CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THEY SPENT THEIR wedding night at Bess’s apartment. Cade had wanted their married life to begin at Lariat, but he was mindful of Bess’s feelings. It would have been embarrassing for her, with his brothers and his mother in residence and everyone giving them knowing looks. He could hardly ask the family to leave the house to give them privacy. Besides, he told himself, he and Bess had the rest of their lives.
He took her out to supper at the most expensive restaurant in town, mindful of his rented dinner jacket and her terribly expensive dress. It seemed more than anything to point up the vast differences between them and put a damper on his mood.
Bess touched the crepe de chine fabric of her cocktail dress when she saw his eyes on it, and instinctively she knew that he was thinking back. He didn’t even own a dinner jacket and had had to rent one. Besides that, she thought guiltily, this meal was costing him an arm and a leg. If only she’d used her mind and protested, but even now it was difficult to get used to not going to the most expensive restaurants, the most expensive shops. Her whole life had been spent with wealth. Now she was still learning how to do without it, even though she loved Cade enough to live in a cave with him.
She touched his hand gently where it rested beside his water glass and smiled at him. “Can we afford this ritzy place?” she mused, with a twinkle in her eyes. “Or should I order a salad and make us a nice chicken casserole back at the apartment?”
Her matter-of-fact remark took the lines out of his face. His hand curled around hers and he smiled. “Is that how I looked? I’m only planning to get married once in my life, Mrs. Hollister. I think we’re entitled to a fancy meal.”
She sighed. “It was a beautiful wedding,” she said. “And thank you especially for removing the one blight from the landscape. I hope he catches cold,” she said, remembering the pushy reporter.
He chuckled. “The river’s not that warm even in summer,” he agreed. “I’m sorry he did that. Nothing should have spoiled today for you.”
“It isn’t spoiled. I’m going to love you until I die, Cade Hollister,” she said huskily, her smile fading as all the long years caught up with her and her eyes misted. “I never dreamed I’d be married to you, that I could live with you and...” She wiped away the tears, aware of his concerned gaze. “Sorry. All my dreams came true today, and I’m shaky.”
His fingers linked with hers. “I’ll take care of you,” he said quietly. “We’ll have a good life together.” He rubbed his fingers against hers. “At least our kids won’t have the childhood I did,” he remarked with faint bitterness. “They won’t be looked down on and made to feel worthless because they don’t have breeding.” His dark eyes met hers. “You’ll teach them manners. They’ll have all the advantages that my brothers and I didn’t.”
She stared at him for a long moment, a little unnerved by what he was saying. “Is that important?” she asked, feeling her way.
“Breeding? Of course it is.” He let go of her hand and picked up his water glass, taking a sip. “I know I’m rough around the edges. I’ve got the biggest part of Lariat, but I’m still not much more than a glorified cowboy. But you’re class, Mrs. Hollister,” he said, eyeing her with pride of possession. “You’re upper-crust all the way, a debutante with a rich background and excellent manners.”
She’d always known that it was as much the illusion of what she was that Cade saw, even through the desire he felt for her. But it was rather shocking to have him put it into words and in such a way. Was that why he’d married her? To give him respectability? To improve the family bloodlines? She felt a twinge of fear.
“I’m just a woman,” she said unsteadily. “Like other women. And I’m not a rich debutante anymore.”
He scowled. Her tone disturbed him. “I know that.”
She looked down at the table and slowly pulled her hand from under his. “I hope you didn’t marry me for a status symbol,” she said, laughing nervously. “Because I don’t have much mileage in that respect. Whatever I was, now I’m just a copywriter for an ad agency.”
He’d put it badly. He caught her hand back and held it. “Listen. I married you because I can’t seem to get through the day without you anymore,” he said, forcing the words out. “I want you. I want to have children with you. I’m not into status symbols, even if I made it sound that way. I’m proud of what you are. I’m proud that of all the men you could have had you wanted me.”
She colored. It wasn’t the speech she wanted, but it would do. She’d known that he didn’t love her the way she loved him. Perhaps someday he would.
“I’ve never wanted anyone else,” she said quietly. A long, tense silence fell between them, and it didn’t ease even when the waiter brought their order. They ate in silence and left the restaurant in silence. Bess felt like crying.
