Holt's Gamble (27 page)

Shrugging out of his shirt, he shifted his weight over her from one arm to the other, then discarded it in the knee-high grass beside them. With a low growl, Clay caught her beneath her arms and rolled with her onto his back. He settled her atop him, astride his hips.

Her eyes widened momentarily and she let out a small gasp at the intimate sensation of feeling him hard and hot at the vortex of her legs. A dash of fear flickered through her body, but she pushed it away.

"Take off your dress," he ordered softly. His hands circled her waist and his hips tilted up reflexively to meet her softness.

She smiled and watched his face as her fingers worked the tiny buttons at the bodice of her dress.

Flick.
The first pearly fastener eased out of its home. With instincts ancient and primal, she moved her hips against his and heard him moan.

Flick.
His eyes drifted shut and he clamped down on her waist, pulling her against him more fully.

Flick. Flick.
His fingers moved up impatiently to help her. The tapered bodice of her dress fell away from her shoulders. His flattened palms slid up over the whalebone stays of her corset and across the curve of her camisole-covered breasts.

"Now, the rest," he told her, skimming a finger across the scalloped edge of her camisole, teasing the fullness of her breast.

Her skin quivered in response. She raised her arms obligingly and he drew the camisole over her head. He dispatched the fasteners on the front of her corset with the same unhurried expectancy. As the constraint slipped away, his heated gaze fell on her breasts and he fitted one in the curve of his palm as if it had been designed for that purpose.

She drew in a breath when he touched her, stunned by the exquisite sensations his caress evoked. A spiraling ache spread upward from her thighs to the center of her womanhood.
What we're doing must be wrong
she thought abstractly.
But could something so wrong feel this wonderful?
Regrets be dammed, she thought, closing her eyes to the thoughts as if she could chase them back with utter darkness. His fiery touch burned away all rational thought once more and she tipped her head back, arching into his hands.

"You're so beautiful..." His voice was low and intimate, roughened with desire. His thumb drew tiny arcs around the crest of her nipple. Dropping his hands to the waistband of her dress and petticoat, he swept them over her head. They spread like a billowing sail, over the grass beside them. "...but you're too far away." He rolled her onto her back again, capturing her beneath him.

His mouth found hers again before she'd fully reached the ground, his tongue exploring the smooth surface of her teeth before leaving her lips to trail moist circles down the length of her throat.

"Shall I taste you here, now?" he asked, devilishly fingering one dusky-crested nipple.

She wasn't sure what the etiquette was in matters such as these, but her entire body throbbed with wanting and his tone seemed to require an answer.

"Yes... please."

Clay's eyebrows went up fractionally in amusement. Yes, please? Was she always so polite in bed? There was something so deliciously innocent in her hushed reply, it made him hesitate for a moment before dipping his head in compliance. A hint of vanilla lingered enticingly on her skin. Her taste filled his senses as he took the fullness of her nipple into his mouth, stoking it with his tongue. She cried out softly and plunged her fingers through the dark waves of his hair, pulling him closer.

Any wishful thoughts he might have had about taking her leisurely disappeared with that cry. She was like a fever in his blood. His need for her was hot, compelling, and raw with unsated hunger, like a man who'd gone too long without food to ever again believe excess was possible.

Kierin was lost in a haze of sensation and was only vaguely aware when he caught the drawstring at her waist and slipped her pantalettes down her thighs. Realizing only that they impeded her movement, she kicked them off and wrapped her bare legs around him. His mouth continued to tease her breasts with soft, sucking bites, spinning her headlong into a blissful daze. For the first time in her life, she felt reckless. Free. She didn't want to question what was happening. She simply allowed it to be.

Every muscle in her body quivered as his fingers made the long, delicious descent to the soft V of curls at the apex of her thighs. But as his fingers slid against the slick warmth there, she gasped and reached down, stopping him with her hand. It was all so intimate, so unfamiliar. She just needed a moment to...

Clay turned a heavy-lidded look of inquiry on her and smiled. He recognized that hesitation for what it was, but he was in no mood for delays. He quickly dispatched the row of buttons on his trousers and slid them down his legs. Taking her trembling hand in his, he guided it against his hot length, and released a shuddering breath. It had been too long. He felt his control slipping, and having no desire to embarrass himself, he forced himself to go perfectly still when her fingers curled around him.

Experimentally, Kierin slid her fingers up and down, exploring the hard length of him, its velvety texture an intoxicating surprise. She heard him groan against her shoulder.

His fingers caressed her satiny warmth, and this time, with her hand still closed around him, she arched into his palm like a cat being stroked. He felt the whispering heat of her breath as she sighed into his ear, an acquiescent purr.

He slipped out of the rest of his clothes without ever completely leaving her. Then, he lowered his primed body over hers, nudging her thighs apart with his knee. His blood pounded in his ears as he guided himself into her. Kierin's arms tightened around him as he surged forward. He heard her cry out when his first thrust met with an unexpected barrier.

Impossible.

Stunned and too aroused to believe the indisputable evidence of her virginity, he rocked against her again. Her cry this time was muffled against his straining shoulder.

"What the hell..." he groaned, slumping against her.

"It doesn't matter," she urged, begging him with her hands to go on. She needed him desperately, wanted him in ways she'd never even imagined before. "Please..."

He raised his head and searched her eyes in the darkness. All the denials and words flung, all the angry bitterness—it had never occurred to him that she could have escaped that brothel unscathed. He shook his head in disbelief. "Doesn't mat—?"

"Clay—I'm asking you..." She tilted her hips up wantonly against his. Her eyes met uncertainly with his. She was willing to risk everything—her pride, even her dignity, to have him. "Make love to me. Don't make me beg."

