by Beverly Bird
Where his hands touched, her skin came alive. When his tongue probed, her soul seemed to melt. His touch stroked and heated her, up her thighs, her hips, her ribs, down again, a rough-gentle caress. And she knew then that she was forgetting, too, and it was as good and sweet and necessary as the air she breathed. Something wild and heated exploded in her as soon as his fingers slid beneath the elastic, against her most sensitive flesh, seeking entrance. Her world grew narrow and smaller until it was centered right there inside her. His fingers moved in and out of her, teasing, urging, until she could bear no more and knew she would die if he stopped.
He finally eased her panties down, too, and then she straddied him, fitting herself over him, and a hoarse chuckle broke from his throat as he considered that for a minute there, he had actually thought himself in control.
He found the clasp of her bra and worked it free. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her back down toward him. His mouth sought her breasts, moving over her hard nipples, making her cry out even as he thrust his hips against her, driving himself into oblivion, into her heat.
Carly felt her cry change to a gasp. She dug her nails into his shoulders and held on.
He plunged into her again and again and she moved with him, feeling wild and alive, so fully alive, as she had not felt for too, too long. A part of her had been sleeping, she realized, just waiting for this broken, complicated, kind man.
Her climax hit her in a stunning ambush, but he was with her and he was all hers now. She felt his own explosion as though he were a part of her. When he groaned it seemed to be with her own voice.
The feeling didn’t entirely dissipate when she lowered herself slowly to rest against his chest again. Her breath was short and fast. His hands stayed at her hips and he made no effort to leave her this time. She felt like part of him. In spite of everything, she felt safe, whole…and drained”.
She couldn’t believe the exhaustion that seeped through her muscles. Her limbs felt weighted.
“It’s okay,” he said quietly, and she realized that somehow he understood. “You don’t have to do anything now. You can sleep. I’m here.”
Carly wondered if anyone had ever said that to her before. No, she thought, not in recent memory. And she realized that he had been doing it, had been taking over for her, since he had first set foot on her ranch.
She closed her eyes.
Watching over her was the one thing Jack felt sure he could manage right now. It seemed like the rest of his world was suddenly a place of hazy uncertainties, shadows where there had been absolute clarity before. He glanced over at his gun. He wasn’t sure what he could give her if he managed to pull them both through this, but suddenly he knew that he wanted to see her again. Somehow, impossibly, she’d managed to find something inside him that wasn’t entirely cold and dead after all. And he needed that—oh, God, how he needed that—even more than he needed the self-protection of solitude.
He wasn’t sure when the thought of roots had started to make him feel more panicky than actually terrified, but he wondered if maybe he could plant just one small, cautious seed here, and see if the roots held.
“Sweet God,” he whispered aloud.
Uncharacteristically, he needed to talk about it. But when he angled his eyes down to look at her, he only let his breath out on an amazed sigh.
Carly was fast asleep.
Chapter 16
Jack finally dozed, a suspended half sleep that he succumbed to out of pure exhaustion. His ears were still listening and his brain was still alert, but when he opened his eyes again, the new sun made the tent walls glow golden.
Carly stirred. He looked over at her and realized that she had been awake for some time.
“That’s what I like about you, Jack,” she said dryly. “You’re so chivalrous.”
He managed to grin. When she had rolled off him last night without waking, he’d decided not to disturb her to wrestle her into the sleeping bag he’d finally unrolled. He’d laid it close beside her instead, thinking that she’d eventually get cold and wriggle over into it to join him. She hadn’t. After the rigors of the trail, she’d slept the way she ate, the way she dug into his psyche, with single-minded fervor and determination.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” he said finally, and enjoyed the way she cocked a sardonic brow at him. Then she sat up and stretched.
She was so beautiful, he thought, all strong, fluid muscles beneath smooth skin. His breath snagged and hunger quickened inside him again. He started to reach for her, needing to touch her now as much as he had last night. That urgency hadn’t waned yet, and it didn’t, until she spoke.
“So what do we do now?”
Jack flinched. “We ride. And we wait. Something will give today. Something will have to.”
His response shook her because she heard what he didn’t say. Scorpion would probably take his money and go before they reached the Cimarron, and Jack would go, too, stalking him.
She groaned and crawled to him on her hands and knees. He had already reached for his shirt, and she pulled it out of his hands to press herself against him.
“Shhh,” he managed. “We’ve got time.”
He didn’t know if he was referring to Scorpion or to the spare moments that remained until the rest of the camp awoke. It didn’t matter. He caught her hips as she knelt over him. He eased down onto his back again and slid his hands up to her breasts, covering them as he’d wanted to do when she’d first woke and stretched, arching her back and thrusting them toward him. He followed his hands with his mouth, slowly, as though to memorize the taste and feel of her. He traced circles around her nipples with his tongue and then he played with each one until she moaned and writhed above him. Oh, yes, they had time. And maybe it was the last time they’d ever have together.
