Fiery Passion

by Dawn Luedecke

  “You’re different from most men,” she said, keeping her gaze on the mountains. “Most would assert themselves in the mill. Try to take over for me. You don’t.”

  “It’s not my place.”

  “Yes, but it wouldn’t be their place either.”

  “You’re right. I’m not like most men. I grew up learning to respect women for who they are, and I don’t believe that’s something taught to boys at a young age. My four sisters are all fire and mischief. They ride with my father, and sew with my mother. Growing up, if I didn’t treat them with the respect they expected out of a man, they’d whip me with their reins, and then I’d get put in line by my mother. Except my sister Layla. She’s always followed my mother’s advice of, ‘kill them with kindness.’” Wall chuckled at some memory as he stared into the darkening grass. “So whenever she baked her famous cherry pies for a particular person, we knew she was mad.”

  “So you have a brother and four sisters?” She was truly impressed. How would she and Luther had been if they’d been given a chance to grow up together? Somehow she doubted their dynamic would have been the same. She certainly wouldn’t have baked Luther a pie. “What it must have been like to grow up in such a family. Surrounded by people who love you so completely they wouldn’t hesitate to beat the tar out of you, or turn around and bake you pie.”

  Wall gave a quiet laugh, the kind that doesn’t even sound through his mouth, but one that speaks of truth and memory, and then motioned toward the open door to the cabin. Victoria peered again at the mountains, only to notice the sun had set. She stood and Wall gathered the chair and led the way.

  Once inside, she stood quiet in the dark of the cabin as he felt his way around the blackness. To her surprise, she even enjoyed this. The eerie silence of nothingness in the middle of nowhere. Well, nothing but the sounds of Wall as he stacked wood somewhere in the cabin.

  But in a few minutes, a flame licked the backside of the fireplace, and brought the cabin to life once more.

  “What do we do in a cabin alone where no one knows we’re here?” Wall frequently commented on her smiles, and she understood why. She rarely gave genuine ones, but for him, they came naturally. And right here, now, she let her smile show her true intention. What she wanted.

  His eyes flared, but he shook his head. “No. Tonight is about you finding your calm.”

  She reached up and toyed with the curl Wall frequently tugged on. Why did he resist? She offered herself in what she thought were not-so-subtle terms.

  He watched her hand at her neck, shook his head, and then stalked toward her. She let her own seductive grin slip on her face and dropped her hair when he stopped before her, his mouth so close their breaths mingled and her lungs began to struggle the way it always did when his body heat collided with hers.

  “What we do has nothing to do with remaining calm.” As she’d hoped, he reached up and tugged on her curl, keeping his gaze on it the entire time. “I’m not certain I am what you need tonight.”

  “You’re a red-blooded man, aren’t you? Don’t you want this? Want me?”

  “I’m as red-blooded as any man down the hill, but there are some things I learned as a cowboy. One is to recognize what a horse needs, and the last is to recognize what a woman needs.”

  “You certainly do learn a lot from being a cowboy.” She reached up and began to unbutton his shirt. He grasped her wrists, but didn’t tug them away, and she knew she’d won. “But what do you learn from being a riverman?”

  She flattened her palm against his bare chest as she opened his shirt. His heart beat fast beneath her fingers. “That you can’t tame something as fierce as the river rapids.”

  “Fierce is such a harsh word.” She pulled his shirt from his waistband as he watched her. His blue eyes darkened to an almost black.

  “Wild?”

  She shook her head.

  “Strong.”

  She tilted her head to the side, and let one dimple show. “Better.”

  “Spirited.” He wrapped his arms around her and tugged her close.

  “Passionate,” she supplied, and reached onto her toes to kiss him.

  He responded as she’d hoped, and scooped her into a crushing embrace. The heat from his body permeated through her clothes and caused instant warmth to pool between her thighs.

  He kissed her, and began to ease the buttons free on her shirt, and skirt. Before long, she stood blessedly naked before him, while he stood shirtless but in trousers.

  The flames roared in the fireplace and lent enough heat in the little cabin to stay off any chill the night might bring, but she didn’t need it. Not with the heat scorching every inch of her body, flaming behind his hands as he roamed her skin. Concentrating on her hips.

  He bit her lip, and stole what remained of her breath.

  “These have to go,” he said, and began to pluck out the pins holding her hair up. One-by-one, he flung them across the room and they landed on the table with a ting.

  She felt the last of her pins go and her long hair fell heavy down her back to tickle the top of her bottom.

  “Longer than I thought,” he said as he smoothed the tendrils all the way down to the end. “Where are the curls?”

  “It’s too heavy when it’s down. Only those that have broken away from the rest of the length curl up.”

  He didn’t respond, but continued to run his hands through her hair. The gentle tug at the base of her skull added to the sensations swirling around the room, and she closed her eyes. These moments, the way his innocent admiration of her hair massaged her scalp and eased the tension from her head, neck, and shoulders was all new to her. She’d never been touched in such a way. When her maid did her hair at home it was always a tough tug, and jab with the pins. But Wall’s gentle touch sent shivers down every inch of her skin and made her want to melt into the floor.

