Willow: A Novel (No Series) Read online

  His hand, resting on her waist, slid slowly to the outer rounding of her breast, the thumb stroking the hidden nipple to an aching alertness. She felt his groan echo into her mouth, as well as heard it, and was conscious of his desire where his groin touched her hip.

  As he kissed her, Gideon undid the first button of her shirt and then the second, and Willow felt the cool caress of the morning air as he displaced the camisole beneath, baring one breast to be cupped in his hand.

  Instinctively, Willow whimpered and arched her back, longing for some fulfillment that seemed to elude her. Gideon’s warm, moist mouth left hers to course down over the soft underside of her chin, the tingling length of her neck, the uppermost swell of her breast. When he reached the peak that already strained for his attentions, he nipped at it, plying it painlessly with his teeth.

  Willow gasped softly, in joy and in torment, and cupped the breast with one hand, offering it. Gideon withheld full satisfaction, nibbling at the sweet morsel, circling it with his tongue, raking it gently with his teeth. Finally, finally, he suckled, and instead of being assuaged, the frantic yearning within Willow’s untutored body grew to torrential proportions.

  Heedless of her soft pleas, Gideon bared the other breast and subjected it to the same sweet worship, tormenting Willow even as he soothed her. When he had taken full satisfaction there, he knelt astraddle her and his fingers warmed her flesh, even through the cloth, as he undid the buttons on her trousers and slid them down. She had not worn drawers, for they were too bulky under such close-fitting garb, and she was completely bared to him, waiting.

  “I can’t take you, Willow,” he said, in a voice that seemed to be directed as much to himself as to her. “It wouldn’t be right . . .”

  But even as he spoke, his hand was at the vee of tangled curls, stroking, searching for the secret sheltered beneath.

  What was happening?

  How had they come to this?

  All Willow could have said for sure was that her need for this man resembled anguish, it was so keen. “You are my husband,” she reminded him.

  His thumb passed through the silken down to touch the core of her need, to ply it to moist wanting. “In the legal sense of the word,” he argued distractedly.

  Willow’s legs were parting of their own accord. “Make love to me,” she whispered, shameless. “Please, Gideon, make love to me. I want to know what it’s like.”

  “I can’t,” he groaned, but the motions of the pad of his thumb were sending sharp blades of desire throughout her body even as he spoke.

  Her pride was gone, seared away by the heat of her wanting. “Please,” she pleaded brokenly.

  Gideon moved away from her, and for one terrible moment, she thought that he would leave her quivering, on the point of no return. She was about to cry out at the injustice when he caught her knees in his hands, drew them up, and pressed them wide of each other.

  He bent his head and she felt his breath whisper against the secret place, his tongue wriggle through the veil to the bud beneath. Willow gasped lustily as he flicked at the hidden morsel, causing it to harden and grow very moist.

  “Gideon,” she choked, almost blinded by this new and never-suspected pleasure. “Oh, God—what are you—oooh!”

  Gideon took his time with her, savoring her, driving her into spheres of explosive need beyond the reach of her very limited experience. He lapped and nibbled and finally suckled in earnest, his hands under Willow’s bottom now, holding her up to him as though she were a chalice filled with sweet nectar.

  She cried out in savage release and stiffened, and still he drank of her. The quivering began again and Willow’s hips began to rise and fall, slowly, matching the meter he set for them. Her knees were draped shamelessly over his shoulders now and her hands were tangled in his hair, holding him close. When she was writhing wildly and pleading once more, Gideon stopped his suckling to part her with gentle fingers and softly kiss her over the brink and into the fire that lay beyond.

  Her breath was ragged and quick as he gently lowered her back to the ground. She was still wearing her shirt and camisole, though they had both been displaced for Gideon’s full access to her breasts, and her trousers lay several feet away. She had neither the strength nor the will to reach for them, and she was too dazed to be ashamed of her nakedness.

