Sunset Embrace (36 page)

He closed his eyes and shook his head, willing himself not to move yet, not to rush it. "No. It's not supposed to be this good."

Then his control scattered and his hips began to pump against hers. He practiced every technique he had ever heard of, whether in brothel parlors or around a campfire. He withdrew until he was barely inside her, then delved deeply to meld them together. He stroked the walls of her body, rapidly, slowly, in tempos that sent her spirit spiraling above her.

He teased the tips of her breasts with his chest, stroked her belly with undulations of his, caressed her thighs with strong hands. He was lost in her womanhood, In her sweetness, and he never wanted to be found.

Her face was rapt with supreme pleasure and that served to intensify his. When the tumult came, he felt her own shuddering response beneath him. They clung to-gether tightly as a nameless, benevolent god of love hurled them into the skies and then let them coast gently back to earth.

Lydia passively trailed her fingers up and down his sweat-sheened back as they lay exhausted in each others arms. Ross finally recovered himself, lifted himself away from her, and turned onto his back, taking in great gulps of air.

When he didn't move for a long time, Lydia put her hand on his stomach beneath his rib cage and asked hesitantly, "Are you all right, Ross?"

He garnered enough strength to chuckle. "Lydia, how can you be both so expert and so innocent?" He rolled to his side and looked at her tenderly. Curly strands of hair clung damply to her cheeks. Her skin was glowing with the rosiness of sexual satisfaction. Her eyes were limpid and drowsy as she smiled at him self-consciously.
God, she's beautiful,
he thought. He gathered her close, despite the warm night. "Let's sleep now."

She snuggled against him, loving the protective feel of his large body. He covered her breast with his hand and she placed hers in the hollow of his waist. As they drifted off to sleep, they were both smiling.

* * *

Ross awoke with uncharacteristic lethargy. He never remembered having a better night's sleep. Before he even opened his eyes, he covered his face with Lydia's hair and breathed deeply of its scent. She was still asleep. He eased up, hoping not to awaken her. He wanted to study what darkness had screened from him the night before.

He let his eyes wander at will over her form. Her skin was as luscious to look at as it was to taste. The taste of it lingered on his tongue. There was a light dusting of freckles across her cheekbones. He smiled, thinking they made her look incredibly young. But the uptilted eyes, with their sweeping, thick lashes that now lay like ruffled fans on her cheeks, were a woman's eyes. Multifaceted, bright with tears one moment, smoky with passion the next. They bespoke so much, promised much, and arousal sparked his dormant manhood again as he remembered the sensuous way they had looked at him.

Her lips were slightly parted. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to drag his tongue over them, to penetrate them. She had the sweetest mouth. And she knew how to kiss.

What else did she know?

A frown wrinkled his eyebrows and his moustache twitched with irritation. Why the hell did he keep thinking about it? She seemed so innocent, but then . . .

Last night had been a man's sexual dream come true. She hadn't been faking. He had heard that some women could experience that little death the way men did. Prostitutes had pretended it because they thought he expected them to. He doubted Victoria had ever heard of such a thing. If she had, she would have been aghast.

Victoria. Memories of her bothered him most of all. He missed her. He loved her still. But how could he still love her and enjoy Lydia's body with such abandon? Was it possible to love one woman and be obsessed with another? He hated the comparisons his mind forced on him.

While Victorias body had been cool alabaster, Lydia's was ivory infused with molten gold. Victoria had been modest sometimes to the point of aggravating him. She had never let him see her completely naked. Lydia was lying nuked with him now. Beautifully naked. She had gone beyond immodesty. She had been giving, generous with herself, allowing him unlimited access, anything he wanted to do. Victoria would have fainted had he moved inside her the way he had Lydia. She would have lain still and accepted him, but afterward she would have left the bed to wash herself, as though what he had left behind was nasty.

Lydia had clung to him, milking him with her body, moving with him, making those baritone musical sounds deep in her throat that seemed to purr through his body and stroke his manhood. When it was over, she had covered her belly with both hands and hugged herself, as though treasuring that essence of him that had become a part of her.

