by Gayle Eden
He was still kissing her, light but sexual. His hand kneaded her breast before he raised his lower half, and after a moment lowered it. Her thighs quivered, warmed from the hard male hips that settled uncovered between them.
Mouth dragging back to her ear, Lucas pressed his hips down, and Falon moaned at the smooth head of his sex entering hers. As before, it triggered something primal inside, emotions new and old, spent and hidden, gathering. She raised her knees higher on his hips, arched her neck and spine, and felt her nails digging into his upper arms.
A sound, half-feral, half praise, came from him. He sank fully inside, filling her body, her sex, racing past nerves and muscles that in turn sent white-hot fire through her. He pulled nearly out and thrust back inside, repeatedly; in a deep way that both pulled long contained emotions from her, and pounded in new sensations, that built more and more. No longer thinking, all feeling, all senses, all earthy flames, Falon needed it, craved it, felt feral herself with each thrust.
His sex stroked hers relentless. His hands were tangled in her unbound hair. Her head at times rolling, thrashing, mouth parting in sexual gasps and skin dewed.
She was not herself, as she knew herself, but something untamed, something buried deep that Lucas McCabe unleashed. The sounds, the arching, and lifting of her body, grinding, and chasing his. Carnal dancing— holding him in that sexual and erotic battle, that gave and took, and asked more. His sex was what she wanted, what she needed, and as he was giving it, harder, deeper, faster. She took it with husky sounds and aggressive female strength.
Falon lost and found herself in different ways—lost to the world and feeling only him. Hearing him, breathing him—attuned to his every move. Found herself, in that this woman was newly born, yet old as time, somewhere inside her waiting for freedom.
hair damp and clinging, she held onto him as he got to his knees and sat back, catching his breath, he pushed the garments away and had her necked on his lap.
Panting to the hard thud of her own heart, Falon gazed heavy eyed into his face and smoothed his hair back—still holding it as he dipped and suckled her breasts, riding him when it sparked more fire in her.
Lungs satisfied, he lay her down again, this time riding her fast, hard, with her legs high so he was deep—deep enough to make her cry out loudly when he stiffened, and held so still releasing soothing scalding seed that provoked her own gratified sound.
* * * *
Falon walked to the brook and knelt down, washing her body free of scent and seed with the bandana he gave her, while Lucas went somewhere down stream. Her hair back up, dress buttoned and body cleansed, she had shoes and stockings on again, when the smell of his cigarette announced his return.
She took the hand he offered and walked to the buggy with him, judging from the dampness of his clothing he had simply lain back in a deep spot of stream and scrubbed himself, then pulled his clothing on. His hair dripped at the edges and was slicked back, the waves just drying.
She stared at the road ahead, waiting for guilt or some forbidden emotion to strike her, but there was only some purged feeling of lightness, mixed with a surreal sense when replaying bits of what they had done in her mind. Because of their detour, it was dark before they reached the road to the ranch, but he, like herself, knew that road so well, that even when light clouds shaded the moon, he had no trouble navigating it.
Admitting she had no real thought as to what he would say or do—what if anything—it meant beyond what it was. Which was enough for Falon. She intended to get out when he stopped short of the lawn, but Lucas set the brake and turned, kissing her in the darkness, his hand on her face, his mouth cool and supple again.
Sexual feelings stirred low inside her. He didn’t kiss her out of sympathy, pity, a needed purging, or anything else. He kissed her as a man kisses a woman he enjoys doing it with, and for some reason that mature man and woman exchange felt perfect, normal, right.
As their lips separated, faces inches close, she could see his eyes clearly and allowed them to hold hers, not able to read his thoughts, but well in her own.
Eventually he helped her down and she walked to the ranch house. She didn’t turn or look over her shoulder, but heard the buggy pull away once Rose opened the door.
* * * *
Finn was in the large stone and timber stables, amber lanterns were low. He had been quietly grooming the black stud when Lucas came in.
