Wild Burn (8 page)

Then, so tentatively it made her want to growl and groan simultaneously, he settled one wide palm at the small of her back and pressed. Pressed her closer. Pressed her into him. His legs tangled in her skirts, pushing her narrow hoops back and away slightly, but it allowed their hips to meet, and the tiny hairs on her neck stood on end.

He was aroused. Prominently aroused.

She waited for fear to suffuse her. The last time she’d been this close to an erection had
not
been a good night for her, and in the end was the impetus for her departure from Boston. The vow she’d made to herself on the coach traveling to Denver—the vow to never let a man touch her thusly again—was as serious as the vow she’d once made to the Church. Yet here she was, five months later, and she found it as easy to shed that promise as she had her veil. Did that make her flighty? Shallow? She wanted to take herself to task for her fickleness, but this was too wonderful, too hot and too unrelentingly necessary to forsake this physical contact with him.

Perhaps she trusted him after all.

Delaney Crawford didn’t scare her. He didn’t scare her in the least. The only fear she felt was a simple one—where would this attraction take her? And would he come along for the ride?

She worried her bottom lip between her teeth as her gaze flicked over his stark features. Sweaty, shadowed, browned by the sun and weathered by the elements. And still dripping blood from the gash next to his left eye, which also appeared to be quickly darkening with a nasty purple bruise. “Make a decision,” she whispered.

He blinked. “What?” His hoarse voice carried a hint of confusion, having lost the thread of their quiet conversation.

Knowing it was this, between them, that had his brain scrambled, she felt powerful. In control. It was a delicious sensation, and she had to fight a self-satisfied smile as she loosened her grip on his hair.

Immediately, his other hand was there, manacling her wrist and holding her in place. “Don’t.” His fingers slid up to curve over hers, insisting they curl into his hair once more.

Instead, she stroked her fingertips into the dip at the base of his skull, soothing him, softening him. “We can’t stay in front of the Ruby Saloon all night.” Any second now they were going to attract some unwanted attention, though Moira was beginning to wonder if she cared.

Crawford did care, evidently, as his hands fell to his sides and he stepped away from her. “Apologies, Miss Tully. I… Thank you for offering to…to…”

“Tend your wounds,” she filled in solicitously, her jaw clenched against the stricken tension that invaded her body the moment she lost his touch.

“Tend my wounds,” he repeated, rather gratefully, she thought. Strange to see such a masculine man so jumpy. “But I can’t go anywhere alone with you. It wouldn’t be proper.”

“No, it wouldn’t. But you’re bleeding.”

“It’ll stop eventually.”

“You need tending.”

He shrugged and bent to pick up his hat from where it had fallen near the swinging saloon door. “I’ve had worse.”

“I’m sure you have,” she bit out, suddenly inexplicably irritated. “Regardless, you looked after me yesterday morning, and I’d like to return the favor.” She paused, sensing him waver in the face of her frustration—and she was thankful to see that he looked as thwarted as she felt at the absence of contact between them. “Please, Mr. Crawford.”

He slapped his hat lightly against his thigh and stared at the boardwalk beneath their feet. “My room is closer,” he mumbled, his brows snapping together in a grimace.

“Excellent.” She frowned. Her voice was too high, tight with…something. Not fear, but nervous excitement. Not aversion, but attraction, beginning to learn the heretofore unheeded signals of her body. Nothing would happen in his room, though—only cleaning his hurts—and certainly nothing to be nervous about, or excited. Unless he touched her. His hand on her back again, maybe? Or staying her wrist when she touched him. Because she
would
need to touch him.

Her stomach leapt at the thought. “Lead the way.”

Without a word or a glance in her direction, Crawford strode past her toward the boardinghouse. She followed closely, her hands folded before her. She ignored the clammy heat dampening her palms. She was a nurse. Or she
had
been
a nurse. What she was about to do was basic routine, and while she could simply send him to his room by himself to wash up, she wanted to see if he needed stitching. If he did, she would stitch him up—Mrs. Yates was sure to have needle and thread she’d let Moira use, should that be the case.

