Stand-Alone: Second Honeymoon
Title: Second Honeymoon
Authors: aussie and bugs
Genre: A/U, Romance
Rating: MA
Word Count: 4600
Summary: Bill takes Laura to his ancestral home.
This is a stand alone set between Unbreakable and Unforgettable. For lacklusterfic on the occasion of her birthday. Why yes, we are toying with you, why do you ask?
~*~
Laura coughed on the dust, brushed the chicken feathers from her fawn brown suit jacket and squinted at her husband in the dim barn. Bill paid no attention to her show of discomfort, his dark face split by a wide grin.
"Damn, I was afraid the damp might have gotten to this old desk," he said lovingly--a tone he usually reserved for when he lavished attention upon her naked body, not carved oak cabinetry. He’d swept back the stained tarp to reveal a heavy lawyer's desk; it looked fairly common to Laura.
"Lovely," she said tartly, looking around for some place to sit. Her feet hurt after the long walk up the rutted drive when Juan's old Chevy truck had failed on the last hill. She had protested that they should wait for it be repaired, since Bill was still convalescing from his gunshot wound, but he'd maddeningly reminded her that Doctor Cottle had insisted that he exercise.
"You know, if you'd allowed me to drive, we wouldn't have broken down." She wasn't going to let this go. She'd sulked the entire train ride down the coast from San Francisco but Bill had done nothing to placate her temper.
He only glanced at her mildly before peering under another tarp.
She'd thought they were visiting his family's ancestral home but he'd gone right past the shambles of the old manor house and made a beeline for this sagging barn.
She sat on the office chair he’d uncovered after wiping it clean with her handkerchief. “Are we going to bring all these old things back to San Francisco? We could just buy some new furniture to replace it,” she said.
“I’m getting old. You gonna replace me with some new husband soon?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped, leaning back into the chair and stroking its arms. Actually, she couldn’t find one rip or tear in the leather at all.
Suddenly, something darted between her crocodile pumps. Laura gave an undignified screech, yanking up her feet as a furry creature brushed past.
Jake, who'd been sitting in the doorway watching his masters, lit out after the flash, barking madly.
"Jake!" called out Laura, hurrying to the doorway. "Don't you dare bring that thing back," she muttered when it was obvious the dog wasn't going to return.
She lingered, struck by the lowering sun's glow on the dry grass-covered hills, turning them pink and orange.
On a rise, Bill's cousin Juan, who raised chickens on what remained of the family's once vast Spanish land grant, was putting up a white tent.
When she glanced back at Bill, she had to blink to focus on his familiar bulk in the darkness. Relentlessly, she pointed out, "If I'd driven, we would have been here hours ago and you could sort through your things in the light. Now we'll have to find a hotel for the night."
Intent on his task, Bill ignored her. With a grunt, he prised off the lid of a packing crate. “Yes! Here they are!”
“Here what are?”
He pointed with his finger to the crates, counting as he went. “Twenty,” he announced. “That’s all of them.” He looked over his shoulder for something. “Maybe I could ask Juan to help me drag out a couple crates tomorrow morning so we can check they haven’t been damaged. Looks like mice have moved into the barn,” he said, heartlessly acknowledging her earlier distress.
“What haven’t been damaged?” she asked with barely controlled impatience.
His grin lit up the barn. “Books.”
Not able to stop herself, she hurried to his side and helped him lever open the wooden slats on top of the crate. “Twenty crates of books?”
“Yep.” He kissed her cheek approvingly at the enthusiasm in her voice. “Just a few favorites I couldn’t bear to part with when I sold the house.”
Laura pulled a volume from the crate, but couldn't make out the faded gold letters on the spine. "This will have to wait until tomorrow," she said with a sigh.
He had been listening to her after all. "No need for a hotel. We're staying on the farm."
"Oh...How nice," Laura said carefully. They'd lurched past a tiny white cottage surrounded by chicken runs in the drive to the barn. She couldn't imagine it had more than one bedroom--
"Juan’s pitching the old camp tent for us," Bill explained. "When there used to still be cattle, we'd go set up a camp in the hills during branding season."
"A tent?" Laura furrowed her brow. She was a city girl at heart. Even when on safari in Africa, her tent had a chandelier and running water. Something told her Juan would be unable to furnish either.
"Yeah, a tent," Bill said firmly. "Real camping, not your 'cabin' on the lake, my lady." He kissed her affectionately, taking the sting from his words.
It was real camping indeed. Laura balanced on an overturned feed bucket and nibbled at the corner of her burnt piece of cornbread. She wiped the smoke from her eyes as Bill and his cousin conversed in a combination of English and Spanish, catching up on family gossip and farm talk. She'd never known that Bill could become so animated about chickens.
Sighing, she picked up the grilled chicken leg from her enameled plate. Jake watched every bite going to her mouth, drool oozing from the corners of his mouth. "None for you," she said absentmindedly, watching the vast sky darken to deep blue, bluer than Bill's eyes, and fill with stars.
Juan seemed to be very shy, or was with a woman such as Laura. He blushed as though she'd been speaking to him and perhaps he had been looking at her legs with the same attention that Jake watched the chicken's.
"Better clear out," he said self-consciously, rising from his bucket seat. "I'll fetch you some more water first."
Bathing...Laura looked around helplessly.
"Thanks, Juan. I'll heat the water so we can clean up," said Bill while hanging a large iron pot over the fire from a spit.
Laura stood. "I guess I'll put on my robe," she said, uncertain. Did one sleep in their clothes out here?
Juan, with agility belying his age and bulk, scampered off, his buckets clanking.
