Fire on the Plains (Western Fire) (15 page)

“Hey, mister, what changed your mind?” the saucy whore called to his backside.

“I’m a married man,” Ben muttered before he shouldered his way past the swinging batwing doors.

“Wake up,” Ben ordered as he
set the oil lamp on the table beside his wife’s bed.

Long hours had passed since he
’d left the saloon. Plenty of time for his pent-up frustration to reach the boiling point. Not giving Lydia a chance to protest the intrusion, Ben pulled the covers off of the feather tick in one fell swoop.

When Lydia opened her mouth to scream,
Ben quickly muffled her frightened exclamation with the palm of his hand.

“Shh. It’s just your husband
paying a late night visit,” he rasped as he swung a leg over her nightgown-clad torso. At the first signs of groggy recognition, Ben removed his hand from Lydia’s mouth. “Now, you listen, and you listen good. Since the day I married you, you’ve done nothing but shun me with those queenly airs of your. For four weeks now I’ve been tormented with thoughts of you. And tonight you’re going to get your comeuppance,” he belligerently announced, his braggadocio buoyed by nearly half a bottle of whiskey.

“The only reason I accepted you
r marriage proposal was because I liked the idea of having a voluptuous, red-headed woman to share my bed,” Ben continued. “Hell, I figured that being a widow, you’d be ready and willing. And while you might not be willing, you better get ready because tonight I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”

With a look of unmitigated disdain, Lydia recoiled against the bed pillows. “You’re inebriated!” she hissed as she attempted to wiggle out from under him.

“Yeah, well, you know what the preacher said, ‘for better or for worse.’ Guess tonight you’ll just have to settle for worse.” Leering, Ben palmed his painfully erect groin. “As you can plainly see, Mrs. Strong, I’m decidedly worse for wear this evening.”

Lydia glanced at the swollen lump between his
hips. “You, sir, should be ashamed of yourself!”

Crouched over top of her, Ben leaned back on his haunches
. Snickering crudely, he glanced at the front of his trousers. “What? You want me to apologize for
that
?” Capturing her wrists in his hands, he stretched Lydia’s arms above her head before heavily leaning into her. “Did it ever occur to you that if you weren’t so damned beautiful, I wouldn’t be in this condition? Hmm? Did you ever think about
that
, Mrs. Strong?”

“Get off me!”

“Not until I’m finished with you.”

Frantically, Lydia squirmed beneath him, unknowingly infla
ming Ben’s passions even more.

Lord, but
I like seeing her like this.

While Lydia’s
passionate indignation and outraged fury made it
seem
like she didn’t want him, Ben knew better. Even between the layers of their clothing, he could feel her hardened nipples boring into his chest. Just as he could feel her woman’s mound shoved against his aching crotch. And then there was the arousing sight of her trembling full lips.

Damn, but she ha
s a sweet pair of lips on her.

As if reading his thoughts, Lydia twisted her head, refusing to let him kiss her.

“Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine,” she intoned, burrowing her face as deep as she could into the feather pillow.

“Why
, you sanctimonious little—”

Without a thought to gentleness, Ben released
Lydia’s wrists and grabbed her by the chin, jerking her head around so that he could kiss her proper. Good and proper, his tongue thrusting past the barrier of her tightly clenched lips. Pressing his fingers into her jaw, he forced her mouth open. He then plunged his tongue back-and-forth, his hips moving to the same fierce rhythm.

Ben
kissed her for as long as he could until, needing to pull air into his lungs, he had no choice but to ease up on her. Resting his forehead on Lydia’s, he took several deep, uneven breaths, his fingers still clamped around her jaw.

Lydia quivered beneath him, her breath coming in small, pitiful whimpers. Clearly, she’d lost the will to fight back.

“I’m b-begging you, Ben. Not like this . . . not in anger.”

The
pathetic plea hit Ben with the force of a well-aimed artillery round.

Releasing
his hold on Lydia’s jaw, Ben slid his hand up the side of her cheek, his fingers encountering a wet track of tears. As he stared at Lydia’s flushed face, he was suddenly hit with a wave of self-revulsion.

Christ
. Another minute more and I would have raped my own wife.

“I’m sorry, Lydia. I
—”

I wanted you so bad
ly that I was going to force myself on you. And damn the consequences.

U
nable to look his wife in the eye for fear of seeing her scorn and repulsion, Ben rolled away from the mattress and rose to his feet.

“I bought you a new dress,” he mumbled
dejectedly as he gestured to the paper-wrapped parcel on the night table.

A
few moments later, as he reached for the door knob, Ben thought about turning around; thought about going down on his knees and begging Lydia to forgive him. But he knew that his plea would fall on deaf ears. What he’d done, here, this night, was unforgivable.

Closing the
bedroom door, Ben made his way down the darkened hallway, the floorboards creaking beneath his booted weight.

Maybe
I’ve lived with violence for so long that I’m no longer fit to live amongst good, decent folk.
Hell, what kind of man would brutalize his own wife, accosting her like a rutting animal?

A damned pitiful excuse
for a man, that’s who.

Leaving Walks Tall’s house as quietly as he’d entered it, Ben made his way to the Conestoga wagon. When he spied the
empty bottle of whiskey on the tailgate, he angrily tossed it as far as he could.

