High Country Bride (16 page)

Rafe must have seen her expression change, for he touched her mouth with one gloved finger.“Why so sad?” he asked.

She smiled. “I’m not sad,” she said, and that was true enough. She couldn’t be, not on this sunny day, with Rafe at her side and a picnic basket tucked away in the back of the wagon. If anything, she treasured every hour of every day all the more, because she knew just how fleeting happiness could be. “I guess I was just wondering if all this can possibly last.”

“All what?” he asked, very quietly. “Are you telling me you’re happy here, Emmeline? On the Triple M, I mean, with me?”

She flushed, lowered her eyes, nodded. And suddenly she was desperate to know. “What about you, Rafe? Are
you
happy?”

He bent his head, tasted her mouth in a teasing way that sent sweet shivers through her. “Yes,” he said, putting a lusty emphasis on the word.

They drove on, Emmeline painfully conscious of all the wicked forces Rafe had so easily aroused in her, Rafe smiling and keeping his thoughts to himself.

Just ahead, the track converged with another, newer trail snaking up the mountainside from the direction of Indian Rock.

When they finally reached the site where their home would be built, Emmeline felt a rush of excitement. Stacks of massive, cleanly planed logs had been brought in, some of them notched at the ends, so they could be fitted together into sturdy walls, strong enough to keep out the worst weather.

“Oh, Rafe,” Emmeline whispered, clasping her hands together.“You’ve begun building!”

He looked pleased, and uncharacteristically modest. “Not exactly. All we’ve done so far is have the logs brought in. They were cut and milled up around Flagstaff.” He drew the team to a halt, set the brake lever and secured the reins, then took a moment to assess the construction project with obvious pride. “Pa said he came into some unexpected money the other day. The logs are his wedding gift to us, along with the land itself, of course.”

Emmeline’s spirits soared. She stood up in the wagon box in order to see farther, and drew in a deep breath, spreading her arms wide. It was easy to imagine the finished house, sturdy and strong, a frontier castle with smoke coming from its chimneys and light glowing in its windows.

“I wish we could stay,” she said.“Not even go back, but just stay right here, you and me, in our own house, under our own roof.”

Rafe laughed. He’d come around to her side of the wagon and now stood looking up at her, ready to help her down. “I reckon you’d get restless soon enough,” he said, raising his arms for her.

He closed his hands around her waist, held her suspended above him for a few moments, during which her heartbeat raced and her breath turned rapid and shallow, then lowered her slowly towathe ground, but stopping just short, letting her slide along the hard length of him as she descended. Then he kissed her, and the hussy in her came out for a fact. She returned his kiss with fervor.

“Oh, Lord,” he groaned, coming up for air. “Are you
trying
to drive me insane, or does it just come naturally to you?”

She smiled mischievously.“Both,” she answered.

“Well,” he told her, his eyes dancing, “you’ve bitten off more than you can chew this time, little lady. Suppose I just lay you down in the sweet grass right now and have my way with you?”

She gave him a temptress’s kiss, or what she imagined as one, sultry and slow, before replying. “Suppose you do,” she challenged.

He eased them both to the ground without another word, and they kissed for a long time, there in the cool, damp grass, never bothering to fetch a blanket from the wagon.

Usually, their lovemaking was a lengthy process, but that day they were too eager for each other to wait long, or even to fully undress. Rafe opened the bodice of Emmeline’s dress, baring her breasts, reveling in them, and she unbuttoned his shirt, splaying her fingers over his chest, savoring his warmth and his strength.

He raised her skirts and petticoat, bunching them in one hand, and she felt the soft ground through her pantaloons. They were soon gone, too, down around one ankle, and Rafe was unfastening his trousers. He teased her for several long, excruciating minutes, and she finally pleaded with him. He was inside her in one deep, powerful stroke, and her need, pent up for so many days, unwound like a watch spring freed from its casing. She was crying out, and hurling herself against him in the first throes of release, from the very beginning.

