Thirty-nine

Randy sat on a quilted bench beside a bedroom window, listening to the bellow of cattle, the occasional whinny of a horse, the hoot of an owl…and in the distant mountains the howl of wolves, the sound Jake hated.

She felt empty and alone. Jake hadn’t returned since leaving the house earlier. Wouldn’t he even come back to hold her one more night? Maybe he thought it was better to stay away, to just leave without making love to her one more time—maybe that would make the leaving easier.

Her heart raced faster when she heard a noise downstairs, some rustling sounds, the squeak of one of the stairs as someone came up. She rose from the bench and waited. The door opened, and there was no mistaking his big frame in the moonlight. “Jake—”

He walked up to her, and in a breath, she was in his arms, her feet off the floor. He held her against him with one arm and wrapped his other hand in her hair.

“I’m so sorry, Randy, but I have to do this,” he told her.

“I understand.”

“Don’t be scared. It’s like we talked about. We’re always together in spirit, even when I’m gone. It was like that back in Oklahoma, and it will be the same this time.”

She kept her arms tightly wrapped around his neck, deliberately breathing deeply of his familiar scent. She was used to the smell of tobacco, and it didn’t bother her. His scent was all man…all leather and sage and just Jake.

“I left my boots and all my gear downstairs. Is it safe to leave my guns out? Are all the kids gone?”

“Yes. It’s just us. Gretta went to sleep at Evie’s house. She knew we’d want to be alone.”

“Is the bed fixed?”

Randy jerked in a sob. “Yes. Oh, Jake, I was afraid you wouldn’t come up here. I was afraid you’d think it was best we didn’t do this before you leave.”

He carried her to the bed and laid her on it. “I considered it, but just like all the other times, I couldn’t stay away.” He met her lips in a desperate kiss. “I want to remember every inch of you,” he told her. “Every move you make, every curve, the way you taste, your breath, your voice.” He pulled up on her gown as he spoke.

Randy sat up, and he pulled the gown over her head and tossed it aside. She wore no underwear, hoping for this moment.

“Don’t move,” he told her. By the moonlight, she watched him remove his shirt, his denim pants, his long johns. He climbed back onto the bed. There was nothing more to say. He met her mouth again as he moved on top of her, kissing her almost violently. When they found themselves in this kind of situation, his lovemaking was always more deliberate, wilder, more demanding, as though he needed to see and taste and touch her as thoroughly as possible so he wouldn’t forget, so he could take her with him in his mind and heart.

His hands were everywhere, caressing, massaging, exploring. She let him do what he needed to do, wanting the memory as much as he did. He kissed and licked and spoke to her in Spanish, moving over her eyes, her lips, her throat, massaged her breasts as he suckled them hungrily, as though tasting a delicious meal. His hands and lips worked their way over her belly, her hip bones, down her thighs. He gently pushed her legs apart and tasted and licked every secret place until she groaned from the ecstasy of his touch.

When he was in this mood, she always just let him ravage her in that strange way he had of making her completely helpless under his spell. It was so much like that first night…in the middle of nowhere…in the back of a wagon. Back then, Jake Harkner had guarded her on the way west and ended up saving her life. Then he’d taken that life and bent it to his will, claiming her in a way that had left her branded.

This was the reason she trusted him, the reason she always waited for him…always. The man was like a drug she couldn’t resist. Her only fear was that this time he could be saying goodbye for more than just one trip. This could be his way of remembering her as he prepared to die.

No! He’d come back to her! He’d come back!

He licked his way back over her body to her lips. Randy grasped the slats of the headboard as first he entered her teasingly, knowing she was close to an intense climax. He wanted to be inside her when it happened, for her ultimate pleasure. His tantalizing thrusts took her to that place where utter, desperate ecstasy surged through her loins. As her insides pulled at him in her climax, he pushed deep with an erection that felt bigger than normal, and normal had always been all she could handle. She literally gritted her teeth as he grasped her bottom and grunted with every thrust. He buried his face in her hair as she grimaced from the power of the man.

“Do you know how much I love your perfect bottom?” he asked.

She didn’t reply. She just enjoyed the way he plied her bottom while pushing hard. It helped the pain a little. She wanted to tell him it hurt, but she was not about to spoil this very necessary mating of souls. It could be the last time they did this. Climaxing while he entered her made the pain more bearable, an erotic experience of agony and pleasure.

“Who do you belong to?” he groaned.

“Jake Harkner,” she moaned, still clinging to the headboard.

“Every inch of you. No one else will ever own your soul, Randy Harkner.”

Why did he say that? Of course no other man would ever own her. She let go of the headboard and raised up enough to wrap her arms around his neck. “Don’t talk that way.”

“Yo te amo, mi quiero. Siempre recuerdes cuanto te amo.”

Always remember how much I love you. When he spoke to her in Spanish, it only heightened her desire and her love for him.

His life spilled into her in hard pulses. Their lovemaking had always been like this back in Oklahoma, each time before he rode away into No Man’s Land. It was a feeling Randy always hoped she’d never have to experience again. Yet here he was, riding away again, after promising he wouldn’t. The only way she could stand it was knowing he truly didn’t have a choice. How could he say no to Gretta, when a child’s life was on the line?

