Rusty sprang to a sitting position. “What happened to you?”
He flung his shirt down onto the pile of clothes to be washed. He didn’t have to ask what she was referring to. If it looked as bad as it felt, the bruise was noticeable even in the dim light.
“My shoulder came into contact with the barrel of Reuben’s rifle. I had to deflect it that way, so my hands would be free to get my own rifle up.”
Rusty winced. The fist-size bruise at the outer edge of his collarbone was black-and-blue and looked extremely painful. “Does it hurt?”
“Like hell.”
“Did you take an aspirin?”
“No. We need to conserve them.”
“But if you’re hurting—”
“You aren’t taking them for the bruises on your butt.” That remark shocked her speechless. But it didn’t last long. After a moment she said stubbornly, “I still think two aspirin would help.”
“I want to save them. You might have fever again.”
“Oh, I see. You don’t have any aspirin to take for your shoulder because I wasted them on my fever.”
“I didn’t say you wasted them. I said, oh—” Then he said a word that described something neither was in the mood to do, a word that should never be spoken aloud in polite company. “Go to sleep, will you?”
Wearing only his jeans, he went to the stove, apparently decided that the water was hot enough even though it wasn’t quite boiling, and emptied it all into the tub.
Rusty had lain back down, but she watched his shadow moving on the curtain as he shucked off his jeans and stepped naked into the tub. Her imagination got the night off because his shadow left nothing up to it, especially in profile.
She heard cursing as he lowered himself into the water. The tub didn’t accommodate him as easily as it had her. How he expected her to go to sleep with all that splashing going on, she didn’t know. He had splashed more water on the floor than was left in the bottom of the tub by the time he stood up to rinse off.
Rusty’s throat went dry as she watched his shadow. He bent at the waist, repeatedly scooping handfuls of water over himself to rinse off the soap. When he stepped out, he dried with masculine carelessness. The only attention he gave his hair was to make one pass over it with the towel, then to comb his fingers through it. He finished by wrapping the towel around his waist.
He went through the laborious procedure of emptying the tub again. After the last trip to the porch, he left the tub outside. Rusty could tell he was shivering when he moved back to the fire and added several logs. Using the chair as his ladder, he took down the screen the same way he’d put it up. He folded the sheet, placed it on one of the several shelves against the wall, and blew out the lantern on the table. The l
ast thing he did before sliding into his bed was yank the towel from around his waist.
During all that time, he never looked at Rusty. She was hurt that he hadn’t even said goodnight. But then, she might not have been able to answer him.
Her mouth was still dry.
Counting sheep didn’t help.
Reciting poetry didn’t help, especially since the only poems he knew by heart were limericks of a licentious nature.
So Cooper lay there on his back, with his hands stacked beneath his head, staring at the ceiling, and wondering when his stiff manhood was going to stop tenting the covers and relax enough to let him fall asleep. He was exhausted. His overexerted muscles cried out for rest. But his sex wasn’t listening.
Unlike the rest of him, it was feeling great. He felt like taps all over, but it felt like reveille: alert and alive and well. Too well.
In desperation, he put one hand beneath the covers. Maybe... He yanked his hand back. Nope. Uh-uh. Don’t do that. Trying to press it down only made the problem worse.
Furious with Rusty for doing this to him, he rolled to his side. Even that movement created unwanted friction. He uttered an involuntary groaning sound, which he hastily turned into a cough.
What could he do? Nothing that wouldn’t be humiliating. So he’d just have to think about something else.
But dammit, he’d tried. For hours, he’d tried. His thoughts eventually meandered back to her.
Her lips: soft.
Her mouth: vulnerable but curious; then hungry, opening to him.