Page 12 of Rescued by the Alien Bull Rider (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #6)

JOLENE

Z ohro’s method of baling hay was a lot more rustic than I’d anticipated.

Where we’d had robotics and powerful machinery to do most of the back-breaking work on Terratribe II, Zohro just had Wyn, a few pieces of ancient-looking equipment, and the strength of his own body.

Which was obviously nothing to sneeze at, considering how many bales of hay he’d already managed to stack up today so far.

“If I devote a good portion of day to it, I can make more than fifty,” he told me.

“More than fifty?” I echoed incredulously, sure I’d heard him wrong. “On your own? With nothing but this stuff?”

I mean, the man was baling hay manually!

He had to cut the grass himself with a scythe!

Once it was cut, he explained that he let it dry in the sun for two or three days, using a metal tedding contraption dragged behind Wyn that helped turn and fluff the cut grass, letting it all dry evenly.

Once dry, he had to bundle it together by hand, and he stuffed those bundles into a large wooden box with a big lever on top that, when pressed down, squashed the grass into a tight rectangular prism.

Gaps between the wood planks of the box allowed Zohro to tie a cord around the packed plant matter inside, so that when he finally opened the front of the box, he could remove a perfectly solid bale and toss it into his pile.

I watched him work for a while, admiring his relentless competence and the seemingly endless well of energy that drove him.

It was almost an angry energy. He worked like he was mad at…

everything . Like he hated the grass so much that he never got tired of squishing it into blocks, no matter how many times he had to do it.

His injuries from last night didn’t seem to slow him down at all.

Or if they did, it only meant he was even faster than this normally, which was hard for me to comprehend.

Once I’d gotten a feel for everything involved, I stepped in to help.

Except, I wasn’t nearly as much help as I’d hoped to be.

My belly got in the way when I tried to stuff grass down the top of the upright wooden box, and I was too short to exert enough pressure on the lever up top to press the grass down fully.

I tried a few different angles and techniques with no success, all under the watchful and entirely unimpressed eye of the poor sap who’d agreed to marry me.

“I swear,” I panted, pushing the brim of my hat back to wipe sweat from my forehead, “I do somewhat know what I’m doing. I’ve been on a ranch all my life. I’ll be more help when I’m not this freaking pregnant.”

Except, when I was finished being pregnant, I’d be healing and looking after a newborn…

Which meant I might be even more useless to him.

A fresh batch of sweat oozed from my pores, and this one had nothing to do with physical exertion. I mean, he’d said he wanted to marry me for God knew what reason last night…

But that was before he’d seen my epic baling failures.

“I’ll be on grass bundling duty,” I said, determined to find some way to lighten Zohro’s load and prove my worth. And I didn’t just want to prove it to Zohro in that moment.

I wanted to prove it to myself. I’d always been a farm girl, and it suddenly felt like I had no idea what I was doing on a farm.

I’d always been a horse girl, and now I didn’t even have a horse.

The result of that dissonance? Pain. And lots of it.

I distracted myself from the sudden urge to cry by figuring out how to best approach the grass.

I couldn’t bend at the waist the way Zohro did.

So I eased myself down onto my knees instead, gathering and rolling the long stalks of dried grass and other plants until they resembled bundles about the same size as the ones Zohro had been making.

I could feel his eyes on me as I worked, but he said nothing.

No encouraging words to tell me I was on the right track.

But no criticism, either.

And when it came time to stuff the box once more, he used the bundles I’d made without complaint. And something told me Zohro would definitely be the type to complain if I’d done it wrong.

Satisfaction swept through me.

Hell yeah, Jolene. Fucking killing it.

Unfortunately, my pride in my human fortitude was severely short-lived. Because the same itching that plagued my back now started up in my hands. The skin was reddening, too.

“Hey, Zohro?”

He yanked a bale from the box then turned to look at me.

“Have you got any gloves?”

“Gloves? What for?”

“For this.” I held up my hands, showing him the spreading redness.

I gasped and flinched, because somehow Zohro was suddenly right in front of me . He fell heavily to his knees and gripped my wrists, bending until his nose practically brushed my knuckles. I stifled a startled moan as his breath skimmed across my tingling, burning skin.

He made a sound of frustration low in his throat.

