by Jo Goodman
Jericho stepped to the foot of the bed and began to strip, deft fingers working on the buttons of his shirt and breeches. He stopped once to yank off his boots and did not pause again until he was ready to join her in bed. He looked as if he would ask her something, but her hand reached for his, covering it, and he yielded to a force greater than himself.
"Come to me," she said again, drawing him near. When he would have brought the blankets about them, she stayed his arm. "Warm me with your body," she ordered huskily.
Jericho's groan answered her sweet sorcery and he pressed himself against her, knowing the heat and power of his own passion by the way she curved to him. She wrapped her arms around Jericho's neck and lifted her head, placing teasing kisses along the angular line of his jaw and the sensuous curve of his lower lip. She touched her mouth to his nose, his cheek, nuzzled his ear. Daringly the tip of her tongue peeked out to trace the curve of his lobe. "You're a beautiful man," she whispered, her breath tickling his neck. She did not say the words because it was expected of her. She had no idea a tart might voice that phrase with boring regularity to even her most dog-faced clients. She said it because she meant it, and she resolutely squashed her hurt when Jericho told her in no uncertain terms to be quiet.
"I know what I am," he snapped between angry kisses that would leave marks on her shoulders and throat. "I have no need to hear it from your painted lips. There are better uses for your mouth." Then he smothered her tormented gasp with his own mouth and would not allow her to dwell on the little cruelties he was determined to lash her with. He quieted her struggles and stilled her protests, and with a skill he had learned at the hands of whores, he made her pliant to his will.
His hands gave her a stormy pleasure she felt certain she had never known elsewhere. They curved to her slender form, roughly familiarizing themselves with the fragile strength of her neck, the delicate roundness of her breasts, and the narrow span of her waist. If his caress was fierce, even frenzied; if his mouth covered hers with a brutal urgency, he believed it was no more than she deserved. She inflamed him by responding to his furious desire with a wild abandon that nearly undid him.
She sought to be his equal, giving this rushing and unrestrained delight as it was given to her. Her hands flattened on his chest and learned he was not of one plane, but smoothly rippled, especially when he sucked in his breath as her fingers drifted across his taut abdomen. Her legs tangled with his and she reveled in the masculine texture that rubbed suggestively against her own lithe softness. Her knee nudged between his legs and she arched against him, liking the insistent heat and pressure of his need flush to her skin.
She kissed his nipples and teased them with her tongue as they became erect and knew that her own swollen breasts ached for a similar touch. Jericho's hands were practiced and his demanding touch exciting, but it did not seem enough. She grew restless beneath him and sought intimacy of a fierier nature.
Jericho was ready for her, had been for some time, yet he held back until he was certain she could take him easily. He did not question his motives as his hand slipped between their heated and perspiring bodies and touched the smooth and velvety center of her. Her thighs parted to accommodate his fingers, and her hips thrust against his palm in a rhythm he controlled. He removed his hand and knelt between her knees, slipping his hands beneath her buttocks, and lifted her to him.
She bucked slightly, struggling against the helplessness of her position as Jericho held her thighs fast. Jericho's palms supported the small of her back as he encouraged her to arch further. Her arms stretched above her head and her fingers clasped the bunk's wooden frame. Her every muscle tensed anticipating his entry.
"Jericho." Her voice was only a thread of sound, but it was what he had been waiting to hear. It was as if he uncoiled into her, his first thrust penetrating as deeply as their position allowed. Resistance, surrender, and pain took them both by surprise. He stilled in the same moment she cried out.
A heartbeat later he heard a question and an accusation in her reedy voice as she called his name. "Jericho?"
"My God," he swore softly, staring at the play of emotions crossing Red's face, betrayal chief among them. His own features were rigid, as was everything else about him. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, calling on a reserve of strength.
Her eyes fluttered shut. "I think I must not have been a whore after all."
Chapter 4
The harsh lines of Jericho's face bore witness to the truth of her statement. Shock, frustration, then pain dominated his expression. His struggle to gain control was etched on his beaded brow and the whiteness about his mouth. His eyes still closed, he withdrew from her and wrapped himself haphazardly in a blanket before he tossed one to her. He growled an order to cover herself. Jericho sat at the foot of the bed, his back flush to the wall and his knees pressed firmly to his chest as he willed his aroused body to accept that there would be no release. He thought he would come out of his skin when he felt Red's gentle and inquiring hand on his shoulder.
"Don't touch me," he said tightly, jerking away. "Haven't you the least idea what you've done? Would you have me take you now?"
Biting her lip in mortification, she scrambled to the head of the bed and hugged her knees in much the same manner as Jericho. By blinking rapidly, she resolutely kept the tears that glistened in her eyes from falling as she studied Jericho's huddled form and taut features from a safer distance. Though her body still trembled, anger had gradually replaced excitement. How clever of Jericho to arouse both those emotions, she thought bitterly. Fingers shaking with suppressed rage, she secured the blanket around her and nearly bounded from the bed. She paced the short length of the cabin while she considered a number of things she wanted to say to Jericho when he came out of his self-pitying trance. How dare he think he was the only one hurting from what had occurred between them. What right did he have to tie her in knots, then act as if he alone knew pain? Fuming, she remembered how he had sprung away from her—as if she were diseased instead of virgin—then would not let her even touch him. She promised she would not let him off easily for treating her so shabbily.
