by Candace Camp
This was the lust her Aunt Margaret had warned her about. The things she had thought and felt about Slater earlier and had termed lust paled in comparison. This was something wild and rampant. Dangerous. But danger had always had an allure for Victoria. She was rarely afraid—or, rather, if she was, it only made the pleasure more intense. And this was the most intense pleasure she had ever felt. It was dazing, overwhelming—but she wasn’t about to cry “stop.”
“Sweetheart,” she heard Slater murmur against her heated skin. “Victoria. Victoria.” His voice shook as he said her name in a way that started a throbbing between her legs.
“Slater,” she answered breathlessly, burying her face in his hair and kissing him over and over. She wriggled on his lap, seeking to ease the ache.
Slater groaned, and his hands went to her hips, pushing her down hard and rubbing her against him. She was intensely aware of the hard length of flesh beneath her bottom, growing and pulsing. She realized what it must be, and she flushed. But despite her embarrassment, the empty ache low in her abdomen increased.
“I’m about to explode,” he muttered, and buried his face in the crook of her neck. His breath gusted against her skin; his hands trembled slightly on her hips. He waited, willing the storm of passion in him to subside. He couldn’t make love to Victoria right here. They would have to go—Good Lord, what was he thinking! He couldn’t make love to her anywhere. His brain began to clear. Victoria was an unspoiled girl, a lady, not some tart. She was under his protection. Moreover, he had a job to do. How could he have so easily forgotten all reason and duty?
Slater groaned and lifted his head. “Oh, God. Victoria. I’m sorry.”
“What?” She stared at him, aghast. “Are you stopping?”
Her face fell so ludicrously that Slater almost chuckled despite his own frustration. “Yes. I’m stopping. I was practically making love to you right here in a saloon.” He turned to look at the bar. He spat out an expletive. “He’s gone.”
“Who?”
“The man we were supposed to be watching!” Slater’s eyes began to search the room.
“Oh, no.” Victoria remembered guiltily what they had set out to do, then had promptly forgotten in the heat of their kisses. She, too, began to look wildly around the room.
Finally, Slater spotted him and let out a breath of relief. “Thank God. There he is, talking to two men.”
Victoria followed Slater’s gaze. She stiffened. “Those are the other men in the gang.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. I saw them clearly. Look, see how the younger one is favoring his arm? You shot one of them.”
Slater smiled down at her. “You have a good eye.”
“I told you so. Now maybe you’ll believe me.”
“It’s not a question of not believing you.” He continued to gaze into her eyes, and unconsciously his hand rubbed over her back. Victoria arched against him, like a cat being stroked, and her eyes fluttered closed. Slater drew in his breath sharply, and pulled his hand away. “Damn it.” He put his hands at her waist and lifted her from his lap, plopping her back down in her own chair. “We can’t continue this.”
“I know.” Victoria kept her eyes averted. He was right. However much his caresses made her tingle, or yearn for him to kiss her again in that ravenous way, she was fully aware of how foolish it was. He desired her, but desire wasn’t enough. When they rescued Amy, he would return to his own life, and Victoria would return to hers. She would never see him again. It would be sheer folly to give her body or her heart to him. “But what will we do about—our act?”
“Sit together. Have a drink or two. Talk and laugh. Dance. Anything else is too dangerous.”
Victoria nodded. She continued to stare down at the table in front of her, tracing a pattern in it with her fingernail. Slater fixed his eyes on their quarry. Neither of them noticed the disreputable-looking man who came up to their table until he spoke, “Well, well, well. If it ain’t my old friend, Slater.” Victoria and Slater turned to look at him. It was the bounty hunter Victoria had tried to hire earlier that day. He stood in front of their table.
Slater stared right through him. “You’re playing a little fast and loose with the term ‘friend,’ McBride.”
A sarcastic smile snaked across McBride’s face. “You’re sure unfriendly, Slater. What’d I ever do to you?”
“Your very existence is an affront to the concept of law and order.”
“That’s a funny way to look at it, seein’ as how I catch crooks same as you.”
Victoria thought that the look Slater shot him would have frozen fire but McBride seemed unaffected. “Don’t compare yourself to me, McBride.”
McBride glanced around. “Seems funny, such a virtuous law-lovin’ man like you sittin’ around in a saloon. I woulda reckoned you’d be out tryin’ to catch Brody. Seein’ as how he gave you the slip and all. But instead, here you are, enjoying the pleasures of a drink and a pretty woman just like—” His eyes flickered over Victoria as he spoke. He stopped and stared at her. His eyebrows shot up. “Well, now, ain’t this somethin’? That fancy young lady that was tryin’ to hire me to find Brody is now a whore, working in Coney’s Saloon. Don’t often see a switch like that, and in such a short time, too.”
Victoria glanced nervously at Slater. Slater was expressionless.
“I guess you must have your reasons.” McBride’s eyes traveled around the room. “You wouldn’t mind if I sat down with you a spell.”
“Yes, I would.” The two men gazed at each other for a moment, then McBride shrugged. He tipped his hat to Victoria and strolled away. Victoria watched him take a seat at a table near the door, his back to the wall. Crossing his arms, he watched Victoria and Slater.
