Deciding to relive him of the burden that was her body entwined with his Honor Elizabeth signaled towards the bed and he dropped her to her feet as he lay on it. She quickly mounted him and grabbed on to his manhood, which glistened with her juices. She kissed it and ran her tongue over it. Squatting over him she continually stroked the length of his member, and she inserted it into her, this time facing away from him. He held on to her waist as she bounced on him.
Her hands were firmly on his thighs and her hair dangled over her breasts as her hips kept working hard on their melded parts. Honor was certain he was getting close because his grip on her waist got firm and his grunting had become short gasps.
She could also feel herself getting moving towards that same edge of pleasure. The familiar tension was now coursing through her body. The spasms were building, and the heat increasing. With each electrifying thrust she made, she felt the tension edge closer to the breaking point. He was matching her movements now, grunting even louder and moving his hips upwards as she fell on them–one perfect sex contraption, they both were.
She gasped as he quickly pulled her aside and unto the bed. He was on her in one quick motion, his left hand directing his shaft in between her huge melons. She clasped unto each breast and caged his manhood between them. Her eyes were locked on his as he frantically humped her bosoms, and, with one final moan, he unloaded on her chest.
Honor Elizabeth licked her lips and winked at him, "Relaxed yet?"
Josiah just laughed as he brought his lips down to hers and they basked in their afterglow. Lost in each other as if they were the only two in the entire world.
They were not, however, and far from Mesa Verde, just south of the Mexican border, there was a man. A man who was about to set events into motion that would bring chaos and gunfire from a forbidden ranch to the place Honor Elizabeth cherished most in all the world … Cedar Ledge.
CHAPTER 8
* * *
CANEBRARO VALLEY
LOS VALLIES TRES
MEXICO
Marisol San Cristobel approached the massive double wooden doors to her brother’s office with trepidation. With her state of mind, the old doors seemed to her like a large, dark hole in the wall, threatening to swallow her whole into a terrible world within, as soon as she walked through them. Behind the door was her brother, Esteban. Around him wasn’t the hell she had briefly imagined too, but books—countless ones stacked to fill an entire wall, archaic but expensive porcelains, paintings that were a fortune—considering that none like them existed elsewhere in the world—and windows, both of them having a nice view of the beautiful hills that surrounded the villa.
Every time she had entered that room she had been filled with dread. Being in it meant watching as her brother ruthlessly ran his business—his criminal enterprise—in the confines of its four walls.
She knew the reason she was anxious to step into his office. An hour ago, she had been told by one of the housekeepers, Rafaella, that he needed her to pack, and then she was to see him. Esteban was going to send her across the border, she knew. She also knew if he was sending her north, she would have no choice but to get buried deeper into his business. Finally, after a deep breath, she fortified herself and stepped towards the door, but an arm snaked out barring her way.
Marisol turned and looked at the impudent young woman that stood next to her. The girl was young, maybe twenty, maybe a little less and lovely with her doe eyes and well-endowed figure. Her ebony tresses shone glossily as they hung all the way down to just above her curvaceous behind. Rafaella was exactly the kind of girl Esteban would like to keep around as a plaything. Being elevated from a maid to a crime lord's woman had gone directly to her head, and there was no mistaking that as her voice coolly issued a command.
“Wait a moment, and I shall announce you to him.”
“He is my brother, and as you well know, he is expecting me.” Annoyingly to Marisol, the woman had waited the entire time while she had packed before escorting her to Esteban’s office. “I do not need your announcing Rafaella,” Marisol said as she pushed her arm away, but Rafaella moved to insert herself between Marisol and the doors.
“You forget your place.”
“And you overestimate yours. How long before he tires of you and looks for another fresh face. My advice to you, senorita, is to enjoy it while you can … because it will not last.”
For a long moment, the two Mexican women glared at each other before Rafaella stepped away, allowing Marisol to seize the twin handles on each door, but she paused for just a moment in reflection.
