Bind Me Close: 3 (Knights in Black Leather)

by Cerise DeLand

  “Oh, come on, Willow, this is kissing cousin hospitality,” Sam said. “Case and I can offer you our guestroom. And if you think you’re imposing on us then Cara can offer you hers too.”

  “I hardly know either of you and I can’t accept such favors. Really. And you are about to have a baby, Cara. You don’t need a guest in your home.”

  “I have three husbands, Willow. And they do all the housework lately. They insist on it, to my everlasting dismay. So you would be no bother for me. But you would be good company. You’re very welcome to come stay with us.”

  Sam sat back and put down her teacup. “Well, I’m not having a baby and I have a guesthouse off the pool.”

  Willow was speechless for a minute as the two women waited with smiles. “That is kind of you but no.”

  “Wait, there’s more. Think of all your research. You could get more done if you weren’t riding back and forth all the time to the B&B. We could lay out all our resources for you and you could have at that, morning noon and night, not a soul to bother you.”

  “Us too!” Cara agreed as she slid around, with some difficulty, in her chair.

  “Are you okay?” Willow and Sam asked in chorus.

  “Fine. Sure. Just those false contractions. I like them really.” Cara examined their faces. “It ‘s like having a giant…”

  “What?” Sam asked.

  Cara paused then grinned like a fool. “Like having a giant orgasm. You know the kind I mean, a G-spot and a clitoral and an anal all at once!”

  Sam chuckled, clapping her hands. “Oh, now I really want to be pregnant!”

  Willow sat, delighted and envious of the two women’s camaraderie. It made her think of her own sister and how she missed her being around.

  “Honey,” Cara said, looking at Willow as though she had just lost her best friend, “did I horrify you?”

  “Not at all!” She broke into a hearty chuckle to think that she had found women who would actually talk about sex as though it was a valued commodity. “I find it refreshing that you don’t hide your joys—ahem, all of them—under the table.”

  Another one of those meaningful looks passed between the two women, leaving Willow stumped.

  “Now just what is that?” Willow pointed a finger from one to the other. “That look there means something and I have to know what it is.”

  “What if we show her,” Sam said to Cara like a conspirator, “instead of tell her?”

  “Mmm.” Cara licked her lips. “More fun that way.”

  “What are you two cooking here?”

  “More fun than Duke’s crème brûlée,” Sam teased her. “Want to see?”

  “I do.”

  “We’ll take her, but…um…when?” Cara asked Sam. “Thursday is shibari. Friday would be better? General play dates.”

  “What is shibari? And play dates sounds like you’re taking me to kindergarten!”

  “Oh, it’s fun!” Sam clapped her hands. “You’ll see. Then you’ll want to stay longer.”

  “Much longer,” Cara agreed. “Sam, she’ll need clothes.”

  “Clothes? No, ladies, please. I have clothes.”

  “Not this kind, you don’t.” Sam’s beautiful eyes danced. “These are different. I have my old butterfly outfit.”

  “Butterfly?” Willow felt the little creatures fluttering in her tummy.

  “Yep. She even has the mask, don’t you, Sam?”

  “I do. I know it’ll fit. The bustier is a lace-up.”

  “Bustier? Oh, no. I’ve never worn one.”

  Cara grinned. “I think you’ll die to wear this one. Say you’re adventurous.”

  What she had done with Wade was more adventure than she’d ever planned. The memories that crept into her waking hours sent shivers of delight up her spine. Could she stand any more adventures? She licked her lips, willing to indulge herself in more. After all, she was with friends who didn’t criticize or ridicule. She could take a chance, live a little bit more. “Okay. Butterflies for me. What is your plan, ladies?”

  Each woman seized one of her hands. “A night you will remember for a long time.”

  Willow shrank back. “If we’re out for a ladies’ night, okay, I do male strip clubs.”

  “Better than that,” Cara said.

  “Okay…I’ve gone to gay dance parties. Even an exhibitionists’ gala.”

  “And did you like that?” Sam asked.

