Caine's Reckoning (13 page)

A stick popped in the fire. She jumped. He pulled her closer, the length of her feeling too fragile to him, the surrender in her body there for all the wrong reasons. He brushed his lips across her cheek. Her muscles grew tighter. “Easy, Gypsy.”

She didn’t move, didn’t respond, just held herself there as if waiting for a death blow…which in her mind, maybe she was. He slid his hands between them, found the bunched mess of her skirts. A soft whimper broke past her lips. He tugged the skirt down as a second whimper joined the first. “It’s all right, Gypsy. No one’s going to hurt you.”

Least of all him.

The kiss he dropped on the corner of her mouth spurred the confession from her throat. Her knee drew up with the tension he could feel growing tighter and tighter. “I don’t like this.”

“I know.” He ran his hand down her arm, under the bump of her elbow and back up. Resentment for the coat that kept his hand from her skin was his uppermost emotion until he got to her wrist. The flesh was cool. He circled the narrow joint and slid his fingers lower, meshing his fingers with hers. Her hand was like an icicle in his. “Jesus Christ.”

She was freezing.

“What?”

“I’m not doing a very good job taking care of you.”

He was so used to living on the trail, the discomfort of sleeping on the cold ground hadn’t even registered with him. He had the muscle and mass to withstand the cold, but there wasn’t anything to Desi. Just delicate flesh and fragile bone. Son of a bitch, no wonder she was freezing. He went to work on the remaining buttons on the coat, opening them with neat efficiency, ignoring the way she seemed to stop breathing as he did. When he had it open, he slid his hand inside. Where he expected to feel the warmth of her skin he found a coldness that alarmed him more. Building the fire wasn’t an option as it would draw attention and wouldn’t warm her nearly fast enough anyway, which only left one other option.

“Hold on a minute.”

He reached into his boot and drew his knife from its scabbard. The blade winked in the faint light. Her big eyes went round with horror as he said, “I’ll have you all taken care of in just a moment.”

He slit the front of the poncho to make room.

She frowned up at him. “What are you doing?”

He turned the poncho around and put the knife back. She was cold and scared and almost out of fight, but she kept her head. A man had to admire that. She was something. “Making you a nest.” He held out his hand. “Kneel up.”

She grimaced as she did and he felt like a heel for making her move at all. He steadied her the last two feet with a hand on her ribs just under her breasts. Christ, his hand about swallowed the widest part of her bone structure. Compared to him, there really was nothing to her.

He lifted the poncho and dropped it over her head. A tug and her head popped through the opening. Her hands came up against his chest as he worked his fingers under her hair and lifted the mass free of the neck. She leaned forward as he got the last foot free and he decided he liked her like this, giving him her weight and the illusion of her trust. Someday, it would be for real.

He glanced over his shoulder, shifted them a couple of inches to the left and then with only a “hold on” to warn her, hooked an arm under her buttocks and leaned back. Her short nails scraped his chest as he caught their combined weights on his elbow, and a quick glance determined her little gasps were from fear, not pain, as he took them down the last couple feet, not stopping until he was resting supine to the ground, his head supported by the leather saddle, her weight a welcome warmth atop him. Her head rested just above his breastbone, her legs falling naturally between his.

“Better?” he asked.

The shake of her head was immediate. “No.”

He frowned. “You hurting anywhere?”

“No, but I liked it better before.”

“You were cold.”

He said that as if it mattered. Desi lifted her hips as he yanked the coat out from under her, wincing as a button scraped her inner thigh. Tracker had fetched her a dress but with only one layer of petticoats, it wasn’t much protection from anything.

Caine patted her back. “Sorry about that.”

“What are you doing?”

“Getting you comfortable.”

On top of him? “You intend for me to sleep this way?”

“You got a better plan?”

“The ground was working just fine.”

She could hear his hair swish across the leather as he shook his head. “The cold would sap the life from your bones.”

“You’re on the ground.”

“I’m a lot bigger with a lot more muscle to take the cold.” His hands slid up her thighs under the coat. “You’re just a little bit of a thing.”

He was right about one thing. He was warm, very warm, and if his hands weren’t gathering up her skirts as she lay there, she might have been able to enjoy the heat radiating off him. “Why can’t you let this go?”

“Because you’re afraid of what I’m going to do, which is loco, seeing as I’d cut off my arm rather than hurt you.”

“So you intend…”

She just couldn’t put into words what he intended to do. “I intend to let you experience my touch so you can stop dreading it.”

“The others—”

“Can’t see a thing, which means they won’t have any idea anything is going on over here other than sleep unless you make a fuss.”

The thought was little consolation. She pressed her face into his chest as his palms curled around her thighs with only the pantaloons to protect her modesty. He pulled and her thighs separated on either side of his thighs. She could feel his cock—hard and hotter than the rest of him—pressing up into her groin. She shifted to the side to relieve the pressure. “I don’t want this.”

“But I do, and unless my ears were playing tricks on me five hours ago, I believe you promised to love, honor and obey.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” Those hands inched higher, those fingers dipped lower.

“Neither did I, but you don’t see me reneging.”

She couldn’t see a thing of his expression with what little light there was obscured by his hat, but the glitter of his eyes reached out to her.

“That’s because all the advantages are on your side,” she managed to say.

“What advantages?”

“You get a woman you can have anytime you want, a woman you can vent on, order around, and it’s all perfectly legal.”

