The Mercenary's Kiss

by Pam Crooks

  “Corporal Martin seemed to think you had quite a reputation, as I recall. Sergeant Bender, too,” she said, thinking of the night Jeb discovered them just beyond their camp.

  Jeb grunted. “Creed and I took risks no one else was willing to take. Hell, we were reckless enough to try. We had nothing else to lose. Got to the point where we could name our own price to the War Department.”

  Soldiers for hire. He spoke without pride or boast or regret. Two men willing to lay their lives down for America in countries too war-torn to care.

  Jeb had his own brand of honor and integrity, and in Elena’s mind, there wasn’t a finer soldier to be had than he. Except for Creed, and perhaps not even then.

  Nicky scooted off her lap and crawled toward Jeb. One chubby hand still gripped the remains of his waffle; the other ventured a curious touch to the scattering of dark hairs on Jeb’s chest.

  “Give yourself a few years, Nick,” Jeb muttered. “You’ll have some, too—ow!”

  He yelped at the sudden yank and sat up abruptly, bringing Nicky with him, his hands big around Nicky’s potbelly, but gentle, too. Jeb stood him on both feet, a few of the curling hairs between the pudgy fingers.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Elena said, reaching for her son and trying not to laugh. “He has to touch everything he sees, and I’m sorry if he hurt you.”

  “He didn’t,” Jeb said, rubbing the wounded spot. “Just caught me by surprise is all.”

  Nicky stepped toward him again, as if he intended to do more of the same, but Elena took his stuffed horse and tossed it to the edge of the blanket, distracting him.

  “See your horsey, Nicky?” she cooed. “Go get it, sweetheart. Bring it to Mama.”

  Nicky fell for the bait and toddled toward it. His drawers began to slip past his hips, and his stride faltered. His face became one of cherubic surprise as he bent downward to see to the problem, but he ventured one more step, and the drawers dropped right down to his ankles, taking the diaper inside with it.

  “Oh!” He was pure naked from the waist down, and laughter bubbled from Elena’s throat. “Jeb, did you change him?”

  “I did,” he said, and pondered the sight, as taken aback as Nicky.

  Her laughter doubled until her injury pinched, reminding her to have a care and hold her merriment in.

  “You didn’t pin him up snug enough. I’ll show you. Oh, God, you look so funny, Nicky. Come here, baby.”

  Haltered as he was, he stumbled trying to get to her. Jeb caught him before he fell and laid him on his back in front of her.

  “I was afraid I’d hurt him if I got the diaper too tight,” Jeb said defensively.

  “That’s understandable.” Impulsively Elena pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “Watch what I do.” She made short work of untying the drawers, unpinning the dry diaper and repositioning both around Nicky’s hips. Afterward, she gave them a test tug to prove they wouldn’t fall down again. “See? Like that.”

  And she laughed all over again, just thinking of what had happened.

  Jeb growled and pulled her to her back next to Nicky. “Think it’s that funny, do you?”

  He loomed over her in mock ferocity, the dark stubble on his cheeks making him look all the more ruthless—the kind of man she knew he could be.

  Yet she’d discovered a gentle side to him, too. Patient, kind and, well, fatherly.

  Before she could explore the thought, his head lowered, and she anticipated his kiss with held breath.

  “Ma-ma-ma.”

  Nicky wedged himself between them, wanting her attention, too, and Jeb drew back with a grin.

  “You know how good your mama’s kisses are, don’t you, buddy?” he said, and made room for him. “But I get one first, y’hear?”

  His gaze returned to Elena. Lingered. Smoldered and burned. His head lowered again, and his lips took hers in a tender kiss that was both thorough and restrained. Elena knew he held himself in check, that if they were alone…

  He made Elena want more than she should, an impossibility of togetherness, just the three of them. The kiss ended, and she touched his cheek with a stirring of longing she was only beginning to understand. A longing that made her want to lie on the blanket with him for hours. Days.

  Forever.

