by Jodi Thomas
“I never said that, either.”
“You don’t have to say anything. The way you treat me says it all.”
“And how exactly do I treat you?”
He gave her hope, and he didn’t judge her, and he was bossy, yes, but he’d come for her, and he was the experienced traveler, and, oh, he treated her like she mattered, like her opinions were worth considering. He treated her like he cared, and his kindness confused her. She didn’t know how to process what she didn’t understand.
What she did know was that she was wrong. Her assumptions, her accusations, her acting out.
“You know,” was what finally came out of her mouth because words failed her, though it was obviously the wrong thing to say.
He started toward her then, and nothing could get her to move. It was as if her feet had sprouted roots, and said roots had made their way deep into the hard-packed earth, growing where so little else seemed to but prairie grass and mesquite brambles and cottonwoods that drank from every stream and creek.
The closer he got, the more determined his steps, the more rapid the rise and fall of his chest, the more fierce his scowl. She wasn’t frightened, however, and she was quite sure she should be. He had something on his mind she couldn’t discern, something in no way connected to the conversation she’d been trying to have.
Was he angry about her prying? Were his secrets that deep and dark that her mentioning them had set him on this path of intimidation? Was that what he was doing? Intimidating her? Or was his approach fueled by another emotion, one with which she was unfamiliar and therefore unable to anticipate?
His hands gripping her upper arms stalled the rest of her thoughts. He pulled her body in to his, and she caught back a breath, her heart fluttering in her chest as if it had wings.
Up close, his eyes glowed like the blue flames of a Bunsen burner, but they were icy, too, and she was quite certain that if she touched them her fingertips would freeze. That coldness was at odds with the rest of what she felt from him; heat rolled off his body in waves.
“Zeb—”
He reached up one hand and pressed two fingers to her lips, shaking his head as he did. His long black hair brushed against his shoulders, his beard hid most of his face, and only the lines at the corners of his eyes hinted at what he was feeling. She couldn’t look at his mouth. She was afraid to look at his mouth.
But the urge to do so pulled and tempted, and she dropped her gaze, a squeak of sound making its way from between her closed lips, because the set of his wasn’t icy at all. It was . . . cocky, and expectant, and primal, and he slid his hand to her jaw and around to her nape, holding her there as he lowered his head.
His lips were dry on hers, chapped by their time in the sun and the wind, and he was warm. He was also hard, his body, his hold, his insistence. His head slanted, and he rubbed against her, pushing until her lips parted of their own accord. His parted as well, then his tongue slid between.
This time when she squeaked, he laughed, but he did it into her mouth and the sound filled her, causing her to rise on her toes, to dig her fingers into his shoulders to keep from falling. That was what she felt like: falling, drifting, losing her balance and her footing and every bit of the grounding she’d prided herself on.
She had sneaked kisses before, of course; what schoolgirl hadn’t? And she’d been kissed by men she’d decried as unsuitable mates. But this was nothing like those sweet, fumbling pecks, those harmless, innocent experiments with attraction. Before, there had been no attraction. None worth speaking of. But this . . .
The indelicate whispers she’d heard from Miss Porter’s girls suddenly made such terrible, beautiful sense. Because if they had been giggling about experiencing the sensations pouring through her limbs like warm honey . . . Except she couldn’t imagine feeling this liquid desire at the hands of any other man. Or even wanting to have another man touching her.
Oh, my, how naive she had been when she’d asked Zebulon if he wanted to see her out of her clothes. What a horrible child, what an incredibly inappropriate tease. These feelings were not to be trifled with. They were consuming, and genuine, and they left little of her sense in place.
She wanted to climb into his skin. She wanted to take off her own clothes, to take off his, to feel him against her, and this from no more than a kiss. How could she be so swept away by what was only a kiss?
His tongue found hers and tangled with it, and though he kept one hand at her nape, he ran the other down her spine to the small of her back to push, then lower, to her bottom, cupping it, squeezing. Tingles of sensation burst between her legs, and she made more noise, not gasps, not squeaks, but what she could only call moans.
They were full of longing, just as she was full of longing, just as the hard press of Zeb’s manliness to her thigh was filled with longing, too. The whispers came again, the giggled appreciation, and she wondered what it said about her that she wanted to know everything Miss Porter’s girls did about the pleasures to be found with a man.
The idea sobered her. She was not loose with her affections, or loose at all, and she didn’t need this man especially to think any such thing. She pushed against his shoulders and against the pressure of his hands, separating her mouth from his and missing him at once.
He didn’t move except to set his hands at his hips, and she crossed her arms tightly in front of her and dropped her gaze to the ground. “I don’t know why you felt you had the right—”
“Shut up, Maeve.”
Her head came up; her chin, too. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. Don’t start in denying you enjoyed every bit of that as much as I did. And don’t place blame where no blame belongs.”
“I wasn’t placing blame—”
“Yes. You were. You wanted to be absolved of your part in starting that fire in your loins.”
