Harper's Bride (27 page)

She stared at his shirt and up at him.
Fiery—she'd certainly never thought of herself that way. She'd
spent most of her life trying to remain inconspicuous. Mortified,
she started to apologize. "Oh, dear, I'm so sorry—"

"I'm not." The teasing tone left his voice,
and straightforward hunger glinted in his eyes, increasing
Melissa's own craving for him. His belt buckle clanked as it hit
the plank flooring, and he kicked his pants across the room. He
stood naked before her then, the beauty of his muscled form
emphasized by shadows and golden lamplight. She let her eyes trail
over his broad chest, down his lean flanks and hips, to his
powerful erection.

Feeling a little timid, Melissa sat up and
made a move to pull off her gown.

"Not yet," he said softly, stopping her with
a hand on her shoulder. He put one knee on the mattress. "Not yet.
I want to do it."

His hand brushed over her hair, down her
back, along her leg, a caress of infinite gentleness. Grasping the
hem of her nightgown, he slid it up her thigh and like a magician,
swept it away from her. It landed in the corner, fluttering over
the rice sack.

He eased her to the mattress and let his gaze
touch her here and there. She felt awkward under his scrutiny and
tried to cover herself with her arms. He nudged them to her
sides.

"No, let me look, Melissa," he murmured.
"I've wanted to look at you, touch you, for so long. Like I
figured"—he kissed her forehead and her eyelid—"you're beautiful."
He buried his mouth against her neck, thrilling her with soft, slow
kisses that made her nipples stand erect.

Melissa forgot her shyness.

Running his hand up her ribs, he skimmed the
side of her breast with his palm. His kisses made a leisurely path
down her throat, and his hair brushed lightly over her skin,
sending tantalizing shivers through her. Then he dipped to suckle
her again and groaned as he took her milk greedily from each
breast. His erection, heavy and full, pulsated against her
thigh.

An insistent throbbing began between her
legs, one that she had never known before. With it grew a demanding
desire to have Dylan inside her, because she knew that only he
could ease the ache. But too shy to tell him so, she shifted
slightly and drew up one knee, hoping he would understand.

Instead, he let his hand drift downward
across her flat belly, downward to delve her sensitive, swollen
flesh with gentle, searching fingertips. Melissa gasped and arched
against his hand. He began slowly, with a careful, deliberate
touch. Soon though, she felt his breath coming fast and hot against
her neck as he stroked her with increasing speed and intensity.

What was he doing to her? she wondered, half
delirious. Nothing in her limited experience with Coy could compare
with this feeling of excruciating pleasure and torment.

As if by instinct, she reached for the hard
length of him resting against her thigh. He was hot and smooth and
pulsing in her grip. When she closed her fingers around him, he
made an inarticulate sound deep in his throat and sucked in a
breath. He pulled his hips away, but she held fast, and he pushed
back.

"Dylan," she moaned. Her voice sounded far
away to her own ears. Helpless against his sweet onslaught, she
could only press against his hand.

Seconds seemed like hours to her as the heat
within her escalated until she was sure she could stand no more.
Suddenly, Dylan batted her hand away from his own flesh and grasped
her writhing hips. Melissa looked up at him, at his heavy-lidded
eyes and the sheen of sweat on his face as he loomed over her.

"You've never made love in your life,
Melissa," he ground out, his voice low and rough. "But tonight you
will with me." Still holding her, he took her with a single thrust
that filled her so completely, she nearly wept with the poignancy
of their joining.

She felt as if there were a tightly wound
spring inside her, and with each forceful thrust he gave that
spring another twist. She looped her arms around him, consumed by
the raging need that threatened to consume her.

She lifted her hips to him so that he could
reach deeper into her. His thrusts came faster, harder, pushing the
throbbing between her legs to a nearly painful extreme. If this
didn't end—

"Dylan," she cried, "please—"

He lowered his head to kiss her again, and
with the next desperate stroke he drove her over the edge, tumbling
her into a dark gulf of sensation. Fierce spasms wracked her body
as muscles contracted and pulled Dylan into her.

