Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (38 page)

   
“Playing! Do you think the life I’ve carved out with Micajah was just some sort of game to me? I’ve learned to cook and cure hides. I’m a darned good shot and I can track a deer through the woods for hours, if need be, until I bring it down,” she said with pride.

   
“For the warm months, it was a good diversion, but I suspect you might begin to miss civilization during the long cold winter in that cabin.”

   
“How shallow you must think me,” she murmured more to herself than to him as she concentrated on her task. Finishing with the arm that had been cut, she took his right hand in hers and examined the bruised, swollen knuckles.

   
He winced slightly when she pressed a fresh cold cloth onto them.

   
She continued the pressure, saying, “You nearly carried out your threat to beat him to death bare-handed. Was it because of me?” What had made her ask that! She held her breath, drawn against her will to look up and meet his eyes.

Chapter Seventeen

   
Time hung suspended as they sat in the firelight amid the wreckage of the cabin. She held his larger hand in both of hers, the washcloth now forgotten.

   
“What is it about you?” he murmured low, more to himself than to her, almost unaware he had spoken the words aloud. He looked into her fathomless green eyes, reliving the shock and horror of seeing her in Pardee’s arms, her body half-naked, leaning into the renegade as if ready to surrender herself to him. Did he believe her story about reaching for the Englishman’s knife? Hell, he did not know. And right now he did not care.

   
Olivia watched him, trying to gauge his mood. Was he still angry with her, still jealous, mistrustful? She was uncertain of how to react to his apparent confusion. She said the first thing that came into her mind. “Our supper is all over the floor. Are you still hungry? I am sure the cook—”

   
“No, I want no food. My hunger is of another sort.” His eyes continued to study her face while he felt the pulse in her wrists accelerate at his remark.

   
Was this his answer to her earlier foolish question? Best that he did not answer it at all; yet some perverse, self-punishing instinct drove her to press. “We have very little to base a relationship on...” she said, faltering over the words.

   
“We have this,” he replied raggedly, taking her chin in one hand, tilting it up as his lips descended, slowly, inexorably.

   
His mouth brushed hers with surprising gentleness, almost as if he waited for her to protest, withdraw. She did neither. Instead her body leaned forward, returning the soft kiss as her fingers tightened their grip on his hand, the soft pads massaging his bruised knuckles and scraped skin. He had been frighteningly angry when he found her in Pardee’s arms, but he had also been possessive.

   
Get your hands off my wife.

   
She was his wife in name. It would take so little right now to make her his wife in fact. He would learn the truth. All his ugly suspicions about her virtue would have to end. Once she had vowed never to let him know that truth, but that was not when he was so near, drowning her with his male vitality, drinking her in as if she were the last drop of water and he a man lost in the desert.
I am the one who is lost.

   
Samuel felt her melting into his arms. He was all too willing to draw her against his body and hold her next to his heart as it slammed in his chest. He was trembling with need for her in a way he had not ever needed a woman before, not even when he had been a green and randy schoolboy. “Oh, hell, it isn’t as if we’ll ever get an annulment anyway,” he muttered against her lips as he kissed her again, this time with greater intensity, letting himself submerge in the hypnotic allure of her lithe, lovely young body.

   
His words did not quite register with Olivia because as he spoke, he drew her closer, tangling his fingers in the long flaming skein of her hair, pulling on it until her head tipped back, exposing the vulnerable column of her neck. His mouth moved along her jaw, trailing soft wet kisses downward along her throat, pausing at the frantic pulse beating at its base. His lips were scorching hot, his breath meltingly delicious on her skin as he caressed her collarbone, pulling open the drawstring that she had refastened and shoving the sheer cotton night rail away to reach for her breast.

   
When his hand cupped her breast, lifting it with soft pressure, she arched against his palm. Then his fingers grazed over the hard distended peak of her nipple, returning to circle and tweak it, until she gasped with the sharp jolts of a pleasure so keen it took her breath away. He shoved the gown down to her waist and his hand moved on to the other breast while his mouth claimed the first one. She was liquid, soft as water running over smooth stones in a swiftly flowing stream. The pressure of his mouth suckling on her breast sent small achingly sweet frissons of raw pleasure radiating through her body, but centering low in her belly. A deep hungry clenching began to grow there as she dug her fingers into the thick shaggy black hair of his head, pulling him closer to her, closer yet.

   
Samuel felt her eager assent as her arms wrapped around his shoulders. He reached down and scooped her up, then stood and strode from the glow of the firelight to the bed where he knelt, pressing one knee into the soft mattress. He placed her in the center, then bent over her, studying her in the dim light as he pulled the night rail the rest of the way down her body, past her slender waist to the soft hollows at the sides of her flat belly, over the flair of her hips, revealing the downy thatch of fiery red curls at the juncture of her thighs. When the gown was free, he tossed it away, feasting his eyes on her long slender legs with the delicate ankle-bones and sweetly curved calves. Her thighs were slim yet strong, able to clutch a man tightly between them while he plunged into the welcoming wetness of her woman’s core.

   
“You are perfection,” he murmured as one hand glided up her leg. He watched her eyes close for a moment, replete with the pleasure of his caressing, like a well-petted cat.

   
Olivia could feel his hungry eyes on her all the while he stripped down the night rail, devouring her nakedness. He loomed over her like some large pagan god, all strength and darkness. His back was to the fire, his expression obscured to her vision yet those dark blue eyes glowed as he examined every inch of her flesh.

