Deborah Camp (20 page)

“He’s not talking about that, hardheaded man.” Mary giggled. “He’s talking about releasing yourself with her in your tepee or in that spare room nobody uses anymore.”

Blade moved uneasily toward the front door and stared out, hoping to see Elise on the road. “I’m in mourning.” He jumped slightly when James landed a hand on his shoulder.

“Your Julia has been dead many months now, my cousin. Your marriage died with her, but not your manhood. You have gone into town once or twice to sport with the saloon women, but that isn’t the same as loving on your own woman—a woman who hasn’t slept with every other man in town.” He leaned closer and his lips nearly brushed Blade’s ear. “It is time you took your wife into your bed, my cousin. Otherwise, you might bust.”

Blade jerked away, angry at himself and the truth his cousin spoke. Then he saw her—a dot on the horizon. “There she is, damn her!” He bolted out the door and his long strides ate up the distance.

As he grew nearer, he saw her pause as if startled
to see him; then she continued her pace. He advanced and she offered up a hesitant smile.

“I’ve been visiting Adam. Is something wrong?”

“Don’t play innocent with me,” he charged, his hands clenched at his sides as he towered over her. “You and Mary make quite a scheming pair, but I’m no fool!”

“Whatever are you shouting about?” she asked.

Good question
, a calmer voice responded within him, but his boiling emotions overruled it. “You are not to leave this place without telling me first! You know better than to go to the judge’s without me!”

“Begging your pardon, but who made you king? I’m not your devoted subject, Blade. I am your wife. I am also a free woman and I shall do as I please.” She laid a hand against his shoulder and gave him a push as she walked past him.

He grabbed her arm and flung her around to him again. His body thrummed with need and it was all he could do not to crush her to him and kiss her until she was breathless.

“I am your husband, woman! You will do as I say.” He hated how he sounded—loud and brutish—so he let her go and walked straight across the field with no clear destination in mind.

“And just where are you going?” she shouted after him.

He didn’t answer, since he had none. All he wanted was to get away from her before he did something he’d regret. Like sweep her up into his arms, take her to the barn, fling her into the hay and make love to her until he knew her body as well as he knew his own. Only then would he be satisfied. And then this smoking, black, heavy ball of need in him would be gone. Finally gone.

* * *

Elise walked gingerly into the barn, where she’d seen Blade earlier. Moving on cat’s feet, she peeked into the horse stalls and was surprised to find him sprawled on the hay.

“Blade?”

He sat up, eyes widening, then narrowing. “What do you want?”

“To apologize.”

He cursed under his breath and lay back down.

“Please, let me explain, Blade.” She stepped into the stall. “I needed to see Adam, and I didn’t want to fight with you about it.” She waited for him to respond, but he only stared moodily at the beams overhead. “I was worried about Adam, and it’s a good thing I did talk to him. He’s threatening to run away.”

“Run away to where?”

“Anywhere. He hates the judge and the judge’s wife. I’ve never seen him so … so angry before. It scares me.”

Blade lifted his gaze to find hers. His softened. “Don’t be scared. It’s natural for a boy his age to be angry, to be bucking at all the restraints placed on him.”

“It’s more than that.”

“Yes, he has never had to work and he is finding he doesn’t like it.”

“No, that’s not entirely true.” She sat beside Blade on the hay. “He was plowing when I found him. He told me that he likes to work in the field because he can get away from the judge there. Nobody nags at him when he’s working.”

Blade smiled faintly. “Sounds like me.”

“Yes, it does in a way. You like being out in those fields, too. Away from me.”

He propped himself on his elbows. “No, that’s not why I like working the fields. I like it because I can think and plan and dream. Nobody is around to tell me that my dreams are foolish, that my plans will fall to ashes at my feet.”

“People have said that to you?”

“All my life—all, except my mother.”

“Your father didn’t believe in your dreams?”

“No.” He picked up a piece of straw and stuck it between his lips. “My father had other sons besides me.”

“Oh. From his other wife?”

