Just Once (28 page)

“Oh, Jemma.”

He picked her up and carried her to the bed. While he held her in his arms, she drew aside the mosquito netting and then Hunter sat down and held her on his lap.

“What made you have a change of heart, Hunter? Why did you come back?” She drew the thong out of his hair and tossed it aside.

He gave her a quick kiss on the lips and set her down. Then he walked over to where he had hung his powder horn and possibles bag on the back of a chair.

“I met a man named Charlie Tate up the Missouri.” He opened the bag and reached inside. Unable to take her eyes off him, Jemma watched him draw something out of the bag. “He was sick, dying very slowly. He was all alone until I got there. That night I saw myself in Charlie and saw what might become of me if I turned my back on everything and everyone forever.”

He crossed back to the bed and held out his hand. In his palm lay a battered, tarnished heart-shaped pendant the size of a gold piece. Jemma reached for it, picked it up and rubbed her fingers over it.

“I found it in Charlie’s cabin the night he died,” Hunter told her. “Right then, I knew that I had to come back to you. I couldn’t refuse the love you had offered, Jemma, not for one more day, let alone a lifetime.”

Clutching the heart in her palm, she tipped her face up to him. He cupped her chin in his hands and bent down to place a gentle kiss of promise on her lips.

“I’m so glad you came for me,” she whispered against his mouth. “I love you, Hunter Boone.”

“I love you, too, Jemma.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing you say that.”

“‘I love you’ isn’t something you say just once. Now that I’ve spoken the words out loud, it just might become a habit.”

“I hope so.”

“I do love you, Jemma. I’m just thankful you’re still mine.” He straightened, finally able to smile since seeing her bruised face. “On the way back, I tried to think of one of your saints to pray to but I forgot their names.”

“They heard you anyway.”

“I would have been here in May, but when I started downriver, Noah was injured in a boat accident. I stayed to see that he made it.”

“He’s all right?”

Hunter hesitated so long that she felt a wave of alarm. Then he said, “He’s blind in one eye and badly scarred on the left side of his face. The scar will fade, but the whole thing has made him more of a recluse than ever. I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me for saving his life.”

“How could you not? You just have to hope he eventually comes to his senses.” She stood up and hurried over to where he had left her bag.

“What are you doing?” He drew his shirttail up out of the waistband of his buckskins and worked his shirt off over his head.

“Getting out my nightgown.” Jemma tossed items right and left. She came across the painting of St. Michael, smiled down at it, and set it aside.

Hunter came up behind her and picked up the miniature. “Who’s this?”

“St. Michael the Archangel.” She watched Hunter trace the sword in the painting and stare at the devil lying crushed beneath Michael’s feet.

“Looks like he could handle just about anything.”

“That’s why I chose him when I left the others behind. I couldn’t carry them all.”

Hunter stood the painting on a table and took Jemma’s hands in his. “Will you miss everything you have to leave behind, Jemma? I saw your home: the silver, all the riches—”

She put her fingertips to his lips. “Not for a minute. Now take me to bed. I’ve been thinking a lot about kissing.”

“And other things?”

“Definitely the other things.”

He undressed her slowly, taking his time, touching her gently as he explored every curve, every rise and hollow. When she stood nude before him, he ran his hands over her breasts, cupped them and lifted them to his mouth. He suckled one nipple, then the other.

Jemma grasped his shoulders and threw her head back, crying out with pleasure. He kept up the wonderful, maddening torture until she was weak with the heady sensations pulsing through her. Then he took her hand and led her over to the bed.

“Wait,” she whispered, drawing away from him, returning to the small table across the room. She turned the picture of St. Michael to the wall before she went back to Hunter’s side. He was watching her with a half-smile playing over his lips.

She shrugged. He laughed out loud and drew back the sheet.

Jemma slipped into bed and watched, wide-eyed and curious, while he took off his buckskins. There was nothing beneath them but bare skin. His manhood stood proud and erect in a thatch of tight curls.

“I knew it,” she said with a shake of her head.

“
What?
”

“No drawers.”

It was his turn to shrug, hers to laugh.

He slid in beside her and stretched out, pressing against her. His body was all hard muscle and firm lines, strength tempered with gentleness. She loved every inch of him.

