by Vanessa Vale
I took in her naked body, not yet having much opportunity to do so in the daylight. “Christ, you’re beautiful.” Reverently, I ran my hands down her arms, to her sides, then back up to cup her breasts, which thrust up with her arms pinned overhead. “I love your tits like this. They’re so sensitive now, aren’t they?”
Brushing my thumbs over her nipples, she moaned.
“I bet I can make you come from this alone.” I arched a brow at her, daring her to disagree.
“Jack,” she repeated, this time on a breathless whisper.
My hands slid lower, over her flat belly and happiness bloomed in my chest, knowing that our child was safely inside. Further on I moved to the red curls at the juncture of her thighs, then lower. She was already slick and wet, her pussy lips swollen and plump, ready for me.
I dropped to my knees and nudged my nose against her, breathing in her musky arousal. She looked down at me with such passion, such trust in her eyes.
“I’m going to eat your pussy, sweetness, and you’re going to come. Then I’m going to fuck you. Right here.”
She spun about to look over her shoulder. “Anyone can see us,” she hissed.
“Only if they’re looking this way. Be quiet and no one will glance up at your bedroom window. But if you make those gorgeous panting sounds I love so much, I’m sure you’re going to have quite the audience.”
I didn’t give her a chance to think, for that was the last thing I wanted from her. While she could be seen if someone were looking up at the second floor of the Bower house, there was not much chance for it to occur. It was just after dawn and her window faced the west, shielded from the sun until later in the day. I wouldn’t put her in harm’s way, or where anyone could truly get a glimpse of my gorgeous bride. Her body, her pleasure, belonged to me.
Nudging her legs far apart, I put my mouth on the sweetest part of her and made her forget everything, everything but me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LILY
“Where are we going to live?” I asked. We were back in bed once again, but this time I was sticky with Jack’s seed and had my stocking still tied about a wrist. My hair was a wild tangle down my back and I was sprawled on top of him, our legs entangled. The room smelled of fucking. We smelled of fucking. It was not only decadent to be lying about in the daytime, but in my bedroom. Dr. Bower had yet to return, which I’d expected, but he could come through the door at any time, Dr. Meager in tow. I didn’t care. I didn’t care at all.
If I could be fucked in front of my open window with a chance of someone seeing, then I could remain abed naked with my husband.
“I don’t have a home, not one for a wife anyway.” His fingers ran through my hair. “Definitely not one for a baby. I doubt you’ll like Washington.”
“Do you like Washington?”
I felt him shrug. “I haven’t been there in almost a year. The Montana Territory, it’s… different. Beautiful. Wild. I like it here.” I heard his hand run over his beard. I wondered if he’d keep it, or shave it off. It was soft and yet a little scratchy against the sensitive skin on the inside of my thighs, and I thought it definitely had its uses. “The women are… stuffy. Some are even prickly.”
“Hmm,” I replied. “Stuffy women. And prickly, too? I doubt I’d fit in.”
He laughed at my dry humor. The day we first met he said he was going to fuck the prickliness right out of me. I thought maybe he’d done just that, but I wasn’t going to tell him.
“I don’t need much,” I told him instead.
“But you need a purpose. I loved you and left you. A wife with no husband. I’m sorry.”
“You were working. I worry about you leaving again, knowing the kind of men you chase.”
He tugged on my hair so I had to look at him. “Sweetness, you don’t have to worry about anything but that baby I put in your belly. While I might not have a place for us to live, I have money. I made an arrangement with the copper kings for Benson. We can do anything you wish. Go anywhere you want. Live near your family.”
“What about your job?”
“My job is to take care of you now.”
“What about being a Pinkerton?”
He sighed, his chest rising and falling beneath my cheek. “I spent my life angry, sweetness, trying to find justice wherever I could. I’ve gone all over the country trying to find it.”
I frowned and swirled my finger through his chest hair. “I don’t understand.”
