“Ah, then I shall seek a remedy.”
He dug his fingers into the rocky creek bed when she began to glide her hand up and down. He wanted to hold back. He wanted it to happen slowly.
He knew it was going to happen fast.
When he reached for her, Theodosia got to her knees and pressed her breasts against his chest, but did not slow her caresses. He pushed his hips toward her, capturing her hand between her belly and his. He became hotter in her hand. Harder. He pulsed. Her gaze traveling over every part of his face, she watched his release begin even while she felt its strength in her hand.
Witnessing this wonderful man’s ecstasy was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. And to know thatshehad given him such pleasure brought her a happiness so deep that she realized it stemmed from her very soul.
“Theodosia,” Roman whispered. Breathing heavily, he buried his face between her breasts and felt her heartbeat on his lips. A wealth of emotions caught hold of him. He tried to name them but could only concentrate on the way they made him feel.
God, he felt so good.Shemade him feel so good. He wanted to hug her as hard as he could, but he forced himself to remember his own strength.
Tenderly, he sat her in his lap again and spread soft kisses over her throat and shoulders. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to.”
“Why?”
Here was the little boy inside him again, she mused. The child who had given but who had not received. “Roman,” she murmured, caressing the muscles in his arms, “you have pleasured me in the past. It was important to me to pleasure you as well. I assure you that it made me as happy as it did you.”
Her explanation sought, found, and warmed a place so deep inside him, he couldn’t understand what that place was. “Thank you.”
She slipped her hands into his hair, loving the sight of her pale fingers lost within such blackness. “You’re welcome,” she whispered, then fell into a long lapse of silence.
“What are you thinking about, sweetheart?” Roman murmured.
She cupped a handful of water, dropped it over his shoulder, and watched it trickle over the muscles in his chest. “I was thinking about the definition offun,which is ‘something that provides amusement or enjoyment.’ It is also ‘playful, often boisterous action or speech.’ I have decided, however, that I no longer think that definition is correct.”
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “Are you saying you’re going to change the meaning of a word?”
She nodded and stretched up to kiss the cleft in his chin. “The new definition offunis ‘Roman Montana.’”
“I cannot do it, Roman,”Theodosia said, cracker crumbs spraying over her lap as she spoke.
Mounted, Roman leaned down and handed her another cracker. “Try again.”
She stopped the wagon, took the cracker, and bit into it. But her lips were so dry, she could hardly get them to pucker. This cracker challenge was yet another new experience Roman had decided she needed. During the past week of traveling, he’d had her catching minnows with her bare hands, leaving scraps of bread near bird nests for the mother birds to find, and filling her mouth with jawbreakers to see how many would fit at one time. She’d even participated in her first pillow fight, which Roman won, but only because his pillow casing was of thicker fabric than hers.
And now he wanted her to whistle through cracker-crumb-coated lips. “May I have a bit of water first?”
“No.” To prove the feat could be done, Roman ate four crackers, and with dry crumbs peppering his lips, he whistled loud and long. “See? It’s not impossible to eat crackers and whistle.”
She tried to lick her lips but failed. “Roman, I am very thirsty. And the sunset is upon us. Might we stop for the night, preferably near water?”
John the Baptist stuck his beak out from the bars of his cage and snatched the cracker from Theodosia’s hand. “I had a terrible case of the measles when I was seven,” he called shrilly. “The sunset is upon us.”
“There’s a stream ahead,” Roman relented, urging Secret toward a woodsy area in the near distance. “But if you think I’m going to forget about making you do the cracker whistle, you’re wrong.”
Smiling, Theodosia followed him and drove the wagon into a beautiful glade through which a sparkling stream ran.
But her smile faded when she saw horse tracks all around the ground. “A gang,” she squeaked.
Roman saw the fear on her face as she looked at the tracks, and he knew she was remembering the Blanco y Negro Gang. “No, Theodosia. The horses that made these tracks aren’t shod, so they aren’t white men’s horses.” He dismounted and walked well away from the stream, studying the trail of tracks. “They’re wild mustangs.”
Her fear vanished instantly. “How do you know? Couldn’t they have been Indian ponies?”
He knew she wasn’t questioning him; she only wanted to learn. Pointing, he gestured toward several neat piles of horse manure. “The horses that were here stopped to relieve themselves. An Indian war party keeps its horses moving, so manure is scattered. Indians moving with their families transport their belongings with them. They carry their lodge poles, which leave marks in the dirt as the Indians travel. There aren’t any pole marks anywhere around here. Wild mustangs often pass under branches that a mounted man would be unable to dodge. See the tracks under those low branches over there?”
