Just Imagine

  She heard the horse coming closer. Her fingers were too stiff from the chilly water to allow her to manage the buttons. She snatched up her shirt and shoved her wet arms into the sleeves. She was fumbling with the button between her breasts when the chestnut gelding broke through the line of trees, and Baron Cain invaded her private world.

  He reined in near the spot where her undergarments still lay. Loosely crossing his hands on the pommel of the saddle, he looked down at her from the great height of Vandal’s back. His eyes were shaded by the brim of his tan hat, leaving their expression unfathomable. His mouth was unsmiling.

  She stood frozen. Her wetly translucent shirt revealed every inch of the skin it clung to. She might as well have been naked.

  Cain slowly swung his leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground. While she struggled with the buttons on her breeches, she thought how wrong it was for such a large man to move so quietly.

  His boots were dusty, and he wore his fawn trousers low on his narrow hips. His pale butternut shirt was open at the throat. His eyes remained shadowed under his hat brim, and not being able to see their expression made her even more uneasy.

  As if he were reading her mind, he dropped the hat to the ground, where it landed next to her undergarments. She wished he’d left it on. The scorching heat in those gray eyes was threatening and dangerous.

  “I—I thought you were going into town with Magnus.”

  “I was. Until I saw you heading out on Temptation.”

  “You knew I was here?”

  “I would have shown up earlier, but I wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be interrupted.”

  “Interrupted?” The button on her breeches refused to behave beneath her fingers. “What difference would that make?”

  “Don’t bother fastening it,” he said quietly. “It’s just going to come back off again.” Mesmerized, she watched him lift his hands and slowly unbutton his own shirt.

  “Don’t do that.” Her voice sounded breathless, even to her own ears.

  He tugged his shirt free of the waistband of his trousers, then stripped it off and let it fall to the ground.

  Oh, she knew what he was doing . . . She knew, but she didn’t know . . . “Sophronia’s going to be expecting me,” she said in a rush. “If I’m not back soon, she’ll send somebody to look for me.”

  “Nobody’s coming after you, Kit. I told them you wouldn’t be back until late. We have all the time in the world.”

  “We have no time. I have . . . I have to go.” But she didn’t move. She couldn’t.

  He came closer, exploring her with his eyes. She felt him take in all the curves that her wet clothing outlined with such scrupulous attention to detail.

  “Do you still want me to turn you over to Parsell?” he asked.

  No! “Yes. Yes, of course I do.”

  “Then I will.” His voice grew husky and seductive. “But first we have something to settle between us.”

  She shook her head, but she didn’t try to back away. Instead, she heard herself say inanely, “This isn’t proper.”

  “Most improper.” His smile held a gentle note of mockery. “And neither of us cares.”

  “I care,” she said breathlessly.

  “Then why don’t you climb up on Temptation right now and ride away?”

  “I will.” But she didn’t move. She simply stood there and gazed at the muscles of his bare chest burnished by the late-afternoon light.

  Their eyes locked, and he drew nearer. Even before he touched her, she felt the heat of his skin.

  “We both know this has been between us ever since the day you came here. It’s time we put an end to it so we can get on with the rest of our lives.”

  Temptation whickered.

  He brushed her cheek with his finger and spoke softly. “I’m going to have you now, Kit Weston.”

  His head dipped so slowly that he might have been moving in a dream. His lips touched her eyelids and closed each one with a soft, quieting kiss. She felt his breath on her cheek, and then his open mouth, like a warm cave, settled over hers.

  The tip of his tongue gently played with her lips. It slid along them and tried to coax away the uncertainty that held them shut. Her breasts had been so cold. Now they crushed against the hard warmth of his bare chest. With a moan, she opened her mouth and let him in.

  He explored every part of the velvet interior that she made so freely accessible. His tongue touched hers. Gradually, he coaxed her into his mouth until she finally took what he offered her.

  Now she become the aggressor. She entwined her arms around his neck. Tasted. Invaded.