The thought made him angry. He pulled her down to him almost roughly and held her mouth to his while he plundered it, seeking, needing, aching for the forgetfulness the had given him last night. He cursed fate and his life that this couldn’t be all there was, just him and her, alone with the dawn. He wished he had met her in a different time, a different place, so that he could have kept her away from all the ugliness—and then he didn’t. Because the way she had wormed her way into his life, the way she had become a part of his innermost thoughts, was so uniquely her, and he realized that he wouldn’t change any part of her at all. She was everything he had imagined, and so much more.
His hands moved over her body as though to brand every curve, as though to memorize every lean, lovely line. He cupped her bottom and traced each rib, and he felt her muscles tense beneath her skin. He delighted in it, craved it, then she began to quiver.
It was like a tonic, strengthening him, that she could want him so much when there was a killer somewhere on the other side of the tent door. But then, he thought, that was the way she approached everything—intensely, with integrity and fervor. It was just…Carly.
His hands melted her even as they tightened everything inside her, she thought. They finally rolled together, their legs twined, their arms wrapped around each other, clinging, grasping, until they came up hard against the tent wall. Their bodies bulged it outward and Jack tore his mouth from hers. He almost grinned.
“Careful, cowgirl,” he managed, “unless you want the whole camp standing out there watching.”
“I thought…you wanted that.”
“No, no.”
Then she was on top of him again and she leaned over him so his mouth could close gently over her nipple as his hands swept up the back of her thighs again. His fingers found her hot center and she groaned, shifting her weight on her knees, opening to him, wanting so much more.
There was nothing inside her now but the wanting, the greed for more of him. It didn’t matter what they would do when they left this tent. He made her fear go away again. Suddenly she knew that it wasn’t just sex she needed. Yes, it was vital and it reminded her that she was exquisitely alive, but it was more tha
n that. It was the way he made her feel, as no other man had ever done. He coddled her in his own unique way, even as he expected too much of her. He soothed her even as he heated her, demanded even as he gave.
She needed Jack Fain, and there was nobody else in the world quite like him.
He rolled her over again and his mouth moved lower, brushing over her belly, his tongue dipping into her navel. She felt her muscles contract in anticipation as he moved lower, then his tongue slid along her most sensitive flesh. He probed and laved until she could only dig her nails into his shoulders, her breath coming again and again in short, hard gasps. It was so right, so perfect, so incredible, she thought that she might cry. He never seemed to doubt himself, she thought, or anything he was doing. There was no hesitation in him, just an arrogant confidence and a spirit for giving. And the giving was poignant, shattering, because she knew he truly did not expect that anyone would give him anything back.
When he finally came up over her again, he watched her face with a small half smile. “Turn about,” he said quietly, “is fair play.” Then, before she could breathe again, without warning, he drove himself into her hard.
Carly gasped then she laughed, a low, throaty sound. She clung to him though she had always been strong, whimpered though she had never been weak. She wanted to wait for him, needed him to stay with her again, but the tension inside her was too much, too ready, too powerful. He stroked within her and nuzzled at her neck, finally taking her mouth again. She stiffened as everything inside her exploded and he finally followed her.
He didn’t leave her this time, either.
Jack braced his weight on his elbows and watched her, enjoying the way her face changed until the one expression came that hurt something inside him. Fear came to her eyes again, then hope flared there.
“Maybe he left last night!” she gasped, her eyes going wide as she realized the possibility. “Maybe he already took that damned money and when we go outside, he’ll be gone.”
“No,” Jack said reluctantly.
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“How? You slept in here. Anything could have happened out there.”
“I didn’t sleep. Not really. I would have heard him at the wagon.”
Hope plummeted inside her. Still, Carly grappled with it, trying to hold it. “Maybe he was real quiet.”
“You can’t pry wood loose so quietly that someone listening for it wouldn’t hear it,” he pointed out grimly. “I only slept outside the first night because I didn’t know where in the wagon the money was. I didn’t know for sure what he would have to do to get to it. Last night I knew what I was listening for and I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear anything at all. It was peaceful out there.”
He finally pulled away from her. Carly sat up slowly and looked at the tent door, her throat closing.
“So…we’ve got to go out there,” she said woodenly. She had never truly been afraid of anything in her life, she realized, but this terrified and appalled her. She felt as if she was handing him over to Scorpion, that her short, precious time with him was over and now she had to give him back to the world—to the agency—that had claimed him first. And she was helpless to fight back, to do anything about it.
She looked at him again. His face had already changed. A moment ago he had made love to her with more heat than she had ever known, but now he seemed cold again. His eyes were different, hooded, hard, and what little she could see in them chilled her. Carly reached for her jeans and hugged them to her chest.
“Okay,” she said, her voice strained. “I guess you’d better get out of here before Holly wakes up.”
They were several hours into the day’s ride when Jack’s demeanor changed again. It struck fear like an icy blade into Carly’s heart.
He was taunting Scorpion now, working at it hard, seeming determined to get a rise out of him.
She didn’t want to keep track of where the assassin was because she knew it would only make her crazy. But even without consciously looking for the man, even without wanting to look for him, she knew where he was at all times because Jack kept dogging Scorpion’s horse, alternately staying close to him, then riding unnaturally close to the wagon as though he were studying it.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” she whispered when he finally positioned himself beside her again.
