Just This Once

by Jill Gregory

  Incredibly, she recognized something else too. Love. Love shook Ethan Savage’s tall, massive frame, it glittered darkly in his eyes, it pumped through his heart. She felt the jolt, the electricity and the sparks. She threw herself against him.

  “I love you too, Ethan! I need you. I need you to hold me, to kiss me....”

  “Glad to oblige,” he rasped, and then he was kissing her, and undressing her in the dark of the bedroom, sliding the filmy fabric up across her hips and breasts, above her head, then in one motion tossing the nightgown to the floor.

  The long, heavy ringlets of Josie’s hair cascaded forward across her cheeks. They fell about her shoulders, wild and dark, trailed over her breasts, caressed the pale smooth skin that gleamed in the moonlight tiptoeing in through the windows.

  If Ethan was hard before, he was now a rock. His eyes drank in the sight of her lovely pearly breasts with their delicate rose tips, her narrow waist, smooth flat stomach, the lush curve of her hips. Her legs were long and silky, her shoulders sensuously rounded. She was magnificent—dazzlingly feminine, intoxicatingly sweet. And shy. Her cheeks glowed with a blush that would rival dawn.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he managed to croak out as her smile wavered and then grew steadier and she slipped forward sleek as velvet into his arms.

  Beautiful? He called me beautiful. And he was gazing at her and touching her as if she were beautiful. Josie’s hands skimmed over the breadth of his shoulders, exploring the hard bulge of muscle beneath his fancy white shirt. She continued along the corded muscles of his arms, her head tilted back all the while to savor his deep drowning kisses.

  A feverish trembling whisked over her. She wanted to touch him, to see him, all of him. Previously unknown needs and longings tangled through her as she wrapped herself against him, almost too weak with desire to stand.

  “Ethan, it’s your turn—to take off your clothes,” she heard herself whispering, and felt her face flame.

  He grinned at her and caught her beneath the knees, scooping her up into his arms.

  “So it is,” he chuckled, nibbling at the corners of her lips as he carried her toward the bed. “Fair’s fair, I always say.”

  She laughed softly, her arms wound around his neck. “I never heard you say any such thing.”

  Ethan lowered her onto the bed with infinite gentleness. Her mouth was sweet and soft and giving—and clung to his with such ardor, he thought he’d explode before he could strip off his own clothes.

  Slow, he’d go slow. That’s what he planned. Slow kisses, slow touches. But the desire lashed at him, and Josie’s hands working at the buttons of his shirt, trailing across his chest, drove him to an aching frenzy.

  Sweat shone on his naked chest and torso. His clothes landed on the floor in a heap, and then only the two of them were in the darkened room, the two of them and the moonlight and the scent of passion heavy in the air.

  He leaned over her and kissed each of her breasts. Leisurely, his tongue curled around first one nipple—caressing, tormenting, teasing it into a taut rose peak—before grazing its way across her flesh to savor the other.

  He was driving her mad, utterly mad. Josie arched her back, writhing with delight. Pleasure floated through her with such wild sweetness, she began to ache. Ethan’s hair was thick and soft beneath her hands. He smelled of brandy and cigars, and as her fingers swept across his powerful shoulders and along the muscles of his bronzed back, she felt herself giving up everything to him, pride, dignity, embarrassment, hesitation... all dissolving beneath the onslaught of his hands and the warmth of his wicked mouth.

  Without thinking, Josie’s legs snaked around his, pulling the long, heavy length of him down full upon her, but when she suddenly felt the huge, solid hardness of him against her thighs, panic struck, slicing cold as ice.

  “No, Ethan, no, don’t!” She froze for a moment, then began to push and writhe, trying to scramble out from under him.

  Ethan rolled off her and stared, his breath coming hard. There was fear in her eyes. No, he realized with shock. Terror. And misery. Why?

  “Don’t do this to me, sweetheart. You can’t want to stop now. What is it, what’s wrong?”

  She didn’t know what to say, how to explain. With all of her heart, she wanted to press her body up against his, to be held tight and close, to be kissed by him until the world rocked and swayed and disappeared and there was only this room, this time, this man—a swirl of heat and sweetness and pleasure.