Thinking about it now brought him erect. He cursed himself and her. Because while he adored her sensual nature, it haunted him. How had she come about having those tendencies,' that talent for loving which had taken him into a realm of sexuality that even he, with all his escapades, hadn't known existed?

He studied her breasts. Even in repose her nipples were slightly flared. Her stomach rose and fell gently with each breath and he wanted to plant his mouth on it, to dip his tongue into her navel. He wanted to again trail his fingers through that silky delta of hair.

Who are you, Lydia—

He didn't even know her last name.

But she didn't know his either.

He gazed at her loveliness in the early morning light and knew he could forgive her her past as she had asked him to. If only she wasn't lying to him about forgetting it. If he ever found out that she had lied to him about putting it behind her as he had his, he would never forgive her.

He didn't allow himself to touch her, or he couldn't have made himself leave. He pulled on his pants and crept outside.

Minutes later Lydia awoke and reached for Ross. The bed beside her was empty and she heard him moving around outside. Rising, she checked on Lee, who was still sleeping, and began to wash from the bowl on the chest. She dabbed the cool, damp cloth over her femininity. Her cheeks flamed as she remembered the way Ross had touched her, the way she had reacted to his touch.

Would he think badly of her?

What had happened to her? For one frightening moment, she had thought she was dying, but at the same time, she had never felt more alive. Joy had gushed over her like a waterfall. The pleasure had been so intense, she hadn't thought her body could contain it. Jealously she had clutched at it to remain. She had closed her limbs around Ross, writhing to take as much of him inside her as possible.

Covering her face with both hands, she breathed deeply, praying she hadn't done something married ladies shouldn't.

She pinned her hair away from face, but left it to riot down her back. Hadn't Ross told her it was pretty, that she was beautiful? When she was dressed, she stepped outside the wagon. Ross wasn't in sight and she was glad. She wasn't ready to meet him face-to-face yet, with last night now an embarrassment.

He came up behind her as she was pouring a cup of coffee. "Good morning," he said softly.

She turned slowly and warily raised her eyes to look at him. Her breath stumbled through her throat when she saw him in the new sunlight. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen, his hair glistening with the dunking he had just given it after his shave. The light twinkling in his eyes and the tender curve of his smile told her that everything was all right. He didn't hold last night's wanton behavior against her. She was certain now that she had only done what wives were supposed to do with their husbands. She had performed as Ross had expected her to. Her relief was vast.

"Good morning." She felt like laughing.

"For me?" He nodded toward the coffee.

Wordlessly, she extended the cup to him and smiled, her face rivaling the sun for radiance. He took the coffee from her, but at the same time curled his free hand around the back of her neck and pulled her up to meet his descending mouth.

He was still kissing her when Ma Langston came to the wagon a few minutes later carrying the pail of milk for Lee. She watched them for a moment, beaming like a proud parent, then cleared her throat loudly.

* * *

"Another false lead," Howard Majors said as he took off his hat and bung it on the rack in his Baltimore hotel room.

"You almost sound disappointed that the girl in the morgue wasn't my daughter, Majors. I'm sorry to have wasted your time."

"Christ," Majors muttered disgustedly to himself and did something he rarely did in the middle of the morning. He poured himself a generous drink.

Vance Gentry was beginning to wear on his nerves. He could almost empathize with the young couple who had sneaked away from him. Maybe Sonny Clark hadn't kidnapped his own wife or coerced her into stealing the jewelry. Maybe she had been all too willing to leave her home in order to get away from this disagreeable tyrant.

For the week it had taken them to reach Baltimore, Gentry had been truculent, but Majors had tolerated his mood and understood it. After all, the man had believed that the girl found murdered in that hotel room near the waterfront would turn out to be his daughter. Majors had doubted it all along, even though both physical descriptions had fit Clark and Victoria Gentry.

