by Thea Devine
The gall, Kalida thought angrily, lifting the rifle and taking aim at her. She had nothing to lose now anyway; Ardelle had very successfully circumvented the truth with her artful lies. At best now, she could satisfy her own growing blood lust; she could shoot at least one of Ardelle's lies out from under her and prove to Deuce that one thing at least was the truth.
He made no move to stop her. His eyds flashed as he stood aside to let Ardelle open the door.
His eyes ... He wasn't going to prevent her from stopping Ardelle from leaving the room. Why? Because . . . something of what she had said made sense?
She pulled the trigger before Ardelle was out the door,
and her cane shattered in two pieces. "Run, Ardelle," she hissed, "because I'll kill you if you don't." Another shot, aimed just over Ardelle's head, ricocheted through the hallway. "Run, Ardelle, I don't care what happens now; you've taken everything away from me." She blasted the floor behind Ardelle's skirt.
And Ardelle ran. She heard the cold-blooded note in Kalida's voice; Kalida didn't care now. She had lost Deuce, her father, Jake. She had nothing. She could have nothing in jail as easily as anywhere else. And she would have her revenge. Ardelle would not be the instrument of her revenge. She ran.
She dashed down the dark hallway as Kalida's bullets made a path directly behind her. An excellent shot, Kalida, she remembered thinking fleetingly. She could have lifted that gun another inch and crippled her forever. In a blur, she saw Prestina's frightened face peering at her from behind her bedroom door.
A bullet smashed into the newel post at the top of the stairs, an inch in front of Ardelle. Startled, she stumbled and tried to catch herself on the spindles of the banister— fragile spindles; the momentum and weight of her body pulled the very one she grasped right out of its socket and she tumbled down the stairs with it, landing with a sickening thud at the bottom.
Kalida dropped the gun in horror. "Oh my God," she moaned, crouching at the top of the steps. "Oh my God . . ." She felt strong arms lift her and cradle her against pulsating warmth. How could he hold her like that, with Ardelle unconscious at the bottom of the steps?
And he held her, so close, so tight; it was a homecoming, his holding her like that. He believed her. She started crying, as much from shock as relief. He believed her. And for just that one moment, Ardelle had ceased to matter.
* * *
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It was incredible the difference a couple of days could make, Kalida thought, as she stepped into the parlor of Ellie's house to wait for Deuce.
It had been two days, but it seemed longer since they had brought Ardelle into Bozeman in the buckboard, unconscious but still alive, after driving at breakneck speed all night.
And one day since the doctor had pronounced her well enough to travel, although she was permanently crippled by her unfortunate fall.
A day since she and Deuce had sought Ellie Dean, only to find that Ellie had disappeared in the middle of the night several days ago with some gentleman or the other, Charlotte said, leaving the house once again in hers and Lorena's hands.
A day since she had slept, she thought wearily, dragging herself up to one of the rooms that Charlotte had offered her for the duration of her stay in Bozeman. It was a room very similar to the one she had occupied earlier, as sumptuously furnished, with the same kind of little china knickknacks strewn all around and pretentious lithographs on the wall.
She needed a week to assimilate everything that had happened. Explanations came later, Deuce said. They had their whole life for explanations, he said. He knew everything anyway now, about Ardelle and the thefts. She had yet to tell him about her father, but at this stage, she was sure he would say he didn't care. Her father was apparently gone for good and had taken Ellie with him to live off the spoils of his ill-gotten gains.
She would probably never see him again, she thought, and strangely, she felt only an affectionate exasperation for all he had put her through.
Ardelle was being sent to Deuce's sister in England, who apparently had enough servants to care for her now
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that she really must cope with being permanently disabled. But for now, Deuce had requested that Ardelle be present in Ellie's parlor this afternoon. And Kalida, "well rested," he had specified, "and dressed like a woman, please, for a change."
That request rankled, but since she was hot, tired, and grubby, needed a bath and to refresh herself totally, she willingly let Charlotte lend her a plain blue dress and had complied with Deuce's wishes only so far as to wear it. Her freshly washed midnight hair was brushed to a glossy cascade down her back, and her cobalt eyes sparked with a curious anticipation as she called to Ardelle, who was slumped in an invalid chair, staring out the bay window at the vigorous movement of the street.
"I'm glad you're here," Kalida said bustling in, hardly wanting to talk to Ardelle at all, let alone try to be pleasant to her. "Deuce was adamant that you be present this afternoon."
"What for?" Ardelle growled, wheeling the chair around viciously.
Kalida shrugged. "Perhaps a little going-away party," she suggested. Ardelle spat and whipped her chair back to the window.
Kalida smiled to herself. Everything was fine, and everything was not. She hadn't seen Deuce since they had heard the final verdict about Ardelle from the doctor and he had sent her back to Ellie's house with his set of instructions.
