Marry Me (36 page)

When she would have found him with her hands, he stopped her, taking her by the wrists and raising her hands to his chest. He began to lift his head, but her lips clung to his. The shape of his mouth changed. He smiled, kissed her again, and when he drew away he was still smiling.

Rhyne slipped one hand out of his hold and touched his lips. “I reckon you have about the prettiest mouth I’ve ever seen.”

Cole blew gently against her fingertips. “Is that so?” “Mmm. It’s even prettier when you’re smiling.” “Then I’m glad you give me so many reasons to do it.” She traced the line of his nose.
“This
is still a proboscis.” “It certainly is.”

“Noble, though.”

Cole was not feeling particularly noble. He recaptured the wrist that was doing all the exploring. “I want to take you to bed.”

Rhyne nodded.

Her agreement didn’t assure him that she understood. “That means we have to get out of the water.” “Of course.”

“I was hoping we could do that together.”

“All right.”

He searched her face. “You’re certain?”

Rhyne’s breathing quickened. “You’re fixing to show off your boy parts, aren’t you?”

Cole touched her forehead with his. “It’s come to that, yes.”

She said nothing for a moment, and then, “Take me to bed.”

They untangled first. Cole released her, and Rhyne used the sides of the tub to lever herself away. Their eyes held; neither of them moved.

“I’m ready,” she reminded him. “I promise you.” And to prove it, she pulled the plug.

It was as bold an invitation as Cole had ever received,

and the last vestige of hesitation vanished. Wresting the plug from Rhyne’s fingers, he pitched it toward the sink before she changed her mind. He heaved himself out of the water and extended a hand to Rhyne.

She absently accepted his hand and let herself be drawn to her feet. Her stare never wavered from his erection. It was difficult to reconcile its size with the fact that she’d once taken all of it inside her. “It’s as big as a stallion’s.”

That comment moved Cole to look down at himself. “No, but you’re kind to say so.” He placed two fingers under her chin and tilted her face toward him. “You need to watch where you’re going.” Letting her go, he stepped out of the tub and grabbed the towels. He placed one in Rhyne’s hands and dried himself with the other. When he was finished, she was still standing in the tub. The water had drained, but she was dripping, and the towel was mostly a damp ball of linen clutched in her fist.

Cole could see that the cold was prickling her skin. He took the towel back and briskly rubbed her down. He stopped when a measure of color returned to her complexion. “Better?” he asked, tossing the towel aside.

“Much.” She expected that he would help her out of the tub, but she wasn’t prepared for him to swing her into his arms. “What are you–”

His raised eyebrow silenced her.

Rhyne slipped her arms around his neck and recalled the last time he carried her to bed. On that occasion, he’d dropped her like she was a sack of snakes and then went off to find better company at Miss Adele’s. Staring up into Cole’s darkening eyes, she had no fear that was going to happen tonight.

Chapter 12

He laid her on the bed and followed her down. Between quick, darting kisses they tugged at the blankets until they were warmly cocooned. They paused then to catch their breath, but only briefly. The pull each felt for the other was too intense to be ignored for long.

Cole nudged Rhyne’s thighs apart. She raised one knee as he moved between her legs. In spite of what she said she wanted, regardless that she believed she was ready, Rhyne felt herself tense in anticipation of being held immobile by his weight. Cole felt it too. He leaned over, supporting himself on his forearms, and brushed her lips with his.

“You know there can be pleasure,” he whispered. “Tell me you remember that.”

Her fingertips alighted on his shoulders as softly as butterflies. “I remember.”

“Say my name.”

“Coleridge.”

He smiled. “Then you know everything that’s important for now.”

Rhyne supposed that she did. He certainly made her feel that way. Her lips parted, inviting his kiss, and then her thighs parted, inviting the rest of him.

He’d held back so often and so long, that Cole was afraid it would be over even as it began. Biting back a groan, he thrust into her. Rhyne immediately made him her captive. Her arms and legs closed around him, and,
there,
where she held him so intimately, the honeyed walls of her vagina contracted. His cock pulsed, and the quickening beat of his blood was hers to control.

Of course it was. She owned his heart.

