Kit Gardner

by Twilight

  Cotton spread wide beneath her seeking palms, laying bare the magnificent breadth of his shoulders and biceps to the flickering lamplight. She’d never thought to find such joy in the simple turn of a man’s neck and shoulder flowing like molten steel beneath her hands. The inner trembling she sensed deep beneath that sculpted sinew sent another surge of aching need tumbling through her. Still, his urgency more than matched hers when he rose and crushed her soft breasts against his bare chest and his mouth again claimed hers with an unrestrained savagery. She could only tremble when the heat of his hand branded the curve of her hip and buttock with a boldness that set her mind to spinning. And then, before she could garner any sort of resistance, his hand cupped her womanhood. Spasms of forbidden pleasure plunged to her core, and brought a hoarse cry to her lips that was savagely claimed and doused by his mouth moving hungrily over hers.

  That this had all gone beyond her control flitted vaguely through her mind. That she should perhaps strive beyond herself to retain some last vestige of propriety burst in a shower of starlight when callused hands cupped intimately about her buttocks and lifted her against the undeniable swell of male muscle straining against his pants.

  “Jess...” Her name rasped from his lips like the plea of a dying man, betraying the depths of his passions. He clutched her head against his chest, then grasped her hand and boldly pressed it to the bulge in his groin. “Touch me...”

  An unexpected, unconscionable thrill shot through her as her fingers brushed over the heated length of him. This elicited a tortured intake of breath from him and a swift stilling of her hand beneath his. She pressed her lips to his chest, felt the fierce beating of his heart, tasted of his skin, the salt, the spicy elixir only he emanated, and filled her lungs with his scent and that of—

  She froze, doused in a torrent of grim realization. And unfettered, entirely consuming outrage.

  Chapter Twelve

  All that nestled soft and pliant against him at once turned to stone. Rance was not so entirely consumed with controlling his lust that he didn’t become at least vaguely aware of this. Cupping Jessica’s head in his palms, he lifted her face to his, intent upon finding the words somewhere amid the whiskey-fogged confusion she’d plunged him into, and then the world exploded before his eyes and his head snapped beneath the force of her palm against his cheek.

  “You—” she choked out, staggering from his arms and back against the barn wall. One slender arm did a miserable job of clutching her sagging camisole to her breasts. The other shoved at him, as though to keep him and all his inflamed desires at bay. No chance of that.

  He worked his jaw against the sting in his cheek, almost relishing its sobering effect as his gaze drifted over the pale swells of her breasts, gleaming like forbidden fruit in the lamplight. “Don’t get shy on me now, Jess....” he murmured, swiftly entrapping her outstretched wrist and tugging gently. “If you want me to stop, just ask.”

  “Is that so?” She yanked her hand from his and slipped agilely past him before he could do more than grab a fistful of lemon-scented air. “You drunken dolt.”

  He planted his hands on his hips and turned toward her. “Ah. I see.”

  “The hell you do.” Fire bloomed from the tips of her breasts clear to her hairline. He watched her lips tremble with her words and remembered the taste of them parting beneath his, her sweet acquiescence—hell, her eagerness. “H-how dare you...” she breathed.

  “Take a good look at yourself, Jess, and you’ll understand. Now, come here.”

  “I most certainly will not!” And with that she spun about and lunged from the barn, her flailing limbs, intentionally or not, sending a painstakingly stacked pile of lumber planks tumbling to the floor, directly in Rance’s path.

  Snarling a curse, he attempted to scramble over them, managing in the process to get himself knocked in the head by one toppling plank and stubbing his toe against another thick plank, which he then felt every manly need to throttle with both hands. This only served to drive a long splinter deep into his palm. Growling yet another expletive, he tossed the plank aside and hastened after her.

  He was met with the solid thwack of the back door.

  For a moment, he stared with disbelief at the door, and then pounded his fist into the wood, further driving the splinter into his skin. “Open the door,” he shouted.

  “If you harbor any care for my son, you will cease your beastly pounding,” came the muffled voice beyond the door.

  He glanced up at the darkened second-story dormer windows directly above him and balled his fists against his thighs. “Open the damned door, Jess,” he growled, infusing his tone with a suitable amount of menace.

  “Ah, but of course,” came the clipped response. “A point is not made quite so eloquently as when a man resorts to profanity. And here I’d thought you men honed but one skill in those saloons you frequent.”

  “Arguing with a female obviously isn’t it,” he muttered, half to himself. He shoved a hand through his hair, then kneaded the muscles bunching at the base of his neck. A drum had taken up an incessant thumping at his temples. Again he stared at the door, and imagined her leaning against the same wood. His hand pressed against that barrier. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what the hell it is that I did.”

  “Ha!”

  “I see.”

  “No, Stark, I’m quite certain that if you’re seeing anything at all at the moment, it’s two of everything, and no sense whatsoever.”

  “I am not drunk,” he bellowed.

