Rode Hard, Put Up Wet: Cowboy Romance (Rebels & Outlaws 2)

She caught it well enough.

"So, then—"

"No, we didn't kill nobody. Not to my knowledge. But we left some people in some pretty tight spots, and I ain't proud of it."

She blinked but held her face steady. "And then?"

"The boys got out, and we had money, sure enough, but… don't you know how it is, it ain't never enough, so we kept on that way. Things didn't get better, neither. They got worse. Eventually, I ate a shot in my leg. Not too bad, all told, but it put me down in the middle of a job, and they had to move along in a hurry. Nobody really stopped to check on me, 's I wasn't moving a whole lot and they needed to get gone."

She stayed silent. Maybe the questions in her head were too much, or maybe she couldn't find words for them, but they were painted on her face.

"So then, ah—" Chris took a breath and tried to steady himself, but it was too much to hope for. "They gave me a place to stay. Patched me up. Introduced me to their boy, and maybe the most important of all, they didn't tell nobody about the circumstances of our meeting, and I suppose for all that, I owe them about everything I got, don't I? They're—ah, they're dead, though, now, so. I can't rightly pay 'em back."

He laid his head back and stared at his ceiling, his breaths coming unsteadily. Then Marie laid her head down on his chest, not saying a thing, and wrapped her arm around him, and he closed his eyes to hold back the wall of emotion that was threatening to overwhelm him.

Thirty-Three

There was no violence in it this time, when her lips found his. No desperation. Marie could feel something else there to replace it, though. A softer sort of need. His arms wrapped around her slowly, clinging to her and holding her in a grip that was comforting in its tightness.

His beard scratched against her skin, threatening to tickle at any moment, but she held off, because she knew that he needed something that she could offer him. Some sort of comfort. After the excitement of the day, Marie thought, she could use the comfort as well.

Her arms wrapped around him as best as they could, with their weight pressing down into the bed, and pulled him in tighter. He seemed to enjoy the closeness as much as she did. The kiss deepened, their desire tightening them together as much as their arms and the weight of their bodies.

She pushed herself up, off of him, and settled her weight back on her hips. They pushed down on the part of him that made him a man, and he pushed back up against her, his body letting her know exactly how he felt about her.

Marie could feel his eyes on her all the time as she reached down to fiddle with the buttons on her dress, undoing them one by one. The first was easy, but as her fingers fought for grip on the little bead of a button with the second, finally getting it to slip out, she realized that she'd been overconfident.

Suddenly, the reality of what she was doing hit her all at once. She'd done this before. She'd done it before, with him. But that had been in the dark, it had been rough and something that had happened in a moment of–

No, not a moment of weakness, she cut herself off. But a moment of passion? Certainly. Now she was undressing herself for the first time before a man who'd just admitted to being every bit the vagabond that some accused him of being, and her fingers froze up.

Was he going to find her adequate? Would he have high expectations for her, after all this time? What if he didn't find her, you know–attractive? After all, there was a big difference between a convenient woman and a pretty one, wasn't there?

He reached up as her breathing started to hitch in her chest with one broad, strong hand and ran a thumb across her cheek. He seemed strangely vulnerable to her, which ought to have been impossible for a man like Chris Broadmoor.

"Are you alright?"

Her jaw tightened. She was alright. She wasn't going to say that she was nervous. She'd never been nervous about anything in her life, before this, and she wasn't going to start now.

"I'm fine," she said, her voice hard, and pulled the next button roughly, to prove to herself as much as to him that she had complete control of herself. That she could do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.

Chris smiled, and then rolled his hips up into her, rubbing the rough fabric of his clothes against her through layers of dress. Her eyes shut themselves tight reflexively, her hips meeting his and temporarily halting her fingers.

The man below didn't wait for her to continue, reaching up and taking the next button between his thick fingers and with a gentle flip, it came undone, showing more of her body.

His hips rolled up into hers again, but she kept her focus this time, brushing his hands away. She'd do it herself, if only to prove that she wasn't afraid.

The shoulders of the dress hung loose on her shoulders, threatening to fall off and leave her there wearing only her camisole to hide her breasts from his eyes. He moved his hips again, threatening to rob her of her senses once more. Reluctantly, Marie slipped off of him, claiming control of herself for a fleeting moment.

The dress fell away easily when she let the top fall, leaving her in her unmentionables, which may as well have been nude, the way that his eyes raked over her. Marie's face burned red, but she continued undressing, her hands shaking.

The camisole came apart easily. Five buttons. They were no different than any other, she reminded herself. It was nothing special, even as each one revealed inches of ivory-colored skin that she'd never let any man see.

He didn't waste a moment in pushing himself out of bed to wrap his arms around her, his skin rough against the smooth skin of her sides. His face dipped low and took one dusky-colored nipple between his lips, sending a jolt of pleasure through her shoulders and into the rest of her body.

Her hands worked the drawstring keeping her petticoat up before she lost her nerve, and then realized with a start that she was the only one with her clothes off. A gentle bite on her nipples, though, drove the thought quickly from her mind. His lips left her for a moment, only to rejoin again on the other side, balancing out the pleasure as Chris replaced his teeth with this fingers, pinching and pulling until her nipple stood at attention.

His arm wrapped around her hip, then, and his weight shifted back, pulling Marie into bed. She let him, turning and falling into the soft mattress as his lips pulled away from her with a soft 'pop.'