Seduced (15 page)

“I thought you were growing fond of her.”

“I am.” Fond seemed such a lukewarm word for what he felt. It was lust and admiration, curiosity and respect. It was more than he’d ever felt for a person outside of his family.

“Do I need to explain how marriage works, Cole?”

“I would like to think that the woman I spend the rest of my life with, raise my family with, would . . . care for me.”

“I see the war did not cure you of your romance.”

“I won’t be embarrassed for wanting what Mother and Father had.”

Steven peeled bark from the stump and flung it off to the grass. “The widow seems a cold and calculating woman to compare to Mother.”

“She is. But she’s also the woman who risked everything to save your life. She’s the woman who carried seeds across the country so she could plant peach trees to remind her of home.”
She kissed me when she was terrified
.
And when I touched her she went breathless
. “Am I foolish to think she has more to her than her worry and hopelessness?”

“You’re foolish to think anyone has more than that, Cole.”

Cole did not agree, and it broke his heart that his brother felt that way.

“So, you are seducing the widow?” Steven asked.

“I am trying.”

“Try harder and faster; they leave in a week.”

MELODY CAME OUT of the cabin with a basket for the eggs and a pail for the goat’s milk. She’d grown accustomed to the luxury of eggs and milk. And now with vinegar they could soon have curds again.

They would have to buy a goat and chickens in Denver.

Cole and Steven had Lilly in the field, which for some reason alarmed her. Like a child, she wanted to pull Lilly from their sight and cry,
mine
!

“What are you doing?” she asked as she approached.

“Nothing nefarious, I assure you. Lilly is going into heat,” Cole said. “Duke and Jacks were about to kick apart the barn.”

“Heat?” She nearly dropped the basket.

“We would like to buy Lilly from you,” Steven said.

“Buy her?”

“Are you okay?” Cole asked, and she wanted to smack at him. She wanted to snarl and snap.
How much more of my life do you want? You have my seeds and now you’ll have my horse? And you still want more?

She ignored him, as she had for the last two days. He wanted more so she gave him nothing.

“We will pay you a fair price,” Steven said in his level way. She felt ridiculous for her childish silence when Steven was so reasonable. And she knew, looking at them, that they would overpay her. They would give her and Annie the best possible price for Lilly. That Lilly would be better cared for here, in this beautiful meadow under the hands of these men, than with any stranger they met in Denver.

And that made her want to put her foot down and say no. Out of spite. Out of childish nastiness.

But there was no choice in the end.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll need to talk to my sister, but I’m sure we can sell.”

She’d thought for so long that she didn’t feel anything, but she felt this, a clean snap in her chest.

Lilly. Lilly would stay and she would have to leave.

She could hear the horses inside the barn. The building shook as one of them kicked the door.

“I’m going to get Duke,” Cole said, and he took off at a run for the barn.

“Did my brother do something he needs to apologize for?” Steven said after Cole was gone.

“What makes you ask?”

“You aren’t speaking to him.”

“If he did, what would you do? Make him apologize?”

Steven smiled briefly. “He's never been made to apologize. Cole has always done the right thing.”

Including refusing the advances of a widow who would force him into marriage.

“He doesn’t need to apologize,” she whispered.

“Somehow his romantic nature survived the war.” A giant cloud covered the sun and the clearing was suddenly shadowed. “He was engaged to a girl—”

“Jane.”

“He told you?”

She nodded, unable to speak.

“They'd been engaged almost his whole life. He was never interested in anyone else. Never courted anyone else, or tried to kiss—”

“What does this have to do with me?” she interrupted, not interested in the love story of Jane and Cole.

“My brother is trying to seduce you and he doesn't know how.”

Overhead the cloud passed and sunlight flooded the clearing, making her eyes sting.

Cole came out of the barn with Duke, and the horse needed no goading to be sent into the clearing. Within moments Duke had mounted Lilly, a violent loud act that sent blood pounding to Melody's fingers. Behind her eyes. The whole world seemed on edge with the intimacy. Or perhaps that was just her. She turned away, not embarrassed by the act, but what it made her feel.

