Wanton Angel (21 page)

Mentioning Rose had been a mistake; Bonnie knew that an instant too late. Golden fire snapped in Eli’s eyes. “You don’t love him,” he said.

“How do you know that?” Bonnie snapped. The pompous ass! Did Eli think he was the only man she could ever love? If he did think that, he was right, of course, but Bonnie had no intention of letting him find out. Ever. “It may be that Webb and I share a grand passion.”

Eli subsided slightly, scowling, his arms folded across his chest. “A grand passion,” he muttered.

Bonnie was warming to the subject. She became reckless. “You asked me the other day if I ‘carry on’ with Webb like I did with you. Well, I do. I not only yelp, I howl!”

Behind them, the conductor cleared his throat. Bonnie was instantly mortified, for it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would overhear what she’d said. Why couldn’t she learn to bridle her foolish and impulsive tongue? Why?

Eli chuckled and shook his head as if in awe of Bonnie’s capacity to embarrass herself.

“Next stop, Colville,” said the conductor, whom Bonnie recognized as the husband of one of the members of the Friday Afternoon Community Improvement Club. He had only to relate Bonnie’s rash words to his wife and the gossips would have another tidbit to brandish over their interminable cups of tea.

Eli was laughing inside himself, Bonnie knew, but she couldn’t face him any more than she could face the conductor.

“I hate you,” she hissed, when she and Eli were alone in the car again.

“We’ll see about that.”

Bonnie looked around, to make sure the conductor wasn’t nearby again. When she saw that the car was truly empty, she muttered, “What I just said was the truth! Webb drives me wild with passion!”

Eli rose from his seat, but there was no rage in his face and no jealousy. Only a certain self-satisfied confidence that Bonnie was lying. Which, of course, she was.

Eli disappeared for several minutes and Bonnie was just beginning to hope that he had decided to ride in the engine room when he returned, his golden eyes bright with an alarming sort of mischief.

He sat down in the seat beside Bonnie and immediately caught her face in both his newly callused hands, forcing her to look at him. “We’ll see, my angel, who drives you wild with passion.”

His lips were descending toward hers. She wanted to struggle but all she could think about was Eli’s mouth coming closer and closer. A shiver went through her, and the peaks of her breasts, hidden beneath her dress and camisole, suddenly burned.

“You can’t do this—the conductor—we’ll be in Colville soon—”

Eli chuckled and Bonnie felt the sound against her mouth, he was so close. “We won’t reach Colville for another half an hour,” he replied, “and you needn’t worry about the conductor. I bribed him to busy himself elsewhere.”

Simultaneously Eli claimed Bonnie’s mouth with his own and his hand closed over one of her breasts. Bonnie felt her nipple quicken beneath his palm and stiffened, but she couldn’t break away. She made a whimpering sound of protest and of need as Eli’s kiss mastered her and brought her rebellion swiftly to heel. He continued to kiss and caress her until she was not only assenting but responding.

Breaking the deep kiss to nibble at her lips, Eli opened the front of Bonnie’s dress and boldly slid his hand inside, beneath her camisole, to take her nipple between his fingers. At the same time, using his other hand, he was slowly raising her skirts.

Bonnie trembled. What if the conductor comes back? she
asked herself wildly. What if the train makes an unexpected stop? I can’t let this happen here, in a railroad car, in the broad light of day! So said Bonnie’s mind, but her body was of a different opinion, a primitive opinion. It craved the luscious attentions Eli was giving it and far more besides.

“Oh,” she moaned, as she felt the strings holding her drawers in place give way under one tug of Eli’s fingers. “Oh, no—”

“Oh, yes,” Eli said, his lips against hers again, and his hand slid down inside her muslin drawers to find what he sought. “I’m going to have you, Bonnie. Right here, and right now.”

“You can’t—you mustn’t—oooooh—”

Eli chuckled and went right on fondling Bonnie. She tried to sit staunchly, but it was all she could do to restrain her hips. They wanted to fly. “We’re all alone, Bonnie. Just you and me and our—wild passion.”

Bonnie pulled away from his kiss, gasping. His fingers were driving her crazy. “Eli—please stop. I’m sorry for saying what I did about Webb—honest—”

“Too late,” Eli mumbled, and then he bent his head and took full, leisurely suckle at the breast he had bared minutes before.

