off his cue, Ben closed in. "You askin' my girl for a dance?"
"She don't got no brand on her."
"She's got a mouth on her, and she said no."
"She's got a nice ass on her, too, and I just thought she oughta shake it one time for a white—"
Ben landed a solid right that effectively shut the man's mouth and sent him sprawling in the dance floor dust like a turtle on its back.
But the sandy-haired cowboy was not without friends, and Clara was lucky to get Ben out of the bar with relatively minor damage.
He assured her the damage was hardly insignificant and definitely rated her attention since it had been sustained mostly in her honor. Using his bucking saddle for a pillow, they bundled up together with an army blanket on a bed of hay in the back of the pickup. She made a fuss over his eye, treating the swelling with the bag of ice she'd picked up at the gas station on the way out of town. And kisses. He kept wanting more kisses. She leaned over him and applied them liberally.
"You know what really takes the swelling away?"
She smiled as he loosened the button on her jeans and pulled her shirt free. "What?"
"A nice, pink, boneless..." He smiled in response to her smile as he touched her through the single layer of cup-shaped cotton. "What's this?"
"Underwire."
"I said boneless breast of—" he pinched the hook and eye apart, then replaced the wiry cup with his warm palm "—mmmm, woman." And he fondled her, then hungrily suckled her until she groaned his name.
"You like that, too, huh?"
Oh, yes. "Is it helping your eye?"
"You wouldn't believe how much."
"Then I like it, too." So much, she could hardly breathe. He smiled, pleased with himself, watching the signs of rapture spread over her face as he slipped his pleasure-making fingers past the no-contest barrier of her panties.
"How about this? How does this feel, Clara?" He didn't have to ask. He knew exactly where and how to touch her. A quick, deep shot of liquid fire made her shiver. "That good?"
"Mmmm-hmmm."
He moved her hand from his waist to the rigid bulge in his jeans. "Then be fair, darlin'," he whispered. "Touch me, too."
She returned his favor, caressing him the way he'd taught her to, but this was to be the time they couldn't make do with touching.
"I really need you, Clara. Please don't turn me away tonight."
"Ben, we can't take... the chance of..."
"I'll be careful. I promise." He brushed scant kisses over her lips and cheeks, probing her portal with gentle fingers and eager penis, desperately trying to make her ready. "Tell me you want me, Clara."
"I do." There it was. And there he was. And there they were, coming together. "Oh... Ben... yes..."
It was a forever vow for Clara.
For Ben, it was the consummate conquest. She belonged to him now. He was her first, and he decided, then and there, that he would be her only man. Ever. He told her how beautiful she looked in the starlight, how much he loved her, how much he would always love her.
She believed every word. She kissed his sore eye and called him her tiger.
"'... burning bright, in the forest of the night,'" she quoted as she licked his bruised knuckles with a pointed tongue.
"No forest out here, honey, but I'll find you one if that's what you want."
His words made the stars in the South Dakota sky burn brighter. Oh, yes, indeed, he had the power. In her ears, his promises were more lyrical than any other man's poetry.
"Just tell me what you want, Clara. Anything. I'll find it, buy it, steal it, whatever it takes to make you happy."
"You make me happy," she told him. "You're all I want."
"You got it, baby." He smoothed her hair back and traced her eyebrow with a reverent forefinger. "Comes the time when I'm not enough—"
"Never," she said, and she took his face in her hands and kissed that silly notion right off his lips. "That time will never come."
Remembering in the solitude of their bedroom—yes, theirs, she couldn't help but think of it that way—made her cry for the
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