  “I did. Wished I was one of the those doing the exhibition.”

  “Well, you’re in good company,” Cara said with a twinkle in her eye. “We’re taking you to a local club. Private. Exclusive. Intimate.”

  Willow thrilled to the lure, her mind instantly going to Wade and her private exhibition for him. “How intimate?”

  “Very. Where those who go play together as they wish by mutual consent.”

  “And if I don’t want to play? Not with a man I don’t know, I mean.” She felt warm and soft, wet and eager. I want to see this, understand this…this freedom.

  “That’s fine,” Sam responded. “You just say so. Still, the sights are intriguing.”

  Intriguing. A good word. “And do they explain why the people in Bravado are careful of their privacy?”

  Sam tipped her head to and fro. “A little. But you’ll find an answer about why Damian’s wife is divorcing him.”

  “I see.”

  And does Wade know about this club? Shouldn’t the sheriff know about such places?

  “Are you up for it?” Cara asked.

  “I am.”

  Oh, she definitely was. She was going to see how the town, or some in the town, had fun. That tickled her.

  She smiled at the very idea and threw herself back into a conversation about researching Francine Turner, her first husband the Comanche Chief Bull Elk and her two second husbands, Cole and Wyatt MacRae.

  By the time Willow left to return to her room at the B&B neither Samantha nor Cara had mentioned her moving in with them. She had promised to see Wade tomorrow night and Giles Tuesday night and she had no inclination to change or cancel. And no desire to let anyone else know about either date.

  Chapter Eight

  Francine Turner stared up at Willow with beautiful, big eyes. The photograph was aged, washed in the sepia browns and rusts and beiges of the 1880s, but the woman in the portrait lived for Willow as if she breathed the same air.

  My god. Willow put a hand to her heart as she sat at Cara MacRae’s kitchen table the next morning and looked at the pictures arrayed before her. She was unable to tear her gaze away from the portrait of the woman who had lived more than a century before her but who looked in so many ways like Willow herself.

  Oh, Fancy was blonde and Willow dark. Fancy was delicate, Willow strongly boned. Fancy had pale eyes. “Bluebonnet,” said the description in one letter from Marguerite to her youngest sister. Willow’s eyes were deep chocolate-brown. “Umber” was the way Fancy herself had described her dear husband Bull Elk’s eyes—and that of his young sister, Willow Talks.

  Cara touched Willow’s hand. “I wanted you to see her. After I met you the other night I couldn’t wait to show you this. I was struck by how you and she look alike. The shape of your faces, your expressions of hope and anticipation.”

  “Oh, surely, I am not as lovely as she.” Willow shook her head, complimented.

  “You are, you are. Look again. Oh, I am so thrilled you’re here, Willow. To see her, know her must be wonderful. She was so strong in the face of awful odds. She was brave and I think very wise.”

  “I agree. The age she lived through was not kind to those who lived a life that was different.”

  Cara smiled and pushed a few yellowed envelopes toward Willow. “You must also read her words. Fancy was well-educated and she wrote to her sister Marguerite often, especially after she returned from the Comanche reservation and few Anglos would talk to her. Oh, but she would be proud of you and what you are writing. And the two of you look nearly identical.”


  “I’m stunned,” Willow said in awe. “I never thought she might look…or rather I might look so much like her. How is that possible? Comanche features are so bold. The large, deep-set eyes and the high cheekbones.” She traced her fingertips over the arch of her own cheeks. “My hair is black like Bull Elk’s.”

  Cara and she turned their attention to the faded photo of the chieftain who had ridden up to the Turner ranch one bright spring morning and stolen the fair young woman from her family and her home. Bull Elk sat in semi-profile, his strong face rigid and impassive in the manner of the Native American portraits of the late nineteenth century. Patu-um-ka was his Comanche name and it suited him. In his buckskin and hawk feathers, his hair in black braids and a silver earring in one lobe, he was the epitome of a tall, dark, fierce-as-hell leader of his tribe, the Lords of the Southern Plains.

