by Nan Ryan
They shared a few more searing kisses before Pecos raised his head and looked at Angie, his gray eyes questioning hers for an answer. He saw before him two liquid green pools of passion and a bruised mouth, moist and parted. He felt her breath warm and sweet upon his face and her ripe, lush breasts swelling, nipples proudly erect, pushing against him. She was ready; he was certain. His hands dropped away from her, and Angie’s tightened around his neck.
“Pecos,” she almost pleaded, “aren’t you going to kiss me more?”
Pecos gave her a warm slow smile and unwrapped her fingers. Stepping back, he began to unbutton his shirt. “Sure, honey, I’ll kiss you plenty, but why don’t we undress and get into bed? Or would you like to take a bath first? There’s ample room in the tub for us both.”
The emerald pools of desire turned to frozen green pinpoints of shock. The soft, moist lips thinned into a tight line of outrage. Her sweet, warm breath caught in her closed throat. Pecos’s cold, cavalier suggestion had opened the door to glaring reality, and Angie, for the first time since his experienced lips had touched her out in the darkened hall, was shamefully aware of her disgraceful behavior. While she’d been caught up in the wonder of Pecos’s kisses, she’d unwittingly made him believe that she would let him do anything he pleased. She watched now, horrified, as he walked toward her bed, nonchalantly pulling the long tails of his shirt from the waistband of his tight trousers.
Blaming herself more than him, Angie swung into action. “No!” she shouted and started to him.
Whirling, he looked at her as though she’d lost her mind. “No?” He cocked his dark head and stared down at her, letting the unbuttoned shirt slide down his long arms. “What the hell do you mean, no? Look, Angel, if you’re worried I’ll tell Dad, forget it. Everybody has the right to go after what they want. I understand, honest I do. With your face and body you deserve to make more from it than you were getting at Gussie’s. I’ve no objection to you having a home here, a few furs and diamonds.” He grinned and added, “Jesus, you sleep with a man old enough to be your granddaddy, I say you deserve a few trinkets.”
Angie stood staring up at him, listening to him as though he were conversing in a foreign language. Stunned and confused by his senseless words, she gaped at him, completely at a loss.
Pecos, still grinning, reached out for her. Long fingers curled to slip beneath the scarlet fabric covering her creamy shoulder. Letting his fingers slowly slide down over her shoulder and across the swell of her bosom to the deep V in the shadowy valley between her full breasts, he slowly pulled her to him. “Baby, relax. I’m not your enemy and I won’t be unless you start getting ideas about taking it all. You get greedy, then you’ll have me to contend with.” He released her and unbuttoned the top button of his trousers.
“Don’t, don’t,” she shouted hysterically. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I want you to get out of my room right now!”
Pecos’s hands dropped to his sides and he sighed heavily. “Angel, I’m on your side. You needn’t pretend with me.” His impish grin returned to mock her. “I’m crushed that you could possibly forget our one evening together. I suppose I’ll have to refresh your memory.” He put a hand out to her and she brushed it angrily away. “Okay, okay.” He nodded and thrust his hands into his pockets.
Angie’s eyes were drawn to a long white scar on Pecos’s dark, hair-covered chest. Resembling a narrow white satin ribbon, the scar started directly below the flat male nipple and descended to disappear into the waistband of his trousers. Insanely, she caught herself wanting to touch it while he spoke in low conversational tones. “Angel, hardly more than three short weeks ago I wandered into Hurricane Gussies’s down at the Pass and you were there. You could have chosen from any number of guys, but bless your heart, as fate would have it, you picked me. Guess you didn’t know that old righteous Barrett McClain had a fun-seeking son. Well, not to worry.” He shrugged his bare brown shoulders and Angie lifted her eyes from the strange scar. “You and I had a midnight supper and drank lots of wine. We were just starting up the stairs to your room when an English gentleman, obviously one of your many suitors, shall we say, rushed in brandishing a revolver. He said that you belonged to him and took a shot at me.” He paused, lifted a hand to a long strand of her golden hair, and smiled. “Is it coming back to you, darlin’?”
