Shelter from the Storm

by Patricia Rice

  Cash chuckled low in his throat and caught her hat, setting it carelessly on the horn of her saddle. He touched her cheek, then brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead. The touch was gentle, warm, and thoroughly exhilarating.

  “We’re two of a kind, I fear. You were always a little hoyden, no matter how hard you tried to conceal it. And I don’t believe I ever worked very hard to hide my rather rebellious nature.”

  “‘Sullen’ is more like it. You looked as if you’d bite the hand off anyone who approached you. I think there were times when you actually snarled. I loved it when you did that. It was something I always wanted to do.”

  Cash threw back his head and laughed. The sound was not so much joyous as accepting, acknowledging the truth of her words. Taking the reins, he led the horses to the side of the barn and tied them to a post. He slammed closed the sagging door, but without a latch to hold it, it merely leaned inward, keeping out the worst of the storm.

  He walked back and held out his hand. “I’ll teach you how to snarl, if you like. I suspect you would make a very good student.”

  She could take his hand and smile and say something innocent, and they would spend the afternoon sitting on that moldering haystack reminiscing. Or she could walk into his arms and learn what it was like to be a woman. It didn’t take a push from the devil to do the latter. She did it with eyes open, feeling Cash’s arms slide around her as smoothly as if they did this every day.

  “You don’t need to teach me to be wicked, Cash. I already am.”

  “The gambler’s daughter, come home to roost? Pardon me if I find that hard to believe. You’re every inch the lady, Laura, and always were. Although, admittedly, there aren’t very many inches.” Cash grinned down at her in the darkness just long enough to feel her ire rise before bending to do what they had come here for. He didn’t know how far she would go, but he was more than willing to find out.

  She kissed like a virgin, and if he thought about it, he’d venture to guess that she hadn’t been married long before the war claimed her husband. But he didn’t want to think about it. That would entail imagining a husband who didn’t kiss her often, and from there the image would deteriorate. So he pulled her closer and proceeded to teach her what she should have known all along.

  He was right. She was a good student. Too good. As her lips parted, inviting him with a sweetness that he hadn’t known in a long time, if ever, Cash shuddered in relief and gathered her closer.

  He would never admit how much he needed this gentle touch, how the hairs on the back of his neck rose in anticipation as tender hands stroked him there. Even through the thickness of her riding jacket, Cash could feel Laura’s soft breasts crushed against him, and there was a heaviness in his loins that could be satisfied in only one way. He had never imagined a homecoming like this, but he was eager to pretend that someone welcomed him, someone as warm and soft and loving as this woman.

  The seductive invasion of Cash’s tongue took Laura by surprise, but when she learned to accept this intimacy, she responded to the sensation with delight. She didn’t even have to think about what was happening. Cash made it so very easy that she knew only the thundering sensations of his kiss combining with the fury of the storm—until his hand slid inside the newly unbuttoned flaps of her coat, and shock struck her like lightning.

  “Do I go too fast, Laura?” he whispered against her ear. “I can dally as long as you like, but I thought you would want it like this. Am I wrong?”

  He caressed her through the thin linen of her shirt, then increased the pressure, until the point of her breast rose in aching response. Laura shivered as he moved to the fastenings of her shirt, but his kiss merely traced her cheek, leaving her the freedom to say yes or no.

  “Don’t stop,” she managed to say, before his hand found what he sought, and she arched into the warmth of his flesh touching hers.

  Never had she known what pleasure could be gained from so mundane a source as her body. For twenty-one years she had merely cursed her lack of height and grace and her smallness of form, and covered herself with the whims of fashion or fortune. A body was to feed and bathe and to carry her where she wished to go.

  But now Cash was teaching her a different use. Laura felt alive as she had never been before. She could sense the blood rushing through her veins, feel heat rising and moisture forming where she had never known it. And all because a man had touched her where she had never been touched before.

