Merline Lovelace (9 page)
Authors: Countess In Buckskin
Lightly Tatiana traced her fingers along his chin. The skin was pale where he had scraped the beard away, and warm to her touch. The curve of his jaw was now as familiar to her as her own.
What would it be like to be held tight in his arms? To share more than his warmth when darkness blanketed the earth? To glory once more in her womanhood? How would it feel to be loved again, and cherished, if only for a night?
Her fingertips followed the line of his lower lip. He frowned at the light touch. Mumbling incoherently, he turned his face into her breast.
“Shh.” Tatiana rocked him gently. “Shh.”
He muttered low, disjointed phrases. A single word carried to Tatiana clearly.
“Catherine.”
She stilled. Her eyes fixed unseeing on the darkness beyond the fire. Slowly, wearily, she began to rock him once more.
Her eyelids fluttered. She forced them up. Moments later, they drifted down again.
Tatiana had no idea how long she slept before she came to with a small start. For a confused, panicky moment, she tried to identify where she was and why she’d regained her senses so suddenly. The reason came to her in a crash of fear.
Josiah!
She no longer held him in her arms. They were empty, as was the makeshift bed the two of them had shared. Alarm lurched through her in great surging waves. She scrambled to her knees, only to crumple back to the fur at the feel of a firm, reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“I’m here.” Josiah knelt beside her, his eyes clear and unclouded.
The fear and the worry that had built in her for so many hours burst. Sobbing, Tatiana flung her arms around him and clutched him to her bosom again.
“At last you are awake!”
Josh thought about telling her that he’d been awake for more than an hour. That he’d used the quiet time while she slept to subdue the ferocious hammering in his skull and cleanse himself of blood and gore. That the entire time he’d worked, her musky, womanly scent had stayed with him, until he’d developed an ache in his lower body a hundred times sharper than the one he’d chased out of his head. Instead, he stroked her hair and waited for her choking cries to dwindle to hiccuping sobs.
“I saw the carcasses,” he said when at last she quieted. “What happened?”
She answered in a teary, shaking voice. “The wolf came, and then the pony, it kicked you. Most soundly. I made the camp and waited for you to wake.”
The brief recital left out a few pertinent details. Like where she’d found the strength to tend to the camp and to him. And why a woman who’d tried to carve a totem on his windpipe a few days ago had taken to nuzzling him to her breast. At this moment, though, Josh wasn’t concerned about those missing details. He’d get them later. Right now, he had to force out the question that had haunted him since he’d first opened his eyes.
“Did the wolf bite you, or scratch you, or mix its blood with yours?”
She shuddered. “No, no!”
“Are you sure?”
“I am sure.”
Josh drew in a deep breath. He knew as well as any man of the mountains that there wasn’t any cure for the madness that came from the bite of a crazed canine. While Tatiana had sprawled in exhausted slumber, he’d steeled himself for the worst and checked his body for puncture wounds. He’d found no injuries except the lump on his temple. He hadn’t found any marks on Tatiana’s face or limbs, either, but he’d needed to hear her confirmation to banish the tight coil of worry in his belly.
He wasn’t the only one who’d worried, he discovered a moment later.
“I...I thought that you would never again wake, Josiah Jones.”
Her eyes swam with tears. They traced silvery trails down her cheeks and brought home to Josh all she’d suffered in the past weeks. Reaching out, he brushed away a tear with his thumb.
“It would take more than a pony’s kick to do any permanent damage to my cast-iron skull, Countess Karanova.”
Smiling weakly, she curved a cheek into his palm. “But you were so still, and then so restive. I feared at times I must tie you down, as you tied me.”
The reminder of how he’d treated her made Josh squirm. “I’m sorry about that.”
She sniffed. “Me, also. It was most uncomfortable.”
Josh started to pull his hand away. Somehow it got wrapped around the curve of her neck. Gently he massaged her tight, knotted muscles.
“Ahh.”
