” Can You Suck It ” – The Lonly Cowboy Asked The Giant Young Bride, She Smiles And Said ” This
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💔 “Can You Suck It?” – The Lonely Cowboy Asked The Giant Young Bride, She Smiles And Said “This Is What I Love Doing Best” 👑
1. The Rattlesnake and the Unexpected Arrival
The scorching Wyoming sun beat down, turning the dust into shimmering, invisible snakes. James Cooper (28), a cowboy hardened by years of isolation, stood dying, two venomous puncture wounds just above his wrist already swelling purple and hot. The nearest doctor was a two-day hard ride through drought-cracked desert. He was a dead man.
Just ten minutes earlier, a stagecoach had rattled into his desolate, broken-down ranch. Stepping off the coach was the mail-order bride he had sent for, sight unseen, out of sheer, desperate loneliness: Margaret Ruth Hayes.
James looked at her—this giant young bride who towered over him when she stood, who had hands twice the size of his late wife Sarah’s delicate fingers.
“Can you suck it?” the words tore from James’ throat like a prayer to a god he’d stopped believing in three years ago.
Margaret knelt in the dust before him, her white lace wedding dress already stained brown, her veil tangled in the dry wind. And she was smiling. Actually smiling.
“This is what I love doing best,” Margaret said, her voice steady and warm as summer rain. “And you will love it.“
She cradled his trembling hand in both of hers, examining the fang marks. Her touch was so careful, so tender, that something cracked open in James’ chest—something he’d sealed shut the day they buried Sarah in the churchyard with their stillborn daughter in her arms.
“Who are you?” he whispered, sweat beading on his forehead as the venom climbed higher.
“I’m the daughter of a cavalry surgeon,” she said quietly. “Grew up at Fort Laramie. My father taught me everything. Venom extraction, bullet wounds, arrow injuries, snake bites. If it’s poisonous, Mr. Cooper, I can handle it.“
She paused, her smile fading into something more vulnerable. “Back east, they called me a freak. Too tall, too strong, too much woman for any proper man to want. But out here,” she glanced at the vast, empty prairie, “maybe being too much is exactly enough.“
James felt his knees weakening. The poison or her words, he couldn’t tell which was hitting harder. “I don’t even know you. You just got here. You don’t owe me anything.”
“The arrangement was thirty days to decide if… if we suit,” Margaret finished. She was already tearing a strip of clean cloth from her petticoat. “Well, Mr. Cooper, if I let you die in the first ten minutes, I’d say we don’t suit at all. So hold still.”
She positioned his arm. “This is going to hurt. The venom’s already spreading. I’ll need to work fast, and you need to trust me completely. Can you do that?”
Trust. The word hung between them like a challenge. James had trusted once, and every single trust had turned to ash in his hands.
Margaret was already bending toward his hand, her wedding veil falling around them both like a canopy.
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” James said through gritted teeth.
“We always have a choice, Mr. Cooper,” Margaret replied. Then she pressed her mouth to the wound and began to suck.
The pain was immediate and blinding. James gasped, his free hand instinctively grabbing her shoulder for support. And she let him, never stopping her work, never flinching. Suck, spit, suck, spit. A rhythm as old as survival itself.
James watched her save his life and realized with creeping terror that this giant young bride was already working her way past every defense he’d built, drawing out more than just venom. She was pulling at something deeper he’d thought was dead and buried with Sarah.
2. The Invisible Woman
Twenty minutes passed. Margaret finally sat back on her heels, her lips stained and swollen from the work. James’s arm throbbed, but the burning had stopped climbing. The purple swelling wasn’t spreading anymore. He was going to live.
“You need to sit,” Margaret said, and she slipped her arm around his waist, guiding him toward the porch. She was strong, stronger than any woman he’d ever known.
She settled him on the wooden steps and returned moments later with water and clean bandages she’d found in the kitchen. She began wrapping his wound with practiced efficiency.
“You saved my life,” he said quietly.
“I know,” Margaret replied, without looking up. There was no pride, no false modesty, just fact. “That stallion in the corral? Thunder. I saved him last week from a rattler bite, too. Seems like this ranch has a snake problem.”
James blinked. “You… When did you…?”
“The morning after I arrived,” Margaret said, finally meeting his eyes. “You were checking the north fence. I heard him thrashing and went to investigate. Two fang marks on his shoulder. I did what needed doing.”
“You never mentioned it,” James said, something like awe creeping into his voice.
