‘You’re making the rules until I get my pants off, Charity,’ he said softly, speaking her given name for the first time. ‘So you better start stripping of your own accord. For me, it’s been a long time since the last time.’
She made several nervous sounds in her throat before she could voice her words. ‘The last time for me was the only time.’ The moonlight through the frosted glass caused the teardrops to glisten on her cheeks. ‘He wasn’t like you at all. And I loved him. I’m scared, Edge.’
His voice was abruptly harsh, as he advanced on her, still wearing his kerchief over the razor pouch and beaded thong, and his pants and boots. ‘What do you think I am, lady?’ he snarled. ‘A frigging horny bobcat on the prowl for any damn she that smells like it’s ready for rut?’
She vented a low howl and stepped back, so that her legs banged against the side of the bed. She heard the half-breed’s arm travel through the air, rather than saw it. But she felt the stinging impact of the back of his hand slam into her tear moist cheek. The howl reached the shrill pitch of a scream of pain then, as she was flung backwards across the bed. But the sound was short-lived: its ending trapped in her throat as he knelt one knee on the bed beside her and clapped the damaging hand over her gaping mouth.
He lowered his face down towards her own, his eyes as narrow as hers were wide: his breath as hot against her ear as she knew hers was against his palm.
‘I came here expecting to screw you, Miss Charity Meagher,’ he said, his voice soft, each word spurting more hot air into her ear. ‘Because I figured you were hot to get screwed. If you are, strip your own threads off. If you ain’t, I’ll belt you in the mouth again and get the hell out of here. On the other hand, if you’re the kind that likes to get took the hard way, I’ll just leave. I ain’t that kind and you made a mistake. Just like we all do from time to time.’
He released his grip on her and stood up. She had been holding her breath while she was trapped and now she remained across the bed as she exhaled and inhaled several times.
‘I’m sorry, Edge,’ she said, struggling to sit up. ‘But you can’t expect everyone to be the same as—’
‘It’s the difference that adds the spice, lady,’ he growled. ‘You gonna put out or do I pull out?’
Her dress had a back fastening. When she raised her hands to the nape of her neck, the movement jutted her breasts more aggressively.
Edge turned his back on her and went to the door, where he stripped off the rest of his clothing. He had never pretended to himself that he was superhuman: was just aware that he commanded a higher than average degree of self-control most importantly when his survival was at risk. Now, as he listened to the rustle of fabric against flesh and to the sounds of a woman breathing, his life was not in danger. But his pride in the almost as important matter of sexual prowess was.
Beth had been the last woman he took. At the start of the war, he had surrendered that part of his innocence to a girl named Jeannie Fisher. When every shred of every aspect of innocence had been ripped from him by war, there had been rape.
All of these a long time ago and far from here: where a new woman was preparing to open her body to him. And, because there had been so many nights of single-bed sleeping since then, Edge recognized the danger of watching Charity undress - and welcomed the biting chill of the unheated air that helped to keep the inner fire burning low until the moment for flaring passion arrived.
Footfalls sounded on the companionway outside the cabin doorway. And voices talked softly. Without hearing the words distinctly, Edge recognized the tones of Ferris’s Deep South drawl and the almost musical accent of Henry Rhett, caught somewhere between the nasal New England speech of his upbringing and a mixture of strains picked up on wide travels. The door to the next cabin opened and closed. The bedsprings behind Edge creaked.
‘I was going to point out that you can’t expect everybody to be the same as you,’ Charity said, a little dejectedly. ‘Some people - especially women - have a more romantic view of life than you. Not least this aspect of life.’
Edge turned, and vented a low grunt of satisfaction that she was under the covers: the blankets bulky enough to do no more than hint at the contours of her body beneath. But he felt his arousal again, as he approached the bed and saw that the woman’s eyes, in contrast to her voice, expressed excitement.
They ranged a gaze over his body and face with almost as much arrogance as he had surveyed her at the dining table.
