The Sheriff (Historical Romance)

by Nan Ryan

  “He was restless, so I let him out,” she said.

  “You shouldn’t be up walking,” Travis warned as he sat down on the chair beside the bed. Affectionately, he reached out and cupped her cheek.

  “You’re cold,” Kate said with concern, laying her hand atop his.

  “It’s freezing out there and…and…” Travis stopped speaking. He almost stopped breathing. He swallowed hard as Kate guided his hand from her face down under the covers.

  “We have to warm you up,” she said, briskly rubbing his hand through the blanket.

  Travis cleared his throat. He felt his heart slam against his ribs. His hand was resting on the soft swell of her breasts as she pressed it close.

  He said, “I’ll, uh, build up the fire.”

  Carefully, he extracted his hand and rose to his feet. Hoping that she couldn’t tell how badly he wanted to take her in his arms, he turned away, closed his eyes for a minute and collected himself.

  For the moment he was successful.

  But it didn’t last.

  Not for him, not for her.

  The attraction that had been there from the beginning—an attraction both had tried so hard to deny—had quickly grown as Kate recuperated in Travis’s care.

  Four days had passed since the shooting, and Kate, a healthy young woman, had regained her strength. The color was back in her cheeks. She felt fine, but she was almost sorry that she did. As long as she was weak and helpless, she got to stay here near Travis.

  At bedtime that night, she said, “Thanks to you, I’m about well, Travis.” She drew a shallow breath. “I should go home tomorrow. Don’t you think?”

  Travis felt a squeezing in his chest. He came to the bed and sat down on the mattress’s edge, facing her. He tried to sound casual when he said, “You don’t want to rush it, Katie. Maybe you ought to stay a couple more nights.”

  “You’re the doctor,” she replied, barely able to hide her relief.

  “I am and it’s time you get some sleep.” He spread the blanket over her, tucked it in around her shoulders, smiled, leaned down and gave her a very gentle, very brief good-night kiss.

  That’s all he meant to do.

  But her lips were so soft and warm beneath his that he couldn’t keep from kissing her again. This time it was not so gentle, not so brief. Travis turned his head slightly, slanted his lips across hers and covered her mouth with his own. He smoothly parted her lips, and Kate’s pulse leaped at the first touch of his tongue on hers. Just as it had been that night at the mansion, his kiss was at once invasive, demanding and heart-stoppingly thrilling.

  Travis put a hand in her hair and held her head still on the pillow while his mouth hotly plundered hers, taking, giving, swiftly igniting the fires of passion in them both. Kate squirmed and sighed while he kissed her over and over again. His lips were blazing hot and his sleek tongue filled her mouth, tasting, conquering, setting her on fire.

  After numerous heated kisses, Travis abruptly raised his head, hastily released Kate and—apologizing for his behavior—hurried out the back door to cool off in the freezing winds.

  It didn’t work.

  He spent several long minutes out in the cold, taking deep breaths of the frigid air, warning himself to keep his hands off Kate. But when he came back inside, his blood was still scorching through his veins.

  Kate sat up in the bed, smiled at him, threw back the covers and opened her arms wide. “Come here, Travis,” she commanded.

  “You sure, sweetheart?” he replied, his heart hammering.

  She nodded. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

  His legs weak, his pulse racing, Travis crossed to the bed. He again sat down on the edge of mattress and gazed at Kate for a long moment, saying nothing. He wanted this image of her, as she was on this cold autumn night, sitting in his bed and wearing his nightshirt, to be indelibly etched in his memory.

  “Ah, Katie,” he said at last, and reached for her.

  In one swift motion, Travis lifted her from the bed, turned her about and sat her on his lap. He kept one hand around her waist, the other wrapped around the back of her neck. He drew her face down to his, and when her lips were less than an inch from his own, he said, “Kiss me, baby.”

  Kate kissed him.

  She took his handsome face in her hands and pressed her lips to his. Travis quickly took over. He kissed her as he’d been kissing her before he went outside, and soon she was sighing and squirming on his knee. Her arms had gone around his neck and one hand was wound through his hair at the back of his head. The other eagerly explored his back through the fabric of his shirt.

