The Renegades: Nick (17 page)

From the corner of her eye, she glanced at Nick, to see whether he was ready to be called to the table. His wet pants clung so tightly to the powerful muscles in his thighs that she couldn’t look away.

He really made her furious. If they weren’t going to behave as husband and wife, then why was he walking around half-naked in front of her? Was he planning to do this all the time?

“Helps to wash off the dust, doesn’t it?”

His low voice was as calm as if this had been just any old day like any other.

The ragged edges of her feelings tore a little more.

“Yes,” she said sharply, barely keeping her voice steady, “we were probably the grimiest bride and groom that preacher ever married.”

He chuckled and bent to set his boots down beside the door. His arms and shoulders rippled with muscles, and her palms itched to slide over them. Oh, how she needed to feel his warm arms around her!

“You were a beautiful bride, Callie. The dust didn’t show on you at all.”

“How can you
say
that?”

The words burst out uncontrollably as she whirled to face him, a fork in one hand, a case-knife in the other.

Startled, he walked toward her.

“Because you were,” he said gently. “I thought that while we were saying our vows.”

The trembly feeling inside her had never really gone away all day, not since the minute she’d waked. Now it took hold of her in a frantic grip.

“I was
not
a bride!” she cried. “Have you forgotten already what you said?”

He stopped in his tracks and stared.

“Well, did you want to be? What I said was that I wouldn’t lay claim to my husband’s rights. I sure as hell didn’t say I wouldn’t accept them if you offered.”

She stared back at him, shocked speechless.

“Are you offering?”

He was looking at her tenderly, from the damp hair clinging around her face to her bare feet sticking out from under his big white shirt she’d commandeered from the cupboard in his room. It came all the way down past her knees, nearly to her ankles. She was decently covered, but his eyes said he could see her body beneath it.

“No!” she said, after a lifetime had passed.

“All right,” he said, with the ghost of his smile starting to play on his lips, “I was only asking.”

He strolled toward her, his feet soundless on the wood plank floor. It was all she could do not to run to meet him and throw herself into his embrace. She needed that, oh, she needed it so
bad
.

“What’s the matter, Callie?”

He sounded as if he really wanted to know.

But he was only going to make love to her if she offered. What man wouldn’t take any willing woman?

“I’m not beautiful, either, besides not being a bride,” she cried, as the tears that had been threatening began to pour from her eyes. “I’ve never been beautiful or my looks considered womanly—
never!
”

“Then there must be something about the fine air of the Cherokee Strip that suits you right down to the bone,” he said softly, and at the sound her very bones began to melt.

She cast about desperately for a defense.

“If our … marriage … is going to be in name only,” she said, trying to sound properly indignant, “you need to put on some clothes, Nick.”

He stood directly in front of her now, looking down at her, searching her face. Then he gave her that rare, crooked grin of his that would charm the birds from the trees.

“Let me take your weapons,” he drawled. “And I will.”

He lifted the utensils from her upraised
hands and reached around her with both arms to lay them on the table behind her.

His body pressed against hers, wet and cooling, yet full of heat. Hard heat. He enveloped her in it. He was almost holding her.

His scent made her drunk. He smelled of the fresh spring water and the night air, and his wet jeans held the fragrance of horses and dust and hay. But it was the aroma of his skin that made her dizzy—the man-scent that belonged only to Nickajack.

She wanted to kiss the hollow in the middle of his chest. It was all she could do not to press her lips against his smooth skin.

But that would be too dangerous. He already thought she was asking him to truly make her his wife. She’d already given him the wrong impression, and she needed to set him straight.

Try as she might, though, she couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about.

“You will do what?” she said slowly, managing to recall his last words.

“Put on some clothes.”

He took his arms from around her.

She felt abandoned, forsaken, lost.

Until he lifted his hands to the top button of his shirt, which she’d fastened just above her breasts, and began, slowly, to undo it.

“Nick …?”

She tilted her head back to look into his eyes.

“You tell me to stop if you want to, Callie,” he said, “and I will.”

But how could she? She was mesmerized. He was weaving a spell with his nimble, callused fingertips brushing fire into her skin.

He moved on to the next button.

“I meant put on some … clothes … of your own,” she said, taking in a deep draught of air, as his hands moved against the swells of her breasts.

“I am. This is my shirt.”

“I meant … a shirt of yours … that I wasn’t wearing,” she said, gasping each time he touched her.

