The Devil You Know

by Jo Goodman

  “Hmm. That’s right. I owe you a penny.”

  She chuckled. “I’ll record it under accounts receivable.”

  Israel said, “Or you could take it out in trade.”

  Now she gave him a full-throated laugh. “Are you trying to be helpful or are you merely hopeful?”

  “Can’t I be both?”

  Willa took her hand from his and flung herself at him. “Come here, you wicked man.” When she was more on top of him than not, she began planting kisses. His ear, his neck, the space between his eyebrows that creased when he was thinking deeply, she put her mouth to each place. Sometimes she lingered, as she did when she came to the corner of his lips, trying to tease the dimple to show itself. Sometimes her lips darted, alighting as briefly as a hummingbird in search of sweeter nectar.

  “Should we remove our coats?” he asked, his breath hot in her ear.

  “Soon.” She breathed the word more than she said it and then said it again, this time against his mouth. “Soon.”

  Israel was agreeable, especially when she did a fair imitation of John Henry as she wriggled over him. He slipped his hands under her coat and cupped the rounds of her bottom. They were soft, beautifully curved, and eminently squeezable right up until the moment he whispered, “Mrs. Roundbottom, I presume.” That was when her head jerked up and her buttocks tightened rock hard under his palms. “Huh,” he grunted quietly. “Just as I thought. You’re not much for the name either.”

  “It doesn’t apply,” she said, mildly nettled.

  He grinned. “Not at the moment, it doesn’t, but there are times, Wilhelmina . . . oh, yes, there are times.”

  She heard this last spoken with such reverence that she could not help but be complimented by it. She relaxed under his palms. “Like this? Like now?”

  He nodded. “Plump as rising dough.”

  Laughing, she slapped his hands away. When they rested at the small of her back, she said, “That’s better. I’ll let you know when you can put your hands on my round bottom again.” She lowered her mouth to his, nudging him with her lips, not teasing him with her tongue. Not yet. She played his lips as if his mouth were a fine instrument, which in many ways it was. She blew on them softly, sipped them, hummed against them. She drew the lower one between her teeth and bit down gently. He moved a shade restlessly under her; she liked that.

  “We can take off our coats now.” She touched her forehead to his. “And a lot of other things besides. You first.” She rolled off and lay on her back, cradling her head in her hands as she settled in and prepared to watch him.

  Israel sat up and began unbuttoning his coat. “I suppose you want your penny’s worth.”

  “Taking what you owe me in trade was your idea, so I sure do.”

  Swiveling, he threw his legs over the side the bed and stood. The room was sparsely but adequately furnished for the transient guest. There was a stove in one corner giving off a fair amount of heat. A copper kettle with a rich verdigris patina and filled with split wood was situated at an angle beside the stove, assuring that the room, with very little effort, would remain warm. Nearby were a rocker and a footstool, both of them plainly made but serviceable. A small square table stood on the right side of the bed and a long bench seat with a colorful quilted pad on the lid sat at the foot of it. The room also had a trifold painted silk screen secluding the corner of the room closest to the stove.

  Curious, Israel folded his coat over his arm, dropped it on the bench seat, and walked over to the screen. He looked over his shoulder at Willa, one eyebrow cocked. She had risen high enough to prop herself on her elbows, and she returned his gaze, clearly interested herself. He held up a finger and peeked behind the screen. He looked back at her again, smiled, and then disappeared.

  “You are going to owe me that penny—with interest—if you are taking your clothes off back there.”

  Israel looked at her over the top of the screen, the lower half of his face hidden from view. “It is remarkable how you have embraced certain intimate aspects of marriage.”

  “It surprises me, too.”

  Israel shook his head, but behind the screen, he was grinning. When he stepped around it, once more in Willa’s full view, only a hint of his smile was left, but what was there was full of cunning. “The washstand is back there. Basin, pitcher, towels, and fresh water. More importantly, there is a tub. I take it all we have to do is ask downstairs and someone will be charged with filling it. It’s big. Bigger than we have at the ranch. There might even be room for two of us.”

  “There’d probably be more room in it if at least one of us wasn’t wearing any clothes.”

  It was hard to argue with that logic, so Israel went over to the stove and stood beside it as he removed his jacket and vest and pulled his shirt over his head. He sat in the rocker to take off his boots and socks, and then stepped out of his trousers. He placed everything but his boots neatly on the bench seat before he shrugged out of his thin flannel undershirt and dropped the drawers that were now riding low on his hips.

  He walked unself-consciously to the side of the bed while she tracked his movements with heavy-lidded and darkening eyes. “Well?” he asked.

  “You are an astonishingly beautiful man, Mr. McKenna,” she said huskily. “And you know what part is worth every penny you’ll ever owe me?”

  Israel stared at her hard. The faint smile playing about her mouth warned him away, but he said, “I am going to regret this, but damn if the devil in me doesn’t want to know. All right. Tell me.”

  “The part where you fold all your clothes and put . . . put them . . . put them all . . .”

