Liz Ireland (22 page)

Paulie cocked her head, studying him. As she stared into his anguished eyes, an idea struck her—struck her with such force she felt thrown off balance, like the world had just started lurching and tilting in weird and unexpected ways. Why, just that afternoon when Will had been grumbling about Oren Tyler, she had naturally thought that he felt sore because he was still jealous of Mary Ann’s unflagging interest in the gambler. But now a very different possibility struck her.

It wasn’t on account of Mary Ann that he was jealous of Tyler—it was on account of herself!

For the second time that evening, it felt as if the wind had been knocked clear out of her lungs. “Why, Will!” she exclaimed, rocking back on her heels from the force of her discovery.

He glanced at her warily. “What’s the matter?”

She remained speechless for a few moments, savoring the delicious wonder of her position. For years she had pined after Will, for years she had been secretly envious of
his attentions to Mary Ann. Why, just before they’d set out from Possum Trot, she had been bemoaning the fact that he was willing to go to the ends of the earth for Mary Ann, who had never deserved him. Now it appeared that he had been willing to go to the ends of the earth for her, Paulie Johnson. She could hardly believe it!

“Why, Will,” she repeated. Her voice was hushed with awe, but the rest of her couldn’t keep so calm. She almost hopped with excitement at her new discovery. “You’re in love with me!”

Able to control her legs no longer, Paulie launched herself at Will, wrapping her arms tightly around his chest and squeezing with all her might.

He pried her away, but only for a few seconds, so he could look into her eyes. “Wait a cotton-pickin’—”

“You can’t deny it,” Paulie said, practically dancing with joy now as she took note of the red flush creeping into the man’s cheeks. “You
are
in love with me, aren’t you?”

“Have you gone loco, Paulette?”

“That’s what this was all about—why you followed me.”

He rolled his eyes as if searching the heavens for patience. “I came out here because I knew you’d get yourself in a fix if I didn’t.”

“You were worried because you’re in love with me,” she told him, still smiling. She didn’t think anything could wipe the happy grin off her face now. “Just like you were worried about Mary Ann when you thought you were in love with her. Only you were all wrong about that.”

He let out a bark of a laugh, but when he found his voice again it was lower, more serious. “What makes you think I’m not wrong this time?”

“Because Mary Ann didn’t love you back.” The unspoken
admission that she
was
in love with him dangled heavily in the air between them.

“I never knew you were a love expert,” Will said.

“I guess you taught me a few things.”

He cocked an eyebrow upwards and sent her a questioning glance. “Like what?”

“Like this.” Shyly, but nonetheless enthusiastically, Paulie stood on tiptoe and planted her lips against his. She counted this as their fourth kiss, but she wasn’t tired of the activity yet—not by a long shot. Their tongues intermingled for a long pleasurable time before she pulled away, a little breathless.

To her surprise, his eyes narrowed and his arm around her waist reeled her in closer to him. “You’re a quick study,” he said in that gravelly voice that never failed to thrill her.

“I guess I like kissing about as much as anything,” she said. Then, with more boldness than she would have ever thought herself capable of, she asked, “What else can you show me?”

She didn’t have to wait a split second to find out. Will enveloped her in such a passionate kiss she thought her toes might not uncurl for decades. But this embrace was different from all the rest. This time she could feel a tenseness in Will, as if he were feeling the same coiled-up pressure building inside him that she was experiencing herself. Warmth pooled in her belly, and with it, a desire to be even closer to Will, though it was hard to imagine how that could even be possible. Unless…

She moved her hips, eliciting a groan from somewhere deep inside him. Her first thought was to pull back a little, but he hiked her firmly against him, letting her know that he didn’t mind the movement one little bit. He seemed to welcome it, even, and responded in kind in such a way that
she couldn’t help but try again, this time less tentatively. Within moments, still standing in the little unmade camp, they seemed to be moving as one.

As one. Paulie let the phrase repeat through her mind, savoring the sound of it. The feel of it. It seemed to her that she had always wanted Will, without ever knowing exactly what it was that she wanted. She would have never believed that Will would crave her so fiercely, too—so fiercely that the hand roaming up and down her spine seemed to move more frantically, as if it wanted to claw right through her dress.

