by Merry Farmer
She responded with a light, cheerful sigh, digging her fingertips into the solid flesh of his sides. “I’m not supposed to say things like this, but let’s hop into your wagon and close the canvas.”
Gideon chuckled at her suggestion, touching his forehead to hers. “Who says you’re not supposed to say those things?”
“My mother,” she replied, stealing a kiss from his lips. “Respectable ladies. Decent society. Everybody.”
“In other words, no one that truly matters.”
She grinned from ear to ear. “No one.”
He kissed her again, and the pressure of his hands around her waist increased. He started to lift her onto the tailgate when a loud, “Eew!” came from beside them.
Lucy jerked in shock and twisted in Gideon’s arms to find Alvin staring at them. “Alvin, sweetheart.” She stumbled to stand upright as Gideon let her go. “What are you doing here?”
Alvin scowled at the two of them. “Mrs. Garrett is making me do homework. I told her I didn’t want to learn my sums, but she said I had to. I want you to show me how to do them.”
Any other evening, Lucy would have been charmed and flattered by the request for help. As it was, her heart was still alive with passion, and the throbbing in her core made it hard to think. To make matters worse, Gideon had turned away, and now stood with his back to Alvin, no doubt hiding what wasn’t appropriate for a ten-year-old to see.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Lucy said, stepping forward and leaning over to smile at him. “I wish I could help you. But… but Dr. Faraday has asked for my help with some things tonight, and I’ve already said that I’d help him.” When Alvin lowered his head in a pout, she rushed on with, “Why don’t you and I have breakfast tomorrow? Then I can try to help you with your sums.”
“Promise?” he asked, giving Lucy the most painfully doubtful look she’d ever seen.
It squeezed at her heart, coming close to convincing her to change her plans with Gideon. “I promise,” she said at last.
“You know,” Gideon added, turning halfway from the back of the wagon. “Lt. Tremaine is very good with sums. I bet he’d be happy to help you.”
Alvin met his suggestion with a scowl. “I don’t want his help and I don’t want yours. I want Miss Lucy’s.”
Gideon sent Lucy a flickering grin that suggested he didn’t want anyone’s help but hers either.
Lucy had a hard time keeping a straight face. “All right, then. Tomorrow morning, you and I will have breakfast and sums.”
“Okay,” Alvin conceded. He sighed, shoulders slumping, then walked away.
Lucy turned back to Gideon. “Well then.”
Gideon watched over her shoulder until Alvin had gone back to the camp. “We should probably make ourselves cozy before anyone else comes along needing help with sums.”
Lucy giggled, sliding into his arms once more and stealing a kiss. “I’m not sure how much of a help I’d be anyhow. All I know about sums is that one plus one makes two.”
He laughed, closing his arms around her and lifting her to sit on the tailgate of his wagon. That put her just a few inches taller than him when he leaned close to kiss her. Lucy wasn’t sure which she liked more, the feel of tilting down to kiss him, her hands cradling his face, or the pressure of his body between her legs.
The delightful position didn’t last long. After one, deep kiss, Gideon broke away long enough to hop into the back of his wagon.
“Are you sure we don’t want to move over to my wagon?” she asked even as she inched deeper into Gideon’s wagon bed.
Gideon shook his head with a wicked grin. “One advantage of so many of the crates being destroyed is that there’s more space to move in my wagon.”
Lucy giggled at the thought, then helped him to lift and secure the tailgate, close the canvas at the back and front of the wagon, and rearrange the crates to the sides. They unrolled Gideon’s pallet of blankets in the center of the wagon, then lay down, side-by-side.
“It’s not all the way dark yet,” Lucy whispered as Gideon reached for the buttons at the top of her blouse. “Shouldn’t we wait for more people to go to sleep before we….”
“Can you wait?” he teased her, knowing the answer would be a firm no.
She laughed, wriggling so that she could loosen the fastenings of her skirt and wiggle out of it and her petticoat. “We’re incorrigible,” she whispered.
