Nan Ryan (21 page)

“Oh, God, baby,” he moaned, roughly pulled her up, and kissed her deeply, hotly. When finally he dragged his heated lips from hers, he pressed her face to his bare heaving chest and fought to regain his equilibrium.

Mollie, inhaling deeply of his heated male scent, thought happily that Lew was nothing short of beautiful without his shirt. The crisp black hair on his chest grew in an appealing fanlike pattern that covered only the flat, hard muscles before narrowing into a heavy, distinct line going down his stomach to disappear into his trousers. His sculpted shoulders and long, deeply clefted back were smooth, dark, and devoid of hair. Glad that it was so, she lifted her head and kissed his dark throat, where a pulse was beating heavily.

“It’s time I get you in out of this heat,” Lew said hoarsely.

Mollie smiled contentedly. “It is rather warm, isn’t it?”

Lew tangled his hand in her hair and pulled her head up. He bent and kissed her urgently, a prolonged, open-mouthed, deep, probing kiss of unrestrained passion.

And with his scorching lips still on her, he said into her mouth, “It’s hot.”

“It’s hot.”

“I am sorry.”

“Damn you, get off me. It’s hot.”

The Texas Kid roughly shoved the woman out of bed, turning a deaf ear to her startled cry of pain when she hit the floor with a thud. She crouched, naked beside the rumpled bed, biting her lip to keep from weeping.

Slowly the Kid got up, swung his heavily muscled legs over the bed’s edge and sat there, scratching his hairy, sweat-drenched chest and itchy crotch.

It was hot in the little two-room shack. Too hot. Nightfall had brought no relief from the blistering heat that had held the dusty town of Magdalena, Mexico, in its punishing grip ever since he had arrived.

Three days ago the Kid and his men—en route to Arizona—had ridden into Magdalena at sundown. At the community well on the outskirts of the sleepy little village, a woman was filling her water bucket. She was a pretty woman, young and full-figured, and her smooth skin was as shiny as brown satin.

The woman, sensing danger, dropped the water bucket, turned and ran. Laughing, the Kid pursued her. She screamed when he caught her and swept her up into the saddle before him.

It would be the first of many such screams for the terrified young wife and mother. While her family—a hardworking husband and three little boys—waited for her return to their modest home a mile from the well, the Texas Kid carried her away.

With his minions following, the Kid laid the spurs to his mount and headed into the forbidding stillness of the Chihuahuan desert. Darkness had enveloped the land when they reached the remote two-room hideout high atop the Presa Plateau. Motioning his men to pull up, the Kid coaxed his surefooted gelding up a narrow, winding trail to the shack.

Up on the plateau there was no sound save the call of the night birds and strangled sobs of the terrified woman. Down below, on the desert floor, the lights of Magdalena twinkled. The Kid dismounted, pulled the crying woman down off the horse, and dragged her over close to the cliff’s edge.

He held her in front of him and said, “Tell me, pretty, can you pick out your home from up here?”

The woman, shaking with sobs, sniffed and nodded her head.

“Which one? Show me,” ordered the Kid.

“Th-there,” the woman said, pointing, directing his attention to a little house set apart east of the village where each day she cooked and cleaned and lived and loved.
“Por favor, señor
, let me go home.”

“Sure, I’ll let you go home.”

“You … you will?”

He laughed, tightened his arms around her, and drew her closer against him. “Tomorrow. You can go home tomorrow.” With that he picked her up and carried her into the darkened cabin, leaving the door ajar. Unmoved by her screams of fear, he tore her clothes off while she fought him with all her strength.

“You’re a regular little Mexican spitfire,” he said admiringly, ripping the blouse from her back. “But damned if you don’t look more like a squaw.” He cupped a coppery breast, rubbed a callused thumb over the nipple.

The woman knocked his hand away, shouting, “I am Apache! My brother is the powerful Chief Red Sunset.”

“No kidding? Big brother sell you to the Mexicans?”

Her tear-filled eyes blazed with indignation. “I marry fine brave Spanish man, Gilberto Lopez. My husband and brother will kill you for this!”

