by Martha Hix
Lisette’s chin was not perhaps as jutted as Gil’s, but she thrust it upward. “All I want is the soap.”
“Tally up the clothes, man, and be quick about it.”
The proprietor rushed to do the cattleman’s bidding, and Gil said to Lisette, “I won’t have you smelling like the wrath of God or looking like Willie Gaines’ ghost.”
“Aren’t I fortunate?” she said breezily, not feeling her sarcasm at all.
Now, as the hours passed in a second-floor room of the Keystone Hotel, she was especially glad for not going wild in the emporium.
Plainly, Gil had no use for a browned woman with rough hands who reminded him of a man, dead or otherwise, least of all the same woman he didn’t want to be legally wed to. A woman who was used goods.
Her eyes went to the iron bed built for two. Already she knew the sheets were clean as a whistle and smelled of the sun. The bed had a snowy white crocheted spread and four plump pillows, and it invited more than sleep. Therein lay the obstacle. Even if Gil were to charge into this room right now, saying he’d forgiven her, and even though their marriage was duly recorded, she would shy away from disrobing.
Frankly, you weren’t that good.
Why hadn’t she thought about that while speaking with the preacher?
Gil’s reprove tumbled over and over and over again in her head and heart. In his words, “Damn.”
Dressed in a robin’s-egg-blue dress of corded silk–totally frivolous for the upcoming days on the trail but insisted upon by her husband–Lisette sat down on a hard-backed chair facing the window. From the Lusty Lady Saloon below, piano music blared. Was Gil there? Had he sought out a woman trained in the art of giving pleasure?
Lisette shivered. With his passions, he couldn’t go on forever without relieving the pressure. Was her husband releasing his seed . . . and smiling?
If she had an ounce of pride, she’d leave this hotel room. Instead, she slammed closed the window and cut out the sounds of the Lusty Lady.
Another hour passed before he rattled the knob and opened the creaking door.
“You didn’t eat your dinner,” Gil said, and she heard him walk across the room.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“You’ll get skinny if you don’t eat.”
“As long as I can do my work–thin, brown-faced, rough-handed–why would you care?”
He chuckled. “You have all the makings of a shrew”
“You won’t get an argument there. I am a shrew.” She studied the worn rug. “I used to be somewhat more amenable–before I encountered your ugly face.”
“Do you think my face is ugly, Lisette?”
Her muscles tensed. She refused to answer, would not turn to him. He cut around the chair to halt in front of her. At last she turned her face up to him.
He wasn’t tousled nor did he appear sex-spent; his look was as fresh as a man just returned from a bath. Although they had lain together but once, she could tell when he didn’t have the look–or smell–of sex. No, he hadn’t spent the past hours in some strumpet’s arms.
Gil repeated his question.
Ugly? No, he wasn’t. Despite the new wound under his eye, which was reddened and puffed, he was still as attractive as ever. His hair needed smoothing, and she yearned–despite any rhyme or reason–to touch the indention on his chin. All around, he looked magnificent, wearing fresh clothes and those provocative boots. And she remembered exactly how he’d looked, naked.
Desire, cursed desire began to build in Lisette.
Replying to his question, she said, “You’re about as attractive as a cake of lye soap.”
“And you are as beautiful as heather on the hillside.”
She hadn’t expected his tone to be soft, nor his eyes to gaze tenderly at her. For once his inflection held the tone of his homeland. Back in Fredericksburg, she’d wanted to know everything about him. She still did. While she knew many things about this man she’d taken to husband, Lisette realized there were many facets yet to discover–among them, what did he want besides a woman untouched by another man.
And where had he been?
She voiced her question, and he replied, “Taking care of business. Hiring more cowpokes.” He paused. “And mulling the question of you and me. I found Eli Wilson, told him to file our marriage license. I want to settle this trouble between us.”
Relieved that he had spoken with the preacher, she was nonetheless unconvinced of their long-range potential for marital success. “I can’t be what I was not.”
“I know.” He crossed to the bed and sat on its edge. Dropping his wrists between his spread legs, his head ducking, he said, “Yesterday morning I decided . . . I never thought I’d be asking, but I got to thinking about something you said. You told me there’d been but one man in your life besides me. I want you to tell me what happened.”
Back in San Antonio, when Lisette learned Thom Childress had made vacant promises, Aunt Ernestine had warned her never to speak of him to another man. Onkel August’s English wife had said no man enjoys hearing tales of another. Lisette believed his wise counsel.
She abandoned the seat, walked to the window, and stared down with unfocused eyes. The room took on the quiet of a crypt. She could feel Gil’s gaze on her back, and she heard his breathing as well as the rasp of a match striking. Even before a ribbon of smoke waved toward the ceiling, she smelled the sweet scent of expensive tobacco.
“Lisette . . . how many other men have known your body?”
“I told you: one.”
“Just one?” he asked slowly.
“I said one.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I’d rather not dredge up the past.”
“We’ll get nowhere with lies of omission between us.”
“Lies of omission? Seems to me you left out a few details about your former wife.”
“I’m not here to talk about Elizabeth.”
