Hours later Bethany trembled in Joshua’s arms, her eyes dark with passion, her lips swollen from his kisses. She gasped as he pulled from the tight, wet heat of her body. Dipping his head, he kissed the corners of her mouth, eyes, lips, soft kisses meant to soothe for he had been insatiable in his demands, already taking her twice, and he was not done yet. He wasn’t even close to being satisfied. Joshua had carried her with him for two years, her sweet taste, her innocent passion, the pain of her eyes. The reality of being with her again was nothing like how he’d dreamed. He trailed his fingers down her throat, loving the smooth, silky feel of her skin. Thick, red wavy hair tumbled past her shoulders and around her face in a halo of fire.

“I like you, brown eyes, more than I’ve dreamt possible.”

Her lips curved, and something sweet glowed in her gaze. Then she ran the arch of one foot over his legs, up to his thighs, pressing her heels into the muscles of his ass. “I quite like you too.” Her voice was breathy, low, and sensual. “So, do you think I am broken in for riding now?” she demanded provocatively.

He touched his thumb to her damp, swollen lips, picturing them wrapped around his cock. His gut clenched with sensual need, and he had to repress the urging of his body. He'd already been too demanding, and there would be enough time to explore passion with her. But wasn't that the crux of it, he had no idea of how long he would have her, and his instincts warned him tonight was all they would have. Her eyes did not commit to him and the west.

He settled his hand behind her neck, his touch dominant and possessive, but he was unable to temper the instincts. “Only by me.”

“That I can promise you, it has only ever been you, and will only be you.” Then she smiled, and the heat of it hit his chest like the summer sun.

“Does that mean you’re staying?” he demanded gruffly.

“It means I am more inclined to return after I’ve visited my mother.”

That was more than he expected. Though he wanted to woo and marry her, there was a part of him that didn't believe it would happen. She hardly knew the manner of man she lay beneath, and one day, be it a month or years from now something would happen to peel away the bandage, and she would peek at the merciless heart he possessed.

He untangled their limbs, shifted, and she groaned. Joshua rubbed the muscles of her calf, kneading the knots. He’d had her legs high above his shoulders for a long damn time.

“You’re beautiful.” Her form was so sensually shaped, his teeth ached.

Though she had borne his son, her breasts stood taut and firm, her stomach smooth and flat with rounded hips. There were a few spidery white lines on her belly, which he traced with his tongue. He turned her onto her stomach, and a chill of violence tore through him. Scars marred her beautiful skin. Two on her upper shoulder, one on her mid back, and the other a long stripe across her left hip. The welts bespoke a time of violence. Emotions clogged in his throat. He kissed the one of her hips.

“What caused these?”

She stiffened, then relaxed slightly. “I…” She pushed a tendril of her hair behind her ears. “Benjamin beat me with a crop.”

Joshua turned her over. “The shame I hear in your voice, why is it there?”

She stared at him mutely.

“Do you blame yourself for his vile actions?”

A heavy sigh slipped from her. “At times. I was incredibly stupid in marrying a man I only knew for a few weeks.”

Joshua didn’t miss the implication that she also only knew him for a couple of weeks.

“It is foolish to linger in the past when the future beckons. We must learn from it, not be a slave to it.” His gut tightened at his words, for that was what she did with her insistence to travel to Boston. A lady like her would never have been prepared emotionally and physically for the harshness of the west. The lessons taught to her were that the west was never to be trusted.

She shifted on the blankets. “Why don’t you have a bed?”

The night sky shimmered with thousands of stars, and his skin itched to be riding, then he glanced at her, and everything settled. He frowned, wondering if there would ever be a time she could ride with him across the trails. Would he even want her to?

“There are no beds on the trail. Just grass and leaves and whatever you find to lie on. At times I find it more comfortable to sleep with the hardness underneath me.”

“We are going to need a mattress at least,” she said archly. The hint of permanency pulled a smile to his lips.

She shivered, and he turned and added some more logs to the fire he had started sometime during the night.

“Your back!” She scrambled up, and the warmth of her pressed into him from behind. Her fingers danced over his skin, tracing his scars, all seven of them. “How did you get these?”

“During the war.”

“You were in the army?”

“I was. I thought the cause noble, and I wanted to watch Elijah’s back. You know, I never killed a man in the war.” He frowned, wondering why he’d even made the admission.

She leaned over his shoulder so she could peer into his face. “Truly?”

He kissed her nose, and she grinned. “Each man was fighting for what they believed was right. The men fighting and dying were not the ones who owned slaves. Hell, hardly any had money and property. They were fighting for the well-heeled plantation owners to maintain their wealth, not for themselves. I reckon most of them didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

Joshua liked the admiration he saw in her eyes. It made something in him go warm.

“When I am forced to defend myself, I do so without taking their lives. I don't kill harmless men. I don't kill for money. I kill to make women and children safer. I kill to protect those I love.”