Bonnie put one gloved hand over her mouth to stifle a cry of frenzied delight and her hips took full flight while her knees widened. She was in a fevered daze by the time Eli turned her so that she was kneeling astraddle of his lap. Blithely, as though such things were done every day, he tore her drawers away and opened his trousers.

The warm prodding of his manhood was more than Bonnie’s body would allow her to resist. With a throaty cry, she took him inside herself.

At this Eli moaned. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, his hands firmly on Bonnie’s hips, guiding them, setting a slow pace. She watched as the cordlike muscles in his neck tightened, thinking not of scandal or shame but of how very desperately she loved this man.

They moved slowly together for long minutes—the friction was a delicious ache in Bonnie—until the train suddenly began to rattle and shimmy. The unexpected motion
brought both Bonnie and Eli to an instantaneous release. For Bonnie the climax was brutal in its intensity, convulsing not only those muscles that cosseted Eli, but those in her toes and her shoulders and all points between. Eli endured his own triumph in absolute silence, though Bonnie could see ferocious spasms of emotion and sensation in his throat and along his jawline.

The moment Bonnie’s body had sated its greed, she moved to leave Eli, shamed to the very core of her being, but he held her firmly in place, his hands warm and strong on her soft hips. His eyes held her as much a prisoner as did his hands, for there was a quiet power in their depths that caught at something deep within Bonnie and would not let her go.

“Stay,” he said gruffly. “Please stay.”

His hands left Bonnie’s hips and came to her bodice, opening it fully, drawing down her camisole. Bonnie shivered with involuntary pleasure as Eli gently caressed her bare breasts.

“The conductor!” she reminded him desperately in a soft whine.

“Don’t worry, Bonnie. He wouldn’t come near this car even if it burst into flame.”

Bonnie thought it might be she that burst into flame, rather than the passenger car; the heat was already rising within her as Eli touched and weighed and toyed with her breasts. Sheathed deep inside her, his manhood flexed itself, exerting a singular power.

“Lean back, Bonnie. I want to taste you.”

Bonnie was far beyond reason by then, and far beyond the boundaries of propriety, too. Allowing her head to fall back and her breasts to thrust forward, she crooned as Eli enjoyed one sweet peak and then the other. At times he was greedy, at other times he was incomparably gentle, but at all times he controlled Bonnie’s every reaction.

He grew more and more fierce within her, filling her, heating her, tormenting her. When her release came, it was so strong that Bonnie’s legs flew out from her sides in order that she might take him as fully inside her as possible.

Eli was caught in the throes of his own approaching crisis and, as such, he was temporarily powerless. That gave an
already fulfilled Bonnie a delicious opportunity to give Eli back a little of his own.

She opened his spotless linen shirt one button at a time, tangling her fingers in the dense hair that covered his chest, caressing him, grazing his nipples with the tips of her fingers. He watched her face with glazed golden eyes as she loved him, groaned when she bent and took a nubbin of masculine flesh between her lips.

Finally Eli’s hips rose in a fierce, powerful thrust and he released his passion at last, his magnificent body shuddering with the force of his satisfaction. His hands moved upon Bonnie’s bare breasts the whole time, molding them, clutching and caressing, and his wonderful amber eyes went blank as his whole being convulsed.

Too pleased by her victory to feel shame now, Bonnie removed herself, buttoned her bodice, and did what she could with her torn drawers. With luck the ties would hold them together until she could change clothes.

Eli sat gasping in his seat, apparently unable to move. Still flying high on the wings of her triumph, Bonnie gave him a little pat and then buttoned his trousers for him. She’d done that many times before their divorce, and in places far less conventional than a railroad car, too. Soon after their marriage, in fact, Eli had told Bonnie that he would have her when and where he wanted, and though they’d never been caught, there had often been an element of risk. That daring had always intensified their passion and at least, Bonnie thought with a bittersweet smile, that hadn’t changed.

Her body lulled to a sweet sense of sleepy languor, Bonnie looked for regret within herself and could find none. She only hoped that Eli would not spoil things by making some cruel remark or, worse yet, trying to pay her again.

She closed her eyes against that idea and felt Eli’s hand gently cup her chin. He turned her away from the window and toward him.

“Stay with me in Spokane, Bonnie,” he pleaded hoarsely. “If Hutcheson is going to have you all the rest of his life, let me have you for these few days.”

