Heartstrings

by Rebecca Paisley

  He saw real mischief sparkling in her narrowed gaze and looked forward to seeing what she would do to him. “Go on,” he pressed. “I dare you. I double-dare you. Hell, I quadruple-dare you.”

  The mud sliding beneath her sleeves and down her arms, Theodosia suppressed a shiver. She knew if she threw the mud at Roman, he’d throw more back at her. Becoming so totally filthy was not a pleasant thought, but backing down from Roman’s quadruple challenge was far worse.

  He ducked just as she flung the mud at him. “Ha ha, you missed!”

  The mud fight became serious business to her then. Resolute in her efforts to muddy him, Theodosia withdrew more mud from the puddle, but lost her chance to toss it at him when he rose from the ground, pulled something out of his saddlebag, and ran into the woods.

  She followed, but at a much slower pace. “Roman?” Listening for sounds that would tell her where he was, she peered all through the thicket. “Roman?”

  The loud caw of a crow startled her into dropping her mud. “Roman, I do not find this hiding game of yours at all diverting. Make your presence known at once, or I shall—”

  She stopped speaking. Or she would what? she wondered. What threat could she give him?

  “Roman, if you do not show yourself this very instant, I shall cease to play with you.”

  Nothing. No sound, no movement, no Roman. “Very well,” she called into the woods, “I am returning to camp.” She turned, took a few steps, then stopped abruptly.

  Fear lashed through her like a thousand whips. At the base of the tree that grew not a foot away from where she stood lay a rattlesnake, its thick body coiled, its tail clattering in deadly warning.

  “Roman,” she whispered without moving her lips. “Roman.”

  She’d barely finished saying his name a second time, when all of a sudden he was there. It seemed to her that he’d fallen from the sky and landed directly upon the dangerous serpent.

  In the next moment he held the writhing reptile out in front of her, his fingers clasped firmly behind its head. “Want to pet him?”

  She moved well away. “No.”

  “Aw, come on, Theodosia, pet him. There aren’t many people in the world who can say they’ve petted a live rattler. Pet him.” He stepped toward her. “Pet him.” He advanced toward her again. “Pet him.”

  She knew he wasn’t going to give up. “You’ll hold him tightly, won’t you.”

  “If he shows one sign of trying to bite you, I’ll bite him myself.”

  Trying to take some small measure of comfort in his absurd promise, she slid one finger down the squirming snake’s back. “All right, I petted him.”

  “You did good, Theodosia. Real good.”

  She almost corrected his grammar from “good” to “well,” but found his mistake strangely soothing. “Where were you, Roman?”

  Using the snake’s head as a pointer, he raised his arm and gestured toward the branches of the tree. “I saw the snake before you did and was just getting ready to warn you, when you turned around and nearly stepped right on it. Leave it to you, Theodosia, to walk straight into danger.”

  She watched him carry the snake deep into the glade. He returned without the reptile, and she realized he’d set it free. “Another man might have killed the rattlesnake.”

  Roman flicked a bit of dried mud off his thumbnail. “I kill for food and defense. I didn’t want to eat that snake, and it wasn’t going to hurt me.”

  With that, he pulled from his pocket the bar of soap he’d taken out of his saddlebag, and headed toward the creek.

  She knew where he was going, knew what he planned to do there, and knew she shouldn’t follow.

  She followed.

  “You look like Santa Claus.”

  Roman gave his long full soap-beard a final pat, and swished his sudsy hands in the cool creek water. “And you look like you have a white owl on your head.”

  “This is a hat, Roman. An ermine hat.” She reached up and reshaped her soap-hat.

  He sat down in the creek, doing his best to study her lather creation and not her gorgeous bare body. “What’s an ermine?”

  “A large European weasel.” A rivulet of soap tickled her breasts as it slid over her chest. “In actuality I have a pile of soap on my head, Roman.”

  “It looks more like a weasel hat. Say it’s a weasel hat.”

