Before Ginny could speak or move he had pulled her against him and his mouth came down over hers in a hard, angry kiss that took her breath away. There was no gentleness in him, no tenderness. His arms held her pinned against the length of his body, and he kissed her savagely and thoroughly, his tongue raping her mouth until she felt she would swoon, felt her legs become weak, felt a strange, feverish pounding in her temples that seemed to spread through her whole body and engulf her.
Without knowing why, or what she was doing, her arms lifted, went around his neck and clung. She felt his hand move slowly and caressingly up her back, then tug impatiently at her hair, loosening it from its tidy, coiled braids. She felt her hair tumble down over her shoulders, and his mouth made a burning trail from her parted lips to her earlobe.
“Ginny—Ginny—” the words sounded like a groan, and a shiver of apprehension went through her as she felt his fingers start to unbutton the thin silk shirt she had worn with her riding skirt.
He mustn’t—she mustn’t let him—but his mouth found the hollow at the base of her throat and she made a little, helpless sound; feeling the shirt open under his hands, his fingers burn against her breast.
He held her close against him, one arm supporting her weak, trembling body, and when she would have protested against the liberties he was taking, his lips covered her open mouth, taking possession of it, stifling the words she tried to utter.
Ginny’s head fell back and she began to whimper in the back of her throat. She felt drained of thought and will.
Suddenly, he had bent his head, he was kissing her breasts, his tongue tracing light, teasing patterns over their taut, sensitive peaks.
She struggled then, but only half-heartedly; both his arms imprisoned her again, she closed her eyes and let him have his way, feeling the desire to struggle or even to protest slipping away from her to be replaced by something else—something that grew like a tight, hard knot inside her belly, spreading a burning flush over her whole body.
He must have sensed her sudden, abject surrender. From somewhere far away she heard him laugh softly, and then, catching her roughly against him, he was kissing her again, his hands slipped under her shirt to caress the bare skin of her back.
This time Ginny arched up against him, half-sobbing, not yet understanding the strange new emotions that he had awakened in her body. She was all too conscious of the pressure of his long, hard-muscled legs against hers, of the feel of his shirt against her bare, tingling breasts, the crisp feel of his hair under her clutching fingers.
Somewhere in the recesses of her mind was the thought: So this is how it feels—like a fever, like a coiled snake in the belly, growing, spreading heat like honey in her loins, rendering her incapable of everything but feeling, needing, and yet not wholly understanding what it was she needed from him.
It was only—as she was to realize later—only the sudden intrusion of a distant shout, from somewhere far below them, that stopped whatever was building up to a climax between them.
Ginny could feel the instant stiffening of his body against hers, the stilling of all motion, as if they hung suspended in space, and then she was free, standing on her own trembling feet as his hands fell away from her and he moved backwards.
“Oh Christ!” Steve said disgustedly as the same voice shouted again—
“Hola up there! Can you hear me, Steve?”
Ginny sank to her knees, her breath still catching in her throat, hands going up to touch her burning, flushed cheeks.
“It’s only Paco,” he said unnecessarily, and then, his voice tight with frustration, “tactful, isn’t he?”
He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled back.
“We’re coming down, hold your horses!”
Already, Ginny was beginning to fumble with the buttons on her shirt. Sudden embarrassment kept her from looking at him. Oh, God, how could she ever face him again? How would she face the others?
He hunkered down beside her and, brushing her shaking fingers aside, began to fasten up her shirt, quickly and efficiently.
“It’s just as well he called out when he did,” Steve said quietly. “You know that, don’t you? And I guess I should say I’m sorry, but I’m not.” He put his hand under her chin and turned her unwilling face up to his.
“Don’t mess with me any more, Ginny Brandon. I’ve no time for romance and gentle kisses! I’m not used to curious virgins.”
Something drove her to flare up at him. “Is that why you were so—so rough? Did you mean to scare me off, Mr. Morgan? Have you never been tender or even kind to a woman?”
He was already pulling her back onto her feet, but he shot her a look that was almost surprised before he masked it with coldness.
