The moment turned both tender and fierce. His free hand traveled down her spine, past her waist, down to the small of her back, and a notch lower. His fingertips drew a slow circle that deepened with each turn of his wrist.
When he touched her bottom, she gasped. He hesitated, but she couldn’t force a single word past her lips and so he went on kissing her. His tongue dove deeper, his lips became hungrier. Everything about this man was confident now, and in a rush of hot, wet panic, she planted her hands on his chest and pushed.
“What the—”
He staggered backward, struggling to keep his balance with the baby cradled in one arm. Charlie shrieked, and Jake landed on his backside like a rodeo clown.
He glanced at the baby, tucked the cloth over its head, then rose to his full height and squinted at her. Rimmed with purple shadows, his eyes seemed wise and all-knowing, scarred by life’s battles and experienced with its pleasures.
“Jeez, Alex, what did you think I was going to do? It was just a kiss.” His voice softened. “It’s just nature.”
Shaking her head and close to tears, she held up her hands to stop him. “I’m not an idiot. I know exactly what it is. And it isn’t an excuse for what I just did.”
His blue gaze pinned her to the spot. “You wanted to kiss me. You want to prove you’re alive and kick death in the teeth. Whorehouses always fill up after a gunfight.”
What in the world was she supposed to say to that? That she had never needed to kick death in the teeth before now, that everything in her world was orderly and simple, because she worked very hard to keep it that way?
Or should she tell him that until now, she had never lost her mind while kissing a man; that her insides felt like warm milk and she could still taste the salt of him on her tongue? Alex bit her lip. She had to keep the moment in perspective.
“Frankly, Mr. Malone, I just made an embarrassing mistake. You see, I’m engaged to a man in Philadelphia, and well, I—uh—”
“You just got carried away.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Whatever you say.” He shrugged as he held out the baby. “Here, you take him. I’ll check on the horse.”
For some reason, his opinion mattered, at least for today, and Alex followed him to the bay. “My fiancé’s name is Thomas Hunnicutt. We work together. With children.”
Jake fiddled with a stirrup. “Is that so?”
“He’s kind and thoughtful. We’ve known each other for years, and when his wife died, it seemed right to get married. She was my best friend.”
The desert air hurt her lungs, as if it were too thin to support a human life, and she took a deeper breath. He glanced at her, and a fleeting shadow passed over his face.
“Thomas Hunnicutt is a lucky man, Miss Merritt. I apologize for my earlier indiscretion.” His manners were impeccable, his voice as sincere as a prayer, but something about the tilt of his head made Alex tremble all the more.
The horse fidgeted next to her, but she no longer cared. She would have climbed on a kicking mule to get away from this man. But what would she do with this terrible ache? This desire to touch his face? Even now her heart felt swollen with a need to taste more than the desert air, to feel more than the heat of the earth rising through the soles of her shoes.
There’s more to life, Alex, so much more….
Her father’s words came at her like a forgotten promise and a strange realization seized her heart. Not once had she been hungry or thirsty, in need of clean clothes, or desirous of a man’s kiss. Until the stage crashed in that torrent of muddy water, she hadn’t felt fear. Until the snake bite, she hadn’t felt pain. And until Jake kissed her, she hadn’t tasted desire.
Standing by the bay, with her arm wrapped in his shirt, with her sunburned skin stinging from the salt of her own perspiration, Alex felt her nerves rippling like grass in the wind. Did misery really sharpen a person’s senses? Did sugar taste sweeter after a mouthful of sand? She had to hope so. What else could explain the trembling in her bones?
Jake Malone saw it all in her eyes, and she could only pray the heat pulsing in her veins was nothing more than shock, an illusion, something that wouldn’t last, because her feelings for this man turned her well-planned future into a wasteland.
She belonged in Philadelphia. She belonged anywhere but here. And that meant she had to push back the glittering mirage of passion and see the true dryness of the desert.
Jake had heard of people going insane on the Colorado Plateau, and Alexandra Merritt had as much cause as the next person. It gave him a reason to be charitable, but temporary insanity was no excuse for bad manners. She hadn’t said a word since he lifted her onto the saddle, and he didn’t take kindly to being shoved on his butt.
Between the baby’s hungry wail and the fact he hadn’t had a drink for two days, Jake was brimming with indignation. They had a half day’s ride ahead of them, and as long as Alex wasn’t in desperate need of a doctor, he was grateful for the chance to sort through his thoughts.
At the very least she owed him an apology, but if the truth be told, he wanted a lot more than that. The angel made him hungry for things he’d never had, simple things like respect and a clean bed, and dangerous things like her body, and even her trust.
There wasn’t much in his life that made Jake proud, but killing the snake with a perfect shot was one of them. Wishing the snake would slither back to its nest but knowing it wouldn’t, he’d grabbed the Winchester and aimed. Instinct had forced the snake to strike, just as a piece of Jake’s own nature, a piece he had either forgotten or wasn’t sure he had, made protecting Alex and the baby as necessary as breathing.
An hour had passed since that moment, and they had all been amazingly lucky. Lancing the bite had been the most awful thing he had ever done. He would never forget the terror in her eyes or the taste of her blood.
Nor would the softness of her lips fade from his memory anytime soon. She had to be the luckiest person he had ever known, and the most pitiful at the same time. How could Thomas Hunnicutt look at himself in the mirror, when it was as plain as the desert sun that Alexandra Merritt didn’t know the first thing about kissing a man?
Jake didn’t understand men who treated women as if they were merely useful, like an extra right arm or a hot-water bottle for their beds. He knew from experience that something wondrous happened when the right man and the right woman got naked together.
He had been nineteen years old and not fully grown when a widow hired him to work her ranch for the summer. By July his muscles were hard and he was sharing her bed. She was close to thirty, but he would have married her if she hadn’t sent him away.
Leaving her cut him to the bone. The widow liked having him in her bed, but she didn’t want him in her life. A few months later, she’d pushed him away like a bum calf, and he remembered the taste of snow as he rode away.
And then there was Lettie Abbott. He’d broken all of the rules when he’d taken her to bed.
“You’ve got to pay for it or marry it,” his brother Gabe used to say, but Jake had done neither with Lettie. It had been nothing more than meeting a man’s need. Not once had he imagined she would conceive a child.
With spots drifting like flies in his field of vision, Jake had to admit there was more than one way to ruin a woman’s life. He had nothing on Thomas Hunnicutt when it came to using a woman. He had spent one night with Lettie for the pleasure of it. It wasn’t even worth remembering, except for the baby she’d conceived.
With the angel pressed against his thighs, the memory of Lettie’s pregnant belly tweaked what was left of his