The Bushranger's Wife

by Cheryl Adnams

  ‘Right.’ Father Flaherty closed his Bible with a loud snap. ‘Can I go home now?’

  ‘Of course,’ Pru said with a giggle as she and Jack parted reluctantly. ‘Jack, take the man home.’

  He hated to leave his new bride to take the long journey to Daylesford and back. But when the priest had moved away to the dray and out of earshot, Pru grabbed Jack and kissed him again.

  ‘Hurry back,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  His blood heated at the unmistakable desire glowing in her eyes. A month of pent up frustration between them was bordering on incendiary. Oh, he would hurry alright.

  Rushing to the wagon, he helped the priest into the back before climbing aboard and taking the reins. As he turned them out towards the road, he looked back. The last thing he saw was Pru standing on the porch in her shabby day dress, looking like the most beautiful bride in the world.

  ***

  Jack had never moved the dray so fast in his life, D’Artagnan being pushed to his limits in the rush to get home. On arrival in Daylesford, he’d practically pushed the priest out of the dray while it was still moving.

  With his heart pounding in his ears, he’d had to slow down at Dead Man’s Bend when the tilt of the dray nearly saw him ending up another of the sharp corner’s namesakes.

  Barely a hint of sun remained on his arrival at the house. The night bugs were already beginning to take over the symphony from the birds of the day. With record speed, he unhitched the horse and set him to roam in the home paddock.

  He gave himself a quick wash in the water barrel beside the porch steps. Then, taking a few deep breaths, he stepped up onto the porch. But as he reached for the door handle, his hand shook. He couldn’t go rushing in to Pru like this. He wasn’t a teenaged boy anymore, jumping into his first foray at sex. He was a grown man, for Christ’s sake. Then why did he feel just like that teenaged boy? Maybe because the past month of living with Pru had him as worked up as an eighteen year old being treated by his mates to one of the girls at Miss Margaret’s house of ill-repute.

  His anticipation had him aroused and impatient. His wife was a virgin and she would need him to be calm and patient with her. More than that, he wanted to be gentle with her, not run at her like a stallion in heat. Breathing deeply, he paced the porch until his heart rate slowed.

  At the sound of the front door opening, he spun back, only to have his heart leap like that damned stallion at steeplechase. Pru stood in the doorway dressed only in a thin, filmy underdress. The same nightdress he’d bought her when she’d first come to live with him.

  ‘Welcome home, Mr Fairweather,’ she said, her voice a low purr.

  Sailors had been called to their peril by sirens with less song in their voices.

  He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out.

  His eyes tracked down the ivory-coloured sheath. The lanterns inside the house cast a backlight, making the dress appear translucent so he could see the outline of her body beneath the thin fabric.

  She turned slightly and the curve of one shapely breast caught his eye. As he stepped closer, he could see a pointed nipple pressing into the cloth.

  Again, he opened his mouth but only a croak came out.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Good evening, Mrs Fairweather.’

  She giggled, momentarily losing that sensuality and reminding him just how innocent she really was. ‘I like the sound of that. Mrs Prudence Fairweather.’

  She reached out a hand and after a moment of staring at the soft delicate skin of her palm, he took it and let her lead him into the house.

  Walking slowly behind her, he marvelled at the thick lustrous waterfall of her sunset coloured hair, sparking each time she leaned down to blow out a candle. He could get his hands lost for days in all that hair.

  The roundness of her backside beneath the dress as they walked towards the bedroom made him want to reach out and touch, but he felt as though he were in a dream, being led by the siren song.

  Finally inside the bedroom, he closed the door behind them. She’d gone to some trouble setting the mood. Candles burned low, casting shadows in the warm yellow glow. Fresh roses scented the air from the vase on the bureau, the bedsheets had been turned down. It was his bedroom, but he hadn’t slept here since Pru had arrived. He barely recognised it with all its feminine touches.

  But it all faded when she turned to face him. His lovely, beautiful, exquisite wife, his virgin bride. He needed to remember that. He didn’t want to frighten her so that she would never want to sleep with him again.