  But there wouldn’t be pleasure if she let him do all he wanted to do. There would be pain. Terrible pain.

  “It’s going to hurt. I’m afraid, I don’t want...”

  He smiled in relief, and reached out to take her hand, pulling it up to his lips. He nibbled a finger, then brushed a kiss across her palm. “It’s true that it sometimes hurts the first time, Josie, but...”

  It hadn’t sunk in to him until just now that this would be her first time. He drew in a hard breath as anticipation sharpened. “I’ll be gentle, sweetheart. And very careful of you. I’d never do anything to hurt you on purpose, I’ll go easily until—”

  “No, it always hurts!” She yanked her hand away, her eyes flashing with dismay. There was a sob in her voice. “Don’t lie to me!”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “You are—it will hurt. It always does for the woman. I love you Ethan, and I’ll try to let you do it if that’s what you want, but...”

  Ethan could only stare in amazement at the torment in her beautiful face. “What do you mean, it always hurts for the woman?” he demanded, his voice more harsh than he intended. “Who the hell told you this nonsense?”

  “No one told me, I know.”

  He watched as she struggled to sit up. Her hair spilled forward over her breasts in dark rippling waves, and her lower lip was trembling, no longer with passion but with anger and fear.

  Something went still and cold and dark inside Ethan. His mouth whitened and thinned to a grim, hard line. “How do you know, Josie? Tell me.”

  Twenty-one

  His voice was quiet, but the unmistakable note of command in it had her lifting her head to meet his eyes. Anger gleamed in them. Oh, God, what had she said? He would guess now, he would know.

  It was too late for secrets. When he grasped her arm and ordered her once more to tell him, she did.

  “Snake.” It came out in a rush. “Whenever Snake did that... did this with me, it hurt, it hurt something awful. Almost as bad as when he beat me that night. He—”

  “You went to bed with that outlaw?” Stupefaction left him numb. Then it quickly gave way to a leap of realization. Shock stabbed through him like a steel-edged bayonet. Ethan stared at her with rigidly clamped jaw.

  “He raped you?”

  The murderous fury blazing in Ethan’s eyes terrified her almost as much as the prospect of having him thrust himself into her had.

  “It wasn’t that exactly—not the way you think. He forced me, yes. I hated him, but... we were married.”

  Josie felt her heart pounding so fast, she thought she would pass out. “Ethan,” she pleaded brokenly. “I...”

  “Let me get this straight. You married an outlaw who beat you and forced you to—”

  “He forced me to marry him.” Shame flooded through her, hot and scalding. “I didn’t want to, but he would’ve killed Pop Watson if I didn’t—and Pop was the closest I ever had to a father! Ethan, don’t be angry with me. It was only for two weeks. Then I ran away. Pop was dead and... I never loved Snake, I’ve only loved you. I’ll try. I’ll try to let you do it to me and to like it. I will.”

  “Josie!”

  She never wept openly before anyone, hadn’t for as long as she could remember. Only in private—hot secret tears, secret sobs. Now, though, tears burned her eyes, spilled out. Her shoulders shook with pain-racked weeping.

  “Please don’t stop loving me because I married a man like him!” she gasped.

  This time as he gathered he
r close he could feel her entire body quaking—not with desire, he realized, but with anguish that she might be rejected, thrust away yet again as she had been over and over in her life. His arms enfolded her, holding her against him as if he would never let her go.

  “Shh, sweetheart. Shhh.”

  She clung to him and sobbed, her face buried in his chest.

  “Cry it out then if you have to,” he told her grimly. Female tears usually left him unmoved, but these burned into him like scalding bullets. “It’s behind you now. It’s all behind you.”

  He thought of the life she’d known, the loneliness, the thankless work, the scraping to get by and stay alive without a home, without family to love or shelter her and at last he thought of the desperation she must have known finding herself at the mercy of a brute like Snake Barker.

  A dam of pity and love burst inside him, burst so fast and furious and icy cold, it rushed over him like a Rocky Mountain falls.