Calmly muffling the horse, he was unseen as Lucas unhitched the buggy and removed the harnesses, seeing to them and leading each horse to its stall, giving them food and water.
Noticing his son’s mussed hair, wrinkled and damp clothing, his green eyes watched Lucas’s usually smooth and fluid movements, knowing from the lack of them that something was wrong. Horses whinnied low, and the familiar sounds of hay being tossed came. Lucas closed the stall doors and stood there in the center dividing each section for a moment, half-light, half shadowed to Finn’s gaze.
Something shifted inside Finn, squeezing and unsettling him when his son picked up a halter to hang it—but instead of doing that, when he faced the wall and peg, the bridle slid down from his hand—and Lucas’s palms hit the mellow stone, his head hanging low a moment, stance as if someone pushing at the world with all their might.
Swallowing, Finn saw that Lucas’s torso was lifting with labored breaths. That’s when under the normal creature noises, he could hear the ones coming from Lucas’s throat. Finn’s hand lifted, his foot almost taking a step as those palms dragged downward with the weight of Lucas’s body as if he had fallen.
On his knees, Lucas’s head bowed more. Finn could no longer sense his own breathing, only pain as if his skin were peeled raw, climbed over him. His stomach felt like a rock, that his heart seemed to be trying to bust with its pounding.
Lucas dropped his hands; his body turning as he sat slumped with his back to that wall. Finn stepped further back and then turning and quietly leaving the stall.
He could not feel his legs when he exited and walked in the dark to the house. Slipping in his study, most of the parlor and downstairs bare save for wallpaper, wood, and runner, Finn reached for the whiskey and then set it down.
His oldest son was a twenty eight year old man, whom he knew from keeping tabs on him had chosen a hard and tough life when he had left there. He had done his private pacing all night knowing almost too much, of which outlaws Lucas was after. Or, when he was in some of the worst territories—when he had been missing a whole month and thought dead. He was eventually found; wounded and sick, nearly starved in a gulch after his horse broke its leg and One-eyed Sam Slater had put a bullet in his leg. Lucas had caught Sam, and went to his hanging, but that was only one in a dozen.
Finn was no fool when it came to demons; he knew that wasn’t the death that his son regretted—
Finn tread by moonlight to the leather sofa and sat heavily down, his head back, his eyes unseeing save for the image of Lucas and the emotions he’d felt watching him. He didn’t have to live with a man’s blood on his hands, and couldn’t imagine it, but he did have to accept the fact he’d rode his son hard and taken much of his bitterness out on Lucas. Lucas was the eldest; he was supposed to be like Morgan, supposed to be more like himself. Lucas would not be branded and he wouldn’t be dictated to. He was one of the best riders, shots, hands, that Finn ever saw, a natural at everything he needed to be—but he had Andrea’s way of playing by his own rules, and Finn made the rules here.
Eventually Finn sat forward, elbows on his knees, as he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and held them there. Too much pressure in his head to stand for a moment. He hadn’t made Lucas a pawn between himself and Andrea deliberately. She had insisted he go fetch Lucas when he’d left, and that had been Finn’s impulse, too. Go after him, drag him back, do what he could to smooth things over with the Christie’s. But he’d let Lucas ride off and he let the town talk, and the accidental death be what it was—
Because, he’d sat muc
h like tonight, knowing in his gut that he shared the blame for Lucas being in town and in the mood he was in. He couldn’t imagine that dawn when a cowboy drew on Lucas and to keep from killing him Lucas had shot wild, and fate put the bullet in young Ashley’s head.
He’d let him go, because he grieved for him, and he hated that Lucas would carry the burden of that death.
Because he had loved him, dammit. He loved him.
Finn shook his head over and over, then dropped his hands and stood. Walking over to the French doors, he opened them and left. He strode toward the barns, seeing Lucas now sitting on the rails of the corral, smoking.
He stood a foot from him, watching Lucas’s head raise from having been staring at the ground, smoke releasing from his nostrils and eyes slightly narrowed against it, but the expression calm.
