Breathing in short, raspy pants, they tore at each other’s garments, yearning to be body-to-body, limb against limb, heart-to-heart. Ceara reveled in the feel of his skin beneath her hands, the texture somehow coarser than hers, reminding her of the underside of silk. She explored the lumpy bones in his shoulders, the fleshy hardness of his biceps, the angular shape of his elbows, and the hard, tendon-roped slope of his forearms. But what truly made her blood run molten was touching his wide, thick wrists and broad, work-hardened hands. Their very maleness made her feel deliciously feminine.
Stripped of the camisole slip, Ceara wondered why she’d fussed so much over what to wear, because now she wore nothing at all. But Quincy didn’t give her much time to ponder. His hot mouth covered her nipple, and with one draw, he had her hands fisted in his hair and her spine arching. She heard herself cry out his name, and apparently he heard her, too, for he scraped the sensitive tip with his teeth, shrilling her cry to a soft shriek as ribbons of pure sensation spiraled from her breast into the hot, throbbing core of her.
Ceara became lost in the swirl of fiery sensation, feelings so intense, thoughts so dizzy that she couldn’t hold on to reason. She felt as if she were turning to liquid and being absorbed into him through the pores of his skin. No more Ceara, no more Quincy. They became one, so melded in passion that no separation existed between their bodies. His mouth, his hands, his igniting heat became her only reality.
This time when he pushed forward, he held nothing back. As his long, thick shaft entered her wet passage, he bucked hard with his hips, impaling her. She heard a scream but was too lost in the throes of passion to care that it had come from her. His rhythm was forceful and fast, and her hips instinctively found the pace so she could meet him thrust for thrust. Higher. Higher. She felt like a champagne bubble, a tiny, sparkly bit of nothing, spiraling upward toward blinding brightness.
They reached the light together. Beneath the frantic grip of her hands on his upper arms, she felt veins pop up under his skin. She squinted open her eyes to watch his face, loving the grimace that twisted his dark countenance and peeled his firm lips back over his white teeth. And then she was caught up in the taut explosion of pleasure herself, bumping her hips hard against him, craving the slower but deeper invasions that set off bursts of delight low in her belly.
Afterward they lay clutched in each other’s arms, legs entangled, her head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder. As their breathing finally slowed to a normal pace, he gently placed the ice pack on her nose again, gasping when the cold touched the feverish skin of his shoulder.
“Nay!” she protested.
“You promised to ice it in betwixt, and I’m holding you to it.”
In betwixt? Ceara grinned and carefully settled the pack over the injured place. That meant he planned to make love to her again. ’Twould greatly please her if he did.
* * *
Quincy stirred to consciousness with Ceara still curled against him. The room had grown colder than a well digger’s ass, and he thought about getting up to start a fire. Thinking about it was as far as he got. As if Ceara sensed his wakefulness, she stirred and lifted her head to peer at him through the gloom, her mouth curved in a satisfied smile. She bent to nip playfully at his bottom lip. He didn’t know where the hell the ice pack had gotten off to.
“Me mum has it all wrong,” she said with a giggle. “The baser pleasures are na a wifely duty to be endured but to be eagerly awaited.”
That was all the encouragement Quincy needed to make love to her again. She responded with complete abandon, no longer a hesitant virgin, but a recently deflowered one who seemed eager to learn all the wonders of sex. Well, she’d come to a willing teacher. Quincy had been with so many women over the years that he’d nearly lost count, but never had he held anyone dearer in his arms, and he’d definitely never experienced such intense sexual pleasure.
Afterward, drained to absolute limpness, he fell asleep with his face buried in her hair. It smelled of her rose water. He needed to buy her some fancy perfume. He’d have to ask his brothers what their wives liked. His last thought before blackness settled over him again was that he’d become very fond of her rose scent and should probably stick with that. To him, the smell of rose petals was Ceara’s trademark.
