Copper Fire

by Fayrene Preston

  “Now part the gown.”

  Her gaze flew back to him.

  “Pull the edges of your gown all the way back so that I can see your breasts. Every bit of them. I don’t want any portion of them covered.”

  “I – I don’t know if I can.”

  “Do it.”

  Determined not to falter, she did as he asked.

  Sloan let out a long, silent breath. Lord, but she was beautiful. Her breasts were just as he remembered from last night – high, full, and perfectly shaped. Before he could check himself, he said what he was thinking. “You’re beautiful.”

  Brianne started with surprise at his words. Other men had told her she was beautiful, and she had been left unaffected. But for some reason, when Sloan spoke the words, pleasure flooded through her body, and she had to acknowledge that the man had an extraordinary effect on her. He wasn’t touching her; he wasn’t even standing beside her. But his golden stare was glittering with a passion that was intensely predatory … and thrilling. Beneath that stare her breasts began to ache and her nipples began to tighten.

  As the rose-colored aureoles of her breasts puckered, and her nipples hardened to enticingly stiff points, Sloan felt heat rush to his loins, where it concentrated, thickening the shaft of his manhood so that it pushed against the confines of his trousers.

  Without haste he walked to the side of the bed and sat down. Lifting his hand, he placed the tips of his fingers against the sides of her neck. Gently, he stroked the length of her neck and back again. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

  Because of his touch, because of his nearness, she could barely breathe. But she couldn’t let him know how much his touch and the sound of the soft huskiness in his voice could penetrate her control. “Yes.”

  “It should make a difference. It should make me back away. You’re the type of woman who should feel a man inside her for the first time only on her wedding night.” He paused to let his fingertips rest on the rapidly beating pulse at the base of her throat. “When I first met you, it mattered.”

  Brianne had lost command of the rise and fall of her breasts as air rushed in and out of her lungs. “But suddenly it doesn’t?”

  “It hasn’t been sudden, redhead.” Casually, he trailed his fingers downward, over the slope of her breast, until they reached the velvety softness of the aureole. “Not suddenly.”The pad of one finger began to circle her nipple, and his eyes watched intently as the nipple stiffened even more.

  Brianne grabbed his wrist, wanting to push his hand away from her. She tried, but the only effect her action had on him was to make him raise his gaze away from the throbbing tip of her breast and back to her face. And he continued the insidious circular motion of his finger.

  Brianne stifled a moan. Heat was coiling through her insides, tying fiery knots in her lower abdomen, making a dampness seep between her legs.

  “Your virginity makes things more difficult, of course,”he said, his voice low. “It would be so much easier if you were like Janice over at Lucky’s, willing to spread your legs and let me enter you whenever I asked.”

  Without giving her any warning, he closed his thumb and forefinger over the erect crest and began rolling it back and forth. This time Brianne couldn’t stop the moan that escaped her lips.

  Without ceasing the manipulation of her nipple, he bent his head and pressed his lips against the side of her throat. “But that’s all right,” he whispered. “I don't mind. It’s more entertaining this way. And I’ll still get what I want in the end.”

  Brianne realized she continued to hold his wrist in a hard grip. She released it just as his lips began sliding down the fullness of her breast. “You’re an unscrupulous bastard!” she managed to say before he drew the tormented point into his mouth. “A bastard,” she repeated with a gasping breath, and tangled her hands in the dark silkiness of his hair.

  He sucked hard while his hand firmly cupped her other breast. Sloan loved the feel of her nipple in his mouth, so tight, so distended, so sweet.

  Incredible sensations washed through him – hunger, lust, desire. Normal emotions when a man had a woman’s breast in his mouth, surely, but what about the life he felt so strongly from her?

  That wasn’t normal. Could it be that he was trying to feed from her? Was he trying to draw the fullness of the life within her into himself? The thought disturbed him, but he continued sucking at her breast, because he knew, incredibly, that somehow it was working. He could feel his blood singing with what he was absorbing from her.