“To tell the truth, when I’ve been with women before we’ve known what was coming. There’s been no need to waste time on silly games. Take my advice, Miss Brandon, and forget what happened just now. I’m sure you’ll find Carl Hoskins much better behaved, and more to your taste as a lover.”
“You make it very easy to hate you, but I’m sure you know that!”
Pulling the shreds of her pride and dignity about her, Ginny mounted her horse, ignoring the hand he stretched out to help her.
They rode down to meet Paco in stony silence, and Ginny did not know whether to feel relieved or guilty when she saw that Carl Hoskins was with him, his face hard with suspicion.
Only Sonya Brandon’s pleading and her extraction of a reluctant promise from him made Carl control his anger.
Steve Morgan’s face told him nothing, but Ginny—surely her cheeks wore an unusually high flush, and her hair, he noticed, had been clubbed together in an untidy braid that swung over one shoulder. He had opened his mouth to say something when he met her eyes, and the almost defiant look in them made him clench his jaws with helpless rage.
“Mrs. Brandon was—quite worried when she woke up and found you’d gone riding,” he said stiffly when the girl had cantered up abreast of him.
“I’m sorry,” she said sullenly. “But I didn’t want to wake her, and I did tell Tillie—”
“If anyone’s to blame, I guess I am,” Steve Morgan said pleasantly. “I asked Miss Brandon if she’d care to go riding with me, and it took longer than I thought it might because we had to stop and rest the horses a few times.”
“I would think you could have been more thoughtful, Morgan—after all it was you who warned us all about Indians!”
There was much more Carl might have said, but the suddenly cold, warning look in Morgan’s eyes stopped him.
Paco Davis said quickly and pacifically:
“Well, now that Hoskins can escort Miss Brandon back to her wagon, I think that you and I, amigo, should find out what happened to all those Apaches your friends run off.”
“Miss Brandon—my pleasure, ma’am.”
Forcing herself to meet Steve Morgan’s eyes, Ginny nodded coolly.
So it was to be over, before it had started? He thought he could flirt with her and kiss her in that savage, almost animally passionate way, and put his hands on her body so intimately—and then pretend that nothing had happened?
You’ll not get away with it quite so easily, Steve Morgan, Ginny vowed silently. He had already ridden off with Paco, their horses half-obscured by dust, and she didn’t realize that she was staring after them until she felt Carl Hoskins’ hand on her arm, his fingers hurting her.
“What happened up there? What is there between you? By God, if he touched you, I’ll—”
“You’ll what, Carl? Will you challenge him to a gun fight?” A cruelty she had not realized she possessed made Ginny’s voice and words deliberately taunting, and she saw Carl’s face redden.
“What has happened to you?” His voice sounded disbelieving, it shook with the frustration he was trying to control. “You’ve been with him twice, and suddenly you’re not the same girl! What has he done to you?”
Tired of him, tired of his questions, Ginny pulled her a
rm from his grasp. Her green eyes looked hard, unsympathetic.
“Nothing! Nothing happened at all! Does that disappoint you? But I’m sick of being treated like a child, sick of your questions! And if Sonya is so worried about me, perhaps we’d best hurry back to her.”
Without glancing at him again she wheeled her mare around, kicking the startled animal into a fast gallop. Not knowing what else to do, Carl followed her.
The hours that followed Ginny’s defiant return to the wagon seemed interminable to them all. Ginny refused to be questioned, refused to speak to Carl. To Sonya she only said shortly that she had wanted to go riding, and had done so; and that she would ride with whomever she pleased when she felt like it.
Finally, Sonya decided to hide her agitation and leave the girl alone until she was in a better mood. She took the reins from Tillie, leaving Ginny lying on the small bunk with her eyes obdurately closed, and could not stop herself from wondering what had really happened. Steve Morgan was capable of anything, hadn’t she sensed that at the very beginning? And she had been foolish not to warn William against hiring him, but what could she have said without giving herself away? She had thought that perhaps the years had changed him—he hadn’t tried to touch her, nor to remind her about the past, not even when he had asked her to go riding, and she had been alone with him. Why hadn’t he? Was it because he wanted Ginny?
