As the Cowboy Commands [Ecstasy in the Old West 2] (Siren Publishing Allure) (5 page)

Helen did not want to watch the violence, but she did, and the skill and savagery that Jared displayed frightened her almost as much as the young criminals did. Even though Jared was outnumbered two to one, the young men did not have a chance against him. Within fifteen seconds both young men were unconscious and sporting either a broken arm or a broken leg.

“Damn it, isn’t this ever going to end?” Jared muttered to himself, releasing the jacket collar of the unconscious cretin who had just discovered exactly how much force the big man could put behind his fists.

Jared reached a hand out to Helen. She knew what to do by now, only this time she no longer bothered to hold her dress closed as she ran at Jared’s side.

Jared was breathing heavily. There had been two more clashes with the young outlaws, and the only reason why Jared and Helen were still unscathed was that the gang had split into small groups in their efforts to kill Jared. They wanted to capture Helen. Eventually, they’d get around to killing her—but not before they’d all had their sadistic fun with her first.

“I…I’ve got…to rest,” Helen said again through gasping breaths.

She bent over at the waist, putting her hands just above her knees, turning partially away from Jared for modesty’s sake. Her legs were weak and shaky, just as they had been earlier when she was in his arms and melting inside because of the heat of his kisses, responding to sensations she’d never before realized were possible. Now she was simply and completely exhausted.

Jared looked up and down the alley and then cursed under his breath. Whether the gang had meant to do it or not, they had chased him deeper and deeper into the seamiest section of Whitetail Creek. This was the area that even Sheriff Artie Sterns, who had been hired to uphold the law, avoided completely. Itinerant cowboys looking for one last job filled the ten-cent-a-night hotels. There weren’t any brothels, but the hotels kept numerous women who rented themselves, and their rooms, out by the hour. The saloons were poorly lighted, sparsely populated, and served whiskey that went down the throat as gently as a hacksaw blade.

The decent citizens of Whitetail Creek knew better than to be in this neighborhood at night, or even to unlock their doors. Jared could hear, in the emptiness of the streets, the outlaw gang running about, shouting to each other, searching for the man in black who had already caused so many of their vicious but close-knit clan to end up screaming in agony or silently dead.

Jared turned toward Helen, and the moment he did, he wished he hadn’t. Or, rather, he felt as though he’d been struck with a lightning bolt. She was standing sideways to him, bent at the waist with her hands on her knees as she gulped in air. In that position, with her dress and camisole torn apart, and gravity playing its vital role in this visual moment that would forever be burned into Jared’s brain, he was given a view of extravagant feminine charms. Even under the duress of knowing that he would be instantly killed if he was caught by the gunmen pursuing him, and despite his own long and profligate history with women that left very little room for new experiences in the realm of sensuality, Jared considered the charms now exposed to him to be beyond earthly splendor. Helen was, in his eyes and at that moment, heavenly and angelic. Again his brain corrected itself, searching for clarity and precision in a world and at a time when clarity and precision were almost nonexistent. No, she wasn’t heavenly—she was incarnate eroticism. She was sexy as hell.

He turned his back to Helen. Self-control of his libidinous impulses had never been particularly strong with Jared, and in Helen’s presence he discovered it was nearly nonexistent. Since his late teenage years, Jared had realized that he possessed steely willpower regarding almost all facets of life. However, when he looked at his reflection in the mirror and stripped away the flesh until he got down to the very bones of his existence, he also knew that where women were concerned, he was weak-willed and intemperate in the extreme. How many times had he promised himself that he would never again be in bed with this rich young belle or that flirtatious debutante? And how many times had he promised himself that he would never again listen to their empty chatter or let himself get tugged into their bedrooms to give them the satisfaction that their other lovers could not provide?

The answer to the question he didn’t want to ask himself, but couldn’t avoid, was
too many times.

With a conscious effort, Jared forced Helen’s magnetic, voluptuous allure—and his own shortcomings—from his thoughts. He looked around the alleyway and considered his predicament. Earlier he had replaced the spent cartridges in his Colt with fresh ones, which meant that he now had six rounds in his pistol and three additional rounds in his jacket pocket. That would be sufficient if he found himself in a duel but woefully inadequate should he get into a protracted gunfight. And with Helen with him, he couldn’t run or attack as he otherwise would have.

He said, “How much farther can you go?”

“Not…far,” was the gasping response. “Leave. Go without me. I’ll hide somewhere until morning. I’ll be fine.”

“I won’t leave you.” He spoke the words softly but with a finality that left no room for ambiguity.

“But—”

“My decision has been made, so save your breath,” he said sharply, cutting off her protests.

He looked up and down the alley. There was nothing that would provide reasonable protection, a permanent safe haven from the outlaw gang searching for them. Then he spotted the fire escape ladder on the redbrick building at the opposite side of the alley.

“I’ve got an idea,” Jared said, turning toward Helen. He was relieved to see that she was now standing erect and holding the shreds of her dress closed sufficiently to hide her ostentatious charms. “Can you go just a little farther? If you can, I think we’ll be safe until sunrise. Those boys are like cockroaches. They disappear when the sun comes up.”

Helen nodded, ready to accept any suggestion that Jared might make. She was exhausted to the marrow of her bones, and she had learned during the previous hour and a half that she was infinitely safer with Jared than without him.

He crossed the alley and leaped high to grab the bottom rung of a rusted fire escape ladder attached to the back of a four-story, old brick warehouse. During the boom years of the gold rush, the warehouse had been vital for commerce. Now half the windows were boarded up, and the warehouse itself was packed with crates holding worthless merchandise that had long since been forgotten. The ladder creaked and protested against his weight, clearly not having been used in many years, and then unfolded and descended slowly. The sound of rusty metal protesting seemed particularly loud to Helen, and a stab of fear went through her. She knew she couldn’t run much farther, and she couldn’t fight the gunmen herself.