She was in her early fifties now and had witnessed the power that her brother had built for himself over the decades. The brother and sister had been orphaned at an early age when their parents had been slain in The Badlands between the Arizona border and the Canebraro Valley. That had left them to raise their baby brother, which her laughing mother had always called her miracle baby due to her past the prime of her life pregnancy.
Instead of shunning crime for the cost it had exacted on his family, Esteban had seized upon it as a way to support them all. He proved very, very good at it when he had started a gang of his own. What a long way her brother had come since then to where he was now. She had disapproved of his ways but she felt she must stay within his sphere to watch over young Alejandro.
Despite her best efforts to prevent it, Esteban groomed their younger brother to join him at his side in his criminal enterprises. Now Alejandro was gone. Exiled by Esteban himself when he failed to have the same ruthless streak as himself, Marisol knew Alejandro was quite the adept criminal himself. It had been a life he had been molded and shaped to, but there was good in him. He preferred to carry out crimes where, if possible, no one was harmed. Esteban had tired of being in conflict with their younger brother over such matters and had sent him away several years ago.
Now Alejandro was running his own organization in another part of Mexico, and she had not seen him in some time. Every day she wondered if she shouldn’t have left with him, but she had come to fear Esteban too much to suggest otherwise. Most days she felt like she was a prisoner in every way but name only. Steeling herself once more she opened the doors and walked in exposing herself to her brother’s toxic world. Once inside she was greeted by the rays of the sun that beamed through a nearby window, settling on her face and radiating through her salt and pepper hair.
Adjusting her vision, she focused on the well-lit room and noticed a man standing before Esteban who was behind his desk. Esteban, as always, looked dashing and dapper in a red velvet vest over a white blouse. Chiseled features and shock of black hair made him the envy of many men, she was sure. She recognized the man standing before the desk as one of her brother’s henchmen, Carlos. He looked terrified and was shaking. Esteban, however, sat calmly at his desk, peeling an apple carefully. Noticing her with a sideways glance, she watched as he smiled briefly and threw a piece of the apple into his mouth.
“If you could wait just a moment, dear sister,” he said, immediately reaching out from his chair to ring a bell.
Marisol found one of the chairs in the room to sit on, just as another maid, an older one, Manuela, hurriedly entered from where she had been working in an adjacent room.
“The sheet, please,” Esteban asked her, and Manuela nodded mutely before hurrying back outside.
The henchman, surely affected by the sheet Manuela was going to get, gave a moan of fear and with shaking legs, dropped to his knees.
“No, no, not the sheet!” He groaned in terror.
Esteban wasn’t listening. Within moments, Manuela was back and the sheet was produced and laid out on the floor. With a sigh, Esteban slowly folded his paring knife and put it in his vest pocket.
“Stand on the sheet,” he told Carlos.
A gun seemed to magically appear in Esteban’s hand when the frightened man kept on fidgeting, although Marisol knew he kept the gun in a lower desk drawer. He pointed the gun at the man, repeating his
order, and Carlos slowly did as he was told. Marisol always wondered why they stepped on the sheet. They knew what was going to happen, so why make it easy for Esteban? Then again, she thought, hope was as good a motivator as fear. There was always a chance Esteban would have a chance of heart, and yet he never did.
Watching, she saw as Carlos collapsed back down to his knees when he was on the sheet, really making it easy for her brother.
“It was you who sent the man we now know as a spy into our midst!” Esteban said forcefully to him now.
“No, please, boss. I didn’t know. He fooled me too.” Carlos was stammering.
“Failure has the highest cost, you shall learn this now,” Esteban said, spitting before pulling the trigger. As targeted, the bullet pierced the man’s head and blew out the back. The gore splattered the sheet and Marisol winced in a familiar horror.
“Always such a messy business,” Esteban said, calmly taking another bite out of the peeled apple and refusing to glance at her.
