Bedding the Beast Read online

  A red flush rose in her son's face. He mustn't like the childish nickname. He'd long ago asked John to call him Bill, and he'd obliged, knowing the boy wanted to be treated like a man.

  "Billy spent some time chatting with her in the wagon," Kathleen went on. "Improving her English."

  "It needs improving," John admitted.

  "She's smarter than she looks," Bill said, then went beet red. "I mean ... she's real smart."

  Kathleen nodded at him. "Yes, I'm sure she's one clever gal. Billy, you'd best get that tree down before sunset."

  The boy nodded, then glanced at John. "Will you tell Mariana I said hello?"

  "Why, sure."

  He watched the lad walk back toward the tree he'd been chopping at. When he was a good distance away, Kathleen spoke. "I'm afraid Billy's a mite sweet on your Mariana."

  Kathleen must be kidding him. Still, the boy had seemed real flustered. "Sweet on Mariana?" he repeated stupidly.

  She nodded and grinned at him. "You'd best get used to it, John. I expect half the men in this county will be mooning over that young woman once they get a look at her. And with Valentine's Day coming next week, some fella may try to romance her away from you."

  Valentine's Day. He snorted. Why women thought that was a special day, he'd never know. And no man was ever going to come after skinny little Mariana. "Now don't go ribbing me, Kathleen."

  She tried to school her grin, the way she always did when she ribbed him. "It's been a right long time since we've had such a pretty gal in these parts. They'll be writing poems about her eyelashes before long."

  What a silly idea. The girl was downright scrawny. But when she smiled ... well, then she looked all right. He shrugged. "I expect she's pretty enough, in her way."

  Kathleen tipped her head back and laughed. "Pretty enough? There's no need to spare my feelings, young man. I have eyes in my head, you know. The girl's a flat-out beauty, and that's a fact."

  A beauty. Mariana, a beauty? Her eyes were nice, but he'd seen plenty of blue eyes before. "Her looks are pretty common back in Tuscany."

  Kathleen laughed again. "Why on earth did you ever leave, then? You must be blind."

  He smiled back at her. Kathleen always teased him, as if she was his older sister. The older sister he'd never had. The older sister he could sort of talk to. "You got to admit she's kind of skinny."

  "What's skinny to an Italian man is dainty and slender to any other man." Then Kathleen sobered. "But yes, she's a mite thin. Didn't she tell you? She was awful sick on the boat. Some kind of fever. They quarantined her at Ellis Island for four weeks after they docked. Poor thing." She made a little tsk noise with her tongue. "I heard that hundreds of immigrants died in the past two months. She was lucky."

  Damn right, she'd been lucky. He'd seen whole families die from fever.

  Francesca had died from a fever.

  Kathleen smiled again. "With some good food, she'll fill out right and proper. Then all the men'll be howling around her like wolves at the moon." She chuckled. "Excepting you, Mr. Blind Man."

  Hell, he wasn't blind. He just wasn't one to exaggerate a woman's looks. He straightened. "Don't want to keep you standing still in this cold. I'd best get back to work."

  Her smile widened into a grin. "You do that. And tell Mariana I said hello, too."

  He nodded farewell, then headed back to pick up his tools. It was a little early still, but the fence was done. He'd head back out later, see if young Bill needed any help clearing that tree. Once his tools were safely stowed in the barn, maybe he'd check on Mariana. See what kind of chores she'd been up to.

  This late in the winter the crops were all in, so he cut straight across the fields toward the back of the barn, his boots crunching over the patches of snow that dappled the ground. His spread was small, barely four acres. Small enough that he could walk around the outer border of it in less than half an hour.

  And now that he wasn't getting any money from Francesca's parents, he'd never be able to enlarge it. He'd planned to ask Kathleen to sell him a few acres of her farm. She had too much land for her and the boys to work, and she didn't cotton to hiring hands.

  He'd never have the money to buy that land from her now.

  No, now he had a new wife instead.

  He rounded the corner of the barn and saw Mariana ‑‑ a nearly naked Mariana ‑‑ viciously twisting a white garment around the pole he'd staked for wringing out laundry. A fire was smoldering under two tubs, almost burned out. She must be nearly finished.

