by Thea Devine
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body, watching his burning eyes follow them, his expression never losing that set obstinate look.
She had to move him. She lifted one hand from her thigh, where it had come to rest, and pulled gently at one end of the sash around her waist. It fell away gently, trailing down her body to graze her bare feet.
The edges of the robe opened to reveal a line of enticing naked skin and a hint of her lush femininity.
His whole body tensed. She could not have done it better if she had planned it. Had she planned it? He didn't care. The shadow of the swell of her breasts invited his eyes, invited his hands. He had only to decide just when to take her. And he would take her. No one could refuse such a blatant invitation.
"You win," he said in that awful flat tone. "Sit on the bed." There was no reason not to, he thought; she wanted it.
She sat, easing herself backward so that she could brace her upper body on her elbows. More of the robe slithered away from her body, as she had intended, to reveal her breasts, her thighs, and the long length of her bare legs. She sent him an expectant look. His arms unfolded from his wall of a chest, and he stood surveying her with his hands on his hips.
"You are something," he said finally.
"You want me," she answered with deep grave surety. It was the one thing she did know; no matter what he still felt about Jake, his desire for her was unabated.
"I'd be crazy to reject your offer," he agreed, and only then did he moved forward, lean the hard line of his body over her, and touch her, drawing his hand frpm her cheek down her chest and straight down the line of her body. "I'd be crazy," he whispered as the sense of her sex and her silky skin jolted through him. His kissed her waiting lips, a firm, pressured, undemanding kiss, a frustrating kiss. She bit his lips as they moved over hers, demanding
more, determined not to let him get away with giving her less.
The heat of his hand enveloped her sex, and her lips moved against it as her mouth moved to invade and conquer his. She was the aggressor now, avidly seeking his tongue, seducing him with the writhing of her hips, demanding his ardor.
He stradled her thighs then, his hand still resting on her straining femininity; bracing his body on his other hand, he leaned his weight into her, forcing her downward, off her elbows and onto the bed, where her wild inky hair made a tumultuous counterpoint to the blue cover.
Her one hand came up and rubbed his hard bare chest; the other slid down his muscular forearm to the hand that remained tightly against the juncture of her thighs. His mouth hovered over hers, dueling with her with an intensity that was not playful.
She flicked her tongue against his lips, impatient with his making her wait until he was ready to kiss her. Her desire flared like a living thing, touching him, enveloping him.
"You'd tempt the devil," he growled, grazing her lips with his and pulling away violently.
"You are the devil," she retorted huskily, running her hand up his chest now to his shoulders and urgently flexing her fingers against his taut skin to bring him closer to her.
He came down heavily on his elbow and, bracing himself, removed his hand from her to support his body just covering hers, over her but not touching her. His heat came at her in waves, and his mouth was touching hers and drawing back, feeling her lips between his and pulling away, tugging her lips, licking them, feeling their texture and shape as if he had never tasted them before.
He could have kept that up all night, but his own body betrayed him, moving with the rhythm of his exploration
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of her lips, acceding to the warmth and weight of her legs wrapping around him and sensually gripping his body. Her eager hands made a torturous glissade of motion up and down his torso, raking his chest, pulling him closer to her, closer, wanting him to feel her naked skin against his. Wanting him, against all reason, to take her with the explosiveness he felt.
His body still braced over her, Deuce took her incendiary mouth, invading it, filling it, and Kalida opened herself to him totally, willing him to possess her this way. His hands surrounded her wild lustrous hair, thrusting themselves into it, holding her head immobile. Her own hands pulled at him, felt him, held him unmoving against her, teased him, and slid down his body to caress his throbbing manhood that strained against the confining material of his pants. God, she wanted him; she pulled frantically at his belt and the impeding buttons, her fingers trembling against his bare skin as she slowly released them one by one.
He didn't move. His mouth still owned hers, his tongue still stroked hers with slow soft movements, and his whole body tightened and poised for the touch of her hand on his hot granite length. What if Jake had forced her to? . . .
