RESCUED: CHAPTER 2

By the time they got back from the Gilt and Glory, the moon was in full display through the French doors, its clear shafts of light seeming to double when they bounced back off the gentle waves near the beach. The sailing vessels with their brightly illuminated lanterns bobbed up and down in the surf, some arriving and some leaving, but always in motion. Matt held Sara while he watched Kitty slip gracefully out of her dinner dress and wrap her big blue robe around her, then handed his daughter to her mother for a well-earned supper of her own. Standing behind her, watching Kitty look out over the ocean like that, took his breath away. It made his mind flash back to a cold night by a campfire on the prairie, with nothing but thoughts of his beautiful wife to keep him warm. How could life have changed like this in the blink of an eye?

The small lantern across the room by Sara's crib barely provided enough light for him to find the hairbrush, but he did. Wordlessly he stuffed it into his pocket, then methodically began taking the pins out of Kitty's hair while she cooed over Sara. Once her long, red tresses were all unbound, he separated them carefully with his fingers, then slowly began brushing that hair he loved so much.

"Mmmm, that feels good," she said softly.

He kept brushing. Kitty sure had been right, the drive season in Dodge had been the busiest in history. While they'd wanted to get away during the heat of summer, here they finally were in San Francisco in late September, with only one final race scheduled for Carbine. The brushing relieved his tension and made him realize he was finally in a place where neither of them could be interrupted or called away. And now, Sara had stopped nursing and was busy blowing little bubbles, a sure sign that she was satisfied.

"Not very lady-like, my little princess." He said as he made sure the burp cloth was in place and lifted her up to his shoulder.

"I'll have plenty of time to teach her," Kitty smiled. "Can you picture her with a knife and fork?"

"No. I want her to suckle forever."

"So you can watch?"

"Probably." He grinned. "Maybe also so I can keep her home."

Satisfied that she'd been properly attended, Matt finally lowered Sara into her crib. It was nice now that they could put a blanket over her baby bunting without worry of her smothering, something that Doc had warned the first-time parents about more than once. He covered her and gave her a kiss on the cheek, then turned back to Kitty who was still mesmerized by the view.

"You want to see a map of San Francisco? I mail ordered one a long time ago, Kit. It's in my bag." He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her.

"Nope." She put her hands over his and rubbed them softly, leaning back into his chest. "We haven't been alone for four days. Don't want to share our time with a map. The restaurant was magnificent, Ava's all settled into her private room, and your little princess will be asleep in five minutes. I had something else in mind while the stars twinkle out there."

Gently, he turned her to face him, covering her mouth up with a deep kiss.

"Maybe that's more to your liking?" He said when he came up for air.

"Much more!" She reached up and returned a gentle kiss to his lips. "Except we're both still on our feet, and you have WAY too many clothes on." Her eyes were sparkling in the moonlight, and her smile was more than easy to understand. What he'd waited for all this time was about to be delivered.

A woman of many talents, Kitty never took her eyes off her husband while he peeled off boots, socks, pants and shirt, and at the same time tied her hair back at her neck.

"Uh uh uh! No, you leave those union bottoms on there, Mister! You've been sneakin' a look over my shoulder watchin' me feed your daughter all this time, now it's my turn for a little eye candy. I'll let you know when you can take 'em off. Actually, I might just decide to chew 'em off."

"Count me in." Matt muttered to himself as he listened to her slur her speech with not a drop of whiskey and only the sight of his body to make her rowdy. He knew what happened to her when she got like that. And just the thought of her working him over with her mouth made his heart race! When he approached her, dressed only in his bottoms, she put her hands on his bare chest and gently marched him backward, giving him a gentle push onto the huge bed. The air between them was thick with anticipation. No man could resist arousal at that point in time, even if he tried.

But Matt Dillon didn't resist. He felt himself starting to stir. She stared at him for a full minute, burning an image in her mind of his body moving like that, wondering how her plan would change the growing bulge.

"Hey, not fair! You're standing there staring, I'm flat on my back! Get in here!"

"Uh uh uh! No, you just lay there and take it Mister. I'm gonna do my bidding, one little step at a time until I decide to molest you."

She attacked his toes first, gently massaging each one then finishing by giving each one a loving kiss. A quick stroke of her fingers up the sole of each foot, and she'd made it to his legs. It was easy to rub her hands under his calves, massaging the thick muscles and feeling them surrender to her touch. She knelt carefully between his knees so she could reach his thighs, but they were a completely different challenge. Not even two hands could fit around the back of one thigh. And besides, it was time for another mental picture. So she let her eyes wander up. Delightful! Left thigh nibble . . .right thigh nibble . . . her victim shuddered as his body responded, chills running up his spine straight to his groin.

