Madam Ruby was about to disappear for good.
Chapter Twenty-Three
May 1898
Sundance, Wyoming
“As registrar in the city of Sundance, in Crook County, in the great state of Wyoming, this union is officially recognized as legal and binding. Jonas McKay, kiss your bride.”
Jonas curled his rough-skinned hands around Dinah’s face, the metal from his wedding band cool on her cheek. He whispered, “Finally,” before his lips connected with hers in a kiss that lingered just enough to be improper.
Some things never changed with her man.
Dinah turned and accepted a hug from Bea Talbot, although hugging her these days was difficult, given the size of Bea’s pregnant belly. Then she hugged Doc and Martha.
Next to her, her husband accepted congratulations from Andrew Talbot and Ulysses Gilbert of the Wyoming Brand board, who’d become Jonas’s closest friends after Jonas joined the Wyoming Cattleman’s Association.
After former deputy Jonas McKay learned that his outlaw brother had left him as one of the largest landowners in Crook County, he’d become involved in the community. He also sat on several state licensing boards to ensure that landowners’ and cattlemen’s rights were being served. Dinah was proud that not only had Jonas embraced that “new” part of his persona, he’d actually enjoyed it.
“So what now?” Bea teased.
“Now, I take my wife home,” Jonas said, slipping his arm around Dinah’s waist. “We’ll see you all tomorrow night.”
Bea and Andrew had moved into their new house just last month and Bea had begged to host their wedding reception. Jonas had agreed—provided the reception wasn’t the same day as their wedding. Because tonight was just for them. They’d finally forge that final intimacy as husband and wife.
Dinah switched her bouquet of wildflowers to her free hand as they exited City Hall.
Jimmy waited with the horse and buggy, grinning like a loon because he’d tied tin cans to the back of it below the sign JUST HITCHED. Points for her former student that he’d spelled everything right.
“Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. McKay! Everything you asked is done,” he told Jonas. “Buttercup was milked, chickens were fed, I put Daisy out with Beauty and Beast. You don’t gotta worry about nothin’—livestock wise—until late tomorrow mornin.”
Jonas said, “Thanks, Jimmy,” and passed him a few folded bills. Then he offered Dinah a hand up. “Let’s go home, Mrs. McKay.”
While they rode along the familiar path, Dinah’s thoughts veered to all the changes the last year had wrought.
After Dinah’s conversation with Ruby, she’d immediately gone to sort things out with her McKay. It’d been a difficult discussion for both of them, to be candid about whether they could go forward after the complete implosion of the life path they thought they’d be on.
But that honesty had saved them.
It’d taken a few months to believe that their love was strong enough to survive.
In those months, Jonas had publicly wooed her in the manner that Silas never would have. They attended dances, community events, church socials. Their fears that people would be suspicious at how easily Dinah Thompson had switched her affections from one McKay to the other were largely unfounded. Perhaps because they’d both shown their eagerness to grow their roots in Crook County, individually and as a couple. When Jonas proposed during the annual Christmas ball, presenting her with a beautiful aquamarine and diamond engagement ring, women had swooned and men had congratulated him for not wasting time in stating his intent.
And yet, they preferred the time they spent alone together. When they could cuddle up and read just like they used to do before. Share meals together. Check livestock. Laugh and argue and kiss and make up. Continue with their plans of creating a home that would be a place of joy and solace. A private oasis where they could explore intimacy in any way they chose.
Tonight they’d take that final step of being fully joined in body. Over the past month as they’d combined their individual lives into one, Dinah had joked she’d come to their marriage bed a virgin, but not innocent.
Not even close to innocent.
She was proud that some of the more…unconventional sexual avenues they’d chosen to express their mutual desire would probably even shock Madam Ruby.
Her man had such deliciously dirty ways to use that silver tongue of his.
“Sugar pie, are you all right?”
Dinah turned and looked at him. He only called her sugar pie these days when they were alone. “I’m enjoying the happiest day of my life.”
