Free Bittner, Rosanne by Wildest Dreams

smiled and carried the boy to an outhouse behind the cabin, helping him undo himself. He was very proud of the fact that he'd learned to "pee" the way Luke had shown him. In the distance the bobcat squealed again, and Lettie felt a stab of anxiety. Luke had said he might have to hunt the thing down and get rid of it. What if he was attacked while he was out there working alone in the woods? There would be no one to help them.
    As she and Nathan returned to the cabin, she gazed at the magnificent beauty of the surrounding country, the wide valley below the cabin, the purple mountains that rimmed the entire horizon. This was a treacherous beauty, a deceitful land, one that lured with its beauty and its promises of riches. She could only pray the land would not devour her husband, kill them all with its harsh climate and dangerous wildlife.
    She spent the next few hours making the cabin as homey as possible for their first night. She hung a blanket in one corner of the room. Behind it she set a washstand and laid out one of the feather mattresses for her and Luke to sleep on. She put the other feather mattress on the small bed where Nathan would sleep and made up his bed properly. She cleaned up the rest of the cabin as best she could, stacking supplies wherever they would fit. Then she cooked supper, a difficult task on the small potbellied stove.
    "I need a regular cookstove," she told Luke when he returned. He promised to see about it as soon as he could. He also promised to go to Billings and buy some tar paper to nail to the outside of the cabin to close off the cracks between the boards. But before he did any of that, he would have to spend the next several days cutting wood. Winter set into this land early, and any day could find them buried in a mountain snowstorm.
    By the time Lettie got Nathan put down again for the night, both she and Luke were bone weary, yet both knew their work had just begun. Luke bolted the door and sat down on a crate quietly to smoke a thin cigar he'd taken from his gear. It was finally warm enough inside the cabin for them to take off their jackets. Luke even took off his shirt, under which he wore wool long johns. He watched Lettie take down her hair. "It's going to be hard, Lettie."
    "I know. We can do it." She shook out her hair, turned to look at him. His long johns were unbuttoned, revealing the dark hairs on his chest. It was the first time she had seen him without a shirt on. Finally there was time to think about what had happened when they first arrived. She knew by the way his eyes moved over her that Luke was remembering it too. It had been beautiful. She wanted to feel that way again.
    "Why don't you undress out here?" Luke asked, his voice soft.
    The flames that flickered behind the open draft of the stove door cast ripples of light on her as she began removing her dress. She shivered, but she knew it was not from the cold. For the first time in her life a man would look upon her nakedness. The night of her attack, there had been only the rape. The men had not even removed all of her clothing. Luke would be the first man to set eyes on her breasts, to touch them, taste them. She was glad she had something left to give him that was still virgin, touched by no other man. She dropped her petticoats, removed her boots and stockings, unlaced her camisole.
    Luke crushed out his smoke in a tin plate on the table, marveling that he had found someone so utterly beautiful on his way to Montana, that he had actually arrived here with a wife and a child to call his own. "Come here," he told her. He saw her nervousness as she approached and knelt in front of him. She closed her eyes when he moved his hands inside the camisole and pushed it away from her full breasts. They were firm, the nipples a lovely pink. He pulled the camisole down her arms and tossed it aside, gently grasped her breasts, caressing them, toying with her nipples, until he saw her breathing quicken. Her head was flung back,