Under His Hands
By Diana Castle
Copyright 2011 Diana Castle
Smashwords Edition
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portion thereof, in any form. This ebook may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others.
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagnation and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To my family for supporting my writing efforts, to Lori DeVoti for introducting me to the exciting world of e-publishing, and to Joely Sue Burkhart for all of the D&E (Dark & Early) writing sessions that kept me on track in spite of the crushing workload at the day job.
CHAPTER ONE
“That’s about the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. And trust me, boss lady, I’ve heard more than my share.”
Lucas Chase propped his tall, lean body against the wooden fence that surrounded the corral of the Circle B Ranch. The herd of wild mustangs he’d brought in that morning thundered about the enclosure. Thick clouds of dust swelled upward from their passage into the hot, dry air then drifted down onto his wide-brimmed hat and across his broad shoulders, but he ignored it.
His lips twisted slyly. “And here I was thinking you knew what you was doing running this ranch all on your own.”
Blood heated Hannah O’Rourke’s cheeks, and her heart thumped hard against the stays of her corset. Normally she wouldn’t have even been wearing one. Especially in this infernal heat. But she’d had to ride into town to see the banker, and it was difficult enough convincing him to take her seriously, being the young widow that she was. She certainly wasn’t going to exacerbate the situation by appearing before him without her corset.
As for Lucas, her foreman’s remark about her running of the ranch stung. Straightening her spine—which certainly wasn’t difficult to do in this damnable corset—she lifted her chin.
“Is that so, Mr. Chase? I must say, I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to apprise me of your opinion. You’re usually so forthcoming.”
“Do tell, Mrs. O’Rourke,” Lucas drawled, his gray eyes glittering as he lazily coiled and uncoiled his lariat.
Hannah could not help looking at the rope, which he handled so smoothly with his big, work-roughened hands. And a thrill, sweet, dark and illicit, surged through her.
A thrill brought on by what he was going to do to her tonight with that rope.
Recalling his words regarding her running of her cattle ranch she pointedly, if reluctantly, drew her gaze away from it and glared at him.
“You have, after all, worked for me nearly half a year now, and you’ve never before questioned my ideas regarding my management of the hands.”
A corner of his firm mouth curled and he slowly nodded. “Yep, that sounds about right.”
She frowned. He did that sometimes. Steer the conversation onto a trail that existed solely within his mind and then expected her to track merrily along. She was sorely tempted to ignore him. However, experience had shown it was best to let him speak his mind and be done with it.
“What sounds about right?” Her voice conveyed her growing irritation with him. She hadn’t forgotten his mocking remark about how she managed the ranch.
He pushed away from the fence and sauntered over to her, puffs of yellowish dirt from the rain-starved ground swirling about his spurred boots. He wore a pair of dusty leather chaps which flapped about his long legs. Hannah tried and failed to keep her eyes from glancing at his crotch, which the chaps, fashioned as they were, tended to maddeningly emphasize.
He stopped when he was just in front of her. She had to lift her head to look up at him, and when she did she beheld a face fashioned by the Devil himself to seduce even the most righteous and virtuous woman onto the path of hellfire and eternal damnation.
Smoky gray eyes framed by long, sooty lashes. Hair as black as those lashes. Black like midnight. Black like coal ready to flame. Black like the darkest, most forbidden temptation.
A strong, square jaw upon which lay a three-day’s growth of dark stubble. Lips that were firm but sensual with a sardonic, erotic twist to them.
In actual fact, Lucas Chase was the most devilishly handsome man Hannah had ever laid eyes on and he provoked her to no end.
However, in spite of her growing frustration with him, she also ached for him. Ached for his hard, dusty hands caressing her body; his warm, sinful lips kissing her breasts; his long, nimble tongue licking her nipples.
Her breath quickened and a delicious shiver rippled up her spine.
Lucas’s deep-timbered voice snapped her out of her heated imaginings. “You’re right that I ain’t had cause to question your decisions before but…”
He stopped and another sly look appeared on his face, suggesting he had more to say but was waiting for her to draw it out of him.
“But what?” she finally snapped when he remained pigheadedly silent.
He grinned, satisfied he had succeeded in stirring her up as he liked to call it. “But I reckon now that I think on it I should have said more about your jackass ideas.”
“Jackass?”
He chuckled. He found it amusing whenever she tried to talk like him or the other hands. He once told her hearing such words come out of her genteel Boston mouth was like watching a slug crawl out of a rose.
“Yeah, jackass.” His eyes suddenly narrowed. “Was it his idea?”
“Whose idea?”
A muscle in his jaw worked as if he were chewing on something that was proving tough to eat. “Travers.” He spat the name out as if it were poison in his mouth.
Hannah blinked. “Samuel?”
Samuel Travers was the son of a neighboring rancher. He’d recently returned home from the East where he had attended school and earned a law degree. Since his return, he had called upon Hannah on several occasions. He’d been away at school when her husband had brought her out West and had also been away when he died.
