The Beloved Woman (29 page)

She slammed her book shut. “Well, what if I’m not ready now? What if your self-serving manipulations have gone awry?”

“You’re ready,” he said, his attention still on his cards. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be squawkin’ and squirmin’ like this. Your eyes have been as bright as black buttons all afternoon and you’ve got a blush even a blind man could see. You keep lookin’ toward the bed and sighin’.”

“Oh! You! You! Why don’t we get it over with! It’s going to be mere heartless entertainment to you, I can tell!”

He looked up then, his expression full of quiet anger. “Isn’t that the way you want it?”

“No! I care so much—” She halted, watching the flare of interest her reckless words provoked in his eyes. She struggled for composure. “I want it to be kind, and friendly, and beautiful. Surely that’s not too much to ask, even if we don’t love each other.”

A muscle throbbed in his jaw. His eyes narrowed. He looked angry again, but also sad. “I’ll do my best.”

Someone knocked loudly on the door. “I’ll see to it,” Justis said. He vaulted up from his chair as if tension had been coiled inside him, waiting for this moment. Katherine patted her hair and absently checked her dress as she watched him pull the door open.

A stocky, well-dressed man stood there. A constable stood beside him. “Mr. Gallatin?” the man said in a stern, formal tone.

“Yeah.”

“My name is Mr. Gordon and I’m the manager of this hotel. I understand that your wife is an Indian?”

“Hell, yes. What of it?”

“Nothing of it, sir. But I want to see a marriage certificate.”

Katherine’s blood froze. “This is outrageous,” she said in her most regal tone. She stood and glided gracefully to the door. “You are maligning my honor, sir.”

He bowed. “I beg pardon, ma’am, but if I don’t see some proof that you’re married to this gentleman, I’m going to have you both arrested for fornication.”

“What?” Justis bellowed. He raised a fist. “Any man who tries to cart my wife to jail will get his face knocked in.”

Katherine grabbed his arm. “We are married, Mr. Gordon, I assure you. I’ve never heard of such strict adherence to propriety. I doubt that many of your guests carry their marriage certificates with them everywhere they travel.”

“Pardon me,” the manager replied, “but most of my gentlemen guests don’t look like they walked in straight off the frontier, and most of my lady guests are lily white. If you don’t have a marriage certificate, you’ll have to get one.”

“Well, find us a preacher,” Justis said.

Katherine gasped. “Wait, oh, wait. Can my husband and I have a moment in private?”

The manager nodded. Justis shut the door and turned to her. “Guess we’re trapped,” he said, and shrugged. “Makes no difference to me. Let’s do it. We need to be respectable, you know. All it takes is a bit of paper with some words on it.”

She stared at him in dismay. “It’s much more than that. It’s a lifetime pledge. It’s an oath before God.”

“It’s a way to stay out of jail.”

She hugged herself and paced rapidly. “I need time to think! Overnight. A day or two. There must be some other way. We could switch to another hotel—”

“Where we’d probably get insulted again. Let’s tie the knot and be done with it.”

“I can’t give up easily!”

“You sure ain’t doing
that
,” he said dryly. “Just gettin’ you to live with me has been the toughest work of my life. You’ve fought a good battle over what’s wise and what’s not, but it’s time to give up and get hitched.”

She whirled on him.

“You sound almost pleased about this! Do you want to be married to me even after we go our separate ways? For the rest of your life?”

He shrugged. “It’s just a piece of paper. I can probably go to court in a couple of years and bribe some greedy judge to nullify it. Besides, bein’ married makes me sound like a solid citizen, whether I got a wife to show for it or not.”

Katherine wanted to cry. He didn’t care why he married her, so long as he accomplished his business goals.
But wasn’t that kind of practical attitude the best? If she built her own separate life, what difference would a marriage certificate make when he no longer wanted her? Marriage didn’t mean they’d be together forever, but at least it was a step in the right direction. And if it meant that he owned her, well, he had demonstrated over the course of nearly a year’s acquaintance that owner or not, he was inescapable and irresistible.

“I don’t want to go to jail,” she said dully.

“Good. Let’s get married and go to bed. I’m sleepy.”

“You don’t look sleepy.”