He leaned back to see her face and raised his eyebrows, feigning great surprise. With one fingertip, he traced a wandering, tantalizing line from the hollow of her collarbone down and down, in between her bare breasts, his knuckles barely brushing one, then the other. A shivering thrill raced through her.

“Oh?” he teased. “Well, then, why didn’t you say that to begin with?”

She couldn’t even frame a reply, much less speak.

He unfastened another button.

She had to stop him. He had said she only had to say the word.

Stop
. She must say it,
Stop
.

The shirt was hanging open now. Soon it would be all undone, and he’d see she was wearing nothing underneath. His scent and his touch and his handsomeness were making her shameless, and she didn’t even care.

Her little voice of truth flashed the warning of danger—if she made love with this man who wasn’t really her husband, she would want to again and again, just as she always wanted more of his kisses. And when spring came he’d be lost to her, because she’d be gone from this claim which also wasn’t really her own.

She must push him away.

He undid the last button of the shirt and stood back with his head cocked to look at her. The breeze from the window lifted one side of the shirt, then let it fall.

Nick’s eyes never left hers. He intended to know every thought, every feeling inside her, they said. He was searching to see what she wanted and he wasn’t going to quit until she showed him.

She must not let him learn she desired him so desperately that she couldn’t breathe anymore. She must keep that a secret, or be lost.

His wet, black hair glinted blue sparks in the dim light, and clung endearingly to the noble shape of his head. She couldn’t help herself, she reached up and smoothed it back with her palm.

He leaned into her hand.

That tiny, beguiling, unguarded gesture, so unlike him, broke her heart.

She didn’t care about next spring. She didn’t care about tomorrow. She needed Nickajack—only Nickajack.

“All right,” he drawled, “what do you say? Are you going to give me back my shirt?”

“N-o-o,” she managed to say, mimicking him, “I’m not. You’ll have to take it.”

H
is gray eyes warmed to the color of smoke and a smile played around the corner of his lips.

She thought he was bending to kiss her, but he scooped her up into his arms, held her nestled against him, where she fit like a dream, lifted the lamp chimney with one hand, and blew out the light. A trembling came over her and she had to wind her arms around his neck and press her cheek against his chest.

It was broad and hard and warm. She wanted more; she wanted all of him. She stroked his neck, his shoulders, and he held her closer until he laid her down.

“Do I have to give your bed back, too?” she
said, breathlessly teasing him. “First it’s your shirt, then …”

“We’re sharing this bed,” he said firmly. “From now on, we’re sleeping here together.”

From now on …

Instead of scaring her, that thrilled her. A reckless abandon was growing inside her.

She pulled him back down when he started to let her go.

“We’ll have everything sopping,” he muttered, but he said it against her lips and then took her mouth in a kiss that plundered her soul.

In the kitchen, there by the table, she’d thought that she wanted him. She had honestly, secretly thought that she’d wanted him the first time they’d kissed.

But she had not known what wanting was.

Wanting took hold of her like a swirling tornado and ripped her right up off the earth. No gravity pulled at her anymore, no connection held her to the planet. Her only bond was to Nickajack, and he was creating it with his hot mouth and his tormenting tongue and his unbridled lips.

Heaven help her. Now she wanted more and more, wanted him to do she didn’t even know what, wanted him never to stop this …

She felt his hands leave her and go to the buttons of his jeans, but she wouldn’t let him move away; she couldn’t live without his
mouth. Shameless, she sat up and moved with him, took his head in her hands so as not to break the kiss, then tried to help him peel away the stiff, wet, heavy cloth.

She wanted all barriers away from between them. Then she wanted Nickajack inside her and around her and
with
her, skin to skin.

She pulled her mouth from his only long enough to whisper one word against his lips.

“Hurry.”

He groaned and kissed her again, quick and hard, dragging his tongue along the seam of her lips as he turned away to peel down his jeans. Then, as she knelt up to reach for him, to run her hands over his back, his slim waist, and brazenly down onto his hard bottom, he caught her hands in his and held them away from his body as he turned to her.

She gasped.

In the moonlight, he was magnificent. She could not take her eyes from his hard manhood, which looked huge and ready and …

“I want to see you, Callie.”

There were no curtains at the long windows. The moon was rising fuller and brighter by the minute and its light poured in, falling across the bed like the dawn.

He sat down beside her and cradled her head in both his big hands, but he didn’t kiss her. Slowly, he stroked the sides of her neck and her shoulders, ran his hands down over
her arms. Even through her sleeves, his touch set her on fire.