  “I’m going to go back there one day soon, Josie, and hunt that animal down and send him straight to hell.” His voice was a harsh cracked whisper against her hair. A vow. “But before I let him die I’m going to—”

  He broke off, deciding it was better she didn’t know what he was going to do to Snake Barker before he finally allowed him to die. A woman shouldn’t have to think about such things.

  “No, Ethan, don’t go near him!” Alarm chased away the last of the receding sobs, and she lifted a pale, tear-streaked face to his and threw her arms around his neck.

  “You don’t know Snake—you don’t know what he’s capable of. I don’t want you near him, anywhere near him!”

  He was both touched and amused by her concern for him. He had a mean reputation in the West and too many notches on his guns to count. And he’d taken on enough vicious men to understand how they thought, enabling him to predict their actions ahead of time, which gave him a keen advantage. But he didn’t want to upset Josie now by promises of revenge, especially if she was going to worry about him.

  It had been a long time since someone had worried about him.

  His hands curved around her nape and gently massaged the tense muscles of her neck. “I’m not going anywhere yet. Not till we’ve settled one or two more things.”

  “What things?”

  “Your marriage to this hombre. It was legal?”

  She bit her lip and nodded. “Justice of the peace. Just like ours.” She took a breath. “I wore that gingham dress, the same one I had on when I picked your pocket.”

  The misery in her eyes almost made him cut short the questions, but there was more he had to know. “And did you end it legal?” he asked carefully.

  She shook her head.

  Ethan’s breath whistled out sharply. “So, damn it, you’re not even my wife.”

  “But Ethan, we can still—” She stopped and reached out, touching his face. “I feel like your wife. Lord knows, I never felt like anything but a cook and a pack mule and a whore to Snake Barker.”

  She dropped her hands and swallowed back another sob, covering it with a gasp and a sniffle. Then she pushed back her hair, suddenly aware that she was buck naked and so was he and they were half sitting, half lying on the bed, their bodies curled together, brushing....

  “Josie, what Snake did to you—it wasn’t making love. You didn’t want him. It was rape.” The coldness in his eyes now came from a place deep inside himself, a place she couldn’t go. “And in the very near future,” he said softly, “I’m going to kill him for it.”

  As she started to protest, he placed a gentle hand across her lips and smiled very tenderly but with great firmness down into her eyes.

  “No need to discuss that right now. It can wait. Right now I’ve got some real good news for you.”

  She moved his hand away, clasping it tight in hers. “What news, Ethan? I could use some good news right about now.”

  “What you and Snake did together in your marriage bed is nothing at all like what you and I are going to do on this bed.”

  As he spoke he eased her down across the wide, fluffy bed, smoothing her hair out on the lace-edged pillow and gazing down at her with a calm certainty that nearly burst Josie’s heart in two with wanting him.

  “We’ll do whatever you want,” she agreed instantly. “The kissing part was just wonderful, and the touching, and I can learn to like the other....”

  He started to grin, then stopped himself, and cupped her chin in his hand. “Do you trust me, Josie?”

  “If I didn’t, do you think I’d have let you take my clothes off and come this close to me after what I went through with Snake?” she demanded softly, breathily, and then her eyes met his and she spoke with fervent conviction.

  “Yes, Ethan, I trust you.”

  He drew a hand lovingly through her curls. “Then believe me when I say I won’t hurt you—I’d never knowingly hurt you.”

  This time as his mouth descended on hers, she met his kiss with eagerness, leaning forward, lips parted and soft. She pulled him down atop her and stroked her hands through his hair.

  “I believe you,” she whispered against his mouth.

  Then her lips moved against his. Her breath warmed his mouth, her tongue met his in a teasing, delectable dance. With moonlight streaming over their coiled bodies, she slid her hands across his shoulders, down his splendid back, inviting him nearer, drawing him to her with magic, yearning touches.

  The complete trust in her eyes, in her yielding body as it melted against his, was like a jackhammer through his gut.

