Candlelight rippled over sleek flesh like sunlight over water, heightening the play of muscle beneath skin that was as fine-grained as amber. The combination of stark male power and equally stark male beauty sent heat rushing through Jessica, shortening her breath, making her feel as though Wolfe were running his hands over her.
The thought was both frightening and fascinating. With fingers that trembled, Jessica scooped up soft, rose-scented soap and began rubbing it into Wolfe’s hair. For a few moments, there was silence except for the splashing of water when Wolfe shifted in the tub and the soft, whispering sounds of Jessica’s fingers as she worked rose-scented soap into Wolfe’s hair.
Little of Wolfe was visible but his head, shoulders, and much of his back. The rest of him was hardly more than a golden blur beneath water that looked black but for streaks of lather and the shimmering of candlelight across the water’s surface.
Despite the aching of her arms after hours of scrubbing, Jessica found that she enjoyed washing the thick, black pelt of Wolfe’s hair. Working her hands through it caressed the sensitive inner surfaces of her fingers. The heat and softness of the lather sliding over her hands was another lure. When she went from his scalp to the taut skin of his neck, she found herself wanting to stroke him, testing his strength and resilience.
The golden butterfly in Jessica’s stomach spread its wings again, sending heat streaking through her, making her catch her breath in pleasure.
No, not a butterfly, she told herself harshly. It’s a moth. A stupid little thing flying around a great hot flame, never knowing that the next second could be the last!
Fear and passion warred within Jessica, making her tremble. Despite that, she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to spiral closer and closer to the flame, letting fire consume her to her very core.
Wolfe shifted abruptly, sending dark waves lapping at the sides of the tub. The slow rubbing of Jessica’s fingers over his scalp was causing a heat greater than that of the bath water to gather between his legs.
“Am I doing it correctly?” Jessica asked.
The sound of her own voice alarmed her. It was much too husky, reflecting the tug-of-war between ingrained fear and blossoming desire. She enjoyed touching Wolfe far too much. Yet she was willing to risk it. Being close to him was an incredible lure.
“Yes,” Wolfe answered. “You’re doing very well.”
His voice was deep, dark, warm. It made Jessica feel as though she had been caressed. Gentle fingertips traced the line of Wolfe’s neck and shoulders. Muscles bunched and slid beneath skin that was the color of gold brushed with copper. The power in him fascinated Jessica, for he took it as much for granted as he did the air he breathed. She couldn’t take him for granted in that way. Not any longer. The realization made her tremble.
“W-what did you do before I came here?” Jessica asked hurriedly.
Wolfe closed his eyes and fought the primal stirring of his body at the husky music of Jessica’s voice and the magic of her fingers transforming him. Then he shrugged and let it happen, knowing there was nothing he could do to prevent it.
“I hunted, bought, sold, bred, and trained horses,” he said.
Jessica’s hands paused. “But there are no horses here, save for the one you purchased with the wagon in Denver.”
“I sold all but my best horses when I decided to go to England for your engagement ball.”
“Where are the rest of your horses?”
“At Caleb’s. I spent most of the year there, helping him build his house. In return, he and Willow are taking care of the mares for me. They’ll be bred by her Arabian stallion.”
“Are they all mustangs?”
“Yes. One of them is an extraordinary animal, elegant and strong, fierce and intelligent. She’s the color of steeldust. She’ll be the foundation of my future herd.”
“When will you bring your horses back here?”
“I don’t think I will. This side of the Rockies is getting too settled. It’s time for me to pull up stakes and move on.”
“Too settled? You’re joking.”
“No. For the most part I get along all right with ranchers and soldiers, but townspeople take a narrow view of halfbreeds. If anything goes wrong, they come looking for the nearest Indian to blame.”
Jessica’s hands paused. “That’s terrible.”
Wolfe shrugged again. “It’s simply human. If I lived here long enough, I’d get around most of the townspeople. The rest I’d fight until they changed their minds, shut their mouths, or left for more healthy climates.”
“If you can make the townspeople accept you, why don’t you stay?”
