Dorothy Garlock - [Wyoming Frontier] (41 page)

“You don’t have to wait,” she whispered.

“Godamighty! Sweetheart!” A great swell of joy washed over him. He felt a tremor run through him as if the earth they were standing on was shaking.

“I don’t want to wait.”

“Emily Rose. Oh, sweet Emily Rose.” The words came from his tight throat in a tormenting whisper.

“I’ve shocked you.” Her mouth sought his in a soul-searching kiss as an insidious, primitive desire grew in both of them.

“We can’t . . . I can’t. . . .” His voice trembled.

She hugged him to her. “I’ve thought about it.” Her words were muffled against his neck. “I’m afraid. At the last minute I may remember what it was like . . . and scream.” She pressed herself against the hardened evidence of his aroused body. “I want to know before we’re wed. I love you too much to saddle you with a woman who cannot be a wife.”

It was Sam who drew back and held her away from him. He felt a strange bittersweet warmth. She was a dream. He was sure her soft, feminine body would respond to the mating instincts of his. He had not thought about her fear.

“We can’t, sweetheart. Not here in the grass.” There was gentle firmness in his voice.

“I know of no better place for a man and a woman to lie down together than here on God’s earth with a blanket of stars overhead.” She stroked his cheek with her fingertips. “The other . . . time I was on a soft, clean bed, my hands tied over my head, my legs spread . . . and tied. I’ve got to know if the nightmare will come back.” Her hands cupped his cheeks, and she brought his lips to hers.

After the kiss she stood within his embrace and unhooked her skirt at the waist. As it fell, she stepped out of it and spread it on the ground. Her fingers pulled at the drawstring on her petticoat. It dropped and she spread it alongside her skirt. She stood there in knee-length bloomers and her shirt-waist.

Sam’s head was spinning, reality was slipping farther and farther away, but before it was completely gone, the thought came to him that she had planned this and had come prepared. Dear God, he prayed, he wanted to be gentle with her, to show her that mating between two people who loved each other could be beautiful.

He reached for her hands and brought them to the buttons on his shirt. He stood very still while her nimble fingers worked at baring his chest. He pulled the shirt from his britches, slipped it off, and dropped it on the ground. With her hands in his, he pressed them to his bare flesh, inviting her to feel his body. He dropped his own hands to his side and stood still as her soft palms roamed over his shoulders, down under his muscular arms, around his ribs to his flat, quivering belly. He closed his eyes when her fingers found the nipples amid the growth of down on his chest.

When she sank down on the clothing she had spread he unbuckled his gun belt and dropped it down beside her. He sat down and kicked off his boots.

“Shall I take off my shirtwaist?” Her voice was a mere breath in the night.

“Only if you want to.” He leaned his head toward her and kissed her reverently on the forehead.

“I want to. I
do
love you,” she said as if she had to give a reason for what she was doing.

He watched as she took off her shirtwaist. Beneath it she wore a chemise, tied above her breast with a ribbon. Her shoulders gleamed in the moonlight. He studied her white face, her mane of thick hair, her trembling mouth.

“Emily Rose,” he whispered. “Yo’re the purtiest woman I ever saw.”

In reply, her arms slid up to encircle his neck and she pressed her breast to his chest. Her mouth was soft and sweet against his. He lay down on his back, bringing her with him, careful not to hold her too tight. She bent over him. While they kissed, his hands softly stroked her back and hips.

“I love you,” he whispered against her mouth. “I’ll never force you or hurt you. You lead the way.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Do what you want, love.” His arms fell to his sides.

“I want to touch you . . . all over. Aren’t you going to take off your britches?”

“Darlin’,” he croaked, “what’s in there might scare the hell out a ya.”

“I know what it is. You were big and hard the night we kissed at Mara Shannon’s. I felt it against me. And I felt it tonight even though you were trying to hold it away from me.”

He pushed his britches down over his hips. His male member stood stiff and proud out of a nest of dark hair. He knew that she couldn’t see it, and prayed that when she touched it, he would be able to control himself. He sank back to see her lift the chemise over her head. He drew in a ragged breath and a small sound came from his throat at the sight of her round, firm breasts.

