After Eden

by Joyce Brandon

  “You’re going to get me shot,” Johnny whispered.

  “Do you care?”

  “I guess not.”

  Tía laughed softly. “Then what are you complaining about?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  Tía stretched her arms overhead and pressed herself against the length of his warm, hard body, reveling in the feeling of power it gave her.

  Somehow she knew Johnny would go only as far as she wanted. She trusted him in that. He kissed her mouth, and while his lips and tongue set up a tumult within her, his fingers slipped the straps of her camisole aside and released her bare breasts to shower her there with kisses. Tía cried out with the wild, sweet sensation that swamped her at the feeling of his hot lips surrounding her. As if out of her control, her hips ground against his, and suddenly even that was not enough. She wanted to feel his bare skin.

  Tía pulled his shirt out of his pants and ran her hands over his hard-muscled back. His skin felt hot and damp, the muscles taut. She wanted him to kiss her forever. Unfortunately, as soon as her body adjusted to Johnny kissing her breasts, it demanded a new sensation. Now it wanted to feel his bare thighs against hers.

  “Take these off,” she whispered, tugging at his pants.

  Johnny opened dazed eyes. “I might not be able to keep the stallion on a lead rope if we do,” he panted.

  “I just want to feel your skin.”

  Johnny unbuttoned his pants and slipped them off. He lay back down beside her, and Tía wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him hard.

  It felt so good to feel him completely unfettered. She loved the warm, hungry feel of his manhood pressing against her hands, against her thighs. It was warm and smooth, and she could feel it throbbing in silence against her. Johnny just held her and kissed her and didn’t seem concerned, but Tía kept worrying about his manhood. It felt so smooth and helpless with no arms or anything. She wanted to make it feel better. Or maybe she just wanted to feel it.

  Johnny kissed her in that hungry, urgent sort of way, as though he were in terrible pain and couldn’t cure it except by kissing her as hard as he could. Tía almost couldn’t stand it. “Can I touch it?” she asked.

  “You better not. I might not be able to—”

  “I’ll be good.”

  She slid her hand down between Johnny’s thighs and fondled him. Touching his rigid shaft relieved a terrible pressure in her, and she withdrew her hand immediately. Johnny rolled away from her to lie on his back, and Tía scooted over to snuggle as close to him as she could. Johnny kissed her so hungrily that she just had to get closer to him. Still kissing him, she sat up and pulled her camisole over her head. Johnny groaned like a man whose burdens had just doubled. “You better not tempt me. I’m hanging on as best I can already.”

  “It’ll be okay. I just want to feel you against me.”

  “Dammit, Tía…”

  Tía stopped his protest with her mouth. She just wanted to feel him heavy and naked on top of her. She kissed him for a long time and then pulled him over on top of her. It was wonderful. He even kissed better that way. She let go of him with her hand and wiggled around until she had him between the tops of her thighs. It felt wonderful there. Johnny was breathing so hard and his heart was pounding so hard that Tía felt the life force in every pore of her body. She loved the feel of him between her thighs. She wanted this moment to last forever. Then, suddenly, even feeling his skin against hers didn’t seem like enough. She wanted to feel how it would be if he just slipped a little inside her. But poor Johnny was having such a hard time with her last request that she hated to ask for more.

  She let him kiss her until he seemed too blind to notice, and then she slid her hand down between them and took hold of him. Johnny groaned, and Tía found his mouth to quiet him.

  Johnny dragged in a breath and took her hand in his. He forced it away from him and up to his lips, where he pressed warm kisses to her fingertips.

  Tía whimpered. “But I want to…”

  “No,” he whispered against her cheek. “And don’t give me a hard time about it. We ain’t married, and we ain’t gonna do married things until we are.”

  Tía felt confused. In Mama’s circle of friends, women did married things all the time, and none of them had been married.

  “What makes you think I’d marry you, Johnny Brago? A man who fights over other women in saloons?”

  “You behave yourself, Tía Marlowe.”

  “Garcia-Lorca.”

