This Gun for Hire Page 17

  “You are more buttoned up than an undertaker.”

  Quill levered himself on one elbow and regarded her handiwork. “You seem to be doing all right. Do you want help?”

  Calico put up a hand, pretending to shield her eyes from his grin. “My God, Quill, even in this light your teeth gleam.” When he abruptly laughed, she clapped that hand over his mouth. “Shh. You will wake someone.”

  He circled her wrist and removed her hand, but not before he kissed the heart of her palm. That quieted her. He moved her hand to his shirtfront and waited for her fingers to begin to fiddle with a button. “One at a time,” he said, releasing her.

  A small crease appeared between Calico’s eyebrows as she worked. “This is like picking a lock, only harder.” She nudged his breastbone with the heel of her hand when she felt a chuckle rumbling in his chest. He never gave sound to it, so she didn’t hit him again. When she was done, she felt a measure of satisfaction out of all proportion to what she had accomplished . . . until she discovered the buttons on his union suit. “This is what explosives are for,” she muttered.

  “You are frightening, do you know that?” He pushed her hand out of the way and finished the job himself. As soon as he was done, her hand slipped inside the opening and lay against his skin. He sucked in a breath. “Your fingers are still cold.”

  “Why do you think they were so clumsy with the buttons? I’m warming them.” Before he could stop her, she turned so she could get her other hand inside. “This is nice. You’re like a furnace. Should have known, you swallowing the sun and all.”

  “Uh-huh. That must be it.” He might have said more, had been considering it anyway, but her palms began to slip upward across his chest. If he was warming her up, then she was doing the same to him.

  Calico parted the material wider. She leaned in and kissed him in the space she made between her hands. She did it again and again, each kiss a little higher on his chest than the last, until she reached the hollow below his throat. Lifting her head, she kissed him on the mouth.

  Quill let her topple him onto his back. She rolled so she was partially covering him with the blankets and her body. This time he was the one cocooned. As confinements went, this one had a lot to recommend it. He waited to see what she would do.

  For a time, she merely held his gaze. Direct. Steady. He did not feint. Neither did she. The narrowest of smiles signaled her intent. Satisfaction for her. Anticipation for him. She lowered her head and touched the corner of his mouth where his faint dimple lived. Her lips slid over his. The tip of her tongue traced the crease on the first pass and filled it on the second. She pressed; he drew her in. The kiss was deep and wet and soft. Pleasure blossomed and then lingered.

  Calico held his head in her hands, her fingers threaded deeply in his hair. She ran her tongue along the sensitive underside of his lip and traced the ridge of his teeth. She feasted on his mouth. He tasted faintly of peppermint. She realized she probably tasted of whiskey. Kisses should always taste so fine.

  Quill did not try to take command, and she was grateful for that. He seemed to understand that she needed to set the pace, and the pace she set was unhurried. She wanted to explore, and for a long time he was content to let her have her way . . . until he wasn’t.

  His move was sudden, the effect, arresting. He wrestled his arms free, took Calico by the shoulders, and pushed her onto her back. While she was struggling up to her elbows, he sat up and shrugged out of his jacket. He tossed it to the foot of the bed, where it slid over the side. His vest was next, and it went the way of his jacket.

  “Now you,” he said, turning on her.

  Calico’s eyes widened at the predatory gleam in his. She pointed to his chest. “Um. Shouldn’t you take off your shirt?”

  He arched one eyebrow. “Do you want help?” When she shook her head, he tugged at the blankets so she could get her arms under them. She wriggled like a worm on a hook until she produced her leather vest. He flipped it over his shoulder. It landed on the trunk at the foot of the bed. “Now unbutton your shirt.”

  She hesitated.

  “Or I can do it.”

  Calico’s hands slipped under the blanket again. Her fingers were clumsy, but the cold did not account for it. What followed consisted of contortions and squirming, but she removed her shirt and showed it to him.

  He looked at it, grinned. “You’re a step ahead. Lucky me.”

  Realizing he had only told her to unbutton the shirt, Calico threw it at his head.

  “Now, see, that’s where you’re different,” he said after he dragged it down over his face. “I figure a lot of women would have fought to get this back.” He pitched it over his shoulder.

  “And I figure them for ninnies. You were going to get it anyway.”

  He bent his head and dropped a swift kiss on her parted lips. “Yes, indeed. I surely was.” Quill removed his shirt and held it up. “In the interest of fairness.” He gave it the same careless toss he had given hers, but before he lay beside her again, he took off his boots.

  Calico regarded his feet with a raised eyebrow. “What about your socks?”

  “My feet will get cold.” When she continued to stare at them unsympathetically, he shrugged, and yanked them off. There was no way Calico was going to hold on to the covers after that, which, he supposed, had been her plan all along. The inevitable tangle happened then, but compromise eventually begat comfort.

  Quill’s hand curved around Calico’s waist. With minimal pressure at his fingertips, he urged her closer. He plucked at the fabric he encountered. “Are you wearing a union suit?”

  “It was cold outside.”

