My Darling Gunslinger (22 page)

“Sounds foreign and high-fallutin’.”

“French,” she agreed. “Would you like me to teach you to play?”

“Maybe some other time.” He’d be damned if he’d spend the few hours of privacy he’d been granted learning to play some Frenchified card game.

“It’s quite simple. One wins by reaching as near to twenty-one as possible without going over.”

“Blackjack.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We call it blackjack. Or twenty-one.”

“Well, as Vingt-et-un is French for twenty-one, it must be the same game,” she agreed with a smile.

“Ah, so that’s why unmarried ladies aren’t allowed to play,” Ty mused as an idea—a wicked idea—took shape in his mind.

“Whatever do you mean?” Charlotte demanded.

“Now, now, my lady, you needn’t play the innocent with me,” he retorted, lips twitching as he fought back a smile. “Nothing shocks me. I was raised in a brothel, after all.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Morgan,” his wife replied primly. “There is nothing shocking about the game at all.”

“We must’ve played by different rules than you learned in England.” Ty pulled his stiff new hat low in hopes she wouldn’t see the lie for what it was. “‘Cause I can’t see you playing blackjack the way Josie and the girl’s taught it to me.”

“How on earth could the rules be different?” she asked, one pale brow raised in blatant skepticism. “Cards are dealt, aces are worth either one or eleven, face cards are ten and whoever reaches twenty-one or as near as wins.”

“That’s all good and well. But what did you wager?”

“Coin, of course.”

“That explains it,” Ty replied with a nod. “I’m afraid we’ll have to play something else. Go fish or old maid, maybe.”

“Those are children’s games,” she protested.

“If the shoe fits.” He flicked his hat brim back to allow her to see the laughter in his eyes.

“Are you calling me a child?” Charlotte was purely aggrieved now, her cheeks flushed and her eyes flashing. “What did you and Josie and the girls wager with?”

“It wasn’t only Josie and the girls. I’ve played blackjack in saloons and brothels from Santa Fe to Jefferson City and never bet a nickel.”

“What did you wager?”

“Nothing you’d consider anteing up.”

“Never say you wagered kisses!”

“Would you wager kisses with me?” Ty asked, pleased by the notion.

“Certainly not,” she retorted. “My kisses are freely given or not given at all.”

Which pleased Ty still more as he’d been the recipient of those kisses and hoped like hell she’d bestow dozens more on him before the night was over.

“Out with it,” Charlotte ordered, leaning over the table to glare at him. “What did you wager?”

“Well now,” he murmured. “Me, I like to start with my hat.”

“Your hat?”

“My infernal hat. Then my boots.”

“You bet your hat and boots?”

“Next I’d throw in my shirt.” Ty ran a hand down the soft cotton of his new shirt, the one he’d chosen because Charlotte said it matched his eyes.

“You wagered your garments against those of…of hurly-girlies?” Charlotte’s voice was barely a thread of sound, her eyes comically round.

“Hurly-burly girls,” he corrected. “From Santa Fe to Jefferson City.”

“But…you undressed completely?”

“Nah, it was the fancy girls who stripped down to their birthday suits,” Ty replied with a grin designed to aggravate. “I came close a time or two but I never dropped my drawers.”

Charlotte leaned back in her seat and chewed her lower lip, torn between shock and fascination. Or so Ty hoped.

“What’ll it be?” he asked with just enough mockery that she wouldn’t miss the dare. “Go Fish or Old Maid?”

“Blackjack.”

“You sure? I wouldn’t want you to suppose yourself obliged to play naughty games if you are inclined to stick to safer ones.”

“Hush and deal the cards.”

“Tsk, tsk. As far as I can reckon, you’ve got seven or eight pieces of clothing on.” Ty took up the cards and shuffled them in a high arch, showing off for his stubborn, adventurous wife. “While I’m practically naked with only five.”

“I can assure you I am wearing more than eight articles of clothing,” Charlotte replied with a cheeky smile.

