He braced himself on one forearm and cradled her breast in his palm then drew her taut nipple into his mouth. Soon he moved on to the other as she raked her fingers through his hair, then kneaded the taut muscles of his arms. He’d never felt anything like having her hands on him as she panted with growing excitement.
Nearly at the end of his tether, he ran his hand downward, exploring the firm skin of her hips and belly until he came to her nest of black curls and found her center—wet and ready.
She shouted his name, trembling under his fingers and pulling at his shirt, running her small hands up his ribs and over his back. She seemed to be urging him on. He stood that. He did. He even helped her get his shirt off. But the sensuous feel of her silky skin against his and her cry of “Closer. Please, closer” in a low raspy voice completely undid him.
After that every thought but the most primitive fled. He shoved his pants farther down on his hips and pushed her knees apart with his. He entered her as carefully as he could but her gasp this time was of shock and pain, not glory.
As if doused by cold water, he froze, managing to ignore his own need in favor of hers. He kissed the tears that flooded her eyes, letting their personal history take over. “That full up enough for you?” he teased.
She gifted him with a watery chuckle. “A…a little too, I think.”
“No,” he soothed. “It’ll get better, wildflower,” he whispered against her lips, “give it some time. You tell me when you’re ready for more.” He closed his eyes reaching for a memory to help him keep that promise.
Just like that, he was back there on the spring day he’d taught her to swim in Adara’s clear cool lake. Looked like he was teaching her something new this spring, too. “You’ll see, wildflower. I’ll see it gets real good real, real soon. That’s no brag, I promise.”
“And you never break a promise. Right?” She moved under him a bit as if testing the waters.
It was a point of honor for him. He never did.
He kept this promise, too. It got a lot better for her and him. Right after he kissed her again and carefully moved in her. She let out a beautiful little gasp. It was full of delicious joy followed by a tiny shriek, hot with need. His own need flooded back with a vengeance. He wanted to race for the end but forced himself into a slow rhythm. He felt the surprising strength in her when she wrapped her arms around him and in the undulating motion of her body as she caught his rhythm. It took him by surprise when she started to shudder and quake under him, around him. He’d never felt such unbridled happiness knowing he’d brought her such pleasure. Needing to watch her face as she came apart for him, he braced himself and arched his back to look down into her beautiful face. And then he had to follow her or die.
And if he had, it would have been with his boots on.
Chapter Eleven
Rhia threw her arm over her eyes, trying to block out the sunlight and cling to her dream—she and Dylan making sweet love. Though she was desperate not to lose the dream, it started to fade as her sleepy senses pushed past the fog that dulled her mind.
There was sunlight on her face. She usually woke to the subdued light of dawn. She frowned. The sun rose on the other side of the house. Curiosity drove her ahead, willing her to face the day.
She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. This was her parents’ room. An ache registered in her muscles. Muscles she’d swear she’d never used before. It hadn’t been a dream. She slid a hand across to where Dylan had slept. He wasn’t there but still, it all flooded back.
Dylan. The wedding. His kindness. Everything that had led to him trying to comfort her.
Her love for him and her own need to belong to someone had welled up from some deep place inside her, overwhelming her pride. He’d made love to her but didn’t love her. She blinked back welling tears. Her pain was no excuse. She’d agreed to the terms of his proposal. As he had to hers.
So, instead of finding a way to thank him for his rescue from her uncertain circumstances and scorn, for relinquishing his chance to ever find a woman he could love the way she loved him, she’d thrown herself at him—begged him. Which made her no better than a soiled dove at the Garter, trying to earn a dollar.
Remembering the way he’d made love to her and the number of times he’d turned to her in the night, she thought sadly that Dylan was a passionate man. Which only meant she’d tempted him beyond endurance. She wasn’t foolish enough to think his passion had anything to do with feelings for her.
