Lacy (17 page)

His nose nuzzled against hers. She could feel
his breath on her lips, quick and rough. His thumb and forefinger gently
contracted, and she shivered.

"Did I do it too hard?" he asked
softly, lifting to search her eyes as his hand stilled. "Did it
hurt?"

"Oh, no," she whispered. She
swallowed. "Cole...you—you could do it under my dress, on my skin."

He felt his body going even more taut and his
eyes flashed. "Lacy, do you remember where we are?" he asked through
his teeth.

"On the moon?" she whispered dizzily,
reaching up toward his mouth.

"Don't I wish," he moaned against her
mouth as his settled on it. His hand flattened over her bodice, slow and warm.
It was like that day before he'd left for the army, when she couldn't get
enough of his mouth. She melted in his arms, her nails biting into the nape of
his neck as she tried to make him come closer still.

"Cole!" she whimpered, and tears
misted her eyes.

He lifted his head, fighting for control. She
looked like a virgin sacrifice lying there so submissive, and his body had
begun to hurt. "I want more, too, little one," he said roughly.
"More than you realize. But we have to stop now, while we can."

It was so similar to what he'd said years ago
when he'd left her. The words echoed in her mind. Her eyes opened and she
looked up at him with possession.

"It was like this before you went away to
fight the Hun," she whispered. "Remember, Cole?You pulled me into
your room and closed the door. We kissed and kissed, and you made me leave,
because we were both trembling."

"I remember," he said. "Oh, God,
I do! I lived on that memory the whole time I was away. It kept me going when I
wanted to give up—" He stopped short.

She touched his mouth hesitantly. "But you
wouldn't let me near you when you came home," she said sadly. "You
pushed me away."

He drew in a slow breath and sat up, running a
rough hand through his dark hair while he tried to breathe normally.
"There were reasons."

She was just beginning to realize what they
might be. Bits and pieces of conversation filtered through her mind while she
lay there and looked up at him.

"Will you ever tell me why?" she asked
softly.

He glanced down at her, his dark eyes kindling
all over again. He looked away to the horizon. "Perhaps. One day."

"When?" she asked daringly, searching
his dark eyes.

His teeth ground together. He stared down at
her, hesitating. He wanted her mouth again. He wanted to touch her, to lie with
her. He almost groaned aloud. "Don't rush me."

She forced herself to calm down, to smile up at
him. "All right," she said, without arguing. "Don't growl at
me."

"You get me so damned hot that I don't know
what I'm doing or saying!" He laughed, bending to crush a hot, hungry kiss
onto her smiling lips. "I happen to want you like hell, Mrs. Whitehall.
But we've got to make haste slowly."

"Whatever you say, boss," she murmured
dryly.

She watched him pull away from her again, his
dark eyes intent on her body for a long moment before he got to his feet and
busied himself rolling a cigarette; she dusted off her skirt and stood up, too.

"Cole?" she asked when she was beside
him.

He turned, smoking cigarette in hand.
"What, honey?"

"Do you think I'm.. .wanton?" she
asked, with a frown, and seemed to be genuinely worried about it.

He smiled, his dark eyes warm and oddly
affectionate. "No, I don't think you're wanton. But you're all
woman."

She flushed a little and folded her hands neatly
in front of her as she walked alongside him toward the house. He had a long,
elegant stride that made almost two of hers. He walked like an outdoorsman.
What he'd said so casually made her glow with pride. "You're pretty
exciting yourself, barnstormer," she said huskily.

She heard him laugh softly as her blue eyes
scanned the long horizon, the familiar lines of the house in the distance. Texas was so big, she thought. Big and sprawling and still reminiscent of the old frontier.

"Taggart said that the Mexican Army came
through here on the way to the Alamo," she said out of the blue.

"It did," he replied. "They
camped just out there." He gestured toward a long space between clumps of
mesquite trees.

"So long ago," she sighed.

"Not even a hundred years ago,"he
taunted. "Just yesterday, in fact."

She laughed up at him, her face radiant.
"Which one of your grandfathers was Comanche?" she asked curiously.

"Dad's father," he said, smiling.
"The old man wouldn't live on a reservation when they came along. He
hightailed it up into the mountains after he got shot in a fight and came upon
a lone white woman, a widow, with two small sons. As the story goes, she nursed
him back to health and hid him from the cavalry, but she used up her meager
store of weapons and the snows came. She and the boys were starving. My grandfather
had left, but he came back to check on them and found them starving. He took it
on himself to provide for her, and them, despite her objections. Eventually he
married her. My father was one of the children she bore him. They died within
five months of each other. Devoted to the very damned end."

"He must have been a special man," she
remarked.

"He was a renegade," he said. "He
loved to invite my father's college friends over and serve them dog and snake
and any other damned shocking thing he could find for my grandmother to cook.
He never truly accepted the white man's ways, and when I came along, he
practically kidnapped me and brought me up like a Comanche. He and my father
fought constantly about who I belonged to."

She searched his hard face. "You never talk
about your father, Cole."

His shoulders lifted and fell. "He was a
hard man. Much harder than my grandfather, in his way. He gave Mother hell all
his life. She was never strong, but what spirit she had, he crushed.

She stopped walking. "Did she love
him?"