Melissa thought she called him again, but she
was sure of nothing except him inside her and the feelings he'd
ripped from her.

Rearing over her, his hair almost hiding his
face, he plunged forward again and again, shorter, harder, more
desperate. Finally, with one last fervent thrust, his own release
gripped him. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she pulled him
close. A low, tortured groan escaped him and his face contorted.
The tendons stood out in his neck as he strained against her body,
and she felt the hot, rapid convulsions that poured from him into
her.

Dropping his weight to his elbows, he rested
his head on her shoulder for a moment and panted against her neck.
At last he breathed a sated, exhausted sigh.

Utter silence fell over them, and for a
moment the ticking of the clock was the loudest sound in the
room.

Dylan closed his arms around her and rolled
them over together, so that he lay on his back and she was nestled
against him. The sheets were in a tangled wad around their legs,
and he reached down to cover them, enfolding them in a warm cocoon.
Melissa thought she had never felt such security. In Dylan's arms,
she was safe from the world.

He chuckled. It was a full, satisfied sound
that reverberated under her ear. "This beats trying to cuddle up to
that damned sack of rice anytime."

"Yes, it does," she admitted with a smile.
Her heart brimmed with so much emotion, she wished she had the
courage to say more, to tell him how much she loved him.

His chuckle bloomed into a laugh. "You're a
different kind of woman, Melissa," he said, repeating the
compliment he'd once paid her. He tightened his arms around her. "I
wish I'd met you years ago, when I was younger."

She laughed now, too. "Ah, yes, I can see
that you're an old man."

The amusement faded from his voice. "Not old,
I guess. But I'm not naive anymore, either. I don't assume that
everything will work out just because I want it to."

Melissa had the distinct, uneasy feeling that
he was talking about them, and she didn't want to pursue it. Never
had she once suspected that a man's bed could be a place of such
communion and sharing. It all felt so perfect she was afraid to ask
any questions and break the spell surrounding them.

Their future was a mystery. They had tomorrow
to face, and the days after that, and she didn't know what those
days might bring. For now, she was content to lie here, with his
arm holding her close to his warm body.

Dylan felt Melissa sigh. Her soft, smooth
limbs tangled with his, and her head fit perfectly in the hollow
between his neck and his shoulder.
This . . . this sense of completion, of joining
hearts and spirits instead of just bodies, this was what he'd
missed. And the warm, unselfish woman who lay beside him had given
that to him.

It lifted his heart. It scared the hell out
of him. He stared up at the dark, timbered ceiling overhead. He had
to decide two things.

Would he spend another winter in Dawson? And
if he did, would he keep Melissa and Jenny with him? Money was no
longer the issue—he'd made enough to buy the land he wanted. He
would have to make his decision soon. September was on them and
winter came early to the Yukon.

But as Melissa burrowed drowsily against his
shoulder, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and pulled the wolf
hide over them. Basking in the peace and contentment that had been
strangers to him for most of his life, he let his eyes drift
closed.

He didn't have to make any decisions
tonight.

To Melissa's great relief, Jenny continued to
make steady improvement over the next several days. Her rash had
begun to peel like a bad sunburn, but Dr. Garvin told her that was
part of the recovery process. Fortunately, both she and Dylan
showed no signs of coming down with scarlet fever themselves.

After their night of lovemaking, Melissa felt
a shift in her relationship with Dylan. Because she stayed upstairs
to care for Jenny, she noticed that he found any number of reasons
to come up from his store. He would claim to be searching for a
ledger book, or a particular pocketknife, or a whetstone. One time
he even came for the sack of rice, declaring he had a buyer for it.
She suspected his true intention was to guarantee that it wouldn't
be used again as a barrier between them in his bed.

With the Yukon's early autumn settling over
Dawson, one afternoon Dylan brought Jenny a cashmere baby blanket.
He'd traded a half case of whiskey to a Russian merchant captain
for the costly, petal-soft white wool. It was the finest fabric
Melissa had ever seen, and her love for Dylan grew accordingly.

