Sweetwater Seduction

by Johnston, Joan

  “Right here? Right now?”

  Felton swallowed hard. It would be like watching a Sunday-school teacher undress. There was something scandalous about it. And downright titillating. “Yeah. Take it off right here. Now.”

  Darcie took her time.

  Felton's pupils dilated and his nostrils distended as he watched her slowly peel off one layer after another. First the green polonaise overdress with its twelve buttons down the front, followed by the slightly ker underskirt. The white petticoats came next, one after another, six in all. He heaved a sigh of relief when her corset came off.

  She was left wearing a dainty white chemise and pantalettes trimmed in pretty pink ribbons. Felton grinned when he noticed her prim white stockings were held up with shocking red garters.

  Darcie raised her hands to let down her hair.

  “Let me do it,” Felton said in a husky voice.

  She stood stock-still as he took several hesitant steps toward her. She could feel the tension in his body as his hands reached for the sedate bun at her nape. He fumbled with the pins and dropped several. He started to reach for them, but she smiled and caught him before he could stoop down. “It doesn't matter.”

  Felton was mesmerized by the soft, silky feel of her hair in his hands. “Where are all the curls?”

  “I left it straight after I washed it.”

  “I never knew it was so long.” He took two handfuls of her thick raven tresses and brought one over each shoulder so they made a seductive shawl for her breasts. Then he reached for the halter straps on her chemise and lowered them. He scattered kisses across her collarbone and worked his way down toward her breasts, finally brushing her hair aside as he took the tip of one breast in his mouth.

  Darcie's head fell back and she arched toward Felton with a moan. She grabbed his shoulders and held on as he took her soaring to heights that seemed higher because of the strangeness of the place, and the clothing, and the specialness of the moment.

  Felton lavished the other breast with equal praise and then kissed his way back up to Darcie's mouth. “I love you, Darcie,” he said. “I want us to make a baby.”

  Darcie felt the tears spring to her eyes, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “What's wrong, sweetheart? You don't want a baby?”

  “Oh, Felton, I do! I want your baby. It's just I never thought . . . I never hoped . . .” She smiled a beaming, silly smile through all her tears. “I will make you the best wife, Felton. You'll never be sorry—”

  He took her head between his hands and looked deep into her green eyes. “You don't have to convince me, Darcie. I'm yours. Forever. And ever.”

  “Oh Felton.”

  They didn't say much for the next couple of hours, just oooohs and aaaaahs, moans of ecstasy, and groans of pleasure, and once or twice pain when Darcie accidentally elbowed Felton in his bruised ribs. The loving was not quite as vigorous as it might have been if Felton hadn't spent the evening tangling with Kerrigan, but it was no less moving. Darcie stayed on top, so she could do of the work, but that allowed Felton to touch her breasts and body more freely with his hands and mouth. When they had both climaxed and thought they were spent, Darcie happened to kiss Felton's navel and it started all over again.

  Later, when they were lying naked on the mattress they had dragged from the bed to the floor in front of the fire, with Felton's head in Darcie's lap, he had simply turned and kissed her thigh, and the chain of kisses had taken him to dewy pastures that Darcie was more than willing to have him explore.

  At last sated, they lay exhausted in front of the fire as it burned low with golden embers.

  “Felton?”

  “Hmmmm?”

  “About that baby . . .”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “How does the spring sound?”

  “Hmmmm?”

  “Late April or early May.”

  “That sounds fine.”

  Darcie felt a little disappointed at Felton's reaction to her news that the baby he had wanted was already on the way.

  Suddenly Felton bolted upright. “April or May? That means . . . Darcie! Are you—? Is there—?”

  Darcie grinned. “Yes.”

  Felton's gaze lowered to her naked belly. It didn't look that much different. It was just a little rounded. He stretched his hand out and she took it and laid it on her belly.

  “Our son or daughter is already growing inside me, Felton. And now he's going to have a mother and a father and a home. . . . It's a dream come true for me. I want this baby to have everythin' I never had, Felton. A chance for a good life . . . a decent life.”

  Darcie leaned over and kissed away the tear on Felton's cheek. “I love you, Felton Reeves.”

  Felton swallowed over the lump in his throat. “We're seeing the preacher in Canyon Creek tomorrow.”

  “All right, Felton, if you say so.”

  “I love you, Darcie.”

  She brushed the hair back from his forehead as she cradled him in her arms. “I know, Felton.”

  They fell asleep in front of the fire, curled together with their child between them, ready for the wonderful new life that would begin on the morrow.