He shifted slightly, so I lifted off of him. He moved so that he sat up, leaning against the brass headboard. I propped myself up on my elbow so I could look at him.
“My father died in the war. My mother died, ultimately, of a broken heart.”
I could see all the joy fade from his eyes, his muscles tense as he spoke.
“When my father left for the war, I was little, six or so. She showed me a hiding place under the porch where I was to go at the first sign of danger. She said we were fighting bad people. I was too young to know what that meant other than my father was gone off to help.”
He took a breath, glanced off at the far wall instead of me. I remained silent, for this heart-wrenching story was what made Jack who he was.
“I was ten when they came. My mother made me go beneath the porch so they didn’t know I was there.” He swallowed then. “I watched them take her into the barn. They left an hour later, but still I remained in hiding. She came out soon after, disheveled. I learned later they raped her, but as a ten-year-old, I only knew they took something from her. Word came of my father’s death soon after that. It had been several years since she’d seen him, but the loss was brutal for her, especially after what those soldiers did. She killed herself soon after.”
I gasped and sat upright, tossing my arms about his neck at that, crying into his shoulder, his beard tickling my forehead. He comforted me as I wept for a woman who had been destroyed by men, men who used war as an excuse to harm the innocent.
Sniffing, I pulled back. “You want justice for your mother.”
He wiped a tear from my cheek with his thumb. “I did. For years I did, chasing one outlaw after another all the way across the country trying to feel some sort of justice for what happened to her.” He sighed. “My parents won’t get justice, because there is none in war. There is none no matter how many outlaws I chase. I learned that this past month.”
“Oh?” I asked, afraid to say more, afraid he might decide to stop sharing.
“My life is with you, sweetness. I want to look to the future, with our baby.” He put his hand on my flat belly and I put mine on top of his. I looked down at our joined hands, the ring he gave me no longer the only physical proof of our love. “It’s time to stop looking to the past.”
***
I must have fallen asleep, for I woke with the sun coming in the windows and Jack gone from my bed. Only the sound of the grandfather clock came up the steps. Outside, I heard the heavy clops of a horse, but otherwise, all was quiet. Where was Jack and how long had he been gone? I lay on my bed and put a hand on my belly. I couldn’t help but marvel about how I was actually making a baby. Lower down, I felt Jack’s seed, sticky on my thighs. I was naked and the sheet only covered part of me. Surely, I looked a picture. Wicked and wanton. It made me grin.
I was no longer working for Dr. Bower, doing his bidding or trying to find random purpose. I was Jack’s wife, who seemed to like me just as I was. While I’d gone to the most ridiculous fashion to gain his attention—investigate and track down a band of outlaws and wait for a bank to be robbed—I felt as if my point had been made.
Jack knew of my intelligence, knew of my idiosyncrasies. He knew everything and he still wanted me. I knew far less about him. We’d spent two days together, then he was gone. I’d had to sift through the lies for the truth about my daring and justice-seeking husband. He’d spent years keeping himself a secret because of his work. An outlaw could use any weakness against a man like Jack. He’d shared the sad story of his pa
rents and it was a deep insight into his character, the kind of man he was. I loved him all the more for it.
He’d said I had been the one who’d made him seek a new life, a new direction. I think the same could be said for myself. I’d just been aimless in Butte, waiting for Dr. Bower to toss me some scraps of his attention and purpose. It was only a matter of time before I would have left to go home, to aimlessly find some kind of purpose on the ranch as well. Perhaps his taking on Dr. Meager had been a blessing in disguise, for while treating patients was something I was skilled in, it wasn’t my true life’s calling. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew it was with Jack, with this baby we’d made. Just like he’d said, it was the future.
Smiling, I climbed from the bed for the last time. I would bathe and dress, then pack my trunk. It was time to live for the future. With Jack.