  He made a muffled sound deep in his throat. She felt his hand slide between their bodies. He pushed aside the open V of her britches and flattened his palm on her stomach.

  The intimacy inflamed her. She dug her fingers into his thick, tawny hair. He pushed his hand beneath her shirt and found her breast. As his thumb circled the small, tight bud at the center, she pulled her mouth away with a smothered cry. Would she go to hell for this? What she was letting him do . . . This man wasn’t her husband but her dearest enemy.

  She felt herself falling and realized he was taking her to the ground with him. He cushioned their landing, then rolled her onto her back.

  The earth was soft and mossy beneath her. He tugged at the button between her breasts, pushed aside the wet fabric, and exposed her breasts.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said huskily. He lifted his gaze to her face. “So perfect. Wild and free.” Locking his eyes with hers, he covered her nipples with his thumbs and began making a series of small circles.

  She bit her lip to keep from crying out. The frenzied sensations spiraled inside her, growing hotter and wilder.

  “Go ahead,” he whispered. “Let yourself feel.”

  The sound she made came from a place deep inside her.

  His smile was smoky and full of satisfaction. He kissed the hollow of her throat, then the nipples he was torturing so expertly with his fingers.

  Fiery pinwheels whirled behind her eyes as he suckled her. Just when she knew she could bear it no longer, his mouth trailed to the patch of flat, smooth stomach exposed by the open V of her britches. He kissed her there, then drew them down over her hips.

  Finally she lay beneath him, naked except for her open white shirt.

  Every nerve in her body quivered. She was frightened. Ecstatic. Noises played inside her head.

  “Open for me, sweet.”

  His hands guided her . . . pushing . . . separating . . . Oh, yes . . .

  Feathers of air touched her intimately. Her thighs were spread. She was open to his gaze, and the first trickle of apprehension hit her. Eve’s Shame. Now he would do to her this momentous, awful thing that men did to women.

  There’s pain . . . There’s blood . . .

  But this wasn’t pain. He brushed the curls between her thighs, and it felt more wonderful than anything she’d ever imagined.

  His breathing grew heavy in her ear, and the muscles in his shoulders quivered beneath her palms. Her apprehension returned. He was so powerful, and she was defenseless. He could tear her apart. Yet she lay here.

  “Wait,” she whispered.

  His head came up, his eyes darkly glazed.

  “I shouldn’t be . . . I need . . .”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Her fear of him evaporated, but not her anxiety. So much was wrong, and right then, she knew she had to tell him. “It wasn’t true,” she managed. “What I told you. I’ve—I’ve never been with a man.”

  His brow clouded. “I don’t believe you. This is another one of your games.”

  “No . . .”

  “I want the truth.”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “There’s one way to find out for certain.”

  She didn’t understand, not even when she felt his hand between her thighs. She sucked in her breath as he pushed his finger inside her.

  Cain felt her w
ince, heard her gasp of surprise, and something inside him twisted. The membrane was there, that tenacious survivor of her rough, unruly childhood. Taut as a drumhead, strong as she was strong, it protected her even as it damned him.

  His vulnerability frightened him, and he hated that. He sprang to his feet and cried out, “Isn’t there anything about you that’s what it should be?”

  She stared up at him from her bed in the moss. Her legs were still parted. Long and slender, they held the secrets she’d shared with no man. Even as he grabbed his shirt and hat, he wanted her with a ferocity that made him shake, and pain he refused to acknowledge consumed him.

  He stalked across the patch of grass to the place where his horse was tied. Before he mounted, he washed all feeling from his face and turned to inflict some of his own torment on her. But he couldn’t think of words cruel enough.

  “This isn’t over between us yet.”

  13

  Brandon proposed to her at the Wednesday night church social. She accepted his offer of marriage, but, pleading a headache, declined his invitation for a walk around the church grounds. He pressed a kiss to her cheek, took her back to Miss Dolly, and told her he would be calling at Risen Glory later the next afternoon to secure Cain’s permission.

