Audrey and the Maverick (10 page)

Closing her mind to the feel of him against her hand, she eased the salve over his bruised flesh. His belly contracted. “You’ll need to take your shirt off, McCaid.”

He didn’t immediately comply. “Call me ‘Julian,’” he corrected her as he slipped out of his shirt.

She pressed her lips together and gave him a quelling look, pushing her own raging thoughts aside. “I don’t think we should be on a first-name basis.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my employer and I’m your dependent. We are not equals.”

“We’re friends.”

“We’ll never be friends.” She shoved the end of the fabric strip into his hand and pressed it to his chest. “Hold this. Tell me if I hurt you.” She passed the roll of fabric around his back, leaning forward as she did so. Her breasts touched his belly. He shivered reflexively, and Audrey felt his tremor ripple through her. She bit her lip. She’d never felt less like a friend to anyone.

She passed the binding around him again, this time drawing the whole thing tighter. Another pass. She smoothed the top layer with her hand. The bruise was now covered. Three more wraps would do it. When she finished, she cut the top layer and tied a flat knot just under his right breast. Then she took the end he’d been holding, split it, and made another flat knot at the bottom.

She smoothed her hands over the whole works, passing gently over the bruised area. “How does that feel? Any better?” she asked, looking up at him. His nostrils were flared, his breathing shallow.

Julian was afraid to move. Her warm body was pressed against his groin. Her clever hands were rubbing his chest. If she didn’t step away very soon, she would find herself on her back beneath him. He took her hands and pressed his mouth to one palm, kissing it, learning the ridges of her work-roughened hands with his tongue. He lifted her other hand and repeated the gesture there. Audrey’s eyes were wide, her lips parted.

“Don’t.” She pulled free. “My hands are not nice.”

“Give me that salve.”

He unscrewed the lid on the jar she handed him, then dipped two fingers into the salve and gave the jar back to her. He turned her free hand palm-up on his knee and rubbed the soothing cream into her skin, smoothing the cream from the base to the tip of each finger and into the calluses on her palm. She watched him worriedly. As he massaged her wrist and hand, working the cream into her skin, he saw her tension slowly abate. He switched hands and repeated his ministrations.

When he finished, he looked at her, her hand still firmly gripped in his. “These are hardworking hands. The hours you work put some of my men to shame. You have a surprising work ethic for a pickpocket.”

She met his eyes. “Sometimes, people aren’t what they seem.”

“If you are not a thief, what are you, Audrey Sheridan?”

“I am a mother.”

“Yes.” He drew her forward, against him. “And a woman.” He leaned down to kiss her, feeling her mouth part beneath his in surrender. Her hands gripped his thighs. He wanted her as he had never before wanted another woman. He groaned and deepened the kiss, his mouth twisting against hers. He broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against hers, his breathing embarrassingly rapid.

“Audrey, this hurts my ribs. Come up here,” he directed, not giving her time to pull away or rethink their encounter. He helped situate her on his lap, her legs together across his, her arms wrapped about his shoulders. Her breasts pushed against his chest. He held one arm around her waist and tried not to think about the feel of her bottom on his lap, the curve of her hip against his hand. He wondered if she could feel his erection against her thigh, through the layers of their clothes.

Such thinking was getting him nowhere fast. He closed his mind to it. Kissing was nice. He’d scared her off before by touching her too freely. He was perfectly content to kiss her until she was mindless, until she melted, until she hungered for more.

Audrey loved the feel of McCaid’s arms around her. Though he was freshly bathed, he had not shaved. She ran her hand against the stubble at his jaw, feeling his mouth work against hers. She pulled away just slightly, enough to look into his dark eyes, eyes of warmed molasses. She stroked his cheeks, feeling his whiskers against her palms. It tickled. She smiled.

“I should shave. I don’t want to leave a rash on your face.”

Audrey said nothing. She could say nothing. She welcomed such a rash, welcomed being marked as his woman. She looked into his eyes as she leaned forward and gently kissed his closed mouth. He was not hers, she reminded herself. Doubtless a woman somewhere waited for him to return to her.

“Have you ever been faithful to a woman, McCaid?”

He looked at her a long minute, his expression revealing nothing of his thoughts. “I’ve never needed to.”

“Have you no one waiting for you back home?” He did not answer her. The hard set of his face indicated this was not a welcome turn in the conversation. “I thought as much.” She started to get off his lap, but he held her in place.

“I am not committed to anyone at the moment, though I intend to find a wife when I go back to Virginia.”

A cold ache slipped around Audrey’s heart.