  “Josie, I’m going to love every inch of you until you know the truth about what should be between a man and a woman.” His mouth scorched a reckless path of kisses down her throat. He found the trembling pulse in the hollow of her neck, and brushed his lips against it, feeling it stir and flutter.

  He vowed to find the strength to go slowly, to cool his own rampaging want of her enough so that when he claimed her, she would know nothing of pain, only ecstasy.

  “I’m going to make you forget everything and everyone,” he promised, and could have sworn he heard her whimper with pleasure.

  His hands were thumbing her nipples, doing wondrous things to her breasts, while all the while his eyes gleamed knowingly down at her and his lips dipped down her flesh to nibble with tantalizing kisses and gentle bites.

  “Please... do,” she managed to gasp before he caught her mouth again and she had no breath left with which to speak, no space in which to doubt.

  And then the kisses deepened. And he began to stroke her belly, her thighs, the soft, dark bed of her womanhood, his hand steady and slow and deliciously arousing. Josie was lost. Deliciously, intoxicatingly lost.

  She made a mewing sound, low and soft and female, deep in her throat, and saw him smile.

  His hands kneaded, caressed. He was awakening sensations that made Josie blink and gasp with wonder. Moaning, she lifted her hips, shifted, and felt her breath stop as his fingers slid inside her. Soft, velvet fire licked through her.

  She clung to him, inhaling the scent and warmth and strength of him as his mouth trailed lower, exploring uncharted paths.

  Sensation after sensation swam through her. She shuddered beneath the onslaught of his hands, his lips, his teeth, and heard herself begging him, though she knew not for what.

  Certainly not to stop.

  The marvel of it enveloped her as he slowly, relentlessly aroused every inch of her vibrating body. What was he doing to her? In the name of heaven.

  Heaven. That was it, Josie thought, with the last shreds of reason fleeing her spinning mind. He’d abducted her to heaven.

  When he took her hand and moved it lower, so that she touched the hardness of his shaft, she felt her fingers tremble. But there was no fear in her, only longing, a ragged longing as she stroked him and explored.

  Ethan knew when she was ready, and he knew when she had reached the point of nearly unbearable pleasure. His own heated need had been doused in patience, but now i
t was flaring like a torch. He wanted her so badly, he ached in places he’d never ached before. Her damp, flushed skin and glazed eyes beckoned him, her luscious body, slick and welcoming, was about to discover the difference between a clumsy brute who used an unwilling woman for his own pleasure, and a man who knew how to drive a woman he loved to the edge of distraction, to the very brink of out-of-control desire, and then tip them both over the cliff into a plunging delirium.

  “Ethan, oh, Ethan.” Her mouth was muffled against his shoulder as he shifted his weight, levering himself with his arms.

  “Scared, Josie? Don’t be, sweetheart. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Scared... ummm...” she gasped, wrapped in fire. “I’m scared you’ll stop. And scared where this... is headed.”

  “It’s time you found out where it’s headed. Where we’re both headed,” he whispered, his eyes glinting down at her with fierce love. He lowered himself to the willing, arching warmth of her and felt her trembling welcome as he slid inside.

  He felt her every quiver, absorbed every moan into his pores. Her eyes were shining with need, bluer than any ocean. Her skin was damp and fragrant like an awakening flower, and as he plunged in deeper, and plunged again, taking all of her, becoming one with her, their hearts began to race in unison.

  And they began to soar. Faster and faster, higher and higher, crashing through space and time and the boundaries of joy. With her arms enfolding him, clinging to him, and their lips seared together, they flew through sweet chaos, past aching, explosive need, beyond what either had known of desire.

  Josie felt her senses reeling. It was like plummeting down a tunnel. Nothing at all like before.

  This was sheer raw pleasure, soaring rapture... this was love, love, love....

  Then she could think of nothing as sensation after sensation caught her up in a delicious whirlwind. Her legs wrapped around him, gripping him with frantic urgency, her hips arced and writhed. The earth rocked and the world fell away, and she and Ethan spun into midnight blackness and dizzying blinding light and heaven was a glimmer at the end of the tunnel and she was flying toward it, crying and thrusting and rejoicing.