OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 33: Down by the Riverside (Lillabit) -- rated M for Mature

The warmth of the sun on my bare arms, after months of long sleeves, felt like a caress. For a few minutes, I just blissed out at the sensation.

Our horses' hooves kept clopping across the grassy dirt.

Only after several slow, glorious breaths, did I glance toward my silent spouse.

Jacob's stare said everything I could have wanted--as did the way his buckskin mare was drifting to a slow stop, confused by the lack of guidance coming from his reins. My my my, I thought, heady with my own power. He was going to ruin that horse, giving her her head.

My sternum wasn't even showing--just some neck and gloriously bare arms. But I guess it's all relative. I was probably channeling an 1878 Playboy centerfold.

Me!

I caught my lower lip between my teeth, smiled, and started unlacing the front of my camisole. My breasts had gotten significantly more impressive since pregnancy, and I kind of liked showing them off.

Jacob looked away so quickly, I could swear I heard his neck crack. He jerkily urged his mare ahead.

I nudged Boy ahead with my heel, to ride abreast of my husband.

Or, you know, a'limb.

"Is something wrong, Mr. Garrison?" I sing-songed.

His back got stiffer. At the risk of being crude, I don't think his back was alone in that. But he said nothing until we reached the first of the trees that bordered the Platte's north bank.

At that point, Jacob dismounted with surprising speed, tossed his mare's reins over the limb--or arm--of a scrub tree, and started to unsaddle.

"We're not at the river yet," I protested.

"Nope," he said, tightly.

"Why not?"

Putting his saddle aside, he spread the mare's saddle blanket across the ground, then shrugged off his coat and spread it out too, creating a kind of pallet. Oh....

My breath fell short in shock and anticipation.

Oh!

"Because I married myself a Jezebel," he explained gruffly. He reached for Boy's reins first, to tie him. Then he opened his arms for me.

Full disclosure? I really hadn't stripped to seduce him. I really had stripped to feel the sun and the air on my skin. Seduction was just an added bonus. But now, at the intense gleam in Jacob's gray eyes, I started feeling a whole lot more than sun on my skin. Night feelings. I happily dismounted from my side saddle and into his arms--

And he slung me over his shoulder, like a sack of grain, for the very brief walk to his impromptu bed.

"Hey!" I protested. At least it gave me a nice view of his ass under his pants, as I hung halfway down his back. I suspected it gave him a nice few of mine, too. "If you're going to carry me, do it the right way!"

"Less temptation," he explained. But soon enough, he'd rolled me back over his shoulder and into his arms so that I dropped down past his chest and down--

I squeaked before he checked my descent, so deliberately close to the ground that my hair caught in the weeds. Now we were face to face, his eyes scorching me.

In the daytime?! Delighted, I wrapped my bare arms over his shoulders and used them to draw myself up, high enough to glance a kiss across the side of his mouth before gravity pulled me back into place.