  Carefully, he stepped towards her. Lifting his hand, he touched her cheek, rubbing his thumb across her full pink lips. His breath caught when she opened her mouth and sucked lightly on the end of his thumb. Undone, he removed his thumb and crushed his mouth to hers, pulling her against him. He couldn’t get close enough. His hands sought her soft arse and squeezed, grinding her against his hardness.

  At her surprised gasp he eased back.

  Calmly, he told himself.

  ‘Pru,’ he said, softening the kiss.

  ‘Mmm?’ she murmured between his light kisses.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here.’ He took his lips on a journey down her jaw, her throat, to her ear. ‘But this last month has nearly killed me.’

  He heard her soft chuckle and lifted his eyes to hers again.

  ‘Jack, I thought of us as married the minute I started living with you. You could have had me in your bed from the first day.’

  ‘You were worth the wait.’

  Lowering his hands, he grasped onto the filmy nightgown and gathered it, lifted it up her body, revealing first her long slender legs. His body tightened as he lifted higher, now able to see the dark red curls between her legs, her flat belly, and then as the dress was lifted off and tossed away behind him, he got his first full look at his Pru in all her naked glory.

  She didn’t shy away, made no attempt to cover herself.

  ‘Beautiful,’ was all he said, before taking her against him and kissing her until they were both panting heavily with their desire.

  Then her hands were at his waistband. ‘Let me undress my husband.’

  ‘By all means.’

  She had his shirt up and over his head quickly. Her fingers blazed a path across his chest and down across his stomach, making him gasp and his muscles contract with the incredible sensation of having her hands move lower and lower.

  Her hands shook as she worked the buttons on his trousers. There was no way she could mistake his want. He was pressed so hard against his trousers that when she finally removed the last button, his erection released itself with urgency.

  She bit her lips to stop the smile, but he saw it. If he’d been worried about her being afraid of him, or his man parts, he needn’t have been. Ever the adventurous student, she was fascinated, running her fingers along its length before reaching out to grasp him in her warm hand.

  ‘Careful,’ he warned, his voice gruff with his barely restrained desire.

  ‘Did I hurt you?’

  Her eyes were wide and worried, and he had to resist the urge to shove her down on the bed and take her straight away.

  ‘No, you didn’t hurt me,’ he said, his breath coming fast and deep. ‘We need to take this slow. And if you don’t stop pawing at me like that, I will either lose my ability to control myself, turn you over and take you like a mare being serviced, or you will unman me as I stand here.’

  Carefully, he removed her hand and stripping himself of the last of his clothes, he slowly lowered her to the bed. She opened her legs and reached a hand to him.

  He shook his head. ‘I said, we’re going to take this slow.’

  He proceeded to lay beside her instead of on top of her as she had so obviously expected. Biting back on his desperate urge to mount her and take what he needed, he ran his hand across her décolletage watching one pink nipple rise as he squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger.

  She jerked a little w
ith the pleasure–pain of it. He did it again, with the nipple closest to him, following the pinch with a wet and warm sweep of his tongue. She cried out and he knew he had her. He would take her to such heights of arousal—the likes of which she would never have had with Frederick Grantham—before he took his own pleasure.

  ***

  Jack lay beside her, his fingers combing in slow movements through her hair. It was such a sweet and tender feeling and Pru turned her face to his.

  ‘You have the most beautiful hair,’ he said. ‘Golden like the sunset. Soft as new grass in the field.’

  ‘Jack, you’re a poet.’

  ‘Being lucky enough to be with you would make a poet out of any man.’

  She ran her hand lovingly across his cheek. Was this her big, tough bushranger?

  ‘How did I get so lucky? How does Jack the Devil deserve such an angel?’

