by Maren Smith
“Where are you going?” she asked, suspicion yielding to the beginning rise of panic. He couldn’t go upstairs. Her bedroom was upstairs!
“To bed,” he said shortly. His footsteps heavy on the stairs, he cast her another dark look before the first floor ceiling blocked him from view. “I’ve had a long and aggravating day.”
“Wait! You—you can’t go up there!” With her underwear and pants tangled around her feet, she chased after him. She almost fell on the stairs, but got them yanked up over her hips and was zipping and buttoning herself back into her shield of clothing when she reached the second floor. “Wait! Wait right there!”
He headed straight for her bedroom, nudging open the door with his duffel before tossing it onto the floor in one corner.
“Hey!” she shouted.
He caught the edge of the door and would have swung it shut on her, except that she quickened her pace to catch it and barreled into the bedroom after him.
“Hey!” she shouted, even louder.
He sat down on the end of the bed, putting his back to her while he took off his boots and dropped each with a heavy thunk on the floor. “Do you mind? I’d like to go to bed now.”
“You can’t do that here! This is my room now!”
“The hell it is.” He stood up to take off his belt. She couldn’t quite stop herself from jumping when he whipped it from his belt loops. She hated the involuntary backwards step her trembling legs made her take before anger—he’d done that just to get this reaction out of her—helped to bolster her courage. He glared at her, obviously tempted, before dropping the belt on top of his boots. “This is my room and has been since my parents died. This is my bed, too. I bought it two weeks before I married my ex-wife.”
“Go somewhere else,” she said through gritted teeth, her chest heaving with the frustration and the sheer helplessness of this situation.
Still glaring, he pulled his t-shirt off over his dark head, revealing muscle after muscle, after ripped core-muscle. God, he was built like a brick wall. Her face flushed, burning hotter the more she tried not to look—or at the very least—to not look like she was looking at him. Dark hair, dark eyes, a tribal tattoo that wrapped the bicep of one arm in stark black half-curves and sharp points. She had never met a man so … so chiseled that he could just as well have been cut from stone. But that’s what Rydecker looked like, standing in front of her in nothing but a worn pair of jeans and with nothing but a bed between them. She hadn’t meant to stare, but his hard mouth twisted into a knowing smirk, and Elsie knew she’d been caught doing just that: staring.
“Good night,” he said and dropped his shirt on top of his shoes.
“You can’t sleep here.” Her voice might be trembling, but Elsie wasn’t about to back down. She squared off against him. “You might have bought this bed, but it’s been mine for the last eight months! I’ve been the one washing the sheets. I beat the dust out of the pillow and mended the holes in the blankets.”
“Oh yeah?” His brown eyes turned steely; his muscles flexed, making that tribal tattoo dance. “I was born in this house.”
“Then you never should have left!”
“You never should have arrived,” he replied, and began to unbutton his pants.
Her face flushed even hotter. Don’t look, she told herself, but her eyes developed a wayward life of their own. She looked. “Stop that,” she said, sounding strangely breathless.
His smirk broadened. “Stop what?”
He unzipped his jeans.
“Stop that!” She pointed, but quickly snatched her hand back when she realized how badly it was shaking.
He shucked his jeans all the way down his muscular legs and stepped out of them. Standing nonchalantly before her in nothing but a well-fitting pair of tightie-whities, he folded and dropped his pants on top of his boots without ever taking his dark eyes off her. “Good night, Elsie.”
Except that he didn’t mean “good night” at all. Rather, he meant “go to hell”. She could hear the words hanging like icicles in the air between them.
“Not in this bed,” she said hoarsely, so impotently helpless to stop him that she didn’t know what to do. Obviously, she couldn’t call the police. She couldn’t physically stop him; it was laughable even to try. There were no guns anywhere in the house that she knew of, and although there were weapon-able knives in the kitchen, exactly what was she supposed to do once she’d retrieved one? Attack him? Yeah—she looked him up and down—yeah, right. He was a trained soldier. He was bigger, tougher—one hand crept back behind her to touch her still burning, throbbing backside—and definitely meaner. She had absolutely no illusions about how such a confrontation would end.
“Anywhere else,” she said, waving her hands over the bed, blustering in the hopes he might listen, because bluster was literally all she could do. “Anywhere else in this house, but not in my bed!”
Taking hold of the quilt, he whipped back the bedding. “Get the door on your way out.” He got in and jerked the blankets back up over him. Casting her one final look, he punched his pillow twice and lay down on his side, with arms folded hard across his chest and his back to her. “Get the light, too.”
And just like that, her bedroom was no longer hers. Elsie stumbled backwards out into the hall. Shaking, she grabbed at the door handle, missed, grabbed again and finally managed to slam it shut between them. Then she stood there, shaking with anger and helpless fear. After eight months of false security, now she was going to lose everything all over again.
Except that “everything” in this case hadn’t really been hers in the first place, had it?
Yes, because she’d made it hers! She’d taken this dilapidated, abandoned house and she’d patched it up, fixed it up, and turned it back into a home. She wasn’t going to leave! Where would she go if she did?
