Free Heartstrings by Rebecca Paisley Page A

of this book, Mr. Montana?”
    “I wouldn’t bother with the book, Miss Worth.”
    She refused to surrender to the warm flow of passion his announcement brought. For heaven’s sake, she was a highly educated woman! Surely with a bit more discipline, she could conquer the feelings Roman so effortlessly created. “Are you saying you know everything there is to know about coitus?”
    He was tempted to say yes, but the gleam in her eyes gave him the vague feeling that she was preparing to use every smidgen of her intelligence to back him into a corner out of which there was no escape. Her weapon was her brain, and in this particular instance it was far more deadly than any firearm he could think of.
    So he wouldn’t do battle with her mind. He’d attack her emotions instead.
    He joined her by the trees, and his eyes holding hers captive, he traced the curve of her cheekbone with his finger. “I’m saying I know how to make love to a woman, Miss Worth. I know when to touch a woman. Where. And how.”
    He heard her breath quicken, and he moved in for the kill. Slowly, he drew his finger past her cheek. Over her lips. Down her throat, and finally into the valley of her breasts. She’d unfastened just enough buttons to make the task easy.
    His thumb folded against his palm, he slid four fingers beneath the low-cut edge of her lacy chemise, allowing only their tips to touch the puckered velvet of her nipple. “This,” he whispered, “is one way to touch a woman.”
    Theodosia swayed and would have fallen if Roman had not quickly captured her waist. She tried stepping away from him, but she discovered that it was not his arm that kept her to him, but her own reluctance to be parted from him. “What possesses you to think you may caress me in such a way, Mr. Montana?”
    He kept his fingers exactly where they were. “What possesses you not to stop me?” He flashed her a lopsided grin and finally withdrew his hand. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover if we’re going to make Templeton by tomorrow. As much as I like touching you and as much as you like me touching you, we’ve run out of time. I guess you’ll have to learn about the—uh…the sweet art of passion on your own.”
    For the next three hours, while she was driving the wagon, Theodosia tried to concentrate on the songs of the meadowlarks that frolicked in the branches of the oak and buckthorn trees. But the songbirds’ music could not hold her attention the way Roman did.
    He liked touching her. He’d said so himself. She couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to touch him in a similar fashion.
    She stared at Roman’s back. His massive shoulders. His long black hair and thick muscular legs. He sat tall and straight in the saddle. His hips moved. Forward. Backward. To the rhythm of his horse’s gait.
    Hips may move in a circular or back and forth motion.
    The words she’d read in the sexual treatise came back to her. Still watching the easy sway of Roman’s hips, she wondered if his movements were also those a man employed when engaging in sexual relations. Was that how Dr. Wallaby would move?
    Somehow she didn’t think so.
     
    S tanding between his stallion and Theodosia’s horse and holding the steeds’ bridles, Roman watched the choppy Colorado River slosh over the sides of the ferry. He realized the current flowed more swiftly now than it had when he’d crossed the river on his way to Oates’ Junction.
    “This ride is precarious at best,” Theodosia stated, peering over the wooden side slats of the ferry.
    When Roman turned to look at her, he noticed her face was as colorless as the brisk wind that sailed through her hair. Clutching the side of the buckboard with her right hand and holding her parrot’s cage in her left, she acted as though she were heading for a raging waterfall aboard nothing but a slim hope for survival.
    “Ain’t nothin’ to be skeered of, ma’am,” one of the ferrymen told her. He slackened his grip on