Maybe at another time, Jeff would have taken
a moment to soothe Allie and let her catch her breath. But her
feverish release and the temptation of her sweetness had driven him
to the point of near climax. Now she lay open and ripe before him
with her hair spilling around her like a medieval bride, compelling
him to ease the demanding ache that dragged at his belly.
Mindful of her virginity, he pushed forward
to join her moist, heated flesh and met resistance. Allie froze
beneath him and her pliant limbs tensed. A whimper of pain sounded
in her throat.
“
Jeff—”
“
It’s all right,” he intoned, “it’ll be
all right.” Steadily, he pressed past the seal on her femininity
that had stood like a sentinel, waiting for this night, waiting for
him. She squirmed, as if to pull away.
Jeff sheathed himself, then he gripped her
hips to hold her still. “Wait, Allie—it’ll pass.” It took every
ounce of willpower he had to lie within her tight warmth and not
move. Fire licked through him—Allie felt like a glove of molten
honey surrounding him. Staring down into her beautiful face, he
lowered his head to kiss her. When he could stand it no longer, he
deepened the kiss and completed their joining with a long, slow
stroke.
Allie relaxed as the discomfort subsided,
relishing the feel of Jeff inside her. He was part of her now, and
always would be no matter what happened. Running her hands over his
back, she felt the hollow of his spine, and the powerful flex of
tendon and muscle.
“
God, Allie,” he groaned, his breathing
rough and ragged. He thrust again and again, faster now. As he did,
she felt a restless urgency building again. It grew with each push
and pull that Jeff plied her with, and she gripped the edge of the
mattress. Could it happen again, that sensation so pleasurable that
it verged upon pain? That loss of self that transcended the
body—almost as if their very souls touched?
Faster and more powerful was each stroke,
carrying Allie ever closer to that exquisite conflagration. She
lifted her hips, and Jeff pushed himself up to the full length of
his arms. Gazing up at him, she found him beautiful and masterful,
bathed in sweat and moonlight. He drove her on, advancing, ebbing,
until Allie felt as if her earthly body were stripped away, leaving
only her soul. Her muscles contracted fiercely, pulling Jeff into
her with surging spasms that left her weeping and calling him.
Jeff plunged forward, harder, more urgent,
more desperate for his own release. He seemed to tower over her,
and she saw the tendons in his neck defined by the moonlight. At
last, with one final thrust he strained hard against her body while
a low, anguished groan escaped him and white-hot pulsations shook
him. Lowering himself to his elbows, he buried his face against her
neck.
Finally, their breathing slowed and Jeff
sighed with a sound of replete contentment. He rolled them over
slowly, and they lay in the darkness with the sheets tangled around
them, listening to the soft night. From its quiet came the faint
croak of the frogs down at the creek.
“
Are you comfortable?” he asked,
pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“
Yes, I’m fine.
Jeff . . . did—did I do it right?”
She felt him chuckle. “You did it better than
right.”
“
I guess you have lots of experience,
being a man and—”
“
Allie, there has been no other woman
since my wife. Just you.”
That pleased her enormously, although she
couldn’t say why.
This communion, the giving as well as
taking—this was what it meant to love someone completely, Allie
realized, with heart and mind and body. Putting her hand on his
chest, she felt his heart beating beneath her palm, strong and
steady. Her own emotions lay so close to the surface, she wished
she could tell Jeff about the love she held for him. But shyness
and fear of rejection held her back. What would he think—that one
of those Ford sisters, and the spinster of the pair to boot,
fancied herself to be in love with him? No, she had this night,
just as he’d said, and she would live on its memory for the rest of
her life.
But what kind of life would it be? Would she
be able to forgive Olivia for her duplicity? Her options were just
about nonexistent, as they often were for women.
“
I don’t know how I’ll go on now,” she
said, her words muffled against his shoulder. “Things will never be
the same between my sister and me, and I can’t act as if they are.
But I can’t really imagine leaving her, either. I’m not sure she
would survive.”
