Desert Storm

by Nan Ryan

  “That’s much better, dear.” He nodded, his hand sliding out of her hair. “Oh, I promise you, darling, you’re going to have a wonderful time here with me.” His eyes caressing her hungrily, he took her arm and propelled her toward the big bed. With feet of lead and a heart full of hatred, Angie walked beside her husband, while he continued with his disgusting, lewd prattle. “Yes, sweet child, we’ve the entire long night ahead of us and I intend to spend most of it atop you. Girl, I’m going to ride you like a bareback bronc.” He chuckled wickedly while Angie wished she were dead.

  Barrett stepped onto the pedestal supporting the bed. From the open balcony doors the blood-red rays of the dying sun streamed into the room, bathing the bed with light. Smiling, Barrett pulled Angie up onto the pedestal beside the bed. Blinking in the sun’s fiery glow, Angie mentally surrendered to her inevitable fate. She stood before him, feeling the heat of the sun and the heat of his eyes burning her barely draped body.

  “I won’t rush you.” He wrapped cold, excited fingers around her bare shoulders. “I know women like to be kissed first.” She cringed; his hands felt icy cold and at the same time clammy.

  “No, you needn’t …” she started to object. She could think of nothing worse than kissing him, and she was right. Her sentence was never finished because his lips captured hers and he crushed her to him. Angie’s teeth were firmly shut, but his loose lips and wet tongue assaulted her mouth with fervor and determination. He kissed her long and sloppily, and all the while she closed her eyes and trembled with revulsion. When at last his mouth released hers, Angie took a needed breath and hoped the courting was over, that he’d take her and get it over with.

  “Sweetheart,” he slurred, his lips now moving on her cheek, “you’re so sweet, so very innocent. You don’t even know to open your mouth when I kiss you.” He lifted his head and smiled possessively at her. “I shall kiss you again and you open your mouth this time.”

  “No, Barrett, I …”

  “What is it, darling?” He licked her nose.

  “I … I … let’s not wait any longer.” She couldn’t believe the words were coming from her, but she felt if she had to kiss him again she wouldn’t live through it.

  Her words inflamed him. Breathing hard, he was in a state of excitement, his brown eyes glazing with lust and too much liquor. “My darling, I understand your eagerness; I feel the same. In a day or two, I shall teach you about kissing. We’ll take some time to do nothing but kiss, giving all of our attention to that sweet preliminary. But that’s for later, right?” He gave her a knowing smile. “Get up onto the bed, Angie.”

  Beaten and heartsick, Angie made one last helpless, pleading attempt. “Barrett, I … let me go, I can’t do …”

  “You’re simply a little scared. Get onto the bed and do exactly as I say. I’m in an aching state of arousal, Angie, and I must be sated.”

  Her shoulders slumping and her heart pounding painfully, Angie sat down on the edge of the bed and heard his next ordered instruction. “Move to the very center of the bed and lie down on your back.” He stood beside the bed watching her.

  Angie did as she was told. She stretched out flat on her back, her balled fists at her sides. She shuddered and a gurgle of despair escaped her trembling lips when Barrett, grinning, leaned over her and ripped the bodice of her gown apart, exposing her bare breasts. She heard his sharp intake of air and loud exclamations of approval. “Ah, darling, such lovely, ripe young breasts. They’re just as I knew they would be. Firm, high, full and sweet.” Angie closed her eyes miserably, tears gathering in them. They opened again when she felt icy hands at the hem of her gown. Bracing herself for it to be ripped from her body, she lay tense and in agony as very, very slowly Barrett pushed the filmy gown up over her knees, her thighs, her hips, her stomach. He released it then, straightened and stood above her, staring down at her nakedness, murmuring gutturally, “Beautiful, beautiful.” His greedy eyes were focused on her quivering creamy belly and the golden curly hair between her legs.

  Turning her head to the side, Angie let the hot tears slide down her cold cheeks.

