She wipes her cheeks rough, smearing the wet across her skin. “I’ll not be claimed by you.”
I lean in, close enough for her to feel my breath, my voice low. “It’s already passed, sweetheart. Ain’t no more say in it. You’re my woman, and you’ll be dreamin’ of me tonight, same as I’ll be burnin’ for you. You can try to pray it away, but you had a taste and ain’t nothin’ holy’ll scrub it clean.”
Her hand trembles where it clutches her bodice closed. She doesn’t answer, only turns her face aside. Inch by inch she shifts away, rolling over to give me her back.
The tent goes quiet but for the rain on the canvas. My breath’s ragged, loud in the hush.
The fabric of my trousers clings damp and wrong. I curse under my breath, fumbling for my bandana. Opening my fly, I wipe myself clean as I can. Ain’t no hiding the mess, though—damp patch cooling in my britches, clinging strange. I feel like a damn boy caught dirty-handed.
I glance at her stiff back, shoulders drawn tight under her dress, fists knotted in her skirts.
Those tears, praying like I’d ruined her.
Heat and shame twist in my chest. “Yeah, you go on and pray, Alice. Pray your little lamb heart out for all I care.”
We don’t speak much for days. She keeps to her side of the wagon. At camp, she keeps her hands busy with cooking, mending and scrubbing our clothes. I drive and tend the horses. The silence’s a weight, but neither of us breaks it. She’s keeping to herself, like speaking a word is a slippery slope to ending up in my arms.
Every mile we ride, it builds. She won’t dare look at me. Her laugh gone, her voice clipped to nothing but what’s needed. And damn if it don’t grate worse than her crying.
I catch myself stealing glances. The shape of her nose when she’s staring off at the countryside. The curves of her mouth when she’s stirring a pot and don’t know I’m paying attention. That long hair of hers when she takes it down to brush it out. Every move she makes just feeds my hunger.
I know she feels it too, and I reckon the silence, the distance, is her way of keeping it from taking hold again.
By the third day, the summer heat’s thick as lard. Sweat stings my eyes. The horses slow. When we pull up by a wide creek, the water glistens, damn near calling my name. The water’s running fast and cool over smooth rock, and I make up my mind.
She wants to pretend she’s some untouchable saint, begging heaven to scour me out of her veins? Fine. But I’ll show her plain what she’s missing.
Chapter 15
ALICE
We make camp. He stretches, long arms overhead, his shirt riding just enough to reveal the lean plane of his stomach. “Water looks cold,” he says. “Been sweatin’ in the saddle too long. Think I’ll have a rinse.”
He arches a brow, tugging at his suspenders with lazy defiance. “Good for the blood,” he says, and strips down—boots first, then trousers, until he’s bare as the day he was born.
I look away, but not before I’ve seen much more than I should.
God forgive me.
My soul threatens to escape at the size of him, hung thick as a beast, bold and unashamed. Stomach in knots, shame rising like steam, a traitorous thought steals through me—what would it feel like to take something so fearsome inside me? What would it do to me? Surely, it would tear my flesh, and yet I shiver at the thought of receiving it.
He wades in, the water climbing his thighs, his waist, his chest. He ducks under, vanishing a breath, then bursts back through the surface with a toss of his hair and a spray of droplets that gleam in the morning sun. He swipes water down his face, squinting against the light and dripping strands. “I reckon it’d be a finer bath if you joined me.”
The Devil never rests.
“Absolutely not.” My voice cracks with more urgency than I intend. “I am a decent woman.”
His laugh rolls across the water as he wades a step closer, waist deep. “Come on. Creek’s cool, sun’s high. Slip down to that pretty shift of yours. I ain’t askin’ for you to go bare.”
“I’ll not strip down before you like some common harlot,” I shout, horrified at the tremor in my voice.
“Alice, ain’t nobody else here but the cottonwoods and the herons, and they won’t tell a soul.”
I shake my head, hugging my arms across my chest. “It’s indecent.”
“Indecent is livin’ half a life ’cause men and preachers told you to be ashamed of your own flesh.” His voice is steady, coaxing. “This is the Lord’s water.”
The words lodge in my chest, leaving me weak. My pulse throbs in my throat. The creek sparkles behind him like it’s lit from within, and I can’t help but picture myself in the water, shift floating free, his hands—oh Lord—his hands on me.