“What is it? Sam?” Her hand came to rest on the flat plane of his stomach.

“Yore breasts are so purty.”

She stretched out beside him and lifted his arm over her head so she could rest her cheek on his shoulder. She brought his hand around and placed it on her breast. His rough, calloused fingers found her nipple and stroked it to a hard peak. He felt a tremor go through her.

“That feels good, so good.” Her voice was soft, urgent. She reached for his lips and kissed him with a hunger that surprised him. Her mound was pressed tightly to his thigh. He could feel the heat through her bloomers. His hand traveled from her breast to the waistband, slipped carefully inside, and flattened against her buttocks. She moved her palm down over his stomach and slid it beneath his extended sex. He caught his breath sharply and waited as it settled on the back of her hand.

“Emily Rose, I swear I’ll never use it as a weapon.”

“I know you won’t.”

Her hand turned and her fingers closed around him. He ground his teeth and tightened his buttocks. His desire for her was a deep pain gnawing his vitals, but he was determined not to show any aggression.

“Be . . . careful, love. I’m so hungry for you. I want to touch you everywhere. Emily Rose, oh, Emily Rose. Tell me if I hurt you and I’ll stop.”

She brought his arm around over her head, placed it beside him and turned so that her breast and belly were against it. His hand worked its way into the slit in her drawers. His fingers combed the springy hair at her crotch and slid into dampness. For a long minute she was still. He was still. Then she rocked slightly on his hand and relief flooded through him.

“You’re so different from me.” She leaned over him. Her mouth moved slowly over his chest. Her lips found a flat nipple. She licked it with her tongue and felt the quiver that passed through him. When she caught it with her teeth, his breath came out sharply. She worded it, then asked, “Does that feel good?”

“Oh, God, yes! Turn over, darlin’.”

She turned on her back and spread her legs. “I’m not afraid, Sam. I’m not afraid.”

“Give me a little time, love. Let me show you how good I can make you feel.”

His mouth, firm yet gentle, fastened on her trembling lips, stealing her breath away. The kiss was filled with sweetness. He put his head on her breast and rubbed his cheek against the soft globe. Then he took her nipple into his mouth, sucking it with lips and tongue while his fingers moved down to the sweet haven between her thighs and slipped inside, stroking, coaxing. She began to squirm, to arch her hips toward his hand.

“Sam!” Something warm and powerful throbbed in the area below her stomach. She whimpered when his mouth left her breast to kiss her mouth and run his tongue over her lips. She moved restlessly against the urgent hardness pressing against her thigh. His fingers worked magic.

“Tell me.”

“Yes! Yes!” Her whispered words were like thunder in his ears. “Please. I need you to.” Her arms clutched him, her hips thrust up in joyous offering.

“You’re sure?” The blood swam in his head, burned his body, pounded in his veins, but the fear of harming something so precious clutched at his heart.

With a breathless laugh her hand searched for him. There was no room for fear as her desire peaked. He lifted her thigh over his and, using all his strength of will to hold back, he slipped into her. She was warm, moist. He was so filled with love for her that he thought he would burst.

Fleetingly, Emily remembered the relentless attack upon her, remembered the pawing, leering, probing into the most secret and vulnerable strongholds of her body. That had been a dreadful and obscene experience; this was heaven.

Love for this gentle, understanding man swept over Emily like a warm wind when he entered her, filled her. She called his name and heard him call hers. With a flurry of softly muttered words of love, he moved within her in a rhythm of loving that increased in speed and intensity. It was like drowning as she was swept along in the turbulence of their desire. Through the bursting darkness sudden joy, like a great flashing light, exploded within her.

The climax of their mating left them gasping. She curled up in Sam’s arms, wet tears on her face. She rested her cheek on the smooth hardness of his shoulder, feeling the peace of being loved and cherished. His ardent loving seemed to have opened wide every door in her mind and emotions.

“Sam, Sam, it was . . . wonderful!”

Unable to speak, he kissed her tenderly, lovingly, again and again. Tears he had not shed since he was a child filled his eyes, then rolled down his cheeks onto hers.

