Once an Outlaw

by Raine Cantrell

  And he envied the man whose ring she still wore. Jessie wouldn’t be erecting any barriers with him. Logan found himself experiencing jealousy. A new emotion, one whose fangs sank deep. He didn’t want Jessie turning to another man when he was gone. He wanted to be the one who filled her thoughts, and her body.

  “Jessie, let me help you. Let me make what’s hurting you go away.”

  Her head drooped to the side as if she no longer had the strength to hold it upright. Two hairpins slipped to the floor and her loosened burnished hair covered his hand.

  Caught in the grip of emotions too tangled to name, Logan lifted his hand from her arm and gathered her hair as he leaned forward to trail kisses along the arch of her bare neck.

  “Jess, oh, Jess,” he whispered, “why can’t you trust me?” He took her earlobe between his lips, gently scraping the sensitive flesh with his teeth. The faint trembling of her body acted as a caress to his.

  “Logan? Hold me. Please just hold me.”

  She twisted around, locking her arms around his waist. Her mouth blindly sought his. It was an act of desperation to silence him, it was a need to replace one memory with another. A memory that wouldn’t hurt. She knew she would be safe with Logan. She had to be. Jessie leaned into him, feeling the captivating heat of his body that warmed her own chilled flesh. The pressure of his lips against her mouth was deep and persuasive and undeniably enticing. When his thumb touched the corner of her lips, she didn’t understand at first what he wanted. The gentle ply of his tongue skimming the seam of her mouth urged a response, and she moaned softly. Her hands grabbed his shirt, and she braced herself for the invasion of his tongue.

  But Logan was subtle. He didn’t want to frighten her. There was no storming of the faintly whiskey-scented delicate skin, but a careful, coaxing foray that left her shivering.

  It was only as he slowly filled her mouth, tasting her intimately, that Jessie realized what she had started. This was how gentle and thorough his ultimate possession would be of her. If she allowed it…if she wanted…

  She held on tighter, burrowing her body against his. All the masculine strength and heat that had been unsettling her for the past days swamped her now. His touch was, she thought, exactly as she had dreamed it would be, rioting her senses, luring her deeper into passion’s web.

  Jessie wasn’t short or petite, but she felt so frail to Logan beneath his hands. He stroked her arms, her back, puzzled over the chill of her flesh beneath the wool shirt, wanting to dispel it. When his fingers brushed the underside of her breast, he felt a womanly fullness that made him ache. He couldn’t stop himself from touching her.

  He heard the catch in her breathing and thought she would push him away. To his pleasure and surprise, Jessie clenched her hands more tightly around his shoulders. Reluctantly he broke free of her mouth and trailed questing, tormenting little kisses along the line of her jaw and up to her earlobe.

  He covered the unfettered fullness of her breast. The kisses grew more frantic. The tips of her fingers bit into his shoulders. He answered the hungry little sound she made with a groan of yearning.

  “Jessie,” he whispered hoarsely.

  God, this was good. So damn good. More than he had dreamed of. He was so hard, he had to bare his teeth against the pleasurable pain of it. She needed him. Not the ghost of a dead man. Not the suitor who hadn’t touched her. It was real and it was honest. And her quiet desperation made him want to please her.

  “Jess. I want you so much. My sweet, pretty lady…tell me what pleasures you.”

  “You. You do, Logan.” Her soft murmur became a moan as she closed her eyes against the feel of his delicate bite to her earlobe. This is what you wanted, she told herself. And what he wanted, too. He was fully aroused, rocking his hips against hers, and she could feel the softening of her body to fit the harder contours of his.

  But this was all happening too fast. She knew so little about him. Yet you’ll trust him with your body when you can’t trust him enough to tell him what happened to you.

  Jessie ignored the nagging little voice. Never in her life had she needed and wanted a man the way she wanted Logan. Denying it would be forever denying herself a chance to know what it meant to be swept by a desire that burned inside her.

