As the Cowboy Commands [Ecstasy in the Old West 2] (Siren Publishing Allure) (9 page)

Before accepting the fresh block of soap, Jared asked, “For sure?”

“Please, I want you to have it.” Helen stood at the edge of the tub, looking down through the clear water at Jared as he began soaping himself. She could see his naked body. Soon the water became cloudy with soap. In a quiet voice, she asked, “You’re not even a little bit embarrassed, are you?”

Jared looked up at her, dark eyes beneath slanting brows not really hiding the amusement he felt. “Embarrassed? About what?” he asked in a voice suggesting an innocence of heart and mind that Jared hadn’t possessed since his early teen years. His cock had responded to Helen’s charms by once again hardening in appreciation.

Helen’s lips pressed together in a thin, annoyed line. She put her hands on the generous curves of her hips, and gave her bare foot a little stop to signify mock disapproval. Finally, her lips curled into a half smile and she asked, “Would you like something to drink. I’ve got some hard liquor, if you’re interested.”

Jared raised his eyebrows. “You? Hard liquor?”

Helen looked away. That embarrassed edge came back to her tone as she said, “Like I told you, I’ve got a…a friend. It’s his. I keep it here for him. He’s buys it. I’ve tasted it, but I don’t like it.” Rhetorically, she asked, “Who in Whitetail Creek would sell whiskey to a woman?”

Jared really didn’t like the idea of letting another man—especially when he suspected that other man was Helen’s lover—buy him a drink when he himself would never be able to return the favor. But it
had
been an awfully long night…

“What’ll he say when he comes back and finds that the level in the bottle isn’t the same as when he left?” Jared asked.

Helen’s green eyes turned flinty, but only for a moment. Then, in a voice that was calmer and more commanding than Jared had ever before heard it, she said, “He’s my problem, not yours. Right now, the most important thing to me is that I make you as happy as you can possibly be.” She glanced away, and when she did, her gaze softened as she concluded, “Don’t…don’t take this away from me. I want—no, I
need
—to do this for you. After all you’ve done for me, I
have
to do this. Please?”

“Well, it’s quite obvious to me that you have everything under control.” Jared smiled, and a boyish dimple appeared in his cheek. “And I am most pleased to be the recipient of your generous hospitality.”

Once again, Helen hurried away from the bathtub, the smile on her lips and in her eyes glowing with an effervescence Jared suspected she usually kept hidden. She hurried to the supply cabinet and extracted a bottle of Evan Williams whiskey and, from another cabinet, a coffee cup.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any whiskey glasses,” Helen said, returning to the tub. The expression in her eye said she hoped Jared wouldn’t be disappointed.

“Glass is glass. A cup’s a cup,” Jared replied, genuinely pleased that the whiskey he’d be drinking was top-quality, Evan Williams, sour mash sipping whiskey. But he was quietly furious that whoever had brought the whiskey to Helen’s house obviously had enough money to buy some of the finest spirits available in Whitetail Creek for himself, but he left Helen in a robe too well worn even for rags…

Jared reached a soapy hand up for the cup, wondering just how much he could hate a man he’d never met.

Helen got down on her knees beside the tub, holding the bottle in one hand and the cup in the other. She removed the cork rather indelicately from the bottle with her teeth and then even more indelicately spit the cork away. She then filled the clean, white coffee cup with whiskey to the brim.

Again, Jared reached a soapy hand for the cup, but Helen moved the cup away.

“I’ve got an idea,” she said, her eyes shining like wet emeralds. “Why don’t you just rinse the soap off your hands so you can hold the cup and enjoy your whiskey? Why don’t you let me pamper you a little?”

Jared, with hands now free of soap suds, gratefully accepted the cup of whiskey. He took a swig of the amber liquid. Helen got to her feet and went to the stove where the boiler was holding yet more water for the tub. Using a towel to protect her fingers from the hot metal, Helen closed the vents to the stove, shutting off the air supply to the fire inside. It would be extinguished within minutes.