  She'd taken her bonnet off ‑‑ her bonnet and most of her clothes. Her hair was blonde, a deep, rich yellow blonde, but he didn't dwell on it for long. Not with everything else he could see.

  Her shift was even more threadbare than her dress had been. Soaked with sweat and steam, the transparent white fabric clung to her body. Yes, she was thin, and her breasts were small, but firm and round. Dark nipples peaked and tented the cloth. Tempting him. A pity she hadn't removed her drawers ‑‑ he'd pay dearly to see more of her legs. Her long, slender legs.

  She leaned further away from the pole, pulling the fabric taut, and groaned. A groan of agony, but it sounded the same as a moan of pleasure.

  God, he was a wicked man. And how wicked was she, outside with no clothes on in the freezing cold, showing her body for everyone to see? It'd be a wonder if she didn't catch her death. "What are you doing, out here half-naked?"

  She jumped a little, but didn't say a thing. With dark shadows under her eyes and wisps of straggly hair falling over her forehead, she looked too weary to talk.

  She unwound the cloth, staggering a little as she stood upright. Wincing, she tossed the fabric she'd been twisting into the larger tub. It looked like a sheet.

  "Too hot," she said. "Too hot for clothes."

  She leaned against the tub, too weak to even stand on her own. He'd have to help her wring the laundry. But when he looked into the tubs, he found them full of damp, wrung clothes.

  "I just finished the last of it," she said, in Italian. Then she blinked and tried in English. "I have ... done."

  "I am done."

  She looked exhausted, with her face flushed and her hair curling in damp waves from the heat. "I am done. I'm done."

  So she knew about contractions. Bill was right -- she was smarter than she looked. At least when it came to English. He picked up one of the laundry tubs and headed for the house. "Bring the rest."

  "I can't." She sounded ready to weep.

  He stopped and turned. She was standing there, simply standing. When his gaze raked over her chest, she whimpered and blushed, but didn't cover herself.

  He frowned. "What's wrong?"

  She looked down at her hands. "My arms ..."

  Her arms were trembling; he could see that even from this distance.

  "I can't move my arms," she said in Italian.

  She sounded terrified. He dropped the tub and went to her, trying to ignore the pert breasts peeking up at him. Her nipples were thick, the thickest he'd ever seen. How would they feel in his mouth, against his tongue? His cock stirred and lifted against his pants.

  He reached out and grasped her upper arms. God, his hands more than circled her skinny biceps. The muscles spasmed under his fingers. The damned girl had worked too hard. No wonder her arms were rebelling. And who the hell had asked her to do the laundry? He'd told her he didn't have any use for someone to clean up after him.

  He sighed and let her go. "Go inside." The words came out in Italian.

  She looked up at him. "What about the clothes?"

  His jaw clenched. Did she think she could do anything to help? She couldn't even lift her hands to cover her breasts and hide herself from his gaze. He took another look at those thick dark nipples, just because he could. "Don't be stubborn, girl. Just do as I say. Get inside and sit down."

  He tossed all of the wet laundry into the larger of the two tubs and carried it inside. She never could have lifted this tub. Why had she started a cho
re she didn't have the strength to finish?

  When he came in, she was sitting at the table with her head bowed. The bed was stripped bare, the blankets neatly folded on top of the chest that held Francesca's clothes. His pile of dirty clothes was missing from the corner. She'd washed all the laundry in sight. No wonder her arms were aching.

  And the house ... the house was clean, too. The dresser, the table, even the chairs, had all been dusted and polished. His boots didn't stick to the floor anymore. Damn her. He didn't need her to clean his place, to make him feel like a good-for-nothing sloth. But now that she was here, well ... maybe she could do two chores. She could clean, and she could warm his bed. She didn't need strong arms to do either of those chores.

  He built up the fire in the stove. She'd kept all of the pots simmering with water on the stovetop, no doubt in case she needed more hot water for the laundry. Even the outsides of the pots were scrubbed clean.

  "I'm not all the time weak," she said, in English.

