I shivered. “And?”

  “And I’m gonna make up for all that lost time.”

  I used my imagination. The place between my thighs trembled in anticipation. On those long nights with the renegades I’d tried to remember how Cal had touched me. The things we did with each other, in secret, in the open. Those touches and kisses and stolen fucks, each one more furtive and more passionate than the one before...In another time I’d been his mistress. Would it be different, now that I was his wife?

  “What if I’m still mad?” I said softly.

  “Then that’s your problem,” he said wickedly. “But in my experience, it don’t take too long to get you under me and listenin’ to every word I say.”

  “You’re a devil.”

  “Maybe so.”

  He suddenly put his teeth into my throat. The love-bite seared my skin. I gasped, but he had already withdrawn. He straightened his vest, and touched his hat mockingly.

  “Mrs. Sampson.”

  We didn’t have to pretend now. We didn’t have to steal kisses. I was Mrs. Sampson. Mrs. Cal Sampson.

  “Where you goin’?” I asked him.

  “There’s some Kiowa nearby,” he said. “I’m going to see the camp. Might be a friendly face in there that could help us.”

  “Help us do what?”

  “Get to California, of course.”

  Not long after he left, Sings-Too-Much came to me with another present: a buckskin pouch with intricate beading along the front. It must have taken her hours and hours to stitch each bead. The pattern made a sort of opening flower. I noticed Sings-Too-Much didn’t seem to happy to give it to me. She made a teeth-kissing sound when I thanked her, and turned away.

  “It was for my daughter,” she said. “Don’t spoil it.”

  “Oh-er-”

  “It is alright,” said Joseph cheerfully, taking her place at my side. “She is angry, but you had no wedding presents. I felt bad.”

  I stared at him and had to laugh. I could never tell whether Joseph was joking or not- but whatever he said had always just broke me up anyway. It was not in the way of Indians to give these big long hugs. I hoped he didn’t take offense, and did so anyway.

  A little surprised blush touched his cheeks. He hurried away after Sings-Too-Much.

  The rest of the day went on with the same slowness as the one before. Cal rode into the town to register the certificate. By the time he came back the Indians were packing up to leave in anticipation of the next morning. I guessed we would be going with them.

  The band left one of the wickiups standing; this would be my bridal chamber. I waited in there for Cal. As I waited I got to thinking.

  Nothing felt different. Nothing felt unusual. I was still the same old Ada. Just with a new name, and a contract binding me to Cal.

  In my life I’d had no use for romance and fairy-tales, and neither had Cal, for sure. But still. A girl only got married once, after all. I had expected more. More- something.

  I waited and waited for Cal. It got very dark very fast. I huddled in the wickiup, bundled in my new clothes and old Kiowa robe. Loneliness and irritation tugged at my heart. Why hadn’t Cal returned?

  The darkness outside swallowed everything. Even the Indians doused the fire and took to their bedrolls. A somber mood covered the night.

  Outside the wickiup, Joseph’s voice rose and fell. He was speaking to the wife in their language.

  Lulled by their strange words, I put my head down and fell asleep.

  ᢇ

  “This is how I find my wife,” murmured Cal. “Passed out like a drunk on my weddin’ night.”

  His hands were uncommon warm. They slid up the curve of my leg, cupping my calf, stroking the inner part of my thigh. In my sleep-daze I hardly felt his touches. His voice came through clearly, though he spoke in hardly a murmur.

  “I came here hopin’ to find you undressed,” he said.

  “You’re ‘bout two hours late for that,” I mumbled back. “Someone came in here and beat you to it.”

  His hand tightened on my thigh. “Oh?”

  “I’m jokin’, Cal.”

  He began to play with the hem of my skirt. My heart fluttered. I fought to rouse myself from sleepiness. Did he want to do it right now? Wasn’t he tired at all?

  “I’m not tired,” he said, reading my mind. “I’m ready to assert my rights as husband.”

  “Oh, Cal. I’m dead sleepy.”

  He rolled my skirt up to my waist. Despite myself, I felt the usual liquid heat gathering between my thighs. His fingertips stroked my skin.

  “That’s alright,” he murmured. “Sleepin’ or awake, I’m here for just one thing.”

  He took my hand. His thumbs rubbed the inside of palm. Then he replaced them with something bigger. Thicker. Harder. I wrapped my hands around his full length. Oh God. What was the saying? Harder than a weddin’ dick. Yeah. That was Cal.

  “You really mean to do it now?” I said, fighting to wake up. I’d never been so tired in my life. By contrast, I could tell Cal wanted to fuck and wanted to fuck right now. He smelled of sex- of lust, manhood, animal dominance. And he wouldn’t be denied.