  Barrett, his eyes never leaving the naked girl, smiled and untied the sash of his gray robe. Angie kept her tearful eyes tightly shut while the satin robe slid over his arms and to the floor. She softly sobbed when she felt his heavy weight beside her as he crawled onto the bed. “Look at me, Angie,” he commanded thickly.

  Teary, red eyes opened reluctantly. She kept her eyes on his face, determined not to see the white, naked body seated beside her. “You, my darling wife,” he whispered, “have a lovely, tempting body and I will show you all the things that can be done to it.” He shifted, climbing fully onto the bed. Then to Angie’s horror, the vile, naked man knelt on all fours beside her. His smiling, passion-reddened face came down toward her breasts, his mouth open, pink tongue stuck out. Much like a hungry alley cat who has just had a thick, rich bowl of cream set before him, Barrett began to lap greedily at Angie’s left breast, making terrible slurping sounds, wetting the entire mound of quivering flesh. Goose bumps covered her tense, stiffened body and Angie prayed silently that she might die. When finally the horrid slurping stopped, Angie held her breath and waited, praying this abuse was finished.

  “Honey, open your eyes.” Barrett’s rasping voice was very near her ear.

  Her fearful green eyes fluttered nervously open to see his grinning face just above hers. His brown eyes were glazed with passion, his lips pink and wet. At the left corner of his mouth, a small thread of spittle slowly made a path down his chin. His rapid breath smelled of liquor, cigars and garlic. He seemed totally unaware of her disgust, as though he had no idea she was repulsed to the point of nausea. Over and over she was forced to swallow down the bile springing to her throat.

  The open, drooling mouth descended to Angie’s. She turned her head to the side and felt Barrett’s busy tongue snaking between her lips, trying to penetrate. Unable to gain the entrance he was seeking, he traced her trembling lips, bringing whimpers of despair he mistook for sighs of passion.

  Lifting his white head, Barrett gave her a happy smile and playfully bit the tip of her nose. “Honey, you and I are going to be really happy. Think of it, child, every night I’ll suckle your breasts and I’ll …” He paused as though a new idea had just occurred to him. “No! Not every night. Why, Angie, it just came to me. Siesta time! Won’t that be wonderful? You’ll be in my bed each afternoon. We’ll come up here every day and lie naked and play. Would you like that, dear? While the rest of the big house sleeps, you and I will make love.”

  Angie despised this horrible man with a vehemence that eclipsed her black hatred for his arrogant son. She lay silently beside the panting, decadent liar and vowed she’d get even with them both. How, she wasn’t sure, but she’d find a way. If it took all the rest of her days, she’d make both McClain men pay for what they’d done to her. Angie almost smiled at the thought. This licking, pawing animal would pay a high price for the privilege, just as his hardhearted, handsome son would pay for taking her virginity. To see that day gave Angie a reason to live, to go on, to survive this grotesque, living nightmare.

  “Child—” Barrett’s passion-heavy voice cut-through her reverie “—I’d like to take more time with you, but I’m just too worked up, darling. Spread your legs, girl, I’ve got something hot and hard that’s all yours.” Awkwardly, he crawled over her, pushing her legs apart and kneeling between them. “Open up your eyes, Angie. Look here,” he said, grinning wickedly, clasping his fully aroused body. “I’m going to shove this up into your moist warmth, little darling. It’ll hurt like blazes, so you just cry out and scream if you must.”

  Without further ado, Barrett McClain lowered himself to his horrified young bride. Growling with excitement, he pushed himself toward her, while Angie’s eyes closed and a sob escaped her lips, turning to a scream from her aching throat as his hard flesh approached her. Angie’s scream was the last thing the drunken, eager Barrett McClain h
eard. Collapsing heavily atop her, he passed out before he could force himself into her.

  For a long moment, Angie, eyes tightly shut, lay completely still beneath him, not daring to breathe, not certain what had happened. Seconds passed and his weight grew heavy upon her small body and loud snores erupted from his open mouth. Cautiously opening her eyes, she looked at him. His head was on her right breast, cheek-pressed to the nipple. His mouth wide open, he blew offensive hot breath into her face each time he exhaled. Her flesh crawled as, close to hysterics, she squirmed and pushed with all her strength, strangled sobs ripping from her throat.

