Dance to a Wylder Beat by Marilyn Barr—Excerpt Day!

 


One of the main reasons I placed the ad was to get a wife who could make friends in town. How am I supposed to depend on this hellcat to integrate my brother Ikshu and me into the community?

When she pales at my terse words, I plunk her into the saddle with the care reserved for a sack of potatoes. Maybe she’s cranky from the journey or the gunshark really encroached upon her person. Just because I didn’t see him touch other parts doesn’t mean he didn’t.

I saw red when the scoundrel tried to wrangle her into a private room. I even lost my hat and flaunted my braids at the townspeople. The self-deprecating thought causes me to stuff said braids into my hat with more ire than they deserve.

“Scheetz, you sure are vain for a man who rolls in a dirt street littered with road apples,” Miss Olive Muegge says from above me. My lips quirk as I stifle a laugh. Her words shouldn’t warm my insides, but I’m entertained by her fire. Whatever she thinks just flies out like a runaway train. No wonder she attracts so much trouble.

Great. How am I going to get us home if she’s in my saddle? I’m not walking all the way to our homestead. I should have placed her on the sheepskin stretched across the travois behind us. She’s small enough the leather wouldn’t stress under her weight. Her shock nearly blows out her hairpins when I swing onto the saddle behind her.

My temperature rises five degrees, and it has nothing to do with the late July heat. Her short frame sits just under my collarbone. If she leaned back, her head would rest on my shoulder and we would fit like a lock and key. The tightening of body parts I had thought dormant declare loud and clear this might not have been my brightest idea.

“Do you mind?” she shouts toward the horse. She can’t turn around to yell at me without rubbing our best parts together. I steady my chuckles so they stick under my Adam’s apple. There isn’t room for a horse’s hair between us, and she will shake with my laughter at her expense.

“You expect me to balance us in a single saddle and drive ’em?” I lean my head down so the words float across the sensitive skin behind her ear. When I inhale, I smell the perfume of her hair and all her sunshine, wildflowers, and untamed womanly scent. When the only response I receive is a feminine shiver, I reach around her to grab the reins.

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The Music of Dance to a Wylder Beat by Marilyn Barr

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