Cade sensed the sadness he’d caused and could have crushed his impulsive tongue. He shouldn’t have been thinking out loud. A woman wouldn’t want to hear on her wedding day that her husband married her because she was well-bred. He hadn’t meant it like that, but he had a hard time expressing emotion in words. He looked down at her, and his body began to burn. Well, he thought, there were other ways to let her know how he felt. Better ones.
But once they were back in her apartment, she shied away from him nervously, and his temper got away from him.
“Is that how it’s going to be from now on?” he asked icily. “Now that the ring’s on your finger, you’re going to have nerves and headaches?”
“Don’t,” she groaned. Her wide, hurt eyes held his. “I’m nervous. It’s been a long few weeks, and then all the excitement of this week... I’ve been living on my nerves. And then tonight, you don’t say that you love me or that you want to cherish me—you tell me that I’m a nice asset to the breeding program at Lariat. You made it sound as if you only wanted me because I had superior bloodlines and a classy background—just the way you’d buy a purebred heifer to breed to your best bull!”
His face paled. He couldn’t have made it sound that way, could he? He started to speak, but she was in tears. She ran into the bedroom and threw herself across the bed, crumpling her black dress as she cried into the white coverlet.
He’d been clumsy. He muttered as he sat down beside her, his hand smoothing her long, disheveled hair. His eyes ran over the soft curves of her body, down to the elegant long legs in black hose that were so nicely revealed where the dress was pulled up. She was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen, and her body made him go taut with sudden need.
“Maybe we’re both done in with nerves,” he murmured. He pulled her up and turned her so that she was lying across his knees. His dark eyes met her tearful ones, and he brushed at the tears with an impatient hand. “But I’ve got the best cure in the world. And it won’t be like breeding cattle,” he said curtly, as his head bent to hers. He bit at her soft lips, enjoying her sudden lapse of breath, the kindling softness in her eyes. “I’m going to strip you down to your silky skin and enjoy you until dawn,” he said sensuously, letting his hand slide down over her breasts to her tiny waist and flat stomach and on to her silk-clad legs. “And you’re going to enjoy me this time. I’m damned well going to ensure it. Come here.”
His hand held her at her nape, bringing her mouth to his. His eyes closed, his brows knitting with pleasure, and he turned her into his arms.
She followed where he led. This time was nothing like the last, except for his exquisite tenderness. It was dark, but he left the lights on, encouraging her to look at him, to learn his body as he’d already learned hers, guiding her hands, smiling at her shy attempts to do what he wanted her to do.
Her body pressed warmly against the length of his, without a scrap of fabric between them, and she trembled with the pure joy of being so close to him, feeling his big, warm hands sliding lazily down her spine, rubbing her breasts against his hair-roughened chest, her hips against his.
His mouth slid onto hers as his hand moved down her body and made sure that she was ready for him. She shuddered at the intimate touch.
He lifted his swollen mouth from hers, and his dark eyes smiled tenderly into hers. “Does it still shock you to be touched this way?” he whispered and did it again. “This is how a man knows if his woman is ready for him, Bess. It’s your body’s own special way of making sure that I won’t hurt you when we join.”
She colored, but he made it sound so natural that she relaxed and didn’t protest. Her eyes searched his when he slid a long, powerful leg across hers and levered himself above her.
“There’s no rush,” he whispered. “We’ve got all night, and I’m not going to pull away until you’re completely satisfied this time.”
“But, I was...” she protested huskily as he eased down over her. She gasped as she felt him intimately and gasped again when he pushed.
“It’s all right,” he said soothingly as the soft, slow joining began. It was still a little uncomfortable at first, but the tenderness of his hands and his mouth made her relax, so that her body made him welcome seconds later.
“It’s a miracle, isn’t it?” he whispered, shivering a little as he lifted his head to look into her eyes. “The way we fit together so perfectly when we love.” His hands shaped her face, and he brushed his mouth with delicate mastery over hers, teasing it until her lips followed it and began to respond. Her hands were on his shoulders, resting shyly, but as the kiss and the overwhelming intimacy of their position began to work on her, her hands pulled at him and finally slid down to his hips, lightly touching but still hesitant.
“Cade...?” Her voice broke as his hips lifted and then fell, a stab of remembered pleasure shaking her.
“Yes?” he whispered. His mouth settled softly on hers. “Don’t be afraid. Feel the rhythm. Move with me. Slowly, honey, very, very slowly,” he breathed into her mouth. “You’re my wife. I’m going to take you as sweetly and as tenderly as I know how. I’m going to make love to you...”