“You’re awful quiet while you’re enjoyin’ it.”
“Mmm. Just fantasizing about how it’ll feel to have your cock shoved inside me over and over.”
He grinned and kissed her. “I love how only I know how filthy this sweet mouth of yours can be.” He reined the horse to a stop. “I’m just as anxious to shove my cock inside you over and over, but I have a surprise for you first.” From the inside of his suit jacket, he pulled out a long piece of black silk. “Since I don’t trust you not to peek, I’m gonna hafta blindfold you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’ll agree to the blindfold, but no ropes.”
“No ropes…this time. Come on now, turn to the side.”
“You’ll mess up my hair.”
Then Jonas’s lips were on her ear. “Like you give a shit about that. Now turn.”
Everything went dark.
“Can you see?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“Good. Hold on.”
It was strange how she had no sense of where they were or how long she’d been blindfolded when the buggy finally stopped.
Jonas gave her a firm, “No peeking” warning before he bailed out to unhitch the horse.
She tilted her face to the sun, glorying in the heat and the pine-scented breeze.
“Okay, darlin’, gimme your hand.” He lifted her out of the buggy and cradled her to his chest, with one hand under her rear, keeping her ivory skirt out of the dirt as he strode along.
“Carrying me over the threshold, Mr. McKay?”
“Yep. We’re doin’ this once and I’m doin’ it right.”
A door creaked, which was odd; he’d oiled the door hinges just last month.
Dinah didn’t have time to dwell on that.
Jonas removed the blindfold and said, “Welcome home, Mrs. McKay.”
She blinked. Once. Twice. Her eyes had to be playing tricks on her because they were not in the cabin.
He set her down.
She knew where they were, but she was shocked to see their chairs in front of the massive stone fireplace. She turned and their table was in the room off the kitchen. Her things—their things—were all over the place.
He moved in behind her and held her tightly. “Surprise.”
“This is Henrikson’s house.”
“Nope.” He kissed the edge of her jaw. “This is our house. Our home now.”
“What?” She tried to take that in. “But…when? How?”
“Henrikson had been talkin’ about leavin’ here for months. I never took him seriously. But after the one-year mark passed that he’d lost his wife and his child, he was ready to move on. He wanted to sell to me, but I didn’t have that kinda money.” He paused. “So I talked to Andrew Talbot at Settlers’ First Bank.”
Dinah whirled around. “You actually went to a banker?”
“Yep. And he actually lent me the money.” He smiled and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it either. “I guess showin’ him that we wanna be part of the community for the long haul was all he needed to get the loan approved. That said, I had to buy Henrikson’s cattle and I’ve agreed to turn over one hundred percent of the money earned when we sell at market this fall. But I’ve done the math, darlin’, and we can afford this. Even without your money from teachin’ and Doc. I can even afford to hire a ranch hand until we make little ranch hands of our own.”
She sides
tepped him and walked to the “parlor,” which didn’t have a stick of furniture in it. Oh, but it had so much potential.
“I also got a little extra money for you to buy furnishings or whatever you want. Since Doc is movin’, he said to tell you he’d give you anything from his house that caught your eye. Says he’s too old to cart a bunch of crap with him or to try and sell it.”
She laughed. That sounded like Doc. And she knew, too, that his offer partially came from grief. Mrs. Agnes had passed on in February. He’d decided that after Dinah and Jonas got married, he’d quit practicing medicine and move south, where the winters weren’t so brutal. Since Martha and Jimmy were more like his kids than his servants, they’d chosen to leave with him the end of the month.
“This is why you kept me away from the cabin the past two weeks.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. Jimmy helped me move everything over. Today he relocated all the chickens and…well, you heard. Been hard keepin’ this from you, but I wanted to give you something special today of all days.”
Dinah faced him. “You’re special every day and everything I could’ve hoped for in a husband. This…is almost too much.”