He caught his breath sharply as her fingers grazed the taut area just below his stomach and slowly pressed downward to grasp and feel and free his masculinity.
She knew what to do; he had taught her himself, hadn't he? She pushed aside all the restraining material, and both her hands felt him, held him, stroked him until he was dizzy with wanting her. Her hands, somehow, had learned what more to do. Her touch was soft and firm, loose and tight, caressing and urgent all at the same time.
Did you do that with Jake?
That was the thought that was holding him back. And she knew it. Her torrid caresses told him she knew it
because she fully intended to tempt him beyond his resolutions. Beyond rational thinking. And she was coming close to it. Closer. Her hands were magical in their enticing play and his desire was raging totally out of control. He felt himself sliding one of his hands under her buttocks and lifting her upwards and against his hard thrusting length, then with one tight lunge, he drove into her wet, welcoming warmth.
He eased her downward, drawing his mouth away from hers now so that he could see her face and look at her lush, sultry body that opened for him so shamelessly.
Her glowing cobalt eyes flashed him a tantalizing look, inviting him to settle his weight on her; her hips pushed upwards in taut little movements that betrayed her urgency. Her hands rubbed his taut shoulders and neck.
She didn't understand this long hesitating pause, or his reluctance to lay his body on hers. He nestled within her, unmoving, looking at her as if he were going to say something, and she knew exactly what.
But he didn't say it. Without warning, he levered his body so that it was being supported by his hands and arms both, and he could gaze at the whole of her body beneath him and the motion of his body within hers. He was not going to touch her; he was going to watch. Very slowly he began the languorous stroking movements that she yearned for.
Her hands grabbed his wrists as if they were anchors as his movements became more powerful, steady, stroking her velvet sheath rhythmically; his shrouded gray eyes told her nothing. Hers, she thought, melting into the molten thrusts of his lusty length, must have told him everything.
H(*r fingers constricted against his wrists with every surge of feeling. Her hips churned against him provocatively, enticing him to plunge deeper, harder, faster. Her head lashed back and forth with each compelling exquisite stroke of his potent masculinity. It was all so simple,
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she thought somewhere in her radiant euphoria, one man and all this pleasure.
He read it all in her face, in her hot blue gaze, in her urgent convulsive movements against him. She was so beautiful, with her body framed by the flimsy robe, all of it open to and possessed by him. Only he could cause this cataclysmic pleasure in her. No one would ever see this—her lusty fiery demands, her body writhing and twisting beneath his.
No one could compel this incandescent response from her except him. In that moment, he loved her for it, and for letting him see it in all her vulnerability.
He loved her.
Her body was all his now, hot, wiling, open, hungry for him, answering him, demanding him.
Everything in her reached for him then with f
ierce, unbridled desire as he plunged to the very depths of her sultry core and away again, over and over, filling her endlessly with piercing swelling sensations that billowed through her, expanding, filling her, spiralling slowly and rapturously from her honeyed center to burst in iridescent radiant shards all over her body.
He watched every movement, every nuance of her response and her culmination. He bent over her mouth to savor it again. His body plunged backward as his mouth claimed hers. He plunged into her luscious heat fiercely, possessively, driving his massive length home again and again and again until his lusty movements exploded his torrent of passion deep into her body.
Only then did he settle his hard weight onto her and allow her eager arms to hold him. He hadjio thoughts of anything but the cascade of feeling that still pulsated through his blood.
Her warmth enfolded him; her nakedness enthralled him. He was content just to lie in her arms for the rest of the night.
It was Joe Slim who pounded on his door the following morning, his voice hoarse with urgency. "Deuce, damn it, wake the hell up! Something's happened. . . . Deuce!. . ."
