The Outlaw Takes A Bride (The Burnett Brides) (28 page)

His hand skimmed down her rib cage, over her stomach, lower, until he felt her wiry curls against his fingertips. He went still lower, seeking the silky folds between her legs. Searching and finding her very center, he delved his fingers into her hot, moist core.

Gently, he teased and stroked the tender petals as Beth gripped the tangled sheets, clutching them in her fists. Never had she experienced the frenzied passion that Tanner incited within her. Never had she enjoyed joining with a man until him.

Just the touch of his hand to her velvety folds left her hungry and shivering with need. She glanced up at him in the darkness and stared into his eyes as she cried out, disintegrating beneath his hand, quivering with her release.

She lay spent, her heart still racing, her breathing jagged as she clung to Tanner, his broad shoulders hovering above her.

He kissed her temple, her eyelids, and her nose. She could feel him rigid and hard against her leg, waiting patiently for her to catch her breath.

Only with this man had she experienced passion; only Tanner made her feel like a woman, sheltered and protected. He made her heart feel emotions she had long since given up on ever experiencing.

Tanner made her feel, made her hunger for desire, and that knowledge just increased her passion. She wanted to return the same feelings to him that he was giving to her. She wanted to know that he hungered for her, as she did for him.

“Beth,” he whispered huskily in the dark. “I need you. Love me.”

She whimpered at his words, the thought of his needing her astonishing. Did he mean physically or emotionally? Or both?

He bent his head and suckled her breast, her nipple hardening into a pointed kernel. With trepidation, she reached down until she located the proof of his desire between his legs. She touched him, wrapped her fingers around his shaft, and lovingly stroked him. She gazed into his passion-filled brown eyes, his face a grimace of pleasure and pain.

“Oh, God, Beth,” he moaned. “You’re turning me into liquid fire.”

The feel of him, hot and smooth, was intoxicating; she felt his blood pulsating through him. She drew the tip of his shaft between her fingers and skimmed her palm over the top.

He grabbed her hand, his breathing jagged. She glanced up into his eyes, staring at the desire shimmering within his gaze. With her free hand, she reached up and cupped his chin and pulled his mouth down to hers.

God, how she needed him. How she wanted only him. And the pure joy she felt at that thought thrilled her. Gentle, tough Tanner, who had cared for her, protected her, and battled for her. No one had ever sheltered her as he had. No one had ever cared quite like him. This sweet, gentle man who hid his true nature, seldom letting anyone in past his guard had won her heart and her soul.

His lips caressed hers, teasing and sweeping her mouth with an urgency that gripped her, holding her captive with his kiss. Her moans of pleasure were muffled as he took her hand and guided him into her center. She shifted to accommodate him, lifting her hips to meet his. She arched her back, her hips rotating slightly to give him deeper access into her center.

He plunged deeper into her, and she welcomed him with a sense of homecoming. This was her destiny, her fate. They were meant to be together. And no two people could ever have shared such a sense of happiness that being with Tanner brought Beth.

He filled her with a sweetness she’d never experienced as he thrust into her over and over until she thought she would go mad with ecstasy. She gave herself to him, risking it all for a man she’d trusted with her life, the very man she was giving her heart to.

With every driving stroke, she matched him, she met him, she loved him.

Passion burst forth like a shower of sparks, scorching her with its intensity as he rhythmically pushed her toward the flame.

She felt as if she were burning, and she glanced up into his gaze for one final soul-scorching look and felt as if she’d been pushed over the edge into the fire.

Beth was falling, tumbling, end over end, over a cliff, until she landed fractured and shattered in Tanner’s arms.

With a shuddered cry, he reached his own release, and together they lay helpless, sweating and completely undone by what had just transpired.

Beth ran a hand across his forehead. He was her safety line, her love, and she could only lie in his arms recovering, trying to pull herself slowly back together.

He was her beginning, he was the start of something brand-new that was wonderful and exciting, yet she was promised to his brother. Surely there was some way that they could find a way to be together, that the two of them could heal each other’s wounded hearts with a love that could last a lifetime.

She breathed a heavy sigh. “Dear God, what do we do now?”

Beth couldn’t believe she had voiced her thoughts out loud. At this moment in time she didn’t want to think about what tomorrow would bring. She only sought to enjoy tonight and the feel of Tanner’s arms around her.

“What made you come to my room?” he asked, ignoring her previous question.

“I heard you having another nightmare and couldn’t stand the thought of you suffering.” She sighed. “I had to wake you. I couldn’t bear to hear you moan.”

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in tight against him, her breasts crushed against his chest.

“What do you dream about?” she asked. “Your face is always so tense and frightened that I’m scared for you.”

At first, she didn’t think he was going to respond as he lay there beside her, his body stiffening, his voice silent. Finally, after minutes had passed, he spoke.

“When I was a kid, I had a friend that I went every-where with. He was like a brother to me.” Tanner took a deep breath and sighed as if it were too painful to remember. “When the war broke out, we both wanted to enlist right away, but our families refused to let us go. We were too young, they told us. But we were boys, and we dreamed of being heroes. We didn’t understand the realities of war.”

Tanner rubbed her arm, his absentminded touch some-how soothing as he spoke. “My father and I argued over which side was correct. He said both sides were at fault and that it was a senseless war. I was young and naive, and so damned arrogant. We clashed often and loudly over my wish to join the South. I can still hear Papa saying that the North would prevail, that the North had the factories, the resources, while the South had only its honor.”

He paused, his mouth so close to hers as they lay on their sides, facing one another, their legs entwined. She ran her toe along his muscled calf. “So what did you do?”