“Didn’t seem worth mentioning. He’s your breeding stallion. Your whole operation depends on him. I wasn’t going to let him die while I waited for permission to help.”
James stared up at this woman, this stranger who’d been living in his house for a week, sleeping in the spare room, cooking meals in silence, working alongside him from dawn to dusk without complaint. He’d barely spoken to her beyond practical necessities. He’d been trying so hard to keep distance between them, to maintain the walls around his heart, that he hadn’t even noticed she’d been saving everything he loved while he looked the other way.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
Margaret was quiet for a long moment. “Because you weren’t ready to see me yet, Mr. Cooper. You were looking at me, but you weren’t seeing me. You were seeing some ghost standing in my place.”
She sat down beside him on the porch step. “Your first wife, Sarah, that’s her name, isn’t it? The one buried under the cottonwood tree behind the house.”
James felt like he’d been punched in the chest.
“I’m not trying to replace her, Mr. Cooper. I know I can’t. I know I’m not what you wanted. I’m not delicate or soft or easy. I’m too tall, too strong, too capable for most men to stomach. Back in Philadelphia, the matchmaker told me I’d need to go west to find anyone desperate enough to take me. Those were her exact words. Desperate enough. So, I know this arrangement isn’t about love. It’s about survival. You need help running this ranch. I need a place where my size isn’t a shame. That’s the bargain. I understand.”
3. The Terror of Being Seen
“You don’t understand anything,” James said roughly, and Margaret flinched. He stood up, his wounded arm hanging heavy at his side.
“You think I’m desperate? You think I sent for a wife because I needed free labor? I sent for you because I’m drowning, Margaret. Because I wake up every morning in an empty house and the silence is so loud I can’t breathe. Because loneliness is eating me from the inside out.”
His voice was rising, anger and grief pouring out of him like poison. “And I thought… I thought maybe if I just had another person here, someone to break the quiet, maybe I could survive one more day.”
He stopped pacing and turned to face her. Margaret was staring at him with wide eyes, her composure finally cracking.
“But you’re not what I expected. You’re not easy to ignore, Margaret. You fill up every room you walk into. You’re loud and bright and alive, and it hurts to look at you because you remind me of everything I lost.” His voice dropped to barely a whisper. “You saved my life today, twice. And I don’t know how to live with that. I don’t know how to live with owing you everything when I have nothing to give back.”
Margaret stood slowly, gracefully, until she was looking down at him from her full height, solid as the earth itself.
“You don’t owe me anything, James Cooper,” she said, using his Christian name for the first time. “I saved you because letting someone die when I have the skill to prevent it isn’t something I can live with. That’s not about you. That’s about me, about who I am.”
“But if you want to know what I want, really want, I’ll tell you. I want to be seen. Not as a freak or a charity case or a replacement for your dead wife. I want someone to look at me and see Margaret. Just Margaret, the woman who can suck venom and birth calves and fix fence posts and still cry at sunset because the sky is too beautiful to bear. I want to matter to someone. Not because of what I can do, but because of who I am.”
James felt tears burning behind his eyes—the first he’d shed since Sarah’s funeral. “I see you,” he whispered. “God help me, Margaret. I see you, and it terrifies me.”
She smiled then, sad and soft and real. “Good, because you terrify me, too.” She reached out and took his good hand in hers, her palm warm and calloused and twice the size of his.
“So maybe we’re even after all, Mr. Cooper.”
They stood there, hand in hand, two broken people holding on to each other like drowning swimmers. And for the first time in three years, James felt possibility.
4. The Mother-in-Law and the Final Vow
Then hoofbeats sounded, and they turned to see a black carriage cresting the ridge.
“My mother-in-law,” James said quietly. “Constance Pritchard.“
Margaret squeezed his hand once, then let go. “The woman who thinks you’re dishonoring her daughter’s memory by remarrying.”
“Well then, Mr. Cooper,” Margaret straightened her spine, lifted her chin. “Shall we show her what dishonor really looks like?“
Constance Pritchard stepped down from her carriage like a queen descending to inspect conquered territory. Her eyes swept over James and then landed on Margaret.
“Good lord,” Constance breathed. “She’s even larger than the rumors suggested.”
Margaret didn’t flinch. She stood perfectly still, her ruined wedding dress blazing white in the sun, and met Constance’s stare with calm dignity.
“Anything you need to say, you can say in front of Margaret,” James replied. “She’s my wife.”