"Take a lantern," Bill suggested to Laura as the darkness deepened.
He lit an oil lamp and handed it off to Laura. Inside the tent, she began to strip quickly in the cooling night.
Bill leaned back on the clean, dry grass, putting his hands behind his head. Laura was unknowingly putting on quite a show, an erotic shadow play on the pale tent walls as she bent over to slide off her stockings and then rose to unfasten her brassiere.
"Oh boy," said Juan as he came up behind his cousin, his words strangled. He dropped the buckets. "See yah t'morrow!" he squeaked and hightailed it off over the hill, back down to his lonely cottage.
Bill tugged loose his tie and shed his suit jacket. He might as well undress too. He banked the fire, keeping a few hot coals under the bubbling water.
Laura eased through the tent flaps, pulling her robe close. "Has Juan gone?"
"Yeah, past his bedtime," Bill said comfortably, beckoning her closer. "The chickens will want him up at four."
Laura shuddered at the thought. Their marriage had saved Bill from this fate!
He poured some hot water into another bucket of water and tested it with his hand. "Got some soap?" he said.
He actually expected her to wash out here? She looked around.
As if reading her mind, he pointed out, "Nobody out here for miles. Just a few hundred head of cattle over the ridge."
She looked at him through narrowed eyes. He bustled into the tent to retrieve a cake of soap and a wash cloth. She was still irritated with him, for no specific reason, but just general frustration...Yes, she was frustrated.
She sank to the overturned bucket again, and loosened the sash of her robe, allowing the satin fabric to fall open.
"Yes, this is nice," she drawled, watching Bill straighten up after dropping the soap in the bucket. She accepted the cloth from his extended hand, being sure to brush her fingertips along his palm. She could see his adam's apple jerk in the dim light.
Since the day they'd met, she'd been the aggressor. She enjoyed this and she could tell he liked being wanted and pursued. But every now and then, she liked to make him beg. She used this power carefully, sensing, although he'd never speak ill of his first wife, that Carolanne had humiliated him for his needs many times.
But tonight...Tonight Bill Adams was just going to have to watch and want, like Jake watching her eat that chicken.
He began to slowly unbutton his shirt. "Might as well clean up too," he said, but his voice was rough.
Laura slowly wiped the sudsy washcloth up one leg, extending it with the motion. "Do," she purred.
Leaning over and averting his gaze, Bill rebuilt the fire so the golden light danced across her bare body. "Don't want you to get cold," he said.
"No danger of that," she said, then demurely, "Thank you for the heat."
"Sure," he croaked. "It can get cold out here at night, when the fog rolls in from the ocean."
Sincere this time, as she washed her other leg, Laura looked up at him from around the screen of her curls. "This is such a lovely place. I can't imagine ever leaving it."
"I never was here," he said, gazing out across the rolling hills, now cloaked in darkness. "I just came for visits, long summer stays. It's the past; not my future."
"Why didn't you settle here when you retired? Why were you searching for another farm?"
"There's barely enough land to keep Juan's chickens in seed. All that you see here is leased for range land, and the money paid out to the family descendants." His mouth twisted. "Carolanne thought she'd gotten a member of the landed gentry, but all we got was a hundred bucks a year."
He looked back to her, and that past was forgotten. Her hand was circling her breast with the cloth, and a few bubbles clung to the taut nipple. He wanted to dive onto her, fling aside her robe and lick away that soap.
But there was a remoteness to her tonight. It should upset him, but he always found that quality one of her finest. Like his treasures locked away in a barn, she was his to enjoy when the precious moments allowed. He'd have his time when she deemed it.
For now, he watched the pale pink robe slip away from her shoulder, then the other, until it was in a pool around her waist. He knew she was putting on a show for him, but rather than to entice him, it was to keep him at bay, to taunt him with what she controlled.
He loved it. Smiling to himself, he rubbed the soapy washcloth over his body roughly, enjoying the abrasion and cold rush as the night air cooled his wet skin.
Laura washed the soap away and watched Bill from under her eyelashes as he scrubbed himself off like a field hand after stripping down to his shorts. He barely looked her way. He was going to play it like that, was he?
She stood. "I'll be going to bed then," she said nonchalantly.
He only replied, "Let me bank the fire again," his face unreadable in the dark.
Hunching her shoulders, she wrapped her robe back around her naked body and shoved her way into the tent.
She snatched up her nightgown and shrugging out of her robe, slipped it on over her head. Already shivering in the damp night, she lifted the lantern to look at the accommodation.
Her giggle caused Bill to ask through the thick canvas, "What’s wrong?"
"Oh nothing," she called back. As she examined the two narrow cots shoved against opposite walls of the tent, all she could think was that Juan watched too many movies if he actually believed married couples did not want to share a bed. She chose one, flipped back the coarse woolen blanket and dove under the worn but soft sheets.
Bill appeared in the doorway, holding the flap open, a strongly outlined black form, from his wide shoulders to his bull-like head. Their faithful dog poked his nose in beside his master, his tail wagging.
Breathless, she told him, "Put Jake in with me tonight, darling. He'll keep me warm."
That was the signal. Bill only gave a sharp bark of a laugh. He was on her before she could even form a word of protest.
There was a torrent of her giggles, his rough chuckles, her protests about fitting on the narrow cot, his insistence that he could make it work, then a groan and a creak and the cot collapsed beneath them.
When she caught her breath, Laura could not stop herself from noting once again, "I told you so." The sting was lost on her words, muffled in his stomach. They were tangled together and with the broken cot and bedding. Bill pushed himself up on his hands above her.
"Gotta get off you," he panted.
