Savage Deception (Liberty's Ladies) (16 page)

Her decision was expressed in the sweet smile she sent in little Andy’s direction as she began rummaging through one of the children’s trunks. Tanner joined in helping her, and before the hour was out, all of the clothes were gone.

 
~ ~ ~

 “Mr. Sheridan is a fine man.” Mike Candy expressed his sentiments by stroking the brown topcoat that had belonged to David Richmond and was now warming Mike’s burly frame. He sat in his lean-to with another man who drank from a cracked bowl containing an unappetizing, watery gruel. “You should have come out and gotten something from his pretty wife. Did you happen to see her?”

“I saw her,” the man blurted out and threw aside the bowl, causing the contents to splash on Mike’s new garment.

“Hey, you ain’t got no cause to act so mean, Mr. King. You seem to forget that I was the one who nursed you back to health last year. I took you in and I’ve gotten only rudeness and nastiness for my trouble. I may not be as grand a fellow as you think you are but I got my pride.” Mike sniffed haughtily and dabbed at the stain with a dirty rag. “If you don’t like it here, well you can just leave.”

“I’d do it, too, if I could,” the man snapped. “But my leg hasn’t mended properly yet.”

Mike stroked his chin in thought and craftily observed, “Yea, mighty funny about that leg. Always seemed odd to me that a British soldier would be wounded by his own men. I mean that musket ball I dug out of you was English made, but you don’t strike me like a Brit.”

“Shut up, Candy. I’m tired and want to get some sleep. I’m sorry for being unkind to you, for staining your coat.”

This sudden turn of face from a man who could be mean one moment and civil the next appeased Mike Candy. Candy had no real desire to know anything about this uncommunicative stranger whom he’d helped last year and taken in. He wanted to live his life with as little discord as possible because he was tired of wars, sick of fighting. “That’s all right, son. Get your rest, you need it to make you strong again. Maybe next time Mr. Sheridan and his wife come you’ll be hearty enough to hobble out and get something.”

For the first time since Mike had met this Mr. King, the man threw back his head and laughed. He clutched at his frayed jacket and lay back on the pallet, covering himself with a ragged blanket. “Oh, I’ll come out and get something, Mike Candy, I promise you I will. The high and mighty Tanner Sheridan and his pretty wife owe me, and I intend to collect.”

Mike didn’t say anything else to the man, who every so often would grunt in his sleep. If the truth be known, Mr. King frightened Mike a bit. Sometimes he’d have nightmares and would call out a lady’s name, followed by foul curses that even made an experienced old sea captain like Mike Candy blush. Mike never asked Mr. King about his dreams, but he felt sorry for the lady and wondered what she might have done to cause Mr. King to hate her so much.

But she had a pretty sounding name, a name that reminded Mike Candy of happier times before the war, for he’d once had a sweetheart with that same name — Diana.

~ ~ ~

Diana hugged her arms close against her thin wrapper to ward off the chill in the drafty hallway. She wished she’d worn slippers to pad downstairs in search of a book, but in the bedroom the fireplace had provided more than adequate warmth, causing her to be unaware of how cold the rest of the house could be on a dark December night.

Entering the small study at the back of the house, she saw a blazing fire in the hearth and smelled the sweet scent of burning pine logs as she neared the bookshelves. She thought it odd that Cammie would keep a fire burning down here when Tanner had gone out earlier — no doubt to visit Gabriella Fox, Diana decided dismally and reached for a book.

“Can’t sleep?”

Tanner’s voice startled her and she whipped around to discover that he was sitting in a large cushioned chair near the fireplace. An empty wine glass stood on the end table.

“I didn’t see you there. I thought you’d gone.” She gave a relieved giggle to find him home.

He shook his head. “I’ve been here all evening.”

He’d been home all the time! He hadn’t gone to see Gabriella Fox. “Do you often sit down here by yourself in the dark?”

“Yes, the dark can be quite comforting.”

Diana drew nearer to him. “I wanted something to read.”

“I see that.”