The Kid guffawed. “They’ll have to catch me first.”

Tired of playing, he grabbed her, tore the remaining clothes from her body, threw her on the bed, and brutally took her there in the stifling hot room.

Now, three days later, the beaten, stoic woman sat naked on the floor by the bed, bearing her pain in silence. Within sight of her own home, she had lived through a nightmare of agony in this nature-concealed hideout. More than once her cruel captor had dragged her to the plateau’s rim and taunted her, allowing her to witness the comings and goings of her husband, sons, and worried friends who were all frantically hunting for her.

Late one blistering hot afternoon, he had forced her, naked, out of the cabin, shoved her up against a large leaning rock, and used her sexually while her husband paced their dusty yard far below. After a few minutes of pounding fiercely into her, he pulled out, spun her around, and pressed her face-first up against the rock.

“Look at this, Gilberto,” he shouted to the man pacing below who could not hear him. “See what we’re doing?” Laughing, he took the woman from behind then. “Bet you didn’t know your little wife liked it like this.” He grabbed her hips and started pumping madly. “See how she loves it, Gilberto. Tell him,
chica
. Tell him you love it.”

Afterward he took her back inside, where he kept her locked up most of the time. There she was forced to do and endure unspeakable things with him. She had learned, only hours into her captivity, that she had to humor the big, bearded man with the missing earlobe or face even worse degradation. She obeyed him. She did as she was told because he threatened that if she did not, he would turn her over to his men. It was up to her. A little fun and frolicking with him, or servitude to five dirty, lusty men.

Cowering silently on the floor beside the bed, Petra Lopez felt a hand on her shoulder. She raised her head. The Kid smiled at her. Dutifully, she smiled back, though she despised him. She made no effort to stop him when he jerked her to her feet, then pulled her down astride his lap. Gripping her hips, he bounced her up and down on his knees as though she were a child. He grinned as her soft bottom slapped against his hairy, sweat-slick thighs and he watched the seductive dance of her bare, heavy breasts.

Knowing he should release her, clear out himself, and ride on up north to Arizona to search for Mollie and his money, he decided that another week or so wouldn’t make that much difference. This woman was so sweet with her wide, soft mouth and her unwashed flesh and her firm brown thighs. And it was so hot. So damned hot.

The Kid looked into the pretty Apache woman’s dark eyes as desire rose again. His bearded face descended to her breasts.

“It’s hot.”

Professor Dixon, a book on his lap, was dozing
in his favorite chair when the sound of girlish laughter awakened him. He lifted his head from the chair’s tall back and laid the book aside. He took out his hunter-case watch and checked the time as deep male laughter mingled with the girl’s.

Lew and Mollie were climbing the porch steps when the professor rose. He had started toward the door, intending to invite them inside, when he heard Mollie say, “No! Lew Taylor, you can’t kiss me on the porch.”

“I don’t want to kiss you on the porch,” came Lew’s teasing reply. “I want to kiss you on the mouth.”

Laughter from Mollie.

Then silence.

Smiling, the professor returned to his chair. More laughter and whispers and finally Lew saying, “Good night, sweetheart. Sleep well and dream of me.”

“I will, Lew, I promise.”

Silence once more, then Lew crossing the porch. Seconds later, the sound of drumming hoofbeats as he rode off into the night. Mollie stepped inside, humming, so lost in a world of her own she didn’t notice the professor until he called out to her.

“Oh, I’m glad you’re still up,” she said, hurrying into the lamplit drawing room. “I’m not at all sleepy, are you?”

He smiled. “Did you enjoy the dance, dear?”

“Oh, yes!” Mollie exclaimed dramatically, clasped her hands to her breast, whirled dizzily around in a circle, then dropped to her knees beside his chair, and sat down.

He beamed at her, charmed. She was part child, part woman, part Mollie, part Fontaine; all utterly irresistible.

“Professor, I had the most wonderful time of my life,” she said, settling herself cross-legged on the floor, smoothing down the billowing folds of her dress.