“My Cheyenne name is Tree That Stands Alone. It suits me.”
“But you built such a cozy home here.”
“I’ll build another one somewhere else. Maybe up over the Great Divide, where Caleb and Willow have their ranch. Sure to God it would be easier than riding back and forth as often as I have to see them.”
Jessica’s hands tightened in Wolfe’s hair. Willow again. Blast that paragon. What chance do I have to persuade Wolfe of my worth as a wife when he is forever yearning after her?
“Take a breath,” Jessica muttered.
As she spoke, she pushed Wolfe’s head quite forcefully under the water. He emerged instantly and shook his head like a hound, spraying water all over her.
“Again,” she said sweetly.
Jessica pushed. Hard.
Smiling to himself, Wolfe slid under the water once more. This time he stayed under long enough to worry her.
“Wolfe?”
She tugged at his shoulders. He didn’t budge.
“Wolfe, that’s enough. Wolfe? Are you—”
Water erupted as Wolfe rose halfway out of the tub, grabbed Jessica, and held her poised over the dark water.
“Put me down!” she demanded breathlessly.
“With pleasure.”
“On the floor, you devil! On the floor!”
But Jessica was laughing too hard to stand, so Wolfe had to hold her. He leaned his elbows against the tub, supporting her, smiling, calling himself every kind of idiot. He should be withdrawing from her, not teasing smiles and laughter from her beautiful mouth, and feeling as proud as a hen with a new chick because there was color in her cheeks once more.
He would never win the war if the kept siding with the enemy. Very carefully, he released her.
“I think you’re well-rinsed now,” Jessica said, turning to leave. “By the time the rest of the water is heated, you should be finished with your bath.”
Again, her voice was alarmingly husky. At the sound of it, Wolfe narrowed his eyes. Little nun or not, she had liked washing his hair. He wondered how she would like washing the rest of him.
Abruptly he knew he was going to find out. His arm snaked out, grabbing Jessica around her hips before she could leave.
“You’ve forgotten something,” Wolfe said.
“What?”
“The rest of me. It needs washing, too.”
6
“Y OU’RE joking,” Jessica said.
Wolfe felt the warmth and tension of her body and smiled. “No, I’m not. Pick up the sponge.”
She bent over a bit awkwardly, for Wolfe’s arm was still around her hips. Just when her bend was at its deepest, she felt Wolfe’s hand caressing and squeezing her hip as though testing its shape and the resilience of her flesh. She straightened so quickly that she almost fell over.
“Wolfe!”
He made a deep sound that could have been stifled laughter or a muffled question.
“Your hand—that is,” she stammered. “You—”
He smiled a lazy, dangerous kind of smile. “I?” he invited.
Jessica blinked. She had never seen quite that expression on Wolfe’s face. He was remarkably handsome, and looked every bit the devil she had accused him of being a few minutes ago. If the flame looked half so beautiful to the moth, it was no wonder the poor thing ended
up getting too close.
“I, er, nothing,” Jessica muttered.
Hurriedly, she started rubbing up a thick lather on the sponge. Wolfe measured her high color and the pulse beating rapidly in her throat. The looks she gave him as she washed his face and shoulders told him she was both nervous and intrigued by his nakedness.
Lady Victoria, my hat is off to you—along with everything else, Wolfe thought with amusement. You’re every bit as wickedly clever about human nature as I remembered. Jessica is no more a nun than I am.
Working in a rush, Jessica rinsed Wolfe, trying not to see beneath the darkly reflective surface of the bath. It was impossible. She closed her eyes, thinking to make the bath less intimate that way.
It was a mistake. With her eyes closed, her hands seemed doubly sensitive. The sleek, hot power of his body beneath her hands made her tremble. The different textures of Wolfe was a new, pleasurable shock each time her hands moved across his chest. Heat burned softly through the pit of her stomach, making her shiver. She moved her hands across Wolfe’s chest once more, telling herself that she was rinsing him and knowing that she was lying to herself. She wanted to knead his flesh like a cat, and, like a cat, she knew she would purr all the while.