She grabbed his thighs, holding him in place. "Stay right here," she growled. Nimbly, she undid the buttons on his undershorts and peeled back the fabric, revealing his dark, bobbing length to her attention.
She gave the head a quick lick, taking away the glistening pearl of fluid balanced there, making him gasp. He looked down at her, his arms still shaking, trying to read her intentions. He still never pushed her to perform that act; it was always her choice. Her pale gaze was unreadable and she bit her lower lip as she hefted his balls expertly.
"Where do you want it?" he asked roughly, teetering on a literal and figurative edge.
She just smiled enigmatically. Her hands left him, pulled up her nightgown to her neck and pushed together her breasts.
"You want it there?" He rocked back on his heels, dragging his hardening erection down her pale throat, over the tangled silk gown, along her collarbone, then nestled it in the valley of her breasts. "Here?" he breathed.
She arched her back, and he gave a few lazy thrusts against the incredibly soft skin of her breasts. But her moans remained low and controlled, not the usual keening that signaled he'd taken her to a deeper pleasure.
He shifted back, drawing a damp line down her stomach. "Here?" he teased.
She lifted her hips off the ground, her moan turning to a whine. Grabbing a handful of her hair, she turned the strands until her knuckles went white.
"No, not there," he murmured, thrusting into the crease of her hip a few times just to torment her more.
"Bill," she demanded, pressing up to try and capture him.
"Hmmm?" He covered her breasts with his dark hands, thumbing her hard nipples until she squirmed and panted.
"Now," she hissed.
Maddeningly, he rocked away from her, leaving her bereft and cold for a brief moment. Then he was sweeping her up in his arms, lifting her and settling her on his thighs. Holding her loosely, he waited for her to take the last step.
Her legs shaking, she wrapped her arms around his neck for support, rose and slid down onto his length.
"Right there," he whispered hoarsely in her ear.
"Yep," she gasped. Nestling her face under his jaw, she nibbled frantically at his rough skin. He smelled of her lavender soap, which laced with his manly odor to create its own savory scent.
His mouth found hers to kiss her at last. She groaned around his tongue. After all these months, his kisses still left her breathless.
Her trembling fingers found the scar on his chest as she rose and fell, tracing the hot ridge, needing to assure herself his heart would not pound out of his ribs.
"I'm fine," he said, with the slightest edge to his voice.
"I'm not," she said, catching the sob in her throat before it could escape and upset him further.
"My knees are going to give out first," he told her, lightening the moment.
"Can't have that." She tugged him over to lie atop her, wrapping her legs around his ribs and crossing her ankles across his spine. Lolling her head over, she watched their shadows dance on the tent wall, illuminated by the lantern. Giggling, she hoped Juan was tucked in his bed in the valley below the tent.
"Just us," Bill said, reading her mind.
"And all those cows."
"Cattle."
"There's a difference?"
"Damn you woman," he groaned. "How can you think while we're..." He suckled at her neck, unable to resist the temptation. "We're like this--"
"I think and think and think when we're making love," she said joyously, running her fingers through his hair and giving his lower back a gentle thumping with her heels. "So many thoughts," she murmured.
He shifted her hips so he could thrust deeper. "All good thoughts, I hope," he huffed.
But she only hummed in reply, remote once more.
He cradled her cheek, gazing into her eyes, searching for his elusive woman, who changed every day and yet always seemed familiar and necessary as his next breath.
Laura kept one palm against his chest, feeling the urgent rhythm, each beat bringing tears closer to her eyes. She’d gone for such a long time in her life making sure she didn’t allow herself to be vulnerable. Other men before him had tried to get through those defenses and dominate her.
She shimmied beneath him, her vaginal muscles tightening around him in the process, holding him close.
Yeah, Bill decided, reacting instantly by thrusting harder and deeper still, they were doing just fine how they were.
“Don’t think for a minute,” he commanded with a pant.
“You’re taking control now?”
He pulled her legs free from his back and pushed them up to open her wide to his invasion. “Yeah, that’s what you want--”
Her nails scraping along his shoulders distracted him from finishing his thought.
With a hiss, he changed the angle of their bodies once more, enabling him to reach between them and hurry things along.
This damn hole that had been drilled into his chest meant he couldn’t do this quite as long as he wanted.
Stars began to flicker before his eyes. He thumbed her clitoris rhythmically. “Come on, Laura,” he demanded, then immediately cursed his apparent lack of romantic phrasing.
She never seemed to mind. In fact, she cheered him on with her own volley of unromantic words: faster, harder, yes, no, God, please, now... Finally the only word she she was gasping was his name, over and over. She grabbed handfuls of the canvas floor and yanked, causing the entire tent to quiver around them. For a moment, he thought the whole thing was going to crash down like the cot but he didn't give a damn. The way her clitoris and thighs quivered in his touch filled him with ridiculous gratitude. He'd made it to the end, still alive. He shouted out her name in the same imprecise, yet triumphant way before collapsing beside her.
Laura stretched out beside Bill, finally feeling all the places rocks had pressed into her back, but frankly not giving a damn. Her husband, after taking a tentative deep breath, hopped right up, much to her consternation. Obviously she had not tried hard enough...He was headed outside when a coyote howled close by.
"Be careful, darling," Laura warned.
Bill started to say, "Got my dog--" Jake shot through the flap and under the standing cot in a flash of black and white fur. He'd retired outside to give them privacy.
Wryly, Bill straightened his shoulders and did up his shorts. "Just a coyote," he said manfully and disappeared through the flap.
Pulling her gown back down, Laura shrugged to herself.