“Without a doubt,” he chuckled against her neck as he pushed her blouse back from her shoulders. “But we’ll have to be very, very quiet.”
“Quiet?” she balked. Her hands brushed his sides, tugging his shirt out of the waist of his pants, then reaching for the fastenings of his trousers. “Us?”
His deep chuckle turned into a groan of pleasure as she slid her hands under his waistband to stroke him. “We have to.”
Lucy pressed her lips shut, swallowing a throaty giggle in a vain attempt to be silent. It would be fun to try and keep quiet. She pushed Gideon’s trousers and drawers down over his hips, then returned to stroking his stiff length. That part of him was a revelation, as far as she was concerned. She loved the way he felt in her hands, both when she stroked her palm up and down his length and when she closed her fist around him and played. The way he tensed and pushed into her grip and the way he stifled sounds of passion so intense that they caused a rushing sensation between her legs was divine. She had the feeling that under different circumstances, he would surrender himself and let her tease and explore that part of him all night.
As soon as that thought sent a heady sense of victory through her, he captured her hands, pulled them away, and pinned them above her head. She gasped in surprised pleasure.
“Shh.” He kissed her to silence her, but his mouth only lingered around hers for a moment.
He let her hands go, then moved to work the fastenings of her corset loose. As soon as that was done and the constricting garment disposed of, he tugged at her chemise, drawing it off over her head, and pulled at her drawers, removing them as well. In the process, he shed his own shirt and kicked off his trousers, so that as soon as every article of clothing was cast aside, he knelt above her, knees between her legs, both of them deliciously naked.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, bending to close his mouth around one of her pert nipples.
“Shh,” she scolded him, using the admonition to vent the pleasure his suckling caused.
Gideon laughed, then flickered his tongue over her nipple. It took everything she had not to cry out in delight. Considering how few times they’d been able to be together, he knew just what would make her writhe with happiness. His hands slipped their way down to her thighs, urging them further apart.
It was a blessing that the crates had been destroyed and his wagon had more space after all. Not only was she able to open her hips wide, of all the wild, wicked things, she could rest her knees high on top of a crate to either side, exposing herself scandalously to him. With her arms still stretched over her head, the position felt indecent, shocking, sinfully bad… and at the same time very, very good.
Gideon took full advantage of her naughtiness, kissing his way down from her breasts and across her stomach. A fluttering jolt of pleasure passed through her as he grew closer to the center of her. She pressed her lips tight over a cry that wanted to escape. How he could remain so silent as he teased his fingers along the sensitive flesh of her thighs was beyond her.
When at last he slipped his fingers up to the juncture of her thighs, spreading the most intimate part of her open, then brought his mouth down over top of her. Lucy couldn’t help but let a high squeak of amazement escape from her.
“Shh,” Gideon warned her.
She was convinced he was laughing at her—the vibrations causing jolts of pleasure in her center—and determined not to make another peep, but when he continued kissing her there and stroking her aching nub with his tongue, it was all she could do to stay sane, let alone quiet. She swallowed the need to cry out in plea
sure, writhed against him, and bit her lip to stop from whimpering. She even grabbed hold of the top edge of the wagon bed under the driver’s bench, but still Gideon tortured her with pleasure. Her thighs twitched with the need to close and prolong the sensation that spiraled higher and higher within her, but he held them wide. That insistence and her blissful helplessness only added to the passion threatening to pull her under.
And as Gideon’s tongue continued its work, his fingers teasing the wet entrance to the secrets she held only for him, it did pull her under. With a long sigh that she couldn’t control, the tight spiral within her broke into a thousand pieces, sending wave after powerful wave of pleasure thundering through her. Gideon didn’t wait for the waves to ride themselves out. He surged up along her overheated body, guiding himself to her entrance, then thrust inside of her to ride the waves of pleasure with her.