  “Let’s see if we can’t make ourselves more comfortable.” Cash stole another kiss and caressed her breast before glancing up to survey his surroundings. It seemed a shame to take her in a seedy barn, but he was too starved to wait for better circumstances. Besides, the thunder and rain overhead and the musty darkness below appealed to some base urge, and he suspected she felt the same. They were much too alike, even in their differences.

  Cash removed the saddles and blankets from their horses and arranged the thick wool on top of the remains of a haystack. Laura hesitated, and he was aware that she had never done anything like this before. She was no bold wanton to toss and have done with. When he was satisfied with his arrangements, Cash offered her one last reprieve.

  “You know what I am, Laura. I don’t want to do anything that will lose you as my friend, but that’s all I will ever be. I can’t even promise to be here on the morrow.” He waited for the denial to reach her face, waited for the recognition of the degradation any liaison with him would ensure, but all he could see was the luminous green pools of her eyes. Perhaps he was blind drunk, but he couldn’t see anything but her fair hand reaching for his face, a hand divested of the glove she had worn earlier,

  “I think that’s why I’m here, Cash. But I don’t want to think about it. Pretend I am a stranger. Pretend I am Sallie, if you must. But just this once, I need someone to hold me, to help me be strong.”

  Her words were like faint blows to his gut. Cash thought they bruised her more than they did him. He grasped her jacket lapels and began to pull the tight garment from her shoulders. “I don’t know what kind of husband you had, Laura, but I don’t think I would like him. You don’t need to be Sallie. You’re a beautiful woman on your own.”

  Even as he said it, he envisioned the vibrant golden goddess that was her cousin in his arms, but he thrust the image away. Laura was small and dark and quiet, all that her cousin was not, but no man could say she wasn’t lovely. He laid her jacket across the top of the blankets, then reached for the pins in her hair.

  Laura let him remove the pins and tuck them safely in his pocket. Her hair tumbled in a cascade over her shoulders, and she was grateful for the darkness which concealed its unruliness. He touched her hair reverently, then parted it to find the nape of her neck and draw her forward.

  “Don’t believe me, then, Miss Pig-head. You’ll see soon enough.”

  His words were nearly lost as their lips met, and Laura thought they were more for himself than for her, but she felt the same thrill as if they had they been polite flattery. This was Cash, and she knew what she was doing. Her arms encircled his neck.

  A few minutes later she was no longer certain that she knew what she was doing. She was lying atop a bed of smelly hay with a man’s heavy weight covering her, and her head was spinning with the heat of his kisses. She felt as if she were on fire and the blaze was rising faster than she could control. When Cash peeled back her shirt and unlaced her corset and chemise, the fire heightened.

  She writhed with the ecstasy of it. It was sheer madness, but she couldn’t help herself. Cash’s eager praises were like songs in her ear, and his hand melted her flesh into wanton waves of sensation. She wanted to touch him as he did her, but he was fully dressed, and she didn’t know how to correct that situation. She ran her hands through Cash’s heavy hair, flattened them against his, and clung to his shoulders when his lips traced a path over the aching mounds of her breasts.

  Had she known what it would be like, she would never have dared this, but knowin
g now, Laura could not stop. She cried out as Cash’s tongue sent spiraling flames of pleasure from her breasts to her center. She was hazily aware of the heaviness where his hips pressed against hers, and the throbbing there was as frightening as it was exciting. But Cash didn’t give her time to think about it, just as she had asked.

  From that day forward she would never forget the heavy wet scent of the moisture-laden air as the hooks and buttons of her riding skirt came undone beneath Cash’s skillful fingers. The heavy lengths of wool slid from her hips with the cumbersome folds of petticoat, and the cool drafts from the storm caressed her skin. As she realized he was uncovering her very plain and unadorned drawers, Laura knew a moment’s panic and embarrassment, but Cash’s attention seemed focused on her face as he spread kisses like warm honey across her skin, and she gave herself up to this enchantment.

  She managed to loosen his cravat and stroke the hard tendons of his neck through a barrage of thunder, and Cash’s warm encouragement convinced her to attempt the fastenings of his shirt. She no longer noticed the chill and damp of the weather for the steam they generated between them. She wanted to touch his skin, feel his chest against her breast, and know all of him at once.