  Kit hadn’t lied about having a headache. She was barely sleeping, and when she did sleep, she’d jolt awake to the memory of the strange, tortured expression she’d glimpsed on Cain’s face when he’d discovered she still was a virgin.

  Why had she allowed him to touch her like that? If it had been Brandon, she could have rationalized it. But Cain . . . Once again she was plagued with the notion that there was something very wrong with her.

  The next afternoon, she rode Temptation hard and then changed into an old dress and took a long walk with Merlin. When she returned, she met Brandon coming down the front steps.

  Ridges of disapproval engraved themselves between his eyes. “I hope no one’s seen you in that dress.”

  She felt a spark of irritation, then put the blame on herself, where it belonged. She’d known he was coming this afternoon, but she hadn’t thought to save time to change. She really was hopeless. “I was walking in the woods. Have you spoken with Cain?”

  “No. Lucy said he’s in the paddock. I’ll speak with him there.”

  Kit nodded and watched him walk away. Her stomach pitched with anxiety. She had to find something to do or she’d go crazy. She made her way to the kitchen, where she greeted Patsy, then began mixing ingredients for a batch of Miss Dolly’s favorite beaten biscuits.

  Sophronia came in while she was working and watched with a frown as she banged the wooden mallet at the dough. “I’m glad I’m not those biscuits. For somebody who’s supposed to be getting married soon, you don’t look too happy about it.”

  Somehow they all knew what was happening. Even Lucy had found an excuse to come into the kitchen right behind Sophronia, who took coffee beans from a burlap bag in the pantry and put them in the big wooden grinder.

  “Of course I’m happy.” Kit took another whack at the dough. “I’m nervous, that’s all.”

  “A bride’s got a right to be nervous.” Patsy picked up her paring knife and began peeling peaches for a cobbler.

  Lucy had stayed by the window, and she saw him first. “Mr. Parsell’s comin’ back from the paddock.”

  Kit snatched up a muslin towel and wiped her doughy hands, then ran out the back door and raced toward Brandon, but as she saw his expression, her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t break his stride. “Cain refused his permission.”

  Kit felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her.

  “He said he didn’t think we’d suit each other. It’s insufferable. A Parsell being dismissed like that by a Yankee ruffian.”

  Kit grabbed his arm. “We can’t let him get away with this, Brandon. It’s too important. I have to get Risen Glory back.”

  “He’s your guardian. I don’t see what we can do. He controls your money.”

  Kit barely noticed that neither of them spoke of love, only the plantation. She was too angered by his resignation. “You may be ready to give up, but I’m not.”

  “There’s nothing more I can do. He’s not going to change his mind. We’ll just have to accept it.”

  She wouldn’t listen. Instead, she turned away from him and strode determinedly toward the paddock.

  Brandon watched her for a moment, then headed for the front of the house and his horse. As he mounted, he wondered if it might not all be for the best. Despite Kit’s captivating beauty and her fertile plantation, there was something about her that made him uneasy. Maybe it had to do with the voices of too many of his ancestors whispering to him.

  She’s not at all the right sort of wife for a Parsell—even a penniless one.

  Cain stood at the whitewashed fence, one foot propped on the bottom rail as he stared out at the grazing horses. He didn’t bother to turn when Kit charged up behind him, although he would’ve needed to be deaf not to hear her angry footsteps.

  “How could you do this? Why did you refuse Brandon?”

  “I don’t want you to marry him,” Cain replied, not looking at her.

  “Is this your punishment for what happened yesterday at the pond?”

  “This has nothing to do with yesterday,” he said so tonelessly she knew he was lying.

  Her rage felt as if it were strangling her. “Damn you, Baron Cain! You’re not going to control my life any longer. You send word to Brandon that you’ve changed your mind, or I swear to God, I’ll make you pay!”

  She was so small and he so large that her threat should have been ludicrous. But she was deadly serious, and they both knew it.

