Thea Devine Read online

  How had he done this to her? No, she was doing it to herself. She had let him talk and now she couldn’t forget a word he had said.

  He did not come.

  She went out in the streets the next day in Reese’s company, stayed a half hour in Bodey’s store, stopped by the stage depot to hear news of any new arrivals in town, had lunch with Reese at the hotel, and listened for gossip, and all the while the thrumming excitement pulsed through her veins. And there was the waiting—the waiting that was the lot of women like her.

  She felt taut as a bowstring, ready to snap.

  Reese found her curiously preoccupied and not a little distracted.

  “Well, I hardly have the same means of seeking relief as a man does,” she said waspishly, and realized after she said it that he could interpret it more than one way. God, her unruly mouth.

  “Oh now Maggie, surely there’s a decanter of whiskey in some sideboard in that apartment. You don’t need company to drink, for heaven’s sake.”

  She sent him a skeptical look. “I don’t drink anyway.”

  “Of course you don’t,” he said comfortingly.

  And then back at the office there was Jean, looking at her with a hectic expression in his eyes as she entered with Reese.

  On her desk was a stack of handwritten notes. More words, she thought, sinking down into her chair resignedly. Just not the right ones.

  His note was on the bottom. Tonight, same time.

  She crumpled it up, started to toss it away and then thought the better of it and slipped it into her pocket of her apron.

  Tonight.

  She felt feverish all over again. She couldn’t for the life of her imagine tonight. Tonight felt like it was a thousand hours away. Tonight he would … come. How could she envision anything past that, when she felt such betrayal that she had had to wait.

  Mother Colleran got in her way. Dennis sent his own note, reminding her to remember her promise about her treatment of the railroad. Jean seemed everywhere around her, hovering in a way that made her extraordinarily uncomfortable.

  Everything felt out of shape and moving in the slowest possible motion. Mother Colleran ate dinner and Reese went out. Maggie ate at her desk in the company of Jean, who had decided to work late.

  Tonight, same time. Would Jean never leave?

  He finally left. She went upstairs to spend an hour or so with Mother Colleran, whose everlasting complaint was that no one paid any attention to her, and even though Reese was here he seemed to have found a set of friends to keep him away at night, and anyway, the whole thing was Maggie’s fault. Maggie wasn’t nice enough to Reese. Maggie wouldn’t let him help with the newspaper. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie …

  She went downstairs finally to escape the carping. The woman was mad. She couldn’t possibly have thought Maggie would let Reese anywhere near the paper.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the slow ticking of the clock and her growing anticipation as the night sounds around her melted into silence and a rhythmic beating that mirrored the pounding of her own heart.

  Much later, as she listened, she heard Reese come back and then go out again. She decided she would not light a lamp tonight, in case Reese should return and come to investigate. She would do nothing but remain by the door until she heard Logan’s signal. She would let him in of her own free will and then she would bear the consequences.

  Later still, there was a soft knock at the rear door in the printing room. She opened the door and felt his solid male presence as he entered and closed the door silently behind him.

  He reached for her unerringly in the dark, and she knew this was the ineffable moment for which she had waited. She felt the touch of his hands first, drawing her tightly against the length of his body. Then there was the shock of his hands moving up her arms to her shoulders and neck and upward to cup her face to center it, in the dark, in that breathless instant before his lips touched hers. And then there was just the pure hot sensation of penetration and the luscious taste of him seeking the essence of her.

  What was the essence but the giving, the surrendering of that part of her sensual soul to his demand of that moment? She yielded it willingly.

  Here, in the dark, there were no questions that could not be answered; there was only the sense that this capitulation was foreordained, not because of her hunger but because of his constancy and his desire to change and reorder the past.

  “There’s no light,” she whispered against his lips at one point.

  “We don’t need one,” he murmured, touching her lips with his fingers, feeling their softness and texture, feeling them quiver as he stroked the tender inner side of the lower lip before nipping at it lightly.

  No, she thought, they didn’t need one. The darkness illuminated everything for her. The forbidden became admissable, because she knew he would do nothing she did not want him to do.

  And she wanted his kisses. If she had nothing else but tonight her ordeal of waiting would have been worth it. She adored how he kissed her, the way he slowly and voluptuously fit his mouth against hers in just such a way that she could do nothing but part her lips to admit his questing tongue. Her arms wound around him to pull him even deeper within her, and she allowed herself the kind of wanton response she had never experienced with Frank.

  He lost himself in it. Never had he thought that she would give herself to him so completely so soon. There was no submerged anger in her tonight. Her need for what he offered was real: he could taste her fierce demand. Her glittering sensuality was totally untapped, he thought, and he was going to be the one to unleash the storm within her. Oh, but slowly, ever so slowly. He knew she thought she would be using him, that he was to be her convenience. And why not, as long as he wanted it this much? But she didn’t know the rest. She didn’t know she could love him, she didn’t know he was going to seduce her until she was conscious only of the need to join with him, and only him. Then she would know where her destiny lay.

