Stuart's eyes were still fastened on Jessie. She returned his impenetrable stare with as much hauteur as she could muster. Now that they were truly alone, his stance relaxed slightly. He leaned one shoulder against the gnarled trunk of an ancient pear tree, and crossed his arms over his chest.
"If you'll excuse me, I think I'll go inside," Jessie said coldly. Why she had not gone earlier, with Mitch, she could not have said. It was almost as if Stuart's eyes had held her transfixed for that brief period, like a snake's might a rabbit. But for whatever reason she had stayed, his movement had broken the spell.
"Oh, no, you don't. Not—quite—yet." Stuart reached out to trap her wrist as she would have swept by him. Thwarted, Jessie turned on him.
"Let go of me! How dare you come out here spying on me!" His eyebrows lifted and he straightened away from the tree. His hand was clamped shackle-like around her wrist, and he was so close that he loomed over her intimidatingly. Jessie, however, 195
refused to be intimidated. She was suddenly, fiercely, angry at him. Why, she refused to let herself speculate.
"Spying, is it?" he asked softly. Jessie realized with a start that he was every bit as angry as she. Those blue eyes snapped and blazed. "You little strumpet, if you value your hide you won't take that tone with me!"
"Strumpet!"
"What else would you call a young woman who leads her beau off under the trees, then begs him to kiss her?"
"You were spying! How despicable!"
"Kiss me, Mitch," he mimicked ruthlessly in a mincing falsetto.
"Oh, please, kiss me!"
"I did not," Jessie said through gritted teeth, "say, 'Oh, please'!"
"But you did beg him to kiss you. Don't deny it, because I heard you, my girl!"
"I didn't beg him, I asked him! Just because— because—" Jessie broke off to stand glaring speechlessly at him as it occurred to her that she couldn't possibly explain.
"Because why? There's no reason you can give me that might serve to excuse such loose behavior. Good God, being a lightskirt must run in the family!"
"A light-skirt!"
"Like your stepmother," Stuart said with relish.
"You mean your wife?" Jessie was so angry that she hurled the below-the-belt riposte with pleasure.
"Yes. Just like my wife. My thrice-damned wife, who'll lie down for anything in breeches. Have you lived with her for so long that her round-heeled ways have rubbed off on you?"
"If you say another nasty word to me, I'll slap your face, so help me I will!"
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Stuart smiled then, a nasty, mocking smile that was as insulting as anything he'd said. "If you slap my face, you'll get exactly what you got the last time. But maybe that's what you're hoping for."
Jessie stared up at him, up into the harsh, handsome face, and abruptly felt much of her anger leave her. As valiantly as she had fought against admitting it, even to herself, she very much feared that he had hit the nail squarely on the head. Oh, not that she wanted a repeat of that bruising, angry kiss he had punished her with at their last encounter. But the kind of kiss she suspected he was capable of bestowing—the thought made her knees weaken. She looked at his mouth and imagined it on her own—and finally faced the truth. The reason that she wasn't interested in Mitch Todd any longer was simple. In fact, it stood squarely in front of her at that very moment, its hand clamped around her wrist, its chest only inches from her own as it scowled down at her. The reason was Stuart. Jessie realized with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach that she had fallen in love with him. She also suspected that he cared in some fashion for her. Certainly he was furious with her for kissing Mitch, too furious considering the minor nature of her offense. After all, being chastely kissed by an eligible gentleman whom she had known all her life and who had just offered her marriage was not exactly the first step on a greased slide to whoredom. Even the most protective father in the world would not have taken such violent exception to what had occurred. And Stuart was not her father. For all his protestations that he had done so out of gratitude, Stuart himself had kissed her much as Mitch had done. Then, later, he'd kissed her far more shamefully as well.
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He didn't strike her as the kind of man who normally went around kissing his wife's relations. Especially not the way he had kissed her.
