Fool for Love (Montana Romance) (16 page)

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he hummed against her warm skin as he followed her neck to the delicious space between her collarbone and down to the valley between her breasts.  “I’d worship you if I didn’t think God would be jealous.”  He kissed the side of one of her breasts and then the other before adding, “Of me.”

He lifted his head and sent her a wicked grin and a wink.  Then he hummed low in his throat and dipped to suckle on her full breast.  Amelia couldn’t contain the sigh of pleasure that his attentions invoked.  He laved her pert nipple with the flat of his tongue, grazing her with his teeth.  The tension in her body was potent.  She writhed under his mouth, under the hand that he moved to her belly to still her, undulating as though she would meld closer to him or get away entirely.

He moved further south, kissing her belly with reverence as his hands cradled her hips.  There was proof of how much she needed him.  The helpless child growing inside of her, no more than a bump and an afterthought right now, needed love and protection as much as its mother did.  He circled his fingers under her hips to the joint of her thighs.  The wild notion struck him that if he filled Amelia enough times, maybe somehow the baby would magically be his.

His heart swelled at the thought.  He inched further down, prying Amelia’s legs apart.  She gave in freely with a soft cry that only a woman enjoying a man with all she had could make.  He had to hold her hips, had to keep her rooted to the bed to keep her from wriggling away.

She was so wet that his balls tightened in expectation.  He grazed his fingers through the folds of her sex, tracing around the secrets he knew and those he didn’t.  She jerked when he sunk two fingers into her.  Her inner walls tightened around him with a wanting that nothing could hide.  She wanted him, badly, and he wanted her.  His cock ached to be inside of her, like it would every second of the day if he wasn’t damn careful.

He used his thumbs to spread her flesh wide enough to press his lips to the tight nub of her clit.  She moaned outright as he closed his mouth around it, sucking and stroking with his tongue.  God, she was sweeter than honey.  He rubbed her without mercy, pressing her hips down harder with his forearm to keep her from popping off the bed.  His fingers worked inside her in tandem with his tongue and she bucked
as if riding a green stallion.

He wouldn’t let her go.  He refused to let her fly off without him.  He was going to win this battle, make her come on his terms without rocketing away from him.  This precious part of her that he ministered to with his whole heart would burst for him and him alone, now and always.

At last she cried out as the tension in her body split into tremors that squeezed his fingers inside of her.  He groaned in response, every muscle and sinew in his hips and cock aching along with her.  It felt so good to feel her come that he teased a third finger in along with the others to catch the last waves of her pleasure.  She gasped even as the waves rolled slower.

Her pleasure may have been tamed for that moment, but his had barely begun.  He withdrew his fingers and slid himself over top of her.  With her legs already parted and her body loose from orgasm, he felt as powerful as a bull as he pressed over her.  He kissed her lips, mouth al
l business.

She would not leave him.  She would know where she belonged, who she belonged to.  As big of a bully as it made him sound, even to himself, he knew it and she should know it too.  She was his and his alone.  He told her as much with his eyes, meeting and holding hers as he su
nk himself deep inside of her.

She gasped, eyes wider, arms reaching around to hold his back.  He plundered her with his full length, possessive, no nonsense.  One week had been enough for him to learn that she liked it hard and deliberate.  That suited him just fine.  He felt every inch of her tightness envelope him as he claimed her.  He thrust deep, knowing she could take it, willing her to take his heart with his body.  She was his.

That final thought, Amelia was his, reverberated through his mind and body as urges as old as time and as vast as the mountains took over.  He pumped hard, heat and pleasure radiating out from his cock through his balls, tightening his hips and spilling passion through his whole body.  He wanted one thing, one thing only.  He wanted Amelia.  He wanted to fill her with his seed and his heart.  He wanted that blissful moment of his release to be hers.

He came with a force that shook him, the rush of orgasm taking his breath away.  His life went with his breath, the whole focus of his existence shooting out of his body and into hers.  He collapsed, weak with delirium, as soon as he was spent.  His body sagged against hers, his shaft still potently aware of her body around him but too damn satisfied to do a thing about it.

He rolled to his side, realizing half a second too late that it was Amelia repositioning him.  She curled against him, panting against his shoulder, kissing it for good measure.  Her leg spread across his and her hand stroked from his exhausted manhood up across his belly before resting on his chest over his heart.  He closed his eyes and for a moment felt completely at peace with the world.

She was his?  Who was he kidding.  His body and soul and everything else in between belonged completely and totally to her.  He knew it like he knew his own name.  She was going to wreck him and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Standing in the heart of Grand Central Depot as hundreds of travelers jostled over each other to catch trains was, oddly enough, exactly what Amelia neede
d to settle her agitated soul.

“It’s 8:30,” she mumbled, distracted, to hurry Eric along.

She had done it again.  After swearing to herself that she would abstain.  She had fallen into Eric’s arms and flat on her back when he had barely crooked a finger of invitation.  He had made love to her with soul-searing passion and she had capitulated like the trollop she was.  Yet she couldn’t manage the disgust she knew her weakness should prompt a good woman to feel.  Far from it.

Her heart beat faster when Eric caught up to her and laid a hand on the small of her back, like it belonged there.

“It should be right over here,” he said, brow wrinkled in confusion.

They stood near the junction of platforms that led to the three tracks serviced by the depot.  Travelers of all descriptions flooded around them; men and women in fine clothes with scores of attendants, some of them of African descent, some with bright red Irish hair, poor families with a dozen children, clusters of immigrants swathed in scarves, chattering in foreign tongues.  A hundred people around them to watch, but Eric kept his eyes on her.

