“What’s got your tail in a twist?” he asked, staring down at the top of her head as she pulled off his footgear then went to work on his pants and the long johns he’d worn underneath.
“Soak,” she ordered him. While he’d been disrobing, a tub of water she’d had prepared steamed across the room. He half expected her to climb into the bath with him but she didn’t. As good as the hot bath felt, the bed was more inviting. He finished quickly, accepting the drying cloth she handed him when he stepped from the water.
In moments, he lost the towel and slid between the sheets, stark naked and tucked under blankets she pulled up to his chin. “You climbing under these covers with me?” he asked, catching her hand and tugging on it.
“Soon as I finish getting you cosseted, I’ll be having my own bath. Then you can have your cuddling.”
Her cosseting included a cup of tea and honey he accepted after she added a generous dollop of whiskey. Miri’s rough-and-tumble manners coupled with her artless innocence aroused both passionate and tender feelings. He sat in the bed, sipping the hot drink and watching her.
“You don’t seem to mind me gawking at you,” she glowered at him. “Me, I don’t cotton to it.” With those words, she pulled the screen in front of the tub.
“Let the cuddling commence,” he murmured, setting the empty cup on the saucer before crossing his arms on the pillow behind his head. He didn’t explain to her that the opaque screen provided a sensual show.
He watched her shadowed silhouette disrobe and step into the bath. He stifled his groan, listening to the splash as she slid into the bath, imagining the rivulets of water running down her body.
By the time she stepped back into his sight, his cock tented the sheets and that was before he saw her costume. She’d donned a familiar ruffled shirt and wore it half buttoned over nothing else. Pale hair framed her exotic eyes before becoming a cascade of silver down her back.
“Since this is our true honeymoon, McCallister,” she said, “I’ve things to tell you, so listen up.” The real Miri, stripped of all artifice and disguise, approached the bed.
She folded her arms, pulling the material taut over her turgid peaks. Deacon swallowed his lust and tried to pay attention to her words.
“I might be a wanted woman. I think I killed a man back in Tennessee. I’ve been moving ever since. I should have told you before I let you tie us together.”
“So you’re not an orphan?” he asked carefully.
“What I said about being in the Tennessee Home for Foundlings and Orphans is all true. And me leaving when I was around ten, that’s true too. I just didn’t mention that I left a body behind.” She frowned at him and waited expectantly.
Deacon remained silent, recalling her Thanksgiving tale of adventure and wild rides. Then he reached out and took her hand, pulling her under the sheet with him.
“The husband in the couple who wanted to take you home?”
“Yep.” Her clipped answer resounded of Beauregard, the tough kid, the male stripling who’d thrash anyone in a fair fight. But the illusion was dispelled when she trembled in his arms.
“Tell me,” Deacon growled, hugging her close.
“He decided I was going to kiss his man parts and I decided I wasn’t.” Beneath Beauregard’s nonchalant drawl, Deacon heard the remnants of outrage.
“And?” He tipped her chin so that she met his gaze.
“I stabbed him with a pair of scissors.” Her response was brusque and unrepentant.
“Did you check the body to make sure he was dead?” Deacon asked.
“No, I ran like hell. But if he wasn’t dead, it wasn’t because I didn’t try to kill him.” Miri looked at him from eyes shadowed with guilt and regret. “I just thought you should know.”
“And that was ten years ago?” Deacon asked.
“Closer to eleven,” she admitted. “You might say my own crime led me into my career. It was handy having an excuse to look at wanted posters, though the older I got, the less I worried.”
“You can quit worrying,” Deacon assured her. “Hiram checked with the Tennessee lawmen he knows. There’s no reward offered for a young woman of your description.”
“Being Beauregard most of my life, I just hoped folks forgot about me.” Then she thought about his words and tilted her head sideways, more curious than alarmed. “Hiram asked after me?”
