Kate Wingo - Western Fire 01 (15 page)

“
If you’re willing, I could show you what it means.”

“I d-don’t know,” she sputt
ered. While she wanted to acquiesce, secretly enthralled by those three perfectly matched words –
to make love
– she couldn’t bring herself to do so.

Spencer took another step
toward her, bringing them to within an arm’s reach of one another. Very slowly, he lifted a hand and began to carefully remove the pins from her hair. Mercy stood motionless, her breath catching in her throat each time his forearm grazed the side of her face. One by one, he dropped the bone pins onto the straw-covered floor, not stopping until he’d removed every single pin. As his fingers unwound her thick braid of hair, Mercy felt her resistance dangerously weaken.

“Just say ‘yes
’ so that we can both end this bodily torment,” Spencer crooned as he finger-combed her hair over her shoulders and breasts.

At hearing that, Mercy’s head jerked. “Is that all I am to you, a bodily torment?”

“You’re a lot of things to me, but I’d be lying if I said that right now, at this moment, I wasn’t burning for you.” Reaching for her hand, Spencer purposely placed it over the swollen lump between his hips. When Mercy tried to pull away, he covered her hand with his, firmly pressing her palm against his manhood.

“
I want you to feel me, Mercy. Feel me and know that the only thing that’s gonna end this body’s torment is your sweet loving. Now I’ve got a fair notion that you’re in need of the same thing.” To her relief, Spencer let go of her hand. Although to her complete and utter shock, he then reached between her thighs and possessively cupped her woman’s place. “You can’t deny that right now you’re starting to get damp between your legs.”

The blood rushed
to Mercy’s face. Shame-faced, she was unable to deny the charge.

Removing his hand, Spencer wrapped both his arms around her, drawing her near. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, honey.” His lips grazed her forehead. “That’s just your body talking to you.”

“It is?” Overcome with emotion, Mercy could barely get those two words past her lips.

“Uh
-huh. And the more you yearn for it, the wetter you’re gonna get.” As he spoke, Spencer molded his hands around Mercy’s buttocks and pulled her that much closer to him. “So, how about it, Mercy Hibbert? You gonna let me ease your bodily torment and make love to you?”

Never in her life had Mercy been faced with such a dilemma. One part of her
– her mind – urged her to run inside the house and lock all the doors behind her. While her body demanded that she throw caution to the wind and let Spencer ease her torment. As for her heart, in all honesty, she didn’t know the contents of her heart. At least not in regards to Spencer McCabe.

Lifting her chin,
Mercy peered into Spencer’s eyes.
A mistake
. Losing herself in his whiskey-eyed gaze, the last shred of her resistance gave way. No longer could she deny the heady undercurrent of desire pulsing through her veins, demanding that she finally discover what it meant to truly be a woman.

Mercy shuddered, her body filled with
a breathless anticipation.

“
I want you to show me how to make love,” she whispered as she clutched the front of Spencer’s shirt.

Still holding her in his arms
, Spencer backed her into an empty horse stall. Keeping his gaze riveted on her, he unbuckled his gun belt and slung it over the stall door.

That done, he
tenderly took her face between his hands. “I know you’re a virgin, honey. But do you know anything at all about being intimate with a man?”

“I’ve, um,
seen cattle and other such animals mating with one another,” she told him.

Spencer rubbed a thumb over her quivering lip.
“There’s a whole lot more to it than that. For one thing, there’s
this
.” Lashing an arm around her waist, he pulled her against his chest, his lips capturing hers with a passionate ardor.

A bit more experienced now
, at least when it came to kissing, Mercy parted her lips and shyly invited him to deepen the contact. Spencer immediately complied, grabbing her by the back of the neck as he slanted his mouth over hers.
Teasing
.
Tantalizing
. Using his tongue to elicit an even more passionate response from her. Whimpering softly, Mercy tangled her hand in his thick hair, utterly, and mindlessly, enthralled.

“What
comes next?” she asked on a serrated breath when the kiss finally ended.

“Next, I strip you naked,”
Spencer said matter-of-factly as he deftly began to undo the row of small wooden buttons that fastened her bodice.

Mer
cy suffered a moment’s panic, admittedly unnerved that the act of making love would involve the removal of all her clothing.

Finished unbuttoning her bodice, Spencer eased the patterned calico fabric off
of her shoulders, his fingers quickly moving to the ties on her chemise. When the last bow was pulled undone, he peeled the plain cotton fabric away from her body. Mercy self-consciously covered her bare breasts with her hands.

“They’re too small, aren’t they?”
Embarrassed by Spencer’s frank scrutiny, her cheeks heated with color.

Spencer
gently shoved her hands aside, replacing them with his own. Smiling tenderly, he plumped the two soft mounds upward. “Looks to me like they’re just the right size,” he said, his eyes glimmering as he appraised his handiwork.

“Really?”
Mercy glanced at her chest, mesmerized by the sight of his bronzed and callused hands cradling her pale breasts in such a brazen a manner.

“Uh
-huh.”

In the next instant, Spencer
bent his head, capturing a rose-tipped nipple in his mouth.

Mercy gasped
as she convulsively grabbed at his shirt. For some inexplicable reason, although he suckled her breast, it caused a taut, pleasurable spasm much lower, between her legs. Granted, she’d had more than a few secret dreams about this man, but never once had she imagined him doing
this
to her.

Spencer let her nipple slowly
slip from his mouth, his eyes darkening with passion as he stared at the engorged wet nubbin.

“Look how pert your titties are. I like that . . . I like that a lot,” he said in a ragged voice, his lips soon lay
ing claim to the other nipple. As Spencer suckled her, he shoved her dress and undergarments to her waist.

