Ride the Fire (12 page)
His smile seemed more dazzling to her than the warm May sunshine that streamed through the open cabin door, and she felt her breath catch and her own smile brighten. For two weeks now she’d been studying her letters with Nicholas’s help whenever she found a few spare moments—during the midday meal, after supper, just before going to sleep at night. He’d taught her the alphabet, then shown her how different letters came together to make sounds.
Though the rules always seemed to change, they were beginning to become familiar. Watching the letters, at first just strange shapes, transform themselves into words before her eyes seemed like magic. Never had she done anything so exciting.
She had to admit, if she were wholly honest, that it was not learning to read that alone brought her happiness, but the time she spent with Nicholas, as well. The way he spoke to her as if her thoughts mattered to him, the way he endured her many mistakes with good humor, the way he encouraged her with praise—no man had ever treated her like this.
Being near Nicholas made her feel alive in a way she had never quite felt before. Oh, aye, he was bonny, but he was also strong, almost frighteningly manly. One look from him was enough to make her feel as if her blood had turned to sun-warmed honey. His smiles, which seemed to come more often these days, made it hard for her to think. Even the way he moved, with the confidence and grace of a predator, affected her. She found herself searching him out with her eyes, looking for reasons to cross his path, worrying about the meals she made for him, even fretting over her hair.
Could it be that she was coming to fancy him? She dashed the thought away, started to dip her quill again, glanced down at Belle, who had fallen asleep while nursing. She set the quill aside, used her little finger to free her nipple from Belle’s mouth. “Come, little one.”
Nicholas watched covertly as Bethie settled little Isabelle for a nap and walked back to the table to finish her lesson. Blood rushed to his groin.
She’d forgotten to fasten the front of her gown, leaving the silken cleft of her breasts open to his view. It had been difficult enough to sit so close beside her as she nursed her baby, her breasts bared, her nipples puckered like sweet raspberries ripe for the picking. He’d been forced to keep his hands busy cleaning his pistols to prevent himself from touching her.
Touching her? Hell, he wanted to do a lot more than touch her. He wanted to tear off that old gown of hers, to feast on the sight of her body. He wanted to taste her skin, to lick and suck her tenderest flesh until she screamed his name. He wanted to bury himself inside her tight heat, to take her on her own bed, on a pile of soft furs, on the sandy riverbank.
His cock hardened to steel, throbbed heavily against the leather of his breeches, and he found it damned near impossible to drag his gaze away from her exposed flesh to the other steel in his grasp. When had he last wanted a woman like this?
Had he felt this way for Penelope? No, he hadn’t, and that was odd, considering that he had respected her wish to remain a virgin until after their wedding and had forsaken other lovers to court her. He ought to have been as randy as a bull around her, and yet it had been easy to restrain himself.
Certainly, months of solitude in the wilderness had often left him longing for the pleasures of a woman’s body. But on those occasions when he had sought out female company, one woman had been as good as the nexL Now he wanted only Bethie.
He’d told himself repeatedly that his obsessive need for her was nothing more than the result of having lived away from women for so long and then having been thrust into close contact with one. He’d told himself that once he left her with her family and returned to the wild, his life would return to normal. He’d even told himself that he would forget her with time.
Being near her was making his life hell. It wasn’t just his extreme hunger for her that tormented him, but the way she seemed to unleash memories and feelings he’d thought far behind him. How she did this he knew not. He only knew that he had not been himself since the first moment he’d looked into her guileless violet eyes.
But like a young mare gentling to the touch of her groom’s hand, she was still far from ready to be ridden. If he moved too quickly, he would awaken her dormant fears, and she would pull away from him. Still, he knew she felt some attraction to him, whether she recognized it as such or not. He had not been in the wilderness so long that he did not recognize the scent of a woman’s desire. Nor was he blind to signs of it—the way her pupils dilated when she saw him working without his shirt, the flush in her cheeks when she stood near him, the catch in her breath when his skin met hers. But he could take her only so far. If he pushed her in any way or took advantage of her inexperience to manipulate her, he would be no better than the bastard who had hurt her. He might be able to wake her desire, but only she could claim it.
Nicholas heard the nub of her quill tap against the little clay pot, felt his gaze drawn to her once more. Her brows were furrowed in concentration as she wrote: S-T-E-W-A . . . She dipped the quill again, bit her lower lip, hesitated. Her gaze lifted from the parchment, met his, her eyes full of doubt. “R?”
He found himself wanting to kiss that lower lip, to run his tongue over the spot where her teeth had troubled it. “Aye.”
“I cannae remember how to start it.”
He stood, laid his pistol on the table, barrel facing the door, walked around behind her. Then he bent down, reached around her, took her small hand in his, began to guide her. “Like this.”