Two hours later, I was folding the last of my dresses and tucking them into the top of my trunk. I heard the back door open and close, then footsteps down the hall and up the stairs. My heart leapt into my throat at Jack’s return. The excitement of him coming closer and closer was… exhilarating. He was mine and he came back. I hadn’t realized until I heard his return that I worried that he might disappear on me again. Instead of folding the last dress, I just rolled it up and stuffed it onto the top of the pile, then shut the lid of the trunk. “I filled it. You’re going to have to carry it down the steps,” I said.
I spun about with a broad grin, which immediately died when I saw that it wasn’t Jack that stood in my open doorway. It was Morgan.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered.
“Does that man of yours know you cuss?” he asked. One shoulder was propped against the doorway, cleaning a fingernail with the tip of a sharp knife. He was relaxed and too confident. A sign of an outlaw that was not afraid of anything. “That’s right, that man of yours. Not Pike, but Matthews. A fucking Pinkerton with a bride who just so happened to be in the bank when we robbed it.”
This was not good. Not only had Jack kept this man from the bank money, he’d done so by impersonation over the course of weeks. I had no doubt he wanted Jack dead, but his interest in seeing me suffer—and Jack because of it—was stronger.
I swallowed down the knot of fear. “Jack will be returning soon. If you want to stay alive, you’d best be on your way. I won’t tell him you were here.”
He lifted his beady eyes to mine. “He’s not coming anytime soon.”
My immediate thought was that Jack had left me, that he’d taken up some Pinkerton assignment and was halfway to Missoula by now. Maybe he’d hopped on the train east headed back to Washington. No. Jack wouldn’t have done that, so I just said, “Oh?”
“He’s in a meeting with that military man of his, at the saloon. By the way the ladies were surrounding them, I figure they’ll be there all night.”
The words were slung like weapons, meaning to hurt me. Jack wouldn’t dally with a saloon girl. The men he was with might, but Jack wasn’t a cheater. He was more honorable than Morgan would ever know. Regardless, if he truly was at the saloon, he might not be back in time to save me. I had to save myself.
“Matthews took something from me and I’m going to take something from him. Let’s go.”
He stood tall and stepped toward me. Of similar size to Jack, he was much heavier. Jack was all lean hard muscle, but this man must eat more steak than Dr. Bower, and by the size of his belly and the rosy color of his nose, drink quite a bit of alcohol. It might slow him down in a fight, but would not prevent him from harming me.
“Why should I go with you?”
“I can kill you here—” he held up the knife, “—but I’d rather make Matthews suffer first.”
I stepped behind the trunk, a solid barrier between us, but the room was small. Unless I decided to jump out the open window, I was trapped. It was futile to resist the man. Getting hurt, and possibly endangering the baby was to be avoided. I had to use my wits. He might have muscle, but I had intelligence on my side.
“Very well. I will go with you, but I will need my coat.”
“Coat?” he asked, looking at me as if I asked if he’d like some tea and cake.
I sniffed and tilted up my chin. “It is getting dark and the air will be cool. I assure you, I will complain and gripe if I am chilled at all. As Jack has told me, I have little meat on my bones and get cold quickly. You don’t wish for me to take a chill, do you? Then you’ll have to deal with a sick woman and—”
“Lord almighty, woman, shut yer trap.”
I bit my lip, trying to look contrite. He was easily riled and annoyed. Good.
“My coat?” I asked.
He sighed. “Where is it?”
I pointed to my trunk.
“Get it quick.”
I didn’t wish to turn my back on him, but if he’d wanted me dead, he would have done it before now. Lifting the lid, I rummaged through until I found one. While my back was turned, I slipped Jack’s ring from my finger and placed it on top of the pile. Either he’d think I left him, or he’d remembered the words he’d said to me out on the prairie.
You take it off, I will find it and I will find you. You belong to me.
Fighting back tears, I spun on my heel and faced Morgan. Lifting my chin, I walked toward the door, pretending I was being escorted to Sunday church instead of being kidnapped. The weight of Jack’s ring was gone and I felt like something was missing. Jack would find me. I knew it and felt resolved. While I certainly had to go with the man, it didn’t mean I had to make it easy for him. And so I began to prattle.
