Page 43 of Love’s Silver Bullet

The thought put a bounce in her step as she quietly made her way back to her room, where Finn was snoring spread-eagle on their bed with sheet and cover kicked off as usual. Libby swore the man was a bloomin’ furnace, able to heat up a bed in the dead of winter like a smoldering fire. She nibbled the edge of her smile as she carefully slipped beneath the sheet.

And a wife in any season with a fire of a whole other kind.

A sigh of contentment breezed from her lips as she shimmied deep into the bed, the memory of bonding with Maggie and Sheridan in their own private women’s club warming her inside pert as much as Finn was able to do. She snuck a peek at his long body stretched out in a white short-legged sleeveless union suit that exposed powerful arms and legs corded with hard muscles even in repose, and felt a familiar shiver of heat. Almost. No question the chemistry between her and Finn had always been strong, but never more so than now in their first year of “remarriage.”

Even so, she knew he wouldn’t be all that happy about the Silver Lining Independence Platform they’d formed. She wiggled to turn on her side. But what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, she surmised, admiring his well-sculpted chest matted with hair that peeked out of his partially unbuttoned union suit. Thickly coiled, the dark hair matched the stubble on his jaw, barely peppered with a hint of silver.

Scrunching her legs to her chest, she studied the man whose favor she needed to cull on Sheridan’s behalf and hoped their honeymoon status would give her more leeway than she’d had before. A gentle smile lighted on her lips when an unusually loud snort escaped his mouth while his broad chest rose and fell in the rhythm of sleep. There was no question Finn McShane was as handsome today as he’d been when she’d first married him over seventeen years ago—the first time. Her mouth crooked.

And surely as stubborn.

No, that wasn’t fair, Libby had to admit, well aware that Finn had mellowed considerably over the seventeen years they’d been apart. She knew now that his goals for women’s rights were aligned with hers and every bit as strong. Her smile flattened a wee bit.

Albeit a whole lot slower.

“Libby, this is the wild and wooly West out here, darlin’,” he’d explained after he’d been elected mayor, “where men move a whole lot slower when it comes to the notion of women’s independence, so unfortunately, we have to take it slowly as well. But I promise you, sweetheart,” he’d whispered as he’d nuzzled her ear, “we’ll step up the pace on a woman’s right to vote once I’m elected senator in a year or so.”

A year or so. Libby picked at her nails as she worried her lip. Not too far away for women to obtain a long-denied right, surely, but definitely too late for Sheridan’s right to choose the boys she may see. She huffed out a sigh while she pummeled her pillow to make it more comfortable. Especially if one of them was the bait to draw Jake out of his shell.

“Trouble sleeping, darlin’?” Finn slowly lumbered on his side to face her, his voice gravelly with sleep as her drew her close.

“A little.” She straightened her legs to snuggle in. “Must be all the extra coffee I had at dinner, I suppose, making me as skittery as popcorn in Angus’s skillet. My brain is refusing to go to sleep.”

“Something on your mind?” Finn deposited a kiss to Libby’s head while he gently massaged her back, lulling her eyes closed for a reason that had absolutely nothing to do with sleep.

“Just thinking about Sheridan, I guess,” she said quietly, breathing in the clean scent of cedar from Angus’s soap on Finn’s raspy jaw, causing her stomach to skitter as much as her body. “It’s hard to believe she’ll be gone to college soon, you know?” She paused to press a light kiss to his throat, tone cautious. “Not much time to learn to shoot.”

“No, but Blaze only needs a few weeks to accomplish that, so there’s still time.”

Libby absently threaded her fingers through the hair peeking through his open buttons, pretty sure Finn would rather wear nothing at all to bed given how hot he got at night. He flat-out refused to wear the typical red union suit most men wore with its long sleeves and long legs. Why, he’d just barely consented to the sleeveless/thigh-high version Libby had asked him to wear in lieu of sleeping buck naked like he used to. Heat swarmed her face and neck as she imagined him lying there with nary a stitch on, surely an indecency for even a wife! So he’d relented for her, but he always made sure he left the front halfway unbuttoned, he claimed, because of all the heat he generated.

She gulped. Both in his own body and mine…

“I have to admit,” she continued carefully, “I was pretty surprised to hear Jake backed out of teaching Sheridan because she mentioned once that Jake always treated her better than her big brothers did, so it just seems strange, you know? The two of them not getting along.”

“I know. I was surprised, too, but Jake’s had to pick up the slack due to Blaze’s injured hand, so maybe he was just having a bad day.”

Libby burrowed in closer, pausing before she made her case. “Seems to me the perfect solution might be to let Clay teach her to shoot, then, since Jake and Blaze can’t do it right now.”

“Not necessary, darlin’.” Finn rolled over on his back and brought Libby along, ratcheting up her pulse when he hooked her firmly on top. He nestled in to skim his mouth along the curve of her neck. “Blaze will get to it in time, so I have a much better idea.”

“Uh … what’s that?” Libby whispered, swallowing hard when Finn’s lips strayed to the neckline of her gown. Her eyelids fluttered closed over the warm chills he unleashed.

“What do you say we forget about Sheridan right now, because I’ll just bet you can expend some of that extra energy on me.” In the catch of her breath, he switched places, straddling her with a dangerous gleam in his eyes that confirmed he was now fully awake.

Lowering his body flush with hers, he gently nuzzled her lips, removing all thoughts of Sheridan when his mouth strayed to suckle the lobe of her ear. “So, what do you think?” he whispered, voice husky as it blew warm against her skin.

What did she think?

From the very first moment Finn McShane had first kissed her those many years ago, he’d had this annoying ability to scramble her thoughts and turn her body to mush, totally disarming her with the mere touch of his hand or his mouth.

What did she think?

She thought this man had entirely too much control over her, but oddly enough at the moment … She lunged to kiss him with the soft ache of a moan.

It didn’t seem to matter at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX