by Robin Gideon
Gregg was very hard, very aroused, but Helen felt no passion. Not so much as a single spark of sexual excitement registered within her.
“There isn’t time for this,” Helen said quietly, searching for an objective tone. “Tomorrow, after work—by the livery. I’ll do this for you.” She squeezed him again, careful not to use too much pressure. Gregg was very specific on how he wanted his needs met. “I promise. Tomorrow.”
“Good.” He gave her a half smile as his hips unconsciously moved in a circular motion while Helen’s fingers toyed with his arousal. “Tomorrow it is then.”
He cupped her breasts one last time, leaned into Helen to kiss her lips again—though this time he didn’t try to force his tongue in her mouth—and then stepped away from her.
“There’s still a couple of minutes left in the workday,” Gregg said as he walked back to his desk. “I’ll talk to you before I leave.”
Helen did not hesitate. Though her stride had faltered upon entering Gregg’s office, it was purposeful as she left the office. Her heels clicked against the hardwood floor, prompting Marcus to look up from his ledger. Helen stepped up to his chair.
“Are you all right?” Marcus whispered. “You’re pale.”
“I’m fine. Leave me alone, will you?” Helen said with more harshness than she had intended. “I am sorry. Gregg’s pushing me to set a date for the wedding. I am just not ready to do that. Not yet.”
Before Marcus could reply, Gregg stepped forward with a file folder in his hands. He dropped the folder onto Helen’s desk and said, “These are the numbers for the Sutherland Mining Company. I want your breakdown of the figures ready for me by the time I get to the office tomorrow morning.”
Helen’s heart sank. She was being punished by Gregg because she hadn’t provided the sexual satisfaction he’d wanted. She said, “Gregg, this will take at least two or three hours.”
“Yes, I suppose. Make sure it is on my desk in the morning. I’ll lock up the bank when I leave. Just let yourself out when you’re finished with your work. See that the door locks behind you.”
Helen was sitting in her chair at the high desk, looking through the financial ledger of a small mining outfit that Gregg was considering acquiring, when the employees of the First Bank & Trust of Whitetail Creek filed out the door. The vault had been closed and locked, as it always was every day immediately at six o’clock. Helen was left alone in the bank with a single lamp to illuminate the pages of a mining company’s profits, losses, and expenses. Hot tears of rage burned in her eyes, but she refused to let them escape.
* * * *
After writing the final sentence to her acquisition report, Helen set her pen in its holder, placed her face in her hands, and sighed wearily as she rubbed her eyelids. As she thought about what she had promised she would do for Gregg after work the following day, the bank’s clock began to chime. It sounded nine times.
She told herself that what she was going to do for Gregg wasn’t something that she hadn’t done before, so she shouldn’t let it weigh too heavily on her mind. She also tried to remind herself that she had a job that paid reasonably well and that her brother was counting on her continuing to pay for his hospitalization in the outskirts of Denver. But whenever Helen’s thoughts drifted in this direction, she began seeing herself as a soiled dove, her motivation with Gregg as being mercenary, not matrimonial, and when this happened she was afraid of looking at her own reflection in the mirror.
Go home and don’t think about anything at all, she told herself. Worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes.
She left the bank, making sure that the door mechanism locked behind her, and began the weary, four-block walk to the livery, where her horse and carriage would be waiting for her.
* * * *
“Lookie here, boys!”
The sound of the male voice directly behind Helen startled her so badly she nearly fell over in her haste to see who had stepped out of the shadows. She looked at the young man who had spoken, and at his four companions, and Helen’s heart began pounding furiously with primal fear. The speaker, as well as his friends, was young, perhaps under twenty, and wore range clothes that had not seen a cleaning in quite a while, though he had a well-oiled and thoughtfully cared-for pistol in a holster at his hip. He and his friends were itinerate cowboys, but with barbed wire being strung up nearly everywhere, they had taken to renting themselves out as gunmen. The contemptuous sneer on his lips seemed a permanent, prominent expression.
“I think this filly is looking for a stallion,” the leader said, his gaze going brazenly up and down over Helen’s voluptuous curves as he spoke.
Another young man said, “Jimbo, I believe you’re right.”
The leader, Jimbo, put his right hand between his legs to obscenely fondle himself. As he did this, his friends fanned out to surround Helen, trapping her between themselves and her carriage. She didn’t stand a chance of getting in her carriage, turning it around, and riding away before they captured her. Some fifty yards down the dusty side street of Whitetail Creek, Helen heard an excited cry, and the fragment of a sentence indicating that Jimbo had found a girl. How many more vicious young men were on their way now?
Helen tried to moisten her lips, but her tongue was dry. With as much confidence as she could manage, she said, “You’d better leave now before you get in trouble.”
This comment brought hissing, sadistic laughter from the leader of the blackguards. Jimbo stepped closer to Helen, still fondling himself through his baggy, dirty trousers. He licked his lips in a crude manner, saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth. The revulsion Helen felt showed in her expression.
“At this time of night?” the cretin asked. “Hell, ain’t nobody in town dumb enough to open their door or keep a lamp lit. At this time of night, me and my boys own the backstreets of Whitetail Creek.”
“Please, leave me alone,” Helen said. Then, her tone suddenly quivering, she pleaded softly, “Won’t you please just leave me alone?”
“That would be a damned neighborly thing to do, but it ain’t gonna happen.” Jimbo broke into another peel of laughter that was shared by his gang. “So why don’t you just go along real nice like, and just maybe you won’t get that pretty face of yours all cut up when we’re done with you?”
Jimbo stepped close enough so that he could reach out and touch Helen. His dark gaze raked up and down over her, and his expression was a foul thing that was both frightening and ugly to see.
“I like what I see,” the leader said. “But I don’t like your hair like that. Take out that pin and let your hair down, missy.”
Helen contemplated refusing to comply, but then a calmer, more rational voice inside her head whispered that needlessly angering the volatile gunman wouldn’t do her any good. She reached up and pulled out the wooden pin that held her long, auburn hair in a bun at the base of her neck. Her hair, gleaming in the moonlight like some precious metal, fell down her back.
“See? I can be a real nice fella when a gal knows how to follow orders.”
The other gunmen cackled at Jimbo’s comments. Helen shivered inside. There were now eight men standing in a half circle around her, all of them looking at her with a carnivorous gleam in eyes that held lust but no pity.
The leader of the outlaws glanced at his men, now close by, then back at Helen. He made no effort to disguise the fact that he was staring at Helen, taking in her ostentatious physical charms—and lusting after what he was seeing. Her lusciously rounded, heavy bosom did not require a corset to be held high, and their allure held Jimbo’s gaze for several unblinking seconds. Then, slowly, his gaze crawled slowly down to her stomach, and finally to her pleasantly curved hips.
“Hey, heifer, where you been all my life?” Jimbo asked quietly, conversationally.
His tone and manner were in sharp contrast to the quickly rising fear in Helen’s heart. There was nothing but remorseless menace in the gunman’s black heart. When Jimbo reached out casually to place h
is hand over Helen’s plump breast, she started to slap his hand away, but the look in the man’s eyes warned her that he could be much more brutal, more cruel and barbaric, than anyone she could possibly imagine.
She stood motionless, fearful and yet furious at what was happening. Helen was disgusted at having the foul young man cruelly pressing his fingers into her breast through her dress while he simultaneously used his other hand to fondle himself through his dirty trousers.
Jimbo laughed and looked around, making sure that all his men were watching. Then, without warning, he stabbed his fingers into Helen’s dress at the neckline and ripped down with all his strength. The buttons gave way easily to savagery. Without hesitation, the young hoodlum then grabbed Helen’s camisole and ripped it apart as well, tearing the thin cotton to expose extravagant breasts.