  Shaking his head, Quill found the uppermost button. He paused and whispered, “I’m better with corset strings.”

  “I’m sure,” she said dryly.

  “But I know how these work.”

  Calico didn’t say a word. There was a hitch in her breath as he unfastened the first button. His fingertips scraped her skin. She expected to see sparks. By the time he’d finished unfastening all the buttons, she expected her flesh to ignite.

  His hand slipped inside the flannel and lay against her rib cage. His thumb made a pass just short of the underside of her breast. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t touched her breast; it only mattered that it felt as if he had. Her nipple swelled. She wanted him to make another pass with his thumb, this one directly over her aureole. She wanted his thumbnail to flick the little soldier until it stood at attention. Every pass he made brought him closer, and then he was cupping her breast. It would be now, she thought, closing her eyes. It would be now.

  But it wasn’t his thumb that she felt dart across her nipple.

  It was his tongue.

  Chapter Eight

  Calico felt herself pulled as taut as a bow. The length of her body arched. Her heels dug into the mattress. The back of her head dug into the pillow. He rolled her nipple between his lips. He sipped, sucked, and she felt a contraction deep inside her. Her skin prickled, and sensations she had no name for flooded her. Waves of heat were chased by cooler ones. Whiskey and peppermint. What he was doing to her was deliciously carnal and wonderfully wicked.

  She was glad for the devil whispering in his ear.

  Her fingers pushed into his hair. They fluttered once and then they were still. She tried to hold him when he wanted to lift his head. She heard him chuckle, felt the vibration of it against her skin, and then he slid his mouth sideways into the valley between her breasts, and climbed out the other side. He caught her untried nipple in his lips and tugged. She thought he might have said something about fairness, but she couldn’t be sure, and she didn’t care anyway. Not just then.

  He laved her aureole with his tongue. Calico concentrated on the slightly abrasive nature of his touch. Sand over velvet. Like his voice. His touch was like his voice, mesmerizing. In a different frame of m
ind, a twenty-mule team could not have dragged that admission from her, but if he had asked now, she would have told him. He could have asked her anything and she would have told him true.

  When she felt him push against her hands this time, she let him go. He had changed her perspective. She understood now that she was the beneficiary of giving him his way, and everything was easy after that. It was not often she was content to follow someone else’s directions.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  She did. He was not smiling. It was impossible to make out the color of his eyes, but the way he looked out of them was intense.

  “You don’t want to miss anything.”

  He was right. She didn’t. Calico nodded.

  “Good.” He kissed her. “Very good.” He kissed her again.

  When he was done, Calico realized she had missed a good deal. The top of her union suit was bunched around her waist, and she had no idea how he had made that happen. She did not dwell on it long. Couldn’t. He was tugging on it now and that captured all of her attention.

  “Lift your hips.”

  She did. Quill rolled the suit over her hips, past her thighs, and then he disappeared under the blankets to finish the job. The union suit appeared. Quill didn’t.

  She felt his lips at the side of her right knee, his fingers under it. He dragged his mouth a few inches higher. His hand curled around her thigh. She knew it was as black as pitch under the blanket, but he was having no difficulty finding his way. He was climbing her like ivy.

  “Raise your knees.”

  She did. He moved between them, separating them farther. With knees lifted, the blankets tented him and she could no longer see movement or watch his progress. Her hips jerked involuntarily when he kissed her mons. The rosy flush that eventually colored all of her started there.

  Quill did not linger, not with his mouth. He made a pass across her belly, took some care with her navel, and then attended again to each breast in turn. When his head finally reappeared, Calico’s eyes were open but infinitely darker than they had been. They were also vaguely unfocused.

  That did not last. They came sharply to attention when his hand slid between her thighs and he eased two fingers inside her.

  “That’s right,” he said, his lips hovering just about her mouth. “Make them wet for me.”

  She did. Slick with dew, Calico contracted around him. Groaning softly, he thrust his hand more firmly against her. She pushed back. He kissed her then, echoing the movement with his tongue in her mouth. Once again, she pushed back.

  Her fingers scrabbled at the sheet, clutching it in her fists, but when he told her to put her arms around him, she clutched him instead. Sounds she did not recognize as her own rose from the back of her throat. Her mouth hummed against his lips. Her body hummed against the length of his. She felt his erection pressing. She wanted it pressing inside her.

  He eased his hand away and lifted his head. “I know you know,” he whispered. “But are you ready?”

  “I’m ready,” she whispered back.

  Quill showed the first signs of impatience as he tried and failed to unbutton the front flap of his union suit. When he swore softly, Calico helped him push it over his hips instead. She cradled him between her thighs. He lifted his hips. Without thinking, she angled hers to meet him. Her fingers grazed his cock, then circled it, and finally guided him to her.

  Oh, yes. She was ready.

  He levered himself on his elbows and thrust, not deeply at first. That came later. He tried to be careful, but she was impatient and, as was her custom, was bent on having her way. When she winced and dug her fingers into his shoulders like talons, he paused to give her another chance to accommodate his entry. He also did not pass on the opportunity to give her a sardonic look.

