Sam waited, an expression of mixed restraint and longing in his eyes. Husky-voiced, he had to ask, “And you, Jen? What are you feeling?”
She felt the strain of his tension although he had not come any closer. And in the darkness that enclosed them, she sensed the heat of him, along with the restless, searching way his eyes touched upon her.
“Answer me, Jen.”
“The same.”
The words were the barest whisper. They rocked him for a moment. He had never thought she would admit it after sending him away last night.
Jenny slid past him to sit on the rail, her face averted. “It was what you were hoping to hear, wasn’t it?” she demanded softly, a betraying quiver underlying her words.
She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until he didn’t answer and she turned her head. Her breath rushed out. He was leaning back against the wall, the bulk of his jacket blurring the shape of him. Not that she needed to actually see him. A hundred pictures flashed in her memory of how she had touched and held, soothed and bathed him, wanting him far more than she was willing to admit. She couldn’t say what he needed to hear. And she knew, too, that her words would have to be freely offered.
The wind brought the scent of smoke to her again, and with it the soft undeniable hunger of his voice. “What am I going to do with you, Jen?”
“Do with me?” she repeated. Her skin flushed with the wanton thoughts she’d been thinking, but she firmed her defenses. “Why, nothing. You’re going to decide to move on to scratch the itch to know who you really are. And I … well, I’m going to remain just as you found me,” she added a trifle smugly.
“Are you?”
“That sounds like a threat, Sam. I don’t like being threatened,” she warned.
“I wasn’t threatening you, Jenny. I was simply asking if you could really go on as you were.”
She turned her head, watching the slow way he lifted his shoulders away from the wall, soft, predatory steps closing the gap between them. Jenny supposed she had expected this to happen; maybe that was why she hadn’t gone straight inside. But it didn’t matter what the reason was. She was in full control of herself tonight, having had all day to think about what had happened the previous night, what would happen if he came near her again. Leveling a direct gaze on him, she didn’t need to think, or wonder, or wait to find out.
His hands rose slowly from his sides, and just as deliberately he placed one on each of her shoulders, twisting her toward him. Each breath was soft, steady, stirring against her hair, his grip firm without hurting, but she sensed the tension that spoke of his holding back.
Jenny almost smiled her victory at remaining unmoved before he lowered his head to very lightly brush her lips with his own.
Almost. Where she had expected gentleness again, she found hunger, savage, raw, and hot, pressing against her mouth. She felt the heat and power of his hands, each finger tightening until he turned her fully, making her face him, deliberately keeping her legs apart until he slipped his powerful thighs between them. Under the fierceness of his drugging kisses, she learned a new measure of desire.
She moaned and his mouth softened. He held her fast and she had to arch against him as his arm locked behind her back. Grabbing his open jacket, her hands slid to his chest, pushing against the sheer force of him to stop her slide off the rail. He cupped her hips with strong hands, bringing her fully molded to his body. The damp heat at the apex of her thighs met and made a cradle for his rigid maleness.
“Jen … don’t you know how much I need you? I’m cold without you, Jen. So damn cold.”
The words so huskily breathed against her mouth brought a tom, defenseless cry up from her throat. His tongue gently tasted the contour of her lips, evoking a deeply shuddered sigh of trembling wonder and he inhaled it into his mouth. Yet to her, the tip of his tongue was hot and rough and frightening. She wanted to tell him to stop and found his teeth pressed lightly into her lower lip. A tiny shiver sliced through her. Never, never had she been kissed like this. Her mouth was invaded, teased, and tasted, filled with the velvet texture of his tongue searching out its honied secrets. Heat was all she felt and thought about, heat that spread like wildfire down inside her and out and around until she felt herself shake with need for him. He stroked her lips again and again. Her fingers that once sought to push him away clutched his supple tanned jacket, sliding down to the firm muscled chest, and clung there as if to keep her from drowning. And she was drowning, for with every bold intimacy that his mouth taught her, Jenny let go of tiny bits of her own hunger.