He let out a strangled moan of ecstasy as their bodies joined. She didn’t have sense enough left to tease him to silence as he withdrew and then thrust again, then again and again with increasing intensity. She let her legs slip from the crates to wrap around him, drawing her hands down his back to grip his backside, urging him to thrust harder and faster.
He did, and all at once, her body burst into another devastating wave of pleasure as he rocked into her with enough force to shake the foundations of the earth. She panted with the joy of it, with the power of his body and his desire, giving herself over to him. Nothing she’d ever known was this wonderful, this full of life. The heat between them was so intense that as Gideon tensed and let out a groan of surrender so sweet it left her breathless, she could practically smell the smoke of the fire they’d created.
Like a spool of ribbon unwinding, they both went limp, spent and panting with the release of so much passionate energy. Lucy let her body float into satiety, arms and legs loose. Gideon slumped to her side, moving out of her to rest by her side. Few thing had ever been so blissful, so satisfying, so—
She sniffed. The scent of smoke was still there, stronger.
“Gideon,” she whispered. “Do you smell smoke?”
Lucy’s words almost didn’t penetrate Gideon’s passion-soaked brain. All he wanted to do was close his eyes and drift away on a cloud of post-coital contentment, Lucy in his arms. But as soon as her suggestion was made, he caught a whiff of smoke too.
Instantly, every nerve in his body was on the alert. “I do,” he said.
More than that, he heard the fierce crackle of wood burning. Close. Very close.
It was nearly pitch black inside of the wagon, but as he twisted to look around, a dangerous spot of glowing orange near his and Lucy’s feet grabbed his attention. Seconds later, a corner of the canvas peeled back as fire ate into it. Lucy coughed, and Gideon realized that the back half of the wagon was quickly filling with smoke.
“The wagon’s on fire,” he yelped, twisting to pull Lucy away from the back.
“On fire?” She scrambled for clothes, for the bedroll, pulling everything she could away from the back of the wagon and up toward the driver’s seat. It was a small blessing that the crates of chemicals were stacked in the middle and front of the wagon, but that wouldn’t help if the fire spread fast.
Gideon rushed to help Lucy, tugging on his trousers as he did. He thrust a handful of her skirts and her blouse toward her, but the back of the wagon lit even brighter with flames. There wasn’t much they could do but loosen the canvas at the front of the wagon scramble out, dressed or not.
As soon as he pulled Lucy to the safety of the driver’s seat, Gideon rolled to the side and jumped down to get a better look at what was going on.
“Fire,” someone shouted from the darkness of the other camps.
The back of his wagon was fast becoming engulfed in flames. He reached for the canvas and pulled, desperate to get it off and away from the crates of chemicals inside. Unfortunately, the canvas was tied tight, and all of Gideon’s tugging only shifted it without breaking it free of the wagon’s bows.
“Stand back,” Pete’s voice permeated Gideon’s thoughts. “We’re forming a bucket brigade. The stream isn’t that far off.”
“The chemicals.” Gideon gave the wagon’s canvas one final tug, then gave up and rushed to Pete’s side. “They’re not explosive on their own, but if the fire gets to them….”
One look at the flash in Pete’s eyes by the light of the growing fire told Gideon he understood. “Can we get those crates out the front of the wagon.”
Gideon twisted to check. He said a prayer of thanks that he’d unhitched the oxen and let them wander with the rest of the train’s animals for the night. “We could try,” he said. “And my generator. It’s almost more valuable than the chemicals. I can’t lose it.”
“I’ll help.”
The offer came from Leopold, who was suddenly there, rolling up his sleeves.
“No,” Gideon said.
He was overridden by Pete. “If a few of us climb up the back, we should be able to hand the crates out before the fire gets to them.” He twisted to see if help was coming, then called, “Hank, Lyle, hurry up.”
