She smiled and touched his hair, liking the feel of it, painful urges pressing at her insides. She did not doubt his love for one moment. Jake Harkner had been starved of loving and being loved nearly all his life. He had a lot to make up for. “I’ll be a good wife, Jake. Wherever our home ends up, I’ll make it nice for you.”
In the distant foothills, wolves began their nightly songs to each other. Tonight the wailing seemed strangely ominous. They both felt it, and Jake met her mouth in a savage kiss as though to make sure she really was there and really was his. Miranda felt the same sudden need. She told herself she must not think about all the problems a woman might have being married to a man with Jake’s past. It was the future that mattered, only the future. She had told him that, and she must believe it herself, for Jake’s sake. He wanted so much to do this right. He needed her love, and she in turn had a mad desire for this man of danger and loneliness. Sometimes she felt that through loving the man she could also bring some love to the little boy in him who wanted so much to be held and comforted.
For now, at last, they could recapture the ecstasy of that first night he had taken her. It had been so hard being together, looking at each other, and not being able to sleep in each other’s arms these last few weeks. Now they had all night, but this first time they needed to dispel the odd fear the wolves’ howling had awakened in them, needed to make sure this was real and nothing could change it, needed to revel in the glory they had found in being united.
Jake’s kisses grew deep and hot, his tongue slaking into her mouth suggestively, something Mack had never done. It made her feel wild and wanton. She thought about the kind of women he had been with before her, realized now there were probably things he knew that she had never been shown. His lips left her mouth and trailed to her neck. He pulled her to a sitting position and began unbuttoning her dress at the back. She closed her eyes and rested her head against his strong shoulder as he opened the dress and ran his hand under her camisole over her bare skin.
“I want to know all of it, Jake, all the things I don’t know yet. I want to be as good as the women who do this just to show a man a good time.”
He grinned at the mere thought of her being anything like the kind of women he had known. She leaned back, and he pulled her dress off her shoulders, untied the camisole and pushed it open, reaching inside to gently close his hand around a soft, full breast. “Just looking at you excites me more than anything those women did.” He laid her back again, kissing her deeply, running his thumb over her taut nipple. “I’ll gladly teach you anything you want to know, mi querida,” he whispered, his lips moving down to taste at the pink fruits of her breasts.
The words stirred a passion in her that made her draw in her breath with the ache of it. In moments her dress and camisole and slips were pulled away. Jake sat up and pulled off her shoes and stockings, removed his shirt, boots and pants. Miranda lay there naked, on fire at how his dark eyes raked over her while he stripped off his underwear. She drank in the sight of his firm body, and that part of him that left no doubt he was all man. She touched the scar at his left side where her own bullet had come close to killing him.
Her own bullet. He had come into her life a wanted outlaw who had gunned down a bounty hunter, and now he was her husband. She leaned up and kissed the scar, as well as the one at his shoulder, at his neck. There were other tiny ones; Jake was a man battered physically and emotionally most of his life. She could hardly bear to set eyes on the faint scars on his back, knowing they’d been put there when he was small and defenseless.
He leaned over her, grasping her knees and parting her legs. She closed her eyes and let him drink in the sight of what now belonged to him. He ran his hands along the inside of her thighs, over her privates and belly. Then he leaned closer, licked at her neck, her cheek. “There are many things I can show you,” he said softly. “Right now all I want is to be inside you, to make sure this is real.”
She gasped when he quickly entered her then, filling her to ecstasy. His shaft was hot and hard, searching her depths. She leaned her head back, arching up to him and groaning at the way his penis teased her as he moved erotically, in moments bringing her to a delicious climax. He rose up then, grasping her hips and drawing her to him, thrusting himself deep. For several glorious minutes there was nothing but to enjoy the man and let him claim her. His hands gently massaged her bottom while he continued to fill her body in a sweet rhythm that made her forget everything else. There was only Jake, invading her, touching her everywhere, bringing out passions and desires she was hardly aware existed in her soul.