With a triumphant look Floris sailed through the swinging door into the kitchen.
“The waitress from hell,” Madelyn breathed in awe, watching the door swing gently back and forth.
Reese choked and had to spit his coffee back into the cup. She didn’t want to look at him, but the urge was irresistible. Without turning her head she glanced toward him and found him watching her, his face unnaturally stiff. She looked at him, and he looked at her, and they began snickering. He tried to control it and quickly gulped his coffee, but Madelyn was still giggling as he grabbed for his wallet. He threw a dollar and change on the table, grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the entrance. The door had barely closed behind them when he released her and bent forward, bracing his hands on his knees as a great roar of laughter burst from him. Madelyn collapsed over his back, seeing again the helpless, stunned look on the cowboy’s face and the gleeful look on Floris’s, and went off into helpless gales.
After her bad temper the laughter felt great. It was even more wonderful to hear Reese laughing, and a pang struck her as she realized that this was the first time she had heard him laugh. He rarely even smiled, but now he was hugging his ribs and wiping tears from his eyes, and still the deep sounds were booming up from his chest. She had an overwhelming urge to cry, but conquered it.
A lot of the tension between them dissolved as they bought groceries. Reese had been right; the general store did carry mostly basics, but Madelyn had carefully studied the cookbooks and knew what she could do with what was available. Thank God Reese wasn’t a fussy eater.
A cheerful woman with a truly awesome bosom checked them out while carrying on a casual conversation with Reese. She eyed Madelyn questioningly, then looked down at the ring on her left hand. Reese saw the look and braced himself for the curiosity he knew would come. “Glenna, this is my wife, Madelyn.”
Glenna looked startled, and her glance flew down to his own left hand. The gold ring on his tanned finger clearly astounded her. Reese carried on with the introduction, hoping to bridge her reaction. “Maddie, this is Glenna Kinnaird. We went to school together.”
Recovering herself, Glenna beamed and held out her hand. “I can’t believe it! Congratulations! You got married, after all this time. Why, just wait until I tell Boomer. We didn’t really go to school together,” she said chattily to Madelyn. “I’m ten years older than he is, so I graduated when he was in third grade, but I’ve known him all his life. How on earth did you catch him? I’d have sworn he’d never marry again— Uh, that is…” Her voice trailed off uneasily as she glanced at Reese.
Madelyn smiled. “It’s okay. I know about April. As for how I caught him…well, I didn’t. He caught me.”
Glenna’s face regained its cheerful expression. “Took one look and forgot about being a bachelor, huh?”
“Something like that,” Reese said. He’d taken one look and gotten hard, but the end result had been the same: the leggy blonde with the lazy, seductive stroll was now his wife.
As they left the store with Glenna waving at them, he realized something that had him frowning thoughtfully as they loaded the groceries into the station wagon: Glenna had disliked April on sight, but had been perfectly comfortable and friendly with Madelyn. Even though, in an indescribable way, Madelyn dressed more fashionably than April, she had an easy, friendly manner to which Glenna had responded. Madelyn didn’t dress as expensively as April, but what she wore had a certain style to it, as if she had practiced for hours to get her collar to stand up just so, or her sleeves to roll up that precise amount. She would always draw eyes, but she didn’t inspire the sort of hostility from her own sex that April had.
Style. He looked at his wife and thought of how she’d looked the day before, with one kneepad slipping down her shin and her hair hanging in her face. He hadn’t dared laugh then, but in retrospect he couldn’t help himself and began to chuckle. Even when chasing chickens, Madelyn did it with style.
MADELYN HAD BEEN outside all morning, scraping the peeling paint off the house. Having brought the interior up to snuff, she was working on the exterior, and it was such a beautiful morning that she’d been enjoying herself despite the hard work. It was getting close to noon, though, and the temperature was rising uncomfortably. Sweat was making her clothes stick to her. Deciding that she’d done enough for the day, she climbed down from the ladder and went inside to take a shower.
