CHAPTER FIFTEEN No Chains Between Us
Six months after the gallows came down in Santa Reina, Gideon woke because Jude’s cold foot found the back of his calf.
He opened his eyes to darkness, blue at the edges with the first suggestion of dawn.
The new bedroom smelled of pine boards, saddle soap, and the faint smoke of last night’s fire.
Wind moved across the rebuilt roof without finding a way inside.
Somewhere in the yard, a horse struck the wall of its stall.
Another answered with an impatient snort.
Jude slept beside him beneath the old blue quilt.
He had taken more than half the blanket and nearly two-thirds of the mattress. One arm lay across Gideon’s stomach. His knee rested between Gideon’s thighs, and his face was pressed into the pillow deeply enough to flatten one cheek.
His boots stood beside Gideon’s near the bedroom door.
Gideon looked at them every morning.
He had imagined those boots while lying beneath the gallows, blood filling his shirt and the sun disappearing beyond the scaffold. At the abandoned mission he had confessed that he wanted to trip over them, resent them, and watch them wear grooves into the floor of a home they shared.
He had since tripped over them seven times.
The wanting had not diminished.
Jude’s foot moved higher against Gideon’s leg.
Gideon caught his ankle beneath the quilt.
Jude made a quiet sound but did not wake. Even asleep, he turned toward the warmth of Gideon’s body. His arm tightened across Gideon’s waist, drawing them together until Gideon could feel the slow rise of Jude’s chest against his side.
The scar beneath Gideon’s right shoulder pulled when he moved. It always did in the mornings. Doctor Keane claimed another year might soften it. Jude claimed the scar had developed a sour disposition from being attached to Gideon.
Gideon had regained nearly all the strength in his arm. He could lift a saddle, fire accurately, and spend a day on horseback without losing feeling in his fingers. Only the cold and certain movements reminded him how near the bullet had come to taking the limb—and everything else with it.
Jude knew every one of those movements.
His eyes remained closed as his hand slid from Gideon’s stomach to the damaged shoulder. His palm settled over the scar through the thin cloth of Gideon’s undershirt.
“Hurts,” Jude murmured.
It was not a question.
“Not badly.”
“Lie.”
“Observation.”
Jude opened one eye.
His hair stood in several directions, and sleep had roughened his voice.
“Those are the same thing when you say them.”
“I have never lied to you about pain.”
“You once rode half a day while bleeding through a bandage and informed me the wound was inconvenient.”
“It was.”
Jude’s hand moved slowly over his shoulder, working warmth into the stiff muscle.
Gideon closed his eyes.
The touch was familiar now. Jude knew how much pressure he could use and where the scar tissue tightened beneath the skin. His thumb pressed beside the old wound, circling until the hard knot began to loosen.
There was no urgency in his hand. No fear driving him to verify that Gideon still lived. Six months ago Jude had touched him like a man memorizing what he expected to lose. Now he touched him with the confidence of someone who intended to find the same body beside him tomorrow.
Gideon turned onto his uninjured side.
Jude’s hand slipped around the back of his neck.
Their mouths met in the dark.
The kiss tasted of sleep and yesterday’s coffee. Jude’s lips curved when Gideon drew him closer, and Gideon felt the smile against his own. Their legs tangled beneath the quilt. Jude rolled partly on top of him, careful of the shoulder out of habit even when care was no longer necessary.
Gideon’s hand moved down Jude’s back.
Jude wore nothing above the waist. His skin was warm beneath Gideon’s palm, smoother between the old scars and rough where the scars crossed. Gideon followed one pale line to the base of Jude’s spine and rested his hand at his hip.
Jude kissed the corner of his mouth.
“Morning,” he whispered.
“It is not morning yet.”
“Then we have time.”
“For what?”
Jude lifted his head. “You require instructions?”
“I require consent.”
The teasing left Jude’s face only long enough for his answer to become unmistakable.
“You have it.”
Gideon rolled him onto his back.
Jude laughed softly as the mattress complained beneath them. Gideon settled between his thighs, bracing his weight on his left arm. His mouth moved over Jude’s jaw, throat, and the warm center of his chest. Jude’s hands traveled beneath Gideon’s shirt and spread across his back.
Nothing about the closeness was desperate.
They did not need to prove they were alive or race an approaching storm. Gideon could pause to kiss the scar beneath Jude’s ribs because he liked the way Jude’s breath caught. Jude could hook one heel behind Gideon’s leg and draw him nearer simply because he wanted the weight.
Their bodies had become known country without becoming ordinary.
