Caden's Vow

by Sarah McCarty

  “We’re not going that far. I’d do it a bit differently if we were putting it on the horse for the long haul.”

  “Ace said we had to move because the claim jumpers found us.”

  “I’d feel better with a wall at our back. It’ll be hotter ’cause the cliff blocks the breeze, but it’s safer.” It wasn’t strictly a lie.

  Maddie licked her lips. Caden couldn’t take his eyes away from the moistness of her tongue as it passed over. He actually saw her breath catch. He looked up. She was watching his mouth. He smiled. She was as aware of him as he was of her.

  “You’re sweet to kiss.” He said that just to rattle her more, but it was the truth. “Sweet Maddie mine, never been kissed.”

  Until him.

  He started on the second pack, letting her silence linger uncontested. She broke it with “I’m not a virgin.”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how many men used you, Maddie. To me you’re a virgin. No one’s touched your heart. No one’s brought out that passion in you.” He finished tying up the second pack and moved over to the first. She was still standing in the same spot, staring at him, but now her hands were clenched at her sides. “The part of you that matters is untouched, waiting for the right man to bring it to life.” He met her gaze. “I’m going to be that man. The one who makes you burn from the inside out. The one you can’t look at without getting wet. The one who makes you scream with pleasure.”

  She looked away. “I know how to fake it.”

  She was firmly on the defensive. “Do you? Let me hear it.”

  “What?”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “Let me hear you fake it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m curious how a woman who’s never felt pleasure imitates it.”

  “Here?”

  “What’s wrong with here? It’s not real, so what does it matter where you do it?”

  She looked distinctly uncomfortable, and she should be. As defenses went, that was a pretty poor one.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Why? Afraid it’s not going to sound real to me?”

  “I just don’t want to.”

  “Because you can’t.”

  “I can.”

  He smiled and took a step forward, expected her to take a step back. She didn’t, and for some reason that made him smile bigger. Maddie was determined to find her feet, and he wasn’t going to get in her way, but he’d be there to catch her if she fell. In time she’d come to understand she wasn’t alone anymore. It was easier than it should have been to slide his fingers over her cheek, to hook them behind her neck, to draw her up into his embrace, easier and beyond sweet.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You know what I’m doing. What’s more, you want it.”

  “No, I don’t.” She whispered the denial against his lips.

  He smiled his acceptance against hers and then he kissed her the way he kissed a woman that he wanted: deeply, hotly, passionately, separating her lips with a thrust of his tongue, coaxing hers into play with his, tickling the inside of her mouth until she couldn’t help but smile, keeping that smile as his own, tempting her more until she moaned and leaned in, taking her passion as the gift it was. His poor sweet Maddie.

  He didn’t pull back until she was breathless, and then he rested his forehead against hers and smiled into her eyes. She looked stunned, like a wild creature surprised from the safety of its nest, and he guessed that was what Maddie’s little pretend world was: her nest. Without it, life was just an onslaught of experiences with which she didn’t know how to cope.

  “I tell you what.”

  “What?” she asked in a husky voice that stroked along his cock. He wanted to hear her say his name like that, preferably when his cock was sliding inside her that first time. He was going to make it so good for her.

  “Tonight when we’re lying down together, I want you to show me how you fake it.”

  “I don’t lie down with you. I sleep.”

  “All right, tonight when you’re lying beside me, trying to pretend that I’m not there, I want you to show me how you fake it.”

  “No.”

  He kissed her mouth, running his tongue on the underside of her upper lip, stroking his fingers along the nape of her neck.

  “Yes. And, Maddie?”

  “What?”

  “Next time I kiss you—”

  “There’s not going to be a next time.”

  He had to smile at her stubbornness. He tapped his finger to her cheek, drawing her eyes to his. She was so cute. “Breathe through your nose.”

  * * *

  MADDIE WAS AS NERVOUS as a cat all afternoon, watching the sun like a doomed man watched a scaffold. Caden shook his head again. What did she think was going to happen? That he was going to turn into some monster intent on hurting her? He shook his head. Clearly he had a long way to go to gain her trust. And now that supper was over, the dishes had been scrubbed and the fire banked down, and Ace was off on guard duty up on the ledge above, he had his first opportunity to start building it. Standing, he brushed off his pants. Maddie jumped so fast to her feet, her skirts swung about her ankles. He remembered how pretty her legs were with the slim calves leading to plump thighs that ended at delightfully full hips.

  “I’m going to make a pass around and make sure everything’s fine.”

  She looked at him.

  “Maddie—” he shook his head at her wide-eyed stare “—I’m giving you time to do whatever a woman does before her lover comes to her.”

  “You’re my husband.”

  “And your lover.” He wanted to shake his head again. “You’d do well to remember that.”

  “I don’t have anything.”

  “What do you mean you don’t—” That pulled him up short, have anything. “It’s okay, I don’t need scented creams and ribbons.”

  She blinked as if he was speaking another language.

