"Surprise."
There was no reward for virtue, none for trying to do what was right; she had known that for years. Regardless, it did not seem fair that she should strive so hard to escape what this man wanted of her, only to run full-tilt and barefoot into his trap.
"No," she whispered.
"I have your word."
"Why? Why are you doing this?"
"Because I must."
It was true. He had known she would be gone when he returned to the cabin, and he had just as surely known where he would find her. He could no more prevent himself from riding ahead to intercept her than he could have stopped breathing. It was a weakness, and he knew it. Still, his memories of the night they had shared fired his blood, while her unattainable beauty haunted his dreams. He admired her intelligence and her courage. He would like to gain her respect, her liking, but since that was impossible, he wanted to taste her mouth and to hear the blood sing in his ears. The risk was great, but he accepted it because the reward promised to be greater.
His words sent a painful fluttering along Lettie's nerves. There was in them a note of finality that told her more certainly than her own senses how complete the trap was. She could expect no help from the ferryman, who must have been bribed to remain in his bed. The late hour made it unlikely that anyone would come to demand the ferry. The river was wide and deep with treacherous currents, and in any case she could not swim.
There were those who would say that she should plunge into the water before accepting certain dishonor, but she could not think they had ever been in her position. In any case, she suspected the Thorn would only dive in after her.
Her hesitation had nothing to do with the man himself. Of course it did not. The weakness in her limbs and the drumming of her heart were caused by her exertions and her very natural fear. She was aware of his size and strength as he stood so close to her, and of something remorseless and daring in his manner that stirred sensations she would rather forget.
With loathing in her voice that was not entirely directed at him, she said, "You really are a fiend."
"Do I frighten you, Lettie? That was not my intention."
"What was it, then? To simply appear and have me run straight into your arms?"
"That would have been nice, but no, I fully expected to be forced to come and get you."
There was a smile in his voice that she could not see for the darkness and the damnable false beard that obscured his features. "Oh, it's all very amusing for you, isn't it? You'll forgive me if I fail to see the humor!"
"Lettie …"
He lifted a hand as if he would touch her. She backed away, searching her mind for something more to say to distract him, moistening her lips with her tongue. "Johnny—is he safe? Well hidden?"
"Oh, yes," he agreed easily as he moved close once more, "I keep my bargains."
"Are you saying I don't? It was no bargain, it was blackmail!"
"Only an exchange of favors."
"If it's so small a thing, why go to so much trouble? Why not just let me go?"
"Because you agreed," he said, then went on, his voice dropping to a husky sound. "And because the thought of you, the feel of your softness in my arms, the taste I had of your sweetness, is driving me mad. Because I want you as I've never wanted anything in my life, and there is no other way I can have you."
He had not meant to say such things any more than he had intended to barter Johnny's life for her surrender when he had set out that evening to keep the appointment. It had happened, one thing leading to another until it came to this, the two of them facing each other on a ferry dipping with the wash of the river. He should stop, here, now, and take her back to Splendora. Every instinct of chivalry pounded into him from childhood demanded it. But there were other instincts more insistent. She had made a promise. He had heard it spoken, seen it in her eyes. He would not allow her to disavow it. He could not.
He reached for her, his hands closing warm and strong around her upper arms, drawing her to him. Lettie, caught off guard by his unexpected declaration and the despair that edged his words, was nearly too late as she brought her hands up to brace them against his chest.
"No!"
"For Johnny's safety, Lettie, and my sanity?"
The plea was whispered. He bent his head, his lips hovering above hers, their touch feather-light, tingling.
"No."
Her voice sank to a trace of sound. There was no strength in her arms. Her will fought that weakness. And lost.
His mouth descended upon her lips, his beard tickling and yet caressing the sensitive corners. Somewhere deep inside she felt a strange, shifting sensation. Desire, like the slow seep of an opiate, suffused her. For a moment longer fear and pride and conscience warred inside her, along with sharp concern for what this man was going to think of her; then, with a soft sound of distress, she let them go, swaying, molding herself against him.
Ransom's chest swelled, his grasp tightened with fierce, protective joy as he accepted that surrender. Slowly, carefully, he set himself to reward it.
What was it about this man that sapped her initiative and fired her senses? Lettie could not tell. She only knew that his lips burned and enticed and fueled her desperate pleasure, that she had no will, no strength. Shivering, with eyes tightly closed, she felt the sear of his lips upon her eyelids, her cheekbones, the curve of her jaw, and the tender turn of her neck. She smoothed her hands over his back, over the corded tendons and muscles, and knew that, deny it though she would and despite her unfeigned rage and attempts to escape, she had wanted this, had been waiting for it. God forgive her.
The waiting was no more. He eased back a step and took her hand, turning with her toward the rail. He lowered himself to the wooden deck with his back against an upright, drawing her down to lie half across his lap, cradled against his drawn-up knee. He removed his hat and laid it aside. There was calm deliberation in his movements, as if he would be neither stopped nor hurried but meant to take what joy there was to be had in the moment.
