by Gem Sivad
So, she forced her anger aside and tried objectively to grasp control of her situation.
Grady Hawks wanted a child. Naturally a boy will be expected.
What-if she could be a real wife and let the girls grow up here in safety. She'd paced, sometimes carrying one daughter, sometimes another. She walked and hummed and soothed, made stew because it was easy, tended the fussy babies, and tried to feed them when they cried.
While she played the what-if game, her body prepared for what she knew she must do. Very little milk came down, and when the twins remained hungry, she resorted to honey water.
Emma had latched onto Julie's finger and gnawed on it when she smeared the honey along the baby's gum. She'd felt a bump on the bottom that she had never noticed before.
Emerald sniffled and seemed generally unhappy. Amy was usually quieter, but today she had been almost listless, and Julie feared she'd caught a cold. She drooled and cried most of the time.
Julie spread a blanket in the kitchen and surrounded them with rolled-up blankets.
The twins fussed and played and chattered and slept while she baked bread and biscuits.
She didn't explore the impulse to add cookies to the evening meal, but while the oven was hot for baking, she hunted up ingredients for her mama's drop recipe and mixed up a double batch.
She'd gone at top speed all day, trying to get back the time she'd spent having a tantrum. By the time supper came and the men ate, she'd made up her mind. She'd assume her position as Mrs. Grady Hawks, mother of two children and ranch wife. Julie decided that she would do whatever it took to keep her place on Hawks Nest Ranch.
When her husband stood dripping and cold by the door, she shoved a cup of hot coffee in his hands, took up another towel to blot up some of the water soaking his clothes and dripping on the floor, and wrapped a warmed blanket around his shoulders.
"Stew's ready. Your clothes are laid out on the bed. I'll have the food on by the time you change."
She gave him an order, but it was sensible and well planned, and left no reason to ignore her directions. He looked surprised before he crossed to the hall and disappeared inside the bedroom.
Julie spooned food into two bowls, cut off two hunks of warm bread, spreading butter over each, and carried the simple meal to the man and woman by the fire. The coffee cups were empty, so she hurried back to the stove and wrapped her makeshift apron around the handle and returned to the man, who held the cup up for a refill.
Grady Hawks came out in time to hear her say, "I don't have night clothes to offer your wife, but I have a dress she can change into."
The smaller woman trembled, teeth chattering, even as she tried to stem the shivers.
Just then, the babies woke and began to fuss. Julie turned away abruptly and hurried to the twins' cradle.
"Shhhhh, my lovelies," she murmured, indifferent to the other three adults in the room. She lifted Emma, who was whimpering as she had all day, settled her on her hip, and reached for Amy, but Grady was there before her, lifting her second daughter from the cradle.
He held her up, inspecting the baby, and when he saw the red rash on her chin, he asked, "What's wrong?"
"I don't know," Julie admitted. "They've both been cranky all day long."
"Are they hungry?" he asked hesitantly. He set his earlier stern animus aside as he inspected the babies for sickness.
There were a million unpleasant answers she could have given him. It seemed like all of them flitted through her mind. But bound by her earlier decision, Julie shook her head and told him the truth. "Neither girl ate much today. I think they've caught colds."
She touched Amy's cheek, worried that it was flushed a rosier hue than earlier. "I think she has a fever." The baby looked up at both of them as they peered into her face.
She yawned, and when she did, Julie was reminded of the bump on her gum.
"She has a bump in her mouth." Without words, he transferred the twin into her arms, went to the sink, and washed his hands thoroughly, returning to inspect Amy's mouth. She fussed and gnawed at his finger, and his frown turned to a smile.
"Is Emma fussing the same way?" He nodded at the baby in her arms and then inspected her mouth too.
"Teething," he announced. "Babies' gums are sore. Good time to wean them." His remark was so self-satisfied she couldn't control her sharp answer.
"How do you know such things, a man alone with neither chick nor child?"