If his passion had waned momentarily with the discovery, her pleading words restored it. "Ah, Kierin," he murmured. His lips claimed her half-opened mouth with a desperate urgency, suddenly indisposed to deny himself or her.

The delicate membrane broke with his next movement and he held himself still for a moment inside her. She answered his silence with a gentle rotating of her hips. "Yes..." she whispered. "Oh, yes..."

Flames shot through her limbs as he buried himself deep inside her. Her breathing became as erratic as her pounding pulse. He tucked his arms around her, his body fastened by invisible bindings to hers. His rhythms became her own as he moved inside her.

Holding himself in check and took his time—holding sway over the fever pitch of passion that threatened to strip away his last remnant of control. Her hips arched up to his as his deliberate thrusts filled her, then slowly withdrew. By degrees, his tempo increased as he heard her breathing become as ragged and uneven as his own.

Kierin's arms tightened convulsively around him. Her body arched and strained under him as he brought her ever closer to the brink of rapture. Splintering halos of light pricked the darkness above her and, with a cry, she relinquished her last fraying thread of control.

He poured his own hot release into her only a fraction of a second after he knew she'd found hers. As the waves of passion subsided, they clung to each other while their breathing slowly returned to normal.

A fine sheen of sweat coated Clay's skin. He slid his weight off her, but held her still. His arm lay heavily across her stomach. One thumb absently stroked her ribs. Kierin felt whole, utterly sated—as if a part of her she'd never known was missing had been suddenly found. He was the answer to her unasked question, the fulfillment of a destiny, the ending of an unfinished dream.

"Why didn't you tell me?" His soft-spoken question startled her out of her romantic fantasies.

"Tell you?"

"That you were untouched." His caress had stilled upon her abdomen.

She turned her head to look at him in the moonlight. "I tried. Quite often, as I recall."

Their numerous arguments eddied in his memory like some troublesome current. "But you never said it."

"Would you have believed me if I had?" she asked. "It doesn't matter now. I'm not untouched anymore." It gave her a thrill to voice that thought. She had thought she would feel some kind of loss when it happened, but she felt just the opposite.

"No," he agreed with a long sigh. "You're definitely not." He rolled onto his back and stared silently up into the night sky. "I'm sorry," was all he could say.

A chill sliced into her at his words and she watched him wedge that familiar distance between them again. Her joy died abruptly in her throat.
Sorry?
her mind echoed hollowly.
Was he sorry that they'd made love, or regretful, perhaps, that he'd made her what he thought she'd been all along?

"Are you?" she asked carefully.

He rolled a fist across his features. "Yes."

"Sorry you made love to me or sorry you... sullied me?"

The look he cast at the velvety sky was suddenly hard. She could almost hear the word "
both
" in his thoughts. But he didn't speak. He only clenched his jaw harder.

"And if I had been... what you thought I was... then, you wouldn't be staring at the stars as if they had somehow just betrayed you? Is that it?" Regardless of which was true, neither brought her comfort now. Should she admire him for his guilt or hate him for his regrets? Either way, it could only mean one thing—that he had only meant this momentary
indiscretion
to have been a fleeting thing. For he'd said not a word of his feelings for her. Not a word of love or of a future together.

The hard truth was, the fool here wasn't him. It was her.

"Well," she said, the word hanging between them for a moment. When he didn't speak, she added, "Don't be." She sat up to search in the dark for her camisole.

He sat up abruptly. "Kierin... What I'm trying to say is—"

It was a mistake.
She heard the words pounding in her ears before he spoke them. "I
know
what it was," she interrupted before he could trample the shattering pieces of her heart. "Lust." When his eyes narrowed, she blundered ahead. "Do you think I'm such an innocent I don't recognize simple lust when I see it?"

"Simple lust? Well, hell, I don't deny that I feel that for you, too," he said, "but—"

"Curiosity, maybe. I don't know. But I suppose we've satisfied that, haven't we?" she told him. Finding the thin camisole, she shrugged it over her nakedness and turned her back on him. "And there's no need for regrets. I mean, it wasn't as if you forced me. After all, I asked you to."

Even in the dark, she watched an uncharacteristic rush of color rush to his face as he watched her pull on her clothes.

Kierin slipped her pantalettes over her bare thighs, glad for the darkness so he couldn't see the tears threatening her eyes.
Please, don't let him see me cry. Allow me a shred of pride.

"So this is how it will be?" he asked, his voice flat. "You are the most infuriating woman."

"I'm sorry to have disappointed you."

"Disappointed?"

"I'm sure you'll agree, now that our curiosity has been... satisfied, it's best for both of us if this never happens again."

He turned his face away from her and stared out into the dark expanse beyond them.

She tugged on the dress that lay beneath him. "Excuse me, may I have my dress back?"

He lifted his hips and slid it out from under him, handing it to her without meeting her eye. "Absolutely."

"Thank you." She slipped it on over her head and fumbled with the buttons, wondering how to escape from this horrible situation gracefully. He didn't help, sitting there, singularly unconcerned with his nakedness. He stared off into the darkened prairie, arms folded tightly across his bent knees.

"You don't need to walk me back," she told him when she'd finished. "I'm going to the wagon." He didn't answer her. Didn't even look at her. "Well... good night then."

Clay watched her disappear toward the wagons, with a welling ache in his chest, feeling as if he'd been sucker-punched.

Slowly, he pulled on his clothes again and started after her. He wasn't sure what had just happened back there or why his apology had caused her to cry. Or, more to the point, why he'd been so sure of who she was, only to be proved dead wrong. There was that. She had every right to be upset about that. But his apology had fallen flat. Worse than flat. He only knew that he was as ill equipped to understand a woman like Kierin as he was to allow his heart to be broken again. It had taken him years to even consider truly living again after his wife had died. And now that he had, he remembered what the hell had taken him so long.