A Texan's Honor

by Leigh Greenwood

  Emily had risen to her knees. “What about you, your life, the things you want? You can’t live your whole life just to avenge an old injustice.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  Emily thumped him on the shoulders with the heel of her palm. “I do understand. My father was disowned by his family. They wouldn’t answer his letters, acknowledge his marriage or my birth. It hurt Dad, but he was determined to live his life for himself, not for someone else.”

  “Isabelle said practically the same thing. Jake warned me not to expect them to change, but I had to leave.”

  “Okay, so you don’t care about yourself, but it’s not fair to ruin my life because of something your stupid uncle did twenty years ago.”

  Bret opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “You know I love you,” Emily insisted. “I wouldn’t have said anything if you didn’t love me, too. If you were going to turn your back and go off to Boston never to return, you shouldn’t have said anything. Teasing me with something I can’t have is cruel.”

  “You knew I had to go back to Boston,” Bret said, desperate to get out from under the weight of guilt. “I told you that from the beginning.” He could see the tears pool in Emily’s eyes, spill over and run down her cheeks.

  “I thought falling in love with me would change that,” Emily said through her tears.

  He didn’t know how to explain to her that the present couldn’t change the past, didn’t cancel out the terrible sense of injustice that wouldn’t let him rest. He couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t explain it away. All attempts to get around it had failed. Only by facing it could he free himself from this unbearable burden. “I have to go back to Boston,” he said. “There are things I have to do there if I’m ever going to be happy.”

  “If you loved me like I love you, you wouldn’t leave me.” Emily’s tears began to flow faster.

  “Would you come to Boston with me?” He knew it wouldn’t work, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

  “You know I hate Boston. Besides, my family doesn’t want me any more than yours wants you. And Joseph only wants my share of Abbott and Abercrombie.”

  “Once I’ve finished what I set out to do, maybe I can come back,” Bret said.

  “You won’t come back, because you don’t really love me.”

  It would make it easier for her to forget him if she believed that, but he couldn’t tell her that lie. A man could be expected to give up only so much, even for an old and grievous wound. Taking her by the shoulders, Bret pulled her to him. He leaned forward and kissed her hard on the mouth. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he said. “I tried not to fall in love with you because I knew it wouldn’t work, but I couldn’t help myself.”

  “I don’t believe you really love me.”

  “How can I prove it to you?”

  “Make love to me.”

  If she’d asked him to marry Bertie, he couldn’t have been more surprised. “I could never do that.”

  Emily shrugged his hands off her shoulders and moved back. “Then you don’t love me.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I know exactly what I’m asking.” Despite her grief over her father’s death, she looked determined and clear-eyed.

  “When you fall in love and marry—”

  “I’m not going to get married, because I’ll never fall in love again.”

  “You can’t know what. When you go to Galveston—”

  “I’m not going to Galveston. You can still vote my shares, but there’s no point.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your shares. I promised your father—”

  “My father is dead. I’m the one who’s alive.”

  “You’re too young and too lovely to give up on having a husband and family.”

  “My parents fell in love the first time they saw each other. Why do you think I’d be any different? I love you. I want to marry you, be your wife, have your children.”

  “Stop.”

  “Why? Because you want the same thing, or because you’ve been lying to me and your conscience is bothering you?”

  Bret was going crazy from the conflicts inside him, but one thing he did understand. He had to convince Emily he loved her. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d pushed her down on the bed and was leaning over her. “I love you so much it’s tearing me up inside. I didn’t want to love you. I fought it as hard as I could, but I couldn’t help myself.”

  Then he kissed her. It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It wasn’t even rough. It was brutal. Behind it was all his frustration and anger, driven by a need for her that gripped his guts and twisted until he wanted to scream. It was like a demon trapped inside him, fighting, struggling, ripping, and tearing.

  Instead of being shocked by the force of Bret’s kiss, Emily was thrilled. It showed she’d finally made a crack in that ironclad self-control Bret wrapped around himself. She knew that was the only way she’d ever get him to admit he wanted to stay in Texas, that loving her was more important than settling a score with his family. But she didn’t want him to forget it altogether. She wanted them to face his family together.

  She held him tight when he tried to pull away. She liked the feel of his body pressed hard against her, his arms resting on the bed on either side. She felt penned in, captured, safe, desired. She’d been desired before. She had seen it in the eyes of men when they looked at her, but their desire had left her untouched. It was flattering, but she didn’t care about the flattery of strangers.

  Everything was different with Bret. She wanted him to be so attracted to her that all other women ceased to exist for him. She wanted to inspire passion because for the first time she felt passionate about a man. That first kiss had been a revelation. Each succeeding kiss had reached deeper and deeper, until finally piercing a well of passion, of femininity, of the need that had been waiting untapped for the right man to come along. Once the reservoir had been uncapped, there was no possibility of containing it.

  Nor did she want to contain it. For the first time in her life, she was in love. She wanted to enjoy every minute of it, experience every sensation, wallow in every dream, explore every errant thought. She didn’t want anything to escape unnoticed, untried, undreamed of. Ida had said falling in love was wonderful, but nothing had prepared Emily for the sheer immensity of its wonderfulness. She’d been only half awake all her life, her body experiencing only half of what happened around her, her mind sleepwalking through life.

