Stands a Calder Man (29 page)

“I'll never be warm enough, Lilli, not if your body isn't next to mine,” he told her.

She choked on a little cry and attempted to rise, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her around to him. “You think you're hurt,” Webb mocked bitterly as
frustration raged inside him. “You have no idea what it's like to want someone so much that you can't look at anyone else.”

“Webb, don't.” She didn't struggle in his hold.

“You shouldn't have come out here, Lilli,” he groaned, then crushed her hard in his arms, his weight driving her backward into the straw. The rough kiss was a punishment for tempting his control by coming to the shed. Lilli understood. It was a situation where neither and both of them were to blame for the position they now found themselves in. Lilli understood that better than Webb. Men preferred to believe they had control over what happened to them; Lilli knew better.

As suddenly as the angry embrace had begun, Webb was rolling his weight from her and sitting up to hunch over his knees. The hat came off as he raked a hand through his hair and kept his head lowered, breathing raggedly. “Get out of here,” he ordered in a hoarse voice.

Aware his control was teetering on a thin edge, Lilli finally acknowledged the subconscious decision that had prompted her to come to the shed. Right or wrong, she wanted him to make her feel alive. There was no more thinking, no more restraint. Webb was here now, and the problems tomorrow might bring were blown away before this primary reasoning.

Not moving from her prone position, half on the quilt and half on the straw, she lifted a hand to touch him. “Webb, I don't want to go,” she said. His body went still. “I wanted this to happen. The restlessness—the cabin fever, you said—that isn't what it was. I don't think I've thought about anything else but this moment for a long time. You've been in my mind since we met at the depot, taking up more and more of it until—”

His stillness was broken as he slowly turned, bringing his hand down and prying into her with his gaze, uncertain that she knew what she was saying. With a faint curve of her mouth, she opened her arms to him, inviting him to come to her. He lowered himself onto
the straw beside her and curved an arm possessively across her. For a long second, it was enough just to look at her.

Her fingers wandered over the ridged bone of his cheek. “This is all I can give you, Webb.” She wouldn't leave Stefan, and she wanted this to be enough, even though she knew it wouldn't be. A time would come when they would both want more, but that time wasn't here.

The straw rustled as Webb moved to warm her lips with his kiss. Her hand curved to the back of his head to increase the pressure and deepen the kiss, guided by the instinct of desire. Webb had already discovered in past encounters that she knew little of the preliminary arts that led to the act of love. He wanted to take it slow and teach them to her, but the need in him was a hot, fierce rod that impatiently demanded satisfaction.

Outside the shed, the blizzard howled and whined, dropping the temperature everywhere except in the corner where the bed of straw was located. There, the friction of two bodies trying to get closer created its own warmth. The black gelding snorted at all the rustling noises coming from the straw pile and turned its head to eye the entwined couple.

Their clothes were an encumbrance that couldn't be removed in this cold, only temporarily shifted out of the way so their hands could seek and invade chosen areas. His mouth grew more hungry for her, eating at her lips and clashing with her tongue. Her breasts strained under his cupping hands, stretching the material that bound them and kept him from touching her warm flesh.

The heat of her body was burning through what restraint he possessed. Little panting moans were coming from her throat as she turned into him with her hips and legs. Webb sensed her uncertainty, her confusion that he hadn't already taken her. It destroyed the rest of his control, sending hot blood coursing wildly through his veins and blocking out all other considerations with his need to have her.

The weighty material of her skirts was an irritating barrier to be lifted to reach her pantalettes. The heat of her skin burned through the cotton undergarment, warming his hand and briefly distracting him. He spread his hand across the rounded cheeks of her bottom, feeling the tautness of them. Then he was shifting her squarely onto the straw, his hand coming around to the front and gliding to her pubic bone. Her astonished gasp of pleasure nearly drove him over the brink. Impatiently he tugged at the undergarment, and her hips arched to help him ease it down.

When he slid into the tight opening, the swelling need inside him nearly exploded on contact. He went rigid, gritting his teeth to check it. She shifted under him, exciting all his senses. His hands dug into her to stop all motion.