“Hey now, no cryin’.” He fastened his mouth to hers, teasing her lips open with the tenderest of kisses. Caressing her arms with his big hands, slowly gliding the palms up and down as if to warm her.
She was definitely getting all kinds of heated up.
Jonas rested his forehead to hers. “Let’s go to bed.”
“Yes.”
“I’m gonna be in you as soon as you’re nekkid.”
“Yes, please.”
He scooped her up and ran with her to the back of the house.
In a bedroom the size of their entire cabin was their bed, covered in their bedding, the book they were currently reading, The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, on the side table next to their reading lamp.
Jonas started to touch her. “You looked beautiful today. I love that you designed this dress just slightly scandalous.” He drew his finger across the square neckline in ruched ivory satin that rested midway across her chest, and up the capped sleeves covered in silk roses.
“You look pretty handsome yourself, Mr. McKay.” While plain workday clothes were still his preference, he’d gotten used to donning the suits and nicer pieces of clothing his brother had left behind.
“Please tell me you brought a button-hook for all these blasted buttons.”
She froze. “There’s one at the cabin. In my sewing supplies.”
“That’s the one thing I didn’t move because I figured you wouldn’t have a lotta time for sewin’ these next couple of days.”
“Oh.”
Against the upper swell of her breasts, he groaned a frustrated noise of a man being denied something he really, really wanted.
“Jonas,” she whispered in his ear, “the dress is slightly scandalous, but what’s underneath is completely scandalous.”
“What’s that, sugar pie?”
“Nothing but my pantalets.” She nipped his earlobe. Hard. “No shift. No slips. You take the pantalets off and you can take me.”
“Christ, Dinah.” He rubbed his lips across her cleavage. “This ain’t the way I wanted this to happen.”
She flitted away from him. Watching his hungry gaze, she lifted up her skirt, untied the waistband of her undergarment and shimmied the cotton down her legs. She let him look his fill of the fluffy tulle and satin dress pulled up to her waist, her legs bare, save the stockings peeping out of the tops of her white boots. “Do you really think we’re the first newly married couple who don’t get all of their clothes off before they’re rutting against each other?”
He stood back, legs braced apart, one hand on his hip beneath his jacket and his other hand moving back and forth across his chin.
Sighing dramatically, Dinah threw herself onto the bed, her wedding dress pooled behind her in a white cloud, fully exposing her lower half to him with her boot heels hooked into the wood slats of the mattress box and her sex brazenly on full display. “I’ll just wait…until you decide to take what’s yours.”
He released the sexiest roar she’d ever heard and his pants were only to his knees before he was on her.
In her.
They both groaned after that first deep, hard thrust.
God. This feeling of fullness was…everything.
His chest was heaving just as hard as hers.
Their eyes met.
She angled up to kiss him. “Keep going.”
“You’re okay? No pain?”
“A little.” She rocked her hips. “But I don’t want you to stop.”
Jonas pulled out and eased back in. “You feel good. I don’t ever remember it bein’ like this.”
“Me neither.”
“Smarty.” He chuckled and his mouth came down on hers. Kissing her with that single-minded passion that curled her toes in her boots.
But he’d stopped moving his bottom half.
Dinah reached around and clamped her hands onto his butt cheeks. Kneading that firm flesh. Then pulling him against her as a hint to get pumping.
He peppered kisses down to her chin, then dragged an openmouthed kiss up her jaw to her ear. “Dinah, I love you. I love you so much.” He traced her hairline with his nose, his lips following with little sugar bites that sent tingles across her scalp.
“I know. I love you too.” The way he kept nuzzling her, without meeting her eyes, caused a tiny bubble of worry to pop up. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“No, sweetheart, this is amazin’.” His lips returned to hers, teasing and tormenting for several long, luxurious moments as his body remained motionless atop hers.
Those long, deep, slow kisses had the opposite effect of soothing her; they inflamed her. She wiggled and moaned but he didn’t budge. “Please.”