  Kerrigan sat in the saloon for a long time after Felton left. He didn't drink, he just stared at the empty glass and thought, and worried, and thought some more.

  What could he say to persuade Eden Devlin that his agreement with the Association wasn't the reason he had seduced her? It certainly hadn't been on his mind when he had finally held her in his arms. If she asked him what he was thinking about, he wasn't sure he had an answer. He could say he had wanted her from the first moment he had laid eyes on her, but somehow that story didn't sound very convincing, even to him. Except it was true.

  He had been denying his feelings to himself, but they were there, had been there, from the beginning. He hadn't expected to desire her. He hadn't wanted to desire her. But he had. He had no explanation for why she had inspired such feelings in him, but the more time he had spent with her, the more he had been drawn to her. Until it was no longer a question of whether he would seduce her, but only of when.

  He was in awe of the love he felt for her.

  It had come as an unwelcome surprise. A shocking revelation. A horrendous calamity. But he was definitely in love with Eden Devlin. And while he ached for her touch, he was in agony for her devotion. He had taken the one. She had once freely given the other.

  And now she never wanted to see him again.

  “We're closin' the bar now, Mr. Kerrigan. Do you want some help gettin' to your room?”

  “I can get there fine.” Kerrigan tried getting to his feet, but between the first two whiskeys he had drunk, and the beating he had taken in the fight with Felton, it was rough going.

  “Sure you don't want some help?” the barkeep asked.

  “I'm sure.” Kerrigan grunted with pain as he slipped into Sundance's buckskin coat. He gasped as he straightened, pulling a bruised muscle. He managed, one step at a time, to cross the room. The saloon door had been pulled closed sometime earlier in the evening and he was astonished at the blizzard that he realized now had been raging outside unbeknownst to him. He had to hang on to his hat to keep from losing it, and squint his eyes against the stinging snowflakes, as the wind shoved him across the street to the Townhouse Hotel.

  It was agony getting up the stairs to his room, and he was so tired, he didn't even bother to light the lamp when he got there. He slipped his coat off and let it drop on the floor, then unbuckled his gun belt and felt in the dark for the bedstead and hung it there. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and it was all he could do to cross his legs to pull off his boots.

  He let out another groan and a moan or two as he stripped to his long johns and pulled down the covers, and then he was tucked inside. The pillow was sof
t, and the bed, too, even though both were frigid with the cold. He knew he ought to get up and light a fire, but he was too damn tired, feeling hin body and spirit. There were plenty of blankets. He wouldn't freeze.

  He couldn't think anymore tonight. Tomorrow the right words would come to him, and he would go see Eden and straighten everything out. He let his mind drift, and in a short while all was oblivion.

  He never noticed the small piece of folded paper on the floor inside the door. It lay there unread all night. But it was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes the next morning.

  Chapter 19

  Hard-boiled eggs tend to be yellow inside.

  ABOUT THE TIME KERRIGAN AND FELTON WERE SITTING down together at the Dog's Hind Leg, Miss Devlin was stepping up into the box frame of the spring wagon Deputy Joe had brought, supposedly to take her back to town. The instant she sat down on the padded, button-tufted seat, he slapped the reins and the two mules set off at a sedate trot. Miss Devlin grabbed the metal frame of the seat and braced her feet against the bottom board in front, wishing the deputy's urgency matched her own.

  It was windy and cold, and it was snowing steadily enough that Eden suspected there would be a good covering of the white stuff on the ground by morning. But the road itself still showed numerous patches of brown, since most of the snow dashed across its flatness until it came up against some bush or a rise in the terrain where it caught and began to form drifts.

  Deputy Joe kept t

  he mules moving at a steady jog until they reached the point where the trail split. To Miss Devlin's surprise, instead of taking the fork toward town, he took the one heading the opposite direction. “Where are we going?” she demanded. “I thought you said Mr. Kerrigan had been shot.”

  “He will be,” Deputy Joe retorted with a vicious grin. “Just as soon as he gets the note I sent him and comes looking for you.”

  Before Miss Devlin could jump from the wagon, or grab the deputy, or do any one of a dozen other things to get free, the deputy shouted, “Hiyahh! Giddyap!” and lashed the mules into a run.

  Miss Devlin clung to the careening wagon for dear life. The only way she could have escaped would have been to try and wrest the reins from the wiry deputy, or jump from the lurching wagon. Both of those options were sure to result in serious injury or death. Miss Devlin wasn't a foolish woman, and before she killed herself she wanted some explanation for what was going on.

  “Where are you taking me?” she shouted over the rackety noise of the wagon.

  “Somewheres you can't be found when Kerrigan comes looking for you.”