  For a long, terrifying moment, Angie couldn’t budge the deadweight sprawled atop her. Then from somewhere, superhuman strength flowed through her, and with an animalistic sound coming from her lips, Angie managed to roll the burden off her. The repugnant naked body spread-eagled beside her still trapped one arm. In her desperation to be off the bed and away from this drunken, slobbering man, she pulled and jerked, the painful tugging threatening to tear her arm from its socket.

  Barrett’s broad back pressed her left hand against the bed, and try as she might, she was unable to pull it from under him. Feeling as though she’d gladly cut that hand off if it meant her freedom, Angie sank her sharp teeth into his bare shoulder and bit him as hard as she possibly could. Barrett didn’t waken, but he moaned a little and shifted just a bit, lifting his shoulder from the bed. It was enough for Angie to retrieve her hand. With a cry of elation, she unconsciously clawed at his back, trying to injure him. Jerking her hand clear, she was off the bed, her eyes, wide and wild, still on the prostrate naked form sleeping peacefully.

  Grabbing Barrett’s gray satin robe to her, Angie, backed away, terrified that at any second the lewd, lustful ogre would awaken and be upon her again. Her gaze remained locked on his pale, nude frame until the polished wood against her back told her she’d reached the connecting door to his suite. Whirling, she rushed inside and slammed the door behind her. Her heart hammering in her chest, she tried in vain to lock the door. There was no lock. Barrett McClain had had the locks on the door between the two rooms removed twenty-four hours before.

  Bested, Angie’s mind raced. First she must wash herself. Dropping the robe to the floor, she ran across the thick wine carpet to the highboy. With shaking hands, she poured cold water from a china pitcher into a matching basin. Hiccuping with sobs, she found a soft cloth and dipped it into the water. Absently wishing for a bar of strong lye soap, she took the square pine-scented soap from the stand. For a half hour the miserable young woman scrubbed her naked body, determined to cleanse from her flesh all traces of saliva left by her repulsive, hypocritical husband.

  Long after her skin was glowing pink and chapped from the vigorous washing, Angie continued to punish her body. When she was so tired she could no longer lift her arms to soap and rinse one more time, Angie dropped the cloth into the water and padded across the room to Barrett McClain’s big oak desk. She was not surprised to find what she was seeking. A half-empty bottle of strong whiskey was inside the desk’s lower drawer. Angie brought it out, uncorked it and put it up to her lips. Making a face, she swirled the fiery liquid around in her mouth and spit it into the bowl. She took another swig and held it until her eyes stung and she began to choke; then it, too, was spewed into the basin. Angie had never had a drink of whiskey in her life. She thought the taste horrible, but preferable by far to Barrett McClain’s slobbering kisses that she was determined to get out of her mouth and off her lips.

  Satisfied the taste and smell of him was gone from her body, Angie replaced the whiskey and was about to hunt something to put on so she could try to escape. A long, legal document was spread out atop the desk, and Angie’s name upon the parchment caught her eye. She didn’t feel the least bit guilty when she picked the long sheet of paper up and began to read. Puffy-eyed, she blinked to clear her blurred vision and sank down onto the padded chair, her toes wrapping themselves around the polished wooden legs. She read the document from beginning to end.

  Slowly she lowered the document back to the smooth desk top and sat perfectly still, thinking. She decided what she would do. Less than an hour before she had been subjected to the frightful lust of a man her father had handed her to, a man who’d promised he would never touch her, that they would be man and wife in name only, that she would be a daughter to him, nothing more. While she’d lain in his bed she had silently vowed to herself that she’d find a way to get even with him. She had thought it would take a long time, maybe years.

  Angie began to smile. It was a rueful, cold smile. She slowly rose from the chair and unhurriedly crossed the room to Barrett’s heavy chest of drawers. It didn’t take her long to find a gaudy diamond stickpin. Angie smiled again as she took the flashy diamond from its box. With the sparkling stickpin between thumb and forefinger, Angie, naked still, opened the heavy door and went back into the mistress’s suite where the drunken bridegroom lay on his back, dead to the world.

