Painted by the Sun

by Elizabeth Grayson

  Breathing hard, he looked down at them, then with a sweep of his arm cleared the desktop. Pens and pencils and papers flew in all directions. Inkpots fell and overturned, bleeding thick, black stains into the rug. His humidor bounced across along the carpet, spewing cigars.

  Bellowing with rage, he swiped the shelves of his bookcase clean. He trampled the pages of the tumbled law books beneath his boots and attacked the filing cabinet in the corner. He grabbed metal-bound corners and hauled the oaken case toward him, straining against its bulk. One by one the drawers tipped opened drunkenly and cascaded folders onto the floor. The weight of the cabinet shifted unexpectedly, and he stepped back, letting it fall. The crash resounded through the room, through the building like a bomb blast.

  Panting with perverted pleasure, Cam grabbed up one of the leather wing chairs by its arms.

  "Cam!" Shea gasped from the doorway.

  He hadn't heard her coming, hadn't heard her open the door. He hadn't heard anything but the fury roaring in his head and the rasp of his own breathing.

  "Get out!" he boomed at her.

  Then with a grunt of effort hoisted the chair above his head and heaved it across the room.

  "My God, Cam!" she cried.

  He could see the shock in her face, the condemnation. "I told you to get out of here!"

  She came toward him instead.

  He snatched up one of the law books and shied it in her direction. When she didn't stop, he threw another.

  He didn't want her here, God damn it. He couldn't bear anyone seeing him like this, mad and frightened, and falling apart.

  He took a step backward. "Leave me alone."

  His voice shook as he spoke. His hands shook. A thick tarry ooze of dread and self-loathing bubbled hot in his chest.

  "I mean it. Go away!"

  Her footsteps never wavered.

  He came up hard against his desk and turned his back on her. He closed his eyes and stood there with his heart surging inside him and his muscles quivering. Sweat slid down his throat, soaked into his clothes. He stunk of desperation and despair.

  Why wouldn't she go?

  Shea insinuated herself on him, pressed up close against his back instead. His nerves rippled with the contact. Her energy crept along the surface of his skin.

  She wrapped her arms around his chest.

  Just this semblance of restraint when he was so raw and desperate made him thrash, made him moan. He grabbed her wrists and did his best to disentangle her.

  "Shea." He meant the word to be a warning, an admonition. It sounded like a plea.

  She clung to him more tightly.

  "God damn it, Shea!"

  "Tell me what's wrong," she whispered.

  He couldn't tell her anything.

  "It's all right, Cam," she whispered, splaying her hands against his chest. "Let me help with this."

  He closed his eyes. He shook his head. "You can't."

  "Please."

  She pressed her face into his spine. Her breath condensed against his skin.

  His heart beat harder. He could feel the sweet, damp suppleness of her body through their clothes.

  "Let me take care of you," she urged him.

  Cam didn't want her to take care of him. He didn't want her seducing him, either with her body or with her promises of help. He wanted her to destroy him. He wanted her to help him destroy himself.

  He started to tremble.

  "Oh, Cam," she whispered and her hands began to move on him. She stroked across his chest, along his ribs. She meant the touch to be gentle, soothing, but with his every nerve drawn taut, the stroke of her hands was like flint on steel—provocative, inflaming.

  His nipples constricted. Heat flooded into his groin with a force and suddenness that made his head swim. His manhood engorged, straining against the front of his trousers. With all of his black soul he longed to turn to her, use her to obliterate his pain for a little while. But even he couldn't be that much of a bastard.

  She seemed to sense his weakness. Her hands moved lower, down along his belly, past his navel, easing toward his...

  Raw and trembling, he turned to her and dragged her against him. He lowered his head, kissing her aggressively, invasively, losing himself in the sheer raw pleasure of her mouth.

  Shea kissed him back. Clasping his face in her hands, she drew him closer and thrust her tongue into his mouth.

  "Take me," she whispered, and he tasted as much as heard the words. "I need to be with you!"