  When, breathless, she finally tore her lips from his, she hugged his dark head to her breasts and rested her chin against his forehead. It was then Kate realized that at some time during the onslaught of blazing kisses, as she squirmed on his knee, Travis had deftly removed her lace-trimmed pantalets. They lay on the floor by the bed.

  Her face flushed.

  She felt Travis’s fingers at the buttons of the nightshirt. In seconds it was open to her waist. To Kate’s relief, he rose to his feet with her in his arms, kissed her, carefully laid her in the bed and drew the covers up to her waist.

  Kate watched as he unbuttoned his shirt midway down his chest, reached up behind his head and drew it up off in one swift movement. He sat down and took off his boots and stockings. He rose to his feet again and his hands went to the fly of his snug gabardine trousers. He shoved them to the floor, but kept his snowy white underwear on.

  Then he got into bed with Kate.

  “I have wanted,” he said, his smooth baritone voice a caress, “to hold you like this in my arms from the first minute I looked out the window of the jail and saw your golden hair blazing in the sunlight.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I mean it and I’ll show you that I do.” He took her in his arms and once again kissed and caressed her, his warm hand slipping inside the open nightshirt to gently enclose a soft breast. His callused thumb rubbed the rigid nipple and Kate tingled all over. His lips on hers, he gently toyed with the nipple until she was sighing and anxiously thrusting her tongue deep into his mouth.

  When he ended the kiss, Kate whimpered in protest at the desertion. But not for long. Travis’s burning lips pressed kisses to her chin, to the hollow of her throat, to the swell of her breasts. With his face he moved the open nightshirt out of his way and brushed a kiss on the nipple he had brought to life.

  He felt Kate stiffen and exhale. He opened his mouth and warmly enclosed her left breast. Kate’s head tossed on the pillow and she clutched handfuls of the sheet when he began to tease her nipple with his tongue, circling it, playfully biting, raking his teeth back and forth. And when finally he began to suck on it, Kate said his name with a sigh.

  Travis was such an adroit lover and she was so enraptured, she hardly realized when her nightshirt came off and his underwear vanished. She only knew that she was now wonderfully naked and Travis was, too, and he was doing such incredibly sensual things to her that she might insist neither of them ever get dressed again.

  Her eyes opening and closing with bliss as they kissed, Kate felt Travis’s hard male flesh pressing against her thigh and his hand on her bare belly, touching, caressing and slowly sliding lower. She emitted a little gasp of excitement when his long fingers raked gently through the crisp curls between her thighs. With his thumb and little finger he gently urged her legs apart. Kate quickly opened them.

  And heaven was hers.

  Travis separated the golden coils with his middle finger and touched that tiny button of flesh that was wet and swollen and throbbing. Kate began to breathe through her mouth as he dipped the pad of his middle finger into the silky wetness her aroused body provided. He circled the flesh briefly before taking his wet fingers away, spreading the moisture on the head of his throbbing erection, then positioning himself between her legs.

  He gripped her pulsing flesh, placed just the g
leaming tip inside her and anxiously glanced up at her to see if she was all right. Her beautiful face was aglow and her hair was spread out on the pillow like a gleaming golden waterfall. Travis took his hand away, braced his stiffened arms on either side and easily slid into her.

  Kate gasped at the feel of him, hot and hard and heavy, buried deep inside her. She clasped his biceps as he bent and kissed her and began a slow, intoxicating dance of desire. Both gloried in the languid loving. It was as though their bodies had been made for each other. The fit was perfect, the rhythm ideal.

  But paradise was short-lived.

  The naked pair were so hot for each other, they began to climax almost immediately.

  “No…!” Kate murmured, eyes widening, heart pounding.

  Travis was relieved she was coming so soon. She was too sweet, too beautiful, too desirable. All his pent-up passion was threatening to explode and come gushing forth. He couldn’t hold back much longer. He swiftly speeded his movements, and Kate followed his lead. They moved together in a frenzy of building sexual delirium. They rocked the iron bedstead, its legs thumping loudly on the floor.

