Cloudcastle

by Nan Ryan

  Kane ordered whiskey and before the barkeep brought down the bottle, loud voices filled the quiet room. Kane never turned around. He watched the bewhiskered bartender pour the amber liquid into a heavy shot glass, glanced into the mirror above the back bar, and saw the three ruffians approaching. All were huge. All were disheveled. All were mean-looking. One was Damon Leatherwood.

  "Well, what have we here?" Leatherwood's voice boomed, startling the two drunken miners. Leatherwood's two companions swiftly flanked Kane at the bar, while Leatherwood, grinning broadly, tapped Kane's right shoulder.

  Kane turned to face him.

  Damon Leatherwood's gaze flicked over Kane's lean body and came back up to his face. "Where's your gun, Covington?"

  "At Mrs. Baker's boardinghouse," replied Kane levelly.

  "Afraid if you wear it to town somebody'll spank you with it?" Damon Leatherwood grinned, pleased with himself, and his companions burst into laughter. One added, "Maybe he's got the wrong building. Sunday school meets down the block."

  Kane remained silent.

  All at once the saloon was filled. The curious rushed in, eyes wide, hearts pumping, eager for a showdown. All jockeyed to get a ringside seat.

  Damon Leatherwood knew he had an audience and his boldness grew. "Covington," he said, narrowing his eyes evilly, "I believe that's my whiskey You're fixin' to drink." The crowd held their collective breath, their transfixed gaze on the tall, dark southerner.

  Kane said nothing.

  Damon Leatherwood reached around Kane, took the freshly poured glass of whiskey, smiled, and downed the fiery liquor. He slammed the empty glass back on the bar, wiped his mouth, and stepped closer. "And that's my spot you're standing in."

  Again the crowd muttered and waited and soured one another that now the quiet southerner would make his move. He did not. Roughly, Leatherwood shoved Kane aside, moved up to the bar, and turned around.

  "This is my waterin' hole, Covington. Find yourself another, I don't like looking at your ugly murderer's face." The room fell silent. More than one excited, staring male hoped that this dark, icy-eyed stranger would pick up the gauntlet the loud-mouthed Leatherwood had thrown down.

  Surely the man who had shot and killed Jimmy Leather-wood and had wounded the brute now baiting him, would not act the coward. Surely this deadly quiet southerner would step forward and defend his manhood. Surely there breathed one soul among them who was not afraid of the dangerous Leatherwood brothers.

  One, avidly watching the drama, hoped it above all the others. From his table in the darkened corner, a sobered Joe South was expectant, certain the man with whom he had shared a jail cell would wordlessly step up and take a well-aimed swing at the bullying Damon Leatherwood.

  As if a knife stabbed deeply into his heart, Joe South felt a pang of misery and defeat when he watched Kane Covington nod his dark head in acquiescence, turn, and quietly leave the saloon. Wearily dropping back into his chair, Joe poured himself another drink, swallowed it down, and felt a childish desire to weep.

  The bottle before him empty, Joe sighed, rose unsteadily, and went out into the cold. Limping wearily down the sidewalk, head bowed, spirits low, he was startled by a greeting called to him from across the street.

  Joe South looked up. Kane Covington was crossing toward him, his dark hair blowing in the wind, his bearing as self-assured as ever. "Joe, my friend." Kane clasped his shoulder. "How would you like to go to work?"

  "Work? Me?" Joe was so taken aback, he forgot his disappointment. "You, Joe. I need help. You interested?"

  "Doing what?"

  "Building my cabin on the mountain." Joe South stared at Kane. "I'm crippled. My leg is…"

  "You don't saw or hammer with your legs Joe." Kane's compelling blue eyes were on his face. "Some say I'm a drunk too." Kane smiled. "Folks say a lot of things about me."

  "I know."

  "So what'll it be? You coming to work for me?" Kane smiled.

  Joe South forced the incident in the saloon from his mind. What difference did it make that Kane Covington was afraid of Leatherwood and his gang? He, himself, was terrified of them. Everybody in Cloudcastle was afraid of the Leather-woods. Why should Kane be any different. It wasn't Kane's fault; it was his own for holding Kane up to being something he wasn't. Kane was like him. Just a man. A man who was afraid.

