by Diana Palmer
“What is this called?” she asked finally, indicating the way they were standing.
He gave it an Apache sound. “Courting, you whites call it,” he translated. “It’s very circumspect. Usually.”
“As I said, I haven’t kissed anyone before.”
“Yes. I noticed,” he replied dryly.
“I’ll be better once I learn how,” she replied, her tone faintly wounded and defensive.
“You’re quite good at it already, but in the interest of your continued purity, we have to stop doing it now.”
“Oh!”
He looked down at her. “Have I shocked you? These things aren’t usually discussed. Do you understand what can happen when a man and woman who find each other attractive spend too much time alone?”
“I’m not that stupid,” she said, swallowing.
He sighed wearily. “We find ourselves in an impossible situation, as it is. I don’t want to increase the burden by doing something unconscionable.” He tilted her face up. “Alexandra, no matter what happens, there can never be a child… There must never be one.”
She winced because the thought hurt her, but she nodded bleakly.
“It is not my wish,” he added. “But a child who belongs to both cultures belongs to neither. This mixing of races is not a good thing.”
“Then why did you gather me into your blanket?”
“I meant the mixing that produces children,” he specified. He searched her eyes, trying to see them in the darkness. “I find you unbearably attractive.”
“I feel the same,” she whispered.
He groaned softly and laid his cheek atop her dark hair. “It is hopeless.”
“I know.” But she didn’t move away, and he didn’t let go. She clung to him, safe in his arms, while the mist feathered her skin.
THE HEAVY RAIN came later, after Sissy had reluctantly left Naki and gone to bed. Trilby was almost asleep when the tent where she slept alone suddenly began to leak on the side where she was lying. She and Sissy had been supposed to share a tent, when at the last minute Julie threw a fit and insisted that Sissy share with her. Trilby was left alone, which she began to think was part of Julie’s strategy to unnerve her.
She was soaked. She’d slept in her long split skirt and middy blouse, and she couldn’t face the thought of staying in wet clothes for the rest of the night. She opened her case and took out fresh things, but she had no place to change. The water was pouring in.
Thinking that she might make her way to Sissy and Julie’s tent to change, she blundered out in the dark. A tall shadow loomed up, and she almost shrieked in fear.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” Thorn demanded. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I’m soaking wet, that’s why,” Trilby muttered. “I must have accidentally rolled into the side.”
“I hardly think so,” he said tautly. “Come with me. I seem to have inadvertently become part of the plan. That being the case, I’ll help things along.”
“I don’t understand….” She panted as he dragged her along with him through the rain.
“You will.”
She expected him to stop at Sissy’s tent, but he didn’t. He continued to the outer rim, where Richard’s was pitched, and stopped. There was a lamp on inside it, with two shadows close together and murmurs becoming louder by the minute.
It was Richard’s tent. There were only three women in camp. Sissy was his sister and Trilby was here with Thorn, which meant that it could only be Julie in there with him.
She was so miserable that she didn’t realize where Thorn was taking her until they were warmly cocooned in his tent.
She stood clutching her dry clothes, slightly damp by now, her big gray eyes wide with what felt like betrayal.
Thorn took off his hat and slicker and tossed them aside. His dark eyes bit into Trilby’s in the darkness of the tent as he lit a match and looked at her face.
“The tragedy queen,” he scoffed. “Now you know, don’t you? I’m certain you were meant to. I saw someone moving around, which is why I got up. Obviously your friend Julie started your tent leaking to bring you outside, so that you’d catch her with Richard. By now, of course,” he added bluntly, “I’m certain she’s back in her own tent laughing her head off.”
She felt her face grow hot with muted anger. “Oh!”
He blew out the match. “Are you shocked that she’s fighting so hard to keep him? Don’t you know how painful it can be to want someone the way she wants your languid beau?”
“I don’t know what you mean—!”
He reached for her, covering her mouth with his even as the words started to escape.
She gasped, but he paid no attention to her struggles. They grew quickly weaker as the powerful arms closed around her, riveting her to the length of him. He was warm and strong, and the mouth devouring hers was expert. She made a sound.
“You want this as much as I do. Stand still, Trilby. Don’t make noise,” he whispered unsteadily, his mouth teasing hungrily at her soft lips. “Don’t make a sound, or someone might hear us even above the rain.”
He lifted her closer and began to kiss her again. The pleasure he gave her was much too thorough and drugging to leave any room for argument. She went soft in his arms and began to kiss him back. Somewhere in the middle of the endless pressure against her mouth, she felt him ease her to the ground. She didn’t protest. What he was doing to her was much too sweet. She loved the way he was kissing her. He was slow and tender and very thorough, and she ached for more.
Even when she felt his body move over hers, she didn’t make a sound. He was heavy, but the weight of him in some strange way eased the throbbing ache of her body. She shifted a little to bring him against her where she hurt the most and she gasped at the unfamiliar feel of a totally aroused male body.
She hadn’t known that men changed like this, or how it happened. She felt the hardness of his body without really understanding what it meant. But it threatened her and she stiffened a little.