He awakened raggedly to that noise—the pounding and Joe's sharp imperative tone. And what the damn hell was Joe doing in the house? What the hell was going on with Ardelle? He reached for his pants groggily and pulled them on. "Hell, Joe, hang on. . . ." Shit, what the hell was Joe doing in the house? He groped for his boots, slanting a glance at Kajida to see whether she was awake. She was watching him, her expression quizzical, her body curved into a sinuously tempting line under the cover.
He stood up, shrugged, and strode to the door. He flung it open impatiently. "Yeah, Joe? What in God's name are you doing here at this godawful hour? Isn't Ardelle downstairs?"
"No, I didn't see no Miss Ardelle. Listen, Deuce, we got trouble. Something's happened . . . bad." He paused expectedly, nervously even. He didn't know how the hell he was going to break this damned news to Deuce, worse because that roundup lady was with him, right in the room. Damn!
"What is it?" Deuce asked brusquely. Joe's respectful diffidence was sometimes aggravating, the more so because Kalida was awake and waiting for him.
"The goddamn cows are goddamn gone," Joe burst out.
"What goddamn cows?" Deuce demanded, all his senses alert.
"Them goddamn cows," Joe whispered, pointing at Kalida. "Them ones we moved down yesterday to Morgan fieid, They're goddamn gone. Up and goddamned vanished, every last damn one of them!"
"And the men?"
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"Left goddamned unconscious in the field. Damn it, Deuce, I don't see how—" Joe broke off as Deuce's face tightened into a blazing, menacing mask right before his very eyes.
"Yeah, well, I goddamned well see," Deuce said tautly, turning to look at Kalida who had bolted upright at Joe's news. Kalida's blatant seduction, he thought savagely, done with an express purpose; clever little bitch. Too bad she had no conception of her father's real character. Too bad he talked her into abetting his little schemes. "Oh yes," he said tautly, pinning Kalida with his stone-hard gray gaze, "I goddamned well see everything is beginning to make goddamned sense."
Chapter Sixteen
He stormed across the room and hauled Kalida out of bed. "Get dressed, you bitch. Get your lying traitorous body out of my bed and downstairs. Now!" he roared at her, wheeling around, grabbing his shirt, and flinging his way out the door with Joe Slim.
She reacted slowly, utterly bewildered by his treatment of her. She reached for her robe, which she had discarded in the aftermath of their sublime lovemaking, and slipped it on thoughtfully.
Her father's herd—Deuce's herd—some five hundred head of cattle were missing. Yes, she understood that. She could not comprehend what Deuce understood or what it had to do with her.
"Kalida!"
His bellow up the stairs sent her running to her bedroom, where Prestina waited for her with a pitcher and bowl for her morning wash up.
"This be serious, Miss Kalida," she said gently, sponging down Kalida's back. "All those cows disappeared. You say how."
"I can't," Kalida said, shimmying into her shirtwaist and staring into the mirror at her nimble fingers buttoning it up. She couldn't say anything at all this morning;
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she felt like her whole world had rocked sideways and that everything she knew from the night before did not exist anymore. It was the only thing she cared about. Deuce's cattle could go to hell. But obviously he thought somehow she had something to do with their disappearance. How could she have?
She tried, as she brushed her wildly tangled inky hair, to figure out what he possibly could be thinking. Nothing made sense, she couldn't come up with a theory that remotely involved her with this catastrophe. It had to be a random happening, the gang of rustlers that had staked its claim on Sweetland and the Linaria. A mistake, possibly. How did a thief determine the breed in the dark?
She threw down the brush and let Prestina braid her hair into a long plait down her back. "You must hurry," she cautioned. "He is raving angry."
"All right, I'm done. I suppose I will find out what the judge and jury down there has decreed before too long," Kalida said^ grimly. Yes, and she would be tried and convicted before pressing her own case, too, or even hearing the charges. Just like with Jake.
She couldn't bear to pursue that thought, but it pursued her as she finally made her way donwstairs. Her cobalt eyes were dark with apprehension, and her hands were shaking just a little. The residual force of Deuce's anger was tangible. She found she was just a little frightened.