He tightened his arms around her, wanting more of the restless heat of her hands rubbing over his chest, wanting deeper cries than the small moaning sounds she made as he took her mouth on a bold lover’s journey toward the deeper mating to come. He fought to still the hunger growing inside him until a slight shift of her hips tore a groan from deep within him.
He knew fear had touched her again and reluctantly separated his mouth from her own, feeling he was tearing away a part of himself. Her cheek lay against the soft cotton of his shirt, her ear pressed to the mad thudding of his heart. He brought one hand up to cradle her head, entwining his fingers deep in the long, silken lengths of her hair.
His thighs were tightly muscled, straining against her own, and Jenny tried to recover from the swamping hot passion he had unleashed between them.
“Jen,” he whispered after a few minutes, “I don’t think either of us is going to ever be the same again.” He didn’t need to hear her answer; her fingers were curled tightly around his waist, holding her to him.
He knew he should go. His fingers caressed her cheek, tilting her face up. Who the hell was he trying to fool again? He couldn’t walk away from her.
His strong hands molded her to the hungry length of his body. Her eyes were dark and wide, filling with need, and a small voice cried out in the wildness of rising passion that he should leave her now. He knew how far he had gone past sane, commonsense reasoning, but she didn’t. Jenny had no idea at all of what she was doing to him. His teeth closed delicately over the soft fleshy lobe of her ear. Jenny, he decided, was going to learn what she did to him. He traced the small shell with the hardened tip of his tongue, then slowly thrust into the tiny virginal opening with measured, heated strokes that had her clinging to him with shuddering cries.
“Sam, oh, don‘t … please, don’t.” Her voice shook with each word she forced from her passion-bruised mouth. She felt herself swelling inside, aching now for his touch. His teeth nibbled the skin of her arched neck, his tongue flicking its own moist heat that took her breath and will with every deliberate stroke. Never had Jonas touched her like this. He’d never melted her insides. But this was Sam drawing her tighter against him, groaning when he felt the trembling response she couldn’t hide anymore. His lips teased the curve of her cheek, seeking her lips hungrily. Helplessly she cried his name and he gave her back her own before he claimed her mouth.
The kiss deepened as if each sought to become a part of the other.
Kneading each feminine curve with his fingers spread wide, he traced the line of her ribs beneath her jacket. “Oh, Jen,” he murmured, “I want to know all of you. Show me what pleases you.” The thinness of her shirt was soft against his callused palms when he lightly and gently brushed his thumbs over the swelling thrust of her breasts until she arched into him, wanting more.
Every touch both soothed and increased the ache inside her and that frightened her. Frightened her enough to twist her head, burying it against the heaving muscle of his chest. She could still taste him, hot, male, and craving more of her. So much more.
“Don’t. I … pl-please, no more. I don’t want you to kiss me like this or…” His breath caught sharply for a moment, then resumed. She couldn’t tell him not to touch her. Still wrapped in his arms, Jenny had to see his face. Her fingers slid into the thickness of his hair, meaning to pull him away, and they clung there when he
arched his head up. The silky brush of his mustache sent a tremor over her skin above the warmth of his restless mouth finding the rigid line of her jaw. Jenny arched her neck away. “Damn you, Sam. Stop.”
His laugh was soft and knowing. “Stop what, Jen?” Yet for all that he teased, he reacted to the slight edge of panic in her voice. But then he was so sure she didn’t mean what she said. He kissed her eyes closed, lips straying to her damp temple.
“Please … don’t kiss me like this.” Her words all came out like a breathless urging for him to do just that.
His tongue flicked lightly against her chin. “Don’t kiss you at all, Jen?” he murmured thickly. “Or just don’t kiss you like this?” Her mouth tasted like hot honey and he wanted his fill of that and more. Warm and pliant, he teased her mouth, licking at her lips with tiny strokes until she opened them. He drank in her short, ragged breaths that blew into his mouth.