  “He is breathtaking, isn’t he?” Cara asked her. “For Fancy to be stolen from all that she knew and loved by such a warrior must have been an earthshaking experience for her.”

  “She was only twenty-two when he captured her,” Willow said. “How terrified she must have been. I’ve read a lot of Comanche folklore and stories written by the Plains Indians. The Comanche were the most feared because they were quite cruel, raping women and skinning them alive.”

  “Yes, horrible stories. Here in the Hill Country so many people tell tales of their own women and children who were taken. Some returned to live with their own families but often those taken as children returned to the Comanche tribesmen they lived with.”

  “Do you have any other pictures of him?”

  “Just this. But Case and Samantha have a sketch of him done by Wyatt.”

  Willow clasped her hands in glee as she smiled at Cara. “Wyatt drew Bull Elk?”

  “Wyatt was a Texas Ranger and he often attended powwows with Bull Elk. This drawing was done in 1865. See Wyatt’s note here in the corner?”

  Willow leaned over and squinted at the print. “Did Wyatt draw any of the other family members?”

  Cara shook her head. “A few of Cole, one of Reg Saxon and his wife Marguerite. She was lovely and frail but she bore Reg two sons. But what you really want to see are the ones Wyatt did of Fancy. We have the best of them under museum glass in the dining room. Come see them.”

  Willow rose with Cara and let her take her hand to lead her into the room where one old map of Texas territories and many old photos decorated the walls.

  Cara stood back to admire the collection. “When I found these drawings by Wyatt in the attic last year, I took them into town and had them all preserved. Jed and Will talked about giving them to museums, so we did donate a few to the state historical society. But I wanted most of these here with us. After all, they are our family.”

  Willow couldn’t get enough of the fabulous pen-and-ink drawings. Most showed Fancy in various poses. One of Fancy with a small baby. One of her with two men, each man standing behind her, one hand on each of her shoulders. “Wyatt and Cole were very proud of her.”

  “They were. When you read the letters that Collette, her older sister, wrote to her you’ll see accompanying letters from Wyatt or Cole telling Collette to mind her own business. Both brothers thought that Fancy had lived through enough trouble in her young life and that many members of her family were unfair to her. After all, she couldn’t help that Bull Elk had stolen her. She couldn’t help it either that she grew to love her Comanche husband.”

  “Her family were unkind to her?”

  “Worse, they told her to leave Bravado. Once a gang tried to ride her out of town. Wyatt and Cole drew guns on the mob. But her brother Jeremiah ignored her. He ordered their sister Collette to do the same. And they nearly broke Fancy’s heart.”

  Had their actions nearly broken my great-grandfather’s heart too? Was their prejudice a contributing factor to Blade’s need to leave Bravado? Willow had to know more. “Wade told me that it was his great-grandfather who married Marguerite and turned the tide against Fancy after she returned from the reservation.”

  “Yes. All of us have letters from various family members that tell that tale.”

  “But Fancy lived and lived well, I think,” Willow said.

  “She did. She died in 1920 at the age of seventy-two. In that day that was a ripe old age. She was survived by three sons, two of them MacRaes, and of course your great-grandfather Blade.”

  Willow leaned close to see the expression on Fancy’s face as she held one baby in her arms and had one hand on the shoulder of a little three- or four-year-old boy who stood in front of her. “Is this Blade?”

  “I think so. Don’t you? He has the look of Bull Elk, I’d say.”

  Dark-haired and cute as a button, the little boy in a white shirt and baggy pants stared out of the drawing with the sweet face of youth and innocence. “I would too.”

  “Why did he leave, Willow?”

  She inhaled and twisted toward Cara. “He wanted to be free of his past. He thought he could find it by going East. He went to college. We’re not sure how he paid for that but he finished. He became a lawyer and a prosperous one.”

  “Did no one back East ever think he might be Comanche?”

  Willow shook her head. “In his diary he wrote that often new acquaintances looked at him oddly when they first met. But after a while, no, no one asked. And he never told them. It was his goal to forget what he was. Where he came from.”

