His Perfect Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch - Spicy Version Book 1) (11 page)

Corva had never been happier in her life. That was all there was to it. Her muscles ached from the bruises she’d sustained sliding into home as Franklin drove back to the ranch, she was covered with dirt and dust from head to toe, and her best dress was torn in several places, but her heart was so light it threatened to float right out of her and carry her to heaven. And to top it all off, Franklin had kissed her with a passion that had made her dizzy and tingly.

“I can’t believe we won,” she giggled. “We actually won.”

“I’m just sorry that you couldn’t have scored the winning run,” Franklin said. “That ninth inning was a bit of a let-down after the eighth.”

“It doesn’t matter. We still won.” She turned her face up to the setting sun as she spoke, letting joy wash through her.

“We did,” Franklin echoed her, smiling.

That was far and away the best part. Franklin was smiling, really and truly smiling. His smile was like the first buds of spring as they popped up through long-dormant ground. It was like the warmth of the hearth as bread baked. No, something about it was hotter, hungrier, and focused on her. Franklin’s smile confirmed something else that she had suspected since she first set eyes on him at the train station. Her husband was the handsomest man she had ever known. With his troubles broken and sorrows lifted, that fact was clear as day. It was almost like meeting him anew. Body and soul, she wanted to know this man more.

“Aren’t we a fine mess, though?” She continued to giggle as Franklin pulled the wagon to a stop next to the ramp on his property.

“We definitely need a bath.” He echoed her mirth.

“I’ll go inside and fill the tub.” She hopped down before he could come around to escort her. In her heart, she knew they were well beyond that sort of polite gesture. If the day had proven nothing else, it had shown that they were a team and that they functioned best when they worked together, each doing what they could do.

Corva skipped up the ramp to the front porch, through the door, and flittered about the main room, lighting the lamps. The house had only a small water closet—nothing like the single, serviceable washroom that Hurst Home had. It was a step up from an outhouse and outside water pump, but she still had to drag the huge, brass washtub out from the kitchen closet and position it near the fireplace in the living room.

By the time Franklin came in from settling the wagon and horse, she had the tub partially filled with room-temperature water, and the kettle and several pots of water boiling on the kitchen stove. Franklin hung his cane and hat on the peg by the door, and set to work lighting a fire in the fireplace to take the spring chill out of the air.

“I hope it won’t bother you to have this so close to the tub,” he called as Corva watched the water boiling on the stove in the other room.

“Fire only bothers me when it’s unexpected or out of control,” she answered. “The bigger problem is how we can both fit in the tub to wash up at the same time.”

Her comment was meant to tease, but the moment the words were out of her mouth, images of the two of them squeezing into the tub together, slippery and without clothes, rushed to her mind. She flushed with embarrassment and slapped a hand over her mouth, hoping Franklin didn’t think she was impertinent. But at the same time, the image seemed so enticing, so exciting, so right.

A long silence followed before he called back, “That would be something, wouldn’t it?” His voice was low and rough, with a note of something…something
spicy
in it.

A slow shiver began at the bottom of Corva’s spine and spread through her in warm waves. She waited until the water on the stove was at a full boil before wrapping a towel around the handle of the biggest pot to carry it into the main room and over to the tub.

Her plan was to avoid Franklin’s eyes, in case he could glean the intimate nature of her thoughts. He was her husband, with all that entailed, but shouldn’t she wait for him to act on the sizzling energy between them that their kiss on the baseball diamond had sparked? The plan to avoid looking directly at him went out the window when their eyes met. Franklin practically glowed with admiration for her as he set up a tall, painted screen between the tub and the sofa.

They regarded each other in charged silence for a moment before Franklin cleared his throat and said, “I figure we can take turns.” He unfolded the screen all the way. “You go first and I’ll wait on the sofa, then I’ll wash.”

Twin feelings of excitement and disappointment flooded Corva from both sides, leaving her stunned and shy. Was she wrong about the energy pulsing between them? She marched up to the tub and emptied the boiling water. Maybe she had imagined the hunger in his eyes on the wagon ride home, was imagining it now. She knew so little about intimacies between men and women that she could be getting it all wrong.

“I suppose everyone in town will know who I am now,” she made conversation to hide her uncertainty, returning to the kitchen to get the other pot and kettle of boiling water. She didn’t want to be wrong about the shift in their relationship.

Franklin chuckled. “No doubt.”

He had already removed his jacket and laid it over the arm of the sofa as she carried the pot and kettle to the tub, and now sat, removing his braces. Corva was sorely tempted to watch him peel them off completely, but if she wanted a bath that was even a little warm, she needed to boil more water.

“I take it that sort of thing doesn’t usually happen in baseball games.” She carried the pot and kettle back to the kitchen to refill and reheat.

“I should say not,” Franklin laughed.

The instinct to read volumes into that comment had Corva clenching her jaw in frustration with herself. Why was it so easy to believe people thought the worst of her and so hard to accept compliments when they came?

“The best part is that the Bears lost,” Franklin continued, shuffling something in the other room. “That ought to keep Bonneville quiet for a while.”

“It won’t make him twice as mad about the calves?” She dipped her fingers in the water to test how fast it was heating, then crossed to the doorway to wait.

Her heart stopped beating and a shiver passed through her at the sight of Franklin standing in front of the sofa, facing to the side, with his shirt and shoes off. He’d removed the braces from his legs too, and stood there in nothing but his trousers. Aside from those trousers being crumpled where the braces had been buckled, he looked every bit a whole, fit man.

“Possibly,” he went on, not seeing her watching him. “But it’s just as likely he’ll lay low for a while to avoid any sort of talk with his name in it.”

