The Invitation (Montgomery/Taggert 19)

“Stop it!” he commanded, grabbing her shoulders and holding her away from him. His voice was fierce as he conveyed his anger without resorting to shouting.

Dorie blinked at him, for a moment not at all aware of what she had done or why she had done such a forbidden thing as to kiss this man’s bare chest.

“I…I apologize, Mr. Hunter,” she said when it dawned on her what she had done and why he was angry. Obviously he did not want her touching him more than was necessary. She stiffened in his arms, in less than a second changing from soft and pilable to unbendable. “I have no idea what came over me. Mr. Hunter, I—”

“Leave it!” he snapped because she’d started to close his shirt and button it up.

“But I—”

He shoved her head back down before she could say another word.

But Dorie wouldn’t remain still. She was probably tired, but at the same time she’d never felt so full of energy in her life. Part of her brain was saying she should be a lady, but another part of her asked why a ladylike manner should matter when she was likely to be dead within twenty-four hours. When that awful man Ford found out there was no gold at her house she didn’t think he’d laugh and say, “That was a good joke on me,” and let them go. He’d probably shoot both of them in the head and never think twice about it. When she was dead, would they carve on her tombstone, “She was a lady to the very end.”

“Is it wonderful?” she asked Cole.

“Is what wonderful?” he growled, trying to sound as though she were keeping him from sleep.

If Dorie hadn’t had her ear pressed against his chest so that she could feel and hear that his heart was pounding much too hard for him to sleep, she would have been thwarted in her talk. But she knew he was no closer to sleep than she was.

“Lovemaking,” she whispered. “Is it very nice?”

When he said nothing, she continued. “Rowena will tell me nothing about it. I mean, I know about the…process, but I don’t know exactly how it feels. Rowena says a husband has to teach his wife everything she needs to know, but I never thought I’d get one. A husband, I mean.” She hesitated, then continued quickly. “Now, it’s not that I think you really are my husband. I know you’re not. It’s just that the way things are now I may never get another one, and so I thought I’d ask you.”

She waited for a while, and he took so long to answer that she thought he wasn’t going to.

“Yes, it’s nice,” he said at last. “But I think it could be better.”

That made her start to pull back her head to look at him, but he immediately pushed her head back down. He didn’t seem to want a square inch of her to move away from him. “You shouldn’t ask me about lovemaking. I only know about fornication. What experience I’ve had has been quick and over as soon as possible before someone comes after you with a shotgun or somebody else wants the bed.”

“But surely…”

“Maybe there have been a few good times, but I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be with a woman who was mine and mine alone.” He lowered his voice. “With a woman who had never belonged to another man. A woman who was never going to belong to anyone except me.”

“I have never…had another man,” she said softly.

“I know. And that’s why you deserve better than an aging gunslinger.”

“Oh,” she said. “Do you mean you’re too old to—”

She wasn’t sure whether she’d said the exactly wrong thing or exactly the right thing, but he put his hand on the back of her head and tipped her head up to kiss her. It was a kiss such as she’d dreamed of. In those days of sitting silently by her father, she had imagined what it would be like to be as beautiful as Rowena and have some handsome man come to her and kiss her with tenderness and passion.

He turned her head to one side and deepened the kiss, and when his hand slipped down her side to cup her breast, Dorie

didn’t even think of pulling away from him. To look at her as she had been a few weeks ago, a man would have guessed she’d take a riding crop to any man who dared touch her, but when Cole touched her, her body seemed to open to his. She moved so her hips were pressed against his, sliding her leg higher between his, and when she moved her thigh, she felt his groan against her lips.

When he pulled away from her, Dorie tried to pull him back, but he pushed her head back down so her lips were far away from his.

“Mr. Hunter, may I call you Cole?”

“No,” he said sharply. “It’s better this way. Listen to me, Dorie, and listen to me hard. I’m not what you seem to believe I am. I’m not your damned hero. I’m what you said I was the first time you met me: an aging gunslinger. I don’t know how I happened to live this long—an accident of nature, I guess. You were right; most of us are dead by the time we reach our thirties. Right now I’m living on borrowed time. I shouldn’t be alive now, and I’m sure I haven’t much time left.”

“But—”

“No!” he said sharply. “I can see it and feel it.” As he said the words he couldn’t help but run his hand down her back, feeling the curve of her body. He couldn’t resist cupping her round buttocks and pressing her closer to him. Nor could he help the groan that escaped him. He would die before he told her that she was the most desirable female he’d ever seen, that he’d rather have a night with her than with any other woman, even a woman twice as beautiful as that sister of hers.

“We have to stay together until I can get you out of this, but after that, you go back to your world and I to mine. We aren’t the same kind of people. We come from two different places.”

“Maybe we are the same kind of people but we were simply born in different places. Maybe you’d have been different if you’d been my father’s son.”