"She couldn't have loved him. Not the way
he treated her," he said, his eyes dark and fierce with memory. "He
was the coldest human being I never knew. He touched and was touched by no one.
Not even his own children. He wanted me for no other reason than to keep me
away from my grandfather."

"Perhaps he cared about you and just didn't
know how to show it, Cole," she said.

He looked down at her. "I don't show
things, do I, Lacy?" he asked quietly. "I can talk about my father's
coldness with such ease, but I've inherited it."

She shook her head slowly. "Not in many
ways," she said. "You're a passionate man." Her face flamed and
she looked away.

"I've always hated that side of my nature
"he said, his voice deep and cutting. He moved closer to her, so close
that she could feel the heat of his body, smell the tobacco scent of his shirt.
"I hated you, at first, because you aroused it."

"Do you still?" she asked demurely.

He touched her waist with his lean fingers,
drawing her slowly to him. "I feel light-headed when I make love to you
"he said under his breath. "Young and uninhibited and full of ginger.
Today I gave in to it for the first time in my life, and I'm still floating.
Does that answer your question, Mrs. Whitehall?"

Her eyes searched his. "I love you,
Cole," she said softly.

He breathed slowly, deliberately. "Do
you?" he whispered unsteadily. It made him feel light-headed, hearing her
say that. Did she mean it, or was it a residue from the passion he'd stirred in
her? If only he could be sure!

"Cole, what are you keeping from me?"
Her voice was soft, tender, her eyes steady and warm.

His pulse jumped. She saw too much. His fingers
traced over her cheek. "Dark secrets, Lacy," he said bitterly.
"Things I don't want to remember. Things I don't want to face."

"They won't matter," she said.

He drew in a slow, sad breath. "They
will," he replied flatly. "Perhaps all too much."

"Tell me, Cole."

He stared down at her mouth. "Not
now."

She wondered what they were. Perhaps something
he'd done in the war had made him withdrawn and ashamed. Or perhaps it had
something to do with his reluctance to undress in front of her... Maybe he was deformed
in some way.

None of that would matter, she thought
miserably, watching him. She loved him.

He saw that adoring look and it was the only
hope he had. He couldn't go on without telling her. He should have told her at
the very beginning, before they'd married. He hadn't expected that things would
develop like this between them. He'd been shocked by his own desire for her, as
well as by hers for him. But what kind of future could he offer her? His eyes
darkened with torment.

"Trust comes very hard to you, doesn't
it?" she asked gently.

"Harder than you know,"he replied.
"Trusting people.. .letting them get close. I've always been a loner, all
my life. But if it's any consolation, nobody's ever been as close to me as you
are."

Her heart swelled with that reluctant admission.
"Isn't it strange the way things have worked out?" she asked. "I
went to San Antonio feeling that it was all over. And now..."

"Have you ever considered that what you
feel for me might be infatuation?" he asked, frowning. "You're remarkably
innocent yourself."

"I had George Simon hanging around all the
time," she said, with a faint smile. "I couldn't even let him touch
me. And," she added wryly, "even after what you'd done to me I still
preferred being hurt by you to being pleasured by any other man."

He ground his teeth together. "And you
didn't even know that I hadn't hurt you deliberately."

"Oh, I knew you hadn't done that," she
said, repeating what she'd already told him. "I know you very well, Cole.
I've seen you nurse a bird with a broken wing back to health. I've seen you
bandage coyotes—the songdogs that some legends say would stay with a wounded
man and protect him from predators until help came. Other people kill them, but
not you. A man who can feel that kind of compassion even for a wild animal
isn't likely to deliberately hurt anyone."

He turned away. My God, she knew him! She saw
right through him, and that was vaguely disconcerting. No one ever had, until
now.

"Other people don't see you that way. You
frighten the men and intimidate the women," she said dryly, beginning to
walk again. "But I've loved you for a long time. I see you in a different
light."

"I've never loved anyone," he said
slowly. "My family, of course, but it isn't he same, is it?" He
glanced down at her. "So many things are new with you. Touching. Holding.
Wanting."

"For a rank beginner, you're not bad,"
she said in a husky, vampish tone, batting her long eyelashes at him.

Instead of being offended, he laughed. "You
damned tease," he muttered. "Look out, or I'll throw you down in the
dirt and take you right there."

Her face went red and her breath rustled softly
in her pale throat. "Why, you mountebank!" she accused. "And you
said
I'd
been
seeing too many Valentino movies!"

He lifted his chin arrogantly. "I sneaked
into a theater when none of the boys were looking and saw that movie—the one
about the sheik," he confided dryly. "I can't imagine how the
moviemakers got away with it. Shocking!"

"I bet they'll make a fortune. The way he
backs her up against the wall of the tent, and that look in his eyes..."
She shivered. Her blue eyes darted up at his face. "Reminds me of
you."

"Does it?" he tossed the cigarette
down and caught her up in his arms, lifting her clear off the ground. "If
things were different, I'd have made love to you back there." He jerked
his head toward the tree where they'd lain.

Her arms linked around his neck hesitantly, so
that she didn't disturb him. "Cole, does it have something to do with—with
why you don't want me to see your body, or touch it?" she asked daringly.

He actually trembled. His eyelids flinched. He
started to speak, his lips were actually moving, when the sudden sound of
approaching hoofbeats interrupted the subtle spell.