Barely aware of what his fingers were writing, he let his gaze fall to the slender column of her throat, where her pulse beat a frantic rhythm beneath the satin of her skin, then drop lower to the bared swells of her breasts, which rose and fell with each rapid breath she took. She smelled of honeysuckle and sunshine. He didn’t have to taste her skin to know it would be sweet.
He was certain she felt the heat between them as surely as he did, and his erection grew by another painful inch. Yet he knew he must not kiss her, not so soon, not like this. But his lips would not be denied. Against his will, they brushed her cheek as he spoke. “See? It’s easy.”
He felt a tremor run through her, heard her breath catch, saw her lips part and her lashes drift to her cheeks as her eyes closed. The quill fell from her grasp, forgotten.
“Aye. Easy.”
Her voice was a breathy whisper. And even as he savored her response, even as his lips sought her throat for a second taste of sweetness, he cursed himself for playing at seduction with a vulnerable woman, a woman who deserved more than he could give her, a woman who’d already been cruelly used. Was not this scheme of his to heal her past hurt just another way of using her? Was his head so clouded by lust that he could not admit, even to himself, that he was doing this as much for his own pleasure as for hers? Were the few nights of bliss and the emotional release he could give her justification for the pain he would inevitably cause?
God’s teeth, he wanted her!
Bethie felt the heat of him behind her. Her skin blazed white-hot where his lips had touched her. Unsure what she was doing, unable to think, she leaned back until her head rested against him. He felt so solid, so strong, while she felt weak and shaky.
Then he stood, pulled away from her, and she would later not be able to say whether he had truly moaned in frustration or whether she had imagined it.
When he spoke, his voice sounded strained. “I need to check my traps.”
“Aye.”
He’d taken a few steps toward the door before he stopped, speaking over his shoulder. “Your gown—you forgot to fasten it.”
Isabelle had been fussy and hadn’t wanted to be put down. Bethie had been so distracted trying to nurse a crying baby that she’d let the venison stew burn and stick to the bottom of the stewpot. In her haste and frustration, she’d become careless and knocked the madder-root dye to the floor, where it had spread in a pool of crimson, leaving a bright red stain on the honey-colored wood, before sinking through a crack between the floorboards. She had just salvaged what she could of their dinner and cleaned up the mess when Nicholas had come in from the day’s chores to find her cross and flushed, trying to dish stew while bouncing a squalling baby in her arms.
He had stepped through the door, closed it, his sharp eyes seeming to take in everything at once. A faint smile had tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Shall I take her?”
He hadn’t waited for an answer, but had scooped Isabelle from Bethie’s arms and begun to walk the length of the cabin, crooning softly and holding the baby upright against his chest.
As if this were what she had been waiting for all along, Belle had immediately quit crying and begun to suck her thumb.
Bethie might have voiced her frustration had not the site of Nicholas doting on her wee daughter stolen her breath. She had marveled that a man as raw as he could be so tender with a babe not his own. What had he done to enthrall them both, mother and child alike?
Somehow she’d gotten dinner on the table—venison stew, corn cakes, field greens, fresh buttermilk. She’d been able to eat despite the distraction of his presence across the table from her. But then he’d brought up the subject of leaving again, of taking her back to her family.
She had tried to ignore him, tried to change the subject, but he had persisted, watching her all the time with that piercing gaze of his.
“The river is still running high and fast, but within a week, perhaps two, it will have dropped enough to ensure safe passage. We’ll stop at the nearest trading post and trade for a wagon so you need not suffer horseback the entire journey. Tis a long way to Paxton.”
“Would want his wife and daughter to be safe.” His blue eyes had seemed to measure her, as if he were probing for the cause of her reluctance.
Did he know she had a secret or was she just imagining it?
“And if I wish to stay longer?”
“Then you lack all sense, madam. You cannot truly wish to remain here when you know full well that you risk death—and worse—for both yourself and Isabelle. Is not the brutality of this war written in me?”
Bethie had felt like crying, though she hadn’t known exactly why.
Nicholas Kenleigh. Nicholas
Kenleigh.
She whispered his name as if somehow the secret to her feelings for him were held within it. She spelled it in her mind—or tried to. Why did the very sight of him make her feel a knot of longing in her belly? Why did she feel as if her blood were singing when he smiled at her? And the way she felt when he touched her, like snow melting into a tremulous trickle of water—
Was this desire?
Even as she asked the question, panic welled up in her heart at the answer.
You’ve the heart of a harlot, Bethie Stewart.
She could not desire Nicholas! Why would she desire him? She was not an innocent virgin, but a widow who had borne a child. She knew all there was to know about what went on between men and women, and she had no need for it. Not only did it not please her, she’d found it painful. She sank into the water, rinsed soap from her hair, tried to rinse him from her thoughts. She had just stepped from the tub and reached for the linen towel when the door suddenly opened and Nicholas stepped inside.
