Allie's Moon

by Alexis Harrington

At the same time, Jeff pushed her to her back and moved the flat of his hand down over her belly, lower and lower, until his hand covered the warm apex of her thighs. Every nerve in her body arced beneath her skin and the longing that had begun to grow in her now escalated. With a careful, deliberate touch, he grazed that most sensitive part of her, inexplicably wet. She jumped, accidently nipping his shoulder with her teeth.

  “God, woman, you’re a she-cat,” he said with a low huff of laughter.

  “I’m sorry—”

  He lowered his head and tugged on her nipple again with his mouth. “Don’t be.”

  Her sudden movement had bumped his hand away, but he came back again, seeking the slick folds and delicate, innermost flesh, massaging her with light, rapid strokes.

  Allie thought her heart would surely burst in her chest, it beat so hard. Though she had a virgin’s inexperience, her shameless body seemed to have a will of its own, and did as it wanted. She heard a herself moan in response to Jeff’s touch. Her hips thrust upward to meet his hand, giving him complete access to continue the sweet torment he inflicted upon her.

  “Jeff, please. Oh, please—”

  She believed she might lose her mind if he didn’t stop, and that she most certainly would if he did. All the while he muttered encouragement and endearments against her ear, urging her to do something, but just what she didn’t know. Perspiration drenched her as she pushed against his hand again and again. When she believed that she could take no more of this tender torture, her body climbed to a knife-sharp precipice and teetered there for a breathless, dizzying instant. Then it flung itself into wave upon wave of contractions that racked her, releasing the pent-up yearning. She sobbed Jeff’s name and he answered her with some wordless sound in the darkness.

  Nearly limp from the chaos of emotions and feelings that had gripped her, Allie couldn’t speak. All she could do was hold out welcoming arms to him.

  Jeff answered her summons, covering her swiftly and showering her face and temples with quick, warm kisses. “I’ll be careful, Allie, I swear,” he whispered roughly.

  Maybe at another time, Jeff would have taken a moment to soothe Allie and let her catch her breath. But her feverish release and the temptation of her sweetness had driven him to the point of near climax. Now she lay open and ripe before him with her hair spilling around her like a medieval bride, compelling him to ease the demanding ache that dragged at his belly.

  Mindful of her virginity, he pushed forward to join her moist, heated flesh and met resistance. Allie froze beneath him and her pliant limbs tensed. A whimper of pain sounded in her throat.

  “Jeff—”

  “It’s all right,” he intoned, “it’ll be all right.” Steadily, he pressed past the seal on her femininity that had stood like a sentinel, waiting for this night, waiting for him. She squirmed, as if to pull away.

  Jeff sheathed himself, then he gripped her hips to hold her still. “Wait, Allie—it’ll pass.” It took every ounce of willpower he had to lie within her tight warmth and not move. Fire licked through him—Allie felt like a glove of molten honey surrounding him. Staring down into her beautiful face, he lowered his head to kiss her. When he could stand it no longer, he deepened the kiss and completed their joining with a long, slow stroke.

  Allie relaxed as the discomfort subsided, relishing the feel of Jeff inside her. He was part of her now, and always would be no matter what happened. Running her hands over his back, she felt the hollow of his spine, and the powerful flex of tendon and muscle.

  “God, Allie,” he groaned, his breathing rough and ragged. He thrust again and again, faster now. As he did, she felt a restless urgency building again. It grew with each push and pull that Jeff plied her with, and she gripped the edge of the mattress. Could it happen again, that sensation so pleasurable that it verged upon pain? That loss of self that transcended the body—almost as if their very souls touched?

  Faster and more powerful was each stroke, carrying Allie ever closer to that exquisite conflagration. She lifted her hips, and Jeff pushed himself up to the full length of his arms. Gazing up at him, she found him beautiful and masterful, bathed in sweat and moonlight. He drove her on, advancing, ebbing, until Allie felt as if her earthly body were stripped away, leaving only her soul. Her muscles contracted fiercely, pulling Jeff into her with surging spasms that left her weeping and calling him.