“Was that what you didn’t want, Jen? Or was it this?” He kissed her again, fully and softly, insistently coaxing until she was as greedy as he. But the fear wasn’t gone, and he brought her up against him, away from the rail, away from the temptation of touching all of the woman’s fire she seemed so unaware of. He knew he was bordering on losing his control. He couldn’t let her go. She was a mass of trembles that had one beginning before the other ended, like the ripples spreading out in a deep pool of water. He set her back against the rough-logged wall, locking his mouth to feed from her lips, deliberately keeping his hands from her.
But Jenny couldn’t stop from touching him. Her fingers raked down his chest, grabbing his shirt to pull him closer. She felt the hot slide of his lips find the pulse in her throat, listened to his soft laugh before he bit her with fierce restraint. Soft cries welled up, escaped, and his kiss claimed them for his own.
Even with that small bit of space he forced himself to maintain, he could feel the sweet building heat of her. She was all womanly yearning and he wanted nothing so much as to hear her admit that.
“Jen, I want you. Tell me you want me, too. Let me”—his mouth slanted across her face—“hear you say it.” Tasting the damp sheen misting her skin, he once more courted her mouth.
“Jen?” The word was a groan, a question, and hunger together. She wasn’t fighting him; she was still, not really giving but not denying him either. It was all the encouragement he thought he needed.
Want? Oh, God, yes, she wanted. But she didn’t say it. That was all he offered, an ease to the wanting. She couldn’t think, knew she must and forced herself. “No more,” she whimpered through kiss-dampened lips. ‘This isn’t…”
His kiss silenced her. No longer was the play one of unbridled need; his lips were soft, hot, and they slowly sucked her mouth until she flowered open for him. Her insides felt drawn tight like a bowstring. She wasn’t even sure if his hand coming off the wall to cup the back of her head brought her up against him or if her own impatience to be closer to him caused it. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t let this happen. But her hands and arms were caught between them, as useless as her struggles for freedom.
His mouth lifted, allowing her to draw a shaken breath before he caught her lower lip with his teeth. She tried to bury the moan of pleasure that escaped in spite of her effort.
With the heels of her hands, Jenny pushed against the damp muscled heat of his chest. To her surprise, his nipples felt like tiny rough stones. It brought another frightened cry from deep inside her, for her own nipples were swollen and aching to be touched. Reacting instantly, he locked her between himself and the wall, slowly rubbing his chest against the pressure of her hands till she moaned wildly.
Sam wouldn’t touch her with his hands, but that didn’t stop him from easing the ache he had caused. She tried moving her hands away and his fingers closed over her wrists, pressing against the full, weighted softness of her breasts. Like a great sleek cat being petted, he rocked his body slowly, pinning her, the tip of his tongue rubbing over the trembling warmth of her lower lip in time to his body.
“Jenny …” It was the sigh of the wind at dawn, a husky plea come again to ask and demand in the same breath. Desire stoked the fire inside, a heated languor stealing over her until she knew not where she ended and he began. “Let me love you, Jen. I can feel the wanting now…” He heard his voice, thick with his own hunger, whispering, and found her lips again, not daring to leave them too long. She was fire against the cold loneliness that lived inside him. He wanted it to end.
“Y-you … pr-promised,” she breathed into his parted mouth as it took possession of her own. Far too frightened of what he was making her feel, she found the strength to deny him. “You swore this wouldn’t happen again.”
Soft and trembling as her voice was, it held enough accusation to make him stop. It would be so easy to show her she didn’t mean it. Sam knew that. But he wanted more from Jenny. He wanted her wanting. Angling his head back, he looked down at her, not needing much light to know her eyes were wide and dark with fear. He cursed silently. Had he ever known such raging desire for a woman before? Or was this all for Jenny?
He couldn’t stop his hand sliding down the straight silken length of her hair, one shaking fingertip reaching out to trace again her full lips, now swelled from the passion of his kisses. Her breath caught, then, still so warm, blew teasingly against his finger until a tremor ran up his arm.
“You did promise me that.” She had to repeat the words, knowing she needed to remind him.