She didn't know why she still felt guilty, as if everything were her fault. And why she still felt trapped.
The door burst open and Deuce strode in, with a strange kindly-looking man in tow.
"What's this?" Kalida demanded briskly.
"The minister," Deuce said flatly, his flinty eyes flaring as he looked at her, daring her to run away from this reality. "The minister, Ardelle," he added harshly, for
emphasis, turning his stone-gray gaze to his aunt who had whisked herself around at his announcement and was staring malevolently at the stranger.
"It's your mistake," she shrugged finally.
"Really," Kalida said, a lick of anger grazing her body, "who were you thinking of marrying?"
"Kalida . . ." Impatience now in his voice, his eyes hardening to rock-gray at the way her body stiffened.
"Charlotte perhaps?" Kalida asked sweetly. "Have you been having a liaison with her all these years just like my father had with Ellie? I'm so happy for you; she'll be right glad to be legitimized . . ."
"Kalida ..." A growl this time, brooking no nonsense, and still she raced headlong ahead, fiery with resentment at his high-handedness.
"Not Charlotte. Lorena? Both of them? Oh my, Deuce . . . Strange no one can recall your asking any of those good ladies to marry you. . . ."
"The hell I didn't," he exploded, thumping his hand down on the nearest table with a force that nearly collapsed it. -
"And rescinded it, as I recall," Kalida hissed, "so surely it can't be little old me." She turned and stalked out of the room, nearly in tears, but she swore she would never let him see her crying. God, and she wanted that more than life —his love, his trust, his commitment —but how could he do that to her, just assume it was what she wanted and never ask her? After all that had happened. It wasn't right. And it wasn't right that he hadn't allowed her to explain. How could he want her to marjy him without hearing her side of what had happened? It was too big a reversal, that; she couldn't in conscience have said yes to a ceremony on those grounds. She couldn't.
But as she climbed the steps slowly to her room, she wished she had. What damned difference did it make anyway? He believed her about Ardelle; what did it
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matter what he thought now about her father and Jake? He still wanted to marry her; wasn't that enough?
She never heard footsteps behind her on the stairs, and she screamed as she was suddenly lifted bodily upwards and hauled over one muscular shoulder by two huge capable hands.
"Deuce . . . damn you!" she shouted, grabbing his shirt, his
hair, pulling, kicking him, wriggling so violently she almost threw them both off balance.
"Kalida . . . damn you," he echoed harshly, his voice rough with something she couldn't define. He smacked her bottom without mercy, and then slid his hand down her leg and under her skirt as he made his way briskly to her room.
He kicked open the door and looked around. "Lots of good ammunition for throwing in here," he commented caustically, dumping her as inelegantly as possible on the bed. "Can I get you something?" He bowed sardonically.
She struggled to sit up as he depressed one side of the bed with his weight. "Don't bother," he advised her, watching with amusement as she checked her upward movement.
"You arrogant bastard," she hissed at him.
"You predictable bitch," he countered grimly. "I swear, Kalida, there really is only one way to keep you in line. I knew it months ago, and I just let it go right out of my mind with all these other distracting goings-on." He leaned over her and covered her mouth ruthlessly with his own.
She wrenched away. "You don't have to marry me for that," she muttered nastily, feeling as if she wanted to gouge her fingers into his ribs. He had no right to be so potently and righteously there, where she wanted him, with the answers that she wanted from him just when she did not want him.
"What should I marry you for?" he whispered, shifting
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his weight onto his arms and fitting his body against hers.
"You don't have to marry me at all," she suggested kindly, turning her head away from him.
"You're right," he agreed cheerfully, pushing her down on the bed. "Absolutely right." His mouth hovered over hers, and the look in his smoky gray eyes singed her. "But I will." He licked her resistant lips as she struggled helplessly beneath his weight. "Anyway," he added softly, to punctuate the point before biting her reluctant lips apart to command her capitulation.
"Deuce . . ."
"Do you have to?"
"I don't understand."
"Yes you do." He delved into her mouth fiercely now, then pulled away, with the softness of her lips imprinted on his. "Yes you do," he reiterated in the softest of voices. "I've waited a long time, and I don't give a damn about anything right now, Kalida, except keeping you forever."
She was drowning, carried away by his surging words, words he would not have said days ago, things he did not believe days ago. She didn't care; they could sort it all out another time. Her hungry body demanded she respond to him.
"Oh God, but Deuce, everybody gets away. . . ." she cried. "Ardelle, my father, Jake; they all get away."
"Not everyone," Deuce whispered, his eyes darkening to flaming charcoal as his lips met hers.