“Stop it!” Helen screamed, crossing her arms to cover herself.
A cry of excitement went out among the men, a collective howl like wolves on the hunt. Jimbo held a patch of cotton ripped from Helen’s camisole. He waved it at Helen then tossed the cotton to the ground and stepped on it, symbolically crushing her beneath his heel.
“Now get on your knees,” he demanded, lust racing through his veins like a drug. He pulled a Bowie knife with a foot-long blade from a sheath attached to his gun belt. The enormous, razor-sharp blade glinted silver in the moonlight. “Get down on your knees, and do it right. Make me angry and you’ll be the sorriest bitch Whitetail Creek has ever seen.”
There was a moment of complete silence as the outlaws stared at Helen, devouring her with their eyes as they waited to see if she would willingly sink to her knees to provide them with pleasure, or if fists and boots would be necessary for her to understand that she really had no choice in the matter.
Through the temporary silence, a much deeper male voice cut through the darkness, causing Helen and all nine gunmen to turn toward the intruder as he stepped out of the shadows.
“Walk away from this,” the stranger said. He was talking to Jimbo.
The stranger was an inch or two over six feet, with broad shoulders and a lean waist. His coat, shirt, and trousers, and even the neckerchief around his throat, were all midnight black. Helen guessed his age at somewhere around thirty-five, though she could be a couple years off in either direction. His hair was black as midnight, as were his eyes, which despite their darkness glittered dangerously. On his face was an expression that Helen was incapable of reading. She could not tell from the man’s expression what he was thinking. He just looked dangerous. Deadly dangerous. And seductive. She couldn’t say precisely how, but the stranger moved like a man in complete control of himself and the world around him, and this awareness triggered a physical and emotional response from her that she was only partially conscious of.
“I told you to walk away from this,” the man repeated, stepping closer. Despite his size, he moved with amazing grace and fluidity.
Jimbo quickly surmised that the intruder was alone, and once he was confident of this, his attitude changed immediately. He stepped closer to the stranger, moving away from his beautiful captive.
“No, mister, it’s you who had better turn tail and run like hell,” Jimbo said, menace dripping from every word that passed between his saliva-glistening lips. “Get your ass out of here now while I still say you can.”
The stranger looked at Helen. In a tone that was oddly conversational considering the circumstances, he said, “The name’s Jared. I’ll get you out of this in just a moment.”
“Seems like this is an imbecile that done wants to die!” Jimbo cackled. He waved the big Bowie knife through the air. “He ain’t even wearin’ of gun.” He spit on the ground, hitting the toe of Jared’s left boot. As he began slicing the air again with his knife, he hissed, “Looks like I’m just gonna have to gut you.”
Jared’s next move was made so fast and smooth that even though Helen had watched the entire thing, afterward, she couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t sorcery. Jared reached inside his jacket, under his left arm. When his hand reappeared a fraction of a second later, he held a Colt in his big right fist. And then there was the hideous roar of the revolver. The force of the bullet that punched into Jimbo’s chest sent him sprawling onto his back in the livery corral.
The other men were just starting to react, all of them reaching for guns in holsters, when Jared’s heavy Colt screamed its vengeance once again, barely a second after the first. Another deafening explosion and another young, vicious outlaw was sent tumbling in the dirt and manure of the corral.
Two men were dead. By this time the fastest draw among the outlaws was just clearing his revolver from its holster. He would have been better off if he’d raised his hands and given up. Jared’s aim was true, and the fastest draw among the young killers was the third to die.
What had been a gang of nine was now down to six. The six remaining, all of them dazed at the speed with which their ranks had been depleted, turned as though a single unit and ran for the open door of the stables, seeking cover from which they might return fire with relative safety.
“Come on,” Jared said, reaching a hand out to Helen. “We’ve outstayed our welcome.”