Blankly she looked at him. The quality of her acting was superb, he thought. It had the distinct effect of making Pecos McClain wish to wrap his hands around her long white neck and choke her. “Damn it, Angel, you’re a whore and I’m a customer, and I never got what you were selling. I want it now. Get your clothes off and get into bed. No one will be the wiser. I’ve told you, I’ll keep quiet. I may have some faults, but blackmail is distasteful to me. I’ll not—”
“Get out of here!” Angie snatched her hair from his fingers and spoke in a voice so icy it startled him. “You are either insane or you’re trying to drive me insane! My name is Angie Webster. I traveled here from New Orleans to marry your father because my papa died and left me all alone. I know nothing of Hurricane Gussie, where or what the Pass is, nor of any jealous Englishmen brandishing guns. You’ve got the wrong girl, and I’ll not listen to any more of your outlandish accusations nor your dirty, disgusting talk. Get out right now or I shall scream at the top of my lungs.” She defiantly thrust a slender arm toward the door, pointing his way out. She hoped this half-naked man grinning down at her didn’t realize just how terrified she was of him.
Pecos shifted and she flinched involuntarily, thinking he was again reaching for her. To her relief, he stooped and picked up his discarded shirt. Hooking it over his thumb, he slung the shirt over his shoulder and started toward the door. Angie watched his tall frame moving away from her and gave silent thanks.
Pivoting at the closed door, Pecos was still smiling, his lips cruelly curled in a sneer that made her long to strike his handsome face.
“Angel,” he drawled lazily, “I’ll let you sleep on it. I’ve no idea how you and your old man concocted the glaring lie that you are some innocent, untouched child who has spent all her life locked up in a Christian home in New Orleans. But I’ll congratulate you on its effectiveness; you certainly suckered my dear old daddy.” Pecos turned his head to rub his chin against his knuckles. “Come to think of it, I’ll bet it wasn’t all that difficult; you’re the answer to his prayers: young, beautiful and knowledgeable in bed.” His smile evaporated. “Sweetheart, I’m telling you that I know who and what you are; you’ve worked the border trade in Paso del Norte at Hurricane Gussie’s, and it’s been a couple of years and a lot of customers ago since you were the innocent you pretend.” He opened the door. “Sleep well, Angel. When you’re rested, perhaps you’ll quote me a price.”
He stepped out and Angie flew to the big door and slammed it behind him. She could hear his easy laughter as he padded down the dark hall. Her heart drumming in her ears, she leaned against the closed door and fought to calm herself. Pecos’s dreadful accusations rang in her swirling brain and she shook her head to clear it. Why he had accused her of such vile things was a mystery, but she had the sinking feeling that it would be next to impossible to convince him of his horrid error. Apparently he had seen a girl who very much resembled her. It was a terrible mistake, nothing more. Surely he couldn’t actually believe that she, Angie Webster, was a … a …
Angie felt a sob starting deep in her throat. She pushed away from the heavy door and flew across the room to the yellow bed. Tumbling across it, she recalled with dismay the shameless way she’d let Pecos McClain kiss her. He’d kissed her repeatedly and she had done nothing to stop him or discourage his amorous advances. She’d behaved exactly like the harlot he was accusing her of being. How could she expect Pecos to believe she was who she claimed to be when she’d willingly gone into his arms on the very first night she spent under the same roof with him? With tears of regret and shame sliding down her unhappy face and a knot of despair clawing at her
stomach, Angie tiredly rose from the bed and undressed.
She turned out the bedside lamp and crawled naked between the soft yellow sheets. She said her prayers as she did each night upon retiring. Wet-lashed eyelids pressed together, she murmured softly in the darkness, begging forgiveness for her behavior and asking for the strength to resist any further advances from the dark, daring Pecos. The whispered prayer was short and sincere, and upon its completion, Angie felt a little better. She believed in an understanding Maker, and she knew that he looked only at the heart. She was Angie Webster, not Angel from Gussie’s, and if Pecos McClain didn’t know it, her Heavenly Father certainly did.
Angie sighed and stretched out on her back. Her father had taught her that spiritual nourishment was what she should seek. Feeding the hunger of the flesh was sinful and unnecessary. Angie certainly agreed with her papa. She would content herself with things that were holy, and never ever again be tempted by the flesh. She was a fortunate young woman; Barrett McClain was a kind, godly understanding man. He was willing to take her for his wife so that she might have a good home and someone to watch over her all the days of her life.
