Lily's Secrets [Elk Creek 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (19 page)

She wanted Wyatt and Dakota to like each other, at least share the same deep affection and respect for each other that she held for each of them. Was she tempting fate and asking for too much to want that?

Lily got up and began to set the table before she had another moment to ruminate the situation without any real hope of a solution to come. When she heard footsteps several seconds later, she was glad she had put away Maia’s little “swag” bag and hadn’t gotten caught looking through its contents.

She had enough time to take a deep breath and gather herself just a little before Wyatt appeared on the threshold of the kitchen.

Lily continued to set the table, glancing at him through her lashes as she moved around the kitchen like she had a purpose. He surprised her, however, when he didn’t make any more of a move to come into the kitchen and just paused where he was.

She lifted her head, unsure of what she would see, what she hoped to see, but when she finally, fully laid her gaze on her husband, he took her breath away as if she were seeing him for the first time in her life. She wasn’t prepared for her body’s intense reaction—her nipples hardening, the moistening between her legs, the heat swirling in her belly. She had thought their lovemaking would assuage her desire. If anything, her body was more on edge, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Let me help you with that.” Wyatt had soundlessly crossed the room while she stood gaping at him. He took the plate she loosely held at her side. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he observed, staring down at her as if
she
was a ghost.

“I just…I just…”

Wyatt put the plate down on the table and took her chin in his hand, drawing her closer and placing a soft but deep kiss on her lips. He stopped just short of slipping in his tongue, pulling back to breathlessly look down at her.

“Everything fine between you and Dakota?”

He grinned and stepped back, walking to the cabinet to retrieve several pieces of silverware without answering.

Lily stood at the table with a fist on her hip, wondering if he would.

He paused in placing the silverware beside each plate, quirking up an eyebrow at her, and Lily was struck, again, by how breathtakingly handsome her husband was, how much their little boy had looked just like his father.

She drew in a shaky breath, placing her hand on the back of a chair.

Wyatt rushed to her side, pulling the chair out and helping her into it. “I was just joshing with you, Lily, not ignoring you.”

“I know that. That’s not why I—”

“Were we too…rough?”

She shook her head, thinking how she wanted him and Dakota to be rough with her again if earlier was Wyatt’s idea of rough.

Lily caught his hand and squeezed it, desperate to assure him that she was okay. She didn’t want him to retreat now after it had taken her so long to pull him out of the hole where he had been buried since her disappearance. She didn’t want him to start second-guessing himself about the decision he had made. She didn’t want him to start regretting.

Wyatt pulled out the chair opposite Lily and sat down. He took both of her hands in his, gently caressing the back of her wrists with his thumb.

She watched the motion, the contact of his callused hands in hers making her pussy tingle with anticipation.

“Everything is fine between Dakota and me.” Wyatt smiled. “We…talked.”

“You did, did you?”

Wyatt nodded. “We’re still not sure where we all stand or what it all means. We thought we’d have to hammer out those details with you.”

Lily grinned, liked the teasing smile playing at the corners of her husband’s full lips.

She cupped his face, returning his smile. Relief flooded her at the thought that he wasn’t shy with her or regretful about what he had done. He didn’t seem to hate her for bringing Dakota into their bed, either, and Lily was glad that he seemed to forgive her for wanting Dakota and wanting him, too.

“What is it?” Wyatt frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re seeing me for the first time.”

“Probably because I am.”

“Get over here, woman!”

Lily had a moment to gasp before Wyatt growled and reached for her. He picked her up out of her chair and plunked her down on his lap, holding her across his thighs and close to his chest as he bent his head to nuzzle her throat.

She cuddled close, feeling safe and on fire at the same time.

How could she be so ready for her husband again so soon after being ravished? She thought she should have been well sated after what Wyatt and Dakota had done to her, but she was as hungry as ever for Wyatt, as if he and Dakota hadn’t been deep inside her less than an hour ago.