  “I already have.” She sank into the water beside him. “Oh, my goodness. These creek pebbles—”

  “They feel good on your bare bottom, huh?” He reached for her and pulled her closer. “All round and smooth.”

  “Round and smooth,” she mused aloud, looking at him from the corner of her eye. “My bottom or the pebbles?”

  He saw an alluring smile in her eyes. “I know an invitation when I hear one, Theodosia,” he murmured huskily.

  “Sir, I do not know what you’re talking about.”

  “No? Well, let me show you, miss.”

  She moaned with deep excitement when he scooped her into his arms and laid her over his lap. His skin was so warm, the water so cool.

  He threaded his long fingers through her hair, and she felt her soap hat spill off. His lather beard dripped to her chest. She cupped her breasts, smoothing the suds around and around and around…

  The sight of her caressing her own breasts caused Roman to shudder with desire. His arm beneath her neck, he lifted her face to his, and as he kissed her, he slipped his hand between her thighs and his fingers into her womanly depths.

  She’d been prepared to savor the slow delicious journey toward pleasure, but her bliss peaked instantly, rippling all through her body as the creek water rippled over her skin. She arched high, her head dipping into the water.

  Roman decided she would have drowned if he hadn’t been holding her. “God, Theodosia,” he said when she finally stilled in his arms, “I’m sorry you weren’t ready. I should have spent more time getting you going.”

  She had the grace to give him an embarrassed expression but felt no shame at all. Her body responded to Roman’s sensual skills like a musical instrument in the hands of a master, and the resulting melody was too beautiful to resist or hold back.

  Gazing into his eyes, she realized she wanted to give him the same pleasure he’d offered her. It didn’t matter that she was uncertain about how to go about it; she knew he would teach her.

  She wriggled off his lap and sat in front of him.

  Her hands around his waist, she rubbed her thumbs gently across his tight belly, then glanced downward. “Roman, your lance is lunging completely out of the water.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Yeah, the old sword of passion is definitely thrusting, huh?”

  Carefully, she took him into her hand, loving the soft groan her action caused him. “It’s throbbing.”

  “Masculinities have a way of doing that when touched by a beautiful woman.”

  She smiled. “I think perhaps that I shall conduct an experiment, Roman.”

  The suggestive tone in her voice set him afire. “What kind of experiment?”

  “An experiment in the name of science. Sexy science,” she added, tightening her hold on him. “It has already been proven that flaming spikes have the ability to throb, but I shall now attempt to discover what else they are capable of doing.”

  He couldn’t answer right away. He gritted his teeth. He took deep breaths. He tried to think of everything but what she was saying, doing, planning.

  Finally, he replied. “Theodosia, I am about to explode in your hand,” he warned.

  She saw the tight expression on his face. “But I haven’t even done anything yet.”

  “You don’t have to. Just the thought…just the feel of your hand…for God’s sake, woman, just the sound of your voice is driving me insane.”

  “You look as though you are in extreme pain.”

  “I am.”

  “Ah, then I shall seek a remedy.”

  He dug his fingers into the rocky creek bed wh
en she began to glide her hand up and down. He wanted to hold back. He wanted it to happen slowly.

  He knew it was going to happen fast.

  When he reached for her, Theodosia got to her knees and pressed her breasts against his chest, but did not slow her caresses. He pushed his hips toward her, capturing her hand between her belly and his. He became hotter in her hand. Harder. He pulsed. Her gaze traveling over every part of his face, she watched his release begin even while she felt its strength in her hand.

  Witnessing this wonderful man’s ecstasy was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. And to know that she had given him such pleasure brought her a happiness so deep that she realized it stemmed from her very soul.

  “Theodosia,” Roman whispered. Breathing heavily, he buried his face between her breasts and felt her heartbeat on his lips. A wealth of emotions caught hold of him. He tried to name them but could only concentrate on the way they made him feel.

  God, he felt so good. She made him feel so good. He wanted to hug her as hard as he could, but he forced himself to remember his own strength.

