She turned away from the sight of him splashing water over his glistening muscles and reminded herself that she knew little about this man. Nothing except that she was afraid it might have been his face on that Wanted poster hanging outside the sheriff’s office that afternoon.
She glanced at the bed and noticed how normal it looked for a man’s shirt to be lying across the quilt. This was how married people lived every day, sharing intimacies in close proximity. But she and Tanner weren’t married, and he wasn’t the type of man to want marriage. Yet her body responded to his in the way a woman responds to a man. She had to remind herself that she was practically engaged to someone else.
“You’re awfully quiet this evening,” he said, drying his face with the towel.
And he seemed unusually talkative and more edgy than normal.
“Uh, the walk tired me out more than I thought,” she said, focusing her gaze on the streets below the window and not on the man whose half-naked state she was trying to ignore.
What was the harm in asking him what he really did for a living? He was probably nothing more than a hired gun. A man who did another man’s dirty work.
He took the towel and briskly dried the droplets of moisture from his chest and back. She looked away, her eyes searching the room for something to focus on. Anything besides the man whose very presence seemed to engulf the small room, suffocating her with his nearness.
A warm feeling came over her, and she knew he was watching her, wondering about her silence.
“What’s wrong?” he questioned.
His query surprised her. He was not the type of man to ask about feelings, to inquire about the other person’s emotions.
But the Wanted poster had resembled him so much, and he didn’t seem like the type of man who worked in a bank. Beth couldn’t stand not knowing a moment longer. “Are you really a banker, Tanner?”
She swallowed, the feel of his blue eyes staring at her intently, shredding what little confidence she had managed to retain. His face was unreadable, almost as if he were bored with her question.
“I’ve worked in a bank before,” he said with a drawl that sent tingles down her spine.
“But you’re not a banker now, are you?” she asked. “Who are you really?”
He drew the towel around his neck, sat down in a chair at the table, and let his hands rest comfortably between his legs, his elbows supported by his knees.
All she could see was his glistening, rock-hard flesh glowing at her, filling her mind, tempting her to run her fingers down the smooth expanse of his flesh.
“Lady, here in the West people don’t ask these types of questions. They just accept a person as they see them.”
He stared at her, his blue eyes intense. “If you’re going to stay, you better learn that principle.”
“I don’t know who you are, and I can’t help but wonder who I’m sharing a room with. And what you were doing on the stage that day.”
He shrugged, his face a bored expression. “I was traveling, just like you.”
A shiver passed down Beth’s spine as she looked at him. From all outward signs, he appeared relaxed, but she sensed a tenseness about him that, although subdued, was there just the same.
Though Tanner didn’t like the fact that she was asking questions, at a casual glance he appeared just fine with her interrogation.
“Elizabeth, do you think I’m going to harm you?” he asked, watching her carefully.
He’d drawled her name, not the shortened version but her full first name. Her mother had only used Elizabeth when she was in trouble, her father, when he was trying to convince her his way was best. So what did it mean when Tanner used her full name?
She stared at his lips and briefly remembered the way they had felt against her own, how he had tasted and his unique smell, which somehow soothed her when he was near. No, she didn’t think he was going to hurt her.
“I’m not worried you’re going to harm me,” she said, her voice almost a whisper in the dwindling sunlight. “I just want some answers.”
“To what?” he asked. “You know my name. I told you my profession. I’ve taken care of you since the accident. Why are you questioning my motives now? If I’d wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have brought you back to town.” He used her name just as her father had, to convince her to see reason. And everything he said seemed so logical, while she appeared a melodramatic fool.
She couldn’t even tell him the reason for her sudden suspicions: a Wanted poster that held a certain resemblance to his handsome face papered on the outside wall of the sheriff’s office.
No wonder he was looking at her as though she’d lost her mind maybe she had. Now that he mentioned her fears, they seemed so minor, so inconsequential.
She shrugged. No, the pit of her stomach was telling her that he was not only handsome; there was so much more that he wasn’t telling her. And that’s what made her nervous.
“You’re right. I guess being ill has made me edgy.” She glanced at his naked chest. “I just need to relax.”
How did she loosen up when a half-dressed man whose very presence reeked of masculinity and danger stood before her? She needed to ignore the feelings being near Tanner evoked. She needed to forget about the handsome man she had every reason to suspect was a hired gun, or worse.
All her energy needed to be focused on getting to Fort Worth, and to Tucker Burnett, before she did something really foolish that could jeopardize her future.
***
The afternoon sun cast a hazy glow through the smoke- filled air. The cannons roared, each shot sending more white smoke spiraling throughout the battlefield.
Tanner put the gun to his shoulder and pulled the trigger again; the reflex of the gun jerked him back each time he fired. The smell of gunpowder filled his nostrils. The cannons boomed, and the sound of bayonets clashing sounded closer, but still they stood and fought, determined to stop the Yankees at Peachtree Creek.
They were losing. The tide of the battle was turning and they were in danger of being soundly beaten.
Around him the moans of the wounded could be heard during the brief silences of the cannon, and the dead lay scattered like fallen leaves. With a worried glance, he searched for Carter. His friend still stood, and Tanner wondered how he ever thought that war was glorious and heroic.