“Do you think you could never kill again?”

She saw an injustice, where he saw justice. “As long as you aren’t in any danger, brown eyes.”

“I would never want you to kill for me.”

“If you are ever threatened I wouldn’t hesitate—”

“To shoot them in the knees?” Her eyes gleamed with amusement.

He smiled. “To shoot them in the knees. Tell me about your family?” In the days when they had driven to the ranch, she had mentioned her mother at times, and there was always a faraway look in her eyes. He’d known Thomas and not once the man had said he had a sister called Bethany. It was like she hadn't existed, and Joshua wondered what her family life had been like. Though at times he loved the quiet of the mountain and the wild call of the land, there was still nothing as peaceful as being with his family.

She was silent for a bit, then she spoke of her home in Virginia, how beautiful the fields had been, the friends she had, and how much her mother and father had loved each other. She spoke of the girls her brother Thomas had courted, and the boys who had courted her. The soft tones of her voice transported him to a different time as she painted the picture of what her life had been like. “I was only sixteen when the war came. My father, William Galloway, owned a cotton plantation, over a thousand acres. He’d always been a man of strong principles, and he had struggled with his conscience for he had slaves. Though he freed several, there were still men and women laboring in those fields without the benefit of wages. It was one of the only sources of an argument between my parents. Mamma hated the very idea, and papa argued we’d be poor if not for slaves. There was a riot on our plantation several months later, and a man shot my father. A boy really, for he was about my age, and he was a field slave. I had a rifle in my hand, and he looked so terrified.”

“What did you do?”

“I gave him food, the rifle and told him to run. My father never forgave me. But I knew they would have hung him when he had only been fighting for his liberty. Father packed us up and sent us away, and we never saw him again. Word was sent that he had died, and our home had been burned to the ground. Mother tried to make a life for us in St. Louis, but Thomas was restless and hungry. He made his way to England, but I stayed with Mamma. I got a teaching job at a girl's academy, but I felt so very restive. I thought…somehow when I met Benjamin Hardin I thought that was what I'd been waiting for. I traveled West with him, and it was the worst mistake of my life…and the most rewarding. For if I hadn't come, I wouldn't have met you…and I wouldn't have known I could feel like this…so hot and needy, and so comforted. And we wouldn’t have Grayson.”

Her words ripped his damn heart out of his chest. He dragged her up to his chest and kissed her. “I have a gift for you…well more like two,” he murmured.

She pulled back slightly. “Gifts?” Her gaze swept across the room. “Where?”

“Outside.”

He drew her up, swaddled her in the blankets and lifted her in his arms.

“I can walk you know,” she said tartly.

“I know.” He smiled. “I just like feeling you in my arms.”

He strolled with her to the porch, holding her close. The chill rolled off the mountain and settled across them. She shivered, though wrapped in his warmest quilt. Then she looked across to the edge of the trees, and right there was a horse, a stallion he’d broken in.

“Oh, what a beauty. Is he your horse?”

“He’s yours.”

“A stallion?”

“Yes. His spirit reminds me of yours, wild and beautiful.”

“I’ve never owned a horse before, and I’ve never ridden a stallion before,” she said shyly, pushing back her fiery locks from her face. She was so goddamn beautiful. “Oh Joshua, he is so incredibly beautiful.”

“I’ll teach you to ride and how to care for him in the coming days.”

Her lips curved into a smile. “And what’s the other?”

He reached behind him, took a wickedly curved knife from his waist, and held it up to her. She stared for long silent minutes. “Most men give flowers and trinkets.”

“I’m not most men.”

Her eyes smiled first, and then her lips bloomed into a wide, carefree grin. “I’m pleased you’re not.”

He took her lips, and her taste was paradise. And as simple as that he wanted to be inside her again. Joshua stumbled with her inside, and gently lowered her onto the blankets. Instead of relinquishing control to him, his woman pushed him back and kissed a path down his chest, and lower until her hot breath fanned over his throbbing cock.

He swallowed tightly, wondering if she would, and beating back the lust urging him to fist her hair in his hands and take her mouth. Unable to help the desire coursing through him, he tried to gather her hair, and she slapped his hands away. Despite her delicate, fragile appearance, his woman had an underlying strength, and at that moment he knew she could handle him and all his complexities. Her sensuality was new, hesitant, but she wouldn't allow him to control it and her. He held up his hands in surrender, and she smiled, then lowered her mouth over the flared head of his cock. His abdomen clenched at that first, tentative heated lick. By the third glide of her tongue of his length, he was shaking. Then the wicked temptresses sucked the crown of his cock into her mouth, enveloping it into paradise. He fucking moaned. She laughed and did it again.