If her face hadn’t already been colored like the brightest lobster tail ever . . . “I am quite accepting of my . . . fire.”
“Good,” he said, turning to go, then stopping and adding, “Because I’m going to be busy awhile putting out my own flame. I sure as hell don’t have time to be dealing with yours.”
• • •
ANOTHER night behind her and Maeve was ready to be done with this trip. She would go back to New York. She would surrender to her parents’ demands. She would be the dutiful daughter, marry well, provide her husband an heir.
She would stay out of Bone Alley and Mulberry Bend and instead host luncheons to raise awareness of the conditions in the city—if only she could be done with this trip.
Her bottom hurt and her thighs ached, and her face stung and no doubt resembled a beet, and the gloves Zeb had given her to wear were next to worthless because his hands were so large. But none of those complaints held a candle to the one responsible for her change of heart.
She was ready for this trip to be done because he had kissed her.
“It’s okay to grumble. You don’t have to be all proper and stoic. No one is going to know.”
She would know. And he would know, she mused, looking over to where he moved with his horse as if the two of them were a single beast. A centaur of sorts, though she much preferred the picture of Zeb in his hat and his boots and his vest, a gun belt strapped to his hip and thigh, his hand on the reins in the most deceptively careless manner.
Her words to Miss Porter returned then to haunt her: I don’t love Mr. Crow. She didn’t, of course. And she hadn’t once wondered what doing so would be like.
“I don’t grumble. And I don’t complain.” Or at least she only did in her own mind.
“Maybe you should,” he said, then huffed to himself. “Work out some of whatever is keeping you so . . . tight.”
Tight? “And what’s wrong with being . . . tight?” She wasn’t even sure she knew what he was implying.
“Nothing, I suppose, though the opposite makes for a much more comfortable seat on a horse.”
Ah. He was probably right abo
ut that. “Our journey will only last a few weeks. I can endure the temporary discomfort and inconvenience.” But only if you don’t kiss me again. Please, please don’t kiss me again.
Her lips still tingled, and the rest of her body ached in ways that had nothing to do with the gait of her horse and her being . . . tight. Why had she let him kiss her? Why had she so feverishly kissed him back?
“Is that some sort of statement about conditions that ain’t temporary?”
Oh, good. A distraction. “Are you even aware of how the other half does live? The filth and the sickness and the very acts the destitute are forced into in order to survive?”
“I’m aware,” he said, though his words held little conviction.
“I’m not sure you are,” she said, frustrated that he would take her no more seriously than anyone else. “I believe you are, like my mother, simply giving lip service to—”
“Stop it, Maeve,” he said, but her passion drove her on.
“I’ve volunteered my time and my efforts in those places. I know the struggles those people suffer through daily. How their lives hang by a tenuous thread. How their very survival—”
He reined his horse around in front of hers. The sudden movement had the beast rearing back and snorting, then pawing at the ground. Zeb leaned forward, rubbed the animal’s neck, his words for the horse soothing. His words to her were not. “Do you want me to tell you about survival? About true survival? About going on day after day when the easiest thing to do would be biting down on a gun barrel and pulling the trigger?”
“Zeb—” It was all she got out before he looked beyond her, bit off a sharp curse, and turned again, muttering, “Let’s go,” before she could object.
But something told her to glance in the direction he had, and she cried out at seeing what had caused Zeb’s harsh words.
“Damn it, Maeve. I said let’s go.”
But she was rooted to the spot, watching the body swing from the branch of a tree they’d just ridden past. Shivers stole up her spine to raise the hair at her nape. “You can’t just leave him hanging there.”
“Yeah. I can.”
“Zeb—”
“We don’t know who he was or what he done—”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“And we don’t know who’s watching and waiting for someone to take an interest.”
“Why would—”
“Stop asking why all the time, Maeve,” he said, riding behind her to smack her horse’s rump and set her moving again. “This ain’t New York. This ain’t polite society. There ain’t rhyme or reason for some of the things that go on. And you’re questioning everything ain’t going to change any of that, any more than you poking your nose into what happens in Bone Alley and Mulberry Street is going to fix the wrongs happening there.”
Heat raced over her chest and up her neck, a rush of humiliation and anger, and it took all of her resolve not to bite back at his hurtful words. And they were hurtful. So terribly so. They were also insulting. How dare he insinuate that her interest in the suffering she’d seen would yield no change?
It would. She knew so with all of her heart and her soul and her being. She had worked too hard for her efforts to fail. Because of that, she would not dignify his barb with a defensive response . . . and then realization struck.
He was goading her to get her mind off the man in the tree. “You’re slipping again. Your language. It happens when you’re upset.”
“I ain’t— I’m not upset.”
“But you corrected yourself anyway.”
“Just so as you’d leave me alone.”
And there he went, slipping again. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”
“It wasn’t you so much . . .”
“As the hanged man.”