As if called, once Esteban returned his gun to his drawer, two men appeared and carefully wrapped the body in the sheet before carrying it all away. Just like that, a man was murdered and the evidence gone. Her brother was very efficient, and she doubted if anyone could beat him at his craft.
“Now then, sister dearest, I have a job for you,” She heard him finally mutter just before his eyes left the apple in his hand to focus on her at the corner chair she had chosen.
“You must go to Alamieda, Arizona, and deliver a message and some papers to my American counterpart. I dare not use even our coded telegrams that we usually communicate with. It is up to you to see that he gets this most urgent communiqué,” he said as soon as she stood and began to step towards his desk.
“If you fail in this, everything I have worked for regarding my arrangements of many years over the border will collapse. If that happens, you will also stand on a sheet.”
As usual, her brother had a calmness to his voice that was a counter to his words. She shivered with the imagination of her lifeless body sprawled on a white sheet just as she finally got to his desk and nodded mutely.
She didn’t have to be told; her brother was loco and she had to do exactly what he wanted her to do and in a strange way was more than happy to put distance and an international border between them.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
CASPER’S CROSSING
ARIZONA TERRITORY
Casper’s Crossing’s courthouse was often the most popular building on any court day. Once the scheduled proceedings began, the large hall would be filled to the brim with various townspeople, a large percentage of them being men and women who came around to be entertained as well as to equip themselves with a range of gossip to last a week. The rest of the crowd were made up of citizens who were involved with the case, and these were usually the anxious ones, always eager to know what Judge William Wilde’s judgment on the miscreants might be. For Casper’s Crossing, trials were better than good theater. This day would be no different and in fact would prove better than most days.
Circuit court Judge William Henry “Whip” Wilde sat confidently, presiding from the bench the afternoon of their second and last day in town, with Honor Elizabeth, sitting quite close in the front row, on the aisle. Behind her were many farmers and homesteaders, and in the back row sat a group of women from the local bordello dressed in corsets and skirts.
None of them, if not told, and determined only by looks, would guess that the judge and the enthralling mulatto spectator, shared blood. While the judge was now over sixty, he had glowing white skin, wide shoulders and a strong chin. His sharp blue eyes and silver hair were also a plus, always giving him a handsome and agile look. Honor, on the other hand, looked out on the world with her hazel eyes and smooth mocha brown skin that made her long, curly black hair stand out. Despite that she sat with her arms folded across her chest, her hourglass figure, a hallmark of all four Wilde sisters, was apparent, her well-meaning breasts, also quite appealing beneath her crimson dress, caught the attention of many of the males in the courthouse.
“After careful consideration of all the evidence, I find Jordan Clegg guilty of the theft of a dozen head of cattle from the Circle C Ranch. I do sentence him to five years of hard labor at Claymore Prison.” Judge Wilde’s judgment eventually echoed loud as he brought the gavel down to conclude the sentencing.
The defendant, Jordan Clegg, standing next to his lawyer, was a short, stocky man, with brown hair. His entire body tensed with the announcement while he held out both hands, having hoped for a better judgment.
“Judge, no! I didn’t steal them cattle!” He shouted, scared.
"As was heard in testimony, two eyewitnesses saw you steer them through a hole you cut in the fence," Judge Wilde said, convinced that the evidence had argued strongly against him.
A burly looking man in the front row leaped to his feet before the defendant could utter more words in argument. Before the man's lips moved, his deep green eyes stared at the judge for a long moment, a deep anger reflecting back from them.
“They’re liars! My brother didn’t steal no cattle from the Chase ranch,” the man in the front row said. “He was with me drinkin’ out at my ma’s farm when this was supposed to have happened,” He concluded angrily.
If both men were indeed brothers, nothing proved it except for their similar brown hair and green eyes. The defendant’s brother was certainly tall and looked like a man that had seen more of this life than his weak sibling. The sheriff, sensing the indecorum that might erupt from the brother’s outburst left his spot at the side of the courtroom and walked towards him with a serious frown.
“You simmer down, Nate!” he told the angry brother.
