His Perfect Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch - Spicy Version Book 1) (12 page)

Instead, he bent carefully to the side, taking up a washcloth and dipping it in the warm water. When he straightened, he brought the washcloth to her shoulder and squeezed. Tendrils of water slithered along her overheated skin, running in rivulets around her breast, down her back, reaching the curve of her belly and disappearing into the curls between her legs. She gasped, and Franklin sucked in a breath, the heat in his eyes flaring as he followed the trails of water down her body. He stooped again, unsteady, to wet the cloth, then squeezed water over her other shoulder. It tickled across her skin, causing prickles and aches. Her breasts grew heavy, her nipples tightening. The pressure between her thighs was almost unbearable.

“Franklin,” she whispered, unsure if it was a plea or a prayer.

“I could look at you like this all day,” he murmured, his eyes devouring her. “You’re perfect.” He dropped the washcloth, sliding his hands over her wet hips and up her sides to cup her breasts. She watched the path he traced, noting the bulge that had formed in his trousers. It made her knees weak and the ache between her thighs flare. “But I don’t know how much longer I can stand.”

She caught her breath when he lowered his eyes. His hands remained on her breasts, his thumbs stroking her nipples. “We could…” She swallowed, licked her lips. “We could go to your bed.”

His eyes flickered up to meet hers, shining with desire. “We could.”

Still, he didn’t move. “I…I want to.”

That sealed it. He surged into her, mouth meeting hers in a kiss that seared her to her soul. Too many new, wonderful sensations struck her at once—the play of his tongue against hers, the press of her breasts against his bare chest, the pressure of that hard part of him against her hip. She wanted all of it at once, and she wanted to experience each part on its own. He brushed a hand down over the small of her back, caressing her backside and teasing his fingertips along the cleft to the point where she let out a sound of pleasure she hadn’t known she could make.

Franklin swayed into motion. It was difficult for him to move fast without his braces, but with Corva helping, they shifted into the bedroom, rolling onto Franklin’s bed. He stretched himself over her as she lay on her back at first, kissing her lips, her jaw, and her neck, while his hand teased her breast to the point where she hummed with pleasure. But when he reached for the waist of his pants, his coordination faltered and he dropped to her side, blowing out a frustrated breath.

“Let me,” she whispered, fighting to hold onto her confidence.

Franklin relaxed onto his back, and she lifted to her knees beside him. Her heart thundered in her chest. She’d never even dreamed of undressing a man before. Her hands shook as she unclasped the fastening of his trousers. She licked her lips as she pushed them open and pulled at the ties of his undershorts. When everything was loose around his hips, she gathered her courage and drew them down.

Franklin gasped as the stiff, strange part of himself burst free. Corva blinked, a shiver sliding down her back and swirling through her core, as it sprung up, laying against his abdomen. His shaft was flushed and thick and as long as her hand. The tip flared and glistened with moisture. A flash of fear cut through her, but just as quickly it was overpowered by curiosity, the need to touch, and the desire to know what it meant and what it could do. She tugged Franklin’s trousers down his legs, so eager that she almost didn’t see.

One flickering glance to his thighs and calves as she pulled his trousers all the way off, and Corva froze, her heart breaking. Franklin’s legs were a scarred mass of crisscrossing lines. His muscles tensed beneath his damaged skin, creating uneven plains and curves, as if they had healed wrong over bones that no longer ran the way they were supposed to. One of his knees wasn’t where it should have been, and the ridges of his shins were broken and scarred. Bruises peppered his flesh where his braces must have pinched.

“Oh, Franklin,” she whispered. It was a wonder he could walk at all.

Franklin cleared his throat and propped himself on his elbows. “Please don’t look,” he said, voice filled with a decade of regret. “Please don’t—”

He sucked in a breath as she stroked from his calf to his thigh.

Corva flinched back. “Does that hurt?”

