by Maren Smith
Lydia remained standing just long enough to make it clear she would never cooperate willingly, and then she sat. “Let me guess,” she said frostily. “This isn’t going to end until I invite you up to my bedroom.”
He pretended to think about that now, too. “Is that where you think this should end?”
The look she gave him suggested she’d be happy if it ended with him floating facedown in an equine watering trough. She did not, however, say that out loud. “Isn’t that what you’re holding me hostage for?”
He arched both eyebrows. “Holding you hostage?”
She blushed, but didn’t back down. Annoyed as he was, he couldn’t help but find that somewhat endearing. Aggravating, but endearing.
“Be honest,” she dared. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? For me to put my buckskins and war paint on, and prance around the bedroom so you can feel more like a man—”
His eyebrows arched higher as his amusement faded.
“Yes, you heard me,” she sneered. “So you can feel more like a man when you bend me over the foot of it, slap my ass and pull my hair! I’m only half-savage, but I’ll do in a pinch, won’t I?”
He tipped his head, loving the fiery fury of her rant, although not so much what she was saying. He especially didn’t like that she was saying all of it with a small child on her lap, listening to every word.
She leapt up again, shifting her son to her hip and grabbing her skirts. Her color was high. He had no doubt at all, if he hadn’t hooked his arm around her waist right there, she’d have jumped to the ground. Mental images of twisted ankles and dropped children flooded his head, which only made him grab her tighter and which, in turn, made her lose her balance. She toppled. A well-timed pull on his part turned what could have been a nasty fall out of the wagon into a controlled landing upon his lap. She plopped down in a knot of twisted black and crimson skirts, an involuntary kick throwing one leg over the buckboard’s footrest. Paquah grabbed his mother. Eyes wide and breathing hard, she grabbed him back and Garrett held onto them both, strong legs sprawling to brace them wherever he could find security against the wooden seat. And he continued to hold them as tense seconds bled slowly by, each breath he took punctuated by the faintly floral scent of her hair—honeysuckle, he thought, turning his nose into her curls to better savor the smell—expecting any minute for her stiff little body to relax once she realized she wasn’t going to fall.
Except that her body never did. Nor did her trembling abate. If anything, it grew that much more pronounced until, through gritted teeth, Lydia said, “You may let me go now, Mister Drake.”
His whole body stirred. “Call me Garrett. After all, if you’re going to invite me to slap your ass and pull your hair, at the very least we should be on a first name basis.”
She looked away from him, a soft breeze tugging through the stray brown wisps of her hair. The short fly-away ends tickled at the shell of her ear and the slope of her neck. They played everywhere he most wanted to, brushing kisses to skin he ached to nuzzle. Ached to taste. Desperately… desperately ached…
Lydia turned back and their eyes met, the new spring green of hers locking on his just as cool and hard as… well, a prostitute’s, despite the heat of the hand she took from her son and slid down between hers and Garrett’s bodies. She touched him and his belly turned molten. His cock leapt and throbbed, glorifying in the caress of her fingers as she stroked the bulge of him right through his trousers.
“Twenty dollars,” she said, in tones that did not match her glare. They were as dulcet as an angel and as seductive as the devil himself. “For twenty dollars, I’ll let you take me to my room and do anything you want.”
Hearing those words come out of her mouth, watching as they fell from the rose-pink curl of her unpainted lips—it made the erotic fire lick up through his belly, burning into his chest, and down the molten ribbons growing hotter and tighter in the confines of his trousers.
“Anything I want,” he echoed as she molded her palm to him and rubbed. Up. Down. Her fingers tightened, squeezing with just the right amount of pressure.
“Anything,” she assured him. “Just take me home.”
Where she would immediately change her mind, he suspected. Still, what man wouldn’t rise hopeful to such a promise? He let her return to the seat beside him and took them both back to the Red Petticoat. Gabe was waiting for them, standing on the front steps as dark as any disapproving father waiting for an errant daughter to be escorted home.
