Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,24

small bed where Nathan would sleep and made up his bed properly. She cleaned up the rest of the cabin as best she could, stacking supplies wherever they would fit. Then she cooked supper, a difficult task on the small potbellied stove.

"I need a regular cookstove," she told Luke when he returned. He promised to see about it as soon as he could. He also promised to go to Billings and buy some tar paper to nail to the outside of the cabin to close off the cracks between the boards. But before he did any of that, he would have to spend the next several days cutting wood. Winter set into this land early, and any day could find them buried in a mountain snowstorm.

By the time Lettie got Nathan put down again for the night, both she and Luke were bone weary, yet both knew their work had just begun. Luke bolted the door and sat down on a crate quietly to smoke a thin cigar he'd taken from his gear. It was finally warm enough inside the cabin for them to take off their jackets. Luke even took off his shirt, under which he wore wool long johns. He watched Lettie take down her hair. "It's going to be hard, Lettie."

"I know. We can do it." She shook out her hair, turned to look at him. His long johns were unbuttoned, revealing the dark hairs on his chest. It was the first time she had seen him without a shirt on. Finally there was time to think about what had happened when they first arrived. She knew by the way his eyes moved over her that Luke was remembering it too. It had been beautiful. She wanted to feel that way again.

"Why don't you undress out here?" Luke asked, his voice soft.

The flames that flickered behind the open draft of the stove door cast ripples of light on her as she began removing her dress. She shivered, but she knew it was not from the cold. For the first time in her life a man would look upon her nakedness. The night of her attack, there had been only the rape. The men had not even removed all of her clothing. Luke would be the first man to set eyes on her breasts, to touch them, taste them. She was glad she had something left to give him that was still virgin, touched by no other man. She dropped her petticoats, removed her boots and stockings, unlaced her camisole.

Luke crushed out his smoke in a tin plate on the table, marveling that he had found someone so utterly beautiful on his way to Montana, that he had actually arrived here with a wife and a child to call his own. "Come here," he told her. He saw her nervousness as she approached and knelt in front of him. She closed her eyes when he moved his hands inside the camisole and pushed it away from her full breasts. They were firm, the nipples a lovely pink. He pulled the camisole down her arms and tossed it aside, gently grasped her breasts, caressing them, toying with her nipples, until he saw her breathing quicken. Her head was flung back, her hair hanging in a cascade of waves down her back. He kissed her eyes, her lips. "They never touched you here, did they?" he said.

Lettie grasped his wrists. "No," she whispered. She opened her eyes to meet his gaze. He leaned down, licking at the white swell of her breasts, then took a nipple into his mouth, gently sucking, pulling, creating a sharp need deep in her belly. She grasped his hair, offered herself gladly, enthralled at these wondrous new feelings he created in her.

"Luke," she groaned, breathing deeply when he moved to her other breast to taste its sweet fruit.

"Lettie, you're so beautiful," he whispered. He picked her up in his arms, carried her behind the makeshift curtain and laid her on the bed. Lettie had spread the bearskin blanket over the top of the feather mattress, then covered that with more blankets. She sank into the pile of softness. Luke bent to remove her bloomers. As she lay there naked she curled up her knees and watched him undress, allowing herself to look at that part of man that had held such terrors for her.

"Don't ever be afraid of it again, Lettie," he told her. He moved onto the bed, stretched out beside her. She ran