  Tenderly, he sat her in his lap again and spread soft kisses over her throat and shoulders. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I wanted to.”

  “Why?”

  Here was the little boy inside him again, she mused. The child who had given but who had not received. “Roman,” she murmured, caressing the muscles in his arms, “you have pleasured me in the past. It was important to me to pleasure you as well. I assure you that it made me as happy as it did you.”

  Her explanation sought, found, and warmed a place so deep inside him, he couldn’t understand what that place was. “Thank you.”

  She slipped her hands into his hair, loving the sight of her pale fingers lost within such blackness. “You’re welcome,” she whispered, then fell into a long lapse of silence.

  “What are you thinking about, sweetheart?” Roman murmured.

  She cupped a handful of water, dropped it over his shoulder, and watched it trickle over the muscles in his chest. “I was thinking about the definition of fun, which is ‘something that provides amusement or enjoyment.’ It is also ‘playful, often boisterous action or speech.’ I have decided, however, that I no longer think that definition is correct.”

  He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “Are you saying you’re going to change the meaning of a word?”

  She nodded and stretched up to kiss the cleft in his chin. “The new definition of fun is ‘Roman Montana.’”

  “I cannot do it, Roman,” Theodosia said, cracker crumbs spraying over her lap as she spoke.

  Mounted, Roman leaned down and handed her another cracker. “Try again.”

  She stopped the wagon, took the cracker, and bit into it. But her lips were so dry, she could hardly get them to pucker. This cracker challenge was yet another new experience Roman had decided she needed. During the past week of traveling, he’d had her catching minnows with her bare hands, leaving scraps of bread near bird nests for the mother birds to find, and filling her mouth with jawbreakers to see how many would fit at one time. She’d even participated in her first pillow fight, which Roman won, but only because his pillow casing was of thicker fabric than hers.

  And now he wanted her to whistle through cracker-crumb-coated lips. “May I have a bit of water first?”

  “No.” To prove the feat could be done, Roman ate four crackers, and with dry crumbs peppering his lips, he whistled loud and long. “See? It’s not impossible to eat crackers and whistle.”

  She tried to lick her lips but failed. “Roman, I am very thirsty. And the sunset is upon us. Might we stop for the night, preferably near water?”

  John the Baptist stuck his beak out from the bars of his cage and snatched the cracker from Theodosia’s hand. “I had a terrible case of the measles when I was seven,” he called shrilly. “The sunset is upon us.”

  “There’s a stream ahead,” Roman relented, urging Secret toward a woodsy area in the near distance. “But if you think I’m going to forget about making you do the cracker whistle, you’re wrong.”

  Smiling, Theodosia followed him and drove the wagon into a beautiful glade through which a sparkling stream ran.

  But her smile faded when she saw horse tracks all around the ground. “A gang,” she squeaked.

  Roman saw the fear on her face as she looked at the tracks, and he knew she was remembering the Blanco y Negro Gang. “No, Theodosia. The horses that made these tracks aren’t shod, so they aren’t white men’s horses.” He dismounted and walked well away from the stream, studying the trail of tracks. “They’re wild mustangs.”

  Her fear vanished instantly. “How do you know? Couldn’t they have been Indian ponies?”

  He knew she wasn’t questioning him; she only wanted to learn. Pointing, he gestured toward several neat piles of horse manure. “The horses that were here stopped to relieve themselves. An Indian war party keeps its horses moving, so manure is scattered. Indians moving with their families transport their belongings with them. They carry their lodge poles, which leave marks in the dirt as the Indians travel. There aren’t any pole marks anywhere around here. Wild mustangs often pass under branches that a mounted man would be unable to dodge. See the tracks under those low branches over there?”

  She did indeed see the tracks he indicated, and she marveled over how quickly he’d determined that they’d been made by a harmless herd of wild mustangs.

  She climbed out of the wagon, drank her fill of the clean sweet stream water and sat down in a thick bed of grass and wild flowers. Watching Roman lead the horses to water, she let her thoughts wander.

