Crouching down under it, he raised slowly. Nothing. “Eyes, don’t fail me now,” he muttered to himself. He kept peering in until he could make out shadows and forms. They were on the bed. Together. For an instant a silly thought formed in his brain. What if she had come up here willingly with Nick?
They certainly looked comfortable enough from where he stood. What if he had read the girl wrong? Nah. He shook his head. Then what if he had already forced himself upon her?…
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He’d throw open the back door, grab Vic, and be gone before Nick knew what happened. He straightened, prepared himself for the impact with the door, and then moved. At exactly the same instant, he heard the front door crack and slam open. Damn it. Wes hadn’t waited. He lunged for the back door.
Confusion. Total. Confounded by the darkness and not knowing where anything or anybody was, Wes stood silhouetted by what little moonlight there was.
Victoria, startled, panic pounding in her head, leaped from the bed toward the shadowy form she knew was Wes. Her knight in shining armor. Her hero.
Buck jumped on the bed, and before Nick knew what was happening, Buck was on him, pinning him to the mattress.
“Git,” he hollered to the two standing by the door. “I’ll bring Nick down in his truck.”
Strengthened by adrenaline rushing through his veins, Nick shoved the old man to the floor and dove for his Victoria. Wes shoved her outside and cheerfully drew back a fist and punched Nick in the face.
Wes heard Nick’s animal-like growl as he righted himself and jumped Wes, arms flying, fists pounding. He fought like a cornered bear, and as Wes fell to the floor after one of his stunning blows, he swore and launched a new attack.
Buck found the handle of something heavy and approached the two figures.
Hoping he had the right head under aim, he swung hard and heard the decided thud as it made contact.
At first all went quiet. The men stood still as statues. Then Nick slumped to the floor in a heap. Buck let out a whistle between his teeth.
Buck wrapped Nick’s wrists together with an old rope that had been hanging from a nail on the wall. “Get her out of here, Wes.”
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Wes and Victoria could hear Nick’s confused struggles and yelps of protest as he came to. Wes didn’t want to leave the old man alone and then remembered Buck. He could take care of himself.
Safe. In his arms, she nearly collapsed. As he helped her to the porch, she remembered Nick’s gun belt thrown carelessly on the table. She wanted it out of there just in case it was loaded with live bullets. She wrenched herself free of Wes’s grasp and lunged back in the cabin. As she felt her way to the table, grabbed the belt and slid it off, she heard Nick call her name. She stopped. It was such a cry, a plea for her to help him. A tear slipped down her cheek. Then Wes was there, yanking her outside. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her down the hill.
Free. She hadn’t known how precious a thing that was until they were in Wes’s truck. He gathered her in his arms and pressed her close to him. “I thought I might lose you. God, Victoria, what happened? How did you get way out here with him?”
She couldn’t tell him that her plan was to leave anyway. Because it still was.
God help her, she had to leave Glory Town for good. For Wes’s good. For her good. She alone had been responsible for Katie and she had endangered her.
How could he ever really love her again? If he ever did? After what she heard outside the sheriff’s office…would she have ever been sure?
He’d go on with his life. He had his parents and his daughter.
What would she do? “It’s over, Wes. I’m so tired. I need to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow. Just don’t hurt him.”
He pushed her away from him. “Everyone is so worried I’ll kill Nick. I just might. He can’t simply take what he wants. Who he wants. Did he hurt you?”
“You hurt me. He didn’t hurt me. He’s the one that needs help. Not me.”
“And damn lucky Buck saw to it that I didn’t get my hands on him again.”
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He gathered her in his arms but he could feel restraint instead of the yielding he needed. He kissed her lips, her cheeks, her hands because he needed the contact. He pushed her away from him so he could see her in the lights from the dash. She wasn’t smiling. She looked pale and drawn and tired.
Wes turned in the seat and started the truck. She relaxed against his shoulder, reveling in the feel of his strength and solidness. Her heart shattered, splintering through her like sparks from a fire. They weren’t good for each other.
