Slowly she looked up at him. Reading the heat of his desire in his eyes, she shifted her body slightly so that she could position him exactly at the most intimate part of her, the place where, with one sultry thrust, he could enter and possess her.
She was at the perfect angle to see everything. She braced herself with one hand and with the other she moved him to the point of her desire and angled her thighs to give him perfect access. She knew she would never forget the sight and sensation of him taking her in just that way. He came into her gradually, in unhurried movements so that she could feel him, inch by hard long inch, and see him and understand the full nature of his carnal possession.
He lowered his mouth to hers for a long erotic kiss to let her feel the full thick thrusting length of him deep inside her.
He loved this positioning of her body, and he lengthened the kiss to keep her tightly connected to him for as long as possible. Even her hands, playing with his firm buttocks, pressed him closer, as if he were not deeply enough within her.
And then he moved her downward so that she was lying on the wagon bed, and he caressed her body as he moved away from her so that he could remove her boots and position her legs on his shoulders.
From his upright position, he could see everything now, every emotion on her face, her luscious nipples taut with excitement, her churning hips seeking the sensation of his motion, the long swooping length of her legs, everything, and he moved, finally, to begin his primitive rhythm.
It was like nothing she had ever felt before. At this angle, with him standing just at the juncture of her thighs and her on her back, she was totally open to him, knowing he could watch and see everything. The thought of that was thrilling, provocative.
She felt herself going wild with fantasies about what he could see, and her body reacted intensely. Her hands thrashed around for something to hold onto. She found the edge of a rusted ring that was used as a tie-down, and she grasped it.
Her arching body and thrusting breasts excited him still more. His hands massaged the long length of her legs as he drove into her again and again. His hands slid under her to lift her upward more tightly against him, still plunging into her with a wild possession. Her hips gyrated provocatively with every thrust, her urgency growing. He loved watching her naked body writhe for him, loved the knowledge that it was his virile manhood that drove her to this ecstatic response. He heard her moaning with every hard thrust, and he loved it that his possession of her brought her to this.
She was all sensual feeling and motion motion motion. The center of her being bore down on the thick hardness of him. Her quivering body tensed, and he took her to a shattering culmination that rocketed through her like a firecracker and exploded into a thousand sizzling fingers of light all over her.
And there he rested in union with her for one long perfect moment.
When she opened her eyes and lifted herself on her elbows so that she could savor the sight of their connected bodies, her insolent look invited his final savage surrender. With one torrid surge he drove deep into her feminine core.
Later, they lay on his bed, naked, satiated, exchanging languid kisses, not moving, barely speaking. She had the brief fleeting thought that she wasn’t even thinking. But it didn’t matter. This mattered, this afternoon, this man, this kiss, this touch. He hadn’t even chided her for her ridiculous notion of leaving him. He had done nothing but make love to her and tell her how wonderful she was.
It was almost possible, in the golden aftermath, to believe there could be some kind of life with Logan. It might even be possible to have this much life with him, if he were willing. But she rather thought he would not be. He was giving her her head and waiting to see how far she ran. And she had run straight back into his arms, demanding his kisses.
She wondered how he had known she would want him so intensely. It wasn’t love, it was a trust, a bond from their past, and a nature within her that knew no sensual bounds. She had tried to deny this nature, but everything else paled in comparison to this release and this freedom. Now she was willing to pay the price to have him. She wondered when, or if, he would broach the subject of a future.
She turned to look at him and was awed by her response to his face in repose. His whole body was quiescent, relaxed. She just loved looking at him. She remembered the day—was it a month ago—that she had ached for the sight of him, just to know he was there.
He was so very there. She hadn’t even had time to examine the brief, fleeting feeling of what would have happened if … There was no regret. She could make a case that she would not have been ready for him had she not married Frank first, but that was absurd. Frank had been what he was and his nature could not have been changed any more than hers.
Logan had brought in her clothing, and she reached for her shirt to slip it over her shoulders, unaware that he watched her through hooded eyes.
He felt a tenuous link to her now, he thought, as he admired the way the soft fabric of the shirt draped over the curve of her breasts. She had capitulated to him faster than he ever could have imagined in his dreams. It made him wonder about her relationship with Frank, but he knew it was something he could never ask her.
It didn’t matter. Frank could never have elicited that incredibly intense response from her. She was all his now, and he was never going to let her get away.
“Why are you getting dressed?” he asked lazily, as he became aware that she was buttoning the shirt.
She came and sat on the bed next to him, lifting her legs onto the mattress beside him. “I think,” she murmured provocatively as she placed her bare foot on his hip and slid it downward along the side of his naked leg, “because I want you to undress me again.”
She was gratified to see that the sensual motion of her foot and her husky words had acted on him visibly, and that he was turning toward her with that lambent light in his eyes.
“Maybe I don’t even have to undress you,” he said impudently, sliding his hand over her hip and under the shirt to stroke her breast and the budding nipple.
She pushed him away. “No, I most definitely want you to undress me.” She shifted her body and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Where is my skirt?”
