When she was standing in front of him again, he marveled at how playful and sexy she was. Beneath the plain, farm-wife exterior beat the heart of a lioness, a woman who knew what she wanted and took it. Lee found that the thought of a coy, meek woman held no appeal whatsoever.
His pulse throbbed through him, making it difficult to hear or think. She took his hand and led him to the bed, giving him a quick hard kiss before she climbed in and lay down. Lee stood there, staring, harder and more aroused than he’d ever been in his life. When she crooked her finger, he followed and lay on top of her. Genny opened her legs and he slid into her. The tight, wet heat surrounded him, making his heart simply stop.
There were few moments in his life he could remember with crystal-clear details. This would be one of the moments, he knew it as well as he knew this would not be the last time they shared a bed. She fit him perfectly in more ways than one. Why hadn’t he seen it before? Anger made him reckless and stupid, and apparently blind as well.
She grasped his buttocks and pulled. “Ride me, cowboy.”
Lee captured her lips in a bruising kiss as he let instinct take over. Genny was no loose woman, in fact she was tighter than a fist, pulsing around him as he plunged into her. She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his hips, drawing him deeper into her cunt. As he thrust, she pushed up and tilted herself, creating a rhythm as old as time.
He wrenched his mouth away and drew in a shaky breath, looking down into the face of the woman who had turned him inside out in under fifteen minutes. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open and her expression one of sweet pleasure. He found himself smiling and squelching the urge to howl at the moon like a coyote.
“Now, Lee, please, now.” She scratched at his back and arched up.
Lee latched onto her breast and fucked her faster, harder. Tingles radiated out from his balls, signaling his release was imminent. He bit down on her nipple and she tightened around him so much, he came instantly. Stars exploded behind his eyes as the orgasm rippled through him. Vaguely he heard her whisper his name, keeping as quiet as possible, even as pleasure washed over them, leaving them breathless and spent.
With one last lick he let her nipple go and slid off her, settling beside her on the bed as if he belonged there. His body still pulsed with the force of the little death he’d just experienced, one more powerful than he’d known existed. As soon as he got his breath back, he propped himself up with his right hand and looked at her.
She focused on the ceiling, her nipples as hard as diamonds, her skin covered with a sheen of perspiration. The mingled scents of their bodies, the sex and the come, made the room feel like a cocoon of bliss. Lee never thought himself to be a poet, but damned if he didn’t feel a poem was coming on.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He wasn’t sure what to make of her remark. “Thank you too” seemed like an appropriate response even if he had no idea what she was thinking.
“I’ll need to get cleaned up and check on Sophie.” Genny sat up and turned to look down at him. “I’ll get you some warm water to wash up with.”
She was up and out of the bed, out the bedroom door, naked, before he could react. He obviously didn’t need to worry about her wanting more from him than he could give. In fact, he might have to worry the opposite was true. Lee wanted this again, the heat, the sex, the rush, and now he wasn’t sure she did.
As his body cooled, so did his ardor and his confidence. Genny Blanchard just knocked him off his feet, literally and figuratively. Lee stared at the door and wondered how his life had changed so quickly, and what tomorrow would bring.
Chapter Five
Genny felt like a coward when she set the pitcher of water by the door and left it there after knocking. As she entered Sophie’s room, she let out a shaky breath and pressed a hand to her mouth. She wanted to cry, and she wanted to laugh. She had no idea inviting Lee to her bed would change her.
Oh, she expected to be satisfied, to have finally scratched the itch she’d been suffering from. Yet the amazing sex she just had with him went far beyond that expectation and left her trembling and a bit confused. She had to be alone with her thoughts and figure out exactly how she felt. Genny was no virgin—she had experience in bed with a man—but she hadn’t expected it to be any different with Lee.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Sophie slept in her bed with an angelic peacefulness she never had during the day. Genny’s heart flipped at the sight of her daughter’s innocence. Life had been quite different when the day began. Now everything was mixed up and Genny knew she was to blame.