Her face heated. How was she going to face him? Abby had tried to fill in her spotty knowledge of the human mating ritual but she hadn’t told her a thing about the awkwardness she’d feel the next day.
She imagined Dylan had let her sleep as yet another kindness. Rhia shook her head. Though the idea of hiding in there with the door bolted held real appeal, it was time to do what she’d always done—put one foot in front of the other. She rose to face the day.
There were eggs to collect, sheep to be sheared and probably fences to check. She washed, dressed in her same old baggy work clothes, and felt the sharp pang of hunger before she remembered she no longer had a cook.
That stopped her in her tracks. Had Dylan thought she’d be the kind of wife who could cook? Sew? Knit? If so, he was in for a rude awakening. After her mother died, Rhia had lost count of the meals she’d burned. She’d get it all going just fine, then her mind would skip to the ranch work that needed doing. She’d follow that thread of a thought on into deeds and forget about the kitchen until smoke leaked from the house. Which was why her father had always hired a shepherd with a wife to cook for them.
Spying the leftover cake from their wedding, Rhia cut a big hunk, and ate it on the way to the shearing shed. She noticed Dylan’s mare, Annie, in the corral and stopped to give her a quick pet. Then she chatted with Juan about where they stood in the shearing and some of the load lifted from her shoulders. Dylan had thought to shear, and skin the sheep she’d lost to the raiders, which would recoup some of her losses.
Grabbing her shears, she got right to work on a ewe she pulled from the holding pen. Shearing time was measured by the number of sheep handled, not by the clock. She and Juan worked in silence but for the din of the bleating sheep.
Fifty ewes later, Rhia’s arms and back ached as she caught a particularly stubborn sheep and finally rolled it over to rest against her knee. “Why are you fighting me?” she crooned as she started clipping its belly. “Don’t you know how hot you’d be in a few weeks if we don’t get this done?”
“She’s probably just hoping to make your life even more miserable than it already is with this job to do,” Dylan said from behind her.
Startled, feeling at a distinct disadvantage bent over a recalcitrant sheep the way she was and still dreading facing him, she lashed out, “I wasn’t aware my life was all that miserable. I’m sorry if you feel I’ve dragged you into a pit of misery.”
“I didn’t say that exactly but I had hoped after yesterday I’d seen the last of the no-account drifter.” He nodded toward her clothes. It sounded as if he was teasing but she couldn’t help thinking there was more than a grain of truth to what he said.
Which meant she was doomed. How was she supposed to keep her promise to her father and look like the person she’d been last week? She couldn’t.
Rhia stared at Dylan over the struggling sheep. She’d been raised to respect hard work as the path to success and security. She hadn’t been raised to care how she looked or to sit around being waited on. In other words, she wasn’t a lady like Dylan’s mother.
Too bad! He’d said he didn’t want that. Apparently he’d been wrong. She guessed she wasn’t the only one having emotional revelations suddenly crop up the way her loneliness had.
He’d been determined to rescue her. He’d said the perfect wife for him had to know what it meant to put in a
hard day’s work. That’s what he’d gotten.
All he’d gotten.
Distracted, the shears slipped in her palm. She dropped the sheep before she hurt it and rounded on Dylan in a pure fury. “Now that tears it!” she shouted and heard a door at the other end open then shut. Juan had fled. Smart man.
“I look like a no-account drifter? Suppose you go over to the Rocking R and herd cattle wearing a dress. Or pick up a pair of sheers here with your skirts tangling in a ewe’s hooves, then tell me how your day went.”
Dylan took a breath. “Look. I’m sorry for the remark about your clothes. It just drives me crazy to know you wore that getup to hide and that you’re still hiding. I want more for you than that. But the truth is, we need you to help with the shearing to get to market before my father drives prices down because of the volume he’ll have for sale. I rode over there. He hasn’t started shearing. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.”
She nodded. “What exactly did you mean by calling my life miserable? Do you see this marriage as having dragged you into misery?”