Now that he was inside her, though, Rafe took his time, guiding her through one climax, and then another. She was all but exhausted when he finally lost control himself, and delved deep. He threw back his head and shouted in triumphant surrender, and his body buckled on hers once, twice, a third time. She felt his warmth inside her, and hoped—
prayed
—they’d conceived a child.

They lay entangled for a while, and Emmeline wondered dreamily if they would ever be really separate again, after such a joining. It seemed to her that, this time, their very souls had fused into one, just as their bodies had. She wound a finger ’round and ’round a lock of his hair, just below his collar.

He raised himself, trembling, to look down into her face. “That,” he said slowly, still out of breath, “was worth waiting for. I’ve got to admit, though, there were times in the last week when I thought I’d go out of my mind, wanting you.”

She merely smiled, feeling as voluptuous as Cleopatra on her barge, and stretched, making a little crooning sound of sensual contentment, way down in her throat. Rafe moaned and instantly began to grow hard inside her.

Her eyes widened.“Rafe,” she said,“I can’t…Not yet.”

He nibbled at her lower lip. He was harder still, now, and bigger.

It was her turn to moan.

He began to move on her, inside her, slowly. Very slowly.

“Oh,” she groaned, drawing out the word, lke someone falling over a cliff.

He slipped his hands under her bare bottom, raised her a little, plunged to the core of her, and found fire there.

Her hands were wild under his shirt; she grasped his back, pulling, trying to draw him into her very soul. Within moments, she was climaxing again, with a violent abandon so wild and so primitive that she barely recognized herself. All the while she was shouting his name to the skies, all the time she was meeting him thrust for thrust and coming apart in his arms, she wondered what force had taken her over.

Rafe’s release was as fierce as her own, and when at last it ended, he fell beside her, fighting for every breath, his eyes tightly closed. It was as if he had depleted all his senses in loving Emmeline, and must wait for their recovery.

He didn’t stir until much later, when a chilly breeze began to blow. Only then did he carefully, but awkwardly, button her bodice, covering the breasts he loved so well, and lower her skirts. He held up her pantaloons, like a flag, and smiled when a blush rose in her cheeks.

“You won’t be needing these quite yet,” he said, and sent them sailing up into the back of the wagon. He ran a hand through his hair, dark as ebony, and mussed by Emmeline’s eager fingers.“What do you say we have that picnic now? Build up our strength a little, before the next round?”

She blushed harder still. “You are incorrigible, Rafe McKettrick.”

“And insatiable,” he added.

She laughed. “Such fancy words. You must have been a very good student.”

“Better at some things than others,” he admitted, kissing the backs of her fingers. Then he stood, deftly pulling her right along with him. He turned his back to her, to fasten his trousers and then button his shirt. He was still in a state of appealing dishabille when he faced her again, took her in his arms, and kissed her soundly.

If we never had any more than this, Emmeline thought, it would be so much more than I ever dreamed of.

“Let’s get a fire going,” he said when the kiss ended, and for a moment, Emmeline didn’t realize that he was talking about gathering sticks and lighting matches. “It’s getting cold out here.”

Emmeline found firewood, branches and twigs, mostly, fallen and dried, and Rafe made a circle of stones to contain the blaze. Once the campfire was going strong, he unhitched the mules and staked them nearby, where there was plenty of grass and a small spring.

Emmeline, meanwhile, spread one of the blankets on the ground, well within the radius of warmth cast by the fire, and laid out the picnic. She was ravenously hungry, and so was Rafe; little wonder, the way they’d exerted themselves earlier. She reddened a little, just to recall her unbridled responses.

Rafe, standing at the edge of the blanket now, bent to take the wine—elderberry, made by Concepcion herself—from the basket, along with two empty jelly jars. He uncorked the wine easily, then poured for Emmeline and himself.

“A toast,” he said, holding up his glass.

