by Lily Reynard
Abby didn't release his hand even after they seated themselves on the log, which overlooked a large pool in the stream. She'd put on a hat and a pair of gloves before leaving the house, and looked every inch a lady.
Maybe Jim already kissed her, but it looks like I might still have a chance at courting her.
Wait—is that what I want? To court her with an eye to marrying her?
Yes, he thought. That feels right. Maybe Jim is only after a quick roll in the hay, but I want more.
Hand-in-hand, they sat quietly for a while. The eagle eventually rewarded them with a long, low swoop over the sparkling water of the stream, wingtips skimming the surface as a large, talon-tipped yellow foot reached down, closed on a sleek fish, and pulled it into the air.
"Oh!" Abby exclaimed softly, her expression suffused with wonder as the eagle landed on a patch of grass on the opposite bank and began to tear into the fish with its yellow hooked beak.
She turned to Dan, and her smile did funny things to his chest. "Thank you for bringing me here. Maybe this is a hard country, but I find that I already love it. I can't imagine returning to Philadelphia…or any city."
"I'm glad to hear that," Dan said truthfully. He'd been hoping that he'd been mistaken with his initial prediction about Abby turning tail and fleeing back east within the first week. "And I'm real glad you seem to be getting on with Chris."
She nodded. "He's already become very dear to me. And it looks like you have both taken excellent care of him." She paused, and a tiny line appeared between her honey-colored eyebrows. "What was your sister like? I'd like to be able to tell Christopher a little bit about her when he's old enough to understand."
"Well, Clara was about five years older than us," Dan began. He braced himself for a flood of unwelcome emotion. After her death, he and Jim had found it easier to bury the pain and avoid talking about their sister. "I guess I should start at the beginning. We had a younger sister, Betsy, who died of a fever when she was seven. Mom told us that she really wanted another baby. It, uh, ended badly."
He and Jim didn't talk about their parents much, either. They'd found that the only way to keep from getting bogged down in their heavy losses was to keep moving forward and try not to look back.
But he found it impossible to refuse Abby's innocent request.
"Mom and the baby didn't make it. After that, Clara stepped up and raised us. Looking back now…" He shook his head. "She was only fifteen, and we were ten-year-old hell-raisers."
He had to look away from the sympathy in Abby's face. Fighting the lump of grief now choking him, he concentrated on the eagle, still enjoying its fish lunch.
A soft touch landed on his arm. "And your father?"
Dan shook his head. "He never got over losing Mom. He was here in body, but not in spirit. It was as if part of him had died with Mom. He started behaving in reckless ways, taking chances he shouldn't. Not too long after Clara married Eddie, Dad went out hunting by himself and never came back. I guess he was just waiting for her to get safely settled down or something." He sighed. "Jim and I had been more or less running the ranch for a couple of years by then, but I won't lie, it was rough going at first. I don't know what we would have done without Clara and Eddie…or Huritt and Isaiah."
Dan shrugged, trying like crazy to push down the old pain. It was like a tangle of old, rusty barbed wire hidden in the weeds of his memory, still sharp enough to tear into his heart if he stumbled across it in an unguarded moment.
"I'm so sorry for your losses," Abby said, her hand still on his arm. "I can't imagine how hard you and your brother have had to work to keep everything going. And your poor sister…"
"That's the truly unfair part," Dan said, his grief transmuting to anger, "Clara and Eddie had been hoping for a baby for a while. Finally, after we got that contract with the army and Chris came along, it seemed that fortune had swung our way at last. But then everyone in town started getting sick…and it spread like wildfire." He shook his head as the pain rose higher, threatening to swamp his defenses. "If you don't mind, Abby, I'm done talking about this."
She nodded, her beautiful blue eyes filled with so much sympathy that he could hardly stand it. They both fell silent for a long moment as her touch on his arm seemed to burn right through his shirt sleeve.
Her lips, her soft, oh-so-kissable lips, parted. Dan couldn't help himself.
He leaned in slowly, determined to taste her but giving her plenty of time to pull away.
Instead, he saw her eyes dilate and heard her soft inhalation. She didn't move.
It was all the invitation he needed to close the remaining distance between them. Overwhelming desire rushed through his veins as their lips met.
◆◆◆
Dan leaned forward, his face slowly drawing closer to hers, giving her time to pull back if she wanted.
But Abby didn't want to. She had only been kissed by two other men, and caught in the moment, she longed to discover whether the connection she felt with Dan was something deeper than just the intimacy of a shared confession.
His lips brushed hers, gently at first, sending tantalizing shivers down her spine. As he deepened the kiss, his firm mouth nibbling and caressing, she saw that his eyes were half-closed, as if he were enjoying the experience as much as she was.
