Only Love

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “The Culpeppers ride by hot springs every day, and those boys are dirtier than any Comanchero.”

  Whip looked at Shannon’s long, shiny braids and creamy skin.

  “At first I thought you bathed so often because you wanted to be pleasing to me. Then I realized it was just your way. Spearmint and fresh water, honey and cream.”

  Whip’s hands shifted, caressing the sensitive soles of Shannon’s feet. She made a throttled sound as her feet arched in sensual reflex.

  “Ticklish?” he asked.

  “Not…quite.”

  “How about this?”

  Whip bent his head and smoothed his mouth over the arch of her foot. Just at the point it would have tickled, he sank his teeth delicately into her skin.

  Shannon gasped as she discovered how deliciously sensitive the arch of her foot was.

  “Am I tickling you?” Whip asked.

  “No,” she whispered, staring at him with wide, luminous eyes. “I just didn’t know that men kissed women there.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yes…”

  She shivered and made a low sound of pleasure as Whip caressed her other foot. Her response sent an answering tremor through his powerful body.

  “There’s so much of loving you don’t know about,” Whip said, looking at Shannon hungrily. “All the sweet tastes and hidden textures of passion. I’m going to know every last one of yours, honey girl. And when we’re too tired to breathe, I’m going to fall asleep deep inside you and wake up with the taste of you on my tongue and then we’ll begin all over again, touching and tasting and knowing, being alive in each other.”

  Shannon didn’t understand most of what Whip was saying, but she didn’t care. The sensual blaze of his eyes and the gentleness of his big hands told her everything that mattered.

  No matter how great Whip’s strength, no matter how fierce his hunger, she was safe with him.

  Watching with curious, hungry eyes, Shannon allowed Whip to unfasten her shirt and ease it down her arms. Her breasts peaked before he touched them, for she had seen the smoky approval in his glance. Then his head bent, his mouth opened, and he shocked her to her toes by taking the tip of one breast into his mouth.

  “Whip.”

  He made a hungry, questioning sound, swirled his tongue around the hardened nipple, and drew her deep into his mouth.

  The rhythmic movements of Whip’s mouth sent pleasure stabbing through Shannon, arching her back even as her fingers blindly raked through his hair, holding him close. She had no breath, no thought, nothing but the changing pressures and textures of his mouth as he suckled her, shaping and hardening the nipple even more with each stab of his tongue.

  By the time Whip lifted his head, Shannon was twisting slowly beneath him and whimpering softly, feverishly. He looked at her breast, taut and glistening from his mouth, and he let out a ragged breath.

  “I’ve been around the world three times,” Whip said in a husky voice, “and I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than you all shiny and proud from my loving.”

  “I—didn’t—know,” she said raggedly.

  “You’ve never been kissed like that?”

  Shannon shook her head even as she watched Whip’s mouth with shocked, curious eyes.

  “Does it matter that I’m as naive as an egg?” she whispered.

  “No,” Whip said. “Teaching you, watching you respond…it gives me a kind of pleasure I’ve never known.”

  Whip bent down to Shannon again, and again he taught her something about pleasure. She learned that it could build and build until her body was burning with a need so great she pleaded helplessly with him to end the sweet torment.

  He laughed softly and refused to be drawn closer.

  “Not yet, honey girl. There are a whole lot of ways of touching and kissing left to explore.”

  Shannon’s eyes opened in disbelief.

  Smiling, Whip raked his teeth lightly over one proud breast, then the other. Then he sheathed his teeth with his lips and tested the velvet tension of her nipple.

  Pleasure lashed Shannon, making her gasp.

  “Whip?”

  The husky voice licked over him like fire.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I can’t—take it.”

  “If I can, you can.”

  “But I’m not kissing you.”

  “Not this time. I’m way too hungry for that. Next time, though. Next time I’ll teach you how to make me sweat and shake with need of you.”

