A Settler's Wife's Dreams (Erotic Romance, Romantic Erotica, Erotic Historical Romance) (3 page)

“You did your duties just fine Frank,” Lisa said.

Frank smirked in pride as he carefully withdrew himself. “When you come back from town, we can try again.”

Lisa's smile widened at hearing this. Frank's demeanor had completely changed from last night. Now it was all about her. After one good bedding he was now encouraging her to ride into town on her own. Without waiting for him to change her mind Lisa hopped off the table, pulled up her pants, grabbed her rifle and ran out the door.

She saddled up Jeb and road him out by the house where she brought him to a halt. Frank walked out of the house and looked up at Lisa.

“Just promise me you'll be careful, all right?” He asked.

“I promise,” Lisa returned instantly. “You've got nothing to worry about, all right? When was the last time I didn't know how to handle myself? I've got my rifle in the side scabbard and I look like a boy dressed like this. Who would mess with me anyway?”

“Whoever has been watching us knows that you aren't a boy,” Frank said. “Which reminds me, you never told me what you were keeping secret.”

Frank's look of concern deepened. Lisa wanted to tell Frank all about the dream. She wanted to tell him about what it had felt like to be an eagle and soar through the clouds. She wanted to tell him about what it had been like to be able to see with an eye that let her vision be perfect for miles, and even about how the figure was what appeared to be a young Indian man wearing camouflage.

Lisa especially wanted to tell Frank that the Indian was a very good shot with his bow and arrow. He had picked her right out of the air like an expert marksman. However she couldn’t! If she brought her dream up now there would be no way that Frank would let her go to town on her own. Hell, if she were Frank and he told her the same dream she might try to persuade him not to go.

“I don't remember, dear,” Lisa said. “Can we just forget about it? I need to head out if I want to be back before the shadows get long.”

Frank gave her leg a pat.

“You're right, you need to get a move on,” Frank said. “Just be careful, all right? I really mean that. Don't take any risks you don't need to. Don't stop to talk to anyone. In town be sure to mention that I'm with you but down at the saloon getting a drink or something. Don't do anything that would put you in jeopardy. I know that you think you are a force to be reckoned with since you have your little rifle, and maybe you are. But many people have rifles and are much better with them than you are I jus—”

“I'll be all right,” Lisa cut him off. “I promise.”

Frank let out a deep sigh and nodded.

Without saying anything else, Lisa dressed up, then spurred her horse to a trot and headed for the road. Town was only a few hours ride one way, but she wasn't going just one way and wanted to be back long before dark. At first she kept Jeb at a quick pace, but soon the plow horse was panting heavily and Lisa slowed the pace down to a walk.

She really didn't need to be in a hurry. And so what if she came back in the dark, what was the worst that could happen? Sure there was some strange Indian fellow stalking the homestead, but what did that even mean? Maybe he was just watching the homestead to make sure that she and Frank weren't soldiers in disguise or something of that nature. Or maybe he thought that secretly they were panning for gold and wanted to know if they were so that he could pan for gold as well.

“Don't be silly,” Lisa said to herself in a soft voice. “The Indian isn't looking to pan for gold. He's looking for you.”

But how did the Indian even know that she was a she? Lisa thought about that one for awhile. There were times that she bathed in the river that she felt like she was being watched. The bend where the current really picked up was most fun place to wash off in the spume. It was also the most open part of the river. Frank hated that she bathed there, but sometimes she convinced him to bath with her. Anyone and everyone with eyes could’ve seen Lisa was a very beautiful woman if they saw her bathing at the big bend of the river near the homestead.

“Maybe Frank was right,” Lisa said. “Maybe it does pay to be modest.”

But this was all conjecture, she had to remind herself. She didn't even know for sure if the figure was a man, or if the figure was just her imagination. She reminded herself of all the times she'd thought she’d seen something in the woods and it turned out to be nothing more than a jumble of shapes her brain had put together to be something they weren't. That was probably it, Lisa convinced herself. There was probably nothing to be worried about at all, no Indian, nothing like that. The only thing that she and Frank needed to worry about was their sex life.