I don’t know, Sonya thought miserably, I’m not sure of anything any longer! All these years, she had felt so safe with William, so secure—almost, she had made herself forget what had happened that long ago spring in Louisiana. And then he’d come back—acting for all the world as if he had forgotten too, but had he? I should talk to him, she thought; ask him—no, tell him to leave Ginny alone. But he wouldn’t listen, it might make him want her more. Or he might think—hastily, she shut the thought away, concentrating on familiar, safer things. Plans for the new house William had built in California, waiting to be furnished. Plans for an empire, waiting to be taken.
Sonya shuttered and screened her thoughts, filtering through only those things about which she wanted to think. Ginny, moving restlessly in the uncomfortably narrow bunk, wondered what might have happened if Paco Davis had not chosen that particular moment to call out. Her thoughts were a mixture of anger and humiliation and yes, she had to admit it, curiosity.
“A curious virgin” he had called her mockingly. He had sworn at her, been deliberately rude to her, but he hadn’t been able to hide the fact that he wanted her, had wanted to kiss her. Would he have stopped? Could she have stopped him?
That strange, half-weak, half-feverish feeling that had taken possession of her, making her helpless, was that desire? She shivered, wondering if it was always like that. So frightening, to lose control of one’s emotions, to actually want a man to do with her as he had done. His lips on her breasts, burning into them, his tongue exploring her mouth, the taste of his kisses—it hadn’t been that way with Carl. No, Carl would never treat her that way.
The wagon creaked and rumbled beneath her, tossing her, keeping her awake when she needed to sleep. She found herself wondering if Steve Morgan would come into camp tonight, whether he’d look at her differently. He will, he will, she thought stubbornly and her heart pounded, so hard she thought she would faint.
14
Pop Wilkins was more talkative than usual over the campfire that night. They had made camp late, in the deceptively transparent twilight of the plains, with the hills behind them still appearing to gnash at the sky with serrated teeth.
“Made it through the pass after all!” Pop said jubilantly. “By Golly, I never did think to feel this good about any damn Injuns being around. But them Comanches, they’re fighters, that bunch—only Injuns the ’paches will run from.”
“Don’t be too sure the Apaches are goin’ to keep their distance for too much longer, though—” Paco Davis warned in his soft, Spanish-accented voice. “They bin used to having things pretty much their own way during the war, and there still ain’t enough cavalry in these parts to stop ’em if they get real proddy—not yet, anyhow.”
Pop pulled nervously at his white mustache.
“You tryin’ to say you think they’ll jump us? Seen any sign up ahead?”
“This is ’pache country,” Paco shrugged. “In fact, it’s pretty certain they’re watchin’ us right now, trying to make up their minds, should they leave us go or not.”
“We’ll be ready for them, anyhow,” Pop said stubbornly. “I’d like to kill me a few ’paches. I seen too often what them devils can do…” lowering his voice, he went on talking, and some of the other men joined in.
Occasionally, Paco glanced across the fire at Steve, but tonight, Steve was letting the others do all the talking, and Paco could not help wondering if his partner’s silence had something to do with the Brandon girl. What had happened between them? He hadn’t asked questions, but he knew Steve Morgan. Women liked him—perhaps because he so obviously didn’t give a damn and they were intrigued by the reckless danger they sensed in him. Steve used women—took them when he felt like it and left them, and most of the time the women knew it would happen, he wasn’t cruel enough to leave them with any illusions. But Ginny Brandon was different. She was too civilized, maybe too naive. She looked all woman and she had a mouth that was made for kissing, but she wasn’t Steve’s type at all, she was too damn vulnerable, that was it.
Tonight, she was doing a pretty fair job of pretending she enjoyed having Carl Hoskins sit so possessively beside her at the other, smaller campfire close to her wagon. She had been flirting openly with Carl ever since Steve had appeared—dusty, tired-looking and unsmiling, with hardly a word for any of them, not even for Paco himself.