  “Burkhart,” he countered. “You still don’t know who you are, do you?”

  “I know as well as most.”

  “You’re my woman. And I reckon to marry you.”

  “I won’t even wear your bracelet. What makes you think you could get me to many you?”

  “You might want me to kiss you or something.”

  “I doubt I’d want it bad enough to marry.”

  “You might.”

  The warm light in his eyes caused Tía to smile. “I probably wouldn’t tell you, even if I did.”

  “Probably wouldn’t.” Then Johnny stopped teasing and stroked her hair as if he expected to calm her to sleep. “Will you marry me, Tía?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t want you to.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How come?”

  “I got something else on my mind.”

  “Like what?”

  “I have to tell Judy first. See if I can make her understand.”

  “You’ve got to be the dangedest woman I ever met.” He took her face between his hands, kissed her lips, and then looked into her eyes. “I love you, Tía.”

  At his words, something settled quietly into place. That was it! So much joy rose up in her that she almost couldn’t breathe. Her heart seemed to swell with it. “I love you, too, Johnny.”

  “I never thought I’d hear those words from you.”

  “Fighting over Judy, you don’t deserve to hear them,” she challenged.

  “For the third time, I told you I wasn’t fighting over Judy. I was fighting with Morgan Todd because I hate the bastard enough to kill him in his sleep.”

  “You do not.”

  “I know it, but you make me so danged mad.”

  Tía leaned up and covered his mouth with hers teasingly. She pulled Johnny back on top of her. “If you’re so smart, let’s see if you can kiss your soon-to-be fiancée.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Wearing a trail in the gold rug she’d ordered from a Chicago mail-order house, Judy paced between her bedroom door and window. Even as distracted as she was, she glanced occasionally at her reflection in the mirror. She was never completely unaware of the picture she made, a pretty girl in a yellow gown nervously pacing from bed to door in her white-and-yellow bedroom.

  Judy paused and looked around her at the room she had grown up in. She liked its bright colors, especially when it was clean and orderly, as it was now.

  Since Tía had been in charge of the house, the women had taken special pains with her room. Thinking about Tía filled her with confusion. Tía had claimed to be her friend, and she’d looked truly upset when Judy had accused her of betrayal. But the fact remained that Tía had taken Johnny away from her within minutes of arriving at Rancho la Reina, even though Judy had told her plainly that Johnny belonged to her.

  Johnny had loved her, and his love had seemed as endless as water coming over a spillway. She had only to look at him to know he had a lot of love to give, so she had depended on it. But she had forgotten about Johnny’s ability to build things. When she wasn’t looking, he had built another spillway.

  Grant had gone to bed early—supposedly to nurse his injured shoulder, but Judy didn’t believe that for a second. He had been shocked by her revelations today. He would pretend that he still loved her for a while, just to save face, but soon he would drift on to another job, another ranch. It was better that way. Grant was too decent, like Johnny us
ed to be. She wanted to be decent, but sometimes her life just got away from her. She didn’t understand it…Somehow she got so distracted doing things that she forgot to consider the consequences.

  At least she could be grateful that Andrea would not be living on the ranch forever. She would probably get married and move away. Men seemed to find her attractive. Judy couldn’t imagine why; she hated schoolteachers.

  She also hated Indians, Morgan Todd, Johnny Brago, Tía, and herself. Only Steve had continued to love her, but even his love was measured out in stingy little amounts. Between pointing out her transgressions.

  Judy grinned. Well, why not? It would take a lot of time to explain her inadequacies. That’s the way she was. Steve had said it best. You could get away with murder if you could talk to the man in charge, but if they ever judge you on your record, you’re dead, because you’re record is insurmountable.

  Steve had a way with words. That was the classiest insult she’d ever gotten. The ones her father had used were a lot less classy. They hurt more too, because she understood the words: Just like your mother, aren’t you? It’s in your blood. You look like her. You act like her. You’ll never be true to any man.