  “See, there you go. Howling at the moon again. Why is it you men believe yelling and stomping about will absolve you of positively anything, including the havoc wrought by your misdeeds? And the more guilty you are, the more furious the stomping. Perhaps your saloon doxies find all that grand pontificating appealing. Yes, I believe it would be well suited to a gambling house. I suppose women like that would also welcome your drunken pawing of them in a barn. Tell me, Stark, in such a place, would their stench be apt to linger so long upon the skin?”

  He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the door. An unseen fist buried itself in his middle and twisted. “Jess, listen—”

  The door thumped against his head, as though a small fist pounded the wood on the opposite side. “What measure of man takes his pleasure on some...some...barmaid, and then, still reeking of her, seeks to ease whatever he has left upon another woman...me...and in my barn?”

  “Dammit, Jess, it wasn’t like that at all.”

  “It never is, Stark. My husband Frank was kind enough to regale me with every last viable explanation known to man as to why he sometimes smelled the way he did, explanations which I, of course, in my stupidity, believed.”

  “Don’t, Jess.”

  “But that is my demon to wrestle with for the rest of my days. So you needn’t feel compelled to explain. You obviously found what it was you went in search of this evening. I’m not interested in your excuses.”

  “Good. I wasn’t about to offer you any.”

  “I’m just surprised you bothered to come back. Was her bed not soft enough for you?”

  “Dammit, Jess, I’m not your husband.”

  “Good grief, what sort of an idea is that? I mean, good heavens, of course you’re not my husband, nor will you ever be my husband. I mean, to even mention the word husband and you in the same sentence...it—it’s positively unnerving.”

  “I’m not like him, Jess. Not at all. And you damned well know it.”

  “I’m not listening, I tell you.”

  Rance gritted his teeth and gripped the door frame with both hands, feeling an uncommon surge of strength, enough to make him believe himself capable of tearing the house apart, plank by plank. “I’ll break down the door, Jess.”

  “Go ahead, if it will make you feel better, but I still won’t listen.”

  “I wasn’t with another woman tonight!” he bellowed.

  “Then why do you smell like you bathed with one
?” she shrieked in reply.

  He rubbed a palm over his bare chest, wishing that simple motion could vanquish all her doubt. “I wasn’t interested.”

  “Ah. So she tried.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  Silence. And then her voice, soft and lilting, laced with feminine wiles. “I suppose she was pretty.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me.”

  Rance let his breath wheeze through his teeth and failed miserably at determining what keen trap her female mind was devising for him, a trap he would no doubt bungle his way into. “Fine,” he barked, shoving himself away from the door. “I’ll have you know she was quite beautiful. In fact—she reminded me of you.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  He frowned in complete befuddlement and ventured a step nearer once more. “Does it?”

  “I’m not quite sure. No, I don’t suppose it does.”

  He leaned his forehead against the door and imagined that she did the same. With every fiber of his being, he suddenly yearned to crush her in his arms. Surely his strength alone could banish all the demons. God knew words would never do it. “Open the door, Jess.”

  “It doesn’t matter, you know, the other women you might...be with. I truly don’t care. Not in the least. Especially for those who remind you of me.”

  “I know. Open the door.”

  “I mean, good heavens, what business is it of mine who my farmhand chooses to...to...”

  “Jess. Open the door.”

  Several long moments passed. A winged night creature cleaved the darkness in a fluster of wings and was gone.

  His fingers dug into the uneven wood. “Jess.”

  Silence, so pervasive he thought he imagined her silent tread as she crept to her room. No...

  “Trust me, Jess.”

  At first he thought he’d imagined it, so desperately did he wish it to be so. But then, again, the door vibrated beneath his hands, sending a surge of triumph through him, and a joy so pure he was momentarily shaken by the depths of it. He shoved his toe between the door and the jamb and pushed gently with his fist.

  Moonlight spilled into the darkened kitchen. She stood several feet from him, wrapped in a white robe that shimmered like pale blue gossamer in the moonlight. With one hand, she gripped the edge of the kitchen table, and with the other she clutched her robe high about her neck. Yet her eyes glowed with something far more seductive than fear or chastity, and the robe clung to her every lush curve and valley, as though begging to be ripped from her supple limbs.

  “That’s the thing,” she said softly. “No matter what happens, I do trust you.”

  In one swift motion, he caught her gently in his arms, burying his face in the curve of her neck before she could think twice and flee. Warm lemon scent tumbled over him as her arms wrapped about his neck and clung as if she might never let go. He breathed her name, again and again, relief and desire spiraling through him, until his lips found hers and drank deeply of her sweet surrender. Yes, he tasted it again, as if it were the sweetest of elixirs, and the most potent of aphrodisiacs. Cotton flowed like silk beneath his hands as they spanned the narrowness of her waist, the sleek sweep of her ribs, then paused to cup one full breast in his palm.

  “Don’t,” she breathed, even as the first gasps of pleasure spilled from her lips.

  “I want no other woman,” he rumbled, tasting the dewy softness of her skin where the robe gaped open at her neck. “I can think of no other woman. You haunt my dreams...my thoughts... I’m like a caged animal in that barn....” His thumb gently urged the robe over one shoulder, and his mouth followed the gaping cotton until it poised upon one thrusting nipple.