Lisette almost laughed at the irony of the woman’s name. “Elizabeth, you say? Do you know the German forms of her name?”
“No, Lisette, I don’t.”
“One is Lisette.”
Another tendril of smoke curled through the room, and she moved to open the window. She heard Gil as he tamped the smoke into a dish. “That’s where the similarity ends,” he replied at last. “I recognize you’re not Betty.”
“The similarity ends with our names?” She disliked herself for being so cynical, but why not? “I was under the impression she and I had another similarity–our both disappointing you.”
A moment passed. “Lisette, we can spend this evening arguing, or we can get on with the conversation. Which do you choose?”
“Getting on with the conversation.”
“Then tell me why you didn’t come to me a virgin.”
If this was the sole way to air their problems, so be it.
She closed the window and turned away from it. Speaking as if she were narrating someone else’s life, she answered, “I met him in San Antonio. I’d gone there to wait out the war. My uncle and his wife took me in. A neighbor had a millinery shop, and she offered to teach me the trade. A young man delivered supplies for the shop, and we became friendly When Uncle August left to join my father’s regiment, Thom asked my aunt for permission to court me. I thought I was in love with him.”
Gil rose from the bed. “Go on.”
“Thorn was conscripted into the army. He was to leave for training on the first of February. The day before he left, we received word my father and Uncle August had died in battle. I was . . . I was grief-stricken. And Thom preyed on it–on that, and on his own leaving. He said he might not return from battle, and he didn’t wish to leave this earth without having known what it was like to hold me in his arms.”
“His was one of the oldest ploys in the world, Lisette.”
She wasn’t schooled in ploys, but the past four years had versed her in reality. “Tell that to a girl of eighteen. Anyway, he asked me to be his wife, and I said yes. O
f course, there was no time to marry. He left the next morning.”
“Did he die in combat?”
“He’s not dead. On the battlefield, he got a case of–” She laughed dryly. “Dysentery sent him to the infirmary. One of the doctors had a daughter helping out, and Thom and the woman . . .” Lisette sighed. “They were married within a couple of months. The war ended before he returned to his regiment. He brought his wife back to San Antonio.”
“The guy must have been crazy not to wait for you.”
Perplexed, she gazed at Gil. There was nothing in his eyes, nothing in his expression to indicate he had been less than honest. Yet . . . Frankly, you weren’t that good.
Gil walked across the room to pull her against his chest. She couldn’t let him do this. It was unfair, his holding her as if he meant to be her lover . . . for forever. But how long were his forevers?
She stepped back.
“Do you still love Thom, Lisette?”
Shaking her head, she gave an honest reply. “I do not. I’m not certain I ever did. I was a girl craving affection. That’s all.”
“Then let’s put him in the past.”
That was more than fine with Lisette, but just exactly what would happen if they–
Her eyes cut to the bed. If she went with her passions, if he received more satisfaction than the first time, would theirs be a lasting union?
Don’t be a Tropf.
Weariness sluiced through her, confession and uncertainty having sapped her strength. Tonight she couldn’t deal with the present. Her attention turning to the bed once more, she yearned for its comfort, its solitary comfort. And she almost laughed. For hours she had ached for Gil’s appearance; now she wished he would leave.
“Leave me alone,” she said.
“Impossible.” The tips of his fingers moved lightly across her bruises, and his silver-banded blue eyes became soft as velvet. “I want to cherish and protect and love you till–”
“Love? You told me once it was a foolish notion.”
“I expect to–”
“I expect nothing from you, Gil.” Except an honest chance ...
“As I told you the night we wed, you can expect the unexpected.” His lips moving to her ear, his hand stroking the rise of her breast, he murmured, “Expect to be made love to.”
She tensed.
His tongue making circles behind her earlobe, he asked, “Don’t you want me?”
That wasn’t the issue. Last time it had started this way, Gil’s touching and seducing her, and where had it led?
Her eyes heavy with fatigue, she stepped away from his arms and made for the bed. Fully dressed, she lay down on the covers and turned her face to the pillow She was simply too weary to make a decision she might regret later.
Or maybe she needed to hide one more time.
“I’ll have to think about it, Gil.”
She’s out like a light, Gil thought as he spread her braids across the pillow. Not a muscle did she move as he stripped her of shoes and dress and undergarments. Somehow he got the covers pulled back and her naked form on the bottom sheet. Pulling off his own clothes, he gazed at her. Her beauty held him captive.
She appeared somewhat plumper than the last time he’d gazed at her unclothed body. Not much, just a couple of pounds. Despite her hard work, the trail seemed to be agreeing with her. She was one helluva pioneer woman.
Unlike his former wife, she was molded of good stuff–determined, courageous, and accepting. Never would she try to control. He’d had a problem with Betty trying to run the show. Put her out of your mind, he told himself.
As he stretched out next to Lisette, his hand molded to his new wife’s breast and his thumb flicked across the coral peak. In her sleep she smiled.
His Lisette was more than any man should expect.
His Lisette?
Nothing like jumping to a conclusion.