  Her throat closed. No words would pass. So instead she kissed him. Softly at first, but then she found herself wrapped around him again, like a vine to a tree. He did things to her. With just a kiss, her body responded to his and she felt the warming of her blood, the liquefying of her lower abdomen where he’d pressed into her and taken her virginity. She took her kisses across his cheeks, down his jaw and to his chest. The light smattering of pale brown hair made her smile. He couldn’t grow a decent beard. It was no surprise his chest struggled to show more than a few lonely curls.

  He groaned when her hand had grasped around his manhood. She couldn’t help it. The thing fascinated her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen the male reproductive parts on animals. But they were animals. Jack was a man. And his manhood was impressive. It had hurt at first. That first slow plunge had stretched her until she began to worry that she’d never enjoy sexual intercourse with her husband. But then he’d held still, stared down into her eyes with such emotion, such a look of desire just for her that she’d relaxed, and her whole body warmed and welcomed him as though they’d always been meant to fit together. As he’d begun to move, slowly, gently inside her, the pain subsided and a strange and wonderful sensation built and swelled until she found his rhythm and moved with him. Like a fever they rose together, melded together and as he’d ground his teeth and groaned she felt him release. She’d been so close to some sort of release herself, but hadn’t quite got there. She wondered what that release would feel like. Would she have the same powerful reaction Jack had experienced? Now, just thinking about it, she wanted to do it all over again, to feel that building inside her, to see where it would lead her. Keeping him in hand, she moved to situate herself over the top of him.

  ‘I need a break, woman,’ he told her with a low chuckle.

  Reluctantly, she rolled to lay beside him again, the opposite way to him now with her feet near his head.

  A flicker of rising sun permeated the room, but it was still night as far as she was concerned. It could stay night for a month if that meant she would never have to leave this bed, so she would never have to leave Jack, and he would never have to leave her.

  ‘Did you enjoy making love with me?’ he asked, taking one of her feet and tickling her.

  She squirmed until he stopped tickling, and when he looked down at her with sleepy, hooded eyes, she was lost again in the honey brown.

  ‘I have nothing to compare it to,’ she said with a little shrug.

  He nodded, a small frown forming between his eyes.

  She was being terribly mean teasing him this way. Chuckling lightly, she ran her hand down his bare thigh.

  ‘Yes, I enjoyed it, Jack. It was wonderful. Is this what it’s like for everyone? I wonder how people stay out of bed.’

  ‘Many don’t,’ he said with a laugh. ‘It’s not like this for everyone, with everyone.’

  ‘Was it like this for you with other women?’

  His brow furrowed again. ‘I don’t want to talk about other women with you. You are my wife. There will never be another woman for me.’

  His words made her happy, but at the same time she couldn’t help but wonder how many women she would come across whose sly, knowing look she might catch. Would she always wonder whether Jack had had relations with this woman or that one? He’d led a colourful life before she’d met him. She imagined he’d been with many women. It didn’t mean she had to like it.

  His fingers ran small lines from her toes, across the pads of her feet and her instep, all the way up her calf muscles to the soft space behind her knees.

  She giggled and shifted. ‘Stop that, Jack. It tickles.’

  ‘You know,’ he said, but continued his feather-light ministrations on her skin. ‘I may need to rest, but there are other things a man can do to make a woman feel good while he is replenishing his stores of energy.’

  He tickled the back of her knee again.

  ‘Tickling is not pleasurable, Jack,’ she said, flicking his hand away yet again.

  He grinned, slowly and deviously. ‘Oh, tickling can be very pleasurable.’

  This time he slowly ran his fingers up, past her knee, to the inside of her thigh. ‘You just have to know how and where to do the tickling.’

  Pru gasped when his fingers didn’t stop but continued up to the apex of her thighs and into the soft mound of hair.

  ‘Just relax, my love.’

  She did as she was told and after a few moments of nervousness, she found she couldn’t concentrate on anything but the sparks of electricity Jack was sending through her body with the gentleness of his fingers and his mouth.

  She could hear sighs and moans of pleasure and realised they were coming from her. She’d never made those sounds before in her life but she’d happily make them again and again if Jack wanted to do this to her on a regular basis.

