back.
“I’m not so sure I want thee anymore.”
The little liar. The truth was in the way she cuddled against him and the way her eyes watched his lips shape around the words as if imagining other things. “Even if I promise to be very easy to seduce?”
Her fingers dug into his shoulder as he pressed against her in little pulses. “How easy?”
Trailing his fingers down her cheek, over the slight ledge of her shoulder to her chest, he confessed, “Very.”
Biting her lip, she continued to hold still as he found and followed the strap of her camisole beneath her dress. “I could meet thee in the barn.”
The confession came out in a breathless rush that touched his tender side and reminded him she was new to this, likely had never been with anyone but the good doctor. That being the case, this was a very big step for her. The least he could do was make it easy. As his finger hit the bodice of the hidden camisole, he kissed her lips for no reason other than that it had been fifteen seconds since the last time he’d placed his mouth on hers, fifteen seconds since he’d taken her breath as his. Fifteen seconds since he’d felt that particular arc of pleasure go through him. It was no different this time. Pleasure arced in a rich unfurling. And when its journey culminated its race down his spine, settling in his balls, pulling them up tight, it was almost like coming home. This time, when their lips parted, he couldn’t manage easy. His impatience bit into his drawl, dragging it down to a rough growl.
“The barn’s too conspicuous.”
She blinked, not with him yet. Her tongue ran over her lips. “I can sneak.”
As if sneaking was an option. “The rumors will start before you get to the rose garden.”
His staying in her barn when he was in town hadn’t raised suspicions when her husband was alive, but now that she was widowed, a hostile edge had invaded his dealings with some of the town’s more ornery citizens. Pretty much everyone but Sally Mae held his motives in suspicion. And as the days passed, that suspicion was growing.
She sighed and flicked her fingers in dismissal. “Some people lead very boring lives. They seek something to talk about.”
She’d obviously never been on the wrong side of community opinion, otherwise she’d know how much other people’s assumptions could ruin a life. He drew his thumb across the remnants of their kiss, the soft, moist flesh clinging to his calluses.
“Bored people could make life very difficult for you.”
“If I worried about how others see my choices, my life would be equally boring.”
He kind of liked the idea of her life being boring. Predictable. Safe.
“Thankfully, the sacrifice won’t be necessary.” He let her slide down, his breath hissing between his teeth as her stomach slid along his cock. “The moon’s bright enough. I’m thinking that I could meet you down by the pond.”
She ran her hand up his back. “Outside?”
She didn’t sound put off by the idea. He hadn’t really expected her to be. In his experience, being taken outdoors was part of what women expected when they invited him to their bed. “Yes.”
Her fingers pressed against his nape in a fleet kiss of excitement. “I’ll have to take my leave and then stop by the house. I will meet thee in an hour.”
An hour was too damn long. As the only thing he could figure she needed from the house was a blanket, he offered. “I can take the quilt off my bed.”
She stepped back, out of his arms. “Not those kind of things.”
He had a gnawing urge to drag her back. “Care to explain?”
She sighed. “Thee must not take this wrong, but I do not wish to become with child.”
He wasn’t in any particular hurry to be a father, though a part of him couldn’t resist toying with the thought of a child. A little bit of him to go on in the future. He wouldn’t have one, of course. Caught between the Indian world he’d never known and the white world that wouldn’t accept him, there was no place for him, any more than there’d be a place for a child who would no doubt bear his skin color. For him, there were just these stolen moments with different women with no forever on the back end.
“You’ve got a way of stopping that?”
“Yes. Jonah taught me.”
“It works?”
“We were married six years and I do not have a child.”
She sounded neither happy nor sad when she said that, which just struck him as wrong. A woman like Sally Mae, who cared for everyone, would have strong maternal urges. Yet she didn’t have children because her husband had taught her how to avoid it.
Sally’s fingers brushed his, drawing his gaze. “This bothers thee?”
He smiled automatically. “Not a bit.”
She didn’t smile back.
“I do not want thee to take offense, but…” She licked her lips. “I must ask…”
No doubt she wanted to caution him to be gentle. Women always seemed obligated to ask that, as if he weren’t aware of his size and the harm he could do. “What?”
“It occurs to me that a man like thee might already have a woman.”
Shit. He’d rather she’d ask him to be gentle than to be insulting him. “If I did, I wouldn’t be out here kissing you.”
She shook her head, causing moonlight to dance off the crown of braids wrapped around her head as the strings to her white cap danced about her shoulders. He wanted to pull those hairpins out so that heavy swathe of hair spilled like sunlight, brightening the darkness around them.
“I don’t mean to insult thee. It’s just not my way to cause another pain.”
He knew that about her, but it annoyed the hell out of him that she didn’t know the same about him. Then again, why should she? To her, he was a means to an end. “Then you can stop worrying. No one’s expecting me anywhere.”
Except Ari, Caine’s sister-in-law, either dead or held prisoner somewhere out there. But until he received a response to his latest query, he didn’t have a lead to follow so he had no choice other than to stay put.
Sally Mae reached up, cuddling the softness of her breasts into the hardness of his chest. His hand fell naturally to the small of her back, supporting her. There were definitely compensations to staying put. “Except me.”
“Except you.”
He shook his head, feeling her shiver when the ends of his hair f licked across her forearms as her fingers linked behind his neck. She was very sensitive to him. “I’ll be waiting for you at the woods straight off the back door.”
“But what if someone—”
He put his fingers over her lips. “No one’s going to see me unless I want to be seen, but you’re not to walk in the woods at night by yourself.”
“I have done it many times. Two nights ago, in fact.”
“I know.”
She frowned. “Thee watched?”
“I kept guard.”
Her smile caressed his fingertips. “Thee always watch over me.”
“I owe you.”
She went still against him again.
“What?”
Her hands slid down to his shoulders. “Thee are not planning on being with me tonight because thee feel obligated?”
Only a woman could come to that conclusion. “Moonbeam, I’m not that nice