“My marriage won’t be based on love.”

“You’re choosing to live your life with someone you don’t love?”

“There are other reasons for marriage.”

“What other reason is there for tying your life to someone else’s?”

“Business. One of the women I am considering courting is the daughter of a man whose bank I would like to form a partnership with.”

“And so you are going to make a home and have children with a business partner. It sounds—cold.”

McCaid shrugged. “It’s how it’s done.” His face hardened. “I don’t want to talk about my future fiancée. What about Hadley?”

“What about him?”

“Is he a contender for your marriage option?”

“Perhaps, though an unlikely one. I have known him since my family came to Defiance, but I don’t think he is ready to stand on his own yet. When he’s not here, he still works on his father’s ranch. I doubt his mother would like him to bring me and Amy into her home.” Not to mention all the other children who came with them.

McCaid touched his fingertips to the sensitive skin of her throat, his eyes dark and intense. “I’ll increase my offer to a thousand dollars.”

Audrey gasped. A thousand dollars was a lot of money—three times what her brother would make in a year working for Jim. With that, she could fund the move to Cheyenne or Denver.

“But I want more than a night with you. I want the rest of the summer. We could move into the house. The furniture I’ve ordered should be here soon. We could camp out inside until it comes.”

“And what if our time together leaves me with a baby?”

Emotion shot through his eyes. “If there’s a child, you will tell me. I will not abandon you.”

Audrey smiled though she felt sad inside. She wondered if the fathers of all her children had said something similar to their mothers. She wondered if all men said such things, said anything, just to be with a woman. Had the mothers of her children hungered for their man’s touch, starved for the sound of his voice, beggared themselves for a glance from him? That was a chilling thought. Julian McCaid was not her man, and he’d just made it clear he never would be, at least, not for more than a summer.

“No, McCaid. I cannot do it.” Her voice was a whisper. She almost hoped he didn’t hear her.

“There are ways to prevent pregnancy, Audrey.”

She squelched her curiosity; this was not a conversation she was going to have with him. She got off his lap and retrieved her basket of bandages. She shook her head as she studied him. Leaving him at this moment was the exact opposite of what she wanted to do. Like catching her clothes on a protruding nail and walking away anyway, she had snagged her heart on him and felt it rip as she retreated to her cabin. He followed slowly, bringing her lamp. At her door, she hesitated, staring down at the white rolls of fabric in the basket she held, which was all she could see in the night’s darkness. Her heart was hammering, fighting her, like a bird caught beneath a cat’s paw.

She looked over her shoulder at McCaid. “I have never sold my body for money, McCaid.”

He held her gaze, his expression hard. “Were you in love with Amy’s father, then?”

She winced. “I—I didn’t know her father.”

Julian shut his eyes, unable to look at her stricken face as the implications of her statement hit him. Rape, then, not love. She’d been how old—seventeen—when the bastard had attacked her. A child still. He remembered seeing her cornered by Howie in the cookhouse. She’d stood immobile, offering no resistance to the man’s depraved advances. He saw again the bruises she had sported the morning he brought her out here. Had any man treated her with respect?

Certainly he hadn’t.

Shit.

He looked at her, steeling himself to the pull she had on him. “Do you have a second chair in your cabin?”

“Yes.”

“Prop it up against the door. I’ll give it a test.” Maybe those damned chairs weren’t such a crazy idea. She did need some protection from him.

She nodded and entered her cabin. She set the basket down and took the lamp from him. He thrust his hands into his pockets and watched as she closed the door. Hope flamed briefly when she reopened the door, until he saw the look in her eyes.

“McCaid, I must ask you to please not kiss me again.” Not waiting for his answer, she quickly shut the door.

Julian felt like a prisoner of war told there would be no food for him—cornered, defenseless, and now doomed to die. He heard the chair scrape against the door, heard the doorknob rattle as Audrey settled it in place. He couldn’t breathe. Like a body dispossessed of its soul, an empty husk of a man, he went to her door and tested her barricade. It held. It wouldn’t keep a determined man out, but it would slow him down.

“Audrey,” he called against the door, careful to not be so loud that he woke Amy. “It will hold long enough for you to open your window and holler for me.” He leaned his forehead against the splintery wood of the doorjamb. “I will help you,” he whispered, knowing he would give her the thousand dollars anyway, recompense for his guilty soul.

Julian spent a rough night, exhausted but unable to sleep. Images of Audrey as an adolescent, pregnant from a rape, young and alone, haunted him. Were her parents still alive then? Had she had anyone to help her other than Malcolm? How had she survived through those days? And here he’d come along, arrogant, spoiled, hungry for a tryst. He’d scolded her for stealing from him.