Wyatt worked his way from her throat to her mouth, cupping her face with both hands as he thrust his tongue past her lips to tangle with hers. She tasted the banana from Thayne’s concoction and baking soda, but underneath them both she sampled Wyatt, the sweet, the tangy, the forceful. She threw her arms around his wide shoulders and hugged him tight, panting as he slid his hand in the opening of her robe.

She closed her eyes and sighed as Wyatt cupped her still-sensitive breast. “Please…”

“You don’t ever have to ask,” he whispered and lowered his head, circling her throbbing nipple with his tongue before sucking it into his mouth.

Lily shuddered in his arms. She had never felt so wanton in her life, having relations in a room outside of the bedroom. They had never gotten to this stage in their marriage, hadn’t had enough time together before she was violated and taken. She felt like she was making up for lost time the last few hours, trying to cram a lifetime, or at least the last five years, into every moment she spent with her husband now.

Had being with Wyatt and Dakota together stoked a desire she’d never known existed, or primed her body for the pleasures that each man could give her?

Lily tunneled her hands through Wyatt’s hair, luxuriating in the smooth strands. She fisted a hank at his nape, holding him flush against her with both hands as she wriggled around on his lap until she straddled his hard-muscled thighs.

Wyatt slid his hands down her body, caressing her sides before he grabbed her ass in both hands and dragged her forward, fitting her naked pussy against his hard cock.

Lily felt the heat of him through his trousers, the thump of his shaft as he thrust against her. She rode him hard, grinding her hips down as Wyatt bucked against her in a fierce, friction-producing rhythm that drove Lily to completion so fast her head spun.

Lily loosened her hold and Wyatt lifted his head to stare at her. His intense blue gaze set her aflame, pushing the confessions—about her ordeal, her and Dakota’s history—from her chest where they lodged in her throat and stayed.

She opened her mouth to speak but heard a noise at the threshold of the kitchen.

Lily turned to see Dakota’s worried look.

Did he know what she’d been about to say? Did he fear the outcome as much as she?

Dakota watched as Lily hastily untangled herself from Wyatt’s arms and practically leaped off his lap to stand beside the kitchen table.

He saw how she had to steady herself, bracing her palm atop the cherrywood. She still looked shaky to him, as if her legs were ready to give way at any moment. He sympathized with her, for after his intercourse with her earlier and now seeing her so intimate with Wyatt, Dakota was feeling a little unsteady himself.

Lily cleared her throat, pulling her robe around her body and tightening the sash, hiding her creamy, full breasts from view.

“I am sorry to interrupt you again.”

“You’re not interrupting us. Lily and I were just…reconfirming a few things.” Wyatt kicked the seat opposite him from beneath the table. “Have a seat. We were just about to eat.”

“I don’t need any help, so please.” Lily smiled before Dakota could offer.

He sensed their coordinated efforts to make him feel comfortable so with no recourse, he took the seat across from Wyatt as directed. He took pleasure in watching Lily move around the kitchen in a flurry as she finished setting and bringing food from the stove to the table.

Everything looked and smelled appetizing and Dakota’s mouth watered enough to remind him that his body actually had other hungers to feed besides his libido.

Once the food was on the table, Dakota realized this was the first time that they had all sat down to the table at one time for a meal.

Wyatt usually avoided eating in the house, preferring to take his meals out on the porch or even in the field during a break from work. Since Dakota had recovered enough to leave the bed and the bedroom, he and Lily usually took their meals together. Dakota had always missed Wyatt’s company as if a part of him had been amputated. Now that Wyatt was at the table with them, Dakota remained at a loss, missing yet another person—Little Wyatt.

It was so strange that one so small could leave such a gaping hole in the fabric of a family unit, but this was the case.

