Jacob smiled, bitter and rueful. “That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before uranium.”
She froze. “What?”
“The reservation sits on huge deposits of uranium. Buck has already started to strip the land on the northern tip of his ranch. He’s making millions. He’s sitting on millions more. Millions.”
Sweet merciful heavens. This wasn’t just about some bad beef or sick horses. Those were small, isolated things. But uranium? She had horrid visions of Chernobyl—a wasteland so complete nothing could live. And the hell of it was, she knew Jacob was right. Uranium wasn’t exactly a renewable resource. To find a huge vein of it? Buck could be sitting on closer to billions. With a B. “So he’s ripping the Lakotas off?”
“Some. Others, he’s paying.”
“He’s paying you.”
“That’s not why I do it,” he growled.
“Then why?” she pressed. “Robin told me you gave up your own rightful place in the tribe and went to work for that sleaze. How is what you’re doing any different than him paying off some other Indian?”
Jacob’s eyes flashed with a dangerous anger. “I run a good ranch.”
“I know that. Bill said that my first day there.”
“I keep the land clean.” His voice was rising in righteous anger.
“That’s obvious too.”
“I give good jobs to guys like Tommy, guys who need a place.” His voice was got louder and louder as he defended himself. “I keep a Lakota hand on the land.”
“I know all that,” she said calmly, trying to bring his volume back down. “But why do you have to do it for Buck?”
The anger peaked and quickly fizzled. Jacob sighed heavily as he flopped in resignation back onto the bed. “If I let the ranch go, he’d strip the whole thing tomorrow. He’d ruin it forever.”
“What’s he waiting for? I’d think a guy like Buck would want more money now, not later.”
Jacob shrugged. “He wants more land. He knows that as soon as he starts mining no one else will sell him their land, so he’s trying to steal everything he can before he starts. I make him enough money that he’s content to sit and wait. The tribe sues him every so often, but our lawyers…” he half-shrugged. “That’s why I sent Tommy’s younger brother, Shawn, to Harvard. Cost me a chunk of change, even after all those minority scholarships he got.”
“Wait…you? You sent a guy to Harvard just so you can sue McGillis?”
“The lawyers the tribe has aren’t good enough. I’m in this for the long haul, Mary Beth,” he said calmly as he patted the bed next to him. “I can wait while Shawn finishes up next year.”
“Seriously?” She sat down next to him, and his hand was instantly on her back, fingers splayed out as he gently traced up her spine. There go the goose bumps again. She shivered under his touch but forced herself stay on the topic.
“Seriously.” He smiled at the repetition. “Not even Robin knows about that. And between you and me,” he whispered, “Robin’s going to get some help next fall too.”
Her mouth was on the bed as she gaped at him. “You fund scholarships?” He nodded. “You?”
“Anonymously.”
Mary Beth couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Well, duh. But I still don’t know what any of that has to do with Kip.”
“Try to understand,” he muttered in frustration even as he rubbed her back in slow, sensual circles. “A return to the old ways would cost some people a lot of money. Strip-mining the land isn’t a part of the old ways.”
“So let me see if I understand this.” She hopped up and paced around the room, struggling to understand everything before he tried to distract her again with soft touches. “Kip is a holy woman because she’s from a long line of powerful psychic women who kept the tribe rooted in the old ways, whatever those are.”
“Right.”
“And there are some people, white and Indian, who don’t want the old ways to come back because of uranium?”
He sat up and nodded. “Right.”
“So her life is in danger because of money?”
“Basically. Susan and Fred decided they couldn’t take the chance that someone would come after her, so they ran.”
“Okay. I can believe that. It makes sense.” Mary Beth sat next to him and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder as she opened her mouth. “So who killed her parents?”
Jacob’s confident façade faltered. “I don’t know if it was an evil spirit after her powers or something more…mortal after the money.”
“The evil spirit thing is still on the table?”
Jacob nodded in all seriousness. “The evil spirit is still on the table. It makes sense.”
“If I believe—” Anything else she was going to say was cut off as he nuzzled her head back with his forehead to push her lips up to his.
“Mary Beth,” he breathed against her skin.
“Jacob…” She let the sentence trail off, feeling paralyzed by the desire rolling off him.
He tilted his head into hers, the stiff leather nose pushing hers to the side as he kissed her with the perfect blend of tenderness and ferocity. His hand was holding her face, his rough calluses brushing against the fine hairs on her cheek.
As he tentatively traced her lips with his tongue and entwined his fingers in her hair, pulling her in closer, she forgot about the mask. She even forgot about the holy Lakota child sleeping peacefully on the couch. She forgot about the creature, her student loans and the blizzard blowing outside.
All Mary Beth could remember was the last time she’d had sex with Jacob—that frenzied coupling of frantic bodies in desperation to focus on something, anything, else.
As she remembered how he effortlessly filled her, easily made her come three times in a matter of minutes, harder than she’d ever come—with or without a man—her body trembled at his touch.
“Do you believe?” he asked, his voice filling her ear as he slipped his hand to the small of her back, pushing her into that broad chest.
“Jacob,” she whispered in warning. “Rule number one.”