At that moment, Whip cleared his throat and threw a curious glance at both brothers. "It was also heard that these witnesses thought they saw another man waiting near the edge of the woods, but they couldn't be a hundred percent sure since it was dusk and the light was bad for that distance," he said. "Now, I wonder who that mystery figure could have been if he existed?"
More words couldn’t have explained the Judge’s thoughts on the matter. It was apparent that he already calculated that Nate might be involved in the theft and was only covering up the entire incident with a lie that both men thought would go down well with the court. Whip stared down at the big brother, intentionally locking eyes with him so he could give up whatever facade he was playing.
The tactic was however interrupted when Jordan tried to make a break for it. He shoved the Sheriff and his lawyer out of the way and turned to run down the aisle leading to the courtroom doors. Screams vented immediately in the hall as every onlooker watched on without a thought of what to do. Honor, however, calmly extended her foot before Jordan could make it far, tripping his stuffed body into a roll on the floor, where he emitted a groan. The sheriff pounced on the miscreant immediately, shaking his head whimsically at him before cuffing his hands and legs. Jordan was infuriated as he was led out of the court; he kept screaming at the top of his lungs, trying and failing each time to jerk his wrists and ankles out of the cuffs.
Throughout the entire time, Honor said nothing nor gave out any visible reaction to the entire incident. Her father gave her a proud smile, and she theatrically bowed her head in response, noticing out the corner of one hazel eye, Nate Clegg, who was apparently furious and looked at them with hate in his eyes.
“That’s it, people. Court is adjourned,” the judge finally said, bringing down the gavel twice to end the day’s courtroom drama.
The entire hall blossomed with whispers and various sounds of footsteps immediately, as everyone began to exit excitedly, having just witnessed another incident that would be the talk of the town for another week. The thought of various versions of the story bandied about in the town's popular saloon for days to come, finally brought a smile to Honor's lips as she stood, the smile getting broader as she noticed a young woman approaching the bench with an older ge
ntleman who walked with the help of a cane.
"Thank you, Judge. From the bottom of my heart and my daughter, Teri, as well, we thank you!" the older gentleman said honestly. Teri, the young woman beside him, nodded in appreciation too. She looked quite young and vibrantly beautiful. Just like her father, she had long brown hair and also had a shapely figure captivatingly dressed in proper courtroom attire. Despite the way her dress flowed down to her legs, the curvy shape of her hips were obvious. Anyone didn't have to gaze that far to know she was a fair beauty anyway; barely staring at her face, her thin red lips and large eyes were quite an exhilarating view.
"No thanks necessary, Mr. Chase," he replied to both of them while stepping forward to stand beside Honor Elizabeth. “If I have anything to say about it, justice will always be served,” he told them kindly.
Honor smiled at his words, always proud of her father. In situations like this, her respect for him was even stronger for the good he did by upholding justice. It was the way of the entire Wilde family and they had learned it from him.“Still, we are most grateful,” Mr. Chase, the old man, insisted. “We have been having difficulty with our mortgage on the farm as of late, and the loss of those cattle only added to our woes. We can at least have the satisfaction of knowing the thief won’t be free to do to others as he has done to us.”
“Well then, you are most welcome. From one rancher to another, there are few things I hate more than cattle rustlers,” Honor heard her father finally mutter with a smile, ending the long vote of thanks.
Mr. Chase gave a wide grin and nodded a goodbye as the pair easily departed now that the courthouse was empty, although it had been filled to the brim a short while ago. Honor turned to her father afterward, slipping her arm into his and exiting the courthouse with him too. Rather than the front door, the pair left through the back door instead, where the judge’s elaborate carriage was waiting for them down the alley. Its polished black chassis with its red trim and golden colored wheels and sturdy glass windows gleamed as they always did whenever light reflected off them.
The Forbidden Ranch: Honor Elizabeth Wilde Tale 0f Suspense (Half Breed Haven Book 5) Page 5