Calico (15 page)

Outside, the storm had nearly spent its fury. In the silence and firelight McCready broodingly watched Maggie. She was finally warm and dry, despite the occasional shiver that racked her body. Wearing his clothes and covered by the quilt, she sat propped up against the wall, sipping from the steaming cup of coffee she held.

McCready would have killed for whiskey. Not for his cut knee that was more bruise than anything else, but for Maggie. She’s fine, he told himself, sipping from his own cup. Any fool could see it. Even him.

So why do I feel she’s still lost somewhere
?

Easy. Even for a fool like you. She hasn’t said a word from the moment you found her
.

And her eyes. He couldn’t avoid looking at them. The fire lent them a luminous quality, but they stared blankly at what only Maggie could see.

Her cheeks had taken on a flush that he hoped came from the warmth in the cabin. He turned his gaze to the fire, trying not to recall the sight of his hands stripping Maggie’s sodden clothes and drying her skin, or the way her breath had turned ragged and her nipples tightened when he had bundled her into his shirt.

His own breath shortened when he found that Maggie was looking at him. Something in her eyes made the blood simmer wildly through his body. Even as he warned himself, he felt the rush of his body changing to meet the honest femininity of Maggie herself. He was filled with a need that was as basic and necessary as breathing itself.

And he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Sometime in those frantic minutes of his search, he had made up his mind to take Maggie back. He’d find another way to protect her if Quincy returned or there was another attempt on her life. He could only guess that his conscience had finally caught up with him, just as Dutch had been warning him would happen one of these days.

“McCready,” Maggie said, clearing her throat of its husky intensity. “I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me a damn thing. If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have been trying to run, would you? And the storm would have played out just like it’s doing now.”

Nervously Maggie plucked at the quilt. She knew what had to be said to McCready, she just needed to gather up the courage to do it.

“Want more coffee?” he asked, turning to fill his own cup.

“Bet you’d like whiskey in its place.”

“I won’t deny it. But this will do.” Holding up the pot, he glanced over his shoulder to where she sat. “Yes?”

She nodded and held out her cup. But after he had poured, Maggie reached out and touched his arm. “I need to talk to you.”

His gaze remained on her hand. He told himself that she couldn’t burn cloth and skin, but he felt scalded by her lightest touch. Carefully he set the pot aside.

“Maggie?”

“Yeah?”

“It’ll be better if I sit over by the fire.”

There was a feverish light in his eyes when he looked up at her, and Maggie didn’t lie to herself that it was from anything but the same ache in her. She had been so grateful when he found her that she couldn’t speak. He couldn’t know what it meant not to be left alone with her terror. But even with her mind still filled with reliving the nightmare of her father’s death, she had been aware of McCready. The heat and strength of his hands. The ragged sound of his breathing. The pulse beating wildly in his throat that she had longed to touch but didn’t. She had shied away from watching him strip off his own wet clothes, too shaken by her own discovery that she had needed McCready and he had come. A new tension had filled her, even as she questioned why he didn’t yell at her for running and getting caught out in the storm or for the soaking he took along with her.

Truth was, he hadn’t said much of anything for the last hour or so. He started to jerk his arm away, and she tightened her hold. Setting aside her cup, Maggie turned to him, but as she opened her mouth to speak, he placed one finger against her lips.

“Maggie, you’re playing with fire,” he said flatly, taking her hand off his arm.

She didn’t pretend not to understand. “Maybe I like to. Or maybe I’m just cold. It could be,” she added with a rueful smile, “that I haven’t the sense of a mule, McCready.”

She reached out and cupped his cheek, and this time he didn’t push her away. “I haven’t mentioned this lately, but Maggie, you’re right. Dig-your-heels-in mule stubborn.”

“Nice of you to notice.”

His narrowed blue eyes swept over her slender body. “Oh, I’m a right noticing kind of man, Maggie. Right now I’m noticing things that would make you run and blush.”

There was a warning for her, but she wasn’t about to heed it. She watched his eyes darken, and her gaze drifted down to his chest. Half the buttons were undone on his shirt, revealing a light mat of hair. It looked soft and Maggie wondered how it would feel to touch. Her mouth went dry and she licked her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue.