As heat rose between them, his kiss quickly turned hungry, devouring her like someone savoring a sweet pastry. His tongue flicked teasingly at her lips until she parted them to admit him.
Unlike Arthur, who had plunged his tongue into her mouth as if ravishing her with it, Dan courted her with slow touches and gentle but urgent exploration.
Desire blossomed in a sweet, throbbing ache between Abby's legs. Her hands rose and slipped around his neck. She pulled him closer, wanting more of his mouth.
He chuckled softly, his breath warm against her lips, as if her boldness pleased him. Then his kiss changed again, and Abby's world shrank to the wet, hungry urgency of his mouth on hers.
When Dan finally drew back, Abby felt as if something ancient and powerful had awakened inside of her. Something that hungered for the press of his hard body against hers.
She stared at him, every inch of her skin alive with the desire for more.
Dan reached up to cup her cheek. When he spoke, his voice was rough with emotion. "You are so beautiful, Abby. And sweet as honey. I want to give you something special. Something you'll enjoy. May I?"
Abby blinked. Excitement shot through her. Is he going to take me now? Here, out in the open?
She remembered Arthur bending her over the bed, pushing her face into the coverlet as he grabbed her hips and pushed himself inside her. It had hurt, a burning, stretching invasion, and it had left her wondering why any woman would actually want a man to do this to her.
At the moment, though, picturing Dan doing the same thing to her made Abby squirm on the hard surface of the log. Her nether regions felt so tender and achingly swollen that even the pain she remembered would come as a relief.
Dan put a hand on her knee and she caught sight of the bulge straining against the front of his trousers.
She stared down at it, fascinated. She had done this to him. The sense of power it gave her felt...intoxicating. She wondered if he was experiencing the same aching, pulsing need that she was.
"You ever been pleasured with a bit of petting before?"
She licked her lips, then shook her head. Her cheeks were burning.
"Can I touch you, Abby? I just want to make you feel good. Real good."
She wanted him to touch her. Oh yes, she did.
"You'll enjoy this. I swear." Dan's smile widened as he leaned in for another heated kiss.
As his lips and tongue stoked the fires in her ever higher, he reached down for the hem of her skirt.
Abby forgot to breathe as he slowly pulled up the layers of wool and the cotton petticoats to bare first her boot-clad ankles, then the entire stocking-clad length of her calves. He folded her skirts over her knee
s, daringly exposing her lace-trimmed drawers to the world.
When he tried sliding her skirt up higher, she reflexively put her hands over her lap, trying to preserve her modesty.
"Trust me," Dan breathed. He nibbled on her earlobe, sending a fresh wave of arousal sweeping through her. "I only want to make you feel good. Real good."
Abby raised her hands and slid her arms around his neck once more. Shyly, she sought his mouth and kissed him, raising her hips at his urging as he slowly pushed her skirts up around her waist.
She was still technically fully clothed, but she felt utterly naked under his hot gaze.
He broke the kiss long enough to say, "Open your legs for me."
Her face heated and her heart was pounding like mad, but she obeyed him. She had never exposed herself to a man like this, not even Arthur.
"Wider," he urged her.
His hand moved to her knees, pushing them apart, He reached for the opening of her drawers between her legs and spread the delicate fabric wide, leaving her with no secrets.
"Beautiful," he said, boldly gazing down at her most private parts. "And so ready for me."
He bowed his head over her lap, and she gasped as he blew a teasing puff of air across her hot, swollen folds.
An instant later, she cried out in surprise and jerked as he stroked her, a light, lingering caress over her aching flesh.
"Did you like that?"
She nodded, already craving more of that deliciously tormenting sensation as her nipples stiffened against her corset.
He chuckled, a low, satisfied sound, and touched her clitoris, making colorful sparks shoot across her inner eye. (She knew what that part of her was called because her father, a physician, had insisted that his children learn basic human anatomy.)
She cried out with surprised pleasure and unconsciously thrust her hips upwards, spreading her legs further apart.
"Oh, yeah, just like that," breathed Dan.
Then he was kissing her as his fingers returned to the spot again and again, teasing and circling with a feather-light touch.
Abby moaned against his mouth and clung to him.
Until he had touched her there, she hadn't known what she wanted. What she needed so desperately. She didn't want him to stop…but as pleasure gathered like a thunderstorm on the horizon, she realized she also needed something more.
"Dan…please…," she begged in a ragged whisper, certain he understood what she needed.
"How does this feel?" He cradled her with one arm as his finger slid into her, meeting little resistance from her slick, throbbing flesh.
"Good," she moaned. "So very good."
"Sweet Abby," he said hoarsely. "You're so perfect."
He returned to kissing her, his mouth devouring hers, his tongue ravishing her as he quickly penetrated her with a second finger, then added a third.