  For a moment she simply sat and felt his hands until the briefest of kisses fluttered on her lips. When he pulled away, he pressed on her shoulders to turn her, guided her to the makeshift bed.

  As he spread the bedroll down, she took that moment to fill her body with much-needed air. When finished, he stood and faced her. “Lay on your stomach.”

  She obeyed. Not knowing what was to come, but excitement bubbled in her chest at whatever he had planned.

  Once she settled, his warmth enveloped her from the back of her knees to her head. His hand skimmed her neck as he moved her hair to lay off one shoulder, and he began to massage her muscles. The pressure enough to press her torso into the bedroll and push out a bit of air.

  She tensed at the pressure.

  “Relax,” he commanded, and moved down her back with his hands. He massaged the knots from her muscles, but at the same time stirred something deep within her core.

  She obeyed his command and tried to melt into the bed. A feeling she’d never had before. Not even at the moment right before sleep did she feel as she did now. As though she floated on nothing while rest tickled at every fiber of her being.

  Darkness began to dominate the hot passion she’d felt seconds earlier.

  From behind her, mere seconds before she drifted off, she heard him utter. “Sshh. We will. For now, you need to rest.”

  Chapter 9

  Wall was a glutton for punishment. There was no other way to put it. Here he lay with the most glorious woman naked in his arms, a woman who’d once again begged him to take her, but instead he’d done what he thought she’d needed.

  All he could do was hope he was right because he was miserable. He’d wanted to take her again. Wanted to wind her up and make her come apart, but she needed the opposite. She was tense. Rigid and stressed. Tonight she needed reverence and admiration.

  It hadn’t taken long for her to fall asleep once he began to show her what she needed. Now, hours later, he lay tucked into the bedroll next to her, wi
de awake, and all he could do was watch her sleep, and cursed his self-sacrificing honor.

  She wiggled in her sleep. He smoothed back her hair and kissed her temple. “Time to get up. We need to get you to your railcar before anyone realizes we were gone.”

  “It’s morning already?” she asked in a sensually husky voice.

  “Yep.” He managed to say through his dry throat when she smiled up at him seductively. He was falling for her. Hard and fast. He may already have crossed the barbed-wired fence of danger when it came to the woman tucked halfway beneath him.

  How was he going to get her to fall for him once she found out about his family? Because if he were to be completely honest with himself, he’d lost his soul completely last night as he watched her sleep.

  He had to have her.

  Forever.

  But when she found out that his father, and by proxy Wall himself, provided most of the funding for Nichols’s agriculture campaign, she’d never talk to him again. Especially since it was this same campaign that had threatened to shut her out of the mountain.

  He hadn’t told her the other night, and thankfully Nichols had enough sense to keep his mouth shut, seeing as Wall had shown up with Victoria.

  He didn’t know it then, but when the woman—gloriously naked in the firelight next to him—had tiptoed her way across the stockyards, Wall had completely lost his heart. Now he had to choose between Victoria and his family.

  Speak of the viper herself, the woman reached up and twined her arms around his neck, pulling him down. “We have time, don’t we?”

  She kissed him like the brazen, sensual woman she was growing to be.

  He kissed her, taking his time to pay homage to her mouth and he roamed her body with his hands. He wanted to, but truth was they didn’t have time. He’d already waited until the last minute to wake her. Any longer and the men would be in the trees by the time they came off the mountain. He gave her one last peck, and backed away. “I would love to spend the entire day exploring the way your body moves against mine, but we’ve got to get you back before the fallers find their way to The Grove.”

  She slouched into the bed, and her lip jutted out in the most adorable pout. “I suppose you’re right.”

  By the time Victoria had dressed, Wall had pulled on his clothes, doused the embers in the fireplace, and tidied the cabin. He grabbed her hand, and towed her outside, securing the door tight behind him.

  The sun wasn’t quite over the mountains to the east, but there was enough light in the pre-dawn morning to make his way to the trail. Victoria clutched his hand with both of hers, but followed without question.

  After a while, the sun began to brighten the forest around them, and Victoria’s tense shoulders dropped to sport her normal prim posture. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow with the men.”

  “What do you plan to do once you get back? Have they mentioned anything to you?”

  “No.” Victoria eased around a large rock in which she’d had difficulties traversing the year before, and Wall smiled. While she may not know it herself, she was growing into a mountain dweller like the rest of them. “I don’t think I’ll know anything until my father comes home. If we can locate him.”

  “Have you sent a man to search for him?”

  “Yes. Paul took a train out to Seattle to fetch him the day I came up here with the men. I only hope he can bring him home.”

  “At least you’ll get answers, and support.” Wall helped her down a slippery section of the trail, but studied the trees around them. They grew closer to The Grove, and the morning sun was getting brighter.

  “Everything will be fine once he returns.”

  Wall suspected she said the last more to herself than him. He hoped so, but one thing he knew was every family had their secrets, and sometimes those secrets could destroy the family. He only hoped this wasn’t one of them.