Jeremiah Webster had told her that the Lord above would bless such a union and she believed her papa. Barrett McClain was as devout as she was, and she was certain that the Lord would sanction their nuptials. If, after she was married to the elder McClain, she was called upon to perform certain wifely duties, that, too, would be sanctioned by the Almighty. Angie surmised that as old as Barrett McClain was, he would not want her to perform those marital rights often, if at all. She would be safe and secure married to the kind and gentle Barrett McClain.
Everything clear in her mind once again, Angie snuggled deeper into the soft, clean bed, anxious to forget everything that had happened with Pecos. It wasn’t that easy. Behind her closed eyelids, Pecos’s handsome, smiling face taunted her. Waves of longing swept over her as again she felt his warm heated kisses. Her fingers could still feel the pleasing texture of the thick dark hair at the back of his head. Her eyes could still see his masculine chest with its thatch of curling blue-black hair, pierced by the long white scar her fingers longed to touch. Her tingling body could still feel his hard length pressed so close against her and she could hear his deep voice, echoing in her room: “Sure, honey, I’ll kiss you plenty ….”
Angie prayed again. “Please, please help me to be good. I don’t want to be a sinner. I don’t, I don’t. Please,” she pleaded in desperation, “send Pecos McClain away, far away.”
Even as Angie prayed, she had the chilling premonition that by the time Pecos left Tierra del Sol, it would already be too late.
Chapter Nine
PEDRO RODRIGUEZ’S tired eyes came open at the first rap of a fist upon the front door of the one-room adobe dwelling. His young son, Jose, remained slumbering peacefully on his narrow cot across the room, blissfully unaware of his imminent ordeal. Pedro hurriedly rose, pulling on his trousers and tucking the long tail of his nightshirt inside them. The pounding from without grew louder.
“I come,” he assured his dawn visitor, casting a protective glance at the youth asleep atop the white sheets. Jose lay upon his stomach, his long slender arms folded beneath his cheek. His smooth brown face, youthfully innocent, was angelically beautiful to the old, wrinkled man who had fathered him. Pedro could remember so well the day his pretty wife, Conchita, had told him that she was again carrying his child, though they had nine children already and at forty-four years of age she had thought there’d be no more. Pedro was pleased, saying the child would be a comfort in their old age, and as their last born, he would be precious. On Pedro’s forty-sixth birthday, Jose Rodriguez came into the world. From his first hour, the child had indeed been precious to Pedro and Conchita, as well as to the brothers and sisters of the family. In the fateful summer of ’78, the Rodriguez family contracted a deadly strain of influenza. All perished save Pedro and his young son, Jose. Since that tragic time eight years before, the two had lived alone, depending on each other for love and comfort.
With shaking, cold fingers, Pedro Rodriguez opened the wooden door and peered quizzically into the dim light. Before him stood the enormous Asa Granger, filling the entire doorway. Pedro began to tremble.
“Where’s the boy?” Asa looked past the short, quaking Mexican.
“Please, Señior Granger, he sleeps now; is so early.”
“What’s wrong, Father?” Jose roused, rolling to his side and rubbing his eyes.
The floor beneath his cot jarred as Asa Granger pushed Pedro aside and bore down on the sleepy boy. Asa stood over Jose, big and intimidating. Jose, coming fully awake now, slid his long brown legs over the edge of his cot, but before he could stand, Asa grabbed him by the shoulder. “Get out of bed, kid. You’re coming with me.” He jerked the surprised boy to his feet.
“I’ll come, Señior Granger.” Jose nodded his dark head. “Let me get my britches and boots.”
“You won’t need them,” the huge man assured him and pulled the reluctant lad toward the front door wearing only his long white nightshirt, his feet bare.
“Oh, please, please, Sefior Granger,” the elder Rodriguez said, clasping his hands together, begging for his son’s safety. “I know what this is about. The boy is innocent. He hug young señorita only to shield her from terrible sandstorm. He mean nothing by it. Nothing.”