Blade nodded. “He never knew what to make of me. After all, the white people were making war and my father was married to a white woman and had a half-white son. When he would talk about the hated white eyes, he would glance at me with shame in his eyes.”

“But he loved your mother! Why couldn’t he love you?”

“My mother was a prize.” He smiled. “I don’t think he meant to fall in love with her. He just couldn’t leave her to die, so he brought her back to camp. She was a beautiful woman, and so different from any other he’d met.” Blade snatched the piece of hay from his mouth and tossed it aside. “But I was hers, never his.”

“Blade, it pains me to hear about your upbringing. I had so much love in my life, and you had so little!” Elise placed a hand on his arm. “When your mother died, did you go back for her funeral?”

“I went back before she died. She was ill and sent word. I arrived on a Thursday and she died on Friday. I think she held on just to say good-bye to me.”

“It appears that white women have taught you the most about love.”

He jerked his gaze to hers as if her statement startled him; then a wry smile touched his mouth. “But not all the lessons have been pleasant.”

She fell silent, not knowing how to respond to him. Finally, she patted his arm in a soothing gesture. She felt him tense under her hand and she pulled away. His eyes flashed a warning which her heart responded to by beating furiously. Elise drew in a shaky breath.

“Are you still angry at me for going to see Adam?”

He frowned. “No, but I don’t want you going over there again without telling me first. Did the judge see you?”

“I don’t think so.”

Mary’s laughter floated to her, followed by Penny’s. Their voices grew closer. Elise sighed, wishing for more private time with Blade. It seemed she never got to talk to him for more than ten minutes without interruption. She had nothing pressing to say to him. She just wanted the time to get to know the man she’d married. Was that asking too much?

Blade dipped his head to catch her gaze. “Why are you frowning?”

“Was I?” She smiled. “I …” She shook her head, unable to find a polite way to tell him that she wished his cousins would pack up their tepee and hit the road. “It’s nothing.” She started to rise, but he caught her wrist, his fingers warm and strong.

“Where are you going? Why don’t you stay and talk a while?”

Her heart sputtered, then raced. He wanted to be alone with her! “Why, I’d like that, but I—”

“ ’Lise!” Penny barreled around the corner and
into the stall. “Come quick! The pigs got out and are heading for the pasture!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Elise sprang up and hoisted her skirts above her ankles, making ready for a mad sprint. “There’s never a moment’s peace around here anymore!” She exchanged a look of regret with Blade before she ran out of the barn, followed by Penny.

T
he night lay upon him like a heavy blanket of heat. Blade stared up at the tepee’s apex where it opened to reveal a patch of stars. He told himself to relax and asked for sleep to come, but his flesh drummed with a thousand pulses and his mind stirred with images of lips and thighs and cornflower-blue eyes.

Coupling with Elise would be disastrous. He understood her well enough to know that she would feel truly connected to him if they shared such intimacies, and even if she were unhappy with him afterward, she’d stay with him out of duty. Like Julia. But he could not live like that again with a woman. The next woman who shared his bed would do so joyfully and equally, not out of duty or to get a child.

Maybe he should ride into town. The gals at the Rusty Key were always flirting with him. Before he’d married Julia, he’d visited the upper rooms a few times. Although it hadn’t been the best sex he’d ever had in his life, it had been sex. Something was better than nothing.

He covered his eyes with one arm as he rejected that idea. The woman he wanted wasn’t at the
Rusty Key. He yearned for Elise with a passion more keen than any he’d ever known. It would be so nice to capture one more kiss from her full pink lips.

Images of her floated behind his eyes, and his loins burned anew. Lately, everything she did made him want to tell her that she’d come to mean so much to him—too much. The past two days he’d ached with no relief in sight. Kissing her only made it worse. He wanted to crush her beneath him and be lost inside her. He wanted to unpin her hair and bury his face in it, then work his way down to—

Soft murmurs interrupted his reverie. Turning his head, he listened. They came again—one voice deep, the other sweetly feminine. Blade closed his eyes in resignation. Mary and James. Their tepee was next to his, and this wasn’t the first time he’d heard them. But not tonight, he pleaded with clenched teeth. Please, not tonight!

