Sweet Autumn Surrender Page 11

  Poppy. Ellie’s mind plummeted back to earth. She knew what Kale had heard; she knew what he believed about her.

  She bent her face toward his ear. The sweet torment of his lips tugging at her breast brought tears to her eyes. “I never worked for Lavender,” she whispered.

  His lips paused; he kissed her breast, then looked into her face. He could barely see her in the near-dark room. “I never asked.”

  His gentle words brought her tears to the verge of spilling. She squenched her lids. “Only because you thought you already knew.”

  Falling back on the bed, he pulled her halfway on top of him and held her close. His lips touched her cheek, moved to kiss her lips softly.

  “She wouldn’t let me,” Ellie explained. “She took me in when I was very young, treated me like a daughter. I wanted to work for her, but—”

  “You wanted to?”

  “To pay my way.”

  Her innocent nature brought a bittersweet smile to his lips. He rubbed her back through the kimono, then began to nudge the fabric up and up until his hand stroked the length of her bare, very soft back. He remembered the delicate, creamy color of her skin. Her innocence combined with her womanly body fired his passion as though another stick of wood had been thrown into an already blazing fire.

  Her innocence—or her innocent nature?

  Ellie could hardly breathe, what with the feelings he aroused inside her with every stroke of his hand, with his furry chest cushioning her aching breasts.

  Tugging and pulling, he finally managed to free her of the silky garment and toss it aside. She snuggled to him, feeling the softness of his skin, the rough fabric of his breeches. Her hand traced his shoulder, his chest, his ribs, resting at last on the band of his pants.

  “I didn’t want you to think I worked that way.”

  “Shh, Ellie.” He kissed her lips, then her face, from cheek to cheek. “Don’t talk.” Suddenly sealing her lips with his, he wriggled his body away from hers, unbuttoned the placket, and removed his breeches, quickly clasping her to him again. Their bare skin fairly fused together, dislodging their lips.

  “But—” she began.

  “If you have to talk about it,” his breath came in gasps; he cupped her buttocks, pressing her to the center of his overwhelming need, “wait till later.” His hand traveled around her hips, over her taut belly. “Right now you’re filling up my senses. I can’t hear anything, I want you so bad.”

  With these words his fingers slipped inside her, taking her breath away…and with it all need to talk vanished, burned away, as it were, by an all-consuming fire, by a throbbing, desperate yearning almost violent in force.

  His lips found hers again, and he kissed her until she felt numb with the insistent wanting of him. She felt as if her entire body must surely glow in the darkened room.

  Trailing his lips down her neck and across her chest he tasted the familiar mixture of baking bread and wood smoke, a combination of scents that took him back to his youth, to hearth and home. A heady sense of happiness and joy suddenly overwhelmed him, and when he shifted her to her back and thrust deeply inside her, he had the strange sensation of creating something…something good, something right.

  In merging their two bodies, he had made them one, one in power and passion. In perfect harmony their bodies moved together as one, and the whole was more powerful, more passionate than anything he had ever experienced.

  And when at last they reached the pinnacle, it was as to the crashing of lightning and clapping of thunder, and her cry in his ear was like the explosion of a thousand lonely nights.

  He clasped her to him, rolled them over, and clung to her. And it was good. So good, and so right.

  She felt as though she’d been caught up in a tornado, but one made of fire instead of air. The fiercely swirling flames lifted her higher and higher until she could bear it no longer. Her lips felt parched when she called his name. The sound of her voice came from deep in the pit of her stomach, and, leaving her body, burst into a light like the sun and became him, and he settled over her, soothing, protecting, loving.

  Drawing her head back, she stared into his shadowed face. She didn’t need light to see him; already he belonged to her heart. “I never knew such feelings existed.”

  Sighing against her, he cradled her head in his shoulder, and they slept.

  Chapter Six

  She awoke at first cock’s crow, pulled the cover over her shoulders, then realized she was nude.