Not that he could blame his despicable behavior on alcohol.
He more than likely would have barged his way into Lydia’s room even if he’d been sober. He’d wanted her
that
badly.

Christ
. Look at me. I
still
want her.

H
ating himself for what he was about to do, Ben leaned against the wagon box. While even thinking about the act filled him with shame, he knew that he had to do
something
or go stark raving mad.

Quickly u
nbuttoning his trousers, he wrapped his hand around the painfully distended hunk of flesh. Simply wanting to get it over with as quickly as possible, he set a furious pace, his body taut as a stretched bow string.

As he tightened
his grip, Ben conjured
her
image in his mind’s eye, remembering the one time that he’d cast his gaze upon wife’s beautiful, naked bosom.

Oh, Lord,
what I would like to do to those breasts
.

If he could, he’d
put his lips on one of those big pink nipples and noisily suckle her. After which, he’d reach between her legs and dip a finger into her wet slit so he could slather her nipples with her own womanly juices while he sucked on her some more. And then, moaning from the pleasure of it, she’d return the favor, one of those soft, pretty hands of hers wrapping around his cock as she—

“Lydia!”

His wife’s name slipped past Ben’s lips like a tortured groan as the manly sap left his body in a hot, jerky burst. And though he shuddered violently from the force of his climax, Ben knew that he hadn’t found the relief that he’d been seeking.

God help
me, I
still
want my wife.

“I brought you some coffee.”

Somewhat warily, Lydia stepped into the back of the Conestoga, a cup of hot coffee grasped in her hand. From the clothes and other items haphazardly strewn about the cramped space, she deduced that her husband had spent a restless night.

“
Are you sure that you want to be alone with me?” Ben asked her, a guarded look on his face.

Lydia set the mug of coffee on top of a barrel, pointedly ignoring the question. Just as she tried to ignore Ben’s bare chest and hastily buttoned trousers, the top two buttons of which were undone. Having
observed him from her bedroom window, she knew that he’d recently bathed in the river that criss-crossed Walks Tall’s farm. Unable to tear her gaze away, she’d watched as he’d plunged, spread-eagle, into the sparkling sun-kissed river. Like a lost soul seeking redemption.

“Had I known
that you wished to bathe this morning, I would have heated you some water.”

“I needed a cold bath,”
Ben mumbled. Reaching for the coffee mug, he took a sip, grimacing as the scalding brew passed his lips. “Where’s Dixie?”

“She’s helping Walks Tall mend fences.”

Battling a case of nervous jitters, Lydia held out her green cotton skirt. “My new dress fits me well, don’t you think?”

When
Ben failed to answer, she let the skirt fall from her hands. At a sudden loss for words, she pointed toward the opened canvas flaps. “The temperature outside seems most—” Flustered, Lydia stopped in mid-sentence, having caught herself about to inanely prognosticate on the weather.

Glancing at the clean work shirt
draped over a nearby barrel, she was half-way tempted to ask Ben to don it. His manly dishabille was making a trying subject that much more difficult to address.

“Listen, Lydia, about last night . . . I know that
—”

“
I did not want to share my bed with you,” she said over top of Ben, forestalling his apology.

I know.”

“No, you don’t know,” she countered with a shake of the head, uncertain how to explain that while she’d been outraged by his drunken overtures, she was also sad-hearted by the deplorable incident.

“You don’t have to worry, Lydia. I’m not a drunkard
,” Ben said quietly. Turning away from her, he ran a frustrated hand through his still damp hair as he paced back-and-forth in front of the bed. A few moments later, coming to a halt, he fixed his gaze on her, a penitent look in his eyes. “Whether you believe me or not, I’m not the kind of man to drown my sorrows in a bottle. It’s just that last night I wanted you so badly that I . . . I couldn’t stop myself.”

“Please, Ben. I didn’t come here to chastise you. I came here because I want
to explain why I spurned your affections.”

“Don’t whitewash what happened. We both know
that there wasn’t anything affectionate about it.”

Grabbing his clean shirt, Ben pulled it over his head.
He then sat on the edge of the bed, dejectedly holding his head in his hands.

Long moments
passed before he raised his head and peered over at her. “Guess I proved once and for all that I don’t measure up to your beloved Saint Jim,” he said with a self-deprecating grimace.

While
she wanted to berate her husband for having made such a foolish remark, Lydia also wanted to put her arms around him and to give solace. A man of good conscience, Ben was clearly ashamed of his behavior the previous evening. Because of that shame, he was now suffering the bitter pangs of self-reproach. To further muddy the waters, Lydia intuited that he also suffered from a deep-seated jealousy of her first husband. Much to her shame, she was the one who’d planted the seeds of Ben’s dark jealousy, having cultivated his jaundiced suspicions by continuing to dress in mourning even after they’d been wed.

And by stubbornly refusing
to part with my wedding band.

Demurely lifting her skirt,
Lydia seated herself beside Ben. As they both stared at the back of the wagon, the only sound to break the silence was the industrious hum of a bee vainly searching the premises for a flower to pollinate.

“He was no saint,” Lydia said at last, her voice barely audible. “He was a great many things. But no one would ever accuse him of having been a saint.”