Wild Burn (22 page)

Her body had felt different as she stretched and yawned that morning, blinking blearily in the pale light of dawn. She’d fallen asleep with lambent pleasure still tripping along her nerve endings, wrapped in Del’s warm, hard-muscled embrace. Her mind had been too fuzzy with shock and bliss to properly sift through the newness of her changed circumstances. Because her circumstances
had
changed.

Moira had felt joy, relief, utter intimacy, and all with the same man. He couldn’t erase what had happened to her in Boston—though she knew he wished he could—but he’d given new meaning to an act with which her body had spent long months struggling to come to terms. He’d painted over the ghosts of pain with a reality of pleasure, splintering the remembered injuries, mental and physical, so they could heal again—this time softer, with edges rounded and specifics smudged. She was so thankful to him, for him.

That gratitude, of course, was made all the more complicated when she realized it colored the other emotions she experienced upon waking. She was bereft by his absence, stabbed with loss and confusion and the tiniest hint of embarrassment as she had stroked a fleeting hand over the empty half of her bed. Memories of that night swamped her, blinding her with flashing images of caresses, kisses, the sensation of his body joining with hers, the spill of wet heat between them. She’d spent the rest of her Sunday alternating between the fear that she’d done something wrong—something that drove him away—and the angry certainty that
she
had been wronged when he chose to leave her without so much as a goodbye kiss.

On Monday, she’d left her cabin, jittery with nervous excitement, knowing she’d likely see him before her day was through. His habits developed over his past week in Red Creek seemed to include disturbing her at her work, and the sight of the schoolhouse’s friendly blue door appeared more brilliantly blue, to her biased eyes, than ever before. But there had been no interruptions, not during the morning’s mathematics lesson nor the afternoon’s continued recitation from
The Pilgrim’s Progress
—even her far-too-slow cleaning of the blackboard hadn’t resulted in a “chance” encounter between them. When the sun gradually slipped behind the mountains, and she drew the curtains in her cabin for the evening, Moira had taken a deep but shaky breath and allowed herself to be disappointed. Her eyes were tired from constantly scanning her surroundings for him. Her shoulders ached from how tensely she’d held them and for so many hours while she’d waited for him to come by and sweep her into a scorching, romantic embrace.

Perhaps she was harboring a few too many sentimental expectations. It was just that it had been so lovely, and sensual, and Del had put her at ease the entire time. He’d looked at her in a way that had her thinking maybe…maybe he had a few sentimental expectations of his own. And he’d cuddled her so close afterward, making her feel safe and cherished and, yes, desired.

It was the first time she’d been allowed to revel in her femininity. She wanted to recapture that feeling every single day for the rest of her life, and though she knew it made her greedy, she didn’t care one whit.

She did, however, care that there was only one man she wanted to help imbue her with that feeling of womanliness, and said man was conspicuously and abruptly absent from her daily, formerly regimented routine. She almost wondered if he’d turned sneak thief and left town, but she felt certain John White Horse would have checked up on her, had that been the case.

So now, Tuesday morning—the day of her dreaded deposition, a day she’d greeted after a fitful sleep—was upon her, and she turned to face the door, wondering no little amount who she might, or might not, find beyond it. Grabbing her nicest hat from atop her chest of drawers, a simple circular-brimmed creation made of pale fawn-colored felted wool and shaped with black grosgrain ribbon, Moira attached it at a rather jaunty angle with a blue-glazed pin to the coil of her braid. The letter from Mother Superior had been smoothed flat and neatly folded into a square, and it sat like so much lead in the bottom of her drawstring reticule, buried beneath her Colt revolver, three dollars, a half a stick of mint hard candy, a nub of a pencil and a tiny tin of soothing rose-petal balm. Draping a thin shawl woven from the softest cream-colored wool about her shoulders, she took a deep breath and flung open her door.

No one waited for her outside.

The last vestiges of an early autumn fog drifted near the damp ground, silencing any noise from the town proper and reminding Moira suddenly, brutally, of that morning, little more than a week ago, when she’d stood in a misted clearing and stared down the barrel of Del’s gun. How drastically her life had changed in the course of a week.