  Seconds later Kate screamed in ecstasy, and Travis groaned as he joined her in a draining release that left him weak and light-headed.

  “Please don’t…don’t move yet,” Kate murmured when she could get her breath, her arms wrapped around his neck.

  Travis laughed, turned his face into hers on the pillow and said, “Baby, I couldn’t move if I tried.”

  Thirty-Six

  In the sweet afterglow of lovemaking, the sated pair lay in each other’s arms, talking, laughing, yawning.

  And kissing.

  Travis lay flat on his back in the middle of the bed with his arm around Kate. Her head resting on his shoulder, she lay on her side, snuggled close against him, a knee bent and resting on his flat belly. Her hand languidly explored the firm muscles of Travis’s chest. “When you went outside, I wanted you to come back in and kiss me again.”

  “I know,” he replied.

  “You’re conceited, Sheriff,” Kate accused, and playfully pinched him.

  “No, I’m clairvoyant,” he said, sweeping a hand over the curve of her hip and down over her soft rounded buttocks.

  “Oh, really,” she said, lifting her head to look at him. “What am I thinking right this very minute?”

  Travis grinned, then screwed up his face and closed his eyes as if concentrating deeply. “Wait…it’s…it’s coming to me. I’ve almost got it. Yes, yes, I have it!” He opened his eyes. “You want me to make love to you again.”

  “Why, you’re a genius,” she said with a happy smile.

  “What’d I tell you?”

  When Travis walked through the door the next evening, Kate tossed off the covers and scrambled up onto her knees to greet him. As soon as he’d hung his hat, heavy jacket and gun belt on the coat tree, he came directly to the bed.

  “I thought this day would never end,” he said. Putting his arms around Kate, he drew her up into his embrace.

  “Me either,” she murmured, just before he kissed her.

  For a time Travis stood there beside the bed holding her, kissing her, urging the long tail of her nightshirt up. When his eager hands touched bare, warm flesh, he lifted his lips from hers. “Hey, what happened to your underwear?”

  Her arms looped around his neck, her blue eyes aglow, Kate said, “I took it off before you got here.” She smiled, catlike, and playfully licked at his lips. “Just in case.”

  “Brazen woman,” he accused, “I do believe you’re meaning to seduce me.”

  Travis carefully lifted the nightshirt up over Kate’s head and tossed it aside. He lifted the bandage, checked her shoulder wound, asked if it hurt. She shook her head and shivered deliciously. He stepped back and gazed at her pale, slender body for a couple of heartbeats, then wrapped a hand around the back of her neck beneath her hair, drew her to him and kissed her again.

  The smoldering sexual fire between them quickly blazed to life. Kate sighed when she felt Travis’s warm hand cupping her breast. When his lips left hers and slipped down over her chest, she emitted a shriek of eager anticipation.

  With her breath coming in quick little spurts, she continued to kneel on the mattress and watch, entranced, as his dark face joined his caressing hand at her breast. She held her breath when his heated lips enclosed a tingling nipple. Travis harmlessly bit and nibbled on her. It felt so good, but her pleasure increased when his mouth closed more securely over the nipple and his tongue fluttered back and forth and swirled around and around.

  “Oh, Travis, Travis,” she murmured, holding the back of his bent head and pressing him to her, mindless of her wounded shoulder.

  Kate’s eyes slid closed with bliss and her sense of touch and hearing increased dramatically. She was intensely aware of the texture of his lustrous hair in her clasping fingers, and the abrasive brush of his gabardine shirt against her naked flesh. The unmistakable pressure of his silver sheriff’s badge rubbed against her ribs. The unbelievably pleasurable sensation of his burning lips tugged forcefully on her stinging nipple.

  A chorus of pleasing sounds added to the intense delight of the moment. The snapping and crackling of the fire in the grate. The soft purring of Cal as he dozed and dreamed in front of the fireplace. The provocative sound of Travis greedily suckling her.

