Moonfire

by Linda Lael Miller

  Tansy went past just then, holding a plate in one hand and dragging a young man along behind her with the other. Maggie knew intuitively that she’d be left to find a place to sleep on her own and made up her mind to wring Tansy’s neck the next time she saw her.

  “Actually,” Mr. McKenna answered belatedly, “it’s the horse racing that I like.” He glanced up at the starry sky, the firelight flickering on the rugged planes of his face and catching in the brass medallion at his throat. “Doesn’t look like rain.”

  Given the cloudless state of the sky, that seemed like a silly observation to Maggie, but she kept her opinion to herself.

  When she met Reeve’s eyes, she saw laughter in their depths. “You don’t believe it can rain,” he accused her.

  “There isn’t a cloud in the sky, after all,” Maggie replied.

  “Storms strike very suddenly in Australia, Miss Chamberlin.” The blue-green eyes flecked with firelight held Maggie spellbound. “And when they do, they are torrential.”

  The ominous words struck a conversely pleasant note deep within Maggie. As sparks from the fire rose toward the black velvet sky, with its spattering of stars, she wondered if this night would be as difficult as the three nights preceding it.

  Chapter 7

  AS SOON AS SHE WAS ABLE TO MANAGE IT, MAGGIE EXcused herself and escaped Reeve McKenna, anxiously searching the grounds for some sign of Tansy. But there was none; the girl had disappeared into the dense shadows where the flickering fingers of the firelight did not reach.

  Now what was she going to do? After a moment’s hesitation Maggie ducked into one of the tents where the gospel was being thundered out with vehemence and fury.

  “For the Lord your God is a jealous God!” bellowed the short, well-fed preacher pacing the wooden platform at the rear of the tent. Dozens of people sat, watching and listening, on long, splintery benches. Maggie rolled her eyes.

  At that moment, as if the Lord meant to reprimand her personally for being a scoffer, thunder split the sky with a deafening crash. Maggie, lurking by the tent’s opening, started in fear and then slipped outside to look up. The stars, present only moments before, were now gone, replaced by ugly shifting clouds. Lightning veined across the sky in golden streaks, making a pattern reminiscent of shattered glass.

  Less than a second later rain sliced to earth, not in drops or trickles, but in cascades, making a roar the likes of which Maggie had never heard on the canvas roofs of the tents and covered wagons, and turning the enormous bonfires to heaps of sizzling charcoal. People dashed in every direction, taking refuge in and under wagons and inside the tents, laughing as they ran.

  Maggie was desperate for shelter—her dress and hair were instantaneously soaked—but not desperate enough to go back inside that tent and hear more about a wrathful God. Cursing Tansy for getting her into this situation in the first place, she stood undecided in the downpour, looking this way and then that.

  Suddenly, a strong hand caught hold of her elbow and she was being dragged through the driving rain. Water and her own wet hair streamed down over her face, making it impossible for Maggie to see who was pulling her along, but, as she stumbled behind her guide, through mud reaching nearly to her shins, she had an idea or two.

  And she wasn’t entirely sure that it wouldn’t be better to stand outside in the rain until the storm passed.

  After an interminable trek, Maggie made out the gloomy outlines of a covered wagon. Her abductor turned, grasped her firmly by the waist, and hoisted her high in the air. Her bottom landed with a mushy plop on the bed of the wagon, and she scrambled inside because so much water was rushing into her face, she couldn’t breathe.

  She lay gasping on the floorboards for almost a minute, afraid to look up. Boots moved past her face in the darkness, and then a kerosene lamp flared to life, illuminating the interior of the wagon.

  “You’d better get out of those clothes or you’ll have pneumonia before breakfast,” warned a placid male voice.

  Slowly, Maggie levered herself to a sitting position and, with both hands, swept her sodden hair out of her face. Reeve McKenna sat on the edge of a narrow cot, smiling companionably. At Maggie’s glare, he spread his hands wide of his body, as if to ask what he’d said or done that was outside the bounds of social amenity.

  She continued to glare, but her teeth were beginning to chatter by then, and she was shivering.