  "Sure, Kane, I'll work for you. But, if I take a drink now and again, that's my lookout."

  Kane laughed suddenly, and there was a magic in his laugh. Joe South decided he would never let the laughing man know he'd witnessed his cowardice.

  When she heard of the confrontation in the saloon, strange as it seemed, Natalie felt a mild twinge of surprised disappointment.

  No sooner had she shed her heavy woolen cape and untied her bonnet on that cold Thursday morning, than Ashlin Blackmore came striding into the courthouse chambers, his fair face flushing from the cold.

  "Ashlin." She looked up and came to greet him. "I wasn't expecting you."

  Looking dapper in a fine cloak of beige cashmere, Ashlin drew her to him. "I know, dear. I just have a moment, then I must run." He kissed the top of her head. "I was at the bank and heard some news about our new friend, Kane Covington." Natalie pulled back to look up at him, fighting down the curiosity she was feeling. "Your friend, you mean." She toyed with the supple collar of his cloak.

  Lord Blackmore repeated the story of Kane's encounter with Damon Leatherwood and his companions. He expressed chagrin that Kane would behave in such an unmanly way.

  "I'm disappointed, truly I am. However, that's unfair I suppose. Those brutish Leatherwoods are frightening and dangerous. I steer clear of them and Kane will learn to do the same." He waited for a reply. Natalie said nothing. "Well… I must be off, darling. I'll see you at lunch. I'll send the carnage for you."

  "Now, Ashlin, that's not necessary. I can walk up the hill to your—"

  "I won't hear of it, dear, it's so cold." He gave her a brief hug. "Must dash, I've a million things to do."

  "Yes, Ashlin," said Natalie, and her thoughts returned to Kane Covington.

  Hugging herself, she went to stand before the crackling fire, reluctant to start reviewing the stacks of pretrial briefs piled high atop her desk. Kane Covington a coward? Hardly. She'd seen the man up against the Apaches. Still… would Ashlin would have allowed such insults to go unanswered?

  No. He would not.

  The thought gave her a warm feeling. Ashlin was the better man in every way.

  Belinda Baker flicked the feather duster over the gleaming cherrywood sideboard. She hummed happily as she cleaned the spacious dining room of Lord Blackmore's hilltop mansion. Thoughts of the upcoming El Dorado celebration filling her head, she didn't hear the man climbing the stairs to the wide marbled corridor.

  "There she is," said a beaming Lord Blackmore, standing in the wide, arched doorway, his handsome face flushed with color, his brown eyes gleaming. "Yes," giggled Belinda. "Here I am."

  Ashlin Blackmore, smiling warmly at the pretty young girl on the far side of the long dining table, shrugged out of his cashmere cloak, tossed it over a chair, and approached her.

  "What color today, Belinda?" he asked.

  Belinda took a deep breath, tilted her dark head, and thought for a few seconds. "I know," she proudly announced. "Gold! I want gold!"

  Ashlin reached her, took the feather duster from her hands and let it slip to the deep piled Aubusson carpet. "Very well. You know where it is." He touched a beribboned pigtail lying over her left shoulder. "And you know what you must do, don't you?"

  Belinda eagerly nodded, stepped away, and disappeared through the arched doors. Ashlin Blackmore smiled, went into the drawing room across the corridor, and drew an imported, ready-made cigarette from a silver box atop a handsome pier table.

  Meticulously fitting the cigarette into an ivory holder, he placed the holder in his mouth, lit the cigarette, and drew smoke deep into his lungs. And he slowly walked down the long marble-floor
ed hall to his bedroom.

  Cigarette holder between long, pale fingers, he swung open the heavy carved door. A drawer was pulled open in the circular drum table near the bed. Atop its inlaid surface sat an open satin-covered box of expensive chocolates, their colorful, shiny wrappers catching the rays of the bright morning sun. There were blue ones and red ones and green ones. Purple and pink ones. Silver ones.

  And gold.

  Ashlin sighed with satisfaction and his brown eyes shifted to the bed. There on his huge four-poster, amid shiny satin sheets of palest gold, Belinda Baker, as naked as Eve in the garden, sat cross-legged, hungrily eating a piece of creamy chocolate from a shiny gold wrapper.

