Stolen Little Thing (Little Thing Series Book 1) (8 page)

Luke’s eyes widened with surprise. He propped his head in his hand and a slow grin spread across his face. “Five whole minutes?”

Esme tried to push him away. “Stop laughing. From what I overheard from some of your neighbors, you’ve made more than one or two business transactions yourself. Maybe you should tell me what you know.”

“I’m not going to tell you. I’m going to show you. You’re still shaking like a leaf even though you’re getting mad at me all over again. Nolan bought champagne. I think we need to drink a little to settle your nerves.”

Esme gasped when he threw the covers back, and strode across the room to a small table where a bottle of champagne rested in a bucket filled with ice. She laughed watching him wrestle with the bottle while he wore nothing but a pair of linen trunks.

“Is this the type of cork that needs a corkscrew or not?”

Esme laughed softly. “Just pull the cork out, Luke.”

Luke glanced at the bottle’s label. “Hell, this stuff is from France.”

“Of course it’s French. Nolan has good taste.” She looked down at her ring and noticed how the diamonds glittered in the candlelight.

The champagne was cool and crisp. Esme sat on the edge of the bed wrapped in the quilt, while Luke stood beside her, taking pins from her hair between sips of champagne. He told her what a beautiful bride she was, and how lucky he was to have her as his wife, and Esme, emboldened by the champagne, told him how handsome he’d looked both in his suit and in linen trunks. By the time the bottle was near empty, Esme was tipsy. She lay in his arms, and Luke resumed his gentle seduction.

He surprised her with his tenderness, and she was shocked the way his touch kindled desire and passion in her. Mostly Esme was astonished by her own eager response to him, her own mindless abandon. His lips and hands explored her body possessively, as though he had always owned her. Making love with Luke was nothing like what Esme had spent so many years dreading. It was nothing like the sordid affair her mother and her mother’s friends discussed in hushed tones. Far from it, and the wonder of it all rendered Esme wordless.

His body was toughened by seasons and years spent working on the ranch. Esme marveled at the span of his shoulders, shyly running her fingertips along the outline of muscle and sinew. He kissed her neck and traced a slow line down to her breasts. She knew he would touch her there, imagined it many times before, but the shock of his mouth on the curve of her breast made her heart beat wildly.

He lifted his head and smiled at her. “Don’t be afraid of me, Esme. Not ever.”

She shook her head. “I’m not.”

“You have to breathe, sweetheart.”

She exhaled and laughed with embarrassment. Tugging the sheet up to cover herself, she went on. “I didn’t know you would touch me like that
and
kiss me like that. It seems very…”

“Don’t think about it too much, because I’m only getting started. I’m going to kiss you everywhere.”

“Luke Crosby, I don’t believe you. Wicked man.” She gave him a small, playful push. “I think you’re being cruel.”

“Tonight I’m going to treat you gentle, but after that you’d better watch out.”

“You’re trying to tease me. Just like you’ve always done.”

He stroked her face with work-roughened fingertips. “I’m not teasing you when I say you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. I’m not teasing you when I say that I’m going to make you mine tonight and every night, and I’m most definitely not teasing you when I say that now you belong to me.”

Luke tugged the sheet, coaxing it from her fingers. What he wanted was to tear it from her and fall upon her and devour her. He’d been aching for her sweet body for days. No, that was a lie. It had been longer. Years. He freed the bed sheet from her grip and tossed it aside. She lay naked beneath him with a sweet, shy smile and a tremble that made lust course through his veins. 

Her skin was like cream, round full breasts, a tiny waist that flared to sweet curved hips that invited him. He slid his gaze down her slim legs and then leisurely back up. Her hair spread tousled on the pillow. Her eyes, wide and shining – part anxiety and part curiosity. Wondering. He rubbed her full lips with the pad of his thumb and traced a line down to her lovely breasts. He leaned closer and stroked her nipple with his tongue and sucked it gently.

The soft noises that came from her as he explored the lush fullness of her breasts made every thought vacate his mind. His body was hardening even more with each passing moment. She trembled in his arms. She was innocent, he reminded himself. He needed to take time. To be careful and deliberate even though every instinct inside him snarled, demanding to finally possess her.

To Esme, it felt like her skin was covered in soft sparks of pleasure. She arched under him, threaded her fingers in his hair and whimpered. When his hand drifted to her other breast and toyed wickedly, it forced her to draw a sharp breath. He cupped it. Then, with his fingertips, he slowly rolled the tip.