“This should have been hers,” Finn said.
“Who?”
“Sara—Sara Landry.” Finn nodded towards the Landry place. “My ranch—my sons…everything that’s here.”
“You been in the whiskey?” Lucas’s tone was wry.
“Not tonight, no.” Finn shook his head, his gaze steady. “You’re right about one thing, I can’t do a damn thing if you walk away from here again, and never come back. I know you’ve blazed your own trails alone too long for anything I say to matter a damn. But I will give you a truth to take with you, Andrea loved someone else from the time we wed, and so did I. Only she stole her hours and days with him until the day she died, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t— not because the dream of this ranch still held me, but because of you, and Morgan—and because she made me think that I had made my choices, and had to live with them.
I didn’t know about the man, don’t care a damn except that she glutted while I starved, and she relished her secrets, while my sins were laid bare.”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “I finished it for me and for Sara, but I did to her what Andrea did to me—I didn’t relish it. I couldn’t even stand to think about it.”
Finn shook his head slowly and turned to go, then turned back. “Jordan thinks I can’t love anything but this ranch. She is wrong. I fought to keep what I cared the most for—sometimes in a fight, you have to let go.”
Lucas slid off the corral fence watching his father stride to the house and go inside. He leaned back against it, took a last nose-burning draw, and crushed it under his boot. A slight smile curved his lips, and he sighed heavy and long before pulling away and heading to Morgan’s.
His brother was on the low front porch, chair reared back and boots on the rail, no shirt, and sipping, fragrant coffee. “Coffee’s fresh, help yourself.”
“Thanks.” Lucas went in but bathed and put on soft denims before joining him, taking his own chair watching moonlight on the bridge and beams of it lighting on the shallower parts of creek threading beyond it.
“Did you know about them,” Lucas murmured before taking a sip of coffee. “Sara Landry and Finn?”
“Yep. When we were younger, the older folks whispered about it. You weren’t around much, mustanging in the hills most of the time, but I rode in for supplies, and to pick up freight, and would hear a thing or two.”
“She’s nothing like mother.”
“Opposite,” Morgan agreed.
“What happened?”
“Nobody knows, but Finn.” Morgan lowered his chair, sat there holding the cup on his strong thigh. “It was her Pa, old man Jim who helped clear this place until he got some kind of blood poison, died at the boarding house in town. Since the old cabin was long gone by the time we came up, nothing left to see the place as it likely was then. But, Sara lived here with him. With Pa. She’s a lot younger, ten years I reckon. Has a brother it’s said, that is supposed to show up this fall when the round up starts—”
Lucas absorbed that. No, he hadn’t been in town except to raise hell or get a poke. He knew what folks thought of him and didn’t so much as raise his hat in those days. Inwardly amused now at the cocky way he’d been, he felt ages beyond that. He thought about his father trying to help Sara in the buggy and her jerking away.
“Jordan’s been over there all day. At the Landry place. Reckon she’s staying the night.”
“Rose and Corey are about her age….”
“Yep.” Morgan rolled his head tiredly, stood and stretched his big body.
Lucas’s own felt light and relaxed but if he started thinking about why, he would get no rest. “Finn already had the land, why do you think he married our mother?”
“Used to think it was to show her off, bask in the envy.” Morgan laughed shaking his head. “Since the funeral, a lot of reflection, I don’t anymore. May have been something he did on impulse. Heard he was like that back then. Hot blood can drive a man in the wrong direction.”
Lucas stood too and considered him. “What are you going to do with the money?”
“Nothing right now.” Morgan shrugged. “Don’t make a difference in my life one way or the other. You?”
Lucas shrugged too, having no time to think about it.
“Rising with the sun in the morning,” Morgan headed for the door.
“I’ll be up and ready,” Lucas said, following him, finding his bed, and dropping like a stone. He didn’t toss or dream that night at all.
