Frozen with indecision, Nan gaped at him. And then, without even feeling herself move, she launched herself at him. True to his word, he caught her close against him. Trembling violently, Nan went up on her toes, locked both arms around his neck, and buried her face against his shirt. “Damn you! I think I hate you. No, I don’t. I take it back. I think I’m losing my mind.”
He laughed—a deep, rich rumble that she’d thought never to hear again—and tightened his embrace. Then he pressed his face against her hair, swaying on his feet and taking her with him. “Thank you,” he said, the words muffled.
“For what, damning you?”
Another chuckle shook his torso. “No, for believing me.”
Nan’s chest squeezed painfully. “I’m afraid you’ve suffered a head injury and have imagined everything, but I am convinced that you honestly believe all that you’ve told me.”
“Ah, so you think my brains are rattled, do you?” He smiled against her hair. “I wish they were, Nan. I wish they were. Then I could simply work on getting better and live into old age, loving you with every fiber of my being. Sadly, that won’t be the case. I have only three days left. You may not believe it, but it’s true. I’m not confused. I didn’t imagine anything. It happened exactly as I said. And just so you don’t get it into your head to call Doc Peterson to dose me with tonic until I regain my right mind, I’ll happily share that tidbit of information about you now, something that nobody on earth, unless it might be Laney, could possibly know.”
Nan turned her face upward to press her nose against his neck. “I’m waiting.”
“You, my sweet, beautiful, nearly perfect wife, have one tiny flaw. Well, not a flaw, really; I found it extremely enticing when I glimpsed it through the parted clouds.”
Curiosity aroused, Nan asked, “What? What did you see?”
“A mole or a dark freckle, I couldn’t tell for sure which, on your right breast. It peeked out at me over the lacy top edge of your chemise. I was so captivated that I damned near lost my balance and fell through the hole in the clouds.”
Nan stiffened. No one—not even Laney, so far as she knew—had ever seen her mole. It had appeared on her breast about two years ago, and in the time since, she’d been trying, without stellar success, to teach Laney modest behavior. Parading about in one’s underthings was not ladylike.
“Oh, dear God,” she whispered. “There’s no way you could know about that—unless you’re a keyhole peeper.”
He chuckled again. “A smart fellow like me? You’re the lady who’s handy with knitting needles. If I’d dared to press my eye to a keyhole, you probably would have stabbed me right in the pupil.”
Nan giggled. But her mirth quickly faded. Gabriel had just offered her inarguable proof of . . . well, something. She still had problems believing that he’d stood on a cloud and witnessed scenes of her life. But if he hadn’t, there was no way—absolutely no way in this world—that he could know about the mole. And if that much of his story was true, then did it follow that all of it was? And if it was—
“Oh, dear God, no!” She clung frantically to his neck. “You can’t die. Not in three days! Not even in a year! I shan’t be able to live without you!”
His mood changed swiftly with hers. “I wish I could stay with you, sweetheart. I’d give anything for that.”
“What shall we do?” she cried.
“Well, my plan is to make love to you—passionately, intensely, and nonstop—before Gabriel or Michael erases all your memories of me.”
He shifted to sweep her up in his arms, the move so unexpected that Nan squeaked with a start. As he carried her up the steep staircase, a horrible thought occurred to her.
“What if . . . well, what if they erase all my memories of you while you’re making love to me?”
Gabriel missed a step, barely managed to catch his balance by pressing his shoulder against the wall, and tucked in his chin to give her a slightly horrified look.
“I reckon I’ll say, ‘Pardon me, ma’am. I don’t know how I wound up in your bed. I’m leaving now. So please don’t scream.’”
Nan digested that, and then they both burst out laughing.
Laughter, one of Gabriel’s gifts to her. And, oh, how glorious a gift it was.