If God or Fate had ever handed a man a golden
opportunity, Jeff knew he was getting one now. With Althea Ford he
felt whole again. He could not forget Wesley Cooper or the night at
Wickwire’s—the event had worn a groove in his mind that would never
go away. But drowning himself in whiskey had not brought the boy
back, either. Nothing would. For the first time in two years, Jeff
thought there might be hope for the future.
Before he had time to overthink it, he lifted
Allie’s chin so that he could look into her eyes. He spoke with the
urgent desperation of a captive who saw a chance to escape his
prison. “Come away with me, Allie. We’ll go away from this place,
even leave Decker Prairie. There’s nothing for us here.”
Allie clutched the sheet to her breasts and
stared at him, plainly amazed by his suggestion. “You mean leave
Olivia?” Even now, after everything that had happened, he knew her
ties to her duty were strong.
“
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.” He
spoke in earnest, hushed tones, and brushed her injured cheek with
a tender touch. “Allie, do you—maybe you feel—” The words came hard
to Jeff. He wanted to tell her how he felt about her, that some
nights he dreamed of holding her in his arms and dancing with her
until sunrise. But sometimes those dreams ended with him clutching
nothing except the wind to his chest. Trust was something he’d
lost—Sally had stolen most of it, and the past years had taken the
rest. God, he wanted to tell her that he loved her, but it scared
him spitless when he thought of taking that risk again. Her moonlit
expression was expectant, as if she waited to hear more from him
than he could tell her. He smoothed her hair back from her
forehead. “I don’t want to promise something I can’t deliver. So I
guess I’m asking a lot without offering much.” The missing pieces
of his suggestion were obvious, and by their very absence, lay
between them like a third entity in the bed. “But a life with me
will be better than what you’ve had here, I promise
that.”
Allie continued to watch him in the darkness.
Leave Olivia? He knew it was an earth-shaking suggestion, even
though she’d admitted to wishing she were gone from here. But Jeff
had said nothing of marriage. In fact, he had not spoken of love,
and he felt like a coward for it. He knew the feeling he had for
her, though, as strong and vital as a living thing. Maybe it would
be enough to heal them both eventually. Maybe.
“
I—I’ll have to think about it,
Jeff.”
Pulling her into his arms, he was filled with
an aching tenderness he’d not felt in such a long time, it was
almost a stranger to him. Jeff couldn’t remember the last time he’d
felt so much emotion that wasn’t tinged with guilt or regret. “I
understand, Allie. You think it over. But I really believe there’s
a future for us now. A reason to keep looking forward.”
Allie turned her face against his neck and
Jeff sighed, knowing that sleep would come to him more easily
tonight.
Just then, over the top of Allie’s head he
caught sight of another feminine shadow lurking just outside the
door. Olivia. The shadow vanished then, and he heard the faintest
sound of bare feet retreating. He opened his mouth to tell Allie,
and then changed his mind. He guessed that this was one of the few
happy moments in Allie’s life thus far, and he didn’t want it
tarnished by any talk of Olivia.
If her sister had stood outside listening, he
didn’t like it, but so be it. Maybe she would realize that there
was more to life than living like a mannequin in a store window,
with a servant to do her bidding.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A horse nickered outside.
A fine, sleek filly kicked up her heels in a
new corral that Jeff had built with his own hands, on the land that
he owned. He should go out there and give her a ration of oats, but
another filly, his beautiful, flame-haired wife, was commanding all
of his attention right now. She stood before him in their bedroom,
her slim fingers slowly and deliberately unbuttoning each button on
his shirt, one at a time. He saw desire, warm and smoky, in her
eyes. Then she slipped her warm hands inside to caress his ribs and
back, and she pressed damp kisses to his chest. She smelled of
lavender and rainwater, and he knew the promise of intense pleasure
waited in her lips and soft curves.
Jeff stirred and realized he’d been dreaming
again. He was still in the lean-to. But this time, Allie was with
him. He pulled her closer, pressing his cheek against her silky
hair. She lay on her side within his embrace, with her soft bottom
nestled against his groin. He could spend ten thousand nights like
this, a million. With Allie at his side the future, which had
recently looked so bleak, now seemed full of possibilities.