How drastically
she
had changed.

She bit back a sigh, not wanting to dip any further into her own internal theatrics while facing an undoubtedly long day, and turned to latch the door behind her. Even if he didn’t want to see her and regretted their night together—what else was Moira meant to conclude from his lack of contact?—Del had said he would escort her to Denver, and she intended to hold him to his word. Which meant she needed to make her way over to the boardinghouse, no matter how uncomfortably her stomach clenched at the thought of facing him after having made love with him, knowing he didn’t feel the same as she.

He didn’t love her.

Then again, maybe she didn’t love him, she told herself sternly. Maybe it was that gratitude, mixed with other feelings that made her vulnerable, feelings like affection and amusement and trust and, yes, frustration and anger. She liked sniping at him, and that had to be unhealthy, didn’t it? If she truly loved him, they would be peaceable and calm, and he wouldn’t irritate her with his high-handed gunslinging, and she wouldn’t constantly want to put her hands on his body. Her mouth too, come to think of it.

The clank and jostle of an approaching wagon reached her ears as Moira stepped away from her door. Glancing up, she watched a white-socked chestnut and a bay bearing a four-pointed star on its forehead come to a halt a few yards away. The man looping the reins around the brake was unfamiliar, his head down-bent and visage obscured by the wide brim of his hat…but after hopping down he approached her with a purposeful stride.

His broad shoulders were clad in a coat of forest-green wool, cut with obvious care to his loose-limbed, muscular form, the shirt beneath a pristine white and his waistcoat a charcoal gray trimmed with taupe edging. Dark gray trousers carrying a faint pinstripe molded more tightly to his thighs than was probably fashionable, and tapered down to tuck into calf-hugging boots that, while polished, had obviously seen better days.

Those boots kept getting closer to where she stood.

Her gaze skated back up the man’s rangy body, touching briefly on the holster riding his lean hip, the shining silver buckle of his belt, the neat black tie that disappeared into the vee of the waistcoat to lay flat against his brawny chest. His face was still hidden in the shadows cast by the hat’s dark brim.

Which was when she recognized the hat.

Brushed clean of dirt and dust, yes, but that hat had stared her down in the clearing last week and gone a round against Jacob Matthews outside the schoolhouse. It had flown over a swinging saloon door and been snatched off its owner’s head by her shaking hands as she’d found herself backed against a tree and kissed into oblivion.

Then he lifted his head, and she gasped.

“Miss Tully.” He touched sun-browned fingers to the hat’s brim in respectful salutation, and he smiled at her.

Deep dimples cut into the sculpted hollows of his lean cheeks, his clean-shaven jaw sharp and defined. There was a shallow cleft in his blunt chin, and his lips now looked as lush as they had felt moving sensuously over hers. His hair had been trimmed, the dark locks curling more than ever as they brushed against his coat collar.

He was handsome. Absurdly, appallingly handsome, almost to the point of beauty, and young too—the man was positively youthful without his gray-threaded beard. Her gaze couldn’t decide where to land, and for the first time since they met, Moira was intimidated by him.

“Good morning,” she managed hoarsely, locking her eyes on the tidy knot of his necktie.

“You look lovely, Moira.”

A strangled laugh escaped her, or at least she thought it was a laugh. Perhaps it was a closer cousin to a groan or a sob. “Bloody hell.” She squeezed her eyes shut. He was too pretty. She wanted his beard back, and his tangled hair and his well-worn, dusty clothing—anything to cover up the fact that Delaney Crawford looked exactly like the Southern gentleman he’d probably been once upon a time.

And she was just an Irish ex-nun from the slums of Boston.

A blast of heat hit her, and she realized he’d stepped closer, no more than a handful of inches away, and then his hand, tough with calluses, slid over the exposed skin of her nape. His breath puffed gently over her lips, which had parted when he touched her, and though she didn’t open her eyes, she sensed him lowering his head, slowly, oh so slowly.

His kiss was languorous, soft and lazy and unprepossessing, and without thought, she melted against him. Her hand came to rest on his sturdy chest, and she tilted her head back in his hold when the brims of their hats bumped. There was a quiet
whoosh
of air, and she knew he’d removed that telling black hat, and she slipped her other hand up to play in new, shortened locks that were positively silky between the pads of her fingertips.