“I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she whispered against his neck. “Sometimes I thought that what we did before might have only been a dream.”

“It was a dream. One that I kept dreaming every night I was away from you.” He slipped his hand between her legs and cupped her mound. She jumped with surprise when his fingers touched that most sensitive nub at the apex of her thighs.

“Does that hurt?”

“No,” she moaned against his shoulder. “I … you surprised me is all.”

“I hope to surprise you a few more times tonight,” he said just before he began to kiss her.

His lips were as soft as she remembered. When he slipped his tongue between her teeth she shivered all over. His fingers slowly smoothed deeper into her and then out. His tongue followed the same rhythm, slow and steady at first, then faster, delving deeper, demanding that she give herself over to him.

Before she was aware that she was even near a peak, she cried out, thrusting her hips higher, forcing his fingers further inside her. He stilled and cupped her while she broke and melted.

As the world around her became real again, he stroked her back, gentling her, molding her against his hard erection. “I want you, Jemma,” he whispered against her ear. “I want to feel you all around me. I want to be inside you, moving and feeling you move against me. The way it was that night beneath the stars.”

“Yes.” She rolled onto her back, urging him to come over onto her, to press her down on the mattress. The oil lamp was still burning low. Jemma looked down, saw their flesh pressed together. The sight of his hard body, of her breasts flattened against him, excited her and made her bold. She reached between them, closed her hand around his erection, felt the dewy drop at its tip. She could feel him throbbing against her palm. “I want you, too. I want to feel you inside me.”

Once more, he kissed her deeply. She moaned and tightened her hold before drawing her hand up along his thick, turgid shaft. He gasped and stilled. “Don’t …” It was all he could manage, but she understood and released him.

Touching his forehead to hers, he remained still, breathing erratically, his heart pounding against her breast. Gradually, he gained control, rose up, and then pressed the tip of his shaft against the entrance to her moist sheath. In that one instant in time, the world could have dissolved around them and Jemma wouldn’t have noticed. All she was aware of was Hunter—over her, breathing with her, his skin hot and exciting against hers.

She bucked her hips, urging him to enter. When she moved to lower her hands to his hips, he captured her wrists, drew her arms up and imprisoned her hands against the pillows. Only then did he enter her, slowly, so very slowly that the anticipation caused her agony. She wanted to scream in frustration and cry out, but he kissed her again, catching the sound in her throat.

Then when she craved him so much that she thought she would go mad, he was suddenly moving again, driving into her farther and farther, deeper and harder until she wrested her hands free, clasped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his hips, and cried out with glorious abandon as he reached his own climax and spilled his seed inside her.

*       *       *

Jemma fell asleep with her head on his shoulder, but for another hour, Hunter stared up at the ceiling. He traced the delicate skin of her shoulder with his thumb, looped a curl around his finger. He couldn’t get the image of her father striking her on the face out of his mind.

Slowly and carefully, he slipped out from beneath her and left the bed, careful to draw the mosquito net back into place. He dressed without a sound, put his knife on, found his hat, and crept into the hall. He locked the door behind him.

It would be hours before dawn, but he practically ran all the way back across the Quarter until he was standing in front of the same trellis Jemma had used to make her escape from her father’s house. Within minutes he was on the second floor, inching his way along the hall. He nearly tripped over a slave asleep on the floor in front of a bedroom door. It didn’t take him long to find the master bedroom.

Thomas O’Hurley didn’t wake up until Hunter had put one knee on the mattress and was leaning over him with the long skinning knife just above his jugular.

“Good evenin’, Mr. O’Hurley,” Hunter said in a tone as smooth as honey, deepening to a backwoods Kentucky drawl. “I hope you weren’t having pleasant dreams.”

“What … what are you doing here?” Thomas O’Hurley started to rise, but when the cold blade pressed against his throat, he flopped back down on the bed.

“I came to get your blessing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jemma and I are getting married.”

“I forbid it,” he sputtered.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to forbid much of anything right now, do you? Besides, she’s already safe from the likes of you. I just wanted you to know that you’ll never have an opportunity to hit her again. I’ll see to that myself. And if you’re smart, you’ll take my advice and never hit a woman again.”

