As the Cowboy Commands [Ecstasy in the Old West 2] (Siren Publishing Allure) (2 page)

Her stride unconsciously faltered just a moment before she stepped through the threshold. She stopped in the doorway. Gregg was sitting behind his enormous, mahogany desk, leaning back in the oversized, leather swivel chair that he’d had specially shipped to the bank from Italy.

“Hello, Helen,” he said, a half smile touching his lips. “Come in and close the door.”

“I’d rather it remain open.” She saw anger flash in his eyes at her refusal. To mitigate his fury, she turned the onus on herself by saying, “For appearances. You don’t need gossipy tongues talking about you. Not with the wonderful reputation the Neilsons have in Whitetail Creek. Remember your political ambitions.”

He pushed himself heavily out of his chair and walked around his desk. Taking Helen by the elbow, he half pushed her to the far corner of the office, where they couldn’t be seen by the tellers and accountants in the main area of the office.

“Gregg, please…”

“Shhh!”

“There are people just outside the office.”

Gregg chuckled softly, lustfully. “That’s part of the fun of it.” At five foot seven, he was five inches taller than Helen, which wasn’t really enough to tower over her, though he was muscular enough to be physically intimidating. He put the middle knuckle of a curled forefinger to Helen’s chin, forcing her face to tilt upward. “Now give me a kiss.”

Helen squirmed when Gregg’s lips pressed tightly against her own. She wasn’t surprised when he immediately tried to force his tongue between her lips. He always did that whenever she allowed him to kiss her, even though she had expressed her displeasure in the act. She clenched her teeth and shivered when the tip of Gregg’s tongue forced its way between her lips.

When Helen forcibly turned her face away, Gregg kissed the silky flesh of her throat. As he did this, his arms went around her, both hands going low to cup her buns, fondling her bottom through a gray, cotton skirt and white, cotton bloomers.

“Gregg, please, I don’t want to do this…”

The banker brought his tongue up the side of Helen’s throat until he reached her ear. There, he caught her earlobe between his teeth and bit her hard enough to cause pain.

“Ouch!”

“Shhh!” Gregg shushed. “You’re the one that’ll draw the attention from the idiots out there.” His fingers kneaded Helen’s generously curved backside. When she reached behind herself to push his hands away, the move caused her heavy, rounded breasts to press against Gregg’s chest. The sensation of firm, plump breasts rubbing against him prompted a groan of pleasure to rumble out of his chest. “Helen, stop squirming. I only want to talk to you.”

Helen put her hands on Gregg’s velvet waistcoat. She tried to push him away, but he had maneuvered her into the corner, and though she was not a small woman, she could not push Gregg so much as a single step backward.

With suspicion in her eyes, she whispered, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Our wedding. I want to set a date.”

“I…I can’t do that. Not just yet.”

“Yes, you can.” Gregg’s right hand eased around Helen’s hip, his palm gliding boldly over her feminine curves until he held a hand-filling breast through blouse and camisole. “My God, look at these big things!”

“Gregg, I don’t like being referred to as a ‘thing.’”

Helen inhaled sharply when he squeezed her breasts, clumsy fingers searching for nipples through layers of clothing. Despite the annoyance in her tone, she wasn’t trying to push his hand away.

“You’ve got to keep these,” Gregg continued, leaning into his fiancée now, using both hands on her breasts. “Keep these, but lose some of this before the wedding.” His put his hand to Helen’s stomach and pinched hard enough to make her flinch in pain. He chuckled. “Promise me you’ll do that.”

With a sweeping move, Helen slapped Gregg’s hands from her body. With her back to the wall, she looked up into his eyes and said flatly, “Look, once we’re married, it’ll be different.”

“We don’t have to wait.”

Through clenched teeth, Helen replied, “Yes, we do.”

“So you say. But you and I both know there can be exceptions to your rules.”

