Chapter 24
Blair started walking, but she didn’t last long. The combination of little food, less sleep, and even more excitement, at last got to her. When she started to stumble, Lee picked her up and put her on his horse and led the way. Blair nodded off to sleep and the times that she nearly fell from the horse, Lee was there to catch her and put her back on.
They seemed to travel for days and, at one point, Blair was sure that she’d never even seen a bed in her life, much less slept in one.
The sun was hanging low in the sky when they finally stopped and Lee lifted her from the horse. Listlessly, she opened her eyes to look at a large log cabin with a stone foundation.
“Where are we?” she asked, but wasn’t really sure that she cared. All she wanted to do was sleep.
“It’s my father’s hunting cabin. We’ll stay here for a few days.”
Blair nodded and closed her eyes as Lee carried her inside the cabin. She was vaguely aware that he was taking her up some stairs, but she was too tired to be sure. By the time he placed her on a bed, she was sound asleep.
She awoke to an odd sound outside the window, and as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes, she grew curious as to what the sound was. She tossed the cover back, then gasped when she found herself to be nude. There was a man’s shirt on the end of the pine bed and she put it on. Looking down from the window, she saw cows dotting the landscape, and below the window a cow and calf were chomping grass and making the sound that had wakened her.
The cabin was on a slight hill in a clearing in the forest, mountains on all sides, tall trees a few yards from the cabin. The grass was laced with wild rose bushes that were just beginning to bloom.
A sound on the stair behind her made her turn. Lee was just coming up with a tray in his hands, the smell of the food making her mouth water.
“I thought I heard you,” he said, smiling at her and looking with interest at her bare legs below the shirt. Blair self-consciously slipped back into the bed and Lee put the tray across her lap.
He removed the cloth that covered the food. “I’m afraid there’s no fresh food, but we have everything that’s ever been canned or preserved.” There was ham and bacon, cheese, peaches, corn muffins, and a tiny dish of wild strawberries.
“It’s a feast and I’m starving,” she said, and started to eat with gusto.
Lee lounged across the foot of the bed and watched her with a steady intensity that began to make her blush. She was more than aware that now all obstacles to the wedding night were at last removed.
“How long did I sleep?” she asked, mouth full of food.
Lee removed his pocket watch in a slow, easy way that made her pause in her eating. He looked at it, then put it on the little table next to the bed, as if he had no intention of putting it back into his pocket.
“Fourteen hours,” he said.
Blair stuffed a corn muffin into her mouth so fast that she nearly choked. “You said that this was your father’s cabin. Have you been here often?”
Leander began to unbutton his shirt, taking his time over each button, then slowly pulling it out of his pants. “Since I was a kid,” he said.
His eyes on hers were intense and serious—and the way he was looking at her through his lashes was making her nervous. She began to eat faster. “Did you come up here for elk?”
Lee, his eyes never leaving hers, began to unbutton the placket of his trousers.
It didn’t take a second glance to show that he was wearing no underwear. Blair’s hand began to tremble.
Lee stood and let his trousers slip to the floor.
Blair looked up at him, her eyes on his, her hand halfway to her mouth with a piece of bacon, while he bent toward her and removed the tray and bacon, and set them on the floor.
“You’re not Houston now,” he said.
For a moment, Blair was afraid of him. She’d fought him every minute for the past few weeks, and she’d felt so guilty about what she’d done to her sister that now she couldn’t really believe that it was all right to give in to him.
Lee bent toward her and she moved backward until her head came into contact with the headboard. Part of her wanted to move away, but the other part—the biggest part—would have died before moving.
Very gently, Lee’s lips touched hers. He didn’t press her or touch her in any other way. There was just this lovely man with this magnificent, nude body bending over her and kissing her.
Blair started sliding down in the bed, or perhaps running down into it would better describe it, rather like butter melting. Lee stayed with her, bending as far as he could until he lost balance and fell on top of her.
From then on, there was no more slowness. Blair opened her mouth to his kiss, and Leander became like a wild man: kissing her with passion, his hands tearing at her hair, running all over her body, ripping the shirt from her. Blair was caught by his passion. For weeks, she’d wanted him, and now he was hers to touch and hold, to help her get rid of this ache that had been caused by holding back for too long.