  “What do you think you need that you don’t have?”

  She shook her head, and he had to think about it a bit and still he couldn’t come up with anything.

  “Maddie?”

  “I don’t have my—” And her jaw set in a way that told him she wasn’t going to tell him. He supposed he could push, but what did he care?

  “Then we’ll just do without it.”

  Her eyes grew wide.

  “I assure you, the lack of whatever it is is not going to stop me.”

  She licked her lips again and folded her arms across her chest, hardly the image of the eager bride. “I can’t prevent a baby.”

  The answer left him stunned and then a little excited. He’d love to make a little red-haired baby with Maddie, to see her grow round with his child. “Who said I wanted you to?”

  “It’s just, I mean, I’m—”

  He cut her off. “My wife,” he finished for her before adding, “and, Maddie, I’d take you right now, as you are, and be delighted at the possibility of a child, but I’m being a gentleman.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you deserve kindness and consideration.”

  She shook her head. A wave of her hand dismissed the higher feelings he was trying to give her.

  “Why would you take me now?”

  “Because I desire you. Why does any man?”

  She shook her head. “What is it about me that makes me desirable to you?”

  She wanted to know what he saw in her. A very reasonable request from a woman feeling very skittish.

  “You’re beautiful, Maddie.”

  “I’m plain. I have freckles.”

  “You’re beautiful, Maddie. Inside and out, and if you’d come to us any other way than how you did, I’d have been on your doorstep courting your favor, but for a long time you were healing and I didn’t let myself see you until it got to the point I’d learned to do some pretending of my own. And then Culbart had you, and I had to come get you. I expected to find a shattered woman, lost in
fantasy, the same lost child you were when you came to Hell’s Eight. Instead, I found a strong woman playing at fantasy, doing what she had to do to get us all out of the situation. And the fantasy I protected you with shattered.”

  She wrung her hands until the knuckles were white. “I didn’t know he was going to make me marry you.”

  “I know, and it’s occurred to me that one of the reasons you might have gone along with it is because any bullheaded thing I might have done could have gotten me killed.”

  She looked stunned at the revelation.

  He pretended not to notice. “I do think sometimes, Maddie. Not always before I talk, but I do work on things until they make sense. Your going along with him to marry me, to betray Hell’s Eight? You, who has a deeply ingrained sense of loyalty?” He shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “And because of that, now you want to have sex with me?”

  “Don’t make me come over there, because if I do you’re not going to get the time you need to be comfortable.”

  She took a step back. He stepped forward, grabbed her hand and pulled her precisely the same distance back toward him.

  “One of the lessons you need to learn is the difference between a threat of passion and a threat of danger.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The first one should make you smile.”

  She licked her lips. “You want me to like this, I know.”

  “I do.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  He smiled, slid his finger up her neck and along her jaw, up over her lips so he could tap her nose. “Then, I’m giving you permission to show me how you fake it.”

  “But now you know I can fake it.”

  “Honey, every man knows a woman can fake it.”

  “They do?”

  “It’s part of the challenge, to see if you can get them past it to the real thing.”

  “And you think you can get me past it to the real thing?”

  “I don’t know if I can tonight, but I’m hoping. There’s so much passion and beauty in you. But if I can’t, I’m going to do my best to prove to you that what we have is good.”

  “I don’t know what we have.”

  “We’re husband and wife. We have the future that builds for us.”

  “You said you’re going to get rid of me.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  He ignored her “Well, maybe I haven’t” and turned away, a smile tugging at his lips.

  She really wasn’t that good at faking it.

  * * *

  MADDIE STOOD AT the foot of the bedroll and concentrated on breathing. Five minutes. He was giving her five minutes. Five minutes to remember—no, not even to remember, to learn how to be a wife. What did he want from her? He’d talked about her as if she was a virgin, but they both knew she wasn’t. She’d been with men who wanted her to pretend they were her first. Was that what he wanted her to do? She could probably do that with him. He made it so easy for her to feel...new.

  The more she thought about it, the better the idea seemed. Playing the virgin wasn’t that hard. Men had firm ideas how virgins acted, clear preferences in what they desired.

  Let me loosen your hair. First she needed to braid her hair. Not too tightly. They might want her to look virginal, but men also wanted the hint of passion. Men who liked virgins liked to loosen her hair from that braid, the same way they liked to think they loosed her passion.

  Don’t be shy.

  And they liked to undress her, too. Liked to think they had the power to make her lose any inhibitions she harbored. Don’t be afraid. More voices popped into her head. Just be still. I know what to do. Just lie there.

  She took a breath and put all that together in her head until her confidence came back. Caden was a man like any other, and she knew what men wanted from virgins. She knew what Caden wanted. Taking her brush out of her pack, she ran it through her hair, pulling it back into a sloppy braid. Untouchable, yet available was what men wanted. One of her clients talked a lot about seeing her pulse pound in her throat. He liked the fear and he had been someone to be afraid of. He hadn’t been a gentle man. She unbuttoned the top two buttons of her bodice. Well, she couldn’t remember back to when she’d actually been a virgin; those early years had just been so painful she’d fought to forget, until now it was as if they didn’t exist anymore. Whoever she had been before her customer didn’t exist, either.