It was eerily quiet as she came down the steps. Everyone was on the porch. She could hear Deuce's hard voice rapping out brisk questions, and low hesitant voices answering them.
She looked up at Prestina, who was following right behind her. Prestina nodded at her and mouthed, "I bring you coffee. You go there," as she slipped behind Kalida toward the kitchen.
I go there, Kalida thought warily. I go to a hanging. She held onto the door frame as she stepped out onto the porch.
The first person she saw was Ardelle, and her vicious, accusing sherry-fired eyes. "Here she is," she said flatly, turning away.
Deuce looked up from a sheaf of papers he was examining. Eakins stood by him, his expression baffled. "Sit down someplace," Deuce said sharply, his eyes flinty. He turned back to Eakins. "All right; this is the pre-drive tally then. Mr. Ryland took the tote, am I right?"
"With me assisting," Eakins corroborated, looking utterly cowed. As anyone would have been, Kalida thought angrily, with Deuce's awesome glare dissecting him.
"Hell," Deuce spat. "God, I might have goddamned known it." He slapped the papers down on the flat of the porch railing and stalked away in a fury.
Kalida looked up as Prestina offered her a coffee cup, taking it gratefully and going to the far end of the porch to find an unoccupied seat. Ellie and Joe Slim sat closer to Ardelle, and two unfamiliar men leaned against the porch railing.
She took a deep hot, gratifying sip of the coffee, almost choking on it when Deuce whipped back to her and demanded, "Where is your father?"
"I haven't seen him since he left," she said resentfully. "Why?"
"He knew we were bringing down the herd," Deuce said unequivocally, staring into her face.
Kalida hesitated the merest second. It was true; she had told him. She remembered it distinctly. Her face whitened but she nodded her head. "Yes."
"From you," Deuce persisted, his frustration simmering under his question.
"Yes," she said low, and Ardelle leapt up.
"You see, you see? She has been a package of trouble
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ever since ... I can't tell you when. You see, Deuce, you couldn't even trust her. I could have told you that, but you wouldn't have listened. God, you have always been so goddamned stubborn where she is concerned."
She drew herself up then, as though she had said mor
e than she had meant to, and sat down heavily in her chair.
"So when he planned his raid, he contacted you to create a little diversion," Deuce concluded, his voice dripping contempt. "And you did it very well, Kalida; very well indeed. Imagine my trusting you to the point of leaving only three men on guard, and Joe. Imagine my thinking you actually had some conception of your father's character, and you actually might be somewhat relieved to have him suitably occupied elsewhere. Imagine my stupidity and gullibility, you bitch."
"Stop it!" she shrieked. "What the devil are you talking about? What are you saying about my father? He didn't-"
"I would gamble Sweetland on the fact he did," Deuce interrupted harshly.
"But my father . . . you ... I didn't . . . When could he have contacted me, for God's sake?"
"At your ranch; the barn with all its little crannies? A message in the haystack, perhaps? Some willing go-between. I mean, what the hell do you think your father has been doing all this while?"
"Planning the renovation and getting together his new herd," Kalida said staunchly. "The wreckage is cleared away already. Do you know that?"
"Yes I do," Deuce snapped. "Because if you think I would have left it to your father to get it done — "
"WHAT?" Kalida screamed.
"I'm telling you, I arranged it directly after we signed the papers, Kalida. Don't tell me you didn't know."
"I didn't know," she said dully, sending a searing blue glance at Ellie, who raised her eyebrows as if to say, I
warned you.
"You didn't know?" he repeated scornfully. "Now why don't I believe that? Your father is a scoundrel, Kalida, an out-and-out scoundrel who calls a good bluff and knows how to read a man's soul. And you, my lying bitch, are the perfect accomplice. You have just the right air of innocence and restraint. You conned me, Kalida. And I'm admitting it in front of everyone here. You and your father twisted me straight around by my tail and left me hanging."