  Nonchalantly, Reeve reached to one side and produced Maggie’s reticule. He tossed it and it landed at her side with a thump.

  “You left this by the fire.”

  Maggie looked at the reticule, which contained a warm nightdress and a change of clothing, with yearning. She supposed she should thank Mr. McKenna for safeguarding her possessions in such a way, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to speak such civil words.

  It was then that Maggie was struck by the distinct possibility that her spare clothes were as wet as the ones she wore. Her fingers trembling, she fumbled with the catch until the reticule opened, plunging one anxious hand inside. Sure enough, her new pink and white gingham dress and her best cotton nightgown were soaked.

  With a groan of despair, Reeve McKenna’s presence having slipped her mind for the moment, Maggie rose as far as her knees, pulling out the spoiled garments for closer inspection.

  “I suppose Duncan bought those things for you.” The flat words brought the full gravity of her situation home to Maggie. Legs shaky, she got to her feet and stared down at Reeve’s expressionless face.

  “Yes,” she heard herself say. “I’m to be his hostess, you see—”

  Reeve stood up, towering over Maggie to such a degree that it hurt her neck to look up at him. One of his hands snatched the sopping wet nightgown from her, a thumb and forefinger assessing the weight of the delicate fabric. “You’ll be greeting his guests in your nightdress, will you?”

  Maggie was a moment grasping the implications of what he’d said. The rain pounded at the taut canvas top of the wagon, dripping through here and there, and still Maggie thought she could hear the beat of her own heart.

  She faced Reeve with what proud dignity she could conjure up under the circumstances. “Of course not,” she replied weakly, and then she reached out and grabbed the garment back.

  Without so much as a word of warning, Reeve turned away, lifted the glass chimney of the lamp he’d lit earlier, and extinguished the flame. The wagon went dark as the cellars of hell, and Maggie drew in a swift, stunned breath.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded of the gloom. She couldn’t see an inch in any direction; it was safe neither to stand fast nor to flee.

  “Do you want the whole of the camp to watch you undress?” Reeve retorted from somewhere in the black desolation that surrounded Maggie.

  “I have no intention of undressing!”

  “Brave words,” Reeve responded, unconcerned. “The trouble is, Yank, that you’re wet to the skin and cold as a banker’s heart in the bargain.” Some unidentifiable but dry garment flew through the blackness and Maggie clutched at it. Flannel. Warm, blessedly dry flannel.

  Shivering, Maggie felt the article of clothing and determined that it was a man’s shirt. “I’m leaving,” she said, making no move to do so. The only thing more dangerous than the inside of that wagon, of course, was the storm that raged outside.

  “Get out of your wet things, Miss Chamberlin,” Reeve ordered wearily, “or I’ll take you out of them myself.”

  Maggie had absolutely no doubt that Reeve McKenna would make good on his threat should he be driven to it, and she was shivering hard now, cold to the very marrow of her bones. “What assurance d-do I have that you’re not pl-planning to light that lamp or—”

  “If I lit the lamp, you’d be putting on a show for anyone stupid enough to be outside,” Reeve answered, “and if I wanted to seduce you, I’d never have thrown away a perfect opportunity to keep you under my roof by giving you your emigration papers, now, would I?”

&n
bsp; Maggie saw reason in his words and began unbuttoning her dress. Given the cold numbness that had beset her fingers, she had the devil’s own time trying to work the bits of mother-of-pearl through the tiny openings provided.

  Finally, in utter frustration, she spat out, “Damn, damn, and triple damn!”

  Reeve chuckled in the darkness, and she sensed rather than heard his drawing nearer to her. Unerringly, he found her buttons and began undoing them without the slightest problem, even though he had to be every bit as wet and cold as Maggie was.

  “You are fond of that phrase, aren’t you, Yank?” he said.

  Against Maggie’s sodden camisole his knuckles felt warm and hard as they worked. She was stricken speechless by the magnitude of the situation she’d gotten herself into and the strange stirrings that Reeve’s touch engendered deep within her. “Wh-what do you mean?” she asked lamely, unable to turn and flee into the rain as she should have.

