Between dark murmurs, heated kisses and caresses inspired by her generous giving, he stole the cloth from her body.
“More lovely than any words I know,” he whispered. His gaze alone touched the taut swell of her hips, the slightly convex curve of her stomach, and lower still, to the rich amber-hued triangle that hid damp heat from his eyes.
He rose quickly then, to strip off his pants, for he sensed her vulnerability in lying naked before him. Her arms rose in welcome when he returned to her side.
Rafe angled his hand and head down to her breast. The small rise of flesh fit perfectly in his palm, and he drew her nipple into his mouth. Her soft moan of pleasure made him shudder.
Flickering his tongue over the swollen tip, he forced himself not to think of the deep, pulsing need of his own body, but only of showing Mary how much she was loved.
The spicy-sweet floral scent rose from her flushed skin. Her breath fanned over his shoulder, one hand gripped his arm, the other his head. She arched against him, burning and shivering. He risked the pleasure and the pain of his own building, savage arousal for more of her needy cries.
He lowered his mouth to her other breast and felt her heart thundering. He wanted to give her more, to give her everything, to know that she craved the way he did.
Beside her the fire shot hissing sparks, and inside her another fire burned, hotter and brighter. She could see him through the pleasure haze that blurred her vision. His dark, fierce need almost tangible, muscles rippling as his lips raced over her skin and his hands wooed her to fever.
She gripped him so hard that Rafe lifted his head. His hands stilled on the flare of her hips. He fought to control the violent shudder that tore through him.
As he levered back, she reared up, her arms tightening possessively, her lips, blind with need, searching for his. He had once whispered of the magic brought by a kiss, and she felt it now, for it was colored with love. Bright gold and shiny, spinning glimmering lights as everything inside her grew taut. She ached so, and nothing she could do would ease the throbbing. She began to writhe beneath him. Greedy now, Rafe pushed her to the edge.
He drank her cry and absorbed her shudders, and wanted more.
The restless movement of her sleek legs drew his hand. He tugged rhythmically on her breast. He knew Mary was too aroused to feel his gentle bite. With a hungry look in his eyes, he lifted his head. Her rosy nipples pouted and seemed to beg for his mouth again, but her cry was a plea he couldn’t deny.
The soft curls parted at the touch of his hand. He stroked her with his thumb. She was hot and wet and more ready than she knew.
“Mary. Mary, hold me,” he whispered.
The cry he drew from her was wilder, a wanton’s call.
“Again.”
She melted moments later against his hand, and he took her mouth with the same gliding penetration with which his caress took her body. He found himself still greedy as once more her sleek softness yielded a hard nub of desire.
His name was the only sound she could make. Once more her body tightened, then racked her with shivers from the hot, intimate touch of his hand. She watched with dazed eyes as he rose over her, her legs parting to make a place for him. There was only Rafe in her world, the taste of him, the scent, the touch of this one man.
“You were made for a man to love, Mary. This man, and this is with love.”
And he sheathed himself in silken softness that shimmered with pleasure from his touch. He had asked her for the ultimate trust a woman could give to a man, and now that it was his, he trembled with emotions that went deeper than passion and were more powerful than need.
It began so gently, the stroking that rode with the waves of passion’s aftermath still shaking her, and brought him deeper, then deeper still, into her body.
His mouth scattered kisses over her face, moving to her neck, where he bit her with hot restraint.
Mary’s hands clenched on his shoulders. He filled her completely. She moved with him, her hips finding a sinuous motion, measuring him again, and again, wanting him to burn as she did.
He drove into her, the force of need rocking her, and still she wanted more. She had learned her power as a woman in Rafe’s arms. Hot with hunger, her mouth mated with his.
Her name hissed with a groan from his lips.
His hands gripped hers and drew them out to the sides.
“Look at me. Open your eyes, Mary, and look at me.”
And in that timeless moment, they gazed into each other’s eyes, drawn to passion’s pinnacle, trembling and watching as love took them over the edge.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Don’t leave me,” she murmured as the tremors faded.
