Caine's Reckoning (36 page)

Another small shake of her head that coincided with the ripple that went through her body. He pulled back, her soft cry cutting his withdrawal short.

“Are you all right?”

Another shake of the head. He needed to see her expression. “Open your eyes.”

A sharp squeeze of her chin punctuated the order. Her lashes lifted slowly, languorously, revealing the eyes of a woman confused by the response of her own body.

“There’s my wild Gypsy.” The smile started deep inside. “Now, let’s see if I can find that sweet spot that makes you feel so good.”

He stretched his thumb inward, sifting through the damp curls, finding her sensitive little clit, watching her eyes the whole time. She flinched at his first touch and those inner muscles fluttered along the head of his cock. His balls burned and cramped in response, eager to give her what she wanted. The second touch didn’t get a reaction at all. Neither did the third. The hesitantly eager glow of anticipation began to fade from her expression. Worry took its place.

He wasn’t worried. “Easy, sweetheart.”

“It’s not working anymore.”

“Everything’s working fine.” She just needed a stronger touch now that he had her attention. The next pass had a little more force, enough so the callus on his thumb grazed her harder. She jerked and gasped and took a bit more. “See?”

He didn’t expect a response and he didn’t get one. All her attention was inward, concentrating on the whip of pleasure he was sending through her with his thumb. He made his next pass slower, incrementally harder. Her moan was the sweetest music. “That’s it, Gypsy. Let me hear you, see you. Let me know how much you enjoy everything I do to you.”

Her hips rocked over him. She strained for more. His cock throbbed with the same rhythm and the same need. He waited for her to take him deeper with every pass of his thumb, but it didn’t happen. It was almost as if she didn’t connect the pleasure he was giving her with his hand, with the pleasure he could give her with his cock.

“Desi,” he gasped as she clenched desperately around him, her hot little cries ringing in his ears. “Take me inside you this time. Every time you feel that spike that feels so good, work yourself down on me.”

For an instant, her gaze focused, and in that brief span of time he saw lust, confusion and a desperate hope. Damn, he wanted to fill that hope, fill her with pleasure, confidence, security. This time when he touched her, he lingered and pressed, urging her back and down even as she shuddered and took him.

“That’s it. Just like that. Again.”

He gave and she took, working herself down on him inch by erotic inch, her body first fighting and then welcoming his possession until she finally had everything he had to give and there was no telling where he ended and she began. He took her clit between his thumb and forefinger and tugged at the same instant he thrust up, lifting her off the bed with his need, driving hard and sure, milking her as she milked him. Pleasure so intense as to be painful held him in its relentless grip until he couldn’t hold back. But he had to. She came first. Always.

“Come with me, Desi. Let yourself go, sweetheart. Let go.”

He wanted to hear that soft little cry of his name again as she came, hear that feminine acknowledgment that she knew who he was, who gave her this. The next caress should have brought her to the edge, left her teetering as he was, but instead she tightened around him, against him, and he felt it—her distancing herself from the magic surrounding them. He felt it, but was helpless to stop it. Not when she lifted off him and then came back down—hard, fast, riding him in a way guaranteed to steal a man’s patience—and she stole his in three strong pulses of her hips, her eyes echoing the sadness he felt inside as his orgasm rushed over him.

He shook his head at her, gritting his teeth as he came, pulling her down, sealing their bodies together, flooding her with his seed, giving her his pleasure, not letting her escape that, at least.

T
hat damn rooster was going to meet its maker.

Desi scattered a bit more grain on the ground, coaxing the hens out of the house. From the edge of the enclosure, the rooster watched, head canted to the right, comb flopped over, staring balefully at her out of one small beady eye. She threw some more corn to the side, trying to lure him away from the edge of the pen. He didn’t move, but the fluff of his feathers meant business. So did she.

