Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (5 page)

   
“What are you doing?” Her voice cracked on the last word.

   
“If I’m going to wrap this wound to stop the bleeding, I first have to bare the skin,” he replied reasonably, continuing to pull the ruined shirt off.

   
She had thought his chest and shoulders were revealed through the sheer lawn covering. Now she could see how mistaken that assumption had been! Darkly bronzed skin rippled with sleek muscles as he tossed his shirt onto the crude wooden bench beside the table. Black hair sprinkled generously across his chest, then tapered into an enticing vee that arrowed down to disappear beneath the belt buckle at his narrow waist. Her eyes would have strayed scandalously lower but a bitten back groan distracted her.

   
Samuel cursed as he tried to flex his injured arm. “The bleeding’s grown worse. If I don’t get it stopped, I might pass out and bleed to death before you can summon help. I’m afraid I’m going to need those petticoats.”

   
‘‘M-my p-petticoats,” she stammered, then instantly felt like a fool.

   
“You’re not going to faint now that the shooting’s done, are you?” His voice was light but a sheen of perspiration glistened on his forehead in spite of the chilly evening air. “I’d search around here for some cloth for bandages but somehow I suspect that any to be found in here would blood-poison a possum,” he added wryly as Olivia came out of her trance.

   
His whole arm was soaked with blood and here she had been gawking at his naked chest as if she had never seen one before! Well, come to think of it, she had never seen a grown man’s bare chest before. With clumsy fingers she began to tear at the top layer of her petticoats but the heavy linen would not give.

   
“Here, allow me,” he said with mock gallantry as he knelt in front of her and reached for the snowy slip with his uninjured hand. In the other one a wicked looking knife gleamed. He sliced through the hem of the undergarment, then let her tear it until she had a little over a yard of cloth with which to wrap his arm.

   
“Tear another piece about the same length,” he commanded as he lowered his injured arm into the bucket of cool water he had placed on the table. A small hiss of pain escaped his clenched jaw but he made no further sound as he bathed the injury until the water ran red between his fingers.

   
Olivia stood holding the makeshift bandages, feeling utterly useless and somewhat queasy as she watched. An ugly furrow marred the perfection of his upper arm, slicing in a nasty angle across his bicep. She swallowed and moved closer as he raised his arm out of the water. “I’ll wrap it,” she said.

   
He held out his arm and let her cover it with the linen. He could feel the tremors that wracked her body vibrating through her hands as she worked. “Pull it tight so the bleeding stops. Aargh! Yes,” he rasped as he pressed the end of the linen against the wound to hold it in place.

   
“I’m hurting you!” she gasped, dropping the bandage.

   
“No! I mean yes, but it can’t be helped. Just get the damn thing wrapped around my arm and tie it off good and tight.” He began to wrap the bandage himself. Suddenly Olivia’s fingers, soft and cool, brushed his hand as she once more took over the task, pulling on the wrapping the way he had instructed her.

   
As they worked, their hands continued to touch each other. Her skin felt silken and she smelled of jasmine. He watched her bite her lower lip in concentration as she tied off the bandage. Her mouth was soft, pale pink, utterly kissable. And he was utterly insane. He was still a married man and he knew nothing about her except that she was young, French and spoiled. That should have been enough to deter him but somehow it was not. Her hair had come loose from its pins during the wild carriage ride and a fat bouncy curl of pure flame brushed against the sensitive inside of his wrist.

   
Without thinking Samuel cupped his hand around the back of her slender neck and lowered his face to hers as he drew her against him. “Such good work deserves a reward,” he murmured as his mouth tasted the soft pink lips that had beckoned him.

   
Olivia felt herself melting toward the hardness and heat of his chest. Her palms pressed against the crisp hair and her fingers kneaded in it as her lips tilted upward to meet his descending mouth. The kiss was fierce and hungry yet oddly delicate and exploratory at the same time. His lips brushed, then pressed hers and his tongue lightly rimmed the edges of her mouth until she emitted a tiny gasp of delight, allowing him entry to taste the virgin territory within.

   
She’d had the adulation of legions of lovesick young swains but she had never been kissed like this. Olivia could feel the pounding of his heartbeat against her palms and the answering acceleration of her own wayward heart. The exotic texture of crisp chest hair delighted her questing fingers but it was her mouth that felt the full drugging persuasion of Samuel’s sensual coaxing. The tip of his tongue dipped and glided inside her lips, then danced a duel with her tongue and retreated only to plunge in for another jolting foray. She heard a low mewling sound like a lost kitten crying, without realizing that it was her own voice.

   
She was pliant and willing yet there was an inexplicable sense of surprise and wonder in her responses that did not befit a belle of her apparent experience. Yet the hunger that he felt left no time for further consideration or caution. It had been far, far too long since he had lain with a woman.

   
As the enmity between him and Tish had grown, their physical hunger for each other had waned. Two years ago he had quit her bed when he learned that she had visited a notorious abortionist in Maryland. Sickened and desolate, he had never touched her since. When his physical needs became unbearable he betrayed his marriage vows with carefully chosen professionals. The encounters always left him with such bitter, sordid regrets that he seldom succumbed. Instead he buried himself in his dangerous work.

   
His compelling attraction to Olivia St. Etienne was utter madness. She was obviously from a good family, gently reared with the expectation of a proper marriage even if she did behave irresponsibly. There was no place for such a female in his life. Then why was he drawn to her with such an inexplicable longing? His hand, deft and sure, had found the small sweet enticement of her breast, cupping it through the soft linen of her jacket. When he rubbed his thumb against the hard bud of her nipple she cried out against his mouth and pressed closer to him in the mindless desire they shared. His fingers tangled in her thick, lustrous hair and he twined the curls around his fists like scarlet ribbons.