  Now everything was in vivid color, exciting detail, and instantly burned into her memory forever. She wasn’t young enough to think that everything would be perfect, but she was young enough to want to experience everything without restraint. She’d save self-control for later—if she ever wanted it at all. She’d seen what it had done to Bret, and she didn’t like it.

  “Mama once told me a person should never fight being in love,” Emily said. “She said true love doesn’t come along very often. She said when it does, that couple is truly blessed.”

  Bret held her in his arms, his head buried in her shoulder. “Your parents were very fortunate,” he said. “Not every pair of lovers is so lucky.”

  Emily made him lift his head until she could look into his eyes. “You don’t think we’re lucky?” In response to her question, his expression was pained.

  “Love is never about just two people. It spills over into everything and everybody in their lives.”

  “I don’t want to think about anybody but us. Maybe that’s selfish of me, but I don’t care. I don’t want our love ruined or diluted by my problems or yours. I want it to be perfect. I need it to be perfect, at least for a few hours.”

  “Are you sure?” Bret asked. “You know the world won’t go away.”

  “We’ve only just faced the fact that we love each other. We tried to push it away before we even knew what it was like. We have to give our love a chance to be shared, to grow, to gain meaning before we can know whether it’s in
fatuation or something strong enough to last a lifetime.”

  “Are you sure?” he repeated. He didn’t sound like he was.

  “Yes, I’m very sure.”

  For a moment Bret didn’t move, just looked into her eyes as though he could find the answer there to some unspoken question. Finally, apparently having found the assurance he was looking for, his arms tightened around her body and he kissed her.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Emily wondered why she’d never wanted to kiss a man before Bret, why she’d never suspected that kissing could be so wonderful. Maybe it wasn’t just the kiss. Maybe it was that Bret held her in a strong embrace. Maybe it was the feel of a powerful, virile male body pressed up against her. Maybe it was knowing that Bret was so strongly attracted to her he couldn’t stop himself. Maybe it didn’t matter what it was. All that really mattered was that she loved Bret, he loved her, and she was in his arms.

  She responded eagerly to his kiss, pulling him down to her until his weight rested on her body. She couldn’t get enough of his nearness. She had begun a journey in which every step was new, filled with wonder and excitement, a journey in which she keenly anticipated each step in hopes it would link her life more inextricably with that of the man she loved.

  Emily had thought Bret would break his kiss after a few seconds. Instead, his attentions grew more intense. She loved the feel of his arms around her, his hard chest pressing against her breasts, the weight of his powerful thigh against her hip. When his tongue pushed between her teeth and delved into her mouth, she was so shocked it took her a moment to respond, a moment during which her body—impatient with the brain’s slowness—took over. Every muscle strained to push her harder against Bret as her tongue attempted to make its way past his tongue and into his mouth.

  Success sent a chill all through her. Bret’s tongue dueled with hers in a sinuous dance that caused her heart to beat faster and her breath to come in short gasps. When they finally broke apart, she felt exhausted.

  Her senses were in such an uproar she didn’t realize that Bret’s hand had cupped her breast until he began to massage her nipple through the thin material of her nightgown. The jolt she felt caused her breath to catch in her throat. For a moment it was impossible to swallow. She thought she might pass out when her muscles relaxed enough for her to breathe and to swallow. A soft moan escaped her.

  “Do you want me to stop?” Bret asked.

  Incapable of speaking just then, she shook her head.

  “Do you like this?” Bret asked.

  Nodding, she reached up to cup the side of his face with one hand. She hadn’t realized how rough his face became when he hadn’t shaved. She liked it. He seemed like a man who spent his days in the open, on horseback, overseeing his domain, rather than one who spent his days inside an office adding and subtracting numbers.

  She didn’t object when he unbuttoned the top of her nightgown and slipped his hand inside. His palm felt rough against the softness of her breast. Her nipple was so sensitive that when the ridged skin of his fingertip rubbed across it, she nearly rose off the bed in sweet excitement, nearly every muscle in her body tensing. She hadn’t known her body could feel like this. Now she knew she wanted more.

  Bret undid a few more buttons. “Sit up so I can slip your nightgown down to your waist.”

  Emily was sure Bret knew what he was doing, but she was still nervous. This was a big step for her. She hesitated so long he drew back.

  “If you want me to stop—”

  “No.” She raised herself into a sitting position.

  She allowed Bret to push her nightgown off her shoulders, so that it pooled around her. Her body tensed, anticipating his touch, but when it came it wasn’t what she expected. Bret leaned forward to drop kisses on her shoulder. It must have been instinct that caused her to tilt her head to one side so he could leave a trail of kisses along her neck. The tensed muscles let go, and she felt herself melting back onto the bed.

  Bret devoured her with his eyes. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured, “more beautiful than I imagined.”

