To give him credit, the man only broke the pencil tip once when she called her fortune ‘pin money.’
“Yes, Miss… ah that will cost…” he counted the letters, “12 cents.”
Nathan flipped the man a coin. “Keep it.” He smiled and held out his hand for Margrett to take. She tried not to show the jolt that ran through her body when her hand pressed into his. Did it show on her face how good it felt when his strong callused hand closed possessively around hers?
He led her out of the station and to a nearby stand of trees that had yet to fall in the name of progress. The sun had gone, the clock had chimed the man’s release from his cage behind the desk. They gathered in the gloom, pressed to one another, and waited in silence. Margrett used the opportunity to sidle closer to him than necessary, watching the station just as he did. With a little thrill of excitement, she felt Nathan’s arm move around her and his warm palm rest against her waist.
Within a few minutes, the little man came dashing from the station, looking around like a fugitive. Margrett moved in closer to Nathan and held her breath.
The man from the station, Nathan had called him Ned, seemed satisfied that he was not being watched and dashed quickly into The Pines. He was about as discreet as a grizzly bear. Nathan snorted.
“Well,” he said, his eyes on the lights spilling from the saloon, “the invitation is sent.” He looked down at her, his expression unreadable in the shadows. “Now we have to get the dance card ready.”
“Mr. Baker,” Margrett said, putting her hand on his chest. She could feel the steady thud of his heart beneath her palm and found it reassuring. “I am sure that whatever it was you just said was meaningful, and even impressive by the way you said it, but I have almost no idea what you’re talking about. You’ve told me very little about this plan.”
He chuckled. She could feel the light rumble in his chest vibrate through her own body, making her want to lean in against him.
“I don’t suppose you do,” he admitted. “But I don’t think I can explain it, not too well.” He held out his arm for her to take. He took her hand to lead it into the crook of his elbow. “Let’s go back and finish the art project.”
“By art project,” she said, leaning on his arm and trusting to his night vision to lead her back to the road, “are you referring to that unholy mess you’ve made on my kitchen table that bears very little resemblance to that sketch you made earlier?”
“Your kitchen table?” He arched his neck, and in the passing light of the town, she could see his eyebrow raised.
“Mine.” She nodded primly. “After all, when I bought the house, all the furnishings came with it.”
He didn’t break his stride or alter his slow speech. “Where does that leave me?”
“You came with the house too, Mr. Baker,” Margrett announced, her grip sure on his arm now that they had gotten to the road and the moonlight helped guide her steps. “Like the table and chairs and couch.” She nodded once as if all such matters were settled.
“And the bed?”
“MR. BAKER!” Margrett slapped his arm, forgetting to worry about the spectacle they surely made, though the hour was late and most good citizens were likely already abed. “You forget yourself, sir!”
“I apologize,” he said, though he didn’t sound in the least apologetic. “But you do have to admit, it is a comfortable bed.”
“I refuse to justify that sort of remark with a comment.” Margrett tried hard to keep the smile from her lips, though the effort was more than a little futile. “Though I will, however, admit to having had a wonderful nap on my first night in your lovely town.”
He chuckled the entire way back to the house.
Chapter 16
“These chaps I’ve had since I was a teen,” he explained indicating the heavy leather roll that lay in a heap on the end of the table.
It was late by the time they’d gotten back. Margrett stifled a yawn and peered at the stained leather with interest. “You were on a cattle drive?” Margrett asked, images of cowboys on the open prairies and full moons over stone mesas filling her head. She leaned in, suddenly wide awake.
He nodded. “When I was young. It was hard, dirty work, but for a kid desperate to get out from under his father’s thumb it was a good way to show I was independent, a grown man, though Father laughed heartily when I told him that. I went out west thinking I knew everything I needed to know because I could ride a horse and knew a cow from a donkey. Turns out I was the ass, begging your pardon. The men on the cattle drive took me under their wing. They showed me what I thought I knew, and taught me many things I didn’t. I learned to play cards from them, there wasn’t much else to do at night. It was a hard life, but I earned enough money to pursue other interests eventually. I never did like cows but for eating.”
He pulled apart something and opened the chaps even further. “This heavy part protects the leg from the brambles,” He pointed and then pointed to the long piece he’d cut from the chaps earlier. “And this part protects the leg against the thick, heavy part.” Without another word, he unrolled the piece and showed her where it fit on the chap. It ran almost the full length of the leg.
“But…Didn’t that have some sentimental value to you?” She picked up the leather. It was soft and supple in her hands.
He looked up at her as though she had spoken Hebrew. “This? No. I hated these when I wore them, I hate them now.”
“Then why did you carry it with you for all these years?”
He took the carved piece from her and bundled the rest up I guess it’s a sort of a warning to me. If I don’t win, I end up in those damn things again.” He gave a dubious look to the leather pile in the corner. “Though I highly doubt they would ever fit me again.”
He spread the leather over the table. Margrett would have beat any man who would profane the dinner table with such a mess as this. It was more than old, it was stained, faded, mildewed. Despite his assurance that he’d not ridden cattle much, the chaps apparently had done so in his absence.