“Hold still,” Webb ordered thickly, the muscles in his jaw flexing with the tearing effort. “Or it will be over before you've had a chance to begin.”

“What?” There was a trace of confusion in her throaty voice.

It gave him the edge of control he needed as his mouth rubbed over her moist lips. “I'll show you what I mean.”

While he took possession of her mouth, his hands slid down to her hips and held them still as he moved slowly against them. But the pressure grew, bringing with it the roughness and the wonder of searing desire. She was all motion under him, her tongue pushing into his mouth to make demands from him. Her breath began coming quick and fast and Webb drove into her, letting the thing that rocked them both take over. Sensation kicked through him.

The storm's frigid chill eventually made itself felt, and exposed skin was covered, clothes bundled around them once more. Contentment brought a serenity to her features when Lilli finally looked at him. There was a tightness in his throat, emotion choking him with the need to tell her all she'd given him. The ache in his loins was satisfied, but it was more than that.

“I wondered if it would be like this,” she murmured, gazing at him from her pillow of straw. “Now I know.”

“Just this isn't enough.” His hand cupped her face, his thumb rubbing at her lower lip. “I'll want more of this—and more beyond this.”

“You have me. I can't hold back from that anymore.” The lightness left her face.

“We'll never be satisfied with that, Lilli. The kind of closeness we're craving isn't satisfied with the breaching of flesh walls,” he warned. “I want to eat with you and talk with you and sleep every night with you in my arms. I love you.”

Her blue eyes became brilliant with tears. “This is all we've got, Webb. At least we have this much.” Her voice was choked. “I can't leave Stefan.”

His argument was silenced by the sad but determined line of her mouth. Webb brought his hand away, conscious that she shivered from the loss of contact. “You'd better go back where it's warm.” He rolled to his feet and waited for her to stand up, too.

Slowly she arranged the shawl like a hood over her head. “Aren't you coming?” Her eyes clung to him.

“No, That's Stefan's bed inside. Mine's here,” he stated, wondering at the peculiar lines men drew. He had taken the man's wife, but he didn't want to sleep in his bed. There was no regret in her eyes, no remorse for her actions. At least he had that.

After she had left, Webb stared at the door for a long time before he finally turned the lantern out and crawled under the quilt. He piled the straw around him, then rested his head on the saddle. There was a flatness in him now. No happy end could come from this, and it would scar her worse than it would him.

He shut his eyes and watched the tormenting images of her in his mind. She had come to him smiling. In some things, women were braver than men.

Sleep was a long time coming, and even then it was in fitful dozes. Along about three o'clock in the morning, he was awakened by the nervous snorting of his horse. He was vaguely conscious that the storm had abated;
then he heard the barking exchange of a wolf pack. They'd probably found the entrails from the butchered cow and were feasting on it. When that was gone, their noses would lead them to the shed and the beef carcass hanging in the corner. The man smell would probably keep them from trying to get at it, but just to be on the safe side, Webb reached out from under the quilt and slipped the rifle out of its scabbard to lay it alongside him. The gelding snorted again.

“I hear 'em,” he murmured, and the horse seemed to blow out a satisfied breath.

A noise awakened Lilli from her fitful slumber. At first she thought it was the wolves again. Then she recognized it as a different sound and tiredly pushed off the bed, pulling the loose shawl more firmly about her shoulders. It sounded like a horse outside. She wiped at the sleep in her eyes and pushed back the hair she hadn't bothered to braid last night.

In a flash it hit her that Webb might be leaving without saying good-bye. She raced to the door and flung it open, then stopped cold when she saw Stefan sliding off the bare back of a draft horse. There was a second horse, carrying Franz Kreuger. She darted a worried look at the shed, wondering if Webb was still there or if he'd heard the riders come in.

“You vere vorried about me,” Stefan judged by the hint of concern in her expression, “I am fine. I stayed vith Franz. As soon as the storm ended, I told him I must get back to my Lillian.”