“You don’t look married. Yet.” He swung the door open again. Mr. Gordon and the constable gazed at him expectantly. “Get us a preacher,” Justis told them. His gaze met Katherine’s. “What kind?”

She sank down in a chair, defeated. “Presbyterian. At least we’ll be solemn about it.”

LONG AFTER THE
minister had left, Katherine continued to stare at the wedding certificate he’d bestowed on them. She stood in the middle of the bedroom and read it as if it would never make sense. Justis moved around the suite, turning lamps down one by one and banking the fires.

“Real pretty, huh?” he said, coming up behind her. He looked over her shoulder at the scrolled gilt letters and the blanks where the minister had filled in their names, the date, and the witnesses—Mr. Gordon and the constable. “Not so scary, huh? Just a pretty piece of paper.”

She numbly laid it on a table. “I’ll change into my nightclothes.”

Justis caught her arm and swung her to face him. “No,” he said gruffly. “You won’t need ’em.”

Her stomach dropped as she saw that all the levity was gone from him. The image of the carefree rascal had been a complete ruse. In his grim, strained face she found a
year’s worth of waiting, a year of wanting her and not having her.

“You’ve run out of patience,” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

“I think you look forward to hurting me a little.”

“God, no. I look forward to making you want me so much that you forget to despise me.”

“
Justis.
” She said his name half in rebuke and half in shared desperation. It was hardly out of her mouth before he pulled her to him and kissed her. Her knees buckled as he slowly moved his mouth over hers, goading her with rhythmic shoving motions of his jaw, retreating a fraction to let her take a quick breath, then sinking his mouth onto hers again and using his tongue to part her lips.

She moaned, exploding inside with a reckless mixture of nerves and desire. In the back of her mind a tormented voice reminded her that their forced marriage was a terribly sad thing that could bring her only more heartache. She was married to a practical man who would never love her the way she loved him. But still—she was his wife.
His wife
.

She broke away slightly. “Let it be, then. I can’t help it. I can’t help anything anymore. But, dear man,
I don’t despise you
. If I were given a chance to choose where I might go in the world and who I might go with, I would freely choose you.”

“Why?” he asked, stunned.

“We—we seem to be fated to torment each other for the time being.”

“You want me,” he whispered fiercely. “Say it. No matter what happens, no matter about love, tonight you want me more than anything or anybody else in the world.”

“No matter.” Tears slid down her face. “No matter. You’re everything I want.”

With a low groan of satisfaction he kissed her repeatedly,
and she found herself lapping her tongue across his lips to learn every essence and texture of him. She clung to him, lost in the shattering, heart-draining possession of their kiss, while he unfastened the back of her dress with hands that fumbled and finally ripped off buttons violently.

“You’re beautiful,” he told her as he pushed aside the gaping back of her bodice. “And you were beautiful even back when you were so hurt and thin.”

He ripped her undershirt, then pulled the remnants of it and the bodice down her shoulders. His roughness excited her, and she cried out in delight when he shoved the tight material beneath her nipples. As her breasts slipped free he bent and took one in his mouth, sucking with such a perfect blend of skill and ferocity that she cried out again and grasped his head to urge him closer.

“Please let me see you,” she begged, jerking on the collar of his shirt. “Please let me touch you too.”

He straightened, his strong arms circling her waist and pulling her up on tiptoe so he could study her eyes closely. The primitive flush of desire on his face made her dizzy with anticipation.

“Tell me the truth—the truth now, you hear?” he said in a gravelly voice. “Am I too hairy for an Injun to admire?”

A disbelieving laugh rose in her throat until she saw his stern, worried frown. “I adore your hairiness,” she murmured. She wrenched the collar of his shirt apart and angled her head so she could nuzzle the thick pelt she’d exposed.

He staggered a little and growled hoarsely with amazement. His hips flexed in response to the sudden addition of her tongue to the nuzzling. She caught his leather necklace in her teeth and dragged it out of the way, then speared it with a fingertip and flipped the gold nugget over his shoulder. “I want no distractions.” She curled
her fingers into his chest hair. “How wonderful it is to pet.”

“I don’t look like your damned Philadelphia dandy. I’m not pink and hairless.”

