Rocky Mountain Dawn (Rocky Mountain Bride Series Book 1) by Lee Savino

but Esther lapped at them like a cat with cream. "My naughty one. What will I do with you?"
    Her husband chuckled and his fingers continued stroking her, before he moved behind her and she heard his clothes drop to the floor.
    He pushed into her wetness. Pressing her body against the bed, she thrust her bottom back, inviting him to drive into her from behind, moaning as he did just that. As he moved, his hips slapped her sore cheeks, but the pain only fueled the pleasure and built a torrent of arousal inside her.
    Planting one hand on the bed to steady herself, Esther used her other to tug at her corset, struggling to pull it down. Johnathan reached around to help, freeing her breasts, then finding a nipple and rolling it between his fingers.
    The pain in her bottom and in her breast swept over her, and her climax followed. Johnathan groaned as her muscles squeezed his cock. When it was done, Esther arched her back and pushed against him with new vigor until he gripped her hips hard and came deep inside her.
    "So," she panted while they recovered. "Do you believe me when I say I'm well enough to travel?"
    "Esther," her husband laughed against the skin of her neck. "I believe you'll be the death of me."
     
    *****
     
    Before winter, they settled into a little white house in a small outpost between Florence and Royal Gorge. Their friends, the Wilders, lived further west, but with Mary doing poorly, the Shepherd's visited often.
    "That Lyle is certainly a fancy fellow," her husband remarked one day. They were down in the kitchen, Esther making a cake to celebrate their first little church service at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The Wilders were there, and Miles Donovan too, though the latter wasn't speaking to the former, and Mary's cough was much worse. A few miners came, and Johnathan promised to ride out to their camp to lead them in prayer once a week, as well as see to any illness or wounds the rugged men sustained.
    In contrast to the mining men, Lyle Wilder looked like a dandy in his fine black vest and coat, his frail and beautiful wife on his arm.
    "I prefer someone steady and true." She smiled at her husband. "Like Mr. Donovan. Of course, that man would be handsomer if he smiled. I wonder if we could write home and find a woman to come and be a wife to him."
    Johnathan just shook his head at her, and she couldn't resist adding, "A good Christian woman. Someone wise, but young, who will make him laugh."
    Her husband dropped his paper. "Esther, leave the poor man alone. Donovan doesn't want a matchmaker."
    She turned away to hide her smile. "Oh, but he needs one. You know as well as I, it is not good for a man to be alone."
    The kitchen chair scraped back, and she felt her husband's heat at her back before he put his arms around her and sank his head onto her shoulder. "Are you going to be a busybody, or will you listen to your husband and leave Mr. Donovan alone?"
    "I don't know," she pretended to think. "I think I was put on this earth to meddle. Stir things up." Sticking her finger into the batter, she gazed at him over her shoulder, and then licked her digit clean.
    She reached for a spoon, but he'd already snapped it up, before relieving her of the mixing bowl.
    "Lift up your skirts, wife," he ordered, tapping the wooden spoon against one hand. "And bend over the table."
    A mischievous light in her green eyes, Esther hurried to obey.
    The End
     
     
     
     

Author's Notes
     
    The story of Esther and Johnathan is loosely based on the real life account of Mary Richardson and Elkanah Walker. In 1837, both Mary and Elkanah wrote separately to the American Mission Board, offering to serve as missionaries. The Board wrote back to Elkanah: "You ought…to have a good, healthy, patient, well-informed, devotedly pious wife. There is a Mary Richardson of Baldwin, Maine, who has offered herself to the Board, but we cannot send her single…If you have nobody in view, you might inquire about her."
    Some of the Walker's