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She was draped across his body. Warm sunlight heating her skin. Completely boneless. Sated. “That’s Elizabeth MacIntyre,” she corrected into the curve of his neck. He smelled of man and sunshine. She took another deep breath just because.
“So it is.” His fingers played gently with one of her nipples. His toes stroked the bottom of her foot.
Against her thigh, she felt a stirring. She shifted her hips. “Hmmm.”
“Just ignore him,” Asa instructed. “He has no sense.”
She didn’t want to ignore him. She reached between them. “I like him,” she said. And he liked her if the way he swelled at her squeeze was any indication.
“You’re too sore.” It was a halfhearted protest. She loved him for making it.
She eased down until he was in position. “No, I’m not.”
She couldn’t imagine ever being too anything to turn away from her husband.
“I can wait.”
“I can’t.” No matter how she tugged, he wouldn’t roll over. She raised her eyebrow at him. “This isn’t going to work if you don’t do your part.”
He laughed, shook his head, and urged her into a sitting position where she straddled his hips. “You do it,” he ordered. “I’m too tired.”
He wasn’t too tired, she noticed, to stroke her breasts the way that caused the goosebumps to chase up her spine. He did it again, encompassing each breast in one of his big hands, sliding from the fullness of her chest up to the crest with a featherlight touch that had her nipples pulling taut. When he reached the very tip, he lightly, gently grazed her nipples. Just hard enough to get their attention. He did it again. And again. On the fourth pass, she dug her nails into his chest and bit her lip to keep back her cry of protest. She needed more. So much more. She shifted against his cock, experimented, then found just the right angle.
Her breath caught as he pressed against her. She was sore and he was bigger than she remembered.
He stroked the inside of her thighs. “Nice and easy, darlin’.”
His hands glided up until they spread across her hip bones. His thumbs met at the juncture of her thighs. As she eased down, so did his thumbs, until they connected at the swollen nub of her clitoris. She gasped, jerked and pressed. He stroked her clit again, and she felt the natural giving that allowed his cock to slide home. She didn’t take him all, she couldn’t. She was too sore, but it didn’t matter. They moved as one, flesh gliding together, intimate parts brushing in rhythm, asking silent questions, garnering quiet responses. It was a courting. A mating.
It was exquisite, sensual and oh, so gentle, this loving. She cried when the end came and the illusion drifted to reality. She wanted it to last forever. She wanted the emotions to be real.
Asa held her while she cried, offering her his shoulder and asking no questions. Somehow, that made the reality all the more wrenching.
Chapter Thirteen
Town was a rude awakening from the quiet of the ride in. People bustled about. The streets were a muddy mess of excrement from the ceaseless parade of cattle, horses, and buggies. Occasionally, boards were strewn across large puddles in order to facilitate crossing the street. The air was full of the scents of food and animals. The din of voices and music from the saloons overpowered the quiet conversations of residents, while the rowdy shouts and laughter of cowboys and railroaders out for a good time dominated all else.
“Believe it or not,” Elizabeth said as they walked down the boarded sidewalk, “Cheyenne used to be a peaceful place.”
“Uh-huh.” Asa steered her around the third drunken man in the same amount of minutes. “Some say the railroad is going to be the salvation of Wyoming—put it on the map—but I’ve got my doubts when you see the crew that’s putting it together.”
“They are wild,” she agreed.
“Uh-huh.”
A man careened out of the door ahead of them. He landed on the wooden sidewalk with a bone-slamming jar. Another man came flying after him, prepared to carry on the fight.
“This is worse than I remembered,” Elizabeth admitted.
Her grip tightened on his arm, telling Asa she was nervous. He just didn’t know if it was the prospect of getting caught up in a gunfight or whether it was being seen with him that had her nerves strung tight. He sighed and thought it was probably the latter. He wasn’t much of a catch, even if he was handy in a fight. “If you have friends in town, I could drop you there before I go to the bank.”
“I’m fine.” She glanced up. “After all, I have the notorious Asa MacIntyre by my side. No one would dare bother me.”
“You’d best be hoping they ask who I am before they swing,” he answered, not sure if her lips were twitching because she was fighting a smile or a frown.