Helen closed her eyes. Yes, she was painfully aware that she had made exceptions. A year earlier she had lost her virginity to Gregg. He had been so insistent and his words so seductive that, despite her protests and better judgment, her willpower crumbled under Gregg’s ardor. And there had been another moment of weakness when she’d given in to Gregg’s lust. While her first sexual encounter held elements of romance to it, the second time had been a tawdry experience for Helen, and she had insisted to Gregg that it could never happen again. It had happened right there in the office, with the door closed and her coworkers at their work desks within the bank. Gregg had bent Helen over his desk, raised her skirt, and lowered her knickers, and took his satisfaction from her. It had been a harsh encounter, short-lived but fever pitched, and when it was over Helen had felt cheapened, violated.

“I told you to never mention that to me again.”

Gregg smiled as he took Helen by the wrist. “Agreed. I shouldn’t have brought it up. But there’s something else that’s up.” He placed her hand over the hard lump in his tailored trousers. Helen closed her eyes and turned her face away. “Give your special man some pleasure once more,” Gregg whispered. “Come on, you know what I like.” His voice deepened, the tone becoming harsher, more demanding. “Helen, I’m a virile man, and a rich one. If I can’t find the satisfaction I need from you, then maybe I should start looking for someone more…compatible”—he drawled the four syllables out slowly, accusingly—“to my desires.”

Helen squeezed his erection through his trousers. He had taught her how to touch him, how to stroke him until he achieved satisfaction. It was, Helen had decided over the past year of their engagement, the least of many possible evils. She still didn’t like doing it, but it wasn’t as defiling as being bent over his desk with her knickers down to her ankles. And it couldn’t be as bad as getting down on her knees to use her mouth on him, which Gregg had once asked her to do. Helen had vociferously refused to grant him that sexual request, now or in the future.

Gregg was very hard, very aroused, but Helen felt no passion. Not so much as a single spark of sexual excitement registered within her.

“There isn’t time for this,” Helen said quietly, searching for an objective tone. “Tomorrow, after work—by the livery. I’ll do this for you.” She squeezed him again, careful not to use too much pressure. Gregg was
very
specific on how he wanted his needs met. “I promise. Tomorrow.”

“Good.” He gave her a half smile as his hips unconsciously moved in a circular motion while Helen’s fingers toyed with his arousal. “Tomorrow it is then.”

He cupped her breasts one last time, leaned into Helen to kiss her lips again—though this time he didn’t try to force his tongue in her mouth—and then stepped away from her.

“There’s still a couple of minutes left in the workday,” Gregg said as he walked back to his desk. “I’ll talk to you before I leave.”

Helen did not hesitate. Though her stride had faltered upon entering Gregg’s office, it was purposeful as she left the office. Her heels clicked against the hardwood floor, prompting Marcus to look up from his ledger. Helen stepped up to his chair.

“Are you all right?” Marcus whispered. “You’re pale.”

“I’m fine. Leave me alone, will you?” Helen said with more harshness than she had intended. “I am sorry. Gregg’s pushing me to set a date for the wedding. I am just not ready to do that. Not yet.”

Before Marcus could reply, Gregg stepped forward with a file folder in his hands. He dropped the folder onto Helen’s desk and said, “These are the numbers for the Sutherland Mining Company. I want your breakdown of the figures ready for me by the time I get to the office tomorrow morning.”

Helen’s heart sank. She was being punished by Gregg because she hadn’t provided the sexual satisfaction he’d wanted. She said, “Gregg, this will take at least two or three hours.”

“Yes, I suppose. Make sure it is on my desk in the morning. I’ll lock up the bank when I leave. Just let yourself out when you’re finished with your work. See that the door locks behind you.”

Helen was sitting in her chair at the high desk, looking through the financial ledger of a small mining outfit that Gregg was considering acquiring, when the employees of the First Bank & Trust of Whitetail Creek filed out the door. The vault had been closed and locked, as it always was every day immediately at six o’clock. Helen was left alone in the bank with a single lamp to illuminate the pages of a mining company’s profits, losses, and expenses. Hot tears of rage burned in her eyes, but she refused to let them escape.