“I won’t. I can’t.” But he shifted his body, just enough to see her. “I don’t want to ever leave you.”
The firelight bathed his face and was reflected in his eyes. “I never loved anyone like this, Rafe.”
“New, then, for both of us. But let me take my weight off you. I’m too heavy—”
“And still—”
“Hard as if I never had you? Yes. I can’t lie, can I? Not like a woman can hide.”
Her intimate smile invited his. A subtle shift, and she showed him that she wasn’t hiding from him.
“I’ll leave you sore,” he whispered, nuzzling her ear.
“A threat? Or a promise?”
“Where’s my prim Mary?” He braced himself on his elbows and looked down at her. Mary’s eyes were still dark with passion. Her hair spread like a burnished flame around her face.
“Where is she?” he asked again.
“Here, with you. Where she wants to be. And there’s only one woman, Rafe. A woman who found more pleasure than you promised, more magic than she ever dreamed of knowing.”
And he saw within her lovely green eyes that look of love she would not admit to. But he could and did.
“I love you. I’ll love you all night long, and for all the nights to come. All you have to do is say yes.”
Mary longed to say the words to him, to free what she held in her heart. But she would first have to tell him—No! She would not taint what they shared with her sorrow.
“Yes,” she whispered against his lips, showing him what she could not say.
She learned that his love could take her to drink deeper from desire’s well, and later, yet again, on a slower path that climbed to tumultuous heights.
She watched the embers in the fireplace darken with ash, even as dawn lightened the sky outside.
Rafe asked her again to marry him.
Mary was thankful that she faced the dying fire while his body curled spoon-fashion behind her. She didn’t want to look at him when she refused.
The touch of his warm lips kissing her bare shoulder distracted her. What could she say? I’ll swear to love you as no other ever could. I’ll fill your life with whatever makes you happy and fill your arms with babes. She had to remember Rafe’s words. And remember, too, that the last was impossible. She had only to think of what she had endured during her marriage with the arrival of her irregular cycle.
“Mary? What’s wrong? Why can’t you answer me?”
She simply couldn’t tell him. His admiration, his trust, and the very love he professed to have for her, would all be gone. He was a man who deserved to have sons and more daughters. He needed a woman who could give them to him.
But it wasn’t words of refusal that she said.
“Give me time, Rafe. Give both of us more time.”
“Don’t you believe that I love you? Can you tell me that love isn’t returned?”
She turned within the circle of his arms, and her lips silenced his questions with a plea for him to love her again.
And with that Rafe had to be content.
Or so Mary thought. In the following days, she began to suspect that Rafe had hidden a sly side. She knew he enlisted Beth’s help to draw her away from household tasks.
The very next afternoon, she had asked
Rafe about the old Spanish helmet. He told the story of finding a few flakes of gold in the stream bed that had led him into the valley. He hadn’t discovered the stone house at first. And as he pointed out when she and Beth followed him outside, the valley itself was shaped like a loop in a rope. Where the stone house stood was the loop itself, but the stream almost ran in a straight line up the neck of the valley, where the sheer stone walls narrowed like the tunnel they had entered to get there.
They had seen where he first found gold.
He carried Beth through first, for the only way to get there was through the stream. Then he came back for Mary, although she insisted she could walk. Mary’s suspicions started then. To the accompaniment of his teasing and kisses, they finally joined Beth.
A few cattle grazed in the cul-de-sac. At the back wall of straight rock was the cabin he had built. It had fallen into disrepair. On the other side, he showed them the mine.
Mary thought her heart would stop when she viewed the deep notch cut at the base of a pinnacle of rock. It was seamed with cracks and crevices that appeared ready to shatter at any moment.
“There’s always talk of lost mines in these mountains, and of the Spanish who lived here and worked them. There are the cliff dwellings of what most call the ancient ones. Those dwellings, like the house, still stand, but it seems as if those who lived in them meant to return.