Arousal seeped through her, heating every fiber of her being and sending the most delicious warmth through the depths of her feminine core. Liquid need simmered and she gasped with dismay when he trailed his fingers down her belly. He lingered, stroked a single fingertip along her sex. She wanted to flee. Burning mortification scorched her and every part of her yearned to escape his wicked touch. She knew he could feel her desire and almost wished she could escape, but her wanton body betrayed her. She opened beneath him like a flower bud beckoning the warmth of the summer sun.

He settled himself over her and for the first time she felt his rigid arousal pressed against her virginal channel.

In bawdy jokes or after one too many brandies, her father always called a man’s sex a cock. Her mother, without fail, called it a manhood. Esme could only call it impossibly big. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for what surely would be shear agony.

“Open your eyes.” His voice was husky. “Look at me.”

She lifted her gaze and kept her attention on his eyes. He stroked her with his fingers and slowly entered her. The pleasure he gave her with his caress made the other discomfort more bearable at first. He eased himself in deeper, watching her closely all the while. There was a sharp stab of pain and she cried out, but he took her cry with a tender kiss.

He stilled above her and then slowly moved with gentle thrusts that, coupled with the caress, made pleasure eclipse pain. She writhed beneath him. Her body reached for something she couldn’t understand.

Luke would not relent and when she reached the heights of desire, she peaked, gripped his shoulders and cried out with exquisite pleasure. And shattered.

“Esme,” he groaned. “My gorgeous Esme.”

Her eyes closed, her mind spun. He reached under her and lifted her and began a slow, hard lovemaking that made her shudder with small tremors of ecstasy.

“Hurting you?” His voice was a deep heated warmth that washed over her.

“No, don’t stop,” she gasped.  

His grip tightened and he snarled loudly, a savage sound that tore from his throat. A moment later he sank down into her arms.

In the quiet afterwards, she clung to him. To be held by Luke was a feeling she’d imagined a thousand times before. He held her close, and as she rested her head on the powerful planes of his chest she said, “My mother and the ladies in her circle had a certain word for women who, instead of simply enduring their husband’s attention, actually found pleasure in it.”

He kissed the top of her head. He knew there were plenty of wives who felt the same way, guilt about their natural feelings. He simply held her while he marveled at how well she fit in his arms, like she’d always belonged there. Her perfume, her skin and her silken voice made his blood stir once more. He kept his eyes closed in an attempt to bring his thoughts back to the conversation.

“Maybe it’s just the champagne.” He opened his eyes to see her expression, to see if he had made her laugh.

Esme lifted her head and saw the smile curve on his lips and she smiled back at him. Her heart felt full to bursting with love for him.

“In that case,” she whispered softly. “I think there’s still a little left in the bottle.”

Amidst tangled sheets, Esme awoke late the next morning to find a white lily on the pillow beside her. The clock on the mantle showed ten o’clock as she leapt from the bed and hastily dressed in simple attire. This was her first full day as Mrs. Luke Crosby, and she wanted to dress suitably. She didn’t want to wear a humorless teaching smock, nor did she want a fancy velvet and lace-trimmed society gown. A simple material somewhere in between the two, a practical but feminine muslin dress would suit her.

Her night with Luke passed like a dream. On one hand, he’d been gentle and considerate, on the other, demanding and domineering. The idea that marriage with Luke was a necessity to shield her from her father changed around midnight when Esme was forced to admit to herself that she’d married him for the simple, irrefutable reason that there was no one else for her. He’d reminded her again of that fact again sometime before dawn.

Downstairs, she wandered into the kitchen to find Henry helping Consuelo. He nodded morosely to Esme before turning his back to her. Consuelo’s reaction was different. She brightened upon seeing Esme.

“I saved you some breakfast
mi hija
.” Consuelo often called her this endearment in Spanish. It meant: my daughter, and Esme loved the sound of it. Consuelo often extended that same sentiment to the boys, calling them
mi hijo
, but only if they were in her good graces. Luke didn’t allow anyone to smack, whip, or beat a child on the Crosby Ranch. Ever. If the boys wanted to beat the stuffing out of each other, they could go to the corral to do so, but no adult was allowed to strike a child.

Everybody except Consuelo, who, if displeased with a boy, could swoop in silently and deliver a smack across the top of a head before the boy even knew he was in trouble. Esme first witnessed Consuelo’s swift justice yesterday during the wedding preparations when she’d smacked first Salvador and next Joseph, both for back-talking.

Consuelo was usually gentle. It was her capacity for kindness, her tenderness that acted like a healing balm soothing hidden wounds. Esme could see how the woman was being extra kind with Henry this morning. She watched Consuelo slide a pan of cookies from the oven and pour a glass of milk for him. Then she’d clucked about how he’d already worked so hard that day. Her
hijo
should take a break from
tanto trabajo
.

When he saw Esme, he sidled out of the kitchen as he muttered a few words about wanting to see if there were some newborn kittens in the barn.