He rubbed his jaw tiredly, and Julie was sorry she'd challenged him. But he answered her anyway.
"Babies of one kind or another all get milk teeth. Some just get them earlier than others. When it happens, they get cranky and started chewing on everything in reach."
He carried Amy to the table with him, and she followed and set the loaf of bread on the table after filling a bowl with stew. She juggled Emma on her hip as she worked.
Silence was easier than trying to have a conversation with this man.
When he finished the stew, she sat the crock of cookies on the table and filled his cup of coffee. After she watched him eat half a dozen of the confections and figured she'd sweetened his disposition as much as she could, she told him her decision.
She spoke quietly, but intended the woman and man by the fire to hear also. "You'll have to get a cow. I will feed my own children one way or another." She leaned over him and lifted Amy from his arms.
"Until then, I'll feed them as I have before." She'd almost made it to the hall doorway when he spoke.
"The cow will be brought tomorrow."
She nodded at the couple by the fire. "You folks can have the bedroom back here that my girls have been sleeping in. We'll be across the hall tonight."
She'd already moved her nightgown into the bigger room. The cradle sat next to the bed in reach of her hand should they waken in the night. She intended that there would be no more coupling with Grady Hawks while her children lay asleep in the same bed with them.
But then the Indian man unrolled a bedroll and made a place in front of the fire for him and his wife, and Julie felt silly for her offer. She retreated to the bedroom, and clutched a blanket around her as she hurried to get ready for bed.
She knew he liked her hair, so she took special care with the heavy waves, using the wooden comb he'd made her. Then she put a bolster between the cold wall and the cradle where the babies slept, crawled into her own cocoon of blankets, and fell asleep listening to the men's murmured voices speaking a language she didn't understand.
His cold nose, pressed against the crease between her shoulder and neck, woke her.
He had shifted her into his arms and curled around her back, nuzzling her almost absently. In spite of her intentions to service him, before she rolled over to comply, he sighed and pulled her closer, then went to sleep.
When Julie was certain it was not feigned and his exhaustion had made him oblivious to what she did, she reached into the cradle lifting the babies to her, opened her nightgown, and fed both daughters. Then she tucked them back into their cradle where they resumed sleep in their comfortable, warm nest.
She woke later, her nightgown around her waist and her bare bottom pressed against his engorged flesh. His hand splayed across her belly, holding her in place while he eased his length into her sheath. When he was seated deep inside of her, he pressed his hand against her mound, forcing the last inch of his cock inside.
"Oh, God." She tried to stifle her moan, but it escaped her in a breathless gasp. He was much bigger than her unprepared flesh was ready to receive.
"You can take me." His entry pulled and burned as he took possession of her and made her flesh his own. He dropped his hand lower and stroked her intimately, rubbing a callused thumb across her clit.
The rough caress made her internal muscles clench, and he in turn sank even deeper as her body heated and prepared for him.
He anchored himself, hand on her now-slippery folds, fingers playing with her sensitive flesh, while his own turgid member pumpe
d slowly in and out, stretching her around his thick cock. He cupped her breasts, thrusting even deeper, so she spread her legs for him, letting him take his pleasure as he wanted.
When his breath began to rasp in his chest, she squeezed her internal muscles, and it was enough. He pulled her hips high and thrust deep, spilling his seed in a mighty flow that flooded her and trickled down her thigh.
Satisfied that she'd done her duty, she was surprised when he left the warm cocoon of the bed and padded across to the pitcher and bowl on the side table. When he returned, he used the wet cloth he'd fetched to clean away the residue of their coupling.
Then, with no words spoken between them, he climbed back into bed, tucked his half aroused member against her rump, and promptly fell back to sleep. Julie lay in the bed awake, the heat from Grady's body and the weight of his arm slung over her uncomfortable and strange.
She couldn't remember being tended as a baby. Other than that long ago possibility, she had never in her life had anyone wash her for any reason. She had even cleaned herself after the birth of the girls.