  Could have fooled him. "Don't start a chore you're too weak to finish."

  He threaded a thin rope around a few nails pounded into the walls, forming an indoor clothesline. Then he took a wet sheet from the tub, shook it out, and hung it over the rope.

  "I want help you," she said.

  "Just sit there." Rest was the only thing that would heal her strained muscles. Rest and heat. When he finished with the clothes, he'd fill a tub for her to soak in. And he'd still make it back out into the field to help Bill with that tree.

  "Too cold to hang clothes outside. I wondered how to hang inside."

  He could think of no response to that. All he wanted to do was drop the damned clothes, pick her up, and throw her onto the bare bed ... and feel those thick, taut nipples against his naked chest.

  Even if she wasn't a virgin, he'd try to be gentle when he took her the first time. He'd treat her better than he'd treated his first wife.

  And he'd never bed her in the daytime. He'd never bed her when she could see his face. When he could see her cringe. Or watch her sob.

  The memory made him scowl.

  "Was there a man?" he asked. It sounded like a shout in the silence of the room.

  "What?"

  "In Italy," he said, lowering his voice. "Was there a special man, a man who cared for you? Back in Tuscany?"

  "No," she said softly. She sounded sad. Too sad to be telling the truth.

  With that flirty smile of hers, she'd probably had hordes of men. All writing poetry about her eyelashes, like Kathleen had said. He snorted and hung more clothes. "A woman like you had no one courting her?"

  She glanced up at him and smiled sunnily. He almost dropped the wet undershirt he was holding. "Thank you," she said.

  What on earth was she thanking him for? Oh, she must have thought he meant she was pretty. Hell.

  "There was men ‑‑ there were men courting me," she went on. "But there was no special man."

  Perhaps she lied. Francesca had. He'd found the letters after she'd died, letters from the man she'd hoped to marry, the man too poor to meet her father's price. But what choice did they have, either of these poor girls? First they were at the mercy of their greedy father, then at the mercy of the man who'd bought them. He couldn't blame them for lying.

  He hung the last garment ‑‑ her worn, pathetic dress. "Take off your shift."

  She gasped. "What?"

  Would she always make him waste his breath? He carried the empty tub to the stove and set it down nearby. "You heard me."

  He lifted a pot of simmering water from the stove and poured it into the tub. By the time he'd emptied them all, the tub was half full. He added a pot of cold water, just enough to lower the temperature from scalding to merely hot.

  And still she sat there in her wet shift and drawers.

  Would everything be an argument with her? At least Francesca had taken orders with good grace. "Your arms will feel better after the heat of a bath. Now take off your clothes."

  Even though he wanted to watch, he turned his back to her and faced the window. The gray light of winter was rapidly fading. Soon it would be dark.

  And he would bed her in the dark. A mixed blessing. She wouldn't be able to see his ugly face, and he wouldn't be able to see her body. For a skinny woman, she had quite an arousing body.

  "I can bathe with them on."

  As if he hadn't seen plenty of her already. Good thing he never had visitors. Anyone could have happened along and seen her like that. Young Bill could have seen her like that. His hand clenched into a fist. "If I hang your things now, they'll dry by morning."

  "Very well."

  She'd learned the phrase already.

  When she gasped, he looked over his shoulder. She was struggling out of the shift, no doubt hurting her sore arms. At least she was facing away from him, so she didn't see him watch as the damp shift fell to the floor.

  Her shoulders were broader than he'd expected, her skin pale and pink in the fading sun, but her back and shoulder blades were far too bony. Even if she filled out some, she'd still be thin. Thinner than he liked a woman to be.

  But when she bent to tug off her drawers, his breath caught. Mother of God, her backside was perfect. Her narrow waist, so slender, emphasized the flare of her hips, the wonderful, round curves of the pale globes of her ass. His mouth went dry and his cock twitched.

