by Jane Henry
Matthew stood with his lunch pail in one hand and books in the other, his wild hair wet and slicked down, and I remembered well the mornings he’d fight his ma, when Samuel wasn’t there, until she bested him and straightened his hair out for school. If Samuel was there he’d merely give him that ‘look’ and say in his low voice, “Matthew, mind your ma,” and Matthew would meekly comply.
As my eyes adjusted to the light, I looked with surprise to see that Samuel stood next to him. I hadn’t expected Samuel to return so soon. I nodded to him, and he tipped his hat.
“All right, then, you two behave yourselves, and come straight back here for some cookies after school,” I said, knowing that they’d come straight home with the promise of such a treat.
I waved as I saw them off, pleased Hannah had Matthew to watch out for her. I stood, my arms wrapped around me, enjoying the warmth of the sun. Though Samuel stood beside me, my mind was churning over all I had to do that day, so I didn’t speak for a moment. I had so very much on my mind that when I heard the squall of the barn cat, I just about jumped out of my skin.
There was chirping and squawks, and sounds of a struggle just inside the barn. I gasped, thankful in the split second it took me to realize what was happening, that Hannah had already gone to school. I bolted to the barn, but Samuel got there first.
* * *
There were feathers and blood, and a proud-looking tabby cat standing with the mama bird limp in its mouth. We called the cat Cornhusk, and she was Hannah’s least favorite, scrawny and aloof, but I liked her because she hunted mice with a vengeance. Cornhusk came to me and dropped the bird as an offering at my feet. I shook with fury.
“You wicked, evil thing!” I shrieked, swatting at it fiercely with my hand. It scurried away, narrowly missing my hand, and likely confused as to why I hadn’t been grateful for the gift.
I fell to my knees and gently lifted the lifeless bird. Dropping the bird, I lifted my apron to my face. As tears welled in my eyes and sadness filled my chest, Samuel spoke.
“Now, Ruth, don’t despair,” he said. “Come here, woman, and look.”
I dropped my apron.
“Every one of ‘em unharmed,” he murmured, picking up one of the wee baby birds in his large hand. The baby bird pecked at his palm, causing him to chuckle as he stroked one large, rough finger over the downy feathers.
“They’re all safe?” I whispered.
He smiled and nodded. “They’ll need some attention, of course,” he said. “I mean, without their mama they won’t be able to survive.”
Something about watching his big, gentle hand holding the tiny baby bird made my heart twist.
“They’ll need shelter, water, and food,” he continued. “You can’t keep ‘em in here like this. Any manner of beast would get ‘em. You’ve got a place inside?”
“Of course I do,” I said. And with his help, we moved the little nest and the three baby birds into our cabin. One of the people who’d helped raise our house had fashioned a bit of a table out of a tree stump for Hannah, which stood right next to her bed and beneath the window in her room. It worked as the perfect sunny spot. The little birds chirped and squawked. I smiled as I turned to Samuel.
“What brings you here?” I asked. “I thought you were shearing the sheep today.”
“Ma asked if I’d come and fetch you,” he said. “Said she wanted to have your hand in helpin’. Matthew found himself a honey tree, and she said come and help, and take what you’d like.”
“Honey?” I asked, as gleeful as a small child. I loved honey on my biscuits, or in my tea, and I still made a honey cake my own ma taught me to make when I was a little girl. But honey wasn’t something easily found, or even easy to come by. When we did find it, we found it aplenty, and stored it away as best we could. It was liquid gold to me.
Samuel’s eyes twinkled. “I think she’d much appreciate it if you’d give a hand with the dinner. You know I like your food better’n anyone else’s, anyway.”
I wondered for a moment if this was his polite way of saying, “Ma wants to make sure you and Hannah have enough to eat.” I was quite a hand at cooking, though, and Ma said I could make a meal fit for a king with nothing more than greens from the garden and a little bit of sunshine.
When I didn’t answer right away, Samuel’s eyes hardened a bit. “I know that look, woman,” he said.
“What look?” I responded, pretending to ignore him as I turned my back to him and tended to the little birds in my nest.