  She remembered long library aisles filled with old books and the tiring afternoons she’d spent walking down the musty-smelling aisles in search of some elusive piece of information. She recalled elderly professors with their beards, spectacles, and long bony fingers. She could even remember how the professors smelled—like dust, probably from walking down the same musty-smelling library aisles.

  She strolled through aisles now, too—endless stretches of dirt roads surrounded by fresh greenery and happy birds and clean fragrant breezes. Her professor wore no beard and no spectacles, and his fingers, though long, were thick and brown and felt wonderful intertwined with hers. He didn’t smell like dust. He was sun and leather, and he possessed knowledge not found within the yellowed pages of books.

  He smiled often while sharing his wisdom with her. She smiled back at him and drank in his teachings as if each drop were more precious than the last.

  He was Roman, and the world he showed her proved so beautiful, she wondered how she would ever be able to leave it.

  The thought occupied her mind with such intensity that Roman noticed. “Why so quiet?”

  She ran her hand through the luxurious mass of grass and flowers. “I’m thinking.”

  Her answer disturbed him. He’d done his best to get her mind off her future plans, and he’d done well. But he knew it was only a matter of time before she began dwelling on her goals again. “You’re thinking about the baby. Brazil. About Dr. Wallaby and the research.” He sat down beside her and absently began to pick the blossoms that grew all around him.

  She watched him stick his thumbnail through each of the flower stems to make thin slits through which he inserted individual stems until he’d created a long chain of blossoms.

  “Ever done this, Theodosia?” He tied the two ends together, forming a posy necklace.

  “No, Roman, I never have.”

  He slipped the necklace over her head, and as he arranged it around her shoulders, an iridescent butterfly floated past her face. “Sometimes I’d make these chains and have my mare, Angel, wear them around her neck. Eventually, she’d eat them off.”

  Theodosia made a flower necklace of her own, a small one, then crowned Roman’s head with it. “There. Now you are His Majesty, King Roman.” He leaned toward her and kissed her soft cheek. “When I first met you, you nev
er would have pretended I was King Roman.”

  “When I first met you, I did not know how to pretend,” she replied, gliding her hand down his thick arm. “I have done quite a few things since then that I have never done before.”

  And there are so many more things I want to show you, Theodosia.

  He urged her to lie down on the ground, then he lay beside her. “Close your eyes and stare at the sun through your eyelids. After a while you’ll start seeing a bunch of colors swirling around.”

  She did as he asked and saw the colors he’d said she would. It was a simple thing—watching colors twirl around behind her eyelids.

  But it brought her such peace.

  “Roman,” she murmured, her eyes still closed.

  He kept his shut, too. “What?”

  “I wasn’t pondering the baby, Brazil, Dr. Wallaby, or the research. I was thinking about how much I’ve enjoyed this time with you.” She paused, trying to stem the sudden sadness that rose within her. “I shall miss you, Roman Montana.”

  Her declaration strengthened his suspicions that she was preparing to commence with her plans and then return to her own world. A world he could never share with her.

  He sat up, and for a moment he watched the horses drink from the stream. One day soon he would watch only one horse drink from streams. Secret would be his sole company.

  “I have something for you, Theodosia.”

  She opened her eyes and sat up beside him.

  “I got it for you in Enchanted Hill,” Roman said, taking her hand and caressing her slender fingers, “but—well, I got mad and didn’t give it to you.” He rose, crossed to the stream where Secret stood, and took a yellow box out of his saddlebag. Sunlight shimmered over the bright red bow, and he felt glad he’d had the present wrapped.

  “What is it?” Theodosia asked when he handed her the box.

  He stuffed his hands into his pockets and grinned down at her. “We could sit here for a few weeks while you guess. Or you could do what makes the most sense and open it.”

  At his sarcasm she stuck her tongue out at him. He’d never seen her do that before and liked seeing her do it now. “Well?”