  How many times had he said those same words to her—one way or another—hated her for what she was? She could recall the exact tone of his voice: gruff and harsh and condemning: You’ll never amount to anything looking the way you do…He had backed out of the room as if it had been filled with snakes.

  Once when she was seventeen…

  Before Tombstone even existed, she had gotten all dressed up for a big dance at Fort Bowie. She put on her prettiest mail-order gown and new shoes; she had a special grown-up hairdo with ribbons wound around the curls on top of her head. Carmen had worked for over an hour on that hairdo. She wore her mother’s earbobs—the amber and gold ones. Johnny stopped beside her window and said she was the most beautiful girl in the world. She’d been so proud of the way she looked, the things he’d said. She’d been so much in love with Johnny. Unthinking, she had rushed to show herself off for her father.

  She had pirouetted, swishing her crinolines in a very grownup way. Pa…She’d twirled in front of him. How do I look?

  He’d looked up from his week-old newspaper and grunted. Then he’d blinked in disbelief and his eyes had filled with unmistakable revulsion…

  All the joy drained out of her, and her insides hardened to granite. Her nerveless fingers dropped her skirt. Hot tears welled up inside her, but she swallowed hard, then turned to go.

  “Judy, wait! I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t you…”

  She tried to look at him but couldn’t see through the haze of tears that flooded up in spite of her best efforts.

  “It’s all right, Pa. I understand.”

  That night Judy went to the dance with Johnny, but she flirted with Morgan Todd, and she sneaked out of the dance and let him take her to his hotel room to show her his whiskey drummer case. She’d never seen one. They stepped quietly up the back stairs so no one saw them. Morgan started to kiss her, and it felt so good to be held, to be made a fuss over, that she wasn’t able to make herself stop him. Because Morgan was big and rough, he hurt her. He hurt so bad she couldn’t stop the tears that squeezed out, but somehow she was glad.

  “Why didn’t you warn me you were a virgin? I have to admit, I thought that bastard Brago had been here first.”

  “Is that why you like to fight with him?”

  “Naw, I just don’t like the way he looks.”

  “I do.”

  “Then why the hell aren’t you with him instead of me?”

  Judy hoped Johnny wouldn’t discover her deflowering, but he knew as soon as he saw her. She saw it in the flat brown opacity of his eyes; he could hide everything except his pain…

  All Johnny had to do was look at her, and she could hear her father’s mocking voice: “It’s in your blood…you’ll never be true to any man.”

  “Did you have fun at the dance?” she asked Johnny hopefully.

  “Until you left, I did.”

  “I had a great time.”

  “Before or after you left?”

  Like a turning kaleidoscope when the colors darken and spread out, little slivers of light flashed in the centers of Johnny’s eyes.

  “Who were you with?” His voice was filled with dread.

  “Morgan Todd. I think he likes me.”

  “How do you feel about him?”

  “Ohhh, I think I like him, too. He’s so strong and handsome. You’re handsome, too, Johnny, but he’s just so…”

  “Don’t fret, Judy. I can find my saddle without a stick. I don’t need a lead rope.”

  She hadn’t seen Johnny again except from a distance. A week later, when the riders rode into Fort Bowie for supplies, Morgan insulted Johnny, and they fought until both dropped from exhaustion. The next day Morgan issued a challenge, and Johnny rode away rather than meet him. In the barn the day he left, trying to stop him from riding away forever, Judy taunted him into kissing her. She hadn’t seen him for three years after that, until the week her father died. And then he’d only come back for revenge.

  Fighting back tears, Judy walked out of her room and down the hall to Tía’s. No answer. She would find Tía. Uncertain, though, she hesitated by the back door. What could she say? Give Johnny back. He belongs to me. Burning with shame, Judy bowed her head. Tía already knew that was a lie. Everybody probably knew. Johnny didn’t love her. He had built another spillway.

  Overwhelmed by her loss, she rushed back to her room and lay down on her bed. Johnny was lost to her. Morgan Todd was lost to her. Even Grant Foreman was lost to her. The only thing she was good at was driving away the ones who might love her.

