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always known. The leather gloves were rough against the delicate skin of her
cheeks.
"Why are you so anxious to go?" she whispered.
"You are the only good thing I've ever found in Texas," Benteen murmured. Just
for a minute, the mask slipped to reveal the pain and bitterness in his
expression.
Then his dark eyes seemed to absorb her whole into his system. She was only
half-conscious of being slowly pulled into his arms. He lowered his mouth to
her lips and took them with a rough force. She curled her arms around his lean
waist, warmed by his enveloping body heat.
Benteen could feel the pulsing life in the soft female form pressed against
him. Surrounded by all this death, he needed the renewal her body offered. He
fed on her lips, eating them with a hunger that forced them apart. His hard
tongue probed the space he'd created.
Lorna stiffened at its invasion. The sensation was new, and vaguely thrilling.
She relaxed a little, sensing that it gave him pleasure, that it filled a need
he had at this moment. Ultimately, that was her objective in the embrace.
There was an instinctive reciprocation of the intimacy. With it came a gradual
change in her desires, into something more self-centered. There was less
giving and more taking as inner needs began to dictate her wants. As her mouth
mated with his, she was beginning to feel hot all over, burning with a fire
she didn't know how to extinguish.
The hardness of his leanly muscled body was beginning to assert its pressure
on her, trapping her against the unyielding boards of the buggy. The long
skirt of her dress was whipped around his legs by the wind. There was an
insistence about the thrusting angle of his hips that she didn't understand.
His hands were under her shawl, pressing her spine to arch more completely
against him. Lorna was on tiptoe, straining to achieve the closeness he was
demanding, and feeling a raw frustration when she failed.
His arms relaxed their hold. She was momentarily confused, not wanting the
embrace to end. A hand slid along the side of her rib cage. She pushed against
its touch, thinking Benteen was going to force her out of his arms. Instead,
his hand moved to cover her breast, taking full possession of its ripe
fullness, straining against the material of her dress.
An inferno of emotions seemed to erupt inside her. For a split second she
yielded to them, until she recognized the sinful lust that was possessing her.
She tried to pull free of his arms, but there was no place to go. The buggy
was behind her, pushing her into his male wall.
There didn't seem to be any strength in her fingers when she tried to push his
hand away from her breast. She was breathing hard, as if she'd run some great
distance. Her cheeks were scarlet with shame at her loose behavior. Lifting
her head, Lorna searched his face in alarm, afraid he would be shocked that
she had practically invited him to treat her like this-like one of those
soiled doves she'd seen around the saloons. But the ache she saw in his eyes
almost made her wish she hadn't stopped him.
Benteen took a half-step back so the lower half of his body no longer pinned
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her against the buggy. His gaze dropped to the hand on her breast, and he
slowly brought it down.
"I shouldn't have let you do that," Lorna whispered anxiously. "I don't know
what got into me. You're probably thinking-"
"-that I want to bury myself in you," Benteen finished the sentence for her,
the sexual significance of his remark lost on her innocence. He seemed to
realize it, as one side of his mouth became twisted in a rueful smile. "We'd
better get married damned soon, because I need you, Lorna."
"I need you too," she murmured, but she was speaking emotionally.
"The things you do to me, woman." The cryptic phrase was accompanied by a
slight shake of his head. "I'll be a solid stone by our wedding night."
A shudder trembled through her at the greater intimacies that night would
bring, and her possible reactions. The shawl had fallen down around her arms.
Benteen reached to gently pull it up around her shoulders.
"It's getting cool. We'd better get you home before you catch a chill."
"Will you have dinner with us tonight?" she asked, not wanting him to leave
her now that he had returned.
"I need to get back and check on the herd," he refused gently, then promised,
"I'll be in town tomorrow. I'll see you then."
He assisted her into the buggy. This time, he climbed onto the seat beside
her, taking the reins and driving the horse to the Pearce house.
CHAPTER 6
On a trail drive the cook was second in importance only to the trail boss.
Most of the drovers considered him to be more important, especially if he knew
how to cook. Besides fixing the meals and keeping a pot of hot, strong coffee
going all the time, he doctored men and horses, was entrusted with personal
belongings and money, pulled teeth on occasion, and trimmed hair. The cook
could make life pleasant on the drive or turn it into sheer hell.
There was only one man Benteen wanted-a cantankerous old sea dog who claimed
to have been the personal cook of an admiral. His name had long been
forgotten, probably even by him, ever since a cowboy had claimed that his
coffee tasted "rusty." "Rusty" emptied the pot on the cowboy's head. No one
ever made the mistake of claiming his coffee was rusty again, but the name
stuck.
Rusty had been cook on two of the outfits Benteen had bossed. He allowed
himself to be persuaded to accept Benteen's offer to trail with him a third
time. He claimed that it wasn't that he liked working for Benteen so much as
it was a desire to see the Montana Territory, blaming the wanderlust in his
soul.
Together Rusty and Benteen picked out the chuck wagon, since it would be
Rusty's domain for the next few months. The man who sold it gave Benteen the
name of a man who had a covered wagon for sale. He slipped the piece of paper
in his pocket and walked over to Pearce's Emporium with Rusty.
After he had introduced Rusty to Arthur Pearce, he explained to Lorna's
father, "Rusty is the cook for my outfit. He'll tell you what provisions he
needs. I'll be back later to pay for them."
The quickest way to get on the wrong foot with Rusty was to tell him how many
pounds of flour, kegs of molasses, jars of vinegar, pounds of sugar, bacon,
and assorted items he'd need. So Benteen gave Rusty the authority to purchase
what he felt he needed.
"Lorna asked me to tell you, if I saw you today, that she wanted to talk to
you," her father passed along the message.
"A man named Davies has a wagon for sale. I'm going to see him first, then
I'll ride over to the house to see Lorna," Benteen agreed.
"She won't be home this afternoon," Arthur Pearce quickly corrected that
impression. "She and my wife are going to the milliner's shop this afternoon
to pick up her wedding veil. Then they were stopping by the church to speak
with the minister."
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Amusement lightened Benteen's eyes. "What am I supposed to do? Run all over
town trying to catch up with her?" He shook his head at the vagaries of the
female sex.
"I'm just passing on the message." Arthur Pearce smiled in understanding.
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