They d run away from home to join the army and whip the Yankees, only to find that their foolish dreams of glory were anything but grand. And he missed his family more than he'd ever thought possible, even his formidable father.
A whistle sounded, and a signal passed down the line, the bugler having been wounded days before. They were retreating, moving out once again and Tanner could only guess what that meant. They were thirty miles from Atlanta, with a previous railroad line that supplied the Confederate army with supplies somewhere between them and the heart of the South. He knew in his gut the Confederacy was losing, but his mind refused to acknowledge that the glorious cause he'd left his family for was a dying mission. He wanted to go home, he wanted his mother’s apple pie, he wanted to tell his father he was sorry, but he couldn't.
He'd be damn lucky to get home alive. A man had his pride.
A bullet slammed into the dirt beside him, and he quickly returned fire. Blue soldier boys were racing toward them, and somehow he knew he was going to die right there, on this field in Georgia.
Running backward, he fired his rifle again; he continued firing over and over, pausing only long enough to reload. But the Yankees were coming faster than he could fire.
A quick glance showed that Carter had seen his predicament and was struggling, fighting hand to hand, to make his way toward him. They would die together on this field. Go down together like brothers.
He gave up reloading and used his bayonet to fight off the attackers. An uncanny feeling came over him, and he swung to the left. A boy dressed in blue stared him in the eye. The young man s eyes were as brown as a freshly plowed patch of earth.
/> Tanner raised his bayonet; then a cry of anguish filled his throat.
He felt a hand on his arm. He grabbed the arm, twisting the soldier to the ground. A soft moan filled his sleep-muddled mind and he slowly realized that he wasn’t on a battlefield and he wasn’t about to die. It was only a dream. The same dream that plagued his nights and haunted his days.
But the moan had sounded real. And there was a softness surrounding him that smelled as fresh as a spring rain, not rank, sweaty, and fearful.
Slowly, he opened his eyes, not wanting to face the real world. Beth lay beneath him, her soft curves molded to his body. He was lying in her bed instead of in the chair beside her. He held her good arm in a viselike grip while she murmured soft words to him.
“Wake up, Tanner,” she said. “It’s all right,” she soothed.
A shiver passed through him as the dream slowly faded, and he realized he was back in Texas, not on a bloody battlefield in Georgia. What had moments ago seemed so real was only his mind taking him back to the place he dreaded most. He released her good arm.
“I’m ... I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked, his voice ragged and rough.
“Not really,” she said in a breathless whisper that twisted his insides. “You just jostled my shoulder a bit.”
For a moment, neither one of them said anything, but she patted his back gently, as a mother soothes a small child. He willed himself to relax in her embrace, to let the dream and all its ugly memories fade away.
Her arms were around him, her breasts crushed against his chest, but she was stiff and tense beneath him. He knew he was too heavy to be lying on top of her, but she felt so good that he didn’t want to move. He wasn’t ready to abandon the cocoon of pleasure in which he unexpectedly found himself.
He glanced down at her face, checking to make sure he wasn’t hurting her. She gazed up at him, her lips full and inviting. In the moonlight, the darkness couldn’t hide the way her eyes were wide with wonder, her pupils dilated. Her tongue flicked across her bottom lip nervously, and he swallowed back a moan.
God, he wanted to kiss her again. Their brief kiss had lingered on the edges of his mind, teasing him with flashes of her taste and the feel of her in his arms. Now she seemed to fit in the hollows of his body’s embrace, and he marveled at the way they melded together. How had they ended up tangled in the bed sheets together?
Her breathing quickened, and when her tongue darted out to wet her lips one more time, that was all he could stand. He lowered his mouth to within scarcely .a breath away and paused, knowing he shouldn’t kiss her. He gazed into her eyes, amazed at the desire he saw reflected there.
“Oh, hell,” he whispered, and gave up any intention of resisting the taste of her full mouth one more time.
His mouth plundered hers, greedily consuming what he’d long denied himself. Her sweet lips tasted of pleasure and madness, and he sampled her mouth, sweeping his tongue across her full bottom lip.
He wanted to consume her, become lost in the insanity of this moment, never returning to the real world, which was filled with uncertainty and pain.
His hands reached up and gripped her face, slanting her mouth for a deeper exploration. One hand tangled in the mass of curls at the back of her head, bringing her closer.
Her arms wrapped around him, urging him still closer, and he gladly complied. She was a distraction he didn’t need, a temptation he had to indulge, and now she lay beneath him.
Shifting on the bed to avoid hurting her shoulder, he gently turned her sideways, facing him. Though his lips never left hers, his fingers began to slowly unbutton the top buttons of her nightgown. He promised himself that he only wanted to touch her breasts, see how they felt, before he’d once again retreat and leave Beth alone.
But when his hand slipped inside her gown and he caressed the hardened pebble of her nipple, he moaned a low, throaty growl. She was soft as satin for sale in a shop window, and he trailed his hand over her breasts, enjoying the feel of velvety smoothness.