“That’s what I get paid for, cowgirl.”
“To die?”
“If that’s what it takes,” he answered absently, his gaze still on Scorpion.
“So how are you going to spend the money when you’re six feet under?”
“Let me worry about that.”
“No! I—” But he was gone again, moving ahead of her as Scorpion picked up into a trot.
He was a man she hardly recognized now, the one she had glimpsed briefly that morning, the man who had smiled so thinly yesterday when they’d talked of sending Scorpion over the river on his horse. He was cold, emotionless. But his eyes were hot, with a kind of unforgiving intent she couldn’t even imagine.
Jack watched Scorpion as he rode up ahead and grinned through his teeth when the man glanced over his shoulder at him one more time. This would be over and done with soon, he thought again. Today. He’d realized a good many things in the past twenty-four hours, and he was ready now. He wanted it to be over…for himself, but especially for Carly and Holly. He realized he could no longer even bear to think what would happen if the man started thinking too much about Holly.
Or maybe he already had.
He’d given no real outward appearance of being interested in Carly, either, but that certainly didn’t mean he wasn’t. It only meant that if Jack had never found that picture, he would have assumed the woman meant nothing to the assassin…just as he was assuming that he wasn’t interested in Holly.
Fear like cold steel pierced deeply into Jack’s heart. He had assumed all along that the assassin had come back for Carly. Sweet God, was he planning on taking both of them? It was entirely possible. Hell, it was probable. Even if he hadn’t known that Carly was pregnant when he took off—and Jack had been clinging to that—he had to know now.
Jack looked at the girl again. He had protected her, had kept Rawley on her last night, as the merest precaution. Today he would step up his vigilance. Yes, today he would get this bastard to move.
Scorpion stopped trotting. Jack would have passed him if he had kept going. He didn’t. He reined in again until Carly caught up with him.
“This is like a game of cat and mouse!” she burst out, just loudly enough that he could hear her.
“Not quite,” he answered quietly. “I’d say he and I are more evenly matched than that.”
“I can’t handle this,” Carly said, snagging his attention again.
“Sure you can. You’re doing fine. Just keep riding.” He was quiet for a moment. “What comes up next on the trail?”
She had to think for a minute. Her brain felt fragmented. “We’re about forty miles from the Cimarron now,” she said finally. “We still won’t reach it before tomorrow.” Although she had, at Jack’s insistence, told everyone that they’d be there by nightfall. Rawley and the cowboys had looked at her as though wondering if she was going to airlift them there.
“There’s nothing between us and the river but hard, dry ground,” she finished tightly. Hard, dry ground and terror, she amended silently.
They rode on. The sun peaked. It was blisteringly hot, and the cattle became listless and even slower than usual. They trudged on unhappily, as though it had finally dawned on them what was going to happen to them—or at least to most of them—at the end of the trail.
Scorpion did nothing. To Carly’s mind, he behaved the same way he had for days now. Her heart alternately stalled and pounded.
They stopped for a quick lunch, and the tension on Jack’s face became etched more and more deeply. Carly noticed that he scarcely ate. Then they moved on again until the sun started sinking. I
t was the kind of day Carly had hoped for before they had set out on the ride, before she’d known how wildly awry this trip would go. It was uneventful, even boring for those of them who had made the trek so many times before.
At dusk, Jack finally rode up beside her again. “How many miles to the river now?” he demanded.
“Nothing’s changed, Jack.” She was frustrated, near tears. “We’re still on target for tomorrow morning. We’re about ten miles away now, but I’ve got to stop. I can’t push these cattle any farther without giving them a rest.”
Jack scowled. Why the hell hadn’t the man done anything yet? Was it for sheer lack of opportunity? Was he simply waiting for darkfall?
At least, he prayed to God that that was all it was.
“Okay,” he said finally.
“Okay what?” Carly demanded.
“Okay, we can stop.”
“You keep forgetting, cowboy. This ride is still my show. Of course, we’ll stop. I can’t auction off dead cows.” Then she closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry. I’m just…tense.”
“And handling it like a pro,” Jack murmured, wanting badly to touch her.
“I’m rattling apart.”
“It doesn’t show.”
“I just snapped your head off.”
“Yeah, but you did that the first day I got here, before you knew any of this was going on.”
Carly smiled weakly.
She swung out of her saddle and went about settling the herd, then she and Plank and Gofer began making dinner. The steaks she had packed in dry ice had been ruined by the wagon’s side trip down the river, not so much because of the water but because they’d lost the ice. The group had eaten as much of it as they could last night, but Carly had been forced to discard the remainder. Now they made do with potatoes and beans and muffins, the stuff that had been packed in tins and watertight casks.
Myra pointed out helpfully that carbohydrates were energy food. Most of the others looked as though they needed all the energy could get, and they began to retire early. Holly was the first to yawn and set up her tent. Carly let her go reluctantly, needing badly to drag her back and hold her until this nightmare was over.