I need a partner, a real one. She reached out and took his arm, her fingers digging into his sleeve. Teach me, Eli. Don't just give me chores to keep me busy. Teach me the accounts.
Show me where Silas is cheating us. Teach me how to shoot so I don't have to hide in the house when a stranger rides up. Teach me the water rights. Maggie, it is dangerous. I know, she cried.
It is all dangerous. Living is dangerous. But if I am to stay here, if I am to be your wife, do not leave me small in a life this big. I want to share the risk. I want to share the fight.
I want to be equal to this land. Eli stared at her. The silence of the barn stretched out, but it was no longer empty. It was filled with the echo of her demand. He looked at her face, the sharp chin, the determined mouth, the eyes that had seen horror and refused to look away.
Something inside his chest, a tight, cold knot that had been there since the blizzard, began to loosen. He had spent years mourning the woman he couldn't save. He had been so busy guarding his grief that he hadn't realized a warrior had walked into his life. She didn't want his pity. She wanted his respect.
She wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with him against the wind. He let out a breath he felt like he had been holding for 5 years. "You mean it," he said softly. "You really mean it. I have never meant anything more. " Eli stepped closer, the space between them, usually a carefully maintained buffer zone, collapsed.
He raised his hand, his fingers trembling slightly, and brushed a loose strand of auburn hair from her cheek. His knuckles grazed her skin. It was electric. "You are stronger than I am, Maggie. " Oor, he murmured. "No," she whispered, leaning into his touch, her eyes fluttering shut.
"I am just tired of being afraid. The air in the barn shifted. The smell of hay and leather faded, replaced by the overwhelming awareness of each other. " Eli looked at her mouth. It was trembling. The desire that he had been stamping down, burying under work and exhaustion, rose up like a floodwater.
He lowered his head. She did not pull away. She rose on her tiptoes to meet him. The kiss was not like the stories. It was not soft.
It was desperate. It was the collision of two lonely, starving people who had found sustenance in a desert. Eli's arms went around her, pulling her crushed against his chest. Maggie's hands found the back of his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer. He tasted of coffee and tobacco.
She tasted of something sweet and wild. He groaned low in his throat, a sound of surrender, and deepened the kiss, his mouth moving over hers with a hunger that shook them both. For a moment, the ranch, the debt, Silas Crane, it all vanished. There was only the heat of their bodies and the frantic beating of their hearts. They broke apart, gasping for air.