff, with his legendary way with women, had seduced Fancy.

He drew the buggy to a halt at the barn door, jumped down, and helped Amelie to alight. The turn his thoughts had just taken made him wonder how the devil he was going to last a full month until the wedding.

The steady
thwack-thwack
of Jeff’s hammer ceased. Both he and Fancy had been kneeling on the grass, one on each side of whatever they were building, but they rose together, their faces watchful, wary.

Oh, no, thought Keith with real despair.

Jeff’s eyes met his brother’s squarely and held, though his words were directed to Amelie. “We have a guest,” he said, unnecessarily.

Keith was diverted by the mention of the woman he loved, probably because he wanted to be. He felt a familiar thrill as her small, gloved hand slid through the crook of his arm and squeezed. She was a vision with her bright green eyes, her dark, glistening hair, her slight but womanly figure.

“It’s so good to see you out and about, Captain,” she said sweetly, her gaze touching Fancy and then dismissing her. “I do hope you’re feeling better.”

Jeff flung one look at Fancy—a look Keith knew as well as he knew the twenty-third Psalm—and then answered, “Much better.”

Fancy’s furious blush told Keith all he needed to know. “I’d like to talk to you inside,” he told his brother, in a tightly controlled voice.