Colorado Bride (26 page)

“Does that mean you’ve learned to like me a little?”

“Do you think I’d be sitting here like this if I didn’t?” Carrie asked, indignantly trying to sit up but Lucas wouldn’t let her. “You got to be an obsession. It grew worse after you told me everything I hated about being a woman was what you wanted in a wife. I suddenly understood it meant I would have to give you up. That was when I realized I would dislike that very much.”

“How much?” Lucas asked before he kissed her quite passionately.

“Very much.” Lucas kissed her again, quite rudilessly this time. “I couldn’t possibly give you up,” Carrie murmured, half out of her mind with happiness. “Couldn’t possibly give you up at all.”

“Is that why you told me you were never married?”

“Yes. Somehow I thought it was important for you to know that no one had ever touched me in the way you have. I thought I liked Robert well enough to marry him and perhaps I did, but it was nothing like this. I was quite unhappy when they told me he had died, but I didn’t feel like a part of me had died with him.”

“And that’s how you feel about me?”

“How many hints do I have to give you before you guess that I’m in love with you? Don’t you Western men leave a girl any self-respect at all? I hope you realize you’ve reduced me to the level of a strumpet. Back home no girl who hadn’t been on her last prayers for years would dare admit she loved a man before he confessed he loved her. Even then half of the women would rather the an old maid before they’d do anything like that.”

“You must waste a lot of time back East.”

“No, because our men aren’t so slow,” chuckled Carrie, but her chuckle was abruptly cut off by Lucas’s passionate embrace. He may have been slow to start, but there was nothing backward about him now. He had leaned her back in the sofa until she was virtually lying down, penned to the sofa by his taut, heated body. He was kissing her mouth, eyes, and ears, but Carrie had never been so conscious of a man’s body, never so aware of the answering response from her own. Robert had never had that effect on her.

“Do you realize I’d spent the whole evening plotting how to get you up here?” Lucas asked as he gazed lovingly into her eyes.

“All you had to do was ask.”

“Do you mean you would have come, just like that?”

“I’m sure no self-respecting girl would make such an admission, but yes, I probably would,” Carrie admitted. “If you hadn’t come down to the station every day I would have come before now.”

“Which just goes to show how much I know about tactics, and women,” Lucas said before he applied himself to Carrie’s lips once more. This time his tongue snaked out, invading her mouth and inviting her tongue to invade his. Carrie felt the welling need inside her become more insistent as his voracious tongue searched out every part of her mouth, tasting its sweetness, sharing its warmth. She was becoming increasingly aware of his chest pressing against her sensitive breasts, the length of him pressed against her body, the heat of him scalding her flesh.

Lucas’s hand slid from behind her shoulder and under her chin. Tenderly he caressed her neck then slid his hand down to her shoulder. Carrie felt herself going limp and sinking farther into the cushions, but when Lucas’s hand slipped down inside the bodice of her dress, she heard herself gasp for breath and felt her whole body tense. His fingers were rough and cool, her skin tender and overheated, but within seconds she was so overwhelmed by a new flood of sensations she forgot the differences in heat and texture. Lucas’s dexterous fingers had quickly unbuttoned the front of her dress and chemise to uncover her breasts. His powerful hands cupped her breasts and she felt them begin to stiffen with desire. When his fingers found and lightly massaged her taut nipples she thought she would moan; when his lips found her rosy peak and covered it with moist warmth, she did. Lucas moaned in response, and before Carrie could get her breath, he had swept her up in his arms and was heading for the small room at the back of the cabin.

It was hard to see his face clearly in the shadowy light of the room, but it was impossible to miss his presence. Carrie lay there almost paralyzed as Lucas undid the remaining buttons on her dress, too stunned to move, too overwhelmed with an unsuspected driving need to be able to think. All she knew was that at least there were no more barriers between Lucas and herself, and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.

“My God, you’re beautiful,” Lucas rasped as he removed her chemise. “Even more beautiful than I thought.”

