Chapter 12
Okee
The ladder has stopped creaking from her ascent, but the room still feels unsettled without her in it. We sit on the rug hip to hip, feet near the fire, and I watch the flames while an uneasy feeling works its way into my gut.
“She’s already under your skin.”
Boone turns his head in the ember-light. “That so?”
“You like her.”
“Yeah,” he says simply, as if it costs him nothing. “She’s a right cute little thing. Fun to poke at. I like the way her eyes flash fire.” His mouth tips at one corner. “And she’s comely. Makes a body notice her, is all.”
Makes a body notice her.
The words settle heavier than they ought to. Above us, the loft gives one soft creak.
Boone’s eyes flick upward, then back to me with that slow grin. “Ain’t like I’m losin’ sleep over it. You’re the one been staring holes through her all night.”
“I have not.”
“No?” He props himself on one elbow. “Standing behind her when she shoots, fixing her elbows just so? Teaching her how to hold that Colt all sensual-like?”
I force air through my teeth. “She needed instruction.”
“Well, you gave her plenty.”
I shift onto my knees and hook my fingers beneath the hem of his shirt, shoving it upward until his stomach is bare to the firelight. “This is what has occupied my mind.”
His abdomen tightens beneath my mouth when I kiss the sharp jut of his hip. The same patch of skin where I caught Lula looking earlier.
Mine.
How terribly I have missed this. Him beneath my hands. The hidden parts of his body I know better than my own. The parts of him that belong only to me.
“She’s more fuss than I’m used to,” Boone says, his voice roughening slightly. “Sweet when she ain’t sharp-tongued, though.”
I trace my mouth along the faint trail of hair below his navel, but my mind betrays me and wanders upstairs.
To her.
My mouth is inches from his cock when Boone asks, “You reckon she’ll stay long?”
I stop near the buttons of his trousers. “She will go when she chooses.”
He watches me for a beat, then lays one hand over his chest in mock astonishment. “Well, I’ll be. Are you jealous, Mr. Collins?”
“Kiss my ass.”
“Turn around and ask proper.”
I sit back on my heels. “There is nothing here to be jealous of.”
“Funny. Weren’t a problem when you had your hands all over her.”
“So that is why you were being a damn nuisance.”
“I weren’t a nuisance.” His dimple appears. “I was courtin’.”
“I noticed.”
“She looked cute as sin out there too. Squintin’ at that target like it slapped her granny.”
Something changes in his voice on the last words. Not much. Enough.
His gaze drifts toward the loft, then back to the fire, and I see her again despite myself. Not her mouth or her hair or any other foolish thing a man might admire from across a room, but the flash of pride she tried to hide when the can flew from the rail.
It would be simpler if only Boone had noticed.
I move over him before he can say anything else, one hand sliding down his stomach to work open the buttons of his trousers.
The loft gives another faint creak.
His gaze lifts. Mine follows.
A strip of darkness lies between the beams above us. No movement. No voice. Only the knowledge of her up there, close enough for every careless sound to carry.
I catch Boone by the jaw and lower my voice. “Hush. There is a woman not ten feet above us.”
“Then I reckon you oughtn’t make me holler.”
“Boone.”
That sobers him. A little.
“Yes, sir,” he whispers.
“C’est bien, Boone. Gentil garcon.”
His whole face lights, and he bites his lip. “Christ, you’re going to ruin me with that fancy talk.”
That is precisely why I use it.
I lean close enough that my mouth brushes his ear. “Sois sage, mon garcon. Et je te ferai jouir.”
“Mm.” He smiles, lazy and wicked. “I don’t know what that means, but whatever it is, I want it.”
I kiss him.
If Lula has unsettled me, if she has crossed his mind and mine both, then I want Boone beneath my hands where everything makes sense. I know the hitch in his breath before he knows it himself. I know the plea he will make before his mouth gives it voice.
Let her be new.
I am the one who knows him best.
Boone gives beneath my mouth with a sound I swallow quickly, his hands tightening on my shoulders while I take exactly what I want from him.