Dylan’s eyes widened and he raked his fingers through his hair. “You don’t know what the don and I fought about, do you?”
“You call him the don,” she said, her tone sarcastic as she planted her hands on her hips. “That pretty well says it. I figured you two had another battle and he ordered you off Belleza. So you went to work for the Rocking R.”
She could see anger build in his eyes as he shook his head. “You have it backward. He disowned me because I went to work on the Rocking R. And I did that because I hate sheep and anything to do with them. They’re smelly and stupid and cause trouble wherever they’re raised.”
Rhia could feel the blood draining from her face. Who was this man she’d married? Did she know him at all?
Apparently not.
She put a hand in the middle of his chest and pushed him back out the shed door. “Get off my place, now. You set me up when you took me to town the night of the raid. It got you ahead of all those others in town who lined up to court me all of a sudden. Which means you didn’t marry me to save me from disgrace. You planned to take over here so you could bring cattle here. You want to destroy my parents’ dream.”
Eyes narrowed, lips thin, Dylan took a vibrating breath. Then another. “You’re wrong, Rhia. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up being tormented for being the son of a sheepherder. They just left you alone ’cause you were a girl and you were rarely in town.
“You talk about your parents’ dream. Well, I had one, too. I gave it up to try to help you make their dream and yours come true. But I wanted more for me and eventually my wife and children than the stigma cattle ranchers tack on to those who run woolies. The town’s growing. Changing. Look at the gossip over you and me going in to report the raid. There’s a school now. I wanted my kids to be able to go there and not get tripped in the street or not get pushed in the mud because of how their father earns a living. I’d think any woman would want the same for her children.
“As for me leaving Adara, we consummated this marriage, Mrs. Varga. And you asked for it. So I guess you’re stuck with me.” He turned and stormed away.
Oh, God. What have I done?
“Dylan,” she called but it came out as barely a squeak. Her breath, her anger, and all the starch drained right out of her along with her ability to stand. Numb, she slid downward, the outside wall of the shed at her back. She hugged her knees. “Dylan,” she whispered.
Too drained to even cry, she just sat. And tried to think. Was she sorry for Dylan or herself? Had she betrayed her parents by loving Dylan? Or had Dylan betrayed her?
She didn’t know.
She didn’t know anything anymore. So she sat there and watched the breeze stir the leaves on the big elm overhead. And thought of nothing—nothing at all.
Not much time could have passed when she felt Dylan crouched down in front of her. “Rowdy, honey, I’m sorry.” He touched her arm.
She lifted her head and stared into his earnest golden eyes.
“Despite my feelings about raising sheep, you’re the boss of this outfit and it’s your dream we’ll work toward. And what I said about last night was plain unforgivable. But I hope you’ll forgive me anyway. Last night was special.” He smiled. “I hope for both of us.”
She nodded and tried to smile back. How could she hold back forgiveness when everything she’d done since she’d seen that darn blue dress had trapped him in a life he clearly hated?
“Thanks,” he said quietly.
“Your dream, Dylan. What was your dream?” Her voice sounded so thin and reedy it shocked her.
“I wanted to breed horses. That’s what Annie was all about. She’d throw gorgeous foals. Alex has a stallion he was going to let me breed to her. I’m good with horses. I could train them and if I cut some of the ones with good lines out of wild herds, I might be able to breed in mustang endurance. With horse racing getting more and more popular, I think I could do really well.”
“Maybe someday we could buy more land. I’ve been trying to save for some. I’m sorry, Adara isn’t big enough for both right now, but maybe someday,” she said.
He nodded but there was a deep sadness in his eyes he tried and failed to hide. “Enough of that. Let me see that hand.”
She blinked. “Hand?”
“There’s blood on my shirt from when you pushed me out of the shed. You must have cut your hand or you have some mean blisters. Now let me see your hand.”
Her hand did sting some.