  “We have letters that declare how Fancy loved him. Adored him.”

  “I am certain of that. He wrote that his mother was his shining moon. And that, of course, is the name that Bull Elk gave to Fancy.”

  “Still, Willow, Blade never returned here. Fancy writes and others do too about how she grieved over that.”

  “I can understand that. But Blade couldn’t bear to come back here and face the ridicule of those who thought of him as a half-breed. He said he had escaped that and he would never return to such degradation again.”

  Cara sighed. “It’s terrible what we can do to one another. If only Jeremiah and Collette had been forgiving or understanding of what had happened, how many lives would have been different. Why, you might even be living here with us now.”

  They both laughed.

  “I doubt it, Cara. My mother came from San Diego and my father persuaded her to stay in snowy Boston only by bribing her with Caribbean vacations every year.”

  “And where are they now?”

  Willow smiled sadly. “Both gone. More than ten years ago. I’ve brought up my younger sister on my own since then.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-two. She just graduated from UT in Austin in June.” Willow rolled her eyes but didn’t reveal the reason why she was glad her sister was soon to be self-supporting.

  “You have no other relatives?”

  “No. Mom and Dad were only children. No extended family on either side.”

  Cara took Willow’s hands then and squeezed. “You have extended family now. Folks who want to help you, not just to finish this book either.”

  “Thank you.” Willow rolled a shoulder. “That will take some getting used to. Being alone only breeds more of being alone.”

  “Alone is fine,” Jed declared from the hallway, removing his Stetson and grinning at them both. “Lonely is not. And we have a cure for that.”

  “I told her, Jed, we have a lot of good things here in this county. Family, fun, friends. We might even have a job for her if she wants it.”

  Jed strolled in to wrap his arm around his wife’s middle and hug her close. “What kind of a job would you like, Willow Turner? We got ’em, babe.”

  “I’m a teacher. High school.”

  “Well, damn, lady, we got a few vacancies we need to fill.”

  “Really?” Willow’s ears perked up. “How many?”

  “Two in the high school, one in the middle and one in the elementary.”

  Willow grinned at him.

  He arched dark brows. “You’d be i
nterested? Wow. Okay. Tell me, woman, I got to get on with filling up that roster.”

  “My sister Skye just got her education degree to teach elementary school and she does need a position. Badly.”

  “Get her on the phone. Tell her we need her. The application is online and she should fill it out and hit Send ASAP. To you, I’ll give the paperwork. Hold on. It’s in my office.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  She hesitated. The idea of living in the same town or even the same house as her sister appealed to her. She hadn’t enjoyed Skye’s company day after day in four long years—and her sister had told her she wasn’t interested in teaching anywhere near Oklahoma. But could she herself leave Oklahoma? Could she remain close to the searing temptation of Wade Saxon and not make a fool of herself? How would that look to him if she did come here?

  One comfort was that Wade wasn’t the only man in town. She could see Giles Benedict. In fact she could go out with any of those great-looking guys she’d met at the MacRaes’ party. That would be more fun than she’d had in years. And Wade could see she wasn’t the type to move into town and expect things from him just because they had gone to bed. She was no needy, horny broad. “It’s appealing but I don’t know, Jed. This is really fast.”

  “But great too. We know how to treat women as equals with their own rights to say how and where and when they work or play.”

  Play, Willow heard, as the operative word in that sentence. “Good to know.”

  “Consider it. The pay is exceptional.”

  “I told her,” his wife chimed in.

  “We’re in good shape then.” He kissed his wife on the top of her head. “We have great things for lunch?”

  Cara curled into her husband’s arm. “Darlin’, I have no idea. We better go out to the barn and ask Will and Harry. They cooked up a storm for us all morning.”

  “Let’s get on it, then.” Jed looped his other arm around Willow’s waist and led the women toward the kitchen. “Two ladies at the table. This is a treat.”

  “Believe me,” Willow said, “the treat has been all mine.”

  “Found a lot you liked, didn’t you?” he asked her, his warm smile brilliant with humor.