“I need something from you,” he said softly.
“Anything.”
That’s when he fastened his dreamy blue-eyed gaze to hers, showing a vulnerability she hadn’t seen in ages. “Just this first time tonight, will you call me Silas?”
Her heart cracked wide open for this man who’d given up so much for them to be here in this moment together. “Yes, I will.” She nipped his chin, then sucked on his bottom lip before she released it and whispered, “Fuck me, Silas.”
He groaned and withdrew from her body, then thrust back in.
She arched hard. That time she felt a bit more pain from her body stretching to admit his girth at the base, but more pleasure too.
Strong, callused, seeking hands glided up the insides of her thighs as he pushed them farther apart.
That one adjustment changed everything as he began to ride her.
“Next time,” he panted, “I want you nekkid so I can see your tits bounce when I do this.” He slammed into her.
“Yes, Silas, more like that. Please.”
The sensations were dizzying as the intensity began to build. Over the past few months, they’d become intimately acquainted with each other’s physical needs and fulfilled each other’s desires. She’d had orgasms. She’d given orgasms. She’d believed she understood every way her body could react to this man’s.
But this was different.
This fullness, this hardness, this shift and arch and slide and thrust was life and rebirth and everything.
Every. Thing.
“Please, tell me you’re close, sugar pie, because it feels so fuckin’ good I’m about to blow.”
“I think I am,” she panted. “But I might need more…”
“Of this?” He twisted his hips against her hot, wet flesh, drawing a circle.
“Yes. Right there. Do it again. Grind harder.” Her belly clenched and that fizzy feeling of anticipation sucked her closer to the pinnacle. She breathed against the strong column of his neck, loving that he shuddered above her. “God, Silas, you are so good at this.”
“And it’ll only get better.” He growled, “Come on, little w
ife of mine, give me what I want from you.”
One more kiss on her throat and a few rapid snaps of his pelvis and Dinah was done for.
Done for.
She came so hard she might’ve ripped the bedding. She said his name over and over, his real name, kissing his cheeks and his jaw, holding on as he emptied himself into her and they sailed off the edge of the world together.
In the panting, sweating, throbbing-in-new-places aftermath of love…with his weight above her and her virginity finally behind her, she giggled.
Jonas paused, gifting the bared skin of her bosom sweet kisses, and regarded her. “What’s so funny?”
“Of all the things you’ve guided me through in learning to be a ranch wife, this is by far my favorite duty. It’s not a duty at all. I could do this kinda duty every day—”
“And twice on Sundays,” he finished with a grin.
She ran her fingers through his hair. “Thank you, Silas, for loving me like you do.”
“It’s my life’s joy, darlin’.”
Then she slapped him on the butt. “So…Silas got first crack at me. Let’s see what skills ‘Jonas’ is bringing to the table.”
Her husband lifted his head. “You wanna do it on the table next? I’m game for anything.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Three years later…
July 1901
Livingston, Montana
“You are considering it… Right, Mack?” Richie, the baby-faced junior agent, asked.
Agent Mack Jonas scratched his dark beard and his gaze flicked to the map of Montana tacked on the wall. “I don’t know, kid. The fact that Park County is hirin’ more enforcement agents means that Livingston is getting too damn crowded.”
“So that’s why, if you took the other job, you could probably be appointed Sweet Water County Land Commissioner in five or six years.”
“But I’d have to live in Big Timber.”
The kid rolled his eyes. “I know there’s a couple of nice hotels, since you’d rather rent a room than own an entire house.”
“I work all over the county. Makes no sense to buy a place that I’ll rarely be in. Plus, there’s something about ordering a meal anytime I want one that makes the Grand Hotel perfect for now.” Dumb name for the place since it was a glorified boardinghouse. But it was located down the block from the coalition office, and it’d served as his home base the two weeks a month he worked in Livingston.
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