She suddenly felt quite ill at ease as she stood before him dressed in her thin white wrapper with lacy inserts at the breasts. She wore nothing underneath because she’d recently stepped out of the tub and didn’t believe Tanner was home. After all, he’d have to be made of stern stuff to want to stay with a woman whom he couldn’t inflame with his lovemaking skills, not when Gabriella or any other woman would melt willingly in his arms.

“Well, I’ll go upstairs now.” She wouldn’t ask him if he’d join her, she was frightened he’d refuse.

“Diana, wait.”

Half turning, she clutched the book in her arms, stupidly attempting to cover her breasts, which seemed to strain toward the sound of his voice. “I want to thank you for helping today. Many people are grateful to you,” she heard him say.

“I really didn’t have much choice,” she admitted. “But you were right to want to help them.”

Tanner’s gaze skimmed over her thin attire. “You’re shivering. Are you cold?”

“Just a bit, but once I’m upstairs I’m certain I’ll warm up.”

“Why wait so long? Sit beside me. I’ve plenty of room in this chair.”

Diana saw that the chair was quite large, even filled with Tanner’s broad frame. In the flickering firelight he looked so handsome as he sat there with an earnest appeal on his face that the will to refuse him never reached her lips. She found herself magnetically drawn to him, barely aware that she’d stepped across the floor until she found herself huddled against him with his arm around her waist.

His right hand reached out and gently brushed aside the wispy tendrils of her hair from her neck. “You have the most beautiful hair,” Tanner praised. “I remember when you first came to Briarhaven how I’d watch you, how when the sunlight touched your hair the strands would gleam red-gold until the color was no longer dark brown but a burnished copper. That day when you were with Kingsley in the carriage on the river bank and he kissed you, your hair was that same unusual color. I wanted to be the one kissing you, touching your hair. It was at that moment I decided to take you away from him.”

Her heart jumped in her chest as his fingers stroked through the thick tresses to slide sensuously past her neckline and hover at the base of her collarbone. “I was very young then,” she muttered thickly.

“And so pretty that I couldn’t think straight when I looked at you. Of course, you’re no longer pretty.”

“I’m not?”

Tanner’s features relaxed into a teasing grin. “You’re beautiful now.”

This time her heart seemed to slam into her ribcage with such force that she heaved a deep, shuddering sigh. How could he think she was beautiful, even passably comely, when she was still so thin? She’d gained a few pounds since marrying Tanner, but not enough to tempt a man who was able to have any woman he wanted. At least that’s what Diana thought.

His index finger traced the shape of her mouth. “You don’t believe you are beautiful, do you, Diana?”

“Not really.”
Not beautiful enough for a man like you.

“Believe that you are.”

Whenever he looked at her with those black eyes, eyes that at this moment danced with amber fire, she could imagine that she was. It seemed that that fire singed her soul, melting it within her. She knew he was going to kiss her, in fact she was already opening for him like a rosebud in the sun, welcoming the consuming heat. The book plopped to the floor as her arms voluntarily wrapped around his neck and pulled him closer to her.

Their mouths met first in a gentle kiss that tasted like sweet wine. Tanner’s lips tasted hers, moving across them with feather-light strokes. Diana moaned under his tender assault, vaguely aware that she was the one who began to deepen the kiss. She expected an immediate response, but Tanner surprised her by not participating. Accustomed to Tanner’s instant arousal, she now realized she was going to have to work for it. This was probably part of his lesson for her, she decided, but she also knew she was up to the challenge.

With the skills he’d taught her and her own inborn sensuality, Diana proceeded to tease and taunt his tongue with hers until Tanner moaned and ended the resistance. “You’re like wildfire, love,” he whispered against her mouth. “Your heat is scorching me alive.”

And it was. Never had Diana felt so warm, so filled with fire. The flames grew higher as Tanner opened her robe and cupped her breast with his hand. She found herself writhing beneath his touch, tiny whimpering sounds issuing from her mouth. When his head bent low to suckle each of her nipples, something liquid and hot began to flow through her body. “Oh, that feels wonderful,” she gasped and arched toward him.