Victoria turned to Slater. “He suspects something. What are we going to do?”
“Nothing we can do, except try to make sure that he doesn’t catch on to which men we’re watching.”
“I wish I had never spoken to that man!”
Slater gave her an eloquent look, but said nothing. Victoria grimaced. “I didn’t know what he would be like! I just wanted to find Amy.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I know. But you thought it.”
He shrugged. “There’s no point in exchanging recriminations. All we can do is wait for Brody’s men to leave and follow them—without McBride following us. I’ll be damned if I’ll let that vulture come in and snatch Brody from us.”
“You hate him worse than Brody, don’t you?”
“I told you, Brody doesn’t kill for pleasure. McBride does. One time I saw a corpse that McBride brought in. It was obvious that he didn’t die easily or quickly—or in self-defense.
Victoria swallowed the gorge that rose in her at the picture Slater created. “I’m sorry.”
“I said there’s no point in apologies.” He reached out and brushed his knuckles down her cheek. “But I wish you had believed me. Trusted me.”
Something tightened painfully in her chest. “Slater…”
“I’ll get him for you, Victoria. I swear it. I won’t stop.”
“I believe you.”
“Good.” For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her again, but he didn’t.
The next three hours were some of the most difficult Slater had ever spent. He had to lean close to Victoria, his arm around her, laughing and talking, maintaining the appearance of a man enjoying the company of a loose woman. It was hard to be so close to her, to gaze at her beauty, and not bend down to kiss her again. He could remember far too well the taste of her mouth on his and the smooth swell of her breast in his palm. He wanted to taste her again, to touch her again. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the deep décolletagé of her gown.
Dancing with her was even worse, for then he had to hold her close to him. Her soft breasts pressed against his chest, and her thighs brushed his legs. His hand on her back too often stra
yed to her side or down to the curve of her buttock. He couldn’t stop imagining her without clothes and with her hair down. He knew that she must feel the rigid proof of his hunger pressing into her abdomen.
After a time, one of the men disappeared upstairs with a woman. “Where’s he going?” Victoria whispered anxiously. “Shouldn’t we follow him?”
Slater shook his head. “No. He’ll return. This is the only way out.”
“What’s up there?”
He glanced at her, and there was a flash of heat in his eyes that sent excitement rippling through her. “Rooms. With beds.”
Victoria stared at him blankly for a moment before the meaning of his words sank in. “Oh.” Pink tinged her cheeks. “You must think I’m awfully naïve.”
“You’re a lady. Ladies don’t know about dance halls and the rooms upstairs.”
“I imagine they guess something about them when their husbands spend their time there,” Victoria replied tartly.
“That’s something else you shouldn’t know about.”
She made a face, and Slater smiled. He liked talking with her—or at least he would have, if desire weren’t clawing at his gut. Victoria was an engaging mixture of lady and hoyden, without the simpering dullness of so many women who’d been brought up “properly.” She had fire and ginger, as well as beauty and refinement.
As he had predicted, the man returned, and shortly after that, all three of Brody’s men started settling up and getting ready to leave. Slater grasped Victoria’s arm and pulled her from her chair, bending his head to whisper, “Look like we’re following that other man going through the door right now. Our friends will be leaving here in a minute, and I want to fool McBride.”
To his intense relief, Victoria didn’t make a murmur of protest, but hurried toward the door with him, not once glancing back at their real quarry. When they reached the street outside, Slater hustled her around the corner of the building into a dark alleyway. They waited. After a moment McBride strode by, his eyes fixed on the man Slater had pretended to follow. Not long after, the three men they sought strolled past, weaving a little and laughing drunkenly.
Slater took Victoria’s hand, and they started down the street after the men. They followed them through the First Ward, until finally their quarry turned in at a shabby hotel. Victoria and Slater followed them inside.
Slater paid for a room, demanding one on the second floor overlooking the front entrance. They climbed the stairs to their room and went inside. It was dark, but Slater found an oil lamp and lit it. Victoria looked around the room.
“You should have left it dark,” she commented dryly.
The room was small and dingy. There were no curtains, and the paint on the walls had long since faded to a nondescript color. Victoria’s eyes went to the bed. It was narrow and lumpy. She swallowed. Until now she hadn’t thought of the implications of their staying close to the outlaws. She glanced at Slater.
“Don’t look at me like that.” His smile was tight and brief. “The bed is yours. I’ll sleep in the chair by the window.”
“No. You won’t be able to sleep in that.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve slept on worse. Besides, I have to wake up early in the morning to keep watch. I don’t imagine our friends will get a bright and early start, but I can’t take any chances.”
“That’s all the more reason you should get a good rest while you can. You take the bed, and I’ll sleep in the chair. Then, in the morning, we can switch.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Contrary to your opinion, I was raised to be a gentleman.”
“Slater, be reasonable.”
“I am. This is what’s reasonable. Unless you’d like to return to your hotel?”
“No! I couldn’t possibly go back there this late at night, especially looking the way I do. They already think I’m rather shady. They only let me in because I said my father would be joining me.”