“Come on,” Jared said, standing at the base of the ladder. “Let’s get to the roof. You can rest there.”

Helen looked at the zigzagged path the iron fire escape ladder took up the side of the building. Her legs were trembling with fatigue, especially her thighs, and she was not at all certain she could climb all the way to the roof.

From less than fifty yards away, a voice cut through the night, shouting, “When I finish with that bitch, she’ll wish she never left her mama’s belly.”

Another outlaw shouted in reply, “But first we gotta find her and that big guy she’s with. You guys seen anything of ’em?”

Helen knew that her only hope of escape lay in staying with Jared and following his commands. He understood what to do, what actions and counteractions to make. Whether Helen liked the character of the man or not, she could not deny that, at least for this evening, she desperately needed him.

Helen released the hold she had on her ruined bodice. She tried to tell herself that she had much bigger problems than whether or not Jared could see her naked breasts, but she couldn’t completely shake her sense of embarrassment, especially when she noticed him looking at her bosom with obvious appreciation.

It annoyed Helen that she was nearly completely exhausted while Jared appeared to be hardly winded. She thought then how easy it would be for her to resent him. Even though he was in his thirties and had been running and fighting for the past ninety minutes, he appeared only mildly fatigued. Where did men like Jared come from? What was it in their past that had made them what they were today?

“I can do it,” she said softly as she began climbing up the metal ladder.

The rooftop of the warehouse was flat, sealed against the elements by some kind of coal tar that had been covered over with small pebbles. It was hardly the place anyone could feel comfortable, but Helen collapsed anyway, sitting with arms wrapped around her knees as she gulped in air.

“Stay here and stay quiet,” Jared said. “I’m going to look around.”

As Helen recovered her strength, Jared kept vigil at the edge of the building, checking all four sides, moving from one direction to the next to look down at the gang members as they searched with increasing anger at the quarry that eluded them.

Jared found an area on the rooftop that would provide some small measure of comfort for Helen. It was a ventilation shaft of some sort, surrounded by a wood housing to prevent the rainwater from entering the building through the shaft. Next to it were two wooden crates, long since abandoned. It wouldn’t be much, but at least Helen would have something to sit down on and something to lean back against.

He went back to her, and as he looked down at her, he did his very best to keep from staring at her breasts. He had seen countless naked women in his life, but the extravagance of Helen’s bosom was truly awe-inspiring. He felt a tickling in his groin as his cock took notice of her charms, too.

“We’ll stay here for a couple hours,” he said, getting down on one knee beside Helen. “I found a place that’ll be more comfortable for you.” He studied her face for a moment. “Those boys are angry, but they can’t run around forever. Even in a place like Whitetail Creek, sooner or later good people who understand right from wrong will unlock their doors to find out what all the ruckus is about.”

When Jared stood and reached a helping hand down for her, Helen pulled her dress a little more tightly together. Whenever Jared was very near, she felt jittery inside. It had nothing to do with the gang of outlaws now. What frightened her was Jared himself. Or, more accurately, what frightened Helen was her reaction to Jared. He had a way of inspiring a sensual curiosity and adventurousness in her that Gregg never had—a fact which caused no small amount of unease in Helen.

With Jared’s help, she got to her feet. She always felt less vulnerable when she was standing. But when she looked at Jared, she was once again made aware of his formidable size. Beside him, she felt small, and that was something that almost never happened to her because she was by no means a petite woman.

When they reached the crates and air shaft housing, Helen sighed gratefully and turned to face the man who had risked his own life to protect her.

“I’d like to thank you for what you’ve done,” she said softly. “I never would have survived without you.”

Jared placed his palm on her cheek, and with his thumb he lightly caressed her lips, passing his thumb from side to side.

“I had to do it,” he replied, giving that grin that Helen was learning to like very much. “Couldn’t leave a damsel in distress, could I? What kind of knight in shining armor would I be then?”

Helen turned her face so that she could kiss Jared’s palm. It shocked her to do this since she was still trying to convince herself that there was nothing appealing about the man. But she did kiss his palm, and a moment later, she let the tip of her tongue trail up the inside of his middle finger, and when she did, she was shocked to smell and taste the lingering, unmistakable essence of her own passion. Intensely vivid memories exploded in her mind. She remembered all the wild thrills she had felt while hiding in the dark alley, wickedly aroused by this darkly handsome stranger, frightened beyond all words at the young monsters who chased them with Jared’s slow death and her own pitiless gang rape on their minds.

Helen brought her tongue along the length of Jared’s finger, swirled her tongue around the tip briefly, then licked back down until she once more licked his palm. She wanted to look into his eyes, but she couldn’t find the courage to do it. Not while she was behaving so brazenly.

On several occasions, while she had been stroking Gregg to give him the sexual release that he said he couldn’t live without, he had tried to push Helen down to her knees. He pleaded for what he explained was called a fellatio, but she had refused. It was the one act of sensuality that Gregg had asked of her that she never relented on. But with Jared, unknown urges tempted her to do wonderfully wicked things. He inspired experimentation and made succumbing to carnal delights seem like the most natural thing in the world.

Helen’s eyes were still closed, and she was licking Jared’s finger when he eased the digit into her mouth. She closed her lips around the slowly invading finger, swirling her tongue against it in a pantomime of fellatio. Helen knew that she must present a lurid and unladylike image to Jared, but she couldn’t help herself. When he began moving his finger back and forth between her lips, a soft sigh escaped her—a sigh that was entirely natural and not at all theatrical. A real sigh of sexual desire…which was so unlike her.

“Passionate, passionate woman,” Jared breathed softly in the darkness.