  Sheer carnality tore through him. A flush of hot, heady lust seared the surface of his skin. Shaking like a man in the throes of fever, he seized her, bent her back across his desktop, and followed her down. He ground his hips into the V of her legs, caught in a frenzy so strong he burned with the joy and pain and insanity of it.

  Shea lifted her hips against him, her tempo rhythmic, erotic. Incontrovertible provocation.

  He moaned and retreated from her only far enough to ruck up her skirts and pull open the slit between the legs of her underdrawers. He tore at the buttons along his fly.

  She spread her legs and offered herself, inviting him to take her. He groaned and thrust into her. She took all of him, encompassing him, holding him close and tightly sheathed. His every cell quivered in response. Every fiber of who he was wallowed in the sensation of being one with her.

  Then slowly he bowed his back, all but withdrawing. She gasped and shivered with the loss, before he returned, plunging deeper.

  The two of them mated there on his desk like pagans on the altar of some heathen god. Mated with her bodice still buttoned to her chin and her hat still pinned in place. Mated with his boot heels grinding into the rug and his watch chain rattling against her belly.

  His breathing roared in his chest; his heartbeat thundered. He thrust and thrust and thrust, the pleasure outstripping the pain he'd sought, the joy of being one with her overwhelming his desolation.

  She cried out his name as her climax took her. He felt her body tighten around him as the paroxysms began, and gloried in the madness of her release. Just when he would have pulled away to deny himself, she tangled her hands in his clothes and dragged him closer, willing him to follow her over the edge. He fought the tide, the throbbing, twisting ache at the base of his shaft, the tight pulse of anticipation.

  "Please," she whispered. "Please."

  And he was lost.

  The world went white around him. Silence like the hush after a thunderclap resounded in his head. Then every nerve flickered back to life, caught fire, exploded in a flare of sensation so intense that when the peak upon peak of pleasure flickered out, there was nothing left but darkness, oblivion.

  When Cam came to himself again, he had absolutely no idea how long they'd been sprawled across his desktop. Shea was flattened beneath him, but somehow she didn't seem to mind. She had one foot still notched behind his knee and was stroking his hair with a tenderness that made his throat burn.

  He pushed up and off her, separating them with a roughness that denied all they'd just done and been to each other. He hated himself all the more for finding solace in her.

  As he attempted to restore some order to his clothes, Shea braced up on her elbows and looked at him. "Cam?"

  Her skirts lay crushed against her thighs in a most provocative manner. Feeling himself beginning to stir again, Cam hastily turned away from her.

  "Cam," she insisted.

  He jammed his shirttail into his trousers. "What?"

  She drew a breath and let it out in a flickering sigh. "Will you hold me?"

  It was the single thing he couldn't deny her.

  He helped her down off the desk and smoothed her rumpled skirts. Then, settling into the remaining armchair, he pulled her down onto his lap. She nestled like a child, tucking her head beneath his chin and drawing her knees up close to her body.

  The feather on her hat tickled the turning of his jaw. The soft lavender scent of her, mixed subtly with the musk of their lovemaking,
was both scandalous and intoxicating.

  It forced him to own up to the way he'd just used her—one more thing to be ashamed of in the tally he was keeping. He sucked in his breath and began to apologize.

  "Oh, God, Shea. I'm so sorry. I should never have—"

  "Have what, Cam?" she asked quietly. "Are you apologizing for giving me pleasure?"

  Heat crept up Cameron's throat. "I'm apologizing for—for ravishing you. For taking you like—"

  "Like a man in need?" He felt her turn and look at him. "I meant what I said. I came to help."

  He sighed and shook his head. "You can't help with this," he insisted. "This is long past helping."

  Shea sat up and fixed him with her most probing stare. "Tell me what was in that note. Let me be the judge this once."

  Cam fished the scrap of paper from the pocket of his jacket.

  Shea turned it toward the window where the last golden light of the day had begun to dim. She squinted at the words and then looked up at him. "Who is Charlie Gilbert?"

  He was well beyond being able to lie to her, but he needed to put some space between them before he told her the truth. He eased her to her feet and relinquished the chair to her.