“What things, McCready?”

“That I’ve come to crave the sight of your smile as much as your kisses. Kisses only lead me to wonder how it would feel to have your mouth on my skin.” He reached out and with the tips of his fingers stroked her cheek. “It’s the same way I want to taste yours while I’m counting all those darlin’ freckles.

“And that sassy pink tongue. There’s a reason for a man to gamble all his winnings, Maggie. I’d like to feel that all over every damn aching bit of me.” His thumb brushed the quick pulse in her throat. “Enough?” He watched her lick her lip again and slid one hand behind her head, angling it back so she had to face him. With his gaze locked on hers, the words feathered over her mouth.

“I can’t help but notice how tight your nipples are. From the cold, Maggie? Would they get like that for a man’s hand, for his mouth?”

Maggie’s lips parted, but she couldn’t make a sound. Her breath caught, then rushed out. No one had ever said such things to her. She didn’t even know that men thought about women this way.
Not men
, a little voice corrected.
McCready
.

“I told you that I wanted you that day in the Rawhider when I saw you dressed as a woman for the first time. The mud and men’s clothes you used to hide behind were all gone. And I felt poleaxed,” he gently informed her in a voice rich with passion. The slight tremor sliding through her brought his slow smile, but even as his body curved over hers, he wouldn’t touch where he burned to, wouldn’t take her mouth.

“Did you know that I was furious with you?”

“Why?” The word creaked out like the turn of a rusty key, but Maggie couldn’t help it.

“I felt…” The curve of her brow invited his lips, and he placed a light kiss there, dragging his mouth to briefly touch her temple. “Cheated, Maggie, that’s what I felt. I never noticed till that day that you had a small waist or gently flaring hips that could easily cushion a man’s ride with ease or breasts so lush that they would fill my hands.”

Once more he stroked her cheek, barely touching her. “And you’ve got skin to rival the color of sweet cream. Did you know,” he whispered, tilting her face up so that he was brushing her mouth with every word, “that those long, long legs of yours have kept me awake nights wondering how they would feel locked around me? You cost me sleep, Maggie, and I didn’t have a drop of whiskey to cool the fire.”

McCready leaned back and cradled her face within his hands. “There you have it, Maggie. As honest as I get. I want you like hell’s on fire, but I won’t take.”

Maggie’s eyes closed as she savored his passion-laden voice but hid from the bright knowing glitter of his gaze. For once she didn’t think that McCready was lying.

Those few moments of hesitation cost her his warmth. He was up and away before she could stop him. Maggie stared at his back. He stood to the side of the fire, one hand on the mantel, the other clenched at his side. It distracted her to feel the tiny stretching of the wee ones inside her, for they had been slow to awake tonight to McCready’s heady nearness. But now that they were awake, there would be no peace.

“McCready,” she called out softly. “I’m sorry that you hurt your knee, but I’m glad that you found me.”

“Don’t,” he stated flatly, turning to face her, “be so sure of that, Maggie. And don’t worry about my knee. It’ll be fine.”

“Tonight, in the storm…” Maggie raised her knees so she could wrap her arms around them. It seemed important to tell him how the storm made her feel, but before she spoke, he did.

“I wondered why you hadn’t gotten far.”

“Did you? It wasn’t for lack of tryin’, boyo. I’m … storms…” Maggie swallowed, unable to understand why the words seemed to stick in her throat.

“There’s no shame in being afraid of something, Maggie,” he said, pierced by the vulnerable look of her innocent eyes. Did she understand half of what he’d told her? He turned back to the fire. It didn’t matter if she did. He was taking her back.

No shame
. Maggie repeated those words to herself, thinking McCready might be right. No one would hear what she said but him, and if he dared to tell anyone, she’d deny it.

“My father died in a storm like this one. Washed away in a gully. I never found his body.” Tears choked her throat. “I’ve been scared of storms since then.”

He wanted her body, and she was handing him her secret fear.
Damn you, Maggie! Don’t trust me
.

Maggie watched him. The firelight lent streaks of gold to the dark brown of his long hair and caressed his skin the way she longed to. Clutching the quilt tighter around her, she took what warmth she could from it, wishing it was McCready’s arms wrapped as tightly.