“You’re entirely too talkative, that’s what you are.” She tilted her head back and gazed at him, her eyes sultry. “I think you have the most beautiful hair and scars and leathery skin. I don’t want you to look a bit different. I’ve seen all of you, remember? And I want to see you again.”

“Oh, God. I never thought I’d hear you say anything like that to me.”

“Is it shocking? Do you think a lady ought not to be so open about her admiration?”

“I think,” he murmured, sinking his mouth onto hers for a moment, “that you’re the perfect kind of lady just the way you are.”

She unbuttoned his shirt and he stripped it off, then she pressed her hands to his shoulders. She slid them slowly down his chest, melting at the feel of him, the entrancing combination of hair and muscle swelling repeatedly under her fingertips.

Justis carried her to the bed and placed her in the midst of the huge, extravagant pillows. He knelt beside her in shadowy lamplight and undid her braids. “I’ve got to see this spread over you. Later on I’ve got to see this spread over
me.
”

She reached up and caressed his face with quick, almost frantic touches. “You said once, a long time ago, that we would burn each other up. You were right.”

Her back arched as he feathered long strands of her hair across her naked breasts. He raked it over her nipples and down her belly, then gathered it close to the crook of her neck and burrowed his face there. She shivered with pleasure as he nipped the tender skin under her ear. He bit her like an animal enticing its mate.

“That makes me go limp,” she whispered.

He chuckled, the sound torn with desire. “That’s not what it does to me.”

“Then you would like it too?” She turned her face toward his neck and nibbled in return, tasting his skin with little sucking movements of her mouth.

“Oh, yeah.” He dug his hands into her arms and shuddered. “Before tonight’s over I’m gonna bite you in places you never thought a bite could be.”

The images that filled her mind were so overwhelming, she moaned. Her thighs felt damp and relaxed; inside she ached with a pulsing emptiness that begged to be filled. Justis got to his knees and quickly finished undressing her. She lay there in quivering silence, so aroused that a mere look from him made her skin tingle. His gaze moved over her slowly and thoroughly, as if he’d never seen her naked before.

She still wore white stockings and the garters that held them above her knees. He placed his palms just above them, on the insides of her thighs. Katherine thought she’d die from the exquisite feel of his blunt, callused fingers slipping down her sensitive skin. He caught the garters and stockings and pulled them off her legs in a maddeningly unhurried way that turned the simple act into a lurid caress.

She felt open and vulnerable as he circled her bare ankles and began the same slow journey again, this time upward. Sensations cascaded along her skin ahead of his stroking fingers. Unseen forces urged her to spread her legs widely and welcome every sensation to the aching center between them.

She panted for breath and curled her hands to her mouth. His eyes met hers, and their hunger seared her. Slowly he reached the tops of her thighs. He pulled them apart a little. “This’ll feel good to you,” he promised. “So good. Like this.”

He stroked her between the thighs, his fingers slipping deep into the folds there, then rising over the mound and
rubbing the swollen nub it guarded. “You are so ready for me.” His voice was a throaty murmur. “I know how to make it even better.”

She wanted to protect her dignity, make some witty remark that would let him know she was aware of how helpless and adoring she must look with her legs opening eagerly. But she only moaned with desire as she saw the approval in his eyes. His fingers continued their slow rubbing motion.

She tossed her head from side to side as his other hand gently pinched her nipples and squeezed her breasts. Her hair tumbled across her, across his hands. “More. More of everything,” she begged.

“Say my name.”

“
Justis.
”

The happy rush of his breath warmed her belly as he bent over and kissed it. His hands never stopped their sweet torture. She muffled a high-pitched keening sound against her knuckles as rhythmic pleasure poured into her womb. In the midst of it Justis took her with his fingers, and her body surrounded them eagerly, adding new fervor to her delight.

Dazed, Katherine realized that she was nearly crying as she reached desperately for him with both hands. He groaned—ragged, demanding sounds in the back of his throat—and began to kiss and suck her breasts.

She protested with a whimper when he stopped touching her, then watched him unfasten his trousers and shove them down. The sight of his large, jutting arousal signaled some deep part of her to relax rather than fear it. “It won’t hurt,” she said in soft awe. “I’m certain.”