The sigh slipped through her lips. Her head went back. Bonelessly she slumped against him. Using both hands now, Josh worked the stiffness from her neck and shoulders. He was only returning in small measure the care she’d just given him, he assured himself.
Which didn’t explain why he drew her around some moments later and kissed her, but by then Josh had gone beyond explanations. He saw only the tracks her tears had left on her pale, smooth skin and her generous, all too seductive mouth.
Unlike their first kiss, he meant this one to be gentle. A soothing of her fears. A sharing of her burdens. A token of his thanks for her care. Just like the first, however, it took on a life of its own the moment his lips touched hers. What started soft and warm and tame built without warning into hard and hot and primitive.
Her lips opened under his. The fingers Josh had curled around her neck speared through her loose, silky braid and anchored her head. His tongue found hers with a hunger Josh had tried to deny for too long.
Abruptly he shifted. Ignoring the brief protest from his temple, he pulled Tatiana into his lap. Her arms threaded tightly around his neck. Straining, she pressed her chest to his.
By the time Josh remembered his promise not to take what she had offered in trade for his escort through the mountains, it was almost too late. Her dress had hiked around her hips. His shirt had pulled free of his belt, baring his chest to her eager hands. Desire tumbled through his veins like fiery, potent brandy.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
He tried to put some space between them. She wouldn’t be moved.
“Wait, Tatiana,” he said raggedly. “I promised you that I wouldn’t...”
“Do not!” She slapped a palm across his mouth. “Do not speak to me of promises! Or of lost loves. I don’t wish to remember the hurt, Josiah Jones. I want only to feel as a woman feels. Just for tonight. Just for now.” Tears brimmed in her eyes once more. “If...if it doesn’t pain you, let me lose myself in your strength.”
If
he
didn’t lose himself in
her,
it would more than pain Josh. It would cripple him. He wanted this stubborn, contrary, seductive Russian as he’d never wanted another woman.
he
didn’t lose himself in
her,
it would more than pain Josh. It would cripple him. He wanted this stubborn, contrary, seductive Russian as he’d never wanted another woman.
“Just for tonight, Josiah,” she whispered. “Please.”
He’d take her slowly, he vowed with savage intensity. Although his muscles knotted and his hands grew slick as he slid her dress up over her hips, he’d make her feel as a woman was supposed to feel or kill himself in the trying.
Her skin was like the finest, smoothest cream, warm to his touch until the cold air kissed it. Her belly rippled under his spread palms. Her hips curved to a narrow waist. Josh raised himself on one elbow and raked a hungry glance down the length of her slender body. Then a jerk of his arm pulled the capote over them both. Black, smothering darkness captured their heat.
Contorting his body to fit Tatiana’s, Josh tasted her. She squirmed at the rasp of his tongue on her stomach. The movement raised her dress above her waist. Josh shoved it even higher and took a tight-budded nipple in his mouth.
Gasping, she cradled his head to her breast once more. Only this time, there was nothing of a mother nuzzling a babe in her hold. This time, she arched under him and offered herself as a woman does to her man.
Desire sliced at Josh like the cut of a bullwhip. Suckling, teasing, worrying the tender flesh with the edge of his teeth, he wrapped an arm around her waist and dragged her into the center of his own heat.
The feel of a hard knee prying hers apart roused Tatiana from a whirling vortex of sensation. She tensed in an instinctive and wholly futile attempt to deny the hand that delved between her legs. Momentary panic crashed through her. No man had ever touched her thus, except her husband. Even Aleksei had never pinned her with his weight and held her spread so wide and helpless while he opened her to his touch. Nor had he ever... she gave a strangled cry. Sweet heaven above, he’d never done that!
Her face burning, Tatiana felt her juices dew the fingers that slid in and out, in and out. Readying her. Claiming her.
When Josiah’s thumb found the tight nub of flesh at her core, she forgot her embarrassment. Forgot her dignity. Forgot everything but the white-hot sensation splintering through her.