  Ashlin leaned back against the door frame, drawing on his scented cigarette and savoring the sight of the girl in his bed. Unashamedly displaying her many charms, Belinda paid no mind to the tall blond voyeur hungrily eyeing her.

  Ashlin's heated gaze took in her huge, melon-shaped breasts tipped with discs of pink satin. Belly slightly rounded with baby fat, flaring, voluptuous hips, strong young thighs that held him tightly. Long, well-shaped legs, soft, fleshy arms, and beautiful shoulders.

  A dark plait, with its gold ribbon bow, fell over her right shoulder, partially concealing one white breast. She changed her position, uncrossing her legs, reaching to the open box of chocolates, and Ashlin's hot eyes went to that dense, curly growth of dark hair between her silky thighs.

  Ashlin nervously stabbed out his cigarette in a crystal ashtray and undressed with trembling hands. While Belinda unpeeled the shiny gold paper from another piece of soft candy, he stripped and came, naked, to the bed.

  She continued to lick the candy when he pushed her over onto her back. His sex already swollen with urgent need, he roughly shoved her legs wide apart, thrust immediately into her, and lowered his head to greedily suckle a ripe, tempting breast.

  Belinda only giggled, popped the last of the chocolate into her mouth, licked her fingers and then twined them into Lord Blackmore's luxuriant golden locks.

  Ashlin lifted his head. Eyes glazed with lust, he huskily commanded, "Belinda, put your legs around me and lift your hips."

  Immediately she obeyed, bucking up against him, her hands clutching his shoulders, her big, trusting eyes wide open. A great groan issued from his open mouth as it came down upon the chocolate-smeared, wide lips of his young, willing playmate. In seconds he climaxed deep within her and fell away, knowing, but uncaring, that he had left her yearning, burning, needing release.

  It didn't matter.

  Lord Blackmore knew that the delectable child, body afire, breath hot upon him, would now do all the things he had taught her that aroused him. Smiling, he lay back, relaxed, content, pleased, feeling no guilt.

  After all, he was an engaged gentleman whose pristine, prim fiancée refused to sleep with him. Save an occasional trip to Denver, he had no outlet for his sexual desires. He didn't dare visit the prostitutes in Cloudcastle; the news would have spread up and down Main before he was back into his trousers.

  No, this was the answer. This lovely naked child who liked to eat candy in his bed. She was perfect for his needs. After that first time when he'd had to cajole and coax her to undress and then she'd cried and carried on because he'd had difficulty getting it in, Belinda had been nothing but supreme pleasure for him.

  She obeyed his every command, performed any act he desired, was as insatiable as he, and kept their trysts to herself. He was confident of her silence. Had she so much as hinted to her mother what went on, Marge Baker would never have let the child darken his door again.

  Their secret was safe. No one knew. No one would ever know. Blackmore never really worried about it. Who would take the word of this half-wit over his? So once again he had three glorious hours to lie here and enjoy the delights of her nubile body.

  He sighed and smiled as he watched her, dark plaits dangling over her shoulders, bare, bouncy bottom pointed skyward while she leaned over him, hugging him, pressing her bare curves to his naked length, frantically trying to arouse him anew. He stretched contentedly, raising long arms up to cradle his own head, refusing to embrace her.

  He closed his eyes, feigning sleep, savoring, enjoying to the fullest one of his favorite rituals of their weekly sexual encounters. It was a delicious game to lie stretched out beneath her, putting forth an immense effort not to become aroused too quickly.

  Sometimes it was easy. Sometimes impossible. On occasion he'd managed to draw out the love-play for an hour, maybe more. Other times he could stand it for only minutes before driving into her hot, moist flesh.

  He could tell this was going to be one of the delightful mornings when he could hold out for a long, enjoyable time. He yawned lazily, turned his head, and peered into the tall beveled mirror near the bed. He watched his hand go to the dark head of the beauty leaning over him.

  "Belinda," he murmured drowsily. "Remember how I told you we can't put it in until you make it hard?"

  "Yes." She lifted her face to look at him.

  Ashlin touched a forefinger to her succulent mouth and said, "I want you to kiss me all over. Start at my eyelids and go down to my toes. Then it will be hard and you can have it."

