He grabbed her hand, not letting her get too far away from him. “I’ve tried to drive you away,” he agreed, his voice a rasp. “But I failed. My efforts to get you to leave Paradise weren’t any more successful than my attempts to drive you out of my thoughts. I can’t stop thinking about you, Ellie. What I told you this afternoon was the God’s honest truth. I’ve missed you.”
Feeling some thin shell of control begin to crack, she tugged on her hand; Roy wouldn’t let go. “Please,” she whispered as he took a step closer.
“Please what?” he asked.
She shook her head frantically, feeling like a trapped rabbit. But the only thing truly ensnaring her was her own desire for the man in front of her. Even when he’d shown her nothing but righteous anger and contempt, she’d never stopped wanting Roy. What chance did she have against him now that he was confessing his own weakness for her?
The answer was clear. No chance. No chance at all.
He pulled her into his arms with such ease that her feet might have been gliding on ice. Then he tilted her chin up with his thumb. “I’ve wanted to do this for weeks now,” he whispered as his mouth descended on hers.
She expected the kiss to be violent and swift and eager, like the urgent impulses swirling inside her. Instead, his lips coaxed hers tenderly into a response. Her eyes closed, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, unable to mask the flow of desire that flooded through her. Unable to stop herself from showing how much she wanted to hold him close to her, to taste his lips one more time.
She was helpless before temptation, incapable of resisting his kiss. He held her fast, but not nearly as fast as she clung to him. His tongue darted along her lips, teasing her until she allowed him full access. When his tongue entered her mouth, sliding with hers in a mating ritual, she was afraid her feet wouldn’t hold her. She felt quivery and loose, as if all her tightly held control had finally cracked and shattered into a million pieces like a sheet of fragile glass.
Roy swept her unwieldy body into his arms as if she were featherlight. As he strode through the darkness, Ellie buried her head against his chest and didn’t question where he was taking her. She knew. She knew, and she was past caring about whether it was wrong or right, or if her pride should forbid Roy from going one step further. Pride was a distant intangible idea at the moment, while Roy’s arms holding her were astonishingly, powerfully real, as were his passion-darkened eyes and the familiar heat brewing inside her.
When he set her down, she knew without opening her eyes where they were. She’d dreamed of the little cot often enough to recognize the sweet smell of hay, the animal-sweat odor of the horses and Roy’s male scent the way she would recognize old friends.
He kissed her again, and though she lost herself in the warmth of his lips, lips that affected her like sweet, strong wine, she was also acutely aware of buttons being undone down her back. His fingers worked methodically, vigorously, and she pulled closer to him to make his job easier. When finally that task was finished, he eased the dress off her shoulders and it spilled to the floor in a puddle of wool. With a whisper of a waistband being untied, her cotton petticoat joined it. Standing now in only a chemise and her undergarments, she felt the cold air chill her, and Roy scooped up a blanket, pulling it over her as he eased her onto the cot. It felt so good to recline, even if she was anything but tired now.
Roy shed his own clothes, all of them, and lay down next to her. Ellie was sure she was blushing down to her toes, and yet she couldn’t help staring at the magnificence of him, the sheer power in his muscled body. Though she had been intimate with a man before, she had never viewed one completely unclothed.
Her wide-open eyes swept up the rest of Roy, taking in snatches of bare flesh that tantalized and aroused her; his broad shoulders, the strong hand resting on her hip, his intent, hungry gaze that was like kindling to her desire. She twisted, nestling closer to him, amazed by the way their bodies fit together even in her condition.
He pushed her chemise back and fluttered a hand over one of her full breasts, causing a moan of need to escape her parted lips.
Roy nuzzled her ear. “I’ll be careful,” he whispered to her.
But rather than soothing her, his words, coupled with the firm pressure of his manhood against her and her recent glimpse at its impressive dimensions, begged questions she feared to ask. How careful could they be? How did this work?