He was back quickly with a warm, damp washcloth. She realized he must have planned this, having retained some water to clean them up. Smiling, she held up her gown for his usual ministrations.
"He's not much of a guard dog," Laura noted.
Bill harrumphed and moved on to gathering the bedding for one bed in the middle of the tent. "Just needs some training, that's all," he said.
As they cuddled under the thick blankets, Bill smoothed her hair away from her face. "We should come here for our second honeymoon," he suggested, acknowledging their aborted attempt at a honeymoon at Lake Tahoe. "We could camp out..."
Laura managed to control her shudder. "Oh darling, the ocean cruise will be so wonderful! Not a care in the world, waited on hand and foot..."
She nestled under his chin, so did not see the conflict on his face. She might as well have described every day of their lives, Bill thought.
"Whatever you want, dear," he said, kissing her temple.
"You," she whispered, "that's all I need."
~*~
The next morning Juan and Cesar, the driver they’d hired to deliver Bill’s belongings back to San Francisco, went about loading the crates onto the back of a truck.
Bill, unable to lift such heavy items just yet, assisted by carefully securing the freight with a series of connected ropes.
Laura was perched on the fifth rung of an old ladder, watching as the seemingly endless procession of boxes were brought out from the barn.
Below her, Jake’s contribution was to pounce at the mice which were being disturbed by the flurry of activity. Most of the rodents easily made it past him, hence Laura’s height on the ladder.
“Qué pasa con la pintura?”
Laura couldn’t help but notice the wary look that Bill cast her when Juan posed his question.
Her brow furrowed. She knew some Spanish from a tutor her father had engaged for her when she was younger, but Bill and his friends spoke so rapidly she usually had no chance of interpreting. She did, however, remember the word for painting.
“Bill? What paintings?”
“Just a couple of paintings which were my grandfather’s,” he said, his tone oddly offhand, climbing down from the back of the truck and following Juan to the entrance of the barn. “Maybe Juan can keep them here for me,” he told her over his shoulder.
She jumped off the ladder and met him in the barn doorway.
“Why on Earth wouldn’t we just pack them up and take them with the rest of your things?”
“They might not be anything you’d think appropriate in the mansion,” he murmured, leaning over the paintings in question, which were still covered with a tarp.
“Not appropriate?” Bill had paintings of nude women? She grinned at the thought of naked, voluptuous women lounging on their walls, finally pushing Elosha over the edge.
"Nope," he grumbled, shielding the pictures.
"Let me see, silly," she murmured, coaxing him aside.
Juan opened the door wider to allow in more light. Bill tugged away the tarp from the outermost massive canvas.
"Oh, it's charming," she assured him.
The wide painting was a traditional genre painting from her grandparent's generation, showing all the scenes from the former ranchero life. The once grand old house, now nothing more than abode rubble, was at the center. The plaza was filled with horsemen on arched-necked horses, while lovely senoritas smiled at the riders from behind their fans. The familiar golden hills were covered with lean cattle, and there was even a brave vaquero battling a grizzly bear from horseback with a lance in one corner of the canvas.
It was the sort of sentimental pictures she'd swept from Roslin mansion's walls the moment she'd been given the task to decorate it. But it suited Bill, and obviously meant something to him.
"My wife--Carolanne didn't like it. And it was too large for our little house anyway," Bill said quietly.
"But we have plenty of room in our home," Laura said.
"Yeah?" he said, unsure.
"Yes," Laura said, taking his hand and squeezing it. "Load them up," she called to Juan.
Bill's lips on her cheek was a simple gesture but filled with love.
~*~
Old Jaffee lingered outside the library door, pushing a broom along the highly-polished marble floor.
His son eased up behind him. "Are they still in there?" he asked out of the corner of his mouth, causing his father to jump.
"I hadn't noticed, but assume so," the older man said, straightening his cutaway coat.
A squeal of indignation, followed by a low, knowing laugh, came through the thick wood door.
"Yep, still at it," the footman said. Then he sighed. "I only hope I'll still be able to keep up that pace at his age..."
His father's nostrils flared in outrage.
"Assuming I ever get married," Young Jaffee said, sighing again and leaning against the wall mournfully.
Laura's authoritative voice rang through the thick door, making both men shift uncomfortably. "I'm telling you, it won't fit. I don't care how many different ways you try."
"I can get it in there if I'd just get some cooperation from you," grumbled Bill.
There was a crash and another squeak from their mistress which was suddenly muffled.
Horrified, the two men stepped back. The younger one stared at the door. "Should we check on them?"
Old Jaffee shuddered. "Never." With all his dignity, he grasped his son's arm and dragged him away.
Laura pushed her curls back and glared at her husband. "That book will not go anywhere, Bill," she insisted.
He sat on a footstool, re-adjusting his tie and picked up the fallen large, heavy volume. He frowned at the groaning bookcases around them. "There's got to be a spot it will fit."
She crossed her arms and looked around as well. "Even if we get it in, there's another eighteen boxes," she said helplessly.
"If you didn't insist on keeping them all in order--"
"I want to be able to find something," she sputtered.
He reached out and snagged her arm, drawing her to perch on his lap. "Don't you know? The search is most of the fun."
She fiddled with his tie, straightening the already vertical silk.
She would definitely have to add some more bookshelves to the plans she was having drawn up as a surprise for Bill; his own office. Until then... "You can keep your books in any order you'd like--heck, you can stack them on the floor like cords of wood!"
His grin was her reward.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his thick hair. "You can stop searching now, Mr. Adams."
When he nodded wordlessly, she held him tighter still.
"Yep, this is one story that's done being told," he said confidently.