He shook his head, and, if Corva wasn’t seeing things, his staff twitched. “No one has touched my legs since—”

She dared herself to run her fingers from his calf to his thigh again. He let out a low growl and lowered himself to his back, closing his eyes. Corva repeated the touch, exploring further, and eliciting the most exciting sounds from him. Her body warmed and came alive again at the suggestion that she was giving him pleasure.

She ventured higher with her strokes, biting her lip as she caressed the tight sack beneath his shaft, then brushed her shaking fingers up his length. Franklin gasped, his eyes flying open. He jolted into action, capturing her and drawing her up alongside him, then twisting so that she was on her back with him above her before she could catch her breath.

“What?” She panicked. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” He nestled between her legs, prompting her to spread her hips so that he fit more closely. “It’s only that I’m too aroused already, and once a man reaches a certain point, he can spill his seed before he’s ready.”

Corva opened her mouth to ask a hundred questions in one, but Franklin silenced her with a kiss. She sighed as their lips met, their tongues touched. Their bodies seemed made to slide together. Her skin was still damp, but whether from the bathwater or sweat she was no longer sure. All she knew was that it was bliss itself to press into him, flesh meeting flesh, and to circle her arms around him. No one had ever told her what to expect from her husband in bed, but her body knew at least part of what it wanted. She opened her hips more and more on instinct alone as Franklin ground against her.

His hand reached between them, caressing her thigh and pushing it wider. It felt so wonderful, so right, that she hummed in response, pressing her fingertips into his back. When his fingers delved between her legs, she sighed and arched toward his touch. He brushed across a part of her that flared with pleasure more intense than anything she’d ever felt, and she bucked and cried out.

“Good,” he whispered against her neck, and continued to circle around that spot.

Corva closed her eyes and tilted her head back, pressing into his hand as he stroked pure joy through her. Their bodies were so close, so many parts of them touching. He nipped at her neck, his teeth a revelation. But more and more of her focus was on the ache between her hips that pitched higher and tighter and stronger until something within her burst into a flood of pulsing pleasure.

She was still riding high on the waves of that pleasure when he shifted above her and thrust. Her eyes flew wide as an impossible fullness joined the softening waves of pleasure within her. Was there a twinge of pain? She couldn’t tell through the rightness of it. Franklin groaned deep in his chest, and she felt that stretching, hot fullness thrust again and again and again. The waves of pleasure that had ridden themselves out pitched again, and she found herself crying out with each of his thrusts.

All at once, he sighed above her, then slowly, gradually, his rocking thrusts drained of power as he came to rest on top of her. For a brief, perfect moment, he rested his full weight on her. It was crushing, but there was something beautiful in it. She was all his, inside of her and around her.

At last, breath shaky, Franklin withdrew and rolled to the side. He reached for her, drawing her close and positioning her against him, in spite of the intense heat that still flared between them. To Corva, it felt perfect. Her body was limp and stretched in the most amazing ways, but it was her heart that felt the deepest change. She may have been a bride before, but now she was a wife.

Franklin awoke bright and early the next morning to a sensation he hadn’t felt in years—contentment. Yes, his legs ached a little, he had a full day of ranch work ahead of him, and chances were that Bonneville would cause some sort of trouble. But he was warm and relaxed in bed, and he held his sleeping wife in his arms.

Corva fit so perfectly against him. He smiled and planted a soft kiss on her shoulder at the memory of all they’d shared the night before, careful not to wake her. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about what it would be like to take her to bed, but the reality of the two of them together was a thousand times more precious than anything he had imagined. Most importantly of all, she had seen his legs, seen the scars and the bruises, and wanted him anyhow.

He slipped out of bed as silently as he could, checking constantly to be sure he didn’t disturb Corva. He was always a little unsteady in the morning, but as he crept around the bed, grabbed clean clothes, and snuck out into the main room, using the rails built into the wall to stay upright, it was as if his heart gave him wings.