And then she felt him grab her around the waist and haul her back to him. She struggled against his hard grip, her naked bottom undulating wildly against his ever lengthening tumescence, until he pushed her face down onto the mattress and covered her with his erotic weight.
“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie …” he whispered in her ear, as his hands held her wriggling buttocks firmly.
“You’re not going to undress me,” she said with a pout in her voice.
“You can’t arouse a man like that and then expect him to wait while you get dressed so he can undress you,” he chided. “I can’t wait, Maggie. I’m ready for you.”
“Let me see.”
“I’ll let you touch.” He thrust himself into her hands and she felt him, sliding her hands avidly from the hard, ridged tip to the firm root of him and below, between his straddled legs, to cup the taut sacs there that loved to feel her touch.
“Let me see,” she asked again. It was like a game, a thrilling game where now she could only imagine his nakedness, his hard long length, and what he might do to her.
“Think about it,” he murmured. But she heard the note in his voice and felt the firm caress of his hands sliding all over her thighs and buttocks and the small of her back.
“I’m thinking about it,” she breathed, as she felt him slide his arm under her and lift her upward onto her knees. Now she was butted right up against his hard shaft. It nudged her, almost like a reminder, and rubbed against her suggestively. “I’m imagining it.” Her voice grew husky. “I want it. I want you.”
“How convenient you’re so deliciously naked,” he murmured. “Now, Maggie—”
“I do.” She felt agitation now. He was on his knees behind her, and the whole hard length of him caressed her buttocks. The feel of i
t was pure arousal to her, heightened by the fact that she could not see him, could not touch him. She had only the sense of him behind her, hot, wanting her, and her own compelling desire to feel him within her once again.
It was exactly the opposite sensation engendered by their earlier union. She was totally in his hands, and they were all over her, caressing her boldly to prepare her for his intimate possession.
It came quickly, in one virile penetrating thrust, and he was deep within from this wholly new position. She felt him writhe against her to place himself in exact alignment with her, and she loved the sense of being outside of him while still totally filled with his manhood.
For him, the motion and the goal were all the same. For her, everything was different, enthralling; the feeling of him within her from behind, the sense of freedom, the provocative sensation of being connected to him in just this one way, the way her imagination ran riot, the way his hands had the freedom to explore her—all of it, different, arousing, utterly exciting….
“Oh, Maggie—” The throaty note in his voice lured her into turning her head to look at him. Again, the fire in her look incited him. The movement, which he had been withholding for the pure pleasure of feeling himself inside her in this way, the movement began almost of its own volition. With the first surging plunge, she threw her head back, and he heard her sweet satisfying moan from deep in her throat. The sound was like a seductive perfume to him.
He wanted her, and he poured his desire into each torrid thrust, showing her, telling her with his lunging potent manhood what he had yet to say with words: she was his, in this way, in every way, she didn’t have to know it, he knew it, and as she rolled her torso with him and in opposition to his movements, he thought that she knew it too.
She reveled in the feeling of him behind her, his large hot hands guiding her, feeling her, taking every motion of her hips, adding to it, moving with her, exciting her with his touch, everywhere. She felt a glimmer of possibilities suddenly, a white-hot tendril of feeling attacking her vitals—she gasped at the sensation of it. She heard herself cry out as the tendrils unfurled, slowly at first, gossamer, until the first molten feeling slithered downward, downward. Then her hips began a wild fluid gyration as she sought the radiant center of all that feeling. It came closer, closer with each forceful thrust of his towering sex. Closer. She moaned as he felt her urgency and met it with his own.
She was utterly wanton in his hands as he drove her to the final glittering moment—the point, the center, the incandescent heat that expanded into a paroxysm of groans that kept rhythm with insensate feeling that totally possessed her.
Oh yes, oh yes, he heard her words on and on and on, oh yes, and it was for him, oh yes, as he poured his living heat into her in a gorgeous spuming ending of utter complete perfection.
It was enough, it had to be enough, but even as she prepared to leave him later that afternoon, she felt as if it could never be enough. There was still more that she wanted, more he would give.
But he knew not to touch her and not to ask the thousand questions and make the dozens of comments that he knew she would not want to hear. He had to let her go this time, and it was the hardest thing in the world to watch the wagon recede in the distance and know her mind was already turned to business in town.
But she was thinking about him, and her, and it was a problem with no solution. Nothing had changed except that he had come after her as he promised and that she had succumbed to his artful masculinity.
It was easy to think that she didn’t have to make any decisions tomorrow. She didn’t have to deal with her feelings, she could just shunt this wondrous aspect of her life to one side while she took care of business. But she knew it was not that simple. Her need for him was escalating with each searing encounter.
She didn’t know what to do about it, and speculating on all the possibilities kept her occupied until she pulled up on Main Street once again.
It was strangely deserted, even for a late Sunday afternoon. She let herself into the office, to that unnerving quiet, and went upstairs to the apartment. It too was empty, and this was not usual. She felt a jangling sense of something out of place.