Rhyne watched Cole’s pupils steal the color from his eyes. She imagined she could see her reflection in the dark pools that were more proof of his wanting. It was an agony for him: desiring her, and desiring not to hurt her. His skin was stretched taut over his cheekbones and the line of his mouth was more grimace than grin.

“You know there can be pleasure,” she whispered.

It was enough. He rocked her hard, pushing her back but not down. She met his thrusts so there could be no doubt that it was what she wanted, too. Their bodies moved in almost violent concert, warriors circling, clashing, falling back. They fought without exchanging a single blow, although there were marks to prove there had been combat.

Her nails pressed deeply into his taut shoulders. Using only his mouth, he left his brand on the curve of her breast. She set her teeth against his earlobe and nipped. He clutched a handful of her hair while he plundered her mouth.

Pleasure rode on the back of hunger. Every pressured touch, every hurried caress, fed a need that had been too long denied. With her lips and tongue and fingertips, Rhyne urged Cole to take his release, but it was the deep, throaty cries of her own pleasure that pushed him from the precipice.

Sated, they lay still while their breathing quieted and their heartbeats slowed. Neither spoke. Words would have been an intrusion just then.

Rhyne did more than tolerate Cole’s weight. For the brief time that he lay covering her, she found comfort in it. As far back as she could remember she’d never looked to anyone for protection, yet she was certain that what she felt in these moments was protected. The sense that she was cherished squeezed her heart.

Cole raised himself on his elbows long enough to kiss Rhyne on the mouth, and then rolled onto his back. She immediately closed the gap between them by securing herself to his side like ivy. He made a cradle for her head against his shoulder and drew her arm across his chest.

“I don’t want to leave,” she whispered. “Ever.”

He stroked her arm. “We have the suite for the night.”

“That’s not close to forever.”

He murmured his agreement against the crown of her dark hair.

Rhyne closed her eyes. “When do you reckon you’ll be talking to Pastor Duun?”

“About twelve hours from now.” He felt her start of surprise. “Did you really think I’d give you an opportunity to change your mind?”

“My mind’s set.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I was thinking about yours.”

“Mine? I thought I was clear about what I wanted.”

Rhyne tilted her head to look at him. “You don’t know everything.”

Cole understood she wasn’t speaking in generalities. “I’ll know when you tell me,” he said. “I can wait.”

She sighed. “You make it sound simple. It’s a lot more complicated in my head.”

He didn’t doubt it for a moment. “Why don’t you tell me about that?”

“You want to know why it’s complicated?” “That’s right.” He gave her arm a light squeeze. “I like puzzles, remember?”

She eased her head into the comfortable cradle he provided. “Well,” she said, drawing out the single word as she thought about all the ones that needed to follow. “I’m thinking that there’s things I know that you don’t that could change your kind feelings toward me if I told you what they are, and I’m thinking that you still might want me to marry you in spite of no longer feeling kindly toward me because you hold so fast to your honor. I’m also thinking that what I tell you might make you feel obliged to tell someone else, and the consequences of that aren’t so easy to figure, but you being possessed of a fine moral character that I mostly admire, you’ll suppose that justice will beat ugly every time, even though I know for a fact that ugly wins its fair share of things.

“And there’s my feelings for you that I’m considering. What I know about loving someone can’t fill a thimble, but somehow I have it in my mind that it will be worse than the worst beating I ever took if you tell me to leave, and maybe only a little less than the worst if I leave before you tell me, so I’m weighing those things, one against the other, and wondering if telling you what you don’t know favors the first or the second. Or maybe it doesn’t favor either.”

Rhyne drew in a breath and exhaled softly, her voice returning to a whisper. “Maybe telling is just honest and right. Maybe things need to be said because a person shouldn’t hold on to ugly forever, no matter what might happen.” Her short laugh was shaky and self-conscious. “And that’s why it’s complicated.”

Cole held her just as he had throughout her slightly breathless recitation, his cheek resting against her hair, his hand stroking her forearm. He waited until he was certain she could hear him over the hammering of her own heart before he spoke. “Here’s what I know that you don’t,” he said. “I love you.”

Rhyne’s heart tripped over itself. “I’m surely glad of it, but it doesn’t make things less complicated.”