She chose to go to town and ask for help. She chose to convince Lee to work for her. She chose to invite him to her bed. All her own choices, so why did she feel so out of control?
After setting the second pitcher of water on the washstand, she washed off the remnants of the sex as quietly and quickly as possible. The cool night air made her skin pebble even as the warm water soothed her tender parts. As she pulled on her nightdress, it felt heavy and scratchy on her tender skin, but she put it on just the same. She climbed into bed next to Sophie without disturbing the girl.
As she stared up at the ceiling, Genny’s mind refused to turn off. It replayed each and every second of what she’d just shared with Lee with startling clarity. She knew she should have simply gotten dressed before she opened the door. Instead, she threw caution to the wind and complicated things by having incredible, indescribable, unforgettable sex with her employee.
She couldn’t regret the mutual pleasure they’d found, not for a moment. Genny decided he’d been as surprised as she by the way things had turned out. For her, she’d expected some satisfying sex, but surely not the emotional surge she experienced at his touch.
Genny lay in bed wide awake long into the night. The morning would be awkward enough, facing Lee again after being intimate with him, but she’d do it with little-to-no rest. However, she couldn’t make sleep come, no matter how gritty her eyes were, or how many times she yawned. A little voice inside her piped up with the truth Genny didn’t want to acknowledge—she would have slept soundly if she had stayed with Lee.
The sun seemed to rise earlier than normal, shining into Genny’s grainy eyes. Her feet dragged like anchors as she mechanically made coffee, splashing cold water on her dress when she tried to settle the grounds.
“Damn.” She wiped at the water with a rag, wondering if she would ever feel awake that day.
“Good morning.” Lee’s voice sent a shiver through her from head to toe.
“My hands hurt,” Sophie piped up from the table where she sat munching on her biscuit. “I don’t like working in the barn.”
“It’s no fun for me either, brat.” The sound of a chair scraping told her Lee sat down. “But chores is chores and they need to be done.”
Genny wrapped a rag around the handle of the coffee pot and picked it up from the stove. When she turned to glance at him, he looked even more sinfully handsome than he had the day before. His blond hair was slightly too long and had started to curl up around his ears. She twitched with the urge to run her fingers through the wheat-colored waves.
Well, certainly the attraction hadn’t faded a whit, in fact it appeared to be stronger. Lee, however, wasn’t looking at her at all. He sat at the table and seemed to be very interested in his fingernails as she poured the coffee. She wasn’t sure if she should be insulted or not.
“I’ve got the harness nearly ready. I need you to try it on so I can make sure the size is right.” She set the coffee pot back on the stove and fixed a plate of bacon, biscuits and eggs for him. No doubt he had a big appetite after such strenuous activities.
The thought made her want to laugh, but she swallowed the urge back down. No need for him to think she was as crazy as her mind was that morning.
“Sure thing, Miz Blanchard. I appreciate you working on it.”
Miz Blanchard? Now she really was insulted. The man had had various parts of
his body intertwined and melded with hers—there was no call to use her formal name like that. He was being ornery on purpose.
“I’d do it for anyone in need really.” Genny fixed her own plate while gritting her teeth. “It’s the Christian thing to do after all. Helping souls in need, I mean.”
When her plate hit the table, his head snapped up and he finally looked at her. What she’d taken for rudeness and dismissal was actually fear and doubt. That changed things and let the wind out of her sails of righteous anger.
“It’s especially nice to be able to help someone I know and, uh, like.” She offered him a small smile, and he nodded before turning back to his food.
“Well I don’t like him.” Sophie spoke around the half-eaten biscuit in her mouth. “He’s bossy.”
Genny swallowed a scalding mouthful of coffee so she didn’t choke on it. “That’s not very polite, and Mr. Blackwood here is only telling you to do your chores. Why, I’d do the same thing if I was in the barn, and you know it.”