Or maybe it was she who was out of place.
“Well, Maggie my dear, I suppose you were smart to get out of town today.”
“Mother Colleran,” she said resignedly, as her mother-in-law slithered into the parlor from her bedroom. She shot the old woman a resentful glance. “I’m very sure I was smart to get away from here.”
“You’re not so smart, Maggie. You know, Frank would not have had any of these problems.”
“But he’s not here,” Maggie pointed out for about the hundredth time. And where could she go to escape the viper’s tongue?
“They’re up in arms again, Maggie. You should’ve heard the talk about you around Bodey’s store today.”
“I’m glad I didn’t,” she muttered, feeling all the magic of the day evaporate.
“You could remedy things …”
“I don’t know of anything that needs a remedy, Mother Colleran.”
“They are saying that you want to take the livelihood out of the hands of men who want to work, Maggie. Not smart, my dear. There are a lot of working men around here.”
“Now I understand,” Maggie murmured. Her article about transient workers. Another nail in the box they were building around her.
“Mr. Brown is so mad …”
“Mr. Brown?” Maggie asked softly, her interest piqued.
“Arwin said.”
“Mr. Brown hangs out around Arwin’s store?”
“Came in to talk about credit for the men, Maggie. Don’t be stupid. And he’s very unhappy that in addition to impeding the right of way for the line you’re trying to turn the town against workers who will spend money in town and maybe even settle down here. Even Arwin could see the sense of that, and everyone knows he’s on your side. Maybe he’s switched now, Maggie. You’d better be careful. I don’t think you’ve got three friends left in this town, unless you count Reese and those two deadbeats that help you run things into the ground down there.”
“I see,” Maggie said, but Mother Colleran wasn’t finished.
“Colville men are applying for those construction jobs you know. Your former friend Sean Mapes was the first in line this morning; I saw him when we went to church. Mr. Brown never made him an offer, you know. I don’t think he wants the Mapes property as dearly as he wants yours, Maggie. So Sean has to go begging.”
Poor Annie. It was the first thought that occurred to her.
“You should have taken Mr. Brown’s offer, Maggie. People say they saw him talking to you the other night. They think maybe you’re ready to back down in spite of what you write and what you say. No one knows where you stand any more, you know. This never would have happened to Frank. I almost hate to go to church now; they look at me strangely and they don’t have to say it, I see it in their eyes: Frank would have been for the railroad. They know the money would be pouring in by now. I’m mortified, Maggie. I can hardly bear to sleep here.”
“Please don’t. I’ll be glad to have Dennis pay your bill at the hotel.
“And how would that look? Everyone would say I deserted you. Don’t be stupid, Maggie,” and she turned and flounced out of the room.
Maggie buried her head in her hands. There was no talking to her in any rational way. She never knew how much of the nonsense she spewed was real and how much was her speaking her thoughts as they occurred to her.
But once she exited the room Mother Colleran became irrelevant; Maggie often thought she was a figment of her imagination anyway. But some of the things she had said today rang true: Sean’s defection, Arwin’s reservations, along with the powerful influence of whatever Mr. Brown might have to offer him.
So what had happened? Suspicions had been raised about whether her concerns were legitimate or just a ruse to force up the price on her land. The offer had been made and she had rejected
it, yet when she was seen in polite conversation with Mr. Brown, speculation began again as to what she had to gain. She had written a negative article and advertising had appeared that she could not reject, and now speculation was that she was going to sell out altogether.
It was fascinating: they wanted her to maintain a morality about the situation while they waited for her to succumb to its lure.
And there was more to come. Tuesday the building of worker accommodations began down the line. Reese drove her out there two days later, and it was worse than she envisioned: a half dozen shacks had been thrown up along the survey site, haphazardly nailed together, rudely constructed with tarpaper roofs and paper windows. Inside each was a crude plank floor and a small pot-bellied stove. The worker provided the rest, on credit from the company, and when the first section of track had been laid, the worker dismantled the house and toted it to the next site.
So when Warfield wrote in glowing terms of the superior housing the company would be providing its workers, she felt like she was living in a dream where her perceptions were totally out of kilter with everyone else’s.
“How may I get rid of him?” she demanded of Dennis as she showed him the article.
“There’s nothing about a contract,” Dennis assured her, his worried gaze roaming her face. She was angry, yes, he thought, but there was something else about her now, an impatience, a sense of her mind being occupied elsewhere.
“On the other hand, when I tell him he’s relieved of his duties, he adamantly refuses to go.”
Dennis shook his head sympathetically. “Send him to me. You should have done that weeks ago anyway, Maggie. I know why you haven’t, and it’s just as I said—you’re letting my feelings for you get in the way.”
She took a deep breath. How could she tell him? She had forgotten all about that. “I’ll send him to you,” she promised.
“But be careful now, Maggie. There’s a great deal of tension in town right now. No one wants to know what you are planning to tell them this issue.”
Thea Devine Page 19