Desi gripped the basket handle in both hands. The damn bird—she repeated the curse because it felt so good—had forced her to stay up late last night sewing the gashes he’d put in her clothes. And when Caine had asked her why, she’d been forced to lie. He already saw her as a useless bit of fluff in need of pampering. She was not confirming it by admitting that a ten-pound rooster had defeated her. If Tia didn’t swear the hens wouldn’t lay without the rooster around, she would have gladly wrung his neck. Not that she’d worked up to that skill yet, but for him, the bald-eyed bully, she’d give it a try.

The rooster strutted forward, wings twitching, tail feathers spread. There was a definite attitude to his approach, a confidence that shouldn’t be there considering the differences in their size and the fact that she was setting his feathered butt in the stew pot as soon as a new rooster came up. A confidence that was only there because he’d won yesterday’s skirmish.

She jerked her sleeves down over her hands, grateful the men had bought her a dress that was too big. She needed armor to deal with his cocky ass.

Again she got that little thrill from using the profanity. Ladies did not use profanity. She’d been told that all her life. Neither did respectable wives, and lately she’d discovered why. Once a woman started, there wasn’t any stopping, and why would she want to? Being able to vent anger so succinctly was wonderful. No swallowing it back, no lingering taste of bitterness, no polite smiles, just the releasing of an invective that was just…liberating.

In a much smaller way, it was almost as good as that first afternoon with Caine in the bath. But not as frightening. The way Caine could steal her will, her purpose, was the scariest thing she’d ever felt because if she let go she’d lose herself in him and nothing would be the same again. She’d never be the same, so while she didn’t deny him his husbandly rights, she kept herself separate at the last.

She tightened her grip on the egg basket. It was getting harder to do that all the time, though. She might have a chance of resisting him forever, but it was getting harder and harder to fight herself. But she was strong, and she had a plan. Besides, nowhere in any book on comportment or in any salon conversation had she heard anyone say it was a woman’s responsibility to enjoy it. Quite the opposite in fact. Only loose women enjoyed physical relations. And she was not loose.

She took a step toward the rooster. The hens around her feet clucked and shuffled away, diving back into the feed as soon as she was clear. Now, she just needed to convince Caine of that. It shouldn’t be so hard, seeing as he saw her as a bit of fluff and was quite ready to believe all sorts of silly things about her. Like she couldn’t do the same work as Tia. But in this area he had a blind spot. He was going to have to work on that, along with his expectations of how it should be between them. But seeing as how that wasn’t going to happen for a long time, for now she’d just deal with the rooster.

It gave a cluck. She growled. It squawked. She approached. The wings came out. She raised the basket. When it reared its head, she snarled, “Not this time.”

It screeched. She stood her ground.

“Those eggs are mine.”

That put him in a tizzy. A god-awful racket came from its beak as it flew at her feet first. She swung the basket, knocking it aside. It hit the ground in a ball of huff and fluff, but she knew it’d be back. Yesterday had taught her that. It flew at her. She kicked out. It bounced up, spurring for her face.

If she could get into the henhouse, she could close the door and get the eggs. And if she didn’t drop them like yesterday, she could learn to bake Caine’s favorite cake. Yet another challenge to add to her repertoire. Desi was three steps from the door when she heard the flap of wings and the air fanning her hair. She spun, wielding the basket. She missed. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who’d learned something. The rooster was right there, in her face. She screeched and ducked. He landed on her back, claws digging, beak pecking. A snarl came from the left and she went down under a heavy weight. Boone.

She jumped up. With a scream of rage, the rooster jumped off. With a snarl, Boone was after him. Desi slapped at her skirt and rubbed the bruises to her skull from the demon bird’s beak. “Get him, Boone.”

Boone had the advantage for about five feet, but the rooster jumped straight up, catching the hound by surprise. Before Boone could gather his feet under him, the rooster was on his shoulders, wings flapping, looking like the devil sprouting from his back. Boone’s snarls turned to howls. With a yip he spun and headed back toward her, jowls flapping, big brown eyes wide with terror. And the rooster sticking to him like a burr.