  She heard Caden’s steps. A twig snapped as he came closer. She settled herself on the bedroll, fluffing her skirts around her, smoothing them, settling her hands on her lap, straightening her spine, looking as prim and proper as she could. She didn’t have to fake the fear. She was very nervous and very afraid. She didn’t want to disappoint him.

  He stepped into the faint light of the fire, shadows casting a more sinister aspect, until she looked at his face. There was no anger in his eyes, just softness. She didn’t know what to do with softness, didn’t know how she was supposed to take it, but it was better than hatred, so she smiled at him timidly, not having to fake the shyness, either. It was strange to think of bedding Caden, stranger still to think of him as her husband. She knew this wasn’t going to last, that this was just a game that he wanted to play as all men did, but it would be a memory she would have to hold on to in the years to come, and she wanted it to be a good one.

  “Hi.”

  He looked at her and frowned. “This is you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed. “Maybe you’d better fake it for me after all.”

  The panic clotted her stomach. “I don’t understand.”

  He sat down beside her, and her breath stuck in her throat. He was displeased. He kicked off one boot, then the other, the second being a little more stubborn than the first.

  “Maddie?”

  “What?”

  He looked over at her, his expression unreadable. “How do you think things are going to go tonight?”

  “I’m going to pretend to be a virgin.” The words and you’re going to pretend to be happy stuck in her throat.

  “That’s what you think I want? Pretense?”

  “You told me to fake it.”

  “You know damn well I was being sarcastic.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know anything.” She clenched her fists in her lap, the rage coming out of nowhere. “You seem to think I should know everything when I know nothing. I don’t know what you want. I don’t know how you want me to be. I don’t know how long this is going to last. I don’t know how I’m going to survive it when it ends, and I—”

  His arm slid around her shoulder and he pulled her against his chest. She wanted to smash her fists into his shoulder. Instead, she just opened her palm and laid it over his heart, feeling its steady beat, feeling the warmth of his body seep into hers.

  She closed her eyes, unable to resist the hug. There’d been so few in her life. It threw her off balance every time he did it. His lips brushed her hair.

  “Maddie?”

  She was beginning to not like the way he said her name. It always led to more probing, more pain, more revelations of the person she was but didn’t want to be.

  “What?”

  “I want to make love to you, not...fuck you.”

  She’d had men that liked that, too.

  “Just tell me how you want me to be and I’ll be it.”

  “I don’t want you to be anything.” He tipped her chin up. She couldn’t see his expression clearly in the shadows, but she was pretty sure he could see hers from the way they were sitting. “I want whatever happens between us to be honest. If you feel nothing, then just lie there like a blob.”

  “Men don’t like that.” Well, unless they wanted her to pretend to be dead, but that just made her skin crawl.

  “I don’t like pretending to be dead,” she told him.

  He drew back. She could tell she’d shocked him.

  “What the hell makes you think I want tha
t?”

  “You said you want me to just lie there and—”

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “Maddie.”

  “What?”

  “Can we start with a hug?”

  She could do hugs. She nodded.

  “Good.”

  He lay down and she lay beside him. He waited a minute and then sighed and put his arm out. “Come here.”

  She went as she always did and rested her cheek on his shoulder. She couldn’t seem to breathe until his arms came around her, and once her body was touching his, the panic inside her melted away. He didn’t do anything except hold her and rub his hand up and down her back.

  She was so nervous she didn’t think she could take her next breath. She couldn’t take the waiting, the pressure of the silence; as a result she just blurted out, “Do you want to hear me fake it now?”

  He laughed and squeezed her tight, shaking his head, and wonder of wonders, she felt the tension leave his side.

  “I think I’ll save that for a little bit later.”

  Wonderful.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DO YOU WANT to hear me fake it now?

  Caden shook his head. How could the woman lie in his arms as soft and as sweet as a dream and ask such a ridiculous question? He didn’t want her to fake it at all, but judging by how stiffly she lay there in his arms, he had a feeling telling her that wasn’t going to get him to where he wanted to go. And he very badly wanted to get there with Maddie.

  He kissed the top of her head and ran his fingers down her arm, and she pressed closer. She gasped. He reached for the top button of her dress, and she stopped breathing altogether.

  Rolling her over, he propped himself above her. He could still see her face in the dying light of the fire.

  “What exactly do you think I’m going to do, Maddie?”

  “I don’t know.” He felt her shrug up the length of his body. “Whatever makes you happy.”

  The plan was to make them both happy. And soon. His cock was so hard his pants were an erotic chafing.

  “Do you think I’m so different from other men?” He winced and wanted to kick his own ass. The one thing he didn’t want Maddie thinking about was her past experiences.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Then why are you so scared?”