~ The end
Authors: aussie and bugs
Genre: A/U, Romance
Rating: MA
Word Count: 4600
Summary: Bill takes Laura to his ancestral home.
This is a stand alone set between Unbreakable and Unforgettable. For lacklusterfic on the occasion of her birthday. Why yes, we are toying with you, why do you ask?
~*~
Laura coughed on the dust, brushed the chicken feathers from her fawn brown suit jacket and squinted at her husband in the dim barn. Bill paid no attention to her show of discomfort, his dark face split by a wide grin.
"Damn, I was afraid the damp might have gotten to this old desk," he said lovingly--a tone he usually reserved for when he lavished attention upon her naked body, not carved oak cabinetry. He’d swept back the stained tarp to reveal a heavy lawyer's desk; it looked fairly common to Laura.
"Lovely," she said tartly, looking around for some place to sit. Her feet hurt after the long walk up the rutted drive when Juan's old Chevy truck had failed on the last hill. She had protested that they should wait for it be repaired, since Bill was still convalescing from his gunshot wound, but he'd maddeningly reminded her that Doctor Cottle had insisted that he exercise.
"You know, if you'd allowed me to drive, we wouldn't have broken down." She wasn't going to let this go. She'd sulked the entire train ride down the coast from San Francisco but Bill had done nothing to placate her temper.
He only glanced at her mildly before peering under another tarp.
She'd thought they were visiting his family's ancestral home but he'd gone right past the shambles of the old manor house and made a beeline for this sagging barn.
She sat on the office chair he’d uncovered after wiping it clean with her handkerchief. “Are we going to bring all these old things back to San Francisco? We could just buy some new furniture to replace it,” she said.
“I’m getting old. You gonna replace me with some new husband soon?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped, leaning back into the chair and stroking its arms. Actually, she couldn’t find one rip or tear in the leather at all.
Suddenly, something darted between her crocodile pumps. Laura gave an undignified screech, yanking up her feet as a furry creature brushed past.
Jake, who'd been sitting in the doorway watching his masters, lit out after the flash, barking madly.
"Jake!" called out Laura, hurrying to the doorway. "Don't you dare bring that thing back," she muttered when it was obvious the dog wasn't going to return.
She lingered, struck by the lowering sun's glow on the dry grass-covered hills, turning them pink and orange.
On a rise, Bill's cousin Juan, who raised chickens on what remained of the family's once vast Spanish land grant, was putting up a white tent.
When she glanced back at Bill, she had to blink to focus on his familiar bulk in the darkness. Relentlessly, she pointed out, "If I'd driven, we would have been here hours ago and you could sort through your things in the light. Now we'll have to find a hotel for the night."
Intent on his task, Bill ignored her. With a grunt, he prised off the lid of a packing crate. “Yes! Here they are!”
“Here what are?”
He pointed with his finger to the crates, counting as he went. “Twenty,” he announced. “That’s all of them.” He looked over his shoulder for something. “Maybe I could ask Juan to help me drag out a couple crates tomorrow morning so we can check they haven’t been damaged. Looks like mice have moved into the barn,” he said, heartlessly acknowledging her earlier distress.
“What haven’t been damaged?” she asked with barely controlled impatience.
His grin lit up the barn. “Books.”
Not able to stop herself, she hurried to his side and helped him lever open the wooden slats on top of the crate. “Twenty crates of books?”
“Yep.” He kissed her cheek approvingly at the enthusiasm in her voice. “Just a few favorites I couldn’t bear to part with when I sold the house.”
Laura pulled a volume from the crate, but couldn't make out the faded gold letters on the spine. "This will have to wait until tomorrow," she said with a sigh.
He had been listening to her after all. "No need for a hotel. We're staying on the farm."
"Oh...How nice," Laura said carefully. They'd lurched past a tiny white cottage surrounded by chicken runs in the drive to the barn. She couldn't imagine it had more than one bedroom--
"Juan’s pitching the old camp tent for us," Bill explained. "When there used to still be cattle, we'd go set up a camp in the hills during branding season."
"A tent?" Laura furrowed her brow. She was a city girl at heart. Even when on safari in Africa, her tent had a chandelier and running water. Something told her Juan would be unable to furnish either.
"Yeah, a tent," Bill said firmly. "Real camping, not your 'cabin' on the lake, my lady." He kissed her affectionately, taking the sting from his words.
It was real camping indeed. Laura balanced on an overturned feed bucket and nibbled at the corner of her burnt piece of cornbread. She wiped the smoke from her eyes as Bill and his cousin conversed in a combination of English and Spanish, catching up on family gossip and farm talk. She'd never known that Bill could become so animated about chickens.
Sighing, she picked up the grilled chicken leg from her enameled plate. Jake watched every bite going to her mouth, drool oozing from the corners of his mouth. "None for you," she said absentmindedly, watching the vast sky darken to deep blue, bluer than Bill's eyes, and fill with stars.
Juan seemed to be very shy, or was with a woman such as Laura. He blushed as though she'd been speaking to him and perhaps he had been looking at her legs with the same attention that Jake watched the chicken's.
"Better clear out," he said self-consciously, rising from his bucket seat. "I'll fetch you some more water first."
Bathing...Laura looked around helplessly.
"Thanks, Juan. I'll heat the water so we can clean up," said Bill while hanging a large iron pot over the fire from a spit.
Laura stood. "I guess I'll put on my robe," she said, uncertain. Did one sleep in their clothes out here?
Juan, with agility belying his age and bulk, scampered off, his buckets clanking.
"Take a lantern," Bill suggested to Laura as the darkness deepened.