“I fully intend to satisfy, Mary Beth.”
All of her sexual frustration ebbed from her into the bed. Satisfaction, after two long months, was near.
He nipped at her ear. Then he dipped his head down to hers again, his tongue searching hers out. When he pulled back, his eye focused on hers.
Then her bra gave beneath her sweatshirt.
“I want you.” His hand was up under her sweater, pushing the bra aside as he found her nipple. God, his voice carried right into her body, setting everything on fire.
“Okay,” she weakly replied, powerless to do anything but let his thumb roll her nipple against all those calluses.
“I want to make love to you.” He cupped the whole of her breast in his hand. “Not like before.”
Through the haze of yearning that was clouding her mind, she held onto one of the facts of his past. “Like with Susan.”
“Better,” he said as he ducked his head down and traced her nipple with his tongue while he moved his hand down beneath the waistband of her pants. “Better.”
As he touched her sweet spot, she bucked under his hands, pushing her breast farther up into his mouth. “Don’t make me beg again, Jacob.”
“I won’t.”
Quickly, they were naked, curling into each other beneath the mound of blankets. Every part of him was hot to the touch, and Mary Beth touched it all. He hadn’t been circumcised, she discovered as she moved his hood up and down, eliciting a low groan that shook his entire body.
“Please,” he begged. “Don’t. Not yet.”
She nodded. She still didn’t have any condoms, but she hadn’t been with anyone else since last time, and she was willing to bet he hadn’t either. Without hesitation, she slipped on top of him. “This?”
He found her spot again. “That.”
Like the promise of the kiss, Mary Beth rocked on
to him with the perfect blend of gentle aggressiveness. His eye rolled back into his head as she pressed him against the pillows with the force of her hips.
“God, Jacob,” she panted as he flicked his thumb around her clit in perfect time with the crashing of their hips. “Oh, God.”
His only response was to grab her bottom, pulling her even farther apart so he could drive in deeper and deeper.
His hand cupping her bottom, his thumb driving her clit, his—Mary Beth gasped as she realized he was slowly rubbing the stiff edge of the leather nose back and forth over her nipple.
“Oh!” she quietly screamed through clenched teeth as the climax left her rag-doll limp on top of him.
Without a word, he flipped both of them over, holding her hands over her head as he drove hard and fast. She struggled to break free from his grasp so that she could touch him as he’d touched her, but he held firm, the tip of his mask hovering inches from her nose. The long parts of his hair cascaded down around their faces, closing them off from the rest of the world. In the dark little room of his making, there was only Jacob and Mary Beth and a passion neither could ignore.
With a final crashing thrust, he shuddered as he came deep inside of her. Her whole body shaking with the power of the release, she finally pulled her arms free and held his quaking body to hers.
Eight years since he’d done this. She never would have believed it, not given the way he made her feel—the way he felt inside of her. Normally, the feeling of responsibility that would come with that kind of knowledge—that she was the first person he chose to be with beyond his high school sweetheart—would have weighed heavily on her. Mary Beth didn’t like to mix this much emotion with her sex. She didn’t sleep with virgins and she didn’t like to stick around long enough for any man to fall in love with her. Sex was a matter of conveniently relieving her sexual energy. That’s the way it had always been.
But as Jacob left her bed and went to get cleaned up in the bathroom, she knew this was different. The first time—that had been different from anything she’d ever experienced. She could have written it off as a one-time-only thing—rough sex against a door.
This time? It should have felt like it always did—but it hadn’t. It had been something else. Something different.
She got cleaned up and slid back into his arms. He pulled the blankets up over both of them and held her to his chest. He was warm and solid and real—something she could believe in, even if she couldn’t quite grasp everything else. She hugged him and he responded by pressing his lips to her forehead. Something about it made her feel safe. Protected.
“Thečhíhila,” he whispered in her ear, then his chest rose and fell with even breaths.
As she drifted off to sleep, she wondered what that meant.
That night, Mary Beth had dreams—nightmares, really. She saw the little house with the bloodstained floor, but this time, she saw the bleeding people too. A thing—not quite a man, not quite a bear—moved at the edge of her vision like a shadow, followed by screams. Everything happened out of order—one minute, the dead people were eating dinner, their necks already slit. The next minute, Jacob was bursting in, already wearing the mask. Always, the thing moved where she couldn’t see it. And she couldn’t see Kip. Where was that girl? God, let her still be safe.
Just a dream, Mary Beth tried to tell herself as the swish of a knife blade passed close to her ears. Bad dream. Not real. Wake up. Wake up now.
She shook awake, the remnants of horror still clinging to the edges of her consciousness. Her heart pounding, she rolled over, trying to reorient herself to the here and now—not some shadow of a past she hadn’t even been here to experience. Jacob, she thought. Jacob was here and now and maybe a little morning sex was just the thing to chase the rest of that nightmare away from her.
She groped around the bed, reaching farther and farther for his warm, real body.
She came up empty.
Gone. Mary Beth sat up with a start. The sheet fell forward, leaving her bare shoulders freezing. She was alone in bed. Throwing on her robe, she raced out into the living room, only to see the couch was put back together, the blankets neatly folded and stacked in a pile on the floor. The table was empty as well. No one was in the bathroom, and in her mounting panic, she even checked the washer/dryer combo before she saw the note taped to the fridge.
