Wild Burn (25 page)

Earlier today, he’d never have thought he could feel this awkward around her. Even in their most tension-filled moments, he hadn’t worried about what to say, or that what he’d say would drive her away. He’d been so cold and so damn tired for what felt like forever, and then he’d lifted his gun one time too many and shot her. Now coldness was impossible.

They rode in continued silence, away from the city and its bustling denizens. The trees thickened around them, the road grew narrower, and eventually there were no sounds but errant birdcalls and the jangle of harnesses. The sky was gray and overcast, the afternoon having chilled further as the day went on.

He adjusted his grip as the stiff leather of the reins cut into the web of sensitive flesh between thumb and forefinger. “I grew up on a plantation just a few miles north of Savannah,” he began, not realizing he’d made the decision to speak until the words were pouring out of him. “I swear, my daddy started training me how to manage the place from the cradle. It was always, ‘Crawford men run Crawford land.’ A shame I never wanted it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Del kept his bitter gaze focused straight ahead. “Probably because he wanted me to love those acres as much as he did. We didn’t exactly see eye to eye, especially when it came down to owning slaves.”

She shifted on the bench seat, scooting closer to him but not touching. He understood that she wouldn’t seek to comfort him unless he asked for it.

But he wanted to touch her, wanted her soft, lithe form to melt against him as willingly and trustingly as ever. Switching the reins to his left hand, he reached over to settle his right atop her knee, finding the supple muscles beneath the many layers of her deep red skirts. Immediately, her hands covered his, holding him to her with a firm squeeze.

“My mama was from the North, and she argued with him until the day she died about our slaves, but he didn’t see it. And I didn’t care, not enough to do anything about it but reap the benefits. We were…well-off.” A bitter taste formed on the back of his tongue. “I found it far easier to ignore my gut instincts and let things be. I went to university but idled for a few years after, living in the house and helping my father run the place.”

“The war changed things, I would assume.”

He smiled, but it wasn’t pleasant. “I found something I had a real talent for—war. Going from a life where I’d become so lazy I couldn’t be bothered to voice an opinion on anything, much less form one, to a life where I had to make decisions in the blink of an eye or find myself dead… It changed me.”

Her fingers tightened over his. “I have no doubt.”

It seemed once he started, he was helpless to stop the babbling flow of his confessional to her. “I moved up the ranks real quick because of my talent, and they put me in charge of a company of men. I led ’em into far too many losses, but we won some skirmishes here and there.” He paused, swallowed. “How much do you know about the Savannah Campaign?”

“I read the papers. I talked to soldiers in the hospitals. I know enough.”

“They were burning everything, Moira. Just…everything. It wasn’t as controlled as it should’ve been, and there wasn’t nothin’ courteous about it. I heard Sherman’s rules, and I know damn well Union blue didn’t abide by them. We found out about a plan to tear apart the railroad and knew that all those houses in between would be looted and burned in the meanwhile, so I brought us up behind them. We stalked them for a day or so, and that’s when I saw my cousin.”

Peter Thatcher, his mother’s sister’s son, had, from what Del knew, worked as an attorney in Philadelphia. He’d been so surprised to see his sandy-haired older cousin, trailing at the rear of the Yankee platoon, that he’d made the mistake of calling out to him. Thank God no one had heard but Peter himself, who had turned with a start to see Delaney sneaking through the forest not twenty yards behind him.

Moira ran a soothing hand over his coat-covered forearm. “What happened with your cousin?”

Del shrugged, his shoulders painfully stiff from unrelieved tension. “He was a Northerner. We weren’t supposed to communicate with one another. But when my company camped down for the night, on the other side of a hill from his, I wandered into the woods on my own. Kinda like…like I knew he’d come find me.”

“And did he?”

“Yeah, he did.” Whether that was a blessing or a curse, Del still didn’t know. “We found each other in the dark. Hadn’t seen him since my mama’s funeral three years earlier—he and my aunt had come down before things got too bad, you know?” It had been a weird kind of relief, finding family on the battlefield, especially when family had never much mattered to him before—Del had constantly butted heads with his father, and his indolence had disappointed his mother. Seeing Peter had been like an arrow through the heart, and he’d wanted to go home in that moment more than he’d wanted his next breath, so when Peter pulled him into a hug, a few stray tears may have dampened the shoulder of that godawful navy uniform.