“I’ll do whatever I damn well—”

Hunter pressed the knife closer. “What? You’re arguing? Why, I’d like nothing better than to kill you, but seeing as how you’re Jemma’s pa, I’ll let you off easy this time. All I’m asking for is your blessing. I’m going to marry your daughter.”

“This is preposterous.”

“Yep. But knowing Jemma, she sets store in this kind of thing, along with saints, and angels.” He prodded the man’s flesh to elicit an answer. “Your blessing, sir.”

“Take her. Get her out of my life. Do you think I want her around after
you’ve
had her? She’s ruined.”

“That’s not quite a blessing, O’Hurley.” Hunter rubbed the blade along O’Hurley’s thick neck.

“Take her with my blessing then. Just get out and leave me alone.”

Hunter relaxed the knife, but not much. “I need one more thing.”

“Just as I thought.”

“I want you to call off the guard in the hall so I can go into Jemma’s room.”

“If you’re after money—”

“That’s the last thing I want from you, O’Hurley. In fact, the way I hear it, I’m the only prospective groom Jemma’s ever had that you didn’t have to bribe.”

“What do you want?”

“Take me to her room.”

Hunter let O’Hurley up. Dressed in a rumpled nightshirt, his calves and ankles exposed, the man padded down the hall on bare feet. He sent the slave to bed and ushered Hunter into Jemma’s room. While Hunter looked around, O’Hurley walked to the bed, pulled aside the mosquito net and sheet, and saw the pillows.

“I told you I had her already.” Hunter was standing near the little altar table covered with candles in odd-shaped glasses.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking these with me.” One by one, Hunter took down the twenty-two miniature paintings of saints. He ordered O’Hurley to strip the quilt off the bed. Even in the semidarkness, he recognized Nette’s handiwork and recalled the long hours one winter that he had sat in her cabin watching her stitch it together. When the man handed the patchwork to him, Hunter carefully packed Jemma’s saints inside.

“Now, you stay put. Count to two hundred. By that time, I’ll be gone.” Hunter started out of the room with his precious bundle, paused in the doorway and turned around. “I meant what I said, O’Hurley. You ever try to hurt Jemma again, and I’ll see to it that you regret it. Believe me, I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”

Chapter 22

Sandy Shoals, November 1817

The wedding took place beneath the trees on the bluff above the river.

Devon Childress officiated and, dressed in his finest black coat, he looked every bit the preacher. Lucy stood in attendance, proudly wearing the new pearl earrings Jemma had given her. The girl’s eyes shone with love for the young reverend and with her happiness for the bride and groom. Nette put her Cherokee pipe away for the occasion, but continued to grumble right up to the last minute about the rudeness of “some folk who just show up and want to get married without givin’ a body time to fashion a decent wedding quilt.”

After the vows, everyone walked back to the tavern, where Hunter announced to the few travelers in attendance that food and drinks were on the house for the day.

“Are you happy?” He stood beside Jemma in new buckskin pants and a shirt she had hand-decorated with embroidery during the long keelboat trip upriver.

She smiled up at him and nodded. “I’ve never been happier. Everything was beautiful.” She watched Lucy, who was seated beside Devon at a table across the room. The rest of the family sat there crowded together, laughing and talking. For the first time in a week, no one was paying attention to the bride and groom.

“Lucy sincerely wants to marry Devon, you know, Hunter, and she’s not about to take no for an answer.” Jemma nestled closer and leaned against him.

“She’s too young,” he said with finality.

“No younger than Hannah was when she married Luther. You’ve got to let her go or she’ll run away.” Jemma turned and slipped her arm around his waist. “You don’t want her to end up like me, do you?”

“I want her to be happy.”

“Then give them your blessing,” she urged.

“But he wants to take her to Texas.”

Jemma just smiled and waited expectantly.

“All right. I’ll tell her tonight,” he said.

“Tell her before the party ends, please.”

Hunter sighed, a dramatic, long suffering sigh. “If you say so. But don’t think you’re gonna boss me around for the rest of our lives.”

“Just the first hundred years or so,” Jemma laughed.

Luther left the group at the table and joined them, after admonishing Junior not to wrestle with Little Artie inside the tavern. The two boys ran outside and Luther shook his head as he watched them go.