It felt like love. She began to whimper as his movements grew slower and deeper, as his lips burned down on her breasts and made her ache with the sensations that rippled through her taut body. She felt his hands on her skin, sliding over her, their deft exploration making her blaze. She tried not to think of how many women there must have been to make him so expert. He was hers now, she thought. Her own. Her husband...
Her short nails dug into his lean flanks, and she felt him shudder and suddenly increase his movements, building the rhythm. His harsh breath in her ear became mingled with the softest kind of Spanish love words as his hands slid beneath her hips and his head lifted to watch.
Her eyes were drawn by his face as he looked down the length of their bodies. She flushed wildly. He caught the awed fascination in her eyes as his hands linked with hers above her head and the rhythm grew suddenly urgent and quick and fierce.
She gasped. His jaw clenched and his eyes blazed, his brows knit and his face strained as he arched his body against hers in a harsh drive for completion.
“Feel it...” He groaned and still his eyes held her shocked ones as she began to shudder and weep under him. “Oh, God, feel it...! Feel it, Bess, feel...it!”
She never knew when the shudders became convulsive, the pleasure so hot and sweeping that she cried out in a voice she knew she’d never used in her life. His face above her was a contorted blur, and when the spasms first hit her, she was afraid. His lean hands controlled the whip of her body, forcing her to completion in a frenzy that brought her into breathless, thoughtless oblivion. She cried out endlessly, vaguely aware of his own shuddering groan in the heated stillness around them.
His shivering body was damp in her arms. She opened her eyes and looked to the ceiling. There was a dull, deep throb in her body and lingering heat. Her hands moved experimentally on Cade’s broad back, moving over it with exquisite tenderness.
After a long, unsteady sigh he lifted himself off and rolled over onto his back beside her, stretching with a lazy, unconscious grace and apparently no inhibitions at all.
Bess stared at him, her eyes tracing the hair-roughened strength of his body from head to toe and back again. His eyes were open, quiet, soft, watching her while she watched him.
“Hello,” she said, her voice soft with love.
“Hello.” He slid his hand under her nape and brought her against him, wrapping her in one arm while he reached and fumbled for cigarettes, lighter, and ashtray with the other. He dragged a pillow behind him and eased himself into a sitting position, with Bess still cradled against his damp body.
The intimacy was as new as their marriage. Before, she’d been too self-conscious and guilty to enjoy what they’d done. But he was her husband now, and the lack of inhibition she felt with him was delicious. Her hand smoothed possessively over his chest and down to his flat stomach.
“Not yet,” he murmured dryly, catching her fingers and dragging them to his mouth. He kissed them before he laid them on his chest, his cigarette still smoking in his hand. He put it to his mouth with a heavy sigh. “Men can’t do that twice in a row without a little rest,” he murmured, enjoying her blush. “While women, I believe, are capable of multiple—”
“Cade!”
He chuckled with pure delight at her expression. “So much for wifely sophistication. Come here and kiss me.”
She lifted her lips to his, enjoying the feeling of possession and sharing. “Your mouth tastes of smoke,” she whispered.
“Yours tastes of smoke, too, now,” he whispered back. His eyes smiled into hers. “God, it was good this time,” he said huskily. “Like being dropped off a balcony. I’ve never had it like that in my life, not even that first time we were together.”
She hid her face in his throat. “I thought men always enjoyed it with women.”
“In different degrees,” he said quietly. He smoothed her hair. “You give me something I’ve never had before.” His chest rose and fell heavily. “You give me peace, Bess.”
What an odd way to put it, she thought, frowning. She stared across his broad, hairy chest. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” He took another draw from the cigarette and shifted so that he could see her face on his bare shoulder. “You fulfill me completely,” he said. “Until now that’s never happened. It takes trust to feel that kind of satisfaction with another person. You have to give up control, to let go of all your inhibitions, your fears of letting your feelings show. At no other time is a man quite as vulnerable as in the throes of passion.” He brushed his mouth over her temple. “Until tonight I’ve never relinquished control completely. I gave myself to you as surely as you gave your body to me.”
She closed her eyes and smiled. “Oh.” Her lips pressed soft, lazy kisses against his bare chest, and she felt the flat nipple suddenly go hard under her mouth. Frowning curiously, she lifted her head and looked at it.