“There’s more, Diana,” Tanner promised and with that he positioned her until she was lying across him, her head cushioned in the crook of his arm. In a daze, she allowed him to help her shrug out of the robe until nothing covered her but golden firelight. He bent low to feast upon her breasts, gently nudged her quivering thighs apart until his fingers found the tender nub between them.

Pain!
Diana’s brain screamed, remembering those times when Kingsley had touched her there, hurting her and humiliating her. She balked and tried to close her legs, but Tanner’s hand steadied her, refusing to be moved from her velvet warmth. “I’m not hurting you, Diana. I won’t hurt you,” she heard him say. “Soon you’re going to feel great pleasure. Lie still and feel it happen. Enjoy what I’m doing to you, sweetheart. Feel my fingers moving across the silken folds of your womanhood. See, I’m touching you now and it doesn’t hurt, does it?”

Diana could barely speak. She felt that her breath had stopped in her throat, that if she sighed she’d miss something incredibly wonderful. Tanner’s voice lulled her, hypnotized her with his words before his mouth continued to suckle her breasts. His fingers stroked her, causing moist heat to gather within her. With her gaze trained on the ceiling, she saw shadows dance to a rhythmic, pulsating beat. Suddenly she found herself among the shadows as her body started to move with abandon, wanting to rid itself of the scorching heat that suddenly claimed her but just as eager to be inundated by the flames.

Something was going to happen. She knew it, but she didn’t know what, and she was somehow frightened of it. It was when she felt Tanner’s finger slide inside her that the fear intensified, for the stirrings of pleasure were so great. “Tanner, please, no…”

“Feel it happen, sweet, feel the heat and don’t fight it,” he told her and his mouth found hers, stilling anything further she might say.

With each thrust of his tongue in her mouth, his finger followed suit until Diana imagined her body was so hot that it would soon explode. Instead of fighting the sensation, she suddenly discovered that by gyrating her hips she could ride his finger and deepen the strange, churning pleasure that left her wet with wanting.

She had no idea what was going to happen to her. She felt exactly as she had that night with Tanner on the bluff. The stars and the moon had been out that night, covering the heavens with millions of pinpoints of light. Suddenly it seemed that all of those lights gathered into a fiery ball and centered within the deepest part of her femininity. Nothing prepared Diana for the light that flashed before her eyes as her body arched upward to seek the heavens. Her body exploded with a force that caused her to cry her pleasure into Tanner’s mouth and left her trembling and panting, not quite certain she was still alive.

Moments later she found herself wrapped in Tanner’s arms. Her head rested upon his chest, and he stroked her hair while he murmured endearments. She couldn’t look at him, more embarrassed than she’d ever been in her entire life. She’d lost control of herself, but in a strange way, she’d found herself, too. Finally he tilted her chin so she’d be forced to gaze into his eyes. He was smiling at her.

“You don’t have to look so pleased,” she said softly.

“Ah, but I do. It isn’t every day that I see a woman get her first taste of sexual pleasure.”

“How many women have you seen?”

Tanner blushed and admitted with some hesitation, “You’re the first for me, Diana. All of the women I’ve known have been very experienced and knew what to expect.”

“Is what happened to me supposed to happen every time?”

“It depends, but if so, then consider yourself to be very lucky.” Tanner intimately kissed her earlobe. “I consider myself to be lucky, too. You’re definitely not a piece of stone.”

Diana shifted her position and her backside made contact with something hard inside Tanner’s trousers. She stiffened. God! he wanted her, but more than that, she wanted him. In fact, she could feel that heat gathering inside of her again, craving release. Suddenly she felt violated and more vulnerable than she ever had with Kingsley. Tanner had turned her into a wanton with only his hands and his lips. What might happen to her if he loved her fully and she experienced that same pleasant, mind-drugging explosion? She’d never be able to leave him and would once more be at a man’s mercy. Her freedom would be taken away from her and she’d be a slave to something so powerful and potent that it might destroy her. And she refused to be destroyed by Tanner.