"Are you goin' anywhere special, Red, or just polishin' the floor with your feet?"
Her agitated pacing stopped as she turned on Jericho, astonishment raising her eyebrows and parting her lips. Just as quickly a sharp, angry breath escaped her and her eyes glittered with resentment. "Your nerve is not to be believed," she said. "Now that you have recovered yourself, you find sport with me. I will not allow you to make light of this, Jericho Smith. Do you think I am lacking any sort of feeling? I reached for you because I was sharing your pain and sought to comfort and be comforted. You spurned my touch and made what happened between us seem my fault, yet it was you who left me." She retrieved the paper notes on the desk and stalked to the bed, throwing them at Jericho. "Take your money! I hardly earned it!" Stiff with pride, she gave Jericho her back and stared at the far wall.
Jericho felt as if his head were spinning as he tried to make sense of her acid argument. His anticipation of her reaction fell far short of her present diatribe. He had expected weeping, even shocked quietness. Never this harangue. "Are you taking me to task because I did not finish what we began?" he asked, though he could scarcely credit it. "Is that the root of your vitriolic tongue?"
"Why does that shock you?" she snapped, rounding on him again. "Haven't I the right to expect you to finish what you began?"
Jericho blinked twice, incredulous at her anger. "But you were no whore," he tried to explain. "You said so yourself. We both felt the proof of your virginity."
"What has that to do with anything? You told me that only lightskirts frequented Wolfe's, and as I was in the tavern isn't it obvious that I had at least chosen to become one? Someone had to be first!"
"But it didn't have to be me, dammit!" Jericho pushed himself away off the bed, pulling impatiently at the blanket that rested low on his hips, and came to stand in front of her. "I have no taste
for inexperienced wenches, nor will I have it said that I helped you on your way to becoming a whore!"
She could not believe her ears. "Will you but listen to yourself?" she demanded testily. "You speak a language of contradictions. When you thought me experienced you paid me so I would not mistake the nature of your feelings for me. Do not deny that you came to me in spite of yourself. You hated the thought that I had lain with other men. Now you find that you are my first, and you can't stand that either. How can you have it all ways, Mr. Smith?" She taunted him, thrusting her chin forward. "Shall I return to Wolfe's and gain a measure of expertise?" Surely she had not mistaken that Jericho flinched at her words. "What would you have me do?"
"What would you have me do?" Jericho said belligerently. At his sides his hands clenched into fists, his blunt nails pressed half-moons into his palms. "Was I wrong to remember you seemed to have no stomach for whorin'? I was offerin' you another choice, a second chance to decide your future, you daft chit!"
"What real choice did I have after the sheets were bloodied with my virginity?" she pointed out, stamping her foot.
"How the hell was I supposed to know? God, I want to shake you! I was tryin' to do right by you, Red. If this is how you respond to a noble act, then you were right to pursue whoredom."
She gasped. "You? Noble? A man who lusts after the wife of his friend?" Seeing Jericho's stunned expression, she knew she had not mistaken his feelings for Salem's wife. Heedless of the consequences, she continued, "Are you shocked that I have guessed it, or that I have the courage to say it? I heard the way you spoke her name. 'Everything a man could want,'" she mocked. "Next you will tell me you are noble because you have never acted on your carnal instincts, merely sniffed at her skirts." She knew she had gone too far, but there was not a word she would call back if she had it to do over. She had a need she did not understand to break Jericho's control, to provoke him as she believed she had been provoked. That was why she accepted the blow that sent her reeling backward without a murmur.
Jericho watched her stagger a few steps from him, then right herself with composure and dignity, her accusing green eyes never leaving his. His own face was as white as the mark made by the flat of his hand. As her cheek suffused with color, his own turned ruddy with shame. He had never struck a woman in such a manner and never known this loss of command over his actions. His stance rigid, he waited for her retaliation. Though it did not come in the expected way, it still rocked him on his heels.
"I suppose I should feel victorious that I was able to goad you," she said quietly. Her eyes stopped accusing him as her thoughts turned inward. "But in truth, I feel nothing of the sort. I think I must be a very sad sort of woman to want to see you out of all patience. I thought I would be heady with power that I could fire such a response, no matter that I was hurt by it. Instead I find that I don't like myself very much for it."
"Red..." Jericho interjected softly. He found himself wanting to take her into his arms, to protect them both from words that scored them. But he did not reach for her, knowing that she would reject his overture as too late and insufficient for her needs.
