Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (16 page)

      
“Are you all right?” Her voice was hesitant and breathless from her race downstairs after being awakened from a sound sleep.

      
“Why in hellfire didn't you let him in?” Slade demanded as he struggled to extricate himself from a badly crumpled pile of carpet.

      
Dazed and half asleep, she asked, “Who?”

      
“That son-of-a-bitchin' cat!” Slade rubbed his head again and stood up unsteadily. He looked at her puzzled face and continued, as if talking to an idiot, “He wanted in your room and you had the door shut, I guess. I heard him scratching. I was just coming up to bed when I suppose he got tired of waiting for you. He did his usual crash-the-barricade act and tripped me. If I'd been a few steps higher when I stepped on him I might’ve broken my neck.” Now his voice was less angry and more aggrieved.

      
“Or the cat's back,” she put in, reaching out to steady him.

      
“Just like you to think of him first,” he said morosely as he once more rubbed the knot on his scalp. Boy, that would help his hangover in the morning, yessir!

      
Charlee was fully awake by now and took note of his unsteadiness. She reached over to guide him into the kitchen. “I better get a look at that lump to see if you need a doctor or if it's just the whiskey causing your list.” Before he could protest she had him in tow.

      
She quickly sat him down on a chair in the kitchen and lit a tallow lamp. “Now, let me see,” she murmured, half to herself, as she parted the thick, straight gold hair and rubbed the goose egg.

      
“Ouch! You have any practice doctoring before?” He flinched and swore.

      
“Only my pa's mules. I can take care of the likes of you,” she said calmly.

      
He raised his head and reached up to grab her wrist. Her soft palm brushed his stubbly cheek as he took his first real look at her. Good God, he could see right through that white thing she wore! Sitting with her standing between his knees put her breasts at his eye level.

      
Jim felt her grow very still, suddenly aware of where his gaze had trespassed. With one hand he continued to rub her open palm along his jaw line, while his other hand reached up to pull gently on a shimmering strand of hair that had fallen over her shoulder. Slowly, as his eyes now locked with hers, he pulled her closer by winding the bronze coil around his fist.

      
She did not resist, nor did she take any initiative, but moved woodenly, her green eyes huge and luminous. Her lips parted slightly as he pulled them to his own to brush them lightly, experimentally.

      
Her breath was sweet and the kiss soft and inviting. She let out a muffled little gasp of surprise and started to move back; but he pulled her closer between his legs, wrapping one arm around her waist while keeping his grip on her hair.

      
“Don't,” was all he said before his lips raised to hers once more, pressing more insistently this time as he held her trembling in his arms. She smelled of dried lavender, clean and natural.

      
Jim could feel her tremble but assumed it was an answering quiver of desire. It never occurred to him that it was virginal fear. It had been such a long time, and his need was so great that he considered no further. He stood and scooped her into his arms.

      
Charlee found herself being carried down the hall and up the stairs before she could muster her badly shaken wits. Jim placed soft, warm kisses along her temples and eyelids, then on her lips once more. She felt a languorous drowsiness overpowering her speech, turning her limbs to water. “Nn—” She couldn't even speak one word of protest before his lips silenced hers once more.

      
If Jim was slightly unsteady in his gait when he crossed the threshold of his room, Charlee did not notice it as she held onto him in a rush of dizziness. But when he deposited her abruptly on his large bed, her eyes flew open in shock. She looked around the strange masculine room, with its rough, dark oak furniture and animal skin rugs, realizing for the first time the enormity of what she was doing.

      
Slade stood towering over her by the side of the bed, methodically stripping off his fancy white shirt, whose studs had hours ago been discarded. As he continued to bare a broader expanse of densely furred chest and lean muscled arms, his eyes never left hers, willing her to lie complacently still in the center of the enormous soft mattress.

      
She forced herself to sit up, saying, “You're drunk, Jim,” but she could not break the hold his eyes had on hers.

