OUT OF THE DARKNESS (THE PRESCOTT SERIES) (23 page)

“Are you alright? Did I hu
rt you?” Jason asked concerned.

He had never known a woman to cry out the way
she had. What if it had been too soon after the baby? What if he had hurt her in some way?

“I’m perfectly fine.” Jade said in the
soft breathy voice of a woman completely satiated. Her body still held her in the grip of the passion she had experienced. Little quivers, she couldn’t control, pulsated through her body.

“I never knew it could be like that.” She remembered the night in the wagon. Nicholas’ rough inexperienced lovemaking was nothing compared to Jason’s tender assault. He ravished her senses, made her come alive
, and she enjoyed every minute of it.

“It was beautiful,” Jade said between soft gasps of air.
She rubbed her cheek on his shoulder .Vaguely, she remembered her nightgown that he’d tossed to the floor, but her naked body craved his warm flesh.

Jason
had heard of women who enjoyed sex as much as men did. Except he thought it was just campfire talk, men bragging about of their sexual experiences with women. Maybe he was one of the lucky ones, he thought as Jade snuggled closer. Smiling into the darkness, he proceeded to find out how much was reality, and how much was campfire talk as he brought Jade once more to completion.

He lay in the dark and thought about the two little girls in the next room. His family, he
thought proudly, he and Jade would make a good life together for their children. Their ‘marriage of convenience’ had evolved into one of passion.

The next battle would be to win Jade’s heart and her love.

Nicky’s soft whimper brought Jade fully awake. She lay in Jason’s bed completely naked. Memories of the night before brought a smile to her face as they played through her mind. Surely, a man couldn’t make love to a woman like that and not care for her.

Nicky’s whimper grew louder.
She had nothing but last night’s sheer nightgown to put on. She was reaching for it when Jason came through the door carrying Nicky and, thankfully her robe. In his other arm, he held Emma, all smiles and giggles.

The day passed slowly. Night couldn’t here fast enough to suit her.
She didn’t know how she endured the day with all of Jason’s heated glances, soft touches, and stolen kisses. By the time a respectable hour came to go to bed, she was in a heated frenzy.