“Yep. He considers you a good friend and worried that you were hiding from the law. He checked. But there’s no record of an unresolved murder of a Tennessee man killed by a young girl,” he assured her. “If the bastard‘s dead, nobody cared.”
She was still frowning. Apparently his declaration of her innocence didn’t alleviate what was on her mind.
She sat next to him, peering down at his face. “You want to undo our partnership now that you know maybe I’m a murderess?”
“You didn’t commit murder. Worst-case scenario, you killed in self-defense, though it sounds more like you should have received a bounty on his ugly hide.” He cupped her chin and ran his thumb across her bottom lip, studying her as he explained. “Let me assure you, if you left him dead, I don’t care. He deserved what he got and whatever you did doesn’t change things between us.”
“Be that as it may, I’ve a mind to keep things honest between us.” Miri relaxed, tension easing from her shoulders as if she’d actually believed he might repudiate her.
“I think we’ve always dealt with each other honestly,” he protested.
“Businesswise I’ve no worries about pulling my own weight in this partnership. It’s the bedroom stuff I’m trying to sort out.” She stared at him, her expression grim.
“Have I done something to frighten you?” he asked quickly.
“You set your mouth on my private parts,” she answered, her face turning rosy pink.
“I’ll never do it again if you didn’t enjoy it.” Deacon was swamped with regret for forgetting about her innocence and introducing her to his carnal hunger.
“You pleasured me fine that way. Can’t be denying you the same, though I want to let you know up front, I don’t expect to like kissing you down there.”
“You don’t need to do that,” he said gruffly through stiff lips.
“We’re partners. I’ll be tasting you now, the same as you tasted me.” She chewed her bottom lip and stared at the sheet covering his groin as if it hid a nest of snakes.
Deacon remained completely still. His erection had subsided during the conversation. But when she declared her intent to sample his cock, it ceased behaving with polite regard for her anxiety, standing tall in delighted anticipation.
Without further hesitation, she ducked under the sheet, sequestering herself with the object of her interest.
“It’s too dadblamed dark in here. I can’t really see,” she complained, gripping his flesh in her hand.
“Not a problem,” he answered, eager to assist. In a moment, he had the bedclothes thrown aside and she knelt beside him, clasping his shaft in her hand, conducting her inspection.
Deacon tensed, rigid under the touch turning his hard length to molten stone as Miri traced the creamy fluid leaking from his cock head.
Still not meeting his gaze, she wet her lips, looked at her moist finger, paused, then unexpectedly leaned down and licked the cream from his slit.
Grabbing the sheet on either side of him, he anchored himself, straining to maintain control, but he couldn’t stop his jerk of surprise.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked as she pet his shaft anxiously.
“Tickled,” he groaned. Actually a jolt of heat had shot straight to his balls, but he didn’t waste time describing the indescribable.
“I like the way this feels,” she murmured, stroking her hand up and down his cock. He did too.
“You sure you want to do this?” he was compelled to ask. When she nodded affirmative, he added, “Grip it tighter.” Deacon figured if she wanted to learn, he might as well explain the particulars so they’d both be satisfied.
He leaned back on the pillow, cupping her breast and kneading her silken flesh. As he watched her hover indecisively above the head of his cock he thumbed her nipple absently. Her moaned response made him smile. He pulled her higher so that her long body lay tight against his.
“Just let me kiss you,” he told her. “Holding you in my arms with your lips on mine is enough heaven for any man.”
He cupped the back of her head and covered her mouth with his. She opened for him, returning the touch of his tongue with her own. Deacon caressed her hair, deepening the kiss until they breathed as one. When he lifted his head, her eyes were heavy with desire.
“I love you,” he murmured, meeting her molten gaze. “And I don’t ever want you to do anything with me you don’t want to do.” Then he thought about her standing in the middle of the street, blasting away at outlaws and amended it to, “In the bedroom, that is. Out on the trail, whether you want to or not, you listen to me.”