And when he thrust into her, she lost herself in his hard, muscled strength.
Chapter Nine
J
osh awoke just before dawn with a single burning need. With everything in him, he wanted to roll Tatiana onto her back and bury his rigid shaft in her satiny heat once more.
osh awoke just before dawn with a single burning need. With everything in him, he wanted to roll Tatiana onto her back and bury his rigid shaft in her satiny heat once more.
He lay tangled in the furs, staring up at the fading stars as he fought for control. Wrenching his mind and his senses from the woman at his side, he forced himself to think about the ravages the wolf had caused. The sorting and repacking of supplies he’d have to accomplish. The day’s journey. Anything but the feel of Tatiana’s legs entwined with his!
They should clear the mountains today and start the descent to the coast. Tonight they’d camp within sound of the sea. They’d spend at least another week en route to Fort Ross...unless Josh took a slower, more circuitous route.
When he realized what he was thinking, he stiffened. He couldn’t extend the trek just to spend a few more nights with Tatiana. They both had urgent, all-too-different reasons for wanting to reach Fort Ross as quickly as possible.
She hoped to save it, and her father, with her precious bundles of twigs.
Josh wanted to verify the details of the fort’s uncertain future and, if possible, secure its possession for the United States.
The thought of Tatiana’s anger if and when she learned of his real reasons for accompanying her to the Russian fort made Josh throw back the furs. Muttering a sleepy protest at the loss of his warmth, she curled in a tight ball. Fire speared through his loins at the sight of her long, slender legs and the gleam of one rounded hip. Gritting his teeth, Josh drew the covers up to her chin.
His jaw tight, he righted his clothing, fed the fire and put the coffee on to boil before digging through the packs for his ax. He needed to construct a travois to haul their supplies. Even more, he needed to think...and to shake this nagging sense of guilt.
Moments later he selected a tall thin pine and swung the blade. The ax blade bit into the trunk with a solid thud. Wrenching it free, Josh swung again. With each blow, he reminded himself of his mission.
He was an officer in the army of the United States!
Under orders from the president!
Van Buren would want him to follow up on the information Tatiana had let slip about Fort Ross.
Except...the ax stilled in midswing...he’d gone well beyond his orders last night.
By giving in to his mindless, rutting lust for Tatiana, he’d complicated an already uncomfortable situation. What was worse, Josh knew damn well he’d taken advantage of her temporary weakness to satisfy that lust. She’d been shaken by fear, by the aftermath of the carnage left by the wolf. Despite her pleas to him to love her, she’d really wanted comforting and reassurance.
Disgust with himself roiled through Josh’s gut, and a determination to get Tatiana to Fort Ross before he scarred her far worse than any wolf.
The blade slammed into the trunk a final time. With a series of sharp cracks and groans, the tall pine began to fall. Grimly Josh started on the second tree.
The sound of the pine’s crashing descent brought Tatiana awake. She lay still under the furs, trying groggily to identify the sound. A few moments later, she picked up the rhythmic bite of Josiah’s ax.
Tugging the blanket down, she breathed in cold, crisp air. Faint streaks of pink and gold ribboned the dark sky above her. She stared up at the shifting, glowing ribbons, knowing she should rise. But for the first time since setting out from the Valley of the Hupa, she wasn’t eager to resume her journey.
A curious languor seemed to weight her limbs. She longed to draw the capote to her nose and lie abed until servants miraculously appeared with a pot of hot chocolate and a plate of the rich, currant-filled pastries the Countess Karanova had always begun her days with.
Even stronger than her physical lassitude, however, was her reluctance to face Josiah. How
could
she face him, after what had occurred between them last night?
could
she face him, after what had occurred between them last night?
Her fingers clutched at the blanket coat as vivid, startling images darted through her mind. By Saint Petr, had she really wrapped her legs around the man and begged him to love her? Was that really she, Tatiana Grigoria, daughter of a count and once wife to a captain of the Imperial Guards, who groaned and gasped and writhed in his arms like the veriest wanton in the throes of her passion?