Twitchy and awful and sad.

More.

It made her feel more.

More was what she wanted to avoid.

Because it was painful.

MELODY HAD MENDING to do and with Steven's words in her ears, she decided to do it outside. Under the trees. Across the clearing from the garden where Cole was finishing his planting.

He is trying to seduce you and he doesn't know how.

He was so handsome. Sharp, and yet worn at the same time. There was no excess, nothing frivolous, just a man and his body and his soul.

It was days ago now, but her wrist still burned and throbbed where his thumb had been. Her body ached where his had been pressed against it.

I would have you show me everything.

She'd certainly shown him something, hadn't she? Screaming, slapping his hands. But she didn't have any embarrassment. Instead, she pitied him and his romance.

She didn’t have any
more
. The freedom she'd felt after shooting Jimmy was a sham. There was no more faith left in her. She was grit and rock and bone. It had been two days since he’d touched her. Two days of the dark man she’d known a little over three weeks ago turning into…someone else. He joked and teased. Laughed.

And he played that damn harmonica and she’d wanted to weep at the stories the music told. She wanted to tell him to stop watching her. Because he did, he watched her all the time. His gaze like a touch at her back.

It was obvious now, his attempts at seduction.

She tied a knot in the thread and snapped it, the hole in Steven’s shirt now a delicate barely-there seam. In time, when Cole took her and Annie back down to Denver, this farm would be much like that shirt. You’d hardly know she and Annie had been there except for the garden. And now Lilly.

Suddenly Cole was sitting beside her, stretched out in the grass. So close, too close. She could feel him along the side of her, through the thin silk of her dress, along the bare skin of her arms. He exhaled and she felt it across her shoulders. It had been a long time since she sat so close to a man and was not afraid.

She shifted away from him, drew herself into her skin. Her body. So there was no chance he would touch her.

The sun was behind him and she had to squint when she looked at him, but still she couldn’t see him clearly. He was a dark face with a white halo.

“Do you need some help?” he asked.

“You’ve darned a lot of socks?”

“I knew three men who had toes amputated because they started a march with a hole in their sock and ended it with blisters that festered.”

“Oh . . . my.” Now she felt terrible for being flippant.

“So I can fix a hole.” He plucked a darning needle from her mother’s small velvet pincushion, which was balanced on her knee, and wool from the socks she'd already pulled apart. She was reinforcing the cuff of his blue shirt and he pulled a black sock from the pile.

“I spoke to your brother today,” she finally said when she could take the silence no more.

He was silent, watching her from the corner of his eyes.

“About rock oil refining? My brother is keen on that topic.”

“No.” She stabbed her needle through the blue linen, her stitches growing messy. Mama would make her pluck them out.

“Denver, perhaps? He has plans to invest in the railroad.”

“Your brother did not talk about himself. He talked about you. He said you are trying to seduce me.”

“I am.”

“You understand that it serves my purpose to let you.”

“I do.”

She threw up her hands. “Then just say yes to marriage and have it be done with!”

They did not pretend to stitch. They didn’t pretend to do anything but sit there, him staring at her, she staring at the frayed cuff of his blue shirt.

“That first night we met, with Jimmy in the cabin. The way I behaved, the gracious hostess, the Southern lady—that was a part I played because he wanted me to be that way. If you want me to playact at love, I can do that, too.”

“Stop, please,” he whispered and put his hand over hers. “I don't want you to playact at anything. I want you as you are.”

Once she’d seen a spider frozen in a giant chunk of golden amber. Someone’s treasure brought over to America generations ago from Europe. Right now she felt like that spider, unable to break his gaze.

“You saw how I am. By the cherry tree.”

“You do not scare me, Melody. But are you afraid?” he whispered. “Of me?”

She shook her head. Slowly he leaned in, and she realized he was giving her plenty of time to move. To back away. Perhaps to slap him, but when his hand touched her face, she melted into the touch. He laid his palm against her cheek, his fingers going into her hair, and she turned into the contact. She’d asked for kindness and this seemed, somehow, its most pure form.

