Sunset Embrace (28 page)

Had it been Clancey, Lydia would have stared up at him defiantly, showing him all the hatred she felt. But she didn't hate Ross and rather than give him that haughty, damning stare of her dark golden eyes, she kept her head averted as he thrust inside her. She didn't anticipate the tearing pain that shot through her. Her body arched off the pallet and she uttered a sharp cry.

Ross buried all of himself deep inside and burrowed farther. When she had taken all of him and absorbed all his weight, he held. Sucking in great amounts of air, his head began to clear. And when that happened, he was aware, for the first time since seeing her in Hill's wagon, of what he was doing. The jealous rage that had bathed his whole world red lifted like a mist and he was left face-to-face with bitter regret. So much regret.

And pleasure. The immensity of which he had never felt before.

He didn't want to feel the pleasure. Yet it saturated him, his mind, his heart, his belly, his manhood snugly gloved by her. He had to test it to see if he were still conscious. Maybe this was a fantasy, the erotic product of a drunken stupor.

He moved slightly, not wanting to awaken from the dream, should it be one. But it was real. He rocked over her, and the miracle sensations washed over him in time to his rhythmic movements. "No," he whispered, "she can't feel this good."

His voice belied his words. It was the voice of a man experiencing the highest physical gratification he had ever known.

It was wrong. He couldn't let it feel so good. He wouldn't. He withdrew, planning to move away, but his body wouldn't let him and he sank into her sweet depth again. "Damn it all to hell, it's not supposed to be like this with you," he mournfully sighed into her neck.

Breaking his own best intentions, his hand worked its way between their bodies. He found her breasts ripe and malleable and fondled her with the inquiring sensitivity of a blind man. He measured her plump fullness in his palm. He stroked the smooth flesh. He examined the nipples with his fingertips, loving the nubby texture of them when they hardened against the pad of his thumb.

Without his realizing he had moved, his head replaced his hand and he began kissing her breasts. His moustachioed mouth moved over her in an aimless caress until his lips found a nipple, pebbly and flushed. They closed around it loosely while his tongue appreciated it with fleeting licks. Then he suckled it gently, taking all of it into his mouth and tasting, tasting, tasting the woman—

His head came up and he looked down into whiskey-colored eyes that were wide and uncomprehending. He saw his own fingers, white with pressure, wrapped around her wrists. He released them immediately. His hands came up to her hair and he plowed his fingers through it until he had closed all ten around her scalp.

Tilting her head back, he fused their mouths as intimately as their sexes were adhered. The heat of the kiss intensified until his lips were grinding over hers, until his tongue was mating with hers, until he couldn't control his kiss any more than he could control the burst of fire from his loins that melted through the gate of her womb.

His lips fashioned her name out of the low, soft staccato sounds of his supreme satisfaction.

For a long time after the crisis had shuddered through him, he lay atop her, suspended in a state of the sublime. He never remembered rolling off her, gathering her to him closely, and slipping into peaceful unconsciousness.

"H
i," the whore said tiredly. "My name's Pearl."

Godf This was her last customer of the night and that bitch Madam LaRue was paying her back for smart-mouthing this morning by sending her this scum. It had been a hellish day, the Fourth of July. The streets of Owentown were swarming with railroad men in for the holiday. They were a rowdy bunch, randy as a herd of buffalo bulls, and she felt like every one of them had had a go at her. She was tired and sore. And now she had to service this, the worst of the lot. "You railroad?" she asked with a weary attempt at conversation.

Clancey Russell snorted derisively as she shut the door behind him. "Got better sense than to bust my balls for somebody else. Got better use for 'em too." He caressed himself suggestively.

Putting all her professionalism into practice, Pearl smiled despite her repulsion. He was filthy and smelled to high heaven. "Let's see your money," she purred. She would make sure this scum had cash before she would let him touch her.

Clancey dug into his pocket for the money he had heisted from a poker table when the players had gotten into an argument over a dealt hand. It had been enough to buy him a good meal and a bottle of whiskey. Both were making his stomach feel fuller and warmer than it had
in
weeks. He tossed the fee down on the aged dressing table covered with a yellowed crocheted scarf.

