The Rustler

by Linda Lael Miller

  It was a relief when he laid her down on the bed, pulled off her pantaloons, her stockings and garters, her slippers. She watched, dazed, as Wyatt stood watching her, devouring her with his eyes, all the while shedding his own clothes—boots first, then the shirt, then his trousers.

  His manhood stood erect, reminding Sarah of stallions in the field, preparing to mount a mare. As primitive as the image was, it made her blood burn and her body strain.

  She wanted him inside her, deep inside her.

  But he turned her sideways on the bed and knelt between her legs.

  She groaned. Now he’d take her. At last, at last, he’d take her.

  Instead, he stunned her with a pleasure so unexpected, and so fiercely keen, that she wasn’t sure she could endure it. He buried his face in her, took her into his mouth.

  She began to rock and writhe on the bed.

  He feasted on her, alternately sucking and laving her to madness with the very tip of his tongue. He stroked the insides of her thighs, inciting rather than soothing, keeping her knees apart. And when she arched her back, caught up in the throes of something she had never imagined could happen, he drew on her harder still, and reached up to cover her mouth lightly with one hand.

  If he hadn’t, the wail she gave would have been heard on every corner of Stone Creek Ranch. The release was utter, shattering, an unhinging of soul from body. Sarah buckled wildly under Wyatt’s mouth, howling against his palm. Again and again, she felt that catching deep inside her, the thing she thought she’d experienced before, but never had.

  At last, spent, she fell, gasping, to the mattress. Wyatt still knelt between her legs, his head resting on her quivering abdomen.

  “I didn’t know—” she managed.

  “Shhh,” he said.

  Presently, he turned her again, so that she lay properly on the bed. And he lowered himself onto her.

  “Sarah,” he told her, looking into her eyes, “the wedding was a prelude. So was what we just did. But when this next thing happens, there’ll be no going back. If you’ve got any doubts, you’d best say so right now.”

  Sarah knew, though only dimly, what he meant. The marriage could still be annulled, even with the marriage license signed, and her still trembling from the unspeakable satisfaction he’d evoked in her only moments before. But once their bodies had been joined, the die would be cast. She would truly be his wife then, and he would be her husband.

  She put her hands on either side of his face, rough now, needing to be shaved, and drew his head down for her kiss. Felt the wetness of her pleasure on his mouth.

  What she couldn’t say in words, her body said for her.

  With a low moan, Wyatt eased inside her.

  The sheer size of him made her eyes widen and her breath catch.

  “Easy,” he said. Ever so slowly, he began to move within her.

  The friction was delicious at first, then as necessary as her next breath, her next heartbeat. Sarah clutched and clawed at Wyatt, trying to take him in still deeper, trying to hurry him.

  But he would not be hurried.

  His thrusts were deliberate and controlled. He murmured senseless words into Sarah’s neck, raised his head to look into her eyes.

  She began to buck beneath him again, like a wild mare in springtime. And when she cried out, lost in pleasure, flung into it to whirl in breathless spirals toward heaven itself, he covered her mouth with his own.

  When she climaxed, he swallowed her fevered shouts.

  And when he let himself go, when he thrust back his head and gave a low shout of surrender, spilling his warmth into her, Sarah realized she’d never made love before that day. She’d given herself, yes. She’d even had soft, sweet releases.

  But she had never known passion. She had never soared, never been ravished, never felt the stirring, silent music of her own body, expertly rendered by a man who cared as much for her pleasure as his own.

  She began to cry.

  Wyatt, lying beside her, kissed her temple. Wrapped her in his arms and held her close against him, not minding her tears. She clung to him, their legs entwined. And, eventually, she slept.

  When she awakened, the cabin was shadowy with twilight. Lying on her stomach, she stretched, made a little crooning sound of sheer contentment. Wyatt stirred next to her, shifted.

  She felt herself drawn up onto her hands and knees, with Wyatt behind her. Kissing her backbone, caressing her buttocks with one hand, he arranged himself and slid into her in a single thrust.

  Her sated body thrilled, wanting again.

