Only My Love (25 page)

Neither of them moved for several minutes. Finally Ethan raised himself away from her. The bed creaked. He wondered if it had creaked the entire time they were making love. Probably. He hadn't noticed.

He kicked a boot out of the way as he headed for the washstand. He thought about lighting a lamp but decided Michael wasn't quite ready for that. When he was finished cleaning himself he carried fresh water and cloth to Michael's side. "There might be blood," he said. "You may want to wash."

When he sat on the edge of the bed he was close enough to feel her stiffen. "Mortified or scared of me?" he asked frankly.

"Mortified."

"Do you want me to wash you?"

"God, no!" She sat up, thankful there was only a little light in the room from the stove. "Turn your back. And stop grinning. I know you're grinning. And looking smug. Unbearably smug. Is your back really turned?"

"Absolutely."

She breathed a little easier. "I don't think I'm bleeding, but there's something that's—"

"That's me."

Her head jerked up. "What?"

"That's me. My seed. What you took from me and into you. Hasn't anyone explained these things?"

"Of course they've been explained," she snapped, tossing the cloth back in the basin. Droplets of water splashed Ethan's back. He reached for the basin and carried it back to the washstand. Her softly stunned voice followed him. "It's just that the reality is so much more...
real."

He tamped down a smile. "It is that." He pulled on a pair of drawers and passed Michael her nightshirt. "Put that back on. You might just get some sleep that way."

She cocked her head to one side, not certain she understood. "You mean... again... this very night?"

Ethan shrugged. "As you so poignantly pointed out earlier: you're not a virgin any longer. Move over. No matter what does or doesn't happen between us, I'm not sleeping on the floor anymore." He stoked the fire while Michael put on the nightshirt. When he returned to the bed there was a space for him. "You don't have to sleep way over there."

Her move toward him was a trifle cautious. "I'm new at this."

"You don't have to remind me. The question is why?" He was turned on his side, his head propped on one elbow. His hand seemed to gravitate of its own accord toward Michael's hair. He sifted the wild curls with his fingers.

"Why what?" she asked.

"Why there's never been anyone before me."

"You'd have been more comfortable with that, wouldn't you?"

"Hell, yes."

"Are you afraid I'll want marriage?"

He shook his head. "If you recall, I offered that your first night here. You turned me down flat. I don't fancy things have changed that much." He found another curl and twisted it around his finger. "What about those fellas you traveled with on the train?"

"I worked too hard to make them accept me as one of the boys to allow them to see me as a woman. I wanted to just be a
person.
But it isn't possible sometimes. It's newspaperman. The good ol'
boys.
Even on the poker table kings are high. I graduated from a college for women but most of the professors were men. I was at the top of my class and I had to start at a position below men who weren't nearly as good as I was. I didn't mind starting at the bottom, only I thought they should have been there too. I've scrambled and scratched and made them notice me at the
Chronicle
for what I could
do.
Not for what I am."

"But you
are
a woman."

"You don't understand," she said with husky urgency, trying to make her point. "It's not that I don't want to be a woman. I just want the same opportunities as a man. I want to walk the streets alone without being considered a streetwalker. I want to work in a newsroom without my presence being newsworthy. I want my name to mean something aside from my husband's. I want to vote for the next mayor of Tammany Hall. And even if she's a complete idiot, at least I'll know I had some choice in the matter of putting her there."

Ethan thought about that. "And what about the other things men have to do?"

"I suppose you're speaking of wars," she said, sighing that she was not eloquent enough to make him understand. "It seems that invariably the argument turns to war. Have I given you any reason to think that I wouldn't fight for something I believed in?"

Ethan's fingers paused in their sifting of her hair. "No," he said. After a moment he added, "Quite the opposite, in fact."

His admission stunned her and quite helpless to call them back, tears stung her eyes. She brushed them away impatiently. Tears always seemed to lend their weight on the side of a woman's frailty.

Ethan saw the sparkle of tears, felt the hurried swipe of her hand across her face. He leaned over and touched his mouth to her closed eyes. He tasted the sweet and salty wetness. He found her mouth and kissed her watery smile. "Still," he said, "why me? Why would you allow me to be the first man in your bed?"

"You're not going to let this rest, are you?"

"No."

She sighed. "Very well. There are a lot of reasons, I suppose. For you I wanted to be seen as a woman. I thought it might be to my advantage. I've seen how the women here manipulate the customers, teasing and flirting and eventually getting what they want. It doesn't always have to end up in the bedroom. The men are often satisfied with a smile or a companion who simply listens to them. But sometimes it needs to go beyond sharing a drink and some companionship and I thought that would be true in your case."

"Wait a minute," he said. "You're telling me you deliberately set out to manipulate me."

"More or less."

Ethan just shook his head, bewildered by her confession. "You have a lot to learn about feminine wiles. You can't be so honest about your motives and still expect to be manipulative."

"Exactly," she said triumphantly.

"Exactly?"

"Mm-hmm. I abandoned the entire idea. Don't you see? Feminine wiles, as you call them, simply didn't suit me. Oh, I can be wily, I think, but I had so much trouble with the feminine part. The one time I really wanted to be noticed as a woman, and I couldn't make it happen."

Ethan's dark brows nearly rose to his hairline. "Not be noticed as a woman? What in the world are you talking about? Houston's been dogging your steps since he got his first good look at you. Detra sees you as a rival. The miners take a dance with you every chance they get. When you kick up your legs on stage no one with eyes in their head thinks of you as anything but a woman."

"But none of those people will help me. I needed
you
to notice me. I thought you were the most likely one to help me get away."

