Wild Burn (17 page)

She stared darkly at him for a long moment before shaking her head. “You’re an idiot.”

“An idiot who had it coming.” He let himself smile slightly, felt a pleased chuckle catch in his throat, and he couldn’t remember the last time he felt so…
happy
.

Moira was safe. She’d heeded his request—demand—to carry the Colt with her, though it was plain she didn’t want to. Best of all, she kissed him like she planned to brand her name into his hide at the first opportunity. Yes, Del was happy.

So he yanked her back into him and bent his head to snare her in another incendiary kiss. Her lips parted for his at once, and she leaned against his chest, releasing her hold on his shirt and dislodging his hand to loop her arm around his neck.

“Thank you for finding my hat,” she breathed into his mouth as she tasted his lower lip with her tongue.

“Welcome.” Banding one arm around her slim waist, he sent his other hand delving into the neat coil of hair at her nape. His fingers dug into her scalp, loosening pins as he cupped the back of her skull.

He held her in place as the slant of his lips shifted, changed, intensified. Because once he owned her mouth again, audience-free, he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t ever stop, and the way she clung to him told him she didn’t want him to either.

His every breath brought her into his lungs, rose and mint and intoxicating sweetness, and he was instantly starved for her. Pressing her into the curve of his body, he swept his tongue deeper into her mouth, needing to devour her much like he would his last meal. Desperation electrified his bones, and he lifted her off her feet.

With a faint whimper, she threw her other arm around his shoulders. Cool metal kissed the back of his neck, a quick slide as her Colt made contact with his overheated skin, and that simple reminder that she’d
listened to him
, even when angry, had him squeezing her tighter, a low groan rumbling in his throat as he immersed himself in her.

His hand at her waist traveled lower, lower, until he clutched at her backside, nothing between him and that perfect palmful of round ass but the layers of her skirts. His fingers clenched, and she moaned when he kneaded her through the material. “Delaney.
Del
.” Her voice was breathy, textured with surprised desire, and it undid him.

He walked them toward the nearest tree and settled her spine against it. Bracing her thus gave his hands the freedom to travel, and travel they did. He skated his fingers up over the sleek curve of her corseted waist and remembered the visceral tug of laces yesterday and easing the garment open. Now his hands cupped her breasts through the fitted panels of her tan broadcloth vest and the loose-sleeved linen blouse beneath. It wasn’t enough, would never be enough, and he began to unbutton the vest.

“I want you,” he mumbled against the soft skin of her cheek, as her vest gaped open and he turned his attention to the white blouse. “I want you in my hands, Moira Tully.”

Her arms dropped from his shoulders, and she slid the gun back into some hidden fold of her skirt. “Then I…I want the same.” She snatched the hat from his head and threw it to the ground, then shoved at the lapels of his coat. “Help me get this thing off of you.”

He leaned back only enough to shrug out of the coat, sending it the way of his hat. She leaned heavier against the tree trunk and watched him avidly from under sultry lashes, her hands hovering between them. As soon as he stepped toward her again, her fingers splayed over his chest, painting, petting, seemingly delighted by the feel of him beneath his shirt.

“Happy now, you greedy thing?” he murmured fondly as he set his hands on her hips. He planted his feet on either side of hers, legs buffeted by the narrow circle of her skirts. “Go on, touch me.”

She wasted no time in her compliance. She pulled at his shirt, tugging until the tails came loose from the waistband of his trousers. As her warm, smooth hands slipped beneath both his gray homespun and the cotton undershirt, he bent to nibble at the sleek line of her jaw. Her fingers found the ridges of his abdomen, and she made the most gorgeous cooing noise he’d ever heard.

Unable to resist, he shifted to catch her earlobe between his teeth, whispering, “You like that, honey? You like how I feel?”

Her head moved in a fervent nod as her hands continued their intimate mapping of his torso. “I do. You know I do.”

His muscles twitched under her touch. “I want to hear you say it,” he cajoled, his hands returning to the buttons of her blouse. Yesterday he hadn’t been able to pay proper attention to the berried shadows of her nipples beneath the thin layer of her shift, but he would rectify that now. His mouth watered in anticipation.

