Gideon, Robin - Desire of the Phantom [Ecstasy in the Old West] (Siren Publishing Classic) (6 page)

She felt trapped between the armed guards three stories
below, at that moment still inspecting the rooftop, and Phantom, showing her the irresistible allure of a dangerous
man in a dangerous setting.

I
shouldn’t let him do this,
she thought. She could not, however, put the notion into words.

It’s only a kiss. Just a harmless kiss,
she told herself
as his lips, warm and gentle, coaxed a little more response
from her.

When the tip of his tongue touched her lips ever so
lightly a second time, Pamela fully realized what Phantom ex
pected of her. Expected or wanted? She could not really tell, but she did know that his kisses were unbearably pleasing and stripped away her anger at the injustices in her life—an anger she had carried in her for so long it was now a part of her.

“Relax…your body is so tight,” Phantom whispered, his lips brushing Pamela’s as he spoke.

“We’re standing on the roof of Jonathon Darwell’s mansion. If we fall off, we’ll die. If the guards see us, we’ll die. I have good reason to be tense.”

“The guards can’t see us as long as we stay right where
we are,” Phantom said.

And then, as though to prove his point, he pushed Pamela just a little more to her left, so that she was even more
trapped between the three chimneys that rose up from the
slanted rooftop. He leaned into her, and this time she had no doubt at all that he was intentionally crushing her breasts with his chest.

“Don’t,” she whispered in a strange, weak, one-word pro
test.

Hearing the single word seemed odd to her then, as though someone else had spoken it. Could that really be her sounding that aroused? What had happened to
her conviction, her heartfelt belief that she had been made
a victim by society too many times already and would never again allow
anyone
to take advantage of her?

When she felt Phantom’s hand against her stomach, she
involuntarily sucked in her breath. Wherever he touched
her, it was as though her nerves were suddenly heightened to the possibility of pleasure.

He’s going to touch my breasts,
Pamela thought with a certain unbidden sense of panic.

She pulled her arm from around Phantom’s neck, quickly,
stabbing her elbow straight down to knock the masked man’s hand from her. She would not let him touch her so
intimately. She would be in control of her own body and
would respond only when and how she allowed herself to.

“Don’t, I told you,” Pamela whispered with only a fraction
of the angry conviction she’d hoped for. She searched the
darkness to look into Phantom’s eyes. Once
again, he’d maneuvered himself so that his face was
in shadow.

Raising his hands, Phantom placed them upon Pamela’s
shoulders. He pushed himself away slightly, releasing the pressure of his chest against her breasts. Very slowly, he
sighed and nodded.

Looking up into his face, Pamela found herself a little dis
appointed that he had stopped, that he had chosen to be
the gentleman without protesting more.

Why couldn’t he, just once, be like all the other men
she had known—and hated?

The Midnight Phantom wasn’t the first man to have kissed
her, though his kisses were the first to make her body
respond so quickly, so completely from head to toe. She could feel her pussy creaming like never before. But with everyone else, when Pamela had been in a man’s arms and he was kissing her and she was trying hard to pretend to herself
that it really wasn’t as bad as she believed and she’d told
the man to stop, they hadn’t done so.

Actually, there had been three such occasions in her
life. Two of the men had persisted until Pamela had at last
demanded that they leave.

When the third had begun to force himself upon her,
she had brought a candleholder down on his skull then
had begun screaming for her brother, Jedediah.

That man, though he’d lived through the beating Jed
ediah Bragg gave him, later told everyone in town who
would listen that he’d taken Pamela Bragg’s virginity and that
he now wanted nothing to do with her because he was
much too concerned with his reputation to be seen in pub
lic with such trash. He left town before Jedediah could kill him, and from
that point forward, Pamela always carried the Colt in the hol
ster at her right hip.

She had promised herself that the next man who kissed
her would end up looking down the muzzle of her revolv
er, and if he could do that without going pasty faced with
fear, then maybe he’d be man enough for her to consider kissing again.

“After tonight, you must never do this again,” Phantom chided again, his voice suddenly stern and commanding.

He had managed, it seemed, to completely shut down his passion. She wished she had such an ability. She
could still feel the muscles of his chest, strong and warm, pressing firmly against her breasts. Her nipples were still
hard and achingly erect. Her lips tingled from kisses that had been warm and exciting, not wet and defiling. Her clit throbbed softly with her accelerated pulse.

“Do what again?” Pamela asked softly, not at all certain she wanted to know the answer. Almost the instant that she’d slapped his hands from her body, she began regretting her decision, seeing herself as being both foolish and naive.