It was different, kissing without the coarse brush of his scruffy beard. Different, but good, and her body tensed as a fresh, foreign awareness slammed into her veins with all the subtlety of cannon fire. Her hands drifted to his jaw, his skin smooth and hot beneath her palms. Oh, but she
liked
this—the surprising intimacy of his bared face resting between her hands—and she smiled against his mouth.

He trembled, his kiss turning suddenly fierce. His fingers at the back of her neck squeezed possessively, and the slant of his lips angled so that she was forced to open, to taste, to give in as she never had to him before. Where once she had felt an equal partner in the stormy attraction between them, now a primitive pulsing inside her urged her to submit. Her body curved more tightly into the larger bow of his, the reaction organic and instinctual.

Looping his arm around her waist, he held her to him as his hips aligned with hers. The evidence of his arousal set fire to the latent heat pooling low in her abdomen, molasses-thick and just as deliciously sweet. He groaned into her mouth when she rubbed sinuously against him, then tore away from her lips with a ragged exhalation. “Moira.” It was a plea and a reprimand rolled together on his drawling tongue, a complement to his flushed cheeks and dilated green eyes.

She leaned back in his arms, taking in his changed appearance once more. She smiled.

Lust, it seemed, was a wonderful equalizer: No longer did she find his good looks intimidating.

Her smile quickly changed to a scowl, and she dropped her hands from his face to punch a solid jab into his shoulder. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I—”

Another punch, her fists coming to rest on his chest. “I may not be very experienced, but I’m fairly certain that sneaking out of my cabin before first light and then avoiding me for two days is not the proper behavior of a new lover, and—”

He cut off her rant with a hard kiss, which, embarrassingly enough, went no little way toward smoothing her ruffled feathers. When he lifted his head again, he let the tip of his nose nuzzle hers in a blatant show of affection that shocked her into deeper silence. “I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I didn’t call on you.”

She swallowed past the nervous lump in her throat. “Why didn’t you?” Her palms turned clammy, and she stepped back out of his resisting arms to hide her hands in the folds of her skirt. Here was where he would tell her he didn’t want to see her again, that he was leaving town, and thank you for the night together, and what the hell was she going to do when he was gone?

Del was the best thing that had ever happened to her—better than the Church, better than Red Creek, better than pretty underthings. So, really, how could she be expected to live life as normal, going about her days as if she’d never been hopelessly drawn into the maelstrom of damnable emotion that had existed between them from the moment he’d shot her? Every day, she would look in the mirror and see the notch in her ear, maybe lift her hand to trace the uneven flesh with a tentative finger, and she would have to brace her aching chest against the knowledge that, for one week, she had come
this close
to experiencing something she’d never dared dream about at Our Lady of the Bleeding Heart.

Tears threatened at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back, because she would not cry, damn it, and damn him to hell for putting her through this. She wanted her control returned to her, and the sooner he left, the sooner her life would resume its careful, plodding existence here in Red Creek.

Why had she never realized until now how dreadfully dull her life had become? How dare he spoil this for her, with his smiles and his touches and his growling and his kisses and the fevered way in which he’d stared down at her in the moments before he’d spilled his seed inside her.

How
dare
he.

It seemed he would reach for her, but his arms fell to his sides, one hand coming to rest at his hip above the holstered pistol, an action obviously borne of thoughtless habit. “I was in Denver until late last night. Needed to handle a few things concerning the Indians here, and I wanted to figure out where I was taking you this morning.”

Her tongue felt thick and unwieldy in her mouth. “But why did you leave without…without saying anything to me?” she whispered as her gaze dropped to the ground.

“Because sometimes I’m an idiot.” His fingers curled under her chin, lifted it until she stared into those familiar pale jade eyes of his. “I thought I should go before anyone was awake. Didn’t want your reputation in Red Creek to suffer at my hands.” A faint blush flagged his cheeks. “And you looked so lovely sleeping, I couldn’t bring myself to wake you.”