He lit an oil lamp and handed it off to Laura. Inside the tent, she began to strip quickly in the cooling night.
Bill leaned back on the clean, dry grass, putting his hands behind his head. Laura was unknowingly putting on quite a show, an erotic shadow play on the pale tent walls as she bent over to slide off her stockings and then rose to unfasten her brassiere.
"Oh boy," said Juan as he came up behind his cousin, his words strangled. He dropped the buckets. "See yah t'morrow!" he squeaked and hightailed it off over the hill, back down to his lonely cottage.
Bill tugged loose his tie and shed his suit jacket. He might as well undress too. He banked the fire, keeping a few hot coals under the bubbling water.
Laura eased through the tent flaps, pulling her robe close. "Has Juan gone?"
"Yeah, past his bedtime," Bill said comfortably, beckoning her closer. "The chickens will want him up at four."
Laura shuddered at the thought. Their marriage had saved Bill from this fate!
He poured some hot water into another bucket of water and tested it with his hand. "Got some soap?" he said.
He actually expected her to wash out here? She looked around.
As if reading her mind, he pointed out, "Nobody out here for miles. Just a few hundred head of cattle over the ridge."
She looked at him through narrowed eyes. He bustled into the tent to retrieve a cake of soap and a wash cloth. She was still irritated with him, for no specific reason, but just general frustration...Yes, she was frustrated.
She sank to the overturned bucket again, and loosened the sash of her robe, allowing the satin fabric to fall open.
"Yes, this is nice," she drawled, watching Bill straighten up after dropping the soap in the bucket. She accepted the cloth from his extended hand, being sure to brush her fingertips along his palm. She could see his adam's apple jerk in the dim light.
Since the day they'd met, she'd been the aggressor. She enjoyed this and she could tell he liked being wanted and pursued. But every now and then, she liked to make him beg. She used this power carefully, sensing, although he'd never speak ill of his first wife, that Carolanne had humiliated him for his needs many times.
But tonight...Tonight Bill Adams was just going to have to watch and want, like Jake watching her eat that chicken.
He began to slowly unbutton his shirt. "Might as well clean up too," he said, but his voice was rough.
Laura slowly wiped the sudsy washcloth up one leg, extending it with the motion. "Do," she purred.
Leaning over and averting his gaze, Bill rebuilt the fire so the golden light danced across her bare body. "Don't want you to get cold," he said.
"No danger of that," she said, then demurely, "Thank you for the heat."
"Sure," he croaked. "It can get cold out here at night, when the fog rolls in from the ocean."
Sincere this time, as she washed her other leg, Laura looked up at him from around the screen of her curls. "This is such a lovely place. I can't imagine ever leaving it."
"I never was here," he said, gazing out across the rolling hills, now cloaked in darkness. "I just came for visits, long summer stays. It's the past; not my future."
"Why didn't you settle here when you retired? Why were you searching for another farm?"
"There's barely enough land to keep Juan's chickens in seed. All that you see here is leased for range land, and the money paid out to the family descendants." His mouth twisted. "Carolanne thought she'd gotten a member of the landed gentry, but all we got was a hundred bucks a year."
He looked back to her, and that past was forgotten. Her hand was circling her breast with the cloth, and a few bubbles clung to the taut nipple. He wanted to dive onto her, fling aside her robe and lick away that soap.
But there was a remoteness to her tonight. It should upset him, but he always found that quality one of her finest. Like his treasures locked away in a barn, she was his to enjoy when the precious moments allowed. He'd have his time when she deemed it.
For now, he watched the pale pink robe slip away from her shoulder, then the other, until it was in a pool around her waist. He knew she was putting on a show for him, but rather than to entice him, it was to keep him at bay, to taunt him with what she controlled.
He loved it. Smiling to himself, he rubbed the soapy washcloth over his body roughly, enjoying the abrasion and cold rush as the night air cooled his wet skin.
Laura washed the soap away and watched Bill from under her eyelashes as he scrubbed himself off like a field hand after stripping down to his shorts. He barely looked her way. He was going to play it like that, was he?
She stood. "I'll be going to bed then," she said nonchalantly.
He only replied, "Let me bank the fire again," his face unreadable in the dark.
Hunching her shoulders, she wrapped her robe back around her naked body and shoved her way into the tent.
She snatched up her nightgown and shrugging out of her robe, slipped it on over her head. Already shivering in the damp night, she lifted the lantern to look at the accommodation.
Her giggle caused Bill to ask through the thick canvas, "What’s wrong?"
"Oh nothing," she called back. As she examined the two narrow cots shoved against opposite walls of the tent, all she could think was that Juan watched too many movies if he actually believed married couples did not want to share a bed. She chose one, flipped back the coarse woolen blanket and dove under the worn but soft sheets.
Bill appeared in the doorway, holding the flap open, a strongly outlined black form, from his wide shoulders to his bull-like head. Their faithful dog poked his nose in beside his master, his tail wagging.
Breathless, she told him, "Put Jake in with me tonight, darling. He'll keep me warm."
That was the signal. Bill only gave a sharp bark of a laugh. He was on her before she could even form a word of protest.
There was a torrent of her giggles, his rough chuckles, her protests about fitting on the narrow cot, his insistence that he could make it work, then a groan and a creak and the cot collapsed beneath them.
When she caught her breath, Laura could not stop herself from noting once again, "I told you so." The sting was lost on her words, muffled in his stomach. They were tangled together and with the broken cot and bedding. Bill pushed himself up on his hands above her.
"Gotta get off you," he panted.