  She whispered his name, raggedly, unashamed of her need.

  He held her hips, filling her and then withdrawing. Teasing until she pleaded. And only when she pleaded did he truly take her, in the way she craved taking. His lovemaking was like some exotic drug; if he withheld it from her, she would suffer. As it was, she gasped and twisted like a woman in a violent fever, but Wyatt did not deny her. He drove into her, hard, at the precise moment she needed him most, and the resultant explosion consumed her.

  She collapsed again, but Wyatt got out of bed, pulled on his trousers, and went outside, Lonesome padding after him. When they returned, Wyatt lit a kerosene lantern and set it on the table, began poking kindling and crumpled newspaper into the belly of the stove.

  “What are you doing?” Sarah asked drowsily, still almost too breathless to speak.

  He laughed, the sound gruff and somehow as intimate as their lovemaking. “Maybe you can keep up a pace like that, Mrs. Yarbro,” he said, “but Lonesome and I, we need some supper.”

  “Supper?”

  “Don’t worry,” Wyatt told her. “You don’t have to cook.”

  “Good,” Sarah said, “because I don’t think I can stand up, let alone make supper.”

  But she would have to stand up, she realized. She needed to use a chamber pot, wash her hands and face.

  “Outhouse is behind the cabin,” Wyatt said.

  Sarah felt the now-familiar heat suffuse her face. How had he known?

  She scrambled out of bed, wrapped herself in the quilt, after untangling it from the top sheet, poked her feet into her wedding slippers, and left the cabin as regally as she could, praying that none of the ranch hands would see her.

  It was dark out, though, and lights shone in Sam and Maddie’s windows, and from the bunkhouse, too. Sarah felt warmed by them, even comforted.

  She used the outhouse, which was newly built and therefore had not acquired an odor, then returned to the cabin. Wyatt had set out a basin of warm water for her, along with a washcloth and a bar of soap still in the wrapper.

  “I wish I’d known your mother,” Sarah said.

  Busy frying something in a skillet, Wyatt looked up. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because she raised you right. You cook. You knew I’d need hot water and soap—”

  “I’m not sure she’d agree,” Wyatt said quietly. “That she raised me right, I mean. She sure didn’t rock me at her bosom when I was a baby and say, ‘I hope my first-born grows up to rob trains.’”

  Sarah felt a pang, because she’d never know Wyatt’s mother, and because she missed her own with a sudden soreness of heart. Both of them should have been at the wedding, Nancy giving Sarah shy last-minute advice, Mrs. Yarbro beaming over her handsome son.

  “I didn’t get to hold Owen, when he was a baby,” Sarah said, without ever intending to say any such thing. “They took him away before I could.”

  Wyatt pushed the skillet to the back of the stove, came to her, took her in his arms. Kissed the top of her head. And he had the good sense not to say anything at all. He simply allowed her to cry.

  “There’ll be other children,” she said presently. “And I’ll love them with my whole being. But if Owen’s not there, too—”

  “Shhh,” Wyatt said. “We’ll think of something.”

  But what? she wanted to ask, but didn’t.

  Lonesome came over, squeezed himself in between them.

>   They laughed.

  Wyatt let Sarah go, went back to the stove. She rummaged through her valise and found her wrapper. Shed the quilt to put it on.

  God bless Kitty Steel, she thought. If it had been left up to her, she’d have had nothing to wear but her mother’s wedding dress.

  Once decently covered, Sarah gathered her scattered clothes from the floor—the petticoats, the gown, the camisole and pantaloons, the corset.

  “You’re right,” she told Wyatt. “Women wear too many clothes.”

  He grinned, crossed the room, took the corset out of her hand, and carried it back to the stove. Stuffed it right into the fire and watched it catch.

  “Wyatt Yarbro,” Sarah protested, somewhat after the fact. “I need that corset!”

  “No, you don’t,” he replied. “As far as I’m concerned, the pantaloons could go into the stove, too, since it would save me having to pull them down, but I reckon you’d feel the breeze on windy days.”

  Sarah laughed, scandalized, not so much because of the audacity of what he’d said, but because she liked the idea.