That was the one thing Jake Harkner couldn’t stand. Every abused woman was young Santana, or his mother. His whole life he’d tried to make up for being too little to help her when his father killed her. The horror of what it must have been like, of having to help bury his own mother and hide the murder was unimaginable. It was a miracle he’d managed to stay halfway sane, and she knew deep inside that the only way he did that was to believe that every man he’d killed was his father—over and over again.

He met her mouth in a deep, demanding kiss. She could taste herself on his lips. He moved his mouth to her throat.

“Jake, I want to taste you. I want to remember.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

He rolled to his side with a groan. His countenance was not that of the man who’d been gently making love to her these past many months. He was Jake the outlaw, and that made it easier to let her do this. He grasped her hair tightly as she kissed her way down his powerful chest and flat stomach. She realized she didn’t care that he’d just been inside her, that he tasted of a mixture of their sweet juices. He grew hard again in moments from her gentle kisses and licks, to the point where she could take him fully into her mouth and remind herself that this could be beautiful. This was Jake. This was Jake.

“My God, Randy.” He gripped her hair tighter.

She kissed her way back up and over his powerful arms, straddling him as she met his mouth, her hair shrouding his face. He reached down and guided himself into her, grasping her thighs then pushing up to fill her. She rocked herself over him for several minutes, until he turned her onto her back and began his own powerful thrusts all over again, this time taking longer—both because he’d just climaxed, and because they both wanted this to last forever and forever.

When his life spilled into her a second time, she felt him tremble. “I’m so goddamn sorry, Randy,” he told her yet again, moving to his side and keeping her close. “If I make it back, I want you to be just like this. Don’t be scared anymore. I’m always with you. Always.”

“How will I sleep at night without you?”

He kissed her hair. “Back in Oklahoma, when Evie was missing and I wanted to die—when you were far away, having that surgery, and we couldn’t be together in the worst time of our lives—I walked into our house after those men had ransacked it,” he told her. “But when I went into the bedroom, it was untouched. God didn’t let them destroy that place where we shared each other in the best way there is. I took up your pillow and put it to my face, and I could smell your rose scent, and it made me feel like I was with you. Hold my pillow, baby, and just pretend it’s me in your arms, because I will be, understand? I will be right here with you. Nothing can change that. You’ve kept me sane all these years. I’d have no life without you.”

She curled into him, her back against his chest. She grasped the powerful arms he’d wrapped around her. “Don’t give up, Jake. If you find where you used to live, remember I’m right there with you too. Okay? I’m right there with you. Don’t let it take you into that dark place. Stay in the light.”

He sighed and hugged her even closer. “It’s been forty-five years since I rode away from there for the last time, but it’s still all so vivid.” He nestled his face into her hair, drinking in her scent, wanting to remember it. “I doubt I’ll even remember where to look for that shack of a house. It’s not likely it’s even still there. The main thing I remember is a hackberry tree high on a hill behind the house. It wasn’t very big then, but big enough to produce those little dark berries. I remember it because”—he hesitated, his grip around her tightening—“that’s where my father…dug the hole and threw my mother and Tommy into it. Some of those berries fell into the hole.” He made an odd groaning sound. “I wanted to jump in there with them.”

Randy kissed his arm. It was as rigid as a rock. “Jake, remember you have a big family who loves you. You aren’t that scared little boy anymore.”

Jake swallowed. “I should have gone back years ago and at least tried to find where my mother and brother are buried…maybe put some kind of marker there.”

Randy closed her eyes. “You shouldn’t do that alone, Jake.”

“I can do it because I’ve needed to do it all these years. I would feel like I’ve done something to make up for not being able to help them.”

Randy rubbed his arms. “If you manage to find anything left of where you grew up, I’ll be standing right beside you, Jake. You remember that.”

He moved one arm away and let out a short gasp. Randy knew he was wiping at tears. “I’ll remember.”

“You come back, Jake. Come back to the life you have here and now—the life God has blessed you with. To the son and daughter who worship the ground you walk on, and those grandsons who desperately need your guidance, and those little granddaughters who will need you to watch out for them. Even more when they’re old enough for young men to notice them. Heaven knows anyone interested in your granddaughters will play hell getting anywhere near them.”

He put his arm back around her. “You bet they will. And first they’ll have to get past Brian and Lloyd. That will be bad enough. When they get to me they’ll be shaking in their boots.”

Randy smiled, glad to get his mind on something else.

He sighed deeply, taking hold of her left hand and holding it up. “What is that thing on your fourth finger that’s sparkling in the moonlight?”

“It’s the incredibly beautiful new wedding ring you bought me last summer in Denver.”

“That’s right. Every time you look at that ring, you remember who loves you beyond life itself. I promise to do all in my power to come back, all right?” He ran a hand over her breasts and turned her toward him, meeting her mouth in another searching kiss. “You have loved me through so many bad times, when you shouldn’t have loved me at all. How does a man thank a woman for something like that?”

Randy kissed his chest. “He never leaves her without coming back, that’s how. And he makes her feel like the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth by the way he makes love to her.” She kissed his chin. “So make me feel beautiful again, Jake.”

She could see his smile in the soft moonlight. “I haven’t ravaged you enough?”

“Not when I know you’re going away.”

“You know, it would be awfully embarrassing if we have to send Lloyd back up here to fix the bed again. I hope he got those screws back in good and tight.”

“Oh my! I didn’t think of that.”

He pressed a hand to her belly and moved his fingers inside her to reignite the fires of desire that licked at her depths. “Too late.” He moved over her again, and all talking stopped.