‘Women talk a lot about romance,’ he answered, his voice involuntarily husky, as he lifted the covers and slid his lean frame into the bed. ‘But comes a time for even them when the talking has to stop. Wouldn’t you say the time’s come for action?’
She was on her back, her body moist with the sweat of wanting. She trembled at the contact of his cold flesh. Then tremored with excitement as his words breathed hot air into her ear, one of his hands found the firm, large mound of a breast and the other explored through the secret tangle of soft hair to probe the musky wetness of her centre.
‘Oh!’ she breathed, spreading her legs and digging the nails of her hand into the small of his back.
‘That don’t count, I figure,’ Edge murmured, submitting to the demand of her clawed hand and easing himself on to her spread-eagled body.
She writhed beneath him, raising her legs to encircle him. As one hand became even more like a talon on his back, the other snaked between flesh to grasp him and direct the initial thrust into her. His own hands kneaded her breasts with mounting fierceness as his hungry lips sucked at the side of her throat.
For the first time, he smelt the perfume in her hair.
The engines of the Delta Dawn pounded in a measured cadence of easy power.
Charity’s hands moved from his back to his head, her nails clawing at his flesh to erupt blood which mixed with the sweat. She forced his face closer to her neck. Then her hands went down and beneath herself, to press at her buttocks, as if trying to arch her body to meet his thrusting want. She groaned and threw her head from side to side, the movement in time with the probe and retraction of the maleness inside her. Sweat ran from both bodies and mingled.
The action of the coupling man and woman caught up with the speed of the engines’ throb, kept pace for a few moments, then passed it.
‘Oh, my sweet...!’ Charity groaned.
Edge felt a burning wetness engulf the centre of his desire as the woman climaxed and a split-second later his own lust was expended in urgent spasms towards her womb.
They clung tight to each other for stretched seconds, until the effects of their draining spread to every part of their bodies. Then, as Charity sighed, Edge eased out of her and off her: to lie on his back beside her.
‘Thank you, Edge,’ the woman said after seconds had elapsed, with just the sounds of the engines and water along the hull to disturb the stillness. She caught her breath.
‘It wasn’t no favor,’ the half-breed muttered.
‘Let a body finish, please. You had a wife once. And I guess there have been a lot of other women. I don’t care about them. I don’t care how you were with them. What was bad with me was my fault. Before. I just want to thank you for thinking of me. John never did.’
Edge swung his bare feet to the floor, rose from the bed and padded across to where his clothes were heaped by the door.
‘But I figure he was strong on the romancing bit, uh?’
‘Because he really did love me, Edge. You don’t mind me calling you Edge? You’ve had that name a long time, haven’t you? People grow into their names. I think you’ve grown out of the one you had.’
‘Edge is fine.’
‘He surely is,’ Charity murmured, and stretched her arms, relishing the luxury of the warmth and space in the bed now she had it to herself. Then her face became earnest, and her voice matched it. ‘I don’t want an apology from you for hitting me. I deserved it. You don’t want me to say I’m sorry for deserving it, do you?’
‘Talking time again?’ Edge asked as he dressed hurriedly, experiencing the discomfort of the cold now, and the vulnerability of nakedness.
‘Not if you don’t want to. But you’re welcome to stay in this compartment, Edge. You may make the rules and I know I can make no demands.’
‘Obliged, Charity,’ he responded, fully dressed now except for his topcoat, hat and gun belt. ‘I’ll be back.’
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, suddenly anxious - not wanting to lose something she had accepted with reluctance but now needed to keep.
He had on the gun belt and hat and coat now. Because she could not see his face clearly in the moon shadow of his hat-brim, the grin he showed seemed to express a great deal of humor. ‘What you just had has another use. And when a man’s gotta go, a man’s gotta go.’
‘Oh,’ she said, and wriggled down in the bed to hide her face from him.
