When Sin barely brushed his manhood against her, touching the flesh where she throbbed for him and then moving away, she rocked up slowly to bring him closer.
She wrapped her legs around him and lifted her hips, taking his head in her hands and looking him in the eye. “I want you inside me,” she whispered, “now.”
He plunged to enter her, to fill her completely. She moved against him and met his fierce thrust with one of her own. He rocked his hips, and again drove forward to be completely sheathed inside her. Again climax shattered her. She felt Sin’s own response as he held himself deep inside her and shuddered in her arms. Their mouths met, their muffled cries lost in a long, ardent kiss.
Sin’s body collapsed over hers; the kiss turned gentle, and Eden melted against the bed.
“I will never be able to move again,” she whispered. “I have nothing left. No energy, no breath, no working muscles.”
Sin laughed softly in her ear. “How am I supposed to pretend not to like you tomorrow? How am I supposed to look at you and pretend not to want you?”
“It won’t be easy.” She threaded her fingers through his hair. “I think we should just go ahead and tell Jedidiah the truth.”
“He won’t take it well.” Sin rolled off of her, but kept her close in his arms.
Eden snuggled against his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. No one’s ever going to take you away from me. Not even Jedidiah.”
Sin speared his fingers through her hair. “I do need you,” he whispered. “Scares the hell out of me sometimes, because I’ve never needed anyone before, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”
Eden smiled against Sin’s shoulder. “I love you,” she said, not caring at the moment that Sin wasn’t ready to say the words himself.
His body tensed slightly.
“You shouldn’t be afraid of love,” she whispered. Knowing what his life had been like, she couldn’t hold his reticence against him. It was up to her to show him that love wasn’t frightening, that it was more wonderful than he’d ever imagined. She snuggled impossibly close. “I’m never going to let you go. What we have is too good.”
“Right this minute,” he said breathlessly, “I’ll agree with you. As for tomorrow... We’ll have to wait and see.” He sounded almost solemn.
She placed her leg over his and drifted toward sleep. “Sin?” she whispered.
“Hmm?” He was almost asleep himself.
“I won’t stop loving you tomorrow. Or the day after that, or the day after that, or ever. I’m not the kind of woman to give my heart or my body on a whim.”
“I know that.”
“We should tell Jedidiah tomorrow. I’ll make a custard pie for lunch. That’ll soften him up a little.”
“I don’t know that a custard pie will balance out having me for a brother-in-law,” he said with wry humor. Still, she detected a note of real apprehension in his voice.
* * *
It was still dark when Sullivan rose from the bed, dressed, and left a sleeping Eden behind. It was harder to leave her than he’d imagined, and he gave her one last glance before cracking open the door to see where Nate was positioned. As he had been a few hours earlier, Nate stood at the top of the stairs.
Sullivan slipped through the door and down the hallway, remaining silent, staying in the shadows, becoming a shadow. Nate never moved.
In his room, he sat on the side of the bed to put on his boots. He’d fought battles, he’d faced death, and he’d faced hate. Why was he scared half to death of what a woman was doing to him?
He and his wife had nothing in common. Nothing but the sex. That was great, but would it really last? Sinclair Sullivan feared nothing, but he was truly afraid that one morning Eden would wake up, take one look at him, and be horrified by what she’d done. By then there would be a baby, maybe two. Hell, there might already be a baby. The thought of the blood he’d cursed every day of his life flowing in another body, the body of a child, gave him chills.
He relieved Nate and positioned himself outside Eden’s door, where he sat for several hours. The sun came up, and he heard Eden stirring inside her room, heard the kids in their own room, opening and closing drawers and talking about the day to come in their high, excited voices.
Hell, he was even beginning to think of those kids as his.
What would he and Eden be like ten years from now? Twenty years? She’d still be taking in strays of one kind or another, and he’d still be hiring his gun out on occasion, if he didn’t get himself killed somewhere down the line. There would be other children, theirs and more strays, and women like Ethel. And men like himself.