  Jeff plunged forward, harder, more urgent, more desperate for his own release. He seemed to tower over her, and she saw the tendons in his neck defined by the moonlight. At last, with one final thrust he strained hard against her body while a low, anguished groan escaped him and white-hot pulsations shook him. Lowering himself to his elbows, he buried his face against her neck.

  Finally, their breathing slowed and Jeff sighed with a sound of replete contentment. He rolled them over slowly, and they lay in the darkness with the sheets tangled around them, listening to the soft night. From its quiet came the faint croak of the frogs down at the creek.

  “Are you comfortable?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Jeff . . . did—did I do it right?”

  She felt him chuckle. “You did it better than right.”

  “I guess you have lots of experience, being a man and—”

  “Allie, there has been no other woman since my wife. Just you.”

  That pleased her enormously, although she couldn’t say why.

  This communion, the giving as well as taking—this was what it meant to love someone completely, Allie realized, with heart and mind and body. Putting her hand on his chest, she felt his heart beating beneath her palm, strong and steady. Her own emotions lay so close to the surface, she wished she could tell Jeff about the love she held for him. But shyness and fear of rejection held her back. What would he think—that one of those Ford sisters, and the spinster of the pair to boot, fancied herself to be in love with him? No, she had this night, just as he’d said, and she would live on its memory for the rest of her life.

  But what kind of life would it be? Would she be able to forgive Olivia for her duplicity? Her options were just about nonexistent, as they often were for women.

  “I don’t know how I’ll go on now,” she said, her words muffled against his shoulder. “Things will never be the same between my sister and me, and I can’t act as if they are. But I can’t really imagine leaving her, either. I’m not sure she would survive.”

  If God or Fate had ever handed a man a golden opportunity, Jeff knew he was getting one now. With Althea Ford he felt whole again. He could not forget Wesley Cooper or the night at Wickwire’s—the event had worn a groove in his mind that would never go away. But drowning himself in whiskey had not brought the boy back, either. Nothing would. For the first time in two years, Jeff thought there might be hope for the future.

  Before he had time to overthink it, he lifted Allie’s chin so that he could look into her eyes. He spoke with the urgent desperation of a captive who saw a chance to escape his prison. “Come away with me, Allie. We’ll go away from this place, even leave Decker Prairie. There’s nothing for us here.”

  Allie clutched the sheet to her breasts and stared at him, plainly amazed by his suggestion. “You mean leave Olivia?” Even now, after everything that had happened, he knew her ties to her duty were strong.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.” He spoke in earnest, hushed tones, and brushed her injured cheek with a tender touch. “Allie, do you—maybe you feel—” The words came hard to Jeff. He wanted to tell her how he felt about her, that some nights he dreamed of holding her in his arms and dancing with her until sunrise. But sometimes those dreams ended with him clutching nothing except the wind to his chest. Trust was something he’d lost—Sally had stolen most of it, and the past years had taken the rest. God, he wanted to tell her that he loved her, but it scared him spitless when he thought of taking that risk again. Her moonlit expression was expectant, as if she waited to hear more from him than he could tell
her. He smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “I don’t want to promise something I can’t deliver. So I guess I’m asking a lot without offering much.” The missing pieces of his suggestion were obvious, and by their very absence, lay between them like a third entity in the bed. “But a life with me will be better than what you’ve had here, I promise that.”

  Allie continued to watch him in the darkness. Leave Olivia? He knew it was an earth-shaking suggestion, even though she’d admitted to wishing she were gone from here. But Jeff had said nothing of marriage. In fact, he had not spoken of love, and he felt like a coward for it. He knew the feeling he had for her, though, as strong and vital as a living thing. Maybe it would be enough to heal them both eventually. Maybe.

  “I—I’ll have to think about it, Jeff.”

  Pulling her into his arms, he was filled with an aching tenderness he’d not felt in such a long time, it was almost a stranger to him. Jeff couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so much emotion that wasn’t tinged with guilt or regret. “I understand, Allie. You think it over. But I really believe there’s a future for us now. A reason to keep looking forward.”

  Allie turned her face against his neck and Jeff sighed, knowing that sleep would come to him more easily tonight.