“I was already sixteen, so on Carter’s sixteenth birthday we left early one morning, before anyone could stop us. We traveled across country until we reached the Confederate troops. By this time the army would take any able body they could find, and we saw our first action within days. I remember feeling so excited that I was finally going to get to fight the Yankees. God, I was so stupid and naive.”

Tanner took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, his body tense, his voice quivering. “That battle was my first lesson in what war is really about.”

She ran her fingers down his arm until she found his trembling hand and grasped it in her own, mesmerized by the story of Tanner as a hopeful young boy going into battle. Quietly, she asked “What happened?”

He laughed, the sound hollow and filled with pain. “Very quickly you learn the rules of survival. You become immune to the blood, the broken bodies of men you care about. You learnit’s better not to be concerned about the people around you because they may not be there tomorrow. You remember the faces of the ones closest to your own age. You die a little inside each time you take a life.”

He shuddered at the memories, and her heart ached for him.

“So what happened?”

She watched as Tanner tensed and shrugged his shoulders, the motion an attempt to make his words less revealing. “Not much. We fought every day; we were constantly on the move. We walked until we wore holes in our boots, and the nights we went to bed without food were too many to count. Our clothing became filthy and our hair, full of lice.”

He shuddered at the memory. “I can still feel those nasty bugs crawling on my body. But the worst was the shortage of guns and ammunition. It’s hard to fight if you don’t have the gunpowder. Soon I realized my father was right. The army was short on supplies. The South didn’t have the factories necessary to win the war, and I could lose my life because of my own stubborn insistence on being a part of the carnage.”

Beth reached up and kissed him on the lips tenderly, a loving reminder that he was here in the present, that he had survived.

She waited for several minutes, but he didn’t say anything more, yet she knew that couldn’t be all.

“So what happened to Carter?” she finally asked, dreading his answer. “Did he come home?”

His body stiffened, and through the moonlight shadows she could see something painful in his expression.

“By July of 1864 we were sick of the war and were in the midst of the battle for Atlanta. It was July, it was hot, and Sherman had been bombarding the city for damn near a month. Dysentery was raging through the troops, we were weak, tired, and all I wanted to do was go home.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked.

“Pride, mostly. Couldn’t go home and face Papa as a loser. Like a fool, I wanted to come home the war hero.”

His hand stroked her naked skin, but his touch wasn’t a caress. His eyes looked hollow, vacant, his touch somehow rigid.

“What happened to Carter?” she asked again.

“The federal army was advancing on Atlanta. That afternoon, we were trying to cut through their flank. Carter had been sick, but we all had been ill. Our division had been combined with William Walker’s, but we were to try to take Bald Hill.” He hung his head and then raised his eyes to gaze into hers and even the darkness could not hide the pain she saw reflected in his eyes.

“We always fought together, looked out for one another. Carter was protecting my back. There was smoke everywhere, and screams kept renting the air. A cry caused me to glance behind me, and Carter was down on his knees, too weak to stand any longer, still trying to defend my back. When I ran to help him, a Yankee charged me.”

Tanner took a deep breath. “I was defending myself when a second soldier charged me. Carter rose from his knees and fought the attacker, but he was weak. I was supposed to be helping him, but I was still fighting off the first soldier boy. I killed the guy, then turned around in time to see Carter step between me and the second soldier’s attack. The man ran him through with his saber, intending to kill me, but Carter took the blow instead.”

Tanner was silent for several minutes as he gathered himself. “He gave his life for mine.”

His voice had dropped almost to a whisper, and by the moonlight streaming through the window, the tears were visibly rolling down his cheeks.

“I held him in my lap, trying to stop the bleeding. But there was nothing I could do. His wounds were fatal, and all I could do was hold him while he died. My best friend died in my arms. I held him, knowing it should have been me lying there instead of him.” Tanner swallowed. “Seventeen years old and one of the best people I had ever known, my friend, and he bled to death in my arms.”

Silence filled the darkened room. Beth wanted to wrap her arms around Tanner and hold him until he was finished; instead, she held his hand in hers.

His voice sounded tight and choked. “The army doc tried to tell me there was nothing I could have done to save him, but I knew I’d turned my back on him for a moment and he’d saved my life. I was alive because he had sacrificed his own life, and I didn’t deserve to live.”

Beth reached up and stroked the side of his face. His cheek was wet with tears. She didn’t say anything; rather, she gathered him in her arms, stroking him, giving him comfort.

After several minutes he cleared his throat. “Eight thousand men lost their lives that day. Me, I threw down my gun and walked away. I couldn’t fight anymore. I couldn’t kill any more innocent men or boys.

“It should have been me, Beth,” he cried. “It should have been me.”

For several minutes she just held him, and then she whispered “Shh. He wanted you to live. He loved you, and if your places had been reversed, you would have done the same for him.”

“No. I’m not a hero like Carter was. He was a good man.”

Beth didn’t know what to say. In her heart she believed Tanner was just as much of a hero, but he didn’t want to hear that now, and she knew it was useless to try to convince him otherwise. She let it go.

“That was ten years ago. What did you do after that?”

“I went to Louisiana. I hid in the swamps and drank until the war was over. I stayed there until I made the decision to get even with the Yankees for what they had done to me and for Carter’s death. That’s when I started my next career. I began robbing Yankee-owned banks.”

Beth felt her heart plunge to her knees. It was true. “Oh, Tanner, that was your face on that Wanted poster. You are a wanted man.”

“That was me. I was uncertain as to whether you recognized me or not,” he said his voice not bragging, just stating a fact. “At first, I enjoyed taking the money. It was a way to get even. I also thought it would be a way to die. I prayed I would get shot during a holdup, but somehow I was always spared.”