If he’d been the one kicking ass in Webberville, instead of getting his ass whupped, would she have fallen in love with him? Or would she have thought herself in love with some other poor sap? How much of what she felt stemmed from her obvious need to heal and care for every wounded creature she ran across?
Jed came down the hallway, his rifle in his hand. Well, this would be as good a time as any to break the bad news.
“A quiet night?” Jed asked.
Hell, no. “Yep.”
“I’ve got a raging headache,” Jed said gruffly. “After you went to bed last night I let Cash talk me into a few drinks, and it was not a good idea. God, I just want to... to break something.” He shook one big fist.
Eden opened the door and stepped into the hall, dressed for the day in a linen blouse and a red calico skirt. As Jed turned his back, she smiled widely at Sullivan and came toward him as if for a kiss.
He shook his head to warn her back. “Maybe Eden has a headache powder, or a special tea or something.”
Eden’s smile faded. “Jedidiah, you have a headache?”
He nodded and headed down the stairs.
“Oh,” she said, following him, glancing over her shoulder.”I remember, even when you were young you were always a real bear when you had a headache.”
“Well it hurts,” he bellowed.
“You are such a baby,” she said sweetly.
In the dining room, Sullivan passed Eden and her brother to check out the kitchen before she prepared breakfast. Finding nothing, he waved her in.
“Not when he’s like this,” she said softly. “He might... hurt someone.”
Sullivan looked through the doorway to see Jed sitting at a table with his head in his hands. “Coffee!” he bellowed. “How long can it take to make a pot of damned coffee!”
“I just got in here Jedidiah,” Eden said patiently. “Give me a few minutes.”
Jed groaned and dropped his head to the table.
“Maybe we can tell him after lunch, if his headache is gone and the custard pie puts him in a good mood.”
Sullivan nodded. “Or we can just tell him now and take our chances.”
Eden smiled and stepped out of Jed’s line of vision to kiss him quickly. “I want the two most important men in my life to get along. I want you two to continue to be friends. We’re family now, and more than anything I want us to get off to a good start this time. We can wait a few hours.”
“Whatever you want.”
“Coffee!”
Eden bustled to the stove and put a pot of water on to boil while she measured out the grounds.
Sullivan had a feeling coffee and pie weren’t going to be enough to soften the blow.
* * *
It was a beautiful day to work outside. A few fluffy clouds dotted the blue sky, and there was no sign of the rain she’d sensed in last night’s sky. A breeze cooled her as she yanked dead plants from the ground with her gloved hands. Sin helped, though he did grumble about being reduced to this sort of manual labor.
“I think the medicine I gave Jedidiah put him to sleep,” she said, yanking viciously at a long dead plant and plucking it from the ground. “Maybe when he wakes up he’ll feel better.”
“I don’t think custard pie and a clear head are going to make him like this any better,” Sin grumbled. “Maybe we should just tell him
while he’s feeling lousy and get it over with.”
Eden wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. Jedidiah has such a temper. Trust me, I know how to handle him.”
Sin worked twice as fast as she did, clearing the land. In the spring, they’d plant new flowers and bushes and make this an oasis, a place to come to at the end of the day. A small piece of paradise.
“I want this to go well, though,” Sin said. “It will make things much easier, later on.”
Eden nodded. If Jedidiah would take her marriage to Sin well, everything would be easier! “I know what you mean.”
“Jed doesn’t like to stay put any more than I do, but if we can work our schedules so that one of us is here with you all the time, I’ll rest easier.”
Eden spun slowly to face him, a frown forming on her face. “What do you mean, one of you will be here all the time?”
“It means when I’m traveling Jed will be here, and when he’s traveling...”
“Why would you travel?” Eden asked calmly.