  The aroma of brewing coffee filled her nostrils, a sweet smell that stirred pleasant memories. She stretched her arms along the narrow bed. The air was cool with the promise of fall; the anticipation of it filled her with satisfaction.

  Then she remembered. Sitting up in the spare-room bed, she listened for sounds from the other room.

  When none came, she slipped on the kimono, sashed it, and stepped barefoot into the hall. The front door stood open, and through it she saw Kale, bare to the waist, sitting on the porch. Forearms on thighs, he cradled a cup of coffee in his hands and stared toward the town road.

  Lowering herself to the step beside him, she lay her head against his shoulder and half-expected him to put his arm around her. But he didn’t.

  After a while she began to feel awkward and started to rise. “You must be starved. We forgot about supper.”

  “Ellie.”

  His voice called her back, and she settled down again, their shoulders touching. Still he stared at the road.

  “Yes?”

  “What did you mean when you said that you sometimes wished you were Delta?”

  His question surprised her. Yet instantly she knew it shouldn’t have. It was the answer she had been seeking herself only yesterday. Without thinking, she mimicked his position, resting her elbows on her knees, letting the bottom of the kimono fall loosely, forgotten, around her legs.

  “If you had asked me that question before last night, I wouldn’t have known the answer.”

  She spoke quietly, following his line of vision toward the road. She felt him look at her then, and with his gaze came a renewal of the heat she had felt last night. Now, however, her pleasure was diffused by a growing concern.

  She didn’t continue, so he questioned again. “What is the answer, Ellie?”

  Meeting his eyes, she was disconcerted by the troubled look she saw, by the questions reflected on his face. Her concern grew to distress. What had happened to the happiness they’d shared? What had happened in his mind while she slept and dreamed sweet dreams?

  She sighed. “I loved your brother, Kale Jarrett, and don’t you go thinking I didn’t.”

  “The thought did occur to me,” he admitted. “After the way you reacted last night.”

  She jumped to her feet. “Are you saying last night was a test?” Tears sprang to her eyes, forced there by shame. Utter shame. Shame at her behavior…shame at her feelings…shame at having assumed he felt the same things she did.

  “A test,” she repeated, “to judge whether I loved Benjamin?”

  His face was solemn, and she turned quickly away.

  “No, of course not,” he hurried to say. “But you’ll have to admit…I mean, it’s only been a couple of months, and—”

  “And what?” she demanded, swirling, hands on hips. The cool fall air penetrated her thin layer of silk, chilling flushed skin.

  He shrugged. “Well, the way you responded to me last night, I don’t see how you could have loved my brother like a wife—”

  “You bastard! What would you know about how a wife loves a husband? First you accuse me of selling my body—”

  “I never accused you of such.”

  “You thought it. And now you accuse me of not…” Pausing, she wondered exactly what he did mean. “I made Benjamin a good wife, Kale. You can ask anyone in town. He was happy. We—” Tears brimming, she turned away from him again.

  Rising, he caught her shoulders. “I didn’t mean that, Ellie. And I know what folks in town say.
I already heard it. They said you were…ah, that you made Benjamin a real good wife.”

  “Then what are you accusing me of?” The quiver in her voice stabbed at his guilt. Damn it, he wasn’t used to sparring with words. All he knew how to do was use his fists—and those damned guns.

  What the hell difference did it make anyway whether she married Benjamin for this ranch? If she’d made him happy…he suppressed an unfamiliar pang of jealousy. If she’d given Benjamin half the pleasure she’d given him in one night, she deserved the ranch—and more.

  “Nothing,” he finally managed to admit.

  He squeezed her shoulders. The silk beneath his palms was the same that had enticed him the night before; the flesh beneath the silk the same that had captured him, made him feel happiness and joy, made him feel whole for the first time since he was a kid, since before he knew the world for what it was.

