Mail-Order Man

by Martha Hix

  When he ended the kiss, he nipped her bottom lip with his teeth. “We’re not doing a very good job of watching the rain,” he said silkily. “And I think you’d get more out of that if we got you out of these clothes.”

  “Such wisdom. Such good advice.”

  Without so much as a fumble, he unbuttoned her shirt and slipped his hand inside her camisole. The calluses on his fingertips gently abraded her breast and its now-puckered tip. As he slipped the shirt off her shoulders, his lips enticingly touched the dip of her throat, then trailed provocative kisses to her shoulder and down her arm.

  After untying the camisole and slipping it over her head, he reverently folded her shirt and undergarment. With lightning illuminating the kitchen, he laid her things on the chair. She gazed with appreciative eyes on the play of his back and arms as he moved. It became a yearning, the need to run her hands along those bunched muscles.

  Not another moment passed before she got her chance, and he felt so wonderful, so strong, so . . . capable. Eagerly, her hands swept over the hard lines of his hips, and she chuckled with pleasure upon scooting her fingertips to the satiny yet unbelievably rigid part of him.

  In a voice barely detectable under the staccato beat of the rain, he said, “Skylla . . . oh, sweet baby, see what you’ve done to me.”

  Without modesty, she looked at him . . . there. “You’re beautiful,” she stated without hesitation. “Truly beautiful.”

  He chuckled. “You’re too kind, sweetheart. I’d say it’s more along the lines of it’s-so-ugly-it’s-cute.”

  “You are mistaken. Only true beauty could rouse such a heat in my private parts.”

  This drew a peal of laughter. “You, my wanton little wife, are quite a woman. Quite a woman. And I’m getting more impatient by the moment to . . . watch the rain.”

  His nimble fingers worked the buttons of her britches, then slid them and her drawers down her legs. She felt as if she were ablaze, so heated was her blood. Would she be transmuted into an inferno of passion? Oh, yes. She did believe so.

  “I don’t think I want simply to watch the rain,” she whispered, gazing up into his marvelous eyes.

  “What do you want?”

  “You.”

  With that he lifted her onto the table. Letting her legs dangle freely, he spread her thighs, stepping between them. His thumbs at her armpits and his hands spreading to support her ribs, he began to finish what they had started. He cherished her breasts, her belly, her navel—each with hot and ardent lips. When the fingers of one of his hands covered her naked mound, she whimpered. That whimper turned to a gasp at the same moment he delved into the cleft of her womanly place.

  “You feel so good,” he uttered. “Perfect.”

  “In the vein of it’s-so-ugly-it’s-pretty?”

  Gently, he nipped the tip of her nose with his teeth. “You would have made a good strumpet in some bawdy alehouse of old, my love.”

  Feeling saucy as a wench and paraphrasing Shakespeare, she winked at her adored husband. “Milord, you make much ado about nothing.”

  “I’ll teach you to call me a liar!”

  His finger found her most sensitive nub, and he knew exactly how to exact passion. The ability to stay upright departed her, and she fell back on the table, bracing herself on her elbows. She looked down at him; he was smiling a wicked smile. She started to lean forward . . . but there was no doing anything beyond giving in to her wondrous feelings, for he had lowered his mouth to that place where his fingertip had been. His tongue made a slow and masterful foray. Never too rough, never too gentle, always with a proficiency not to be improved upon, he laved her. Was there no end to the wonders of him?

  Suddenly, flashes of heat singed her every pore, her every cell, her every vein. And like a burning leaf as it curled in a fire, her muscles drew inward. “Stop! For God’s sake, Braxton, stop! I can’t take it!”

  He stopped.

  Yet she hated herself for asking.

  That emotion lasted a fraction of a second. His long and thick erection slid into her wet portal. She moaned. And then he had her in his arms, her behind leaving the table.

  “Wrap your legs around me,” he commanded in a hoarse voice. “Put your arms around my neck.”

  She did as bade.

  His strong legs planted to the earthen floor, he pushed deeper into her, and lifted her from the table. She gasped at her response. Her nails dug into his back, her teeth into his shoulder. Was there anything better than making love to him?