Chapter Fifteen
As Gabriel carried her to the bedroom, Nan clung to his neck, determined to focus on the moment and not allow fear or worry to nip at the edges of her mind. Sadly, though, as much as she loved this man and hoped to please him, her thoughts drifted away from him. Oddly, she wasn’t terribly nervous about engaging in the act, although her inexperience with such things did pose slightly disturbing questions she couldn’t answer. What really terrified her was that she would soon lose him. As he gently deposited her on her feet beside the bed, left her momentarily to light the lantern, and then returned to catch her close again, all she could think was that he would leave her in only three days. It was such a short time. How could a woman let go and feel overcome with desire in her husband’s arms when death hovered over him like a black specter?
Gabriel must have felt her tension. Nuzzling her ear to send shivers coursing through her, he whispered, “What is it?”
Nan squeezed her eyes shut and pressed as close to him as she could get, hoping to absorb some of his courage, or, failing that, to melt into him and cease to exist as a separate person. Oh, how she’d come to love him—his unpredictable sense of humor, his caring heart, the way his dark eyes twinkled into hers and warmed her all the way through. She wished now that she’d spent every single night in the circle of his powerful arms, enveloped by his heat. Instead she’d wasted all those opportunities. And now, in too short a while, they would be lost to her forever.
“Nan?” He tugged lightly on her lobe with his teeth. “I’ve got this real bad feeling that you’re a hundred miles away. Are you afraid of what’s about to happen between us?”
“No.”
He sighed. “Well, hell. You aren’t still fretting about Geneva’s bright red sequins, are you?”
Nan laughed, dismayed when the sound came out as a wet choke. She tightened her arms around his neck, frustrated by her lack of height, wanting to experience the feel of him in places she couldn’t quite reach. “Oh, Gabriel, I’m sorry. Sequins are the last thing on my mind.”
“What, then?”
“I’m going to lose you,” she pushed out, feeling as if the words had to move through a blob of cold, congealed oatmeal caught in her throat. “I can’t bear it.”
He sighed, and in one fluid motion he sat on the bed and swept her onto his lap. Reaching up to pick the pins from her hair, he said, “Life is a great big poker game, Nan. None of us really thinks of it that way, but the truth is, we all stand to lose those we love with the turn of a card, a shift of the wind, or the flutter of a leaf. And from the moment we’re born, we all start to die. You’ll die one day. So will Laney. Geneva is no spring chicken and will soon be wearing an awful sequined gown in heaven. That misguided woman would probably put sequins on her angel wings if she was ever fortunate enough to earn a pair.”
Nan snorted, a sound that was half sob and half laugh. Gabriel tugged a white handkerchief from his hip pocket and reached to wipe her cheeks and then her nose. Until then, Nan hadn’t realized that tears were streaming in rivers down her cheeks.
“Hardly anyone knows when they’re going to go,” he whispered. “Imagine the chaos if they did. For instance, if I told you that tomorrow morning you were going to keel over dead, what would you do in the hours left to you?”
Nan gulped and held her breath for a moment to stop a sob that tried to escape. When she felt the pressure subside, she said in a rush, “I’d live every moment as if it were my last, I guess.”
“Exactly,” he said, grinning as he gave her nose another squeeze with the square of linen. “And that’s just what I want to do??
?live every moment as if it’s my last. I don’t want to think about what will happen on Christmas morning. I just want to live, really live during the time I’ve got left.” He tossed the handkerchief aside and lifted her chin slightly with his bent finger. “I know it’s a tall order, but can you let go and help me do that? No tears, no dread. Let’s just exist in each moment and make each one as wonderful as we can.”
Nan took a deep, cleansing breath. Life offered no guarantees to anyone, and she’d be a fool to miss out on the beauty of now. She also knew that Gabriel needed her help in order to make the most of what time he had left.
“That,” she said with a wobbly smile, “is an invitation I absolutely cannot refuse, Mr. Valance. Let’s live every second as if it’s our last.”
He set her off his lap, stood, and stretched out a palm to her. “Dance with me?”
Nan laughed, real laughter this time. “We have no music,” she said as she laid her fingers across his.
