by Robin Gideon
Chapter Four
They slipped through the drapes onto the balcony. The Phantom climbed onto the surrounding railing, grabbed hold of a drainpipe, and climbed onto the roof of the mansion. On his stomach, he stretched out, leaned over the edge of the roof, and reached down for Pamela.
“Come on, you can make it,” he whispered.
She climbed onto the balcony railing, then, grasping the drainpipe, started climbing, just as she had seen Phantom do. Garrett’s respect for her increased as he watched her struggling, awkwardly inching her way higher.
He knew that she was scared, but her fear did not paralyze her. Instead she overcame it through sheer force of will, through determination and desire.
“You can make it,” he encouraged in a whisper when Pamela paused a second to catch her breath. She needed to climb only another foot before Phantom’s outstretched hand could help her the remainder of the way. “Just a little bit more.”
The toes of Pamela’s boots were jammed between the bricks of the wall. She stretched her right hand out, reaching for Phantom.
“I can’t make it,” she said, feeling the strength in her fingers going.
“Just a little more and I’ll have you.”
She began to look over her shoulder. If her fingers gave out, she would hit the railing and might fall onto the balcony or over the edge to shatter on the ground far below.
“Don’t look down,” Phantom whispered, and this time there was urgency in his tone. “Just look at me, Pamela. Look only at me, and I’ll help you.”
It was the first time he had used her first name since he’d surprised her by recognizing her, and the sound of it galvanized Pamela’s spirit. With a final contraction of the muscles in her arms, she was able to raise herself just enough for Phantom to catch her wrist. Moments later he pulled her onto the roof of the mansion, folding her body protectively into the safety of his arms.
“That’s harder than it looks,” she whispered.
“You just haven’t had much practice at it,” Phantom replied. “Come on, we’re vulnerable here.”
Phantom took her hand in his and helped her to her feet, pleased that this time she did not try to remove her hand from his.
He led her to the highest point of the roof, where there were several chimneys and ventilation ports. Far below, the celebration continued. Pamela wondered what time it was, how long it had been since she first entered the Darwell mansion. From the moment Phantom had come into her life, she had had more questions than answers.
From the ground came a loud exclamation, and one man asked another to look up at the roof. At first Pamela did not understand what exactly was happening, then it dawned on her that they had been seen by one of the many armed guards now gathering below.
Phantom’s reaction was instantaneous. He grabbed Pamela by the arm and pulled her tightly against him, at the same time wrapping his cape around her and pulling her head down against his chest.
“Don’t move,” he whispered, pushing her so that her back was against the brick chimney. “It’s that beautiful blonde hair of yours, darling. It catches the moonlight.”
Pamela’s heart pounded in her chest. Were the bullets about to fly? Her holster was still empty. Phantom hadn’t returned her revolver.
What difference would that make? she asked herself angrily. The guards would be armed with rifles, which were infinitely more accurate than pistols.
She inhaled deeply, trying to control her fear as each agonizing second ticked by. She caught the smell of Phantom’s body, and in a strange way she couldn’t have anticipated, the scent of him pleased her. He smelled of a fresh bath and expensive soap, yet also of male exertion. She felt the heat of him through his shirt, the strong beating of his heart against her cheek. She was distinctly aware of her breasts pressing and compressing against his solidly muscled boy.
Phantom will get us out of this, she thought. He’s never been caught before, and he won’t get caught now.
“Stay very still,” Phantom whispered.
Pamela could now hear the guards arguing among themselves on the ground, one saying that he’d seen someone on the roof, the other saying it was probably just an owl hunting.
Phantom eased Pamela a little to her left, hiding her more completely from view. He pulled away just enough so to look down into her face, keeping her in the curve of his arm, his cape hiding her long blonde hair.
“You’re trembling,” he said in that low, flinty, confident tone of his that Pamela had learned to appreciate, even though she knew it wasn’t his natural tone.
“I’m scared. I never thought it would be like this,” she replied, shocking herself by speaking so honestly.
“You mustn’t be,” Phantom said softly. He touched the tip of Pamela’s chin, turning her face up to his own. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
She looked up at him. He now had the moon at his back so that, while she knew her own face was visible in the moonlight, his features were completely hidden in shadows.
“I don’t even know who you are. Why are you helping me?”
“Because you need it.”
She wanted to be angry with him, but she just couldn’t. All Phantom had done was speak the truth, the painful truth. She did need help, but she was far from helpless.
Pamela moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. Being in such close proximity to Phantom made her feel jittery all over. As never before, she was aware of a pulsing in her clit and an itching sensation in her nipples that seemed to transmit heat throughout her body.
“Will you let me see your face?” she asked, surprising herself at her own bravery. “I want to know who you are.”
“It’s better for you if you don’t know.” Phantom looked away a moment, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. “There are people who would pay a lot of money to find out my identity.”
“I would never betray you.”
“Perhaps not. But I also know that Jonathon Darwell is an evil man, and if he thought you knew my identity, he would torture you until you told him everything.”
“I wouldn’t break,” Pamela said with quiet, forceful determination.
“Everyone has a breaking point. Even me.”