  “Am I too rough for you, my precious wife?”

  “Not in the least.”

  Unconvinced, he added, “I can make love to you gently. Or I can give you the wildness of my loving. Which will you have, wife?”

  “I-I’m not sure.”

  “Know your power. Use it. Tell me what you want.”

  They went still, still as a calm night. This wasn’t a clement night. She didn’t want tranquil. Her half-lidded eyes blazed a trail to his fixed gaze. “Hold nothing back, husband.”

  He didn’t.

  Her moans of ecstasy, not one but several, filled the cookhouse. He rubbed raw her ability to make sense of anything. Yet there was a certain clarity to her feelings. Her mouth rushed to his shoulder again as he pumped wildly into her, and she couldn’t help but nip at his skin.

  He yelped. He yelped at the same moment that his primal groan drowned the beat of the rain. The pulse of his release shot into her—she felt it in his every action. A calm, a celestial calm, settled through her. She knew, as women have known throughout the ages, that she and her husband were forever cleaved, the one unto the other.

  He went still. Too still? She had hurt him.

  “I . . . I’m sorry. Oh, Braxton, my darling, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. This is the shoulder the Indians attacked, isn’t it?”

  Holding her tight, he let his lips hover over hers. “I’m man enough to take it.”

  “Is there anything to eat around here?”

  The night storm having softened to rain outside the cookhouse, Skylla smiled at her naked husband. She had to pinch herself in this, the afterglow of lovemaking, to make certain she wasn’t in the throes of a wonderful dream. Marriage more than agreed with her. If only she weren’t troubled about family . . .

  Glancing to the cupboard, she finally answered, “I could fix you a plate of leftover sausage and pickles. And there’s pie for dessert. Vinegar pie. Interested?”

  “Vinegar. Sounds awful.”

  “Try it, you might change your mind. It tastes a lot like lemon pie. Mrs. Burrows swears by it. And it made a hit at dinner tonight, um, I mean last night. It was all I could do to save you a piece.”

  “You’re wonderful, Skylla Hale. Flat out wonderful.” He pulled her into his arms and began to nuzzle her neck. “Forget the food. I’ll just feast on this sweet piece of pie.”

  “Later, you insatiable beast,” she murmured, shivering with delight yet pulling away. “You wanted food. I’m going to provide it.”

  “Killjoy.” He swatted her bare behind, but let her go, sitting down on the cloth-draped table, his back resting against the cookhouse wall, while watching her fill a plate with food. When she handed it over, he asked, “Share it with me?”

  “By all means.”

  “Then get your butt up here, woman.” He spread his legs and patted the area between them, gesturing for her to sit there. “I’m so hungry I could eat the south end out of a north-bound jackass.”

  “That’s not much of a testimonial to my cooking.”

  “Get up here, woman, and now,” he ordered with affected gruffness. “Else, I’ll tell everybody that you can’t even boil water without burning it.”

  She made a face at him. He returned the gesture. Then they both laughed as she levered up to her appointed place, leaning back against his shoulder—the one without the bruise—and just plain relaxed. Relaxed, and luxuriated in the warm cocoon of Braxton.

  He fed her bite after bite,
until she realized that he had been the one to cry hungry. “My turn to feed you,” she said, scooting around to lift a slice of sausage to his lips. Mesmerized, she fed him pickle, then pie. The way his mouth moved when he chewed, it had a sensuality to it. And she hummed low in her throat upon recalling the vast talent of those lips.

  At last he licked his lips. “Mm, mm. You’re right. The pie was delicious. Will you make it again some time?”

  “With pleasure.” It did please her to do for her husband, even though she had the idea to hire a cook.

  He reached for his denims and dug into the pocket, saying, “I brought you something.” Proud as a youngster presenting his mother with a frog, Brax handed over an amber bottle. “Liniment.” Liniment? Neither liniment nor a pair of corrective shoes was a box of chocolates—or a cameo—but his offering pleased her. “I’m sure it’ll help. Where did you get it?”