Lettie could feel the strong beat of his heart against her, could sense the probing of his gaze, though it was doubtful that he could see any more of her than she could of him. It was better that way, infinitely better. As he tilted her chin with his strong fingers, she lifted her mouth to his without restraint. Once more his beard tickled. Half enchanted, half repulsed, she knew better than to ask him to remove it. Firmly attached with what must be spirit gum, the disguise was better in place, for her sake as well as his. She was not sure she wanted, at this moment, to know who or what he was.
He spread her loosened hair over his arm, smoothing its silken strands. With consummate care, he opened her shirtwaist and drew back the edges, at the same time sliding the straps of her camisole from her shoulders. He cupped a breast in his hand, gently circling it, touching the alabaster skin as if its texture and firmness gave him pleasure. He brushed the nipple with his thumb, bringing forth exquisite sensations that caused it to contract into the shape of a berry that he took into his mouth.
"Delicious," he whispered, "delicious."
Casually, as if the movement was accidental, she touched her fingers to the strong column of his neck and trailed them down to the open collar of his shirt. She dipped into the hollow at the base of his throat, counting the steady beat of the pulse that throbbed there. By degrees, she eased lower to the buttons of his shirt, loosening them slowly, unobtrusively, one by one. He permitted the familiarity in a show of elaborate unconcern as he found the secret of the catch at the band of her skirt and freed it to push the heavy material and the petticoat underneath down around her hips.
Absorbed, each pretending not to notice what the other was doing, they undressed one another. She plowed the hair on his chest into furrows with the tips of her fingers and followed the descending triangle to the hard, flat expanse of his belly. He kissed the hollow between her breasts and set them tingling with sweeps of his beard before diving to plunge his tongue into her na
vel. She pressed her palm to his lean, hard-muscled flank, slowly grasping. He flicked his tongue along the sensitive skin on the insides of her knees, one after the other, and would not let her close them. With the tip of one finger, she traced, marveling, the faint ridge along the underside of the silken length of his swordlike member. He scoured a hot wet path to the apex of her thighs and, ignoring her gasping protest, tasted the honeyed essence of her, probing, until she lay in silent, trembling wonder.
It was at first a shared jest, that half-playful wooing. Time was elastic, a thing that seemed to stretch endlessly. The pleasure of it held them in a powerful bond, heated and liquid and without limit. But by degrees it lost its humor, becoming a thing of taut muscles and stretched nerves, of heated bodies, of pounding hearts and harsh, straited breathing.
Holding Lettie close, Ransom spread her skirts and placed her on her back upon them. She gripped his arms for an instant, as if in panic, though it might have been in a paroxysm of suppressed desire. Either way, there was a remedy. He caught her to him and rolled so that he was upon his back and she lay on his hard length.
"My treat," he said, and moved slightly, nudging her softness, to make his point.
Exhilaration for her freedom and a curious kind of passionate gratitude seized Lettie, blending with the vibrant, aching pressure of desire. Holding her breath, she eased back upon him, giving a small cry as the entry was made, then taking him deep and deeper still until he filled her, was a part of her, seemingly inseparable. She moved upon him then, grasping his muscled shoulders, her hair swinging around them like a golden-brown flail. He aided her, finding her rhythm, holding it in endless strength. The pleasure escalated, burgeoning upward from their joined bodies, bursting in her brain. Lettie was molten inside, her body incandescent, transformed.
It burst over her, the healing eruption of liquid fire. She gave a gasping moan and went still. In that instant he heaved himself up and over, plunging into her so that the receding waves of her turbulent joy took with them the last vestige of her tension, and she sobbed in an aching, infinite relief so unexpected that tears rose in her eyes and trailed in hot tracks into her hair.
Ransom held her, rocking her gently with the declining movements of the old ferry, staring with hot eyes into the darkness.
The jest, it seemed, was on them. It was rich but rather cruel, and not unexpected.
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12
The breeze drifting over the water dried the film of perspiration that covered them, cooling their heated bodies. A mosquito whined around their heads. Ransom stirred, reaching for the white blur of Lettie's petticoat to draw it over her.
It was caught. As he tugged at it, he found that she was holding it in her fist. She swallowed, a difficult sound thick with tears, and wiped her face with a furtive movement. Ransom eased from her to rest on one elbow. She turned on her side with her back to him. Tightness invaded his chest. He touched her shoulder, then took his hand away again. He opened his mouth to speak, and in his distress, he could not think of how he was supposed to sound. Alarm touched him. It cleared his brain as it had always done.
He said quietly, "I'm sorry."
Her throat closed at the harsh sound of pain in his voice. She could only shake her head.
"It won't happen again, you have my word. Please—"
She took a deep breath, choking a little. When she spoke, the words were nearly unintelligible. "It isn't you."
"Not …? What is it, then? Are you hurt?"
"No. It's … me."
"I don't know what you mean. Tell me." He caught her shoulder and rolled her toward him, his voice urgent.
"I feel—I feel like such a harlot." It was not as hard to say as she had thought it would be. This man did not pretend to be upstanding and God-fearing; he would not judge her.