She grabbed his thighs, holding him in place. "Stay right here," she growled. Nimbly, she undid the buttons on his undershorts and peeled back the fabric, revealing his dark, bobbing length to her attention.
She gave the head a quick lick, taking away the glistening pearl of fluid balanced there, making him gasp. He looked down at her, his arms still shaking, trying to read her intentions. He still never pushed her to perform that act; it was always her choice. Her pale gaze was unreadable and she bit her lower lip as she hefted his balls expertly.
"Where do you want it?" he asked roughly, teetering on a literal and figurative edge.
She just smiled enigmatically. Her hands left him, pulled up her nightgown to her neck and pushed together her breasts.
"You want it there?" He rocked back on his heels, dragging his hardening erection down her pale throat, over the tangled silk gown, along her collarbone, then nestled it in the valley of her breasts. "Here?" he breathed.
She arched her back, and he gave a few lazy thrusts against the incredibly soft skin of her breasts. But her moans remained low and controlled, not the usual keening that signaled he'd taken her to a deeper pleasure.
He shifted back, drawing a damp line down her stomach. "Here?" he teased.
She lifted her hips off the ground, her moan turning to a whine. Grabbing a handful of her hair, she turned the strands until her knuckles went white.
"No, not there," he murmured, thrusting into the crease of her hip a few times just to torment her more.
"Bill," she demanded, pressing up to try and capture him.
"Hmmm?" He covered her breasts with his dark hands, thumbing her hard nipples until she squirmed and panted.
"Now," she hissed.
Maddeningly, he rocked away from her, leaving her bereft and cold for a brief moment. Then he was sweeping her up in his arms, lifting her and settling her on his thighs. Holding her loosely, he waited for her to take the last step.
Her legs shaking, she wrapped her arms around his neck for support, rose and slid down onto his length.
"Right there," he whispered hoarsely in her ear.
"Yep," she gasped. Nestling her face under his jaw, she nibbled frantically at his rough skin. He smelled of her lavender soap, which laced with his manly odor to create its own savory scent.
His mouth found hers to kiss her at last. She groaned around his tongue. After all these months, his kisses still left her breathless.
Her trembling fingers found the scar on his chest as she rose and fell, tracing the hot ridge, needing to assure herself his heart would not pound out of his ribs.
"I'm fine," he said, with the slightest edge to his voice.
"I'm not," she said, catching the sob in her throat before it could escape and upset him further.
"My knees are going to give out first," he told her, lightening the moment.
"Can't have that." She tugged him over to lie atop her, wrapping her legs around his ribs and crossing her ankles across his spine. Lolling her head over, she watched their shadows dance on the tent wall, illuminated by the lantern. Giggling, she hoped Juan was tucked in his bed in the valley below the tent.
"Just us," Bill said, reading her mind.
"And all those cows."
"Cattle."
"There's a difference?"
"Damn you woman," he groaned. "How can you think while we're..." He suckled at her neck, unable to resist the temptation. "We're like this--"
"I think and think and think when we're making love," she said joyously, running her fingers through his hair and giving his lower back a gentle thumping with her heels. "So many thoughts," she murmured.
He shifted her hips so he could thrust deeper. "All good thoughts, I hope," he huffed.
But she only hummed in reply, remote once more.
He cradled her cheek, gazing into her eyes, searching for his elusive woman, who changed every day and yet always seemed familiar and necessary as his next breath.
Laura kept one palm against his chest, feeling the urgent rhythm, each beat bringing tears closer to her eyes. She’d gone for such a long time in her life making sure she didn’t allow herself to be vulnerable. Other men before him had tried to get through those defenses and dominate her.
She shimmied beneath him, her vaginal muscles tightening around him in the process, holding him close.
Yeah, Bill decided, reacting instantly by thrusting harder and deeper still, they were doing just fine how they were.
“Don’t think for a minute,” he commanded with a pant.
“You’re taking control now?”
He pulled her legs free from his back and pushed them up to open her wide to his invasion. “Yeah, that’s what you want--”
Her nails scraping along his shoulders distracted him from finishing his thought.
With a hiss, he changed the angle of their bodies once more, enabling him to reach between them and hurry things along.
This damn hole that had been drilled into his chest meant he couldn’t do this quite as long as he wanted.
Stars began to flicker before his eyes. He thumbed her clitoris rhythmically. “Come on, Laura,” he demanded, then immediately cursed his apparent lack of romantic phrasing.
She never seemed to mind. In fact, she cheered him on with her own volley of unromantic words: faster, harder, yes, no, God, please, now... Finally the only word she she was gasping was his name, over and over. She grabbed handfuls of the canvas floor and yanked, causing the entire tent to quiver around them. For a moment, he thought the whole thing was going to crash down like the cot but he didn't give a damn. The way her clitoris and thighs quivered in his touch filled him with ridiculous gratitude. He'd made it to the end, still alive. He shouted out her name in the same imprecise, yet triumphant way before collapsing beside her.
Laura stretched out beside Bill, finally feeling all the places rocks had pressed into her back, but frankly not giving a damn. Her husband, after taking a tentative deep breath, hopped right up, much to her consternation. Obviously she had not tried hard enough...He was headed outside when a coyote howled close by.
"Be careful, darling," Laura warned.
Bill started to say, "Got my dog--" Jake shot through the flap and under the standing cot in a flash of black and white fur. He'd retired outside to give them privacy.
Wryly, Bill straightened his shoulders and did up his shorts. "Just a coyote," he said manfully and disappeared through the flap.
Pulling her gown back down, Laura shrugged to herself.