   
If he did not stop at once he would take her here in this filthy deserted cabin on the rough plank floor, rutting like the cur dog that lay quietly in the corner of the crude bare room watching them. This was insanity born of simple deprivation. Surely it couldn’t be anything more. With an oath he pulled away, supporting the breathless, dazed girl by holding her shoulders. He could feel a shudder of surprise rippling through her. She raised her head and their eyes met. Hers were wide and dazed, turned the deep green of a tree-shrouded forest pool.

   
The pull of her mute entreaty frightened him with its intensity. Without words she asked him why he had ended the passionate interlude. Without thinking he replied, “I’ve wanted to do that since the first moment I laid eyes on you. Don’t deny that you wanted it, too,” he added, stung by her wounded expression and his own guilt.

   
Shame washed over her in waves. Feeling her face flame, she raised her hands and pressed them to her cheeks, backing away from him. Dear merciful lord, what had she almost done—allowed him to do? “No, I am scarcely in a position to deny anything.” Her voice was hoarse, soft as if coming from a great distance. She could still feel his heat, the virile magnetic presence that held her in thrall. His eyes pierced to her very soul. She felt naked as he was, defenseless.

   
Samuel could feel her vulnerability and the pain of it hit him like a slap. He turned to pick up his discarded clothing. The shirt was a blood soaked mess which he quickly abandoned, attempting instead to slip his injured arm through the sleeve of the heavy uniform jacket.

   
Olivia watched him struggle with the stiff coat, then stepped closer and pulled the blood caked sleeve straight, helping him ease it over his bandaged arm. He shrugged the other arm into the uniform, then began to button it. She stepped back yet their gazes locked and held. When Samuel had completed the task, his arms dropped to his sides.

   
He continued to study her with those unnerving blue eyes. “I’m truly sorry,” he said stiffly. “You saved my life and I behaved abominably.”

   
“You dared nothing I did not allow,” she replied with candor, meeting his gaze unflinchingly.

   
“There is something between us, Mademoiselle St. Etienne, something quite remarkable...disturbing...and dangerous,” he said, groping for a way to express his tumultuous emotions without revealing too much.

   
She smiled wistfully. “Yes, I believe you are right.” Then appearing thoughtful she added, “Since I’ve already been as bold as any hussy, I may as well be even bolder. Don’t you think after all that has happened, you might call me Olivia?” Her bones melted when his face, so harsh and austere a moment earlier, split into a heart stopping smile.

   
Olivia.
How classically lovely. It fit her perfectly. “Hussy you are not. Bold you definitely are. My name is Samuel, Olivia.” The sound of her name rolled off his tongue like song. Damn, he was bewitched! “We had better return to the city before you are missed by your family.”

   
She returned his earlier smile. He was clever at extracting information without revealing himself. “I have only my guardian, Samuel. Emory Wescott, a St. Louis merchant who is currently in the capital to attend to business matters.”

   
“St. Louis?” he questioned, caught off guard.

   
Olivia picked up on the surprised note in his voice and turned to him as they approached the phaeton. “Yes, that is where we reside, unless Uncle Emory takes me traveling with him.”

   
“Even a guardian so remiss as to allow his charge to go careening about the countryside unescorted will be upset if she’s at not home by dark,” he ventured as he helped her into the carriage.

   
“Not tonight he won’t. He is yet in Maryland, collecting some bills owed him,” she said with a mysterious smile. “As long as I present myself all packed and ready to travel home on Friday he will not note my absence. Anyway, ‘tis
I
who must see
you
home since I am the driver and you are the passenger. Now, let’s hurry so I get you home by dark.”

   
A smile hovered about his lips. “Such solicitude for my reputation! How can I refuse so generous an offer?”

* * * *

   
Dusk had settled over the city with a glittering cloak of frost when Olivia’s phaeton pulled up in front of the elegant three-story Georgian brick house that had been Senator Worthington Soames’ wedding gift to his beloved ‘Tisha-Belle’.” Samuel hated the looming monstrosity.

   
Olivia eyed it with amazement. “Your house is as grand as any I’ve seen, even in London,” she murmured, wondering how Samuel could afford it on a colonel’s pay.

   
He could see the questions looming: Mercenary speculation? Or mere curiosity? As the daughter of French émigrés she had grown up living with the grating reality of champagne taste and gin-swill income. Although it had always bothered him to admit the house and its lavish furnishings were a gift, he especially did not want to confess such to Olivia St. Etienne. Nor in their long and earnest conversation on the ride into the capital had he confessed that he was married. But what if he were free? Free to do what? Become involved with a wild young French hoyden who drew him like a wet hound to a warm fire?

   
“It is just a house. I don’t even own it,” he replied dismissively, raising her hand for a chaste salute. Somehow once he had pressed his lips to the jasmine scented silk of her skin, he could not release her.

   
Olivia’s fingers curled around his wrist while their eyes communicated in eloquent silence. He surprised himself by saying, “I’ll be posted to St. Louis within the month. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

   
Her smile was dazzling. “St. Louis is not so large a city that you could hide from me. I shall delight in tracking you down!”

   
Leticia Soames Shelby stood behind a Brussels lace curtain at an upstairs window watching Samuel and Olivia say their farewell. Her eyes narrowed to pale golden slits as the sound of their laughter drifted up to her. “Such tendresse. Who is the red-haired tart?”

   
Her companion peered out in the gloom and swore as Olivia’s flame-colored hair danced in the light from the torch held by a servant who had come out to greet Samuel. “That’s the rig that rescued him! An expensive lightweight phaeton with those superb matched bays.”