  She’d never thought of her breasts as beautiful, but then she’d never guessed they were capable of giving her such incredible pleasure. She certainly wouldn’t have guessed Bret would look at her as if seeing a woman for the first time.

  He looked for so long without moving to touch her, she was caught by surprise when she felt his hands gently cup each breast. A sharp intake of breath signaled her body’s response to his touch, to the amazing sensations that radiated out from her breasts, causing small bursts of heat to scatter throughout her body. The sensations increased incrementally as Bret gently massaged her nipples. Then she went into orbit when he touched her nipple with his tongue. How could she have lived so long and still have no real knowledge of her body? It was as if something had been broken or unconnected. Whatever it was, Bret was putting it together, piece by piece.

  When he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked gently, it was like throwing logs on a fire and watching the flames go a little higher each time. She wondered how high they could go before they consumed her. When he took her nipple between his teeth, she was convinced she was about to find out. She was certain the moan that burst from between her lips was loud enough to wake everyone in the house.

  Bret’s lips moved from her breasts and began to scatter kisses across her abdomen. Her body had barely come down from the screaming point when he moved his hand down her side, along her hip, and down her thigh. By the time he reached her knee, the tension was back.

  She wasn’t aware just how tense she’d become until Bret said, “I can stop now.”

  She didn’t want him to stop, but she did want a minute to pull herself together. Her mind and body had been so overwhelmed, they weren’t communicating with each other.

  “I’d like to touch you.” She moved her hand inside his robe until she found the silky mat of dark hair that covered his chest. She’d caught glimpses of the cowhands when they washed at the trough, but she didn’t remember anyone with hair. It fascinated her. She tried to move her hand around, but the closed robe restricted her movement.

  “Open your robe,” she said.

  “I can’t,” Bret said. “I’m not wearing anything under it.”

  “Can you pull it off your shoulders?”

  Bret pulled his arms out of the sleeves and allowed the robe to slide off his shoulders, but not before Emily discovered he was completely aroused. Made slightly uncomfortable by the heat that suddenly suffused her body, she redirected her gaze to Bret’s chest. His upper arms and shoulders were smooth, the hair in a diamond-shaped patch in the center of his chest. As it descended, it narrowed to a thin line, then disappeared beneath the robe bunched at his waist. She ran her hands over his chest, over his shoulders. She smiled when she touched his nipples and he flinched, but she was having a hard time concentrating on what she was doing. Bret had both her breasts in his hands, was kneading her nipples, kissing her shoulders and the side of her neck. Giving in to the lassitude gripping her—she didn’t understand how she could feel so limp when moments before she’d been strung tight—she leaned against Bret, running her hands over his back, marveling at the power of his muscles. Bret’s body was a newly discovered treasure that was hers alone to do with almost as she wished. Bret pulled her nightgown up enough to run his fingers lightly along the inside of her leg. She forgot her fascination with his body as she was overwhelmed by new senations.

  “Open for me.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant. He must have sensed her confusion, for he laid her down on the bed, took hold of the gathered nightgown at her waist, and slipped it under and off her body.

  She lay naked before him.

  The suddenness of it was a shock, but she was determined not to flinch or draw back this time. This was what she’d wanted from the first. She admitted it frightened her a little. Giving herself to a man for the first time was an event of colossal importance in her life, a major mile
stone. If he was as big as she thought, she was afraid it would hurt.

  “Relax,” Bret said. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Ida said men never thought about making love the way women did. She said it would be up to Emily to teach her husband to be considerate of her, but Ida had neglected to tell her in what ways a man would be inconsiderate and what she was supposed to do to change it. But Bret loved her. She believed him when he said he wouldn’t hurt her. It wasn’t easy, but she willed her body to relax.

  Emily practically held her breath as Bret’s hand gently stroked the inside of her thigh. He’d taken her nipple in his mouth again, dividing her attention. He was so successful, she almost missed it when his finger gently prodded her entrance.

  “Don’t tense,” he whispered. “It won’t hurt.”

  The anticipation was so great, she couldn’t control her muscles. As Bret continued to stroke her, she relaxed enough to take a deep breath. At that moment, his fingers entered her.

  It wasn’t anything like she expected. It didn’t hurt. She just felt slightly stretched. Then Bret touched something inside her and she nearly rose off the bed.

  “What—” She tried to get out the rest of the sentence, but her throat wouldn’t let the words pass. She swallowed once, twice, and then again. She didn’t know what he was doing, but her body convulsed with feelings unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Her muscles, alternately tensing and relaxing, were beyond her control.

  “Relax,” Bret said. “It’ll feel even better soon.”

  She didn’t think she could stand any more. She tried to ask, how much better? Yet despite her moving lips, no sound came from between them. Bands of steel encased her body, but at the same time she felt she might explode. Heat that had pooled deep in her belly began to spread to the rest of her body, setting her afire. Her hands gripped the bedding on either side of her and dug in hard as the sweet agony gradually drove her to the edge of an unknown abyss. She didn’t understand how anything could feel so wonderful and so terrifying at the same time. Surely Bret would explain it, but she’d passed beyond the point of being able to think coherently or utter any sound other than a groan or a moan.