She barely noticed when they entered the vacant entryway of the boardinghouse, so lost in her musings. Later, she would vaguely remember the echoing
click
of her heels as a contrasting rhythm in her ears to his solid, booted footfalls on the stair. When they came to the end of the hall and stopped before a door bearing the numeral eight, she had to blink. “This is my old room.”

He froze, his hand on the knob. “Your old room?”

She nodded, squeezing her hands together until the knuckles turned white. “The cabin wasn’t finished yet when I first arrived in Red Creek,” she explained softly, wondering why she felt nearly dazed as she stared at the door. “I lived here for a month. In this room.”

“This room,” he repeated as he turned the handle and allowed her to precede him into the small space. She glanced around, hearing him close the door behind them, the muted
snick
of the latch catching in the frame. “My room.”

She turned to face him. “Your room.” It even smelled of him, now, different from when she’d stayed there. When she had entered her room at the end of a day of teaching, exhausted and frustrated and thankful in equal turns, she’d often been greeted by the scent of fresh-cut flowers—courtesy of Mrs. Yates—or hints of rose soap from her morning toilette.

But now it was very much his room, with the spare evidence of his belongings revealed in the low light of the wall lamp. A saddle sat in the corner, and his pack and bedroll rested next to the small vanity table. His duster hung on the hook by the door, and his razor, mug and brush sat by the basin beneath the mirror. Leather and harsh soap and clean linen were the overriding scents of the room, but there was something of
him
there too, indescribable and yet essential.

As was the man himself. Crawford cleared his throat and stuck his hat on the hook over the top of his coat. As he crossed to sit on the edge of the bed, he gestured to the basin. “Should be clean water in there. Otherwise—”

“Otherwise, I know where to fetch it from.” She was glad to be spurred into action again. It would have been all too easy to just stand there in the middle of their shared room and ponder the seeming import of that sharing. She rolled up her sleeves as she checked the contents of the pitcher and basin, and indeed, the water was clear and fresh. Mrs. Yates had also provided him with two clean hand towels, draped over the edge of the vanity, and Moira appropriated those as well. After pouring some of the cold water into the basin, she wet one of the towels and wrung it out, then carried it and the basin the few steps to the bed. “Hold this.” She thrust the bowl into Crawford’s hands.

The blood cleaned away quickly under the damp corner of the towel and her scrubbing. She made a concerted effort to be gentle, to not tug at the split skin next to his left eye and cause him more pain, yet he didn’t even flinch when she began probing the edges of the gash. In fact, she didn’t think he was breathing. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he grated, his eyes locked on a spot somewhere over her shoulder.

“Try to remember to breathe.”

He laughed, but it wasn’t an amused sound. “Harder than you’d think, Miss Tully.”

She combed her fingers through his hair, attempting to remain as clinical as possible as she revealed his brow. “You should call me Moira.” It was the second time she’d said as much to a man that day, and she wondered briefly why the familiarity mattered to her.

“I really shouldn’t.” He sighed, and his striking jade eyes met hers before returning to her shoulder. “And I shouldn’t have brought you to my room.”

She
tsk
ed with false lightness. “I didn’t give you much choice.”

“I could’ve said no.”

“So why didn’t you?” she asked softly as she tilted his face toward the lamplight, so as to better examine the bruise forming above his cheekbone. Gingerly, she pressed two fingertips to the spot. “Does that hurt?”

“No.”

“Liar. It’s a bruise. Of course it hurts.”

He shifted his head out of her grasp and stared up at her. “There is nothing truly painful about this…” he gestured to his face with one hand before returning it to the basin in his lap, “…except the knowledge that, eventually, you’ll stop touching me.” His eyes trapped her. “That’s what hurts. Moira.”

She sucked in a breath, her hands hovering on either side of his face. “Why didn’t you say no?” She was desperate to know, to have her suspicions confirmed. Daringly, she inched forward until she stood between his legs, settling one hand on his shoulder as the other, the one still gripping the wet towel, fell to her side.

His jaw clenched. “Because I guess it turns out I like pain,” he muttered darkly, and slid a big hand up to cup the back of her neck.