  “From the quartermaster at Camp Llano. We got in a card game, and rather than take his money, I told him I’d settle for some of his horse liniment. Now, you’ll want to use it three times a day, first in the morning, then at noon, and before you go to bed.” His wiggled his brows. “I’ll do the rubbing-it-in.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” She reached up to hug him. “Thank you.”

  “Let’s give some of it a try.” He poured liniment onto his palm, rubbed his hands together, then smoothed the cool-hot liquid along her twisted calf. Brow furrowed, he said something entirely off the subject. “While I was at Camp Llano, I talked to Webb Albright. He says there’s a railhead up Kansas way. The railroad goes to Chicago. The stockyards of Chicago. Albright says beef is selling for forty dollars a head up there.”

  “Forty dollars? For one cow?” Her eyes widened.

  “What do you think about a cattle drive to Kansas, come the first of the year?”

  “What’s wrong with now?” she retorted, giddy with the thought of forty dollars a head.

  He shook his head, made a couple of kneading rubs to her flesh, then replied, “Winter will be here before we know it. Winters can be tricky up that way, I understand. We need to cull and brand all the stock we intend to send to Kansas. Which means we need more cowboys and good horseflesh.”

  “The first of the year will be fine, then.”

  He landed a peck of a kiss on the tip of her nose. “In the meantime, now that Snuffy and Luckless have shown up, I say we send down to San Antonio for some tannery supplies. Those fellows are crackerjack tanners. We’ll get in the tanning and hide business, like you suggested. There’s a market for hides closer than Kansas, sure as shootin’.”

  “I’m for it. But what’s this ‘send down to San Antonio’? We need all kinds of things for the ranch. I need all kinds of things. To tell the truth, honey, I’ve got a hankering to go shopping. Let’s me and you go to town.”

  He moved behind her, pulling her to him. His arms crossed under her breasts, he said, “You called me honey.”

  “Why, I guess I did.”

  “That’s the first time you’ve called me a sweet nothing.”

  “There’s a first time for everything—honey.”

  He nuzzled her nose. “Yeah. And there’s time for something else. . . .”

  “Oh?” she teased. “You want to get an early start on helping the boys build your precious fence?”

  “That is not what I’ve got in mind.”

  They stole naked through the night, ending up in their bedroom. He put Electra out, then turned to Skylla. Her eyes were on the bed. “Braxton, honey, I’ve misplaced something. A legal document. I’d stuck it between the mattress and the ropes. You haven’t seen anything of a folded piece of paper, have you?”

  Suddenly he began to cough. And cough.

  Twenty-two

  That deed of trust was going to be the death of him.

  Three hours after she’d questioned him about the deed’s whereabouts, Brax still had a headache, a giant headache that had penetrated his skull to pound on his brain.

  Luck had been his until this morning. Boy, had he been lucky. Matter of fact, he’d considered himself the luckiest man alive. A happy marriage; Piglet with her eyes on a husband; Claudine having one. Neither that business with the new county clerk nor the redhead’s vague threats had had him ruffled. Luck’s name was Brax—until Skylla had reminded him of his harebrained scheme.

  The headache didn’t go away all morning, even when he busied his mind. He figured to sell the topaz gems and bank the proceeds, plus Titus’s gold, in San Antonio. There, he would buy a wagon to haul supplies back to the ranch. He intended to talk his wife out of making the trip, even though as brother to two sisters who had delighted in shopping, he knew his wife thirsted to sail from millinery shops to dress shops and back again. Next trip. This trip, he had unfinished business with the horse thief, Singleterry, and he didn’t want her in the middle of the showdown.

  With his head pounding, he couldn’t deal with composing an argument to keep her down on the ranch. Nor could he decide how to get out of the trap of his own making: the deed of trust.

  The sun on his aching head, he rode to Safe Haven Canyon and got reacquainted with the cowpokes, Snuffy Johnson and Luckless Litton. Talkative fit Luckless. The most distinguishing feature in the laconic Snuffy was wild red hair, so bright it looked as if a bolt of lightning had struck him.