Sin dropped a rather large, dead stalk. “It’s what I do,” he said. “I hire out, mostly to lawmen in trouble, sometimes to ranchers at war with rustlers, sometimes to towns in trouble. You know that.”
She could not believe what she was hearing. “You used to hire out your gun,” Eden said, to clarify. She shook her head vehemently. “You can’t do that anymore,” she insisted. “You’re a married man, now. We have children to think of. You can’t just go... go riding off for goodness knows how long.”
Sin cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “I can’t?” he asked softly.
“No,” she said, knowing as the word came out of her mouth that she’d made a mistake, but unable to back down. “You can’t continue to fight other people’s battles until you wind up dead. I won’t have it.”
The look on his face surprised her a little. He wasn’t angry, but he was clearly disappointed. “So what do you have planned for me, Eden? Let’s see, your other strays are all taken care of. Teddy and Millie are in school. Ethel is presently making stew in the kitchen and will soon, no doubt, fall at your feet and thank you for saving her from a life of decadence.” Now he was angry. “What do you have planned for me?” He kicked at a dead plant. “Am I to be the gardener? Maybe a porter or a bellman. I know, I can take in laundry!”
“I do not take in strays,” she said indignantly.
He grinned wickedly. “Of course you do. I ought to know; I’m one of them. I forget that, sometimes, but you just reminded me. It all boils down to the fact that I’m just a human version of one of your half-drowned cats. You won’t have it,” he muttered beneath his breath.
She couldn’t understand why he was so upset. “You are most certainly nothing like a half-drowned cat. That’s a ridiculous notion. I just want a nice life for us. Is it wrong of me not to want you to get hurt?”
Sin pinned his eyes on her, hard, unflinching. “Honey, you’re great in bed, and in the tub, but no woman tells me what to do with my life. Not even you.”
Now she was offended. “I’m not just some woman,” she snapped. “I’m your wife. If you’re going to ride off for goodness knows how long and place yourself in danger, don’t you think I should have some say in the matter?”
“No,” he said softly.
No? All of a sudden she could feel everything, the sun on her face, the gentle wind, the hard ground beneath her feet. She could see everything with a clarity that only came with a rush of fury. After everything that had happened, he was going to leave her here, again and again, and purposely place himself in dangerous situations. He had no regard for her feelings. Her love meant nothing to him.
“You are so... so uncivilized,” she whispered.
His face hardened, and his eyes darkened. His hands folded into fists at his sides. “Yes,” he said, “I am. It’s in my blood, remember?”
Her heart fell as her anger melted a little and she realized what she’d said. “I didn’t mean...”
“Inside,” he said stalking past her and throwing back the door that opened on to the lobby. “I’ve had enough gardening for one day. Besides,” he said quietly as she passed, “you can make all the plans you want. You can whisper all the honeyed words you want to in the dark. You can tell yourself, and me, that what you feel is love, if it makes you feel better about what we do.” He turned to face her and leaned slightly closer, pinning his cold eyes on hers. “But we both know you won’t be here in the spring. Rock Creek and the people in it are much too uncivilized for you.”
Sin spun around and stalked away from her. Rico sat on the green sofa, diligently sharpening his knife, and Sin passed without so much as glancing down. “She’s all yours,” he said as he walked through the doors and across the street to the saloon.
Chapter 18
Sullivan sat in a hardback chair and leaned against the wall. Cash was in a similar position beside him.
“I shoulda seen it,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Since the day I met Eden, she’s been talking about how she can handle her brother. Now she thinks she can handle me.”
“A lesser man would say I told you so.”
“Thanks for not stooping so low.” He didn’t know what had made him more angry, the fact that Eden suddenly thought she had the right to tell him how to live his life, or that word that had fallen so easily from her mouth as she’d looked at him—uncivilized. All his life he’d been branded with the blood of his father. Heathen. Renegade. Uncivilized.
“But I did warn you,” Cash added, unable to take the high road. “Women like that, they turn your insides upside down and twist your mind around until you can’t think straight, and then they look at you with wide-eyed innocence as if nothing happened.”