His wife. Her stepmother. For all Celia's bitchery, Stuart was a married man. She should walk away from him, now, and at the next opportunity accept Mitch's proposal. To stay at Mimosa now that she had faced the truth about her feelings for Stuart would be nothing less than a disaster. There was no future in it^
and the best she could hope for would be to wind up with a broken heart.
But never to have him kiss her as her body cried out to be kissed—she didn't think she could go away without that. Swallowing in an effort to ease her suddenly dry throat, Jessie lifted her gaze from his mouth to his eyes. He was watching her intently, his eyes glittering. His face was dark with temper, his brows pulled together over those heart-stopping eyes. His mouth curled angrily at her. Even in the face of his wrath, just looking at him made her pulse quicken. He was without a doubt the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life.
"Maybe," Jessie said at last. "Maybe it is."
"What?" He blinked, as if he couldn't for the moment imagine what she was talking about. It took him a second or two to recall his taunt that she had left unanswered. The instant he remembered she could see it in his face. Those incredible blue eyes flickered, and then he scowled down at her even more fiercely than before. "You heard what I said."
"You want me to kiss you?" Disbelief made it a question.
"Yes, Stuart," she said, taking a step closer, so that her breasts lacked just a foot or so of brushing his chest, and lifting her face.
"Please."
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His expression was indescribable. "God in heaven, have you lost your senses? Are you sickening for something, like brain fever? You can't just go around asking men to kiss you! I ought to beat you!"
He sounded so horrified that Jessie had to smile. She took another step toward him, and to her amusement he took a half step back.
"I don't want men to kiss me. I want you to kiss me." She'd knocked him completely off balance, she could tell, and the knowledge gave her a delicious courage. She had a feeling that he didn't get thrown off balance very often, or very easily.
"A quarter of an hour ago you wanted that Todd boy to kiss you."
"That," Jessie said, "was just an experiment."
"An experiment?"
Jessie nodded. "I wanted to see if he kissed like you." "Good God!" "He didn't." "Jessie ..."
"Not at all." She took another step toward him. With the pear tree behind him, he was left with nowhere to go. Catching her free wrist, he slid both hands up to her elbows and held her away from him.
"Now listen here, Jessie ..."
Cocking her head to one side, she continued thoughtfully: "But then, you were the first gentleman to ever kiss me. Maybe I've built it up all out of proportion in my mind. Maybe, if you kiss me again, I won't feel any more than I did with Mitch. Then I can marry him after all." Her tone was wistful. The faintest suggestion of a frown puckered her brow. If she'd suddenly grown a second nose, he couldn't have regarded her with any greater consternation.
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"If you truly don't want to, of course, I'll understand." All at once she sounded very humble.
"It's not that I don't want to." Shaking his head, he looked down at her. "Christ, this is the devil of a conversation! Jessie, I kissed you the first time because—because—hell, I don't know, because you looked so sweet. The second time was a mistake. It shouldn't have happened. To do it again would be a worse mistake. Take my word for it."
"So I should just go on with my life and pretend I don't feel . . . what I feel when you kiss me?"
"Yes," he said through gritted teeth. "You should."
"I can't." Her words were very soft.
Her eyes fastened on his. Stuart looked down into her face, opened his mouth as if he would say something, hesitated, and was lost. His hands on her elbows no longer held her away, but slid around to encircle her upper arms and pull her gently against his chest.
XXVII
"I know better than this," Stuart muttered. Jessie was already rising on tiptoe, her breasts swelling and throbbing as they pressed against his chest, her face lifting for his kiss. His eyes flamed a brilliant shade of blue as they moved from her eyes to her mouth, and his fingers wrapped around her arms tightened almost painfully. Jessie didn't care. All she cared about was the beautiful male mouth she was stretching to reach.
"Christ," he said then, the near whisper more curse than prayer. But Jessie was not, at the moment, concerned about what might have prompted such a sentiment. His head was descending, his 200
mouth just touching hers with the same exquisite gentleness he had shown the first time he had kissed her. Softly, tenderly, his lips brushed hers. The hot, wet melting she had experienced before flooded her, and she gasped against his mouth. Stuart lifted his head.