“Then maybe this will: I think you killed the men that raped you.”

In her mind she imagined herself bolting from the bed. The reality was that she was so startled that she couldn’t move.

Cole was relieved when she didn’t fling herself away, but he was aware that the distance between them now could not be measured by conventional means. “You don’t have to say anything,” he told her. “I’m not looking to you to make a confession or protest your innocence. Neither is required. Both are true.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I mean that confessing to murder doesn’t always make you guilty, not in my eyes, probably not in the law’s.”

“See?” It was an accusation. “That’s what I meant about you being the kind of man that believes justice can beat ugly. It’s not so nearly often enough.”

“I know what you meant, but this time ugly
was
beaten. You shot them, and that was justice.”

Rhyne hesitated. “Not that I’m admitting to anything, but if it was justice, it wasn’t the law. I know that much.”

Cole knew it too. “I don’t feel at all obliged to tell anyone,” he said. “Even if I had something more than my suspicions. It could be that a certain sheriff and no-account Beatty boy already have it figured out and have no intention of doing anything about it.”

“What do you mean?”

Cole shrugged. “Will’s the one that told me about a couple of men that he and Wyatt tracked into the mountains somewhere around your place.”

“They’ve tracked a lot of men out that way.”

“But not every miscreant is found dead at the end of the trail. In this case, one of them was shot in the head, the other in the privates.”

“Sounds like a falling out.”

“Sounds like,” Cole repeated. “Probably that’s all it was.”

“Probably.” Cole’s fingers threaded through hers. He squeezed lightly. “That shot to the privates, though …” He let the sentence hang. His lips brushed her hair. “Someone was purely pissed.”

“Someone was.”

Cole had it in his mind that calling on Pastor Duun would be the first order of the morning, but his own appetites took precedent, and then there was breakfast. The small round table in the sitting room was so laden with the food Rhyne had ordered from the kitchen that there was barely space for their plates and cutlery. He only raised an eyebrow when she began uncovering the dishes.

“I’m hungry,” she said by way of explanation. “It wasn’t decent what you did to me on an empty stomach.”

Cole forked two flapjacks and put them on his plate. “That wasn’t your stomach I heard growling.” He managed to get his hand out of the way before she stabbed him with her fork. “Or was it?”

Rhyne’s smile was inscrutable. She passed him the syrup after she drowned her pancakes.

Cole added a few crisp strips of bacon to his plate and a large spoonful of scrambled eggs. His stomach rumbled loudly as he reached for the coffee pot.

Rhyne laughed. She carved out a bite of pancake and put it in her mouth. The pancake melted away while maple syrup clung deliciously to her tongue. “Food of the gods,” she said, cutting out another piece. She glanced up and found that Cole was staring at her mouth. She started to raise her napkin, but he reached across the table and stopped her.

“Let me.” He gave her no time to consider what he was

going to do. Rather than rising, he simply pushed the table out of the way and leaned across the space that separated them. He kissed her deeply, tasting sweetness that was more than the syrup on her lips and tongue. When he sat back, he pulled the table into position, and picked up his fork. “Never doubt it,” he said, spearing a strip of bacon.
“That
is food of the gods.”

She stared at him, a blush stealing over her face. “I stand corrected.”

He smiled. “Eat up.”

They both did, but the air was charged and the simple act of eating became foreplay. Their mouths were engaged in one activity while their minds were engaged in another. Even as they ate, their eyes drifted toward the bedroom. They thought about the rumpled covers, the musky scents of skin and sex, the pillow that he’d used to raise her hips when he took her from behind.

She saw his perfectly sculpted hand as it had been when it cupped her breast, and again when it slipped between her legs. She knew the shape of her own body by the molding of his palm, the gentle turn of his skilled fingers as he caressed her.

He saw delicate blue veins in the underside of her wrist and recalled the quickening of her pulse. He was reminded of all the ways she moved him and moved for him, how she responded to his touch, both subtle and demanding. Her curiosity excited him and made him cautious. Her trust, now given, seemed absolute, and there was nothing that he could imagine that she would not let him do. She’d said as much to him, and for that reason, he reined in his imagination.