Suddenly she was as unschooled and anxious as if she had never known a man before, and, in a way, she realized she hadn’t. Not intimately. No one had ever kissed her in the shockingly sensual way Roy now went about kissing her, tending to not just her mouth but seemingly every inch of her. Parts of her that she thought pedestrian and lifeless stirred shocking feelings as his lips lavished attention on them. Her eyelids, her nose, the lobe of her ear. She gritted her teeth against sensations he could send racing through her with the merest brush of his lips.
But when his lips moved to her breast, his tongue testing and then teasing her soft flesh into a tight bud, she gave up fighting the whirlwind galloping through her. It was too much for her. All she could do was be swept along, moving against him instinctively, reaching out brazenly to touch that part of him that moments ago had seemed so daunting. Under her hand, however, its hardness seemed more supple, almost velvety. She explored then caressed him, causing a groan almost like pain to issue from his lips.
It took her a moment to realize his response was one of pleasure.
His reaction sparked a thrilling realization. She wasn’t just an object, a receptacle for his desire, but a partner fully capable of gratifying him in other ways, too.
A few more minutes of her ministrations, however, seemed to put him on edge. Roy grabbed her hand, and when her eyes looked up his face was tense, his jaw clenched.
Flustered, she blushed. “Don’t you like…?”
“Yes,” he gritted out quickly. “Too much.”
He pulled her to him again and kissed her, hiking her chemise up to her waist and massaging her through her pantalets as he had once before. Then, to her surprise, he tugged her remaining clothes off so that she was fully exposed before him. Despite the cold, every bare inch of her felt red-hot under his sultry gaze.
His eyes were filled with awe. “You’re beautiful.”
She felt anything but, and she looked down self-consciously at her distended middle, which he cradled gently with his hand.
“Beautiful,” he repeated emphatically as he bent down to kiss her.
His voice was so raw, the embrace he pulled her into so tender, that she felt a fierce ache build in her for him. She moved against him suggestively, wantonly as his kiss deepened and his hands roamed her body.
He rolled so that he was poised against the most intimate part of her. She moved against him, testing, tensing for the intense pain she remembered was imminent. But when he entered her there was only the delicious friction of sensitive flesh. There was only Roy gently moving against her, tentatively at first, then with swifter strokes that fueled the fiery tempest inside her. The inferno licked and crackled at her just as the flames of Ed’s house had licked the night-dark sky.
All at once she realized she was losing herself as she had before under Roy’s touch, and she gave into the abandon joyfully and eagerly. The dark world around them turned bright with color as fireworks seemed to explode within her. Moments later, Roy shuddered over her, his entire body tensed, and then collapsed next to her with his arm draped over her shoulder.
“Mmm, Ellie…” He groaned and nuzzled his head against her.
Ellie’s heart rushed into her breast, and for a moment she was so ecstatic she could hardly think. So this was what fired the imaginations of poets and novelists! This was the impulse that spurred musicians to ecstatic bursts of melody and the artist to spread passionate colors on canvas. After Percy, she’d been skeptical about the physical glories of love. But now poems and rhapsodies seemed to flow through her, and all her thoughts had the ringing br
illiance of arias. This was love in its purest, sweetest manifestation.
And, amazingly, as her imagination thrilled to operatic arias and Keats and Shelley galloped through her veins, something else managed to break through her consciousness, too.
A snore.
She turned. Roy was asleep—so fast asleep that his breath came out in deep heaving snorts.
She felt her brow furrow as the cold night air settled around her, raising gooseflesh. What should she do now? Wake Roy? Try to sleep herself?
But the bed was too small to accommodate both of them comfortably, especially when Roy turned slightly and sprawled his body over more space, nudging her closer to the edge of the cot. She very nearly was sent tumbling over the side. She tensed, trying to breathe lightly in an attempt to make herself small so that she wouldn’t go rolling onto the ground.
The trouble was, she wasn’t small. And being squeezed like this was decidedly uncomfortable. The dead weight of his arm was heavy on her shoulder. Her arm was falling asleep.