“Vain man.” Breathless, she stroked down his rib cage, her fingertips digging into his skin to urge him nearer still. Her lips found his neck above his shirt collar, then her teeth. A shudder wracked him as those sharp white teeth of hers marked him. “You feel glorious,” she confessed against his skin. “I would touch you for days, if you’d let me.”

Each word was like a lash, whipping him into a frenzy. Arousal prickled painfully along every inch of his body, hardening him and melting him at the same time, and he fell onto her with a heartfelt groan. “I’d let you. Moira, I’d let you touch me for
weeks
.” Months. Years.

She huffed out a laugh, rising on her toes to press hungry kisses up the side of his throat. “Somehow, I don’t think this is how courtin’ is s’posed to go.” Her lilt grew thicker with each new, bold stroke of her hands over his body.

“No,” he agreed, grinding his hips against her in rhythmic need. He could no longer ignore the throbbing of his cock in the overly tight confines of his trousers, but there was no ease in the motion. Hell. There would be no ease until he fisted himself in the lonely darkness of his boardinghouse room that night…unless he could convince Moira to explore him a little further south, below his straining belt. “But the last time I tried proper courting with you I ended up shooting three Indians, so—”

They stiffened at the same time, his words an untimely reminder of the danger they had faced, and still did. The danger from which he’d promised to protect her. “Moira.” He couldn’t keep the regret from his hoarse voice. “I need to—”

“I know.” She drew her hands from under his shirt, and his body immediately mourned the loss. Tipping her head back, she peered up at the patches of sky peeking through the branches over their heads. “However it is you choose to court me, Delaney, and to whatever end…” she laughed, wryly, “…I’m beginning to feel a titch…thwarted.”

His own laugh was equally ironic. “I hear you, honey.” He carefully buttoned up her blouse for her, then her vest, letting her watch the sky above her as he watched the steadying rise and fall of her chest. “Let’s get you home.” He collected his coat from the ground, slinging it over his arm, and settled his black hat atop his head.

She stepped around him, reaching for the straw hat he’d found in the forest barely an hour earlier. “Yes, let’s.”

Her disappointment poked at him, creeping beneath his skin to wind its way toward his heart. He grasped her hand, drew it through his arm. “We ought to give courting another try.”

“Oh?” She kept pace with him but gazed straight ahead, her hat dangling from her free hand by its pale ribbons.

He glanced over to take in the serious set of her features and the flush of uninhibited desire that refused to fade. “Eat supper with me tonight. Not in your cabin,” he rushed to assure her. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

An amused snort escaped her. “We’re not all that good at proper, Del.”

He liked that she’d shortened his name, and grinned to himself as they made their way down the hillside. “We could go to the boardinghouse. Mrs. Yates serves a nice evening meal.”

“She does, indeed.”

Feeling unaccountably nervous, he soldiered on. “I, uh, could come by at six to escort you to the boardinghouse.” He hesitated. “If you’d like to, that is.”

She kept her peace as they approached her cabin, but when she slipped her hand from where it rested lightly upon his forearm, she faced him. Gazing almost shyly up at him, blue eyes soft and color high, she said, “I’d like to, very much.”

“Good.” He beamed at her like the idiot she’d so recently accused him of being. “That’s good.”

Her lips parted as she stared at him. “Your smile.”

“What about it?” he asked, feeling the smile in question fade a bit.

She shook her head, loose red strands falling about her heart-shaped face in pretty disarray. “You’re a handsome man when you smile, Delaney Crawford. You ought to consider doing so more often.”

His smile returned, even as he felt a flush heat the tips of his ears. It’d been a long time since a woman had seen fit to call him handsome. “For you, Moira Tully, I’ll smile whenever you like.”

“Promises, promises,” she teased, seeming to recover her aplomb, and she climbed the short steps to her cabin door.

Just as her hand curled around the handle, she froze. “The bodies.”

“What?”

“You killed three men yesterday, in the clearing.” She turned on the top step, a frown furrowing her freckled brow. “I didn’t see any bodies today. Where were the bodies?”