“Sorry, old man.” The giant turned a deaf ear to the frightened father’s pleadings. “I take orders, just as you.” Without another word he dragged the boy out the front door and into the thick darkness. Another man, mounted, sat quietly in the stillness. Punch Dobson, the other half of Barrett McClain’s shadow, yawned sleepily and pushed his broad-brimmed hat back on his head. The first granite-gray of dawn on the eastern horizon silhouetted the big, mounted man.
From its neat coil attached to his saddle, Punch Dobson deftly unwound a braided lariat, slipping a hurried knot to make a loop large enough to enclose the slender torso of the sleepy Mexican boy. Flipping the loop above his head two or three times, Punch released it, letting it fall directly over the nightshirt-clad body of young Rodriguez, pinning his long, slim arms to his sides. In irritation, Punch looked down to see old Pedro Rodriguez tugging on his heavily muscled left thigh.
Tears streaming down his withered, brown cheeks, Pedro pleaded, “Señor, por favor, the boy, he do nothing. Take me, punish me. He is only a baby.”
Punch Dobson sighed. “Baby, huh? Pedro, your little baby boy had better learn to keep his brown hands off the girl Barrett McClain intends to marry. Hell, I’d as soon stick my hand in a rattler’s nest than lay it on that soft, white skin.”
“No, please.” Pedro clung to the big man’s leg, as Punch kneed his mount and began to back away, pulling the rope, jerking the youth forward. “Dios, no,” Pedro shouted frantically, lost his grip, whirled and threw his arms around his son.
“Don’t, Father,” Jose said bravely. “I will be all right. Go back to bed. Do not worry.”
Sobbing heartbrokenly, his anxious father clung to him, shouting in hopeless desperation at the mounted man now urging his horse into a trot, making the imprisoned boy and his clinging father run to keep from falling. Knowing his sixty-two-year-old father could not run very far without collapsing, young Jose shouted to him, “I love you, Father. Do not worry,” and tripped the old man. Pedro hit the ground with a thud that knocked the breath from his aging body. When air finally flowed back into his starving lungs, his beloved young son was only a speck on the dim horizon, running agilely between the two huge, mounted horsemen, as though he were eager to reach the place of his punishment.
His thick dark hair whipping around his face and his mouth wide-open, gulping for breath, Jose Rodriguez ran across the packed earth, the rope cutting through the thinness of his perspiration-soaked nightshirt. Where he was running to, and what would happen to him when he got there, Jose had no idea. He only knew that as long as he was conscious, he was determined to remain on his fee
t. He would not let these two Anglo bullies drag him to the ground. He was a man. A proud Mexican man and with the last breath in his body, he would live up to his heritage.
The strange trio soon left the outbuildings of Tierra del Sol far behind. Across the barren high range they flew into the rosy dawn. His lungs burning and his legs weak, Jose saw nothing but a distant flat mesa, its saucerlike top catching the first light of the rising sun.
His captors rode straight for the small bald shelf of land. As Jose blinked away the sweat and sand he saw them. Two tall cedar poles rose from the sand, side by side, several feet apart. Those two tall poles were new to the mesa. Jose had ridden by and over that very mesa many, many times and the poles had not been there then.
Asa Granger spurred his big stallion and raced up the creviced side of the tableland. Punch Dobson, showing a little kindness, slowed his horse as he ascended the mesa. Even so, the tired, stumbling boy he pulled after him had to painstakingly place each battered bare foot in a well-chosen spot to keep from falling. At the top, Jose was led directly between the two towering cedar poles.
His lungs near to exploding in his narrow, heaving chest and his feet bruised and bleeding, Jose gulped and coughed and silently gave thanks his destination had been reached. His legs threatened to give way beneath him. He was prepared to take any punishment the two big men had planned for him. It surely could be no worse than running barefoot behind the powerful horse.
Punch Dobson had dismounted and was walking toward Jose, coiling the rope as he walked. Asa Granger crawled down from his stallion’s back and joined them. Neither man spoke to Jose and Jose asked no questions. Punch’s lariat was lifted from Jose and the boy automatically rubbed his hurting ribs where the tightly pulled rope had burned through his nightshirt. His young face showed no emotion and he made no sound. He winced as the flimsy nightshirt was torn from his body and dropped in the sand.