  Worrying the distended nipple with his tongue, then pulling on it again with his mouth, he wondered what would happen if he didn’t stop feeding at her breast? If he just continued on and on? Could it be possible that Brianne’s energy and spirit were the antidote he needed against the hatred that he felt for Wes?

  Wes? How had Brianne and Wes become entangled in his mind? He had no idea. He loved the feel and the taste of her so much, it was hard for him to question himself. And when he realized it, he forced himself to reach for his control.

  Pulling his mouth away, he stared down at her. Her chest was rising and falling every bit as rapidly as his. Her breasts appeared swollen, and her taut, reddened nipples seemed to quiver under his gaze. God, but it was hard not to lower his mouth back to her. But he made himself continue his survey. He wanted to see her eyes. Ah, yes. The anger was still there, but behind the anger was the passion. She was angry that she was being forced into submitting to him, but she was also angry that she was responding to him. Her passion made him happy.

  Her lips were parted, ready to be kissed – to his mind asking to be kissed again. Briefly he complied, crushing his mouth down to hers, thrusting his tongue in and out of her mouth in a rhythm he would soon use to thrust in and out of her body.

  Because he felt himself beginning to slip back toward the fire and life he found in her, he abruptly ended the kiss and gained immense satisfaction when he heard Brianne utter a small cry of frustration.

  He brushed a knuckle down the side of her cheek. “Don’t worry, redhead,” he whispered. “I’ll be back tomorrow night after everyone else has gone to bed.”

  She jerked away from his touch. “You had better find Patrick!”

  “I will. Sooner or later. In the meantime, I want you to stay right here in your room, with that ankle up.” She yanked her gown into place. “You may control my actions late at night, but during the day you have no say.”

  He fingered a long red strand of hair away from her face. “You’re going to be surprised what passion can make a person do, Brianne. Soon I won’t even have to ask. Soon you’ll do as I want without thinking.”

  “I may know very little about passion, but I do know myself. And I could never be made to do something I don’t want to do.”

  “But that’s the point, redhead. You will want. Oh, how you will want.”

  Chapter 8

  The minute Sloan stepped out on the porch just before dawn the next morning, he knew Wes McCord had returned. Lights blazed from the windows of McCord Enterprises. Outside the office, men milled about. Inside the office, he could see a silhouette of a man against the shade.

  The urge to rush across the street and burst into the office with gun blazing was almost overwhelming. He closed his eyes, willing the powerful impulse to pass.

  Since he had been in Chango, an idea had begun to form. He was pretty sure he knew what Wes was up to; he just needed to be certain he was right. With the proof, he could make Wes suffer a lot of pain. And then, when he judged that Wes had suffered enough, he would kill him. As it happened, getting the proof he needed would fit nicely into his deal with Brianne to look for her brother.

  Feeling the murderous desire recede, he opened his eyes and stared across the street. He would choose the time and the place of their first confrontation. This time he would be the one to have control of the situation.

  Deciding that there was no sense in alerting Wes to his presence before he was good and ready,
he took the back route to the stable and soon was on his way out of town. He had questioned Brianne on the paths she had taken and the area she had searched, so he carefully chose a different direction. He reasoned that if, after a few days, he didn’t find either Patrick or the proof he needed to use against Wes, he would then begin to retrace Brianne’s trails.

  But it didn’t come to that, because early in the afternoon he came upon a small hut. Smoke was curling out of the chimney, but there were no horses in sight. He dismounted in a stand of trees and tethered his horse.

  Taking his time, he studied the small adobe building and the layout of the land around it. The hut was simply built and probably contained no more than two rooms, he decided. A garden of sorts grew to one side, but from the looks of it, the soil was producing as many weeds as it was vegetables. A plow had been abandoned in a half-finished furrow, its metal rusted.

  The smoke puzzled him. There wasn’t any other sign of activity, not even any stock grazing near the place. He supposed a family of settlers could be living in the hut, but that seemed doubtful.

