Page 111 of Snowbound Surrender
She let out a breath, brushing her skirts under the table, then picked up her cards. “Honestly, Randall, I can’t keep track of any of your questions or your train of thought anymore.”
He huffed a laugh. She was probably right about that. His mind was so clouded with boredom and anxiety and lust and the longing for an adventure different from any of the cockamamie schemes his father had sent him off on that he wasn’t sure he was making sense to himself.
They continued to play. Randall lost the next hand and took a drink, then the one after that. Then Miranda lost again, then him. The whiskey was strong, but it could have been much stronger. He wasn’t exactly swigging down gigantic gulps and could tell that Miranda wasn’t either. Still, after a few more hands, the mood between them took on a different shade of tension, more fuzzy and slippery than brittle.
He still wanted to know what she was trying so hard to avoid talking about, though. “So once again,” he tried after they’d both settled into the rhythm of the game and the mellowness of the alcohol. “What did Starla and your uncle say that has you so irritated?”
She pursed her lips, sorting through her cards. “It’s irrelevant.”
“I don’t think so.
“It’s irrelevant because it’s not true,” she repeated, stronger, swaying just a bit in her seat. She didn’t seem fully drunk, but she was definitely a bit tipsy.
“What’s not true?”
“That I need to loosen up.” She ended her sentence with a hiccup.
He couldn’t help it. He burst into laughter. Maybe that was the whiskey working on him. “They obviously haven’t seen you stuck in a saloon during a blizzard.”
“It has nothing to do with the saloon or the blizzard,” she fired back with less inhibition than she might have before the whiskey. “It has to do with—” At the last minute, she clapped a hand over her mouth.
A hazy grin spread across Randall’s lips. “Has to do with?” he prodded her.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Randi, are you calling me nothing?” He sensed their game reaching its end.
“Of course not, you’re—” Once again, she stopped herself with a look of alarm and wonder. Wonder about how she could say such things or wonder that she felt them at all, that’s what Randall wanted to know.
He set his cards aside, face up, revealing the king and queen of hearts. “What am I?”
“Are you laying down your cards early?” Her voice shook. “In that case, I win.” She put down her cards as well, including a pair of aces.
“Yes, love, you win. And you will always win.” If it was the alcohol turning him into a lothario, then thanks were due to the bottle. He had a feeling the confinement and the snow would have gotten him to the same place anyhow, though. “Go ahead and claim your prize, Randi. I can see exactly what you want. I’ve been seeing it in your eyes, in the tilt of your head, the softness of your lips, for days now. And I want the same thing, Miranda. I want you.”
“I—” She blinked rapidly, swaying closer to the table, propping herself against the edge…or perhaps using the table as the only thing that was keeping her from flying into his arms. “It isn’t right,” she whispered. “It isn’t proper or respectable.”
Randall shrugged. “I think we both forfeited the right to call ourselves respectable the moment we each stepped into this saloon.” And then he added his final ace to the argument. “Youknow, one way or another, we’re going to face scandal for being snowed in together. Might as well make it worthwhile.”
Her bottom lip trembled, but whether it was because she was on the verge of crying or laughing or bursting into some other kind of emotion, he couldn’t tell. She sat there, frozen, her eyes blazing as her thoughts zipped through her head so fast he could practically see the smoke.
And then, all at once, she blinked, and the decision was made, the game was over. She stood so fast that her chair tipped backwards and clattered to the floor. “I do, want you, Randall. I’ve wanted you from the moment you got up on that stage to do your silly brush presentation. More than I ever wanted that stupid lout, Micah. Vicky can have him. She can have everything about that brittle, boring life. I want this life. I want you. And now that we’ve gone through all of the things in the attic and discovered,” she swallowed, pressing her hands to her stomach, “things, I want you even more. I’m tired of being prim and proper and missish. I want to let go. I don’t care if it makes me the same as every other woman who’s slept in this saloon.I want you.”
Randall stood, stepping quickly around the side of the table to be closer to her. “Then take me, darling. I’m yours.”
CHAPTER 8
A sizzling rushof defiance flashed through Miranda. Yes, defiance—at the ridiculous restrictions she’d been raised with, at the lifeless lady she’d forced herself to be all these years, and at the part of herself that had held onto that for so long. It wasn’t even the whiskey at work. She’d deliberately taken smaller and smaller sips as the game went on. Her head was spinning, but not from that kind of intoxication. Uncle Buford had done a wonderful thing. He’d given her the means to free her true self from the chains polite society had wrapped her in, to stop comparing herself to Vicky and pretending to want the things her sister wanted. Now was the time to unwrap the gift of who she truly was.
She threw herself across the scant space between her and Randall, reaching for his head so that she could pull him close and claim the kiss she’d wanted for what felt like an eternity. His arms closed around her, pulling her closer still, and a relieved groan welled up from his chest as their lips met. It wasn’t a teasing, coquettish kiss either. She opened herself to him in a way that wouldn’t have been possible just days ago, her tongue meeting his with an urgency that was almost comical.
She’d never kissed with tongues before. She’d only ever heard whispers that it was done. Fortunately, Randall knew what he was doing. He tasted her deeply, one hand shifting to caress her breast through the layers of fabric she suddenly wished weren’t there. He nibbled on her lip, slanted his kiss so that he could suck the air right out of her. Then he moved on, planting hot, damp kisses along her jaw and down her neck.
“Oh, why did we wait so long to do this?” she sighed, tugging the hem of his shirt out of his trousers. As soon as his shirt hung loose, she spread her hands across the heated flesh of his abdomen. Waves of excitement shivered through her.
“Because we were under the mistaken assumption that we had to behave ourselves,” Randall answered, his breath hot against her neck.
“We’re in a saloon,” she sighed, leaving his skin to work the buttons of his vest loose. “No one behaves themselves in a saloon.”