He grasped her hand, tugging her up and into his arms. Before she could even catch her balance, he swept her into a swirl. Against her hair, he whispered, “We do have music. Don’t you hear it?”
Nan relaxed, allowing her body to float with his, and in her heart she did hear music—not the conventional kind to be heard with the ears, but a melody all the same, precious, sweet, and only theirs. They dipped, swayed, and turned, bodies moving as one in the amber glow cast by the lamp, their shadows shifting over the walls with them in perfect unity. Gabriel. For Nan, he was not only the music but also the dance, and as she drifted with him through shadow and light, she thanked God for this moment and any that followed, because each would shine in her memory like a polished gem for the remainder of her life.
She wasn’t sure what to expect when it came time to engage in the act, but then, as always with Gabriel, she would have been more successful at catching dust motes than trying to predict his next move. She anticipated an abrupt change in his mood and plenty of advance warning before he began to make love to her, but instead he only slowed their momentum to a mere rocking motion and kissed her, a soft, coaxing, whispery graze of his mouth over hers that delighted her senses and left her yearning for more. His mouth tasted of coffee and a masculine essence exclusively his own. Nan wished she could bottle the flavor of him and stash it in her bedside drawer, something of him that she could take out on lonely nights to savor once again. But that wasn’t possible; she could count on only this moment. So she concentrated fiercely on each fraction of a second, attempting to imprint upon her memory the sound of his breathing and the rustle of his shirt, the pulse beat that thrummed into her skin from his fingertips, the feel of his palms, as thick and satiny as well-buffed leather.
Still swaying to their secret melody, he inched her back toward the wall and then pressed her against it. Cupping her cheeks in his big hands, he tipped her head slightly back to trail his lips over each of her brows, kissed her eyelids closed, traced the angle of her cheekbones, and in the process made her feel cherished. Her senses spun. Her heart began to slog. Her bones felt as if they were made of butter and slowly melting in his radiant warmth.
Gabriel. He didn’t ask, and yet he didn’t take. Button by button, he unfastened her dress, distracting her with kisses after each one slipped free, and soon her gown and petticoats lay in a puddle at her feet. Before she could feel embarrassed, he caught her up in his arms and carried her to the bed, where he laid her full-length on her back and then stretched out beside her. Nan momentarily regretted the lantern light, but then she grew lost in the expressions on her husband’s dark face and was glad not to miss them. She saw love for her etched in every line of his chiseled features, reverence in his gaze, and adoration in the half smile that curved his firm mouth. He touched the hollow of her throat as if he were fascinated. Then he lightly traced the scallops of lace that edged the top of her chemise. He winked at her, reverting back momentarily to her mischievous, funny husband as he bent to touch his tongue to her mole.
Nan’s breath snagged at the base of her throat as his hot mouth closed over the imperfection, and she learned between one heartbeat and the next that she’d only just begun to melt. Then she ceased to think at all and surrendered to the sensations of being tasted by a man who seemed bent on savoring every bend, curve, and secret place of her body. He began with the mole, then moved to the ridges of her collarbone, the slope of her shoulders, the sensitive inner side at the bend of her arms, and then spent an interminable amount of time exploring her wrists and hands. Nan’s entire body tingled, and when he moved away from her to remove his gun belt and strip off his shirt, she was so limp and dazed that she felt as if she’d been sipping spirits.
She’d seen Gabriel without a shirt many times, but tonight the powerful planes of his chest, the rippling slope of his thick shoulders, and the well-muscled display of his arms seemed gilded by the lantern light. She recalled thinking once that he was beautiful, like a carving of polished teak, and how horrified she’d been to entertain such a notion. She was no longer horrified. Gabriel had a gorgeous upper body, every line of it sculpted as if by a master, and she had no doubt that he was just as impressive from the waist down. And he was hers, only hers.
When he sat to take off his boots and socks, Nan reached out to trail a fingertip down his spine, eager to feel his bare skin, a pleasure she had long denied herself. He grinned over his shoulder.
