Night Child, page 16
Would Kirk be home? Would he be so stubbornly set against her that he wouldn't even listen to her? Would she have everything but the man she loved?
Two miles down the road, the MacKay ranch house was as she remembered it from her childhood. It was a house with clean, simple lines, with wide verandas on every side, a freshly painted house nestled in a shadowy grove of salt cedar and gnarled live oak. The blades of a windmill sang pleasantly, groaning in a faint breeze, and the whining sound filled her with a sweet nostalgia. Jeb had told her that Kirk had bought the MacKay Ranch back from him with his gas royalties, and that he had remodeled it and moved into it several months before.
Dawn stepped cautiously onto the porch. Curtains billowed against screened windows, and she could see into the rooms. In the bedroom there was a large bed with a brass frame. A man's leather jacket was carelessly flung across the quilted spread. The television was on in the living room, and a beer bottle sat tipped at a queer angle beside a leather chair, as if Kirk had set it down in a hurry and gone somewhere.
Dawn could hear Kirk in the kitchen. She caught the scent of coffee brewing, the smell of warm bread and a steak baking in a hot oven.
Was that the only thing he knew how to cook? She would have to learn to cook herself so she could vary his menu.
She pushed the screen door open and stepped from darkness into the softly lit room.
It was a comfortable house, though sparsely furnished. A rifle lay against the fireplace. A box of shells was open, and some of them had spilled onto the floor. It was the house of a man. She would change that, too.
The door closed soundlessly behind her, and she knew that she belonged here and nowhere else.
"Kirk..."
He heard the velvet sound and came to the doorway. The light came from behind him, and his immense body was framed in its radiance. He was shirtless, in his jeans and boots. Golden light splashed across powerful male muscle, and she felt her pulse quicken. His silver bracelet gleamed against his dark wrist. He stood perfectly still, looking at her.
The wind blew through the screens, blew her hair about her neck and shoulders, blew the filmy chiffon about her slender form. She could feel his eyes burning across her face, over her body.
Then he walked slowly toward her, his boot heels echoing on the wooden floors. His handsome face was gentle yet haggard, as though he hadn't slept at all, as she hadn't during the long hours that had separated them. He stared at her, his gaze filled with doubt until at last he saw her love for him shining in her luminous dark eyes.
"Don't send me away," she whispered, reaching toward him. "Please."
She touched his arm, and he felt as hard and unyielding as a statue. Yet he was hot; not a statue at all. She was afraid as she'd never been afraid.
After an agonizing length of time he folded her into his arms.
"As if I could," he whispered on a hoarse, ragged note, burying his face in her hair.
A sob caught in her throat.
"I never thought in my wildest dreams...you'd come here," he said.
"I never want to be anywhere else."
"What?" He stared at her, stunned. "Leave New York? For good?"
"It's only a city."
"It's much more than that. It's your life. It's everything."
She reached up to touch his cheek with trembling fingers. "No. You're my life. You're everything."
"I love you," he said. "More than I've ever loved anyone." There was both agony and joy in his voice as his arm tightened and crushed her to him. She felt him shaking with intense emotion, and she began to tremble as well.
He did not ask her again what she was doing here. He believed her.
She kissed his face, and he began to laugh. His large hands spanned her tiny waist. Slowly he lifted her high above his head and let her slide down once more against his body.
"You're light as a feather," he murmured.
She smiled, pleased.
"That wasn't a compliment," he said huskily.
"To me it was. I like being skinny."
His hand moved beneath the silken mass of her dark hair. His palm traced the curve of her breast. "I'm going to change that."
"You can try," she whispered.
The laughter died in his eyes, and for a long moment he was silent. "Are you sure?" Again his tone held anguish. "Can you really give it all up?"
Her breasts rested against his hot, muscled chest. Dawn felt a simple physical happiness that just being near him gave her.
"I missed you so much," she said in answer, knowing that she couldn't live without him, couldn't live without his voice, without his body. Without him. "It means nothing to me... without you."
He took her fingers and kissed them, one by one.
The air was heavy with the smell of cooking. The steak was sizzling and popping.
"Dawn! I forgot the damn steak! I'd better turn the stove off," he cried, taking her by the hand and rushing her into the kitchen, "before I burn the house down."
Swiftly he turned off the oven. He smiled at her, a smile that was so warm and exciting that she dared not look at him for too long. When she kept looking at the floor, he ran his callused finger lightly along her delicate jawbone. "We'll eat later," he said softly.
Outside the screened kitchen windows, the too-early darkness of the range and the afternoon smelled fresh and sweet. Someday soon he would teach her the individual smells of jasmine and climbing roses and huisache and mesquite. And all the wildflowers, too. But not now. Not now, when her presence was like a living thing heating his blood.
His fingers tightened on hers. Inside the house, the air was charged with the jet of their sexual excitement.
He led her into the bedroom and turned off the light, holding her quietly in the darkness. Slowly he pulled her down beneath him on the bed. Laying his face tenderly against her, he kissed her over and over.
She stroked his cheek. Then she traced the hard muscles of his chest and shoulders with her eager hands.
All that dark night, she would have him to herself.
For all the rest of the dark nights in her life, he would be hers.
And she knew that never again would she be afraid of the darkness, because he would be with her, holding her, loving her—forever.
He would be her husband, the father of her children. Her life. Everything.
The future stretched before her like a dazzling light. A warming brilliance—no longer a terrifying one. It was a blazing happiness that would fulfill her completely and last forever.
"Say my name," she whispered.
"Dawn."
"No! My real name!"
"What?"
"Say it," she pleaded. "Call me Julia." Her light, yet urgent, tone drifted away in the darkness.
She felt his hands go still in her hair. For a long time he was silent.
"Julia," he said very slowly, very reverently. "My darling Julia."
Though his mouth closed gently over hers, she could feel his desperate passion, his wild elation, the tornado whirling inside him.
Tenderly, insistently, his hand flowed downward, warm, slow, but sure, touching her everywhere, arousing her, claiming her, making her his.
He lifted his head, looking down into her beautiful face.
"Julia..." His voice was husky, uncertain. "Darling."
Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. He felt himself drowning in her beauty, flaming against her gentle loving warmth. Then he lost all sense of caution and clutched her tightly in a spasm of uncontrolled desire.
His Julia had come back to him at last.
She felt his cheek, and it was wet with his tears. Softly, gently, she began to kiss them away.
*****
Ann Major, Night Child