“Took Kip home. Jacob.”
She sagged against the table, flooded with relief that everything was normal and yet crushed that he was gone again.
Gone.
Again.
Chapter Eleven
After five long days, Ted Yellow Robe managed to get his plow up to the ranch. Six days after he slipped out of Mary Beth’s bed without waking her, Jacob stood outside the barn, waiting. He had no idea how much trouble he might be in, but he was pretty sure she’d be pissed at him.
She had every right to be.
The air was already warming in the morning light, and soon there would be nothing but mud as far as the eye could see. But it didn’t matter, because she was coming back to the ranch.
She was coming back to him.
Jacob didn’t think that she’d appreciate why he’d left without saying goodbye, but his reasons were honorable. He knew that if she woke up in his arms and kissed him with that mouth, made him breakfast and kept on treating Kip, well, like Kip was a normal girl, he might never leave.
Why would he? When was the last time he’d had a conversation over dinner with someone who was interested in his day and understood his job? For heaven’s sake, when was the last time he’d had dinner with someone who talked? It felt like normal—like he’d always thought normal would feel. Like normal looked on Happy Days and The Brady Bunch and all those shows he’d watched when he snuck over to Ronny’s or Tommy’s after school as a kid. Like normal had been in the Benge or Yellow Robe households, where he’d been just another kid instead of a future tribal leader.
Sitting at Mary Beth’s table, eating the homemade dumplings, talking late into the night and taking the comfort of her bed—well, the whole thing had been profoundly, wonderfully normal. She’d looked at him like he was just a man—not a leader who stepped away from the tribe, not a guy without half his face—just a man. A man she liked.
The temptation to stay shut away in her little house, safe from everything but her ferociously sweet mouth, had almost overpowered his better judgment.
But not quite.
Kip liked her. Kip went with her. He had a sickening sense that the safer Kip felt with Mary Beth, the more danger the vet was in.
It was that thought, above all other baser wants and needs, that had propelled him from her bed. The logical part of his brain knew that the more distance between them, the safer she was.
Try and explain that to his dick.
God, but she was good in bed. The way her legs wrapped around him—the way everything wrapped around him—it had felt like he’d finally found his place in the world. It wasn’t right that the two months between their first and last time had seemed every bit as long, if not longer, than the eight years between his first and last lover. Suddenly, the line between being wanted and needed and wanting and needing was gone, obliterated by a white woman with almost-gray eyes crying out, “Oh!” as she took from him what he hadn’t believed he still had to offer.
Despite the gusting winds, the mere thought of her body shaking in his arms sent his temperature spiking up a few degrees. There was a long way to go until spring. He wasn’t sure when she’d let him back in her bed, but he knew damn good and well it wasn’t going to be soon enough.
Here she comes. He forced the memory of her warm, bare body curled against his chest as he stroked her hair before dawn broke to the back of his mind. Don’t be a jerk.
She almost smiled at him as she dug her boot heels into the compacting snow, but he could see he’d guessed right. She was pissed and he had it coming. He couldn’t stop his face from going blank. Old habits died hard.
; “Jacob,” she almost sneered, her eyes narrow slits as she started to stalk past him to the waiting horses.
“Morning, Mary Beth,” he replied, trying to remember what he’d practiced. “How are you?”
That pulled her up short. Slowly, she pivoted on her heels, those furious gray-blue eyes looking all the grayer in the early morning light. She smiled a nice smile, but the rest of her face wasn’t having any of it. “Fine.” She sounded anything but. “How are you?”
He couldn’t help but gulp in air as she glared at him. “Good.”
“How’s Kip?” she asked, her fists jammed into her hips like he was a teenager three hours late for curfew.
“Good,” he squeaked out. Remember the compliment. Gotta give her a compliment. “Hey, thanks again for dinner. Kip really liked your chicken and dumplings. They were great.”
Her eyebrows shot up as she screwed her mouth into a slightly-more-amused-than-pissed smirk. “Oh?”
Jacob was sure he was bright red, but it was too late to turn back now. “There’s a good restaurant in Rapid City—Minerva’s—I’ll take you there this spring to make it up to you.” Hopefully, she’ll take that the right way, he silently prayed.
Jesus, if looks could kill, he’d have died three minutes ago. “Listen, you cho de, if you think I’m—”
Tommy loudly cleared his throat from just inside the barn door. “Hey, Doc. Good to see you back.”
Her eyes stabbed through Jacob for just a second more before she turned, all bright and cheery, to one of his oldest friends. Who had probably just figured out Jacob was holding out on him. Damn. Now both Mary Beth and Tommy were probably some degree of pissed.
He sighed. Can’t win for losing. Then he followed her into the barn.
One day, he’d have to find out what cho de meant in Vietnamese. He guessed it wasn’t anything good.
Mary Beth knew it was foolish to get her hopes up, but she still roasted a turkey breast and made a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, just in case she had company.
Masked Cowboy (Men of the White Sandy) Page 13