  He made his way through the carnage to the far side of the desk, then turned to face her. "Charlie Gilbert rode with 'Bloody' Bill Anderson during the war," Cam told her, sickened by the memory. "He was a guerrilla, a marauder. He trampled fields and set fire to barns and ran off animals. He stood idle while men were rousted from their beds and hanged in their night-clothes. He watched women being terrorized and did nothing to save them." He paused for breath, his self-loathing like a miasma exhaled into the air around him.

  "That was you, wasn't it, Cam," she said quietly. "You're Charlie Gilbert."

  Bile rose in his throat. He inclined his head. "That's how Wes Seaver knew me—as Charlie Gilbert. At least until today."

  "Seaver was in the courtroom today, wasn't he?"

  He couldn't answer outright; he was too ashamed to even nod. He should have been able to do something, to call to the bailiff, to have Seaver arrested. Instead he had cowered in fear.

  "Did Seaver ride with the guerrillas, too?" she asked him.

  "Lots of the men who rode with the Confederate bushwhackers in Missouri and Kansas became outlaws after the war—the Jameses and the Daltons and the Seavers. Anderson and Quantrill schooled us all in lawlessness."

  His own mastery of the guerrillas' lessons gave proof to the paucity of his conscience, the bleakness of his soul—no matter what reasons he'd had for joining them.

  "Seaver sent that note to let me know he recognized me," he went on. "To put me on notice that he means to expose me."

  "But what is there to expose?" Shea asked. "The war's been over for a decade. Considering your reputation here in Denver, how could this hurt you?"

  "Do you have any idea who the guerrillas were? Do you know what they did during the war? They were beasts, monsters, anathema to people of conscience on both sides of the conflict who had so much as a shred of decency."

  "You couldn't have been part of that."

  He was touched by her conviction, "Oh, but I was. I raided and burned with Anderson, who was mad with viciousness, and men like Wes Seaver, who developed an appetite for pillaging and killing. And after the attacks on Lawrence, Kansas, and Centralia—"

  "Centralia?" Shea's head came up. "Lily was burned the day the guerrillas attacked Centralia, wasn't she?"

  He nodded, determined not to spare himself. "So now you know the worst."

  He saw accusation replace the shock in Shea's eyes, and knew her censure was nothing compared to what his sister's would be when she learned the truth.

  "Lily doesn't know I rode with Anderson. She doesn't know how I came to be in Centralia the day she was burned."

  While most of Anderson's troops were down at the station executing the unarmed Yankee soldiers they'd found on the train, Cameron had done his best to reach his mother and sister.

  "And what will Seaver expect to ensure his silence?" she wanted to know.

  Trust Shea to understand what was at stake. "He hasn't asked for anything," he hedged.

  "I think you know very well what he wants."

  She was going to force him to admit what Seaver was after. "He wants his brother's freedom."

  "Will you give it to him?"

  Cam stared past her and shrugged. "Jake Seaver's freedom isn't up to me."

  "Who is it up to, then?"

  "It's up to the jury and to the law."

  "But you're the law," she insisted.

  "Yes."

  Shea looked into his face, daring him to tell her he would stand against Seaver and chance whatever came.

  He shifted beneath the intensity of her gaze. After the intimacies they'd shared, he thought she deserved an answer. He thought she deserved the truth. "I don't know what I'll do."

  Cam saw her eyes darken. He'd been bound to disappoint her in any case, just as he was bound to break Lily's heart. What he'd done all those years ago ensured that.

  Shea rose and came toward him. "I know the man you are, Cam," she said softly standing before him in the dying daylight. "You won't give in to him."

  "You don't know anything."

  She took his hand in both of hers, into those small, dexterous hands, into those hands that had wreaked sweet havoc on his body not half an hour before. "I don't know what happened in the war, or why you rode with men like Seaver. What I know is that you've never spared yourself when it comes to doing what's right, what's honorable."

  "I'm not the only one who'll suffer if this comes out. There's Lily and Rand." A sound of distress vibrated deep in his throat. "Especially Lily."

  Shea's voice came softer; her hands tightened on his. "What would she have you do if you gave her the choice?"

  Cam didn't know the answer.