Despite Wyatt and Lily’s invitation, Dakota felt like an interloper. He did not belong here enjoying the warmth of their company, the goodness of their food. Their little son belonged here. The only reason the boy was not here was because Dakota had made the decision to keep Little Wyatt’s existence a secret for the child’s own good. Dakota had not thought the couple he had known, the broken husband and wife who had rescued him more than a week ago, had enough love and stability in their home, in their hearts, to sustain Little Wyatt’s soul. Now he knew he was wrong. There was more than enough love, if not stability, in this house. With love, however, they could work on the stability, Dakota realized.

Except now, he did not know how to tell Little Wyatt’s parents about their child’s existence, that he lived and breathed on a reservation not too far away from Elk Creek, at least as far as distance was concerned. Culturally, the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation might as well be a world away from the white man’s town.

He had known this would be difficult when he had undertaken his task and made his decision to keep the secret. Despite being in love with Lily since he had rescued her all those years ago, he just had not expected to care for Little Wyatt’s parents so much.

Dakota did not relish his position. He did not look forward to the time when he would have to tell Wyatt and Lily about their child. He did not want to see the wounded, betrayed looks in either of their eyes.

When Lily reached for his hand on the table, Dakota took it, holding her look with a grave expression of his own. He couldn’t hold her gaze for long, not when Lily gave him a quivering grin that pierced his heart and made him question how he thought he could ever get away with keeping this woman’s child from her without repercussions.

Wyatt reached for Dakota’s other hand across the table to complete the circle. The gesture humbled Dakota and made him feel equal parts traitor and honored guest.

Dakota watched as both Wyatt and Lily bowed their heads and he followed their lead. He was immediately transported back to the table at his mother and father’s home before they had been taken away from him when he was not much more than twelve.

He had lived in a home much like this, if a little more modest in stature, but not lacking in warmth and love.

Dakota wondered now what his mother or father would have done had someone kept him away from them when he had been but a helpless little boy. How much would they have grieved his loss? How hard would they have searched for him?

He knew the answers to both those questions. They would never have stopped grieving and they would never have stopped searching had they had any suspicion that he was alive.

Dakota had seen what his father had been driven to when his wife had been taken from him by white men who did not like the idea of an Indian woman, a savage, being married to a respectable white man.

His father had not been able to get justice from his own people, the white man, so had sought what he had thought the only other alternative open to him.

Dakota came back to the present with a jolt, listening to Wyatt’s voice as he recited a prayer of thanks for the food and the company of loved ones.

He watched as Wyatt glanced at Lily beneath his lashes, then felt the warmth of the other man’s feelings as Wyatt glanced at him and grinned.

Dakota squirmed in his chair, parroting Wyatt and Lily’s “Amen” before making the mistake of looking at Lily again.

Guilt washed over him. He knew, like any mother, had Lily known her child was alive she would have moved heaven and earth to be with him. She had no reason to believe he’d survived the raid, however. She had, in fact, had every reason to believe he had died with the rest of the tribe, and Dakota, up until months after the raid, had had every reason to believe Lily dead.

Once he finally tracked her down, Dakota had done nothing over the last several months to dispel Lily’s belief. He had even gone so far as to hide Lily’s existence from his grandfather.

At the time, he had convinced himself he was doing the right thing for Little Wyatt. The child had been four when the tribe had been attacked, firmly entrenched with his Indian family and educated in the ways of the Kiowa. Dakota had convinced himself that to uproot him from the familiar, especially after so traumatic an event as the raid that had killed most of his tribe, would have been cruel.

Now, however, seeing the evidence of Lily’s love, experiencing her grief, Dakota thought differently and had since she and her husband rescued him. Lily was not the type of woman to abandon someone she deeply cared for. Lily was not the type of woman who would easily forget about the son she had lost. Not to mention, by relegating Little Wyatt to life on a reservation, Dakota was depriving him of his birthright and his legal place in the white man’s world.

His parents’ world.

He knew it was just a matter of time before he told Lily and Wyatt about their son.

He did not want to open that dialogue without first thinking long and hard about what he would be doing to all concerned, however, especially Little Wyatt. Besides Lily, the child’s well-being was Dakota’s biggest concern and always had been.