Free A Settler's Wife's Dreams (Erotic Romance, Romantic Erotica, Erotic Historical Romance) by Ashley Olsen

no breath and lay very still. Lisa felt the face with her hands since there was hardly any light from Frank's almost gone out lamp. She didn't feel any wrinkles or crows feet—before her lay the body of a young man.
    “Oh, shit,” Frank said. Lisa looked back toward him and saw him slumped on the bed, trying with all his might to keep the rifle trained on the fallen body of the Indian.
    “Are you hurt?” Lisa cried, leaving the Indian’s body to rush over to Frank.
    “Yeah,” Frank said. “He got me in the chest, right through the middle. He must have missed my heart and back bone though since I'm still alive. I'm weak though, I can barely hold the rifle. Here, quick, take it from me in case he gets up.”
    “It's all right, Frank,” Lisa said. “He's dead.”
    Frank's head slumped down to meet his chest and the rifle clattered to the floor. Lisa sat on the bed with Frank's head cradled in her lap, wondering if there was anything she could do. She felt for the wound but all she found was a gaping, ragged hole in his back. Once she found that Lisa gave up hope. There was nothing she could do. She wasn't a nurse, and she didn't have any materials here to plug the hole in Frank's body. She’d learnt in school that puncture wounds to a human thorax made it so the diaphragm lost suction and then couldn't expand the lungs to draw breath.
    “Oh, Frank,” Lisa said as she cried, rocking back and forth with his head in her lap. “Oh Frank, oh Frank, oh Frank. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”
    She cried until her eyes were dry. She cried until her stomach hurt from the retching and heart wrenching sobs. Now, more than anything else, she wanted Frank back like he had been before she'd left. All she wanted to do was sit down at the table and have Frank be whole again. She wanted to listen to him tell her about how hard it was to plow, and how much they needed rain, and how little the crops were growing. All of their hard times seemed like nothing now that Frank was gone. She couldn't imagine life without Frank.
    Slowly Lisa got up off the bed and sat down at the table. For a long time she just sat there and thought about what had happened that day - the good and the bad. All the adventure and heartache that had come with a trip to the city for a horse shoe and a few nails to put it on. Who would have thought any of that was even possible?
    It just seemed like a dream that she needed to wake up from, some kind of fantasy that went horribly wrong and she needed to escape. She put her head down in her arms in hope that when she raised her head back up there wouldn't be anything like there was now. When she lifted her head again she wanted it to all be back to normal.
     

     
     
     

Chapter 6
     
    The day was beautiful. Lisa sat on top of Ted's shop, on the roof, sipping a cocktail and waiting for him to bring up their lunch. She had been living with him for a few weeks now. It had been that long since she had ridden back into town covered in blood with her tale of woe. She had been in a state of shock that made it hard for her to communicate with anyone. After awhile a doctor had gotten the story out of her. Then Ted had shown up and taken her back in.
    For all this time Lisa had been sleeping in a different bed than Ted. He hadn't just assumed that they would be sleeping together because her husband had died and there was nowhere else for her to go. Lisa appreciated this more than she knew how to express to Ted. But now she was afraid of losing even Ted.
    Just before Ted had closed the shop so they could eat lunch together the sheriff had come in to tell Lisa that the town was forming up a kind of militia that was going to go out and get justice for Frank. Lisa had said she didn't know why that was necessary, considering that the Indian that had killed Frank had already died by Frank's hand. The sheriff hadn't wanted to hear anything like that though. He'd looked at her strangely and walked out.
    “Ted,”