“You don’t mind that I’m so tiny?”

“You’re perfect.” Lucas let his fingers wander over her breasts, circling the rigid tips and making ever widening circles as they descended to the warm, creamy flesh of her body. Down her side, over her belly, and along her thigh his fingers traveled, leaving blazing trails of singing sensations which slowly engulfed Carrie’s mind until she was barely conscious of anything but the aching desire building within her.

“Now you.”

Lucas’s startled, inquiring gaze met her warm, beckoning look. “I want to feel you next to me,” she said. “I want to feel the warmth of your body, your rough strength.” Lucas didn’t make her wait.

“I’ve dreamed of this moment,” he whispered as he lowered himself on the bed next to her. “It’s kept me awake nights wondering how you would look, how you would feel in my arms.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“No. Are you?”

“I knew I wouldn’t be,” she answered, snuggling close to him. “I knew that the first time I saw you.”

Lucas kissed her, roughly and hungrily, crushing her tender breasts against his chest. She put her arms around him, feeling the strength and power of his muscles, the breadth of his shoulders, the overwhelming sense of his presence. Then Lucas’s hands began to caress her body, traveling over every inch of her soft skin, searching out every point of sensitivity, fondling and teasing until she arched against him, nearly crazy with need.

Lucas’s hands drifted lower until they stroked the softness of her inner thighs. Instinctively Carrie relaxed and opened to him. She could not contain a tiny gasp as Lucas’s fingers invaded her inner self, but the sense of shock was almost immediately obliterated by a rush of desire, a sudden and powerful need to draw him to her, to press his flesh against her flesh until they were one.

“It may hurt a little at first,” Lucas whispered as Carrie felt something hard and hot nudge against her. Spirals of aching need shot all through her body like fireworks in the night sky. When he stopped moving, she felt an insistent need to pull him deeper until she had engulfed him, but he remained where he was, teasing, tantalizing, toying with her until she thought she would go crazy.

“Please,” she moaned.

“It’s going to hurt,” he said, but Carrie didn’t care anymore. She pressed against him and still he did not enter her; she pressed harder and still he withdrew. Frantic with desire, she flung herself at him just as he plunged toward her. There was a momentary flash of sharp pain and then a burst of pleasure so brilliant and pervasive that it wiped out all memory of discomfort.

Now Lucas entered her fully and Carrie drew him into her, needing him as much as he needed her, wanting to consume him, demanding that he touch something at the very core of her being. Carrie could hear his breath coming quickly and in short, rough gasps and the sound created an equally insistent urgency in her. She had never felt more wondrously alive in her life.

Wave after wave of pulsating desire swept over her, picking her up, flinging her upon the shore and then washing her back out to sea to be borne ashore once again on a still higher “.rest. Carrie wondered how long she could stand it, certain she would be destroyed by the fury of the sensations exploding all through her. Suddenly she was aware of a difference in Lucas. His breath was ragged and his movement no longer smooth and controlled. Gradually his body became stiff, his movements uneven until, with a roar of release, he drove deep into her, scalding her with his heat. Carrie felt her body respond with equal tension and they clung to each other, their bodies racked by spasms of exquisite pleasure, their minds filled with nothing but each other.

Then with a sigh that came from the very depths of their beings, they fell apart, exhausted and temporarily emptied by their passion.

Chapter 14

A sixth sense warned Lucas of danger and he woke with a start. Without a moment’s hesitation he drew on his pants and reached for his rifle.

“Where are you going?” Carrie asked drowsily, the mists of sleep still clogging her brain.

“There’s somebody outside,” he whispered. “Stay here while I have a look.” Carrie sat up, clutching the bedclothes to her bosom. Was it Baca Riggins? Had he come back as he’d said?