  Even so, her passionate kisses made his head reel, made him almost lose command of his senses, made him want to reach for her and couple with her in the most primitive and elemental way. It was that terrible craving for her that he had to learn to control.

  But if he touched her anywhere he might explode. She might explode. He never dreamed that her kisses could be so incendiary, or that the press of her body against his would arouse him to a fever to possess her that was almost impossible to subdue. He wanted everything—tonight, and he knew nothing was possible but the lush possession of her mouth and his firm hold of her pulsating body.

  It was enough for tonight to feel her yearning and stroke her desire.

  “Maggie …”

  “Don’t stop.”

  “Shhh …” He touched her lips. “Come inside …”

  “Yes—” She took his hand and carefully led him into the office. Yes, here there would be even more privacy, in the dark, with the door closed and the magic of him to light her way. She found her chair and he settled into it and pulled her down on his lap.

  The feeling of taking her body against his was so natural. Every movement of her torso as she twisted to find a comfortable position sounded a chord in him that demanded to be answered.

  A sensual heat arose between them as she became aware of his pounding heart and powerful scent and the thick, pulsating length of him beneath her.

  She licked her lips, thinking of what that meant to her—that she was here with him willingly, that she wanted his kisses, that she wanted him to hold her, and more, that she wanted him to touch her anywhere he wanted to.

  She drew her breath in with a little hiss as her imagination envisioned the torrid caresses that he had yet to initiate. Only the avid thrust of his rock-hard manhood against her bottom told her that his desire was growing every bit as volcanic as hers.

  He was holding back as he had promised, and yet he had her in his arms in a way that would allow him to feel her and arouse her just as he had dreamed of doing. Just t
he way she wanted him to.

  And so it happened: she had crossed the line into a fevered erotic yearning that was rushing headlong into pure greediness, a greed to experience the lush sensations she knew he could excite in her.

  But he had said, and she remembered, that he would not do anything she did not want him to.

  She wanted him to.

  When had she come to that?

  Her hands moved of their own volition around his neck to pull his mouth down against hers.

  “I need your kisses,” she whispered, and gratifyingly, his mouth crushed down over hers as though he had been waiting for this bold invitation.

  “Tell me more, Maggie,” he murmured between his sultry kisses and the heated thrust of his tongue as he expertly explored every inch of her mouth.

  “I want more,” she sighed, opening her mouth to him again, reveling in the feel of his hands in her hair, holding her again in that precise way as if he were drinking nectar from her lips.

  She moved her own hands to touch his face, downward to feel the movement of his mouth on hers as he plunged voraciously into her mouth, seeking, dueling, playing, tasting, easing away to lick her lips, to rim them with the wet heat of his tongue.

  Everything he did in this carnal probing aroused her beyond anything in her experience. She didn’t want him to stop, and she wanted, she wanted …

  … she didn’t want to want…

  … she felt him sucking her tongue so very gently …

  … she felt him elongating under her as if that part of him were some separate entity seducing her as well…

  … she wanted …

  His sucking became intense, overtly sensual, bewitching her with the ravishing motion of his lips pulling against her tongue just … lusciously … so …

  She moved with this erotic provocation because she could not help it; her body wanted the movement that the gorgeous motion of his lips foretold. She remembered, oh how she remembered … and there for the taking was the powerful essence, the potent maleness, the culmination of what she really wanted.

  Her hips ground against his towering sex in a timeless mating dance. Timeless, the whole was timeless, and they would come to it, she knew now they would come to it, as her body felt the living heat of his manhood through the layers of clothes and the hot naked kisses of his mouth, kisses that made her want to strip away her clothes and bare herself to him totally.

  His mouth moved away from hers, hovering a mere breath away as his sensitive fingers touched her swollen lips. She was shaking with excitement and arousal. He wanted to move his hands, he wanted to feel her pulsating body that he had incited into such an erotic heat, and all he could do was wait.

  “Maggie …”

  “Oh God …”

  “I’ll stay here all night kissing you.”

  “Yes, kiss me, kiss me again just the same way; I love how you kiss me,” and a moment later, his tongue sought hers and his lips closed around it and began the same rhythmic caress, while he felt the one part of her body that she could not deny him—her beautiful face and neck and the insatiable motion of her wanton tongue.

  And then it all became one, a fusion of her body rocking against his ramrod manhood, arching upward as if she were demanding his caress, and the firm enticing thrust of her tongue in concert with his mouth, and the darkness, and the fiery response of her, and the smooth texture of her skin, and his explosive need of her. His one hand reached for her, sliding down her chest to meet the straining tip of her breast. The buttons, the hell-be-damned buttons … He gripped the buttons and ripped them away, stripping the impeding material from her body until he could feel the naked lushness of her breast in his hand.

  He wouldn’t let her break the kiss. He held her and he kissed her until her faint tremor turned into yearning once more. Only then did he begin his exquisite exploration of her luscious breast. He felt her arch toward him so he could hold her more fully; he felt her body squirm tantalizingly against his tumescence as he touched her nipple and caressed and gently squeezed its voluptuous tip.