“It means,” I breathe against his lips, “be good, my boy, and I’ll make you come.”
His pupils flare.
“Will you be a good boy for me?”
He nods, though the grin says he intends to be trouble about it.
My hand slips inside his trousers and closes around his thickening length. Boone inhales hard.
“Okee,” he breathes, half warning, half plea. “I need you so bad.”
I make no answer. Instead I swing one leg over him and settle astride his thighs, the wool of my trousers rasping softly against his. With quick hands I free myself, already heavy and aching.
Years of discretion have taught me many things. One of them is that Boone Maddox cannot get fucked quietly.
Even now, his breath catches too sharply the moment our cocks press together, and my hand covers his mouth at once.
“Not a sound.”
His eyes flare above my palm.
I spit into my other hand and wrap my fingers around us both. The first slow glide drags a shudder through him. His lashes dip, his jaw working beneath my hand as he fights to keep still. I stroke us again, slower this time, feeling every twitch of him against me.
“You wanted to court,” I whisper near his ear. “Now hold still and be quiet.”
The look he gives me is near enough to worship to make me cruel.
I tighten my grip and stroke us harder. His hips rise despite himself.
My expression chides him back down.
“Please,” he breathes against my palm.
“No.”
I bend lower, forehead nearly touching his. Boone’s hand clamps around my wrist and pulls my palm from his mouth just far enough to whisper, “Okee.”
One word. Barely a breath.
Mercy.
I could give him more. He wants it. I know how his knees would part, how quickly he would surrender, how badly he would fail at silence if I worked him open here on the rug.
The thought nearly undoes me.
Then the boards overhead creak beneath Lula’s weight.
No.
Not tonight.
I cover Boone’s mouth again and work my hand between us faster.
His fingers dig into my hips. His breath breaks hot against my palm. I kiss the side of his face, his cheek, his temple, anything to keep him anchored and quiet while I drive us both toward ruin.
“Easy,” I whisper, though there is nothing easy in me.
Every movement risks some betraying sound—the floor, the cloth beneath us, Boone’s breath, the wet drag of skin against skin. His body begins to shake, and his fist catches in my shirt.
I grip tighter.
“Okee.” His eyes squeeze shut. “Fuck. I’m coming.”
He spends with a strangled cry he nearly manages to swallow, body jerking beneath mine as he spills between us.
The small failure of restraint tears through me.
I come a moment later with my face buried against his throat, angry and aching and not entirely certain where one feeling ends and the other begins.
For a long while, neither of us moves. We lie tangled in front of the hearth, hearts pounding, listening.
Boone lets out the smallest laugh, breathless and foolish, and I clap a hand over his mouth again. His eyes crease with wicked amusement at my glare before he turns his mouth into my palm and kisses it.
We clean ourselves with a dirty shirt dragged from the laundry basket. Beyond the hearth’s dull glow, the dark presses close around us.
“You ain’t mad at me, are you?” Boone asks softly.
I still. “No. Of course not, my love.”
His grin fades into something gentler. “So what then? You’re scared?”
“It’s nothing.”
He studies me for another moment, then lets me have the lie.
Eventually he turns onto his side, still smiling faintly. His breathing deepens beside me as he falls asleep.
It would be simpler if only Boone had noticed her. Simpler if I could call this jealousy and be done with it.
But I had seen her too.
That is the part I cannot forgive.
In the morning, I rise first.
The cabin is gray, the fire gone to ash. Cold has worked its way into every seam between the logs. I coax the hearth back to life and set the kettle to heat.
Behind me, Boone stirs in the cot, hair mussed and pale eyes barely open.
The ladder creaks.
Lula descends in a pretty patterned dress, the fabric drawn close by the climb in a manner I have no business noticing. Her hair lies in two thick braids, one over each shoulder. In the weak dawn, her eyes are the color of evergreens in fog.
It is one thing to resent a woman in theory. It is another to have her come down a ladder looking like that, all sleep-warm and sharp-eyed.
“Coffee?” I ask.