"So you thought a virgin sacrifice was in order?"

Michael didn't know whether to slap his face or laugh. She did neither, counting to ten instead. "I told you I abandoned the idea. Not only couldn't I get you to notice me, I wasn't certain I wanted you to."

"I seem to recall a few kisses."

"I haven't forgotten them either, but I didn't know what I wanted then. The thought of you in my bed then was abhorrent. By the time I realized there might be some advantage in it, you didn't seem to be interested."

Ethan couldn't remember ever
not
being interested. Apparently he'd been more successful in hiding his thoughts than he'd suspected. "So you gave up trying to seduce me because you thought you couldn't do it, you weren't certain you wanted to, and you didn't have any real assurance that I'd help you escape."

"I never said the last thing you mentioned."

"No, I did. Because it's true. I won't help you get away from here." It was too dangerous. She couldn't do it on her own and he wasn't ready to go with her. He couldn't tell her those things.

"I realize that now." The feel of his fingers in her hair, against her scalp, was so gentle, so soothing. She felt as if she could give herself up to him. Then he reminded her that he wasn't so different from the men he rode with. He seemed bent on making her understand he wasn't her hero. "I suppose I didn't take the right meaning from those articles you gave me."

"The articles? You mean the ones about the robbery? From the Denver paper?"

She nodded. The movement brought his thumb in contact with her lower lip. He ran it along its length. Her tongue touched the very tip. She heard his breath catch.

"Michael?"

"Yes?"

"If you're wanting me to notice you as a woman right now, you're doing a helluva job."

"I am?"

In answer he found her hand and brought it to his groin. She could feel the heat and hardness of him through his drawers.

"Oh, my," she said softly. "Does it hurt?"

Her question elicited something between laughter and a groan. Ethan leaned over and pressed his mouth and body against her. His hands pushed up her nightshirt. Her hands were tugging at his drawers. "You're sure?" he asked. His hungry mouth was against her ear.

"Please... yes... I want you."

There were no preliminaries this time. She was ready for him and Ethan drove into her hard. Her heels pressed into the bedding as she lifted for his thrusts. The pads of her fingers pressed whitely into his arms. Her mouth sought his. Their tongues matched the energy and motion of their bodies. His hands stroked her. He couldn't touch her in enough places. Her hair. Her breasts. Her mouth. The sensitive inside of her elbow. Her skin was fragrant, musky. It was his own scent he smelled, the scent of him on her while he was in her deeply, filling her, touching her so intimately that he was part of her. And she held him, rocked with him, and accepted from him what she had never accepted from any man. She clung to him and there were soft keening cries at the back of her throat, urgent little murmurs that spoke of her pleasure, her passion. She felt the sleekness of his muscled back, the tension that rippled through him as her hands caressed. There was the wetness of her mouth on his shoulder and at his throat, her fingers in his ebony hair, her calves stretched out beside the length of his. She twisted beneath him, rising, falling, arching in her need. His long beautiful fingers were in the thickness of her hair. He whispered her name and his breath was hot on her face. She tasted her name on his lips. His whiskey soft voice held secrets and pleasure.

Michael shuddered. The long line of her neck was exposed as she arched with the force of her release. Her body strained with the fullness of her pleasure. She felt the cadence of Ethan's rhythm change, the stroking became more shallow and furious and then the final thrust and the tension in every part of his body as he spilled himself into her.

Their breathing was harsh, their bodies damp. Ethan turned so that Michael could lie comfortably on her side and rest against him. His hand slipped beneath the neckline of the nightshirt and felt the steady strength of her heart. He brought her hand to his. The beats were in unison.

"Are you all right?" he asked after awhile. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No. No hurt."

"I was rough."

"I didn't mind." She touched his shoulder, exploring with her fingers. "I think I was rough back." She found a small indentation on his flesh. "Did I
bite
you?"

"Old wound," he said, raising her fingers to his mouth. He kissed the tip of each one in turn. "But you did bite me." He didn't need light to know that she was embarrassed by the revelation. He could feel the heat in her cheek against his chest. "I didn't mind. I've never been with a woman who enjoys loving the way you do." And he hadn't, he thought. Michael was the most completely sensual woman he had ever known, in or out of bed. She liked to touch things. He'd seen her hands smooth over the folds of a dress she was putting away. She ran her fingers around the corners of her notepad whenever she closed it for the night. He thought she was familiar with the texture of most everything she saw because it was part of her nature to touch. She liked the cold, the heat. She'd sit at the window watching snow fall for hours if he didn't make her turn in. He'd seen her working in the kitchen taking hot pies from the oven, holding them just below her face so she could inhale the steam and the fragrance. She'd sat at the table one Sunday morning with a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. Between sipping it so delicately, enjoying the sweet aroma, and warming her hands, she'd let it grow mostly cold. He'd thought then that no one had ever enjoyed simple pleasures the way Michael did.

"Is that a bad thing," she asked, "to enjoy it so much? My mother says it's not."

"Your mother's a wise woman then."

"I wonder," Michael said, more to herself than to Ethan. "Some people think my mother's a whore."

Ethan wondered what he was supposed to say to that. "I've mostly been with whores," he said finally. "If they happened to enjoy it, they still enjoyed my money more."

"It was never about money to my mother. It was always about love. Love made her stupid." Bitterness tinged her voice. "It won't happen to me. I won't let it."

It occurred to Ethan that she was trying to convince herself. That meant in some corner of her mind she was afraid it
could
happen. Mary Michael Dennehy feared taking the same path as her mother. Ethan stroked her hair. When he spoke his breath ruffled strands of it. "You won't let it," he repeated softly.