Big Sky Rancher Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”
    â€œWhere East?” he asked, his brow puckering as if he considered her request valid.
    â€œAnywhere,” she said. “Anywhere but here.”
    â€œI couldn’t possibly allow my wife to run off before we’ve even begun our marriage,” he announced after a moment’s deliberation. “I promised to cherish you until death parts us, and I haven’t even started with that part of the bargain.”
    â€œI don’t want to be cherished,” she blurted, only too aware of where this conversation was heading.
    â€œYou don’t?” he asked. “I’d think being cherished would make a woman, or a man, for that matter, feel kinda special, sorta like a present waiting to be opened and enjoyed.”
    â€œI’m not a present. I’m a woman.”
    He grinned. “Yeah. I noticed.”
    Indeed, he could hardly help but notice, she thought. Her front was plastered up against him, and now that he’d moved his hand a bit, she felt the pressure of his chest against her tender breasts. Not to mention a strangely formed part of his anatomy that persisted in nudging her belly, as if offering a reminder of something she needed to know.
    â€œStop it,” she said, responding to the pressure of his body against hers.
    â€œStop what?” he asked, one big hand against her lower back, the other on her chin again, as if he could not decide just where his lips would take hold. It seemed that her mouth was elected, and he suckled her bottom lip, then transferred his attention to her throat, where he nuzzled and murmured faint words she strained to hear.
    None of them made any sense to her, her ears only catching a mishmash of sounds that seemed foreign to her. Something about her being sweet and soft, and smelling good. And wasn’t that a bit of nonsense.
    She’d never been called sweet, having been a sassy child,forever in trouble because of her determination to have the last word in any dispute. And not by the greatest stretch of the imagination could she be described as smelling good. She wore no perfume or toilet water, and the only scent on her skin was that of soap and the powder puff she used after bathing, a vanity that seemed to getting her deeper into trouble by the minute.
    She bent her head to one side, then the other, straining to remove herself from him, all to no avail. He was persistent, his hands roving over her hips and then to her waist, his long fingers almost circling her ribs. His thumbs were pushing at the bottom curve of her breasts, lifting them higher, pressing them together and causing her to shiver.
    He leaned back a bit and looked down at his accomplishment. She was almost indecent, her bosom outlined by her shirtwaist, her flesh mounded over his hands as though her breasts might spill out of her clothing, given any encouragement at all. And Lucas seemed to be very good at encouraging illicit behavior in several parts of her body.
    She tingled in places she’d rarely been aware of in her twenty-three years. Even as she looked down, the man ran his fingers over the prominent crests that puckered at his advance. She shivered again, feeling a slender thread of fire take hold in the depths of her belly.
    â€œI think we’ve messed around long enough,” Lucas said, his face taut, his eyes half hidden by long lashes as he watched her. A line of ruddy color touched his cheekbones and his breathing seemed erratic.
    â€œThen let me go,” she managed to whimper, fearful of his next move.
    â€œI’m going to take you upstairs and show you your newbedroom,” he told her, and she caught her breath. The ways and means of how men and women came together in the act of marriage was a secret her mother had not seen fit to share with her.
    Neither had her sister, Alma, but then, there hadn’t seemed to be any love lost between that gentle soul and Kyle, the brute she’d