Gideon knew that Jude liked his throat kissed slowly in the morning and his mouth kissed hard after an argument.
Jude knew that Gideon’s injured shoulder required patience when the weather turned and that patience could become its own form of seduction.
They knew when laughter would break tension and when a question had to be answered plainly.
“What do you want?” Gideon asked against Jude’s skin.
Jude’s fingers closed in his hair.
“You.”
“How?”
“Close.”
“I am close.”
“Closer.”
Gideon obeyed.
A hammer struck wood outside the bedroom window.
Both men stopped.
A second blow followed, then a third.
Jude turned his head toward the sound. “If that is Eli repairing the chicken coop before sunrise, I am going to shoot him.”
“You hired him.”
“You recommended him.”
“He follows your instructions.”
“I never instructed him to become industrious before coffee.”
The hammer sounded again.
Gideon lowered his forehead to Jude’s chest.
Jude’s body shook beneath him with silent laughter.
A woman shouted from the yard, “Eli Pike, if you wake Marshal Shaw, he will arrest you!”
Jude raised his voice. “Continue, Eli. The marshal was already awake.”
Gideon bit him lightly below the collarbone.
Jude’s laughter broke into a startled sound.
“That,” Jude said, tightening his legs around Gideon, “was an abuse of federal authority.”
“You are free to file a complaint.”
“With whom?”
“Judge Ainsley.”
“He has begged me to stop writing.”
A fist struck the bedroom door.
“Coffee in ten minutes,” Marisol called. “Clothes in five.”
Jude looked at Gideon. “Does she possess a key?”
“She does not require one.”
The door opened.
Gideon dragged the quilt over them.
Marisol entered carrying a basket of eggs on one hip. The bruising from the gallows had disappeared months before, though a thin mark remained beneath her jaw where the rope had tightened. She wore her black hair coiled at the back of her neck and had dressed for riding.
She looked at Gideon.
Then at Jude.
Then at the shirts hanging from opposite sides of the same bed.
“I said five minutes,” she observed.
“You opened the door immediately,” Jude said.
“I allowed five minutes for shame. I knew neither of you would require it.”
She set the basket on the washstand.
“The north pasture gate is open. Three mares are in the vegetable garden. Eli is repairing the chicken coop because one of the mares attempted to stand inside it.”
“How did the gate open?” Gideon asked.
Marisol looked at Jude.
Jude looked at the ceiling.
Gideon waited.
“I may have left it unlatched,” Jude admitted.
“You said I left it unlatched.”
“You were standing near it.”
“I was holding two saddles.”
“A suspicious activity.”
Marisol went to the door. “Coffee. Clothes. Horses removed from my tomatoes.”
“Your tomatoes?” Jude called after her.
“I planted them. That makes them mine.”
She closed the door.
Jude looked at Gideon. “We made a mistake giving her a room.”
“She does not have a room.”
“She occupies the west room twice a week, leaves clothes in the wardrobe, and has threatened three ranch hands for touching her pillow.”
“She visits.”
“She lives here with intervals of travel.”
Gideon climbed out of bed.
Morning light had begun to enter the room.
It touched the broad frame they had built together and the blue quilt rescued from the stone pantry.
The bedroom floor bore scuffs from two pairs of boots.
Two gun belts hung on the wall. Gideon’s badge rested beside Jude’s civilian commission on the bedside table.
Nothing in the room attempted an explanation.
The ranch hands knew which door belonged to them.
Travelers understood why Gideon and Jude shared one bed, even if some chose not to name it.
Neither man invented a deceased fiancée or distant widow to satisfy curiosity.
When asked why he had never married, Gideon said he had not wanted a wife.
When asked why Jude lived in the marshal’s room, Jude said it was because the marshal became unreasonable when left alone.
Some visitors left.
Others stayed longer.
Gideon pulled on his trousers while Jude stood naked beside the washstand, pouring water into the basin.
“You are staring,” Jude said.
“I live here.”
“That does not answer the charge.”
“I was not aware there was a charge.”
Jude looked over his shoulder. “Do you deny it?”
“No.”
“Then continue.”
Gideon did.
By the time they reached the kitchen, Marisol had removed the worst of the mud from the escaped mares and Eli had repaired enough of the chicken coop to stop apologizing to it.
The kitchen occupied the largest room of the rebuilt house. Morning light entered through two new windows and warmed the long pine table. Copper pans hung above the stove. A row of mismatched mugs crowded the shelf beside the door.
Six men and three women lived at Sundown Ranch that month.