Gideon, Robin - Desire of the Phantom [Ecstasy in the Old West] (Siren Publishing Classic) (40 page)

“You’re a very wicked woman,” Garrett whispered a mo
ment before his lips closed down over hers.

Pamela closed her eyes, luxuriating in the highly sensual kiss. She pressed her breasts insistently against his chest,
which never failed to heighten her excitement. Her nipples tightened and became more sensitive to contact.

This time, it was she who first explored his mouth with her tongue, insisting that he open his lips wider. The mask
and cape that would hide her identity from others now
hid her inhibitions from herself, leaving her free to do whatever she wanted, to be bold and demanding in her sexual appetites.

She grasped the hand Garrett rested on her hip. “I love the way you kiss,” she whispered. Then she moved his
hand to her breast, her fingers forcing his to tighten over
the taut mound. Though she repressed all sounds of pleas
ure, reminding herself to remain as silent as possible, her excitement was growing stronger and more insistent with
each passing second.

She kissed Garrett again, her tongue dancing against his,
as she continued to hold her hand over his so she could revel in the heat and strength of his palm against her breast. She took pleasure in her own forcefulness, in
her newfound willingness to be demanding when it came
to having Garrett satisfy the sensual cravings he’d first aroused in her.

In the middle of this delicious kiss, feeling her passion
building, Pamela fully experienced her own desire for perhaps
the very first time. A heat was rising within her, the lips
of her pussy were becoming moist and swollen with
excitement, and the pulse of her heartbeat throbbed in her clit
. She was an experienced woman now, knowledgeable
as to what was happening with her body, no longer con
fused or frightened by her excitement, by the passion that
before had mystified her.

Would she dare make love with Garrett right then and there? The danger of exposure, of being caught by Billy Quinn, would add to the excitement. But as Pamela kissed Garrett’s throat, nipping lightly at his flesh with her teeth, she had to admit that the chances of Quinn waking from his alcoholic stupor were remote, at best. There really wasn’t much danger there.

And if she didn’t stop kissing Garrett very soon, she would not
allow
him to
stop
kissing her until he had quenched her passion.

She took a half step away from him, looking up into his face. Her skin felt as though he was touching her
everywhere, running a thousand feathery fingers over her from head to toe. Even her scalp tingled with the building
passion.

“Phantom, when we get home…” Pamela said, leaving the
sentence unfinished.

“When we get home, what then?” he replied, a self-assured half smile curling his lips and making Pamela want to kiss him once again.

“Do you have to make a game out of everything?” she
asked.

“I like to play. Now tell me, what’s going to happen when we get home?”

This was a small play for power on Garrett’s part, and
Pamela rather enjoyed it. They were
both
powerful people. With Garrett, there was always something going on just
beneath the surface of every conversation, and in this mo
ment, she sensed that his desire equaled her own.

Emboldened by the anonymity the mask and cape gave
her, Pamela decided to find out exactly how far this new, dynamic persona could take her.

“Let me give you a hint,” she said, taking his hand by the wrist.

She moved even closer to him once again, bringing his
hand to the juncture of her thighs. The pressure of his fingers and palm against her pussy brought a flood tide of heat and cream through her senses and to her pink lips. Her eyelids fluttered briefly as delicious feelings slithered through her.

With little effort, and without shedding even a single
article of clothing, Pamela was quite certain she could
reach a climax from Garrett’s caresses, just
as she had that first night when she’d attempted to break
into Jonathon Darwell’s mansion.

When Garrett began to move his hand, Pamela tightened her
fingers around his wrist. The simple pressure of his hand
against her pussy, even through her drawers and Levi’s, was
about as much as she could sanely accept.

“That should give you something to think
about,” she said after a moment, finding it difficult to
speak clearly. Her heart was racing.

She pushed Garrett’s hand away, fully aware of how she
had teased him. She also anticipated the delicious thrills that would be hers once the evening had come to a close
and she and Garrett were safely ensconced in her cozy little
cabin.

“Back to business,” Garrett said
with equal measures of
determination and despair. “But suddenly I’m really not in the mood for business. I don’t suppose you’d have any notion as to why my trousers are suddenly so damned tight.”

Pamela looked at his bulging trousers and nearly reached out for him.

“Oh my, you
always
respond,” she said a bit breathlessly.

They checked the ground floor of the general store first. Scraps of paper lay scattered around an empty cash drawer at the front. One slip read
Sack of Flour
. Beside
that was a set of initials. Garrett crumpled the paper up and
tucked it into his shirt pocket.