His lips, when they touched hers, were soft and warm. A surprising luxury on such a sparse man. Of the things she missed, she’d forgotten about kissing. Oh, she’d loved kissing. She pushed into his lips and he melted this time. He groaned and pulled her closer, opening his mouth against hers. She thought of how she’d tried to hide her experience from Christopher, who had been far from her first kiss, and Jimmy, who loved to punish her for her past, but she didn’t bother with Cole.

Unlike their first kiss, Cole took charge of this one. When his tongue swept into her mouth, she met it with her own. He tasted of coffee and tooth powder and him. A delicious slick and wet heat. He pushed the pile of clothing away and pulled her closer, against him. She felt the strength and warmth of him through their clothing and gasped. The needle and shirt spilled from her grasp and she wrapped her hands around his neck, her fingers finding home in the thick hair at his nape. All of her found a home against him, the heavy weight of her breasts, the trembling muscles of her stomach, lips, teeth and tongue, all them found a welcoming spot on his body.

He lay back in the grass, pulling her over him. She felt the hard ridge of his erection against her belly, and tension made her freeze. Both of them stopped, breathing carefully through their mouths against each other.

“I am sorry,” he whispered. “I . . . am carried away.” He shifted to sit up, but she spread her hands wide across his shoulders.

A man who cared so diligently for seeds would not hurt her the way Jimmy had. And perhaps a man who cared so diligently for seeds would show her more pleasure than Christopher had shown her in those rushed, awkward moments.

I am not scared of you
, she thought and kissed him again. He groaned, his hand sweeping down from her hair to her waist and over her hips. Fire rippled under her skin and everywhere he touched her it blazed, until she didn’t know herself. She was a stranger in his arms.

The thought was exciting and she moaned, running her fingers from his shoulders to his chest, where muscles jumped under her touch. He broke the kiss and pressed his lips to her neck, so much skin revealed by that stupid ball gown and suddenly she loved that dress more than she had when it was beautiful.

He kissed her collarbones, the tender skin where shoulder met neck, the trembling tops of her breasts. Her gasp was loud in the silent meadow and his chuckle was louder.

“Are you laughing at me?” she gasped, trying for teasing but feeling stupidly like she wanted his assurance.

“Never. I am laughing at us.” He rolled again, putting her on her back in the grass, her blue skirts draped over his legs. His fingertips traced her cheekbone, the corner of her lips. She gasped, her skin so sensitive she felt the ripples of his touch in her belly, her chest, down to her toes. His fingertips touched her ear and measured the pulse in her throat. His eyes, the color of soil, of healthy earth, never left hers and she felt a terrible ache bloom in her breasts. Between her legs. Restless, she arched against him, biting her lips.

His fingertips found the edge of her neckline and traced it from her shoulder to the center of her chest. His eyes left hers to look down at her body, and she stared up at the blue sky.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered. “But you’ve been told that before.”

His finger traveled over silk to the hard point of her nipple, and she tried to swallow a groan. “If we had met before the war, I don’t think we would have found much to admire about each other.”

She wished she could smile. She wished she could actually follow his conversation, but his fingers danced over her dress, pulling and touching and grazing. “But I find your beauty to be the least of your attractions,” he continued. “I am compelled by your boldness and your strength. The darkness in you that matches the darkness in me.”

His touch turned fierce, a sharp, hot pinch of her nipple, and she nearly sprang from her skin.

His eyes kindled and he squeezed her nipple again and she moaned, her teeth biting into her lip.

None of this was unfamiliar. But yet, this burning under her skin, this restless ache in her belly, it was wholly new. Cole’s touch was . . . transformative. It turned her skin to water, her blood and bone to . . . something else. Lightning, perhaps.

His body was alive with heat and intent and she groaned. Overcome.

His whole hand cupped her breast and it was gentle . . . but not. Careful . . . but not. His thumb and forefinger found her nipple again and pulled, rolled it. And she turned her face away, embarrassed by her reaction, while he simply watched her.