But what passion it was!
Never, ever had Tatiana imagined herself capable of such shattering, shuddering pleasure. Or dreamed, for even a moment, that the American could bring it about. Despite the giggles and pointed comments the Hupa women had let drop about his talents under the blankets, Tatiana had never known anything to compare with Josiah Jones’s impact on her body and her senses.
What had she been thinking of, to lose herself in his arms like that? She couldn’t give herself over to mindless pleasure, not with so much at stake. She’d done that once, and nearly lost her head as well as her heart. She must conserve her strength and her energies for this endless journey.
Greatly troubled, she dragged herself upright and searched among the tangled furs for her clothing. To the steady, ringing whack of the ax, she dressed and cleansed herself with melted snow, then poured thick, bitter coffee into a tin mug. Sipping slowly, she contemplated just what she would say to Josiah when he reappeared. She was so absorbed in this difficult task that she didn’t hear him approach.
“Are you ready to walk?”
Startled, Tatiana looked up to find him standing over her, hands thrust into his belt. She knew him well enough by now to see the wariness in his gold-flecked eyes. Slowly she set her mug aside.
“Yes, I am ready.”
“I’ll load the packs. Then we’ll move out. I want to make camp in the lowlands tonight.”
His brusque tone stung, as did his closed, guarded expression.
“I shall pack the eating utensils, then,” she replied evenly. “And we shall unpack them tonight in these lowlands you speak of.”
Tatiana rose, silently berating herself. What had she expected? That he would languish at her feet like a besotted courtier? That he would greet her with an ode to her beauty? Her womanliness? She herself had set the boundaries to their joining. They had come together for one night. For a few moments of breathless passion. That was all she had asked of him. All she wanted of him. That, and his escort to Fort Ross.
Evidently that was all he wanted of her, too, as his next words confirmed.
“It seems I’m always apologizing to you, Countess.”
Tatiana stiffened. “For what do you apologize this time, Josiah?”
“For last night.”
Pride lifted her chin. Hurt gave her voice a brittle edge. “You are sorry for last night?”
He looked away briefly, and Tatiana guessed that he was thinking of his Katerina. His precious Katerina. Her hurt sharpened into something she refused to admit was jealousy. She could not, she would not feel jealousy of a woman long dead!
“I’m not sorry it happened,” he said after a moment. “No man in his right mind could be. But it can’t happen again.”
“Do not fear,” she replied in a voice tipped with scorn. “It shall not happen again.”
And the next time a horse kicked his thick head, she vowed, she would let the blood build in his skull until it burst!
The angry glitter in Tatiana’s eyes warned Josh that he was bungling this badly. He wanted to tell her the truth. Even more, he wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss the scorn from her ripe, tantalizing mouth.
Instead, he watched her turn away to gather the scattered items. Forcing himself to move, as well, he laced the buffalo robe between the poles he’d just cut and began to load supplies onto the travois he’d drag behind him. The last item he added to the pile was Tatiana’s basket.
By noon, the confining mountains gave way to rolling foothills. By nightfall, they reached a broad, almost level stretch of forest broken by occasional prairies. Rain fell in continuous sheets, making for a wet, cold camp that night. Tatiana shared a bed with Josiah, but she took little comfort from his body’s heat. To her disgust, it disturbed her most greatly, and kept her stiff and rigid in a futile attempt to avoid contact.
The next day she heard the roar of the ocean through the rain and fog. Deep and ominous as a great, booming cannon, it crashed against a shoreline that Josiah informed her was yet many miles away. Tatiana shivered under her fur cloak, remembering her last encounter with the sea.
Late that afternoon the American led the way into a village of a people he called the Wiyot. The inhabitants who greeted them carried guns and swords and wore vanous pieces of sailor’s garb with their own, exquisitely decorated skins. Many sported beads and brass trinkets that could only have come from traders, as well as long, pointed dentalium shells through their noses.