   
She felt suddenly vulnerable. No man had ever before seen her naked. Would he find her too thin? Too tall and gawky? Many men liked pillowy softness and plump curves. When he finally touched her again, running his hand up her leg, the warmth of the contact reassured her for a moment. She closed her eyes, trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart.

   
Then his hand moved upward to her mound and caressed the curls at the seat of her womanhood, where all the restless unfamiliar sensations were gathering. Her eyes flew open and met his. He was fully clothed, she completely naked. He was calm; she was disoriented. Olivia tried to cover herself with her hands and arms. “I’ve never had anyone look at me this way,” she admitted in a low, husky voice.

   
Samuel chuckled with amusement. “Turnabout’s fair play. You watched me stripped buck naked walking out of the river that day—and you enjoyed looking, don’t deny it.”

   
“I...I won’t,” she whispered as he pulled her arms away from her breasts and then eased his hand between her clenched thighs, once again caressing the curls there.

   
“Now I’m enjoying this...a very great deal,” he murmured raggedly, lowering his mouth to her navel and flicking the tip of his tongue inside until she shivered and moaned. His hands held hers pinned at her sides as he raised up once more claiming her breasts, suckling them until she whimpered and arched against him.

   
With a muttered oath he sat up and began tearing off the tattered remains of his shirt, then pulling off his boots and hose.

   
Feeling the loss of his body heat so abruptly, Olivia’s eyes opened again as he rose from the bed and began to strip off his tight buckskin trousers. When he turned back to her, her eyes widened in amazement at the transformation from the last time she had seen his male member lying flaccidly in the black hair of his groin. Now it jutted out, big and dark red, almost menacing...yet not quite.

   
“Touch me,” he commanded softly, seeming to understand the fascination which drew her. When she hesitated, he reached out and took her hand, pulling it to the scalding heat of his thigh as he placed one knee on the edge of the bed and sank down on it. Then he moved her hand upward, toward his aching shaft and wrapped her small soft fingers around the pulsing engorgement.

   
Olivia felt the sleek muscles of his thigh, but nothing prepared her for the shock of touching his sex. Like steel in velvet, silky smooth and hot, so vibrantly alive with power. She watched his jaw clench and then he threw back his head, shuddering. “Did I hurt you?” she whispered, trying to withdraw her hand.

   
But he would not release it. “God, no!” he ground out, showing her how to slide her hand up and down the length of him rhythmically. When she caught the motion, he released his hand from hers and clenched his fists at his sides, breathing rapidly, reveling in the pleasure of her touch until he knew he could stand it no longer without losing complete control. He reached down and caught her wrist, pulling her hand away and pinioning it and her other one above her head as he covered her, sinking onto her on the soft mattress.

   
She felt a small frisson of fear as his big body pressed against hers but it passed quickly as his mouth once more found hers. This time there was no gentleness in the kiss. It was as hot and hungry as those they had shared all the times past. And yet it was different, too, as they lay together naked, poised on the brink of yet another discovery. She felt protected by the hardness of him, hair roughened and muscled, the opposite of her silky smooth and softly rounded body. She gave herself over to the kiss.

   
He could sense the tension in her body when he first moved over her, but when his mouth claimed hers, she opened to the insinuating caress of his tongue, allowing it access to the sweetness inside, to plunge and plunder above as he soon would below. He slanted his mouth across hers, deepening the kiss. When he released his hold on her wrists to bury his hands in her hair, he felt her arms encircle his waist and her palms glide up his back until her fingernails dug into his shoulders. She was ready...and he was more than ready.

   
When Samuel’s knee separated her thighs, opening her for his touch, she was beyond coherent thought, lost in a maelstrom of passionate new sensations, oblivious to the eminent sundering of her maidenhead. His hand glided down her body, pausing at the curve of her breast to flick the pebble hard nipple and let his fingertips glide around the aching mound. She whimpered as jagged bolts of pleasure mixed with an inexplicable need centered low where she could feel the heaviness of his phallus pressing against her core.

   
Then his hand swept down, brushing the curls as his fingers quested deeper, separating her labia with a soft gliding touch made smooth and wet by the creamy moisture her body gave off. He was pleased that she was so responsive and forced himself not to consider how many other men might have trespassed where irrationally he felt only he had ever possessed the right to be. He guided the tip of his aching staff against her sweet welcome, teasing her with the gliding friction until she spread her legs wider and arched up involuntarily, crying out his name.

   
Her last movements drove him past all control. He had to have her that very instant. Without further delay he positioned himself and plunged deep inside her. When he began the slick glorious penetration she was incredibly tight, almost as if there were a barrier, but that could not be.

   
Olivia tossed her head back and forth against the pillows, her whole body like a bowstring drawn taut, ready to be released in some unknown soaring flight. She writhed in ecstasy against his hand and then against his scalding hot maleness as waves of unbelievable pleasure swamped her. But when he poised the tip of his staff at her center and drove deeply into her, the intensity of feeling moved abruptly from joy to sharp unexpected pain, almost as if she were being torn in two.

   
She looked up into his face and saw in his eyes the sudden comprehension she had known would vindicate her, but the pain was a cost far dearer than she had thought to pay.

   
He felt her whole body stiffen as he tore into her tender flesh and knew at once the enormity of what he had done. She did not cry out but bit her lip, then turned her head away, no longer able to meet the shocked surprise and guilt on his face. At once he lay still within her, not moving his lower body as he struggled to regain control. His breaths came in great shuddering pants as the heat and softness of her body enveloped him. Every nerve cried out for him to move, to plunge up and down for the surcease he had craved all these many months.