  He rolled me over on my stomach. I felt him move lower. His fingers parted the lips of my venus and he put his tongue right there, delving it deep in the creamy juices spreading from my arousal. He tongued me slowly, stroking from bottom to top, then plunged deep inside me where I knew his cock would go. He wasn’t just arousing me- he was making sure I’d be wet enough for his entrance.

  Each lick and suck stripped aside my defenses. I had tensed under him at the invasion of his thick fingers. But he did everything to undo my control. He fucked me, spread me open for his invading snake’s tongue.

  I like to taste you, Ada, he’d said to me once.

  And he had- many times before this. But to be bared open from behind, his face buried in the curves of my bottom and his mouth kissing and tonguing and drenching my most secret parts...it was too much to handle. It felt wrong- but oh so right.

  I bit a scream into my arm.

  “Good girl,” he muttered. “Lie still, now.”

  I was wet enough. I broke away from the last remnants of sleep as he lined his blunt instrument up with me. Used to these quick fucks in our bedrolls or out in the prairie, I prepared myself for a sudden and brutal entrance. But instead he got in just the tip. His hips worked back and forth with it, coating in my cream.

  “Don’t think this will be quick,” he breathed, settling his hips over mine. One hand groped the ample folds of my ass. “I’m here for you all night. You’re gonna keep me hard like this all night, Ada.”

  He slid inside me. I muffled a gasp. He leaned his whole body over me, covering every part of me until my breathing slowed.

  Outside, a rumble sounded in the distance. Deep in the very corners of the sky a raincloud boiled, and then blew forward over the miles to fall over us. The Kickapoo cried in dismay; we heard them shuffling around outside.

  “Where are they goin’?” I asked.

  “The caves,” said Cal. “They’ll wait it out.”

  He slid his cock from me and turned me over. He wanted to look into my face. In a minute he’d replaced it again. He didn’t seem concerned with the rain. We were protected by the canvas cloth.

  “What if it floods?”

  “Hush, Ada.”

  His hips slid back and forth. He reached a hand up to cup my breasts.

  “These got bigger,” he murmured.

  “Really?”

  I lost what I’d been about to say next. He did something with his fingers that made me stifle a gasp against his chest.

  “You like that?”

  “Cal- oh. I can’t take it.”

  “You got to, sugar. You got to take it.”

  Over and over. Fiery snakes of desire wound from his body into mine, twining us together in a panting embrace. He fucked into me as if I were leaving, as if the world was ending, as if I had done him wrong. As if I resisted him. I was Cal Sampson’s wife now. He spread my legs apart farther, farther, until I felt I would break underneath his ferocious pounding. Slick with need for him, I allowed each invasion.

  He rolled over suddenly.

  “We’re gonna try somethin’, Ada?”

  “Like what?”

  He gripped himself with his hand. In the darkness a bead of wetness glistened at the head of him. I wondered- how would it taste? How would Cal taste?

  “I think you know. Come here.”

  A hand on the back of my neck guided me lower. Just as he had kissed my private parts, I was being invited to do the same. I gasped. The smell of his arousal hit me in a delicious wave. Did he want me to suckle on it? And would I like the taste?

  “Do it,” he murmured.

  I wouldn’t be shy. We were married, weren’t we?

  “Oh god,” he hissed.

  I flicked my eyes up to him. His tool felt impossibly huge in the small space of my mouth. But God help me. I wanted it bad.

  He held my head firm. There would be no getting away. Slowly he began to slide in and out of my mouth. The head of him slipped past my tongue and to my throat.

  “I could do this ‘till mornin’,” he whispered.

  I couldn’t answer, but I gave him a soft squeeze in the right spot- he knew I felt the same.

  10

  One Month Later

  The wanted posters for Sam Twist went up all over. Which did absolutely zero favors for Cal and me. Cal had a job of a time convincing everyone his brother was dead.

  After a few weeks of harassment, Cal had to ride into Baxter Springs himself and speak to the printers there.

  “My brother’s got blue eyes!” he insisted. “And he’s an inch taller. Not to mention, he’s dead. I killed him myself. Y’all need to put that on these papers, or some two-bit Sheriff will be hangin’ me before the year’s out.”

  “You got to admit, Sir,” said the printer, “ It’s an uncanny resemblance.”

  “Not to me,” said Cal. “Fix it, or I’ll be back here.”

  “He’s dead, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s the body? A body ought to have been brought in.”

  “There ain’t no funeral homes on the plains.”

  “Well-”

  “I told you. I killed him myself. My word ought to be as good as anyone else’s around here.”

  The printer glanced at the drawing. I thought the artist had done a solid job. It looked exactly like Sam Twist. It also looked exactly like Cal.