The murder didn't sound like something Clark would do. He was whiplash-fast with a gun, and violent when backed into a corner, afraid of nothing, but he never had been a ruthless killer, especially to the point of stabbing a woman long after she was dead. That didn't fit Clark's clean, quick eruptions of violence at all.

Majors had put up with Gentry's belligerence out of deference. Now he was good and sick of-it. "It wasn't a waste of my time, Mr. Gentry," he said with more diplomacy than he felt the man deserved.

"No, just a waste of my money."

"At least now we know your daughter could still be alive."

"Then where the hell is she?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know." Gentry was so furious that his white hair seemed about to pop out of his scalp as he whirled on the detective. "Goddammit, man, what do you think I'm paying you for? I'm paying you to track down my daughter and that outlaw husband of hers."

Majors counted slowly to ten, reminding himself that after this case was laid to rest, he was facing retirement. "You can fire me at any time, Mr. Gentry. I'll still go on looking for Sonny Clark now that I know he's alive. He's wanted for five counts of murder that we know of, bank robberies in several states. The list of his crimes is as long as my arm. And even though he hasn't ridden with them in several years, he might bargain for his life and help us find the James brothers. So, do you want me to work with you, or do you want to go it alone?"

Gentry rocked on the balls of his feet angry but subdued. His anger wasn't directed so much toward the Pinkerton detective as it was at the situation. He despised not being in absolute control, but he knew that the detective had a network of informants and communication that he couldn't begin to duplicate even if he could afford to pay for it. "I see no need to separate now."

"Very well, then, I'll politely ask you as a gentleman not to insult me with any more snide remarks. Of course I was glad to know that that cadaver wasn't your daughters body." He tossed down another drink and passed the bottle to Gentry, silently stating that if the man wanted one, he could damn well pour it himself.

Gentry accepted the rebuke and after pouring his drink asked, "What now?"

"Back to the office in Knoxville, I suppose. We start at square one again, putting out feelers and seeing what turns up."

Gentry swallowed his whiskey in one gulp. It burned no more than the rage in the pit of his stomach. When he did get his hands on Ross Coleman, or whatever the hell his name was, to hell with the Pinkerton Agency, the governments of several states, and anybody else who wanted him taken alive.

He was going to kill the bastard.

* * *

The days passed slowly for Lydia and Ross because they couldn't wait lor the evenings. Ross was constantly busy with his horses or with someone else's, or hunting, or some other occupation that prevented him from driving his own team. And it was just as well. On the days he sat near her during the long hours, he was in misery. Each brush of his arm against her, each touch of her hand on his sleeve, each glance, each stolen kiss, only made him long for sundown.

The evenings belonged to them. They visited with other members of the train, but as soon as decently possible they went into the wagon and let its privacy embrace them as they embraced each other. Each night their intimacy was enhanced a further degree. They became less shy of their emotions, freer with their shows of affection,

Lydia didn't think she could be happier. She didn't put a label on what she felt for Ross. She only knew that she would never be whole again without him. They didn't communicate their feelings verbally, but she didn't know enough to miss that particular intimacy. The way he looked at her, the way he touched her, told her all she wanted to know.

As usual, she was in a haze of contentment one afternoon as she washed, preparing for Ross's return to the wagon in time for supper. She had beans boiling over the fire and cornbread batter ready to fry. Moses had picked blackberries that day and shared them with her for Ross's dessert.

When the knock came from outside the wagon, she finished buttoning up her dress, made one last passing sweep of her hand over her hair, and pushed aside the canvas flaps.

She recoiled in horror as she looked into the mean, ugly visage of her stepbrother, Clancey Russell.

L
ydia opened her mouth to scream, but terror had frozen her voice. That gave Clancey the time he needed to step into the wagon and clamp his hand over her mouth and against her teeth.

"Now, now, you ain't gonna go and start a ruckus, are ya, Miz Coleman?" He was waving a bowie knife just beneath her nose. "'Cause if you do, whoever comes through that openin' first is gonna get this right through the gizzard. And it just might be that husband of yours."