  He smiled at the question brewing in her amber eyes. “No, hellcat, that didn’t make you pregnant, either.”

  Willow’s head was beginning to clear by then, and she could see Gideon’s own need pressing, fierce, against the confining cloth of his trousers. “What about . . . what about you?”

  His hand trailed over the curve of her thigh, threatening to begin the madness all over again. “I’ll be all right,” he assured her, but there was a hollow sound in his voice, and Willow found herself fearing that he would find relief elsewhere, with another woman. Though she had no right to consider such things, she was broken by the very possibility.

  “You’re going to be married,” she remembered aloud, trying to hide the emotions that were already displacing the sleepy ecstasy she had known only seconds before. “Your mother talked of little else, until Norville proposed to me.”

  Gideon sighed, reached for her discarded trousers, and extended them in a mannerly fashion. “Yes,” he replied quietly. “I am getting married. Once I’m free to, anyway.”

  Willow silently ordered herself not to cry and sat up to scramble somewhat awkwardly into her trousers. “Is she pretty?”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “What is her name?” She already knew the answer, of course. Evadne was constantly singing the praises of her daughter-in-law to be.

  “Daphne,” Gideon answered.

  Willow wriggled to button her trousers. “That is a silly name,” she observed petulantly, her lower lip jutting out.

  Gideon only shrugged.

  “What would she say, your Daphne, if she knew what we just did together?”

  He shifted uncomfortably in the grass. “What would Norville Pickering say?” he countered.

  “He would probably challenge you to a duel or something equally stupid. Now answer my question.”

  Gideon’s green-gray eyes were impatient now, and narrowed to slits. “How in the devil can I answer a question like that? How should I know what Daphne would say?”

  “You must have some idea,” Willow insisted.

  “All right,” Gideon said, growing impatient. “Naturally, she’d be upset. Are you happy now?”

  “No!” Willow cried, swaying somewhat precariously on her knees as she did up the buttons of her shirt. “No, I am not happy! I have just been compromised in the grass by a man who is my husband and someone else’s intended and I am anything but happy!”

  Gideon’s face reddened. “God damnit, you have not been compromised and I have the wherewithal to prove it!”

  In spite of the fact that she was near tears and totally confused about everything, Willow had to stifle a laugh. “So you do, Mr. Marshall,” she said, glancing briefly at the front of his trousers. When her face caught fire, she had to look away. “That will teach you to follow me through the woods like some skulking—”

  Suddenly, Gideon was on his knees, too, his face within inches of Willow’s. “Skulking, is it?” he broke in, taking obvious offense to the term.

  Willow went on, though it would probably have been more prudent to hold her tongue.

  Alas, she had never been the prudent sort.

  “And as if that wasn’t enough, Mr. Marshall, you then proceeded to take liberties with my virtue!”

  “I took liberties with you?” growled Gideon, even more affronted, it would seem, than before. “You practically attacked me. In fact, you asked me to make love to you!”

  With a smug smile, Willow reached out and caressed him, taking wicked delight in his groan and the almost imperceptible motion of his hips. “I suppose some people would even say that we have consummated our marriage,” she said.
/>   Gideon caught her wrist in a grasp just short of pain and stopped her from tormenting him. The color drained from his face as he stared at her. “What did you say?”

  “We were very intimate, weren’t we? Just now, I mean?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’ve certainly never done anything like that with anyone else,” Willow said primly.

  “Willow!”

  “I guess you’ll have to divorce me now, instead of just getting an annulment. Dear, dear—Norville and Miss Daphne are going to be in a fine state when they hear about this.”

  Gideon’s jawline was rock hard and his nose was almost touching Willow’s. “Are you planning to claim that I actually made love to you?”

  “Of course not—I wouldn’t lie. But I suppose my father will see little difference between that and what we actually did.”

  Gideon grew paler still as he drew back and considered. Above, the shiny leaves of cottonwood trees whispered in the breeze and cast their dancing shadows down onto the soft ground. “You would tell him?” he asked at last and in wonder.