  Whip’s hands moved with the quickness that was as much a part of him as his fallen angel smile. Shannon felt the rest of her clothes sliding down her legs. Unease went through her, but far stronger was the memory of pleasure she had once known at his hands.

  “That’s what you’re going to be doing before I’m through,” Whip said in a low voice. “Sweating and shaking with need of me.”

  Slowly he ran the back of his fingers up between her legs from her ankles to the dark mahogany cloud just above her thighs. His big hands shifted, circling the top of her thighs, flexing deeply, urging her legs farther and farther apart even as he caressed them.

  Then Whip became very still but for the quickness of his breathing.

  “I thought nothing could be more beautiful than your breasts,” Whip said finally. “I was wrong.”

  Shannon followed his glance down her body and made a startled sound. She was sprawled wantonly, wholly naked to his eyes, his touch. Reflexively she moved to cover herself, but found that impossible. Whip was kneeling between her thighs, bracing them apart with his knees while he caught both of her hands in one of his own. He was holding her in a gentle, immovable vise.

  “Too late, honey girl,” he said huskily. “You set free something in me that no other woman has. I don’t know what it is, but I’m damned sure I’m going to find out.”

  One of Whip’s fingertips circled the lush flower that had opened for him. Shannon trembled and made a broken sound.

  “Tell me again that you want me,” Whip said thickly.

  As he spoke, he parted the flushed petals with two fingertips, seeking the honey within.

  “Yes,” she said huskily. “Yes.”

  Shannon’s hips moved as she cried out, and his fingertips knew the hot, silky kiss of her desire.

  “Honey girl,” he whispered. “God, I love feeling your pleasure.”

  She started to speak, but her breath wedged in her throat as she felt Whip’s caress slowly deepen. The feeling of having him within her even by so small a measure was as unexpected as it was extraordinary. Heat swept through her, leaving her skin flushed, sultry, exquisitely sensitive.

  But nothing was as sensitive as the flesh Whip was softly stretching even as he caressed her. Pleasure coiled relentlessly inside Shannon, twisted, redoubled, and then held her arched and quivering on a rack of need.

  Shannon moaned and moved her hips in a reflex as old as desire, seeking to draw Whip more deeply inside her body.

  Instead, Whip’s touch lessened as he forced himself to withdraw all but his fingertips.

  “Not yet,” Whip said, his voice hoarse with fierce restraint. “You’re not ready. You’re so tight, honey girl. And I’m not as small as your husband was. We’ll have to take this slow and gentle for a little longer. Like this.”

  Shannon moaned as pressure and pleasure built inside her once more, pushing her toward the shivering culmination she had known once before at Whip’s hands. Yet before she could touch that sweet ecstasy, he began withdrawing again, leaving her aching, restless. Then he returned, bringing pleasure with him, a hot teasing that promised heaven and delivered only a bittersweet kind of hell.

  Sweating, shaking, Shannon begged him to end her torment. Whip closed his eyes as sweat broke over his whole body. He couldn’t look at her, touch her, hear her pleas, and not take her.

  “Hold on, honey girl,” he said hoarsely. “Just a little more. You’re so damned tight. And so hot. Just a little deeper a
nd—”

  Whip’s words stopped as though cut by an ax. He stared at Shannon in fury and disbelief.

  “You’re a virgin.”

  Shannon simply looked at him, not understanding what had made him so angry.

  Whip shot to his feet and stood over Shannon.

  “Naïve, huh?” he said savagely. “Ha! You’re naïve like a fox, pretty little window lady. You figured I would give you a wedding ring if you could tease me into taking your maidenhood.”

  Dazed, trembling, Shannon understood only that the culmination she desperately needed had been yanked away from her without warning. She wanted to weep and scream and rail at Whip, but she had no breath.

  Whip didn’t have the same problem with breathing. And talking. He had never been more furious—or more frustrated—in his entire wandering life.

  “What kind of twisted marriage did you have with that old man-hunter?” Whip demanded.

  “I don’t understand,” she said shakily.