  But the tides of passion moved faster than Laura’s inexperienced fingers. Just as she succeeded in uncovering a small fraction of the mysterious dark curls on his chest, Cash’s fingers dipped below her waist to the open seam of her drawers, and Laura cried out with the exquisite torment of this forbidden touch.

  The sudden explosion of rain and hail against the barn roof warned that the time to turn back had ended. Cash’s gentle kisses became more urgent, demanding, and Laura raced to keep up with them. With her chemise hem hiked up above her waist and the bodice open to his questing fingers, she was nearly naked, but that was no longer enough. Heated lips suckled at her uncovered breasts and strong fingers took inconceivable liberties until the rush of pleasure became almost a panic for something she didn’t know how to achieve. Laura caught her fingers in Cash’s hair and pleaded wordlessly for reprieve, and his deep groan of desire and need struck new heights of urgency.

  His mouth returned to plunder hers, and Laura sighed in relief at this familiar pleasure. She was aware of his hand between them, rearranging his own clothes, and she let him take over, knowing he would help her find the meaning of these pressures. She used her tongue as he did his, and was rewarded with another moan of pleasure and the crushing of Cash’s body against her as he pulled her closer.

  The abrupt awareness of the hard shaft between her thighs nearly shocked and terrified her from the pinnacles of desire. Never had she tried to imagine the differences between men and women, nor the means by which they came together in the marriage bed. To suddenly have that recognition thrust on her created an insidious fear. This was what Jonathan would do to her when they were married.

  There was scarcely time for the fear to take root. Strong fingers once more touched her intimately, and this time Laura didn’t back away, but rose instinctively to meet the secret they offered. She didn’t know where to turn or how to escape the fiery urges rendering her helpless. She felt a complete loss of self as Cash parted her legs and rose above her. Instinctively she knew what was coming, and in a last desperate attempt at self-preservation, she opened her eyes to plead for a halt, only to fall beneath the intensity of the dark look of need in Cash’s eyes.

  The pain when he entered her was brief, but sufficient to make her momentarily stiffen and gasp deeply of the storm-laden air. Cash tore his mouth away and cursed as he glared down at her pale face against the blankets, but the damage was done and not to be repaired. Shaking his head to clear it of questions or any thought at all, he thrust more carefully until he was completely sheathed in the narrow entrance to her body.

  He had to concentrate on her pleasure to rid himself of his dismay. She waited pliantly beneath him, eager for the rest of his lesson. Lesson! Damn, but he felt like a cradle-robber. Yet he couldn’t stop the powerful urges of his body as her hips moved tentatively beneath him. He should have taken all her clothes off, taught her the full sweetness of her body, but it was too late for that now. He had taken her like a stag in rut, thinking her in the same state of need as he. How was he to know she was as innocent as the day she was born?

  Other than her lack of practiced tactics, he would not know it now. She responded with passion, took his thrusts with a growing eagerness that nearly destroyed his control. His dismay gave way to the challenge of teaching her what it meant to be a woman, and Cash applied all that he had learned the hard way over the years to this single lesson.

  And she almost ended up teaching him anew what this joining between man and woman could be. It wasn’t just the pleasure and relief of his body, but something deeper, more primeval and instinctive, just beyond the boundaries of conscious thought. Cash reached to grasp it, groping in the dark as Laura took him and welcomed him and did a dance of rapture beneath him as he joined her again and again. And then the knowledge was beyond his grasp as his body gave in to her beckoning and exploded with a rapture of his own, leaving nothing to thought but pounding waves of sensation in the electrified air.

  They dozed briefly, completely satiated and drained of consciousness. The thunder drifted away, and the rain became a gentle patter on the wooden roof. The breeze brought a cleaner, sweeter scent as the heavy humidity dissipated and evening approached. Only the unmistakable rustlings somewhere in the hay beneath them gradually stirred them back to reality.

  Cash woke first, lifting his heavy weight from her slenderness and gazing into Laura’s flushed and peaceful face with genuine curiosity. And then his expression hardened, and he disentangled himself, waking her more fully.