Paco wished he knew her well enough to warn her. “Losin’ your papa’s gold ain’t goin’ to hurt you, Miss Brandon; not half as much as you’d hurt if you let yourself get tangled with my partner.”
It would have surprised Ginny, and even Paco himself, if they had known what Steve Morgan’s thoughts were, behind his taciturn and almost sullenly withdrawn appearance tonight.
He should have been thinking about those Apaches, who were somewhere out there in the night, waiting. But he kept hearing Ginny Brandon’s soft, teasing laughter as she made up to Hoskins; found himself unwillingly remembering the feel and texture of her flesh under his mouth. Damn Brandon! Why in hell did he have to send his women along to do his dirty work for him? And damn the complications that Ginny could cause if he let her. She didn’t belong out here in the West—she should have stayed in Paris, or in some sophisticated drawing room back east.
Ginny Brandon’s hair shone coppery in the firelight, and she was leaning against Carl Hoskins’ shoulder. Carl would be better for a girl like her anyhow; he’d probably want to marry her right off if he took her virginity, and that way, if he was smart enough, he’d be cutting himself in for a bigger share of the profits in Brandon’s grandiose schemes…one of which, at least, he and Paco were supposed to nip in the bud.
Abruptly, Steve came to his feet. He caught Paco’s quizzical look and yawned ostentatiously.
“Guess I’ll turn in. Figure to be gone before daylight, so you can head ’em out around six, if I’m not back before then.”
He disappeared into the darkness, and Ginny, in spite of her outward preoccupation with Carl, was vividly aware of his going.
So he thought he could ignore her? The memory of the way she had all but thrown herself at him—her own surprising response to the almost brutal intimacy of his caresses that morning, stained her cheeks with blood, and she was glad of the warm orange glow of the fire; glad that no one would notice. From now on, she thought viciously, it would be she who ignored his presence—she would act as if he did not exist, as if the interlude that morning had been merely amusing to her, a scheme to make Carl jealous.
Ginny laughed softly at something Carl had said, aware that his eyes had hardly left her all evening. Carl was nice—he was handsome, an
d he was civilized, which was more than one could say for Steve Morgan.
When Sonya suggested that since they were all tired and would have to start out so early in the morning, perhaps it would be best to retire, Ginny smiled at her sweetly and insincerely and begged that she might be allowed to sit a little longer by the fire. She caught Sonya’s small, hurt frown, but preferred to ignore it.
They sat by the fire, she and Carl, until it had burned down into embers, and she needed the shawl he had so thoughtfully brought out for her earlier. Except for the cook, who lay rolled in his blankets by the chuckwagon, they were alone.
Carl’s arm was around her waist—she felt his warm breath against her temples when he kissed her lightly.
If it had been Steve Morgan, he would not have been content with that, she thought angrily. Why didn’t Carl turn her face up to his and kiss her? Everyone else was asleep, why didn’t he do something? I keep forgetting that Carl is a gentleman, she thought, he is hardly the kind of man who would pull a female roughly into his arms and kiss her until she falls breathless; he would not…
As if he had sensed her thoughts he said tentatively, “Ginny? Perhaps it is time I took you back to your wagon now, your stepmother might think…”
She wanted to retort, “do you care so much what everyone else might think? Don’t you want to kiss me, Carl?” but she only gave him a half-drowsy murmur instead, and let him help her to her feet.
In the small, dark space between her wagon and the next, he surprised her by taking her uncertainly into his arms, his mouth finding hers almost by chance.
Her mouth was soft, half-open under his, and made bolder by the fact that she did not attempt to pull away from him, Carl kissed her hard and almost desperately, drawing her body closer to his, wanting to feel the soft swell of her breasts against him. She had only wanted to make him jealous by riding with Morgan this morning, Carl was sure of that now. Maybe her sudden and unexpected flirtation with the man had been merely her woman’s way of telling Carl to move faster—maybe he’d been too respectful, too patient and gentle with her. He had begun to feel, this evening, that under her soft and ladylike exterior there was a streak of wildness in Ginny Brandon. Let her find out that he was a man, as well as a gentleman.
Sweet Savage Love Page 13