      
“Not
that
drunk, Charlee, not nearly that drunk.” With that he quickly balled up the shirt and tossed it behind him, then knelt on the edge of the bed to take her small face between his hands and silence her protests with a deepening kiss.

      
He tasted faintly of whiskey and tobacco, compellingly male, just as she had always known he would. His tongue outlined her lips, then pried them open and entered her mouth. She obliged him by opening wider in a small, whimpered gasp. He twined their tongues together while he explored the sensitive insides of her cheeks. His lips brushed and pressed, caressed and heated hers, until she was mindless and breathless, melting into him, returning the kiss with abandon.

      
He pressed her back onto the bed without breaking the joining of the kiss. Charlee placed her arms around his shoulders and felt the soft tickling of his chest hair as it teased her sensitive breasts. His hands seemed to be everywhere now, running down her sides, caressing her belly, squeezing and massaging her silky little buttocks until she writhed in wanton ecstasy. His warm lips left hers to trail soft, wet kisses down her throat and onto her breasts. Impatiently, he loosened the tie of her night rail and eased it down past her shoulders to bare the delicate perfection of her breasts.

      
The moment his mouth fastened on one nipple, she arched up, clutching her fingers in his hair with a convulsive cry. His tongue teased and circled one hard little bud, then moved to the other, alternately licking and suckling them as she whimpered in pleasure.

      
When she was completely at his mercy, uncaring in the throes of her first passion, he regarded her flushed face and the mane of bronze hair spilled across the pillows as she thrashed, tossing her head to and fro. His own breathing was labored and erratic, his eyes glazed with lust. He quickly pulled off his boots and stockings, then stood up and unfasten his breeches.

      
Through heavy-lidded eyes Charlee watched him undress, realizing what was about to happen but too drugged by passion to stir herself or cry out in protest.
This was what you always wanted, from the first day you ever saw him, wasn't it?
Her eyes drank in his lean, sinewy body, following the thick dark golden whorls of hair covering his chest downward. He freed his hard straining sex and she saw the aroused male anatomy for the first time. Then, he was back beside her, his hands and lips luring her into oblivious surrender once again.

      
Her arms were pinioned to her sides by the half-lowered night rail. Deftly, he freed one slim arm, then the other, and slid the gown down past her hips and legs, tossing it to the bottom of the bed. She felt the hot hardness of his body. They rolled back and forth across the wide bed, locked in an embrace, rubbing and caressing, lips seeking, tongues entwining.

      
Charlee could have gone on like this forever, so new and wonderful was this exploration. How different his body was from hers, longer and stronger, hard and hairy. She buried her face in his chest hair and ran her hands down his narrow hips. But then he reached for one of her hands and pulled it between them, guiding it around the engorged shaft that had been prodding between her legs with such insistence.

      
She gasped at the hot velvety hardness of it. How could it grow to be so large and rock-hard, yet be so smooth and slick? She caressed him experimentally. Now it was his turn to let out a choked moan of pleasure. Then he rolled her onto her back and reached between her legs to caress the cluster of curls, feeling her wet readiness even before she began to writhe and whimper in wanting. He thrust into her in a frenzy of aching need, only to be shocked by the rending pressure of a breached barrier and her sharp cry of unexpected pain.

      
Charlee tensed at his swift, hurtful entry, but her own flesh was wet and eager, and quickly the discomfort began to evaporate, replaced by a keen, aching need. He began kissing her feverishly as he moved inside her. She clasped him eagerly, once more, her desire stoked into surging waves of pleasure. She joined him in what quickly became a natural rhythm. Once again, she wanted time for all the wonderful new sensations to register, to weave their way through her and build toward some unknown completion. But Slade knew what he wanted, and he wanted it quickly. He increased the pace, and in a few long, shuddering convulsions, spent himself in her.

      
When he collapsed and withdrew from her, rolling onto his back, he cursed silently. Jim had never taken a virgin before, but he knew that he had done so now. The stricken look on her face and the hurt in her green eyes convinced him further. However, as he was satiated and still more than a little drunk, rational thought was fleeting indeed. He pulled her to him, rolling her to fit along his side.