  Whatever Wyatt was cooking sizzled, and it smelled divine. He grinned at her. Waggled his eyebrows.

  “You are not going to go around pulling down my pantaloons,” she said.

  “Wait and see,” he answered. “You liked it when I took you from behind, and what you like, I like. I’ll be bending you over things right and left, Mrs. Yarbro, and having you hard and slow, until you howl like a she-wolf in heat.”

  Sarah fluttered a hand in front of her face, overheated. It must have been the stove, and the summer night. “I take it back, what I said about your mother raising you right,” she told him. “You mustn’t say such things, Wyatt. It’s improper.”

  “Why not, Sarah?” Wyatt asked, still grinning. “Because it makes you want me to put my—money where my mouth is?”

  She did want that, and he knew it, and her temper surged, right along with that insatiable passion he’d awakened in her.

  “Shall I prove it, Sarah?”

  “No,” she said, drawing the belt of her wrapper more tightly around her waist. It really was too warm in that cabin. “I’m starved. I’m exhausted. And there will be no more talk about where you put your mouth!”

  He laughed out loud at that, throwing back his head.

  “Wyatt!”

  “If I remember correctly, you liked where I put my mouth.”

  “Open the door,” Sarah blustered, “or a window. It’s so hot in here.”

  “I can’t do that, Sarah,” Wyatt said reasonably. “It’s hard enough keeping you quiet, without the door and the window open so half the county can hear you calling out my name.”

  “Why, you—”

  He pushed the skillet to the back of the stove again.

  Sarah backed up a step. “Wyatt Yarbro,” she warned.

  He came to her, undid the belt and opened her wrapper. Waited smugly for her to protest.

  She didn’t.

  He caressed her breasts, suckled at her nipples.

  Sarah groaned, let her head fall back. The wrapper went the way of the wedding dress and the petticoats.

  And then Wyatt turned her around, bent her over the table, and took her in a single, hard thrust.

  It was a very good thing, Sarah would admit later, that they hadn’t opened the window or the door.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  MONDAY WAS NOT, despite Sam O’Ballivan’s generous offer, set aside for more honeymooning. It was to be Owen’s first day at Stone Creek School, after all, and Sarah couldn’t, in good conscience, leave the bank for Thomas to manage alone. At the first sign of a scruffy cowhand with a gun on his hip, looking to make a deposit or inquire about a mortgage on some patch of land, he’d probably panic and head for the hills.

  So Wyatt hitched up Sam’s buckboard and loaded Lonesome and his tools in the back, and he and Sarah went to town.

  Her father was resting comfortably, though there had been no significant change in his condition, either for better or for worse. Owen was fully dressed, his hair slicked down and his face washed and his new boots on his feet, chomping at the bit to start school. He’d made his own breakfast, and he’d gathered his tablet and pencil box and other school-going gear before dawn, according to an amused Kitty. It had been all she could do, she reported, to keep him from heading for the schoolhouse before it was even light, he was that anxious for classes to commence.

  If Kitty noticed the blush in Sarah’s cheeks, the light in her eyes, and the new spring in her step, she had the unusual good grace not to comment.

  Owen scrambled into the back of the buckboard, greeted Lonesome, and asked Wyatt not to spare the horses. He had things to learn, he said, and he didn’t want to be late.

  “Not much danger of that,” Wyatt said, after consulting his pocket watch. He hoisted Sarah back up into the wagon seat, having waited outside for her and Owen. “Like as not, that pretty new schoolmarm hasn’t even opened her eyes yet.”

  Sarah gave him an elbow. “How do you know she’s pretty?” she demanded, smiling.

  He chuckled. “Word gets around,” he replied. “Jody Wexler took one look at her—from across the street—and decided to get himself an honest job and save up for a house. It’s odd how a woman can have that effect on a man.”

  “You’re all rascals,” Sarah said, quietly merry. “Every single one of you.”

  “Me, too?” Owen piped up, as though it were an honor of some sort. “Am I a rascal, too?”