“No hurry,” he said. “I’ve prided myself on being fast at a lot of things, but making love to you isn’t going to be one of them.”
Heat surged from low in Nan’s belly to lick at her skin from head to toe. “You’re very well practiced at it.”
He turned so suddenly to brace his arms on either side of her and lean low that she blinked, the only gesture of surprise she could manage, because her body had gone heavy with languorous pleasure. “Well practiced?” His eyes twinkled with amusement. “I confess to having been with countless females, but everything I just did with you was a first for me.”
Nan liked the thought that at least some of this would be something he’d done with nobody else. “No, sir.” Convince me, her tone pleaded. “How can you have made love with countless females and experience anything new with me tonight?”
He narrowed an eye at her. “I said I’d been with countless females, not that I ever made love with them. That particular kind of intimacy is more . . . I don’t know. . . . Quick and businesslike is probably a good way to describe it. I guess there are men who don’t care if they’re twentieth in line, but I wasn’t one of them. I never felt emotionally touched during those encounters.”
She really liked that he’d used the past tense, because she had no intention of sharing this man with anyone. From now on, whether their time together was brief or long, he would be exclusively hers.
He dipped his head to nibble on her ear, his husky voice vibrating through her as he said, “You are my one and only love, Nan. And most of this is as new to me as it is to you—sweet, beautiful, wondrous, and absolutely new.” He nipped playfully at her earlobe. “Stop thinking about other females, or I’ll have to start all over again.”
His words eased the brief sting of jealousy that she’d felt. She hesitantly rested her hands on his bare shoulders, glorying in the vibrant and silky warmth of his skin, which had a slightly coarser texture than hers. A breathless sensation came over her, and she could have sworn her heart stopped beating as she drew her palms downward to finally feel his chest and dip her fingertips into the curly black hair there.
“Oh, Gabriel.” Her voice sounded throaty and almost sultry, which was strange to her ears. But then, she’d never felt this way before: hot and tingly all over, with certain parts of her aching with needs she couldn’t define. “Make love to me.”
“Make love with you,” he corrected in a husky whisper. “But first we need to get rid of the rest of your clothes.”
Nan made fists over the cover
let beneath her as he lifted her right leg to roll her garter and black stocking slowly down to her knee, tasting every inch of skin as it was bared. When he finally divested her of her boot and got the stocking off, she moaned as he nibbled at each of her toes and tickled the arch of her foot with feathery kisses. Her other leg and foot received the same attention before he set himself to the task of slowly—ever so slowly—tugging loose her corset strings, dipping his head occasionally to suckle her nipples through her cotton chemise. Soon the cloth became wet and cool from the air, and the tips of her breasts went as pointy and hard as metal rivets.
Gabriel’s gaze went molten—and Nan felt the burn clear to her core. Oh, how she wanted. She wasn’t sure precisely what she yearned for. The images she’d held in her mind of what occurred in a marriage bed had always disgusted her. But somehow, with Gabriel, nothing seemed distasteful.
Making love with him became Nan’s wish when all her clothing had been discarded. She felt only a moment of shyness, but the touch of his warm hand on her bare waist blasted all such foolishness from her mind. When he lowered himself over her, she decided the tasting business could go both ways, and opened her mouth over his neck to tongue a faint bit of salt from his skin. Next she sampled his shoulder. Then she went for his chest, loving the feel of his furred flesh against her lips.
“Oh, sweet Lord,” he cried, the pace of his breathing suddenly shallow and fast. “Don’t. . . . I want to . . . Slow and easy, sweetheart. This is your first time, and I want to make it special for— Oh, God.”
Nan ignored his protests. It seemed entirely unfair that she was now as naked as a newborn babe while he still hid behind trousers. She fumbled inexpertly with his belt buckle, wondering why he kept jerking and snapping his body taut after she dived her fingers inside his waistband to get a better grip on the dratted metal.
He suddenly whooshed out air, caught her wrists, and pinned her hands above her head, his broad chest forming a canopy of bunched muscle over hers. “My britches stay put until the time is right.”