  He pounced as her voice dissolved into peals of bright, joyful laughter. He pinned her with scissor legs and by making a fist around her rope of hair. She was free to pummel him if she liked because he did not grab her by the wrists, but she had begun laughing in a little hiccuping fashion and appeared to have no strength to fight back. It might also have been that she had no enthusiasm for doing so.

  Israel leaned in so his face hovered inches above hers. “Are you quite finished?”

  “I think—hic—so.” She regarded him guiltily. “Sorry. I’m—hic—trying. I really am—hic.”

  Shaking his head, making a genuine effort to appear solemn, even stern, but failing so miserably that she began chuckling, Israel lowered his mouth until he could feel her breathy giggles, and then he tickled her until she begged him to stop. When he finally obliged her and rolled onto his back, she curled on her side, hugged her ribs, and gasped for breath.

  “That was cruel,” she said when she could speak.

  “Mnh.”

  She stared at his profile, saw his lips twitch. “Do you know what would be more cruel?”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you don’t help me out of these clothes. Because frankly I don’t have the strength.”

  “All right,” he said, rising to his elbows. “But I am not folding them.”

  Laughing, she flopped onto her back and beamed up at him.

  Israel made short work of her clothes, pausing only to torture her as much as he saw fit, but never as much as she deserved. She should be grateful, he told her, that he did not have the stamina to draw it out that long. And Willa, between gasps of pleasure and hitches of laughter, assured him that she was.

  Israel pulled back the covers so she could wiggle under them. It was not until she was naked, perfectly so, that she had a stab of self-consciousness and wanted to be beneath the covers. He obliged, rising to his knees and tugging on the blankets to get them down and then over. Before he dived under them, he asked her about the curtains. Did she want him to close them?

  Willa looked to window, frowned slightly at the cloudy gray light pressing against the glass, not because the day was overcast, but because she was reminded that it was still early in the afternoon. They had never had th
e opportunity to be intimate during the day while they were at the ranch. There was always the threat of intrusion, mostly from Annalea, even when they found themselves with time and opportunity.

  “No,” she said defiantly, as if she were taking a stand against the light. “Leave them open.”

  “Rebel,” Israel whispered. He gave her a thorough kiss before crawling under the blankets and hoped she felt rewarded for her decision. That had been his intention. He wanted to see more of her, not less.

  She turned to him once he was settled and did not question his decision to pull her leg across his. She was familiar with mounting and straddled him easily when she realized it was what he wanted. Her hair fell in two long waves on either side of her face, a dark curtain of modesty and mystery where it covered her breasts. Israel’s fingers slipped between the waves, sifting and combing. He cupped the side of her face, and his thumb brushed her lips until they parted. When she sucked on the tip, bit it gently, it was as if she had found the single thread that would unravel all of him.

  He pulled his hand back sharply before he was undone by her teeth and her Circe smile. He slipped his fingers under her curtain of hair and dragged them lightly over her breasts. The nipples stood erect under his thumbs, and those sweet little buds did not bite back. When her sorceress smile faded as she pressed her lips together, he chuckled deep in his throat, and the sound of it was vaguely wicked even to his own ears.

  Her fingers were busy as well. They flitted over his chest, never alighting for long, but always exerting enough pressure to keep from being ticklish. When she traced an imaginary line from his breastbone to his navel, his skin retracted in anticipation of her touch and for a moment he didn’t breathe.

  He was not helpless to stop her when she took him by the wrists and removed his hands from her breasts, but neither was he persuaded any good would come of denying her anything. When she had borne his hands down to the mattress, she threaded her fingers through his to keep them there. The handclasp was an effective restraint as she bent over him and kissed him at her leisure.

  Israel returned the kisses as he was able, but those were fleeting moments as she frequently left his mouth to attend to him elsewhere. She kissed the pulse beating in his throat and used the tip of her tongue to trace the sensitive cord in his neck. She blew a kiss against his ear that made him shiver. She told him to close his eyes, and when he did, she teased him with the unexpected, kissing the underside of his jaw, his temples, his forehead, even pressing her lips to his collarbone, before she settled them briefly on his eyelids.

  When he opened his eyes, her face was close, and her eyes were so dark now that even with daylight as a companion, they were like black diamonds, fathomless, yet radiant. Yes, she had contradictions, too.

  She nudged his lips, whispered against them. “I want you inside me. Show me.”

  Israel stretched his fingers, and she released him, sliding her hands along his forearms as she began to sit up. When he was free, he slipped his hands under her buttocks and lifted her. “Go on,” he said. “Take it.”

  She reached between them, between her legs, and made a fist around his cock. She looked at him, momentarily uncertain, but when he nodded, she began to lower herself, guiding him, guiding her, and her hand came away and then he was inside her and she was all around him.

  She closed her eyes briefly. He stroked her thighs, and when she began to lean forward, he caressed her buttocks. She tentatively lifted her hips and then pushed back. She squeezed him and opened her eyes when he groaned.

  “Go on,” he said again. “Watching you ride is a singular pleasure.”