“I hoped you were there,” she said and stepped back from the door to admit the two men.

“Vere you all right? I vorried about you being alone.” A little frown creased his forehead. His vague bewilderment increased when he noticed the wisps of straw clinging to her hair and the straw chaff on the back of her shawl as she crossed to the stove. “Have you been out to take care of the horses this morning already?”

“No, I haven't.” Her back was to him as she bent to open the stove grate and stir up the coals. “As a matter of fact, I haven't stoked the fire or put coffee on yet.

I've been sleeping. I guess it was the sound of your horses that woke me up.”

She had been sleeping in her clothes? And her hair wasn't in its nightly braid. Stefan's frown deepened. Neither of these things was normal for her. She straightened from the stove to pick up the coffee pot and carry it to the water pail, giving him a side view of her.

“And you needn't have worried about me being alone,” she said, busying herself with filling the pot with water, “Mr. Calder came by. He went out looking for you before the storm began, but he couldn't find you. He barely made it back here himself.”

“Calder vas here?” A bitter anger began to fill him with its birthings in jealousy and fear.

“Yes. He slept in the shed with the horses last night.” The information came out with a certain quickness that pulled Stefan's gaze to the particles of straw in her hair. “I haven't seen him this morning, so I don't know whether he's left or not.”

“You vere in the shed vith him.” His voice rumbled in accusation, surprising a slightly stricken expression to cross her features before she stopped it. For all her outward show of calm, Stefan sensed a tension about her, and his hand tightened its grip on the rifle.

“I took him a quilt,” she admitted, lifting her chin a fraction.

“Look at her eyes.” Franz Kreuger stood at Stefan's side and leaned slightly toward him when he spoke, as if to share some secret knowledge with him. “They are puffy and red. She has been crying. What do you suppose happened to make her cry?”

The question only increased Stefan's dark suspicions. He was vibrating with the anger that welled within him. “Did he violate you?” He glowered at her, channeling his rage into vengeance to justify its existence.

“No!” she denied, her shocked gaze flying to Franz Kreuger, then back to Stefan.

“Look at how frightened she is.” Franz turned the brooding fire glittering in his eyes on Stefan, certainty
burning in his expression. “He has threatened her. She is afraid to tell the truth.”

“Stefan, don't listen to him,” Lilli protested in alarm.

But Stefan looked at the evidence his own eyes had seen and the supporting observations from his wise friend, and drew his own conclusions. Revenge was much nobler than the jealousy of an old man for a younger one. Always a man of few words, Stefan did not speak of his intentions as he turned away to stride toward the door, his rifle in hand.

“Stefan!” Lilli pushed the coffee pot onto the stove and ran after him, but Stefan ignored her cry as he bolted out of the shack and levered a bullet into the rifle chamber.

The black gelding stirred restively, its ears swiveled to the human activity outside, and its animal instinct sensed something was wrong. The horse's movements roused Webb from a deep sleep, his subconscious picking up the primitive warning from the animal. Automatically he reached for the rifle lying alongside him, still not fully awake, and expecting to hear the snuffling and clawing of wolves outside the shed as they had been doing off and on through the predawn hours.

When the door was thrown open, suddenly and violently, instinct took over, bringing Webb to his feet in a crouched, defensive posture. The rifle was aimed low from his hip as he prepared to meet this unknown attack. All in the same instant, Webb recognized the whiskered man charging into the shed as Lilli's husband and started to relax his guard before he saw the murderous look in the man's eyes.

An explosion, red tongues of flame from the rifle in Reisner's grip, and a woman's cry all mingled together as Webb was spun backward by the impact of a bullet fired at close range. It knocked him against the carcass hanging in the corner. He grabbed at it for support, his own rifle lost somewhere in the straw.

The neighing of frightened horses surrounded the second explosion of the rifle. This time the bullet was buried in the frozen beef carcass that Webb had instinctively used as a shield when he'd heard the clicking of the rifle's lever action. He knew he'd been shot, but shock kept him from feeling any more than a burning sensation in his side.