That smelly, disgusting scrap of leather was now spread carefully over the table. Margrett swore she would attack the table with boiling lye before eating on it again.
He took the ink stick and mixed it with a little bit of water, but much too thick for writing. He took the awl and dipped it, made a careful touch to the leather and pressed.
“Are you giving that leather a tattoo?” Margrett asked, sitting down across from him and watching, elbows on the table, chin cupped in her hands.
He gave her a startled look. “Familiar with tattoos are you?”
“Indeed,” Margrett said. He raised an eyebrow in what was becoming a familiar gesture as she explained. “The maintenance man at the Boston League was a sailor, or so he claims. There is a dark smudge on his right bicep that he said was once a mermaid.”
Nathan grinned. “I’m willing to bet that mermaid wasn’t overly clothed.”
“You do seem to have a one-track mind, Mr. Baker.” She smiled when she said it, but he did tend to make several references which, while not offensive, bordered on the inappropriate. She was starting to suspect that Nathan Baker was actually trying to flirt with her. The thought filled her with a great deal of satisfaction.
A proper lady would be horrified by such remarks.
She was starting to suspect she wasn’t a proper lady at all. She wasn’t sure she was unduly stressed by that thought.
He set down his needle. He’d created a convincing drawing of a mesa on the leather.
“I apologize, Miss Childs.” He met her eyes, seeming a little sheepish as he did so. “I have not been alone in a woman’s company for some time, and admit I am still fondly distracted by the idea of holding you as I did earlier.”
Margrett broke eye contact first. She felt herself color, the heat rising to her cheeks.
Chapter 17
“Mr. Baker.” Margrett breathed, though just barely. “I…I don’t know…” Margrett couldn’t s
ay it, needed to say it, but needed to not say it all at once. Her experience with men was severely limited. An all-girls school, a careful upbringing, a genteel household as a child... none of these things lent to knowing much of the opposite sex, nor indeed for knowing much about the passion between a man and a woman at all.
But when she found herself in his arms again, lips pressed firmly against his, it was so easy to get lost. The feel of the soft mustache and the hard, muscular arms combined to steal her breath and reason. She should have felt fear, and maybe there was some hesitation in the back of her mind, but it was small and unimportant. She should have been self-conscious, worried about where her hands were, how his arms were positioned; in short, doing it right.
There were a dozen reasons she should have been thinking about something else other than that kiss and his arms and his…Margrett was lost in the moment. When the kiss ended, and his lips pulled away from hers, it was as though the kiss lingered in the air between them. Eye to eye, he watched her, his expression filled with…was it joy? It couldn’t have been anything else. She was making him happy. It was that thought that melted her heart and captured her mind.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, curse him for being so tall, and she lifted herself up, or pulled him down, it didn’t matter as long as they met, lip to lip and embrace to embrace. She pulled him to her and trapped his mouth with hers.
His hands, his large, wonderful, talented hands ran down her back over the stays of her dress and felt her hips before retracing their paths and exploring her back all over again. He pulled away a moment, and she looked at him to see if she’d done something wrong, confused why he would withdraw.
With his eyes on hers and a slow smile, he began to pull at the fastenings of her dress. They came loose, and the bodice began to open like the petals of a flower. He never broke eye contact with her. He was watching her reaction, letting her take it at her speed. She smiled and reached up to give the stays a good yank and loosen them in a rush, so they fell from her, freeing her to feel his hands that much closer.
Nathan’s eyes widened momentarily, but then so did his grin as his hands eagerly traversed the expanse she’d opened up to him.
Margrett pulled at Nathan’s jacket and nearly tore the buttons from his shirt trying to get her hand under all the cloth to feel his skin. She couldn’t explain why, but it suddenly seemed of desperate importance that her hands come into contact with his chest, his stomach. At that moment, Margrett knew that no one would ever be a replacement for this man. She needed him, wanted him, couldn’t imagine feeling anything like this with anyone else.
Years of propriety and careful etiquette dropped away with Margrett’s outer garments. The closer they came to skin to skin contact the more feral and needy her passion became. It surprised her how she attacked him, pulling at his clothing and her own. Judging by the intrigued looks he sent her when not entrenched in kissing her, Nathan was also somewhat taken aback by her ferocity but matched it with a rising passion of his own that left her absolutely breathless.
So this is what it was like between a man and a woman. How was it she’d never known this until now?
They tore at each other until Nathan ended the impromptu ravishing of cloth by picking her up and carrying her upstairs.
The moonlight shone on the bed as he dropped her on the mattress, following her down, kissing and caressing as he went. He found skin first, and she looked at him, licking her suddenly dry lips, only then feeling the nervousness and self-consciousness that had eluded her earlier.
“My god,” he whispered, breaking the spell. “You’re beautiful.” He grabbed her around the waist and played his lips along the base of her neck, working down and around to her corseted breasts. He paused to begin feverishly working on the lacings that would release her to his gaze. She pulled at his pants and shirt randomly, distracted by the sensations he was causing in her.