His fingers hit the beginning of her buttocks, lingered under the rise, tracing the crease beneath each as if fascinated by the separation. “That’s how you see it, huh?”

“Yes.” And she hated it. Almost as much as she hated the tickling sensation his caress was inspiring. She tried to hold still, but it was impossible. She shifted her hips away. A soft “Hmm” and a slowly drawled “I like that” were her punishment.

She didn’t want him enjoying her rape. She didn’t want him enjoying anything, but another lesson she’d learned in the past year was that there was nothing she could do to stop a man’s pleasure. Whatever she did, lying there, fighting, it all thrilled them. The only thing she could do was battle for her own survival during every instance. She drew her hands into fists against his chest and lowered her head, notching her forehead between his pectorals, pushing against his breastbone. She could do this. She knew how to do this. Concentration and one breath at a time, following her heartbeat deep into her center until she could all but ignore what was happening to her body.

Caine’s fingers tickled again. She shivered.

“Cold?”

“No.”

“Good.” His palms rode the rise of her buttocks, conforming to her shape while his fingers dipped between, following gravity down to the slit in her pantaloons. She held her breath. Maybe he wouldn’t…

He did. His fingers slid between the whisper-light pieces of fabric, brushing gently along her pubic hair, exploring her shape with a barely there sensation that tickled. She tried to twist away, wrenching her ribs. One hand immediately came out from under her to press in the small of her back, holding her still for his pleasure. “Easy.”

She shook her head. She couldn’t be easy.

“Is this what you fear?” he asked as those fingers explored. “My fingers here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Because it hurt, but he wasn’t hurting her, just touching her with butterfly-light caresses that tickled in the oddest way.

“Does it embarrass you?” he asked as his middle finger skimmed the crease of her lips.

“Yes.”

With a wiggle, he separated the plump outer lips. “It shouldn’t. I’m your husband. Our loving each other is right.”

Right. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it, but she knew what he meant. “It’s not a sin now….”

“No.”

And that was supposed to make everything all right? “But it’s still against my will.”

The finger dipping deeper into her folds stopped. “Is it?”

The low, drawled question hung between them, full of expectation. The immediate “Yes” caught on her tongue.

“Husbands and wives make love. You knew that when we married.”

“Yes.”

“And still you married me.”

“Yes.” She had.

“So you’re saying you didn’t mean the promises you made?”

“Did you?”

“I don’t make promises lightly.”

“Father Gerard made you marry me.”

“He offered me a way to pay off a debt, but nothing forced me to make the promise.”

“Then why did you marry me?”

“I liked what I saw.”

“I’m a whore.”

His hand snaked out from under the poncho so fast she never registered the change, but she felt the tug on her hair that had her head wrenching back, staring through the dark at an expression she couldn’t see. “You’re my wife.”

She dug her nails into the front of his shirt. “It doesn’t change what I was.”

“It changes who you can be.”

The truth hung between them. Her lip slipped between her teeth. It was so much more complicated than that.

“I can’t promise you a soft life, Desi, and I can’t say that I’m an easy man, but I can promise you this. I’ll care for you, protect you and honor you as my wife and the mother of my children.”

“Why?”

“I made a promise a long time ago not to hurt the innocent.”

“And you think I’m innocent.”

“Sometimes a body can’t help what happens to them. The best they can do is make something of what’s left.”

And he was offering the status of his wife, the protection of his big body, the comfort of his home. What did he want in exchange? She bit down hard on her lip. She didn’t really know what he wanted from her. “That all sounds good, but—”

“But what?”

With his hand in her hair and his fingers parting her woman’s flesh it was hard to miss the aggression in the question. He could sense her weakening and like the predator he reminded her of, he was going in for the kill.

“What do you want in exchange?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “I want your trust, your obedience when it’s called for and a chance.”

Of the three, the last was the one she sensed that mattered. “A chance for what?”

“A chance to prove I’m not what you’re used to.”

His fingers moved, probed, slid. Tingles shot up her spine. Panic thrummed along with her heartbeat, and above it all, the tiniest flutter of hope. That maybe he meant it. That maybe things didn’t have to be an unrelenting hell from here on out. That she didn’t have to endure being passed from man to man, that maybe her dreams of a home and family were not dead.

Taking a deep breath, feeling like she was stepping off a ledge, glad for the cover of darkness that hid her terror at the step she was taking, Desi said, “Yes.”

“‘Yes’ what?”

“I want to be your wife.”

“And you’ll give me your trust?”

Promises mattered to her, too, so she couldn’t just give a blanket statement. “I’ll do my best.”

He released her hair. She dropped her cheek back to his chest, breathing in the scent of hard-worked man, horse and leather. She should have been offended, but she wasn’t. Unlike the stinking cologne James and the others favored, there was a cleanliness about the smell that went far deeper than a bath could ever deliver.

“You’re talking an honest try?” he asked.

She’d longed for so many months for someone to help her, prayed while James and his cronies had hurt her for their amusement, that a white knight from one of her fairy tales would come along and sweep her away to safety. And now someone had. He wasn’t well-dressed and he was definitely rough around the edges, but he seemed to have something she’d learned was a lot more important. He seemed to have integrity. She licked her lips and then answered his question. “Yes.”

“Guess a man can’t ask for more than that.”

Some could but he wouldn’t and she was grateful for that. His hand slipped back under the blanket and poncho, finding the soft skin of her calf. Her instinct was to flinch away. She controlled it, but she couldn’t control her gasp.