Beth was a lady, a sweet, beautiful woman who with one glance managed to send his heart thundering like a stampede of buffalo. Yet she was a fighter, a tough woman who had survived a gunshot, a holdup, and the fall of the South.
Opening the last button on her nightgown, he shoved aside the material and put his lips to her breast. She gasped a deep breath and arched her back toward him. Suddenly, her hands were in his hair, holding his mouth to her hardened kernel.
This was madness. A sweet lunacy that enveloped him, making him forget he was a man who couldn’t afford a complication like a good woman in his life. He was a man haunted by the war, by the decisions of his youth, and no decent woman should want him.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t pretend for just one moment in time that he was good enough for the woman beneath him and that she desired him. For just a moment he wanted to act as if he were unscarred by life.
He slid his hand past her ribs, down her smooth stomach, to the waistband of her pantaloons. He slipped his hands in her drawers, past her belly button, down past her stomach to the wispy curls of hair covering her center. He touched the folds of her womanhood, and she moaned a deep, throaty purr.
Unable to resist her sweet mouth, his lips covered hers once more. He drank from her greedily, consuming her with a pleasure he had long denied himself. Her hands were urging him on, pulling him tighter and harder against her as she moaned repeatedly.
Then, suddenly, those same hands were pushing him away. She went stiff beneath him and shoved him with all her might, breaking the contact of their lips. He stopped touching her, the moisture of Beth on his fingertips, and pulled his hand from her drawers.
Tanner took a deep breath urging his body to relax from the pleasure that consumed him.
“I . . . can’t,” she whispered in the darkness.
He rolled to the edge of the bed, his body breaking the contact they had shared. He sat up and rubbed his hands through his hair, trying to calm his racing heart and pounding pulse.
“It wouldn’t be right,” she whispered, her voice filled with anguish.
She was right, but that didn’t mean her decision was a welcome one. No, in fact, he felt damn foolish. He never should have kissed her.
He stood, unable to listen to her protests any longer. He strode to the table, grabbed his gun belt and his hat, turned, and walked out the door. He couldn’t say anything, couldn’t tell her he was sorry. He knew deep in his heart that he wasn’t going to apologize for what they had done. His only disappointment was that they hadn’t completed the act. He had wanted Beth since that very first day.
Though the hour was early, Tanner shoved his hat on his head and was out the door before she could say goodbye.
When he shut the door behind him, he took a deep breath and shuddered. He had to get Beth out of his room, out of his life, quickly or find himself in her bed.
***
Tanner spent the day at the local saloon, drinking away the memories of his dreams and the remembrance of the lovely Miss Beth Anderson. He should have been looking for a place in which she could stay until she was well enough to continue on her journey, but he didn’t have the energy or the enthusiasm to find her a safe haven.
Now it was dark, and though he’d had meals sent to her room, he had not seen or talked to her since before dawn. Slowly, he made his way back to the hotel. He had to go back, check on her, make sure she was all right, but he feared seeing her face. He dreaded wanting her, seeing her reaction to his kiss, knowing he couldn’t have her. And he refused to go on apologizing for what had happened that morning between them.
He made his way up the stairs until he stood outside the door, knowing he should enter, anxious about this first meeting since he had almost—
Tanner turned the knob, pushing himself past that troubling thought. He walked in and found her where he least wanted to face her, in bed. Beth sat propped up, reading a book of poetry, her auburn hair curled softly around her face.
“Evening,” he replied curtly. “You feeling all right?”
“Stronger every day,” she replied her tone forced.
“Good, then I’ll be able to leave you soon.”
It was then that he heard the first moan, and he glanced at her sharply. The sound hadn’t come from Beth. Had it come from the room next door?
He walked over to the table and noticed several pictures sitting out that previously had not been displayed. “What’s this?”
“Today was my mother’s birthday.” She glanced at him. “I took those pictures out ... I was looking at them . . . remembering.”
It was a tintype of Beth dressed in a ball gown with a scooped neckline that revealed the swells of her bosom to perfection. An older woman dressed in finery and a gentleman in a fancy suit stood beside her.
“Those are my parents,” she said, an undercurrent of sadness in her voice. “That picture was taken the night of my debut ball.”
Clearly she came from a sphere of society that he could never reach. They had very little in common except that he wanted to crawl into that bed with her and finish what they’d started that morning.
“Looks like you lived high before the war.” He walked away from the table, to the window facing the street.
Beth glanced at him, her eyes filled with pain. “We did all right.”
The sound of a female moan echoed through the room, and he glanced at Beth.
She grimaced.
“Is that noise coming from next door?” he asked.
He watched as she glanced at the wall; her eyes widened, and her face seemed to turn a beguiling shade of pink.
“It’s . . . it’s the couple next door,” she said, stammering. “They’re . . .”
About that time, the mattress began a telltale squeak, and suddenly the very thing that had kept him holed up in a saloon most of the day was occurring next door. He stared at the woman whose image he had tried to drink away.
“Good God,” he said, the sound of moans penetrating the thin walls of the hotel room. “How long have they been doing this?”
The Outlaw Takes A Bride (The Burnett Brides) Page 8