When she came back downstairs, the first thing she saw was the bag containing Reese’s lunch sitting on the cabinet. He was out repairing fencing again and wouldn’t be back until dinnertime, but he’d forgotten his lunch and thermos of tea.
She checked the clock. He had to be starving by now. Quickly she emptied the thermos and filled it with fresh ice cubes and tea, then got the keys to the station wagon and hurried outside with his lunch. By chance she knew where he was working, because in the past two weeks he’d shown her around the ranch a little, and he’d mentioned this morning where he’d be. It was actually a safety precaution for someone to know where he was, and she frowned as she thought of the years he’d worked alone, with no one at the house to know where he’d gone or how long he’d been out. If he’d gotten hurt, he could have lain there and died without anyone ever knowing he’d been hurt until it was too late.
Her marriage wasn’t even three weeks old yet, and already she could barely remember her previous life. She’d never before been as busy as she was now, though she had to admit she would gladly forgo the housework to ride around the ranch with Reese, but he still refused to hear of it. She was certain that if anyone looked up the word “stubborn” in the dictionary, it would have Reese Duncan’s picture beside it. He’d decided where she would fit in his life, and he wouldn’t let her get outside that boundary.
She could almost feel the hunger in him at night when he made love to her, but he never let himself go, never released the passion she sensed, and as a result she couldn’t let herself go, either. Sex was no longer uncomfortable, and she desperately wanted more from their lovemaking, but the intensity she needed wasn’t there. He held back, diminishing the pleasure they both could have had and thereby preserving that damned inner wall of his. She didn’t know how much longer she would be able to bear it, how much longer it would be before she began making excuses and turn away from him in the night. The situation was dire, she knew, when she was actually looking forward to having her period!
She drove slowly, preoccupied with her thoughts and with watching for any sign of his truck out on the range somewhere. Like all ranchers, Reese paid no attention to roads; he simply drove across the land. The truck was a tool to him, not a prized and pampered status symbol. If it had been a Rolls he would have treated it the same, because it had no value beyond that of its worth as a working vehicle. So she knew the area where he was working, but that area covered a lot of ground and he could be anywhere in it. She didn’t see him anywhere, but fresh tire tracks scored the ground, and she simply followed them, carefully steering around the rougher ground that Reese had driven over without concern, because the station wagon was much lower than the truck and couldn’t negotiate such terrain.
It took her almost forty-five minutes to find him. He’d parked the truck under a tree, partially shielding it from view. It was the chance glint off a strand of wire as he pulled it tight that caught her eye, and she eased the car across the range to him.
He glanced up briefly as she approached but didn’t pause in his work. Her throat tightened. He’d removed his shirt and hung it over the side of the truck bed, and his muscled torso glistened with sweat. She’d known he was strong, realized from the first that his body made her mouth go dry with almost painful appreciation, but this was the first time she had seen those powerful muscles bunching and flexing like that. He moved with a fluid grace that made his strength that much more noticeable. His biceps and triceps bulged as he hammered a staple into the post, securing the new strand of wire.
When he was finished he tossed the hammer
onto the sack of staples and pulled his hat off, wiping the sweat from his face with his forearm. “What are you doing out here?” He didn’t sound at all pleased to see her.
Madelyn got out of the car, carrying the thermos and sandwiches with her. “You forgot your lunch.”
He walked toward her and took the thermos, twisting the top off and tilting it up to drink directly from the spout. His strong throat worked as he swallowed the cold liquid. He’d been working all morning without anything to drink, she realized. A drop of tea escaped his lips and ran down his throat. She watched it in painful fascination as it slid down his hot skin, and she envied it the path it was taking. So often she had wanted to trail kisses down his body but had held back because he didn’t want that sort of intimacy. All he wanted was the release of sex, not the love expressed in slow, sensual feasting.