And now, and now . . . Words conveyed no meaning. The motion of his hands" held all the meaning in the world. How they touched her and aroused her, pausing here, sliding there, gently unfastening, unbuttoning, caressing. And her own hands, audacious with her own suppressed need, her feelings multiplied uncontrollably by the horror of having thought she would never have him again. She would never have believed how much she yearned to feel all the hard planes of his body, to learn
each and every angle and hollow, every long beguiling line that led to the one inexorable, incredible part of him that she desired the most.
And she loved having him reduced to wanton need by the very caresses of her torrid fingers, loved the elemental sense of laying naked next to him, her long bare legs entwined with his, her hands stroking his body, her tongue stroking his in the same tempestuous rhythm. And she loved his hands exploring her body in just the same way, sliding over each curve as though he had never felt it before, holding her breasts and caressing each ripe nipple to a stiff turgid peajc of pleasure.
And then the long, honey-hot moment before he shifted himself over her, poised at her velvet cleft, seeking her demand in the heat of her tongue, entering her then with one luscious thrust of pure molten sensation that elicited a long, satisfying satin sigh from deep in her throat. How could she live without this?
"Kalida." He breathed her name in that same urgent voice she knew. "Kalida. No one else can have this," he whispered against her lips. "No one else will ever make you feel this. And you know it, Kalida. You know it."
"I know," she murmured, savoring the moment, and her understanding. She felt infinitely connected to him by every pore of her skin, by the words she had uttered, by the fact that she loved him. Her whole body quivered as she admitted the thought into her consciousness at last.
The dimension this acknowledgement added to her feeling was indescribable. The possessiveness she felt suddenly, the sense of the strength of his being within her, driving his need within her, answering hers wholly and fully with every ounce of that virile male strength of his, potent, surging, indomitably hers. The insatiable wild joy of knowing he desired her now, meaningful beyond anything between them so far. She loved him.
And he sensed that spurt of fire in her. Something had
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changed, had ignited her ardor to a fever pitch. Her intense response sent him soaring. Her body demanded all of him. Her hands explored all of him, every muscle, every hollow of his body, learning where to gently squeeze, where to stroke, feeling and holding his buttocks in a way that excited her still more.
He plunged into her satin-moist sheath with short, quick ravishing strokes. He felt her body tighten beneath him, spreading, unfurling then to feel each voluptuous thrust to its utmost, bracing her feet against the back of his knees to give her body purchase to move with each sultry thrust.
The gush of sensation was intense, tantalizing at first, each lavish stroke compelling her to reach still further and wider for all he had to give. And she opened her pliant body to him, demanding even more, submitting to his passion, letting it propel her into a sumptuous spiral of sensation, riding with it, letting it carry her endlessly upward until the very peak of her endurance, when it crackled into an eruption of spuming sparkles that danced all over her skin like molten fingers.
He held her tightly, rocking her body against his as he nestled deep within her. "I love you, Kalida," he whispered as he took every subtle movement of her body deep into his consciousness. "I've loved you since you were fifteen." He moved gently, tentatively, testing her readiness to receive him. "And you knew it," he added in concert with his first driving thrust. "You knew it, you knew it. . . ." He buried the words in her mouth, feeling for her provocative tongue as his body went (wild with the sense of her beneath him. He plunged vigorously into her sultry core, consuming her essence, seeking her elusive femininity with every ounce of strength he possessed. She would be his, she would; nothing else mattered, nothing.
And then he heard the words. "Now . . ."A breath in the air between them, in rhythm with his thrusts, "Now
. . . now . . ." And . . . "Now . . ." And with her demanding words resonating through his whole body, he gave one last churning surge and spewed his seed deep within her.
She curled herself against him, feeling his warm arms surround her and the wetness of his body sticking to hers. They lay still a very long time. She didn't know how long.
Time seemed meaningless. Nothing was urgent. He loved her.
"I love you," she murmured.
"I know."
She could feel his smile as his chin rested against her tangled inky hair. "Brute, and you put me through so much."
"You didn't know."
"Maybe I knew," she admitted huskily. "Deuce, why did you let me go after Ardelle?"
"Not now, Kalida."
"Now; I have to know. I have to." She felt his arms tighten around her, as if what he would say would be something she wouldn't like. And she didn't.
"You said she could walk. And I thought, if you could fake it —badly as you did —so could she. And if she were faking, everything you accused her of made logical sense. So I let you prove it."
She felt his smile again, and she slapped him on the thigh.
"Kalida, I
wanted you to prove it. You proved it. And that's all I'm going to talk about it. Now."
"I hate you." She didn't move, and his hands cupped her breasts gently.
"But you will marry me."
She recoiled from the resonant male surety of that statement.
"Maybe," she said saucily, twisting her body around sinuously, "you'll marry me."
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"Thank you," he said huskily, "I accept your proposal. And soon, please, because that poor patient minister is still waiting for us downstairs. But not," he added, as he shifted her body so that she was beneath him once again, feeling the evidence of his desire for her, "just yet."
THE END