His only reply to that telling gesture was to kiss her again and very slowly ease one of his long, jean-clad legs between hers, imprisoned in the long split skirt. The faint rhythm of it made her feel oddly tense, but it was a warm, sweet, addictive kind of tension that she quickly began to enjoy. She caught her breath and her hands clutched at him, telling him without words that she didn’t want him to stop.
He smiled against her mouth and kissed her again. His mouth was slow now, without any urgency. But it was a terrible kind of tenderness that he was giving her, and his body began to tremble as time stretched by. His hands were gentle on her slender body, not offering to become invasive just yet. But the way he touched her made her want them to.
As his lean fingers played around her rib cage, her body arched up to them in a slow, helpless rhythm. She knew what the touch of them would do to her breasts, and she wanted it. She wanted him to feel the softly mounded flesh, to touch it. She wanted him to peel away her bodice and touch her hot skin, so that it might cool. She wanted him to open his mouth and place it over her nipple….
Even as she thought it, she felt the air on her skin as his warm mouth found its way to the place she wanted it. She shivered and clung to him. The rain beat down on the tent and made a noise that drowned out her helpless cries of passion.
He was whispering something, his voice heated and urgent. She felt his hands on her skin, making the ache go away. His chest was cool against her hot breasts, and it was hairy. The hair tickled, but she didn’t mind because he was kissing her in a new way, deeply and hotly so that she shivered with sensation.
His body was against hers, too, but something was different….
Seconds later, she realized what it was. But by then, it was too late. His hands held her firmly while his bare legs suddenly went between her own and he pushed down. He went inside her body, actually inside it, in a stark invasion of herself that she’d never even imagined! All her reading hadn’t prepared
her for the intimacy of a man’s naked body over her own, for the reality of sexual possession.
She cried out against his hard mouth in shock and amazement, and then in pain, as the rhythm made him groan and whisper ardently against her ear while his body tore away the protective barrier of her maiden-head and possessed her utterly.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“THORN! YOU…CAN’T!” she gasped.
But he could, and did. He was helplessly driving for satisfaction, blind with need and beyond words. He groaned and his body clenched as he felt the petal-soft envelopment of himself trigger an explosive urgency. He held her under him and pushed blindly, rhythmically, over her until he was able to satisfy his agonizing need of climax.
When he felt it, his mind went completely blank except for a blinding white pleasure that lifted him, arched him, into the cradle of Trilby’s softness.
“Oh…my…God!” His voice shivered reverently.
He held it, only for a second, and collapsed, devastated, onto her.
She wept hotly, because she knew, couldn’t help but know, that he’d achieved paradise. But for her, the climb had been painful and unfulfilling. She felt cold, with the sweat on his chest cold against her breasts in the night air…while his body still throbbed in the aftermath of satisfaction and he gasped for air to breathe. Her secret places hurt, felt as if they’d been torn. He was heavy on her and his body was cold, and there was an uncomfortable wetness…there.
He felt the tears as he turned his head and began to kiss her face with lazy tenderness.
“Please,” she whispered miserably. “Let me go.”
“No, little one,” he murmured gently. “Not yet.”
His lean hand slid up her bare thigh and between their bodies. His mouth slowly found hers, tenderly parting it while his fingers moved down and began to touch open nerves.
She gasped and pushed at him. But even as she feverishly protested the stark intimacy, he touched her body in a way that made it suddenly his. Her fingers curled into his hard arms as the sweet, dark pleasure washed over her body. She gasped again, but this time she didn’t push.
“I know,” he whispered. “It hurt and you’re disappointed. But this time, I promise, it won’t hurt. See how this feels, sweetheart?” he asked huskily, as his hand moved on her and she moaned and shivered. “Isn’t it good, Trilby? Doesn’t it make you want more? And I can give you that….”
Seconds spun into minutes; she began to bite at his mouth, pulsating with the rhythm and the sharp pleasure and the building tension that was magical and hellishly, shamefully, satisfying.
Her fingernails bit into his arms. She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear his breathing. Like hers, it was ragged and quick. She knew that as long as she lived, she’d remember the sound of his breathing mingling with hers while the rain beat down on the thick canvas over them in a tattoo no softer than her whispered cries of pleasure.
“Oh…please, Thorn,” she choked, her voice a thin whimper as she writhed against the fabric beneath them. Wanton sensations weakened her, held her at a peak of tension that was devastating. “Please…please…make me…whole…”
“Soon.” He breathed the word into her mouth. “We mustn’t go too fast. It must be slow and take a long time, so that your body will be ready to accept mine when I take you again.”
The words went through her like ecstasy. She dug her fingers into his back, wanting him. She whispered it into his ear, barely able to get the words out through her thick tongue.
His mouth moved down to her breasts. He nibbled at them, suckled and touched them with his tongue while he pleasured her. It would almost have been enough with the sudden urgency that made her guide his hand in a wanton demand that would shock her afterward. But now it was only important to end the torment and the tension, to get past the barrier that blocked her surrender to pleasure. Only a little…more. A little…more. She shivered suddenly and harsh little cries pulsed out of her throat as the ecstasy overwhelmed her and she went rigid.