* * *
They awakened the next time simultaneously, their eyes popping open like those of exhausted children who realized they’d snoozed too long and missed out on too much playtime. Ceara nuzzled her cheek against their shared pillow, pleased to see his sleepy but satisfied grin.
“Ye look happy,” she murmured. “Almost as happy as I am.”
“So you liked it, did you?”
Ceara traced the frown lines above the bridge of his nose. “A lady canna wax poetic about how greatly she likes that kind of thing. ’Tis brazen.”
He laughed. “So we’re back to that again, are we?”
“’Tis who I am.”
“I know that now,” he said huskily. Then he sighed. “Where the hell is your ice pack?”
“’Tis lost, and me nose has stopped paining me, so I have no further need of it.”
“You promised to use it in betwixt.”
“In betwixt what?” She flashed him a deliberate grin that she knew dimpled her cheek and made her look as impish and mischievous as her little sister did after she pulled a prank. “’Tis thinking I am that ye’re falling down in your duties, Sir Quincy, if ye expect me to keep me promise about icing during the betwixts. I need a bit more encouragement from ye than what ye’ve given me so far.”
“Sir Quincy? Please. Surely we’ve moved past that now.”
“A man who pleases his lady so much deserves to be addressed by his title.”
“Aha!” he said with a rich chuckle. “Caught you. You as good as told me that you liked it a lot, you brazen little hussy.”
Ceara gave him one of her most demure smiles. “Let me say only that if ye approach me again with such things on yer mind, I willna object.”
He studied her for a long moment, and then, with no warning, he growled, caught her in his arms, and playfully nipped her shoulder. “You won’t object? I’ll take that as a green light.” His mouth found her breast, and Ceara gasped, unable to suppress the sound. “Mmm.” He suckled her, sending jolts of sensation into her belly. “You taste like honey.” He tickled the hard crest with his tongue. “And one of my favorite things is honey. What if I have such things on my mind all day today and never let you out of bed?”
Ceara could barely collect her thoughts to give him a coherent answer. “I willna object,” she managed shakily.
He laughed and then turned serious as he began making love to her again. Ceara nearly groaned when he abandoned her breast. She wondered whether it would be considered brazen of her to ask him to go back to it. She quite liked the pull of his mouth on her nipple. Ah, but his kisses along her rib cage were just as delightful, and before she could answer her own question, she’d forgotten what it was.
* * *
When Ceara next awoke, it was to the urgent sound of someone’s stomach growling. Blinking open her eyes, she couldn’t be sure at first whether it was Quincy’s or her own, but after drifting upward to full consciousness, she determined that both of their guts were complaining of hunger. As if he felt the pangs, too, Quincy opened his eyes, seeming to come instantly alert.
“You’re hungry.”
He pushed up on an elbow, looking so good that Ceara considered having another taste of him before they ate, but her belly hunger won the vote. “’Tis starving I am.”
He swung off the bed, pulled on his boxers, and shoved his feet into his boots. As Ceara stood to pull on the camisole slip, he said, “The kitchen’s a total wreck. I’ll carry you down. I don’t want you cutting your feet.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, blinked, and then focused on her face. “Well, shit. So much for using ice in betwixt. You’re well on your way to having two beauts.”
“What are beauts???
?
“Black eyes, Hollywood. Shades for you, coming up.” He made circles with his thumbs and forefingers over his eyes. “Great big suckers. And you’ll wear them whenever we go to town. Otherwise strangers will think I’m a wife beater.”
“Yer family willna?”
Quincy chuckled. “Darlin’, in this family, any man who lifts a hand in anger to a woman can expect to see his picture in the obits three days later.”
“What are obits?”
He circled the bed, scooped her up in his arms, and said, “I’ll explain while I sweep up the glass and mop the kitchen floor so your pretty little feet don’t stick to the slate.”