He set the thermos down on the lowered tailgate and reached for his shirt, using it to wipe the sweat from his face, shoulders, arms and chest. Tossing the garment back across the side, he eased one hip onto the tailgate and took the sandwiches from her. “The station wagon isn’t meant for driving across the range,” he said as he unwrapped a sandwich.
Madelyn’s lips tightened. “I didn’t want you to go all day without anything to eat or drink, and I was careful.”
“How did you find me?”
“I followed your tire tracks.”
He grunted and applied himself to the sandwich. It and another disappeared without another word being said between them. Madelyn lifted her hair off her neck, letting a slight breeze cool her heated skin. She usually braided her hair away from her face during the day, but she’d taken it down when she showered and hadn’t put it back up again before she’d started searching for Reese.
Reese watched her graceful gesture, and his heartbeat speeded up. She was wearing a gathered white cotton skirt with one of her favorite white camisole tops, and a pair of sandals that were little more than thin soles with a few delicate straps. She looked cool and fragrant, while he was hot and sweaty, a result of the difference in the way they’d spent the day. Now that the house was clean and polished it probably didn’t take much to keep it that way.
The breeze caught a strand of hair and blew it across her face. She shook it back, tilting her head to make all of her hair swing down her back.
Every movement she made was naturally seductive. He felt the response in his groin and in his veins, as his blood heated and began racing. It was becoming more and more difficult to keep his hands off her during the day, to keep from turning to her time and again during the night. He grew angry at himself for wanting her so much, and at her for doing everything she could to make it worse.
“Why did you really come out here?” he asked harshly. “I would’ve finished with this and gotten back to the house in another hour or so. I’ve gone without eating or drinking all day before, and I’ll do it again. So why did you really come parading out here?”
Madelyn’s eyes narrowed as she slowly turned her head to look at him. She didn’t say anything, and the combined anger and sexual frustration built up even more pressure in him.
“Do you want me to stop work and play with you? Can’t you go a whole day without a man’s attention? Maybe you thought we’d have a sexy little picnic out here and you’d get your skirt tossed.”
She turned to fully face him, her eyes locked with his. Her words were slow and precise. “Why would I care? From what I can tell, sex isn’t worth a walk across the yard, let alone chasing it down on the range. I’ve got better things to do with my time.”
He took the verbal jab square on the ego, and suddenly it was too much. It was all too much, the wanting and not having, the needing and not taking. A red mist swam before his eyes, and his whole body seemed to expand as he blindly reached for her, catching her by the arm and swinging her up against him.
Madelyn was unprepared for the blurring speed with which he moved. She didn’t even have time to take a step back. Suddenly he had her arm in a painful grip and with one motion brought her colliding with his hard body, almost knocking the breath from her. His mouth came down, hot and ravaging, not waiting for her compliance but taking it. His teeth raked across her bottom lip, and when she made a shaky sound of…response? protest? he used the opportunity to enter her mouth with his tongue.
Her heart lunged wildly in her chest as she realized he was out of control. His arms had tightened around her, lifting her off her feet, and his mouth took hers with bruising force. Elation swirled in her, and she wound her arms tightly around his neck as she kissed him back.
He hefted her onto the tailgate of the truck and reached for his shirt, tossing it down on the truck bed. With a motion so smooth it seemed like one movement he slid her backward and leaped to a crouching position on the tailgate; then he was pushing her down onto the shirt and lowering himself on top of her.
Dimly she realized that once you had unleashed a tiger, it wasn’t so easy to get him back under control again. Of course, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. The sunlight sifted down through the leaves, dappling his gleaming skin, and his eyes were fiercely primitive as he kneed her thighs apart. He looked wild and magnificent, and she made a soft whimpering sound of need as she reached for him.
