by Maren Smith
“A little,” Chin confessed. It came out sounding every bit as irritated as she felt. Even knowing such acidic temperament would not help the situation, she simply did not have it in her to sweeten her tone. Head leaning against the bars of the headrail, she stared up at the ceiling again, but almost immediately she found herself eyeing the strap instead. That didn’t help sweeten her any, either.
“I wouldn’t have to tie you if I could trust you to stay put,” Cullen said, a little irritated now himself.
He was right, too. Knowing that sweetened her even less.
She twisted her good arm, needing to feel the bite of the rope squeezing her wrist before she could trust herself to be civil. “Don’t worry. It’s hardly my first time tied to a bed.”
It was, however, the cheapest. Normally, she’d have charged thirty dollars for this. At least she wasn’t ass up with a pillow propped under her hips; that was forty dollars, minimum. Fifty if he had a big cock. She avoided glaring at Cullen. Big as he was everywhere else, the gwailo was definitely a fifty.
Now, not only did she need to pee, but she couldn’t stop thinking about how much starting-over money she’d lost to the California mud.
She made the rope bite harder.
Cullen noticed. “If I untie you, are you going to behave yourself?”
“Doubtful.”
They both sighed.
Setting the plate on the bedside table, Cullen swiveled on his hip to confront her. He offered the glass first, bringing it to her lips. “Drink,” he said, tipping it only a little until he was sure she would comply.
The water was fresh, but lukewarm. She drank, missing the Red Petticoat’s ice cellar but grateful for the ease the moisture gave her parched throat. She honestly hadn’t realized how dry she was until then. Her head hurt a little too. Being mad often gave her a headache, but everything else already hurt, so why not her head?
After only a few swallows, he lowered the glass. “More?”
“Yes,” she whispered, hating herself for being so needy with a man who most likely was going to feed her and then beat her.
He tipped the glass again. This time, Chin did her best to drink it all. He only let her have a few swallows more, however, before he took the glass away. “You look flushed. Hot?”
Sulking because he’d stolen her water, she lay her head against the bars again. “A little.”
Standing, Cullen removed the blanket, though he was careful to leave the sheet tucked in modestly around her hips. Was it a trick of her imagination, or did his gaze really linger overlong on her breasts. She looked down at herself. Apart from the sheet covering her from the waist down, all she had on was a man’s old shirt. Much too big for her small frame, she was swimming in the off-white fabric. By the time she looked up again, his attention was fixed on the scrambled eggs he was prodding back from the edges of the plate.
“Hungry?” he gruffly asked. His voice had dipped, sounding almost angry, except that wasn’t anger she could see putting a blush on his weathered cheeks.
“You look flushed,” she noted, an unexpected thought beginning to snake its way through her. “Why, Mr. Drake, are you hot?”
He prodded the eggs into a higher mound, then dropped the fork altogether. It clattered loudly against the plate and nearly bounced off the side. “You hungry or not?”
Her eyes narrowed on the uncompromising lines of his frowning mouth and eyes. That he had been looking, she was sure of now and that meant she had an advantage if she chose to make good use of it. For a woman who made her living off men who liked looking at her body, she suddenly found herself strangely reluctant to manipulate him that way. Besides, where could she go? Like this—she’d wager, right back upon his knee. Either face down or, worse…
Chin abruptly shut that thought down before she had to relive how it had felt to have him just sit there while she raged at him with her fists. Or when he pulled her onto his lap, into the unexpected comfort of his embrace when comfort and gentleness had been the absolute last things she’d wanted to feel from anyone, much less this man.
“Try some. It’s not my cooking, so you can actually eat it.” He scooped a fluffy forkful of egg and extended it.
Were she not already leaning against the bedrail, she’d have recoiled. “I can feed myself.”
“Not tied up, you can’t.”
“Untie me,” she ordered.
“You going to behave?” he countered again.
That they both knew she wouldn’t was as easily read in her frown as it was in his arched eyebrow. The forkful of egg rose to her mouth level.