  “The hell you don’t. Silent John was a piss-poor gold prospector, but he was first-class when it came to tracking down men and killing them where he found them, then collecting rewards for their sorry hides.”

  Shock widened Shannon’s eyes.

  “He never said—” she began.

  “Hell,” Whip interrupted savagely. “He never said anything, right? Silent John. Silent as a tombstone. And that was what some folks called him. Tombstone John. He earned that moniker, too.”

  Whip’s glance raked Shannon from forehead to heels. Shame flooded her as she looked at her own nakedness. Her groping fingers found her shirt. She pulled it on and fastened it with shaking hands.

  “That man must have had ice water in his veins,” Whip said through clenched teeth, watching as Shannon’s beautiful breasts vanished beneath worn, faded fabric. “He had you for seven years and barely touched you.”

  “He never touched me.”

  “Never?” Whip laughed harshly, not believing a word of it. “Even an old killer like him must have liked undressing you and—”

  “Silent John was my great-uncle!” Shannon cried, cutting across Whip’s words. “He never touched me! Not ever! Not a handshake when I brought down my first deer. Not a quick tug on my braids when he passed my chair. Not even a pat on the head when I learned to make biscuits the way he liked. Nobody has touched me in a tender way since Mama died!”

  Blindly Shannon pulled one of Whip’s blankets over her hips, shielding her nakedness from him.

  “And then you cam with your hungry eyes and fallen angel smile and gently hands,” she whispered.

  Shannon closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of Whip’s face hard with anger and contempt.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?” Whip asked, his voice flat.

  “I did.”

  “Horseshit.”

  “Go to hell, yondering man. Go Soon.”

  Whip looked at the girl huddled in a crookedly buttoned shirt with part of his bedroll drawn up over her hips. There was nothing of the hot temptress about her now. She wasn’t pleading for his mouth, his hands, his body locked with hers in primal ecstasy.

  Whip drew a quick, sawing breath and fought for self-control. Shannon didn’t know what she was missing.

  But, by God, he did.

  “When did you tell me you were a virgin?” Whip asked less harshly.

  “When we were talking about me not having a baby.”

  He thought about it, frowned, and shook his head.

  “The subject of virginity didn’t come up,” Whip said.

  Shannon threw him a glittering glance. Her eyes were as brilliant as sapphires.

  And twice as cold.

  “I asked how you could be sure that you didn’t leave any bastards behind,” Shannon said flatly. “You said the same way Silent John knew how not to get me pregnant. Well, the way Silent John used was—”

  “He never touched you,” Whip interrupted, finally understanding, believing. “You’ve really never been touched at all. My God.”

  “Hallelujah,” Shannon said sarcastically. “If I repeat something often enough, even a gray-eyed yondering man finally learns.”

  Whip opened his mouth, closed it, and stared at the virgin widow who had turned to honey and melted all over him at a touch.

  “My God,” Whip repeated. “I—” He shook his head as though coming out of deep water. “It never occurred to me that Silent John and you had’t been truly man and wife.”

  “No more than it occurred to me that you didn’t understand why I didn’t get pregnant,” she shot back.

  “Chastity. The oldest way of all. Judas H. Priest.”

  Shannon’s anger drained away as she saw how shocked Whip was. In the wake of anger came a fatigue so great that she wanted to put her head on her knees and cry. It was all too much to take in—the grizzly and her fear for Whip and his rage that she had come running up, then the heady sensuality of his touch, and then his fury.

  “Shannon?”

  “What.”

  “What did you think would happen after I had you?”

  “Think? Think? Yondering man, when you touch me I can’t think worth a handful of cold spit.”

  “You weren’t trying to trap me into marriage?”

  Shannon lifted her head. Between the grizzly and the lovemaking, her braids had come mostly undone. Long, dark strands slid over her cheeks and down over her breasts. Her eyes were dark, unreadable.

  “Why on earth would I want to do that?” she asked.

  For the second time Shannon had managed to shock Whip speechless.