  He kissed her lightly, feeling the coolness of her lips, but inside her mouth was hot. He rubbed his lips against hers, drinking the small, hungry sounds she made. Their tongues touched, and she moved against him restlessly. Her hands climbed the back of his neck, sliding into his hair to grip his head. Jessie became the aggressor and ignited a powder keg of sensation.

  Heat suffused his chest and spilled down into his belly and thighs. The strong, primitive feelings that made his arousal almost painful strengthened. He touched her nipples and she tore her mouth from his to utter a soft cry.

  “Jess, tell me you’re not afraid of me.” His hands slid down her back, forcing her gently against the length of him. When his palms reached her rounded buttocks he cupped her and lifted her up into the heat of his thighs.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.” The fear was buried beneath need and desire. A desire that was mutual. She could feel the rigid shape of him pushing against her.

  He brought his hands around to stroke up her sides, cupping her breasts and tugging gently on her nipples. He whispered dark words, praise, sounds of need as he felt the passion come to life in Jessie. She covered his throat with random kisses and tiny bites she instantly soothed with her tongue.

  Logan longed to feel her skin against his, to take her nipples into his mouth, to bathe them with his tongue for a long time and feel them flushed and hard, while she cried out his name.

  “You can’t be afraid of me when you can tell so easily how much I want you?” His voice lowered to a husky groan as he pressed her tight against him.

  “Logan, please…”

  “I want to. I want to pleasure you like no one else has, or ever will again.”

  There was a raw, primitive sound to his voice that should have alarmed her. It didn’t. Jessie felt her blood sizzling inside her body. She started to trail kisses over the hard line of his jaw, but he turned her within the gentle cage of his arms until she stood with her back against his chest. Swaying slightly, she attempted to turn around again.

  Logan held her still. “Stay, Jess. Open your eyes. I want you to see us. Together.”

  She lifted heavy-lidded eyes and watched them widen with shock. She didn’t know the woman reflected in the mirror. With her lips swollen, parted, and her hair tumbling down to her waist, there appeared a wanton, not the Jessie she knew. She leaned back against Logan and saw only half of his body showing behind hers. He looked lean and spare, a flush mantling his cheeks, like the heat that tinted her own. His eyes were hooded, watching her, his facial muscles tight, and she wanted to reach back to touch the errant lock of dark hair that fell across his forehead. She didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her breathing grew shallow as her body tensed with waiting.

  There was a strength and male beauty about him that stirred fear and heightened her desire at once, but she never averted her eyes.

  “Do you see yourself as I do?” he whispered, opening the top button of her shirt. He slid his hand over her neck, stroking her, taking the tension with him.

  “Desire,” she murmured, surprised that she said it aloud, surprised that she saw what he asked. There was a languid heaviness to her gaze, a silent pleading invitation within the depths. She wanted to close her eyes against the sight, but the glitter in Logan’s eyes stopped her. A delicious shiver began inside, turning her knees to jelly, sending a flood of heat that rose tremoring through her thighs to settle low in the pit of her stomach.

  Jessie studied the woman in the mirror and knew, impossible as it seemed, that she would be safe with Logan. The very gentleness of his touch allowed her to be vulnerable with him.

  “What?” he questioned with a slow, sensual smile spreading across his lips. “I can see you want to ask me someth
ing.” Softer then, “Ask me.” His tongue rimmed the shape of her ear and his smile deepened when a languid sigh drifted forth. “Ask me, Jess. Anything.”

  Chapter Eleven

  She moistened her lips. No words came. She closed her eyes, thinking it would somehow be easier to ask that he touch her again, that he ease the ache that seemed to swell her breasts. But all she thought of was the feel of his hand stroking her throat. She didn’t want to lose the gentle, tender touches.

  So she remained silent, wishing she could ask him not to stop the sweet caress, but only to slide his hand lower.

  Without ceasing the ply of his hand on her throat, Logan slid his other hand around her waist and spanned the curve of her belly. She arched into this new touch, but he pressed her tight against him, slowly rocking her to and fro, needing to ease his aching flesh as much as he needed to heighten the passion that Jessie still guarded.