“Afternoon,” Garrett greeted with a grin as he locked the brakes and tied off the reins. If his step had an extra bounce as he hopped down and circled around to lift first Paquah and then Lydia to the ground, it was a bounce so familiar to the Red Petticoat’s co-owner that the glowering Mexican never made a comment. He and Lydia exchanged looks.
Gabe’s frown said everything he didn’t as he took Paquah’s hand. “Nettie’s baking cakes. Let’s go see if she’ll give us a nibble.”
Garrett watched them go, offering a wave the one time the little boy looked back just before the swinging kitchen door swallowed them from view. After that, his attention was all on Lydia and the pendulum swing of her hips as she led the way past the bar where Jewel and Amy were running through a checklist inventory of their liquor stocks, and then up the stairs.
Anything he wanted, Garrett thought, mouth running dry at all the possibilities. It couldn’t have taken more than a minute, perhaps two, before they reached Lydia’s bedroom, but those were two of the most imaginative minutes of his life. He had no idea what he was going to do once he got her alone. Oh, he knew what he wanted to do. Twenty dollars wasn’t quite enough to do it all, and he could easily see himself going broke in the attempt. But this one time—this first time—giddy excitement rippled him like skipping stones hopping the surface of a cool pond.
He was just another customer and he knew it, he could tell by the way she avoided looking at him as she held the door to allow him entrance into the quiet of her very spartan bedroom. She didn’t have much of a feminine touch. As an ex-military officer, his knowledge of ladies and their boudoirs was as extensive as it was shameful. He’d been in more than his fair share of brothels, not to mention the homes of a widow or two (or twenty) and even the occasional wife. This was the first female bedroom he’d been in that didn’t look lived in.
Oh, she had everything that bedrooms were supposed to have—one bed (as neatly made as any hotel), armoire, dressing table with a mirror and stool. The chamber pot was tucked up under the bed beside a trundle mattress. A washing pitcher was nestled in its matching bowl on the night side table beside an oil lamp, but there were no pictures on the wall. No jewelry or face paints on the dresser. No hairpins or ribbons, or stockings hanging out to dry over half-cocked open drawers. In fact, the only thing he saw that suggested anyone lived here or made regular use of the room was a small box of toys under the far window and a hairbrush, resting on a clean white handkerchief on the dressing table.
“Tidy,” he said, looking around.
Shutting the door, Lydia came to him and held out her hand.
Garrett dug into his pocket, counted out two ten-dollar notes, fresh from the bank just that morning. “Anything I want,” he reminded before pressing them into her hand.
She took the notes. “If you hurt me enough to leave marks, I’ll ring the alarm and you’ll be made to leave.”
He blinked twice, those molten ribbons instantly losing some of their eroticism. “I have no intention of hurting you.”
“You’re not much of a man then, are you?”
His eyebrows arched all over again, but already she had turned her back. Dropping the money into her top dresser drawer, she headed for the bed.
“How do you want me? Face up, face down, hands and knees?” She bent, gathering her skirts in her hands and bringing them up her thighs. She started to kneel on the edge of the mattress, as if no longer interested in giving him a choice, but intent simply to get it over with.
“Stop.”
Lydia did. She waited, her head bowed as she stared down at the stretch of blanket before her. A painted doll ready to be posed for his pleasure.
Garrett studied her back. His smile was as automatic as it was disingenuous. Hurt her? His gut-reaction was to take her by the arm and walk her right back out of the Red Petticoat, perhaps even break the nose of the first customer he passed on his way out the door. But she wouldn’t go with him, and probably wouldn’t even recognize it as the half-baked rescue attempt it was.
In the sudden quiet of the room, his footsteps seemed abnormally loud as he crossed the floor, walking as far as the dresser because he was afraid of what he might do if he went to her. Hurt her? He’d never do that, but he might take her by the arms, pull her to him, bury his face in the honeysuckle scent of her hair and draw her out of her clothes far enough to fill his arms and his hands with the softness of her flesh.