  Moaning softly, she found his hands and brought them to her breasts. She rubbed herself against him, and it was not long before it was not enough. She covered him so he could take the tip of one breast into his mouth, and when he did, when he sucked and teased and tasted, she began to rise and fall with the rhythm he drew out of her.

  Israel let her go at the first sign that she wanted to pull away. She was slightly out of breath but not in a way that was concerning. It was more in the way of a compliment, and he had a knowing smile for her when she sat up and took notice of his mouth.

  “Beast,” she said under her breath, and then she began to take him on a long ride.

  She came noisily, without inhibition, and he liked her for it. Hearing her like this, so deeply satisfied that she could not help giving it sound, was a rare occurrence in their bedroom. In spite of her experience with Annalea being a sound sleeper, she was never so confident that she wanted to test it. Sometimes it happened in spite of her intentions, primarily because he would not let her go quietly, but she was more embarrassed than pleased in the aftermath, and he had to be careful not to press her too often.

  For now, though, she was quite content to be tumbled onto her back and let him have his way with her, just as if he hadn’t already had his way. He came when he was deep inside her, and he, who had often painfully tried to avoid any possibility of a child, wondered if perhaps this time he had got her with one.

  They lay side by side, shoulders touching, breathing slowly, both of them with their eyes set drowsily at half-mast. After a few minutes, Willa lifted his arm so she could make a cradle for her head in his shoulder. Once she was comfortably nested, he was able to bring his arm around her.

  She murmured something that Israel could not properly hear. “How’s that again?” he asked.

  “Mm.”

  “Oh. Nothing profound, then.”

  A brief, silent laugh shook her shoulders. “No. Nothing profound.” She rubbed her cheek against him. “But you know what would be?”

  “No.”

  “That tub you talked about earlier, filled with hot water, ribbons of steam scented with lavender or spice, a thick sponge, floating soap, and a stack of towels warming beside the stove.”

  “I don’t know if that meets the definition of profound,” he said. “But you paint a very nice picture, although I have to tell you I’m not partial to scented bath salts.”

  “I am.”

  “Then you can put them in after I get out.”

  “The bath is for me,” she said.

  “Not if I’m the one getting up, getting dressed, and going downstairs to make it happen.”

  “Oh.”

  “Uh-huh.” He started to rise, but she pulled him back. “It can wait.”

  He shook his head. “No, I need to get up anyway. There’s something else I want to do. It won’t take long, but I have to leave the hotel. I’ve seen the size of the tub. I’ll be back before it’s filled.” He gently removed her hand from his arm and slid out of bed.

  “May I know what you’ll be doing?”

  “I’d like to tell you when it’s done.” He could see that she did not particularly care for his answer, but he began to dress in spite of it. She was quiet and obviously unhappy, and that resonated uneasily with him. He sat on the bench to put on his boots. “I didn’t have to tell you I was going to leave the hotel, but I did because I knew if you learned it on your own, you would wonder about every promise I ever made to you. That’s precisely what I don’t want you to do. I’m coming right back.”

  Willa sat up, drawing the covers with her as she raised her knees to her chest. She nodded, but it was reluctantly given. “I can’t help but wonder if those are the same words you spoke to someone else.”

  He paused, tucking in his shirt. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean those might be the very words you said to someone before you rode out to the ridge with men who probably intended for you to die there. I can’t seem to put it behind me, which is more than passing strange since it happened to you. But there you have it. It still knots me up inside. Life is that fragile and there is not much ahead of us that we can ever know for certain.”

  Israel sat down on the bed beside her and took her hand. “Listen to me, Wi
lla,” he said quietly, willing her to look at him. “‘And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life’s span? If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters?’”

  “‘Consider the lilies . . .’” she said softly. “Yes, I know. Matthew?”

  “Mm-hmm. It’s there, but I was quoting verses in Luke.”

  She smiled a trifle crookedly. “Seems that if two disciples saw fit to write down what their Lord said, they are words to take to heart.”

  “Hmm. Quill told me once that I interpreted the whole passage wrong, or perhaps took it too much to heart. He said when the Lord provided, it did not mean that He provided only for me, nor did it mean that whatever was provided was mine for the taking. There was very little I worried about in those days, which is not precisely what was meant either.”

  “It must be useful to know so much and employ it at will.”

  “Are you talking about me or my brother?”

  “Both of you, I imagine. You had the same father . . . and mother.”

  Sober, he said, “We did, but Willa, we employed what we learned in very different ways.”

  “I think I understood that.”

  He bent, kissed her on the mouth, and allowed himself the privilege of lingering. When he drew back, he heard himself ask without any forethought of doing so, “Do you want to come with me?”

  Surprised by the offer, her lips parted. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” His eyebrows lifted as her smile erased every vestige of concern from her features. Anticipating her answer, he stood and tugged on her hand. He was slow to register her resistance until he heard her speak.

  She said, “No.”

  “No?”

  “Uh-huh. No.”

  “But I thought—”

  “It was enough that you asked.” She loosened her hand from his and shooed him away. “I don’t understand it either, but there it is. You go, and I will supervise the filling of the tub to an acceptable height and see that it’s hot enough to still be warm when you return.”