  Jessie felt the whisper of his fingers moving up the front of her clothes, and the cooler air against her skin warned that he had unbuttoned her shirt. The tease of his hand moving like a shadow over the land sent a flood of sensations over her skin. And Jessie was tempted to allow herself one bold action.

  She caught hold of his hands.

  “Yes, Jessie, yes. Show me,” he murmured encouragingly.

  A dreamy smile tilted her mouth, for there had been a smile in his voice. The sense of being safe spread throughout her as she drew his hands to cover her breasts.

  She had wanted, but Jessie wasn’t prepared for the wealth of desire that streaked out from his rough, callused palms as they met her bare flesh.

  “Don’t be afraid, Jess. I won’t hurt you. I’d never hurt you.”

  An overpowering urge flooded her to see him…them. Her lashes lifted slowly and she stared at the sight of Logan’s dark, tanned skin against her paler flesh. His hands cupped the undersides of her breasts, and as she watched, his thumbs circled her nipples, drawing them tight. The dark shirt fell to the sides, but she didn’t want its warmth now. A fine mist flushed her skin and she grew embarrassed when he lowered his head and nudged aside the shirt from her shoulder.

  Kissing her, he whispered, “You taste like passion, Jessie. But there’s so much more I want to taste from you.” He frowned at the sudden tenseness of her body. “What’s wrong? What have I said? Done?”

  She turned her head away from him, unwilling to admit how much she regretted an end to all the sweet, gentle touches. She should have known. But Logan had lulled her, for he had let it go on so long and hadn’t seemed to mind. She thought he was enjoying—

  “Jessie, don’t hide from me like this.” He turned her with his arms, guiding her chin up, coaxing until she opened her eyes again. “Now, what’s all this? If you don’t tell me what pleases you, or what doesn’t, how can you find pleasure?”

  She searched for the lie, but all she found was concern in his gaze. “Do you really want to know? Harry never—”

  “I’m not Harry.” Logan bit off the words. If the man had hurt her, when he found Jessie the most responsive woman—He broke off his thoughts when she spoke.

  “I can’t tell you unless I do it in my own way. He grew angry with me when I asked him to kiss me a little longer or to touch me gently. He’d promise. He even tried. But then he’d get mad and tell me that most women didn’t get any pleasure, so I shouldn’t stop him from having his.” Pensive, she drew her lower lip between her teeth.

  “No,” Logan said softly, using one finger to free her lip. “You’ve abused it enough. Bitten down real hard today. I told you,” he murmured, bending his head to take her mouth with his, “let someone have a care with these lips. Someone who knows how to be gentle, Jess,” he whispered, brushing his mouth against hers. “As gentle as you want, as gentle as you need.

  “And Harry was wrong. That’s a selfish man talking. Oh, honey,” he said, caressing her back. “I learned never to be a selfish man. I know what’s gonna happen on my side, Jess. Making you feel pleasure is the challenge for me.”

  She snuggled her head against his shoulder, and Logan cradled her head in one hand, keeping the long, sweeping strokes going over her spine with the other.

  “Now, I don’t want you takin’ that the wrong way. For me, I like knowing that you’re enjoying touching me as much as I like touching you. But if you don’t tell me, then I won’t know if the touches are the ones you want, or even how.”

  What he didn’t say, couldn’t say, was Conner’s rule. Pleasure a woman the first time, and she’ll invite you back to her bed. Logan had never faulted Conner’s logic, and he never lacked for female company.

  “Logan?”

  “I’m listenin’, Jess.”

  “What if a woman doesn’t know?”

  “Then she learns. Like you’re gonna learn with me. You only need to trust me. Trust that I really want to give you pleasure, Jessie. If you can believe that, then you’ll let me give you pleasure. Anything I do that you don’t like, say so. But, please, pretty lady—”

  “Tell you if I do,” she finished for him, and pulled back to look at his face. Cupping his chin, she planted a kiss on his jaw, and smiled. “A kiss, then—”

  His mouth closed over hers before she could say another word. He kissed her soundly, hungrily, rubbing his mouth against hers until her lips parted. His tongue slipped inside, and stayed until he had thoroughly sampled her, until her breaths were as ragged as his, and the pounding of his heart slamming against his chest reflected the thundering noise filling his ears.