  “Stark—”

  He eased the cotton over her nipple with one flick of his tongue. “I want to make love to you, Jess.” He pressed the fullness of her breast upward and took the nipple deep into his mouth, as would a starving man, relishing the spasms of pleasure rippling through her slender body.

  Her buttocks curved into his hands, and she arched her back, as if to give him further access. The movement allowed the last of the robe to slip from her shoulders and pool at her waist. Moonlight spilled like fine cream over the willowy length of her neck, the lushness of her breasts, her softly parted lips emitting those wondrous gasps of delight. Slender thighs quivered at his touch, then parted, and the wet, pulsing heat of her branded his fingers, then his palm, as he cupped her.

  He buried his face in the soft valley between her breasts and moved his fingers over those delicate womanly folds between her thighs, with each caress seeking to drive that aching, desperate moan of pleasure from her. Her hips lifted, and her warm, damp womanhood pressed wantonly against his chest, driving the last of his ebbing control from him. With one flex of his arm, he lifted her onto the kitchen table and lowered his head between her thighs, instantly dispelling her murmur of resistance.

  She tasted of sweetness, of innocence, of passions long denied, of a woman hungering for something she’d never before known. She writhed on that table for him, gasping his name, clinging to his shoulders with a desperation that fired his blood to limits unknown. And when she cried out in a long, shuddering surcease, he could only crush her in his arms until the spasms left her, until only he was left prisoner to this raging inner fire.

  “Oh, Logan,” she breathed at last. Her mouth moved softly over his, then skimmed over his throat to bury in his chest. Her hands molded his ribs, ventured over his belly to his waistband, then paused, as though she hadn’t any idea of his tenuous condition.

  He swallowed thickly. “Jess—”

  In response, she snuggled her breasts against his chest in the most provocative manner ever known to man, then all but purred against his throat and commenced with a torturous trailing of her fingers up and down his belly. “You’re magnificent,” she murmured.

  “I’m not finished,” he said softly, hoping beyond hope that he didn’t scare her off now with some uncontrolled display of unleashed male desires. He was having a hell of a time with it, after all. Never once, in his wildest imaginings, and there had been many, had this kitchen table been the site of what he intended to be his skillful initiation of her into the delicate art of lovemaking.

  Her wide eyes shimmered with innocence as she drew away from him. “Do you want me to touch you again?”

  “No,” he rasped, quickly grasping her venturing hand and drawing it to his lips. “That would surely be my undoing.”

  “I know little of all this.”

  “I know.”

  “Teach me, Stark. Teach me everything, starting now.”

  “No—” Again, he caught her venturing hand, which prompted another lifting of her innocent eyes to his. Something twisted in his soul. He’d won her trust. He certainly couldn’t abuse it now, driven by lust and a whiskey-logged conscience that had come very close to forgetting who he was, and what he was doing here. A great wheezing sound filled his ears, the sound of passions left denied ebbing on a long breath. Resisting her now, however unnatural it felt, was his only course, though his fingers almost rebelled as they drew the robe up over her shoulders. “Listen to me, Jess. I think you’d better go to bed.”

  Her arms slipped from around his neck, her eyes wide and shining in the moonlight. “What is it, Stark? You’re displeased—”

  “No—” He crushed her against his chest, feeling responsibility suddenly like a leaden weight on his shoulders. “If I were more animal than man, I would take you here, now, on this table and this floor. Part of me aches with it, Jess.”

  “So do I.”

  He swallowed a groan. “But I can’t...not...yet...not until—” He paused, almost certain he could hear a buggy coming down the road, improbable as that seemed.

  “A buggy,” she murmured above the muffled thud of a horse’s approaching hooves upon the earth and the clatter of buggy wheels. “Who would come out here at this time of the night?”

  He shr
ugged his shirt up over his shoulders and caught her chin with his fingers, tilting her face up to his. “Stay here,” he warned, unable to refrain from tasting her lips once more.

  For once, she did as he told her without any sort of resistance, though the trusting smile she gave him was nearly enough to keep him there with her, and to hell with the rest of the world.

  He closed the door behind him and moved into the yard, just as a curricle pulled to a halt directly before the barn. A slim figure alighted from the carriage and paused in momentary silhouette against the open barn doors.

  Halsey.

  With coattails billowing behind him, and apparently unaware of Rance, Avram Halsey strode determinedly into the barn.

  Soundlessly, Rance crossed the yard, moving around Halsey’s horse with a reassuring murmur to the animal and a rubbing of his muzzle. He paused at the open barn doors, one shoulder braced against the jamb, arms crossed over his chest. One look at Halsey assured him the man had not ventured here so late in the evening owing to some catastrophic event. No, the reasons were of a more personal nature, as was evidenced by Halsey’s measured yet deliberate tread as he moved about the barn. A brow arched, and he sniffed with disdain as he paused to poke his walking stick into Rance’s trunk.

  He certainly hadn’t come out of some unassuageable need for Jess. Perhaps this proved impetus enough for Rance to leave his shirt as though hastily donned, unbuttoned, its tails swinging free.