“Yeah. Him.” Lucas’s voice throbbed with scorn. “Sounds like something that feather-headed fool would suggest. From what I hear tell, despite all that fancy schooling he got back East, he ain’t got sense enough to drive nails into a snow bank.”
Hannah fidgeted with the lace on the front of her dress. The last time Samuel had visited she had, in fact, mentioned her idea to him. He had thought it a good one and had even praised her on it. Of course, even his own father had confessed that his only son wasn’t all that interested in ranching, and it was the good Lord’s blessing he wasn’t because he had about as much aptitude for running a ranch as a snake had for crowing or a heifer for laying eggs.
“No, Samuel did not suggest it. It was my idea. Completely.” She stiffened her body, her lips thinning. “I suppose you consider me incapable of coming up with ideas on my own.”
Lucas stared down at her then offered her a small smile. “Oh, no. Not at all. I know you’re quite capable of it.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “But you’re the boss.”
“Exactly. And since you’ve finally deigned to remember that particular fact, I fully expect you to do as I say from now on. Are we clear, Mr. Chase?”
“Clear as rain, Mrs. O’Rourke.”
Hannah licked her dry lips. The heat of the sweltering late summer afternoon was already causing her to perspire more than a respectable woman should. Sweat trickled around her breasts, down her back and between her thighs, and the physical discomfort was making her distressingly aware of her body.
And the things Lucas did to it with that rope he was lazily playing with.
The sinful, wicked, utterly delicious things he did when it was just the two of them.
But that was the last thing she wanted to be thinking about right now. Especially when she needed to maintain the upper hand. “Now, as I was saying, I intend to—”
Lucas slowly shook his head.
She stopped, frustration prickling her like the perspiration on the back of her neck. “What is it now?”
Sweat drizzled down the hard planes of Lucas’s face, and she couldn’t help wanting to lick it off his sun-browned skin.
She gritted her teeth. Focus, Hannah, focus.
“It’s still a dumb idea,” he said.
She blinked. “Am I mistaken or didn’t you agree to abide by my decision?”
He untied the red kerchief from about his neck and swiped at the perspiration on his face. “Jesus! It’s hotter than a whorehouse on nickel night.”
She glared at him.
Noting her look, he quickly tied the kerchief back around his neck. Then he put his gloved hands on his hips and leaned toward her, his gray eyes boring into hers. “No, Mrs. O’Rourke. I did not agree.”
“You most certainly did.”
“As I recall you asked if we was clear I was to do as you say from now on. And I said yep, clear as rain. I don’t see that as me giving credence to your present notion.”
Hannah ground her teeth. “You’re splitting hairs.”
“Could be. It’s your ranch and, Lord knows, you’ve every right to do with it as you please.” His eyes narrowed. “But you hired me on as foreman. And as I’ve been working for you nigh on half a year now you must be…” He stopped and fixed her with a lustful look. “Satisfied with my work.”
Her throat constricted as her sex tightened and moistened. And she saw herself in her mind’s eye.
Naked, roped to her bed and totally helpless under his fierce, rough, demanding hands.
She cleared her throat, as much to relieve its tightness as to drive that heated image from her mind.
“You’re right,” she went on briskly, “I’ve no cause to be displeased with you. Or your work,” she added. She made certain her voice remained businesslike to discourage him from referring to their secret trysts.
“Glad to hear it,” he drawled. “Hate to think I’ve lost my touch.” His voice bore down on that last word the way his hands did when she was tied up beneath him.
Damn him. He was deliberately trying to set her off joint. “However, I fully intend to go through with my decision, Mr. Chase.”
Yes, continue to refer to him by his surname. Make it clear that outside their private encounters she was the one in charge. Not him.
“I did well with the sale of my cattle,” she went on, “and the men have worked hard. I see no reason not to share some of my largesse with them.”
“Well, I beg to differ, ma’am, because I do see a reason.” He pointed towards the bunkhouse. “You give them boys as big a raise as you’re suggesting, and I guarantee you as sure as sunshine on a July day they ain’t going to do nothing with that extra money but waste it on whiskey, gambling and whores. You might as well start a bonfire and burn that money as give it to them.”
“I don’t agree.”
He dolefully shook his head. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Perhaps they will take the extra money and set it aside.”
He frowned. “Set it aside?”
“For their future.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Their future? You joshing me? Them boys don’t know nothing about no future. All they know is the here and now. Driving cattle. Drinking whiskey. Fucking whores.”
Hannah’s cheeks burned. Since Lucas usually didn’t swear around her, she knew he was angry. But what he was angry about she had no idea. All she knew was his crabbiness was becoming contagious.
“And you know better than they do, I suppose?” she remarked. “About the whores I mean.”
He stared at her, his gray eyes now as cool as autumn rain. “And what about your future, Mrs. O’Rourke?” he said, ignoring her question about the prostitutes.
“What?”
He glanced around. “You got yourself a nice spread here. Ain’t many could run one of the largest cattle ranches in the territory.” He gave her a pointed look. “In spite of.”