  Someday, if she allowed it, if she liked bed sport, if ... someday, if he was the luckiest man alive, he'd take her from behind. He'd put her on her hands and knees, yes, and kneel behind her. Somehow there would be enough light to see ... and he'd hold onto those wide hips and look down at that glorious ass as he fucked her. Her yellow blonde hair would stream down her slender back and over her shoulders as she moved with him ... and she'd bury her face in the mattress, trying to muffle her cries of pleasure ‑‑

  She moved slightly, shifting to one side, and he quickly turned his head away so she wouldn't see him looking at her. Did other men think such lustful thoughts about their own wives? He'd never know. Even if he had friends to ask, he could never raise such a personal subject. He'd heard men brag about their conquests, but never about their wives.

  She gasped and drew short, panting breaths. She must be sliding into the hot water, but he imagined her making those sounds beneath him.

  Enough. He turned and saw only her head over the edge of the tub. Somehow she'd managed to twist up her hair and tuck her knees under her chin. Her shoulders were underwater. Good. The heat would soothe her sore muscles.

  He picked up her discarded clothes and hung them on a spare end of the clothesline. He had to get out of here. Outside. The cold air would settle his cock. He'd go find Bill, help him with that rotten tree. And hear more about how smart and desirable Bill found his wife-to-be. Damn. Well, at least she'd be decently clothed when he got back. She'd better be.

  He shrugged into his coat. When he opened the door, she called his name softly. He closed it again. "Yes?"

  "Please, will you give me soap?"

  Her English wasn't terrible at all. With simple sentences, she did just fine.

  He kept his gaze on her face as he brought her the tin of soap and a washcloth. Lord, her face was as red as boiled beets. Maybe she was a virgin after all.

  Or maybe it was the sight of him that made her blush. The thought of an ugly man like him seeing her naked.

  She reached out for the soap and winced.

  "Don't use your arms."

  He shrugged out of his coat, then dragged a chair over and sat behind the tub, so he could stare down at her bosom without her seeing. "I'll wash you."

  She looked up at him, mouth agape, and covered her breasts with crossed arms. "You can't."

  "You're no use to me crippled. I'll help you now, so you can work tomorrow." And so I can fuck you tonight.

  He saw skepticism in her eyes, but she didn't voice it. Perhaps she didn't have the English words. God help him when she caught up ‑‑ she already chattered away l
ike a magpie, at least compared to him.

  He dipped the washcloth into the tub, careful not to touch her yet. "If you keep using those sore arms, they'll only take longer to get better."

  She turned away from him and dropped her head. With her hair piled up in a loose knot, the curve of her tender neck was exposed. Her blush covered even the back of her neck. How high would she jump if he planted a kiss there?

  He leaned close enough to stir the fine hairs on the back of her neck with his breath. "Don't be embarrassed."

  She ducked her face even further forward, resting it against her folded arms. "I can't help this."

  He grinned. "Would it help if I took off my clothes as well?"

  That brought her head up. "No."

  Her neck was even redder now. He shouldn't rib her. "Sorry."

  "No, I'm sorry to be ... to cause ... I wanted to do more chores today."

  "You're not strong enough to do much." Maybe she never would be. "But ... you worked hard." He bit his tongue to keep from adding, and now you'll be useless for days.

  But he merely rubbed some soap on the cloth, worked it into a lather, and gently washed her neck and upper back. She relaxed a little, leaning forward, giving him a little more space between her body and the edge of the tub.

  Now he'd get to wash her fine ass. "Stand up," he said hoarsely. No doubt she'd argue about it.

  But she stood obediently, to his surprise, putting her wet, wonderful ass on a level with his face. His first urge was to kiss, to lick, to nip that generous flesh. He ground his teeth. No, he couldn't. He couldn't startle her like that. He washed her magnificent bottom instead, careful not to let his calloused hand touch her peachy skin, and shifted in the chair, adjusting his stiff cock into a more comfortable position in his trousers. Soon, he promised his aching friend.

  He reached around her to wash her stomach, then moved higher, swirling the cloth around her breasts, over her collarbones, up her neck. He didn't dare fondle her breasts the way he wanted; she'd bolt like a rabbit if he touched her too intimately. But he could dimly sense them through the cloth, soft mounds of feminine flesh that seemed to rise and fall with her shallow breaths. That was enough. Almost enough.