She was having similar thoughts. She didn’t think that she would mind taking off her clothes. His, either. Days before, she had been too shy to want Will to see any part of her. Now her mind began searching for ways to move her hands between them surreptitiously so that she could undo the many little buttons that ran down the front of her bodice. To her amazement, he seemed able to read her mind. Only he didn’t wait for her trembly hands to begin unbuttoning. He took on that task himself.

Paulie draped against him as he worked at the buttons and lightly nibbled the sensitive skin around her cheek and ear. She marvelled at how adept he was at making every caress feel as if it were the most earth-shattering thing that ever happened to her. Just to feel the inadvertent brush of his thumb against the sensitive skin beneath her bodice made her knees go weak with longing. She held on to his shoulders, enjoying every minute he held her. She feared he would suddenly stop—and at the same time she was aware that she should
want
him to stop.

She wasn’t completely naive. She knew where all this could lead—to the same place that had left Mary Ann with child and without husband. There were sometimes dire consequences for women who let themselves get carried away
with a man. A woman was supposed to wait for a man who would love her and take care of her.

Yet in the heat of the moment, those rules seemed ludicrous. In her world, in this darkness, there was only herself and Will, and the wonderful pleasures he was introducing her to. She loved him. She had never been surer of anything in her life. When they kissed, when they moved against each other, she felt as if they were touching soul to soul. There had never been and never would be a man she cared for so intensely.

Trouble was, he had never said he loved her—not in so many words—and maybe he never would. But he had followed her, when she knew he would rather have stayed in San Antonio. Besides, she realized with sudden clarity, it didn’t matter whether he loved her or not. She loved him, and would go on loving him all her life. She had been willing to follow him blindly into Mexico after a renegade; now she would follow his lead into the mysteries that men and women shared. She wasn’t certain which destination was the more dangerous.

She moaned in response to his rubbing the tops of her breasts with the back of his hand. His touch almost sent her off balance, so unsure were her legs beneath her; she was grateful for his strength, or else she might have toppled to the ground just as surely as she had when she had tripped earlier. Only now there was a strange energy building inside her, a melting warmth, making her bold and almost delirious.

“Oh, Will,” she whispered, throwing her head back to allow him to trail kisses down her neck.

To her shock and dismay, he answered her hoarse voice of passion by stepping away from her, nearly sending her reeling from his absence. Didn’t he know that her legs had turned to water?

He turned away only long enough to snap the blanket off her saddle and spread it on the ground. Then, lying down himself, he pulled her down on top of him. She’d thought she might collapse; instead, she felt almost as if she were being poured onto the ground, and ended up straddled on top of him. He reached up and pushed her dress off her shoulders so that the whole thing bunched at her waist.

Paulie felt fire in her cheeks. Before leaving Maudie’s she had dispensed with her corset. Now she wasn’t wearing anything more than a thin shimmy beneath her dress, and Will had untied that, too, so that her breasts were exposed to him, pale in the moonlight. “You’re beautiful, Paulie,” he whispered, teasing one peaked bud with the tip of his thumb.

Paulie drew in a sharp breath, both at the shockingly pleasurable sensation and at his words. Beautiful?
Her?
She could hardly believe he’d said such a thing, and yet when she looked into his eyes, glittering at her through the moonlight,
she felt
beautiful for the first time in her life.

Paulie thrilled at his glance and quickly wriggled out of the rest of her clothing, so that she was completely bare on top of him. Then she started working on his buttons, slowly, kissing the skin beneath each as she uncovered it, as he had done for her. She took special care around the bandaged shoulder where the bullet had hit.

His whole body tensed beneath her lips, and she felt a strange power she’d never dreamed of before. And a growing impatience. She looked up into Will’s eyes and he shifted slightly, so that she would feel the swollen length of him against her thigh.

He was apparently impatient, too. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” he said, his voice a hoarse rasp.

She smiled, and rubbed against him instinctively. “Not a clue.”

He shut his eyes as if in prayer. “I didn’t think so.”