“Pairs, as in shoes, stockings and garters, count as single wagers,” Ty said, making things up as he went along. “Lose one and you lose them both.”

“Or win, as the case may be,” his lovely, quick-witted opponent retorted. “Are you going to deal those cards at some point this evening?”

“We’ve got to even the playing field first.”

“I don’t see why.”

“You wouldn’t since you’re the one with the unfair advantage.”

“I can count and you’re wearing six garments,” she tossed back. “Add one of those new cravats and a jacket if you don’t think you can beat a mere woman on uneven ground.”

“I’m not wearing drawers,” he answered with a wink.

Charlotte opened her mouth and closed it again with a snap, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been about to ask him to prove it. “Fine, I’ll give up my shoes and stockings and garters.”

Ty bent his head to hide his smile. If he played his cards right, he’d have his wife stripped naked in five hands.

And maybe he would have, except he got distracted watching Charlotte kick off her slippers and hike up her skirts to her knees. His wits went wandering at the sight of her long, elegant fingers plucking at the ribbons of her garters and slowly rolling the silk stockings down her pale legs.

Ty lost his hat taking a card when any novice would have known to hold at seventeen. Disgusted and sorely wishing he’d said he started the betting with his boots, he tossed the black, unbroken hat on the table.

His boots — also new and of such supple leather and fine craftsmanship he’d found himself hopping and skipping about to avoid the piles of horse dung on the New York streets — went missing when he dealt Charlotte a king and an ace on the second hand.

He managed to win her pristine white petticoats with four cards totaling twenty on the next hand, only to lose his thick woolen socks and his concentration after watching her wrestle the undergarments from beneath her skirts.

His shirt went for a song, his wife softly humming some ditty under her breath as she flipped over her cards to reveal the jack of spades and ace of hearts.

And all the while, Charlotte smiled, tapped her fingers on the table and fidgeted in her seat until it was all Ty could do not to toss his cards away and haul her onto the table for some real fun and games.

“Are you certain none of those fancy ladies from Santa to Jefferson City stripped you down to your birthday attire?” Charlotte teased as Ty made a great show of slowly unbuttoning his shirt and sliding it off his shoulders.

“You count the cards, don’t you?”

“Am I not supposed to?”

“Some might call it cheating.”

“Are you going to call me out?” Charlotte’s gaze swept over his chest, lingered on his nipples before rising to his neck and finally lifting to his face. “Shall we have a duel in the streets?”

“A shoot-out,” Ty corrected just to annoy. “On deck.”

“Might we wait until I’ve won this next hand and divested you of your trousers?” she asked with a throaty little laugh that pushed Ty that much closer to the edge of reason. “You would certainly gain an audience, women from all over the ship braving the night winds to ogle your manly parts.”

“You haven’t won yet,” he growled in mock irritation.

She nearly divested him of his trousers on the next hand. But nineteen beats eighteen in any country and in any language, even Prussian.

Ty assumed the muttered words falling from his lady’s lips were spoken in the Prussian language as she flicked her cards to the table and rose to her feet. Some of the words sounded like those Jasper Heimlich had used that fateful night when he’d given his ranch and his niece into a gunslinger’s hands.

Ty’s hands. The same hands itching to explore the narrow line of flesh exposed as Charlotte’s fingers plucked at the buttons of the high-necked, frilly pink gown she wore. Itched to take over the task, to push the material to the floor and start in on the laces of the corset revealed as the gown parted to the waist.

Instead Ty watched, silent but for the rasp of his breath, still but for the blood rushing through his veins and the twitching of his cock.

Christ, she was so damn beautiful, so pale and slender, so proud with her chin raised in the air and her blue eyes fixed on him as she pushed the tight sleeves down her arms and gave the smallest swivel of her hips. Pink silk slid over a lacy scrap of white cotton that somehow passed for drawers, down long legs to pool around narrow ankles.

