Lily's Secrets [Elk Creek 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (9 page)

“Wyatt…”

“I want you.”

“We can’t do this now,” she panted.

“You’re my wife. I want you.” He circled his hips, pressing his cock against her slit to emphasize his point, and Lily squeezed her eyes tight as if to fight off her own desires.

When her hands crept up the sides of his face before burrowing in his hair, Wyatt thought he would explode like a stack of lit dynamite.

She was his Lily, soft and warm and giving like she had been before her abduction, but she was different, too. There was something more…solid and substantial about her. Maybe it was because of all she had seen and been through—the pain and uncertainty.

He couldn’t say he didn’t appreciate the difference. He liked that her gentleness had been honed around the edges to reveal a subtle hardness. Despite the unfortunate experiences that must have wrought this, he liked the new sexual awareness he’d sensed in Lily since her return.

When he touched her it was like being with a new woman, a different woman, but not.

Was that what she felt when she touched Dakota? Did she want to have her cake and eat it, too, being with him and being with Wyatt—two different men whose only similarity lay in their connection to her? Was she even thinking of being with both of them together, at the same time?

He closed his eyes against the notion but couldn’t escape the vision of Lily writhing between him and the other man as they brought her to climax.

Wyatt groaned deep in his throat at the strikingly sinful picture and pressed his mouth against the side of her neck as if to wipe it from his thoughts. He licked and nibbled her slightly salty skin, reacquainting himself with the taste of her.

He remembered her female musk, the sweet, tart flavor of her pussy. Most of all he recalled the shock and surprise on Lily’s face when he had planted his face between her legs and licked her moist folds before inserting his fingers inside her pussy.

Wyatt wanted that again—now. He wanted to feel her pussy muscles clutch hard around his fingers, He wanted to feel her shudder as he prepared her for his cock.

Someone knocked on the doorjamb behind them and Lily jerked back, pressing herself against the wall while Wyatt dragged himself away from her to look over his shoulder.

“Sorry to interrupt. I can see you two are busy.”

Wyatt noticed the twinkle in the doctor’s blue eyes and felt his own face heat. He couldn’t remember being this self-conscious around Doctor Hopwood. He wondered if he felt so awkward around the newcomer because Doctor Malloy was younger than Hopwood and seemed to know exactly what was on Wyatt’s mind as well as in his pants.

He remembered how he and Lily had first met the doctor and his wife and brother and mulled over all the rumors following the trio. He felt his blush deepen.

Lily pushed by Wyatt to stand in front of Doctor Malloy before Wyatt could let his imagination plumb run away from him.

“How is Dakota faring, Doctor?”

He smiled and put a tender hand on her shoulder. “It looks like you’ve been taking very good care of our patient, Lily.”

She sighed as if in relief.

Wyatt noticed how she nervously twisted the front of the apron she was wearing in her hands. He stepped beside her and slid his arm around her waist and almost sighed himself when she sagged against him, letting his body support hers.

Doctor Malloy squeezed her shoulder in a reassuring motion. “He’s going to be just fine. There’s no fever, no sign of infection, and the wound is healing nicely. He should be up and around and out of your hair as soon as he’s ready.”

“That’s good news,” Wyatt said.

“Yes, that is good news,” Lily said, but Wyatt noticed that she didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the possibility of Dakota soon being able to leave and get “out of their hair.”

He wondered if maybe he should be enthusiastic himself.

It was after all always better to keep one’s friends close and one’s enemies even closer.

Wyatt had yet to decide into which category Dakota fell.

Since the infamous day in the hallway with Wyatt, Lily did everything she could to avoid Dakota. Except for the times of days when she checked his bandages and brought him food and drink, she barely spoke to him or put herself in his company more than necessary.

She needed space and time to sort out her feelings for Wyatt and Dakota, and being in the same house with the two men to whom she found herself irrevocably attracted did nothing to help her emotional equilibrium.

Lily had never been so torn in her life. She had never been indecisive about what she wanted. From the time when she was a little girl and had discovered the joys of reading as well as growing up near Wyatt, she had been sure about three things in her life. She knew that she wanted to be a teacher and share her joy of learning with other children, quenching their thirst for knowledge as she quenched her own, and she knew that she wanted to be a wife to Wyatt and a mother to his children. She hadn’t had any more elaborate plans beyond being the best teacher, wife, and mother that she could be.

Her attack, rescue, and time with the Kiowas had changed all that, rearranging her priorities until she didn’t know whether she was coming or going.

Now Lily thought if she could make it from one day to the next without grieving all that she and Wyatt had lost, she was having a good day.

She wanted more than good, though. She wanted more than just existing and moving through life, insubstantial and empty, like a ghost, as Rebel had put it.

Lily looked out the window on the sun-soaked late-spring day as Wyatt tilled the acres of their rich fields. Even this early in the growing season, and despite the recent drought, she could see the harvest looked like it was going to be a good one and it was due to no small effort on Wyatt’s part.

She had no complaints where that was concerned. Whether a cowboy, carpenter, farmer, or in the capacity of any other trade at which he had tried his hand, Wyatt had always been a capable, hard worker and a good provider. What he lacked in the areas of verbalizing how and what he felt, he more than made up for with his actions and ethics.

Lily watched him lean on the handle of the shovel he had been using to dig. He tipped the Stetson he was wearing back on his head and wiped the back of a hand across his moist forehead.

She followed a trail of perspiration as it made its way down from his temple, to his chiseled jaw, and farther down the front of his throat where it disappeared beneath the red bandana he wore tied around his neck. She swallowed hard at the view, her nipples tightening when she remembered the way Wyatt had pushed himself against her in the hallway. He hadn’t hurt her, nor had he been too rough. He had been just rough enough to rouse her desire and make her hot and moist between her legs for him.