As much as she wanted to believe that he
actually came upstairs to see her, she refused to give in to the
temptation. The lingering glances they exchanged, the half smiles,
and brushes of hands and arms in passing meant nothing much, she
maintained. They were only the natural results of their nights
together.

Their nights . . .

In the evenings, with Jenny tucked into her
cradle, they staved off the chill under the wolf hides on his bed.
Dylan brought her body to heights of pleasure that she had never
before imagined, and taught her wondrous ways to satisfy him. It
gave her a heady sense of power to watch him lying next to her,
groaning and struggling to maintain control as she caressed and
stroked him to the point of near-climax.

"You're a heartless tease," Dylan said one
night through gritted teeth. He lay with one arm thrown over his
eyes and his hands clenched.

She took no offense at his accusation. "No,
I'm not," she murmured with a sly smile next to his ear, "I only
want to please you, and you showed me how to do it."

At that, he made an inarticulate sound that
resembled a low growl, and rose from the mattress to flip her on
her back. Then he parted her thighs and took her with slow,
torturous thrusts to get even with her. He reduced her to
whimpering his name over and over before he finally decided she'd
suffered enough sweet torment and pushed them both to
completion.

As much as Melissa delighted in making love
with him, though, she liked it best when she brought the baby into
bed with them. It was then that she let herself pretend they were a
real family, and that Jenny, their daughter, was snuggled safely in
the embrace of her two doting parents. It was a fairy tale, she
knew, and probably the most dangerous kind because it involved her
child's heart as well as her own.

And despite all the secret glances exchanged
and the nights spent in fierce, breathless passion, Dylan spoke no
words of love and said nothing about their future.

Melissa didn't need Dylan for support.
Between the gold she had hoarded from her laundry business and the
bequest Rafe had left her, she knew she and Jenny could go back to
Portland and have a safe, comfortable life for the foreseeable
future. She was far from wealthy, but with careful budgeting, the
financial independence she had strived for would be hers. If the
day came that she needed to earn a living again, she now had the
confidence to do it.

No, she didn't need Dylan to keep the wolf
away from her door.

She needed him for love.

*~*~*

He was doing it again.

His thoughts were drifting like slow-moving
clouds across a summer sky, drifting to a blond woman and the child
in her arms, drifting to cool nights under warm blankets, to a face
whose prettiness he had not seen when he first set eyes upon it, a
face he now couldn't get out of his head.

Dylan pulled himself out of his reverie and
straightened away from the counter where he'd been leaning on his
elbows, daydreaming like a kid with his first crush. He had all
kinds of work to do—accounts to go over, stock to put on the
shelves, a new shipment to check—and he'd done none of it. Every
time he began a task, some distracting thought would cross his
mind, like the way Melissa angled her head when she looked up at
him, or her graceful hands, or the feel of her arms around him when
she took him into her body.

This morning he'd heard her humming to Jenny
again with a soft, mellow voice. He'd been so damned glad to hear
it, his heart had felt as light as a feather. Disgusted, he kicked
a ball of twine across the floor.

What was wrong with him, anyway? He was twice
as distracted as he'd ever been over Elizabeth, and look what
trouble she'd gotten him into.

He walked to the open door and, slouching
against the jamb, looked out at the cold gray rain. It seemed
almost profane to compare the two women—they were nothing alike.
Even his own feelings for Melissa were not the same. She wasn't the
mindless fever in his blood that Elizabeth had been. She touched
him more deeply, reaching down to the corners of his soul he'd let
no one into before.

Overhead, he heard her footsteps crossing the
floor. Drawn to her, Dylan started down the duck-boards and almost
headed for the stairs again before he pulled up short in front of
her abandoned washtubs.

She wasn't part of his plans, he argued with
himself, gazing at the web of clotheslines. She had nothing to do
with that plot of land he'd dreamed of and worked for all this
time—not a damned thing.