Helen had no intention of putting her hand in Jared’s or in going anywhere with him. He was a dangerous brute in a black suit. He was obviously skilled in the horrible arts of warfare and gun fighting. He was probably a man cut from the same bolt of cloth as the younger, coarser gunmen who had attacked her.
But a frantic voice inside Helen’s brain admitted that he was indeed a killer—but he was not at all the same type of killer as those who had ripped open her dress and tore off most of her camisole. In a flashing epiphany, Helen realized that no amount of contempt for violence would, in fact, stop violence from occurring. In the grandest irony of all, Helen realized that her only hope of safety rested in the man who seemed most violent of all.
Placing her hand in Jared’s much larger one, she said, “Please, get me out of this.”
Jared smiled. It was an incongruous expression under the circumstances, but it made Helen feel a little more confident just the same.
“Trust me,” he said, then began leading Helen into the shadows of Whitetail Creek’s deserted backstreets, running swiftly but not as fast as he could.
Helen was about to say that Jared was running too fast, and that she would surely fall down at any second. But just as she was about to speak, she heard the reports of revolvers being fired. A bullet kicked up dirt at her right foot as she ran, missing her by inches.
It added swiftness to her stride as she clutched onto Jared as though holding a lifeline.
Chapter Two
That morning, Helen had chosen to wear her ankle-high, side-button boots with two-inch heels. The footwear was of good quality and quite fashionable. They were also almost impossible to run fast in. She tried to keep up with Jared while he ran a zigzagging course through the backstreets of Whitetail Creek, but he had to pull her along just the same.
They went six blocks before Jared stopped running. He put a finger to Helen’s lips, silencing her even before she had begun to speak. He looked back in the direction from which they’d come. Several seconds later, Helen heard the pounding of boots against the dirt street.
“Come on,” Jared said, leading Helen down a litter-strewn, dark alley.
Though they were hurrying, they were no longer running, and Helen was thankful for that. Her right hand was still held by Jared. With her left hand, she held the bodice of her torn dress closed as best she could. When she tried to ease her right hand free from Jared’s grip so that she might see if there was some hope of repairing her camisole and regaining some measure of modesty, he refused to release her.
“Wait, wait,” Helen said finally, breathing heavily now as Jared guided her down yet another dark alley. “I think we’ve lost them.” Jared glanced back over his shoulder at her, clearly annoyed. Between gulps of air, Helen said, “Please, I’ve…got to stop…to catch my�
��breath.”
Jared stopped then. He turned toward her, and though it was clear that every muscle in his body was tensed and prepared for action, there was a certain compassionate tenderness in his eyes that Helen was thankful for. He looked only at her face, managing to keep his gaze away from her bountiful, nearly completely exposed breasts. That was another thing that Helen was thankful for. In that instant, it was impossible for Helen to remember that violent men like Jared were exactly the kind of men that she disliked the most in this world.
Helen caught the torn halves of her camisole and inspected the shredded cotton. A swath perhaps four or five inches wide had been completely torn away from the very center of it. There was no possible way that she could repair the camisole. When she checked her dress, she saw that all of the buttons from the neckline to the belt were missing.
When she thought about what the outlaws had intended to do to her, she felt a wave of gratitude that Jared had given them the swift and merciless justice that they had deserved.
And then Helen felt guilty for her emotions.
“Where are they, Tookie?” a young gunman shouted from the end of the alley. “Anybody see what way they was headed?”
Helen gasped. Jared instantly clamped his big hand over her mouth to silence her. She cupped her naked breasts in her hands to hide them. Jared pushed her backward, deeper into the shadows of the alley, until she was against the exterior brick wall of a business that had closed its doors for the day many hours earlier.
With Jared so close, Helen was suddenly aware of just how tall and powerful he was. He leaned against her, his lower chest pressing against the backs of her hands. She felt the pressure against her breasts and found it strikingly curious that the sensation was not unpleasant.