Seams ripped as they shed their
clothes with such haste that two buttons fell to the floor and rolled under the bed. Her cries of passion echoed in the room late into the night, answered by Jason’s growls of satisfaction.

~~~

Jason entered the cook shack late in the afternoon. He had spent the last two days in the house with Jade and the girls. He needed to check with Cookie to make sure that he’d kept the ranch running smoothly in his absence.

Pete and Willie took one look at
him and their cheeks turned a dark hue. They mumbled something about checking on a newborn calf and raced for the door. Cookie was grinning from ear to ear as he stirred the beans on the wood stove.

“What’s up with them?” Jason asked, staring at their departure with a
look of puzzlement on his face.

They usually had a cup of coffee with him as they discussed ranch business. Now they couldn’t get out the door fast enough. Cookie
stood there staring at him with a sappy grin on his face. Jason wondered if he had his clothes on wrong side out.

“Uh, we
was in the barn with that mama cow late last night,” Cookie explained.

“So.”
Jason couldn’t imagine what a cow had to do with the way the men were acting or account for their red faces.

“You got you a screamer don’t you boy.” At the perplexed look on
his face, Cookie went on. “Yer bedroom’s on the same side of the house the barn’s on.” As if this was explanation enough.

“Oh.”
Heat crawled up his nape. He turned on his heel and left the cook shack. Cookie’s laugh followed him out the door all the way to the house.

I
t wouldn’t be wise to inform Jade about what the men had overheard. It would embarrass her. Besides, it made him feel proud knowing he could bring those cries of ecstasy to her so easily. He went directly to Jade and gave her a hug and a kiss. He knew he wore the same sappy grin that Cookie had.

Morning brought clear skies. The sun was just coming up when Jason rose from bed to start another happy day. The babies were still asleep, and Jade had started breakfast. He came up behind Jade, encircled her with his arms, and nuzzled her neck.

“Good morning, sweetheart. Do you
realize how beautiful you are?”

He blazed a trail of warm kisses from
a sensitive spot behind her ear to the hollow of her neck. He didn’t know about her, but passion still rode him hard. He hadn’t realized he was such a passionate man until he held Jade in his arms. These last months with her had been the happiest of his life. Underneath, the fear of losing her to the past still raged inside him. He thought with time, he could bind her to him through their shared passion, also with the fact that Emma was now a ‘mama’s girl’. The little girl had attached herself to Jade. She always wanted Jade to rock her to sleep.

“You make me feel beautiful.”

She turned in his arms, reached up, and pulled his head down to kiss him long and leisurely. She had never been the aggressor in their lovemaking.

Jason’s arms tightened. He let her take the lead in where such a sweet kiss would take them. She was becoming the lover of a man’s wildest dreams. She always responded to him, yet, had never initiated their lovemaking. He rather liked this new side of Jade.

With her arms still around his neck, she slowly tugged her lips from his and peppered tiny kisses over his face. She stepped away and gazed up at him.

“Come. I want to talk to you.”

Taking him by the hand, she led him to the living area to his favorite chair. She sat on the sofa across from him and took his hand. Her green gaze bore into him with such a determination in their depths, it made him afraid of what she was going to say.

Never had Jason consider
himself a coward, but at this moment, he was terrified. Afraid his world wouldn’t be the same after Jade said what she was so intent on telling him.

Had she decided her past life was better than what he offered? Had she recalled the love she had for another man? Nicholas?
He knew this conversation was inevitable. But he would have preferred to live with the specter of Nicholas overshadowing their lives, as to lose Jade to him or to his memory. He felt torn between learning someone had hurt Jade and if there were someone out there she loved, who would claim her.

Jade realized n
either she, nor Jason had mentioned Nicholas’s name since the day Nicky was born. With his confession of love last night, she felt more confident about her confession, knowing he returned her love.

She had tried several times over the last months to tell Jason about the darkness she had lived with for nine months. He always found something else to do, or said they would talk later.

Last night, as she lay drowsy after their spent passion, he’d repeated the words he said each night after he heard her steady breathing. He didn’t know she feigned sleep just so she could hear those words before she drifted off to sleep.

Only last nigh
t they were not the same words.

This time he’d whispered, “I love you, Jade. I promise I’ll make you happy.”

They were sweeter to her ears than ever before. Tears had stung her eyes at the sincere commitment behind his vow. He needed to feel free to say those words in the light of day, not just in the dark hours of night when he thought she couldn’t hear.

It made her realize she had to force him
to listen to what had held her in its dark grip until he came into her life. She wanted him to know the love she felt for him, wanted him to understand about Nicholas.

She wanted to speak those words aloud in the light of day.

“Jason, I want to talk to you about my past. About Nicholas.”

“Nicholas?” Jason repeated. A guarded expression on his face, as if, he had never heard
the name before.

“Yes
, Nicholas. I don’t want him to stand between us any longer.”

Their future depended on him knowing the truth. Accepting it and putting it behind them.
She had taken his hand so he couldn’t get up and leave with a lame excuse as he had in the past. This time he would have to stay. She wasn’t going to let him put her off any longer.

“What about him?” Jason
asked grudgingly.

“Nicholas was my friend from childhood, my husband for a few days, but you Jason, you are my life. I love you with all that I am,” she reassured him. “I want you to know why I was silent those months before Nicky was born.”

“You love me?”

He reached for her and tried
to pull her into his arms. Putting her hand against his chest, she held him back.

“No Jason. I want to tell you what happened, with no distraction,”
she insisted. “I need for you to know, for you to understand.”

He nodded
, sat forward, and braced his elbows on his thigh. Jade began the arduous journey back in time. Into the darkness. Past it, into her life before everything had been ripped from her. Then back into the darkness, through it, into the light where she now lived.

“Nicholas’ and my families had been friends for years. We grew up together. Nicholas, almost nineteen, was one year older than I was
, and we were best friends. Nicholas’s father was determined to take his family west, so my father decided to go with them. To save money, for when we got to our new homes, our families bought one wagon. If we shared everything, we would have enough to get us through the first winter.

“The men slept outside while the women slept in the wagon, among the supplies. Nicholas’ younger sister and my younger brother were with us. We were several weeks into our journey when a fever struck the wagon train killing nearly one-fourth of the people
, men, women, and children. Nicholas contracted the disease. But, being young and healthy, he survived. Our families were among those we buried along the trail.”

“I’m sorry
, sweetheart. I know this is not easy for you to tell,” Jason sympathized.

Jade squeezed his hand tighter and continued, tracking
the terrible events of that day through her mind, trying to put them into the words that she hadn’t been able to voice for so long.

“Women of the wagon train didn’t think it was
proper for Nicholas and me to share the same wagon without our parents, or the benefit of marriage. The people forced the wagon master to ask us to leave. Being on our own in unfamiliar territory, we both knew it would be best if we married so we could remain with the wagon train. But, Nicholas continued to sleep outside while I slept in the wagon.

“Three wagons, including ours, split from the main wagon train to head south where we were to buy land. On the third
day, it rained so hard we never broke camp. Everyone stayed inside the wagons.”

She and Nicholas had not shared the wagon before. It seemed natural in the limited space, since they were married, to share a bed. In the night as they snuggled for
warmth, Jade had awakened to fumbling fingers and Nicholas’ weight on top of her. The experience had not been pleasant. Nicholas apologized and promised it would never happen again. He had been half-asleep and didn’t realize what he was doing, he’d explained.

Jade skipped telling this part, sure Jason could tell by the blush on her face what had occurred in the wagon.

“We had been going south for four days when the men noticed we were being followed. Each man took his turn on guard duty. Nicholas always accepted night duty since the other men had families. On the sixth day, when we stopped for the evening, a strange man rode into our camp.

“He had long, dark, hair and a scar down the left side of his face. It gave him the look of an aged predator, yet he was younger than he first ap
peared. The scar began at the inside corner of his eye, causing it to droop. The puckered red scar extended across his cheek to disappear underneath his ear. His eyes were so black it seemed he had no soul. He wore clothes just as black. He accepted the offer of coffee, but refused a place beside the campfire to sleep the night.

“I will never forget
his face. No matter how long I draw breath, I will remember him.” She shuddered as she recalled the face from her nightmares.

“The next day broke under a clear, cloudless sky,” she went on. “We all woke early to start another day of travel. Women made breakfast over campfires while the men harnessed the teams and hitched up the wagons. It was such a natural, peaceful morning. No one realized the morning would end in such disaster.

“Jason, such death and
destruction. It was horrible.”