Merline Lovelace by Countess In Buckskin

it had fallen and spread it atop the buffalo robe. Pine branches rustled as first he, then Tatiana, resumed their places. She held herself away from him, sharing the covering but not his warmth. That would come later, Josh knew, when sleep and the predawn cold drew them together.
    He folded his hands under his head, listening to the uneven pattern of her breathing. Above him a thousand stars shimmered in the night sky. As was his habit, he courted sleep by mentally preparing himself for the next day’s march. Slowly, inevitably, his thoughts spun from the trek to the woman who would make it with him.
    She hid a surprising vulnerability behind that prickly exterior of hers. Josh hadn’t missed the sadness in her voice when she spoke of her husband, or the bitterness. Why hadn’t she loved him? Why hadn’t the man loved her? Had theirs been a marriage of convenience, a merging of titles and properties? Even so, Josh couldn’t imagine her nameless, faceless husband not desiring her. For all her forward ways and irritating hardheadedness, Tatiana Grig... Grigor... Whoever... could start a man’s blood to pounding. She certainly wasn’t lacking any feminine charms. His brief, startling glimpse of her full breasts and slender waist had confirmed that.
    Josh rolled his eyes, cursing under his breath. The last thing he needed to do was think about the Russian’s body! His own went hard as he fought to banish the image of her pale skin and rounded hips. In desperation, he tried to focus his thoughts on his memories of Catherine. His remorse over the way he’d treated Tatiana. The lost husband who had left those shadows in her eyes. Anything!
    He was still trying to shove the image of her sleekly curved form from his mind when the branches beneath him sagged. Muttering in Russian, Tatiana burrowed into his side. The breasts that Josh had just been trying not to visualize pressed into his rib cage.
    He closed his eyes. Opened them. Started counting the stars, as she’d done earlier. Gave up at 107, when she muttered again and nudged his shoulder with her chin. Resigning himself to a long, sleepless night, Josh brought his arm down. She sighed and cushioned her head in the hollow of his shoulder. Her breath washed his neck in warm, moist heat.
    Josh started counting once more.
     
    Tatiana woke to the rank scent of buffalo and a chorus of small, foreign sounds. Wrinkling her nose, she dug her face out of the curly, ticklish fur and breathed in a draft of cold air.
    While her sleep-blurred eyes adjusted to the dimness that still blanketed the mountains, Tatiana identified the sounds that had teased her into wakefulness. The little stream trickled through its narrow, ice-encrusted channel. The pony huffed a short distance away. A faint chink confused her, until she recognized the sound of metal on metal. A spoon hitting a tin plate, she thought. Or the lid of the pot the American used to boil coffee beans.
    The thought of the dark, steaming, bitter brew spurred Tatiana to movement. She thrust off the fleecy blanket and sat up, tilting sideways in the shifting boughs. Righting herself with one hand, she shoved her tumbled hair out of her eyes with the other.
    “Mornin’.”
    The American’s deep drawl came to her from the shadows. Blinking the last of the sleep from her eyes, Tatiana watched him move toward the fire in an easy, noiseless stride.
    “God give you good morning,” she murmured.
    He knelt on one knee beside the banked fire and balanced the battered tin pot on the embers. “The coffee will boil in a few minutes. Keep warm until it does. You’ll have time enough to tend to your needs while I pack up.”
    Tatiana had no objection to a few more moments in the bed’s warmth. Bunching the fleecy blanket coat around her shoulders, she propped her chin on her knees and studied the confusing, confounding man she’d slept beside.
    The fire’s glow cast his face into sharp relief. Perhaps she’d been too hasty in her