Mary giggled. James groaned. Silence. A rustling of bedclothes. Mary moaned. James said something that made her moan again.

Blade clamped his hands over his ears, but it was too late. He knew what they were doing in that tepee next to his, and the hunger inside him beat its drum again. Blade pushed off the bedclothes and emerged from his tepee into the cool night air. He breathed deeply and reached back inside for his pants. He had to get away, he thought, before he went mad.

What was that?

Elise sat up in bed and looked around the room. Penny slept peacefully. Moonlight streamed through the open window; a breeze fluttered the
curtains. Nothing was amiss, but something had awakened her. Maybe a dream.

Soft moans … heavy breathing … panting … the sounds flew through the window to Elise and brought hot color to her face. She froze, listening and knowing that Mary and James were making those sounds. She was used to them, having heard them several times since the couple had pitched their tepee just around the corner from her bedroom window.

At first she’d thought that one or both were in pain or having a nightmare, but then she knew, as any woman or man knows, even if the person hasn’t made those noises yet. The sexual creature within every human recognized the music of mating.

Not tonight, she thought, holding the pillow over her head to muffle the noises. She’d had a devil of a time calming down enough to sleep, and now she was wide awake again.

Envy poked at her and she realized how much she wanted a man of her own. Watching Mary and James exchange glances and secret smiles made Elise wish for that kind of intimacy.

Didn’t it bother Blade at all? she wondered. Didn’t he yearn for a relationship? Of late, it was all she could do
not
to pine for Blade’s attentions. She breathed in deeply, almost feeling his touch in her mind and melting under it.

Elise lifted the pillow in time to hear Mary’s sharp cry of satisfaction.

Enough! She bounded from the bed and escaped from the room. She closed the door softly behind her so as not to awaken Penny. What she needed was a long, cool drink, she decided, turning blindly to feel her way across the main room.

She gasped as her gaze collided not with an empty room, but with a tall, wide presence filling her vision.

“Blade!” she whispered, her hand flying to her throat in a startled gesture. “I didn’t expect you to be …” Her words fell apart like ashes in the wind. His sultry gaze moved over her from throat to toes. She had neglected to put on her robe and stood before him clad only in her thin white nightgown.

“Can’t y-you sleep?” she whispered, barely able to force the words out. He made no response other than to rake her thoroughly with his smoldering eyes.

Her nipples perked up, begging for attention, and they were swiftly rewarded as his dark eyes found and admired them. Elise shivered and crossed her arms over her breasts. She started around him just as he started around her in the same direction. They bumped against each other and his arm came around her, pulling her up against him until she could feel the hammering of his heart.

She looked up into his face, a face so handsome she could hardly believe her good luck. His hair looked like black waves of silk, and she longed to rub her face in it and drink in the intoxicating scent of him. A bead of sweat formed on his neck and rolled downward. Emboldened by the semidarkness and the sexual glint in his eyes, Elise followed the droplet’s odyssey with her fingertip, down his neck, across his shoulder, over the bulge of his chest wall and directly to one of his flat, dark brown, diamond hard nipples. She flicked it with her fingernail.

Blade panted heavily. Veins stood out in his neck. Elise trailed a hand down his chest to his low-riding
waistband. Obeying a series of commands issued from a primitive part of her, she hooked her fingers there and tugged hard.

With a deep, fevered moan, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. His mouth fastened on hers, and she parted her lips. His tongue swept inside to tease and tantalize. Determined to experience his kiss fully, Elise wound her arms around his sturdy neck and positioned her mouth more completely beneath his.

His tongue was delicious inside her mouth—slick and satiny and oh, so agile. He nibbled on her lips and she felt him smile as one of his big hands moved over her hips to cup and lightly squeeze.

Never had she been handled in such a way! Oh, Lord, what she’d been missing!

Raining kisses over her face, he murmured words that had never been spoken in her company—sexual words that made the blood pound more furiously in her veins. He stroked her back and buttocks, molding her body to his. She felt him grow hard with desire.