He tore her clothes, and she didn’t care. The seam of her chemise gave way beneath his twisting fingers, and the taut rise of her breasts thrust nakedly up at him. He sucked strongly at her while he shoved her skirt to her waist and hooked his fingers in the waistband of her underpants. She lifted her hips to aid him, but heard the rip of lace, and then he threw the shreds to one side. He transferred his lips to her other breast and sucked the nipple into his mouth while he worked at the fastening of his jeans. He grunted as the zipper parted, releasing his throbbing length, and he shoved both underwear and jeans downward with one movement.
His entry was hard and fast. Her body shuddered under the impact of it, and her hips lifted. He groaned aloud as the exquisite feminine sheath enveloped him, immediately changing his unbearable ache into unbearable pleasure.
Madelyn sank her nails into his back as she arched up, driven by an explosion of heat. Coiling tension tightened her body until she thought she would go mad, and she struggled with both him and the tension, crying out a little as her heaving body strained to throw him off even as her legs tightened around him to pull him deeper. If he was wild, so was she. He pounded into her, and she took him. Her hips hammered back at him and he rode her, wrapping his arms under her buttocks to pull her up tighter, to shove himself in deeper.
A great rolling surge exploded her senses without warning, and she gave a primal scream that sliced across the clear air. He kept thrusting heavily into her, and it happened again, the second time following the first so closely that she hadn’t had time to regain her breath, and the second time was more powerful, tossing her even higher. She bit his shoulder, sobbing from the force of it, and suddenly she could feel him grow even harder and bigger inside her, and his entire body began shuddering and heaving. He threw back his head with a guttural cry that ripped up from his chest as his hips jerked in the spasms of completion.
The quiet afterward had a drifting, dreamy quality to it. She could feel the sunlight filtering down on her skin, the heat of the metal truck bed beneath her, his shirt pillowing her head. A bird sang, and a breeze rustled the leaves and grass. She could hear the faint buzzing of a bee somewhere, and the slowing sound of his breathing.
They lay beside each other, his heavy arm across her stomach. She might have dozed. The breeze dried the sweat on her body with a gentle, cooling touch. After a long, long time that might have been only minutes, she turned into his arms and pressed her mouth to his.
He got his boots and jeans off this time. As rawly frenzied as the first time had been, this one wasn’t much less. The force of his restrained hunger had built up until, like a flooding river overwhelming a dam, it had broken through and could no longer be controlled. He undid her skirt and stripped it down h
er legs; then she parted her thighs and reached for him again, and he couldn’t wait a minute longer. The sight of those sleek legs opening for him was an image that had haunted his dreams. He’d intended to be easier with her this time, but as soon as he penetrated she made a wild sound in her throat and her hips rolled, and he went mad again.
This time when it was over he didn’t withdraw, but lay on her in continued possession. “Reese,” she whispered, her fingers sliding into his damp hair. He slid his thumbs under her chin and tilted her face up, slanting his head so he could drink from her in the long, deep kisses he’d been craving. He began to grow hard again, but he was still inside her and there was no urgency, only steadily increasing pleasure.
They were both drugged with it. He fondled her breasts, caressing them with both hands and mouth. Her slim hands moved over him like silk, sleeking over his broad shoulders and down the taut muscles of his back, finally cupping and kneading his buttocks. Lifting himself on his arms, he began a slow, steady thrusting. She surged upward, too, kissing his throat and chest and licking at his little nipples, half-hidden in the curls of hair on his chest. When her time was close, she writhed on the twisted bed of clothing, and he watched enthralled as her torso flushed and her nipples tightened. He caught her hips and lifted them, sliding her up and down on his impaling flesh, and the sight of her convulsive satisfaction brought him to the peak before she had finished.
The hot midday hours slipped away as they sated themselves on each other’s bodies. Nothing else existed but sensual exploration and hot satisfaction. He kissed her from head to toe, tasting the sweetness of her flesh, delighting in the way she responded to his slightest touch. When her back became tender from rubbing on the hard bed he pulled her on top of him, watching her pleasure at the freedom it gave her to take him at her own pace.