“Congratulations again, brother.” Luther raised a tankard of beer in salute.

“Thanks for standing up as best man,” Hunter told him.

Luther sobered. “It’s too bad Noah couldn’t even bring himself to come to the wedding. I know he’s up and around, because the other day I saw him from a distance setting some traps down by Hickory Creek.”

Jemma looked at Hunter, who nodded. Then she told Luther, “Noah was here. From where we stood on the river, we could see him in that copse of trees directly behind all of you. He was watching from the shadows. At the end of the ceremony, he waved and then blended back into the forest.”

Luther shook his head. “It’s a shame what happened to him. Just before the accident he was sweet on Lucy, or so Hannah tells me. Noah must be feeling pretty low.” Luther took another swig of beer and reached down to keep little Sadie from running into the corner of the table.

“Lucy will be marrying Devon,” Jemma told him as the little girl ran up and hugged her around the knees. She bent down and lifted Sadie up onto her hip. “As soon as they can find a preacher.”

“Luther, did you remember to bring that bundle I left with you?” Hunter smoothly changed the subject. As far as he was concerned, Lucy could marry the preacher, but he didn’t have to like it yet and he certainly didn’t want to stand around talking about it.

“What bundle?” Jemma wanted to know.

Luther ignored her. “Hannah had to take Callie home to change her dress after she spilt cider down the front of it. They’re bringing it over.”

“
What
bundle?” Jemma asked again.

“Sort of a wedding present,” Hunter told her.

Sadie was playing with the brass heart hanging from a ribbon around Jemma’s neck. “I thought we agreed not to exchange gifts,” Jemma reminded him.

“This isn’t really a gift,” Hunter said, glancing toward the back door. Callie came skipping in with her braids flying behind her. Hannah followed with a bulky brown-paper package. Jemma turned to Hunter.

“What have you done?”

“You’ll see.”

He reached out and took Sadie from Jemma as Hannah walked over to them. Everyone in the family watched as Jemma went over to the table and set the package down. Across the room, Big Artie was serving liquor at the bar. At another table, five men who’d arrived that morning on a flatboat played cards, oblivious to the Boones’ wedding festivities. A few other travelers were looking on, enjoying a free meal.

Jemma pulled the string and opened the crackling paper wrapping. Inside was the Honey Bee quilt that Nette had given her the day she left Sandy Shoals. She ran her hand over the patches and minute stitches.

“Did you make another one, Nette?” Jemma could only stare at the pieced quilt that had required hours of work and planning.

“Nope. That’s the same one. Signed and dated on the back,” Nette said, her lips closing on the pipe stem as she puffed out a cloud of tobacco smoke.

“I left this behind at my father’s house.” Jemma turned to Hunter. “How did it get here?”

“Unfold it,” he urged.

“But—”

“Go on.” He nodded at the quilt. Sadie had lost interest in pulling his long hair and was struggling to get down. He set the little girl on the floor and she ran off again.

Jemma folded back the first layer, then one more. Nestled inside the quilt were each and every one of the paintings of her saints.

“How did you ever get these?”

“Let’s just say I went on a little adventure the night you ran away from home—for the last time, I might add.”

“But—”

“I know how much they meant to you and I didn’t want you to have to leave them behind. Besides, I figure where we’re headed, we might need more than just the one saint along the way.”

“Where are we headed?” She wrapped the pictures up in the quilt and planted her hands on her hips. “We just got here a few days ago.”

Hunter drew her up against him and crossed his arms in front of her. She leaned back while he bent his head and spoke softly against her ear.

“During my travels I found this pretty little valley on the upper Missouri. Plenty of water, good grazing land, and a view of forever. In no time at all, steamboats will be heading all the way upriver and I figure there ought to be somebody there to sell those travelers all the things they’ll need. Not much out there but wide open spaces right now, though. What do you think?”

Jemma turned in his arms and kissed him right in front of the preacher, their whole family, and even the strangers in the room. When they parted, most everyone was laughing. She spoke just loudly enough for him to hear. “I think it sounds like a grand adventure. When are we leaving?”

“After we’ve taken some time to practice kissing and a few … other things.”