“I’m glad, child.”

Impulsively, she raised her hands and pushed her hot, heavy hair up off her neck. “Shall I tell you something?” she asked. Nodding, he watched while she twisted the lustrous golden hair into a thick silky rope atop her head. “I am in love with Lew Taylor!” She released the rope of hair, put her hands on the floor behind her and threw her head back, allowing the hair to cascade down her back. “Should I tell him that I love him? I started to tonight when he—” She looked at the professor. “He just
has
to love me. I would surely die if he did not.”

“Dear,” the professor began diplomatically, “I’m sure that Lew is very fond of you. But you might want to delay declaring your love for him. A young lady generally waits until her suitor has professed his love for her before she admits her own.”

Mollie made a face. “I don’t see why it must be that way. I love him. I want him to know that I love him. Oh, Lord, he just has to love me back.”

“Give him time. I’m sure in time he’ll come to realize that he loves you.”

Mollie brightened. “Yes, of course! He’s probably already in love with me and just doesn’t know it. Oh, he is so …”

Mollie talked and talked, filling the professor in on all that had happened, including the fact that Mary Beth McCalister had danced with Lew and flirted outrageously. The professor didn’t tell her that he already knew. As it happened he had been standing below the platform not a stone’s throw away when Lew and Mary Beth danced. He had heard snatches of their unorthodox conversation.

“… and I just wish everyone could be as happy as I am.” Mollie paused to catch her breath. Smiling dreamily, she announced, “Love is truly wonderful.” She frowned suddenly and asked bluntly, “Why did you never fall in love?”

“I did,” he said evenly.

“You did? Tell me about her. Was she pretty?”

The professor exhaled. He closed his eyes, opened them. “Pretty?” he said. “She was breathtaking.”

“Really?” Mollie leaned up closer. “Describe her.”

“Well, she was a very cultured young lady and highly intelligent. She loved poetry and literature and she was kind, sensitive, and gentle. She was all that is good and pure in this world.” Mollie, listening intently, noticed that the professor’s pale fingers were gripping the chair arms as he spoke. “She was a small girl with hair of gold and eyes … her eyes”—his own eyes lifted and locked with Mollie’s—”were a vivid violet hue.”

Lips parted, Mollie stared at him. A cloud passed behind her own violet eyes and she said in a voice hardly above a whisper, “Professor, you just described my mother.”

Nodding, he confirmed it. “Yes, child, I’m speaking of the young, beautiful Sarah Hunt. Your dear deceased mother.”

“Did … did she love you?”

He smiled wistfully. “I thought she did. And perhaps she thought so as well until she met a big, handsome, red-haired army lieutenant at a summertime ball.”

“Papa?”

“Yes, your papa.” His narrow shoulders lifted in an almost imperceptible shrug. “I introduced them. I met Cord my first year at the university and had tried for years to get him to come to Texas for a visit. I wanted my best friend to meet my sweetheart.” He paused, chuckled softly, and shook his head. “He never came; he was always too busy. Your papa was a devil with the ladies. The prettiest always flocked to Cord. He couldn’t get away from them.

“But, after he joined the army he was sent to Fort Griffin. One summer weekend he came to Marshall with a detail of soldiers to transport lumber back to the fort. He rode out to the plantation late Saturday evening and learned I had attended a dance. He came looking for me.”

Eyes wide, Mollie said softly, “And he found my mother?”

“Yes. I knew the minute their eyes met that I had lost her.”

Her heart filled with compassion, Mollie laid a hand atop his, and said, “I’m sure my mother never meant to hurt you.”

“Of course she didn’t; nor your papa. We are not always responsible for whom we choose to love. They couldn’t help falling in love any more than I could help continuing to love Sarah.” Pensively, he added, “The poet said, ‘I must love her that loves me not.’”

“Is that why you left Texas? Why you never came back?”

“I thought it best for everyone.”

“Oh, Professor,” Mollie said, tears gathering in her eyes, “I never knew. I’m sorry, so sorry.”