“Oh, no.” She grabbed the basket off the ground and sprinted for the henhouse. She yanked the door open. Behind her Boone howled. She debated, but she couldn’t just leave him like that. Especially as he’d saved her.

She held the door open. “Come on, Boone.”

He cleared the rickety ramp with one leap. Holding the basket like a shield she knocked the rooster off and then shut the door. Boone whined and looked around. Clearly he knew he wasn’t supposed to be in here just as clearly as he knew what waited on them both outside that door. One angry, victorious rooster.

Desi gave him a pet and then went for the eggs. “We have got to do better than this in the future, Boone.”

She put eggs in the basket as she went down the array of nests. No sense wasting the opportunity. “Otherwise Caine will be putting us both up for trade.”

Boone whined and licked at a scratch on his shoulder.

She knew exactly how he felt. The pecks on the back of her head hurt like heck, and if she wasn’t clever tonight, her husband would see the scratches stinging the back of her neck and ask questions she did not want to answer. The last roost was empty. She bit her lip. A bad layer became dinner. She glared at the door on the other side of which she could hear the rooster cackling. “Oh, sure, you’ve got all the time in the world to bother me, but when it comes to doing the rest of the job, pfft!”

There were no more eggs, which meant it was time to go back out. This is where she had run into trouble yesterday. Of course, yesterday, she hadn’t had Boone with her. She patted his head. “You distract him while I get away with the eggs, all right?”

He looked at the door and then at her. His lower lids sagged down his cheeks.

“I’ll save you an extra bone after dinner.”

The end of his tail wagged.

“A big one.”

He got to his feet. She grabbed the latch. “Ready?”

His ears pricked forward. She listened, too. There wasn’t any noise. Maybe the randy featherbrain had gone to fornicate with one of the hens. She lifted the latch. “Go, Boone!”

On a whine he burst out the door. She was right behind him for all of one step before he cut to the left, little more than a red streak, leaving her behind to face the red-feathered demon bird at the base of the ramp. Deserter! She was moving too fast to stop. She swore the rooster grinned as it sprang.

She swung the basket, wincing as the eggs rattled, throwing her hand up to guard her eyes, not slowing down, because for all his aggressiveness, the rooster had a territory and wouldn’t leave it. She just needed to get outside it. “Get off me.”

She shook her arm. He latched on to the basket rim. The rooster dug its claws in the basket, beating at her with his wings. She swatted at him. “I just need six eggs, you selfish bastard.” He flapped and gained purchase. His beady little eyes fixed on her hand. “You can spare six!”

Tia said Caine loved spice cake and she’d already told him she was going to try her hand at making one. From the way he squawked and worked up toward her arm, there wasn’t a selfless bone in the rooster’s horrid body.

She swung and ran. He clung and pecked. Her hand was on fire. By sheer luck she hit his head. He fell off. But he bounced back. There was no way she’d make the last ten feet. She grabbed an egg and threw it at him. It missed. He came at her, talons spread. She landed the next egg right on his arrogant beak.

She ran and threw, he squawked and attacked, and when he hit that invisible line that was his territory, she whooped and shouted with victory. She’d made it. She looked in the basket, six eggs left. Just enough.

“Next time, I’ll get them all!” she called, glaring at the bird now strutting across the yard. She turned, tripped on a rock and went down. There was no mistaking the sound of eggs breaking for anything other than what it was. Nor the sound of male laughter as she pushed to her feet.

Three men she didn’t know were standing with Tucker and Ed, watching her, big grins on their beard-stubbled faces. Humiliation rose fast and furious as they touched the brims of their hats in greeting, fueling her anger, giving her something to latch her pride on to. She got to her feet, put her chin in the air and asked Tucker, “Where’s Caine?”

He nodded toward the barn. “Working with that stallion we finally caught.”