  Belinda never questioned the command. Her hot, wet mouth went immediately to his closed eyes as she eagerly began kissing his face, his throat, his chest. She never made it to his toes. By the time her lips were scattering fiery caresses down his belly, she felt him stirring against her.

  "Look," she said happily to Ashlin, "you're hard. See." She wrapped long fingers around his pulsing flesh. "Yes," he groaned, "I see. You've done good work, Belinda."

  "Can we put it in now?"

  "You put it in," he huskily commanded, and sighed when she climbed astride him and guided him into her. Again he turned his golden head to the mirror and watched her wildly ride him until her climax came and she tossed her dark head and screamed and brought him to the same, blinding ecstasy claiming her.

  At noon, Ashlin stood in the downstairs corridor helping Belinda on with her wrap. "Now remember, dear," he said, winding the long, striped muffler about her young throat, "we don't tell anybody what we do."

  "We don't tell." She nodded.

  "And why is that, Belinda?"

  She didn't hesitate. "We do the things we do because we are 'very special friends.'"

  "Correct. 'Very special friends.' That makes it right. But we don't want anyone to know." He gave her full left breast an intimate squeeze. "It's our secret." He bent and kissed her parted lips, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth. He lifted his golden head and murmured, "The secret of 'very special friends.'"

  Gravel crunched beneath the wheels of a carriage. Natalie, red hair gleaming in the cold sunlight, stepped down and dashed up to the porch. Ashlin opened the door, a relaxed smile on his face.

  "Darling," he greeted warmly, "say hello to Belinda. She was on her way out." He put an arm about his fiancée's narrow waist. Over Natalie's head he winked at the young girl. "Belinda does good work."

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cold northeasterly winds whispered softly against the windows. Natalie paced restlessly before the roaring fireplace in her parlor. Try as she might, she could never fully dismiss from her mind the dark, defiant southerner who was cutting timber just around the mountain from her.

  Little seemed to bother—or interest—Kane Covington. She had heard the gossip following the Leatherwood taunting at the Gilded Cage. Covington had been mistrusted before that, now he was laughed at as well. Men on the streets said he was yellow, a lily-livered southerner who needed a gun in his hands to be any part of a man.

  They, however, said it out of earshot of Kane Covington.

  Covington went about town just as before, unruffled by his reputation, insensitive to the disgust now showing clearly in the eyes of Cloudcastle's citizens.

  Kane drank alone in Cloudcastle's saloons. He played cards, coolly winning from drifters and gamblers who respected only money. He wor
ked tirelessly on his cabin in the mountains, Joe South at his side on Joe's sober days, alone when Joe was drunk.

  There was one faction of Cloudcastle's population who harbored no ill feelings toward Kane. The ladies.

  With them he had no trouble and many a female head fluttered pleasantly when the dark, handsome man touched the brim of his hat and smiled. Pretty girls flirted with him and daydreamed about him. Young matrons blushed and smiled and dropped their gaze from his bold blue eyes and wondered why their husbands had nothing to do with the man. Older ladies openly admired his exquisite lean physique, his dark good looks, his cool, courtly manners, and silently said to themselves, If I were thirty, even twenty years younger…

  Natalie grimaced and picked up the heavy black poker.

  She prodded and jabbed at the smoldering logs with a vengeance. It was downright disgusting the way the women of Cloudcastle whispered about Kane Covington. Only yesterday she'd had lunch at the Eureka Hotel with Esther Sanders, young mother of two, and Carol Thompson, widowed by last year's accident down in the Paradox mine.

  Plump and good-natured Esther, who was deeply in love with her miner husband and devoted to their adorable little boys, had mentioned that she thought the handsome Mr. Covington was a fine gentlemen despite what others might say and she had invited him to come to Sunday services to worship. Carol Thompson, a small, fair blonde with sparkling hazel eyes, a teasing smile, and an irreverent sense of humor, confided laughingly, "I wish the good-looking southerner would quit being such a gentleman. I'd like him to come over to my house and worship me."

  "Carol!" Natalie was appalled at her friend. "You can't mean that, why—"

  "Oh, but I do, Nat." Carol leaned over the table and continued, "I loved Benny Thompson, but he's been dead for more than a year." She smiled and added, "Kane Covington makes me feel very much alive."