Chapter Five
Corey lay in her moonlit room listening to Jordan and Rose across the hall whispering and laughing. She wrinkled her nose. Jordan wasn’t so bad. Even though, when the woman first got there Corey had fidgeted and twitched in the parlor while she and Rose had talked books, fashions, things about Boston where Jordan went to school. Jordan had brought over a whole crate of magazines, and even Sara had sat with them on the settee, admiring the fine stitching on the designs, and talking about various face creams and such.
Having no opinion beyond nodding when Rose turned the page and showed her a simple scoop neck gown she thought was lovely, Corey had endured, mostly interested in weaving bits and pieces of Jordan’s life together as she talked about her growing up.
By the time Rose was ready to start dinner, Corey was on the porch when Jordan walked out and asked her, “Show me some of the ranch.”
Since the woman was dressed for riding and Corey always was, they saddled up and rode, Corey telling her this or that, and then out of the blue Jordan had said, “I’m not a Croft. Not Alex’s daughter.”
Corey had reined in and when the woman stopped, she told her quietly, “You look like McCabe. Got his eyes.”
With a bitter smile, Jordan nodded. She then told Corey about her real mother, a bit of the way Andrea was, then confided, “She left me well off I guess, but I think it’s more to spite Finn, and I can’t ever take his name.”
“Does he want you to?”
“I think so. But then, Finn McCabe’s motives are questionable. Could be he just can’t stand what she did. Could be his pride, although he’s never shown much in his children.”
“Morgan seems to have fared well with him.”
“That’s more to Morgan’s credit than Finn’s. He’s a private man and wouldn’t show whatever he did feel about his father, or the way that family was.”
“How was it?”
“Not a family.” Jordan laughed. “As an outsider, it was like watching a bunch of strangers. Well maybe you are right, Morgan did get along with them both, but since Andrea was distant and formal, I don’t think that he got much in return. He was just solid and hardworking, and good with all the hands. He even got along with Lucas, who, back then, was always butting heads with Finn.”
“You live in the house—”
“For now. I don’t know. Lucas and Morgan, they think I have a right and want me to stay. It’s nearly cleared of Andrea’s things at her request, but I don’t remember Finn being much outside his own apartments anyway.”
“Sounds odd,” Corey mused. “But our father, Frank. It was a lot like that, except he was here on the range or in town. Whenever he was inside the house he looked
through Rose and Falon, and would have me too if I hadn’t chased after him, learned whatever he would teach me. Mamma seemed good to him, respected him, I guess, but they didn’t talk much and had separate rooms as long as I can remember.”
Turning back Jordan observed, “You and Rose aren’t much alike.”
“No. But, I admire some things about her. Like I do Falon, even if Falon had a different Mamma. I always lost my temper with bullies, got in scraps, and couldn’t sit still for much. I wanted to be working on the range, learning to play poker, or hanging out with the hands. Rose got teased a lot, whispered about by hands, and still does get gawked at because of her…” Corey made a shape with her hands. “But she’s smart and when she’s not on guard, has a good sense of humor. She handles things calmly when you think she wouldn’t. Falon is like that, more to herself, but takes on things and finishes them. She’s been loyal to the parents of the man she loved, even after he died.”
“I know about the shooting,” Jordan told her. “I was home then for a short spell and Morgan explained it because Finn was slamming doors and Andrea took to her rooms when Lucas left.”
After debating a moment, Corey told her about the boy, Asher.
Listening for a bit Jordan said softly, “Sounds like he has folks who love him, and I can attest to the fact that matters more than anything.”
They had reached the barn and Sara came out carrying one of the feed pails. She brushed back stray strands of hair and smiled at Jordan. “Why don’t you stay the night, Jordan? I can send one of the hands over to let them know. I’d enjoy more of your company, and I’m sure Rose and Corey would.”
Jordan had stayed, and Corey had laughed when she admitted after supper she didn’t know how to wash dishes. Rose showed her, then Sara had her folding clothing off the line, and they had all gathered in Sara’s room after scrubbing and Sara loaning Jordan one of Falon’s nightgowns.