The most beautiful part was, they had all the
time in the world to plan for it. He smiled in groggy contentment
before he began to drift off again.
Then he heard another nicker. He was
instantly alert. It was real, not part of a dream. He waited, not
breathing, not moving, just listening. His heart pounded in his
chest.
There was no horse on the Ford farm. Even
Kansas, Elisha Smithfield’s old mule, had been returned to its
rightful owner. Someone was out there. He heard a drone of low male
voices, rising and falling as if buffeted by the wind, too
indistinct for him to understand over the blood rushing through his
head.
After tucking Allie in more securely, he
eased himself from the bed, silently cursing the corn shuck
mattress for crackling like a crate of burning tissue paper.
“
Jeff?”
“
It’s all right, honey, you go back to
sleep.”
She lifted herself up to one elbow. “What’s
the matter?”
“
I just want to check on something
outside. I thought I heard a noise. It’s probably nothing.” Closing
his hand over his belt buckle to keep it from clanking, he grabbed
his pants and put them on.
“
Oh, well come back soon.”
He stepped over to the bed and dropped a kiss
on her forehead. “I will.” Then he groped in the shadows for his
boots, but couldn’t find them. He couldn’t go tearing out into
possible danger barefoot, but neither could he risk lighting a
lantern. Damn it, he needed to get out there, now, to see what was
going on.
Just as he was about to give up and take his
chances in the thistles and blackberries outside, his hand fell
upon leather. Forgoing socks, he jerked on the boots, then crept
out of the lean-to, quiet as a cat and keeping to the shadows. He
wasn’t sure what time it was, but a glance at the low-slung moon
and the eastern sky told him it must be just moments before dawn.
Next to the barn stood an axe that he’d sharpened just the day
before, and he wrapped his fingers around the handle.
By the eerie light of the coming dawn, he saw
a distant feminine figure running along the path that led from the
field to the house. Stripped of any discernible color by the
ethereal gloom, her dress seemed to almost glow against the
backdrop of darkness, the full skirts drifting around her like a
ghostly shroud. Olivia. What the hell was she up to out here? She
stopped to look at him, like a deer in flight, then shot off again
and scurried to the shelter of the back porch. He didn’t bother to
talk to her; she was close enough to safety if she needed it.
Barely breathing so he could hear, he took to
the same path she had used. Careful. Twigs, parched weeds, and last
autumn’s withered leaves carpeted the earth. Each time he stepped,
the debris snapped and rustled beneath his boots. He hunched low
and crept forward cautiously. Probing the shadows with eyes that
burned with the strain, he felt the muscles in his shoulders and
back knot up with tension.
Again he heard men’s voices, louder now, as
if in argument. Ahead of him, a parked wagon loomed in stark
silhouette next to the field he’d planted. Instinct honed by his
years as a lawman made him extremely wary, and for the first time
since he’d shot Wes, he wished he had a gun strapped to his hip.
God. Even if he had one, could he hold a steady bead on a target?
Thoughts galloped through his mind—he wished he had a gun, he
wished he had a drink, he wished he had more courage so his insides
would stop shaking.
He felt the smooth axe handle beneath his
rough palm. It was no match for a shotgun, but if he was lucky, the
intruders wouldn’t be armed. He almost laughed. Who besides Jeff
himself would trespass on another’s property in the middle of the
night without a gun?
Still crouching low to the ground, he crept
up to the small wagon, raising his head only high enough to scan
the field on its opposite side. At his approach, the horse danced
restlessly in its harness and gave a nervous snort. Jeff could only
hope the sound didn’t alert the intruders to his presence. Since he
was without a firearm to defend himself, he needed the element of
surprise to even out the odds. On the tailgate of the wagon box he
saw a large sack. Running his free hand over its contours, he gave
it a quick jostle and determined by touch that it held something
heavy. The light was too poor for him to read the print on the
cloth. What the hell was going on here? He stole another quick
glance over the wagon box and tightened his grip on the axe.