He turned to face her. Their eyes met. Swirls of warmth of a sort she’d never felt before pulsed through her. It was too complex to call admiration. All Corva knew was that she wanted to keep looking and looking at her husband, and more. The look was in his eyes too, growing fiercer by the moment.

“Sorry.” He twisted as if he might reach for something to cover himself, but without his braces, he wobbled dangerously and had to hold still to regain his balance. Once he had, he lifted his arms in a helpless gesture. “I hope you don’t mind. We are married, after all.”

“I don’t mind.” Her voice came out in a rough squeak. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him—the lean lines of his torso, the broadness of his shoulders, the dusting of dark hair that converged into a line below his navel and ran down to his waistband. The contours below his waistband.

She was saved by the bubble of boiling water on the stove behind her, and whipped around, rushing to the stove. Her cheeks were far hotter than the kettle and pots, and so were other parts of her. The ache and pull inside of her was both exciting and nerve-wracking. Was she supposed to feel that way at the sight of a man’s chest? The blessedly few times she’d caught her uncle in a state of undress had inspired revulsion, not this…yearning.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she whispered to herself, grabbing the larger pot from the stove.

When she returned to the main room to pour the water into the tub, Franklin had moved to a cupboard at the side of the room and was searching through cakes of soap, towels draped over his bare arm. Heaven help her, but his back looked as good as his front, not to mention his backside. She rushed back into the kitchen to fetch the rest of the water before her thoughts drifted any further.

By the time she poured out the last of the boiled water and returned the empty vessels to the kitchen, the main room was far hotter than she remembered.

“I’ve set the towels and soap on a stool by the tub,” Franklin said as he walked carefully to the sofa on the other side of the screen from the tub. “There’s a washcloth for you draped over the side of the tub. Don’t worry about getting dirt on the floor as you undress. We can clean that up later. Do you need help with buttons?”

A hitch caught in Corva’s chest. She had done up the buttons herself, so she could undo them too, but that nervous, excited part of her nodded and stepped forward. Her heart raced a mile a minute as she reached him, then turned her back to him.

His fingers brushed the back of her neck as he undid the top button of her high collar, and a bolt of electricity zipped through her. “How accomplished of a seamstress are you?”

“Hmm?” His feather-light touch as he worked on her buttons was too much of a distraction for her to form a real answer, or comprehend what he’d asked. His warm, throaty chuckle that followed didn’t help her focus at all.

“I don’t know much about women’s dresses, but this one looks like it’s had it.” His hands reached the curve of her spine between her shoulder blades. “You can try to repair it if you want, but I’m more than happy to buy you a whole closet full of new clothes. That’s actually something I’ve wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?” The single word came out as a shaky trill.

He paused as he reached the top of her chemise. For a moment, even the air stood still. He leaned closer to her. Corva could feel his heat, feel the whisper of his breath against her neck. His hands continued down, undoing buttons, slower, as if savoring each one.

“I’m your husband.” His voice was heavy with promise, the words tickling against her skin with such intensity that she tensed. “I’ll give you anything you want, all you have to do is ask.”

Her dress sagged loose around her as he finished with the buttons at her waist. She gasped, rippling with longing, as he slid his hands around her waist to her stomach against the stays of her corset. His lips brushed the side of her neck, sending a flash of fire through her. She’d seen firsthand the power that fire could have, but never had she imagined that she would want to surrender herself to it.

He moved one hand away from her waist, brushing up her side, then pushing her dress off her shoulder and down her arm. His lips followed, tracing a line from her neck to the top of her arm. Each gentle kiss filled her with more and more of a sense of need. She needed him in far more ways than as her protector and provider.

She let him slide her sleeves down her arms one at a time, then with a tenderness that left her trembling, pushed her dress and petticoat over her hips. They spilled like a puddle to the floor. His bare arms circled around her, the heat of his skin raising gooseflesh on hers. He spread a hand over her stomach, easing her back against him, while his other hand rested on her hip with a heady mixture of reassurance and possession.

“Sh-shouldn’t we bathe?” Corva winced as soon as the words were out. Her heart didn’t want to stop this beautiful, new exploration, it wanted to run headlong into it.

“You’re right,” Franklin murmured against her ear. “
We
should.”

The dark timbre of his voice sent another wave of trembling through her. It was only just settling and spreading through her when he inched back and twisted her to face him. Her split-second of disappointment blossomed to a physical ache at the sight of his eyes, glowing with heat and need and things she couldn’t begin to put a name to. He leaned toward her, and for a glorious moment, she thought he would kiss her. At the last second, he stopped himself, lowering his eyes.

He took her hand, steadying her as she stepped out of the pool of her discarded clothes, then led her around to the other side of the screen. The fire in the fireplace crackled merrily, and a faint wisp of steam rose from the fragrant water in the tub.

“We’re not both going to fit,” she whispered, heart fluttering.

“No, we’re not,” he agreed. It didn’t seem to bother him. He reached for her waist, pressing her corset to unhook the front inch by inch.

Corva’s head spun with desire as he freed her, tossing her corset aside. He brushed her waist with both hands, and just when she thought she might turn liquid with expectation, he slipped his hands under the worn cotton of her chemise and lifted it up. She was so startled by the sudden gesture that she raised her arms, letting him pull the garment up over her head. That left her standing in front of him in nothing but her drawers.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. He leaned toward her, brushing her lips with his as his hands searched for the tie of her drawers.

One tug and a push, and she was standing before him naked. He swayed back to look at her. No one, no man, had ever stood gazing at her naked body. She fought the urge to cover herself, her breath catching in her throat as she realized she would much rather have him cover her instead. She wanted to feel his hands on her body in all of those special places reserved for a husband.