Frowning at how quickly the ecstasy had evaporated, Ellie stared into Roy’s face and tried to recapture some of the poetry and music of just minutes before. She’d been so swept away, so ecstatic just to be back in Roy’s arms, to have it all end so abruptly jolted her out of her happy thoughts.
Doubts rose up in her. Especially when she tried to extricate Roy’s hand and looked down at the silhouette of her naked, pregnant body lying next to the powerful male outline of his.
Heavens, Eleanor! What have you done?
Old Louisa Sternhagen’s question startled her out of her love-fogged daze and made her bolt out of bed.
She’d given herself to Roy, heart and body and soul, and yet did he know? Did he care?
That last thought troubled her the most. Because if her recollection was correct, he’d never uttered a word today about loving her, either this afternoon at his mother’s house or tonight after the fire. In fact, at Isabel’s she’d thought he was using her. Both times they’d been alone he’d only spoken of desire—and how quickly, how eagerly, how recklessly she’d answered his call to arms!
Her cheeks burned with a fire that was no less hot because her audience was in a deep sleep. She felt mortified, and began snatching up her discarded clothes and donning them hurriedly. She’d lost a stocking—maybe Roy was lying on it. Whirling in a confused circle, she spotted her coat in a heap on the ground, scooped it up, and dashed toward the barn door.
Jonas, the old nag, was still waiting for her, and in her desperation she managed to heave herself up on him in only three tries. She dug her heels into his sides and nearly slipped off again when he bolted forward at a bone-rattling trot; every jounce was a painful reminder of what she’d just done.
The night was dark, and Ellie wasn’t even sure of where she was going. There was a path, and she was counting on Jonas’s steadiness to get her to town. Right now, as her thoughts spun in a confused, disappointed, heartsore whirl, she just knew where she didn’t want to be: in that barn when Roy awoke and his rueful expression revealed how big a mistake he thought he’d made.
Chapter Eighteen
Ellie slept sinfully late. Her whole body felt heavy and sore—unwelcome reminders of her activities of the night before. As if her dreams hadn’t been reminder enough! All night, visions of Roy had swirled through her mind. Roy laughing, Roy pulling her into his arms for a kiss. Roy making love to her.
That thought spurred her out of bed. She swung her legs over the edge of her mattress and dressed quickly after giving herself a brief wash from the basin in the corner. She felt unusually disoriented and tired, though she’d slept longer than usual.
Stepping out of the privacy of her curtained-off sleeping area and descending the narrow steps carefully, she immediately knew what had finally awakened her. Ed and Isabel were seated together by the fire, laughing as merrily as they had been when she’d finally come in the night before. When they heard her steps, they looked up and beamed at her.
“Good morning, Ellie!” They practically chirped in unison.
“Good morning,” she answered.
She wondered if they had slept at all, or had simply stayed up talking the whole night. “I’m sorry I slept late,” she said quickly. “I know there’s work to do.”
Isabel jumped up, clapping her hands together. “Not today,” she announced happily. “Edward—” She gestured grandly toward him, preparing Ellie for something remarkable. “My Edward has asked me to marry him!”
Although Ed sat up taller, his face was tomato-red.
A smile broke out across Ellie’s face and she ran over to hug Isabel happily. “How wonderful! Although I can’t say I’m surprised….”
Not after seeing them together nonstop since the dance.
Isabel’s eyes widened. “Did you hear that, Ed? She’s not surprised, either. Only you were.”
He grinned sheepishly, though Ellie could tell he was the happiest man alive despite all the other things that had befallen him yesterday. It was remarkable that they could find happiness after a tragedy that would have devastated some.
“I’m still flabbergasted,” Edward admitted.
Isabel put her hands on her hips. “Why, you old bachelor, were you secretly hoping that I would say no and you’d be able to hold onto your solitude and to me?”
Though she teased him, he looked truly startled by her words, and reached out and grabbed her hands. “No, Izzy, I’m just surprised you’d have me because you’re too pretty for me, that’s why. Too pretty, too smart, too everything!”