  The fifty yards between the stand of trees where he was and the hut offered no real cover. He would just have to take his chances. Grimly, he drew his revolver, cocked it, and cautiously began to advance.

  Reaching the building without incident, he flattened his body against the cool adobe and listened.

  No gunfire greeted him, but he could hear voices. With his back to the hut so that he could cover himself from three sides, he slid along the wall until he reached one of the two windows. Angling his head over his right shoulder, he peered through the dirty pane of glass.

  Four men were sitting around a table playing cards. Three of the men he recognized as those he had seen in Lucky’s. He could see only the back of the fourth man, but it was Patrick Delaney all right. He couldn’t mistake that chestnut hair. He ducked beneath the window and crept to the porch.

  A strong kick to the door had it breaking away from its rusty hinges, and it went crashing down amid a billow of dust. Sloan rushed in. All four men surged to their feet, cards went flying, and the three men from the saloon immediately raised their hands at the sight of Sloan’s gun.

  The taller one, his eyes big with alarm, pointed at Patrick. “He's our prisoner.”

  “Yeah,” the other two chorused, all the while keeping their hands high.

  “Delaney, are you all right?”Sloan asked without taking his eyes off the three men.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, and there’s no need for the gun.”

  Sloan heard the humor in Patrick’s voice and cut his eyes to him. “What the hell’s going on? We thought you'd been kidnapped.”

  “He has been!” one of the three men insisted with such a petulant tone that Sloan’s attention was brought back to them. All three dutifully kept their hands in the air.

  The tall one spoke up again. “I told you, he’s our prisoner!”

  “We’re gonna get money for him,” another one said.

  “What you’re going to get is more trouble than you ever thought possible if I don’t find out what’s going on in the next ten seconds.”

  All three started talking at once.

  “It wasn’t never our intention to cause no harm!”

  “All we wanted was the money!”

  “Farmin’s hard work!”

  “I told them we shouldn’t ask for so much money!”

  Patrick put two fingers to his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. Everyone turned toward him. “I think it would be better if I told Mr. Lassiter the story, don’t you?”

  All three nodded. “Whatever you say, Mr. Delaney.” Patrick gave Sloan a wry smile. “Lassiter, I think it’s time you formally met the Grimes brothers. Odis, Hannibal, and Lester. Fellows, this is Mr. Sloan Lassiter.”

  “Pleased to meetcha,” the three mumbled.

  “Now, why don’t we all sit down,” Patrick suggested, “and Lassiter, you can tell me how it is that you're here.”

  Sloan kept his gun pointed toward the three brothers. “You and I can sit down, but those three are going to stay where they are, with their hands reaching for the ceiling, until I understand what in the hell is happening here.”

  Patrick glanced at the Grimes brothers. “That sounds reasonable, wouldn’t you say, fellows?”

  They nodded, their eyes on the gun.

  “Would ya like a cup of coffee?”

  Odis’s timidly spoken question earned him a hard look from Sloan. He chose a chair where he could keep the three men under his scrutiny. “To answer your question, Delaney, I’m here because your sister was under the impression you needed rescuing.”

  Patrick’s expression turned anxious. “Is she hurt? Sick? What’s happened to her?”

  “Nothing serious. She’s sprained her ankle. She was out looking for you yesterday afternoon, when her horse shied, and she fell off. The doctor says she just needs to stay off the ankle for a while.” He cast Patrick a curious look. “Why did you think something had happened to Brianne?”

  A grin returned to Patrick’s face. “Because it’s not like Brianne to send a hired gun to do her work.”

  “Ah… of course.” Now that he knew Brianne, her brother’s statement made perfect sense to him.

  “You’re sure she's all right?”

  “She's been worried sick about you. She was determined she’d find you herself, but after she sprained her ankle, she telegraphed your grandfather.”

  Patrick grimaced. “I was afraid that would happen.”

  “Rest assured, Brianne sent the telegram only when everything else had failed.”