There was no place. She had nothing.
Elsie covered her mouth with her hand, and momentarily bowed by the sudden weight that hit her in the back along with that realization. She had nothing. She was once more exactly where she’d been last spring. She could taste the desperation in the back of her mouth, that sickly taint that made her feel as if she were going to throw up.
Get a hold of yourself, Elsie.
Dragging herself up the wall, Elsie straightened her spine. Rydecker might be a soldier, but she was used to fighting too. She’d been fighting every single day for every fragile toehold of gain she’d taken, and she wasn’t about to back down now. If he’d had the power to really throw her out, the cop would have arrested her. He hadn’t; so Rydecker didn’t. The only way he could win this battle was by getting her to admit defeat.
Well, Elsie was all done being defeated.
She scrubbed the tears she hadn’t realized were winding their way down her cheeks, and then she marched back into the bedroom. Sometime during her crisis in the hall, Rydecker had got up and shut the light off himself. He was back in bed now, still with his back to her, still with his arms folded across his chest. He was pretending to be asleep, but she knew better.
She wasn’t about to strip down to her usual nightshirt, but she did kick off her shoes and then she got into bed, too. Robbing him of at least half of his blankets, she scissored them between her legs to ensure he couldn’t wrench them back and freeze her out during the night.
“Damn it!” he swore, lifting his head off the bed’s only pillow while he tried ineffectively to tug back enough to cover himself.
She grabbed the pillow next and yanked it out from under him, then lay down facing the door with it clutched tight in both hands.
Swearing again, she could feel Rydecker’s indecision a bare moment before he elbowed the mattress in frustration and lay back down with his head now cushioned on his own forearm.
It was a Mexican sleep-off, and it was one she intended to win. Back to back, they made that bed into a silent battlefield, and neither one of them slept easily or well.
CHAPTER THREE
December
22nd…
Quint awoke with the light of the rising sun glaring through a crack in the window curtain and falling directly across his face. Right away he knew he had two major problems: the first, Elsie was making a full-frontal assault on his side of the bed. Sometime during the night, he had taken back the pillow, and she had retaliated in true female fashion by turning him into a pillow instead. Her cheek was plastered to his chest. Her arm lay heavy across his stomach and she had one leg thrown indifferently across both of his. Flyaway wisps of tangled brown curls were tickling his shoulder, neck and one side of his face. She was snoring. Soft little in-drags of breath that puffed out again, spreading sleepy warmth across his pecs and down his ribs, adding merciless fuel to the fire of his second problem—he had morning wood the likes of which no military man wanted to wake up with while living in a barracks full of men…like, ever.
Except that Quint wasn’t in a barracks full of men right now. It was worse than that; he was waking up in bed with Elsie—his mortal enemy (well, maybe that was a bit overly dramatic) and the first woman he’d been to bed with since his last leave with Maydeen. What had that been…three years ago? Oh no, a full-on morning erection was the last thing he wanted to have to explain right now.
He had to get out of this bed before he did something completely insane—like roll Elsie over, rip those pesky jeans off her for the second time in less than twelve hours and, in a long, slow thrust (a motion he was certain would be the single most satisfying movement his body ever made), bury his cock all the way up inside her. He could already feel the mind-blowing heat emanating from her hot little core, like a brand searing its beckoning heat right into his hip.
Elsie softly snored again.
He had to get out from under her. Right now. Before he forgot how much he didn’t like the thieving little wench and made love to her instead.
He tried to move, but she stopped snoring and he froze, praying like hell she wouldn’t wake up. No such luck. She scrunched, hugging her arm in, drawing her leg up his body until her thigh was stroking right up the underside of his cock, pressing it hot against his belly with the bulbous crown peeking out at him from under the elastic waistband of his underwear. When she pulled in a sleepy sigh, her hand coming up to rub at her eyes, Quint completely panicked.
He erupted out of bed, throwing both her and the blankets back onto her side of the mattress and leaping over the protesting top of both in his mad-dash to the bathroom.
“Hey!” she mumbled, thrashing to find her way out from under the blankets.
Quint slammed the bathroom door and threw the lock.
“Jackass!” she barked after him.
Quint didn’t care. He leaned both hands on the edge of the sink and concentrated on breathing. Let her go ahead and think he’d awoken angry. She should be afraid he was angry. Hell, he ought to be angry, not sporting the love-log of all erections!
“Jesus, man,” he growled, baring his teeth at his reflection. “Get it together.”
A small fist battered the other side of the door. “You’re not the only one who needs to pee first thing in the morning!”
Quint smacked the door right back. “There’s another bathroom in this house. Find it!”
“Jerk,” she sniffed, and stomped back to the bedroom.
Switching from sink to tub, Quint turned on the shower. Under the hot, pelting spray, he planted one hand against the tiles and vigorously rubbed one out just as fast as he could manage it. He closed his eyes while he did it, trying to see anyone’s face but Elsie’s, but his was the body of a son-of-a-bitch and it kept trying to feel her whisper-soft breaths moving across his chest, the way her fingertips had trailed him on their way to rub the sleep from her eyes and the slow caress of her leg stroking up so sweetly along the underside of his cock.