  “Nothing,” he repeated. “But if I’m going to save this ranch for you, I’ll have to hang around, at least until some of the family comes. And I don’t want you falling in love with me.”

  He felt her tense beneath his hands. “You were right about me, Ellie.”

  She tried to turn, but he held her in place.

  “I came here ahead of the army. Those bruises you noticed that first night, they were from a fight with a soldier up at Fort Griffin. If he dies, they’ll…”

  When his words trailed off, she forced herself from his grasp and turned to face him, concern written all over her face. “They’ll what?”

  He looked away. “Prison, if he dies, or—”

  “If he doesn’t?” Her words escaped in a ragged breath. She studied his face, his strong features, remembered his strength and his gentleness. She wanted to stroke his face so badly her fingers twitched. “If he doesn’t die, Kale,” she implored, “what will they do to you?”

  At the plea in her voice he turned back. Their gazes held. “Probably nothing.”

  “Then—?”

  “But I’m not staying here. I’m going to California. I have a stake in a—”

  Her heart felt suddenly lodged in her throat, and she spoke with difficulty. “I never asked you to stay.”

  Your voice asked me, he thought, and your eyes. Recalling last night he suppressed a shudder. And your body—your wonderful, passionate body begged me to stay.

  “I don’t want you to be hurt all over again,” he pleaded.

  Ellie knew how inexperienced she was. The only women she had ever known were what he would call whores. And the men—Snake at the Lady Bug, who had treated her like a daughter until she grew up, whereupon he ignored her, probably on Lavender’s orders; Armando Costello, her friend, but a man who she knew instinctively would lie and steal and cheat if it served his purposes; and Benjamin Jarrett, her husband.

  She’d been a good wife to Benjamin, giving him all he wanted and more. And he’d been a good husband. Until last night she hadn’t known, and she strongly suspected Benjamin never knew, that passions between a man and a woman could run so fast and carry two people so far. Yes, she had loved Benjamin, but never in the same way she could learn to love his brother.

  Kale knew that too, she decided, and it scared him to death. She could see it in his eyes. He was like a skittish colt who’d never known the halter, yet who shied away from it anyhow, determined to hold onto his freedom.

  But the fire from last night was still there as well. She could see that in his eyes, too. The fire and the gentleness. And the only thing that frightened her now was her own inexperience. What if she didn’t learn how to play the game in time to win it?

  But what if she won the game and later regretted it? As a warning, she recalled his admission that he was indeed a man at odds with the law. Yes, she’d been right about that; but she was right about the other, too—about the fire and the passion and the need.

  Seized by this new understanding, prodded by a desperation to save what had been offered her, Ellie straightened her shoulders, tightened the sash on her kimono, and looked him squarely in the eye, trying with all her wits to sound worldly.

  “Don’t you think you’re rushing things a bit?” She brushed by him, taking the bottom step. As she did so, her kimono fell open, revealing a bare thigh to the cool fall air—and to Kale Jarrett. She turned to smile at him, striving to calm her racing heart.

  “Since you fixed coffee, I’ll fix breakfast.”

  His fingers caught a strand of her hair. When he spoke, his voice was low. “Why is everything so complicated?”

  With the slightest movement, she turned back, then went naturally into his open arms. “Everything isn’t complicated,” she lied softly. Her lips moved toward his. “This isn’t.”

  He kissed her with a hunger that had nothing to do with missed suppers or late breakfasts, and she returned his assault, passion for passion. He could almost feel a noose slipping lower and lower about his neck. He would wriggle out of it later, he argued…he would stay until some of the family came; surely she couldn’t fall in love with him that quickly, especially not after the way he had just added to her concern about him being an outlaw.

  He would stay until some of the family came; he would secure the ranch for her, then he would hightail it to California.

  But as his kisses deepened and he slipped his arms beneath her kimono and felt again his passion grow by leaps and bounds, he knew the family had better come soon.

  “This most of all,” he whispered into the moist folds of her lips.