He felt her gaze on him and resisted the urge to turn around. But he couldn’t continue to ignore her confidence and said, in a too husky voice that he couldn’t help, “If you’re worried, Maggie, I won’t tell anyone.”

She brooded over the way he stood, not making another move toward her. How could he say those things to her and leave her alone with them? From memory she dragged forth the sight of Cora Ann’s smile along with the Rose’s teasing sigh that hinted of all the delights they shared with McCready. She’d had a taste of them herself and wanted more. There was a time to take bait and a time to leave it in the trap. She had to decide what she wanted. “McCready?”

“What?”

The word was as tart as green apples, and Maggie shifted to come to her knees. She kneaded her thighs, finding the courage to ask what she had to.

“You’ve not said a word about us bein’ married.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You told me that you’d be teachin’ me what bein’ your wife meant. What’s more, you said I’d be likin’ it.”

“Did I? I don’t remember, Maggie.”

Frowning, she hesitated, uncertain what to say to that. “But you threatened me.”

“Then I apologize.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t the one who was mule stubborn. He was. How did a woman go about getting a man to come to her? The question startled her. When had she decided that? Maggie shook her head, as much in confusion as she did to rid herself of plaguing questions.

“You said you’d been wantin’ to kiss me, McCready. I’d figure you can’t be wantin’ it all that bad.”

Tension coiled his body, but still McCready didn’t turn around. “Maggie, how many men have you been with?”

She asked about kisses, and he asked a dumb question that he already knew the answer to? Maggie sank back on her heels. What was wrong with him?

“Can’t count them all?” he asked with anger sharpening his tone.

“There was my father and Uncle Pete. But you know—”

“Not those men. That’s not the kind of
being with
I mean.” He raked his hair, fighting the answer that was rushing at him, hoping he was wrong. There was no delicate way to ask, and with a shrug, he tossed a look at her. “What I want to know is—”

“I’m not that dumb, McCready. You’re talkin’ about the way babies get made.”

Indignation flooded her eyes, and McCready bit back what he’d been about to say. “Yeah, Maggie, that’s what I meant.”

Once again she saw the fire highlighting the planes of his face, the curve of his mouth, and the sheer power of his lithe body. Maggie watched him with a fascination that she didn’t try to hide.

“You keep looking at me like that, Mary Margaret, and I’m going to feed all that hunger in your eyes.” His gaze moved over her face, lingering with frank male intensity on her parted lips. Even though his shirt was a bit big on her, it didn’t conceal the harsh rise and fall of her breasts.

“You didn’t answer me, Maggie. How many men?”

“Not a one,” she answered honestly, feeling the coil of unknown tension as if a band squeezed her belly. She couldn’t keep kneeling there, watching him. Not when need urged her to satisfy it and touch him.

Maggie came to her feet slowly, dropping the quilt, for once wishing she knew a woman’s ways. She felt clumsy dressed in his shirt and pants and with her feet bare. But she didn’t let that stop her. She was walking toward something both exciting and dangerous.

“Think about what you’re doing, Maggie. I said I wanted you like hell’s on fire. That’s hungry, little one.”

“I’m not so little, McCready. I’m big and sometimes so clumsy—”

He reached out and pulled her up against him. “No. You’re not, Maggie. I just want you to understand that if I start kissing you, it doesn’t stop there. I’ll want everything you have to give a man, and I’m going to want it until I’m too damn tired to breathe.” Maggie had resurrected his conscience, and now he couldn’t close the door on it.

“Don’t you understand? I get hard just watching you.” To prove his point, he took hold of her hand and dragged it against his violently aroused flesh. “
Now, do you understand
?”

She understood that she had never wanted a man before.

“Truth, McCready?”

“A man can’t hide what he’s feeling the way a woman can.”

She couldn’t help but look at his mouth with a hunger she had never felt. The dark beard stubble only made the smooth line of his lips more inviting. Maggie lifted her gaze to his eyes. They burned. And she knew he meant his warning. McCready wasn’t going to stop with kisses. He’d take all she had to give.
Deep waters, Maggie. Aye
, she answered herself.
But these aren’t the same cold ones I’ve stood in to pan for gold. They’re so hot I can feel the heat in my bones
.