  He pulled back and grinned at her wet, rosy lips.

  They both turned to stare at the door, realizing that the pounding they heard was not from passion, but was real.

  “They’re here. Jeez! Not now.”

  Before Jessie could gather her wits and question him, Logan was buttoning up her shirt. One finger flicked her chin. “Hold that smile and the rest of that kiss, lady. We’re not finished.”

  Fear set in the moment he left her. All the terror she had held at bay rushed back. They’re here. Logan’s words meant only one thing. Those men he’d been with had come looking for him. With a sob, Jessie forced herself across the room to grab hold of the shotgun as Logan opened the door.

  Kenny stood before the door, his brow beetled into a pronounced frown. He was as spruced up as Marty, whom he held by the hand. Slicked-back hair, clean shirts and pants, boots spit-polished to a shine. In his other hand he held two rabbits.

  “You sure you want us here?” he asked Logan.

  “I invited you both, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah. But we saw you hangin’ all over her like she was honey and you the fly. Marty, here,” he said with a jerk toward the smaller boy, “figures you’d have sticky fingers.”

  “Yeah. Do you? Huh? Do you?”

  “Jessie’s got a right large bar of lye soap she ain’t had a chance to use yet. You boys take my meaning?”

  They nodded, but Logan had to resist the urge to turn and look at Jessie. She was making awful choking noises, and he swore beneath his breath when he realized that he had completely forgotten to tell her that they were coming. He fixed a stern stare first on Kenny, then Marty, wishing he could say something that would lessen her embarrassment. Damn Kenny for having a mouth that didn’t know when to quit.

  Jessie, regaining control over herself, snatched the whiskey bottle off the table and shoved it on the bottom shelf of the cupboard. She straightened and smoothed her shirt, trying to muster some semblance of calm before she went to the door.

  Sniffing loudly, Kenny peered around Logan. “Don’t smell like much’s cookin’.” He held out the two rabbits. “My ma always said ya can’t go visitin’ folks without takin’ ’em something to eat. By the looks of things, it’s a good turn I did for all of us.”

  “What’s that mean, Kenny?” Marty pressed closer to him as the widow woman came to stand behind Logan.

  “Means that when big folks got a game of slap an’ tickle on their minds, they ain’t
got room for thinkin’ ’bout food, too.”

  “Jeez, boy, watch your mouth. Jessie’s a lady. You owe her an apology.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” But he turned to Logan with one brow quirked, the grin spreading on his thin lips and a knowing look in his eyes. “What do you folks call it?”

  “Call what, Kenny? What kind of game is it? Can we play?”

  “Jeez!” Logan exploded.

  “Jeez!” Kenny yelled.

  Both Logan and Kenny looked at each other and burst out laughing. Marty shook his head much in the same manner as Jessie.

  When the laughter died away, she came forward. “Why didn’t your mother come with you?”

  “Didn’t ya tell her?” Kenny shot Logan an accusing look.

  “I didn’t get around to talking to Jessie. But I’ll remedy that situation right now.”

  “Well…” Kenny heaved a long-suffering sort of sigh. “Seein’ as how you gave us an invite for supper an’ none’s cookin’, Marty an’ me’ll make it. You can walk out with him, ma’am, iffen that’s all right with you. Might want to tend those horses.”

  Logan grabbed hold of Jessie’s arm. “Excellent idea.” He hustled her outside and away from the cabin before he took that boy over his knee.

  Jessie’s protests remained unspoken. First the pace had her stumbling, then the moment they reached the corral, Logan swung her into his arms.

  “So I was all over you like a fly to honey?”

  “That’s what that impossible—”

  “Yeah. But he was right.” A quick, hard kiss settled the matter as far as he was concerned.