“So I did, Jen,” he finally managed to say. His chest was heaving with his own uneven breathing and for a moment his mind teased him with the idea of kissing her again, kissing her and touching her until she wouldn’t stop him. Until she couldn’t.
“Go inside, Jenny. Go before I do something we’ll both regret.”
Cold rejection flooded every bit of heat he had called into being.
She didn’t ask why or what he meant … she ran.
And Sam was left hungry, not only for Jenny, but the answers he had sworn to have.
Chapter Seven
Fear sent a chill down Jenny’s spine and her sorrel mare snorted, pulling at the bit, sensing her rider’s tension. Jenny knew it was cowardly to have run off to Hadly’s ranch for feed this morning before Sam and Robby returned from fishing. But after last night she couldn’t face him, and now she was glad. She needed to warn Sam that the two men who had traded his buckskin were back in Folsom, asking questions about the man who had bought the horse. Jenny couldn’t pry more information from Ross Hadly without raising his interest.
Gnawing her lower lip till it swelled, she tugged the lead rope of the two packhorses loaded down with sacks of grain. The old Indian path her father had showed her long ago followed a sinuous trail through a narrow gorge. She was feverishly impatient to get home, so she didn’t notice the subtle blending of rippled colors brightening, then fading along the stone walls.
There was no way to urge the horses faster up this steep climb. Above her, the mountains loomed, their peaks sharp and clear. The horses had to be allowed to pick their way and Jenny chafed at the delay.
As they reached the summit she felt the labor of her mare and then, finally, they were coming down the path leading to her cabin. She called out as she dismounted near the corral. A gentle breeze sloughed in the pines in answer. Thinking the three of them might still be down at the creek, Jenny hurried to unsaddle her horse and turn the mare loose in the corral. It was then she saw that the buckskin was gone.
“Oh, Lord! Don’t let him have ridden into town again!” But even as she cried out, Jenny wasn’t really surprised. Sam was a man and Jonas had forced her to learn about men and their physical needs. It shouldn’t have brought a twisting pain inside her to think of him going to Sarah Parkins, but it did. She tried brushing it aside, but she couldn’t. She thought of Sam as hers, not for sharing. The idea of Sam with Widow Parkins made Jenny more jealous than she had ever been about Jonas and his women.
> But what if those men were still in town? What if they found him?
“No more!” With her mouth set in a grim line, she led the packhorses inside the bam. Unloading fifty-pound sacks of grain tested every muscle in her body, but anger gave her the strength to accomplish it.
Finished, Jenny stepped outside and heard Ben laughing with her son. They were coming from the woods behind the bam, guns shouldered, making a dead stop when they saw her standing there, glaring at them.
“Where have you two been?”
“Now, Jenny, don’t be takin’ off on us. Me and the boy did us a bit of huntin’. Sam helped him catch that big daddy trout this mornin’ and then he took—”
“The buckskin,” she snapped, cutting him off.
“Mom! We got a whole mess of fish cleaned and ready to fry for supper,” Robby piped in, glancing from her to Ben. “Sam and me did it just like he said. We—”
“All right!” Jenny hadn’t meant to snap at him, and Robby, not understanding, tugged at her arm, demanding her attention.
“What’s wrong? I just wanted to tell you how Sam tricked that big ole fish into coming for my bait.”
Distracted, Jenny shook her head. What was happening to her? She never denied her son time, never cried so much, never snapped at him like this. Forcing a smile, she encouraged Robby.
Contented with her attention, Robby launched into an account of how smart Sam was to notice the sun casting their shadows on the deepest pool. He had Robby cross over to the other ledge and there he snagged not one but a string full of trout. There was so much he had to say about Sam and never once did he notice his mother’s shifting stance, or the way her eyes darkened as she listened to his chatter. Sam said it was fine to call the cat Kitten and Sam thought they should think about adding another room to the cabin ‘cause he was getting big enough to have his own room and she needed privacy. And Sam had given his word that Robby could ride the buckskin. And did she know that a man was only as good as his word. Sam said…
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