Lisa often times wondered what Frank really thought of her. Sure he treated her well enough, but at the same time, even though he treated her like a partner there were many times that he took her for granted. Then again she couldn't imagine what life would be like being someone else’s wife; someone who wasn’t quite as forward thinking about what women as Frank. And Frank didn't care that she was barren. The thought made her sad. Even though there was no way to know that it was her.

Then she remembered how Frank had pleasured her today. He had seemed an expert at it; which probably meant that he had been with some other women. Lisa chided herself. It had been silly to think that Frank had never been with another woman. In society’s eyes, although it was naughty, it was kind of all right for men to sleep around. The standards for women were different.

Lisa's heart sunk as she thought about it, because it probably meant that Frank knew if he was fertile or not. Lisa was sure, now, that Frank had gotten someone pregnant before. He probably had a whole brood of children somewhere, tucked away in some New England colony. That's why he'd been so eager to come west with her, to get away from his other wife and their children. They probably had a bunch of children.

“Oh Lisa, don't be silly,” she said to herself. “None of that is real.”

Jeb let out a snort as he walked down the road.

“That's right Jeb, none of it is real,” Lisa said, patting the side of the horse’s neck. “None of it’s real at all. It's silly to make up stories about Frank's past in my head. What normal person does that?”

Jeb snorted and tossed his head, shaking his mane back and forth. Lisa stated to wonder why Jeb was acting like something was wrong. It was a nice day, the sun shone through clouds down on the road in front of them. The town was only a little way ahead of them now, but Jeb wouldn't even walk a straight line anymore, he kept dancing side to side, as if swerving to avoid something only he could see.

“What has gotten into you?” Lisa asked the horse as it dance from side to side on the road. “Is there something a matter? Is there a pebble or something under the saddle?”

She had checked the saddle for debris before she put it on the horse though, so she was fairly certain it wasn't that. Or had some kind of hard shelled insect had flown under the saddle as she put it down on the beast?

She wasn’t sure what made her look behind. Maybe it was Jeb's goading that finally did it, as that was plainly what the horse was doing in hindsight. Or maybe it had to do with the way her flesh goose pimpled for no reason. Lisa didn't know what made her cast a long look over her shoulder, but when she did her blood ran cold.

Down the road behind her quickly closing ground was the Indian man on a war pony.

“Go, go, go!” Lisa screamed as she kicked Jeb's ribs.

Jeb took off like he had been waiting the whole time for Lisa to realize what was going on and act in her own best interest. The town was just ahead and Lisa was glad for that. Jeb, although a work horse, was good at short sprints. She hoped he would be able to hold out. She looked over her shoulder again and saw the Indian and the pony just a few horse lengths behind her.

“Come on Jeb,” Lisa screamed. “Come on! Go! Go! Go!”

Jeb's stride reached out as if responding to his mistress’s command. Lisa would have liked to think that Jeb was speeding up in order to save her but she knew it was because Jeb hated to feel another horse behind him.

It just didn't feel right to Jeb - that much was easy to tell. Jeb like to be out in the stretch by himself when he was running, not cramped up with a bunch of horses behind him and around him. Not that Jeb had ever been to an actual horse race or anything like that, it was just what Lisa imagined Jeb's personality to be like.

Just as they entered the city limits of the town Lisa looked back and the Indian on the pony was gone. She could see the froth coming off of Jeb's lips in thick clumps and steered him over to a trough. Lisa jumped off the horse and started to rub him down with a rag she kept in one of the saddle bags. She let Jeb drink a little bit, but pulled him away when he started to drink so much that his stomach would hurt and make him sluggish.

“Good boy,” She cooed. “Good Jeb. Going to have to keep this one between us, all right? Going to have to keep this one from daddy. Frank won't understand, all right? So let's just keep this between us.”

Jeb nodded his head as if in agreement and Lisa fished an apple out of the saddle bag and fed it to him. Jeb really had saved her life today, and for that she was grateful. It was hard to tell what the Indian would have done with her had he caught up with her. Probably knocked her off her horse, or tried to lift her off and then slow his horse down so he could set her down safely. Maybe the Indian just wanted to rape and scalp her.