  His hands were at her waist now, unfastening the last of those cursed buttons. “You said something similar on the ship when you found out you couldn’t go ashore in one of the dinghies.”

  Maggie had heard Reeve’s words, but she couldn’t make sense of them. Her attention was focused on the hands she could not see, now slipping under the shoulders of her dress and moving it away. She shivered again, and not with cold, but with wonder at the hot, biting sweetness that possessed the most secret part of her.

  She stood fast as Reeve untied her camisole and then peeled it away from her flesh, which was chilled on the surface and scalding hot underneath. His thumbs grazed her hardened nipples, whether by accident or design Maggie could not tell, and she gave an involuntary groan at the pleasure the motion spawned.

  “Maggie,” he said in a low and ragged voice, and then she felt his breath on her face and instinctively she tilted her head back to greet his mouth with her own. His forceful but infinitely gentle hands entangled themselves in her dripping hair and he kissed her.

  Maggie was stunned by the tender warmth of his lips moving against hers, moist and undemanding. She shivered when the tip of his tongue encircled her mouth in one swift, featherlight foray, bidding it to open for him. Maggie responded by parting her lips in response to his mild command and nestling close to him. Her nipples tightened even more on contact with the cold, rain-drenched barrier of his shirtfront.

  His fingers moved along the slender, moisture-beaded curve of her back, warming her, exciting her more with each pass over her flesh. Then, with the soul-shattering kiss continuing, Reeve caught his hands under her bottom and lifted her flush with the full force of his need. Even through her petticoat and drawers, all the clothing left to her except for shoes and stockings, Maggie felt the straining power of him and trembled for the want of it even as she recoiled inwardly in fear.

  Reeve’s hand suddenly came up beneath Maggie’s chin and clamped around her jaw, and it was as though he were battling his own will to break away from the kiss.

  He half groaned and half growled an expletive and stepped away from her. But soon enough his hands were back, briefly cupping Maggie’s full and throbbing breasts, then sliding down the sides of her waist to dispense with her petticoats and drawers.

  Maggie was powerless to protest, much less flee, and when she felt herself being lowered to a soft bed covered in woolly blankets, she offered no resistance. She closed her eyes as she felt Reeve removing her shoes, rolling down her practical ribbed stockings with a sensual lassitude that heightened Maggie’s need to a pitch that made her toss restlessly on the bedclothes.

  Reeve’s voice was thick with the brogue Maggie had heard only hints of before, and hoarse with needs she couldn’t even begin to comprehend. “You’re a virgin, then, aren’t you, lass?”

  Maggie could not speak; he knew her answer because one of his hands had come to rest alongside her cheek and he felt her feverish nod.

  “Then I’ll not be takin’ you this night,” he vowed in the dense gloom. Maggie couldn’t tell whether the roaring in her ears was the sound of the rain outside or just the rushing of her own blood.

  She did know that her disappointment would have been fathomless but for the fact that Reeve’s thumbs were once again brushing her nipples. She’d lost all sense of propriety by then; her need of whatever Reeve was promising with his nearness and his touch was primal.

  Reeve chuckled at her eagerness; when she regained her senses, Maggie promised herself, she’d call him to account for that. “You’ll ’ave the pleasure, lass,” he vowed in that same thick brogue, “without the ruinin’.”

  His mouth closed over one of Maggie’s distended nipples then, sucking for a moment and then withdrawing. Maggie gave a little cry and clutched both her hands together at the back of his head, pressing Reeve back to her breasts.

  He laughed before enjoying her again, this time with a lusty avarice that made Maggie writhe in pleasure, her head thrust back, her lips parted, her breath coming in short, rasping gasps.

  Reeve had his fill at the first breast and then took leisurely nourishment at the second. Maggie was almost delirious with wanting as it was; when Reeve’s fingers brushed over the downy place at the junction of her thighs, promising much in their passing, she groaned aloud and, of their own accord, her hips bolted from the bed in response to his touch.