She sucked him deeper, tightening her lips and her mouth around the broad head and working it with her tongue. She pulled back from him, crawling backward to spread her body onto the large bearskin rug on the floor by the fire. Her mouth was puffed and tender-looking from loving, yet her eyes glowed with innocence and the bloom of uncertainty.

“Open for me, let me see your pretty folds.”

Sensuality washed over her expression, flushing her face. She widened her legs, and the pink, swollen glistening folds of flesh drew his gaze. Joshua pushed to his feet, lifted her into his arms, and walked her over to the large table near the kitchen, and lowered her to it.

“It’s cold,” she gasped.

“You’ll be burning soon,” he promised.

He dropped to his knees and tasted. Her flavor exploded on his tongue—honey, spice, and the woman herself. Her pussy against his tongue was the sweetest, softest silk. He palmed her ass and held her under the lash of his tongue. She screamed, her hands clenching in his hair, pulling him closer. Had any other woman been this wet for him, been this greedy for his touch? Hell, he wouldn’t even know for he recalled none before her.

“Oh God, Joshua,” she cried, shuddering when he sucked her clitoris.

He dropped her legs, pulled her off the table, turned her around and bent her over the smooth surface. He arched her rounded ass into the air, groaning at the provocative picture she presented. He blanketed her smaller frame with his, pushed his cock against her wet opening and slammed deep.

She screamed and bit into the muscles of his forearm braced on the table top.

“Can you take it?” he whispered, kissing the back of her neck.

“Yes,” she moaned breathlessly. “Now move, Joshua Kincaid.”

He gripped her hips, pressed a kiss on her sweat-slick shoulders, and rode her. He wasn't gentle, Joshua didn't think he could be, even if she begged him to. The need burning through his soul was raw and insatiable. But she didn’t pull away, passionate cries echoed in the cabin and wrapped around his soul. She arched beneath him, tightening on the hard, heavy length of his cock, as she began to tremble.

“Joshua!” Her release swept through her, and she convulsed, the clench of her inner muscles pulling his release from him before he was ready. With a harsh groan, he tumbled with her, emptying deep inside her still shivering body. He withdrew from her, lifted her into his arms, and somehow managed to lower them onto the thick rug and splay her on his chest.

He wrapped her in a blanket, and she snuggled into it, a smile curving her lips. He kissed her head, loving the feel of her delicate weight against his chest.

“If you touch me again, I’m going to shoot you,” she muttered into the curve of his neck.

He held her, stroking a hand from her bottom to her shoulders until sleep stole over her.

* * *

Beth stirred lazily on the mountains of blanket Joshua had made into their bedding, scanning the large log cabin for him. A fire crackled nearby, and a tantalizing aroma of bacon and biscuits wafted through the air. There was a potbellied stove at the end of the room, and she could smell the coffee brewing.

She shifted, and a soft groan escaped her. Everywhere felt sore. Though the blankets made for good padding, they were not the soft feathers of a mattress. And Joshua had taken her four times throughout the night, the last time only an hour ago while they had bathed in the spring behind the cabin. She had tried to escape inside from the cold, but he had been hell-bent on seduction, and after a while, Beth hadn’t been cold anymore. She grinned as she remembered her screams echoing through the trees and startling the birds. A yawn slipped from her, and she burrowed further down into the blankets. Perhaps she would get a few more hours sleep.

She was jerked fully awake at the volley of echoing gunfire. Fear tore through her heart. “Grayson!”

“He’s with my father. That man won’t allow anyone to harm our son.”

She lurched to her feet and looked around. Her lover had vanished. The man tugging on his pants, and gun belts was methodical, calculating, and ruthless. The shiver of dread that went through her was unwelcome. “What do you think is happening? An Indian attack?”

“No.” But there was an icy knowledge in his eyes.

Another volley of gunfire echoed across the valley, and her mouth went dry. “Abraham Hardin,” she whispered.

“I won’t know for sure until I head down to the ranch. Get dressed. Arm yourself. Stay here, I will be back soon with our son.” The look he gave her brooked no argument, and the protest on her lips died.

“Joshua?” she hesitated, not wanting to be that weak woman who begged him not to go, not when the rest of her heart was at that ranch. In fact, she had come to care a lot about his family and the idea of them in danger because of her made her throat burn. “Be safe.”

He nodded, grabbed his Winchester and headed for the door. There he paused, and she stepped toward him, uncaring that she was naked. They met each other in the center of the room, and he grabbed her, and kissed her, fiercely, passionately, and then with exquisite gentleness. “I’ll bring our son to you. Do not leave.”

His voice was quiet, assured and confident, and some of the fear left her. She nodded, he released her and disappeared through the door. Beth hurriedly dressed. She plaited her hair and went over to the guns lying on the table. There was a six-shooter, a Colt dragoon, and a knife. She checked that the guns were loaded, took several deep breaths, sat on the lone chair by the window, and waited.

Please God, let everyone be safe.