by Pat Tracy
The woman was stronger than she looked, Logan discovered as she launched herself at him. He felt the towel drop to the floor and swore.
At that perilous juncture, he heard the door to his suite open again. With his luck, he expected to see Windham standing in the doorway with a drawn gun.
It was Victoria, though, not the enraged colonel, who stood before him.
Logan swore again, crudely and succinctly. There wasn’t a woman alive who would believe he was an innocent victim of Athena Windham’s unwelcome advances. For the first time in years, he’d held happiness in his hands; now it was about to be snatched from him.
He opened his mouth to defend himself. Dammit, none of this was his fault, and no matter what it took, he was going to convince Victoria of that.
“Mrs. Windham, you really must leave Logan alone. He’s a married man now, and he belongs to me. I have no intention of sharing him with anyone else.”
Dumbfounded by Victoria’s calm manner, Logan freed himself from Athena’s grip. Realizing he was buck naked, he plucked the towel from the floor and wrapped it around his waist.
Athena Windham also exhibited an amazing degree of composure, Logan thought as the woman methodically rebuttoned her dress. “I’m very disappointed in you, Miss Amory.”
“It’s Mrs. Youngblood.” But curiosity obviously got the better of her. “Why are you disappointed in me?”
“You’ve married ‘Passion’s Pirate’!”
Logan’s skin burned at the offensive title. He’d hoped Victoria would never hear it.
“And that’s really not fair,” Athena continued, drifting toward the doorway before pausing. “Men like Logan Youngblood aren’t meant to be ordinary husbands,” she said chidingly. “They’re supposed to run free, like wild stallions who know no master. They’re a dream all women share in the darkest hours before dawn. And once in a lifetime, if a woman is fortunate, she has a chance for him to make love to her.”
Athena Windham shut the door quietly behind her.
“Victoria, you’ve got to let me explain.”
“I would very much like to hear your explanation.”
“That woman came into my room without an invitation! She…she threw herself at me.”
“I see.”
“And I was naked because I’d just taken a bath.”
“That makes sense.”
“Then you believe me?”
“Absolutely.”
Logan’s eyes narrowed. From the first moment he heard Victoria’s voice, when he was locked in the stockade, it had been one pitched battle after another between them.
It was inconceivable that she would so easily accept his flimsy explanation of why she’d caught him in his bedchamber, stark naked, with a half-dressed woman in his arms.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you believe me?” Logan held his breath. Would she tell him it was because she loved and trusted him? Or was the real truth that she didn’t care that deeply about him and, therefore, was indifferent to whatever he did.
“I believe you because the very same thing happened to me.”
“What?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly the same. My disaster was hardly on the scale of ‘Passion’s Pirate’ being seduced by Athena, the Greek goddess of warfare.”
“Damn it, Victoria. I never wanted you to hear that name!”
“‘Passion’s Pirate’?”
“For your own protection, honey, never say it within my hearing again.”
A look of bone-melting softness filled her eyes. “Even before Constance Pritchert told me of it, I’d begun to think of you as my very own personal pirate.”
Logan found redeeming merit in the formerly offensive title. Anything that pleased his new wife was fine with him.
“You were telling me about a compromising scene from your past,” he prompted, moving toward her. It occurred to him that his sweet rescuer had on too many layers of
clothing. He needed to do something about that.
“Now that I reflect upon it, there are a couple of similarities between my experience and yours. I was in my bedchamber, and I was wearing only my chemise and drawers. And when Mother and her friends entered my room in response to Mr. Threadgill’s cries for help, he was minus his britches.”
Logan stopped in his tracks. From Victoria’s amused features, he sensed the incident had not been what it appeared—a young woman and her lover being caught in an
illicit tryst. Still, he was enraged that a man had evidently tried to take advantage of her.
“You better tell me exactly what happened.”
“It was all a misunderstanding. Mr. Horace Threadgill had climbed the trellis outside my chamber, bearing a rose for my sister. It was afternoon, and I’m certain he merely intended to leave it on her pillow as a token of his esteem.”
“He sounds like a fool.”
“An infatuated fool,” Victoria said, in a wistful tone that Logan found strangely irritating. “He entered my room by mistake. As I said, it was a simple misunderstanding.”
“And he lost his pants because…”
“I removed them.”
Logan squeezed Victoria’s shoulders. “Stop torturing me, honey. Tell me what happened.”
She sighed, allowing him to draw her close. With her cheek resting against his chest, her words drifted up to him. “There was this really savage bee. It had been hiding inside the rose, waiting for an opportunity to attack an innocent person. Well, it proceeded to choose poor Horace Threadgill as its target by flying up his pant leg and assaulting him.”
“Don’t tell me,” Logan said, his shoulders shaking. “You tried to help by removing the man’s trousers so you could get to the bee.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
He stared down at the auburn crown of her hair and smiled. “Never, honey. Never.”
Some of Logan’s light-heartedness faded as he recalled a scene from his past, when he’d walked into his brother’s room and discovered Robeena. That situation had been hauntingly similar to the one Victoria had interrupted with Athena Windham.
