Yet when Wolfe looked up again and handed the baby to Willow, there was a smile on his face. The smile was as real as the pain had been.
“You made a beautiful baby,” Wolfe said to Willow.
“I had some help.”
“Damn little. A man as ugly as Caleb can’t make a pretty baby.”
Willow smiled and looked at Caleb. “My husband is as handsome as a god.”
“To you, maybe,” Wolfe said dryly. “To me?
Well, I’ll just say I’ve seen better looking things left on the ground after a buffalo herd walked past.”
Caleb snickered. Wolfe turned around and gave the other man a swift, hard hug, brother to brother.
“Before this, you had the sun,” Wolfe said. “Now you have the moon and stars. Guard them well.”
After a moment, Jessica looked away, for she could no longer bear the sadness she sensed beneath Wolfe’s pleasure for his friend.
15
S HE was naked on a vast plain of ice. Nothing was alive. Nothing moved but the many-voiced wind. Far ahead of her grew a powerful, living tree that carried safety in its branches.
She must reach the tree’s shelter.
Yet the harder she tried to run, the more deeply encrusted she became in ice. She was a prisoner of cold and a plaything of the wind. Yet still she struggled toward the tree while the wind taunted her:
That woman is not Jessica.
Worst mistake of his life.
All wrong for each other.
Jessica sat bolt upright in bed just as the first light of dawn brought color to the empty sky.
“Jessi?” Wolfe’s hand touched her shoulder. “Are you having nightmares about the past again?”
“No. Not the past.”
“Get back under the covers,” Wolfe said gently. “It’s cold out there.”
“It’s freezing,” she whispered.
Jessica lay down and turned toward Wolfe, needing his warmth to chase the chill of her own dreams.
“What is it?” he asked, stroking her hair.
“A nightmare, that’s all. I was alone.”
“You’re not alone now. I’m here.”
But for how long?
Wolfe felt Jessica’s arms go around his neck. The softness of her breasts pressed against his naked chest. He had awakened from his own dreams already aroused. The feel of her against his skin brought his need to the point of pain. When she shifted, trying to come even closer, her hip brushed against his hardened flesh. He felt as much as heard her gasp.
“Don’t be frightened,” Wolfe said. “I’ve spent a lot of nights like this, and I haven’t forced you. I never will. All I have to do is remember how terrified you are by a man’s need, and why, and I have no problem at all controlling myself.”
“It’s not that. You just…startled me.”
Jessica took a slow, almost secret breath, trying to banish her dream. She rubbed her cheek against Wolfe’s reassuring warmth, letting it sink through the chill left by the voices of the wind repeating Wolfe’s words, telling her how little she was worth as a woman. When she felt Wolfe withdrawing from her, she made a broken sound and clung to him with a strength that surprised him.
“Don’t let go of me,” she whispered urgently.
“I thought I was frightening you.”
She shook her head. The motion sent a silky fall of hair over Wolfe’s chest.
“Are you certain?” he asked.
“Very.”
Slowly, Wolfe put his arms back around Jessica and pulled her close once more. She relaxed against him despite the stark evidence of his arousal. For a few minutes, there was silence but for the wind coiling through the spreading light of dawn.
“Wolfe?”
He made a questioning, rumbling sound.
“Seeing Willow…” Jessica hesitated, not knowing how to give words to what she was feeling. “The birth was…”
Wolfe kissed Jessica’s forehead. “It brought back the nightmares, didn’t it? Don’t worry. They’ll fade. Even under the best circumstances, birth is a messy process. With your memories of the past, it must have been horrifying.”
“That’s not what I meant. Yes, birth is messy, but so is spring. One doesn’t get an omelet without breaking shells and all that.”
Wolfe smiled as he nuzzled the hollow of Jessica’s cheek. “Did I remember to tell you how very brave you are, Jessi?”
“I’m a ruddy little coward and no one knows it better than you.”