The men welcomed Josiah in a language he seemed to readily understand and offered food and drink. The women took Tatiana to a lodge where she gratefully steamed away long days of travel. After a meal consisting primarily of fried whale blubber, wild onions and a roasted, bulbous root the size of a hen’s egg which Josiah identified as a swamp potato, Tatiana collapsed onto a pallet in the corner of the chief’s lodge.
Josh spent most of the night trading news with his hosts, drinking bitter beer, and fighting his desire to join her in the soft, warm bed. His head ached as much as his groin when the fire burned low and the Wiyot chieftain nudged him in the ribs with a sharp elbow. Augmenting his words with signs and gestures, the headman nodded to the sleeping Tatiana.
“I see your eyes go often to the woman. Did she really walk with you through the mountains?”
“She did.”
“She is strong, and brave, to make this walk.”
“Yes, she is.”
The headman grunted and held out a cup carved from whalebone. “Drink, then go join your woman and take your ease of her so you may rest well this night. You have a long way yet to travel.”
Josh’s gaze slid to the recumbent figure. He wanted nothing more than to take his ease of her. His jaw working, he pulled his eyes away and took the cup.
“The woman can wait,” he said tightly, downing the contents in two long swallows. “First, we must decide on a price for the horses you will sell me.”
The headman waved a hand. “You need no horses for this journey. The Wiyot build great boats to hunt the whale and the sea lion. In one, maybe two days our boats shall carry you and your woman to the land of the Pomo and this Russian fort.”
Josh’s stomach twisted. One, maybe two days in the company of the friendly Wiyot and Tatiana’s journey would at last end. He nodded slowly.
“I thank you.”
“There!” Josh shouted. “On that bluff!”
Keeping a tight grip with one hand on the side of the huge, hollowed log that the Wiyot sent skimming over the waves with such skill, Tatiana dashed her wet hair out of her eyes with the other. Squinting through the whipping rain, she followed the line of Josiah’s as
He leaned forward until his chest touched her shoulder. Even so, she could barely hear him above the boom made by the sea as it spent itself against a long line of gray cliffs.
“Do you see it?”
“No!” “There, the round tower with the cross atop sit”
Tatiana searched the rain-shrouded promontories high above the surging sea. Suddenly she saw it! The structure Josiah pointed to. It was set back from the cliffs, barely visible in the swirling rain. Yet the merest glimpse of the distinctive Russian Orthodox cross wrung a cry of joy from her lips.
It symbolized all she knew. All she was. With that double-barred cross came bearded patriarchs. Brilliantly painted icons. A religious faith that shaped Tatiana’s every thought. She blinked eyes already teared by the wet, stinging cold and gave a fervent prayer of thankfulness for her deliverance.
The prayer still tumbled from her numbed lips when she saw another symbol of Russia whipping in the wind on a flagstaff some distance from the cross. Her fingers dug into the boat’s side.
The double-headed eagle of Imperial Russia showed against a field of white. Below the eagle was a slash of red and one of blue. Nikolas’s flag. The man whose fury and thirst for vengeance had brought her here, so far from her home and all she had held dear.
Damn him. Thrice damn him.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the snapping, curling flag until the boat drew closer into shore and the high palisaded wall of the fort cut it from view.
Tatiana clung to the boat’s sides as pounding waves pushed it toward a small, rock-strewn cove some hundred or more feet below the fort’s walls. She caught a fleeting glimpse of a bearded sentry leaning out a window of the fort’s eight-sided log blockhouse. He waved an arm and shouted something, no doubt ascertaining their status as friend or foe.
Josiah shouted a reply, but Tatiana paid no heed to his brief message. Shoulders hunched, insides all aquiver, she gripped the boat’s sides with both hands and cringed back, as though to escape the onrushing rocks and foaming surf.
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