Lorraine Heath by Texas Destiny Page B

shifted his stance, and his muscles rippled with the slight movement. He appeared much stronger than she’d imagined. She lowered her gaze as his hands tightened their hold on his clothing. She could see the veins and muscles in his arms straining with the force of his grip.
    “Git inside the tent,” he growled in a low, warning voice, “or you’re gonna see a lot more than my shadow.”
    With a quick nod, Amelia scurried into the tent.
    Houston fought to hold back his laughter. The woman was precious. Bold as brass one minute, ordering him into her tent; timid as a mouse the next, with wide eyes and a blush that just begged a man to touch her cheek.
    Dropping to his pallet, he worked his way back into his clothes. Inside his cabin, he did sleep without a stitch of clothing, but not out here where a man
could
wake up with a snake curled over him.
    He hefted his saddle to the other end of his pallet and stretched out, his gaze focused on the mules instead of the tent. He should have done it this way the first night.
    He chuckled low, remembering the relief he’d experienced when he’d peered out the tent and seen Amelia crouching on the log, her face hidden. He wondered at what point she’d covered her eyes. Maybe he could have spared himself the cold wash-up. He’d done it so quickly that his body had barely noticed the touch of the cloth. He supposed out of fairness, he should have let the cloth caress his body the way she did when she washed. He should have slowly removed every speck of dust and every remnant of dried sweat until he could have come out of that tent smelling like she did: clean, pure, and tempting.
    How could a woman be both pure and tempting? A decent woman shouldn’t wash herself the way Amelia did. A decent woman shouldn’t travel halfway across the country to marry a man she only knew through letters. Maybe Amelia Carson wasn’t a decent woman. Maybe—
    “Mr. Leigh?”
    Her soft, gentle voice brushed over him like the finest of linen rubbing against his coarse body, sending his thoughts to perdition where they belonged.
    Rolling over, he came up on his elbow and met her troubled gaze as she knelt beside his pallet, her hands folded primly in her lap. “Amelia, don’t you think after what we learned about each other tonight that we can call each other by our first names?”
    Even in the night shadows, he could see the flush in her cheeks as she lowered her gaze to her clenched hands.
    “That’s what I wanted to explain. I didn’t watch for very long so I just … I just didn’t want you to think I was wanton.”
    He didn’t know what possessed him to slip his finger beneath her chin and lift her gaze back to his. He could feel the slight quiver beneath her soft skin and hated himself because his weakness—and not hers—had brought them to this moment
    “I don’t think that.”
    Her green eyes held a depth of sadness. “Dallas might feel differently if he were to find out about tonight.”
    “He won’t hear it from me.”
    His fingers ached to spread out across her face, his palm to cup her cheek, his thumb to graze her softness, his hand to draw her heart-shaped mouth to his. In all his life, he’d kissed only one woman—a whore whose breath had carried the stench of all the men who had come before him.
    He had a feeling that the first time Dallas kissed Amelia, he’d taste nothing but her sweetness … as he should. Dallas had earned the right to nibble on those tempting lips because he’d dared to offer her a portion of his dream.
    Houston drew his hand away before his fingers stopped listening to his head and started listening to his erratic heart.
    “You’d best go back to bed now,” he said in a rough voice he hardly recognized as his own.
    “I don’t like to be inside the darkness, but if I keep the lantern burning, I’ll create shadows.”
    “I won’t be lookin’.”
    “Promise?”
    He deserved that hesitancy, that lack of trust. Dallas had told him once