* * *
Quincy turned up the thermostat so Ceara wouldn’t be cold in Loni’s camisole slip, and after cleaning the kitchen floor, he set to work cooking breakfast. Ceara sat at the table with a fresh ice pack over her nose, but every time he wasn’t looking, she lowered it so she could feast her eyes on her husband. She quite liked the trews that he called boxers, she decided. He had legs as brown and sturdy as tree trunks, and his back, chest, and arms put on a show for her, muscles rippling and bulging under his bronze skin. As hungry as she was for real food, watching him kindled other fiery needs within her. She doubted that she would be in need of the spectacles he called shades to hide her black eyes, because, brazen though it might be, she wanted to spend at least the next week in bed with her husband. She had a delicious feeling that he’d introduced her to only little bits of the whole picture when it came to what he called “sex.” She felt like a child who was being taught tiny words etched on slate while whole tomes filled with complicated sentences awaited her.
He was whisking eggs, putting so much force into the swirls of the beater that his boxers danced on his narrow hips, when she collected the courage to ask, “Quincy, what is an electronic boyfriend?”
He nearly toppled the bowl of frothy yellow as he jerked his head around to gape at her. “Say what?”
Ceara restated the question. “Dee Dee tossed hers in the trash, but Rainie still has one. They call him Mr. Purple.”
“Son of a bitch.” He went back to whisking, but with far more enthusiasm. “That’s it. No more hen parties for you. The women in my family are teaching you all kinds of stuff you have no need of knowing.”
“Why do I have no need?”
She saw his muscular shoulders tense and then relax. “Okay. You do have a need. You’re in my world now, and I guess females are going to talk to you about stuff like that.” He sighed and his shoulders slumped a bit more. “An electronic boyfriend—well, hell.” He released the handle of the whisk so abruptly to turn to face her again that the implement rocked out of the bowl and splattered whipped egg all over the counter. “It’s a gadget.” He threw up a hand. “Don’t ask what a gadget is. Just let me get this said. When women get . . .” He dragged in a deep breath that swelled his already impressive chest, and then released it with a whoosh. “When women get lonely for male companionship, they use what they call electronic boyfriends to satisfy themselves. The correct nomenclature isn’t ‘electronic boyfriend’ or ‘Mr. Purple.’ Its proper name is a vibrator, and when it’s turned on, it vibrates. The sensation is . . . well, when applied to certain parts of a woman’s body, the vibration is arousing, and a woman can get off using one.”
“Get off? Where do they get off to?”
He shot her another disgruntled look and returned his attention to the eggs. “They feel sort of like . . . well, at the high point, when we made love, sort of like you felt all those times last night.” Still holding the whisk, he turned to jab a finger at her, shaking beaten egg all over the recently scrubbed floor. “The thing is, you won’t need one, ever.”
“Mayhap ye will be the one to need a Mr. Purple.”
That had him bugging his brown eyes at her. “Me?”
“Yes. Rainie says if she fools around with Mr. Purple during . . . what did she call it? Foreplay, ’tis the word she used—that Parker turns into a wild man.”
Quincy’s dark face turned an odd red color, nearly the same shade as the lovely berry wine she’d enjoyed at Loni’s house yesterday. “That is more about my brother’s sex life than I really want to know.” He pivoted back to the stove. “Parker? Holy hell. I never would’ve guessed him to be even slightly kinky.”
“Kinky? ’Tis a word I havena heard.”
“And a word you don’t need to know the meaning of, either.” He released a loud sigh. “Back to you and me. Anytime you get to feeling like you need Mr. Purple in the drawer of your bedside table, you just let me know, and I’ll blow him clear out of the hemisphere. Got it?”
Ceara didn’t get it, but Quincy seemed so disgruntled that she decided to wait and ask the hens for more information. A quick change of subject seemed in order.
“So, Quincy, I canna continue to wear Loni’s camisole slip to seduce ye, because I must return it, and I was—”
“You don’t need anything to seduce me.”
Ceara remembered Loni saying that Clint had given her fifteen hundred dollars to buy what she’d called lingerie, and Ceara had a feeling lingerie must be very important to husbands. “’Tis not that I feel I need props,” she informed him. “I am just thinking that a wee bit of lace might be nice when I do wish to seduce you.”