Below, the guards continued to argue, at least one still convinced he’d seen someone on the roof.
“As long as we don’t move, they’ll never see us. The cape doesn’t reflect light,” Phantom explained.
Pamela leaned her head back against Phantom’s forearm and looked up at him. He’d been totally prepared to break into the Darwell mansion, and despite the time she’d spent plotting and planning this evening, she had not been.
“I thought I would be better at being a thief than I am,” Pamela admitted.
“It’s not a skill to be proud of,” Phantom replied.
She closed her eyes. There was nothing to do now except wait until the guards finally convinced themselves there was nobody on the roof. Just remain still, stay hidden beneath Phantom’s cape, and wait.
With her eyes closed, she became very aware of Phantom’s forearm against the back of her head, his body touching hers, his chest pressed lightly against her breasts. She felt warm all over, and though she tried to convince herself that it was the sultry evening air affecting her, she suspected it was something more than that. Or someone.
“Promise me you’ll never again do anything as foolish as this,” Phantom whispered.
“I can’t give you promises,” Pamela replied.
She refused to open her eyes, painfully conscious of every sensitive place where her body touched Phantom’s. Their knees bumped, then the inside of her thigh rubbed against the outside of his. Pamela felt herself creaming, and for a moment, she cursed her body for being so traitorous.
“Promise me,” Phantom said, more demanding than before.
“I don’t promise anything I can’t be sure of.”
Phantom’s hand cupped her chin. “Promise me,” he repeated.
/> Pamela recalled all the people she knew who had been hurt by Jonathon Darwell and his family, and she shook her head, despite Phantom’s hold on her chin. His fingers tightened.
“I’ll never stop until Jonathon Darwell gets what he deserves,” she whispered, her anger rising. “What’s wrong? Can’t the infamous Midnight Phantom take the competition?”
“If you’re not careful, you’ll get what you deserve.”
“And what might that be?” Pamela demanded angrily. She would not be intimidated by anyone—not even the Midnight Phantom.
“This,” Phantom replied.
Pamela wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t Phantom’s kiss. And once his mouth was pressed against her own, his lips firm and commanding, she certainly didn’t expect the response of her body to the kiss.
As though he were kissing her everywhere simultaneously, every fiber of her body came alive. The Phantom turned her, angling her head so that he could more completely dominate her mouth, and Pamela surprised herself once again by not resisting.
Her arms had been resting loosely at her sides, but now she slipped them up around Phantom’s chest, sliding her palms lightly over his silk shirt and over his jacket, under his cape. When she did this, he leaned into her, forcing her more firmly against the brick chimney, his body pressed against her breasts.
The tip of his tongue teased her lips. Pamela knew what he wanted, and she resisted him for the first time. She kept her lips closed, turning her face away at last to end the kiss.
But Phantom was undeterred. He kissed her cheek then bent lower to kiss the smooth arch of her throat. To feel his lips then the sharpness of his teeth against her sensitive neck was perhaps even more stimulating to Pamela than being kissed on the mouth.
“The guards…they might see us,” she whispered, not knowing what else to say.
She wanted to push the cape off her head, to put some distance between herself and the enigmatic masked thief who could artfully steal away her better judgment. But a step in any direction, even uncovering her blonde hair, would put her in jeopardy, and that she could not afford.
She felt trapped between the armed guards three stories below, at that moment still inspecting the rooftop, and Phantom, showing her the irresistible allure of a dangerous man in a dangerous setting.
I shouldn’t let him do this, she thought. She could not, however, put the notion into words.
It’s only a kiss. Just a harmless kiss, she told herself as his lips, warm and gentle, coaxed a little more response from her.
When the tip of his tongue touched her lips ever so lightly a second time, Pamela fully realized what Phantom expected of her. Expected or wanted? She could not really tell, but she did know that his kisses were unbearably pleasing and stripped away her anger at the injustices in her life—an anger she had carried in her for so long it was now a part of her.
“Relax…your body is so tight,” Phantom whispered, his lips brushing Pamela’s as he spoke.
“We’re standing on the roof of Jonathon Darwell’s mansion. If we fall off, we’ll die. If the guards see us, we’ll die. I have good reason to be tense.”
“The guards can’t see us as long as we stay right where we are,” Phantom said.
And then, as though to prove his point, he pushed Pamela just a little more to her left, so that she was even more trapped between the three chimneys that rose up from the slanted rooftop. He leaned into her, and this time she had no doubt at all that he was intentionally crushing her breasts with his chest.
“Don’t,” she whispered in a strange, weak, one-word protest.
Hearing the single word seemed odd to her then, as though someone else had spoken it. Could that really be her sounding that aroused? What had happened to her conviction, her heartfelt belief that she had been made a victim by society too many times already and would never again allow anyone to take advantage of her?
When she felt Phantom’s hand against her stomach, she involuntarily sucked in her breath. Wherever he touched her, it was as though her nerves were suddenly heightened to the possibility of pleasure.
He’s going to touch my breasts, Pamela thought with a certain unbidden sense of panic.