  Just then, over the top of Allie’s head he caught sight of another feminine shadow lurking just outside the door. Olivia. The shadow vanished then, and he heard the faintest sound of bare feet retreating. He opened his mouth to tell Allie, and then changed his mind. He guessed that this was one of the few happy moments in Allie’s life thus far, and he didn’t want it tarnished by any talk of Olivia.

  If her sister had stood outside listening, he didn’t like it, but so be it. Maybe she would realize that there was more to life than living like a mannequin in a store window, with a servant to do her bidding.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A horse nickered outside.

  A fine, sleek filly kicked up her heels in a new corral that Jeff had built with his own hands, on the land that he owned. He should go out there and give her a ration of oats, but another filly, his beautiful, flame-haired wife, was commanding all of his attention right now. She stood before him in their bedroom, her slim fingers slowly and deliberately unbuttoning each button on his shirt, one at a time. He saw desire, warm and smoky, in her eyes. Then she slipped her warm hands inside to caress his ribs and back, and she pressed damp kisses to his chest. She smelled of lavender and rainwater, and he knew the promise of intense pleasure waited in her lips and soft curves.

  Jeff stirred and realized he’d been dreaming again. He was still in the lean-to. But this time, Allie was with him. He pulled her closer, pressing his cheek against her silky hair. She lay on her side within his embrace, with her soft bottom nestled against his groin. He could spend ten thousand nights like this, a million. With Allie at his side the future, which had recently looked so bleak, now seemed full of possibilities.

  The most beautiful part was, they had all the time in the world to plan for it. He smiled in groggy contentment before he began to drift off again.

  Then he heard another nicker. He was instantly alert. It was real, not part of a dream. He waited, not breathing, not moving, just listening. His heart pounded in his chest.

  There was no horse on the Ford farm. Even Kansas, Elisha Smithfield’s old mule, had been returned to its rightful owner. Someone was out there. He heard a drone of low male voices, rising and falling as if buffeted by the wind, too indistinct for him to understand over the blood rushing through his head.

  After tucking Allie in more securely, he eased himself from the bed, silently cursing the corn shuck mattress for crackling like a crate of burning tissue paper.

  “Jeff?”

  “It’s all right, honey, you go back to sleep.”

  She lifted herself up to one elbow. “What’s the matter?”

  “I just want to check on something outside. I thought I heard a noise. It’s probably nothing.” Closing his hand over his belt buckle to keep it from clanking, he grabbed his pants and put them on.

  “Oh, well come back soon.”

  He stepped over to the bed and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “I will.” Then he groped in the shadows for his boots, but couldn’t find them. He couldn’t go tearing out into possible danger barefoot, but neither could he risk lighting a lantern. Damn it, he needed to get out there, now, to see what was going on.

  Just as he was about to give up and take his chances in the thistles and blackberries outside, his hand fell upon leather. Forgoing socks, he jerked on the boots, then crept out of the lean-to, quiet as a cat and keeping to the shadows. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but a glance at the low-slung moon and the eastern sky told him it must be just moments before dawn. Next to the barn stood an axe that he’d sharpened just the day before, and he wrapped his fingers around the handle.

  By the eerie light of the coming dawn, he saw a distant feminine figure running along the path that led from the field to the house. Stripped of any discernible color by the ethereal gloom, her dress seemed to almost glow against the backdrop of darkness, the full skirts drifting around her like a ghostly shroud. Olivia. What the hell was she up to out here? She stopped to look at him, like a deer in flight, then shot off again and scurried to the shelter of the back porch. He didn’t bother to talk to her; she was close enough to safety if she needed it.

  Barely breathing so he could hear, he took to the same path she had used. Careful. Twigs, parched weeds, and last autumn’s withered leaves carpeted the earth. Each time he stepped, the debris snapped and rustled beneath his boots. He hunched low and crept forward cautiously. Probing the shadows with eyes that burned with the strain, he felt the muscles in his shoulders and back knot up with tension.