But she was already bending to him, her eyelids fluttering closed as his warm breath fanned across her lips. He paused, halting her scant millimeters from where she wanted to be, and then his tongue, wet and oh so perfect, traced the curve of her top lip.

Her lungs ceased inflating. Her heart halted its pumping rhythm. Her throat closed, and her lips parted, and her toes curled inside her shoes. And then a whimper, soft and high and needy, escaped her, and he took pity on her and pulled her mouth to his.

All at once, every one of her organs began to function again, and she became dizzy beneath the hunger of his lips. Because even though she stood taller than him at the moment, he owned the kiss, and her mouth, and her entire being. He was hot, thorough, generous and dangerous with his nipping teeth and his seeking tongue. She shuddered when his beard rasped over her chin. His fingers speared into the braid above her nape, loosening the pins even as he fisted his hand there, much as she had earlier done to him.

The tingling, shocking sensation his firm grip elicited was incredible. It stroked down her body like a bold caress until it found the aching spot between her thighs and lingered. Oh, how it lingered. Each greedy lap of his tongue against hers, each new slant of his lips as he feasted on her mouth, sent undiluted wanting arrowing to her core until she was molten, moaning, gasping as she used both hands to clutch at the braces crisscrossing his brawny shoulders. The towel dropped heedlessly on the bed.

She forgot everything but the whiskey taste of him and leaned in, desperately needing the foreign, wild heat in her limbs to fuse them together in this stunning moment. The hand at her nape massaged, seduced, and his other hand came up to land with a possessive squeeze on her hip.

Then the sound of sloshing water penetrated the rush of her pulse in her ears, and a split second later the basin he’d been holding crashed to the floor, soaking their feet as china shattered on hardwood.

Moira stumbled backward, breathing hard. She stared dumbly at the broken bowl, lightheaded and feeling half-drunk, her lips swollen and her hands shaking. She wanted. She
wanted
, so badly, and she understood what he had meant about hurting.

Nothing compared to this empty, throbbing, desolate ache. Nothing. Not even getting shot.

“Shit,” Crawford said.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at him sitting there on the edge of the bed. Panic, frenetic and confusing, gripped her by the throat as she hurried to the door. “You don’t need stitching.”

“Moira—”

“I have to go.” She scrabbled blindly for the door handle and twisted hard. “I have to go, Mr. Crawford.” But even as she opened the door—flung it so wide that anyone who’d been standing in the hallway could’ve seen the scene behind her—she couldn’t make her feet move.

She heard him stand. Heard the crunch of porcelain beneath his boots. Heard him cross the room to halt at her back, so close that she could
feel
the raucous thumping of his heart as a tactile echo against her spine. One arm slipped around her waist and pulled her into him, her back to his front, and she sighed at the wondrous heat of it.

She sensed him dipping his head toward her good ear. “It’s Delaney,” he whispered. “Or Del. But not Mr. Crawford. Not anymore.” The arm holding her tightened as his other banded high across her chest. His lips pressed into the side of her neck. “Moira,” he breathed, and used the tip of his tongue to trace a slow, torturous figure eight over her flushed skin.

She let him hold her like that for another heartbeat, then two, three. Four. But eventually she stiffened her spine, and he released her. Without looking back at him—oh, God, she still couldn’t make herself look at him—she murmured, “I have to go, Delaney.”

Because she liked the feel of his name as much as she liked the feel of
him
, and because she still burned, she fled into the hall, down the stairs and into the mountain night.

Chapter Ten

It had been the better part of two days. Two long, terrible, painful days where Del had been so aroused and frustrated that he’d snapped at everyone he came into contact with, including the maternal Mrs. Yates, who didn’t deserve his surliness. But he couldn’t help it, and though he wanted—needed—the relief of a warm body, the thought of utilizing the wares found at the Ruby Saloon felt gut-wrenchingly wrong.

Fucking freckles.

Her face when she’d pulled back from their kiss, the glazed look in her dilated blue eyes… That image had haunted him for two days. He’d close his eyes with his head on the pillow and be instantly reminded that this was
her
room.
She
had slept in this bed, beneath this coverlet, and Lord only knew what she’d done here.