  Patrick’s wide-set brown eyes thoughtfully studied the man across the table from him. “And then she sent you out looking for me.”

  “As it happened, searching for you caused me no inconvenience.”

  “I see. Evidently you and Brianne have gotten to know each other pretty well since I’ve been gone. Brianne would never have asked you otherwise.”

  Sloan’s answer told Patrick nothing.

  “She didn’t ask me. I volunteered.”

  Short, stocky Hannibal dared to gesture toward Patrick. “His uncle Joshua once fired us from a cattle drive. And all I did was shoot at a jackrabbit.”

  “He missed,” Patrick said, “but managed to stampede the cattle.”

  “Well, hell, I was just tired of eatin’ beans,” Hannibal whined.

  Sloan raised his gun, expertly sighting it between Hannibal’s eyes. “Who said you could talk?”

  Lester, equally short and stocky as his brother, went to his aid. “He didn’t mean nuttin’ by it, honest.”

  Sloan shifted the blue-steel barrel of the gun to Lester. “Delaney, I think you’d better start explaining.”

  “They did kidnap me, it’s true. They paid off that little piece I was having a good time with, and knocked me unconscious with ether they stole from the dentist.”

  Obviously feeling further information was called for, Odis cut in. “The dentist also gives a mighty fine haircut.”

  The gun shifted toward Odis, causing the man’s Adam’s apple to bob up and down as he swallowed hard.

  “At any rate,” Patrick continued, “they threw me over my horse – ”

  “We didn’t steal that horse!” Hannibal said in a panic. “Mr. Delaney was ridin’ him. We ain’t gonna be hung for no horse thief!”

  Patrick rolled his eyes at their reasoning, but carried on with his story. “I gather they had a hard time finding their way out of town – ”

  “That 't’weren’t our fault neither!” Lester insisted. “It 't’were rainin’ and, well, we was kinda high on them ether fumes.”

  Sloan’s roar filled the cabin. “One more word out of any of you, and parts of your bodies will be found in four counties.”

  The three brothers inhaled sharply and moaned in unison.

  A big grin on his face, Patrick shook his head. “Well, I guess there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing before they eventually got me here. Wh
en I woke up, I was mad as hell and sick as a dog for a long time. I threw up from the effects of the ether and, in sympathy, so did Hannibal.”

  “I couldn’t stand to see him sufferin’ like that. 'Sides, I’ve got me a weak tummy,”Hannibal lamented, then immediately regretted it, because Sloan’s cold eyes sliced toward him.

  “I’ve also had a hell of a headache the last few days. But during this time I’ve come to realize two things,” Patrick continued. “One, they’re completely incompetent.”

  Odis opened his mouth to protest, but one look at Sloan quickly made him change his mind. “And two, they are also essentially decent men.”

  The three brothers beamed.

  Sloan laid his gun on the table and rubbed his forehead. “So, given all this, why haven’t you come back to town?”

  “Because in all the excitement one of them forgot to fasten the gate to the corral, and the horses ran away.”

  Sloan stared at Patrick in disbelief. Patrick shrugged.

  Odis said, “They’ll come back. They always do sooner or later.”

  Lester and Hannibal nodded their emphatic agreement.

  “The other thing is – ” Patrick hesitated, then glanced at the three brothers. “Wait outside, fellows, will you?”

  Deep furrows formed in Hannibal’s forehead as he considered their predicament. “Can we put down our hands if we go outside?”

  “Yeah,”Lester said, “all my blood’s rushin’ to my elbows. I can feel it!”

  “You can put your hands down.”

  Odis hesitated and cast a worried look at Patrick. “You promise you won’t escape?”

  “I promise.”

  “Well, I guess that’s all right then.”

  After the brothers had left, Patrick sighed. “You see how they are. They’re bungling fools. They’ve done everything from punch cows to mine for gold and have been complete failures at everything they’ve tried. They thought they’d farm this place, but they quickly found out that farming is hard work.”