“I never found the bones of the men who worked this mine, but I understood why they hesitated going in there to take all of the gold out. I had to stop working it. And the seam is still rich, but not worth my life.”
“Is this the reason the Indians believe this place is haunted?” Mary asked, finding herself full of dire imaginings as she stared at the notch.
“I never had one follow me here. Behind that brush is a cave filled with shards of pottery, animal bones, and the remains of fires. It’s where I found the spear. It’s another place that appears to have been suddenly abandoned.”
“Let’s go see it, Papa!”
Beth ran off. When Mary suggested that she go back, Rafe wouldn’t hear of it.
“Oh, no. I’m not letting you go that easily.”
Later that night, Rafe cleared one of the bookshelves so that Beth and Mary could display their finds. He held Beth on his lap and read to her while Mary sewed. She was filled with such peace and contentment, and she knew it was hers for the taking for all her tomorrows. The crackling fire was soothing. She looked up to find that Beth had fallen asleep and Rafe was watching her. She couldn’t say it with words, but hoped her look conveyed that she was as eager as any bride for the night to come.
Her eagerness was noted and appreciated. How much appreciated, Rafe showed her with lovemaking that was more tender and cherishing than the night before.
He and Beth woke her in the morning with breakfast. She wasn’t given a moment to herself for the rest of the day.
Rafe admitted there were a great many things lacking—a cow for Beth, chickens, for all three of them missed having fresh eggs. By nightfall he had added a stove for Mary to his list. She burned the bread. A first for her, and she blamed Rafe for his insistence that she joined a game of hide-and-seek.
Beth named her father the seeker because he was the oldest. Mary teased and disagreed, but their two votes overrode hers. Rafe found her each time, kissing her senseless before they would run off and find Beth.
Mary hadn’t fully understood that Rafe’s wealth meant he didn’t have to work. He chopped wood to see them through the winter, and that took a good part of his day. She often stopped some chore to watch him. His muscles rippling with each swing of the ax, sunlight gleaming on his hair. A sensual excitement filled her the moment he stopped and saw her watching him.
He came stalking her then, demanding a reward for his hard efforts to keep her fireplaces fueled. Beth would giggle, then whisper to her doll or kitten, while Mary allowed herself to be caught. But Rafe was sly, as she had come to know. He’d sometimes settle for a slice of herb bread, or a taste of what she had cooking. At other times it was a hug, or a chaste kiss. And there were rare times he’d swing her into his arms and carry her back to the woodpile. He insisted she sit where he could watch her, despite her halfhearted protests that she’d burn supper or left chores undone.
But he conspired with his daughter, too. He’d catch hold of Beth and she’d shriek for Mary to rescue her—the price, a kiss.
Beth’s wound healed with small scars that Mary hoped would fade with time. Just as the child’s nightmares faded away. She no longer had her haunting dream, for she knew her wounded spirit was healing. How could it not? She was in love and was loved in return.
Rafe taught them to pan for gold in the stream. Beth insisted on weighing the small but growing pile of flakes they found each night. Rafe turned it into a lesson in arithmetic, as he did counting the herd of horses, then mares, fillies and colts.
Mary used the books and the growing number of arrowheads to do the same.
On the days Rafe hunted, Mary taught Beth to sew. The kitten often wore the results, much to Beth’s delight and Mary’s surprise.
They all called her Kitty, but Beth would shake her head with a secretive smile and say that wasn’t her name. She wouldn’t tell what it was. Her secret. Hers and Muffy’s.
Mary helped Rafe break a few of the horses to the saddle again. None were truly wild, but he had been away for a long time. Beth had her daily riding lessons, but dressed warmly as the weather turned colder.
There were picnics on idle days when Rafe and Mary told childhood stories, with Beth an avid audience. It was on such an afternoon that Mary was struck by the bonds of love and laughter the three of them shared. Rafe had just finished a tale of a bear that had raided the mining camp repeatedly to steal sides of bacon. The bear had outwitted them at every turn, finding bacon wherever the miners thought to hide it.