“Strike out at Jonathon Darwell,” Phantom replied. There was a fleeting hint of a smile on his sensual lips, letting Pamela know that he was not as immune to feelings, or as solidly in control of them, as he wanted her to believe.
“Did you think I was talking about you and me? That you
must never kiss me again?”

Before Pamela could respond, he leaned down. Cursing
herself silently, she closed her eyes to receive yet another
kiss.

As his tongue pressed against her lips once more, she opened her mouth just slightly, very hesitantly. Kissing this way was something she had only done once before,
and then it hadn’t been entirely voluntary. The experience
having been repugnant. She’d always shuddered when thinking about that awful kiss forced upon her so long ago.

But the shudder going through her now as Phantom’s
tongue eased between her lips and entered her mouth was
not one of revulsion. A low, tremulous moan of desire purred from her throat, shocking Pamela.

Cautiously, she put her tongue against his, and instinc
tively, the kiss deepened. Pamela pressed closer
to Phantom, her body responding spontaneously to this new and deliciously evocative kiss. A heat,
deep within her, escalated from an ember to a glowing
passion. She felt the lips of her pussy becoming slick with the nectar of her desire, her body preparing itself for penetration.

And just as quickly as it had started, it ended. The Phantom
stood upright again, a faint smile curling his lips.

“I wasn’t talking about our kisses,” he said then, much
too calmly for Pamela’s liking. “I was talking about breaking
into Jonathon Darwell’s home. If he’d caught you, he
wouldn’t have had you arrested. You’d have been found in
an alley somewhere in Whitetail Creek, or maybe you wouldn’t have been found at all.”

Pamela’s head was spinning. How could he go from kissing
her at one second to lecturing her on her lifestyle in the
next? Didn’t the kisses mean anything to him at all, affect
him in any way? And if they didn’t, then why did he bother
kissing her in the first place? And why, since it appeared
that the kisses were as unemotional as a handshake to Phantom, was he so good at it?

“I wouldn’t have gotten caught,” Pamela said defiantly.

A warm breeze passed across the rooftop. The sky held
a million stars. She found it nearly impossible to think about the things he was saying, or to make any sense of what she was feeling. The way her body had responded, passionately and without reservation, frightened her.

Trying to forget the new sensations she’d discovered in
Phantom’s arms, she tried to pay attention to the guards on
the ground. They were mostly laughing and having a good
time, no doubt having picked up a drink or two, but one kept looking stubbornly to the roof. While her body tin
gled with passionate excitement, however, the guards barely existed for her.

Suddenly, Phantom grinned at Pamela condescendingly, and
the anger that his expression evoked was an emotion she embraced. An
ger was familiar to her. Intense sexual arousal wasn’t.

“We’re not out of here yet,” Pamela said sharply, for a
moment forgetting where she was. “What makes you think you wouldn’t—
won’t
—get caught?”

“I trust my own abilities. I test them all the time. I
know precisely who and what I am, and what I am capable
of accomplishing.”

“You’re conceited. People don’t know them
selves that well.”

“It’s a mistake to assume that your limitations are my
limitations,” Phantom explained, speaking as though he was
declaring an irrefutable fact.

Pamela wanted to slap him, and she would have if they
weren’t hiding from the guards.

She glowered at him. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You always twist my words around. I don’t trust
you.” She tried to position herself so that her body wasn’t
touching his.

Then turning away from Phantom, she peered around the
edge of the brick chimney. All she could see of the guards
below was shadows, so she knew they couldn’t see
anything at all of her. Now she felt safe from them, but not from the infuriating stranger in the black mask and
cape who had already saved her life once that night and
had shown her that her body wasn’t as unfeeling and un
responsive as she’d always assumed.

“Is it me that you don’t trust, or yourself and how you
behave when you’re in my arms?”

Pamela glared at Phantom. Why did everything he said make
her want to slap the smile from his lips or kiss them?

“I don’t think you’re one to talk about trust. You don’t trust me enough to give me my revolver back.”

“Oh?”

Pamela held her hand out. “Then give it to me. If we get
in a fight with those men down there, you’ll need my
help.”

“I can’t give you back your pistol again.”

“What do you mean, you can’t? Did you leave it in the
bedroom?” Pamela exclaimed, her voice rising dangerously.
She wasn’t certain the gun could be identified as hers,
but the risk of it was enough to send a chill through her.

Then, seeing the half smile curling Phantom’s far-too-
tempting lips, she thought about his words, paying a bit
more attention to them this time.