  Their time together was fast dwindling away, she thought as Jeb pulled back, distracted by something Nicky did. What would happen after they crossed the border? They’d go in separate directions, Jeb to Fort Duncan, perhaps. Or California to meet Creed. Elena would be heading north to San Antonio.

  Would they ever see each other again?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Elena pulled Nicky’s blanket up over his little shoulders and gave up trying to take a nap herself. He slept soundly. A morning of playing and eating and getting reacquainted as mother and son had worn him out.

  He’d sleep for a while yet, she knew. He always did at nap time, and she slipped from the bed as quietly as she could. He didn’t stir.

  The early afternoon stretched out before her. Where was Jeb? Somewhere he wouldn’t disturb her, she was sure. He was determined that she rest as much as possible, but she knew he was as anxious as she to leave Mexico.

  Concern for her injury was keeping him back. That, and the impending arrival of the arms shipment.

  Perhaps she could convince him to leave now. So what if he’d sent Simon for reinforcements? Let the Army fight Ramon. Simon could lead them right to his camp. They could prevent the rifles from reaching the revolutionaries just as easily as Jeb could. Better, most likely. They had the numbers to do it.

  Another dose of elixir earlier kept her pain-free. She was on the mend. She was up for the ride.

  And she was restless.

  But the inevitability of never seeing Jeb again left her pensive and more confused than ever about what she wanted. She had only a day or two left with him. Hours, maybe.

  If only she could make time stand still.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and meandered outside. She’d changed from her nightgown into a skirt and blouse, but wore no shoes. The grass felt soft, cool against her feet.

  Her steps slowed, her glance snared by the sheet spread and covered with acorns drying in the sun. The final step before Simon roasted them.

  He wouldn’t be roasting them for Ramon anymore. Not after last night. Simon was as good as dead for helping her kidnap Nicky.

  A pair of strong arms slipped around her waist, and startled, she nearly dropped her coffee cup.

  “What are you doing up?” Jeb growled into her ear. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

  He pulled her against his chest, and she relaxed against him, letting her heartbeat return to normal. He had yet to don his shirt, and the heat from his body soaked into her back, a delicious heat she found herself snuggling into.

  “I tried, but I couldn’t,” she said.

  He nibbled at her ear, sent shivers zinging down her spine. “You could’ve tried harder. You have to get better.”

  “I am better.”

  He grunted his skepticism. “Nicky still sleeping?”

  “Yes. He was pretty tired.” She peered up at him over her shoulder and lifted her cup. “Coffee?”

  “Thanks.” He took it from her, kept one hand around her waist and lifted it to his lips.

  Elena didn’t step away from him. She didn’t want to, not when he made her feel this warm and secure in her turbulent world. Just the two of them, in this little patch of God’s green earth, sheltered in the serenity provided by so many trees.

  “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” she murmured, watching a meadowlark flitter in a low branch.

  “Quiet,” he said with an agreeing nod.

  “Simon must feel very alone out here. The isolation— I don’t know how anyone could find him.”

  “De la Vega will, Elena.”

  She flinched at the grimness in his voice. “We can’t let that happen. Not after all Simon has done for us. Or what he’s doing even no
w.”

  “I’ll see that he hides out for a while so de la Vega can’t find him. Someplace safe across the border until this is all over.”

  He evaded her question, but he didn’t need to say the words. Simon’s life, his home, would never be the same again.

  Jeb turned her around. He knuckled her chin gently upward.

  “What will happen to us, Elena?” he asked quietly.

  He felt it, too. This desperation that their time together was running out. That soon, too soon, their lives, like Simon’s, would take a different course, each without the other.

  “It scares me what will happen,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  She cupped his cheek. “These past days, we’ve taken care of each other. We’ve worried and planned and risked our lives together, and—”

  She couldn’t finish. She couldn’t say the words, When this is all over, I won’t see you anymore.

  He turned his head and pressed a kiss into her palm. “There’s one thing we haven’t done yet, sweet.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Yes. The one thing that shimmered between them like heat off desert sand, the desire that had been steadily building between them since he found her in the woodlands along the Nueces.