And then his hands came together at the front of the shirt, parted it, and gently, gently drew it down over her shoulders and off. Nothing lay between them now.

Tenderly, he laid her down again, pushing the pillow beneath her head.

Nick caressed her with his gaze and she felt it as warm as the stroking of his hand would be on her skin. Some small corner of her mind marveled that she felt so easy about it, so truly comfortable with something so new and bold as this.

“You
are
beautiful, Callie,” he said hoarsely. “You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

Tears sprang into her eyes.

“Ah, Nick,” she said, and held out her arms, “come here to me.”

And he did. He came to her and enfolded her; he kissed her senseless and then pulled back to look at her again, laying one hand on her hipbone as if it were a brand.

By then she was writhing beneath him, ready to beg but unable to form words. Only one. Nick. That was all she could say.

“Nick,” she whispered, reaching for his hard shaft, “Nick.”

He groaned pitifully as she took him into her hand, and rolled over on top of her. He
pushed her legs apart with his knee, then thrust into her with a fierce need that matched her own. His mouth and hers fit together again with an old, familiar passion. Inside the magic circle of his arms was where she was meant to be.

Everything
about them was meant to be.

They moved together to the rhythm of their deep, wild heartbeats. She clung to him, digging her nails into his back so as not to go flying off into the universe—yielding, then demanding, then incredulous that pleasure could be so strong, so all-consuming. She had known nothing before this. Nothing.

Then the pleasure built and built into a whole new storm that grew wilder yet. Nick swept her into it and through it to the peak of a mountain of joy, where lightning struck her, heart and soul. She could not think, she could only feel, as he collapsed with his face against hers and his ragged breath against her ear.

With her primal instincts, she knew one thing: never, ever would she be the same.

The dawn light, the earliest pale shadings of gray, told her
how
it was that she would never be the same. They lay entwined, her head on Nick’s shoulder, her leg thrown over his, his hand cupping her bottom.

She smiled. Yesterday at dawn she had been scared half to death that she could never get
him out of jail and he’d be hanged. Today she rested, peaceful, in his arms.

Well, that just went to prove a person shouldn’t faunch and worry about what might happen, because there was no way of knowing. Never,
ever
, not even at noon yesterday, had she dreamed she’d wake up married to him this morning.

Why in the world had she done such a thing? She could’ve scrabbled out a living in town somehow. She could’ve left the Cherokee Strip, for that matter! After all, she didn’t have a claim anymore.

But, like a stranger to herself, she had married Nickajack. It wasn’t all for the baby’s sake, she didn’t think.

It was because she’d been so lonesome. Probably because she needed to be kin to someone, since she’d never been away from kin during her whole life. Yes, it was the comfort of being tied to someone, even if it was only temporary, to salve the awful wounds of the heart she’d carried away from Kentucky.

She idly stroked her palm against Nickajack’s warm skin, let it slide up and over his shoulder.

No, she had married him for some more mysterious reason.

It came to her with the gray light in the sky turning to rose. She loved him. She was still the same person, no matter how far from
home, and Calladonia Sloane would never marry a man she didn’t love.

Nickajack Smith had been a part of her blood and her breath since the minute he rode up to her on the day of the Run. That was why that passion had always been there, lurking, ready to reach out and pull them together at the slightest provocation.

Loving Nick was the reason Vance’s memory had slipped away from her. One reason she had been trying so hard to hang onto it was so she
wouldn’t
love another man. Look what loving Vance had done to her: it had hurt her like poison when he died, it had destroyed her whole life, it had scared her all the way to her soul to be alone in the world with the baby and without him. Something in her had been afraid of facing all those dangers again if she loved a man and lost him.

Against her will, Nick had made her trust him. And love him. She loved him with all her heart.

She had Nick back here at home now, and she would never lose him.

She smiled as she drifted back to sleep, her hand over his heart as if she were staking her claim. She’d never known what passion was until Nick—and the same was true of love.

Nickajack finally brewed some coffee, just to have something to do with his hands besides
start stroking Callie’s porcelain skin and making love to her all over again. It wouldn’t be fair to wake her up when she was sleeping so soundly, her face open and innocent as a child’s.

Plainly she was exhausted, and who wouldn’t be? Yesterday had been a day for the tally book.

He sat on his haunches, opened the door of the old cookstove, and punched up the fire under the coffeepot. Yet it’d be such a wonder and a release to him if he could just go crawl back into bed with her and hold her, just hold her, and tell her that he loved her.