"Christ," he said again, looking down into her face with an expression that was almost, she decided dazedly, bewilderment. She thought he was going to pull away from her and her hands closed pleadingly on the sleeves of his coat.
But he did not pull away.
Instead, he lowered his head again.
If Jessie had died in that moment, she would have died happy. The touch of his mouth on hers jolted through her like a lightning bolt. Her insides quivered along with her knees. Her lips trembled against his mouth.
Still he was just barely kissing her, his mouth brushing back and forth, back and forth over her shaking lips. The world whirled around her. Jessie held onto the smooth wool of his coat, eyes closed, straining on tiptoe to deepen the contact, her heart beating so fast she thought she might die.
"Ah, Jessie." He whispered it against her mouth. His breath was warm on her lips. For a moment, just a moment, she again feared he might pull away. His hands slid along her bare skin from her elbows to her wrists, raising goose bumps in their wake, then closed over hers where she clung to his coat. Gently he pried them free, then lifted them until they were linked around his neck. Her eyes opened then, to find him looking down at her with an expression that was only slightly less dazed than she felt. As if he had no more control over his actions than she did over hers.
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Without a word he bent his head to hers again, and this time his kiss was marginally less gentle than before. Jessie's eyes fluttered shut, and her arms around his neck held him tight. His hands slid down over her back, stroking the nape of her neck beneath the thick fall of her hair, tracing her spine through the thin material of her dress.
When his tongue came out to gently trace the outline of her lips, she shuddered.
"Sweet, sweet Jessie." He murmured the words as he kissed the corner of her mouth. Her fingers dug into the silky curls at the nape of his neck, and she quivered in his hold. Pressed full against him, she felt the hard, muscular strength of him with every fiber of her being. Her breasts throbbed against the solid warmth of his chest; her thighs quivered against the powerful length of his.
"I love you, Stuart." It was a mere breath, escaping of its own volition. Hearing her own voice whisper the secret she'd only just discovered herself, Jessie's eyes fluttered open in alarm His mouth lifted just a fraction above her own. His eyes as they met hers were heavy-lidded and intense. A muscle quivered at the side of his mouth. Then his arms slid around her waist, pulling her tight against him, and his head descended again. This time he was not gentle at all. His mouth slanted over hers, parted her lips. His tongue slid inside. As he had done once before, he invaded her mouth, his tongue exploring the contours of palate and cheeks, running over her teeth and stroking her tongue. He tasted of brandy and cigars. His tongue was burning hot, and very strong.
But this incursion was nothing like the punishment he had inflicted upon her before. This kiss rocked her world on its axis. 202
Jessie's arms tightened around his neck, and her head fell back to rest against his shoulder. When his tongue touched hers again, instinctively she responded, stroking his tongue with her own. The harsh indrawing of his breath presaged the lifting of his head.
"Stuart ..." She was sore afraid he meant to leave her.
"Shhh, darling." He pressed kisses along her cheek to her ear, where he explored the delicate whorls with his tongue. Then his mouth slid down the cord of her neck until it was stopped by the lace frill of her collar.
"You smell just like vanilla."
Whispering to her, he pressed her closer to his body. With mingled excitement and shock, Jessie realized that his hands now cupped her bottom. They were large hands, and strong. Jessie could feel the heat and strength of them through her dress as they curled around that part of her that she'd thought was only good for sitting, pulling her full against him.
There was something large and hard lying across his abdomen. As he pressed her against it, Jessie realized that it had its origin between his thighs.
It was only when he rocked her against it so that her womanplace rubbed squarely against the bulge that she realized what it was.
The knowledge burst inside her like a rocket. Her insides quaked, and that hot, sweet melting feeling intensified until Jessie had to cling to his neck because she could not stand. He had been kissing her neck, but as she shivered and sagged in his arms, his mouth moved even lower, to find and rest against the tip of her breast. His breath burned through the layers of her 203
dress and chemise to her skin. He bit at her nipple, and Jessie cried out.