A chill slid down his nape to pool at the base of his spine. “I took care of them this morning.” He’d collected his horse from the livery and borrowed a shovel, as well, and hauled the bodies of the fallen braves to a square of tillable soil he’d found in the forest. He’d dug the graves, buried those he’d killed. There was one more part of his ritual he had yet to complete, but that would have to wait until his work here was truly finished and the final three dog soldiers were dead in the ground. “You needn’t worry yourself on it.”

Moira simply stared at him, unblinking and intent. “Ah, but someone should worry over you, Del. And I think that someone should be me.” She pushed open the door to her cabin. “Be safe today, and I’ll see you at six.”

Chapter Nineteen

The letter changed everything.

Moira’s afternoon had been an exercise in nervous excitement. It was probably wrong of her to feel so anticipatory about their upcoming meal, knowing that Delaney was out hunting down the dog soldiers, but she anticipated it nonetheless. Any lingering shakiness from the events of yesterday had been replaced by the memory of her fingers tracing the muscles of his bare stomach, his large palms cradling her breasts through her chemise, their mouths meeting and clashing again and again. Her body still tingled with latent heat and frustrated longing.

She channeled her energy into productivity, scrubbing the floor of her cabin to within an inch of its life, then turning her manic attention to the hearth and windows. She beat the rugs and aired the sheer curtains, put fresh linens on the bed and—because she couldn’t stop thinking of
him
—cleaned her Colt revolver until it fairly sparkled.

By the time she remembered she needed sugar and cornmeal from Mr. Vangaard’s store, she had sweat straight through her blouse, rolled her sleeves past her elbows, lost her vest to a vicious grease stain and swept back her messy hair into a long, loose braid. Strangely unconcerned with her appearance, Moira smiled her way into the heart of Red Creek, practically waltzing into the general store.

“Hullo, Mr. Vangaard,” she called out cheerily as she moved toward the selection of cooking goods near the back. Pre-measured sacks of flour, sugars, cornmeal and oats sat neatly stacked on wooden shelves, ready for purchase, and she found what she needed easily enough. That she’d nearly forgotten her usual trip to the store, part of her carefully regimented weekly routine, both surprised and pleased her. It was the rare distraction that could untangle her from the very pointed memory avoidance constantly in play in her mind, but Delaney’s presence had managed to distract her, indeed—and, in doing so, told her what she’d been hoping so vigilantly for over the past few months.

She could move on from Boston.

Moira hadn’t ever thought there would be a time when she
wasn’t
thinking of the assault. It had changed her irrevocably and shaped every decision since—where she would go, what she would do, if she would go outside after sunset. When she woke in the mornings, her gaze would dart about the room, immediately checking for intruders or disturbances. When she fell asleep at night, she waited until the last possible moment, as exhaustion tugged at her drooping eyelids, before she would blow out the candle next to her bed.

And every time she saw the chapel at the end of the street, just a few short paces from the schoolhouse, she had to force herself to look away. Because she could still hear her attacker’s voice in her ear, the words slurred from drink and harsh between panting breaths.

“One of God’s pure little daughters, are you? I’ll fix that up, real nice. Fucking Catholics.”

She knew the disregard most people felt for Catholics in this country, had often seen evidence of their disdain. Before the war, it wasn’t unusual for men to spit at a nun when she walked past, or to call out obscenities. When the fighting broke out and the hospitals were understaffed and overrun with untrained volunteers, however, the sisters filled the void—Moira along with them. The general attitude had slowly begun to change, but war…war was a fickle, funny thing.

This one had turned brother against brother, brutal in its bloodshed, virulent hatred leaping across state lines and into the territories beyond. Sometimes, as Mother Superior had tried to explain it, a soldier would let his hate spill over into other areas of his life.

The night of the attack still rang clear in her head. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Moira had whispered, lying on her thin cot while Mother had kneeled at her bedside, stroking a hand through the damp hair at Moira’s temples.

“I know, Verity. This circumstance…” Mother had sighed softly, then whispered, “You are a casualty of the war.”

“But the fighting—”

“The man who hurt you…he is hurting too.”

Moira’s stomach had turned. “I don’t believe that. He laughed. He
laughed
in my ear, Mother.”