“I cannot have you serving me the entirety of our exile,” she says. “Let me do my part.”
Boone sits up. The blanket pools at his waist, baring the scarred length of his chest. He stretches long and easy, apparently forgetting there is anyone in the room but me.
Lula catches sight of him and turns sharply away, one hand lifting toward her eyes. A beat later, she peeks back.
“Mr. Maddox would seem to be in active revolt against the wearing of clothes.”
Boone glances down at himself. “I’ll get decent. Didn’t figure you’d be awake this early.”
He keeps his eyes off her as he moves behind me to collect his shirt from the back of the chair. Lula’s gaze remains fixed on the kettle, though color rises fast in her throat.
Then she glances over despite herself.
“What have you there? A bruise?”
Boone pulls the shirt over his head, quickly concealing the mark over his heart.
“Ain’t a bruise.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s a tattoo.”
He says it plainly, but his eyes cut to mine. It strikes me then that Boone took the mark without ever knowing all it meant. He did not need to. All he knew was that I loved him and wanted us both branded across our hearts.
That had been enough.
I bite back a smile.
“Is that what men do for sport now?” Lula asks.
Boone does not answer.
Neither do I.
“Hmm,” she says, conceding nothing. She moves to the kettle and clears her throat. “Have we set upon a plan?”
Outside, snow drifts down, quieter than the night before but steady enough to matter.
“Best way to hear God laugh is to declare your plans out loud,” Boone says, reaching for his tobacco. “Specially in winter. Right now I reckon we gather firewood and keep it dry.”
Her brows pinch. “This will not do at all. I must return to Fort Smith. All my belongings are with the station agent, who would be glad to enjoy Eli’s pension if I cannot return to reclaim it.
Every penny I have saved for my shop is there.
It has been over a week,” she goes on, too briskly.
“Those men must have moved on by now. Have they no other matters requiring their attention? I certainly do.”
“That ain’t how this works, miss,” Boone says, voice sharpening.
“Well, of course we cannot leave today. But perhaps once the snow melts a bit.”
She says it sweetly, as if coaxing agreement from a difficult child.
I look at Boone.
First light. No food. No coffee in his belly.
Unwise.
I lean against the wall beside the stove and let her walk into it.
“Snow melts, roads turn to soup,” Boone says, the edge in his voice sharper with every word.
“Wagons sink plumb to the hubs. Horse’ll lame hisself in a hole he cain’t see.
Cricks’ll rise and drown you before you even know you’re wet.
Freeze on the road. Starve waitin’ out storms. Get turned around when the sky drops and there ain’t a landmark left worth trustin’.
Next thing you know, you’re wonderin’ which one of us looks most like supper. ”
I huff a laugh before I can prevent it. Cannibalism seems a touch extreme, though I have heard stories.
Lula’s eyes cut to me, unimpressed.
Boone rolls a cigarette with hands steady as church bells. “And that’s before you get to men. Marshals don’t ride in weather like this. Most folks keep to their camps. Which leaves you alone with whoever’s willin’ to chance it. Desperate men do what they got to, not what’s decent.”
She opens her mouth, then shuts it again.
Boone glances at the window, where snow drifts past like pale dust. “We move when the ground firms up and the cricks mind their banks. Not before.”
She mutters a curse.
Boone scoffs, licking his cigarette shut. “Woman behaves like we aim to be here any more’n she does.”
Her shoulders rise and square at him. “Do not pretend this arrangement injures you as it injures me!”
His eyes snap to hers. “I’m injured by your fit-pitching and carrying on!”
“There is no call to raise your voice, sir.”
“You took to hollerin’ first!”
“That is enough,” I cut in, stepping between them. “Both of you. Calm down.”
Boone leans back against the wall, calm returning to him like a pistol sliding into a holster.
“I am calm,” he says flatly, a ploy to aggravate her further, no doubt.
Lula glowers at the kettle as if she is considering bashing in Boone’s skull with it.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and wonder which will end us first: the winter outside or the fire we keep feeding inside these walls.