He stopped his mission long enough to pull off his shirt. Margrett reached up a tentative hand to feel those muscles she’d only touched through fabric, feeling them move under her fingers and watching Nathan still, breath suspended, watching her movements. She ran her hands over him, around him and down the back of his pants with an audacity that amazed her. She was rewarded by Nathan’s soft groan as he finally remembered to breathe, gathering her to him in another hungry kiss. If someone had told Margrett a week ago that she could be this wanton, she would have laughed herself silly over the joke.
Yet this wasn’t all seriousness. She laughed as he struggled with her corset, calling it an infernal device and making her swear to never wear one again. She finally had to help him, unlacing it the rest of the way herself while he stood and stripped. She still wore a layer of her undergarments, but he was willing to be the first one naked. His skin glowed in the silver moonlight room, and when he straightened from his work, his arousal made her forget about being self-conscious. She reached out to touched him, exploring something new to her, something wondrous and strange. Amazed that she could bring such an expression of agonized pleasure to his face by the mere touch of her fingertips just…there.
Nathan growled as he pulled the last of Margrett’s clothing from her. He lay down beside her, kissing, caressing, playing with her passion. A need began to build in Margrett. She wanted more, though she was at a loss as to what that ‘more’ was. The warmth of Nathan’s skin beneath her palms wasn’t good enough. The rest of her body cried out for his heat as well, and she tossed about, every inch of her vying for his next kiss, his next touch. Nathan seemed to understand exactly what her crazed movements indicated. Leaving off his exploration, he covered Margrett’s body with his, the reassuring weight and branding heat instantly appeasing her, though not the tension growing in her belly.
Then she felt the searing heat of him as he pressed himself between her thighs and knew exactly what it was her body still craved. Nathan paused, searching her expression. Margrett knew he was giving her the chance to change her mind, to retreat from an irreversible action. The thought made her heart swell as she tightened her embrace around him and, with trembling hands, pulled him closer.
He let out a low moan, and she caught her breath as he pressed into her slowly and deeply. Margrett couldn’t restrain her own cry of pleasure as a sense of fullness engulfed her. There was no more hesitation or doubt. Deep inside of her, Margrett felt Nathan begin to move. Slowly at first, but the initial fierceness of their passion quickly resurrected itself, and their pace quickened until they were both panting desperately, hips rocking to meet each other as though their lives depended on it. Margrett never imagined that she could feel something this beautiful.
She lost herself under and around him. He was taking her and filling her, gaining and giving pleasure. She could feel his heat, his passion. She heard it in his breath and tasted it on his skin. He joined her in a primal connection, and she fell, spiraling downward into a blissful oblivion that left her in shy wonder that she was doing such a thing, and that she was able to love a man in such a way.
The bed groaned, or maybe it was her. The moonlight danced as they swayed to each other’s rhythms until the rise began to build. It was a yearning she didn’t understand, couldn’t comprehend and wanted to never stop. She ached for the touch he’d already given her and longed for the completion she wanted to put off as long as possible that she might savor it forever.
When the wave hit her, the inexorable, inevitable overwhelming wave of release, she wrapped herself around him, burying her head in the hollow of his neck and letting the sensations pull her, carry her wherever they would. She let go, arching to meet his thrusts as he groaned and cried out before clamping his mouth over hers in a last desperate kiss.
“Margrett,” he breathed into her ear when he finally broke for air. It was deep, thick, heavy and filled with promise. It spoke of need and passion and love.
It was the most beautiful word she’d ever heard.
Chapter 18
Nathan Baker staggered past th
e door and caught himself on the bar. The saloon was busy, there had to be a dozen girls working the room. Miners, ranchers, all manner of rough-dressed men populated the place, most drinking heavily. Someone was pounding at a piano in the corner, the noise of the tinny keys colliding with that of feminine laughter, with shouts, with chaos. A smoky haze was over the place.
It felt like home.
Nathan ordered two glasses of whiskey and downed one while waiting for the other, his eyes alert, noting the position of every man in the place. When the second drink came, he raised the glass with an unsteady hand. He reeked of the stuff, giving proof that his aim hadn’t been overly steady for most of the night. He pounded his fist on the bar and yelled for the barman to hurry. “I’m still upright!” he yelled, “I can still FEEL!”
“Why, Mr. Baker, I do believe!” a voice called from behind him. Cleveland Morrison approached, dressed in clothing that should have been too fine for the establishment. He actually looked clean, hair neatly parted and as oily as that ten-dollar smile of his.
“Who are you?” Nathan blinked, reeling as though trying to focus his eyes on a target that wouldn’t stay still.
“Oh dear.” Cleveland tsked and shook his head in an exaggerated pantomime of concern. “I do believe you have had a rather large amount to imbibe sir.”
“So?” Nathan stood and staggered against the bar, the stool clattered to the floor. “You have some sort of problem with that?” his fist balled up, and his arm cocked back. “Where the hell is my…oh…” he grabbed the full shot glass and drained it.
“You…” He snarled at Morrison. “you have no idea. None. Been sober nearly a year before I come here, not a damn drop, but…” he turned back to the bar and slapped the wood for another.
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