  Angie walked directly to the bed and stepped up onto the pedestal. She raised the flashy stickpin in her right hand. She lifted her left, palm up. Smiling coldly, she promptly pricked her forefinger with the sharp pin, bringing immediate droplets of blood to the surface. Popping the pin between her teeth, Angie grabbed her pricked finger and squeezed. She then very daintily turned the finger over and, leaning over the slumbering man, flicked bright crimson drops onto the white, rumpled sheet in the exact spot where her bare bottom had squirmed in terror a short time earlier.

  For good measure, Angie held her finger just above Barrett’s right thigh. Patiently she waited until a large, dark drop of blood fell onto his exposed skin. She watched, fascinated, as that tiny drop of blood made a slow, determined path down the hair-roughened flesh between his legs. Her eyes narrowing, she glanced at his peaceful face, turned and stepped off the pedestal.

  She returned to the empty master suite and replaced the diamond pin in its drawer. Feeling completely drained, yet strangely calm, she was learning. It was a cold, hard world, and to survive, apparently, one had to be cold and hard. Her papa had been. Pecos was. Barrett McClain certainly was. Well, she would be the hardest and the coldest. The McClain men thought they both could use her as though she were a toy, an object with no feelings. She had other plans. She now held all the cards and she would play them wisely.

  With a hardened heart, Angie picked up the gray satin robe from the carpet and slipped into it. She went to the empty bed that had been turned down earlier by a servant. Sighing heavily, she stretched out atop the soft, silky bed and stared, unseeing, at the high ceiling. Exhausted, physically and mentally, she grew sleepy despite all that had happened. Her last thought was of the document she’d seen, and of Pecos’s outrage when he found out about it. She snuggled deeper into the mattress and her soft lips turned up into a smile.

  A cold, hard smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  PECOS WATCHED the hot September sun setting on the western horizon. He sighed, rubbed his tired eyes and re-crossed his long legs. The monotonous clickety-clacking of the train winding its way across the desert had an irritating effect on his tense nerves. He longed for the boring, lengthy journey to Paso del Norte to come to an end. With no diversion to take his mind off the events of the morning, Pecos couldn’t shake the vision of the beautiful Angel floating down the aisle to become Mrs. Barrett McClain.

  Pecos groaned audibly. Night was falling rapidly. Very soon Angel and his daddy would … they … Pecos levered himself abruptly from the hard padded seat. He jerked open the door of his private compartment and stepped out into the narrow passageway. Working his way determinedly toward the back of the moving train, he stepped out onto the observation deck and sighed with relief that no one else was there. Alone, he gripped the iron-lace railing and leaned on it; his gray eyes swept the baked, barren land, its familiar, repetitious desert and mountains pleasing to him.

  Despite the events of the day, Pecos knew he would be returning to
this desolate, beautiful land that was his home. His father’s marriage in no way altered the fact that Del Sol was a part of him and would always be. The tempting tart, so blondly beautiful, might inherit a portion of the empire some distant day, but not even Barrett McClain would be so foolish and cruel as to leave it all to her. Wryly, Pecos grinned. Twenty years from now it might well be that he and his shapely stepmother would be partners. He tried to picture Angel in twenty years. At thirty-eight her lush, goddess’s beauty would have long since faded; the slender, perfect figure would have spread from too many pastries and, quite possibly, from childbirth. For the first time, that likelihood popped into his head.

  Pecos gritted his teeth and his long fingers tightened on the iron railing. How naive he’d been not to consider such an occurrence. Angel would probably do her darnedest to have a whole passel of brats; then she’d be assured a large portion of the McClain fortune. Pecos’s overactive brain promptly envisioned a fat, frumpy Angel, one child at her swollen, milk-heavy breast, another on her knee, two or three more crawling about at her feet. Groaning loudly in the twilight, Pecos pivoted and hurried back inside, heading straight for the bottle of bourbon in his compartment. He’d get the conniving little bitch out of his mind if he had to drink himself half-blind to do it.