“We sprawled on the ground, our backs to this gnarled old tree trunk, and talked the whole night through.” It surprised him, how clear the details were now, when he’d fought so hard to block them out over the course of the past ten months. “When it was nearly dawn, I told him I had to go back, and he…he hesitated. It took me a long time afterwards to realize precisely why he’d done it, because at that moment he decided to tell me that my father had died.”

There was no mirth in the chuckle that followed. “It was an excellent distraction. Had me demanding details, shedding a few guilty tears about the way I’d left things with the old man,” he admitted without compunction, relishing that Moira wasn’t leaning away and instead snuggling herself closer to his side. “But eventually I walked away from him. He followed me. I realized I heard sounds, gunshots and yelling. When we broke through the trees…” Chaos. Blood and screams and chaos. And fire. “My company was slaughtered. I walked belatedly into the fray with a Union soldier at my side, in full view of hundreds of men. And then the bastard took a bullet for me.”

“He
what
?” Her nails bit into the back of his hand.

“My cousin, the fucking idiot, saw one of his compatriots aim a rifle at my head. He jumped in front of me.”

“Did he…?”

“Die? Oh, yes.” Half of Peter’s head had disappeared in the space of a breath. “His body slammed into mine, and I fell with him on top of me. The Yanks just assumed I’d been hit too.” Del had laid there in the dirt, his cousin’s blood spilling over his chest, until the sounds of fighting dwindled. It wasn’t cowardice so much as shock that had held him immobile, but his survival instincts had kicked in full bore nonetheless. “Eventually, I snuck away. Stripped off my uniform and left it there. You know the rest.”

“Stop the wagon.”

Dread coiled in his stomach, low and sickening. With an incoherent mumble and a tug on the reins, he halted the horses.

“Look at me, Delaney,” she demanded, steel in her voice.

For the first time since their stilted luncheon at the hotel, he faced her, and his gaze drank her in with unabashed greediness. Her color was high beneath those freckled cheeks, making her a picture in rose and cream and amber, her eyes startlingly blue in contrast to the porcelain tones of her complexion. A few stray wisps of rich red hair had escaped her pins to brush gently against her temples. Her mouth, wide and usually so mobile, looked impossibly appealing as her lips parted to expel a rush of air, and he almost missed what she was saying.

“Thank you for trusting me with your past. But did you honestly think learning about your time in the war, and before, would send me running, any more than my past did you?” She shook her head, as if shocked by his stupidity. “You’re not a bad man.”

Throwing the brake and carelessly dropping the reins to the footboard, he shifted further in his seat, squaring his shoulders to her in an effort to convey the situation’s seriousness. “Yes, I am. Hood’s right—I’m a killer.”

Her cool hand lifted to caress his smooth cheek, and he shivered in response. “You’re a soldier.”

Covering her hand with his, he leaned helplessly into her touch, but his eyes never left hers. “I was a cipher before they put a gun in my hand. I’ll likely be a cipher again if they take it away.”

“No, you won’t.” Her thumb stroked the corner of his mouth.

Unrepentant heat replaced the worry churning in his belly, and those damnable emotions she’d roused over the past week leapt high into his chest in something that felt a helluva lot like hope. “How do you know?”
Tell me, please, because I’m terrified that I
need
to kill, just to be myself.

“I have faith,” she murmured, bringing her other hand up to frame his face.

He struggled to breathe. “I thought you said you didn’t believe in God.”

“I don’t. I believe in you.”

Even as part of his confused, elated brain recognized that she was giving his own words back to him, the rest of him was suddenly unbound, untethered and heart-shatteringly emancipated to do what he wanted most in the world.

Which, in that moment, was to kiss her.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Reason failed her as instinct clamored to the fore, and Moira turned liquid beneath the demanding pressure of his mouth. It didn’t matter that they were stopped in the middle of the road to Red Creek, where anyone who happened along would see them—she was his, and she welcomed his claim with open arms.