* * * *

After writing the final sentence to her acquisition report, Helen set her pen in its holder, placed her face in her hands, and sighed wearily as she rubbed her eyelids. As she thought about what she had promised she would do for Gregg after work the following day, the bank’s clock began to chime. It sounded nine times.

She told herself that what she was going to do for Gregg wasn’t something that she hadn’t done before, so she shouldn’t let it weigh too heavily on her mind. She also tried to remind herself that she had a job that paid reasonably well and that her brother was counting on her continuing to pay for his hospitalization in the outskirts of Denver. But whenever Helen’s thoughts drifted in this direction, she began seeing herself as a soiled dove, her motivation with Gregg as being mercenary, not matrimonial, and when this happened she was afraid of looking at her own reflection in the mirror.

Go home and don’t think about anything at all, she told herself. Worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes.

She left the bank, making sure that the door mechanism locked behind her, and began the weary, four-block walk to the livery, where her horse and carriage would be waiting for her.

* * * *

“Lookie here, boys!”

The sound of the male voice directly behind Helen startled her so badly she nearly fell over in her haste to see who had stepped out of the shadows. She looked at the young man who had spoken, and at his four companions, and Helen’s heart began pounding furiously with primal fear. The speaker, as well as his friends, was young, perhaps under twenty, and wore range clothes that had not seen a cleaning in quite a while, though he had a well-oiled and thoughtfully cared-for pistol in a holster at his hip. He and his friends were itinerate cowboys, but with barbed wire being strung up nearly everywhere, they had taken to renting themselves out as gunmen. The contemptuous sneer on his lips seemed a permanent, prominent expression.

“I think this filly is looking for a stallion,” the leader said, his gaze going brazenly up and down over Helen’s voluptuous curves as he spoke.

Another young man said, “Jimbo, I believe you’re right.”

The leader, Jimbo, put his right hand between his legs to obscenely fondle himself. As he did this, his friends fanned out to surround Helen, trapping her between themselves and her carriage. She didn’t stand a chance of getting in her carriage, turning it around, and riding away before they captured her. Some fifty yards down the dusty side street of Whitetail Creek, Helen heard an excited cry, and the fragment of a sentence indicating that Jimbo had found a girl. How many more vicious young men were on their way now?

Helen tried to moisten her lips, but her tongue was dry. With as much confidence as she could manage, she said, “You’d better leave now before you get in trouble.”

This comment brought hissing, sadistic laughter from the leader of the blackguards. Jimbo stepped closer to Helen, still fondling himself through his baggy, dirty trousers. He licked his lips in a crude manner, saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth. The revulsion Helen felt showed in her expression.

“At this time of night?” the cretin asked. “Hell, ain’t nobody in town dumb enough to open their door or keep a lamp lit. At this time of night, me and my boys own the backstreets of Whitetail Creek.”

“Please, leave me alone,” Helen said. Then, her tone suddenly quivering, she pleaded softly, “Won’t you please just leave me alone?”

“That would be a damned neighborly thing to do, but it ain’t gonna happen.” Jimbo broke into another peel of laughter that was shared by his gang. “So why don’t you just go along real nice like, and just maybe you won’t get that pretty face of yours all cut up when we’re done with you?”

Jimbo stepped close enough so that he could reach out and touch Helen. His dark gaze raked up and down over her, and his expression was a foul thing that was both frightening and ugly to see.

“I like what I see,” the leader said. “But I don’t like your hair like that. Take out that pin and let your hair down, missy.”

Helen contemplated refusing to comply, but then a calmer, more rational voice inside her head whispered that needlessly angering the volatile gunman wouldn’t do her any good. She reached up and pulled out the wooden pin that held her long, auburn hair in a bun at the base of her neck. Her hair, gleaming in the moonlight like some precious metal, fell down her back.

“See? I can be a real nice fella when a gal knows how to follow orders.”

The other gunmen cackled at Jimbo’s comments. Helen shivered inside. There were now eight men standing in a half circle around her, all of them looking at her with a carnivorous gleam in eyes that held lust but no pity.