by Maren Smith
“Who said anything about Chin moving with us?” Cullen said, astounded. “She can’t stand me!”
Garrett gave him a Look. “Right,” he drawled, and then held up his hand again. Wordless surrender; he wasn’t going to argue. “I’ve said my piece, and that was all I wanted. Whatever you do from here is up to you, pretty much as it was to begin with. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll heat up a bucket of water.” He turned toward the hatch, though he did cast a smirk back over his shoulder before he descended it. “Not sure which of us needs it most, but someone up here really stinks.”
It was probably both of them. Cullen waited just long enough for Garrett to disappear down the ladder before plucking his shirt out enough for a cautious sniff. He was pretty bad, all right. Pushing off the bed, he rummaged through his chest of drawers for fresh clothes. He paused, looking at the clean shirt in one hand and trousers in his other, and then he looked to the window.
It was ridiculous to even think it, and yet what possible harm could it do just to ride out for a look. It had been two days since the rain finally stopped. By now, it was entirely possible the flood waters would have receded. He might not find all of Chin’s things—personally, he doubted he find any of it—but at the very least, he might find a place to cross and of all the things his brother had said that morning, one part rang more true than all the rest: Women didn’t pull up stakes and move anywhere near as easily as men could. Women needed things. They needed homes—flowers in vases on the kitchen table, soft beds and quilt comforters, and Cullen could give her that. For now, anyway. It might not do any good at all to walk into that bank (hat in hand, as he’d said) and ask for another loan. If they said no, he wouldn’t be any worse off than he was now, and if they said yes, he’d have to work twice as hard to pay it off, but at least he’d have something to offer her.
As if she’d take him. At least not without her uttering that blasted twenty-dollar bit before he bedded her down each night.
Twenty dollars. He did the math. Damn. Well, maybe he could work it into the bank loan somehow. Just a month’s worth of proper man and wife affectionating, perhaps two. Then he could take his time, court her properly. The way women liked to be courted. Picnics and whatnot. Watching the sunset from the front porch swing, a cool glass of lemonade in his hand while he considered how best to steal a kiss.
“Water,” Chin croaked, startling him.
Dropping his clothes, Cullen returned to her side, dropping to sit at her hip and clasp the bandaged hand she was reaching with before she knocked the glass off the table.
“How you feeling?” he asked, pouring fresh water into it. He bent over her, helping to lift her head so she could drink. “Just a few sips,” he cautioned.
He should have known she’d ignore him. It probably served her right that she choked after the first swallow, but it still hurt to watch her face scrunch up and her tiny body wrack under the spasm.
“How bad is the pain? I’m out of laudanum, but I can brew you some willow bark tea.”
Her face screwed up all over again, this time in stark distaste. “I think I’d rather die.”
“You almost got your wish.” Cullen set the glass aside and switched instead to stuffing pillows behind her when she began to struggle upright. “Garrett’s heating bathwater, if you think you’re up for it.”
“I think so.” She looked down and then quickly got her nose back up again. Her third grimace was the most expressive of all. “Gah, is that me? I smell horrible.”
Mouth twitching, Cullen said, “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
She looked at him, almost accusingly. “You smell horrible too.”
“That was why I wasn’t going to say anything.” His twitch became a full-blown smile.
She edged away from him, as if she mistrusted his laugh. That was when she noticed the bandage mummifying her hand. She stared at it.
“Do you remember anything?” he asked.
Chin looked at him sideways, mistrusting him even more. He had a hard time imagining that was possible.
“I… remember you turned into a dragon,” she finally hedged.
Cullen arched both eyebrows. His bark of laughter must have caught Garrett’s ear. “Laudanum will do that, I guess.”
“Is she awake?” his brother called up the hatch.
“Yeah,” Cullen answered.
“Good. You both can come down then, because this here workhorse ain’t about to cart all this water up there.”
“She’s not in any condition—” Cullen began, but already Chin had pushed the sheet aside.
“I’ll go down,” she said, not looking at him. “I—” She stopped when she saw her knee. “I-I’m fine,” she finished haltingly.
But she wasn’t and they both knew it. Her knee looked awful and yet so much better than before the medicine man cut it open. The swelling was almost gone, and although the bruising was extensive, the coloring had turned from blue-black to the brownish-yellow hues that signified healing. Her ankle was almost back to normal too, although the bruising there was somewhat darker.
Frowning, he began again, “She’s not in any—”
“Stop babying me,” Chin snapped.
“Stop snapping at me,” he bit back. “I don’t deserve it, and I’ll be damned if I take it more than once.”
She turned her face away, but if she was ashamed, he could find no trace of it in the stiff set of her shoulders.
He breathed in, striving for calm and patience. “Chin…”
She turned her face even more away, but he was all done accepting her sullen silences and sulky glares. He caught her chin with nothing more than the end of one finger. She made no effort to fight as he turned her back to face him. He lowered himself, squatting on haunches so he could look into her eyes. He was surprised to find, instead of dark and sullen, they were flooded. His scrutiny must have made her uncomfortable. She tried only once to escape his finger, but it was a minor revolt and one he effectively killed when he changed his grip and cupped her chin instead.
