Page 96 of The Widow and the Wanted

For a while, Boone and I sit without speaking, the silence not empty but full to bursting. The limestone keeps the wind off poorly, and the fire has burned down to a sleepy glow. He glances at me then, gentleness in his face now.

“Come here,” he says, low. He sits with his shoulders hunched against the cold, holding up one edge of the buffalo hide.

I move to his side, and he settles the hide around us both, careful in a way that seems almost impossible from hands so broad and scarred. His arm comes around me only after I lean into him, and we settle together. His heartbeat is steady beneath my cheek when I let myself rest there, breathing in smoke and leather and cold wool.

For a moment, neither of us says anything. Then Boone’s hand, rough from reins and weather, passes once over my hair.

“Didn’t like hearing him talk to you that way,” he says. “But he’s just scared. He ain’t ever known how to show it proper. It’s because he cares for you like I do.”

The wind moves over the canvas and the fire sinks lower, throwing its weak red light against the hide. Boone draws it more securely around my shoulders, then bends and kisses my forehead.

I shut my eyes.

“Do not be so sweet to me,” I whisper.

His breath stirs my hair. “Why?”

Because Boone spoke of the future and suddenly I felt like I was hiding unarmed under a tattered canvas.

“You’re a good man,” I say. Before I can say, “But…” his face changes. A relief so deep it looks as though some long-carried burden has been lifted.

Then all at once he cups my face, the other arm drawing me close under the buffalo hide, and he kisses me as though I have given him something holy. I gasp against him, startled by the force of his tenderness.

His callused thumb strokes my cheekbone once, then slides back to tangle in my hair, holding me steady as he kisses me harder.

My heart hammers, lungs seizing. Heat surges up my neck and I draw back, pulling in a sharp breath.

“You all right?” he asks.

I wriggle back further, the heavy hide lifting at the side, icy air seeping inside.

“You’re lettin’ the heat out.” His arm finds my waist, pulling me against him. “Thought maybe I’d fuck your soul loose, but if you’re tired, at least keep warm.”

The dread in my belly turns over and comes up laughing. “You ridiculous man.”

“Wasn’t nothing ridiculous about me spreading you open and fuckin’ you deep.”

He lowers his mouth to the place beneath my ear, and my answer scatters before I can give it. Not a kiss at first. Just the brush of his breath, the graze of his lips, the lazy confidence of a man who knows too much about my body and not nearly enough about my heart.

That is the trouble.

My body remembers him without permission. It remembers the weight of him, being stretched full of him deeper than I ever thought possible, the way he made pleasure feel like something dragged out of me by force. It remembers too well. It leans toward him like a fool.

“If you’re tired,” he whispers, “I can fuck you slow until you fall asleep on my cock.”

My fingers twist in his shirt, teasing. “Ought to wash your mouth out with soap.”

“You say that like you don’t know exactly where it's been.” He hums cruelly, as if the memory alone is delicious. “I don’t care how many hard miles we traveled, woman, you tell me you need your little quim sucked and I’ll dive in face first right now.”

I smack him, half horrified, half jest. “You’re terrible.”

The cold is at my back, his heat is all around me, and my body has never had the decency to lie where he is concerned. I pull him down before I can think better of it, before tenderness can creep in and ruin the wanting. The next thing I know, we are both breathing hard, the sound of it echoing off the hollow stone, the hide twisted around our legs and the fire burned low beside us.

With my skirt rucked up and his trousers shoved down just so, he fucks me like he means to brand his name on my very soul, kissing the deepest part of me until my sight sparks white. The smack of flesh meeting flesh is muffled under the blankets and hide, the smothered sound still echoing off the basin windbreak. Every moan, every grunt, every slick sound comes bouncing back, no doubt clear as a bell where Okee stands guard.

The thought should sober me. It does the opposite.

“Look at you opening up so sweet for me,” he says, making no effort to lower his voice. “You stretch so pretty around me. Feeling like silk inside.”