Sophie furrowed her brow and looked at her mother. “Your face is all red and there’s a rash on your neck, Mama. You ain’t getting sick, are you?”
Oh, hell and damnation. Genny hadn’t counted on whisker burn, but given her pale skin, it would be inevitable there’d be evidence left. “No, I was hot last night and scratched myself up a bit. It’s nothing.” Her eyes flickered to Lee’s for just a moment and that’s all it took for her arousal to spark. His nostrils flared and her pussy throbbed. Well, she had her answer as to whether or not they both wanted it again.
“Why don’t you work on brushing Ned this morning? I’ll bet he’d enjoy that.” Genny continued as if she wasn’t flushed and stupidly horny. “He did a lot of work yesterday and needs some special attention.”
Sophie stood and narrowed her eyes. “I’ll take care of our horse in our barn. Just so long as I don’t have to take no orders from the likes of him.”
With that she walked out, nose in the air, her self-righteous crown firmly positioned on her little head. It wasn’t until the door closed that a laugh burst from Genny.
“That child has entirely too much attitude,” Lee grumbled. “Someone ought to take a switch to that little fanny.”
Genny shook her head. “It isn’t as if she doesn’t come by it honest. I’m afraid I always had a bit of sass in me as well. She’s just feeling…free, and giving her limits right now, well, it’d be very hard for me to do.”
“I’ll do it.” He gulped the rest of his coffee.
“I’m sure you would.” Genny smiled at his orneriness, which he apparently didn’t realize mimicked Sophie’s.
Lee glanced up at her. “You just going to let her run wild then?”
“It’s not your business, but no, I’m not. Doing chores will help her get her own control back.”
“She’s seven, not twenty-seven. She needs a mother.” He stood and stared at Genny with annoyance.
Genny stood and walked over to him, her anger stirred up now. “My daughter is my business, Mr. Blackwood. I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself on how to raise her.”
He leaned down, his brown eyes dancing with indignation and passion. “You’d best start raising her right then.”
“You’re a bastard.” Her breath came in short gasps as she tried to sort out the difference between her anger and her arousal.
“No, but I can be a son of a bitch.” He grabbed her and yanked her flush against his hard body. When his lips came down on hers, they weren’t gentle at all.
Damn if she didn’t almost burn into a cinder right then and there. She wrapped her arms around him and scratched at his back, even as her tongue dueled with his. They might have continued on to the bedroom if Sophie hadn’t stomped back in the door.
“Mama, what in tarnation are you doing kissing him?”
Genny wanted a hole to open up in the floor and swallow her right then and there. Of course, it didn’t happen so she had to extricate herself from Lee and step away. With a shaky smile, she turned to her daughter.
“I was just saying thanks for all his hard work.”
Sophie narrowed her eyes. “That’s an awful big thank you. You don’t kiss Mr. Marchison like that when he loads the wagon.”
Genny managed a small chuckle even if her heart was beating so hard it actually hurt. “Mr. Marchison doesn’t work for me. I pay him to load the wagon, yes, but he’s not the kissing type. I just tell him thank you instead.”
She heard Lee muffle a snort behind her and wanted to kick him. This was harder for her than him and he had no call to make her feel even worse. Sophie didn’t look convinced at all as she marched over and sat at the table, leveling her stare at Lee.
“Ah, now let’s get that harness fitted so we can get you to work.” Genny forced a brightness in her tone she surely wasn’t feeling. Although her body throbbed and pulsed for more, she had to force her desire away and focus on fitting the harness correctly.
Awkward wasn’t quite the right word for how she felt holding the contraption up against Lee and touching him. Particularly with Sophie a foot away watching them.
Genny was more self-conscious than anything. Oh hell, she didn’t know what she felt. All she knew is this man and she had a connection. Something she wouldn’t have been able to explain if asked, but there was definitely something between them.
