The Rancher's Wedding Read online

  Chapter Eleven

  Cassie had no experience of intimacy. A few kisses and some groping, yes, but nothing really intimate. So what JL did to her came as a shock.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered. He’d removed her gown between soft, tender kisses and put her under the covers while he removed his own clothes. She hadn’t watched. It was pretty intimidating already, this initiation into true adulthood. But he hadn’t made fun of her shyness. It had delighted him. Now he was touching her in ways and places that embarrassed her, and she caught his wrist worriedly.

  “It’s really all right,” he said again, brushing her mouth with his. “Just relax. There’s no reason to be embarrassed. This is part of the process. You have to let me touch you. It’s how I can be sure that I won’t hurt you, when the time comes.”

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered back, and she really didn’t. Her few girlfriends had been mostly like her, uninitiated, and what she heard from experienced people was general rather than specific.

  He chuckled. “Okay.” He whispered it to her, so that she understood what he was doing, and why.

  Her faint gasp indicated how new to it she really was. She swallowed, hard, and let go of his wrist.

  “That’s it. Yes. Shhhhh.” His mouth opened on hers, tasting her, arousing her, while his hands were doing the most incredible things to her body.

  She began to writhe on the sheets, shivering with each new touch.

  “It won’t be hard at all,” he said huskily. “And by the time we start, you won’t be afraid anymore.”

  She was barely hearing him now. Her body was throbbing with new sensations, new experience. She opened her legs for him without coaxing, gave him back the hungry kisses with new passion, arched up to his hands and then, unbelievably, his mouth!

  She wanted to protest, but all at once, she shot up into the sky, exploding, throbbing, dying of pleasure. She cried out helplessly, a sound she’d never heard from her own lips.

  “Oh, yes,” he murmured just as he went into her.

  His mouth covered the faint little cry that was less protest than enticement. She was sensitized now, so that the joining of their bodies was warm and sweet and welcome. She wrapped her long legs around his and held on, shuddering as he moved, feeling him swell in her, feeling her own body respond urgently to the slow, deep movements of his hips.

  Then, all at once, it became something else, something primitive and devouring, a throbbing need that ached to be fulfilled, that demanded heat and motion and passion. She bit his shoulder in her ecstasy, crying, sobbing as she begged him not to stop.

  His mouth buried itself in her throat as he pushed harder, harder, and then suddenly went rigid above her and cried out. She found her own fulfillment at the same time, riveted to his hard body, shivering and convulsing in a pleasure she’d never known existed. It was almost unbearable at the last, a sweetness so volcanic that she thought she might pass out.

  Finally, she was able to relax, to flow into his body as she felt him go heavy against her. He started to pull away, but she held him there, coaxed him back to her mouth so that she could kiss him hungrily, with new and sweet knowledge of him as a man, as her husband.

  He lifted his head and looked down into her soft, sated eyes. He smiled at her expression. His big hand brushed back her unruly red-gold hair. “Now you know,” he whispered.

  She nodded. “Now I know.”

  He covered her mouth with his and kissed her hungrily. “That exclusive club I mentioned?”

  “Umhmm,” she murmured lazily.

  “We are now members in good standing,” he chuckled.

  Her eyes laughed as they met his. “Yes, we are. So. Where are we going?”

  “Jamaica,” he said. “Montego Bay, to be precise. We can be beachcombers for a week.”

  “Maybe enlist on a pirate ship and raid small villages?” she suggested.

  He pinched her bottom and laughed when she flinched and grinned at him.

  “Maybe sit around drinking piña coladas and enjoy the swimming pool,” he countered.

  “Spoilsport.”

  He smoothed back her damp hair. “My darling, if you wanted a pirate ship for real, I’d go right out and get you one. I’m the happiest man in the world right now.”

  “I hope to keep you that way,” she replied. She touched his hard mouth. “What does JL stand for?”

  He smiled. “John Lewis,” he said. “But I’ve gone by JL for so long that it’s pretty much my name now.”

  “I have a better one.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded. “My sweetheart.”

  He grinned from ear to ear. “I like it.”

  She tugged him closer. “Me too. And this is where we live happily ever after, right?”

  He rolled over, taking her with him. “Happily ever after and after and after.”

  “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  She smiled with her whole heart and kissed him again. “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I love you more.”

  She beamed. It was the first time he’d really said it. “You do?”

  “I loved you when you were standing in the rain holding a protest sign, with your hair all wet,” he confessed. “You stole my heart, when I didn’t think I had one left. If I’d lost you, I could never have gone home again, you know,” he added solemnly. “I’d have been a wanderer for the rest of my life, rootless, useless.”

  She touched his mouth with her fingertips. “You stole my heart when you took me home and dried my clothes and made me coffee.”

  He smiled. “And here we are, married.”

  “Married.” She looked at the beautiful diamond, set in gold, with its beautiful wedding band. “Now I feel married,” she added with a wicked look.

  He chuckled. “So do I.” He pursed his lips. “Hungry yet?”

  She moved under him. “Yes. But not for food. . . .” she whispered against his mouth. “Suppose we have another go at that exclusive club you mentioned?”

  He smoothed his body over hers. “We should have just about enough time before we land,” he said with a grin.

  And they did. Just.

  * * *

  Nine months to the day later, a little boy was delivered in the community hospital in Benton, Colorado. His name was Cole Reed Denton and he had so many godmothers and godfathers that they couldn’t all fit into the waiting room. They spilled out onto the parking lot and some were left sitting in stretch limos until they could get into the building.

  It was talked about in Benton for many years to come. The rancher and his famous wife, who were just JL and Cassie locally, no matter how famous she got or how much richer he got. The lovebirds, as they were referred to, were just part of the big family that was Benton. And they did live happily, ever after.