"You seen my stuff," he said arrogantly. "Now let's see yours.."

Though she let her mouth take on an aroused pout, on the inside Pearl was shuddering with revulsion. He pulled down his suspenders and began to unbutton his shirt. When he shucked out of it, she saw the rings of dried sweat circling his armpits on the faded red underwear. Stalling for time, she pointed to the scrap of folded paper that had fluttered out of his shirt to the foot of the bed. "What's that?"

"Somethin' I picked up. Bounty poster. Never know when somethin' like that can come in handy. Come on now, girlie, take that thing off."

Pearl came up on her knees on the rickety bed and shrugged out of the old ratty robe a veteran whore had given her. Even the sad row of feathers she had sewed along the neckline hadn't improved it much.

She was naked. Clanceys eyes glazed with lust and his mouth twisted cruelly. Pearl was known to be a good sport, giving a man whatever he paid for as long as he didn't hurt her. But her heart began to race when she saw the feral malice in Clanceys colorless eyes as they toured her. He unbuttoned his pants to reveal a swollen, angry sex that even to Pearl's jaded eyes was hideous.

"If that paper is so important, let me see it," she said, lunging for the poster. Anything to stall this animal climbing on her.

"Hellfire," Clancey said, falling atop her. "What you wanna—"

"Why, that looks like ... oh, shoot, what did he say his name was? The man from the wagon train."

Clancey clapped his hands over her breasts and pinched the nipples hard. "Ouch! That hurts, stop it. Don't you understand what I'm trying to tell you? I saw this man just a few days ago."

Clancey raised himself up and peered first at her, then at the poster. "That's just a piece of trash." He couldn't read the writing on it. He hadn't even known why he had picked it up that night off the table in the Knoxville saloon, except that those two fancy men had been talking about how they had thought this man was dead, but it seemed now he was passing himself off as somebody else. Stolen some jewelry too. Is that what they had said?

"It's worth five thousand dollars," Pearl said, her tiredness fading into excitement. This might be her ticket out of Owentown and away from Madam LaRue.

"Five thousand dollars?" Clancey sat up and jerked the poster out of her hand. "You say you saw this guy? Recent-tike?"

Pearl wasn't all that astute, but she was cunning. Two years with Madam LaRue hadn't been completely wasted. She would keep what she knew about the man on the poster to herself If there was five thousand dollars in it, she would be damned before she would let this dirty sonofa-bitch get it in her stead.

She blinked her eyes seductively and allowed her hand to trail down past his waist. "Shoot, I was just funning with you. I thought you wanted to talk about me, not some old poster."

Clancey swung a mighty fist at her jaw. It cracked sickeningly and she fell back on the dingy pillow, dazed and wracked with pain. "You'll wish you'd never funned with me, whore, if you don't tell me where you seen this here man? You understandin' me?" He slapped her hard on each cheek and with the meaty fingers of his other hand pinched the inside of her thigh. "Understand?"

Pearl, her vision clouded and ears roaring, nodded. "All right, I'm waitin' to hear." His hand moved up her leg threateningly. She whimpered. "Talk." He bruised the white flesh between his fingers.

"We ... we broke down and he ... I think it was him . . . helped us and followed us in to town. He's older now, doesn't have long hair and has grown a moustache. It might not even be the same man." But Pearl had little doubt that it was. Who could forget those eyes? And the way he had of looking at somebody, like he was going to remember them for the rest of his life and how they had treated him, good or bad.

"Did he call himself Clark?"

"No, no ... it was ... I don't remember."

Clancey knotted his fingers in her pubic hair and pulled hard. "That jostle your memory?"

Tears spurted from her eyes and she yelped, but he only slapped her again. No one would hear her cries for help. The barroom downstairs was in celebratory pandemonium. She could hear the laughter, the thumping of the piano, the raucous sounds of revelry. No one could help her. "Co . . . Coleman. He said his name was Coleman."

Bejesus! That was it. That was the name of the fella the two gentlemen in Knoxville had been after. He was on that wagon train Lydia was hiding in. Kill two birds with one stone. Isn't that what Pa had always said?