  The want.

  She wanted him to make love to her. Wanted it more than she ever thought she would. Or could. The intimacy that had once left her revolted and frightened, she now wanted from Jeb more than anything.

  Because she might not ever get another chance.

  His eyes darkened to sultry midnight. He tossed aside the coffee cup, and the brew soaked into the grass. He slipped an arm behind her knees and lifted her against him.

  The blanket they’d used with Nicky this morning was still there, next to the adobe where Jeb had spread it in the coolness of the shade. He carried her toward it and lowered her gently on top.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Elena,” he murmured. “How can a man not want to make love to you?”

  His words circled around her like fine silk, seductive and alluring, captivating her with the promise of what was to come. Her arms slid around his neck, and she eased backward, bringing him down with her. Though he loomed over her, concern shadowed his face, awareness of the violence she’d endured beneath Ramon’s brutal hand.

  “I’m not so afraid of what will happen, Jeb. Not with you.”

  He groaned, and his mouth took hers in a gentle assault on whatever threads of resistance might have lingered. He plied her lips with lazy thoroughness, until they were swollen and wet and aching for more.

  “I’m going to touch you all over, Elena. Y’hear me? Skin to skin. You and me.” He pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of her eye. “Just let yourself feel all the things a woman is entitled to feel. You’re going to like it, but if ever you get to feeling scared, you tell me. You tell me right away, and I’ll stop.”

  Already he was making her feel things she hadn’t felt before. A languid warmth, deep inside her. An ache for something that wasn’t quite there, a promise of pleasure to come.

  “Your hair looks kissed by the sun.” A corner of his mouth lifted, as if the words amused him, words he wasn’t accustomed to saying but that seemed to just come out of him on their own. “Soft and shiny, like glittering gold diamonds.” He moved her hair aside, reverently spread the strands across the blanket, then lowered his head and nuzzled the bare curve of her neck. “You smell good, too.”

  “You certainly know how to woo a woman, don’t you?” she murmured, her hands caressing his shoulders. Thick muscle corded them, the skin taut and warm, the breadth a testament to his strength and power.

  He chuckled softly. His fingers found the buttons to her blouse, undid one, then another and another. “Just telling it like it is, darlin’.”

  He nudged the blouse open. She wore no chemise—he’d ruined it the night before—and he gently grazed a trail from her collarbone to her upper arm with his teeth and tongue. Her eyes closed at the seduction, and she wasn’t aware he had finished unbuttoning the blouse until he parted the garment wide. Her eyes flew open, and she hastened to bring it closed again.

  “Jeb, please,” she protested shakily.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” He pried her fingers away and spread the blouse again. Their gazes locked. “Remember what I said, Elena? Skin to skin. Both of us.”

  Her pulse floundered, but she allowed him to remove the blouse and toss it aside. Her skirt followed, and for the first time in her life, she lay naked before a man.

  A strange thing it was to be surrounded by trees and singing birds, the air a warm cocoon around them. Yet, with Jeb, it felt natural and right, too, and she knew no shame from it.

  His gaze lowered to her breasts, her hips, to the joining of her thighs. His breathing roughened.

  “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he asked huskily.

  A rueful laugh escaped her. She patted her bandage and thought of the scar she’d have. “I’m trussed up from your doctoring. Hardly beautiful.”

  “Only a small bandage.” His brow furrowed. “Does the wound hurt?”

  “No, no, no.” She pulled him down and touched her mouth to his. “You make me feel something else entirely.”

  He grunted, and his concern seemed to leave him. “That’s more like it. And I’m just getting started.”

  His hand cupped the underside of her breast and pressed upward, lifting the mound, and he took her taut nipple into his mouth. He suckled, long and strong, his cheeks moving in, then out again, in primal erotic rhythm.

  “O-oh, Jeb.” The moan that escaped her sounded like a whimper as she fell victim to an onslaught of sensation, a man’s carnal pleasure taken at a woman’s breast. Nicky had nursed countless times, but nothing like this.