Before Gideon could put a stop to any of it or warn Pete that Leopold was the one who had destroyed the chlorine just the night before, Pete rallied the men and dashed to the front of Gideon’s wagon. The fire raged along the whole back end now. Pete took the lead, jumping up to the driver’s bench, then disappearing into the back of the wagon. Seconds later, he handed one of the crates to Leopold, who had mounted the bench.
“Be careful,” Gideon shouted as he dashed to join the men. “We can’t afford to lose any more.”
“Yes, sir,” Hank answered, handing the crate Leopold had handed to him into Gideon’s anxious arms.
Gideon did the only thing he could. He accepted each crate from the men who worked to rescue them and lay them carefully in the grass as far away from the burning wagon as he could. They saved his trunk of personal belongings and his portable generator as well, then worked to empty the rest of the wagon’s contents.
“What are they doing?” Lucy rushed up to Gideon as he settled his trunk beside the crates. She was dressed, but not particularly well. Her blouse was unbuttoned and her skirt was askew. Her auburn hair was a halo around her head, as vibrant as the fire itself. “He’s the one who set the fire.”
There was no need to question the panic in her eyes or to ask what she meant. She pointed to Leopold, coming to the same conclusion Gideon had reached.
“They had to get the chemicals out before they exploded,” Gideon said.
“Yes, but now?” she pressed.
Now the whole back half of the wagon was in flames, though a line of people with buckets had formed. First one, then another, then another bucket of water was thrown on the wagon, hissing and sizzling. Estelle and Olivia hauled water along with several of the train’s men, and even boys, like Alvin and Luke Chance, were in the line, doing what they could. Alvin was near the front, his young eyes wide with terror, but he was still helping.
“We can’t do anything now.” Gideon’s shoulders dropped with the realization. Not only were the contents of the wagon already removed, in short order, the fire would be out. Pete, his men, and Leopold, were already jumping down from the wagon and rushing to help the bucket brigade.
Within a few minutes, the fire was out. The back half of the wagon collapsed just as the flames were put out, both back wheels crumbling to cinders. Gideon flinched as the whole thing tipped, the tongue sticking up in the air.
“Thank God the oxen weren’t still yoked,” Pete said, out of breath and sooty as he strode up to Gideon’s side. “And we got just about everything important out in time.”
“Thank you,” Gideon answered him.
It was only when Pete moved to slap Gideon on the back but stopped that Gideon remembered he was standing there in just his trousers, bare-chested and grubby. Lucy clung to his side, gripping his hand in both of hers.
“It’s, um, a good thing that the two of
you were,” Pete cleared his throat, “in there. Otherwise there’s no telling how much the fire would have burned before anyone noticed.”
“How did the fire start in the first place?” Graham asked. Gideon hadn’t noticed his friend and Estelle approaching. They all stood and stared at the smoking remains of the wagons now. “Did you guys knock a lantern over in your… enthusiasm?”
Beside him, Gideon could feel Lucy burning with embarrassment.
On second thought, Lucy would probably get a good laugh out of being caught in flagrante. He was the one who was ashamed to be caught breaking society’s rules.
“We didn’t have any lamps lit,” Lucy answered where he couldn’t. “And the campfire wasn’t close to the wagon. Someone set the fire deliberately, someone who is trying to kill—” She slapped a hand over her mouth.
“I don’t think anyone is trying to kill anyone.” Pete winced, rubbing the back of his neck.
He might not think so—murder wasn’t a logical part of everyday life, after all—but Gideon couldn’t rule it out. In fact, after finding Leopold’s locket, he found it easy to believe that at the very least, the man was trying to destroy the last of the chemicals he’d failed to destroy the day before.
Only one doubt remained. If Leopold was trying to get back at him, why had he joined Pete to help rescue his things?
Then again, he had been right there, near enough to arrive on the scene before most of the others. That could only happen if he had been close when the fire started.
Like it or not, Leopold was suspect number one.
Chapter Fifteen
“So let me get this straight,” Pete said the next day as they walked through the morning. “You think that Leopold Diver destroyed your chlorine and tried to kill you last night.”