Edge stepped outside and turned towards the stern. The time was now beyond midnight and the only lights on the Delta Dawn glowed bright at the top of the spars and dimly from the windows of the wheel-house. For, despite the flow of free drinks, the multi-purpose salon was deserted and darkened. The moon shone as brightly as before, but clouds were banking in the north east and already blanketed the gleam of the stars in that part of the sky. The air was still only given an illusion of movement by the forward thrust of the boat. But, if a norther was brewing, every light in the sky would be masked within minutes.
The half-breed’s footfalls rang loud in his own ears against the decking as he moved along the companionway and out over the Boiler Deck towards the aft-sited toilets.
The signal lamp flashed three times from the Nebraska bank as he reached to open the door. Immediately, the engine note altered and the big paddle-wheel slowed. For a few moments, the impetus of the boat continued to push her through the water at the same speed, the drag of the slower turning-wheel making more white foam than usual. But then she slowed and her reduced way made her less responsive to the demands of her twin rudders against the powerful currents.
Edge remained where he was for a moment, peering at the base of the bluff where the signal lantern had flashed.
The Delta Dawn shuddered and her bows inched around to starboard. Ice-floes crunched hard against her hull instead of her bow. White water showed against the pitch-black moon-shadow of sycamore timber growing under the bluff. Then a yawl was rowed out towards mid-river. Three men were mere silhouettes in the boat: two handling the oars while the third sat motionless on the stern gunwale. The tiny boat was still ahead of the dawdling stern-wheeler, the oarsmen rowing fast and expertly, on a semicircular course that was designed to turn the yawl upriver and close with the Delta Dawn amidships.
Edge stepped into the toilet, used it without haste, and came out. There was a burst of power from the engines, with the rudders hard over, to get the stern-wheeler on a due north heading again. Then she slowed, and something banged against her hull with more force than a small ice-floe.
The half-breed moved to the Boiler Deck rail, but stayed in the moon shadow of the toilet to lean out and look down at the main deck below. The yawl was alongside, just aft of the hold where Edge had slept through the afternoon. A bowline from the smaller craft was hitched around the rail and held fast by a man the half-breed failed to recognize. The mate, Wren, had a grip on the blade of an oar while the oarsman held the handle.
‘Hurry it up, frig it!’ Wren snarled through grimacing teeth. ‘My arms are near broke!’
The man in the stern of the yawl was short, wiry and nimble. There was something of the lithe animal about him as he stood, reached for the rail, and hauled himself up and over on to the deck.
‘When a fellow doesn’t have either brains or skills, his only useful asset is brute strength,’ the new passenger said arrogantly, his accent strongly British. ‘Where?’
Wren released the oar and the bowline whipped free a moment later. Both oarsmen were on one side of the small boat and shoved hard against the hull of the Delta Dawn. Open water showed between the two craft and the men continued to fend off, using the full length of their oars. The yawl cleared the sucking action of the stern-wheel and then was rocked and pitched in the wake until the men had refitted the oars into the rowlocks and pulled hard for smooth water. Their safe escape was seen from the wheel-house and full power was demanded from the engine again. Smoke belched faster and thicker from the twin stacks, the acrid black streams filled with bright, short-lived sparks.
Wren, the other man and the new passenger went from sight. As impassive as ever Edge started across the Boiler Deck: satisfied that he had seen the boarding but prepared to ignore it and its implications unless events made it his business.
The doors of the cabins were recessed about a foot into the bulkheads and the half-breed sensed the presence of another before he saw him. His coat had never been buttoned since he left Charity’s cabin. As he became aware of a figure standing against the door of Ferris’s private compartment, his right hand was lifted slightly to curl the long, brown fingers against the coat - level with the Remington butt jutting from the tied-down holster.
‘Easy, Captain,’ Henry Rhett announced, stepping away from the door. ‘On account of Bob, we’re not enemies anymore.’
He was grinning and Edge acknowledged the comment with a wry expression. Then: ‘But we’ll never get to be even just good friends, feller,’ he said sourly.
Rhett’s grin did not alter. ‘Like I said, I can take a joke. No offence, Captain.’
‘You sure won’t commit one with me,’ Edge rasped, and pushed open the door to enter Charity’s cabin.