The mess that waited for him by the fireplace brought him firmly back to earth with a thud. His brass bathtub still sat by the fire, the water cooled to room-temperature. The floor was still soggy in spots around it, and Corva’s ruined, dirty dress lay in a sodden heap on the floor. Her chemise and drawers were still damp from the way he’d sluiced water over her shoulders, watching it trickle down the full curves of her—

He sucked in a breath to stop his body’s reaction at the images flooding his mind. He had work to do, and it would be impossible if he got carried away and slipped back into bed with his wife. His beautiful, perfect wife.

The best way to combat ill-timed desire was to work it off. Franklin moved to the sofa to dress, then strapped on his braces, which still sat on the floor where he’d left them. Normally, he would wait until the last minute to put them on, but one look around the room told him he would need extra strength that morning.

By the time Corva stepped out of the bedroom, dressed in one of her simple work dresses, her hair pulled back in a braid, Franklin had emptied the tub, moved their old clothes to the laundry basket, and was mopping the floor. He paused what he was doing to tell her, “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” A pink blush tinted her cheeks, and she glanced down, smiling from ear to ear.

Her modest beauty took Franklin’s breath away and left him seriously debating forgetting about work and spending the rest of the day in bed with her.

“Are you hungry?” she asked a moment later, shaking herself out of her shyness and crossing the room to the kitchen. “I should have gotten up earlier to start breakfast. Something hearty this morning, I think.”

Franklin abandoned his mop to follow her. He caught up to her at the kitchen counter, closing his arms around her. Corva gasped at his touch, then turned to face him. He swept her into an embrace, and slanted his mouth over hers in a kiss that would say far more than any feeble words he tried to put together.

She relaxed into him, resting her head against his shoulder for a moment when he ended their kiss.

“Yes,” he murmured, settling his hands at her waist, loving the feeling of her against him. “Something hearty is definitely in order.”

He kissed her again, then let her go, though it took a colossal effort. How did husbands across the world ever let their wives go once they had them in their arms?

The answer came in the form of a room that needed him to finish cleaning it and a breakfast that wouldn’t make itself. The work was easy now that he had this new song in his heart. He was certain that everything else in his life would be bright and new too.

“I might try riding out with the boys to manage the herd today,” he told Corva as they sat across the breakfast table together. Suddenly, sharing every detail of his daily life with her was vital. “Maybe if Bonneville sees that we’re serious about keeping an eye on our cattle, he and his men won’t try anything funny. Not that they’d dare try anything after yesterday.”

“I suppose not.” Corva pushed her eggs around her plate with her fork, her cheeks still as pink as roses.

“It’s calving season anyhow, so we’re likely to see a few more born on any given day. The sooner we can get them back to the barnyard where they can be tended to, the better.”

“Yes.” She reached for her coffee, not meeting his eyes.

“I’ll try to get back here early tonight for supper,” he went on, a long-forgotten smile spreading across his lips. It felt so good to smile. It felt good to share. “Not sure what we could fix to eat, but we’ll find something.”

“I…I could go in to the mercantile and do some shopping,” Corva offered.

“What a grand idea. That way you can get out of the house a bit and maybe even see some of the people you met yesterday.” He pushed his chair back and stood, carrying his plate and coffee mug to the kitchen. He glanced across one of Corva’s paintings that hadn’t been hung as he went. It leaned against the wall as if waiting for a home. “Maybe you could take some of your paintings with you,” he suggested. “I bet Lex Kline would be willing to sell them in his store. You might be able to make some decent pocket money while you’re at it.”

A long pause followed as he deposited his dishes in the sink before a small, hesitant, “Yes, maybe,” floated through the doorway.

Franklin frowned. That didn’t sound right. Corva was happy this morning. Shy, but happy.

He left the kitchen and crossed to the front door and the peg where he hung his work hat and his cane. Corva was still seated at the table, staring at one of her paintings on the wall across from her seat at the table.