It became apparent from notes they found that Billy Quinn was, at best, marginally literate, and that his bookkeeping was appalling. He had no filing system, per se.
Apparently people came to the store when they needed
something and charged it when they didn’t have the cash
to buy what they needed. So they went into debt to Darwell’s
General Store, and once they’d gotten in, they never got
out. Ironically, this moneymaking operation, while having
a devastating effect upon the people living near Tula Valley
was, Garrett knew from his experience with Darwell’s business
matters, quite an insignificant contributor to Darwell’s
wealth.

“We’ve got to go upstairs,” Garrett said after some time
spent on unproductive searching. “There are only frag
ments of information down here, not what we really
need.”

He found the way to the stairs and took each step
slowly and carefully, annoyed by the creaking beneath his weight. With every breath he hoped that Billy Quinn would be
dead to the world. Though Garrett did not
draw the revolver from its holster, he kept his right hand
on the butt.

The door to Billy’s living quarters was ajar. It con
sisted of a tiny room, crowded with supplies to be brought
down to the general store as needed. Also crammed in this little room were a washbasin, pitcher, clothes rack—
though judging from the looks of the clothes he was sleep
ing in, he’d been wearing them quite some time without the benefit of laundering—and a flat-topped desk. Upon
closer inspection, Garrett discovered the desk was sim
ply a door placed on two sawhorses. Upon this were a
single kerosene lamp, a pen and ink set, a stack of slips
of paper weighted down with a rock the size of a man’s fist, and a leather-
bound ledger.

Even from across the room, Garrett determined this last
to be a book of quality, the kind printed and bound in San Fran
cisco. He used several ledgers just like this to record the operations of Randolph Ranch and its various busi
ness enterprises.

“Look at that,” Garrett muttered.

Pamela followed the direction of his disgusted glare to
Billy Quinn lying on a cot, his shirt mostly unbuttoned,
his trousers half open, one suspender strap on and one
off, one boot on and one off, his mouth gaping open, his
arms flayed out. He was passed out cold as a man could
be and still be alive.

“To think we were worried he might hear us,”
Garrett growled in an almost conversational tone.

“Well, it isn’t exactly like we wasted our time,” Pamela
replied a little defensively. She didn’t want anything nega
tive said about her bold behavior with him earlier. Her confidence was rising steadily with each passing day,
and with each time she and Garrett shared their sensuality.
Still, insecurity was never far from the surface.

Garrett heard the ragged edge to her tone and smiled
reassuringly. “No, it wasn’t wasted at all.” Much as he
wanted to reassure Pamela, he also wanted to do the deed
they’d set out to do and then get out of the general store.
Even if Billy Quinn was dead-drunk, neither Garrett nor
Pamela knew enough about the way business was done at the
store to have any assurances that someone else wouldn’t
show up at any minute.

Garrett took the thick ledger book out of the room then
knelt near the head of the stairs. From a shirt pocket he
withdrew several stick matches. With his thumbnail, he
struck one.

“This is what we’ve been looking for,” Garrett said, run
ning his finger down a column of figures to point to the
name “Matthews.”

He briefly studied the ledger. Judging from the legibility of the handwriting and from the misspellings, Billy
Quinn simply stood behind the counter at the general store during the day, scribbling down customers’ pur
chases. And then, at regular intervals, Michael Darwell would
show up at the store and transfer all the information from
the slips to the master ledger.

The Darwells weren’t making a fortune off this, but they
were making too much profit from unfortunate people.

“Did you get all the slips you could find?” Garrett asked
Pamela as they knelt at the head of the stairway.

“Everything that had anything written on it. I didn’t really pay much attention to what was on them.”

“Just as well,” Garrett said, a slow burning anger build
ing inside him. He shook out the match.

Tossing all the slips of paper they’d found into the
ledger, he closed it and tucked the book under his arm.
“I’m so mad at myself I could scream. I didn’t know a thing about this operation. I always think I’m so damned smart, but I’m really not.” He shook his head in disgust. “Let’s get out of here. It smells of fresh drink and old
sweat.”

Silently, they made their way to the tethered horses, and
once Garrett was certain that nobody would see the flames,
he put a match to the ledger.

“This is going to make a lot of people happy,” he said
as he watched the flames devouring the pages, destroying
the records of ruinous debt. “Now all we have to do is
get word out that this has happened and make sure nobody
confesses to what is really owed. Then there won’t be any way in the world Jonathon Darwell can prove in court these
people owe him anything.”