Free As the Cowboy Commands [Ecstasy in the Old West 2] (Siren Publishing Allure) by Robin Gideon

moment before opening the front door to Helen’s little home. He didn’t want to just barge in, but it seemed a bit formal for him to knock on the door before entering. He looked up at the morning sky. The clouds were rolling in from the west, fat and blue-black with the promise of mischief. It would be a miserable, muddy day for the prospectors working in the mines today.
    Thanking the Fates that he’d never tried his hand at gold prospecting, Jared pushed open the front door and entered Helen’s private home.
    He found her straining as she poured a large boiler bucket of steaming water into a galvanized bathtub. She had changed from her tattered clothing into a summer-weight, cotton robe that had been worn so many times it was still white but almost translucent at her buttocks and elbows. The garment was wrapped around her womanly body and belted tightly around her waist, but the movement of Helen’s extravagant breasts beneath paper-thin cotton let Jared know she was completely naked beneath. Despite the sexual satisfaction he’d experienced earlier in the evening with this voluptuous woman, he felt his cock twitch slightly in his gabardine trousers.
    “Good idea,” Jared said, nodding at the bathtub.
    “I knew that I needed a bath, and I thought you might like one, too.” She pushed an errant lock of auburn hair back behind her ear, now having abandoned all attempts to keep her hair in a bun. Jared watched her rounded breasts tremble gently beneath the cotton, and saw more than just a hint of cleavage. He looked away, not wanting to ogle. She said, “If you’re hungry, I have bread and cheese and some wine you can have right away, or if you wouldn’t mind waiting, I can cook up something hot for you.”
    Jared looked at the steaming tub then around at the interior of Helen’s house. The bed was tucked into the southeast corner of the room, no doubt away from the fierceness of the nasty arctic winds that howled in the winter. There was a fireplace in the middle of the north wall, with a wood rocking chair and a bentwood chair on either side angled toward it. A small, rectangular table was accompanied by two simple chairs in the area that was used for dining. In the center of the table was a small vase for flowers. Jared immediately noticed the flowers, though not displeasing to the eye, were actually made out of paper. A porcelain washbasin and towel were there on a small table for her morning wash. There was a tall bureau that looked dreadfully old and did not have doors but did have a curtain that appeared to have been made with several different scraps of either bed linen or towels. The bureau stood beside a scarred, four-drawer chest-of-drawers. Jared assumed the bureau and chest-of-drawers contained every last piece of clothing that Helen owned.
    Everything around him whispered of quiet desperation, of a life lived at the very edge of the lowest level of respectability. During the ride from Whitetail Creek to Helen’s home, he had learned that she was a clerk of some sort. She had intentionally kept the facts quite vague, and Jared had been gentlemanly enough to not press her for details, despite his curiosity. If this was any indication of her wages, her employer wasn’t what anyone would consider generous.
    “It’s not much,” Helen said, apology and embarrassment coloring her tone as she spied Jared eyeing her home, “but it’s been in the family ever so long. I just couldn’t see myself selling the property, just to make some quick money.”
    Jared grinned, gave her a sideways look that displayed how proud he was of her, and replied, “That wouldn’t be right, now would it? And you, Helen Miller, strike me as a woman who does right.”
    She blushed and looked away. “I try,” she said, suddenly shifting her bare feet nervously on the slat-wood floor. “Sometimes I just don’t do very well.” She gave her head a little shake, as though to cast off any unwanted personal doubts, and then