A sweet smell wafted through the kitchen, the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg drifting up from the pan of cookies. Esme poured and sipped coffee, helped herself to one of the cookies and wondered why Henry was continually sent to the kitchen? He should be outside doing chores with the other boys.

“Is the boy in trouble?” She asked Consuelo.

Consuelo shrugged. “He’s stolen money twice from the other boys. Luke gives them each a little pocket money every month. The boys found him stealing from David the first time and Salvador the second.

Esme took a bite of the warm cookie. “Why give them money?”

Consuelo worked masa flat to form tortillas. The steel pan was heated over the flame. In it she cooked tortillas, each one puffing up with pockets of hot air before being whisked into a basket.

“So they learn about money,” the woman answered. “Miss Eleanor started doing that. Back then she and Mr. Crosby only had one or two boys, but Luke kept it up even though he has so many more. He says that if they never have money, they’ll never learn how to manage it.”

Esme eyed the stack of tortillas piling up in the basket. “What’s for lunch?”

Consuelo patted Esme’s cheek, her hand coated with a dusting of flour. “It is a beef stew. Something called
Carne Guisada
,
mi hija
. I have it cooking outside over a fire. It’s a favorite of your
marido
.”

“My husband?” Esme asked. Consuelo nodded and laughed.

A blush of warmth filled Esme. Luke. Her husband. Of course he had favorites, and she wanted to know all of them. She took another cookie from the pan. “I’m going to go find him, my, how do you say
marido
?” She took several cookies from the tray and winked at Consuelo when the woman looked up from her work.

Consuelo laughed again, shooing her new mistress out of the kitchen.

Outside, in the middle of the farmyard, boys hung over the corral fence watching Nolan, a bullwhip clasped in his hand. The man stood in the middle of the enclosure, lecturing his audience how to make the whip snap, preferably without drawing one’s own blood.

Luke, perched on the top rail, dropped down to the sand when he saw her. A wave of warmth washed over Esme. My husband, she said to herself. How could one small word carry so much meaning?

His gaze fixed upon her. “Esme,” he said simply as he stalked across the yard, pulling off gloves and shoving them under the belt of his chaps.

If it were possible to melt from a gaze, Esme might have done so right there. His eyes darkened with desire in what must have been remembrance of last night’s love.

“You’re up. I was thinking of going back to our room to wake you myself,” he said softly taking a cookie from her hand. A few boys glanced over and nodded respectfully to her.

“How are you?” he asked softly.

“Fine,” she said. “Better than fine. Wonderful.”

Luke studied her for a moment and then took a bite of the cookie. “Me too. I’m better than fine too.”

Esme, overcome with emotion, leaned closer and kissed her husband on the cheek. The boys were watching Esme and Luke, eyes wide with curiosity. Henry ignored them entirely, and kept his eyes fixed on the older man in the corral snapping the bullwhip.

Nolan explained to his audience that he was a “cracker” from age twelve, which was roughly a hundred ninety six years earlier.

The boys chuckled, all but Henry. He sat apart from the rest. Occasionally he might try to say a word to one of the older boys, but they ignored him. No one paid him any attention until David asked casually why he wasn’t in the kitchen helping Consuelo. Then every boy’s head turned to wait for Henry’s response. When he didn’t react, David made a show of checking his pockets wondering aloud if he were missing any money. The rest of the boys snickered, not one of them watching Nolan anymore.

Esme observed the effect of David’s teasing on Henry. The boy’s face went white, his lips thinned and he swung his leg over the railing. He dropped to the ground, thrust his hands in his pockets and walked to the barn as though he had just remembered something that needed doing.

Luke stood behind Esme, his hand resting on her waist. He could feel the tension in her shoulders as she watched Henry walk away.

“That right there,” he whispered, “is for the boys to figure out.”

“But he’s the littlest. It doesn’t seem fair,” Esme argued, “I was always tormented by my older brothers. I know how he feels.”

“I doubt you ever stole pocket money from them,” Luke said, keeping his voice low to avoid being overheard by the boys.

“I ain’t out here for my health, boys, so listen up.” Nolan raised his voice. “You might need this one day if you need to push cattle somewhere they don’t care to go, like across water, or a through a stretch of narrow space, the barber shop, maybe Sunday School.”

The boys chuckled and Nolan grinned, happy to have their attention once more. He was a showman, Esme decided. He told the boys everything they could possibly need to know about cracking a whip while emphasizing practicalities and precautions. Then to make it memorable, he lined up bottles atop an old sawhorse and cracked his whip, making them fall one by one into the soft sand of the corral.