  "I've spent my life protecting her." He could hear the defeat in his voice, feel it caught like a burr at the back of his throat. "I can't betray her. I can't let her know I rode with the men who nearly destroyed her."

  "Lily's stronger than you think."

  "I can't risk hurting her any more than she's been hurt already."

  She touched his face, traced her fingertips down his cheekbone, along the edge of his mustache to the turning of his jaw. "You're a stronger and wiser and better man than you know, Cameron Gallimore," she told him.

  He stepped away from her, not willing to let her lie to him. All he wanted was for her to go.

  "Aren't you supposed to be meeting Ty at the jail-house?" he asked pointedly.

  Shea sighed as if she saw what he was doing. "I thought I might see Rand today. He hasn't been around much since Ty's father was arrested."

  Cam heard the wistfulness in her voice, the yearning of a mother for her son. But that was something else he couldn't bear to think about tonight.

  "Rand's been riding back to the farm with Emmet while I've been preparing for this trial." He looked around him at the inch-deep carpet of scattered files, the tumbled lawbooks, the broken and up-ended furniture. "Which I suppose is a very good thing, since it's going to take me half the night to put this back together."

  She cupped his cheek for an instant, then turned and wended her way through the chaos to the door.

  He stopped her as she reached for the knob. "Shea, I—" He hesitated, not sure what he wanted to say to her.

  She gave him a slow nod and a tender smile. "I know," she murmured, and closed the door behind her.

  * * *

  Cam was halfway down the alley between his office and the livery stable when someone grabbed him from behind and jabbed a pistol into his back. A silky soft voice purred in the darkness.

  "Well, if it ain't my old friend Charlie Gilbert. Or maybe I should call you Judge Cameron Gallimore, like everyone else?"

  "What is it you want, Seaver?" Cam asked, though he knew very well what it was.

  "You get my note, Charlie?" Seaver taunt
ed him.

  "Your note?"

  "The one I had delivered to you after court let out," Seaver prompted.

  "Yes, I got it."

  "And what'd you think?"

  Cam gave a snort of disgust. "I think your handwriting is illegible."

  Seaver chuckled under his breath and rammed the pistol even harder against Cam's spine. "You ain't changed a lick, Charlie, since I knew you in the war. You still think you're smarter than me—and maybe you are. But being smarter don't necessarily give you the upper hand."

  "Why don't you just tell me what you want?" Cam was tired down to his bones. He just wanted Seaver to either say the words outright or kill him and get it over with.

  "You know what I want. I want you to see this trial goes my brother's way."

  Cam gave his head a quick, little shake. "That's not up to me, Seaver. Juries decide which men are guilty."

  Seaver cocked his gun. "You're a lawyer, God damn it, Charlie. You know how to bulldog a jury. Or if those bastards find Jake guilty, you sentence him light. You sentence him to the time he's served. I hear judges can do that."

  "I can't let him off, Seaver. The law prescribes the punishment—"

  "I don't give a damn what the law prescribes. You find a way to get Jake off or I'll have an an-nony-mous word with the men who write for the newspapers here in Denver. I'll tell 'em how you rode with 'Bloody' Bill and old Quantrill. How you kept close company with the James brothers and the Daltons." Cam could almost hear Seaver grin. "And me. It won't take much checking for them to find out it's true."

  "This town'll lynch your brother if I let him off." Cam spoke the truth before he thought.

  Seaver snapped Cam's head back and pressed the pistol to the base of his skull. The barrel was startlingly cold against his skin; the chill of it jolted down his back.

  "If Jake dies," Seaver hissed, "I'm holdin' you responsible."

  Cam took a long, slow breath and let it out. "You do what you need to, Seaver. But even if I don't sentence Jake to hang, sooner or later someone will."

  "To hell with you, Charlie!" Seaver shouted. He gave Cam a hard little shove and cracked him with his pistol.

  Cam's vision flared white, then blue. The next thing he knew he was on his hands and knees in the slush and the mud. He could hear Seaver's footsteps retreating down the alley, hear him mount his horse over somewhere toward Lawrence Street.