That's what Frank would say. Lisa wanted to think otherwise but it was hard to imagine the Indian with good intentions, especially after he had stalked the homestead for months on end and then tried to run her down as she went to town. None of it made any sense unless the Indian was trying to kill her. Unless the Indian wanted to kidnap her so he could bring her back to his tribe and make her live a life of indentured servitude from which there would be no escape but death.

“Oh Jeb,” Lisa said. “I sure am glad you are a good horse that likes his own space. I'm not sure that Zed would’ve really made it here like you did.”

Zed didn't mind running with a pack of horses, and that's why Frank and Lisa tended to take Zeb into town instead of Jeb. Where Jeb shied away and strode out Zeb tried to become more compact and squeeze next to the other horses, even going so far as to synchronize the hoof falls.

“Well, guess we better head into town.” Lisa said.

Before the Indian had tried to run her down Lisa had had all kinds of plans when she got to town. Sure, she needed a few horse shoes and some small nails, but she didn't want to waste a perfectly good trip to town by just getting a few things that were needed. She wanted to shop around and see what was going on; maybe even stop by some local watering whole that women gathered at and gossip.

It would be hard to mingle with women, she realized, since she dressed like a man and moved with the freedom of a man. In her experience Lisa found that woman especially didn't like it when she disobeyed the societal norms of the day. Some men could handle it, or at least abide it, especially since Lisa was smart and pulled her own weight. Pulling her own weight seemed to cut her a lot of slack with most men; even those who were used to women that fell into the role of being passive and needing help like they had been taught to their entire lives.

Lisa wondered if she should go to the Sheriff and tell him what happened, but decided against it. If she talked to the Sheriff he would surely come out and try to tell Frank how he was wrong to let his wife do as she pleased, and then Frank would tell the Sheriff off and things would go poorly from there. No, Lisa decided, she would go and find the horse shoe that she needed, a few of the small nails that worked the best, and try to make it home before the sun went down.

She could only hope that the Indian was spooked and took off in fear of a search party going out and looking for him. If the Indian was bold and waited in ambush by the road Lisa might very well be in some serious trouble. She'd never killed a man before, and wondered if she had it in her.

Copyright © 2014 by Ashley Olsen

All Rights Reserved

The town hustled and bustled with an astonishing amount of people Lisa wasn't used to. Living in the cottage with Frank sometimes made her forget that there was a world outside of their little homestead, and trips to town like this one were exactly what she needed to rekindle the sense of adventure that had filled her with excitement when she was a child and people had spoken of settling land in the land out west.

Iowa may not have been as far west as California and the gold rushers there, but it was much farther west than most of her east coast relations would ever manage to get in their entire lives. Lisa rode Jeb to the nearest stable and turned him over to the young boy out front.

“Could you just wash him down and baby him a little bit?” Lisa asked.

“Well I sure can miss,” the boy answered, taking the reins from her hands.

Not until after she had walked away to window shop on main street did she realize that she'd never inquired about what the payment would be. She wondered if the young boy would even charge her. She’d heard that sometimes people in town did little things like that no charge as long as the people riding in from the country did something to stir the economy; it was a kind of incentive and a sharing in the little hardships of country travel that served to lessen their sting. Lisa thought that there might be a chance she could acquire the horse shoe and nails for free as well since they were such small things that many of the city folk would have in abundance just laying around.

She wondered what things she had that the city people didn't, what little things she had access to in her day to day activities that a city slicker would find intriguing. Frank had told her once that a doctor had paid him for a map of where morel mushrooms grew at in the forest. The doctor had gone on to tell Frank that he had an interest in all kinds of fungi, and that any kind of specimens that Frank gathered in his travels should be brought to the doctor and he would buy them for a fair price. The richer folk in the city seemed to have some eccentricities about them, but she found them interesting instead of obnoxious like Frank did.

Lisa walked down the main street, window shopping as she looked at dresses and household appliances on display behind the big window pains of busy stores. The gangplanks creaked loudly as she walked, making her glance with worry at some of the boards that bowed in badly, as if they were going to break at any moment. She found it strange to think that the city didn't take care of the walkway and that each individual store had the responsibility of fixing up the boards that broke in front of them.