Oh, how she loved making this giant of a man tremble!

"Kitty!" He breathed.

She paused right there, glancing at the result of her teasing: 240 pounds of man completely lost to a woman half his size.

"You want to get that map out now? We could make our plans for tomorrow."

The teasing had gone far enough. Completely forgetting about his union suit, he pulled her down on top of him. She giggled softly and ground herself into him while his underwear blocked his contact. His wife, the mother of the child sleeping soundly in her crib across the room, was a wild woman making him crazy. He groped at his waistband, pulling it down, at last freeing himself. The wild woman nibbled again, a perfect order to her plan. He was hot, hot and ready. The nibble became a kiss, then eager sucking. When she finally guided him carefully between her legs to her soft warmth and rubbed on him again, slowing wasn't an option. He pushed into his willing victim. His reward was her low groan, then a throbbing, squeezing. She went over the top at his second thrust. At that moment, he knew. He'd meant to talk to her, to make a plan. But she was his wife; there was no risk, no need to control what his body was telling him to do. So he set up the rhythm that he knew would release him from his bonds. Stupid underwear around his thighs didn't matter. He pulled on her butt in time with his thrusts as they got faster and faster, then stopped completely with his climax. Their mutual grunts of pleasure signaled the end in no time. There was no going back.

She lay quietly on top of him, enjoying the aftershocks. It took a full minute for her to stop trembling and start ministering to him, but she sure did, brushing her lips over his, snorting in his ears, then gently biting him on the neck. She'd been satisfied by the lover of her lifetime. Slower to recover, he drew her into his arms and stroked her. There was never any concern about crushing her in this position, and he planned to keep her right there, staying inside of her until nature forced him away. Finally he recovered enough to kiss her hair, her face, and even to speak.

"Kitten."

"Hmmm," she purred.

"We made love in the Governor's suite in Topeka, now the Palace in San Francisco. Where do we go for our next tryst?"

"How about the ocean? We could rent a boat."

"Lovers from Kansas gettin' after it in the surf." He smiled and kissed her on the nose. "Now that might just make the Dodge City Bulletin."

She giggled. "All that bobbing up and down in the waves. Ohhhhh!"

"Kit. . ."

"What now?" She snuggled into his neck, enduring a moment of silence while she waited for him to join her in the vision she was having.

"Maybe we should start being careful again."

"Whaaat?! Oh Matt, your timing is impeccable!"

"Yeah, so like me. But maybe we should talk about it."

She raised up to her elbows and looked at him in complete disbelief. "You want me to spend the rest of my good years being careful?"

That one took him a while to process. Her "good years." Once he figured it out, it took him even a little longer to make sure he could find the right words. The last thing he wanted to do was ruin their lovemaking. The serious twist to the conversation made him slide away instantly, so he pulled her to his side and faced her. True to form, his tongue remained separated from his brain.

"I . . .uh . . .no, of course not! I just thought we should talk about it before we get surprised."

"Sara would love having a little brother or a little sister." She smiled.

"We had Sara on purpose, Kit."

"Mmmm Hmmm. Had to work at that for a while, too, remember? We could actually have that little brother or sister on purpose too, you know. Might be hard for a lawman to understand, but not everything in life has to be a surprise."

"I need a little time here." He drew her close to him, his mind spinning. Here he was in bed with his wife, acting like a frightened teenager. With her snuggled into his chest like that, he was enjoying the loving nips she was taking at his neck.

"It's all right, Matt. You take all the time you need. I'll start keeping track of my dates. We can start being careful if you want."

"No, I didn't mean I don't want to Kit . . .well, I didn't mean 'no'. Of course I want another someday." His thoughts were all jumbled up. "God, Kit, Sara's only eight months old!"

"Mmmm Hmmm. Takes a while longer for a woman my age to start another . . . not to mention needing a willing partner."

"Can you picture me with a little child in each arm and a .45 strapped to my hip?"

"Retirement looms in under three years, my love."

"Maybe we could have another then?" His eyebrows peaked hopefully.

"Maybe we could. I'll sure try. At least by then Sara should be packing her own .45."

It didn't seem appropriate to laugh out loud especially after such a serious conversation and with an infant sleeping on the other side of the room, so he opted to cover her in soft kisses instead.

"You're laughing at me." She whispered.

"Nope. I'm kissing you."

"You'll make me want you again."

"I most certainly want YOU again." His big hands eagerly ran up and down the smooth skin of her arm while his brain prepared his body for what he wanted. Anticipation. Sweet, sweet anticipation!