Desperately, Jessica opened her eyes just in time to see one of Wolfe’s long, powerful legs emerge from the water. Dark patterns of water-slicked hair began above the ankle and progressed farther up his muscular thigh than she was prepared to acknowledge.
Wolfe saw the direction of Jessica’s glance and knew that the water wasn’t hiding as much of him as it had before. He waited for a long, tense moment, measuring the combination of fear and desire in her. Knowing that he intrigued her as a man was violently exciting to him.
And it showed.
“W-Wolfe?”
“Surely I’m no more difficult to scrub than bricks,” he said casually. “Wash me, wife.”
Carefully looking no farther than Wolfe’s thigh, Jessica ran the soapy sponge over his leg in a single, breathless rush.
“Rinse,” she said.
The huskiness of her voice was another kind of caress on Wolfe’s responsive flesh. His right leg disappeared, only to be replaced by his left. She rubbed the sponge up the flexed muscles of his calf to his knee, only to fumble and lose the sponge. Instantly it sank beneath the surface of the water between his legs.
Jessica waited for Wolfe to retrieve the sponge for her. When he made no move, she looked up. She thought she saw the gleam of his eyes beneath his black lashes, but decided she was wrong. Carefully she fished beneath the water. Her fingers met hard, smooth flesh rather than sponge. Breath hissed between Wolfe’s clenched teeth.
“I’m s-sorry,” she said breathlessly, snatching back her hand. “I didn’t mean to…”
“Touch me?” Wolfe smiled without opening his eyes. “I forgive you, sweet nun.”
“The sponge,” she began.
“Hammer the sponge. Your fingers feel much better.”
Jessica was too rattled to argue. She grabbed more of the soft soap and rubbed it into the powerful muscles of Wolfe’s thigh, skimming over him in the space of seconds. Then, against her will, her own hands betrayed her and returned to enjoy the feel of his skin beneath her palms.
“Rinse,” she said in a low, choked voice.
The leg vanished back into the water. Lather swirled and floated away. Before Wolfe could make any more demands in regard to being washed, Jessica surged to her feet and hurried from the room, mumbling something about checking the heat of her own bath water on the stove.
Wolfe’s shuttered, hungry glance followed Jessica until she was out of sight. Reluctantly, he fished out the sponge and finished the bath, knowing he had teased her as much as he dared…at the moment.
By the time Jessica’s bath water was heated and she returned cautiously to the bedroom, her heart was beating at a less frantic pace and her stomach no longer did odd little flips at every other breath. She watched from beneath lowered eyelashes as Wolfe tamped the wooden plug back in place, closing up the hole that drained the bathtub through an opening in the bricks and onto the ground below.
Jessica admired the flex and play of Wolfe’s body while he emptied bucket after bucket of scalding water into the tub, then drew more water from the pump to cool the bath. It was quite easy for her to admire Wolfe’s supple power, for he wore nothing but his linen towel wrapped as a loin cloth. The pale luster of the cloth against his copper-brushed skin fascinated her.
Rather quickly she began to feel the increasingly familiar sensation of having swallowed golden butterflies. As a result, her fingers were clumsy when she went to work on the buttons up the back of her dress. Even worse, her arms simply refused to flex more than a few inches. Her muscles were too tight after hours of scrubbing to have any flexibility left.
With a stifled, frustrated sound, she hooked her fingers in either side of the opening at the back of her neck and yanked. Buttons tore free and fell soundlessly onto the thick wool throw rug by the bed.
Warm, hard fingers brushed Jessica’s hands aside. Wolfe began unbuttoning the dress in a silence that thickened with each jet button sliding free of its tiny hole. Finally, nothing but the long sleeves were holding the dress in place. The exquisite lace of Jessica’s silk camisole revealed more than it concealed of the skin beneath.
“Thank you,” Jessica said breathlessly. “I can manage now.”
“Don’t you want me to bathe you?”
“No, that won’t be necessary thank you,” she said, running the words together in her rush to have them spoken.