“You told me I was a quick study, though,” Paulie said.

Will opened his eyes again and ran his hands up and down her arms. “Quick isn’t what we’re aiming for, Sprout.”

At his use of his old endearment for her, she felt her last shred of control slipping away. Not that she cared. There was such a fire building inside her that she felt as if she might happily turn into some wild beast, if Will would just stop being so darned cautious.

“This is your first time,” he whispered. “I want you to have something to remember.”

She could have laughed at the irony. “I don’t think I’ll be forgetting this anytime soon, Will.”

He smiled, and pulled her down to him again, kissing her hard. At the same time, he rolled onto his good shoulder so that his body was pressing her to the earth. Paulie sensed that she should have been nervous, but all she felt was more heat coiling urgently within her. Then, with his free hand, he untied his belt and began to shuck off his pants, a task she was eager to help him with. She tugged off his boots, then sidled back up against him, shamelessly eyeing his impressive masculine body.

After allowing her to look her fill, Will pulled her toward him again. This time when their bodies touched, skin to tender skin, it was chain lightning going off inside her. The soft friction of their bodies made her senses fog, and yet she felt she would remember his every touch and movement to the end of her days.

When he poised against the most vulnerable part of her, hesitating slightly, she enfolded him in her arms, eager to quench the throbbing desire inside her. She pushed herself
against him so that their joining was complete, and an unexpected sharp pain shot through her, causing her to gasp. Will froze, looking into her eyes with concern, but the pain slowly subsided, replaced by stronger, more urgent sensations.

When Will sensed she was ready, he moved more deeply inside her, and from that moment, Paulie really did feel as if some wild thing had taken over her being. She couldn’t stop the primal heat that built inside her with each thrust, any more than she could hold back the moans and heartfelt whispers that escaped her lips.

Will whispered to her, too—sweet words whose meaning she could only believe because they were so entwined in the frenzy of lovemaking. When that frenzy built to a fever pitch and the heat between them spiralled out of control, their bodies shuddered in release as one, which was sweeter still.

Minutes later, still wrapped tightly against Will, Paulie felt rather than heard the night enveloping her. This time as she shut her eyes, no thoughts of bears or Night Bird haunted her. All she was aware of was the sound of Will’s steady breathing, and her own as she drifted off to sleep.

Will awoke in the dark with a start, amazed to find Paulie snuggled close to him, asleep. He smiled. His shoulder ached like fire, but the pain had been worth it. He reached over and combed his fingers through a strand of Paulie’s hair straggling across her cheek.

Silky. He hadn’t expected her hair to feel so soft. But Paulie never failed to surprise him. Her wiry body was covered in skin so soft that if he hadn’t known better he would have sworn she spent her days doing nothing but soaking in a tub full of rosewater. There were other things that had shocked him that perhaps shouldn’t have. Like her
complete abandon during lovemaking. He’d been bowled over—and delighted—by her boldness. But when did Paulie Johnson ever do anything half-heartedly?

He sighed contentedly, wishing only that they were in a fancy hotel somewhere, in a feathery bed, with nothing but leisure ahead of them. He wanted to do nothing but spend a few years making love to her—but he doubted there would be time for that now.

They still had work to do, people to track down. His heart wasn’t really in the chase, though. How could it be? His heart was already full to bursting with love for Paulie; there was no room left. He wondered how it would be when she woke up, and they had to speak to each other. What would he say? Gabbing was never his strongest suit, like it was with Paulie. But he didn’t want her just to start nervously chattering on like nothing had happened, which, being Paulie, he feared she would. Something
had
happened, something that changed their lives forever.

For so long, he had wondered why love, which came to so many so easily, seemed so elusive in his own life. He’d tried to manufacture the emotion with Mary Ann, a project that had taken him a long time to give up. But when he looked at Paulie now, he understood why it was he’d been so confused about love. Because he’d never been without it. Ever since he was a young buck and had first run into Paulie Johnson in her pigtail days, he’d never lacked for a female to lavish his affection on—or one to lavish it on him. He wondered now if there had ever been a day since that he hadn’t loved Paulie. They just had a more roundabout way of expressing it than most people.