  When at last he released her wet nipple and raised his head, Kate eagerly kissed him and began unbuttoning his shirt. When it was open down his dark chest, she swept it apart, put her arms around his neck and confided, “Since that hot day last summer when you came to my place and hung the front door at the mansion, I have wanted to feel your bare chest against me.”

  Travis clasped the twin cheeks of her bare bottom and drew her closer. Kate pressed her breasts against his chest, watching as her shiny wet nipples disappeared in the crisp, ticklish raven hair. Playing, brushing back and forth against his muscled torso, Kate smiled and sighed and enjoyed herself immensely.

  So did Travis.

  While she rubbed her soft breasts against his chest, Travis let his hand glide down her back to her bottom. Grasping the cleft of her buttocks, he reached down and under, to meet his other hand coming from the front. Lean fingers met and quickly began to work their magic.

  Kate suddenly stopped her own sexual game to be a willing participant in his. “Travis, what…what are you doing to me?”

  “Making love to you, sweetheart,” he said, touching and toying with her in such a shockingly carnal way that she momentarily wondered if she was allowing him to do something perverse.

  Then all at once she didn’t care. This darkly handsome lover was coaxing liquid heat out of her with his stroking, probing fingers. And she was loving it. It was strangely erotic to be kneeling naked on the bed facing the fully clothed sheriff, while he stood there doing such lovely things to her.

  With the hand in front, Travis cupped her groin, and his forefinger circled that point of raging desire. At the same time a skilled finger that came from behind was inside her, thrusting rhythmically. Kate gave herself up to the blinding passion.

  She grabbed at the strong column of Travis’s neck and clung to it while he masterfully caressed her with his lean, artistic hands. While she sighed and gasped and threw her head back, Travis teased and toyed and stroked. And all the while he murmured endearments in low, rich tones that added fuel to the flame.

  When Kate felt the dam of desire about to burst, she grew anxious and frantic, afraid she could wait no longer, and equally afraid she couldn’t fully climax. Would she remain in this highly agitated state until pleasure turned to pain?

  She needn’t have worried.

  Travis knew the frantic state she was in. He took loving care of her, and Kate soon cried out with joy and gratitude as he dexterously took her all the way to the top, his magical fingers coaxing her nearer and nearer to sexual nirvana.

  And when her powerful orgasm came, she screamed at the intensity
of it. Her body spasmed and she tossed her head, her unbound hair whipping into her face and his. When at last the tempest had passed, she weakly collapsed against Travis. He held her against his solid chest, stroking her back, her tangled hair, calming her, telling her everything was all right, that he had her and wouldn’t let her go.

  When finally she had stopped shaking, Kate raised her head, looked into his dark, flashing eyes and said, “Sheriff, don’t ever do that to me again.”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “I liked it too much,” she candidly confessed.

  Travis grinned. “Now how would you like a nice hot bath?”

  “I would,” she said. “And then?”

  His grin widened, then disappeared, and his expressive dark eyes softened. “There are so many ways I want to make to love you, Kate. So many things I want to do to you. For you. With you.”

  Awed by the look in his eyes, she said, “Travis, I can hardly wait.”

  Half an hour later, a serene Kate sat in the suds-filled wooden tub directly in front of the fireplace. Her golden hair was pinned atop her head and a glass of red wine was in her right hand. She sighed with contentment as Travis, on his knees beside the tub, gingerly washed her back.

  “You’re too good at this,” she said. He smiled. She ventured further, “And you’re too good, as well, at removing a bullet from a foolish woman who got herself shot.” Travis made no reply, but carefully swirled the washcloth along the top of her left shoulder, taking care not to get her bandage wet. “Travis?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know you’re from Virginia. Doc Ledet told me. And he told me that you once studied to become a physician.” She stopped speaking and held her breath.

  “It’s true, I did.”

  “What happened? Why didn’t you become a doctor?”

  “Squeamish stomach,” Travis said flippantly. “Couldn’t stand the sight of blood.” He dropped the washcloth and rose to his feet. “How would you like for me to go across the street and pick us up a couple of sizzling steaks from the Bonanza Hotel dining room?”