He was back quickly with a warm, damp washcloth. She realized he must have planned this, having retained some water to clean them up. Smiling, she held up her gown for his usual ministrations.
"He's not much of a guard dog," Laura noted.
Bill harrumphed and moved on to gathering the bedding for one bed in the middle of the tent. "Just needs some training, that's all," he said.
As they cuddled under the thick blankets, Bill smoothed her hair away from her face. "We should come here for our second honeymoon," he suggested, acknowledging their aborted attempt at a honeymoon at Lake Tahoe. "We could camp out..."
Laura managed to control her shudder. "Oh darling, the ocean cruise will be so wonderful! Not a care in the world, waited on hand and foot..."
She nestled under his chin, so did not see the conflict on his face. She might as well have described every day of their lives, Bill thought.
"Whatever you want, dear," he said, kissing her temple.
"You," she whispered, "that's all I need."
~*~
The next morning Juan and Cesar, the driver they’d hired to deliver Bill’s belongings back to San Francisco, went about loading the crates onto the back of a truck.
Bill, unable to lift such heavy items just yet, assisted by carefully securing the freight with a series of connected ropes.
Laura was perched on the fifth rung of an old ladder, watching as the seemingly endless procession of boxes were brought out from the barn.
Below her, Jake’s contribution was to pounce at the mice which were being disturbed by the flurry of activity. Most of the rodents easily made it past him, hence Laura’s height on the ladder.
“Qué pasa con la pintura?”
Laura couldn’t help but notice the wary look that Bill cast her when Juan posed his question.
Her brow furrowed. She knew some Spanish from a tutor her father had engaged for her when she was younger, but Bill and his friends spoke so rapidly she usually had no chance of interpreting. She did, however, remember the word for painting.
“Bill? What paintings?”
“Just a couple of paintings which were my grandfather’s,” he said, his tone oddly offhand, climbing down from the back of the truck and following Juan to the entrance of the barn. “Maybe Juan can keep them here for me,” he told her over his shoulder.
She jumped off the ladder and met him in the barn doorway.
“Why on Earth wouldn’t we just pack them up and take them with the rest of your things?”
“They might not be anything you’d think appropriate in the mansion,” he murmured, leaning over the paintings in question, which were still covered with a tarp.
“Not appropriate?” Bill had paintings of nude women? She grinned at the thought of naked, voluptuous women lounging on their walls, finally pushing Elosha over the edge.
"Nope," he grumbled, shielding the pictures.
"Let me see, silly," she murmured, coaxing him aside.
Juan opened the door wider to allow in more light. Bill tugged away the tarp from the outermost massive canvas.
"Oh, it's charming," she assured him.
The wide painting was a traditional genre painting from her grandparent's generation, showing all the scenes from the former ranchero life. The once grand old house, now nothing more than abode rubble, was at the center. The plaza was filled with horsemen on arched-necked horses, while lovely senoritas smiled at the riders from behind their fans. The familiar golden hills were covered with lean cattle, and there was even a brave vaquero battling a grizzly bear from horseback with a lance in one corner of the canvas.
It was the sort of sentimental pictures she'd swept from Roslin mansion's walls the moment she'd been given the task to decorate it. But it suited Bill, and obviously meant something to him.
"My wife--Carolanne didn't like it. And it was too large for our little house anyway," Bill said quietly.
"But we have plenty of room in our home," Laura said.
"Yeah?" he said, unsure.
"Yes," Laura said, taking his hand and squeezing it. "Load them up," she called to Juan.
Bill's lips on her cheek was a simple gesture but filled with love.
~*~
Old Jaffee lingered outside the library door, pushing a broom along the highly-polished marble floor.
His son eased up behind him. "Are they still in there?" he asked out of the corner of his mouth, causing his father to jump.
"I hadn't noticed, but assume so," the older man said, straightening his cutaway coat.
A squeal of indignation, followed by a low, knowing laugh, came through the thick wood door.
"Yep, still at it," the footman said. Then he sighed. "I only hope I'll still be able to keep up that pace at his age..."
His father's nostrils flared in outrage.
"Assuming I ever get married," Young Jaffee said, sighing again and leaning against the wall mournfully.
Laura's authoritative voice rang through the thick door, making both men shift uncomfortably. "I'm telling you, it won't fit. I don't care how many different ways you try."
"I can get it in there if I'd just get some cooperation from you," grumbled Bill.
There was a crash and another squeak from their mistress which was suddenly muffled.
Horrified, the two men stepped back. The younger one stared at the door. "Should we check on them?"
Old Jaffee shuddered. "Never." With all his dignity, he grasped his son's arm and dragged him away.
Laura pushed her curls back and glared at her husband. "That book will not go anywhere, Bill," she insisted.
He sat on a footstool, re-adjusting his tie and picked up the fallen large, heavy volume. He frowned at the groaning bookcases around them. "There's got to be a spot it will fit."
She crossed her arms and looked around as well. "Even if we get it in, there's another eighteen boxes," she said helplessly.
"If you didn't insist on keeping them all in order--"
"I want to be able to find something," she sputtered.
He reached out and snagged her arm, drawing her to perch on his lap. "Don't you know? The search is most of the fun."
She fiddled with his tie, straightening the already vertical silk.
She would definitely have to add some more bookshelves to the plans she was having drawn up as a surprise for Bill; his own office. Until then... "You can keep your books in any order you'd like--heck, you can stack them on the floor like cords of wood!"
His grin was her reward.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his thick hair. "You can stop searching now, Mr. Adams."
When he nodded wordlessly, she held him tighter still.
"Yep, this is one story that's done being told," he said confidently.
~ The end