Emmeline knew her eyes were shining as she held hers up in response.

“To us, Emmeline. To you, and me, and our children, and our children’s chilren. To this house, and this land.”

She touched her glass to his, and they drank, and to Emmeline there was something sacred about the exchange.

The wine was heady stuff, and she had more with her dinner, and more still afterward. When Rafe laid her down amid the remains of their feast and took her again, this time slowly, she was transported, rising and falling on the tides of a sweet, quiet passion that had no beginning, it seemed, and no end.

They slept afterward, huddled together under the other two blankets they’d brought along, and woke to find twilight descending. The wind was raw, and the fire was nearly out.

“We’d better head back,” Rafe said, without particular enthusiasm.

Emmeline nodded, wishing again that the house were finished, and they could stay where they were, on their own ground, just the two of them, for just a while longer. She opened the valise she’d brought, found a pair of pantaloons inside, and put them on behind the wagon, out of Rafe’s view.

It seemed a silly pretence of modesty, given that he’d removed the first pair with so little resistance from her, but there it was. She felt taut as the strings of a fiddle inside, tuned and resonant, all her senses humming. Indeed, she suspected that if Rafe so much as touched her in the most remotely intimate way, she would shatter like a clay pigeon at a skeet shoot.

She didn’t look at him while they were gathering the blankets and the remains of their picnic, and when he’d hitched up the mules and hoisted her into the wagon box, she took great care to keep to her side of the seat.

He chuckled, wrapping one of the blankets around her, pulling her close to his side. She hesitated, then settled against him with a sigh.

It was dark by the time they crossed the creek, a few hundred yards downstream from the ranch house, with its glowing windows, and rambled up the other bank, mules and wagon wheels dripping water.

Rafe stopped the rig behind the house, near the steps leading to the enclosed back porch, and helped Emmeline down from the wagon box first thing. She was stiff from the long, rugged ride down the mountain, but she felt a deep, secret contentment, too. That, she knew, was the legacy of Rafe’s lovemaking.

He carried the picnic basket and blankets as far as the porch, then went back out to put away the team and wagon. Emmeline was hoping to find the kitchen empty, for she knew there was a silly, dreamy look about her, one she couldn’t quite hide. She might have been treading on air, several inches off the floor, so light was her step.

And then she saw him.

Emmeline stopped cold, staring at Holt.

He smiled and hoisted his coffee mug in an impertinent salute.“Hello, Mrs. McKettrick,” he said.

She couldn’t speak.

Holt sighed and shook his head, affably bewildered. “Have you forgotten what we were to each other?” he asked. He chuckled when she didn’t answer, set his mug in the sink, and went out.

Emmeline collapsed into the rocking chair near the stove, her knees having turned to water.

Jeb reached into the of the wagon, just as Rafe was leading the mules into the barn to be brushed down and fed, and came up with Emmeline’s discarded pantaloons.“What’s this?” he teased.“A flag of surrender?”

Rafe left the mules standing and went back to snatch the knickers out of his brother’s hand. Once he had them, he didn’t know what to do with them, and he made several false starts before stuffing them inside his shirt. His face felt hot as a stove lid with a January fire burning beneath it.

“One more word,” he warned, waggling a finger at Jeb and frowning so hard, it hurt. “Just one more word, Little Brother, that’s all it’s going to take.”

Jeb was trying hard not to laugh, and he held up both hands, palms out, in a gesture of peace. His cheeks kept puffing out, though, and he was making a wheezing sound. Under any other circumstances, Rafe would have whacked him hard on the back, thinking he was choking.

Instead, he turned his back on his brother, commending himself on his forbearance, and stalked over to take up the mules’ halter ropes again. Damn, but he’d be glad when he and his wife had their own place.

Jeb followed him into the barn. Typically, he didn’t help put the mules away, he just leaned against the stall gate, watching Rafe work and grinning like a cat with feathers in its whiskers.