“And the train goes into the mountain tunnel,” he said with a complete lack of humor. “Chugga-chugga, choo choo.”
Chin startled. “What?” she would have asked, but the minute she opened her mouth he stuffed the food into her. She (choo?) chewed, growing increasingly disgruntled the longer it took to swallow. “Gwailo,” she muttered.
Cullen refilled the fork, cracking the smallest of smiles which he tried to stifle behind another attempt to clear his throat.
“How did you get so big eating nothing but eggs, biscuits and beans?” she grumbled.
“Gwailo come from fine breeding stock.” He offered the next bite. “Eat.”
She did, but unlike the water, the egg wasn’t settling in her stomach well. She turned her face away when he tried to feed her another. “I need the necessary.”
“You just want me to untie you.” He held the fork steady. “Open, or does the train have to go back into the tunnel?”
She scowled. “In about three seconds, you’ll find out whether I’m lying or not.”
Cullen held her unwavering stare for five before apparently deciding he really didn’t want to have to change the bed. He set the plate on the bedside table. “Try anything and you’ll get the strap tonight, hurt or not.”
Since she already knew she’d be getting it eventually anyway, that wasn’t much of a threat. Physically, however, she wasn’t well enough to try another escape. She lay still, watching as he worked the knots loose and pulled the ropes free from both her and the bed.
“I mean it,” he warned one last time as she shifted around far enough to slide her legs over the edge of the mattress. The pain was almost more than she could bear. There was simply no way she could manage the ladder, much less another drop out the second story window, as she’d done that morning. And worse, Cullen didn’t leave. He only walked as far as the hatch before turning his back. If that was all the privacy he intended to give her, it was as mortifying as bending her knee was painful.
“I promise to behave,” she said through gritted teeth. Her hand shook as she held the sheet around her middle. She hugged the sheet tighter, forcing her hand to still against her own body. She didn’t know why she was shaking like that. She wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t that angry, either. Nor was she nervous or even scared. She wasn’t naked. Far from it, but though the hem of the nightshirt came down to her thighs, beneath that her legs were bare. With Cullen in the room, it made her a little uncomfortable to be so exposed, but a little nudity had never left her this shaken before.
Few customers at the Red Petticoat cared whether she shucked down to less than corset and undershift. Only a handful ever bothered to wait for her to get her bloomers down, much less off. Fewer still paid for the privilege of seeing her entirely nude, but upon occasion she had done it and stripped off all. Sometimes even with all her lights burning bright. After that first time, she’d done it without hardly batting an eye. It was a job. It was what she’d had to do, but she wasn’t working now and Cullen wasn’t paying.
He wasn’t even looking at her. She stared at his back, at his hands braced upon his hips and his strong legs planted somewhat apart. She didn’t for a second believe he’d do anything more than just stand there while she did the necessary, but just the thought of doing it where he could listen while she emptied her bladder… She didn’t think she could.
He cocked an ear. “Need
help?”
“No!” she snapped, more horrified than upset. That he should be within hearing range at all was bad enough, but she’d sooner let Quan Ji take her, than to have Cullen hold her over the chamber pot.
“Get to it, then,” he said gruffly, squaring his stance. “The longer you take, the more convinced I might get that what you’re really looking for is something to whack me over the head.”
“Don’t tempt me.” She threw the sheet back only to have one corner snag her toe, sending shocks of heat and pain stabbing up through her bad ankle. Chin grabbed her leg, sucking air until the spasm had passed and she could move again without screaming. Wincing, she bent and gently uncovered both legs. “Oh,” she groaned.
“What?” Cullen asked.
Shaking her head, Chin said the only thing she could. “Nothing.”
It was anything but nothing. Her ankle was twice its normal size and almost as darkly bruised as her knee, which was the size of a small melon. Both refused to bend and neither would take her weight.
Softer, perhaps even sympathetically, he asked, “Need help?”