It was so very sinfully good to be filled and stretched by him as he began pumping his fingers in and out of her. The pad of his thumb rubbed deliciously over the swollen bud standing sentry at the apex of her entrance, every whorl and line on his skin pleasuring her with a subtle, teasing friction.
"Delicious," Dan panted, between kisses. "I've wanted to do this…ever since I met you."
A soft, pleading moan escaped her, muffled by his mouth as he continued to caress her, winding her arousal ever higher.
She felt tension gathering like a storm in the pit of her belly and desperately wanted the release that hovered just out of reach. She was burning with need, even as his caresses inflamed her further.
"Soon," he whispered, the rhythm of his fingers becoming faster, more urgent as he moved them in and out of her. "You're very close now."
And then sweet, hot lightning struck across her senses in an explosion of pleasure.
Abby cried out and writhed against the fingers impaling her so deliciously as her climax lifted her like a leaf on gusts of almost unbearable pleasure.
Revelation washed over her like warm rain. This—this was what she had wanted from Arthur. What he had promised her with his kisses but failed to deliver.
This was what a man could give a woman.
Her breath came in sobs as her secret flesh fluttered and pulsed around Dan's fingers and his continued caresses drew out her release.
When her climax subsided at last, Abby curled against him, her head against his shoulder, listening to the strong, rapid rhythm of his heart. She felt relaxed and very, very good.
She should be ashamed. There must be something deeply flawed in her nature, because she had let two different men kiss her in the space of twenty-four hours, and she hadn't hesitated to allow Dan to touch her most private parts.
But it didn't feel wrong. Quite the opposite. Every part of her was suffused with a warm golden glow, and happiness flooded her veins.
Small, languorous ripples of pleasure were still moving through her as Dan gently withdrew his fingers with one last, lingering kiss.
"So, was that good for you?"
Her breath caught as she watched him lick his glistening fingers as if they were coated with honey.
She nodded.
"I've got more to teach you," he said. "Come sit on my lap."
He reached for her waist, clearly ready to lift her, and her head suddenly cleared. She couldn't let this go where he clearly wanted to take it next.
"I can't," she said, drawing back. "I shouldn't have let things get this far. I'm sorry."
Too little, too late, she chided herself. The time to protest would have been before she was half-naked and writhing shamelessly on his delicious fingers.
Her gaze dropped back his lap, and she realized it would be monstrously unfair to him if she yielded to her current temptation and fled back to the house.
"I can't give you what you want," she continued. In for a penny, in for a dollar.
She gathered her courage and reached out to press her palm against the long, hard bulge at the front of his trousers. "But perhaps I could do something else to repay you?"
Dan swallowed hard. "I can think of something, yeah," he rasped. "But only if you take off those damned gloves."
◆◆◆
Dan felt like screaming with frustration when Abby abruptly put the brakes on what was turning out to be an extremely promising afternoon.
It was a pleasant surprise to discover an unexpectedly sensual, passionate woman beneath her prim, oh-so-proper exterior.
Her mouth had been every bit as sweet and soft as he'd imagined, and he'd loved fingering her to her first release…she hadn't actually told him she was a virgin, but based on everything he'd observed so far, he'd be willing to bet one of his finest colts that this was the first time she'd ever climaxed.
Her surprise at his pleasuring had been a beautiful sight to behold.
He couldn't wait to sheathe his aching erection in the slick, hot flesh that had been clenching around his fingers just a few short minutes ago. He wanted her on his lap now, riding his cock and making those same soft moans.
He wanted to take her hard and fast on the soft grass, filling her with his seed as she panted in release beneath him. He wanted to strip away the layers of skirts and petticoats, not to mention that damned corset, and feel her hot, naked skin bare against his own.
He wanted to lie back and let her impale herself upon him and ride him until they both came.
He wanted to fuck her over and over again until she lay in his arms, flushed and limp with pleasure and completely his.
He wanted so many things from her…but he didn't dare push her. Not yet.
And then—miracle of miracles—she touched him. Actually put her gloved, oh-so-ladylike hand on his hard-on. Surprise almost made him come on the spot.
Blushing, she offered to return the favor. Hallelujah!
Okay, so maybe I won't get to fuck her today, but at least she's not going to leave me high and dry.
She removed her gloves without protest, revealing elegant, smooth-skinned hands that had nev
er known the harsh manual labor of a frontier woman.
"Did you like how I used my hand on you just now?" he asked her, his throat tight.
Abby nodded, her cheeks still flushed and her mouth pink and swollen from kissing.
Dan couldn't help himself. He captured her hands and pressed his lips to the center of each soft palm, before kissing each of her fingers in turn.
"Well, I would be mighty obliged if you returned the favor, sweet Abby."
Her blush deepened but she nodded again.