Then he was lowering her to the ground, and coming down on top of her.
As his weight crushed her, Jessie whimpered, but not with pain. She wanted what he was doing to her, burned for it, ached for it. Her hands clung to his shoulders, then locked convulsively around his neck. His mouth descended, stopping her soft cry, kissing her fiercely while he cupped and squeezed her breasts, and pressed himself urgently against the juncture of her thighs. He pinched her nipples, and Jessie felt a shaft of fire shoot clear down to her toes. When one hand left her breast to jerk her skirt upward, she trembled in anticipation.
Then, with no warning at all, he stopped what he was doing and lay still. One hand was clenched in her skirt, which was raised above her knees. The other cupped her breast.
"Stuart?" Her tremulous voice seemed to provide the impetus he lacked. Moving stiffly, he propelled himself to his feet despite her clinging hands. "What's wrong?"
"I'm a swine, but not that big a swine," he said through his teeth, then turned on his heel.
Scrambling into a sitting position, Jessie could do nothing but watch as he strode away.
XXVIII
By the time Clive pulled the saddle from Saber's back and turned the big horse loose in his stall, it was nearer to dawn than midnight. He could have awakened Progress, who slept in the 204
loft so as to be near his beloved horses, to do the job, but he wasn't the man to deprive a dependent of his night's sleep when the task was one he could as easily do himself. Besides, being in the huge, echoing barn with only the animals for company was oddly peaceful. And some kind of peace was what he had ridden hell-for-leather in search of.
Clive carried the saddle to the tack room and hung it neatly on a peg, then rubbed a hand over his face. God, he was tired! Tired enough, maybe, to sleep.
Though he doubted it. Physically he might be weary, but his mind continually ran in circles, trying to find some solution to the conundrum he was facing. So far, he hadn't had a tinker's damn of luck.
Hadn't someone once said that a man had better be careful what he wished for, because he just might get it? Clive now knew just what he meant.
Saber stuck his head over the top of the stall and nudged Clive as he dropped a handful of the molasses-impregnated grain that was the animal's favorite into his trough.
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"Good night, fella," Clive told him, rubbing his velvety nose and scratching the itchy spot behind his left ear. Saber's head bobbed up and down appreciatively at this treatment. Clive had to smile, although the smile was wry. It was stupid, he knew, but he loved the horse. Saber was a fine animal, with the proud head of an Arabian and the speed of a Thoroughbred. A mount like Saber had been part and parcel of what he had used to wish for so intensely. And, like the rest of his wish, it had been granted, in spades.
After years of living by his wits, he'd finally gotten everything he'd ever dreamed of. More than he had ever dreamed of, in fact. 205
He was a wealthy man now, owner of a magnificent plantation of the sort he had used to look at enviously in passing from the deck of whatever riverboat he'd happened to be working. His wish had been to buy some land, have a place he could call his own, stay put, and put down some roots. But he'd known, even as he'd been wishing, that he'd never have a place like the vast plantations he saw from the river. Money enough to buy a place like that was not likely to be won on a hand or two of cards.
But by a labyrinthian twist of fate he'd ended up as master of a plantation that covered more territory and housed more souls than some towns. He had acquired more possessions than any man had a right to own. Even Saber, whom he had purchased from a horse breeder near Jackson, was the embodiment of his dream. The animal had cost more than he would ever have considered spending on a horse in his old life. But as master of Mimosa, there was little he couldn't afford.
More than that, he was respected, looked up to even, when deference was something he had never thought to imagine for himself. Clive McClintock, river rat, professional gambler, who even his friends acknowledged was no more honest than he had to be, was now one of the gentry, a gentleman planter. When he'd been wishing, that wish had been so far out of line with what he'd considered possible that it had never even occurred to him.
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