Her lips firmed. She clearly heard the rest of his sentence as if he had spoken it aloud. In spite of being a woman.
She crossed her arms over her breasts. “Your point, Mr. Chase?”
Lucas flicked a hot glance at her breasts then looked back into her eyes. “It’s your future you should be worrying about. Not theirs.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Who you plan on leaving all this to?”
She stared at him but said nothing. She now knew what he was on about and where he going with the conversation, but she certainly wasn’t going to help him get there.
“Babies,” he said when she remained mulishly silent. “You ought to be thinking about having yourself some young’uns.”
She firmly shook her head. Children meant marriage and she had sworn never to remarry.
Lucas frowned. Probably because he thought it unnatural of her not to want children. But she did want children. Very much so. She just didn’t want another husband. And since she couldn’t have one without the other, well that, as they say, was that.
He swung his hand again at the bunkhouse. “Instead of giving that money to them who ain’t going to do a thing with it except get roostered up and whore or gamble it away you should put it back in the ranch.”
“I have every intention of doing that. But I also think—”
He took a step closer. “You ought to be married, Hannah.”
He never called her by her Christian name. Except when he had her tied to her bed, his firm lips pressed against her ear as he fiercely whispered her name over and over, his hot hands stroking and kneading her naked flesh.
“I know you think you’ve done alright running this ranch without a husband,” he went on. “And, you have, I’ll grant you that.”
She arched a brow. “How chivalrous of you.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “But a woman running a spread this large all by her lonesome ain’t natural.”
“What do you mean it isn’t natural?”
“A man would have himself a wife. And young’uns. Not just to help him but so he’d have someone to pass all his hard work onto.”
A smile curled Hannah’s lips. “Are you saying I’m in need of a wife?”
He didn’t return her smile. He just stared at her.
She frowned and shook her head. “No, I will not marry. Not again. Not ever.”
“You sure about that?”
“Of course.”
“What about Travers?”
This was the second time this morning Lucas had brought him up. The few times Samuel had visited, Lucas tended to ignore him. Even if Samuel went out of his way to greet him with a howdy or a good morning, Lucas would only growl something in passing. That had been the extent of the contact between the two men.
Except, of course, that afternoon a week ago when the two had nearly shot each other.
“What about Samuel?” Hannah asked.
Lucas looked away from her, that same muscle in his jaw bunching. “Nothing,” he muttered.
“Don’t you dare say nothing. What is it?”
He looked back at her. “You ought to be married,” he stubbornly repeated.
“To whom? You?”
His face tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Something wrong with the idea?”
“Yes, there most certainly is. I will never remarry.”
“Never is a long time.” He raked his gaze up and down her body. “Your mind may be all set on that notion, but your body…” He looked back into her eyes. “Your body says different.”
The sun was like a furnace in the sky above Hannah’s head, and she felt as if she were going to faint from the stifling heat. Lucas certainly wasn’t helping matters with his repeated references to their secret trysts. Even now her cunny swelled, imagining his rough hand on it, stroking and caressing the tender nether lips to a fevered pitch with his long, callused fingers.
“I will not marry,” she repeated firmly. “And if you’re unable to deal with that then perhaps you should move on.”
Lucas took a short, quick step towards her. She smelled leather and horse and that distinctive masculine odor that was strictly his own and never failed to make her weak at the knees.
“Is that what you want?” His hard, angry voice beat against her. “You want me to leave? Because I’ll do it. Goddamnit, woman, I’ll cut a path out of here so fast you won’t have time to draw a breath.”
Her eyes widened. Leave? No, he couldn’t leave.
But she would not say that to him. She could not. Because if she did he would know how she truly felt about him and such knowledge in the possession of any man was risky.
In the hands of a man like Lucas Chase it was downright dangerous.
“I just want you to stop pestering me about marriage,” she said instead.
He scowled at her. “I ain’t pestering you about it.”
“Aren’t you? You and every man that’s ever come here since I was widowed. Asking me to marry them. Acting as if they cared for me.” Hannah’s voice hitched and the old pain, like a scabbed-over wound, burst open.
Her husband, Broden O’Rourke, lying dead in the sweat-stained bed of a whore, his heart having given out as he had romped with her.
The pain rolled over into anger; a proud but terrified anger that had festered inside her like a canker as she had struggled with the shame of Broden’s adultery and faced down the stares from those who knew how and with whom her husband had died.
That anger burned in her now. Fueled as much by all that she’d gone through fighting to hold on to the Circle B as much as by Lucas’s questioning of her ability to run the ranch on her own. So as she was to later reflect, it made perfect sense for her to turn that anger on him.
“But none of them really wanted me,” she went on, her voice throbbing. “All of them wanted only one thing. To become master of the Circle B.”
She lifted her head and looked Lucas directly in the eyes. “And you’re no different.”
The sun was behind him so that all she could see of his features, shadowed as they were by the brim of his hat, were his gray eyes. And in them was a gleam terrifying to behold, like lightning flaring across the plains.