Lucas tiptoed to the front window and looked out, being careful not to offer himself as a possible target. He saw nothing at first. The yard was empty and he heard no sound of anyone moving around the cabin. Then one of the horses whinnied and he looked toward the corral. The mustangs were moving about restlessly, but it was several moments more before Lucas saw the young Indian creeping along the edge of the corral toward the gate; he was going to open it and stampede the horses.

“It’s those fool Indian boys,” he called to Carrie in a loud whisper. “They’re after the horses again, and they may have brought their friends along this time.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Stop them, of course.”

“But they’re boys. You can’t kill them.”

“I won’t hurt them if I can help it, but if I let them take our horses, nothing will be safe, I’ve got to stop them.” As he slipped noiselessly out the cabin door, Carrie jumped out of bed and began to dress. She had no intention of lying quietly in bed while Lucas battled Indians, boys or not.

But before Lucas had gone more than fifteen steps, the morning stillness was rent by an Indian war cry, and the boy stood up from his crouching position and reached for the corral gate. Taking quick aim, Lucas squeezed off a shot, and the corral post beneath the Indian’s outstretched hand dissolved into a shower of splinters that pierced his skin like a barrage of sharp needles. The boy let out a startled yell and leaped for the cover of a nearby tree. But the gate was unlatched, and a second Indian boy inside the corral began herding the horses toward the gate. Lucas put two shots into the ground in front of the herd; the shower of dust and stones caused the lead horse to rear and those behind him to run up on one another’s heels. Catching sight of Lucas where he knelt in the open, the Indian boy drew a bow, but before he was able to loose the arrow, a bullet from Lucas’s rifle shattered the bow in his hands.

With two Indians down and busily occupied pulling the painful slivers of wood from their flesh, Lucas darted for the open gate. If the horses got out, they wouldn’t stop until they were back in their familiar grazing ground, and that was a hard three-day-ride away. He reached the gate and was in the act of sliding the bar back into place when a whisper of clothes against leaves came to his ears; he whirled just in time to see a third Indian attacking with tomahawk raised. There was no time to take aim or dodge the blow; Lucas threw himself to the ground, hoping to confuse the boy long enough for him to get in a position to defend himself. The crack of a pistol sounded at that moment, and the tomahawk disintegrated in the stunned Indian’s hand. Lucas whipped his eyes toward the cabin in time to see Carrie, wearing nothing but one of his shirts, turn her pistol around toward the Indian in the corral and take the feather out of his bonnet with another shot.

Their surprise attack having failed and their weapons and themselves in total disarray, the three boys scrambled to their horses and galloped off.

But before Lucas could congratulate himself on having broken the attack without a serious injury to anyone, he heard a shout from the corral behind the barn and the sound of thundering hooves told him the stage teams were being driven off at a gallop. “There’s more of them down at the barn,” he yelled to Carrie and disappeared down the path at a dead run. Only the sheer fear of being caught in such a state of provocative undress kept her from chasing after him. Instead, she ran to her cabin to put on her
own
clothes and prepare to help Lucas.

The Indian boys had meant to coordinate their attacks on the separate corrals, but Lucas’s unexpected shots had caught the two boys behind the barn still in the midst of their soundless approach. At the sound of shots, they had darted forward, one opening the gate and the other yelling and screaming to stampede the horses. They were through the gate and heading for the road before Jake could roll out of his bed and reach for his shotgun. The boys were too far away for the scattered shot to cause them any serious injury, but before the boom of the big sixteen-gauge gun had ceased to echo through the hills, several pellets were painfully buried in their skin and they had caught a glimpse of Lucas vaulting down the path. Unwilling to face lethally accurate gunfire from two sides, the Indians abandoned the horses, headed for their mounts, and took out for the hills at a dead run. The bullets Lucas sent whistling around their heads encouraged them to drive their ponies to even greater speed.

Them the same boys we took those horses from a few days ago?” Jake asked as Lucas reached the barn, still panting from the sprint down the mountain from the cabin.

“Looks like it, only they brought a few of their friends along with them this time.”