“And you said your friends Michael and Charlie would meet us at the train?”  Amelia clung to his arm.

“Yeah.”

Eric blew out a breath and reached under the brim of his wide hat to scratch his head.  He took a few tentative steps closer to the platforms, staring up at the signs distinguishing them.  Amelia watched him carefully.  He cleared his throat and lifted his arm to point at one sign.  His finger twitched from left to right before he dropped his arm entirely.

“It’s this way, I guess.”

He tugged her arm, leading her along the flow of traffic heading to the right.  Amelia followed with him for several yards before noticing his mistake.

“No, Eric, it’s this way.”  She stopped him as gently as she could.

His face pinched as he turned to her.  “Are you sure?  We’re supposed to take the New York to Hudson River line.”

“Exactly,” she said.

He blinked.  “So come on.”  He tried to pull her on.

Again she stopped him.  “This is the New York to Harlem line.”

His frown deepened.  He glanced between her and the sign.  “No, it says New York to Hudson River.”

Amelia checked the sign.  There was no dou
bt it read New York to Harlem.

“No, Eric,” she said with all the patience she had used with the Hamilton girls.  “It says New York to H-a-r-l-e-m.”

Eric looked stricken as he checked the sign again.  He cursed under his breath and squinted hard at the sign.

“You’re right.”  His shoulder
s dropped as he looked to her.

She leaned closer.  “And you’re certain you don’t want me to send your cousin Curtis a telegram?”

“No!” he answered definitively.  “No, I….  no.”  His expression pleaded with her.  “Which way do we go?”

It wasn’t a question, it was an admission.

Amelia twisted to find other signs.  “This way,” she said.

They switched directions and strode on through the bustling crowd to the correct platform.  Piles of luggage were being loaded onto several trains at once from a single loading dock.  A dozen station workers crawled over it, shouting to each other and switching bags around as though they too were hopelessly confused.  It would have been reassuring to catch a glimpse of their luggage among it, but the jumble was too large.

“I think even the porters are turned around,” she told Eric with as much of a smile as she could manage.

He returned her cheer with a withered look that said he knew she was humoring him.

Eric couldn’t read.  At least not well.  A soft feeling of protectiveness – as though he had entrusted her with a treasure to be kept – filled Amelia’s chest.  It fit uncomfortably next to the guilt and grief and shame that had staked their claim on her heart, leaving her itchy and unsettled.

“Look, um, nobody else knows, all right?” Eric mumbled as they reached their train pausing to face her.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”  Eric kicked the toe of his boot into the boards of the platform.  “I’m no illiterate.  I can read fine once the letters settle themselves down, but it takes so long most times and I’m too stupid to bother waiting.”

His words were so startling that she didn’t think to contradict him, but her chest constricted all the same.  Eric thought he was stupid?

He greeted her silence with a weak smile and looked away.

“There you are!”  Charlie West’s voice bumped Amelia out of her shock.

Amelia turned to see her waddling toward them on her husband’s arm, faster than a woman in h
er condition should be walking.

“We were worried we might miss the train,” Mic
hael said.  He nodded to Eric.

The trepidation that had burned on Eric’s face vanished into a teasing grin.  “You two up to the same old routine?”

Michael and Charlie exchanged mischievous glances before Michael answered, “That’s none of your business.”

They headed on together to board the train, and in no time Amelia and Eric, Charlie and Michael were settled as comfortably as they could be in the train car.  Passengers were still boarding, checking tickets and searching for seats.

“How the hell did you manage to get seats right next to ours?” Eric asked Michael after storing his and Amelia’s smaller bags in the rack above the seats.

“I didn’t,” Michael answered.

“Then what are you-”

“Excuse me, I think you’re in our seats,” a middle-aged man interrupted to ask Michael.  His wife peered at Michael with a frown, but smiled when she saw Charlie.

“If you wouldn’t mind trading with us,” Michael said, presenting his tickets and two crisp twenty dollar bills with them to the couple.  “My wife would like to sit near her friend.”

Charlie smiled at the middle-aged woman then twisted to share a far more cunning grin with Amelia.

“Why, I think that would be just fine,” the middle-aged man said, eyes wide.  He nodded to Michael and took his tickets and the money, handing over his own tickets.  “Have a pleasant journey, sir, and best of luck to you and your wife.”

As the couple walked away, Eric muttered, “Hell.”  He plopped into his seat with a grin on his otherwise tense face.  “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

Michael chuckled.  He sat and leaned close to his wife to kiss her with almost obscene tenderness for being in public before saying, “What’s the good of good fortune if you can’t use it to bribe your way into getting what you want?”  He leaned closer to Eric, offering a couple of bills.  “Just say the word….”

“No.”

Amelia gaped at Eric’s friend.  She couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.  Eric evidently thought he wasn’t.  He laughed and settled back in his seat.  There wasn’t enough space for him to cross his legs, but he stretched his arm across the back of Amelia’s seat behind her shoulders.

“I’m still not clear on where all this money came from, and I don’t think I wanna ask,” Eric said, “But if you keep throwing it around like that you’re gonna give Christian and Phin both conniption fits.”

“Christian maybe,” Michael said.  “Phin will be the first one to offer suggestions on how to spend it.”

“Who are Christian and Phin?” Amelia asked, leaning closer to Eric.

Eric turned to smile down at her with something close to ease, but not close enough for her to be off the hook.  His arm around her shoulders was proof enough of that.

“Christian Avery and Phineas Bell are two of our closest friends back in Cold Springs,” he said.  “Phin owns the bank in town and Christian is Justice of the Peace.”

“And he’s about the biggest stick in the mud in the west,” Michael added.