The subtle doubts he’d experienced lately as to what he’d really seen that hideous night intensified. As if sensing his disquiet, Victoria tugged herself from his embrace and regarded him solemnly.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’m remembering an episode from my past, one regarding my older brother and my fiancée.”
Her interested expression encouraged him to continue. “I caught them together, very much as you discovered me with Athena.”
“That must have hurt you,” she said, her tone filled with compassion. “Was your brother able to explain her presence in his room?”
“She was in his bed. I didn’t stay for explanations.”
“And now you’re beginning to wonder if you should have?” she asked with uncanny intuitiveness.
“Yeah, honey. That’s exactly what I’m wondering.”
“This woman, your fiancée…was she the one you abandoned at the altar?”
Logan flinched. “Good Lord, how on earth did you find out about that?”
“Constance Pritchert enlightened me.”
“Damn. I know she’s Martin’s wife and he loves her to distraction, but she’s a real busybody.”
“She was just warning me about your reckless reputation with women,” Victoria observed charitably. “She didn’t know it was too late for any warnings.”
A cold place in Logan’s heart began to thaw. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to wrap his hand around the back of Victoria’s neck and pull her to him for a hot kiss.
Her soft palms stroked his chest. He knew he was moments away from disgracing himself with his new bride if he didn’t gain control of the heat she stirred within him. Her sweet tongue agilely caressed the inside of his mouth. He groaned and deepened the already burning kiss.
When he lifted his mouth from hers, his heart was pounding. He
was already fully aroused and aching to be inside her. With a frustrating groan, he shoved her gently from him.
Her green eyes were wide with feminine yearning and confusion. “What’s wrong? Why did you stop?”
“Honey, I’m going to lock the damned door before anyone else comes charging into this suite.”
A look of startled comprehension flashed across her features. His explanation surprised a giggle from her and, as if embarrassed, she put her hand over her mouth.
In that moment, seeing her in her prim and proper plaid jacket with the double rows of gray braiding at her cuffs and along the hem, her face flushed, her eyes huge and her hand trembling, Logan Youngblood knew he’d fallen hopelessly and irrevocably in love.
Before him was the woman who had not only saved his life twice—once at the stockade and this afternoon with her wily scheming—but had also saved him from the haunting loneliness that had infiltrated his soul without his even realizing it.
“I love you, Victoria Amory Youngblood.”
A look of surprise crossed her features. Logan cursed his timing. He should have confessed his love the afternoon at the hot pools, when he seduced her.
Her nimble fingers went to her jacket. She wasted no time in discarding it. “And I love you, too, my fierce pirate.”
It amazed him that he could be touched by her use of the name he loathed.
“Do you know how much power you hold over me?” he asked in bemusement.
She shook her head. “How can you say I have any power, when you make me feel as if I’m a fragile leaf caught in a wild windstorm?”
Her hands went to the front of her blouse, and she freed the buttons one by one. Whereas the identical act performed by Windham’s wife had left him cold, Victoria’s actions caused a raging conflagration to sweep through him.
“Oh, honey, the storm is inside me, and it’s about to break.”
He couldn’t wait for her to remove her clothes. Instead, he strode forward and captured her in his arms. She squeaked delightfully as he carried her to his bed. In moments, he had her where he wanted her, completely, softly, deliciously nude, and writhing helplessly beneath his intimate caresses.
His fingers sought and found the sleek, wet channel that had been fashioned just for him. Her nails dug into his shoulders. He kissed her again and again. He couldn’t get enough of her, couldn’t get enough of feeling her smooth, silky skin brushing against him. Her nipples were pretty pink pebbles, and he savored their taste and texture as if he were a man who’d gone too long without sustenance.
She whimpered. “Oh, Logan, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
Her soft, womanly thighs parted. He wanted to wait, to draw her desire and his to their fullest, sharpest limits, but he couldn’t. This woman owned him—heart, body and soul. There was no way he could delay for even a heartbeat returning to the tight, wet heat that had been seared into his memory.
When he entered her, he did so in one smooth stroke. She cried out his name again. It was impossible to think. This woman, his woman, had taken him to a reckless place of mindless ecstasy. He could only surrender to the primitive need within him to drive himself and her to the outer limits of their control.
He heard her frantic cry as she hovered on the brink of fulfillment, inhaled the smell of her unique feminine scent, felt the beginning tremors of her ultimate release. Sheathed completely within her, he experienced his own harshly demanding ascent to paradise.
He shouted her name and his love in one urgent, mangled breath.
Almost immediately, Logan regretted the nearly savage taking of his bride. He withdrew from her perspirationslickened body with the guilty knowledge that he’d rutted with his wife in a carnal manner he’d never used with another woman. Hell, he thought grimly, he’d shown more consideration for the females he paid for than he had toward Victoria.