  “Never figgered to see the likes of you agin,” Litton said, pounding a post into the ground. “Me an’ Snuf, we figgered yew was in the good life, since ya tied in with Gen’l Hood.”

  Snuffy nodded and spat a stream of tobacco to the ground.

  “I fared well enough. Better than most Rebels.” Brax wiped his brow. “I didn’t finished the war with Hood. I got separated from him a few months before Lee surrendered. Hood was doing all right, and my services were needed at the front.”

  Litton nailed a cross tie into the fence post. “We heared the gen’l went down to Nawlins, got marr’d up down there. Marriage shore does agree with ya. We ain’t seen ya so fat and happy, never. Ain’t that right, Snuf?”

  Snuffy nodded. Then spoke. “How come you come back to the Nickel Dime? Did ya reckon to squat on the place?”

  Brax answered with a question of his own. “Did you two reckon to squat on the place?”

  “Ta tell the truth,” said Litton, “that be ’xactly what we bet on. Didn’t know nothing about no heiress, but figgered she be the major’s niece. She be as purty as he let on.”

  Brax wished he’d listened closer to Titus.

  Litton hitched up his britches. “ ’Course, now that we be here, we ain’t too upset to hire out as hands, are we, Snuf?”

  “We ain’t riled.”

  “That be a right nice lady ya got, that Miss Skylla.” Litton dusted his hands. “We be happy to work for y’all.”

  Brax pulled on gloves to lend a hand with the fencing. “We could use a coupla dozen fellows like you. My wife and I have big plans for the ranch. Anyone who stays loyal to the brand, there’s gonna be nothing but good coming to him.” Brax launched into a monologue about a cattle drive and a tannery.

  “Sounds good, don’t it, Snuf?”

  Snuffy nodded.

  “I’m thinking y’all might be due for a raise. How ’bout thirty a month?”

  “Oh, boy, I can hire me a whore,” the normally quiet Snuffy exclaimed. “A purty whore what dudn’t stink like piss nur fish. That’s what I been dreamin’ about durn near all my life.”

  Every man was entitled to his own idea of heaven.

  After his jawing with the restored cowhands, Brax had backtracked to headquarters and a thankless task. His wife at his side, he approached Kathy Ann in her room. “Piglet,” he said, “that dress has got to go back.”

  “If it goes, I’m going with it.”

  He read her look, and it was determined. It dogged him, cutting into her happiness, though he doubted Skylla would change her mind. “Kathy Ann, we’ll buy you a dozen dresses. A hundred dresses. Whatever you want to make you happy
.”

  “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am, Piglet. I am.”

  Skylla stepped toward her. “Lovey, would you like to go away to school? We could send you back East. Or to Europe. Or we can tutor you here.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, she asked, “Is that what you want me to do, Sergeant?”

  “Your sister and I want what’s best for you.” He wouldn’t mention their diverse views on “best.”

  Kathy Ann turned to her bureau, removing her adored buckskin dress from a drawer. Not facing them, she thrust it out behind her. “Take it.”

  Brax couldn’t. Skylla did. It broke his heart to hear Piglet’s plaintive sobs as they left her. “I hope you’re happy,” was all he could say to his wife.

  He found that he didn’t want her around as he tackled the next dirty job. Thankfully, Skylla didn’t press the subject. Brax approached Charlie Main, who was collecting a saddle from the tack room. “Main, why don’t you sit a spell?”

  “Whut be the matter?”

  “Claudine got married.”

  His sun-battered face went white, the light collapsing in his eyes. “I wanted her for my own.”

  “I know you did, ole buddy. I know you did.”

  The cowpoke dropped the saddle. “I’m gonna do whut I shoulda done, long time ago. I’m taking Patsy Sue, and we’re leaving.”

  “Main, don’t rush off. We need you here. But if you’re set on going, my wife and I want to give you a grubstake.”

  “I won’t need a grubstake where I’m going.”

  If Main’s next moves were in character, he’d no doubt get drunk, tear up Leander’s Saloon, pass out, then get up and start over again. Nickel Dime money could put the saloon back in shape. Besides, if ever a man earned the right to tear something up, it was Charlie Main.