He chuckled evilly to himself while Pearl made pathetic efforts to shove him off her. She had told him she had seen the man only a few days ago. He was getting close. First thing tomorrow, he would start after that train again. Hell, he would start tonight. He could travel miles a day faster than that wagon train. But before that, he had something else to do.

"Pearl? Is that your name?" he cooed, taking her breast in his hand and massaging it. "Right pretty name, Pearl. And you're a right pretty girl too. And you done right by ol' Clancey. You surely have."

She sniffed back her tears. Maybe if she let him do his deed, she could contact the sheriff before he did with news of the wherabouts of that Mr. Coleman. "Thank you," she whispered.

"I mean to pay you back, Pearl. Yes, sirree. Clancey Russell always gives back what he thinks someone has comin' to 'em." His dirty hands were scouring her belly, slipping down between her thighs, fondling her roughly.

Pearl gritted her teeth and forced her swelling lips back into a travesty of a smile. She wasn't smiling seconds later when Clancey rammed into her like a driven spike, painfully, tearing her insides as his fingernails brutally dug into the soft flesh of her breasts.

"You're hurting me," she screamed.

"And you like it, bitch," he panted as sweat beaded on his oily forehead. "You love it." One of his hands wrapped around her throat and pressed against her larynx. With each thrust of his hips, lie pressed harder, until her eyes bugged out and her mouth opened wide. Clancey, lost in satisfying his lust, didn't even notice until he had spewed his seed into her that she wasn't struggling anymore.

Pearl wasn't missed until early the next afternoon. Madam LaRue couldn't remember what Pearl's last customer had called himself or even what he had looked like. It had seemed that the entire male population of Arkansas had paraded through the saloon last night.

How was she supposed to remember them all? she asked the harried sheriff. She couldn't provide him with a description. One sweaty, stinking man wanting a woman looked the same as another.

But Madam knew that wasn't true. She had had a hankering for that one a week or so back. The tall one with the black hair and green eyes. She had thought by the way he moved and the way he handled himself that he was different. But unfortunately for her, he had been just another sod buster too much in love with his wife to bed a whore. She had been mad as hell when he left her wagon that night. Bat then Madam had remembered that girl with the unique hair and unusual eyes and proud carriage. Maybe the man couldn't be blamed for loving her.

* * *

Every muscle in Lydia's body ached. She tried to move to a more comfortable position, but there didn't seem to be one. The wagon was dim, awash with the first blush of dawn. Everything was still. After the celebration the night before, everyone was sleeping later than usual.

The man lying with Lydia was still. The arm stretched across her waist was like a lead weight. His breathing was soft and steady, barely stirring her hair as he held it trapped beneath his cheek. The gentle cadence of his breath was reassuring, testimony that she hadn't spent the dark hours of the night alone, but that someone stronger had lain beside her protectively.

A lone tear rolled from the corner of her eye and into her hair. It wasn't at all unpleasant to wake up beside him. And now he would despise her. More tears followed the course of the first.

Maybe he was right about her. Maybe she was a born whore. Clancey had seen her wantonness, like a sickness growing inside her even as her body matured. He had responded to it. Ross had known it all along. Last night had proved him right. Because when she should have fought him the hardest, she hadn't been able to. She had liked what he was doing to her too much.

She tried to turn her head away from his, but her hair caught and she had to lie looking straight up at the canvas overhead or risk waking him.

Something had happened to her last night when Ross began to move over her. Something strange and terrible and shameful and wonderful. When his tongue exercised the same artistry in her mouth that . . .

She closed her eyes and sank her teeth into her bottom lip. When he released her hands, instead of fighting him off, she had rested them on his shoulders and had enjoyed the feel of his naked skin under her palms. Her fingers had tightened around the corded muscles to pull him nearer and deeper. Her thighs had closed tight against his hips.

She had actually been disappointed when he eased away from her and tell into a dead sleep. What she had thought she would despise, her body now grew warm and restless with the memory of. He would taunt her and hate her for what she was.

She was unsuccessful in stifling a sob and he stirred beside her. He came awake by degrees, shifting his legs and stretching. The arm across her waist contracted, then relaxed. He drew in a deep breath, then let it go on a long shuddering sigh.