Page 22 of Midnight Rider

He was laughing! She felt his breath against the moist fabric as he bent again and took the hard nipple in his teeth and nibbled it with exquisite tenderness until she shivered.

He lifted his head, keeping one warm hand over the place he’d kissed as he looked down into her wide eyes. “I know that you are not and never will be like Consuela,” he whispered.

She searched his face. “You truly are wicked.”

He smiled. “Yes. Aren’t you glad?”

She hid her face against him and smiled as he folded her close and brought the blanket back over them. She was glad, but it wouldn’t do to admit it. Marriage, it seemed, wasn’t going to be anything of the terror she’d expected.

* * *

BUTWHENTHEYAWOKETHENEXTmorning, she was embarrassed and a little shy with Eduardo. He noticed this and held her when she would have jumped up from their shared bedroll.

“Nothing has changed since last night,” he chided softly. “Except, of course, that you are now ‘ruined’ and must marry me.”

She sighed. “Yes, I know. And we’ll never live it down, not for the rest of our lives.”

“You must admit, it was the only way to secure your father’s permission,” he reminded her. “And to save you from his own candidates.”

She lay back against the saddle, forlorn and worried. “He would have given it, gladly, but you didn’t come near me. He assumed that you didn’t want me.”

His breath caught. “He said nothing! Nor did you!”

She shifted a little away from him. “You were his best candidate from the beginning, I think,” she said. “He offered you as an alternative to the German and the Italian and said that if I could interest you in his proposal, he’d send the foreigners home. But you didn’t come, so he assumed that you weren’t interested in me at all.”

“We spoke the day of your asthma attack,” he said shortly. “I told him then that I would not be averse to marrying you.”

She gasped. “He said nothing!”

He took one of her small hands in his and held it lightly. “I was ashamed of my own behavior,” he said curtly. “It was dishonest and low to arrange such a marriage behind your back without your knowledge. My conscience ate at me like acid.”

Her heart skipped with pure delight. He wasn’t such a rogue, after all. But it surprised her that he’d been willing to marry her.

“You might have said something to me about it,” she said.

He chuckled. “Yes, I might have.” He turned his head and suddenly rolled over, so that her face was beneath his. “But I was very attracted to you, and not at all certain that I wanted such a complication.”

Her thin eyebrows rose. “You wanted a wife who didn’t attract you?”

He shrugged. “Put like that, it sounds absurd.”

“I think I understand, a little,” she replied. Her gaze was intent on his handsome face. “You wanted to be honest about how you felt. You weren’t willing to pretend an emotion you didn’t feel.”

He nodded. “That was it exactly, Bernadette.”

“So you stayed away and my father thought you’d decided against marrying me at all.”

“And I thought that he’d decided I wasn’t good enough to marry his daughter,” he confessed.

Her eyebrows arched. “You didn’t!”

“I did.”

She shook her head. “But, didn’t you know that he admires you more than any other man he knows?”

He sighed. “No. I didn’t.” He searched her soft eyes. Impulsively, his fingers went to her eyebrows and traced them curiously. “I’m half Spanish and half Texan,” he said. “It’s a curious mixture, like being part Indian. Some people object.”

“Are there Indians in your past?” she asked.