Bonnie felt an unbearable sadness at his words and at the defeated emotion behind them. Was it possible that Eli
really cared for her, just as Seth had implied in recent days? Could it be that, beneath all that anger, he still loved her just a little?

She decided that she didn’t dare hope for such a miracle. The disappointment would be unbearable if it turned out that she was mistaken. She had every reason to believe that Eli was using her and none to feel that he bore her any goodwill, yet she couldn’t resist his attentions. What had just taken place was proof enough of that.

And she needed more of Eli’s loving; her body and her soul cried out for it.

“I won’t be called a whore, or paid for my love, Eli McKutchen,” she warned. “And I will not be mocked when this is over and we’re both back in Northridge.”

Eli lifted his right hand in a pledge, and a slight smile curved his lips. “You have my word, Bonnie. Once we get back to Northridge, it will be as if nothing had happened.”

Bonnie wasn’t sure she wanted exactly that—the suggestion made her feel a little sad, in fact. Even bereaved. But she nodded her assent to share Eli’s bed because she knew she was bound for it anyway. This way she could at least tell herself that it had been a deliberate choice.

T
HE HOTEL WAS
a grand place, its huge lobby filled with potted greenery and handsome leather furniture. Heavy crystal chandeliers, powered by electricity, twinkled against the impossibly high ceilings, shedding their light over lush Persian rugs and the elegantly clad guests who walked upon them.

Bonnie drew in her breath; she’d forgotten that such sumptuous beauty existed since her return to Northridge. Thinking these thoughts helped to distract her while Eli spoke to one of several clerks stationed behind the registration desk, but the trick didn’t work for long because Bonnie knew that she didn’t really belong in a place like this anymore. If she ever had.

She paced, clutching the handle of her shabby valise, her conscience suddenly sore and smarting. She was no longer Eli McKutchen’s wife, in the eyes of either God or the law, and yet she had allowed the man to make love to her in a railroad car and then bring her to this hotel! What was the matter with her? What had happened to her principles, to her ideals, to her morals?

Bonnie was about to walk out of the hotel and find a place that she could afford on her own, when Eli reappeared at her side, taking a gentle but firm hold on her elbow. The
expression in his whiskey-colored eyes conveyed both amusement and a tender understanding.

She was defeated, without Eli’s saying so much as one word, because for all the papers she’d signed and all the dreams that had died, Bonnie still felt as much married to this man as she ever had. Her mind might know that the union had been legally dissolved, but Bonnie’s soul was still cleaving to him as husband, and all her emotions took its part. Her intellect was left to struggle alone.

“You swear you’ll never tell?” she asked tremulously, a part of her already anticipating the singular joys that lay ahead.

Eli arched one butternut eyebrow. “As long as you want this to be a secret, Bonnie, it will be. Now let’s get settled and find a decent restaurant—I’m starved.”

Bonnie gave a sigh of such relief that Eli chuckled as he took her valise in one hand and her forearm in the other, ushering her toward the elevator.

“Did you think I planned to hurl you onto the bed and have my way with you the moment we entered our suite, my love?”

Bonnie eyed the elevator dubiously. She disliked the things, was always dizzied by the swiftness of the ride. She would have felt safer, too, if the door had been sturdier, but it was only iron grillwork, and it made an alarming clanking sound when the elevator operator opened it. “No,” Bonnie lied coolly, hoping that the small, uniformed man who ran the apparatus knew what he was about. “I did not.”

Eli only grinned, saving his reply until they had reached the top floor of the hotel and were standing outside the door of their suite. “We can have our supper right here, if you’d like,” he said.

Bonnie made a face at him, hating his teasing but at the same time taking an odd comfort from it. “I don’t know that we can go anywhere fancy,” she conceded. “I haven’t the clothes for it, you know.”

“Being a humble storekeeper from Northridge,” Eli added, unlocking the door of their suite with a brass key and stepping back, so that Bonnie might enter first.

She swept ahead of him, chin high, on a wave of pretended elegance, but the simple beauty of the suite’s sitting
room dissolved her act. The last of the day’s sunlight streamed through a western window, pooling on a carpet of the palest blue. There were two cream-colored sofas, facing each other, along with a small ivory fireplace polished to a glistening patina. Bonnie would not have believed that such an exquisite room existed in Spokane, outside some of the fine houses on the city’s South Hill, that is.