“Can You Make Me Come Tonight — The Mail Order Bride Asked… The Virgin Mountain Man Whispered, ‘I…’”

Chapter 3

Elias was avoiding her. It was obvious. For the past hour, he had found every excuse to stay away from the corner where the bed sat. He had checked the door hinges. He had added three logs to the fire, making the cabin almost stiflingly hot. He had meticulously cleaned his rifle, oiling the barrel until it gleamed.

Now he was sitting by the hearth, sharpening a hunting knife on a wet stone.

Shhhk. Shhhk. Shhhk.

The rhythmic sound of steel on stone grated against Margaret’s frayed nerves. She knew how this worked. She knew the stalling. Men were either brutal in their haste or clumsy in their hesitation. She preferred the latter. The anticipation was always worse than the act itself.

She put the comb down.

“Elias.”

The scraping stopped. He didn’t turn around, but she saw the muscles in his broad back tense beneath his flannel shirt.

“Yeah?”

“The fire is fine. Your knife is sharp. It’s late.”

He sat perfectly still for a long moment. Then, slowly, he set the knife and the wet stone down on the hearth. He stood up, wiping his hands on his pants — that same nervous gesture she was already beginning to recognize. He turned to face her.

In the dim, flickering orange light, he looked terrifying. He was a wild man of the woods, a giant carved from the mountain itself. Yet as he took a tentative step toward the bed, he looked like a man walking to the gallows.

He stopped about four feet away, his arms hanging awkwardly at his sides.

“I can take the floor,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly whisper. “If you need time. If you ain’t ready.”

Margaret let out a short, humorless breath. She looked down at her hands, fingers intertwined tightly in her lap.

“We signed the paper, Elias. I eat your food. I sleep under your roof. I know what the bargain is.”

“It ain’t just a bargain,” he muttered, looking at the floorboards.

“Isn’t it?”

She looked up, her gaze sharp and cynical. “Let’s not dress it up in lace. You bought a wife because it gets lonely up here, and a man has needs. I sold myself because I was starving and tired of being beaten by men who didn’t even have the decency to feed me first. We made a trade. I’m ready to pay my end.”

He flinched.

It was a tiny movement — a tightening of his jaw, a subtle shift in his shoulders. But Margaret caught it. She had spent too many years reading men’s bodies not to notice.

He swallowed hard. “I ain’t going to beat you, Margaret. Ever.”

“I know,” she said softly. And she was surprised to realize she meant it.

“But the rest of it…” She paused, her voice dropping. “We have to do the rest of it.”

Elias didn’t move. He just stood there, staring at the quilt covering her knees. The wind howled outside, a lonely, desperate sound.

The silence stretched. Margaret’s anxiety began to curdle into something sharper. She needed to know. She needed to understand exactly what kind of night she was in for so she could brace herself accordingly. She had spent her entire adult life navigating the selfish, brutal desires of men. She had learned to map their lust, to dodge their anger, to commodify her own body just to survive.

She needed to know if she had to brace herself for pain, or if she could simply check out and let her mind wander while his body did the work.

She looked him dead in the eye.

“Can you make me come tonight?”

The words dropped into the quiet cabin like a lead weight.

Elias’s head snapped up. His eyes widened, flashing with a sudden, intense panic. He looked as if she had just pulled a gun on him. The blood rushed out of his face, leaving his weather-beaten skin a pale, sickly color.

“What?” he breathed.

Margaret kept her voice steady, though her heart was hammering against her ribs. “You heard me. I’m asking if you know what you’re doing. Or if this is just going to be ten minutes of heavy breathing while I stare at the ceiling and wait for you to roll over.”

Elias opened his mouth. Closed it. He took a half step back, his massive hands opening and closing at his sides.

He looked entirely cornered.

The apex predator of the Rocky Mountains had been utterly paralyzed by a woman in a cotton nightgown.

“Margaret, I—” He choked on the words. He rubbed a trembling hand over his face, dragging his fingers through his thick beard.

“It’s a simple question, Elias.”

He looked at her. His river-stone eyes were wide, vulnerable, completely stripped of any masculine bravado. The silence stretched again. But this time, it wasn’t the natural silence of the mountain. It was the agonizing silence of a man facing his deepest inadequacy.

He dropped his gaze to his boots. When he spoke, his voice was so quiet she barely heard it over the wind.

“I… I don’t know how.”