  Again he heard men’s voices, louder now, as if in argument. Ahead of him, a parked wagon loomed in stark silhouette next to the field he’d planted. Instinct honed by his years as a lawman made him extremely wary, and for the first time since he’d shot Wes, he wished he had a gun strapped to his hip. God. Even if he had one, could he hold a steady bead on a target? Thoughts galloped through his mind—he wished he had a gun, he wished he had a drink, he wished he had more courage so his insides would stop shaking.

  He felt the smooth axe handle beneath his rough palm. It was no match for a shotgun, but if he was lucky, the intruders wouldn’t be armed. He almost laughed. Who besides Jeff himself would trespass on another’s property in the middle of the night without a gun?

  Still crouching low to the ground, he crept up to the small wagon, raising his head only high enough to scan the field on its opposite side. At his approach, the horse danced restlessly in its harness and gave a nervous snort. Jeff could only hope the sound didn’t alert the intruders to his presence. Since he was without a firearm to defend himself, he needed the element of surprise to even out the odds. On the tailgate of the wagon box he saw a large sack. Running his free hand over its contours, he gave it a quick jostle and determined by touch that it held something heavy. The light was too poor for him to read the print on the cloth. What the hell was going on here? He stole another quick glance over the wagon box and tightened his grip on the axe.

  Revealed in dim outlines, two men stood at the edge of the field. He moved a bit closer, never forgetting that he was basically unarmed. A flurry of obscenities erupted from the pair, and he recognized the voice of Cooper Matthews.

  “You’ll get paid! Now do like I told you and let’s get the hell away before Hicks catches us. We’re almost done.”

  “You were gonna cheat me, Cooper. And after I stuck by you through thick and thin! You told me she only paid you ten dollars. Not twenty, like she just said! It’s been hard work drivin’ that wagon all over this field in the dark, not to mention spreadin’ this stuff over a plot this size. The sacks weight fifty pounds apiece! I want my fair share of the take.”

  Sacks, Jeff puzzled, fury racing through his veins.

  “Goddamn it, Floyd,
I’m sick of your whinin’!”

  “Well, you won’t have to listen to me anymore! I’ve had a bellyful of you.” One of the pair—Floyd, Jeff thought—broke away and ran to the wagon.

  Jeff stepped forward. “Just stop right there, Floyd!”

  The man gaped at Jeff. “Talk to Cooper. This was all his idea!” Throwing a pick into the wagon bed, he pulled himself up to the seat and unwrapped the reins. He flapped them on the horse’s back so suddenly the animal whinnied in surprise and took off running across the field, narrowly missing Cooper in the bargain. Floyd yelled, slapped the reins on the horse’s back again, and then jerked hard to the left to steer the conveyance toward the road. The wagon squeaked and rattled as it bumped over the plowed earth.

  Cooper stood motionless, and then flung his hat down and stomped it. “Goddamn it all to hell! Just wait’ll I get my hands on you again, you simple-minded bastard! Your own mama won’t recognize you,” he yelled after the wagon.

  “It won’t be anything compared to what you’ll look like when I’m finished putting my hands on you, Matthews.” Jeff approached Cooper, filled with so much rage that he’d forced himself to leave the axe behind in the blackberries. In his state of mind, it seemed the smart thing to do.

  Cooper whirled around and faced Jeff. “Hicks! You ain’t the sheriff no more. You can’t arrest me for trespassin’.”

  “Arrest you!” Jeff’s laugh was grim. “I’m not interested in anything as formal as all that. I just want to beat the shit out of you. Who the hell do you think you are, you piss-ant, white-livered son of a bitch? You sneaked out here in the dead of night and salted this field!”

  “You hold on there with your name-callin’, Hicks. Miss O-livia Ford paid us twenty dollars to do just that. If you don’t believe me, you can ask her yourself.”

  “She never sets foot off this property. I’m supposed to believe she went searching for you two?”

  “I don’t give a damn what you believe. I’ll tell you something else—” Cooper said, chortling—“she paid us to hang that spook in the barn too. She said she was playin’ a joke, and by God, I guess it was a good one! Oh, damn, but I wish I coulda been here to see your faces!” He laughed outright.