That fence-post stiffness of her back said she likely wouldn’t allow that either. She was in her cactus mood, ready to prick at him with every needle she had so as to keep him from prickling her. He almost took his money back, feeling absolutely no hint of that earlier desire.
He almost took it back. But, gazing at her reflection in the mirror, what he found himself picking up instead was the hairbrush. Long handled, oval head, made of light brown oak and milky white horse-hair bristles. He turned it over in his hand, looking at it first and then the handkerchief.
The stiffness of his smile melted, becoming soft and gentle again. “Close your eyes.”
Suspicion made her even pricklier. “Why?” She turned and froze when she saw the brush in his hand.
Shifting the stool out away from the dresser, he crooked his finger, beckoning her closer. “Anything I want,” he purred.
She edged half a step toward the head of the bed and the bell pull that hung there from the ceiling. “I said no marks.”
“And I said I have no interest in hurting you.” He beckoned again, then sat down on the floral-cushioned top of the stool. He patted his waiting knee. “Come on. Right here. Sit.”
Her face was a mask, completely devoid of anything but mistrust. Her breasts, however, betrayed her true emotions. Her breaths had quickened, causing the creamy mounds to rise and fall much faster than normal. The fingers of her right hand, not quite hidden in the folds of her dress, tugged and twisted at the dark cloth.
One reluctant step at a time, she approached him. As she neared, her gaze shifted from him to the brush until, by the time she stood at his knee, every inch of her reminded him of a guilt-ridden schoolgirl about to get her drawers dusted. She wouldn’t look at him. Her face pale, she stared only at the hairbrush.
Turning her by her hips, Garrett drew her down to sit on his lap. “There’s a good girl,” he said soothingly, picking up the handkerchief and giving it a gentle shake. “Close your eyes.”
Her voice quavered. “No.”
“Anything I want.”
“I’ve changed my mind.” She was statue-stiff, but she wasn’t fighting him and she made no move to get up.
He folded the hanky diagonally and then over and over again, making as long a blindfold of it as could be managed. “Close your eyes,” he coaxed again, and then made the request obsolete by gently wrapping the handkerchief across her eyes. He tied the blindfold into place. “There. Did that hurt you?”
“Yes,” she argued automatically.
Garrett chuckled. “So sorry. I’ll try to be gentler.”
She held herself so tense and straight, her buttocks and thighs betraying her unease as he pulled the pins from her hair and let her long, chestnut waves tumble down over the blindfold knot. He smoothed them down her back, loving how soft it all felt running through his fingers. She shuddered, but maybe that had less to do with his touch and more to do with how aware she was that he’d just picked up the hairbrush. He shifted it around in his hand to let the bristles do their work.
“Relax.” He found only a few tangles before the bristles ceased to catch and instead glided from just below the blindfold knot to the very bottom of her waist-length curls. Her back never relaxed. Neither did her hands. They remained tight-fingered fists, pressed together in her lap. He stroked his fingers lightly over her scalp, and then brushed it all over again. Long past the time that it became tangle-free, he continued to caress her and eventually he felt the first small twitch of relaxation leach through the tightness of her thighs. Her bottom softened next, and then her neck. Her head bowed, though only by the barest degrees, followed at last by her shoulders.
“Good girl,” he praised her, the warmth of his tone and repeating softness of his touch rewarding her reluctant obedience. “Good girl.”
She didn’t reply, and he didn’t stop brushing. Not until her hair passed well beyond smooth and silky and began to frizz. He didn’t care. It was still beautiful, still soft. Still smelled ever so faintly and sweetly like fresh morning honeysuckle twining up a garden trellis.
A man could bury himself in a smell like that. In a woman like Lydia.
It really was too bad she didn’t like him.