“Then I suggest you lie down on that bed and let me get some sleep tonight.”
“All right.” Victoria turned down the bedspread. There was a yellowed sheet on top of the mattress, but there was no top sheet, only the bed cover. “Do you suppose these are clean enough to sleep on?”
“Depends on how tired you are, I guess.” Slater flopped down in the chair. It was not soft and comfortable. “Could I have one of those pillows?”
“Of course.”
Slater pulled off his boots, sighing with satisfaction as he stretched out his legs and wriggled his toes. Victoria had seen her father do exactly the same thing a thousand times. It was an endearingly familiar masculine gesture, but an intimate one, as well. She had seen Slater remove his boots before; she’d even taken them off herself when she’d put him to bed at the Mileses’ house. But this was different. Then she hadn’t been dressed as she was, and they hadn’t been kissing as they had earlier this evening. Tonight, watching Slater kick off his boots started a warm, melting sensation in her abdomen.
Victoria picked up one of the pillows and handed it to him. He reached out to take it, and their eyes met. They both glanced away quickly. Victoria laced her fingers together and stared down at them.
“Uh, Slater. I—I can’t sleep in these clothes. The dress is far too tight.”
“Then take it off.” He thought of the implications of her sleeping only a few feet away from him in nothing but her underthings, and the coil of desire in him wound tighter.
“I can’t—in front of you.”
Slater stood and ostentatiously turned his back. He heard the rustle of her net petticoats as she slipped them off. He could think of nothing but how she must look stripping off her clothes. She couldn’t have worn anything under the top of that dress. When she unfastened it, her breasts would spill out, freed from their confinement. He thought of their ruby tips at last bared to his sight. He crossed his arms. How much more of this could he take?
“Slater?” Victoria’s voice was tentative and tinged with embarrassment. “I hate to ask you, but there are some hooks in the back that I can’t reach. Do you—would you mind?”
He pivoted slowly. She was standing beside the bed. She had taken off her shoes, stockings and black net petticoats, and those garments lay piled on the bed. Her dress was undone at the top and down as far as she could reach in the back, and the straps sagged off her shoulders. She held up the front of the dress with both hands, but her creamy shoulders and part of her back were bare.
Slater’s mouth went dry. He walked over to her and stood for a moment, gazing down at her back. Her head was bent forward. Slater ached to kiss the nape of her neck. He reached down and unfastened the hooks, his hands clumsy. There was a tiny mole on one of her shoulder blades, and Slater thought about kissing that, too. He imagined that the woman who usually wore this dress had put the fastenings in the back so that her customers could have the pleasure of undoing them. But it was a painful pleasure for him to brush his fingertips against her skin, seeing it revealed inch by inch under his hands, knowing that he would have to turn away and sleep in a chair, alone.
When he was done, Slater walked away quickly and pulled his boots back on. “I—uh, I think I’ll take a stroll outside. Smoke a cigar. Then you can have some, uh, privacy.”
“Thank you.” Victoria’s voice was muffled. She didn’t turn to look at him. Her dress hung open, baring almost her entire back. Slater thought about running his hand down her spine. He hurried out of the room.
Victoria was grateful that Slater had left her alone. All the time he had been turned away, pointedly not watching her undress, she had imagined him watching her. The idea had made her nipples harden and her blood race. Then, when he had undone the fastenings on her dress and she had felt his callused fingers against her flesh, it had been almost more than she could bear. She had wanted to turn to him and let her dress fall to the floor. She’d wanted to put her arms around his neck and ask him to kiss her. She thou
ght he would have. Surely even Slater didn’t have that much control.
It was better, far better, that he left. She would be able to regain control of her wayward feelings. Victoria undressed and took down her hair. She had no brush, so she just braided it in a clumsy plait to keep it from tangling further. She climbed into bed and pulled the covers over her shoulders. She thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep before Slater returned, but in the end the day proved to be too tiring for her.
She was asleep when Slater walked back into the room. He stood looking down at her. She lay on her side, facing him. Her face was slack with sleep, her lips parted slightly. Her thick dark eyelashes cast long shadows on her cheeks in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp. She was so beautiful it made his heart ache. What was he going to do about her? She was invading his life at every turn. The scary thing was that he was beginning to become accustomed to it. He was beginning to like it.
Slater sighed and blew out the lamp. He sat down in the chair and pulled off his boots again. Then he arranged the pillow behind his head as comfortably as he could. He closed his eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. He kept thinking about Victoria curled up in the bed with next to nothing on. He gritted his teeth and shifted into another position. This was going to be a long, sleepless night.
Chapter Fifteen
The pale light of dawn streamed in through the uncurtained window, awakening Slater. He sat up gingerly, his joints cracking and his muscles crying out in protest. He stood to look out the window, rolling his neck to get out the kinks. The street was quiet, as he expected it to be.
He stretched and yawned. What a night. He’d been right in thinking that he wouldn’t get much sleep. He had still been wriggling around in that chair, trying to get comfortable, at four o’clock this morning. He couldn’t have gotten more than two hours’ sleep, and it had left him feeling more like he’d been beaten than rested.