He deserved more. And maybe she did, too. She had never been able to give what was needed to make her marriage to David survive. She had never been a source of pride to her mother. She remembered the way Wes looked running with Katie toward the ambulance. Remembered the dark circles of sadness beneath his eyes during her hospital stay. She had almost killed his daughter.
She wondered if she’d ever be happy again. And where would she go…her eyes closed. The gentle, safe rock of the truck lulled her to sleep.
Wes took one hand off the steering wheel and put it around her shoulder.
She slumped against him. He felt the hand clenching the steering wheel begin to ache. He loosened his grip and tried to relax. He was never going to let her out of his sight again. He’d come too close to losing everything that meant anything to him in the last few days. Katie
and Victoria. Determination furrowed across his brow. Taking a deep breath, he kissed the top of her head and willed himself to believe everything was fine. He had her back. He could feel the warm softness of her body as she leaned against him. It would be this way from now on. No one and nothing would change that.
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He didn’t take her to Glory Town. Even as she hung suspended between wakefulness and deep sleep, she knew it wasn’t Glory Town. It was the ranch.
He was carrying her through the darkened rooms, up the stairs. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and laid her head there. Wes shoved at the door with his booted foot. And then he was laying her down in his big soft, down-covered bed in his room. He was unbuttoning her shirt. If he’d asked her, she would have refused the refuge…but he hadn’t asked. And it wouldn’t hurt to love him one more time.
His fingers roused her. The gentle brush of his flesh on hers brought her further from sleep but into a dreamy state. She had no idea what time it was or what day it was or what month it was. She knew only that he was there with her.
The man she loved with all her heart. Nothing mattered anymore. Not the screaming warnings that echoed off in the distance of her mind, telling her, reminding her that she was putting an end to this relationship.
Gently, he lifted her, pulling the blouse away from her. Laying her back, he shed her of all her clothes, tossing them across the room.
Then he was under the light cotton blanket beside her. Gathering her in his arms, he pulled her across his chest. Wes kissed the top of her head, as he would a child’s, and closed his eyes. He wanted her badly but he knew she needed to be undisturbed. She had been through so much. He would have to be content with just holding her, knowing she was here, with him and safe.
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All during the night, she tossed and turned, groaned and fought, pleaded and cried softly. Drifting between sleep and wakefulness, Wes soothed her and calmed her. And gently held this woman he loved close to his heart.
The first streams of the faint light of morning drifted between the curtains. A breeze lifted them gently, bringing the aroma of wildflowers into the room.
Victoria became aware of where she was and that her body lay cradled against his.
She felt the hard softness of him as she ran her fingers over his taut abdomen. Her fingers brushed against his jeans. Bless him. He was being cautious. She pulled at the snap. Soon enough they would be parted. Soon enough, she would no longer know the ecstasy of making love with him. There would be time for missing him later. Her mind and body needed him.
Demanded him. Just this time. She wanted to be free and in love, one more time.
And she wanted him to remember her. When he went to bed at night, he should remember the woman who loved him with all her heart, the woman he had tricked.
He awoke quickly and smiled at her. He kissed her chin lightly. She turned her mouth up for full contact. Sensing the welcome in her movements, in her eyes, he rained open-mouthed kisses down her face. Turning her so she lay flat on the bed, he bent over her and slowly but surely, gently and with reverence, devoured her.
His hands, his lips were everywhere at once. Running her hand through his hair, she brought his mouth up to hers. He held his face inches away from hers, looking at, soaking up that eager gaze in her eyes that even the shadows of morning couldn’t conceal and he was happy.
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Happier than he had ever been. Life with her was going to be the best. He closed the space between them. This was only one in a million times when he would be inside her, filling her and being filled.
She traced his mouth with the tip of her tongue and then met his lips with her own, open and inviting. Their warm breaths mingled and merged, branding-iron hot and just as effective.
Under his hands, her breasts blossomed. Beneath his hands, her body arched, needing more and more contact. Licks of hunger drove the moans from her lips.