With a pang of remorse, he studied his companion’s achingly fragile, beautifully formed body. He wanted to reach out to her, to draw her to him, but he was afraid of her reaction. Her dark red lashes rested against her pale cheeks, and her arms lay weakly at her sides. Her thighs were still parted, and damned if he didn’t feel another rush of hot desire. The little red nest of curls held his unwavering regard. He wanted nothing more than to lean forward and use his mouth and his tongue to bring her to another shattering climax.
Lord, he was hopeless.
“You’re not planning on going anywhere, are you?”
Her drowsy voice wafted over him like a warm morning breeze.
“I hadn’t planned on it,” he said neutrally, waiting for the outburst that was sure to come.
“That’s good, because you know I really didn’t like it the first time you made love to me, and—”
“Honey,” he interjected, wanting desperately to forestall her entirely justified complaints. “I don’t know what came over me, but I promise the next time will be different.”
“The next time?” she asked in that same lazy voice.
Lord, she wasn’t going to tell him that he’d so disgusted her that she wasn’t going to give him another chance to prove he could be a considerate lover. Logan’s jaw clenched in determination. Just because they’d gotten off to a rocky start, that didn’t mean he intended to be shut out of his wife’s bed.
“There definitely is going to be a next time,” he said harshly.
She opened her eyes and regarded him with obvious bewilderment. “But, that’s just the point. I don’t want this time to be over yet. I want you to come back into my arms. I want us to kiss some more. I want to…touch you all over, and I want you to…”
“Yes?” he asked, his lungs fairly bursting and his skin strung hot and fight across his rapidly hardening body.
“I want you to touch me. Everywhere.”
A feral joy erupted in Logan. Something very basic and very male inside him was pleased to know he’d satisfied his woman and she wanted more of him.
“I want to kiss you all over,” he told her huskily.
Her legs shifted against the bed coverings. “You do?”
He nodded. “Your skin is such a beautiful golden color. I want to taste every bit of it.”
A lovely pink blush spread to the tips of her breasts and climbed up her throat. “I know you’re my husband, but it’s very.unsettling when you look at me like that and say such things to me.”
He ran a fingertip across the satiny flesh that beckoned.
“I like unsettling you, Victoria.”
“And you should know,” she continued, in a breathless voice that bit into the tattered fragments of the control he’d barely managed to resurrect, “that my skin isn’t truly golden. If the light were better, you would see I’m covered in freckles!”
Her definitely unhappy wail made Logan smile. “And I saw every one of them when we made love at the hot pools.”
“I’ve heard that lemon juice can bleach them, but I haven’t tried it.”
He leaned forward and planted a kiss on her stomach.
“Logan!”
“Yes, sweet?” He began to use his hands with sensual intent, and his lips, too.
“Oh!”
“Do you like that?” He breathed the question against her passion-scented curls. “I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time.”
“Oh, my goodness!”
And, for the next little while, Logan Youngblood found himself serenaded by his lovely bride’s lilting cries.
He felt as if he truly had captured a little red bird and taught her to sing her own special song just for him. He knew his years of feeling like an outcast were over. She’d freed him from a prison darker than men could build. She’d taught his heart to take flight. And together, with Madison, they would live in the sunlight of love and happiness.
Logan’s future hung before him like a glimmering, newly minted gold coin. Even the idea of his healing his estrangement with his brother no longer seemed impossible.
“Logan…”
“You’re going to have to build us a house, you know.”
He cupped her bottom and squeezed lightly. “Am I?”
Her soft moan made his heart expand.
“A hotel, even one as nice as this one, is no place to raise Madison.”
“I suppose I’ll have to build a mansion to hold all those books of yours.”
Victoria’s cheek rested against his chest, and when she spoke he felt the whisper of her breath upon his skin. “It doesn’t have to be a mansion. I want a home to hold our love, a home where Madison can grow up surrounded by that love. A home where, in time, our own children can be nurtured and cherished.”
Logan closed his eyes, embarrassed by the thickness in his throat that his wife’s words caused. “There will be room for your books, too, honey. I’ll build you a library big enough to hold every single volume you carted here, plus space for a thousand more. I can afford the best for us.”
It pleased him that he spoke the truth; his wife would lack no material luxury.
She twisted from his side and leaned over him, regarding him with an earnest intensity that made his heart tremble. “Darling, I would be content to live in a tent with you, if that was all you had to offer.”
“When you thought I was a drifter on the wrong side of the law, you sent me packing,” he pointed out. “I want to make sure you understand I have the means to take care of you. For a lifetime.”
He’d always wondered if a part of the reason Robeena turned to Burke had been that he was the older and more established Youngblood brother.
She pressed a kiss to his lips, then raised her head. “You’ll never know how much I regretted doing that.”
“Did you?”
She nodded. “I changed my mind, but there was no way for me to find you.” The sheen of unshed tears touched her green eyes. “I knew I’d made the worst mistake of my life when I let you go, but I didn’t know how to fix it. I thought I’d lost you forever.”
A tear splashed on his chest. Logan hugged her to him. “Hush, darling, don’t cry.”
“I can’t help myself,” Victoria whispered thickly, thinking how close she’d come to never seeing Logan again. “I was such a self-righteous prig where you were concerned.”