He swallowed an oath; his thoughts were brutal companions.

When the eastern sky whispered of the dawn to come, he was there, watching it, waiting for another miserable day to begin. He needed some space between himself and Audrey. Maybe he’d ride into Defiance and see what the sheriff was up to. And he’d wire his bank to send out the money he’d give to Audrey.

He’d have to leave word with Franklin, though, not to tell Audrey where he’d gone. She’d panicked the last time he’d told her he was going into Defiance. The last thing he wanted to do was upset her.

Julian sipped his whiskey as he surveyed the four women working the room at Sam’s. Two seemed to have made connections; two were flirting with several different men, touching, leaning, whispering in their low, husky voices. He caught the eye of the prettier of the two. Tauntingly, she sauntered over, glad to have another man to play against the others. She set her hands on her hips and sashayed up to Julian’s table. She was of an indeterminate age, neither young nor old but somehow ancient. Her dark, curly hair was drawn up to the top of her head, baring her neck for a black velvet choker from which a glass ruby heart dangled. Her face sported a heavy application of rouge on her cheeks as well as her lips. Her eyes had been darkened with some kind of cosmetic. Red earrings matching her choker’s charm danced in the saloon’s candlelight.

She wore little more than a fancy black corset with puckered strips of ribbons that emphasized her wide bosom and narrow waist. Her skirt was made of layers of black and red ruffles that fell to just below her knees. Scandalous indeed. He thought of seeing Audrey in such an audacious getup and grew hard instantly. That thinking was why he was here in the first place.

He swallowed a mouthful of whiskey and made himself focus on the woman before him. Leaning back in his seat, he gave her access to his lap. She giggled and sat on him without any hesitation. “I’ve been watching you, wondering when you was gonna need a little comfort.” She moved ever so slightly against his groin, intensifying the pressure already built up there. She looped an arm around his neck, pressing her breasts against his chest.

Julian’s mood darkened. He remembered what it felt like to have Audrey sit on his lap, Audrey’s arms wrapped around his neck. He tried to envision any of the women he was considering courting sitting on his lap, rubbing against him, hungry for sex. Somehow the picture seemed unreal. His limited interactions with them had not lit a spark. He did not feel the all-consuming burning for any of them that he did for Audrey.

The woman on his lap had a strong scent. Julian drew it into his nostrils, testing it like one might taste an unfamiliar food. She smelled of sweat, woman, and sex all woven together with a soapy perfume. It wasn’t exactly pleasing, but it wasn’t entirely off-putting either. He reached up and drew her in for a kiss. Her mouth was open and wet and welcomed him. He closed his eyes and pretended she was Audrey. He twisted his face against hers and thrust his tongue deep into her mouth, hungry for possession, hungry for a connection, trying to shut his thoughts off.

When the kiss broke, she looked into his eyes, knowing she had won, knowing she would make her fee with him. Julian didn’t care about the money. He didn’t care about her triumph. He sipped his whiskey, washing the taste of her out of his mouth. She cupped his groin, felt the ridge of his erection, and made a purring sound low in her throat. Leaning into him, she whispered that they should go upstairs.

“Lead the way,” he answered. Julian watched her hips as she moved across the saloon to the stairs, realizing the flounces and ruffles of her skirt emphasized each step she took. A bit of her scent lingered in the air behind her. He decided he didn’t like it. He didn’t care. He needed a woman, and he was going to have this one. He would take her until he was depleted, until he was too exhausted to move. And then he would go back to Hell’s Gulch and not give Audrey another thought.

In her room, he closed and locked the door, then set his hat down on an adjacent dresser. When he turned around, she was already on the bed, fully clothed. She lay with her knees open and her skirt drawn up around her waist, her legs still clad in dark stockings, still wearing her high heels. She had no drawers on. He watched as she touched herself, touched the dark, secret folds of her womanhood. Her other hand had freed a breast, and her fingers worked a nipple.

He looked at her and felt—nothing. He was hard. He could do her. But he didn’t want to. He realized he was more than the sum of his urges and silently cursed. This was a helluva time to grow a conscience. He didn’t move. He didn’t know himself anymore. A cold sweat broke out all over him. Suddenly, this was not where he wanted to be. He turned stiffly, slapped some money on the dresser, took up his hat, and slammed out of the room.

He’d been wrong. Not just any goddamned woman would do. There was only one he wanted.