“I think we’ve got enough hot water now,” she said matter-of-factly as she dipped a pan into the boiler, extracting a measure of clear, heated water. She walked back to the tub and knelt on the floor, setting the pan down beside her. There was an unusually serene expression in her emerald-green eyes. “Now where’s that block of soap?” she asked. Before Jared could answer, she dipped both hands into the milky water and, not unintentionally, managed to find his penis and testicles before finding the soap. “Here it is,” she said with mock innocence as her hands came out of the water holding the soap.

Jared, with his elbows on the sides of the tub, had a roguish half smile on his lips as he studied Helen’s performance. He took another healthy sip of whiskey and sighed as the liquor burned down his throat and warmed his blood.

Helen worked up a mountain of soap suds between her hands and, after only a moment of deliberation, started washing Jared’s chest with her left hand and his back and shoulders with her right—all the while affecting an aura of innocence that would have been perfectly natural for a nun while washing the laundry.

“How does that feel?” she asked, her fingers tracing gentle swirls in the soap suds trickling down Jared’s chest.

“Magnificent,” he said. He took another sip of whiskey, sighed, then added, “Is there something better than magnificent? Whatever that word is, that’s how good it feels.”

Helen smiled and replied, “We’ll just have to find out for ourselves, I guess.”

She took the pan of warm water from the floor and lifted it over Jared’s head. “Close your eyes,” she said. When he did, she doused his hair with clean water and then wiped the excess from his face with her free hand. “Take another sip then hold your glass away. I don’t want to get soap into your good liquor.”

“How right you are, my lady,” Jared replied, taking a hefty swallow of whiskey before holding the glass away with an extended arm.

A strange, fluttery feeling slithered through Helen when she heard Jared call her “my lady.” She responded to it physically, as though he’d touched her instead of spoken to her, and though such emotions were entirely unfamiliar to her, she was consciously aware of a slow-moving warmth passing through her tissues, through her nerves, eliciting pleasures where none had been sought, adventurousness when none had been summoned.

Helen worked up soap suds between her palms, and then soaped Jared’s hair. He closed his eyes and sighed with such unalloyed pleasure that she felt her clit start to tingle. Never before had she known such a desire to please a man. Never before had she experienced such satisfaction in seeing a man contented with what she was doing for him. His obvious appreciation made her want to please him all the more.

Helen watched her hands moving through Jared’s thick hair. She had never bathed a man before. In fact, she’d never even thought about doing such a thing. Yet with Jared, despite the brevity of her personal history with him, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do. She had seen him taut with tension. She’d seen him unleash his violence in her defense. Now she was seeing him luxuriating in the simple comforts that she was able—and
so
willing—to provide.

“Does that feel good?” she asked.

“I’m in heaven.” He opened his eyes and looked at her with sudden seriousness. “Are you an angel? I never thought I’d get to heaven.”

Helen laughed softly and resisted the urge to kiss his mouth. “No, I’m definitely not at angel, and this old house certainly isn’t heaven.”

“Sure feels that way,” Jared said before closing his eyes again.

I could love this man.

She had not intended for the thought to enter her head. After all, she was engaged to a wealthy and powerful man, and a smart woman simply didn’t fall in love with someone as dangerous as Jared when that woman happened to be engaged to another man with enough money to make all her financial worries disappear forever. But the thought had entered her mind, and once it had, she couldn’t pretend that it hadn’t existed.

But what about Gregg? she thought and then immediately squeezed her eyes shut against the pain that instantly followed. She thought, Forget Gregg. At least for now, forget Gregg. Think about Jared. For right now, Jared’s all that matters.

Forcing the unpleasant thoughts from her consciousness, Helen took her hands from Jared’s hair, rinsed them quickly in the bath water, and then picked up the pan of warm water from the floor. She said, “Keep your eyes closed now. I’m going to rinse out the soap.” She watched as the warm, clean water rained down over his head. When the pan was empty, Jared still had soap in his hair. “I’ve got to get more water. Just keep your eyes closed, and I’ll be right back.”