The bleakness in Jessica’s voice surprised him. Wolfe tilted her face up so that he could see her eyes.
“That’s not true,” Wolfe said simply. “You’ve endured things that would have broken most adults, much less a child.”
Saying nothing, Jessica closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Jessi,” Wolfe whispered, kissing her eyelids. “You had every right to run and hide on the nights your father raped your mother, but you didn’t. You went to your mother and gave her what help you could.”
“So little.”
“So much,” he countered. “You must have been terrified beyond words, yet you gave comfort to the very woman who should have been comforting you.”
“There was no comfort in her. Toward the end, I think she was mad.”
Wolfe closed his eyes. “It would have been a blessing.”
“Yes. But it left me very much alone. I expected to die when cholera took her. I was so sick. Then he came and bathed me and fed me thin gruel and kept me warm until cholera took him, too.”
“He?”
“The lord. My father. Everyone else was dead or dying. I tried to help him, but finally the wind took him, too. I think…I think he welcomed it.”
Wolfe made a low sound. “You were so young. It tears my heart to think of you alone and frightened.”
“I’d always been that way,” Jessica said matter-of-factly, “until you came. I tried to keep you from seeing what a coward I was, but you knew anyway.”
“Hush,” he said, kissing her eyelashes. “A coward would have run from the house and left Willow to bear her child alone. You didn’t. Despite your horrible memories, you stayed by Willow’s side and kept your fear to yourself. Caleb said you were as calm as a doctor.”
“Fear would only have made it more difficult for Willow. I couldn’t do that to her.” A sound came from Jessica that wasn’t quite laughter nor yet tears. “You were right about her, Wolfe. She is a rare and wonderful woman. Sharing her son’s birth made me…less fearful.”
Smiling, Wolfe stroked the back of his fingers down Jessica’s cheek. She turned her head slowly until she could catch his index finger between her lips. The swift intake of his breath as she tasted his skin told her that she had his full attention.
“Caleb taught me something, too,” Jessica said.
“Did he?”
“Mmm.”
The soft warmth of Jessica’s tongue between Wolfe’s fingers made him forget to breathe.
“Seeing Caleb with his son,” she said, “made me realize there is more to having heirs than passing on titles and estates.”
Wolfe barely registered the meaning of the words. Jessica was biting him so delicately that he might have imagined it, but even in his dreams he hadn’t felt the tiny serrations of her teeth caressing him.
“You taught me something, too,” Jessica continued.
“Again,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Bite me again, elf.”
Smiling, she dragged her teeth lightly down the sensitive edges of his finger. When she reached the base, she thrust the tip of her tongue between his fingers.
“I didn’t teach you that,” he said huskily.
“No, you taught me something much more important.”
“Did I?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I saw the awe and the hunger in you for a child of your own. Let me give you that child.”
He became utterly still.
“Love me, Wolfe. Let m
e love you. Let me give back to you just a part of the beauty you’ve given to me.”
“Jessi,” he whispered, stopping her words with a gentle pressure of his thumb. “It’s all right. You don’t have to repay me that way.”
“I want to.”
He smiled sadly. “You woke up terrified by old dreams.”
“Not old dreams. A new one.”
“Do you remember it?”
“Dear God, all too clearly. You were gone and I was alone and the wind was taunting me with my worthlessness as a wife, as a woman…”
Wolfe’s arms tightened. “You aren’t worthless.”
“Then why won’t you make our marriage a valid one?”
“Jessi…elf…”
She waited, watching him with hope burning in her eyes like dawn.
“Sweet girl,” Wolfe whispered, kissing Jessica between words, “it has nothing to do with worth or lack of it. There is no future for a Scots aristocrat and a halfbreed bastard. You were not born for the Western wilderness. I was. I was not born for the elegant drawing rooms of London. You were. You need a husband more civilized than I am. And I…” His voice died. “Someday you’ll admit our mismatch and ask for an annulment.”