Drew his whispers. All she knew, all her entire world consisted of was him. His hands, his mouth, his hair. His long, hard torso. His feet as they tangled with hers. His knees as they trapped hers.
Her lids shuttered closed and she was lost in a world of dark red sparks and flowing lava. He kissed her fingers one by one, and the soreness from the fire, the splintered wood disappeared as the feel of his mouth spiraled from her fingertips to the very center of her. Then his mouth was trailing over her breasts, slowly down the center of her body, and then along the inside of her thighs. Grabbing handfuls of sheet, she held on for the ride as he continued his journey to her ankles, behind her knees and back.
Despite the weakness caused by her ordeal, together they rolled across the bed, tangling sheets and spread. Pillows slipped silently to the floor.
He could never get enough of her. He wanted her now but he forced himself to keep a tight rein on what pushed for release. She was like velvet, soft and yielding. She was like long grass in the wind, undulating and flowing. Still he guided her, took her along the path of higher places. He felt her hand reach for the zipper on his jeans and he helped her.
Sizzling. The secret pleasure of her haste threatened to explode in him. Then when she pushed gently at his shoulder, he rolled over on his back and she bent 208
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over him. He was a locomotive coursing down the tracks at top speed. He was skydiving, floating and twirling through space and time. And all the while, her hands, her lips glided softly here and then there and back again.
Her mouth was like the soft, sweet petals of a rose as it poured over his flesh and seeped through his mind, killing any awareness of anything except her. Her gentle rovings drove him mad.
The only pain that racked her body now was that of need. Of want. The need to please him. To bring to him all the love she had for him. When he reached to draw her close, she pushed his hands away and continued her exploration. Their bodies were slick and hot. She tasted him, tested him, and made him wait. Sultry.
Lazily and then with speed, her mouth brought him pleasure that threatened to send him over the edge.
Yet she made him wait. And want.
No more. A man could take no more without…rolling her under him, he looked into her shuttered eyes. His hand moved slowly, down…down. Weak now, she let him have his way.
Thunder echoed in the distance, trumpeting the imminent arrival of a storm.
A cooling breeze ducked in the window, fluttering the curtains and carrying the scent of roses to linger there.
His touch, his gentle words of love sifted through the light veil of sensation.
Driven to peak after peak, her body writhed with delight. A kaleidoscope of colors twirled in her brain. Each color bringing its own heat, its own speed. A whirling pattern of sensations spun on a hot axis, dizzying her. Like a pinwheel spinning in the wind. A roller coaster ride of speed and thrill.
And then he stopped. Reaching over to snap the little night-light on the stand, he looked down at her in the dim light.
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He ran his fingers over her lips. She nipped him. He pushed her unruly hair behind her ear. She kissed his chin. Rearing his head, he positioned himself over her. “I want to see you when we’re together. I want to watch you become mine.
Only mine.”
He took her hands, twined his fingers with hers. She opened for him. He lifted, poised, for seconds only touching, only reveling in the heat of hot, wanting flesh against flesh. Pushing forward, ever so slightly, and so very slowly. Sliding, growing, filling, deeper…
She took all of him. United. Complete. Pressure point to pressure point. Core to core. Heart to heart. Polestar to apex.
Volcanic. Ebb tide. She arched toward him. He drove, meeting her only to retreat and charge again.
A carousel whirled, a rainbow arched, a flash of voltaic lightning zipped, ripping white into a rolling black sky.
Her eyes drifted closed as he kissed the smile that came to her lips. In that place reserved for lovers, saved and hidden until joined, until together and pleasing one another, they sailed.
She ran her hands down to his buttocks. In the age-old rhythm of lovers throughout all time, they moved. Locked together, one in mind and body, spirit and heart, he pulled her even closer. As the tempo increased, became out of control and urgent, he reared back and whispered her name. As her eyes opened, focused on his beautiful face, they soared, exploding and fusing, sinking and disintegrating, melding and forging. Together they jettisoned over the edge into a scalding aura of force.