  “Most definitely,” Sarah answered, with another smile, thinking if she loved that child any more than she already did, she’d perish from it.

  Although the start of the school day was still an hour away, it turned out that Owen wasn’t the first pupil to arrive. A band of boys and girls played some chasing game in the school yard, and Davina Wynngate, clad in another prim brown dress with tidy black piping on the bodice, was on hand to supervise.

  “Lord,” Wyatt said at the sight of her.

  Sarah elbowed him again. “You,” she told him, “are a married man.”

  “I still have eyes,” Wyatt answered. Then he laughed and kissed her lightly on the nose.

  “Stop spooning,” Owen ordered from the back. “Everybody will see.”

  Davina approached the school yard gate, opened it, and walked toward the wagon as Owen jumped nimbly to the ground. Although she turned a reserved and somewhat chilly glance on Sarah, Davina greeted Owen with a genuine smile.

  “Put your tablet and pencil box inside,” she told the boy. “And join the other children.”

  After staring up at her in naked adoration—Davina Wynngate would be Owen’s first love, it seemed—he rushed to comply.

  “His name is Owen,” Sarah said, relieved that whatever Davina’s opinion of Sarah herself might be, she clearly didn’t intend to hold it against the child.

  Davina nodded. Her gaze strayed, measuring, to Wyatt.

  He tipped his hat.

  Sarah refrained from elbowing him a third time, but barely.

  Introductions were made, and Sarah and Wyatt went on to the bank.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Yarbro,” Wyatt said, holding Sarah unnecessarily close for a few charged moments after he’d helped her down from the buckboard. “I was just teasing you, back there at the schoolhouse. You’re all the woman I’m ever going to need. Maybe even a bit more.”

  Sarah blushed—she was always blushing, with Wyatt—but she felt relieved, even if she could admit that only to herself. “May I remind you,” she purred, “that we are on a public street?”

  “More’s the pity,” Wyatt said. And then he kissed her. Left her trembling, there on the sidewalk as he climbed back up into the buckboard seat to drive off.

  Sarah’s heart seemed determined to chase after him, scramble right up into the back of that wagon with Lonesome and go wherever Wyatt went.

  She turned resolutely, got out her key and opened the door of the Stockman’s Bank as if
it was any other Monday morning of her life.

  It wasn’t, of course.

  Thomas appeared only long enough to plead sickness and ask for the day off. Since he did look a little green around the gills, Sarah told him to go home and get into bed. If she happened to see Doc, she said, she’d send him by, in case the malady was serious.

  She’d conducted several transactions when the two cowboys came in. They were familiar, though not local men, but she couldn’t place them. When the shorter one leered at her, she recalled his previous visit.

  He tugged at the brim of his seedy hat and looked around as though he’d never been in a bank before. There was something about the avidity of his attention, both to Sarah and to the bank itself, that troubled her, but she quickly shook it off. Strangers came in all the time, asking questions, looking to do some sort of ordinary business.

  “May I help you, gentlemen?” Sarah asked.

  “We’re thinking of conducting some banking,” the shorter man said.

  Sarah produced two forms from under the counter and set the ink bottle and public pen nearer to hand. “If you’ll just enter your names and places of residence, I’ll be happy to help you.”

  There was a pause. The taller man, his clothes as shabby and trail-worn as any Sarah had ever seen, looking as if they could stand up on their own, without him in them, didn’t even glance at the form. The other one grinned, showing very bad teeth to accent his pockmarked complexion, took up the pen and wrote, Wm J. Smith on his form, printing the letters in a childish script. Genrall Del., Stone Crek, Arizona Terrtary.

  He was barely literate, Sarah concluded. Again, that was not unusual.

  “This here’s Josh,” William J. Smith said, cocking a thumb at his sidekick. “He don’t write. Just makes an X when it’s required.”

  “That’s fine,” Sarah said, mildly disturbed by something in his stance or manner, but unable to put her finger on just what it was.

  “We might be dealing in large sums,” Smith went on, after laying the pen aside. “So if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, we’d appreciate it if you’d let us have a look at your safe. Can’t be too careful, these days.”