  Laura knew where she was. She had heard the rustlings and knew that a haystack was no place to be. But the heavy warmth of the man holding her had taken precedence, and the security of his arms had relaxed her usual caution. When he abruptly moved away, she woke with a jerk and reached to cover her unforgivable nakedness in the cool, dusky air. She had no fear of the mice in the haystack, but she felt unexpectedly vulnerable beneath Cash’s deliberate perusal.

  “Why do I get the feeling that I’ve just been used?” he asked, with only a hint of his usual sarcasm.

  Laura stared at him blankly, then flushed, pulling her chemise to rights and tying it with trembling fingers. Cash was still almost completely dressed, with only his open shirt and the dark shadow of curls beneath giving him a slight aura of unrespectability. She was the one who appeared wanton, and she hastened to correct that situation as she fumbled for a reply.

  “I thought the feeling was mutual,” she answered defensively.

  “And so it would have been, had you been the experienced widow I expected.” While she was otherwise occupied, Cash adjusted his trousers and fastened them. He couldn’t help feeling a slight revulsion at himself for taking her like some whore he didn’t have time to please. “I think you owe me some explanation. Why did you lie about being married?”

  Laura heard the harshness in his voice and knew its cause. They had always been open and honest with each other, and she had broken that bond. That was the price they had to pay for growing up, she supposed. They didn’t know each other well enough to be friends. They were scarcely more than casual acquaintances, after all. Which made what she had done even more reprehensible.

  Laura turned her back on him as she struggled with her corset. Cash caught her shoulder and took the laces from her hands, yanking them tight until she nearly gasped, before he relented and tied them off. The intimacy of the gesture left her even more unsure of herself. He now had a hold over her that no other man possessed. Why had she been so certain earlier that she could trust Cash not to take this any further?

  She lifted her gaze shyly to meet his forbidding stare. An angry tic pulled at the muscle above his cheekbone, and she wondered irrelevantly if there might not be Indian blood in him. His dark face had the angular lines of the Cherokee, but thi
s was scarcely the time or place to question him about his origins. That was something she should have considered before she took him to her bed, instead of seeing him as the hero of her childhood.

  “You’re right, I do owe you an explanation, but I’m not certain how to give it.” Resignation laced her voice as she grubbed around in the dark for her skirt and petticoat. She was oddly grateful that he couldn’t see the darn holes in the frail cotton. The petticoat had been pretty enough when Sallie first handed it down to her, but that had been nearly ten years before. It had seemed senseless to replace the old-fashioned petticoat when crinolines were all the style; she couldn’t afford the expensive cages even if she had wanted one. She should be grateful she hadn’t grown in stature, so that the material still covered her to the ankles.

  The sated feeling of earlier had passed, and Cash felt rubbed raw and aching as he turned away while she completed dressing. He wrapped his hand around a post and stared at the barn door while he listened to the rustle and whisper of her garments.

  Even the smallest and most defenseless of the Kincaids had succeeded in puncturing his rather faulty armor. He clenched his teeth and tried not to remember how sweet and heady had been the pleasure of their joining. Any thoughts he might once have allowed of taking a Kincaid mistress were definitely quenched. There were enough men out there ready to plant a knife in his back. He didn’t need a woman to do the same.

  “Doc said you ran away to get married. I take it that the marriage never came about.” Unable to endure her continuing silence, Cash took the initiative.

  He heard the bitterness in her laugh and jerked reflexively. He didn’t want to know her troubles. He wanted to continue imagining her as the cosseted pet of wealthy society.

  “He lost all interest when he learned I was only a dependent relative with no wealth of my own. He’d had visions of drinking bourbon all day while being waited on hand and foot by me and our slaves, then pleasuring himself all night—without me but with our imaginary slaves, I suspect. Even the maids were preferable to me, it seems. I suppose I am lucky that I am not as pretty as Sallie, or I wouldn’t have had to do what I did today. I am certain he was capable of rape if I had been at all desirable.”