      
Charlee snuggled down, still tense and aching for something that had not come, yet wanting the feeling of belonging that such cuddling gave her. Jim's soft, even breathing told her he had fallen asleep almost instantly. She reached for the covers crumpled at the foot of the bed. Pulling a sheet over them, she settled down to await the morning.

      
It arrived all too soon, for she had taken a long time to fall asleep, unused to lying beside a man and still excited from her incomplete introduction to making love.

      
Slade stirred first, rolling over against the slight body nestled next to him. Great masses of her hair were tangled around him, across his face and chest. He brushed the silky tendrils away and sat up. One look at Charlee, naked and asleep in his bed, was enough to bring last night back to him in a rush of remorse.

      
Damnation! He muttered several oaths under his breath and swung his long legs over the bedside, then swore again. Clothes were strewn all over the floor, and his pants were on the far side of the room. When he ran his fingers through his hair, he encountered the lump on his head. Wincing, he cursed once more as all the details of the preceding evening came into agonizingly clear focus. Grimly, Slade stood up and walked around the bed, realizing he had a pounding headache. “One part whiskey, one part tomcat, and two parts Charlee,” he groaned as he bent over to retrieve his trousers. Once he had pulled them on, he looked again at the sleeping girl. She looked so young in the daylight, young and innocent.

      
He cringed and slipped silently out the door, heading for the kitchen. They had slept late, not surprisingly. Weevils gave him a peculiar look but made no comment. The cook served up coffee, muttering under his breath, then left the forbidding presence of his boss. If he saw any correlation between Slade's coming to the kitchen half-dressed in the late morning and Charlee's obvious absence, he did not mention it. Slade sat and contemplated what to do. No solution came readily to mind. Finally, he refilled his cup and poured one for Charlee. He would have to face her sooner or later, no use putting it off.

      
Deprived of Slade's body heat, Charlee had awakened almost immediately to hear his groans and curses as he dressed. Nervous and uncertain, she feigned sleep until he was gone, then sat up in bed, staring around the large masculine room she only dimly recalled from the night before.

      
“Now collect yourself,” she scolded, shifting uncomfortably in the center of the bed. It felt strange to be naked beneath the thin sheet. She was sore between her legs. When she noticed the smears of dried blood on the sheets, she gasped. Still, it hadn't been that bad—in fact, a good deal of it had been downright wonderful, so much so she found herself wanting to try it again!

      
“I must be a terrible, wicked sinner,” she sighed, but felt no genuine remorse. “Well, once we're married, it'll be all right for us to spend all day in bed,” she said to herself, then blushed for her boldness.

      
Charlee sat hugging her knees with the sheet wrapped haphazardly around her. Closing her eyes, she relived every nuance of Jim's skillful seduction, including her own increasingly enthusiastic responses. He seemed awfully practiced at making love, despite the fact he had been drinking. That jarred her girlish reverie a bit, shaking her confidence in the fairytale ending she foresaw after their night of passion. What if he had seduced her only because he was drunk? Did men get more amorous when they were drinking? Remembering her father's tavern companions, she somehow doubted it, but her experience was rather limited. Then she recalled his muttering anger upon arising this morning. Clearly he had been in one of his foul humors when he stalked from the bedroom. Was that because of finding her in his bed?

      
No. She resolutely forced such disquieting thoughts from her mind. He simply had a hangover and a nasty lump on his head. Maybe he was one of those people who was always crabby when he awakened. Oh, how she wished he would return! Should she dress and go downstairs?

      
Just then her question was answered when soft footfalls sounded on the steps. For a panicky second, Charlee struggled to remember if Lupe and Lena were supposed to be here to clean today. No, thank God, not until tomorrow. How mortifying it would be to be caught naked in Jim's bed by her friends. Then, she reconsidered, maybe not exactly mortifying. “Oh, I guess I'll never make a proper lady.” She sighed and hugged her knees again.