  The tugging of his mouth sizzled spiraling heat down to the cleft between her thighs. He shifted, repeated the seduction to the other, and her fingers speared into his hair, holding him to her even as she wanted to push him away.

  Her thighs loosened. He shifted over her, his mouth open and hungry over hers, his body deliciously heavy. He nibbled her lower lip, licked her chin, nipped and sucked against her neck.

  “Elena, Elena.”

  His ragged whisper fueled her need to have all of him, and her arms circled around him, her hands stroking the cords of sinew along his back. He would know this need she had, but he took his time to satisfy it. She knew, too, his need ran just as strong, for his kisses had grown fevered, passionate, his breathing a little more frenzied.

  “Let’s get you out of these,” she said, her fingers skimming his lean belly and finding the button at the waist of his Levi’s. He rolled away and pulled them off, then returned to her with a throaty groan. He lay over her, his chest pressed to her breasts.

  “Skin to skin,” he whispered. “Oh, yeah….”

  She purred at the feeling of lying naked beneath him. He was so warm, so strong. So male. His hand slid between her legs, his thumb pressing and probing her folds, but she drew back a bit in hesitation at this new contact.

  “Just feel, Elena,” he whispered, the words jagged against her throat. “Don’t think about anything. Feel me touch you. Enjoy it.”

  His manhood quivered against the inside of her thigh, and gently he took her hand and brought it between them. His fingers closed over hers on his pulsing staff.

  “I’m going to enter you,” he said. “Soon. When I do, I want you to know it’s me inside you. No one else. I don’t want you to be afraid. I don’t want you remembering. What we’re feeling, what we’re doing, is the way lovemaking is meant to be between a man and woman.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  She understood. Her one experience had been a rending of flesh, an act of terror and pain performed in the dark. Jeb would be vastly different, and his compassion moved her deeply.

  A shaft of late-afternoon sunlight filtered through the leaves of the trees, igniting their bodies with fire, painting their skin wit
h mellow gold. Elena stroked Jeb and marveled at his virility, his blatant masculinity. She wasn’t afraid, as he had feared. She looked forward to joining her body with his, and the tightening of his jaw indicated the effect she had on him.

  Heady stuff, this.

  His mouth took hers again, and their tongues mated in wet, erotic play. His hands stroked her hips and thighs. She caressed his back and lean buttocks. She lost herself in his kisses, in his touching, and let the sensations lift her higher into ecstasy.

  Her knees had spread, and she cradled his hips between them. The ache he built inside her was almost unbearable, and her hips began to move.

  His head lowered to her breast again; his mouth closed over her nipple, his tongue sweeping over and over across the sensitive tip. Her back arched and her breathing quickened. He found the other, laved it lovingly and suckled in that lazy, bone-melting way of his. The fire built in her belly and she whimpered, moving restlessly beneath him.

  Again his hand slipped between them. This time, Elena knew what he was doing. She wanted it, accepted it. Ached for it. He kissed her, long and hard and ravenous, then slid one finger inside of her. Two. She was wide open for him. Wet. He kissed her, again and again, his fingers stroking and probing with the same rhythm of his tongue.

  She climbed higher still.

  When Elena could stand his sweet torture no longer, she grasped his hips and broke the kiss, breathing in quick, aroused pants. “Jeb, I want you in me. Now. Hurry.”

  “You think anything’s going to keep me from it?” Muscles quivering from restraint, he lifted himself over her. “Lord, woman. What you’re doing to me…”

  He slid into her slowly, filling her. Her eyes closed, and she savored the feel of him.

  And then he began to move. Each stroke bumped against that wild sweet spot he’d found with his thumb. Her hips lifted, rocked in the need to pull him deeper. His strokes came faster, harder, bringing with them keening pleasure. Elena climbed and climbed, higher and higher, until a deep, spasming flutter rocked her womb, and she cried out from the glory of it. Then, with one last driving thrust, Jeb peaked with her, held them both on the pinnacle for a single heart-stopping moment, before they floated back down to earth.