“I hope you have this planned out. As a doctor’s apprentice, I am well aware that if I don’t eat frequently I become dizzy and lethargic. Did you notice that the sun is going down? The man at the livery said his bones ache when a storm is coming on and he told me, just this morning, that he could barely walk. That means we’re in for some harsh weather. Such a surprise because—”
Morgan groaned and I kept right on jabbering.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JACK
Sending a telegram to Washington was quick. Just two words. I resign. The reply would be slower in coming and I had to meet the colonel one last time before I took Lily and left town. Where we went, I had no idea, but it would not be for the Pinkertons or the colonel. I might even be happy living with her huge family, if the men her sisters married didn’t feed me to the pigs first. Two months ago, I would have been stunned to be happy walking away from my work, from the never-ending stream of outlaws that needed to be brought to justice. They were someone else’s problems now. With that thought in my head, I didn’t even mind the hour it took to track down the military man at the saloon. He was with several others in uniform, enjoying an early round of whiskey.
They were celebrating Benson’s capture and as I’d done the work, I’d been pulled into the celebration. When the upstairs girls joined in on the fun, I let the good times pass me, letting the bachelors have their fun. They might need to release some of their pent-up energies in the lush, willing bodies of these whores, but I had my own woman, a woman who was just as lusty, just as willing sleeping off my very ardent attentions.
Even so, I had been unable to pull myself away from the saloon before the sun had long set and returned to Dr. Bower’s house, eager to take Lily away with me. Standing at the front door, I didn’t know if I should knock or just enter. After what I’d done to her in her bedroom—there was no question the room was totally defiled—I should just walk right on in.
This was Dr. Bower’s house, however, and I’d married the woman under his supervision—weak as that had been. He also could wield a scalpel, so I knocked. Dr. Bower opened the door.
“Ah, Mr. Matthews. It is good to see you.”
I shook his hand. He was an odd man, not concerned that I had married Lily hastily and in secret. Based on what I knew of him from Lily and the way he’d behaved the day before, I wasn’t surprised.
“Good evening, sir.”
&
nbsp; He returned to his office without a backward glance. Looking up the stairwell, I didn’t see or hear anything from Lily, so I had no choice but to follow him. He was a small man, trim, yet his profession seemed to have taken its toll. His hair was graying and deep grooves lined his face.
“I hope you stay for dinner. Lily serves a delicious pork roast on Wednesdays.”
I breathed in, then replied, “I don’t smell a roast, or any dinner, for that matter.”
He glanced up then, suddenly aware of the time. “That’s odd. She loves roast.”
I wasn’t going to quibble over the fact that the man wasn’t aware Lily didn’t eat meat. I focused on the fact that he said that it was odd. While the man seemed to have his head up his ass, he was observant enough to pick up on any changes in routine. Lily was a woman of routine herself and definitely catered to Dr. Bower’s equally annoying trait. That meant that Lily hadn’t prepared the roast as expected. Either it had also been eaten by a wild dog or something wasn’t right.
“Where is Lily?” I asked, a feeling of dread settling over me.
He raised one graying brow. “I assumed she was with you. She is your wife, is she not?”
Spinning on my heel, I took the steps two at a time and stalked into Lily’s room. I saw it right away. My ring. It was resting on top of a wrinkled dress in her trunk.
I grabbed it and squeezed it in my palm. I spun around the room, wishing she were playing a game of hide and seek.
“Lily!” I bellowed.
Dr. Bower came up the stairs then. “What is going on?”
“She’s not here. Something’s wrong.”
“How do you know that?”
I stood with my hands on my hips in the hallway.
“She took a bath earlier; a wet bath sheet is over the knob of the brass footboard.” I pointed my thumb behind me. “She packed her trunk to leave the house. It’s filled to the brim with the lid open. She left her hat on the hook by the door and she left my ring out where I could find it.”