His body stiffened as he lay against her. The soft sound he made was not unlike that caused by a hard blow to the heart.
"I'm not blaming you," she said hastily, scrubbing her face with her petticoat, trying to control herself enough to make sense. "It's just that I—that I should fight you and I don't, and I should hate you and I can't, and I shouldn't—shouldn't—"
"You should never, never enjoy physical love because good women don't."
"Yes," she said, and blotted fresh tears with something like desperation.
He ground out an epithet that made her stop and stare at him there in the darkness before he asked, "Who told you that?"
"Everyone says—"
"They're wrong! The fact that you feel pleasure when I touch you means nothing except that it's the way the female body is made, or the male for that matter. It's the brightest gift one human being can give another, our sole reward for being born. There would be something wrong with you if you were incapable of feeling it."
"Then why—"
"Why do they say it? Ignorance and stupidity. Or maybe it's just a convenience to fearful fathers and selfish husbands, who, you will note, make no bones about their own pleasures."
"Oh, but—"
"You are as the good God made you. Can it be wrong?"
It did not seem so when he spoke with such firm conviction. She was growing calm enough to feel a little resentment at being set so firmly among the ignorant, however, even if he had not meant it that way. With some asperity, she asked, "How do you know so much about it?"
"There was a buxom widow during the war. I was on reconnaissance when the battle lines shifted and I was caught in enemy territory. The lady hid me in her barn for three weeks. I was as green as a watermelon in May when I went in, but considerably riper when I came out."
"Three weeks?"
"Well, I had a trifling injury in the leg. She said it needed exercising. Come to think of it, she may have been right."
There was entirely too much levity in his voice. "Your legs and feet seem prone to injury—and to giving you excuses for lovemaking. How is your gunshot wound?"
"What?"
"Your foot, where I shot you."
"That's long healed," he said, then added hastily, "though a little stiff at times, such as now."
"I don't believe a word of it." She gave him a look of dark suspicion.
"What, no offer of exercise?" He reached to take the petticoat from her grasp, then brushed the palm of his hand over the globe of her breast, molding it gently to fit his hand. He moved closer, pressing against her thigh.
Her eyes widened as she felt the turgid length of him once more. "Not again!"
"I assure you, it's possible."
"It can't be necessary!" There was less force in her voice than she had intended as the effects of his ministrations spread through her. She wanted to be miserable and guilty, but somehow the need for it was gone.
"That is a matter of opinion."
"Your foot—"
"—is fine, but there is another part of me that isn't. Don't you feel the least little need of … ripening?"
She bit her bottom lip to keep it from curving at his wheedling tone. He leaned to brush her lips with his, flicking his tongue along the line of her teeth set in the soft skin. She released her breath in a sigh. She whispered, "Maybe … just a … little."
There was a mount waiting for the Thorn on the opposite side of the river. Lettie did not ask where it had come from, and he did not explain. She preferred not to think that he had planned the way the evening would end from the very beginning, but the only other explanation was that he had reached the ferry far enough ahead of her to give him time to transport his mount across the river.
There was little doubt in her mind that he was the man who had passed her while she crouched on the trail, the man behind the night riders. Still, the only way he could have been prepared for her at the ferry was for him to have known exactly what she meant to do and how he would counter it. It was uncomfortable to think that she was so transparent or he so calculating. The proper description might be determined rather than calculating, determined to collect
what was owed him. She did not care for that view of him, either.
Riding along beside him in the night, Lettie began to think it was possible that Aunt Em could be right about the Thorn. Nothing that she had seen of this man, nothing she had received at his hands, gave her reason to believe that he was a killer.
Henry must have been wrong, misled by circumstantial evidence. The culprit he had sought, the murderer loose in the countryside, must be one or more of the outlaws Johnny had spoken of, a man who masqueraded in a sheet like the Knights of the White Camellia at times but who could also strike down a victim in broad daylight if the reward, such as an army payroll, seemed worth the risk. It made sense.
It made sense because she wanted it to make sense, because if the Thorn were innocent of spilling her brother's blood that would make what she had just done all right. That was all.
She glanced at the tall shape of him beside her. If she really thought her brother was wrong, she would ask this man to remove his disguise. She could not do it. Whether the cause was something in the Thorn or some failing in herself, she did not know, but it was an impossibility. Curiosity burned inside her, and yet … and yet … To know could mean terrible embarrassment. It might also mean that her conscience would require her to inform the authorities. Or if she did not, she would feel responsible, would be responsible, for everything laid at his door from this moment. It was true, of course, that her failure to ask made it so in any case.
They came at last to Dink's Pond. He reined in and she stopped beside him.
"So silent," he said, his voice low. "More guilt?"
It was startling, this ability of his to understand her when he hardly knew her. "It's the way I'm made; I can't help it."
"There's no need to take pride in it."
"Pride!"
"Accepting the blame for what other people do is as much a form of arrogance as claiming the credit."
"We have a responsibility toward other human beings."
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