  “You sure y’all weren’t twins?”

  “As sure as you’re sure you ain’t Queen Victoria. And the way you’re fussin’ at me, I ain’t so sure you can be sure.”

  The man blinked like a dumb owl. “Uh- right. And he’s dead?”

  Cal looked like he might blow a stack. I steered him from the printer’s. He jammed his hat on his head.

  “Moses in a breadbasket. I’m getting right sick of this.”

  “We might have to go on back to the river and pick through his bones. Seems they won’t believe it ‘till they see it.”

  “That he’s dead, you mean? I can’t blame these folks, exactly. Sam Twist’s been a feared name around these parts for well on a decade. They miss their enemy.”

  I took a deep breath and watched him closely. I said, “I wonder what happened to his money.”

  That question had tugged at me for weeks. But I’d been afraid to put it to Cal. After the incident with my stolen gold bar, I feared mentioning Sam Twist’s stolen gold ever again.

  “Ah,” said Cal.

  He jammed a hand in his pockets. “The gold we found in his camp, I sent back.”

  “Back? Back where?”

  “To the bank he took it from. Sent it back with a note tellin’ them everythin’. I expect they’ll have their agents out here some time, to look for it.”

  I tried to hide my disappointment. That gold could have bought us a fast ticket to California. We could have built a good life on even a tiny piece of it. And for Cal to just send it away without thinking...

  “It wasn’t our money,” he said, as if reading my mind. “It belonged to somebody. And I ain’t gonna build a future with you off stolen gold stained with my brother’s blood. It’s a bad omen as any.”

  “I understand, Cal,” I sighed. I stroked his arm. “I just wish there was another way. It’s lookin’ like I might have to set my mind to stayin’ here for the rest of the year.”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment we crossed a wall full of posters. Something made me stop.

  “Cal!” I yelped. “Look!”

  “Huh? What you fussin’ for?”

  I pointed.

  REWARD

  TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS

  FOR THE RETURN OF MARY ELIZA HARMIN

  TWENTY-THREE YEARS OF AGE

  Hair is black. Eyes green. Sallow complexion, five foot and three inches of height. A young girl from Boston, kidnapped on June Nineteenth 1844, in the area of Southern Kansas. She is thought to be held by a gang of renegade comancheros.

  Family will deliver reward immediately upon her safe return, or accurate information concerning her whereabouts.

  “Oh,” said Cal. “I seen those around.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I exclaimed.

  “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Her family is still lookin’ for her!” I said. “I could find them out in California, give them information.”

  “Information on what? They already know she was kidnapped.”

  I looked at the poster. It was a fair drawing of Mary, copied from another I recalled, which hung in the parlor at her father’s house in Boston. A gorge of sadness rose up in my throat.

  “Or,” I said slowly, “We could find her ourselves.”

  Cal peered at the poster. He rubbed his chin. “It’s a fine reward.”

  “Knowin’ her family, I wouldn’t doubt it.”

  He looked at me curiously. “You know, Ada, I do wonder about who you were before I met you.”

  “I was a servant girl. Ain’t nothin’ special to know.”

  He smiled. “Well, Miss servant girl. Miss Boston. I’m afraid our trip’s gonna have to wait.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  Folks gave us funny looks as we strolled. In these towns Cal didn’t bother hide his attachment to me. He held me on his arm in the middle of the street. He told everyone I was his wife- and if they turned up their noses, well, to hell with them. I would dare any man to challenge someone as big as Cal.

  “Why, Cal?” I repeated.

  “I got business with Iron Eye,” he said. “I got to pay my respects before I leave out West.”

  “The Kiowa are here?”

  “About a day’s ride, I believe. They stop the same place every year, after the Sun Dance.”

  The next day we prepared to leave. It didn’t take long. Neither of us had that many belongings.

  Cal saddled the horse and helped me up. We got out of town by the time the morning sun poked above the horizon. Cal still insisted on an early start to everything. It reminded me of the old days of riding with the cowboys. Cal would likely never run a cattle drive again. Out here, there was too much bad blood associated with his name.

  But I didn’t want to think about those cowboys. I leaned against my husband. The pleasant rocking of Big Girl eased me into his chest.

  “I remember when I first saw you, Ada,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s some people that just stand out, you know. You were one of those women. I could tell.”

  “I remember thinkin’ you were an arrogant son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Pretty but a mouth fouler than any woman’s I know. Sweet Jesus.”

  “I ain’t gonna change that for you, Cal Sampson. I’ll be cussin’ till I’m eighty.”

  “Lord. What did I get myself into?” he laughed.

  His arms tightened around me. I breathed him in. A smell like sage. A smell like the prairie.

  “I love you,” I said softly.