Chapter Five
Lydia sat at the foot of her bed for almost an hour after Garrett left. The twenty dollars he’d paid her remained in the dresser, untouched. The money in the drawer might be out of sight, but it was far, far from out of her mind. The hairbrush and blindfold lay on the floor beside the stool, still positioned in the middle of the room where anyone—probably her—could trip over it. Her hair flowed down her back, curling wildly about her face and shoulder, free of all constraint.
He’d brushed her hair.
He could have done anything, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t even kissed her. Not really. Just before he’d left, he’d cupped the back of her neck to prevent her shrinking away as he pressed the warmth of his lips to the top of her forehead. As far as kisses went, that hardly seemed as if it should count.
She’d been horrible to him, and he’d brushed her hair.
He could have done anything.
But he hadn’t.
The trickle of a single tear spilled over her lashes and down her cheek. Lydia slapped it away, but others quickly rose up to take its place.
He could have done anything. Not that she’d wanted him to. God knows he should be the last person she’d want to have touching her. So why was this icepick blade of disappointment stabbing away inside her chest?
She drew a shaky breath, but halfway in it turned into a choke hard enough to jerk her shoulders. Gathering the excess of her skirts in both hands, she quickly smothered her face in the folds so no one would hear her weeping.
Chapter Six
Garrett stayed with Lydia as long as he could justify it. Not that he wouldn’t have loved to touch her hair all night long, but his pulse kept quickening into a tempo he could feel in the low, insistent throb building back up between his legs. He could feel it in his fingertips each time his skin accidentally brushed her ear or the side of her neck. And then there was nothing accidental about it. He couldn’t keep himself from touching her, although it wasn’t how he wanted to. The soft slope of her shoulders were smooth and pale, with the tiniest little brown dot right at the base of her neck so that each downward stroke of the brush forced it into the most beguiling game of peek-a-boo that made his mouth hunger for a taste. Just one kiss. Would it really have been so terrible to steal just one?
Then she sniffled and took a surreptitious swipe at her eyes with her thumb, then fixed her hands tight and unyielding in her lap again. She refused to look at him, but he could make out a partial profile of her lovely face in the mirror and what he saw was enough to—well, not kill his ardor, exactly, but it definitely banked the fires. She wasn’t crying yet, but he could glimpse the shine of tears gathering along her lashes. He twitched, the reflex to hold her leaping through the muscles of his back and down his arms. His fingers tingled with the urge, but would she allow it? He let his hands settle on her shoulders an
d she immediately leaned forward. Not far enough to break away, but still, plenty far enough.
Nope. Not this time, but she wasn’t as frosty as she had been in the wagon. That gave him hope that she might yet warm a little further.
A brisk knock at the door preceded an unfamiliar man’s voice calling out an all too familiar command. “Time’s up.”
Lydia instantly stood and stepped out from between his knees, out of his reach before he could reach into his pocket and offer her another incentive to let him stay. So, he didn’t. He stood up too and, leaning in long enough to press the gentlest of kisses upon her forehead, he then let himself out of the room and retired all the way downstairs to the bar. His body was still humming, his mind still racing. The last thing he wanted to do was go home; he ordered a drink instead and wasn’t exactly surprised when the lady bartender, Amy, sniffed at him and made herself scarce. The only person who jumped to obey (and honestly, “jumped” was probably the wrong word) was Gabe. Almost from the moment Garrett opened his mouth, the glowering Mexican emerged from the back office to stare him down. Shaking his head, Garrett laughed at them both.
“Beer,” he said again, and tapped the bar. “Please.”
He half expected the brooding co-owner to throw him out. Instead, gathering every ounce of professionalism he could muster, Gabe stepped behind the bar.
“How’s Chin?” he asked pointedly.
“Just fine,” Garret replied. “You’re welcome to come out anytime and see for yourself.”
“Be easier on us if you brought her into town once in a while.”
“Not my decision,” Garrett told him. “Doesn’t make her any less fine, though.”
Frowning, Gabe glared at him for a long moment in tight-jawed silence. Then, picking up a clean mug, he filled it to the brim and set it in front of Garrett. “One beer. Then I want you to leave.”