She sounded heart-achingly broken when she said, “You don’t know what I’ve…”
“Done?” he countered gruffly. “No, I don’t. But I know what I’ve done, and I know there are no comparisons.”
“I ran away.” It was a whole new wash that overflowed the dark pools of her eyes and flooded down her face. She sucked a ragged breath, catching hold of the front of her nightshirt as if she were struggling just to breathe. “I ran away. I’m a coward! They all died while I ran! And it didn’t do any good because he found me anyway. I lost everything. He took it all and still he’s following me. Why is he following me?”
Cullen dipped his head in the slightest of shakes. “Doesn’t matter. The running stops here.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I can’t. He’ll find me.”
“He’ll find me first,” he said grimly. “I made you a promise, Chinny honey, whether you remember it or not and I intend to keep it. If he wants to follow you here—” He caught her arm when she shrank back, shaking her head harder, trembling now every bit as badly as she had in the worst throes of her fever. “No, let him come,” Cullen said when she clapped a hand over her eyes and twisted sideways to break away. He pulled her back, forcing her to look at him and see that he was serious. That he wasn’t afraid. That he could and would protect her against whatever rode up to his front porch, because he knew without a doubt that he was bigger, tougher and meaner than Gabe—this unknown man who made a living off hurting women. “Let him come. He’s not going to find you, honey, he’s going to find me. I want him to find me.”
“You don’t know him…what he’s like…”
“You don’t know me,” he countered. In that moment, he’d have given anything not to have to tell her, either.
She laughed, a soft and bitter sound. “If you knew what I was, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to make me feel better. You wouldn’t have pulled me from the river. You wouldn’t want me anywhe
re near your house.”
“Why? Because you sold yourself to men?” He was sorry he said it from the moment the words crossed his lips and yet she never flinched. Her gaze hardened instead and the stubborn tilt of her chin lifted higher. “I ain’t passing judgment, and I ain’t preaching hellfire and damnation. You act like I’m fixing any minute to drag you to church or jail, but I’m not. I’m not that guy. I ain’t putting twenty dollars on your bureau, either.” He tried to pretend his skin didn’t tingle at the thought. Or that his hand didn’t tremble a bit as he brushed his thumb across her cheek, not because she was looking away now but because he couldn’t stop himself from touching her. “If you’re thinking you’re a ruined woman, I don’t agree. There ain’t a man or woman in Culpepper Cove—or hell, in all California—who ain’t haunted by at least one thing they regret. This here is a territory built on blood, land, gold, sweat and second chances. Maybe some of us are needing that second chance more than others, but there isn’t a one of us here who ain’t ruined in one way or another. Me and you, we’re the same side. We’re just two different coins, is all.”
Still damp with tears, her face hardened. “Whoring was my second chance. Nobody gets a third.”
“Ranching was mine,” he argued. “As soon as the wash can be crossed, I’ll be heading to the bank for a loan and I’m going to try again. My third chance. If I can do it, so can you. Not there,” he said, when she recoiled. “Here.” His chest tightened. He hadn’t realized how sharp the edge of impending disappointment could be until he was perched on it. He expected her to say no. Any sane woman would, and yet, he pressed on. “I want you to stay here…with me. I know I’m not perfect. There’s things about me, things I’ve done, that would make anyone want to run the other way. But I promise, those days are behind me. I ain’t asking you to say you love me. I know it’s too soon for that, but give me a year. I’ll take good care of you, Chin. I’ll provide for you. I’ll be affectionate. I’ll prove I can be a good man and a good husband. I promise, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you never regret staying. But if, after trying, you find you can’t reconcile yourself to a man like me, just tell me where you want to go and I’ll do everything I can to see you get there. Safe. As protected as I can make you.”
She stared at him, the somber set of her features slowly melting into pure disbelief. “Why?”
She may as well have asked why it had rained for a solid week straight. He shrugged, at a loss how to answer. “Because that’s what men like me do. When we care about someone.”
The disbelief melted into horror next. “You are a dragon.”
Laughing softly, he shook his head. “That was just the laudanum. Besides, I thought I was a gwailo.”
He probably should have left the jokes to Garrett. Chin didn’t so much as crack a smile. “Why me?” she whispered. “Why would you come to me?”
Cullen felt his heart catch, stumble. How could any man look up into eyes like hers and answer so simple a question when the answer itself felt so damned profound. How could he tell her he couldn’t stop thinking about her? That when she left his sight, all he wanted was for her to be back in it. Because touching her made his flesh tingle and his blood burn. Because as stubborn as she was and as crazy as that had the potential to make him, he couldn’t help admiring her strength and her will. She was a survivor. So was he, but they were both also broken and had been now for so long that maybe neither one of them knew how to be anything else.
“Chin, honey.” He shrugged again, helplessly. “I ain’t no dragon. I’m just a man, that’s all.”
A man who had been alone too long. Even living in this house with Garrett, Cullen had been alone, though it was only looking back on it now that he could see it. How could he begin to tell her that being with her didn’t make him feel like that? That for the first time in years, he felt less hollow and more whole.