Wolfe’s long finger traced the length of Jessica’s spine. “Are you certain?”
She shivered as an odd tingling rippled through her at his touch. “Yes.”
Wolfe’s finger paused before retracing every bit of its journey as he asked, “Yes, you’re certain you want to be bathed?”
Jessica made a small sound as curious sensations flared unnervingly in the pit of her stomach. “No, I can bathe myself.”
“If you change your mind, call me.”
As soon as the door closed behind Wolfe, she let out a long breath she hadn’t been aware of holding and began stripping off her clothes with more haste than care. With the pot of soft, rose-scented soap in one hand and the sponge in the other, she stepped into the tub.
A delicious shivering went over her as she lowered herself into the water’s hot embrace. The tremor of sheer pleasure was very much what she had felt at the long, slow stroking of Wolfe’s fingertip down her spine. The realization was almost as unnerving as his touch had been. Quickly, she ducked beneath the water to wet her hair before she began rubbing soap into it.
By the time Jessica had rinsed and begun to work a second round of soap into her hair, the quivering reluctance of her arm muscles abruptly changed into something more alarming. Her arms locked in a half-raised position. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t raise them any farther. In fact, she couldn’t even hold them upright.
Soap began trickling down her face and into her eyes as her arms fell uselessly to her sides.
“Wolfe,” Jessica cried out. “Something is wrong with my arms!”
Afraid to open her eyes because of the soap, Jessica didn’t know Wolfe had come into the room until she felt a warm cloth moving over her face. She flinched in surprise.
“Be still, Jessi,” Wolfe said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I know. You just startled me. My arms, Wolfe. I can’t—”
“Yes, I can see,” he interrupted.
He ran his hands gently over her arms. The slender muscles were knotted and hard beneath her smooth skin.
“Do you hurt?” he asked.
Jessica shook her head. “Not really. I think the muscles have just declared a holiday. The same thing happened to my legs that day I tried to jump the creek the way you had. Remember?”
Wolfe smiled slightly. “How many times did you try?”
“I don’t know. I spe
nt most of the morning running and jumping.”
“And landing in the water.”
“And landing in the water,” she agreed, sighing. “It made me angry that you could fly so easily over the creek time and again and I couldn’t do it even once. That night I couldn’t walk.”
“You never told me.”
“I was too proud.”
“Just as you were too proud to tell me today that you couldn’t work any more.”
Jessica said nothing.
“I’ll take care of the soap on your face, first,” Wolfe said. “Your arms can wait. Tilt your head back and keep your eyes closed.”
The gentleness of Wolfe’s voice was matched by his fingers sliding into Jessica’s soapy hair and easing her head back while he blotted up the last of the lather.
“No, don’t open your eyes yet. I haven’t gotten all the soap out.”
Jessica heard the sound of cloth being rinsed, felt the swirling of water over her breasts, and blushed at the reminder of her own nakedness. Water ran warmly over her closed eyes, down her cheeks, down her neck.
Wolfe watched each golden trail of moisture with something approaching envy. He wanted to be that close to her, that warm on her skin, licking over her without hindrance.
And he was a fool to want any part of her at all.
“Do your eyes sting?”
“No,” Jessica said hesitantly, wondering at the leashed anger in Wolfe’s voice.
“Keep them dosed until I rinse your hair.”
“You don’t have to. I can—”
“You can’t do a bloody thing,” he interrupted impatiently. “The muscles in your arms have cramped. Take a breath.”
Jessica barely had drawn a breath before her body was shifted and her head was pushed under the warm water. Unlike Wolfe, she was almost able to stretch out in the narrow tub.
Working quickly, Wolfe stripped out lather and swirled clean water through the long mahogany strands until all the soap was gone. Only then did he prop her head above the water against the tub.
“That should do it.”
Jessica tried to push a stray lock of hair from her eyes, but her arms still wouldn’t cooperate. When she tried again, the struggle brought the pink tips of her breasts above the level of the water. Immediately, her nipples tightened against the cool air of the room.
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