When Jessica opened her mouth to object, Wolfe took it in a deep kiss that made her moan.
“But until that day,” he whispered when he finally lifted his head, “we can enjoy each other in ways that will leave your virginity intact for the lord whom you will finally accept as your husband in every sense of the word.”
“I’ll never accept any man but you.”
“Yes, you will,” Wolfe countered softly. “You have too much passion in you to live a nun’s life, and you know it now. God help me, so do I. I’ll die remembering your scent, your taste, the sounds you made when you burned beneath my mouth.”
Before Jessica could speak, Wolfe kissed her deeply, seducing her with hot movements of his tongue. When he cupped her breasts in his hands and drew out the velvet peaks with his circling thumbs, she made a broken sound at the back of her throat. Reluctantly, Wolfe lifted his head, afraid that he had frightened Jessica with his ardor.
“Fear or pleasure?” he asked huskily.
“What?” she asked, dazed by the heat splintering through her.
His hands moved, and the heat became a sweet burning that made her arch toward him. Small sounds rippled from her lips. One of those sounds was his name.
“Wolfe?”
“Never mind,” he breathed. His fingers caressed the hardened tips of Jessica’s breasts, drawing her nipples into proud, hungry crowns. “Your body is telling me everything I need to know just now.”
Her thoughts came unraveled as a golden incandescence splintered through her. She felt the warm wash of Wolfe’s breath over her nipple and knew in another instant he would draw her into his mouth and she would be lost.
“Wait,” she said breathlessly. “I want…”
When she tried to speak, she couldn’t find the words for what she wanted to say.
“It’s all right,” Wolfe murmured, rubbing his lips over the velvet hardness of her nipple. “I know what you want. I want it, too.”
“Do you?”
The real question in Jessica’s voice stopped Wolfe. Slowly, reluctantly, he lifted his head from the sensuous temptation of her nipple.
“Didn’t you know?” he whispered. “I like this as much as you do.”
“Not quite.”
“You sound positive,” Wolfe said, amused.
Jessica’s cheeks were flushed with more than dawn, but she spoke anyway, for a need greater than the pleasures of the moment was driving her.
“If you keep caressing me, you’ll give me the sun,” she said.
The sensual promise in Wolfe’s eyes was as dark and hot as his smile. “I hope so, Jessi. I love watching you burn.”
“But I don’t know how to give the sun back to you.”
For a moment, Wolfe said nothing. He couldn’t. His heart was threatening to close his throat.
“Do you want to know how?” he asked finally.
“Is it possible? Can I give you the sun?”
“It’s not only possible, it would be so damned easy. Just the thought of your hands…” A primal tremor of response raked through Wolfe.
“My hands? Where, Wolfe? How? Teach me.”
The temptation was almost overwhelming. He had spent too much time on fire for Jessica. He didn’t think he could feel her hands on him without losing control. Yet he couldn’t bear the thought of repulsing her at the very instant he was feeling the greatest pleasure.
“My response might…disgust you,” Wolfe said simply. “You don’t have to, elf. Despite our complaints, no man has ever died of sexual frustration.”
“Did my response disgust you?” Jessica asked curiously.
His smile was slow and lazy, yet his eyes smoldered with memories. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than you burning.”
Jessica’s hands slid into Wolfe’s hair, pulling his head down for the kind of kiss he had taught her both to enjoy and to need. He responded with a searching hunger that aroused her as much as his hands on her breasts.
“Teach me how to make you burn,” she breathed.
Wolfe drew her hands from his hair, kissed her palms, closed his teeth over the edge of her hand almost fiercely, and let out a harsh breath.
“I think we had better go slowly. That way you may stop any time you want.” Wolfe looked up, pinning her with eyes that were clear and dark. “I mean it, Jessi. The thought of disgusting you is unbearable to me.”
Tears burned in Jessica’s eyes as she understood once again how badly she had wounded him by saying that his touch disgusted her.