Isabel laughed. “Not too modest, though. No one has you beat there.”
Ellie felt herself grinning like a schoolgirl as the two flirted, and she even blushed when Ed pulled Isabel onto his lap and pecked her on the cheek. Amazing that she could blush at anything so innocent as a kiss after last night! But their happiness was so infectious that for a moment she was able to forget her own troubles and revel in their prenuptial bliss.
After a half hour with them, however, a new discomfort set in, especially when she picked up the pattern she had been sewing yesterday and found Isabel blinking at her impatiently.
“Don’t bother with that, Ellie. I’m too happy to work, and seeing you toiling away would just make me feel guilty.”
Ellie set the sewing aside and looked about her awkwardly. “Is there anything else you would like me to do today?”
“Why don’t you take the day to relax?” Isabel suggested. “Or go shopping.”
Isabel was truly a generous woman, she knew. But right now Ellie’s employer’s generosity wasn’t completely selfless. As she and Ed sat blinking at her impatiently, it was obvious that Ellie’s presence in the little house had suddenly become superfluous.
She cleared her throat. “Thank you. I would enjoy a day to myself to…” Her mind hunted for some activity she might use to occupy herself. “To shop, as you said. Or I might take a walk. Would you mind if I stayed out till this evening?”
The two of them looked as if they couldn’t have been more delighted. Ellie hurriedly readied herself for a day on her own, putting on her coat and hat and snatching up her reticule. She left the house in a hurry, too quickly to decide what she was really going to do with all this time she had promised them.
She headed for the mercantile, then turned her steps when she realized she was too exhausted to handle the calamities that might befall her there. She wished Parker had come for a visit this morning, and still half expected to see him.
But most of all, she wished Roy had come.
All during the slow ride from Ed’s farm into Paradise last night, she had expected to hear his wagon drive up behind her. But it hadn’t. And now as she walked through the town, she imagined him hunting her down to ask her where she had run off to last night. To tell her that he still loved her.
But that, too, was just a wishful illusion.
Tears stung her eyes when she remembered how happy she had felt last night, with so li
ttle to base that happiness on. Had she learned nothing from her eight-month ordeal? Another man had used her for his gratification, offering her no promises, and yet she had gone into his arms eagerly, accepting whatever crumbs he cared to give. She had given real love and had received not even empty words in return.
A queer, unbalanced sensation overtook her. She felt like running—yet she couldn’t have run if her life depended on it. Abruptly, her steps passed the Lalapalooza and turned off the sidewalk and onto the road out of town. She didn’t know where she was headed; all she knew was that she had to be alone. And if her footsteps took her a little closer to Roy…well, there was only one road, and he didn’t own it.
She placed one foot in front of the other, feeling better the farther she left the town behind her, and looked ahead to nothing but the fields of burnished brown. Oh, she did love this country—as much as she had on that first day when she’d arrived. She inhaled a deep breath of cool clean air and delighted in a small cluster of coppery haystacks standing sentry next to a rickety log fence. No matter what happened, she was glad she was here, where there was room to breath. Paradise might not be the utopia she’d hoped, but she had no doubt that her child would have a better chance here than where she was.
Her child.
After another quarter mile of walking, she suddenly felt very tired, and stepped off the road to sit down for a moment.
That was a mistake, she soon discovered. When she lay down, she suddenly realized how exhausted she was. And the soreness she felt didn’t seem to her a reminder of yesterday anymore, but a very real sensation of pain happening to her right now. Her abdomen cramped uncomfortably, and she leaned over, feeling a sudden flash of heat.
Then, when understanding dawned, a clammy wave washed over her and her mind froze in panic.
Dear Lord, no, she thought. The baby couldn’t be on its way. It wasn’t time…it was too early.
And she was so very, very alone….
“Did you hear all the talk last night after the fire?” Ike asked as Roy sat bleary-eyed over a cold cup of coffee.
Liz Ireland Page 24