  “What possible use is a man who puts a baby in you and then flits off around the earth until it’s time to come back and put another baby in?” she asked.

  “I’d never get you pregnant and then leave you,” Whip said coldly. “You know me well enough to know that.”

  Reluctantly Shannon nodded. “You’re not the kind to run out on your responsibilities.”

  “Is that what you were counting on? Getting pregnant so I would’t leave?”

  Anger stirred in Shannon, but she was too tired to sustain it.

  “I’m naïve about sex, but I’m not stupid about life,” she said wearily.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Pregnant or not, I will never marry a man who wants me less than he wants a sunrise he’s never seen.”

  Whip flinched at the conflicting emotions in Shannon’s voice, in her eyes, in her hands clenching the blanket over her nakedness.

  “But you would have given yourself to me,” Whip said, angry for no reason.

  A shiver of memory and desire went through Shannon.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because I’m afraid you’re naïve enough to believe you love me,” Whip said bluntly.

  Shannon gave Whip a shuttered glance.

  “Either way, it’s not your worry,” she said. “It’s mine.”

  “I don’t want you to love me,” Whip said, biting off each word.

  “I know.”

  “Love is a cage.”

  “Yes. I know that too. Now. Someday I’ll thank you for teaching me how to build cage of sunlight. But not today.”

  She put her forehead back on her knees, shutting Whip out.

  “Shannon?”

  “Go away, yondering man. You don’t want my body, you don’t want my love, you don’t want anything but the sunrise you’re never seen. Go chase it and leave me be.”

  11

  WHIP slammed the pick into rock and felt the shock wave all the way down his arms to his ankles. Stone splintered and sheared away from bedrock, showering him with biting pieces of grit in the process.

  Nothing useful lay behind the rock Whip had hammered from the end of the short tunnel. The faint signs of gold he had been pursuing like a demon for the past two days weren’t in evidence anymore. Nor could he guess where the faint trace of gold had
gone. There were no visible faults, no layering of stone, no way to decide which was the best direction to dig—up, down, sideways, straight ahead, or not at all.

  Reno might be able to make this sorry claim pay, but not me.

  No wonder Silent John took to man-hunting. It’s a damned sight more interesting than hammering on stone.

  Despite Whip’s sour thoughts, he kept on swinging the pick with all the power in him. He hoped if he worked long enough, hard enough, his body wouldn’t stand up and howl every time he thought of Shannon crying out with hunger, opening herself to him, shivering with pleasure at his touch.

  Sun-warmed honey in my hands.

  Steel pick slammed into the mountain of stone.

  A virgin.

  Whip swung harder. Rock chips exploded.

  Hotter, sweeter, wilder than any woman I’ve ever known.

  Steel met stone and rang like a bell.

  A goddamned virgin!

  Whip tried to drown out the endless circling of his thoughts with the sound of steel hammering into rock, but it was impossible. He hadn’t been in control of his own mind since two days before, when he had knelt between a virgin’s legs and learned more about sensuality than he had since he was a man-sized fourteen and a widow woman had hired him to make repairs on her hayloft.

  The pick struck, stone shattered, and new rock surfaces appeared. They looked even less promising than the stone Whip had been hammering on.

  With a weary curse, he stopped, wiped sweat and rock dust from his face, and lifted the pick again. He didn’t want to go back to Shannon with more bad news about Silent John’s useless gold claim. He didn’t want to watch her trying to hid her fear of being alone and broke. He didn’t want to fight himself not to take her in his arms, comfort her, kiss her until cold fear became wild, searing oblivion….

  Rock chips exploded, scoring Whip’s skin. He barely noticed. He was too busy wrestling with his conscience and his body’s driving need for a virgin widow who would give him everything he asked for as a man and take from him everything he had to give to a woman.

  And never ask for more.

  That was what was riding Whip with long spurs, digging into his pride and conscience. If Shannon had played the age-old feminine game of baiting the marriage trap with her own honeyed body, Whip could have played the age-old masculine game of stealing the honey without being caught in the trap.