Those arms quickly wound around his neck, holding him to her as his lips slanted over hers with a rumbling groan from deep in his chest. His hands grabbed for her waist, and he hastily pulled her to him, until she was nearly sprawled across his hard thighs in the wagon seat. Heat pooled low in her abdomen as her fingertips dug into his shoulders. He was so strong, his muscles taut and heavy everywhere her body melded with his, and there was nothing she wanted more than to be surrounded by that strength, overwhelmed yet protected.

His mouth was frantic on hers, his breath coming in harsh pants against her cheek. His teeth nipped at her, a pinch of sharp-pronged pleasure sizzling down her spine when he bit down just a hint too hard on her lower lip, making her whimper. When he soothed the sting with his tongue, she swept hers out to meet him, to tangle, and he responded by gripping the braided coil at the back of her head in one hand and angling her to allow himself better access.

He made a feast of her, nibbling here, stroking there, swallowing the uninhibited sounds of her pleasure with a ferocity that would have made her nervous had she not trusted him so much. Where earlier she had wanted him to restore her equilibrium, now she needed him to tear her apart. Because that’s what he needed too—the chance to regain a measure of control.

His admission of his past deeds had cost him. She saw that, understood his turmoil. Their situations were far different, of course, but they had both been forged in violence, and they both struggled to build themselves anew. He was a man whose life had been empty before the war, and she was a woman whose choices, prior to Red Creek, had reeked of indifference. There was a barrenness to their souls that only suffering had filled, and while it likely hadn’t made them better people, it had certainly made them
people
.

She would take bruised, damaged, wrecked and reborn any day if it meant that somehow, be it divine providence or dumb luck, she and Del had found each other here in the mountains. If he wanted to leave Red Creek for another territory, she would go with him. If he wanted to stay, she would make a place for his boots by the door of her cabin. He needed her, just as she needed him, and now that they were together, she didn’t ever intend to let them be parted.

He tugged at her hat, dislodging the pin and throwing it in the rear of the wagon, along with her shawl. His fingers fumbled with the cloth buttons of her fitted jacket as his mouth broke from hers to trail halting, open-mouthed kisses down the side of her neck. She shuddered when he found a particularly sweet spot, sending a dizzying wave of lust rocketing through her entire body. She lurched up on his lap, yanking off his hat to join hers in the wagon bed, and dove her fingers into his recently shorn dark hair. Her hands fisted, holding him to her throat as she writhed atop him, and he shook against her, moaning.

She loved that sound. His moan made her wild.

After fumbling with the small closures running in two parallel rows down the front of her jacket, Del lost patience when presented with the buttons of her white blouse. The sounds of snapping thread and the
plink
of popping buttons had her pulling back with a small gasp. “Del…”

“Don’t stop me, Moira,” he warned as his teeth sank into the revealed tendon joining her neck and shoulder.

Her sex clenched at the exquisite sting of his animalistic claim, and she loosened her grip on his hair in order to sift her fingers through the silky locks. “I won’t.” She didn’t want to stop him, because it didn’t matter where they were when he took her—so long as he took her at all.

He growled against her throat, his hands reaching up to caress her breasts through the thin layer of her shift. “Your breasts are the perfect size, all soft in my palms like you were made for me.” He squeezed, surprising her with his gentleness given his earlier ferocity. He licked a wending path over her clavicle until he could nuzzle against her cleavage, the wicked tip of his tongue delving into the shallow valley between her breasts. “And your skin… God, your skin.”

She couldn’t respond because his lips had latched on to the hard point of her nipple, presented pertly to his mouth by the structured lacing of her corset. She sucked in an unsteady breath and arched in his twining arms, her head falling back while she dug her nails into his scalp.

The scrape of her fingernails seemed to incite him, and his capable hands moved to her waist, lifting her, adjusting her, making it so that she straddled his lap on the bench seat. Her heavy skirts bunched between them, ridiculous layers of linen and lacing and broadcloth, but it didn’t stop her from writhing against him, the inside of her knee scraping across the holster that was a constant presence at his hip. She ached, deep in the core of her body, and she knew exactly what would ease her.