The woman was in a deep sleep, breathing regularly with just the suggestion of a low snore at the start of each inhalation. But the sounds of her sleeping were not loud enough to mask a short series of noises outside on the companionway: which began and ended just as Edge was about to close the door fully. The harsher, more insistent thud, splash and beat of the Delta Dawn’s progress might have covered the thump, groan and grunt - had not Edge turned to pull open the door and step outside again.
He recognized the sounds for what they were: the thump of something hard and heavy against flesh, the groan of one man sinking into unconsciousness and the grunt of another under strain.
Edge completed the turn, drew the Remington and eased the door open. Charity had not responded to the first draught of cold air. She did so now, with a moan in her sleep and a movement that drew her body into a warm ball under the blankets. She did not wake up. Edge turned sideways on to the open doorway and swung his long leg wide to step out on to the companionway. His gun was held low, at the full reach of his arm, the muzzle aimed at the deck.
The Delta Dawn’s new passenger was down on his haunches, both hands under Rhett’s armpits as he lowered the unconscious man to the deck. Rhett’s head was sagged forward, chin on his chest and face hidden. But his attacker’s head was high, face revealed to Edge in the bright, cold moonlight. It was the face of a man about forty, with sharp eyes, slightly crooked nose and mouth line twisted by a snarl.
Edge shifted his glinting eyes from the expression, to the man’s right hand and back again. The man was holding a gun - but by the barrel in the same grip as when he had crashed the base of the butt against Rhett’s skull. His victim’s derby had fallen off, its crown badly dented. Rhett’s hair was much darker in one place than elsewhere.
‘I was told there was one,’ the Englishman rasped, sharp eyes moving to look at his back-to-front gun, then flitting towards the half-breed again.
‘Yeah, he’s one, feller,’ Edge replied, moving his Remington slowly up to aim it at the face as the expression softened slightly from the snarl to craftiness. ‘But that ain’t the way he likes to sleep with another, I figure.’
The sharp eyes were confused for a moment. ‘What is your angle, sir?’
‘Obtuse right now. But I aim to change it. You want to get up, feller? Best you leave the gun down there with Rhett.’
>
‘What then? You’ll kill me, no doubt.’
‘Doubt makes a man careful.’
The Englishman did as he was told: first releasing the Navy Colt so that it clattered to the deck. Then he withdrew his hands from under Rhett’s armpits and drew himself erect. The back of Rhett’s head thudded against his boots. They were expensive boots, in keeping with his long coat buttoned high to the neck and his low-crowned, wide-brimmed hat. His eyes darted one way and then the other, and did not express disappointment when he saw there was no way to escape.
‘I’ll double whatever Ferris is paying you,’ he said, and seemed excited by the idea. ‘Name it.’
‘Nothing, feller.’
‘What?’
‘Double nothing, it comes out at nothing.’
A sneer altered the Englishman’s mouth line. His voice matched the look. ‘Another stupid patriot.’ He shuffled backwards a few inches, to remove his feet from under Rhett’s head. ‘Like him, I suppose?’
‘No way like him, feller. Knock on the door.’
‘You’ll shoot me in cold blood if I don’t?’
‘Sure will be cold when it runs out of the bullet hole.’
‘A gunshot would wake up the entire boat.’
‘Obliged for your concern on my account, feller. Won’t be your worry.’
The Englishman sighed, gave a short shrug, and turned towards the cabin door. ‘I would ask to be accorded the rights and privileges of a prisoner of war,’ he said with a sidelong glance towards Edge. ‘I am no longer armed and I have surrendered.’
He raised a clenched fist and rapped his knuckles on the wooden panel. It was obvious that Horace Ferris had been pressed to the inside of the door, listening to the exchange. For, as the knock sounded, the door was wrenched wide.
Edge heard the Englishman’s sharp intake of breath and saw his profile suddenly gripped by a look of horror.
Edge: Echoes of War (Edge series Book 23) Page 6