The late morning sky grew dark as clouds gathered and billowed. Thunderheads reared up, and the sounds of distant rumbling rolled across the hills and pastures. Esme was grateful for the beautiful weather they’d had the day before. Her wedding was perfect, particularly after she and Luke were alone. She shivered with pleasure at the memory. Luke kissed her hair and squeezed her shoulders gently.

“I’m going to say a few words to Henry,” Esme said as the bullwhip lesson came to a close.

She hadn’t been inside the barn yet, but Esme knew Henry was looking for the mama cat the boys had been talking about. An expectant mother cat, the pretty calico had made a few shy appearances yesterday during the reception, prompting guests to make several requests for kittens.

Esme wandered past the empty stalls until she found Henry kneeling next to a cat lying in a pile of hay. The cat yawned and stretched in her nest, purring softly while Henry stroked her head. She flicked her tail with interest as she eyed Esme approaching.

Henry said nothing, and did not raise his gaze to look at her. His silence made Esme uncomfortable. Children in general made her feel that way, but she couldn’t leave him, even if he was keeping up a front of stoic silence. Had she been trying to comfort a spoiled girl from the school where she used to teach at St. Adelaide’s, Esme would not have needed to think about how to start the conversation. Instead she would have been trying to figure out how to get a word in.

“I don’t think we should give any of the kittens away,” Esme finally said.

Henry gave her a sharp look of dismay. “Will you talk to Luke and tell him that? I don’t want him to either. And Lilac won’t want her babies to go.”

Esme knelt and ran her fingers across Lilac’s head several times. The cat closed her eyes and stretched her claws, digging them down into the musty hay as her purring grew louder.

“Lilac’s going to be a great mama,” Henry said softly. “She’ll want her babies nearby. And her babies will want to be near her.”

“I bet I can convince Luke to keep every one of them,” Esme said. “Can you imagine how pretty they’ll be? How many do you suppose she’ll have?”

The two sat with the dozing Lilac, debating the number of kittens she would have, and then discussed different names for her offspring.

Esme couldn’t help but be touched by how protective Henry was of the cat. He told her how Consuelo gave him scraps of chicken and scrambled egg left over from breakfast. He kept the scraps in a cupboard with two bowls for Lilac. He showed her his stockpile of provisions, a jug of water, small canvas bags of food, explaining he fed the cat four times day. Henry told her what sorts of preferences the picky mother had shown: chicken was good, eggs even better, but ham, bacon and grits made her turn up her nose. He told her he wished Luke would take in another boy, one smaller than him, so the others would have someone new to pick on.

Esme listened. It was like happening upon a small waterfall in the middle of a barren desert, this sudden burst of conversation from the sullen boy. His eye still showed signs of the fight he’d the day she’d arrived. Gently, she grasped his chin, and tilted his head to get a better look at the remnants of the black eye Salvador had given him. The bruise had almost faded, but below was still deep purple with green borders.

“Does it hurt to get a black eye?” she asked, genuinely interested.

“Not a bit.” Henry’s smile spread across his face. “Least not for a man.”

“It’s nothing to be proud of.” She gave a stern look, but could see he was undeterred. Esme guessed the black eye was a badge of honor, one he would bring up in conversations for years to come.

As they walked back to the house, a light rain began to fall. Henry talked about how the boys teased him because he was afraid of the horses and how he’d never get out of the kitchen if he didn’t overcome his fear.

Henry, Esme observed, had overcome his reticence. The conversation continued later at dinner, where Henry made certain to sit beside her. He expanded his talk about the topic of cats, kittens, and broadened it to include puppies and foals.

Luke lifted his brows at Henry’s sudden talkativeness. “Does he know you don’t care for children?”

Esme by then was beginning to feel a little fatigued by the boy’s unending talk. She whispered back to Luke, “Do you think someone could tell him? Soon? He’s working on a treatise about the offspring of the animal kingdom.”

Luke shook his head. “You picked a complicated one to make friends with.”

Later in their room, Luke elaborated on his comment. “Henry steals money because he wants to give it to his mother. Henry and Joseph both have mamas. Both of them send their money to San Antonio. Neither one of those women is what you might call a nice lady. Henry’s mother writes him a letter every so often explaining she can’t take care of him because she has no money. So he thinks if he gives her enough, he can go back and live with her. He sends her every bit of his pocket money along with whatever he manages to filch from the other boys.

“Joseph’s mother, thank God, can’t write.”

Esme watched the expression on Luke’s face harden as he undressed. A steaming tub of water awaited him as he tossed his clothes aside with disgust.

“I really dislike these women who discard their kids like yesterday’s newspaper, then come back hinting that maybe they want their children after all. It’s much easier to have a boy whose parents are dead. Easier on the boy. Easier on me. No loose ends.”