Fifty-five

Randy helped Jake bathe, her heart sick at the sight of more scars on his back. There was barely a half inch of his original skin left there. She gently washed his back, almost afraid to touch it.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “There is no feeling to scar tissue.”

Her eyes teared. “My God, Jake, how you must have suffered.” Her voice broke as she rinsed his hair and back.

He reached behind him and touched her hand. “Don’t cry, Randy. I’ll be all right.” He sighed. “Obviously, Don de Leon wasn’t too happy that I stole his virgin from him.”

“But you didn’t even touch her.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered, and I didn’t bother explaining. It was worth every lash, because it helped me cope with what my father did to Santana. I couldn’t save her, but I did save Annie. At least this was something I could stop, and I’m glad as hell Cole got Annie back to Denver.”

“We’ve seen her, Jake. She is so beautiful…and so deeply saddened by thinking you gave up your life for her. She and Gretta will be so incredibly happy to find out you’re alive and home.” She held out a towel for him, closing her eyes at the sight of the bump on the front of his left leg from the poorly healed break. “Jake, I know you’re in pain. Please let Brian give you some laudanum.”

He wrapped the towel around himself and limped over to where clean underwear lay. “No. You know how I feel about laudanum. It’s nothing more than enhanced whiskey. You know I don’t drink if I can help it.”

“But, Jake—”

“Randy, I’ve lived with pain all my life. Brian said the bone just healed crooked, so my body produced more bone to fill in the gap. That’s all it is. It will get stronger and stronger, and eventually the pain will lessen. It’s one hell of a lot better than having the damn thing cut off. I would never have come home to you like that. Never. I can ride a horse, and I can walk on it.” He pulled on the long johns and faced her, studying her lovingly. “I’ll just have an old man’s limp, I guess.” He smiled sadly.

Randy walked closer, running her hands over his muscled arms and still-firm chest and flat belly. “You are no old man, Jake. You’re amazing—the strongest man anyone could know.” She moved her arms around his middle and kissed his chest. “And you’re here and alive, and you know damn well I’d love you the same if you did come home with half a leg.”

He sighed and wrapped her into his arms. “Well, I have a good one for you. Don de Leon told the men who dragged me into the desert to cut off my privates before they left me—just payment for taking his virgin, I guess.”

Randy gasped. “My God, Jake!”

He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Apparently, they chickened out. Maybe they even felt sorry for me. I don’t know. All I know is when I came to, I still had my equipment, much to my great relief.” He grinned and gave her a squeeze. “What if I’d come home without that?”

Randy laughed lightly and looked up at him. “That, Mr. Harkner, would have been something to give a lot of thought to. I suppose we would have had to reinvent how to have sex.” Jake laughed too, and Randy drank in the sound with relish.

“I’m not even going to comment on that, Mrs. Harkner,” he told her. He grasped her face and leaned down to kiss her softly. “And right now, I’d love to make sure this thing is still in working order, but I’m so goddamn tired and in so much pain, that’s going to have to wait.”

She reached up around his neck. “Oh, Jake, surely you don’t think that matters. This is your first night home, and you’ve been to hell and back. Just being able to touch you, hear your voice and your laughter, and to know that tonight I can sleep in your arms are the most wonderful gifts God could have brought me. We have weeks, months, years to make up for this. As soon as you’re fattened up a little and well rested, we’ll go to the line shack, and we’ll make up for lost time.”

He gave her his best smile. “Sounds damn good to me.” He kissed her hair. “Get undressed, woman. We might not be able to make love yet, but by God, I intend to feel your naked body against mine tonight. That’s all I’ve thought about ever since I was able to think straight. That old Mexican told me I lay in a near coma for about a month. It was two more months before I could get up and walk around, but I was still in incredible pain and so weak I could only take a few steps. An old woman was there—his wife, I guess. He never said. She kept putting some kind of salve on my back that helped, and she rubbed my leg and kept bending it and making me move it so it wouldn’t seize up on me. I don’t know where they came from, other than God Himself must have sent them. I suspect one more day of lying naked and wounded in that desert would have done me in for good.”

“This whole family was praying for you.” Randy took his hand and led him to the bed. Jake gladly climbed into it.

“This feels so good I could cry,” he told her as he settled into the quilts.

Randy smiled and undressed. “That bed will feel good to me too, because I haven’t slept in it since you left. That peppermint stick is still lying there on the nightstand.”

Jake rolled over and grabbed the candy. Randy climbed naked into bed, and he studied every curve, every slender line, the flow of her hair, the fullness of her breasts. He threw the covers over them and pulled her close. “My God, Randy, this is the longest we’ve been apart since I went to prison for four years.” He put the peppermint stick into her mouth and kept the other end in his. They licked it until their lips met. Through it all, he moved his hand over her breasts, her soft belly, her hip bones, her sweet bottom, her slender legs, drifting his fingers past the blond hairs of her love nest, up to her neck. They finished the candy together, kissed deeply, settled against each other…and fell asleep in each other’s arms for the first time in months.

Deep in the night, Jake ignored his pain. Bad memories woke him: the whip lashes, the desert, his broken leg, the boiling sun burning up his naked body. When he roused to consciousness, it took a few seconds to realize where he was…and that his beloved Randy was lying right beside him. She’d saved him from the darkness of hell over and over again. She lay here now in the flesh, not his imagination—naked and beautiful—still the woman he loved beyond measure, the woman who’d given up so much for him. He had to know this was real. It had simply been too long.

“Randy,” he groaned. “Tu eres mi vida, mi querida esposa. I need to be inside of you.”

She turned, rubbing at her eyes by the soft light of a low-lit lamp in the washroom. “I want that more than anything,” she answered softly. “I just wanted you to be rested.” She threw her arms around his neck. “I haven’t even slept yet, Jake. I was just lying here enjoying the feel of your strong arm around me.”

He moved on top of her, and she gladly opened herself to him.

“I don’t want to hurt you. It’s been such a long time, Randy.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She helped guide his hard shaft into her depths, drawing in her breath at the feel of him, the realization that he really was here and all in one piece and making love to her. Usually he took his time with foreplay, but right now, they both needed this…just this…anxiously, desperately. She smiled at how glad she was that those men who took Jake into the desert hadn’t cut off what gave her so much pleasure now.

He grasped her arms and moved them over her head. He moaned as he buried himself hard and deep, nuzzled her neck, and kissed her ear. “Who do you belong to?” he asked.

“Jake Harkner,” she answered.

“Every last inch of you.”