Her “I’ll have to think about it” left their marriage up in the air. After the events between their wedding and now, he should have expected nothing more. Well, he wasn’t going to tuck his tail between his legs and run away.
He would make the loving good this time.
But she was drained, emotionally and physically. She worked hard, too hard, and never complained about the privations of life on the trail. And he, her husband, had given her hell over one lapse in judgment. He, who had a scroll-long list of mistakes in his past.
He doused the hurricane lamp and slid into bed. Pulling her into the cradle of his arms, he held her while she slept. When they made love, would she be as hot as before? He hoped so. He prayed so. This time he wanted to make it right for both of them–before, during, and afterward.
His fingers caressed her jaw, her chin, her temple, and he feathered a kiss on her eyebrow. It was wicked of him, wanting to waken her, but he had a growing desire to make love to her.
Nonetheless, it took Gil another twenty minutes to rouse her from sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
Lisette awoke to moonlight streaming through the hotel window to make shadowy patterns on the bed. And a long-fingered hand was making patterns on her flesh.
Womanly needs coursed through her unclothed body, as if her husband had been touching her intimately for quite some time. His arms were around her. His tongue made circles on her throat, his fingers canvassed the dip of her waist, then between her legs; his toes slid up and down her calf. It took her a moment to realize there was no hostility in his actions.
It took but one more to recall the situation.
“Stop,” she moaned.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to disappoint you.”
He reared his head. “Disappoint me? What in hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t you remember what you said in the meadow? ‘Frankly, you weren’t that good.’ ”
“Oh, my darlin’ Lisette, you are an innocent.” He cuddled her against his broad chest. “You don’t even know the difference between good and bad loving.”
She gazed into the eyes that watched her closely. “You’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not. I’m wanting to show you what good loving is all about. Hell, I need to know myself.”
Confused by his words, she said, “I don’t understand. You’ve been married before, and surely you’ve known other women.”
“All that is true. But I want to make ours a marriage for keeps.”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Absolutely, positively.”
Was he lying? Trust your instincts. Instincts? They’d done her wrong, but should she let yesterday’s foul up tonight? Going on her feminine desires, she answered, “I like that idea.”
“You’ll like this one even better.”
He rolled to his back, pulling her atop him. She flattened her forearms on the sheet and raised up to study his expression, but his aroused sex, long and thick, pressed against her stomach, rendering her incapable of clear thought.
The hair on his thighs tickled her legs, that on his chest doing the same to her breasts. Her insides were warm and heavy, and those senses sharpened as he whispered, “My angel, let’s start all over again.”
Once more, she worried. She could accept his offer and take a chance of not satisfying him. Or she could hold on to her pride, and keep a distance between them. But since they were abed, both nude, and he was doing his best to arouse her by touching her most intimately, she decided there might be a chance of giving him a modicum of pleasure.
“All right, husband. Let’s start anew”
A grin eased across his face. “Thank you.”
His hand abandoned the top of her thighs to stroke her hip, but she scooted back. “G-Gil, I do want you to enjoy yourself. I do not want to make you unhappy. If I do anything you disapprove of, please tell me.”
“You are an innocent.”
“Not totally. When we did this l-last time, I was going on my instincts.”
“Don’t quit.” He
winked boldly. “On second thought... give us a kiss.”
“Us? Who’s this us?”
“Don’t get too literal on me.” His hands swept down her back. “What about that kiss?”
Her disarrayed braids falling forward, she leaned to plant a kiss on his whisker-shadowed jaw. His “Not good enough” moved her lips to the sensual ones half parted in expectation. What was left of her braids became clouds of hair as he fiddled with the mass. His tongue slid into her mouth, and the rhythm of loving was in his every movement.
She felt the shape of him, turgid and eager, at the portal of the place he had denounced in the meadow.
Yet . . . her body heated further as she wiggled against him. The kiss ended. Her breasts touched his hair-swirled chest, the sensation sending tendrils of heat to the center of her being, and he smiled as she drew in a deep breath of anticipation.
“Will we make love like this?” she asked, raising her head and moving her fingers to the thick mat of hair enticing her.
“If you’re willing to give it a try.”
“I’d be willing . . . if you think you might like it.”
He laughed. “Ah, Lisette, you are some woman. Bold as brass, innocent as a lamb. I like you like this.” He reached up to nuzzle her throat. “And I’m so hot I don’t know if I can wait too long to have all of you.”
Apparently not waiting too long would make it good for him. Last time he had spent a long time warming her up. “It feels as if I’ve been ready for hours,” she admitted in all honesty.
“I’ve been trying–you can bet I’ve been trying to get you this way.”
Scooting his fingers between their naked bodies, he captured her nipples to touch them gently, then with more pressure. She grimaced, wondering why her breasts were more sensitive than before.
Her concerns subsided as he asked silkily, “Do you still think I’m ugly?”
“No, you vain devil . . . no.”
“Then move up a bit, honey.” He blew a stream of arousing air across first one nipple, then the other. “Old Son’s wanting to pay you a visit.”
Levering above him and bracing her palms on his chest, she questioned, “Old Son?”
“Yeah. This.” He lunged upward and deeply.