  “I would do practically anything to keep from marrying Norville Pickering,” Willow answered, in all honesty.

  “Well, just tell him no, for God’s sake!”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Willow turned her head, only to have her chin caught in Gideon’s hand and drawn back. Tears welled in her eyes and trickled down her face. “Because Norville knows how to find Steven,” she said.

  Gideon’s hands rested on her cheeks now, his thumbs wiping her tears away. “Pickering blackmailed you by threatening your brother? That was why you were getting married?”

  Miserably, Willow nodded.

  Gideon sighed and shoved a hand through his rumpled hair. “What’s to keep Pickering from telling what he knows, Willow? His price was marriage and you haven’t met it.”

  “I think I can stall him.”

  Suspicion played in Gideon’s features. “How?” he demanded.

  Willow shrugged. “By making Norville think that I still want him, even though I’m married to you.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “I’ll tell him that you’ve never actually touched me in an untoward fashion and—”

  “And he’ll want to know why you don’t have your father the judge arrange an annulment!”

  “If-if I have to, I’ll let Norville kiss me . . .”

  She paused and shivered slightly.

  Gideon’s hands suddenly grasped her shoulders. “Oh, no, you won’t,” he said.

  And then he looked surprised by the assertion.

  Willow felt a wisp of triumph. “No?”

  “That’s right, no. Damnit, you are my wife and you will not—”

  “Will not what?” Willow wanted to know.

  Gideon made an exasperated sound and got to his feet, turning away, folding his arms. “You will not go around throwing yourself at other men, just to save your brother’s hide.”

  “And you, of course, will not go to other women,” Willow said reasonably, standing up. “Because that would be equally wrong, wouldn’t it?”

  “You forget that I am engaged to Daphne Roberts!” Gideon threw out.

  “You’re the one who forgot, Gideon. And you aren’t faithful to her anyway, are you?”

  His back stiffened and his head was tilted back, as though he might be challenging the sky itself. His silence was answer enough.

  3

  Dove Triskadden settled herself on the sofa and took a sip from her brandy snifter. There were times when it was wise to speak first and times when it was best to hold her tongue, and this was one of the latter.

  Devlin stood facing the mirror over the fireplace, adjusting his string tie. Though everyone in Virginia City knew that he kept a mistress, and that that mistress was Dove Triskadden, he couldn’t very well go home looking as though he’d just crawled out of her bed—which was exactly what he’d done.

  Finally, he turned and assessed Dove’s voluptuous body with appreciative eyes. Worry was etched in his handsome face, and Dove felt regret that her lovemaking had not smoothed it away. She sighed.

  “Smile,” he urged gruffly, as he always did when he was about to go back to Evadne.

  Obediently, Dove summoned up the requested smile, for she loved Judge Devlin Gallagher as no other woman, including Chastity, ever had. Loved him for who and what he was, the good with the bad, and never wished to change him.

  Devlin was perceptive, and he read much from Dove’s wide green eyes. “You know I would live here with you always, if only I could,” he said gently. “I love you, Triskadden.”

  Dove’s smile was real this time, requiring no effort on her part. “Wouldn’t that be a scandal, though, if you moved out of Evadne’s house and into mine, bold as brass?”

  Devlin sighed. “It would be, indeed. Between Steven and Willow, there’s been enough of that sort of thing already.”

  “Do you think Steven’s heard about the wedding yet?”

  He grinned and shook his head. There was gray in his wheat-colored hair, and Dove felt a tug in her heart at the notice of it. “No—definitely not. There would have been some kind of incident if he had.”

  Dove looked away as Devlin reached for his suit coat and shrugged into it. “What will happen now, Dev? Will Willow still marry Norville Pickering?”

  “Good God,” sighed the judge, “I hope not.”

  “That’s why you haven’t tried to dissolve her marriage to Gideon Marshall, isn’t it?”