“I swear it’s true,” he declared. “Those miners, me included, took to strapping those sides of bacon to our backs just so we wouldn’t have to eat plain beans. No one would leave his claim to get supplies.”
“And did the bear go away, Papa?”
“Not on his own. We each cut strips from our bacon and planted a trail one night that led across the creek to another camp. Those men howled the next night. But that bear didn’t come around to bother us again. Days later, Three-Fingered Jack, who’d been hunting gold for almost forty years, chased that bear up the mountain into a cave. He come running right out swinging his pick, and tore a chunk of rock off the cave’s entrance. He hit a pocket of gold that took him all the way to San Francisco in high style.”
“Oh, Papa, you did a bad thing but made it good. Just like you promised me.”
“I’m trying, Beth. Trying real hard to keep that promise.”
The engaging smiles on father’s and daughter’s faces led Mary to believe she figured prominently in that promise.
Later that night, after they made love, Mary asked Rafe if it was true.
He was braced on his arm above her, the blanket draped over his hips. With the fire behind him, Mary couldn’t see his face clearly.
“I promised to marry you,” he answered. He brushed her hair back from her cheek. “Beth loves you. She wants you to be with us forever. Her words. My desire. Mary, I want you for my wife, my love. To have and to hold, to cherish and to protect.”
His hands drifted from her cheek to her neck, where his thumb measured the wild beat of her pulse, before he cupped her breast. “I know you’re happy. It’s rare to see the sadness in your eyes anymore. And,” he teased, “despite all you do, you’ve put on weight.” He lowered his head to taste her. “Right here. I can tell.”
He rolled onto his back and lifted her as though she weighed nothing. She took him deep, so deep her hands reached to grip his. She rocked, matching his rhythm, matching the savage tempo of her own pulse. And Rafe was with her, sweat-sheened skin bronzed by fire, holding her, cherishing her with so much love that she nearly fainted
from the ecstasy they created together.
Mary knew she had to tell him.
But in the morning, Rafe announced his intention to go hunting for a Thanksgiving turkey. Mary was surprised. Almost two months had slipped by without her noticing. She thought of the merry month-long holiday she and Sarah had shared with Catherine last year. From Thanksgiving to the first day of the New Year. She vowed she would help make these first holidays that Rafe shared with Beth very special ones.
Her mind was busy with the cookies she could begin baking. When Rafe asked for a kiss for good luck, she absently pecked his cheek.
“Ah, Mary, that’s a wifely kiss you give a man to send him off. What’s taken your thoughts?”
“Spices,” she murmured. “I’m thinking about what I’ll bake to celebrate.”
“Spices, is it? Then give me a kiss,” he demanded, in a mock growl that sent Beth into giggles. “A kiss worthy of your thoughts, to keep me while I’m gone.”
She was too happy to scold him for behaving like this in front of Beth. Or, as she told herself later in the day, she was coming to believe that Rafe would not stop loving her even if she couldn’t give him a child.
That day marked a flurry of activity. There were spices to grate, sugarloaves to be crushed and rolled, dried fruits to soak. Planning Beth’s gift for her father took two days to reach a decision, required hours of secrecy and no end to Rafe’s grumbling when Mary and Beth shut themselves up in the child’s room.
Rafe brought home several turkeys. Beth, in the spirit of the day, was whooping through the house in a headdress of rawhide and turkey feathers. She wore Rafe’s fringed buckskin shirt as a dress. Mary and Rafe were declared Pilgrims.
Mary had tied a white linen square for a shawl collar over her new wine-colored gown. Rafe told her with words and with his frequent looks how beautiful she looked. She watched as he carried corn bread and steaming biscuits to the table, then returned for beans baked with molasses and bacon, the bowl of stewed tomatoes and herbs, hominy and maple syrup. Mary turned the turkey on the spit and gave a stir to the gravy. The dried apples had been made into a pie, and there were sugared doughnuts—bear claws, Rafe called them, and swore men would travel one hundred miles to have a taste of one—sugared nuts and spice cookies for dessert.
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