“That stubborn look that says your pride is gettin’ in the way of good sense is what. When’s the last time you and Hannah had meat?”
I frowned, giving him a quick glance over my shoulder. “We do just fine, thank you. Honestly, Samuel, I don’t know if I have time to go with you today. I’ve much to do around here.”
He crossed his arms on his chest and looked at me sternly. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?” I asked, feeling my irritation rising.
“What you’ve got to do today.”
The nerve of the man! “Do you doubt my honesty?” I asked, spinning around to face him. “Or is it that you have no use for woman’s work? You think that the work in the house isn’t as important as the work in the field? You’d do well to remember that I have both the work of a man and woman on this farm!” I’d marched over to him as I spoke, so close to him now my angry exhale ruffled his shirt.
His eyes darkened. “Woman, if you hadn’t been mistreated at the hand of that lowlife husband of yours, do you have any idea what I’d do to you?”
My anger flared into flames of fury. “How dare you threaten me? You’d take a hand to me like he did? You wouldn’t!”
He took a step toward me then—the only step between us—so that now he towered over me and I had to crane my neck to look up at his furious face.
His voice was a low, hissed whisper. “Not like he did. You insult me to even hint at such a thing. But there’s a world of difference between his fist and my palm across your backside. Ruth Watson, though you try my patience, I won’t spank you. But as God is my witness, if you don’t close your mouth, I’ll close it in the only way I can.”
My stomach clenched. I knew I was acting in anger and I knew Samuel was a good man, but I was not immune to the threat of a spanking. I also didn’t know how he meant to close my mouth.
I poked a finger at his chest, though I trembled. I was furious at his ridiculous statement but angrier still at my body that would betray me. For I was somehow set to flames with his warning of a spanking, my belly tingling.
“Don’t you ever,” I began, but his large hand wrapped around my smaller one, interrupting my punctuated set-to, pinning my hand behind my back. With his other hand, he grasped my second wrist. My chest heaved with impotent anger and fear, and the room fairly spun with the intensity of my feelings. And before I knew what was happening, his mouth met mine.
I wanted to protest. I wanted to push him away.
I wanted to be stronger than I was.
But I was not. As he kissed me, I moaned. My wrists pinned helplessly behind my back, overcome by the sheer size of the man compared to my tiny frame, I felt consumed by him. His mouth was warm and sensual, surprisingly soft, and in sharp contrast to the whiskers that pricked my lips. I felt the flicker of his tongue in my mouth, and my chest constricted, as he kept his hands firmly on mine. He kissed me until my knees weakened. I’d never been kissed like this before.
I heard the distant chirping of the birds, and further in the distance, the bang of an axe on a log. Someone was chopping wood, and a hawk cried overhead, but it all murmured in the background as my only focus was Samuel’s mouth on mine. Arousal flamed in me, licks of fire between my legs and low in my belly, as my body yearned to be touched by him.
I’d been sold into marriage by my father to a man who beat me on our wedding night and took what he wanted. I’d never been touched by a lover before. I longed for Samuel’s touch. I wanted more, as I felt deep within me th
at somehow his touch would cleanse me. I wanted his hands on my breasts. I wanted him to strip me. I wanted his strong, powerful hands over my bare skin, ravishing me as I relinquished myself to him so that my body no longer remembered the savage assault I’d experienced, but instead the claiming of a real man, a lover.
I knew my thoughts were wanton. I well knew that such desires for an unwed woman were considered sinful. Other than the Stanleys, ‘polite society’ had spurned me when I’d been wed to a man who drank and beat me, so I’d long since discarded any care for societal expectations and morals.
As his mouth pulled away from me, I looked at him in astonishment. I had no words.
His eyes smiled at me. “I have means to quiet that razor-sharp tongue of yours, little Ruth.”
“You’re a brute,” I whispered helplessly.
He released my hands and stepped back, one corner of his mouth turning up. “Honey, if you think that was brutal, we could have a talk or two to show you otherwise.”