He hadn’t touched her like that in a long time, with the kind of urgent need that called out to her soul and everything in her that was female. He hadn’t made her pussy throb with longing for him since before the attack.

Lily understood Wyatt’s hesitancy and fear to initiate intimacy since she’d come back, but she’d wanted him right then more than she ever had before. Yet, her desire for her husband hadn’t dampened her desire for the exotic man who lay in their guest room just several feet away with Doctor Malloy tending to his wound. If anything, Wyatt’s possessive behavior toward her made her greedy enough to want two men at the same time. Not just any men, of course, but her husband and Dakota.

Lily shook her head against the decadent thoughts and wondered if there was anything to the stories she’d heard about Maia, her husband Doctor Malloy, and his brother Cade. If there was, how in the world did Maia handle it? How could any woman handle trying to please not just one man but two?

Maybe she was looking at it all wrong, though. Maybe it wasn’t just about her pleasing them, but them pleasing her. Two sets of skilled hands, two hungry mouths, and two probing tongues roaming her body…the possibilities were absolutely sinful and unimaginable.

Maybe, too, it wasn’t just about the physical pleasure that the three of them gave each other, but the emotional comfort and support. Speaking from experience, Lily knew the latter two were just as important in a relationship as the former, sometimes more important.

Would Wyatt ever agree to such an unholy trinity? Who was to say that Dakota wanted her enough to risk Wyatt’s wrath or that he wanted to fly in the face of convention that way?

God, this was a mess, but she didn’t regret making Wyatt bring Dakota back home so that they could take care of him. She would never regret that. She wouldn’t have been able to live with herself had they left Dakota out in the woods to die knowing that there was something they could have done to prevent it. Despite Wyatt’s animosity toward Indians, she knew he felt the same way and wasn’t as hard-hearted as he pretended to be with Dakota.

Lily blinked against the almost blinding sun to focus on the tall, well-muscled figure of her husband as he began to plow the earth again with the shovel. He had taken off his shirt and for a long moment she just watched him work, admiring his tanned skin taut over powerful back muscles and his flexing biceps as he dug, turned, and lifted shovels full of dirt.

Before her attack, Lily would have been right out there beside him, if not helping Wyatt then providing him with a midday snack and a cool glass of lemonade to quench at least one of his thirsts while she satisfied herself sneaking appreciative glances his way. Since she had returned, however, Lily had been relegated to doing only her “woman’s work” and restricted mostly to the house as if Wyatt was trying to hide her away from the world.

Sometimes she wondered if it was to protect her or because he was ashamed of her.

Wyatt allowed her to continue doing her usual domestic chores like care for the poultry, make butter, garden, sell eggs, provision the household with the staples of meat, eggs, bread, vegetables, and fruit, and pay for food items such as spices, cornmeal, coffee, and clothing. These were the household tasks without which their farm wouldn’t thrive and which were essential to their overall survival.

Wyatt, however, drew the line at her helping him in the fields with the crops and dealing with the large livestock the way she used to.

Helping Wyatt in the fields had been one of her biggest joys in life and had never felt like work to her since she didn’t consider spending time with her husband a chore, even if she was spending it doing heavy lifting. She was a fit woman, always had been. She didn’t take pleasure in idleness and she liked to stay active. Next to teaching and her and Wyatt’s sex life, her time in the fields with her husband during the days had been something to which Lily looked forward.

She had never been into neighboring, a common practice in which the married women in the territory took part that involved visiting and providing comfort and friendship in the absence of their husbands. Since her return she was even less apt to participate in this activity. She didn’t have anything against neighboring or the other women. She just didn’t have that much in common with them anymore despite growing up just outside of Elk Creek like a majority of them. She had been changed by her experiences. She was a different woman, and except for the independent and bold women in Elk Creek like Maia, Sabrina, and Rebel, Lily could no longer relate to the other females.

With the heavy farming taken away from her since Wyatt seemed to think she was too fragile to handle anything more demanding than her female chores, Lily had much more time on her hands to fret about the situation with her husband and Dakota.

Lily sighed and let the curtain fall back into place over the window, shutting out her vision of Wyatt moist with perspiration and working beneath the afternoon sun. When she turned from the window she found Dakota standing not several feet behind her and slapped a hand over her bosom with a gasp. “Goodness, you scared the bejesus out of me!”

“I am sorry, Lilybelle. It was not my intention.”

“What are you doing out of bed anyway?” Lily closed the space between them and put a hand under his elbow, easily leading him toward the nearest chair as if it was the most natural thing in the word for her to do.

She caught his smile as he took a seat, and suspected that she had only succeeded in getting him to sit down because he had allowed her to manhandle him. His next words confirmed this suspicion.

“You have the perfect personality for a school teacher.”

“Is that a nice way of calling me bossy?”

“Is that what you are? I would call you…persuasive.”

Lily chuckled. She liked his playful tone and the teasing gleam in his blue eyes. “Yes, persuasive. That’s a good word to describe me, I guess. It’s certainly a diplomatic way.”

“Why have you never returned to teaching?”

Lily shrugged and took a seat on the sofa opposite the chair he was sitting in. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Dakota frowned, and before he could express the question she saw forming, Lily asked, “Do all your people
kajika
the way you do?”

His eyes widened and she laughed at his shocked expression.

“I picked up a few things while I was with the Kiowas.”

“I am sure you picked up more than a few things.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, walking with no sound is a skill that many of my people learn at an early age.”

She wanted to ask him where his people were and why he wasn’t with them. She wanted to ask him what had happened to him out in the woods the evening she and Wyatt found him.