  Calico came within a moment of answering his mockery by sticking her tongue out, but he began to move, and she nearly sank her teeth into it. She reared up and nipped him on the neck instead.

  He grit his teeth and growled in her ear. It sent a shiver all the way to her toes.

  She uncurled her fingers and smoothed over the crescent indentations in his flesh. Her hands slid down his back on either side of his spine and came to rest at the small of it. When he moved, she felt it first in him and then in herself. It made his thrust seem fuller somehow, made the experience richer, made her feel as if she were not merely taking part of him, but all of him. She was not sure she should feel that way. It was premature, possibly unwise, but denying it would have been wrong. She did not want these moments to be less than they were.

  She was glad he had told her to open her eyes. He was beautiful. Strained, his features were masterfully cut. They showed in sharper relief than usual and the symmetry held. His eyes were dark, impenetrable at their centers, and firelight cast one side of his face in a pale orange glow. His thatch of hair absorbed the light. His face reflected it. She raised her hand and cupped his cheek cautiously. There was heat, and he was the source of all of it.

  Sparks rose in a spiral from the point of their joining. They were familiar to her. She had felt them earlier, but they had faded, become a memory. They did not fade this time. They were white hot, delicately sharp, and they pricked her as they skittered across her skin. Her muscles jumped, twitched, but it never occurred to her to try to avoid it. What she wanted was to feel it more deeply.

  Calico dug in her heels as the exquisite stirrings of pure pleasure flooded, and then overwhelmed her. She would have cried out if he had not covered his mouth with hers. He swallowed whatever unintelligible thing she might have said and took the spasm that rocked her body and made it his.

  His thrusts quickened, his breathing sharpened, and he buried his face in the curve of her neck as his body jerked. He did not try to avoid coming inside her, and he was deep when it happened. He nipped her flesh as she had done to him, but then he kissed her there and turned the feral attack into a moment of tenderness.

  Quill felt her stiffen. Apparently tenderness was what she wasn’t ready for.

  He did not want to move, but he did. In consideration of his weight and her silence, Quill rolled onto his back and tugged his union suit over his hips and up to the level of his waist. His heart was still thumping in his chest but slower now, and what had been a thundering in his head had quieted to a dull and distant roar. He was aware that Calico lay unmoving. The blankets did not stir once he was settled. Nowhere did their bodies touch, but heat radiated between them.

  He had no idea what she might be thinking, and he did not spend a moment guessing. Instead, he asked, “Are you all right?” When she did not answer, he turned on his side, raised himself on an elbow, and regarded her profile. The shadow that he cast made it difficult to clearly see her features, but he could tell she was not sleeping. The opposite seemed to be true. Her stillness was a consequence of how alert she was. He thought she might come out of her skin if he touched her. She certainly would leap out of the bed. He kept his hands to himself and prompted her. “Calico?”

  Her response was barely a whisper. “I think I might be bleeding.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah? Is that all?”

  “This is a new conversation for me.”

  “For me, too. And I am the one bleeding.”

  “It might not be blood. It might be me.”

  “You?”

  “My seed.”

  “Oh.”

  “Mm. What would you like me to do?”

  “Leave.”

  “Besides that.”

  “Then I don’t know.”

  “What if I light the lamp? At least then you will be able to see.”

  She hesitated. “Where will you be while I’m looking?”

  “On the other side of the room, if you like. With my back turned.”

  “All right.”

  Quill raised the covers enough to
swing his legs over the side of the bed as he sat up. He found matches in the bedside table’s single drawer, lit the lamp, and adjusted the wick. He checked with her to make sure the light was adequate before he walked to the fireplace. He warmed his hands while he waited to hear the results of her examination. It did not occur to him that she would not say anything, so he was surprised when he caught her out of the corner of his eye making a beeline for the bathing room.

  He got to the door in time for her to shut it firmly in his face. The tail of the sheet she had wrapped herself in got trapped between the frame and door. He stared at it, considering what he wanted to do, but then she took matters into her own hands. He heard her swearing softly as she cracked open the door and yanked on the sheet. He might have gotten a toehold before she closed it again, but he did not even try. He waited on his side of the door and listened for a while before he returned to the bedside.

  He shrugged into the rest of his union suit, buttoned it up. He found his shirt and put it on and then gathered her clothes, folded them, and placed them at the foot of the bed. He opened her wardrobe and removed a cotton shift and her robe. He hung them on the bathing room’s doorknob so they were within her easy reach. Inside that room, he heard the water stop running. It did not seem to him that enough time had elapsed for her to fill the tub.

  Quill knocked. “Are you all right?” She murmured something he could not make out. “May I come in?”

  “No!”

  He heard that. “Then I won’t. I have your nightgown and robe hanging right here when you want them.” It was shortly afterward that the door opened a fraction.

  “Step back,” she said.

  He did. “They’re on the knob.”

  Calico slipped her hand through the opening and felt for her belongings. She clutched both articles in her fist and pulled them inside. This time she made certain everything cleared the door before she closed it.