“She is no such thing. You have thirty days to evaluate this arrangement. There’s still time to rectify this mistake. Send this woman back east where she belongs and find you a proper wife, someone who honors Sarah’s memory instead of spitting on it.”
“Everything you do has to do with Sarah,” Constance whirled on him, tears in her steel-gray eyes. “She was my daughter. The least you can do is honor her memory by not replacing her with the first oversized woman who answers an advertisement.”
“Mrs. Pritchard,” Margaret said quietly. “I’m sorry for your loss. Truly. But I’m not trying to replace her. You’re looking at me and seeing everything Sarah wasn’t. Tall where she was petite, strong where she was delicate, alive where she’s dead. And that feels like betrayal.”
Margaret took a small step forward. “But Mrs. Pritchard, I promise you, I’m not here to erase Sarah. I’m here because James needed help and I needed a place to belong. That’s all. Just two lonely people trying to survive.“
“Survive?” Constance laughed, a sharp, broken sound. “You’ve been here one week, and already you’re parading around in a wedding dress like you own the place. Already you’ve got him looking at you like…” She stopped. “…like he used to look at my Sarah.“
James felt the guilt crushing him. Constance was right. He should go.
“I should go,” Margaret said suddenly, her eyes dry but devastated. “I’ll pack my things and catch the evening stage back to Cheyenne. We’ll call the arrangement dissolved by mutual agreement.”
“Wait!” The shout came from Constance, her face crumbling. “Wait, please. I’m a bitter old woman. I blamed you,” she said to James. “God help me. I blamed you for not saving her. And seeing you try to find happiness again, it feels like losing her all over again.”
Margaret crossed the porch and did something that shocked them both: She pulled Constance into her arms and held her while the older woman fell apart.
“It’s all right,” Margaret murmured. “It’s all right to love her. It’s all right to miss her. You don’t have to stop any of that to let James live.“
Constance finally pulled back. “I don’t know if I can accept this,” she said honestly. “But I don’t want to lose you, too. You’re all I have left of her.”
“You won’t lose me,” James promised. “Sarah will always be part of me. Always. But Constance, I need to try. I need to see if I can be something other than sad.“
Constance nodded slowly. “If you’re truly willing to stay… then I won’t stand in your way. I’ll send the lawyer home.”
“Thank you,” Margaret said quietly. “And for what it’s worth, Mrs. Pritchard, I hope someday you might tell me about Sarah. Not to compare myself to her, but just to know her. She must have been extraordinary to be so deeply loved.”
“She was. She truly was.”
Constance climbed into her carriage and was gone.
“You didn’t have to comfort her,” James said. “She was cruel to you.”
“She was grieving,” Margaret replied simply. “Grief makes people cruel sometimes. Makes them lash out at anything that looks like happiness because their own happiness is buried six feet under. I meant what I said, though. I’ll leave if you want me to. If this is too hard.”
“Stay,” James interrupted. The word came out fierce and urgent. “Please, Margaret, stay.“
She searched his face, then nodded. “All right, I’ll stay.”
And when he reached for her hand again, she took it without hesitation. James looked at this woman, this giant, brave, impossible woman, and thought, “Maybe, just maybe, survival wasn’t the only thing left to hope for.”
5. Forever
Three weeks later, the drought finally broke. Rain hammered the roof like a benediction.
“Thirty days,” Margaret said quietly. “Tomorrow makes thirty days.”
James turned to face her, his heart pounding. The wound on his arm had healed to a pale scar. “I know. So, we need to decide. Make this arrangement real or dissolve it.”
He stepped closer. “Margaret Ruth Hayes. Look at me.”
She did, tilting her face down to meet his gaze, and he saw fear there, raw and vulnerable.
“I love you,” James said simply. “I don’t know when it happened. Maybe when you saved Thunder. Maybe when you knelt in the dust for me. Maybe when you held Constance while she cried. But I love you, and I’m terrified, and I’m asking you to marry me. Really marry me. Not an arrangement, not a trial. Forever.“
Margaret’s tears came swift and sudden. “I love you too,” she whispered. “God help me. I love you so much.”
He reached up, she bent down, and they kissed in the rain-soaked barn while the land drank deep and the future opened wide before them. Two broken people perfectly fit. The lonely cowboy and his giant bride choosing each other every single day. Love isn’t about size or status or second chances. It’s about seeing someone completely and saying yes anyway.
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