And in that moment, somehow it all struck me as funny. My flaring temper, over—what? His ‘way’ of quieting my mouth. His declaration that I needed a spanking but he’d stay his hand, and the way he implied he could do more than kiss me to keep me in line. Amusement bubbled up inside me that I couldn’t contain. I put a hand to my mouth and laughed. His eyes widened. The laughter burst out of me and I snorted out loud. He looked astonished, even as his eyes darkened. I found it hilarious.
“You’d quiet my mouth with a kiss?” I asked, in between gasps of breath. “You were mad enough to swallow a horned toad backwards!”
His mouth dropped open.
“Oh, I’m simply shaking with fright!” I guffawed, not sure where I was going with this, but certain that if my punishment for provocation had been a kiss like that, I needed to provoke him again.
“Woman,” he warned, but I would not be quieted.
“And I’d like to see you try to spank me, Samuel Stanley! I’ll tell your ma on you!”
His eyes were dark now. “She’d clap my back and congratulate me,” he growled.
This had me howling with laughter.
I didn’t know such a large man could move so quickly. He had me cornered, then up and over his shoulder in seconds, marching me out of Hannah’s bedroom and into the main room of the cabin. I protested, of course, but it was no use and I knew it. He walked with decided steps to my room and tossed me down on the bed.
I shrieked with laughter. “Oh, you look like a bear that’s just emerged from his winter cave, with those eyes of yours,” I taunted. I placed the back of my hand to my forehead and pretended to be faint. “What’s a girl to do?”
“Stop your yappin’!”
I needed him to kiss me, or spank me, I just needed him to touch me, and I needed him to touch me now.
“Yap yap yap!” I prattled on. He growled, bending down toward me again, lowering his mouth close to my ear as he grasped my bottom with one hand and squeezed. It was a shocking gesture, scandalous for an unmarried couple.
“Naughty little Ruth needs to be put in her place.”
He kissed me again, and this time, his hands roved my body. I moaned into his mouth, my hands on his chest, my palms flat against his shirt. I could feel the hardened muscles beneath, and I shifted with arousal.
He wrenched his mouth off mine, but only to growl one more warning. “Are you gonna behave yourself now, or not?”
“Nooooo,” I moaned, as I did not want this to stop. I began unfastening the buttons on his shirt. He removed it as the last button came undone. I stared for a moment at his muscled chest, honed by years of hard labor. As I roamed my hands across the sprinkling of hair and lower still to the taut muscles, I could see the evidence of his arousal tented in his trousers. I felt suddenly overcome with tears.
He wanted me.
Until then, I’d never been desired like this, in a way that made me feel attractive and beautiful. With my husband, I was merely a vessel for him to use to satisfy his base desires. But for Samuel, it was different. He hungered for me even his firmest touches were gentle. Right then, I’d have allowed him to have his way with me. I’d have refused him nothing.
“You beautiful, reckless, naughty little girl,” he whispered in my ear.
“I’m not a girl,” I replied in protest.
“When you’re with me you are.”
My lady parts tingled as one large hand wrapped around my waist and pulled me closer to him. His mouth on mine again, we kissed as his hand kneaded my breast, one firm thumb encircling my nipples straight through the fabric.
I knew I should have protested. I should have insisted he court me, or sent him on his way. But I did not care that we were not married. Samuel made me feel wanted for the first time in my life, and I yearned for more.
I was pinned beneath him now as he kissed me, bracing himself over me with one hand so he wouldn’t smother me, while the other was hiking up my skirts. My thighs clenched together in anticipation as I felt the warmth of his hand on my stocking. Blast the layers of clothing I was wearing! He smoothed a hand over my drawers. My hips bucked. The intensity of my arousal had me near tears.
“Please,” I begged, conscious of the desperation in my voice.
“Sit up,” he ordered. “Undress yourself.”
Hastily I obeyed, until I was wearing nothing but a thin chemise and drawers.
“Ah, so you will obey,” he said. “Seems I may have found the key.”