He swore, gripping hard as pure heat and need shot out through his hips and drizzled into the bottom of the tub. The spasms were beyond pleasurable. He held himself frozen, fighting the urge to keep right on pumping until the final spasm stilled and his seed at last was spent. The spray of water washed both the tiles and his frame, sweeping tell-tale semen down the drain. His eyes closed, Quint kept his forehead pressed to the tile until he could breathe without panting.
That was pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. He was made of stronger stuff than this. She was the enemy who was trying to steal his house out from under him. He did not need to spend his first morning home masturbating furiously to get her out of his system!
A soft bump rattled the bathroom door.
Lifting his head, Quint glared through the plastic shower curtain in that direction. He raised his voice to be heard over the falling water. “I said, use the bathroom downstairs!”
There was no answering reply.
Snorting, Quint straightened up under the spray and finally applied himself to using the shower as it was originally intended. He soaped every inch of himself, shampooed his hair three times and didn’t get out until he had exhausted the hot water supply. She wanted to live here, fine—he shut the water off and got out of the tub, toweling himself vigorously to get dry—but he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. In fact, he was going to make this the most miserable experience of her life. Give him a few days, and she’ll be running to get out of here before the winter snows made it impossible for either one of them to escape the other.
Having escaped to the bathroom without a change of clothes and in nothing but his underwear, Quint pulled his shorts back on and reached for the doorknob. With any luck, Elsie would be downstairs making coffee or breakfast and he’d be able to dash back to the bedroom to get dressed in peace.
Except that the door wouldn’t open.
Quint tugged, turning the old porcelain knob first one way and then the other. The door budged only the merest centimeter and then no more.
“The hell you say,” Quint muttered, tugging again and again, but budging it no further than before. “What the—” He stopped. He thought. “Oh, hell no.”
He searched through the medicine cabinet and the under-the-sink cupboard, then finally rummaged through half of the six shelves that made up a very narrow linen closet located behind the bathroom door. Finally, he found something that would work—one of Maydeen’s many makeup compacts, fallen to the floor and kicked into the very back of the closet where it had become lost and then forgotten. Quint opened it up, laid it flat on the wood-floor slats, and there was just enough room under the door to push it through. He tipped and angled the small mirror until he saw Elsie, propped up against the railing overlooking the stairs. Arms folded across her chest, she gazed down at the small compact, looking smug.
The second thing he saw was the rope. He didn’t know where she’d got it, but she had tied one end to the doorknob and the other to the banister.
“You…bitch,” he said, marveling.
Pushing off the banister, Elsie squatted down over the compact. She hunkered close enough for him to really see her face and then she smiled. Just before she snatched the compact away, she flashed him both middle fingers.
“Who’s the bitch now?” she said, laughing as she walked away.
* * * * *
Nanny Cactus, Nanny Sage, and Nanny Pita (which was really spelled P.I.T.A. and for very good reason) were patiently waiting for their morning milking when Elsie came out onto the back porch.
“There’s my babies,” Elsie greeted as she pulled her coat on. Her breath fogged the air. It was really getting cold here lately. Close as it was to Christmas time, she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised, but then this was supposed to be the desert. If she’d known the days would get as cold in the winter as the nights often were, she’d have picked a more southern highway to get stranded on.
Holding the milking can well up so the bottom wouldn’t tangle with inquisitive little goat horns, she pulled the short stool away from the wall and sat down. Cactus always went first, and from the moment Elsie sat down, she assumed the position with no prompting and waited to be relie
ved of her swollen discomfort. Of the three, Elsie liked Cactus the most. Cactus made the daily milking chore so much easier because she was so well-behaved.
Sage ran a pretty close second. She tended to lean if Elsie wasn’t paying attention though, and now and then she still lipped at clothing, though she rarely nibbled.
P.I.T.A. not only nibbled, she swallowed.
This morning, however, all three stood in a neat cluster, chewing their cud while they waited for the milking to be done, and now and then, they cast wary glances at the house where muffled cursing could still be heard coming from the upstairs bathroom. Elsie was casting glances now and then, too. Rydecker didn’t seem to be settling down much. Tying him in the bathroom where he couldn’t interfere with her morning had seemed like a good idea at the time, but she was beginning to second-guess herself now. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do but leave him where he was until he calmed down. If he calmed down…
Taking the milk to the kitchen, she headed back outside again. With collar bells clanking, seven goats came running out of the field to join the three nannies trailing along behind her to the sheds behind the house. Apart from the garage and barn, there were four small outbuildings total. Two she had converted into a chicken coop and goat shed, respectively. A third held the grain for both animals and the fourth she’d pretty much left alone. As she passed out the morning feed, she took a quick count: two billies, three nannies, the pretty spotted female who’d be ready to breed next spring, and Curries 1 thru 4, whom she was going to have to harden her heart against and butcher before winter set in. She gave them each a greeting and friendly petting and when it got to the Curries, she did her best to convince herself that she wasn’t checking to see how plump they were, then she turned her attention to the chickens.