Charlotte stood quietly before him, dressed much as she’d been that day when he’d surprised her in the Pleasure Palace. Her front-lacing corset was a confection of embroidered pink silk and ruffles, hugging her tiny waist and pushing up her breasts until the flesh nearly spilled over the top.

“I forgot I’d left off my chemise,” she said, a faint flush cresting over the swells of her breasts and traveling up her neck. “I only had on seven articles of clothing, four when we started.”

Ty swallowed around the lump wedged in his throat, part wonder and part worry. He didn’t want to rush this moment, rush this woman. His wife.

“I suppose you’ll say I cheated.” There was a smile, soft and sweet, hovering on the edges of her lips and lurking in her eyes.

“It’s only…” Ty paused to clear his throat, undone by the promise of that smile. “It’s only cheating if you win.”

Charlotte laughed, the sound light and airy. “Shall I offer up a forfeit for my transgressions? My corset, perhaps?”

Before Ty could speak, before he could remind her the lack of a chemise was to his advantage, her fingers were tugging at the bow of her laces, pulling satin ribbon through silver eyelets and he was dizzy with desire.

“There,” she said on a sigh as silk and a tangle of laces fell to the floor. “Now we’re on an even playing field.”

But there was nothing even, not a single blessed thing even about playing the final hand with Charlotte perched on the edge of her chair with her pretty breasts on display.

Of course, Ty lost the hand. He’d never stood a chance. He couldn’t make out the cards, couldn’t get his mind to form a coherent thought, let alone do the simple arithmetic needed to hold at nineteen. Instead he dealt himself one more card.

The queen of diamonds smiled up at him from the tabletop, a siren’s smile, full of knowledge and mischief.

“Goodness, I won,” Charlotte said with a siren’s smile of her own. “With a fifteen, no less. I suppose I could show those hurly-burly girls a thing or two.”

His wife could show them a hundred things or more. About cards and cheating, about desire and kisses freely given, about seducing a man with smiles and laughter, about simple pleasures and complicated choices.

“Ante up, Mr. Morgan.”

“I think you mean pay up.” Ty rose to stand beside the table, his hands falling to the placket of his new trousers.

Charlotte rose with him, her eyes following the clumsy movement of his fingers, watching intently as he freed the buttons, one by one. He shoved his trousers past his hips and his cock sprang free, hard and heavy.

“Oh.” The single word, whispered on a soft exhalation of breath, had his shaft jerking and his balls tightening.

“Did you think you could strip down to that scrap of lace and I wouldn’t take notice?” He bent to push the trousers down his legs and free of his feet, knowing he sounded petulant, as if his sorry state were all her fault.

“I should hope not,” she replied pertly. “I’d simply forgotten how…er, how substantial your… That is, your phallus is of copious proportions.”

“Copious?”

“Enormous.”

“I’m not making any husbandly demands. You don’t need to acquiesce to anything.”

With a little huff, Charlotte snatched up his hat and placed it atop the coil of braids on her head. She raised both arms and tilted the brim at a jaunty angle, her breast jiggling enticingly with the movement.

“I’ll be in our bed.” She tossed the words over her shoulder as she spun away. “Waiting for my husband to pounce and make all sorts of husbandly demands so that I might happily acquiesce.”

Ty caught her before she’d taken three steps, scooping her up in his arms and capturing her lips. He meant to go slow, to take the time to carefully woo his wife with tenderness. With a sigh and a single swipe of her tongue, Charlotte pushed him past the point of slow, past the point of careful wooing, and long past the possibility of tenderness. Instead he plundered her mouth, pouring all his frustration, his endless desire and his soul-wrenching need into the kiss.

His hat fell to the floor as Charlotte wound her arms around his shoulders and clung, twisting in his hold until she’d plastered her breasts to his chest. Her hands tangled in his hair, fingers tugging and pulling, nails scouring his scalp. She stroked her tongue over his, circled and retreated, luring him deeper into the wet heat of her mouth.