“That’s Eden,” Sullivan muttered. He cast a sideways glance at Cash. “How do you know so much about women like her? You saw from the beginning that there would be trouble. No one else did.”
Cash took a long draw on his cigar and blew the smoke out slowly, almost thoughtfully. “I knew a girl just like her once, a long time ago. Damn it Sullivan. I tried to let you benefit from my misfortune, but you had to find out the hard way. You had to discover for yourself that women like Eden Rourke are more dangerous than any soldier or brigand you’ll ever face.”
He wanted to ask about this woman from the past, the woman who had soured the gunslinger against nice girls, but he knew Cash wouldn’t share any details. Sullivan’s heart sank. He didn’t want to be as cynical as Cash. He didn’t want to push Eden to the back of his mind, a bad memory and nothing else, just so he could bear to survive without her.
But what else was he supposed to do? She wanted to change him, to turn his life upside down. The way she’d said no, when he’d told her he would continue to travel... It was as if she simply expected him to obey, as if no one had ever told her no before.
She wanted safety and security, a peaceful life. She wasn’t going to find it in Rock Creek.
“When this is over, when the Merriweather brothers are captured, she has to go home.”
“Amen.” Cash raised his glass in salute. “Of course, you don’t actually send a woman like Eden home. You and Jed were right about that from the beginning. She has to want to go.”
“She won’t go if she thinks there’s any chance... if she thinks we’ll ever...”
“So make sure she knows there’s nothing left,” Cash snapped. “Women like her, they’re hopelessly romantic. Give her a nasty dose of reality, and in a matter of days she’ll be begging to return to Georgia.”
“A nasty dose of reality?”
“Don’t clean yourself up for her. Don’t try to make everything pretty and nice.” Cash waved a dismissive hand. “Put her in her place, once and for all.”
* * *
Eden was still angry as she served lunch. How could Sin possibly think he could continue to travel and chase outlaws and fight one battle after another? The very idea was inconceivable to her. Husbands stayed home. Fathers didn’t just
ride off whenever the mood struck them.
She sniffled as she slopped a pile of potatoes onto a plate, next to a piece of braised chicken. And besides, she didn’t want to be left here alone!
As she and Ethel were serving lunch, Sin came in and sat at a table by the window. He barely glanced her way as he crossed the room and took his seat. Just looking at him made her angry all over again. How could you love someone so much one minute and then in a heartbeat become so furious with them that you shook all over?
She had Ethel serve Sin his lunch, not wanting to approach him until she’d calmed down a little. He was not an unreasonable man, she decided. He was just resistant to change, stubborn. Eventually she’d be able to convince him that she was right.
Jedidiah shuffled into the dining room, rubbing his head as he sat at the table nearest to the door. Since he refused to shave on a regular basis, he always looked a little rough. There was a handsome face beneath that pale stubble; he just wasn’t interested in showing it to its best advantage. Too bad. He should be married and have a couple of kids by now.
“Do you feel better?” she asked as she placed his lunch before him.
“Yeah.” He looked up at her and grinned. “Thanks for the medicine. It did the trick.”
“I made custard pie for dessert.” She sat beside him and pulled her chair closer to the table.
His grin got wider. “You’re a jewel.”
“Jedidiah,” she said, leaning closer as he began to eat, “why did you never get married?” She held her breath. He and Sin were alike in many ways; they wandered; they defied convention.
“What woman would have me?” he asked with a wink.
She wasn’t going to be put off so easily. “I don’t believe for a minute that there aren’t lots of women out there who wouldn’t love to have you for a husband. You’re handsome and smart and funny....”
“And you’re my baby sister, so you’re a little prejudiced about my better qualities.”
She couldn’t let him make light of this conversation! How would she ever get a helpful answer if he continued to tease? “Why don’t you want to be married?”
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