Pandora woke when her bottom hit the floor.
“What?” she cried rubbing her bruised him. Russel, fully dressed, towered over her.
“Time to go. Dress quickly or ride in your skin.” He turned from her. “I'm saddling the new mare.”
“Daisy,” Pandora corrected him. With a thread of magic, she loosened his belt, making his pants fall around his ankles. She pulled her dress over her head to avoid looking at him and laughing. The act would lose impact if she did that. As it was, he must have blamed himself because he said nothing and was gone when she tied her stockings to her garter.
Downstairs, she found Thunder nudging Russel's arm, the one holding Daisy's reins.
Pandora yawned and made a show of stretching.
“What do you have for my breakfast?” she asked.
Russel snorted and pulled a rag from his pocket. Fresh bread, still warm and moist tumbled out into her hands.
She couldn't resist the urge to needle him. “This is it? Where are the eggs? The sausage?”
“If you'd risen when I tried to wake you, you would have had them with me.”
“Blaming me for being tired after all you did last night, seems to me a way of blaming yourself.”
The broad grin that brought to his face was more than worth the teasing.
“On your horse, woman, before I do as much or more again.”
Pandora's stomach fluttered at that thought and the lascivious gaze that accompanied it.
She hiked her skirt to mount and clicked her tongue in frustration. Some time in the night, her spell dividing the skirt for riding had come undone. It would take time to recast it, but Russel obviously had no patience this morning.
He offered his hands and she set her foot in them, swinging the other over Daisy's broad back. Russel quirked an eyebrow and ran a finger along the top of her stocking, inside her thigh.
“Are you trying to make me dally here?” he asked.