  She was twenty-two years old, and thank God she was married. Because she didn’t think she could go another day of her life without having known the wonders of sex with a man like Jack.

  The climax rolled through her and her cries sounded loud in the quiet room. The last thing she remembered was feeling Jack’s weight fall to the bed beside her, his arm across her naked breasts and his lips against her neck. Exhausted from a full night of lovemaking, she drifted off to a heavenly sleep.

  Chapter 10

  ‘Right, boys, let’s hit the pub.’

  Garrett rubbed his hands together before sweeping his share of the loot from their latest successful robbery into a sack. They were in an upstairs room at the Duchess of Kent, sorting out what they could keep and what had to go to Alfred to be sold on the black market.

  ‘There’s a hot game of cards and an even hotter woman waiting for a man such as I.’

  ‘Stick with the woman,’ Jack advised. ‘You’re shite at the cards.’

  ‘He’s shite with the women, too,’ Bobby tossed in.

  Garrett took Bobby under his elbow in a stranglehold. ‘Take it back!’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘I’m a better lover than you, Bobby boy.’

  ‘That’s not what I hear.’

  Jack sat back amused as they played about at fighting like children until they wore themselves out. When they were upright again, Jack laughed at their scruffed hair, their red faces. ‘Oh, the ladies will adore you now.’

  ‘You coming downstairs for a pint, Jack?’ Bobby asked, straightening his waistcoat and doing his best to flatten down his hair. ‘That Arabella woman has been asking after you for weeks now.’

  Jack thought about it. He would have enjoyed a quiet pint with his mates. But he was a married man now. He could no longer spend his nights in boarding houses or hotels after a robbery, while his wife was at home waiting for him, hoping that he was safe. The shock of it was he not only needed to get home to see Pru, he wanted to. He’d missed her today. And only Pru could satisfy the wants that coursed through his system after a good bail up.

  Since she’d discovered the joys of sex, she was more than happy to welcome him home from bushranging with open arms and fervent kisses that often led them to making love in
interesting places.

  When she’d come out to welcome him home one evening not long after they were married, they scared the horses in the barn as they’d ended up rolling in the hay like a pair of animals themselves. They’d made good use of the kitchen table a few times as well, until the legs had snapped under the weight of them and they’d had to break it up to use for firewood. Easy come, easy go. He’d never liked the table much anyway. Then he’d surprised her a few weeks later with another, much sturdier, shining cedar dining table he’d had delivered from the city. Sadly, it had backfired on him as she’d loved it far too much to besmirch with naked bodies leaving sweat on the immaculately polished wood. His groin tightened as he thought of his lovely Pru and their wild lovemaking.

  ‘Jack?’ Bobby’s voice broke into his rampant thoughts. ‘I asked if you’re coming for a drink.’

  ‘Ah, no, I’m heading back to Little Windsor,’ Jack said, taking his time to pack his share of the loot safely into his saddlebag.

  ‘It’s late,’ Bobby said, checking the time on the silver-plated pocket watch he’d scored that day. ‘And Windsor’s a good forty-five minute ride away. You may as well stay in town and find a cosy bed and a warm body to keep you company in it.’

  Jack remained silent, but Bobby must have seen the smile that had crept across his face as he’d mentioned a warm body in his bed. He’d immediately thought of Pru, naked and waiting.

  Bobby shared a quizzical look with Garrett before they both looked inquisitorially at Jack.

  ‘Unless there’s a warm body at the house waiting for you.’ Garrett narrowed his eyes.

  Again, Jack said nothing, just kept loading his saddlebags.

  ‘Jack the Devil, do you have a woman living with you?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘That woman.’ Garrett stabbed a finger in Jack’s direction as realisation struck. ‘That bit of skirt that came out on the road that day. The shoe lady. She’s living with you?’

  Jack’s jaw tightened but he kept his voice low and calm. ‘Garrett, call her a bit of skirt again and I’ll shoot you where you stand.’