  The Grove came into view, but to his relief no loggers dotted the trees. He picked up the speed, and moved off the trail, to skirt the meadow where Garrett’s train stood waiting to be loaded.

  After a while, Victoria’s own train came into view and he hurried her to the railcar where she’d planned to stay.

  She turned to step onboard, but he spun her around, and kissed her one last time. “Take care today up at The Grove.”

  She nodded. “I will.”

  At that, he left her and headed toward the loader. Both relieved to finally work with his hands, and irritated that all he could focus on was where she was in the forest.

  But he needed to get the loader fixed, and today.

  Once there, he stuck his head in, and began to work. He remained this way until the muscles from his stomach to shins began to ache. The only sounds filtering in through the thin metal sheeting surrounding the loader was the nearby chop of a logger on a tree, and more closely his wrench against the blasted gear. He tightened one last bolt.

  Satisfied, and needing a good stretch, he stepped back and away to study the machine as he tilted his head to one side, and then the other.

  “Wall.” Victoria’s sweet voice sounded from his right. Next to her, the city men walked silently. One with a hungry gleam in his eye. “Mr. Churchill wanted to know if you could accompany us up to The Grove.”

  Wall wiped the grease from his hands onto his pants. “I’m about finished here anyway.”

  “Splendid,” Churchill said, and stepped next to him to follow as they began to make their way to The Grove.

  Wall took the lead, being as he was the only one in the group with experience navigating the hazards of the forest. They climbed the hills and he motioned toward where the debris had once littered the ground. “As you can see, gentlemen, Miz Victoria keeps a clean operation.”

  Victoria stepped near Wall and remained close as they hiked the hills. Showing various points of operation along the way.

  “This land is quite impressive,” Smith said as the sun began to wane toward late afternoon. The group headed downhill. A man who up until now had not uttered a word in Wall’s presence. “Although, is this the area where the men are working under permit? According to my calculations, it is not.” He pointed up the hill to where the new Grove was barely visible through the trees as they hiked away from the operation.

  “I assure you, sir, everything here is in legal order. That section was given to my father during the Timber and Stone Act of 1878. The old Grove—” She pointed ahead of them on the trail to where the widowmakers dotted the trees above. “On the other hand, was permitted. Once the permit expired, we moved to Great Mountain land.”

  Crack!

  Wall knew the sound all too well. He spun around and yanked Victoria under his protective embrace as the widowmaker fell with a crush of vegetation beneath it, a hundred yards from where they stood.

  The scent of Victoria’s hair drifted from under his chin and he knew she was safe.

  The men beside them searched their surroundings in a white-faced panic, but to Wall’s relief all were whole. Alive. His chest eased from the tight pain of fear, and he released her. She stepped back and peered up into his eyes.

  “What a fright!” Churchill exclaimed, but the man sounded a bit too enthusiastic to have been so close to death, or at the very least excruciating pain. Wall suspected he was up here for the thrill of the logging-camp experience rather than simply work. The other two, however, he hadn’t gained a reading on.

  Mr. Smith’s face darkened and a deep crease formed between his eyes. “And is this where Brewer died?”

  “What?” Victoria clutched her ever-present necklace to rub the stone, but squared her shoulders.

  “Our man Brewer.” Smith waved toward the expanse of the old Grove. “Is this where he died?”

  Wall’s heart must have rivaled hers because her breathing heaved like it did whenever she got excited. His heartbeat was for a different re
ason, however. Part from the moment they’d had, and part because he thought she knew the men were from Helena. It was only a matter of time before the topic of the dead man came up. But by her reaction, she hadn’t known. He should have warned her.

  It took a split-second for Victoria to gain her composure, and luckily she did or else he’d have to interfere, and he knew how much she hated when he stepped in before her in matters of business.

  “Mr. Brewer met an unfortunate accident over there. You brought the report to me yourself when you arrived. His death was deemed an accident.” She pointed to the edge of the trail where they’d found the body. “Had I known he was going to be up at my camp, I could have had an escort for him to ensure something like this didn’t happen.”

  “Would an escort have been able to stop the widowmaker from falling?” Smith made a show of peering at the top of the trees. “These are littered with death traps. If a herd of cattle were to wander into these trees the rancher would lose almost an entire herd. Not to mention the dangers for people finding their way into this part of the forest.”

  “It’s a good thing then that we are here instead of a rancher,” Victoria responded with her usual bite. Wall smiled at her fight. “As per the permits directions, this section was selectively logged. We took only every other tree, and left quite a few behind. The permit we logged a few years back was a clear cut. That left no widowmakers, and we both benefited handsomely. If the government wants to force my company to use this sort of technique, then they have only themselves to blame for the widowmakers.”

  Smith, with his ever-present lack of communication skills, answered with a simple humph, and began to walk down the trail. All the while keeping one eye in the treetops above. Peters followed in much the same way.

  Wall motioned for Victoria to walk in front of him. With a tense smile, she obeyed. If any of the time he’d spent with her over the last few months taught him anything, it was in reading her smiles. That one was her irritated grin. Tense and short.