“I’m fine.” She bit the inside of her cheek to keep her voice from quavering, and then bit it hard to keep from making any more noise at all.
Unable to stand because of her ankle and unable to kneel because of her knee, Chin wedged herself between the bed and the small table at its side. She used her arms to hold herself up as best she could. She couldn’t pee that way. She couldn’t even fish the chamber pot out from under the bed, and after less than a minute of trying, she was on her butt on the floor, legs sprawled straight out because that hurt so much less than trying to bend them.
Flush with humiliation, she shot a glare at Cullen’s back. His head was bowed. His shoulders had tensed, but he hadn’t moved. Fighting to keep her breathing soft and steady and completely void of the groans, huffs and grunts that kept climbing up the back of her throat, Chin fished the necessary out from under the bed.
Now what? She couldn’t sit on it this way, fanny over the hole and uncooperative legs splayed out like a turkey wishbone. Her arms simply didn’t have the strength and squatting would be impossible. No matter how much it hurt, she had to kneel; there was simply no other way. And if she didn’t figure it out soon, she was going to piss herself right here.
She bent, hands braced against the floor as she struggled to bend the better of her two legs. Her breathing turned ragged and she buried her face in her hands to muffle the sound, but the tiniest whimper still escaped as she dragged her good knee under her. No matter how she balanced, she couldn’t find any way to hold her foot that did not send radiating agony shooting through her leg. As much as it hurt, that was nothing compared to the pain of sliding her other leg into position. A knee was just a knee… until it no longer functioned. The slightest movement was excruciating. She couldn’t bend it, but she couldn’t hold herself up with it stretched out before her either. Trying to shift it around to her side or even behind her was a lesson in agony that left her shaking, sweating, and—try though she did to stay silent—panting.
“I’m coming back,” Cullen said grimly.
“No. N-No.” Forehead pressed to the hard floorboards, eyes squeezed shut, Chin felt for the chamber pot. Her searching fingertips bumped the cool side and instead of bringing it closer, pushed it out of reach. Damn it.
It hurt so bad. She reached again, each straining inch she managed accompanied by such a pulse of pain that she barely heard him come up beside her. He pushed the chamber pot back within her reach.
“Don’t,” she groaned, but he got down on the floor between her and the bed, carefully maneuvering his much larger body and longer legs around her without touching either of hers. “Please… don’t.”
He hooked his arm around her waist anyway. When he lifted, she cracked her head against his shoulder, shouting out a hoarse cough of pain that brought Garrett back to the ladder.
“Everything’s all right,” Cullen called out, stopping him before he ascended more than that first rung. “Stay out.”
“Let me go,” Chin begged. Her body shook, sweat beading up on her forehead and tickling down the small of her back. “Please.”
He didn’t. Braced on his knees, he swept the hem of her nightshirt out of the way and positioned her over the pot.
“I can’t,” she wept.
“Yes, you can.” His arm tight around her waist, he held her in place as he caressed the tangles of her long hair back from her hot face. “It’s all right,” he said, easing not just the pain but the overwhelming embarrassment. “You can hold me while I piss tomorrow.”
Chin couldn’t help it. She laughed. Eventually, she also peed, and then she wept.
Chapter Eight
Cullen put his hand on Chin’s forehead, but the fever that had begun to sink in around sunset was now raging hotter than hell. Her body was wracked with pain and sweat. When he’d unwrapped her hand to check the puncture wounds, about half were oozing pus. So was her knee. A sheen of sweat now glistened her skin and she was shaking, teeth-chattering as only someone in the grips of an icy fever could be.
“I could ride out and get Doc Norwood,” Garrett said the third time Cullen descended the loft, but they both knew better.
“No,” Cullen said, his tone flat and not open for further argument. Until the rain stopped and the water receded, nobody would be crossing that wash, and he wasn’t any more willing to lose a brother than he was a perfect stranger.