  Devlin was deeply troubled; Dove didn’t need to look at him to know that. She’d felt it, even before she’d held him in her arms, given him the only solace she had to offer. “I’m not sure that’s possible,” he muttered. “Both Gideon and Willow claim they haven’t consummated the union, but there’s a—well, there’s some kind of charge between those two. If they haven’t been together already, they soon will be.”

  “Would you want Gideon Marshall for a son-in-law, Dev?”

  His chuckle was raspy, humorless. “I don’t think my personal opinion matters much, one way or the other. I can’t say I dislike the man, but . . .”

  “But?” prompted Dove.

  Devlin gave a ragged sigh. “Gideon came here to track Steven down—at the behest of the railroad. He told me that, straight out.”

  The pit of Dove’s stomach quivered. “Do you suppose he can find Steven? Succeed where Vancel Tudd has failed?”

  “I sure as hell hope not,” breathed Devlin, and then he approached Dove, bent to kiss the top of her head, and was on his way out of the house.

  * * *

  The morning hadn’t gone at all the way Gideon had planned it. He’d meant to find Steven Gallagher; instead, he’d ended up on the ground with Willow.

  Swinging back into the saddle of the horse he’d borrowed from the judge’s stables, he rode away from the scene of his downfall without looking back.

  Willow’s challenge rang through his mind and heart—And you aren’t faithful to her anyway, are you?—all the way back to town. He hadn’t been strictly true to Daphne, that was a fact, and up until now that had never seemed important. Every man had at least one mistress, didn’t he?

  Gideon swallowed hard. His pride smarted and his groin ached and his thoughts were all tangled up with each other. Fidelity was something Daphne, sophisticated as she was, had never demanded of him, probably never even expected.

  It was the way of the world.

  Men of means provided well for their wives and children; in his world, that was understood. A mistress, discreetly maintained of course, was considered his due.

  But things were different with Willow, and Gideon knew he had a bitter choice to make. He could appease his physical needs with other women and let his “wife” do as she pleased, or he could be faithful—to a woman he couldn’t, in good conscience, bed.

  “Shit!” he yelled to the blue summer sky.

  * * *
r />   Willow sat quietly on the ground, long after Gideon rode away, her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes burning with unshed tears. Lord have mercy, what a mess her life was.

  One tear trickled down her face and she dashed it away angrily.

  A long shadow passed over her. “Willow?”

  Willow’s head shot up and she gaped at her brother, both alarmed and relieved. He had the most disconcerting way of appearing and disappearing, like some kind of stage magician. “Steven! What are you doing here?”

  Steven crouched to face her, the wind lifting his sandy hair, his blue eyes bright with affection and mischief. He looked as Devlin must have, in his youth, powerful and handsome and arrogant, and for all of that, ingenuous.

  “I came to see my sister,” he answered mildly.

  Willow flushed, remembering what she and Gideon had done, conscious of the possibility that Steven might have seen at least some of the exchange.

  God forbid. “You took a terrible chance, Steven,” she scolded, testing the waters. “What if I hadn’t been alone?”

  “You weren’t alone,” he said, taking in her rumpled clothes and misbuttoned shirt with discerning eyes, “unless I miss my guess.”

  Willow colored again and averted her eyes, but she was still self-possessed enough to make an attempt at throwing her brother off that conversational trail. “You should be more careful,” she muttered. “Contrary to what you probably tell yourself, Steven Gallagher, you don’t lead a charmed life.”

  Steven laughed and plucked a blade of grass to turn in his hands, as Gideon had turned a tiger lily only minutes before. “Lancelot is well away, m’lady,” he teased. “I made sure of that before showing myself. When did he arrive in our fair town?”

  Willow flinched at the mention of the silly name she’d given Gideon in her innocence; she’d forgotten how much she had confided to her older brother over the years. “He came yesterday—just in time to stop me from marrying Norville.”

  There was an awful silence, followed by a breathless “To stop you from what?”