The broken boy - healed by innocence

What she wants

*Cooper*

As the full moon slips beneath the billowing black clouds, I'm sitting on my front porch in a straight-backed chair, the front legs raised so I'm tipped back, sipping my whiskey.

Dancing with Faith was a mistake. She is no longer a child. I can still feel the slenderness of her back against my palm. My nostrils flare when I inhale her scent… a muskiness intertwined with a sensuality that's somehow different from what it once was.

As we moved in rhythm to the tune, I wanted to wrap those few curling tendrils bouncing along her neck around my finger and draw them gently toward me until her mouth was nearer to mine.

Her lips seemed redder, fuller, as though they, too, have matured in anticipation of a time when she would be kissing men. And her eyes… sultry and knowing… held mine with such intensity that I wanted nothing more than to claim her as mine.

But she is still young, innocent, and naive about men. Certainly, she has seen enough animals breeding to know the particulars regarding how it's done, but she doesn't know all the subtleties of it, of how a man is different from a beast, how his hands would caress…

I shut that thought down like a corral gate slamming closed to pen up the horses.

After dancing with her, I couldn’t stay and watch her waltzing about the room with other men, knowing what it's like to hold her in my arms. Seeing her with Berringer had been torment before I had danced with her, but afterward, it would have been pure misery

So I came back to my place and poured myself a whiskey, determined to forget… but all I'm able to do is relive the moments over and over.

I had danced with Maggie, who is as cute as a button, and hadn't given a single thought to putting my hands anywhere other than where they respectfully rested. When it comes to Faith, though, my mind wanders to places it shouldn't.

And it seems Faith is wandering as well.

Setting my whiskey aside, I let the front legs of the chair drop before pushing myself to my feet and walking to the edge of the porch to get a better look at her sitting astride her horse as it trots toward me.

“Cooper!” she calls out, extending my name so it has around five parts to it. She brings the gelding to a stop. “The party’s over.”

“What are you doing here, Faith?” I ask as I step off the porch.

“I wanted to see you. Help me down.” She calls.

She is still in the gown, has been riding the horse astride, and the skirt has risen up to her knees, the moonlight glistening over her calves making my mouth water. She holds her arms out toward me and starts to tilt.

I rush over and catch her as she tumbles, stopping her from falling on her head. With her feet on the ground, she sags against me.

“You’re drunk,” I say, wrapping an arm around her, holding her against my chest.

“A little. Lots of champagne.” She shakes her head, straightens, easing back until she stands on her own. A silly grin spreads over her face as she whispers, “Cole kissed me.”

The thought of that man lowering his lips to Faith’s, of circling his arms around her, has me feeling strung tighter than a strand of barbed wire between two posts. Of their own accord, my hands ball into fists, and I decide I will make use of them the next time I come within a foot of the arrogant oilman. “You don’t know anything about Berringer. He took advantage.”

“No, he didn’t. He is a gentleman. And I know lots about him. He comes from a good family near Houston. Pa hired some ex-Texas Ranger to look into him before he gave me the okay to work with him, before he would give him permission to look for oil on our land.” She says.

As far as I'm concerned, none of that gives Berringer the right to know the taste of her. “You shouldn’t give a man your favors unless you have an understanding between you.”

“The understanding was that I wanted a kiss. Besides, I have kissed fellas before.” She grins.

“Who?” The word comes out a bark, harsh and echoing around us. “When?”

“John Byerly on my sixteenth birthday. Augustus Curiss on my seventeenth. I always kiss some fella on my birthday.” She gives me a slow wink.

Is her father aware of that? He would tan her hide if he found out she was going around giving out something as precious as her lips puckered. “Why?”

“Curiosity. And on my sixteenth birthday I wanted to do something memorable. Guess I have been looking for that memorable ever since.” She sighs.

Had she found it? Probably not if she has just been kissing pups and young men who has never had the opportunity to ride a trail and pass through a cattle town where dance hall girls and soiled doves waited for their arrival. “Berringer give you that something memorable?”

I want to bite off my tongue for asking. I do not want to hear the man lauded for being an excellent kisser.

She studies me for a full minute. With my heart pounding, I wait for her to deliver a lashing to my heart with her confession that the oilman had given her exactly what she had yearned for.