“Yours do that when I kiss them,” he pointed out.
She felt her cheeks go hot. “Yes, but I didn’t know that yours would.”
His eyes twinkled. “Surprise, surprise. And it’s not the only thing that stands—”
She hit him. “You wicked man! Everything I’ve heard about you men is true, that you love to shock women, that you just spend time thinking up embarrassing things to say...!”
“It’s delicious,” he said huskily. He put out the cigarette and threw her down on the bed with tender ferocity, looming over her with eyes that blazed with emotion. “Delicious, watching you blush, seeing you color. Most women these days are so damned blasé about sex, they make it as exciting as a drink of water. You get embarrassed when I talk to you like that, you blush when I look at you and you go up in flames every time I touch you. My God, I’ve never felt more like a man in my life than I do with you! Experience be damned, I’m so proud, I could strut.” He bent and put his mouth hungrily on hers. “Even if it is a double standard,” he murmured huskily, “it’s sweet hell to put my hands on you and know that no other man ever has. If that sounds chauvinistic, I don’t care.”
She lifted her arms around him and held on. “There was never anyone I wanted but you,” she whispered. “There never could be. It would be sacrilege to even let another man kiss me after you...!”
The emotion in her voice sent his heart spinning. He kissed her with aching hunger and eased down onto her, shivering with kindling need. “Is it too soon?” he whispered roughly. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me,” she whispered back. “Oh, come here.” She groaned, holding him. “I want you so!”
He cradled her under him and bent to her soft mouth. He wanted to love her so tenderly that she’d never get over the memory of it. Slowly, gently, he brought her body up to his, joined with it, curled his legs around her drawn-up knees so that they were in a position he’d never shared with a woman, curled together like shells. And that way he loved her, cherished her body with his in such a slow, tender lovemaking that she wept helplessly all through it, blinded by soft kisses and tender Spanish words in her ear and hands that were slow and sure. There was nothing fierce about it, nothing urgent until the final few seconds, when the feeling spiraled up into the night and broke past her lips in a sound that was more shattering moan than cry.
She shivered and felt him shiver as the exquisite pleasure rippled along their tightly joined bodies, silver-bright, petal-soft, in gentle explosions that went on and on and on.
He whispered her name in the midst of his satisfaction, his voice shaking like his powerful body. But there had been no violent urgency, nothing except the tenderness of two souls entwining.
“That...was loving,” he whispered, his voice as shaken as his body. “My... God! My God!”
She heard reverence in his faint exclamations and repeated them in her mind. There couldn’t have been that kind of pleasure without an intensity of feeling on both sides. It was then that she knew he was in love with her. It wasn’t desire alone, as she thought it had been the first time. Then, he’d wanted her and lost control. But just now, that wasn’t desire alone. She’d never imagined Cade giving that kind of tenderness to her, and she wept for the beauty and joy of being his wife.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered, kissing the tears away. “Don’t. It was so beautiful.”
“Yes. That’s why,” she whispered. Her eyes looked into his, seeing him only as a faint blur. “I love you so much...!” Her voice broke and her trembling arms encircled his neck as she hid her face against his damp throat. “I want to give you a child more than anything in the world.” She did, but saying it aloud only tormented her and she cried more.
He didn’t understand her emotional state, unless his lovemaking had shattered her. Probably it had, because it had certainly shattered him. He’d given and received more than ever before in his life. His hands soothed her, cradled her. He couldn’t seem to make his body leave hers, though, and they were still in the same position they’d shared during that exquisite loving.
“We’re still part of each other,” he whispered. His eyes closed as he held her. “I can’t...quite get enough of this closeness. Do you want me to move?”
“No,” she said. “Oh, no, not ever.”
“Do you feel it, too?” he asked, lifting his head, searching her soft eyes. “The...oneness.”
“Yes.” She touched his face with trembling fingers, adoring it, worshipping its hard lines and stark strength. “Kiss me.”
He bent and put his mouth on hers. Incredibly his body hardened. He gasped, and her eyes opened. She lifted her arms, offering herself.
“You won’t hurt me,” she promised when he hesitated. She closed her eyes and stretched up toward him with the first stirrings of her own femininity. “Cade, put your mouth on me...!” she pleaded, offering her breasts.