"Please. Don't say anything. I know I am making rather a botch of this, but I beg your indulgence." Now her eyes left his and fastened on a point beyond his shoulder. Unknown to her, the slight twist of her head gave him a full view of the mark on her cheek, the same cheek that still bore the scratches from her errant trek through the woods. Jericho felt as if she had landed a blow to his middle. Some part of him, as he listened to her go on, wondered what damage she could have wrought if her revenge had been calculating. "I am not sorry for what I said about the woman you love, but I do regret that I am not she. My experience, or lack of it, made no difference to me. It was rather a surprise, you see, because though I railed against the things you said of me, I also accepted them. But surprise or no, I wanted you. You said that you were offering me a second chance, another choice. Well, I choose whatever will make you want me. I want this night's pleasure to remember when you send me away tomorrow. I want this night's pleasure to remember when I no longer have a choice about the men who lie with me. I will remember an evening when I did have a choice, and chose you." As she said the last she faced him boldly, and only a slight glistening on the rim of her lower lashes spoke of the courage her action took.
Jericho swayed on his feet as she impaled him with her dark emerald gaze. Odd that he had once thought her eyes had no more sparkle or depth than green glass; that he had once thought her undeserving of nature's fine colors. He had thought then that he deserved a woman such as she appeared to be. The truth broke through his consciousness with the punch of a cannonball. "I don't deserve anyone like you," he said, breaking the weighty, expectant silence that had enveloped the cabin since she voiced her decision.
She could not doubt that he believed what he was saying; conviction framed each word and the words were said slowly as if dragged from his inner soul. She took a step closer to him. Then another. And another. When she stood so close that she had to look up to see him, she spoke. "I do not believe that."
"It's true. You don't know me."
Her hands lifted and came to rest on Jericho's hips. The tips of her fingers slid between the edge of the blanket and Jericho's flushed and faintly perspiring skin. "I know what you've allowed me to know. I've come to—to know a man who wears ruthlessness as he would a hair shirt, who punishes the child he was by choosing a name meant to invoke pain each time he hears it. This is the same man who rescued a wench he had no liking for from a certain hanging, who nursed her and kept her safe, who washed her hair with profound gentleness and has caressed her with a softness in his eyes that he could not bear to bring to his hands. I think you are afraid, Jericho Smith. I think you are afraid to want anything for yourself because it may slip through your fingers." She released the tuck in the blanket and it fell between them revealing Jericho's stark male beauty and scorching her palms with the heat of his flesh. "But know this, Jericho. It will be you who will send me away in the morning. I would not go otherwise."
"I have no use for your pity," Jericho said. He made no move to shrink from her hands or hide the state of his arousal. Instead his own hands reached for the blanket tucked carelessly at her breasts.
"I don't offer it." She could feel Jericho's smooth nails touch her breasts as his fingers insinuated themselves in much the way hers had done. Her bottom lip trembled as a wave of desire swept through her, pushing her closer to Jericho. She felt an echo of her need ripple through Jericho when he glimpsed her tongue nervously wet her lower lip. "Kiss me."
Jericho's surrendering groan gave sound to the last barrier between them as her covering slid to the floor. His mouth lowered to hers, and she accepted the kiss with a measure of thankfulness and greed. She arched against him, flinging her arms about his neck, and reveled in the feel of him pressed intimately against her. Her tongue had abandoned the line of her own lip in favor of the taste and texture of Jericho's.
"You'll show me, won't you?" she implored softly between the nibbling kisses she placed on the corners of his mouth. "You'll show me how to please you?" Her hips settled against his thighs, cradling him naturally with her slender body.
Jericho lifted her, sliding an arm around her back and under her knees. "You are in the wrong of it, Red," he whispered in her ear as he carried her to the bunk and laid her down. "I'm thinkin' you'll be showin' me."
And she would show him, she vowed, as she drew him down till he covered her with his body. She would show him tenderness he could feel as well as see. She would show him that where she was concerned his fears were groundless. And in the event he could not put aside the ghosts that plagued him, she would have enough courage for the both of them.
She used his momentum as he came to her to turn them on the mattress. For a moment she was still and then her lips gentled on his, her breath fluttered softly against his cheek. Her hands slid down the tapering length of his back, smoothed his taut buttocks, the backs
of his hard thighs. She rained kisses on his chin, his throat, across his shoulders, and along the ridged muscles of his chest.
Jericho knew ineffable pleasure at her hands, and unkind, unworthy thoughts warred within him: thoughts that questioned her loving instincts and wondered if there were such a thing as a born harlot. To banish the thoughts, he followed her lead, turned so they lay side by side, and applied himself to mirror her caresses.
Almost against his will, he found himself doing those small, adoring things he swore he would not do. He counted the freckles on the bridge of her nose and kissed those spraying either cheek. His fingers wove through the thick auburn strands of her hair, untangling the damp strands and eliciting a wince when he tugged too hard. She retaliated by pinching his buttocks. He responded by sinking his teeth in her neck. She tickled him. He stopped her by laving her swollen nipples with the rough edge of his tongue.
It was the caress her body had demanded earlier, and her soft cry told Jericho of her satisfaction.
Moved as he had not known he could be by the telling sounds of her pleasure, Jericho continued to make forays across the slick saltiness of her skin with his mouth and hands. Her small breasts swelled and hardened against his chest, and he remembered the posters that called her a woman of Amazonian proportions. His smile was lost in the musky valley of her breasts. No Amazon, she. But still a woman whose slenderness held a supple strength and whose delicately wholesome features harbored a heart of rare bravery.