Rifling the kitchen shelves, Cullen gathered anything that might help. Medicine cost money; he didn’t have much of either, so he laced a cup of willow-bark tea with honey and laudanum and, as often as he could get her to swallow it, poured it down Chin’s throat. Apart from that, all he had was a rather dubious bottle that he’d bought off a traveling salesman who had stopped in Culpepper Cove last spring to sell his wares. When the good Doc boxed his ears for a charlatan and sent him packing off again, part of Cullen suspected Norwood was right and what he held in his hand now was nothing more than snake oil. On the other hand, Culpepper Cove wasn’t quite big enough for two town doctors; so maybe Doc Norwood simply hadn’t wanted to share his hard-won customers. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosy and he’d popped the stopper to sniff the contents. His nose told him what medicine there might be in that little glass bottle was heavily laced with whiskey, but by midnight when Chin’s fever crested and the soft tan of her skin flushed a bright and worrisome red, Cullen grew just worried enough to pour some of that into her too.
“Get some sleep,” he told Garrett. “No sense in both of us staying awake.”
“Want me to keep watch downstairs?” Garrett asked, his gaze following Cullen through the kitchen as he gathered fresh cloths for bandages and another bucket of clean water.
Cullen shook his head. “I’ve got windows. I can hold both vigils. We won’t be worth our spit if neither of us is sleeping.”
Seeming reluctant to leave, Garrett followed as far as the ladder. He held what he could while Cullen climbed up. As he passed the bucket and medicine, he said, “Wake me if you need me.”
Nodding, Cullen closed the hatch.
Chin had cast off the blankets again. She lay on her back, her black eyes open, glazed with pain and fever. He had no idea if she truly knew he was in the room with her. She barely blinked when he lit the bedside lamp; she gasped, her back arching when he accidentally jostled the mattress, but after a few seconds, her tense body eased back down again. At least she wasn’t crying anymore. She wasn’t talking anymore either, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Starting perhaps an hour ago, most of what she’d said had been in her own language. What bits and pieces she’d muttered in English, though, were anything but soothing. Not just because of what she said, but because she seemed never to know him. Each time their eyes met, it was like the first time all over again. She was still drowning, he knew, it just wasn’t in water.
“Gwailo,” she’d inevitably whisper.
> He just agreed with her. “Yeah, I know.”
“Don’t touch me.”
But he did anyway. Despite the dangers of it, he wished he had laudanum enough to knock her out completely. Not just because she needed the rest, but because it wasn’t her agony alone whenever she clawed her way onto her side and tried to drag herself away. He didn’t want to have to tie her to the bed again, but he couldn’t bear to watch as that mask of utter agony swept over her again and again each time she forgot her wounds only to move that blasted knee.
“I know,” he said as he bathed the sweat and tears from her face, and that was just as gut-wrenching. Whenever he did so, it was as if his gentle touch were the first she’d ever known. She always fought it at first, but by the end, she always turned her cheek into the soft, cool comfort of his washrag with that same look of wonder and relief shining in the tears of her eyes. But inevitably, he would have to take the cool cloth away. In the few seconds it took him to rinse away the sweat and refill the fibers with fresh, clean water, she always forgot him again and the hostilities would begin anew.
“Don’t touch me.”
He was coming to hate those words. He was coming to hate the mistrust he read in eyes that would have looked so much more beautiful filled with softness, warmth and welcome. He was coming to hate—sight unseen, name unknown—whoever had done whatever had been done to make her this way.
According to his pocket watch, shortly before 2:00 a.m. the rain stopped. For a brief time, he held hope that when morning came he might be able to ride out to the wash and see if a crossing could be found. Within the hour, however, the storm returned and with a vengeance. Rolling booms of thunder like cannon fire shook the house and Chin’s delusions grew worse. Her sweat drenched the bed and now, when he leaned over her, constantly bathing whatever limbs of her he could catch and hold, instead of “Don’t touch me” what she said was worse.
“Work,” she croaked. “Please, I can dance. I can still dance.”