She pulled her arm from around Phantom’s neck, quickly, stabbing her elbow straight down to knock the masked man’s hand from her. She would not let him touch her so intimately. She would be in control of her own body and would respond only when and how she allowed herself to.
“Don’t, I told you,” Pamela whispered with only a fraction of the angry conviction she’d hoped for. She searched the darkness to look into Phantom’s eyes. Once again, he’d maneuvered himself so that his face was in shadow.
Raising his hands, Phantom placed them upon Pamela’s shoulders. He pushed himself away slightly, releasing the pressure of his chest against her breasts. Very slowly, he sighed and nodded.
Looking up into his face, Pamela found herself a little disappointed that he had stopped, that he had chosen to be the gentleman without protesting more.
Why couldn’t he, just once, be like all the other men she had known—and hated?
The Midnight Phantom wasn’t the first man to have kissed her, though his kisses were the first to make her body respond so quickly, so completely from head to toe. She could feel her pussy creaming like never before. But with everyone else, when Pamela had been in a man’s arms and he was kissing her and she was trying hard to pretend to herself that it really wasn’t as bad as she believed and she’d told the man to stop, they hadn’t done so.
Actually, there had been three such occasions in her life. Two of the men had persisted until Pamela had at last demanded that they leave.
When the third had begun to force himself upon her, she had brought a candleholder down on his skull then had begun screaming for her brother, Jedediah.
That man, though he’d lived through the beating Jedediah Bragg gave him, later told everyone in town who would listen that he’d taken Pamela Bragg’s virginity and that he now wanted nothing to do with her because he was much too concerned with his reputation to be seen in public with such trash. He left town before Jedediah could kill him, and from that point forward, Pamela always carried the Colt in the holster at her right hip.
She had promised herself that the next man who kissed her would end up looking down the muzzle of her revolver, and if he could do that without going pasty faced with fear, then maybe he’d be man enough for her to consider kissing again.
“After tonight, you must never do this again,” Phantom chided again, his voice suddenly stern and commanding.
He had managed, it seemed, to completely shut down his passion. She wished she had such an ability. She could still feel the muscles of his chest, strong and warm, pressing firmly against her breasts. Her nipples were still hard and achingly erect. Her lips tingled from kisses that had been warm and exciting, not wet and defiling. Her clit throbbed softly with her accelerated pulse.
“Do what again?” Pamela asked softly, not at all certain she wanted to know the answer. Almost the instant that she’d slapped his hands from her body, she began regretting her decision, seeing herself as being both foolish and naive.
“Strike out at Jonathon Darwell,” Phantom replied. There was a fleeting hint of a smile on his sensual lips, letting Pamela know that he was not as immune to feelings, or as solidly in control of them, as he wanted her to believe. “Did you think I was talking about you and me? That you must never kiss me again?”
Before Pamela could respond, he leaned down. Cursing herself silently, she closed her eyes to receive yet another kiss.
As his tongue pressed against her lips once more, she opened her mouth just slightly, very hesitantly. Kissing this way was something she had only done once before, and then it hadn’t been entirely voluntary. The experience having been repugnant. She’d always shuddered when thinking about that awful kiss forced upon her so long ago.
But the shudder going through her now as Phantom’s
tongue eased between her lips and entered her mouth was not one of revulsion. A low, tremulous moan of desire purred from her throat, shocking Pamela.
Cautiously, she put her tongue against his, and instinctively, the kiss deepened. Pamela pressed closer to Phantom, her body responding spontaneously to this new and deliciously evocative kiss. A heat, deep within her, escalated from an ember to a glowing passion. She felt the lips of her pussy becoming slick with the nectar of her desire, her body preparing itself for penetration.
And just as quickly as it had started, it ended. The Phantom stood upright again, a faint smile curling his lips.
“I wasn’t talking about our kisses,” he said then, much too calmly for Pamela’s liking. “I was talking about breaking into Jonathon Darwell’s home. If he’d caught you, he wouldn’t have had you arrested. You’d have been found in an alley somewhere in Whitetail Creek, or maybe you wouldn’t have been found at all.”
Pamela’s head was spinning. How could he go from kissing her at one second to lecturing her on her lifestyle in the next? Didn’t the kisses mean anything to him at all, affect him in any way? And if they didn’t, then why did he bother kissing her in the first place? And why, since it appeared that the kisses were as unemotional as a handshake to Phantom, was he so good at it?
“I wouldn’t have gotten caught,” Pamela said defiantly.
A warm breeze passed across the rooftop. The sky held a million stars. She found it nearly impossible to think about the things he was saying, or to make any sense of what she was feeling. The way her body had responded, passionately and without reservation, frightened her.
Trying to forget the new sensations she’d discovered in Phantom’s arms, she tried to pay attention to the guards on the ground. They were mostly laughing and having a good time, no doubt having picked up a drink or two, but one kept looking stubbornly to the roof. While her body tingled with passionate excitement, however, the guards barely existed for her.
Suddenly, Phantom grinned at Pamela condescendingly, and the anger that his expression evoked was an emotion she embraced. Anger was familiar to her. Intense sexual arousal wasn’t.