He traded the little kisses for a deep one. Involuntarily, her toes were curling on his legs, that delightful sign of her growing passion.

"We can be careful this time if you want," she offered reluctantly, not wanting him to stop.

"After what happened twenty minutes ago? Seems pretty silly. I made a mistake saying that, Kit. I get scared and then I get all tongue tied and stupid. I'm sorry. Seems like when I don't think it over and just blurt things out like that, I pick all the wrong words. Can I start over again?"

"Talking or making love?"

"Both."

"Okay. Go ahead." This time it was Kitty who went in for the deep kiss. As was so often the case, it left him speechless.

"Kit, I was going to start talking first, remember?"

"I remember. Go ahead." She was pulling on his earlobe with her lips.

"I can't when you're doing that."

She ran her toes up and down his legs, then her expert hands moved down to find him, stroking his hardness with purpose, maybe just a little more aggressively than usual. She tucked him between her legs and left him there to make his decision. Suddenly it didn't seem like there was much talking left to do.

XOXOXO

They'd spent the entire morning together huddled in Doc's office talking the Philadelphia College of Medicine and one new technique after another that young Joseph had learned. Doc compared it to being at a medical conference exhibit when the youngster opened one of his bags and hauled out his graduation present, a microscope unlike any he'd seen or even read about.

"We don't get to do a lot of lab work in Dodge, Joseph." Doc sighed as he took a skeptical look through the eyepiece at a tiny piece of lint he'd harvested from his desk. The illumination was twice anything he'd seen, and most impressive was the presentation of color: absolutely no distortion. "Incredible!" He announced.

Joseph chuckled at the "incredible" from a respected physician looking at nothing more than a piece of fuzz.

"It's an Abbe scope," Galen. "Gift from my mother."

And that lead-in was Doc's perfect opportunity to find out about the person behind all those medical credentials, so he pulled himself away from the instrument and looked at Joseph.

"Your mother lives in Philadelphia, then?"

"Washington. I grew up in Washington." He was quiet for a minute, then suddenly inspired. "I probably should tell you more about why I answered your ad."

Doc's eyes twinkled at Joseph's perception. It was the big piece of the puzzle that didn't fit. He'd been crystal clear explaining this job, life in Dodge, and the seemingly insurmountable challenges of practicing medicine out on the prairie. Why would a young physician with a brilliant education and an even more brilliant future want this? He nodded slowly in agreement, a signal to Joseph to go right on with that train of thought.

"Cyrus was a prominent lawyer when I was born. He was appointed to the federal judiciary when I was seven years old. Everything was perfect until he decided to pack us up and take a temporary assignment in the new fourth district in Hays. Mother absolutely hated it, couldn't tolerate anything about it or Kansas either, for that matter. He kept telling her it was temporary. But after almost two years of empty promises about moving back to Washington one day, she divorced him and took her life back, me along with it."

He refilled both of their coffees, then sat back down and went on.

"I visited my father in Hays when mother would allow it, but I was only in Kansas half a dozen times until I went off to school in Philadelphia. My most vivid memories are those of Cyrus talking with me about the difference he made in people's lives as a district judge on the frontier. He talked about all the horribly bad men he'd been able to take off the street, and in the next breath all the innocents he'd been able to save from being wrongly charged. He called it his "purpose" in life. The frontier bench was like his second child. It really made an impression on me. I started replaying that in my head in the last half of my internship when all of us were being recruited for some real lucrative positions back east. Galen, I almost accepted a pediatric residency at Columbia! I was SO close! Abraham Jacobi is a genius! Have you read about him? The thought of joining Jacobi and being able to save children ALMOST . . .well, it almost fulfilled the same purpose that drove Cyrus! But the parents were amazingly wealthy and those children would have seen the finest specialists whether I was one of them or not. My father's speeches about making a difference kept tugging at me. Your ad drove me over the edge. I'd really like to try this, Galen. Cyrus never said it was easy, he just said it gave him purpose."

Doc pulled on his earlobe thoughtfully, then rubbed his mustache for emphasis. He, Cyrus Brooker, Matt Dillon, and now a whole new generation in the person of Joseph Brooker had come to Kansas for exactly the same reason. It was eerie; almost like Joseph had a "hire me" sign pasted to his forehead. There were hundreds of brilliant young doctors, but it took a lot more than that to survive out here. Joseph had the most important skill of all: Desire. And just like Matt Dillon had done almost fifteen years ago, this young man had let him see into his soul.

A feeling of near euphoria washed over him, and he stifled a chuckle when he spoke.

"By thunder Joseph! You're hired!"

tbc