  “Maybe you already have.” He headed out across the paddock.

  She stumbled toward the orchard, not seeing where she was going, knowing only that she had to be alone. That day at the pond . . . Why had she told him the truth?

  Because if she hadn’t, they wouldn’t have stopped.

  She wanted to believe she could make him change his mind, but she knew as surely as she drew breath that he wouldn’t. Her childhood hatred of being born female returned in a rush. How she hated being at the mercy of men. Would she now have to drag Bertrand Mayhew here from New York?

  The memory of his fussy ways and soft, pudgy body was repulsive to her. Maybe one of the men who had showered attention on her since she’d returned . . . But Brandon had been the Holy Grail, and choosing any other made her despair.

  How could Cain have done this to her?

  The question haunted her for the rest of the evening. She refused dinner and sealed herself in her bedroom. Miss Dolly came to the door, and then Sophronia. She sent them both away.

  Long after dark, there was a sharp knock from the adjoining sitting room. “Kit, come in here,” Cain said. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Unless you’ve changed your mind, I don’t have anything more to say to you.”

  “Either you can come in here or I’ll join you in your bedroom. Which is it going to be?”

  She pressed her eyes shut for a moment. Choices. He presented them to her and then took them away. Slowly she walked to the door and turned the knob.

  He stood across the sitting room, a glass of brandy in his hand, his hair rumpled.

  “Tell me you’ve changed your mind,” she said.

  “You know I haven’t.”

  “Can you even imagine what it’s like to have another person control your life?”

  “No. That’s why I fought for the Union cause. And I’m not trying to control your life, Kit. Despite what you think, I’m trying to do what’s right.”

  “I’m sure that’s what you’ve told yourself.”

  “You don’t want him.”

  “I have nothing else to say to you.”

  She turned and headed back to her room, but he caught her in the doorway. “Stop being so stubborn and use your head! He’s a weakling, not the kin
d of man who could ever make you happy. He lives in the past and whines because things aren’t the way they used to be. He was born and bred for only one thing, and that’s running a plantation on slave labor. He’s the past, Kit. You’re the future.”

  There was more truth in what he was saying than she would admit. But Cain didn’t know the real reason she wanted to marry Brandon. “He’s a fine man, and I would have been privileged to call him my husband.”

  He gazed down at her. “But would he have made your heart pound the way it did at the pond when I held you in my arms?”

  No, Brandon would never have made her heart pound like that, and she’d have been glad of it. What she’d done with Cain made her feel weak. “It was fear that made my heart pound, nothing else.”

  He turned away. Took a sip of brandy. “This is no good.”

  “All you had to do was say yes, and you’d have been rid of me.”

  He lifted his glass and tossed down the rest of his drink. “I’m sending you back to New York. You’re leaving on Saturday.”

  “What?”

  Even before Cain turned and saw her stricken expression, he knew he’d driven a knife into her heart.

  She was one of the most intelligent women he’d ever known, so why did she have to be so stupid about this? He knew she wouldn’t listen to him, but he still tried to think of something he could say that would penetrate her stubborn will and make her see reason, but there was nothing. With a muffled curse, he left the sitting room and headed downstairs.

  He sat in the library for some time, his head bowed, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Kit Weston had gotten under his skin, and it scared the hell out of him. All his life he’d watched men make fools of themselves over women, and now he was in danger of doing the same.

  It was more than her wild beauty that stirred him, more than the sensuality she hadn’t yet entirely claimed. There was something sweet and vulnerable about her that unearthed feelings inside him he hadn’t known he possessed. Feelings that made him want to laugh with her instead of snarl, that made him want to make love with her until her face lit up with a joy meant for him alone.

  He leaned his head back. He’d told her he was sending her back to New York, but he couldn’t do it. Tomorrow he’d tell her. And then he was going to do his best to start over with her. For once in his life, he was going to set his cynicism aside and reach out to a woman.