Egg went flying again. His gaze found hers, and its hold was as physical as an iron fist. “I like little bits of lace, and I damned sure won’t complain about the bill if you want to buy some. I’ve already sent in to get you a credit card. Sky’s the limit. Buy whatever you want.”
“’Tis me wish to ask the hens to help select me lace.”
He shot her another look over his shoulder. “I could go with you.”
Ceara shook her head. “Nay, ’tis me feeling that I will need the advice of the hens.”
He considered for a moment and finally nodded. “Mr. Purple? What the frigging hell?” Then he shrugged. “Go for it. All ladies love shopping together, and no matter how crazy they get, my heart is in prime condition.” He paused in the whisking, glanced at the sausage frying in a second skillet, and added, “Well, at least it was.”
* * *
Life with Ceara. As frustrating as it sometimes was for Quincy, if he’d been asked how to describe the ways his world had been changed, he would have said, “In so many fabulous ways, it’s impossible to put into words.”
After a slightly rocky start, Ceara regained her confidence and approached everything in the twenty-first century with curiosity, daring, and determination. When she wasn’t with him at the stable to help with the horses, she spent time at home, creating what she called “household” mixtures for cleaning, even though Quincy had a woman who came in twice weekly to muck out the rooms. Apparently Ceara still managed to find soil or dust, and she felt more comfortable using familiar, homemade concoctions for scrubbing or polishing, which meant several drives to town for weird ingredients he couldn’t readily find—pure beeswax and lye, to name only two. She also traipsed in the fields to pick spring flowers, which he helped her dry using the dehydrating setting in his ovens, to make fragrant sachets for their clothing drawers. When she wasn’t otherwise busy, he helped her choose a contemporary flick on Netflix to better familiarize her with his century. She especially enjoyed films that featured other countries so she could orient herself in her new world, where new lands had been discovered and occupied since the sixteenth century.
She also needed to learn to cook all over again, so Quincy assumed the role of teacher, fearful that her tendency toward easy, packaged foods would become an unhealthy diet regimen for both of them. She found the gas flame burners on the Viking cooktop similar to preparing food over an open fire, so he started her off there with simple dishes, his aim to give her a sense of accomplishment before he moved on to the more complicated features of the appliances, including the steamer, the warmers, the toaster, the mixer, and even the Traeger smoker-grill in his outdoor kitchen. Some of her culinary attempts were
, in a word, inedible, but when she pulled something off that tasted great, she danced around and whooped with delight.
Quincy gave her daily driving lessons on his property. Needless to say, fence repairs became a common necessity, because Ceara continued to miss the brake pedal in his truck. But, oh, well. Though Quincy dreaded the day that he turned Ceara loose on an actual road, he was practical enough to realize that she couldn’t exist in his world without learning how to drive.
It took two weeks for Ceara’s blackened eyes to return to normal, and because she detested wearing sunglasses, which she said made everything look dark, she and Quincy spent most of that time either on his ranch or visiting the homes of his family members. Ceara continued to refer to the other Harrigan females as the “hens,” and somehow the tag stuck. Not even the women themselves objected. Instead, they acted as if they’d formed an exclusive club and were glad to have a name for themselves.
Because all the hens had cell phones, Ceara asked Quincy to please supply her with one, which he promptly did, and even more promptly regretted. Ceara was fascinated by the phone’s features, which opened up the electronic world of communication to her—with a bang. At first Quincy feared that the technology would baffle her, but Ceara proved to be a fast learner. She caught on to texting and fell in love. When he worked in the arena without her, his phone went off constantly. He had assigned a special ring tone for Ceara—the sound of a hen clucking—and he heard clucking alerts about every ten minutes, which made it difficult for him to accomplish anything. Hi, she’d write. What u doing? Quincy would text back about his activity of the moment. I miss you. He’d zing back, Miss you too. Mostly he didn’t mind the intrusions and smiled, wishing he could be with her instead of with his horses. But there were other texts that sent his blood pressure off the chart and had him racing toward the house.