She filled the pan from the boiler, and upon returning, paused a moment to marvel at the physical beauty of the naked man in her house. His shoulders were broad, the muscles in his chest exquisitely formed, their slumbering power obvious. There was an almost perfect triangle of dark hair on his chest. She couldn’t see far into the milky, white water of the bathtub, but she knew what was hidden in the warm, murky waters…and she knew that that, too, was beautiful.

Helen slowly got down on her knees at the side of the tub. Quite suddenly she was painfully aware that moments such as this did not happen often in a woman’s life. In fact, for most women, they never happened at all. She knew this instinctively and accepted it—just as she accepted that she would make the most of her brief time with Jared. When he rode away, she would try to be grateful for the time that she had spent with him and thankful that she had shared his passion. She would accept that she must then get on with her life and, unfortunately, set a date to marry Gregg.

She poured the water over Jared’s head slowly, rubbing his hair with her left hand to get all the soap out of the dark strands. When she was satisfied that his hair was clean, she ran her left palm lightly over his face to smooth away water and said, “Now you can open your eyes.”

When he looked at her, Helen knew that she’d never before seen eyes such a tempting shade of chocolate brown. He didn’t need to say or do anything to make her want to kiss him, to touch him, to do wickedly intimate things with him. All he had to do was look at her with those seductive, brown eyes, and Helen’s pussy began to tingle, and all the inhibitions and convictions that she believed she held dear simply faded away.

“Okay,” she said, forcing her tone to be casual, “now kick up a foot and we’ll continue.”

With a chuckle, Jared raised his left foot out of the water, obviously enjoying the special attention he was receiving. Helen soaped his foot, ankle, and then calf, making her way slowly along his leg. The galvanized tub was not overly large, so Jared’s big frame was folded up considerably to fit into it. Helen stopped washing when her hands were at the top of Jared’s thigh, just barely beneath the surface of the water.

“Now the other leg,” she said.

Jared lifted his right leg out of the water. Helen leaned over him to begin washing his foot, and in doing so, brushed her breasts against his wet left knee. She leaned back for a moment, watching as the moist spot on her thin robe where she had touched Jared turned almost opaque, showing faintly the color of her areola through the cotton.

In a slightly strained voice, Jared said, “Why don’t you take that off?” He cleared his throat then added with an attempt at innocence that didn’t quite meet the requirements, “No sense in getting your robe wet.”

Helen gave a little shake of her head.

“Please?” Jared prodded.

Again she shook her head, averting her gaze from his.

Several seconds passed before Jared asked, “Why not?”

Helen closed her eyes. She didn’t want to answer Jared’s question. She could feel his gaze on her, studying her, waiting for her. Finally she opened her eyes, glanced furtively at his face and then away, and said, “You’re beautiful. Your body is absolutely perfect.”

“Thank you,” Jared replied. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

“Your body’s perfect. Mine’s not. I’m too…” The words drifted away, and she felt her cheeks and ears getting warm and pink with embarrassment. These were not comforting truths she was revealing. After several seconds of painful silence, she shrugged and explained, “My hips are too big…so are my thighs. And my breasts”—she uttered a short, derisive laugh—“well, they’re
way
too big.”

She finished with his leg and, with a pat, indicated he could put his foot back in the water. That left only one part of his body that she hadn’t bathed. Whether it had happened consciously or unconsciously, she was now aware that she had left the best for last.

She reached with both hands into the murky water and immediately found Jared’s cock. He was aroused. His magnificent flesh was solid but not yet fully extended, though he was still impressive. Helen wrapped the fingers of her right hand around his shaft as she cradled his testicles in her left palm. A low, throaty groan of pleasure came from Jared, and Helen smiled.

“Your body is perfect,” Helen whispered, feeling Jared’s cock immediately responding to her touch, swelling instantly, filling her hand. Saucily, though she wasn’t a woman to use coarse language, she added, “Absolutely…goddamned… perfect.”