It felt so strange, so unlike his usual self, to be bursting to tell his feelings to someone else. He couldn’t help it, though—it seemed like such a miracle. He had never told any woman that he loved her, and now he knew that if he had, it would’ve been a lie.

He heard the coffee begin to boil, closed the stove, and crossed the room to the open front door to lean against its frame. The chores were done, the horses shifted from one pen to another; it was time to ride. The sun was halfway up the sky.

But he couldn’t make himself get to work, couldn’t make himself leave the cabin. Not until he saw Callie awake this morning.

He smiled to himself as he watched the young horses start a game, running in a bunch
from one side of the round corral to the other. The smile wasn’t for them, though; it was for Callie.

Who would’ve thought a slip of a girl like her could have stuck in there and wrestled that crazy team of hers to town, found Baxter, made a deal, and got him out of jail in time to get home in time for evening chores? He shouldn’t have bawled her out for trading off her claim—plainly she’d had no choice, since that was what Baxter’d been after all along.

The deal had just scared him because he’d known in his gut that if they lived in the same house, they’d be in the same bed before long. Last night had proved him right. Thank God, she had wanted it as much as he had, and if actions really did speak louder than words, he had a feeling that one of these days, she’d be telling him that she loved him, too.

The thought made his heart clench in his chest. If
that
dream came true, he’d have no right to ever expect anything more, in this life or the hereafter.

An incoherent choking sound made him turn around.

Callie raced past him, one hand over her mouth, heading for the back door with her other hand holding the sheet wrapped around her. He stared, then dashed after her.

She ran out through the back door and into the yard, but she couldn’t make it past the cottonwood
tree. All she could do was latch onto it for support as she bent double to throw up what little was in her stomach.

Nickajack turned back into the house, grabbed the first cloth he saw and the pitcher of water, then ran toward her while he wetted it. She tried frantically to wave him away and hold up the sheet at the same time but he went to her, anyway.

Pitifully, she shook her head at him, then doubled over again.

“You haven’t eaten for hours,” he said. “You’re throwing up nothing but bile. Here, let me hold this cold rag …”

She blushed beet red, as if this were the most embarrassing situation he could ever find her in.

“No!” she gasped, flapping her hand at him weakly. “Go away …”

Then she was retching again.

He held her head, he put the cloth on it, he wet it again, and finally led her to the back porch, where he sat her down on the steps.

“Callie, what has made you sick? It can’t be what little you ate on the way home …”

She took the cloth from her forehead and held it out while he poured more cold water over it. Then she slumped back against the porch post and stared at him with her huge, green eyes.

“The smell of coffee makes me sick,” she said.

“It does? Why didn’t you tell …”

She shook her head and the look on her face shut him up instantly.

“What I didn’t tell you is a whole lot more than that, Nickajack,” she said baldly. “Come spring, I’ll be having a baby.”

He couldn’t quite take in the meaning of her words. He searched her face, as if they’d been written there for him to read and refresh his memory.

But his memory wasn’t the problem; he remembered what she’d said, all right. He thought he knew her. How could he not know such a big thing as this?

He shook his head to try to clear it.

“You never said …”

“I never said it because you’d have tried even harder to send me back home or into town,” she said wearily. “Don’t you see? You’d have jumped on that fact like a dog on a bone. You’d have lectured me from now to kingdom come about how a woman with child could never prove up a claim.”

He didn’t even try to respond to that. All he could do was let every time he’d been with her since that day of the Run flash back through his head.

Had he been wrong about her openness, her bluntness, her honesty?

Yet, why should she tell him all her secrets?

This was a big piece of information, though—one that would soon be visible. Obviously, she didn’t feel as close to him as he did to her.

“What were you going to do? Let me find out along with the rest of the world? You could’ve told me, Callie. You
should
have told me—why, you wouldn’t even let me help with your soddy!”

Hurt and anger held his jaw so tight he could barely get the words out.

“My soddy isn’t … wasn’t … your responsibility.”

An even more horrifying thought hit him.

“And last night! We might’ve damaged the baby … good God, Callie, I had a right to know!”

She paled even more, so the freckles across her nose stood out like tiny brown specks on snow. Her eyes filled with pain and regret but he didn’t feel sorry for her.

“You have a right to know something else, too,” she said, clearly fighting to keep her voice from shaking.

He could see that it was all she could do to hold his gaze and not look away, but she did it.

“What?”

“You’re my first husband. Vance and I were never married.”