“Not quite,” she finally says. “But maybe that’s because he is not the one I had decided I wanted to kiss tonight.” She presses up against me, drapes her arms over my shoulders, meets my gaze straight on. “You are.”

*Faith*

Perhaps it's because a little spark of jealousy hit me when I learned someone else had a claim to his heart. Or maybe it’s because, for the past couple of years, I have compared every man who crossed my path to him and found them all lacking in one regard or another.

They don’t share his love of the land that was bred into me the moment I was born. They don’t respect the legacy that was handed to us by those who fought to free the territory so it could become part of the United States, or they don’t appreciate the sacrifices made by those who settled the land and worked to make it grander than it might have been otherwise.

They boast instead of doing things in quiet ways that speak volumes for them. Their smiles don’t slowly hitch up on one side before lifting up on the other. They don’t give me half a sarsaparilla stick. And they don’t stand so still that they might as well have been a statue.

“How much champagne did you have?” He asks.

“Are you afraid?” I taunt.

He scoffs. “Hardly.”

“Maybe it’s that you don’t know how, that you have never kissed a gal before.” I tease.

“I have done plenty of kissing.” He scoffs.

I raise a brow, or try to, “Then why not kiss me?”

“Because you deserve better.” He mumbles.

“I’m not asking you to marry me, cowboy. Just kiss me.” I give my head a little shake, angle my chin up a tad, look at the sky, the stars tossed over the black velvet. “On the other hand, could be I misjudged Cole’s kiss, didn’t give it enough credence. It did cause my toes to curl a bit.”

The only light comes from the moon and stars shining down, yet I still manage to detect a tightening in his jaw.

“Those fellas you kissed before were just boys, and Berringer is a tenderfoot. I doubt they know the first thing about proper kissing.” He tells me.

“Then show me.” I challenge.

He emits a low growl at the back of his throat as he cups my cheek with one hand. “This is a bad idea, Faith. A damn bad idea.”

Then he draws me in, lowers his mouth to mine, and urges me to part my lips. When I do, he claims my mouth with the same intensity that a storm sweeps over the land, dark and billowing, giving no quarter, threatening to conquer all in its wake.

The palm cradling my cheek moves until his fingers are threaded through my hair and his thumb is caressing the corner of my mouth, enhancing the sensuality of his efforts, causing molten warmth to slowly sluice through me, carrying me away on a tide of sensual indulgence. With his free arm snaking around my back, he presses me flush against him, and I suspect that through his shirt he can feel the puckering of my n*****s, their sensitivity increasing with each stroke of his tongue over mine.

His is not a timid kiss like those of the boys who have come before. Nor is it civilized like Cole’s. It is wild and untamed, a force to be reckoned with. It demands a response equal in intensity.

I wind my arms tightly around his neck because I need purchase. Not only do my toes curl, but my legs have become as unsteady as those of a newborn foal, and I’m afraid I'm going to embarrass myself by sliding down the long, wondrous length of his hardened body until I'm a heap of heated pleasure.

I have never experienced anything like it, hadn’t even known existed. With each passing moment, I’m aware of a metamorphosis happening, as though he is weaving a cocoon around me, encasing me in ecstasy, and when the kiss comes to an end, I will emerge to discover I have been transformed into something more beautiful than I ever thought possible.

He is doing things to my mouth that cause the female aspects of me that I thought had blossomed to really and truly unfurl into a glorious bloom that steals my breath. Within his arms, for the first time in my life, I feel power beneath my femininity, knowing the full extent of the strength residing within me.

As I return the kiss with identical fervor, I feel equal to the task of meeting him on the terms he is setting and daring enough to set a few of my own. I scrape my fingers along his scalp through his thick black hair. From far away, another world, I hear sighs and groans circling around us. My body tightens with needs and yearnings that are frightening in their intensity, but at the same time, they beckon with the promise of more. And I want to take all that is offered.

With a desperate moan, I press my hips against his, searching for something I think only he can deliver.

Suddenly, he breaks off the kiss, cups my shoulders, and sets me away from him. “Happy birthday,” he grumbles.

Then he walks off as though he hasn't just rearranged my heart and soul while upending everything I believed I understood about Cooper. I realize I don’t know him at all.