He stayed silent as they rode, the breeze lifting the ends of his hair, dropping them back to his shoulders. They were tight again, his spine stiff. She imagined his jaw beneath his beard was equally taut, and she thought back to what he’d told her about coming home to find his family murdered.
And what he’d just said about biting down on a gun barrel. “Zeb?”
“Hmm?”
“Was your family hanged?”
He continued to ride without speaking, and she remained mute as well. She knew he’d heard her, but she also knew he would not appreciate being provoked. Her asking such a question had been unnecessarily forward.
She was being too presumptuous. It was not her business what had gone on in his past to turn him so harsh and bitter. She thought again of the scars on his hands, some of which she knew were burns.
Then she realized he had rarely, in all of the three years she’d known him, been harsh or bitter with her.
For the rest of the afternoon, they rode with little said between them. She asked him to stop once so she could relieve herself, a request that no longer embarrassed her. He asked before they started up again if she’d like to rest or if she was hungry.
Neither spoke of the man they’d seen, though the picture of the body in the tree never left her mind, or her many, many questions, and certainly not her inappropriate inquiry into his loss. Why did she think she had to know everything or that her knowing would allow her to fix things? And why was she consumed by such a desire?
Why did she need so badly to have her calling taken seriously?
“Maeve? Are you listening to me?”
She looked over to where Zeb was leaning forward to take the reins of her horse from beneath the animal’s head. But rather than answering him, and in an effort to distance her thoughts from the haunting images of the hanged man, she said, “I think I’m an inconvenience to my parents.”
“What brought on that thinking?”
“They don’t understand my curious nature. Or how that curiosity pushes me into situations of which they disapprove. I don’t share their concerns with social status. Quite frankly,” she said, her throat growing tight, “I think I embarrass them.”
“If you do, that’s on them.”
He reached up to help her down, but she stepped away, needing distance between them.
“I don’t know why I told you that. Or why I ask you so many questions—”
“I don’t mind you asking me questions, Maeve,” he said, but he dragged a weary hand down his face as he did. “Some are more painful than others, and some I might not want to answer. But don’t ever stop being curious. Your nature’s a sight more honest than that of most folks I’ve known since leaving South Carolina. And that’s a refreshment I find that I very often need.”
Chapter 6
DIGGING a shallow grave with nothing to use but a hand shovel was not how Zeb had wished to spend this night, but he had to get the hanged man down from the tree and into the ground while Maeve slept—and before she realized it was her uncle Mick swinging.
Once the sun had set, Zeb had taken a circuitous route back to the copse of trees where Mick hung and made camp at the farthest edge. The distance between their small fire and the spot he’d chosen to put Mick in the ground allowed for Zeb to hear her, should Maeve cry out, and get to her quickly if riders approached.
And that was his biggest fear. That whoever had strung Mick up remained nearby. He hoped that by riding on earlier, they hadn’t attracted attention. That anyone on the lookout wouldn’t be staring too intently into the dark. And that Maeve, should she wake, wouldn’t peer beyond the fire’s low flames.
Zeb had recognized Mick earlier but had hurried on without making mention to Maeve. He’d have to tell her, of course, but later, once her uncle had been laid to rest and they’d put too much time between now and then for her to demand a proper burial.
He’d known as they set up camp that she was ready for sleep. Coming across a body hanging by the neck took an emotional toll, as he, having coming across three, well knew. But she was also exhausted from the realizations about her parents, and that angered him in ways far different from his own situation.
Maeve was
a beautiful woman, not a child, and her short temper of late he attributed to their long days on horseback. She was quick-witted, with a good head on her shoulders, not flighty as were so many of her society peers. She cared more about things that mattered than she did about herself, and that told Zeb everything he needed to know.
What he knew was that he wanted her for himself. And the realization had come as a surprise.
The body was not overly far from the ground, those who’d passed sentence not much for judging the strength of tree branches. Zeb was able to stand on a log he dragged close, one arm around the stiff torso as he sliced through the rope above Mick’s head.
He lowered the deadweight, then looked down at the face of the man who’d been as different from his brother as Maeve was from New York society’s other young women of her age. Though maybe he hadn’t been that different after all, considering both men had turned out to be thieves.
Before shrouding the body in one of his blankets, Zeb did a quick search of the man’s pockets, coming up with a watch and a scrawled note. He waited until Mick was in the ground and properly covered before looking at either, which at least kept Maeve from seeing her uncle, since she walked up just as Zeb was using the light of the moon to read the inscription on the back.
“Where did you get that?”
Her voice was small, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle as she made her way slowly to where he stood at the head of the grave. She stopped opposite, looked down at the mound of newly turned earth, the full moon casting crooked shadows of tree branches across it, looked up again.
“Where did you get that?” she repeated, her gaze falling to the watch.
“I heard you the first time,” he said, closing it and circling the fresh-packed dirt. He took her by the arm to lead her back to their camp, but she shook him off.