Julie had expected to satisfy Grady Hawks' sexual needs, but had been unprepared for his thoughtful attentions after. She wanted to scoot as far away from him in the bed as possible. His sexual intimacies were opposed to everything she understood. Coupling was supposed to be about a man climbing on, satisfying himself, and climbing off. It didn't include personal familiarity or the passion he tried to call from her each time.
She gritted her teeth as his breath whistled annoyingly in her ear, and his body, wrapped as it was around hers possessively, blanketed her with too much heat. She could see out the window that the winter storm still raged, and as her eyes drifted shut, she smiled. There would be no cow in the barn tomorrow.
When his long arm reached beyond the edge of the mattress and rested on the cradle, seeming a silent promise of safety and care, Julie opened her eyes again and stilled the impulse to shrug out of his embrace. Her sleep, when it finally came, was tangled in confusion.
Chapter Thirteen
Grady woke early, feeling rested in spite of the grueling journey he'd made the day before. In the dim light streaming through the window, he could see that the snow had settled into a fine blow.
His woman lay with her back to him, curled protectively toward their two daughters.
In the Indian way, he had claimed the twins as his children, making it so. He enjoyed looking at all three females sleeping soundly.
All three were pink and white confections, exotic in a land where white skin and red hair were rare. His hand rested on Julie's hip, and his bronze color contrasted starkly with her alabaster skin. He nodded. One thing in his plan was apparently going right.
He'd been surprised when the angry woman of the morning had changed into an accommodating wife, greeting him with warm clothes and hot food.
His body already accepted hers as its nesting place, and his cock reached out longingly, hoping for another taste before his day began.
But it was the middle of a snow storm, early winter, and he had to find a cow that had dropped a late calf. Not an easy project, but one promised.
He swung his feet to the cold floor and tucked the blankets back around the sleepers, warding his family from the cold.
The murmur of voices greeted him as he walked down the hall to the big room. The Chiricahua Apache, Dakota, stood by the fireplace when Grady entered the room, and his wife, Dawn, moved quietly, folding the bedroll they'd slept on.
Grady spoke in Kiowa and explained that Julie wanted a cow, rather than a wet nurse. The woman looked relieved, the man concerned.
Grady sat on a chair in the kitchen, lacing up his knee-high boots. Then he stood, shrugging into his coat. "Gotta find a milk cow in this mess," he explained as he headed for the door.
He was surprisingly light-hearted as he began his quest. Dakota followed him, telling Dawn he'd be back soon.
"My woman," Dakota began, as they slid toward the barn, but whatever he intended to say, was lost in the storm. Grady yelled his own explanation.
"Julie won't let another woman feed the babies. Sorry to have brought you here."
Grady could feel the blood in his veins turning sluggish as the cold of the morning attacked him.
"Dawn must help your woman with the babies." Dakota's voice was a fierce demand.
Grady shrugged sympathetically, but headed for his horse to get riding anyway. "The babies will get fed the way their mother says. She says we need a cow. I'm going to go find a cow."
He threw his saddle on and mounted. Dakota slid onto his Indian pony and rode beside Grady into the cold half-light of morning.
They tracked the herd to a windbreak where the animals stood in a circle, heads down, bunched together sharing body heat. It was hell, trying to find a cow with calf still suckling, and it took the better part of the morning for the two men to cut the mama from the herd, rope her, and haul her to the ranch.
Once there, they made a makeshift stall to hold her, put the calf in with her, and hurried to the cabin. Grady was limping where he'd gotten head-butted, and Dakota needed to clean up and change, because he'd slid in cow manure, falling hard in the green muck.
Neither man wanted to admit his anxiety to the other. They had left the two women, strangers to each other, alone all morning without a way for them to communicate. Dawn spoke no English and Julie no Kiowa.
"My woman still grieves for our son. Her empty arms need to be filled so that she can end her tears." It was a stiff plea for help. "If she gives suck to your babies she will grow strong before she gets with child again."