At that instant, he went into her, and she saw stars behind her open eyes. There was no pain, no future, no past, only the invasion of this man’s body into hers and the convulsive passion that left her totally at his mercy while he buffeted her welcoming hips until she shuddered and lost consciousness.
He held her for a long time afterward, gently smoothing her hair, her yielded, soft body in his arms while the rain saturated the earth around the tent. He made no move to dress, nor did she. The reality of their loving was too astonishing.
“I…must go back…to my tent, Thorn,” she whimpered. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
He kissed away the tears. “You mustn’t cry, sweetheart,” he whispered. “You gave me your virginity.” His voice was deep against her ear. “I felt you give it to me, Trilby,” he moaned. “I felt it.”
She gasped. His mouth covered hers, and she wanted him again. It was incredible. Her body was sore, but it demanded. She shivered and pulled at him, her hands urgent as they smoothed with helpless need over his slender flanks.
“No,” he whispered. “No, Trilby. Not again. We dare not. It would hurt you now.”
She sobbed, but he held her and rocked her, cradling her in his arms until she quieted.
“You must marry me,” he said finally. “You realize that, don’t you?”
“Thorn…”
“I may have given you a baby, Trilby,” he whispered into her ear.
Her breathing stopped. She lay in the darkness, in his arms, and tried to imagine how it would feel to bear his child.
She laid her cheek against the hard throb of his hair-matted chest and realized only then just how badly she’d burned her bridges. Yes, there could be a child. And they were not married.
“Oh…oh, dear,” she began unsteadily.
“Trust me,” he whispered roughly. “Stop fighting me. I want you more than my own life. I can give you everything you want, everything you need. Marriage isn’t the end of the world—and now we have no choice,” he said solemnly.
“No choice,” she repeated, sick at heart. Now there was no hope of finding happiness with Richard, even if she had fooled herself into believing he might notice her with Julie around. She could never have Richard now. Thorn had made her into something not quite ladylike. He’d shown her a dark side of herself that shocked her.
Thorn was having his own thoughts. He had Trilby now—and access to the water on her father’s land. And with it, he had the most incredibly sensual experience of his life. Imagine feeling like that with a virgin! All his plans had worked themselves out, with no conscious effort on his part. But he’d taken Trilby’s choices away, and she was crying. He didn’t feel very proud of himself.
“Samantha can be your flower girl,” he began. “And if Sissy would like to stay for the wedding, she can be maid of honor. Would you like that?”
She bit her lip with nervous fear. Samantha. Marriage. Babies. But Thorn hadn’t once mentioned love. He’d only said that he wanted her. And like an idiot, she’d let her emotions run away with her. She’d…lain with him!
“It must be soon,” he added quietly. “Very soon.”
She flushed. “Oh…my,” she whispered unsteadily.
He kissed her forehead with breathless tenderness. “Stop trying to sound like a fallen woman. We’re going to be married, Trilby. We made love to each other, but the world isn’t going to end. All right?”
“All right,” she echoed dully. He meant to be comforting, but he wasn’t. She felt like a fallen woman. The things he’d said to her…and she’d said them back! She flushed and scrambled out of his arms to dress.
After a minute, he followed suit. When they were clothed again, she felt even more ashamed of her lack of principles. He escorted her out of the tent, her arm clasped tightly in his lean hand. He lit a lamp for her and took her to the spare tent they’d fixed for the equipment.
“It will be dry, at least,” he said.
She looked up at him fo
r the first time since they’d been together. He looked different. Younger. More vital. Without the hardness, the stoic expression she’d grown used to. He looked uncomfortable. She grimaced inwardly as she wondered if perhaps he was regretting their abandonment as much as she was. He didn’t look happy, certainly. Perhaps he hadn’t really wanted to marry her. But he was an honorable man, and they’d let their emotions carry them to the point of no return.
He had her promise to marry him, despite what she thought she felt for Richard. Now he was sorry that he hadn’t proposed honorably. She’d always feel trapped. And what if she really did love Richard? He’d have robbed her of any chance for happiness. It had seemed so right. Now it was anything but right. He could have cursed his impetuousness, his selfishness.
“Try not to worry,” he said quietly. “We’ll have a good life together, Trilby. I’ll take care of you and your family. I swear, you’ll have no cause for regret.”
But she would, she thought miserably. Because there was only desire between them. He didn’t love her. And there was still Richard. Even if he’d betrayed her with Julie, he’d been her world for such a long time. She was sick with confused emotions—and guilt and shame.
He read the worry in her face. “Try not to hate me,” he said quietly.
“It was my fault, too, Thorn,” she said hesitantly. She didn’t know what she felt. She’d been raised to believe that women endured the foul lusts of men only to get children. Now she knew that it was only a myth, that women could have pleasure, too. It shocked her.
His hands contracted around hers as he searched her eyes. “You can’t back out,” he cautioned. “We can’t let our people suffer for our error, if there are consequences.”
“You already have Samantha,” she began, seeing a whole new set of complications developing.
“I won’t mind more than one child,” he said. “I don’t think you will, either. Once this camping trip is over, we must apply for a license and find a minister.”