She put her palm up and he spit out a curse. “It’s both. Let’s get you up to the house and get this looked after.”
He was so sweet and gentle. He took care of her hand but then he got all polite and stiff, his eyes still sad. He excused himself. He had things to think about, he said. Then he made her promise not to go back to shearing. Next thing she knew he was out the door. And she was alone.
Not knowing what to do, she figured she’d try to cook dinner. Since she was supposed to stay in the house, maybe she could keep from burning it to a cinder.
It wasn’t easy with her hand all bandaged but she had the stove going and a stew on to simmer within an hour. At loose ends in the sparkling-clean house, she went to make up the bed and blushed at the evidence of last night’s activity. She stripped the sheets, grateful for the new ones the Presbyterian minister and his wife gave them as a wedding gift.
As she tucked in the blankets, she wondered about the damage to her mama’s pretty quilt. Yesterday Dylan said he’d put the damaged things in the tack room of the barn. That was something she could do with herself.
In the barn she stopped to pet Jessie’s velvety old nose. Dylan’s mare, Annie, trumpeted for attention and Rhia went to the stall and stroked her neck and cheek. “You really are a beauty.”
With a deep, defeated sigh, Rhia left the stalls and headed for the tack room. She found the quilt right off and was relieved she had enough skill with a needle to fix it. Mum had kept swatches of their old clothes Rhia could use to make repairs. They were in a yellow wooden box Daddy built. Mum had been going to make a quilt for the baby. Then they’d both been gone. Now Daddy was gone, too.
It wasn’t hard to find the bright yellow box. The lid was crushed and broken. She lifted the pieces with care and laid them aside in the hope that Dylan could glue it the way he had the teapot.
She smiled at the memory of the wildflowers he’d had waiting for her on the table. In her bouquet. On the altar at the church. Dylan had made their wedding day special even when she was the last woman he’d have chosen to marry.
Feeling sad already, she got even more so as she looked through the swatches, remembering the clothes they’d come from. Her dresses. Her mother’s. Her father’s shirts. At the bottom of the pile lay a letter addressed to her grandparents in
New York. They were both gone, too.
She frowned down at the envelope and ran her fingertips over her mother’s handwriting. Curious, Rhia opened it. The date explained why it had never been posted. Mum had written it the day before her death.
In it she talked about Adara and the reasons they’d decided on raising sheep. It wasn’t for any great love of them. Her mother confessed to not liking them a bit. She called them smelly and stupid.
Rhia fought a smile. Dylan’s exact words.
Her parents had picked sheep because it was easier to build a herd. Required fewer men. And there were the drives north with cattle on long dangerous trails they’d considered and rejected. It hadn’t mattered to them what made Adara a success, as long as they gave their children a good future.
Rhia closed her eyes, she’d been so wrong.
Then a thought occurred to her and she knew exactly what she intended to do about it. Their birthdays were tomorrow.
The only question left was could she do it on time?
Chapter Twelve
Dylan sat staring at the lake. It spread out before him, so still it perfectly reflected the trees surrounding it. They remained the bright green only seen in spring.
Spring.
Supposedly the season of promise. Of renewal. Of life. Not destruction, heartache and pain.
If only he’d kept his mouth shut. Rhia hadn’t needed to learn about his hatred of raising sheep or his reasons for it. She had so many worries with the uncertainty of starting a life together. Clearly a lot of men had made their true interest in her clear in town last week. They’d all wanted her land. It made sense that she’d read the motives of those men into his actions toward her.
So she’d lashed out in anger.
He frowned and looked down at the stone in his hand, then hurled it into the lake. No, she’d been feeling more than just anger. Hurt had added teeth to it. He’d never seen her strike out in anger at anyone, even as a child. He rubbed his hand over his chest where she’d shoved him backward out of the shed.
Weddings Under a Western Sky: The Hand-Me-Down BrideThe Bride Wore BritchesSomething Borrowed, Something True Page 15