I moaned in reply as he laid me back down, lowering himself over me again, his lips insistent and probing. He kissed me as he pulled my drawers down, dipping a finger between my legs to my most sensitive parts. My breath caught in my throat as he stroked me. The feeling was exquisite.
“Spread your legs, honey,” he whispered. I obeyed, while he stroked me, his other arm holding me close to him while we kissed. Two fingers plunged into my core. I gasped from the sheer pleasure before he went back, stroking me. I was going to lose control, with Samuel holding me tightly next to him. In minutes, the release coursed through me, waves of ecstasy meeting in a delicious crescendo as he stroked and pumped my sex. He kissed me slowly, softly, holding me until the delicious spasms passed.
“You feelin’ better?” he whispered.
“Yes,” I replied with a sigh. “You?”
He chuckled. “No, but that’ll be for another day. Today was about puttin’ you in your place.”
I pursed my lips. “Is that so?”
“It is. You’ll question me now, woman?” he said with a raised brow.
I smiled. “No, sir,” I said, as meekly as a lamb.
“Sir, is it?” he said. “I’m not sure you’ve called me that before.”
“No, sir,” I said, closing my eyes as he lowered himself onto the bed next to me.
He chuckled. “Now are you gonna be a good girl, get yourself dressed, and come bake me one of your cakes, or am I gonna have to toss you over my shoulder and carry you on over?”
“You and your taunts,” I muttered. “Toss you over your shoulder! Spank your naughty little bottom!”
He tilted a head to me. Though his eyes twinkled, his voice was stern. “Oh, honey, those weren’t threats. Now get yourself dressed and let’s go before I prove that to you.”
Not in the mood to test him, subdued after he’d brought me to ecstasy, I obeyed.
Chapter Two: Tossed into a Loft
I dressed, while Samuel righted himself and went out to the barn to do some of my morning chores. I left the birds with water and some grubs, and fixed my hair. I looked a right mess after he’d laid me down in bed. My cheeks flamed with embarrassment as I remembered lying in bed next to him. And it wasn’t just because of his intimate touch. No, it was deeper than that. I had been a docile lamb afterwards.
Yes, sir.
I closed my eyes, pursing my lips as I splashed cold water on my face and tidied up. I’d been beaten by my husband and mistreated by my father, but I’d never willingly submitted to any
man. I sure wasn’t going to start now. I was a woman in my own right, and I’d stay that way.
Samuel came in a few minutes later, tapping off his boots and shaking off his hat, hanging it up on a peg. “You ready to go?” he asked.
“In a minute,” I said. “I have a few things to tend to. Why don’t you go on up ahead and I’ll meet you in a little while?”
He frowned. “You think I’m leaving you to travel alone when I’m right here, and can go with you? Nonsense, woman. Do what you need to, then we’ll go.” He turned his back to me, pulled a chair out, and sat down. Well, then.
I didn’t need to worry about cooking, since I’d be with Ma for most of the day, but I did need to set my sourdough bread to fermenting. I affixed my apron and busied myself flitting around the kitchen, turning out my flour and deftly preparing the dough.
“That’s astoundin’,” Samuel murmured. I paused, flour straight up to my elbows, and looked at him.
“What is?”
“The way you just—” His hands flipped around and twisted. “And then you just—” He pretended to pat the dough. I smiled.
“You never seen a woman prepare dough before?” I asked, incredulous. He was around enough women in the Stanley line to know that this was routine. I was puzzled. But he was staring at my hands now. He sat with his legs spread apart, hands folded lightly in his lap. His voice was low and husky when he spoke.
“Not with pretty little hands like that, I haven’t.”
My lady parts well remembered where his hands had been. I squirmed.
“Land’s sake,” I whispered. “Samuel, you’ve one mind!”
He chuckled low. “Ain’t that the truth.”
“And blast if I can’t keep my head on straight around you acting like that,” I muttered.
He grinned. “Well, now. I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe I can keep little Ruth behavin’ herself for another minute or two.”
I flicked flour from my fingers at him, which merely elicited a low, manly chuckle I felt down to my bones. Oh, this wouldn’t do at all.