“Just allow me to reapply the salve.”
I nodded. The scent of the bonfire warm and sweet, the snow crisp and mineral. Stot rummaged in my saddlebag for Niabi’s salve, murmuring assurances to Cricket, the timbre of his voice muted and gruff, like something dusky and full of brambles. I unbuttoned my blouse, and he came toward me, the glow of fire patterning across hisface. I removed my slicker and shirtwaist and handed them to him. He tossed my cloak over an icy cottonwood bough and tied my shirt to my gun belt. I pulled up my shift, the bruise purple and amber across my ivory skin.
He wiped my wound with a damp rag, his breath warming my collarbone, the air too cold. Dipping his fingers into the salve, his gaze flicked to mine a heated moment; then he smeared some across my stomach. I hissed, the mixture freezing. Stot rocked back on his heels, studied me. “I’m fine,” I said. “Just hurry.”
After he wiped his hands on the rag, he helped my shift over my belly. He stepped away to grab my blouse, and I swallowed a deep breath of dark, icy air. Stot slid sideaways on a patch of rime and dropped my shirt, steadying himself by grasping a sapling.
I gasped. My blouse sank in a puddle of fire-melted slush. Stot cursed. He bent and lifted my shirt: It was sopping.
“Damnation, Stot.” I couldn’t believe he’d dropped it.
“You can have mine.” He shrugged from his slicker.
“I don’t want yours. I want mine.”
He tossed his slicker over a branch and unbuttoned his black waistcoat, his deft fingers striking down the center of his body.
“I said I don’t want your dratted shirt.” I shivered, my body hardened with too many emotions.
“Why do you always fight me about the dumbest stuff?” He held my pathetic, soggy blouse up between us, his vest gaping open. I battled between a ragged cry of exasperation and amusement. I yanked my shirt from him and looped it over a branch, the yellow blaze of fire roaring skyward.
Why couldn’t I just take his flannel? Why did I have to push and push? Sometimes life got so muddled and sad, all a’sudden. Brawling my brother, gunfighting outlaws, racing home, all these wearying months building my homestead. With all of that, I was in control. I was fine. But my blouse slumping in the snowmelt: That toppled me. I didn’t have the time or the energy to waste on nonsense. Fury and misery whisked about me. I felt consumed. I couldn’t alwayskeep strong, couldn’t always control my rages, couldn’t always react rationally—I was just so angry. About being stuck in the snow, about my brother, about Stot’s soonwifemoving down in mere weeks, about him hovering, expecting entirely too much but unable to give me anything.
“You don’t have to be cruel,” he said.
I stepped up to him, my shivering body right below his chin. “Why the hell not?”
His jaw clenched, the hollows of his cheeks deepened.
The wind howled, the icicles clinked, and snowfall melted across my back. I heard scratching along bark, perhaps some animal burrowing in a hollow. The moment pulled, an undefined battle of power. He broke my gaze, as if yielding. I nodded and stepped away.
He grabbed my wrist, spun me back. “Wait.”
He edged closer and pressed me against the broad trunk of an oak, the raised bark craggy along my shoulders, his trousers fitted the length of my skirt. He slapped a hand against the tree, caging me, his body large and ragged and furious. He said, “You don’t get to handle me like I’m nothing, like I’m a monster.”
I dropped my gaze from his eyes to his lips, then back up. His eyes flashed, ivy green in the winter haze.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I said.
Snow misted my arms, and I shivered. He settled a palm on my hip, steadying me. Warmth seeped from his hand.
“Then why are you always needling me?” he asked.
I ran my palm up his chest and lifted an eyebrow, my leg sliding between his thighs. His fingertips clenched on the bark; a vein pulsed in his jaw.
“Don’t play with me,” he said.
I didn’t abide orders—I did what I willed, when I wished. He didn’t get to tell me what to do. I scraped my fingers into his starless sky–black hair, and his hand clenched on my hip. I wasn’t cold anymore: The fires from his body soaked me. He smelt of weapon oil and wide spaces and sweat.
“Don’t,” he said, voice rough, expression strained.
“Why not?”
His palm trailed up my back. “This is good. We shouldn’t.”
I lifted onto my toes, my words whisking against his mouth. “I don’t like to be tolddon’t,can’t,shouldn’t.”
I nipped my teeth on his bottom lip, and he groaned low in his throat. I brushed my lips against his, became liquid all the way to my toes. He tasted of ice. And then he unraveled, his mouth angled harshly across my own. His arms swept below me, hefting me up, my legs looped about his waist. It was hot and undomesticated and all I’d longed for.