Of its own accord, his hand moved, rising to cup her soft cheek. It was comforting that she didn’t flinch from the closeness. When his thumb brushed a caress along the fragile pink bow of her lips, they parted. The need to steal a gentle taste from them made his mouth run dry and a bloom of warmth unfurl in his abdomen. A low throb built beneath it.
He didn’t know how to tell her that, either. He’d never been a coward before, but he was now. He picked his way through that explosive field of cannon fire and chose the safest of all possible words. “Like I said, we’re—”
“The same,” Chin finished with him, still whispering, still staring. As though if only she looked hard enough, she might see beneath the cover of his skin to whatever half-remembered hallucination still colored her perception of him.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Can two people as broken as we are mend one another, or will we only make the pieces smaller?”
She clapped a hand over his mouth, silencing him. She stared at the back of her hand for a long time, quiet. She was trembling; he could feel it in her fingers, pressing lightly upon his cheek just before she haltingly took her hand away. She looked at his mouth the same way she’d looked at her own hand. Reluctant, half-fearful, as if she wanted to but couldn’t quite bring herself to turn away.
Cullen held himself still, that unfolding bloom of warmth becoming a veritable tangle of burning vines, each one extending out through him until his wanting for her pulsed in even the smallest parts of him. His blood quickened—thrumming in his veins, his temples. His pants. Growing and intensifying as she rolled her lips together, then licked them.
He reached for her then and his fingertips sparked at the softness of her cheek. She didn’t flinch, but she did close her eyes. Perhaps feeling sparks of her own. Whatever it was, it made her trembling worse. Cullen drew encouragement from that.
He let his fingers wander, tracing up the high curve of her cheekbone into the long black tangles of her waist-length hair. It needed to be brushed. Hell, it needed to be washed. He could not have cared less on either front. Just touching it felt sinful.
He tucked a long lock behind the shell of her small ear. He was trembling now too, but from the restraint it took not to let his arm snake around her tiny waist and pull her to him, to bring her right up to the very edge of the mattress so he could bask in the sensation of all of her pressed up against as much of him as he could manage. His shirt had never looked better on anyone, ever. How he had confused her for a child, he couldn’t begin to remember.
Careful of her legs—so very, very careful—he lay his hand upon her good knee, loving the smoothness as he caressed the outside of her thigh. He stopped when he reached the shirt hem and Chin, of her own trembling accord, allowed her knees to part. The button-down halves of his shirt fell between her thighs, keeping her covered, but that was all right. He remembered everything—every dip, curve and shadow that she had laid bare three nights ago when, in the grip of her fever, she had exposed herself to him.
Cullen knelt between her thighs, a modern-day Samson laid low by the world’s most exquisite Delilah. The heat of her hips burned into his hands as he circled her waist—so small and slender that his fingers all but overlapped. He’d have to be careful with his weight and his size and her injuries. Still, he brought her closer. Any more and she would have fallen off the bed and onto his lap. He could already feel her weight as she straddled him and his whole body hummed, sending zings of pure erotic awareness shooting straight through to his groin. The vibrations made his swollen cock strain, eager to gain freedom from the prison his pants had become.
Her lips parted and Cullen stilled. If she said “twenty dollars” to him now, every part of him was going to wither.
But Chin didn’t. She drew a shaky breath instead and finally opened her eyes. Her hands at her sides had fisted in the folds of rumpled bedding; her knuckles had whitened. Damn. He’d gone too far, too fast. He didn’t want her to be afraid of him.
“I’ll push no further,” he opened his mouth to tell her, but never got the chance.
Leaning forward, Chin hesita
ted only once before touching his lips with the most trembling of kisses. The caress ignited an explosion of heat and desire. It ripped through him, tore him open, left him bared and exposed in ways he hadn’t let himself be since ‘44, when Elle-May Watson stomped his heart flat right in the middle of the Yoder’s barn-raising dance. Granted, they’d both been fourteen at the time and she’d only gone with him to make her beau’s wandering eye a little more fixed, but still… Fourteen-year-old hearts flattened easily. Thirty-year-old hearts should have been hardier, but the way Chin kissed him, with her timid lips so tentatively sampling his, it left his racing, stumbling, and racing again. She opened her mouth, the tip of her bedeviling tongue tapping at his, begging for entry and the last thing Cullen found himself braced for was the stomp of rejection.
His hand found the nape of her slender neck as he opened for her, encouraging her to take the taste she so desired before his resolve not to move too far or too fast killed him. She moved with such uncertainty, as if this were the first time she had ever given herself to a man when money was not involved. He didn’t know if that was true or not, and he planned never to ask, but Cullen liked that thought. He liked believing he was the first to ever kiss her for free. To touch her like this, with nothing to be gained apart from the pure wanting for more. Her body became the whole of his world, with all his heightened awareness starting and ending with all the places he touched her and all the places he could feel pressing up against him in turn.
At least until Garrett yelled up the hatch, “So help me, if I have to come up there, I will draw you both a map to the kitchen and nail it to your foreheads! Bath water’s getting cold!” His heavy bootfalls retreated back across the lower floor, and so did his not-so-cheerfully muttered, “I am not going to be the only person in this house without a canoodling partner, I’ll tell you that right now.”