A few moments later, placing a
hand on each of her hips, he sank to his knees. He then quickly untied her shift, shoving it, along with her dress, to her ankles. After he impatiently tossed both garments aside, he began to unlace and remove her boots.

Clothed
only in a pair of white cotton drawers and well-worn stockings, Mercy shivered, unexpectedly seized with a multitude of conflicting emotions – fear, embarrassment, excitement – all of them tumultuously colliding, wreaking havoc on her tightly strung nerves.

Sensing her hesitation, Spencer raised his head
and locked gazes with her. “This is your last chance to say ‘no’,” he murmured quietly.

Mercy stood silent, her hands limply hanging at her sides
. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of what ‘making love’ thus far entailed, she opened her mouth to speak. But she couldn’t get the words past the lump in her throat.

Hoping that actions did indeed speak louder than words
, she untied the knotted bow that fastened her drawers. Determined to make her intentions known, she peered directly at Spencer as she pushed the garment off of her hips, letting it pool at her ankles.

In the next instant,
overcome with modesty, she tried to cover her private parts with her hands.

Spencer grasped her by the wrists,
forcing her to expose herself.

“Oh, but you are a thing of beauty, Miss Mercy Hibbert. Damned if you aren’t.”

Taking a deep ragged breath, he released her wrists. Curving his hands around her buttocks, he pulled her close to him as he buried his face in the cluster of dark blond curls that covered her woman’s mound. A few moments later, one his hands slipped between her thighs.

“Open your legs for me,” Spencer
urged, his voice little more than a husky rasp.

Dizzy with need, Mercy inched her legs apart, stunned when Spencer’s hand raked through her nest of curls before nestling at the juncture of her thighs. She was even more stunned when he slowly, lazily, dragged a finger a
cross the soft, velvety folds.

At that moment,
Mercy abandoned the last vestiges of fearful doubt, her lower body writhing against his finger.

G
lancing up at her, Spencer asked her to widen her stance. When she did so, he rewarded her with an agonizingly slow caress. This time, to her shocked disbelief, he finagled a blunt fingertip into the small recessed opening of her woman’s place.

Mercy clenched her teeth, barely able to stifle a moan
.
Never
in her life had she experienced such sweet, unbearable agony.

H
olding her steady with his left hand, Spencer pillowed his cheek against her lower abdomen as he repeatedly dipped his finger into the narrow opening of her body.

“God
Almighty, but you’re tight,” he muttered against her belly, inhaling sharply as he tried to insert a second finger into her.

Tangling
both of her hands in his brown locks, Mercy shuddered. The tension between her legs was escalating, having become almost unbearable. “Please . . . end it,” she whimpered, begging him to free her from this frenzied madness.

Spencer eased his head away from her body, slowly letting his fingers slide out of her. Angling backward on his haunches, he
raised his hand, Then, having ascertained that she was watching him, he inserted his index finger into his mouth.

Mercy
gasped, awed by his pagan sensuality.

“
Umm
. That sure is sweet tasting,” he drawled as he leisurely lapped at the glistening essence that coated his fingers. “Makes me think that it’s about time I dipped something else into that lil’ honey pot of yours.”

Wrapping his hands around her waist, Spencer urged her onto the bed of straw. He then got to his feet
and quickly pulled his shirt over his head before tugging his boots off his feet. Unable to take her eyes off him, Mercy avidly watched as he proceeded to unbutton his trousers. Truly, he was a magnificently built man, his shoulders broad, his torso all banded muscle.

As
Spencer shoved his britches off of his lean flanks, Mercy choked back a nervous squeal. Having never seen a nude man, she stared, wide-eyed, at the thatch of dark curls between his legs from which protruded his fully extended manhood.

In a word,
Spencer McCabe was fearsome looking.
And utterly breathtaking
.

Naked,
he lay down beside her. He then gently pried her legs apart, unabashedly staring at her exposed female parts. “You’ve been haunting my dreams for nigh on two weeks. But I’ll tell you true, no dream can match
this
reality.”

A
s Spencer situated himself between her legs, Mercy could feel his distended manhood poke against her soft flesh. The insistent prodding caused her to tremble with anticipation, her heart hammering in her ears.

“What should I do?” she
asked timidly, her body awkwardly sprawled beneath him.

Spencer raised himself on his forearms
. With a surprisingly tender smile, he said, “Put your hands on my shoulders.” When she did as he requested, his smile broadened. “Good girl. Now, I want you to pull your knees up.”

Slipping a hand between their two bodies, Spencer fingered her woman’s slit, his thumb rubbing against the small sensitive knot hidden within. Mercy whimpered, the pleasure so intense
, it was almost unbearable.

“Wh-what are-are you doing?” she panted, her lower body involuntarily bucking off the ground.

“Just easing the way,” Spencer whispered as he nudged the tip of his manhood against her. Still caressing her between her legs, he flexed his hips, slowly pushing his organ into her.

In the next instant,
Mercy lurched beneath him.

“It hurts,” she cried,
her eyes instantly tearing.

“I know, honey.” Spencer kissed the tears from her face, his thumb still rhythmically moving across the small nubbin hidden
within the cleft between legs. “But the pain will soon be gone.” He inclined his hips ever so slightly as he slowly pushed into her.

Biting back an agonized yelp,
Mercy clawed at his back, certain that her body would never be able to accommodate him. When he finally reached her virginal barrier, Spencer went motionless. Admittedly ignorant in such matters, Mercy sensed that he was restraining himself, holding a tight rein on his body, trying to inflict as little pain as possible. Removing his hand from between her legs, he framed her face between his palms.