  Her hips jolted against him at the first wild feeling of his fingers. She had been waiting for this, she thought somewhere in the cataclysmic fog where she floated in a sensual haze. She loved how he played with her nipple, rubbing his fingers over it, sliding his hand all over the roundness of her breast and then back again to the lush tip, holding it between his fingers so gently she could just barely tell they were there.

  The knowing and the not knowing incited her to a tumultuous arousal. Her body responded to his hot kisses and his fondling of her nipple; white-hot moistness drenched her. Her body rippled, ready for anything, wanting everything, as his fingers surrounded her nipple and made her firmly aware of his possession.

  Her body melted against him and her mouth went wild with urgent kisses. Her hips undulated erotically against the iron length of him in rhythm with the hot pulling of his lips against her tongue and the lush stroking of his fingers on her pebble-hard nipple.

  Heat gushed through her, streaming through her veins, spiraling downward in a smoldering paroxysm of sensation that resonated into a crystalline feeling that hovered for one long moment somewhere in the deepest feminine part of her before it shattered into a huge glistening point of light.

  She tore her mouth away from his and wrenched his hand away from her body, feeling him shudder just as she collapsed against him. He wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he could, and his lips brushed her hair.

  “You are wonderful,” he murmured against her ear.

  That was wonderful, she wanted to say. She felt her nakedness now, and she was glad of the darkness, and yet the time in his arms seemed so short before he had to be going. She started thinking about the nature of what they had done in the dark and how she wanted to do it again—soon.

  “When?” she finally brought herself to ask him.

  He felt himself stiffen again at the thought of when. He wished he could carry her off to the ranch and make love to her all night, all day, all the time.

  “Tomorrow,” he promised, even though he did not know whether it could be tomorrow, or even whether he could bear to let her go tonight.

  “Tomorrow,” she murmured, nestling against him for the few more moments they had left of this night.

  His body reacted and she knew it. His desire spurted to life again and they both felt it.

  She trembled at the thought of it, and she remembered what he had done. She almost thought of begging him to stay…. Oh, but stay where?

  He knew she was moments away from full, wanton arousal. He ached to caress her all over again. But the time … he felt the full impact of the fleeting time and the knowledge that this would be their only meeting place until she decided she wanted something more.

  There was no time to be leisurely, no time for second kisses and caresses lest they lead elsewhere, and no time for completion after that. God, he hated it. He wanted her again and all he could do was prepare to leave her. His only consolation was that she was as unhappy about it as he was.

  Tomorrow … the talisman; they would have time all over again tomorrow. It shouldn’t take her long to see that all they had was endless tomorrows with no future, he thought. In the end she would want their union just as much as he.

  Tomorrow was Thursday already, and with one part of her mind she dealt with the complexities of pulling the paper together, handling Arch Warfield and his militant pro-railroad articles with some diplomacy. And with the other, she damped down the hot memories of the previous night and tried to pretend it had not happened.

  She was in the buggy with Reese, following the survey team to check its progress, when it occurred to her that it might make things easier if Logan had a key so he could let himself in to wait for her.

  She was in the back room with Jean doing local advertising layout when she thought of not wearing underclothing when she dressed for him tonight.

  She was at her worktable, penciling out the more fulsome phras
es in Arch Warfield’s articles when she remembered his succulent kisses. Her body vibrated instantly with yearning.

  She had her usual consultations with A.J., and although she thought she sounded coherent she wasn’t sure since she was remembering the feeling of Logan caressing her breast.

  How could she stand to wait until tonight? Late tonight.

  “Well, let’s see,” she murmured, as A.J. plunked himself down next to her so they could go over the order of the newsworthy articles. “Nothing new on Denver North. The survey will be completed this week, and then I suppose the circus will begin. All right. No especially important visitors in town. The usual aunt from Denver and cousin from Texas, I believe. Now, I understand we have some new advertising, so maybe that should be more prominent than inside the backfold page. I’m running a shorter editorial this week. My heart’s not in it for some reason, or maybe I’m just suspicious that Denver North is being so amenable to spending thousands of extra dollars to circle Gully Basin. But I guess we’ll find out about that soon enough. Anything else, A.J.?”

  “Well, we’re thinking about listing property assessments and sales; the clerk requested we consider it so it’ll be made public without him having to do so much work.”

  Maggie grimaced. “All right.”

  “We got some new babies. This was one quiet week, I’ll tell you; I wonder if we shouldn’t think about tacking in some Denver news.”

  Maggie shook her head. “No, then they’ll expect it every week, and I’m not sure we can get hold of a Denver paper that frequently. This is enough. We’ll dig out some filler. You can publish the property sales too, and the assessments. The new menu for the hotel dining room, if there is one. Reese’s comings and goings, if you can figure them out. Mother Colleran’s new interest in church social clubs. I’m babbling. Sorry, A.J.”

  “No problem, Miz Maggie. Maybe you should buy yourself a new dress. I heard the dress lady got a whole raft of them in the express today, ready-made.”