“Never, Wolfe. You could never disgust me.”
“I’ll bet I can shock you,” he said dryly.
She smiled with lips that trembled. “My dearest Wolfe, you have already shocked me to my soul.”
Black eyebrows lifted in silent query.
“Every time you touch me, it gives me the most shocking pleasure,” she said simply.
Wolfe’s breath came in with a sharp sound. “Do I really, Jessi?”
She held out her hand so that he could see its fine trembling. “This isn’t fear or disgust. This is what happens when you touch me or when I remember how you have touched me.”
Gently Wolfe lifted Jessica’s hand to his mouth, kissed her, then let her fingers slide away.
“Why don’t you start by touching me everywhere you like being touched?” he suggested.
Jessica tilted her head to one side as she looked at Wolfe. Though the sheet covered him from the waist down, he was unmistakably and aggressively male. When she looked back up to his intent eyes, the smile she gave him was both sensual and mischievous.
“I fear I must point out a small problem.” She flushed slightly and cleared her throat of its sudden huskiness. “Well, not small. Actually it’s quite…extensive.”
“What is it?”
Wolfe’s teasing, lazy smile made Jessica feel as though he were stroking her. The sensation was both delicious and somewhat unnerving.
“For a man who is reputed to have the eyes of an eagle when looking over a rifle barrel,” she muttered, “I fear you are somewhat blind at close range.”
“How so?” he asked, measuring the heightened color in her cheeks.
“And you call me innocent. Have you not yet noticed, my Wolfe? We’re not quite the same everywhere, which will make it difficult for me to carry out your suggestion of touching you where it pleases me to be touched.”
“We both have ears,” Wolfe pointed out blandly.
“Does this mean I finally get to bite yours?”
Before Wolfe could answer, he felt the warmth of Jessica’s breath on his ear, the heat of her tongue, the delicate edge of her teeth. He made a low sound of pleasure as her tongue spiraled down and in, sending sweet chills over his spine. She lifted her head and saw the dark glitteri
ng of his eyes in the dawn.
“You liked that,” she said.
He smiled rather fiercely. “Yes.”
“Lovely,” she murmured, bending to him once more. “So did I.”
Jessica tested the difference between ear and lobe with her tongue, her teeth, her lips. When she had managed to draw another low sound from Wolfe, she kissed him gently behind one ear.
“We both have necks,” she said against his.
“What?”
“Necks,” Jessica repeated. “We both have them. I liked the feel of your mouth on my neck. Does that mean you’ll—”
“Yes,” he interrupted swiftly. “Please.”
Smiling, she shifted, not noticing that the front of her gown had come half undone beneath Wolfe’s fingers. White lace fell open, revealing her breasts just as she discovered the strong tendons and resilient muscles of Wolfe’s neck. He was as hard as polished wood, yet much more supple. Life coursed through him tangibly.
“Your neck is so much stronger than mine.”
“I haven’t your petal softness,” Wolfe agreed. “Bite me, elf. Let me feel your teeth and your warm little tongue. You won’t hurt me.”
An instant later he felt the edge of Jessica’s teeth testing him. Her willingness to please him was as arousing as the caress itself. Knowing he shouldn’t trust himself to touch her at all, Wolfe drew her gown away from one breast and looked at her. His index finger circled the creamy skin just at the point where it began to gather into the rosy velvet of her nipple.
Jessica shivered and her teeth closed a bit savagely on the corded muscles of Wolfe’s neck. Heat shot through him. He caught the responsive tip of her breast in his fingers and twisted with exquisite care. She made a ragged sound and drew her fingernails down his chest. When she felt the tiny, hard rise of his nipples, she hesitated, then circled back to test the nubs she had drawn so unexpectedly from his muscular chest.
“Yes, we both have breasts,” Wolfe said, smiling despite the hot wires of need that were drawing his muscles into knots. “But yours are wonderfully soft and silky.”
“I like yours better.”
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