  And she knew he was right.

  Armando Costello arrived in time for supper two days later. By that time tension ran so high between Ellie and Kale that she was sure one of them would soon snap, like a twig after the first blue norther.

  “You’d better go put some clothes on,” Kale had finally managed to tell her on the porch that morning. “This silky thing will go up in smoke at the first ember from the fireplace.”

  Already her heart was beating out of control. She had completely forgotten her offer to fix breakfast until he reminded her, and even then she was reluctant to leave his arms. She tugged at his lips with her own, felt his hands roam her back. She ached for him.

  His voice cracked beneath the extent of his own passion. “I’m not very good at putting out a fire.”

  She grinned, feeling her flesh flame. “You do know how to start one, though.”

  After that he had sent her into the house to fix breakfast while he milked the cow and then turned the calf in with her.

  They had spent the rest of the day apart, Ellie doing chores around the house, Kale riding the pastures, inspecting Benjamin’s herd, looking for sign of foul play.

  “No,” he had answered when she suggested riding with him. “You stay here. You must have things that need doing, and I don’t need distractions.”

  He had grinned when he said it, and she laughed with him. But she knew what he meant: he needed to get away from her, to put some distance between them. And she knew he was wise to try.

  That evening after supper they sat on the porch. Discussing the day’s activities, they steered clear of anything personal—physical contact, eye contact, intimate conversation. She ached to touch him, and she could tell by the determination with which he avoided her that he knew it.

  Kale studied the rosebush beside the step, thinking instead of that other rosebush, the one long ago, the one the carpetbagger had pulled from the ground and gotten himself shot over. What would his own life have been like, he wondered now, if that had never happened? Would he still live in Tennessee? Would he have settled down with a place of his own and a wife and a passel of kids? Or would he have ended up a drifter anyway? Was it in his blood, a thing over which he had no control?

  “Where’d all this red dirt come from?” The sprinkling of red clay on the ground around the rosebush provided him a topic of conversation he hoped would ease the tension.

  “Off Benjamin’s boots,” she answered. She had given him the boots and Benjamin’s clothing that morni
ng. He had thanked her kindly, taken them to the spare room, and worn his old clothes. She didn’t mind. It was a gesture she needed to make.

  But she cringed at the thought of him not wanting to wear Benjamin’s clothes. Her mind had run in circles all day, and she had come to regret their night together. What must he think about her now, since, as he said, Benjamin had only been gone a couple of months and here she was throwing her body at another man?

  If he had an aversion to wearing his brother’s clothing, how had he felt making love to his brother’s wife—widow? The difference between the two words had done little to reassure her of her own lack of guilt in the matter. She felt ashamed. Her skin fairly prickled with it, with the shame and with the want. Must she live in this vicious circle of torment until he left?

  “Where’s any red clay around here?” he asked. “I rode all over this place today, and all I saw was black loam—and lots of rocks.”

  “There isn’t any red clay on the ranch.” Desperately she tried to concentrate on his conversation. Red clay was a much safer topic than the direction her own mind seemed bent on taking, safer and dreadfully boring.

  “Then how did it come to be on Benjamin’s boots?” he queried.

  She frowned. “I don’t know. I didn’t think about that when I cleaned them.” Her thoughts were elsewhere. Even then, before they had lain together, her thoughts had been full of nothing but Kale Jarrett. Since that first moment when she’d stared at him across the water trough, her mind had been filled with him.

  “So,” he prompted, “where did it come from?”

  “I don’t know. The only red clay I’ve ever seen is up at the painted cliffs.”

  “Along the Concho? That’s a good day’s ride from here.”

  “More. We went up there a couple of times. Benjamin and I, once; Armando went with us another time. Each of the trips took us two full days on the trail.”

  He considered this new development. It might be the lead they needed—in addition to providing a different direction for his pitiful mind. He’d thought of little else today but her. And that, he chided, he must put a stop to…pronto.