“I love you too, Deacon McCallister. Even if you are bossy,” she whispered, staring at him fiercely. “And you can’t be getting shot, or stabbed or
catching pneumonia
out of stubborn dumbness.” She crossed her eyes and wrinkled her nose playfully, bringing him back to her original complaint, easing the moment with laughter as she stared at him with desire.
Abruptly she sat up, and, before he realized her intent, leaned over him and swiped her tongue across the head of his cock.
“Maybe it’s an acquired taste,” she conceded. “I’ll have to sample it some before I decide yay or nay.”
Deacon tried to hold on to his sanity this time as she tasted, licking up the side of his hard length and stopping to wiggle her tongue in his slit. He groaned in pleasure when her tongue danced over his rigid flesh before she took more of his arousal in her mouth.
“Good?” she asked, mumbling around his flesh as she met his gaze. The tentative movement of her lips brought his hips off the bed and he could only nod incoherently.
She sucked harder, taking him deeper. He remained still, holding back his need to fill the hot cavern of her mouth. But she bobbed her head up and down, taking more of his cock each time and sucking harder with each of her own thrusts.
After he’d suffered the ecstasy of her attentions to the breaking point, when even his toes were curled in his effort to hold back his orgasm, he rolled her onto her back.
“Now,” he growled, “my turn.” Deacon settled between her thighs and rubbed the head of his cock over her pearl. She gasped and arched her back, her cunny bumping against the source of pleasure.
“Want me?” he teased, coating his hard length in her wet heat.
“Yes,” she grabbed him by the rump and took control, lining up cock to cunny before he thrust home. Her orgasm began immediately and her pussy flexed, squeezing and stroking his cock as she came. Her release triggered his and he plunged in and out with jarring thrusts, filling her with his seed.
As his release pulsed into her she wrapped her legs around his waist, sealing them together. Spent and exhausted, he managed to roll sideways before he collapsed. Afterward, with Miri’s head on his shoulder and her body cuddled close, he let his mind wander through bliss and back to business.
“It’s a damn shame we’re leaving the crime boss at large.” He sighed, reluctantly turning from passion to criminals.
“Minus his plates,” Miri reminded him.
“That’ll definitely make huge inroads in the counterfeiting business in Texas,” he muttered. “I don’t suppose Ned left a clue to the identity of the gang leader.”
“I imagine he’ll use the name to bargain for his freedom out of jail.”
“Until then, Doyle said the plates were worth four times what Ned brought in and that’s a nice tidy sum to tide us over while we puzzle out how to catch the leader.”
Deacon figured Miri was right about Ned parlaying his information into a ticket out of jail, but it irritated him just the same. “Guess we best get this show on the road. Are you hungry?” He’d have rather curled up with her and slept the night, but they still had work to do.
“Yep,” she answered. “It’s back to being female for me.”
She moved quickly in spite of her grumbled words, throwing open the closet to begin assembling her costume. That’s how she described her outfits. Deacon understood the real Miri was the woman he’d just held in his arms and he didn’t care what she wore or who she pretended to be in between.
After she finished packing their trunk, she appeared at his shoulder where he stood in front of the mirror knotting his tie.
“How do I look?” she asked, twirling around to give him an eyeful of goddess.
“You go from being a country bumpkin to a butler, to an old lady, to the beautiful woman standing before me. I don’t know how you do it, sweetheart.” He shook his head in wonder.
Plying her fan, she tapped his arm and batted her eyelashes at him.
“If ya don’t give people a reason to doubt ya, they don’t look close.” She ruined the effect of the costume when she answered in Beau’s Tennessee twang.
“See what I mean?” she asked, switching to the husky Southern accent that stroked Deacon’s nerve endings.
“Trust me, in that getup, both men and women will be looking at you even if you bray like a jackass,” Deacon growled, enjoying the hint of pink his observation brought to her cheeks. She stood in front of the mirror admiring the purple fabric that could have made a lesser woman look washed-out but enhanced Miri’s Amazonian beauty.