  The pressure was building up in Judy’s head. She couldn’t think. From some deep reservoir, her mind tormented her with flashes of her life: Morgan’s face filled with revulsion; Grant’s eyes, looking like Johnny’s had that night…So much torment. Was there some hidden evil in her that attracted all this misery? Maybe Bill Burkhart had been right all along.

  Once, a long time ago, she had been peeling potatoes with Carmen—mindlessly peeling, not really paying attention. She’d cut into a potato and found a blackish-gray mold inside. She’d cut deeper and then deeper yet, hoping to save it, but the whole insides were gnarled and malignant. She had shuddered violently. On the outside the potato had looked like all the others, until she’d cut into it. Were people like that? Could their perfect outsides hide something gnarled and putrid inside?

  Mumbling some excuse to Carmen, strangely disoriented by so much hidden ugliness, she had slipped out of the kitchen. Was she like that? Was that what her father saw when he looked at her with hatred in his bright blue eyes?

  Judy tried not to be like her mother. She prayed to banish all her evil thoughts. Her mind was innocent, trusting…but her body…

  She loved Johnny so much. She had always loved him. “I want you…tonight.” His quiet words seeped into her bones, and cold spread out from her chest. He’d been trying to warn her, but she hadn’t listened. He didn’t love her anymore. Her mind refused to accept it.

  Judy curled into a ball. Then a sound drew her attention. How long had she lain there? Had she slept? Shakily, she uncurled and sat up. It didn’t matter if Johnny didn’t love her. She needed him.

  She stopped at the mirror and tried to peer through the darkness to see how she looked but quickly gave up and slipped out of her bedroom.

  Outside, the stars shone like diamonds in a velvet black sky. The cooling night air was fresh and dry on her face, but it was not powerful enough by itself to heal her heart. The night sounds were louder than usual. Judy listened until she realized that the soldiers had added their racket to the already noisy night; men were snoring.

  She hurried past the women’s quarters to Johnny’s cabin. No light showed in his window. She knocked but heard only the hollow echo of an empty room. The faint hope turned heavy inside her.
Her legs felt weighted with lead. The heaviness grew worse. She needed Johnny. Where could he be? In the old days he sometimes went up into the hayloft. At the thought of finding him her mood lifted, and she ran toward the barn.

  The barn was still lit. Someone must be there. One lantern hanging on the center support post cast a gold luminescence over the drowsy horses that stood in the stalls.

  “Johnny!” Softly she called out and waited, but only the animal sounds—the soft snorts and stampings, the creaking of a stall as a horse leaned against old wood—greeted her straining ears. Smells of dry hay and fresh manure, horses and leather, were all strangely comforting, but they made her miss Johnny even more poignantly. She could wait for him. It would be better that way. Waiting wouldn’t seem so bad in his cabin.

  Judy left the barn and ran across the compound.

  Dap Parker hated guard duty. When it was his turn he generally bribed someone to stand in for him, but tonight no one had been willing. Sunday nights were bad for that.

  A horse appeared down the slope; he heard it before he saw it. The moon wasn’t up yet, and it was near pitch black out there. He watched mostly with his ears, which had to strain to hear anything over the racket inside and outside the compound. Anyone who thought the plain was silent hadn’t spent much time on one. Between the stock and the horses and the cats and dogs, he barely had time to listen to crickets and other pests. Add to that the continual snoring of men.

  The rider was halfway up the slope before Dap picked him out. He waited a spell and then called out.

  “Might want to stop right there.” The horse halted. “Good thing you did that, ’cause you come any closer this scatter gun might blow a hole in you we could walk a dog through.”

  “It’s me. Morgan Todd. Open the gate!”

  “How’d you get through them Injuns?” Dap had known Morgan Todd when he was only a whiskey drummer.

  “Didn’t see any Injuns.”

  Dap shook his head as he climbed down the steps to comply. He swung the gate open just wide enough for Morgan to ride his horse through. “Well, if it ain’t old petty shadow. There must not be a blamed ’pache anywhere around, or he’da smelt your prime scalp and gone after it.”