It didn’t matter that he only had one arm. It didn’t matter that she was a widow with a less-than-perfect past. It was apparent he had been through quite a bit in his life, perhaps even as much as she had. The war had not been kind to him, that was obvious, but there was something else, something deeper. Something that had festered inside him longer than the past six or seven years.
No one got to be an adult with such a deep scar inside, even more painful than the one on the outside, without there being some kind of tragedy in his life. She was curious, but honestly, she shouldn’t be poking her nose into Lee’s business. It was, after all, his business.
He smelled good as if he’d just washed with soap and warm water. He’d shaved too. There was a nick on his chin. Genny had to resist the urge to kiss it.
There it was. That attraction, that indefinable link between them. She had to make a choice to either let go of her doubts and fly with it or stop the relationship completely. Genny wondered if she had wings.
“So how is this contraption supposed to work now?” Lee interrupted her musings.
“Well, um, you hook this here like this.” She stuck a couple pins in her mouth to pull the sleeve up and around so she could fasten the harness on his shoulder. “Buckle it here and then on the end here I hooked something so you could use the end of it as you would a tool. I’m not sure if this is exactly the right thing to use.”
She’d found a long nail amongst Henry’s tools and used a hammer to pound it against the anvil until it was a hook shape. “We may find something else that might fit or work better. This kind of thing is new for me too so we’ll have to figure it out as we go along. I think this will at least give us a start.”
He looked at it dubiously. “Okay, if you say so. I’ll give it a try.”
After she made sure that her measurements were correct, she unbuckled the harness and took it off. “Give me five minutes and it should be ready for you to use.”
“Okay.”
“There’s more coffee on the stove if you’d like some.”
“I would.”
Before she could offer to get him a cup, he’d done it himself. He was standing by the stove watching her as he sipped the hot brew. Sophie sat on the chair beside her, watching him, looking for all the world as if she were a miniature guard dog. She wasn’t sure what it was that had gone on yesterday between Lee and Sophie, but whatever it was, he obviously hadn’t succumbed to Sophie’s whining, complaining or bossiness.
Genny could only think that was a good thing. After all, she admonished herself over and over for not exercising more discipline where her daughter was conce
rned. Lee was a stranger but he had the perspective that she didn’t, and Genny was wise enough to recognize that, even if she wasn’t smart enough to do something about it herself.
“Why is he staring at us, Mama?”
“Sophie, Mr. Blackwood is waiting for me to finish this harness so he can finish cleaning up the barn. To finish what you started yesterday.”
“I ain’t working in the barn today, especially with him. I already said that.”
“You mind your manners, Miss Sophie Marie Blanchard. Mr. Blackwood deserves your respect and so do I. If you don’t want to give it to us, then I will paddle your behind and put you in the corner for the rest of the day where you can think about how hard it is to be polite and respectful.”
Genny surprised herself with her stern words. It was the first glimmer of being a parent, of being the parent she should be to her daughter. Sophie seemed to be as shocked as Genny.
“Uh, well, okay.” Sophie sounded quiet and unsure of herself.
Genny wondered if she’d gone too far. She glanced up at Lee and noted the approval in his expression. It wasn’t his business, but just the same, he noticed Sophie’s wildness right off as most folks did. Genny winced inwardly knowing that Lee’s first day had been spent with a house full of mad females and even crazier shenanigans, not to mention knee-deep in horse shit.
What must he think of her? God only knew what she thought of herself. She pricked her finger three times pushing the needle through the heavy leather and canvas. As promised, within five minutes the harness was complete.
“Finished!” She held it up.
One blond brow rose. “It ain’t like it’s a cotillion dress.”
A cotillion. A word from a million years ago that conjured up images of peeking through enormous paned-glass windows and seeing beautiful white, yellow, blue and pink dresses. Girls with grown-up hairdos and boys pulling at their ties, straightening their suit jackets as they asked the girls to dance.
Lee: Devils on Horseback, Book 4 Page 7