She wasn't an economics professor at some fancy university. It reasoned that if the stores were essential to the survival of the town then the city should see to it that the people could get to them without breaking their necks tripping on a broken board.

She walked into a furniture store. Polished chairs glimmered in the light streaming through the windows, along with tables, bed frames, benches, and all other manner of wood work. From the looks of it the furniture was being made in the back of the place.

All of the wood work bore a uniformity only achieved by skilled hands working lathe, saw and sand paper over the raw wood itself, followed by several coats of some kind of high gloss sealant. Lisa didn't know a great deal about how the creation of furniture, but she did have a good idea as to the basics of wood working, enough of an idea to know that whoever was working wood here knew what they were doing and did it well.

“Oh my, my, my,” Lisa said.

She ran her hand over the arch of a chair's back as she admired it. Frank had made all of the chairs in their log cabin when he'd built it. He was competent enough when it came to woodworking—the chairs had never failed to support his or her weight—but he didn't have the style or flair of a professional. Lisa would have died to be able sit in the chairs in front of her now. She would have loved to bring food off the stove and set it on one of the tables that shone like glass, or to be able to prop her feet up on one of the comfortable looking stools after helping Frank around the fields. She knew that Frank wanted to make a bigger bed for them at some point, but time was hard enough to find, not to mention the lumber.

“Well hello, madam,” a voice said from the back of the store.

A tall man with dark hair and eyes walked toward her while he wiped his hands with a rag. From the look of black oil on his fingers he'd been in the back room staining some new additions to his stores inventory. The man's hands were strong and well muscled, bearing heavy calluses. His chest was broad and the shirt he wore hung unbuttoned, opened down to the middle. Sweat trickled down his brow, and he wiped it again and again while he made his way toward her.

“Hello,” Lisa said, her voice almost catching in her throat.

“What can I do for you today?” the man asked.

“What is your name?” Lisa said. Immediately she blushed a deep red. It wasn't because she’d asked his name; it was how she asked it. She sounded like a young girl at a school dance wondering the name of a pretty boy who had just walked in the room. From the way the man hands slowed down their efforts wipe the stain from themselves it was apparent the man had noticed it as well.

God damn it,
Lisa thought,
way to make yourself look like a country bumpkin.

Lisa glanced down at her own clothes and realized that it was obvious she had come in to town from a nearby homestead.

“You look famished,” the man said. He extended his hand. “My name is Ted. It's a pleasure to meet you.”

Lisa took his hand and squeezed it.

“Ted, it is so nice to meet you. Your wooden creations speak much to your work ethic and character.”

“Well thank you, Lisa,” Ted said. He glanced at the clock above the door then back at Lisa. “You know, I see the dust on your boots and it occurs to me that you just road into town and you looked simply famished. Why don't I close for lunch and we head up top for lunch?”

“Up top?” Lisa said, hesitantly.

“Oh, my, well yes you wouldn't know, would you?” Ted said with a smile. “On top of this building I've set up a table, chairs, an umbrella of sorts to keep the sun off and music player. Just a little bit ago I set out some rather hot soup to cool as well as some sandwiches to warm in the sun. I'd love for you to join me!”

“I don't know,” Lisa said.

She didn't know why she was having such trouble thinking around this man. Her breath was come more difficult than it had before she'd seen him. Scared to open her mouth in fear of something silly coming out of it she had to really put effort into forming words and sentences.

It had been a long time since anyone had made her feel so beside herself for no reason. It made her think back to when she was an awkward teenager and boys were noticing her all the time and then finally she had noticed one of them. Goodness, this man in front of her looked simply divine, like a sultry, dark haired angel that fell from earth and decided to start making furniture.

“No none-sense, please,” Ted said. “I realize we don't know each other but I often times have guests on top of my shop for lunch, especially people that haven't been in to see it before. I realize I'm new here and it's good to build up a rapport with people, not just for myself as a man but for my business as a whole.”

Lisa didn't know what to say.

“So please,” Ted said as he put her hand on the small of her back. “Just come with me.”