“I don’t know enough about human skin. What is it?”

“I think it’s some kind of contact dermatitis or something,” I said. “Pregnancy makes my skin a lot more sensitive to stuff. It’s not dangerous or anything. Just uncomfortable.”

Uncomfortable. That was one hell of a euphemism considering it felt like Satan himself was currently pissing unholy lava all over my hands.

But I’d never been one for complaining if I could help it.

I’d learned early in my life that tears and whining would never win me much sympathy from Pa, and as I’d gotten older, I’d wanted to show him how tough I could be.

I wanted to show Zohro, too. I wasn’t a wimp. Even if I kind of felt like one sometimes.

Zohro released me, and I breathed out, relieved that I now had a moment to scratch frantically at the backs of my hands.

“Don’t do that!” Zohro barked, getting to his feet. With one swift step, he was behind me. One set of claws seized on my hair, lifting it high. His other hand grasped the collar at the back of my shirt and yanked. This time, when I felt his breath, it was on the back of my neck.

My nipples hardened.

“What are you doing back there?” I stammered. I couldn’t wrench myself out of his hold. He had me by the fucking hair!

“Examining you,” he hissed. He released my hair and shirt at the same moment. “Get up.”

Easier said than done.

“Not sure I’m loving your tone right now,” I grumbled, awkwardly manoeuvring myself onto all fours so I could push myself up onto one knee, then stand.

But I guessed I was too slow for Zohro, because a second later, he grabbed me under the pits and lifted me like I weighed nothing more than one of those hay bales he’d been tossing around all morning.

He set me gingerly down on my feet, then pulled me by the arm back towards the house.

“I still have grass to bundle,” I cried, craning my neck to look at all the unfinished work we’d left behind.

“Not with those hands, you don’t,” Zohro practically spat. “Your back is inflamed as well.”

“Well, yeah. That hay bale was poking into my back all night long.”

Zohro’s eyes were so white they looked like they could burn a hole right into the ground he was currently stomping over. But despite his obviously foul mood, his hold on my arm was never hard. His bandaged hand cradled my elbow. Like I was something breakable.

I’m not breakable , I wanted to tell him. I was just unfortunately rather red and itchy.

When we reached the house, Zohro took me around the side. In the shade, he rolled a large tub towards a hose and began to fill it with water. Once the tub was full, he glared at me and said, “Get in.”

“I’d rather not,” I said, remembering what he’d told me about being direct earlier. I stepped forward and dunked my hands inside. “Holy shit, that’s cold!”

“You need to cleanse your skin of any lingering irritants and put on fresh clothing,” Zohro said with a haughty sort of certainty, eyes scathingly white.

“Has anyone ever told you that you are extremely bossy?” I asked him, rubbing my hands together in the freezing water. Oh, well. At least if I lost all feeling in my fingers due to the coldness, I wouldn’t be itchy anymore.

“Not just your hands,” he ordered me, ignoring my question and entirely proving my point. “You need to undress and get in for your back as well.”

“Undress?”

Zohro suddenly tensed, as if in his hurry to order me around, he hadn’t actually stopped to think about the words coming out of his mouth. His nostrils flared, and his bright gaze dragged up and down my body.

In a strangled-sounding voice, out of nowhere, he said, “I’m a doctor.”

I didn’t know if he was saying it to make me feel better…

Or himself.

“Look,” I said, taking my hands out of the water and shaking the drops of icy water off.

“If we’re going to be married, then you’re obviously going to see my body at some point.

And I’ve never been a prude. But I am telling you right now that I am not getting my naked butt into that tub. It’s too cold.”

My pregnant penchant for overheating would only get me so far. The air was refreshingly cool right now, especially after the morning’s sweaty work. But after about ten seconds in that tub, I was going to be a Jolene-sicle.

Zohro ripped off his hat, scowling at me so hard I half-wondered if he was going to throw it at me or something.

He didn’t. He merely disappeared into the house, returning a moment later sans hat and instead holding what looked to be a clean rag.

He dunked the rag into the tub of water, then slapped the soaking weight of it into my hands.

“Wipe yourself down with this,” he commanded me. The hot glow of his eyes illuminated the tightness of the muscles beneath them. “I’ll be back.”

With that, he stormed away.