Grady frowned at the man. "Don't climb on your woman if you don't want to plant your seed."
"You can stay off of yours?" The Chiricahua's startled question brought a flush to Grady's jaw, remembering how he'd wanted seconds the night before, as soon as he'd finished firsts.
He didn't answer, but as he headed for the house he was uneasy at the question.
Having the woman sleeping next to him in bed was a pleasure he'd never before experienced.
When Grady was sixteen, Henry Hawks had bought him a night with a whore to learn about women. His teacher had been inexhaustible, and by the time she deemed his training complete, he had been used thoroughly.
During his sexual initiation he'd been like an animal unleashed. The woman had laughed with delight and taken him every way a woman can take a man.
Afterward, he'd been disgusted by his loss of control and the wantonness of the woman's behavior. Since that time, when the need came on him, he mostly limited sex to infrequent and quick couplings with whores, and more often, his hand.
Having his own woman in his bed, available for him when he wanted, opened up a sensual side of him repressed for half of his life. He'd used his training well, bringing cries of passion from his woman with tongue and lips. Now he longed to feel her pulse around the length of him when he filled her with his seed. The feel of gliding into her wet heat was already imprinted on his brain.
It surprised him that he'd slept so easily with her in his bed. She'd smelled fresh and clean, like the soap she'd made with more of the ingredients she'd ordered him to buy; he'd reveled in the feel of silken hair brushing across his skin.
She'd left it unbound, and when he'd crawled in behind her, he'd breathed in the smell of lavender as he'd spooned, enclosing her in his arms. There had been a feeling of rightness, of coming home, he'd not ever felt before.
He'd fallen asleep inhaling the flower smell of her hair, mixed with warm yeasty milk and her unique female scent that aroused him just thinking about it.
And Jesus, when he'd come awake, his cock had been swollen bigger than he could ever remember. She was asleep, so he'd tried to ease into her, amazed that she was there, and he could.
He'd been careful, entering her slowly, holding himself in check when he wanted to plunge into the velvet heat. She'd taken all of him after a little help, and he'd gotten relief.
It
had been good. But she'd restrained herself and not given him the pleasure of her own release. He wanted that too. He clenched his jaw belligerently. He would have all of her.
The walls of his life had expanded to encompass the woman and her daughters.
Somehow they had already become part of him.
He frowned. Could he stay off of her? His immediate response was— Why the hell should I? She's mine.
*
When she woke and found herself and the girls cuddled together minus Grady Hawks, she realized he must have put them in the bed with her while she slept. She was tempted to go back to burrow under the covers and hide all day. She remembered that there were strangers in the cabin with her, and she didn't want to face the changes they brought with them.
Breakfast for the ranch hands was part of the duties she'd assumed, so she rolled out of bed trying to keep from waking the babies. But Emma's eyes popped open, followed by her mouth. She was loud, demanding, and determined to wake her sister.
Julie changed them, tickled and laughed as they tried to crawl off the bed, and then returned beneath the covers to let Emma and Amy feed.
"I love you so much. I love you so much." She blew a raspberry on each belly and giggled when they did. And then it hit her. "Oh God." She buried her face in a pillow to stop the loud sob that escaped. Her girls would not see her sniveling over a deal gone wrong.
"Mr. Hawks has the right to ask this of me, babies. Grady is a good man, just stubborn about what he intends to have. I made a commitment I have to keep." She tippy-toed her fingers up Emma's arm, across her shoulders to Amy and down the other girl's arm.
"He even smells good." She thought about her words and realized that they were true. It was one of the first things she'd noticed about the man. Even in the turbulent moments at Comfort Quince's Boarding House, she'd liked the way he smelled.
"We'll have to get you two into a bigger bed. You're getting too frisky for that little bitty cradle he made for you." Behind her words bravely spoken to her daughters, a foreign thought from her life as Jewel Rossiter scrolled through her mind.