  A low sound in Reeve’s throat indicated his amusement, and his mouth left her breast to tease her with a kiss so light as to cause Maggie to wonder if she’d imagined it. And then Reeve’s lips were moving against hers. “The rain ’as stopped,” he said. “If you aren’t quiet, lass, everyone in camp will know just what it is that I’m doin’—”

  Maggie’s hands were still locked in his hair, and her body throbbed in restless yearning on the blankets. His fingers brought her yet another new torment, sweet and achy and fierce. “I’ll b-be quiet—I promise—I promise!”

  Reeve chuckled again and then he was moving away, his lips brushing along her chin, the quivering satin expanse of her neck, her breasts, and her stomach. And then, to her utter surprise, his fingers gave way to his mouth.

  Maggie’s hips were flung high by some savage instinct as he nuzzled her, tasted her with brief fiery strokes of his tongue, and then claimed her fully. His hands held the shivering plumpness of her bottom high while he consumed her, and Maggie clapped both her own hands over her mouth in a desperate effort to muffle the low, lusty cry of welcome that spiraled up from the very core of her soul to rattle in her throat.

  She had thought, in the first jarring realization of what Reeve was doing, that this was the summit of pleasure, the fulfillment. Instead, it turned out to be only a hint of the explosive tumult that was to come.

  Maggie’s heart hammered and her breath tore back and forth through the latticework of her fingers, and the sensation at the joining of her thighs became unendurably pleasurable. At the same time she craved the mysterious satisfaction her body strained toward, she fought to escape it. But Reeve held her fast in his hands, raising her hips higher and higher as he tongued and sucked her toward madness, and Maggie’s own legs betrayed her, knees widening to give him greater access, heels digging into the mattress in a frantic, entrenching motion.

  And then it happened, that fiery explosion ignited at the very essence of her womanhood and fanning out to pound at her hips, tingle in her breasts, and make the hair at the nape of her neck, sodden as it was, stand on end. Her hands were not enough to quiet the long, low cry of release that escaped her; Maggie wrenched the pillow from beneath her head and clasped it over her face.

  Slowly, Reeve lowered her shivering hips back to the bed; reluctantly, he rolled his tongue around that sensitive nubbin of flesh once more before withdrawing.

  Maggie lay trembling, too shaken and too embarrassed to come out from under the pillow. “Oh, Lord,” she moaned, “what have I done?”

  She felt Reeve rise off the bed, heard his rueful chuckle and then his answer. “Nothing that’ll do you any lasting harm,” he said. “I, on t
he other hand, may never be the same.”

  The brogue was gone. Even as Maggie noted that fact, she wondered why she cared and pressed the pillow down harder.

  Before she knew it, the pillow was snatched away, and landed with a soft thump on the other side of the wagon somewhere. “You won’t undo what’s happened by smothering yourself,” Reeve pointed out.

  Maggie sat bolt upright, forgetting her mortification and the delicious, sated feeling possessing her body in a disturbing realization that while she might as well have been blind for all she could make out in that pitlike darkness, Reeve had been able to see. “You must have the eyes of a cat!”

  Reeve laughed, but the sound was harsh somehow, as though he might be suffering pain of some sort. “The pillow slip is white, Maggie. Besides, you struck me with it when you pulled it out from under your head to—”

  Maggie wailed with embarrassment and wriggled underneath the covers. If the pillow slip showed white in the darkness, her skin probably did too.

  “You saw me!” she accused him through the blankets.

  “I did more than see you, my love,” Reeve responded. She was once again conscious of the rain; it grew louder.

  Maggie tore the blankets from over her face, forgetting that her body might glow in the gloom like a pale light. “You’re leaving me alone?” she hissed.

  “If I don’t, Yank, we’ll both be sorry,” Reeve answered, and then there was a splashing sound as he leapt down from the wagon. The driving thrum of the rain was muffled a little when he closed the canvas curtain.

  Maggie lay down again, pulling the covers up to her nose. The sensible thing to do, of course, would be to get out of Reeve McKenna’s narrow bed, put her clothes back on, wet or not, and leave. The trouble was that the sensible approach had a distinct lack of appeal. Wet clothes would be cold clothes, and the rain was still beating down outside. If Maggie left the warm, though admittedly scandalous sanctuary of the wagon, exactly where could she go?