*  *  *

Emily, sitting between Charlie and Sam on the wagon seat, saw the train coming up the grade. She had seen it before as only a dim image moving across her vision. Now, with her glasses, she could see the windows and the smoke rolling from the great locomotive as it puffed and wheezed into the Laramie station. She clutched Sam’s arm.

“Oh! Charlie said some of the cars were painted yellow, but I didn’t dream they were so colorful. It’s beautiful! The steam engine is like a dragon and the cars its tail.”

“A tail with windows for eyes.” Charlie laughed.

Charlie had at first been skeptical about what he considered Emily’s sudden infatuation with the Texan. But now that he’d had time to observe them together and to get to know Sam, he realized they had truly fallen in love.

Charlie prided himself on being able to read a man’s character. During the war he’d had to choose those who were to lead and those who were to follow. Sam Sparks was not a man to trail along behind other men. Charlie liked what he had seen and heard about him, but it was going to be hard for him to let another man take over the responsibility for his sister.

Emily had been urging Charlie to talk to Sam. She had already told Sam what had happened to force them to leave Indiana and come west, but she hadn’t told him all of it. He was not the kind of man to ask questions. Yet there was something he should know, something he would have to know before he and Emily were married. Charlie wished to hell he’d told him before things had gone so far.

“That’s the church I tole ya ’bout.” Sam motioned toward a small unpainted building at the end of a side street, set off by itself in a grassy field.

Charlie turned down the rutted road and pulled the horses to a stop in front of the church. Sam got down and reached for Emily. He would have liked to hold her there for endless moments looking at her. Her dress was a light gray, her bonnet blue. A continuous smile curved her sweet mouth. He wanted desperately to kiss her.

“What denomination is it?” She looked over Sam’s shoulder at the church.

“I didn’t ask. Will it matter?”

“Not in the least. Are you coming in, Charlie?”

“No. I’ll stay here.”

Charlie swung his wooden peg up on the sideboard of the wagon and reached for his pipe. While he lit it, he watched his sister, the only person in the world whom he loved, walk into the church on the arm of the man to whom she had given her heart. He thought of their parents and the love they had shared. Their father had been a rough Scots riverman, their mother a petite southern belle.

Charlie’s mind spun back to the first year of the war. He had returned home on a short leave to find that first his father and then his mother had died of a lung sickness that spread through Evansville during one of the coldest winters they had known. Emily, nearly blind even then, and two old colored servants had nursed them, been with them when they died, and had buried them.

The next time he came home it was a month before the war ended. He was weak from losing a leg and lying in a hospital bed. Emily had been brutally raped by three men from prominent Evansville families; one of them was wed and the father of three children. Charlie, teetering on one good leg and his peg, had sought them out and made sure that each of the men admitted his crime before he killed him. Afterward he and Emily had fled to Missouri and later taken a boat up the river to Wyoming.

The thought of what would happen to Emily if he were caught and sent to prison had weighed heavily on Charlie’s mind. His worry had been eased when at last he had taken Pack into his confidence and Pack had assured him that he would see to it that Emily was taken care of if she were left alone. Now Sam Sparks, the Texan, would be the one to take responsibility for his sister.

Charlie was tired. The strain of constantly looking over his shoulder, of having to change his and Emily’s name, of being cut loose from everything that had been dear and familiar to them, was taking its toll. It didn’t matter so much now if someone called his name and he turned to see someone from his past—Emily had Sam.

An hour later someone did call his name, and Charlie turned to see someone from his past.

*  *  *

“He was very nice. Not at all like the pompous Reverend Piedmont. He asked us if we were aware that the commitment we made to each other was for life. He came here from Kansas and his congregation isn’t very big, but it will be, because he’s very understanding. We set the date for a week from today, Charlie. He’s Presbyterian. Can you believe it?” She turned to Sam. “That’s the church we went to back home.” She turned back to Charlie. “Mama would be pleased to know that I’m going to be married by a Presbyterian minister.”

Emily chatted happily while they drove back down the road toward the main part of town. Both Charlie and Sam chuckled at her enthusiasm.