  “Then Kerrigan hasn't been shot?

  “Not hardly,” he said with a derisive snort.

  Miss Devlin felt a flood of joyful relief that was quickly dammed when she realized she must be part of another plot to ambush the gunslinger. Which made no sense to her. “Why do you want to kill Mr. Kerrigan?”

  “That ain't none of your never mind. Just keep your mouth shut and your hands to yourself and you won't get hurt.”

  It didn't take much deduction on Miss Devlin's part to realize that the “you won't get hurt” part was going to last only so long as keeping her alive was useful to the deputy.

  They drove for another twenty minutes at a breakneck pace. By then, the snow that had been falling when Miss Devlin first got into the spring wagon had turned as malevolent as the rest of the evening. The farther from town they got, the worse the weather became. It was as though the snow recognized their frenzy and conspired to add to it. The temperature got colder, so Miss Devlin's toes and fingers felt frozen. The wind began to whip, and enveloped them in stinging snowflake tornadoes. It soon became apparent they were in for a full-fledged blizzard.

  It was appalling how fast the snow suddenly began to accumulate. It quickly covered the road and began layering drifts that made it difficult for the mules to find footing. The deputy was forced to slow the mules down to a walk or take the chance of driving off the road. A short while later, the deputy left the road and headed off toward no apparent destination.

  “Do you know where you're going?” Eden asked.

  “Sweetwater Canyon.”

  “There's no way to get into Sweetwater Canyon from this direction,” Miss Devlin protested.

  The deputy smiled. “That's what everybody thinks. Ain't so. There's a secret way in, leads right to the floor of the canyon. Found it myself, following a deer.”

  “How far is it? Are we close?”

  “Not close enough,” the deputy muttered, squinting at a landscape that was fast disappearing under the drifting snow.

  They were going slow enough now that Miss Devlin could easily have escaped the deputy. But it would have been foolhardy to set herself afoot in the middle of nowhere at the height of what could only be labeled a blizzard.

  What also became clear to her was that there was no way anyone was going to come hunting for her when it was nigh impossible to see your hand in front of your face. Just as Miss Devlin began to think she and Deputy Joe would likely be found frozen to death when the storm was over, she saw a glimmer in the distance.

  “Look! Is that where we're going?”

  Deputy Joe just grunted, but he turned the mules in the direction of the distant light.

  Miss Devlin was the first one down when Deputy Joe pulled up in front of a boarded-up line shack. Leaving him to take care of the mules, she walked up to the door of the dilapidated hovel and knocked. When the door opened she said, “May I come in, please?”

  In a million years Miss Devlin couldn't have imagined what she saw when she entered the shack. Calling it a pigsty would have been generous. Calling it a shambles was calling it close. A cowshed, a chicken coop, even a cattery, would have been cleaner. Incredibly, in the corner of the room, was a wood box containing a calico cat and a litter of tiny kittens.

  There were five men crowded in a room that might have comfortably held four. She removed her coat and shook off the snow before handing it to the closest man.

  In a voice she would have used on a new first-grader, Miss Devlin said, “I am Miss Devlin, the schoolteacher in Sweetwater. Would you all like to introduce yourselves?”

  “Name's Stick,” said the one holding her coat in his hand.

  “Do you have a peg where you could hang that up to dry, Stick?” she asked.

  Stick stared a moment longer at her before he replied, “Yes'm.”

  Miss Devlin stepped up to the two men who were sitting at the rickety wooden table in the center of the room. “And who might you be?”

  “I'm Doanie.”

  “I'm Hogg.”

  “A gentleman always stands in the presence of a lady,” Miss Devlin admonished.

  Doanie and Hogg lurched to their feet.

  “And hats are never worn indoors,” she instructed.

  Doanie and Hogg quickly yanked their battered felt hats off and held them in front of them like neck-wrung chickens.

  “What's your name?” Miss Devlin said as she approached the largest, most ferocious-looking of the bunch, who was standing before the potbellied stove holding one of the kittens.

  Bud blushed. “B-b-b-bud.”

  Miss Devlin put out her hand. “I'm pleased to meet you, Bud.”

  Bud set the kitten gently in the box with the others and then stuck out a meaty paw and carefully shook Miss Devlin's hand.

  Miss Devlin turned to survey what had become, in a matter of moments, her domain, and discovered the scowling face of the fifth man, who was leaning against the wa

  “I don't believe we've met,” she said, taking a step in his direction.

  “We ain't goin' to, neither,” Levander snarled.

  “His name's Levander. Levander Early,” Stick volunteered.

  Levander spit tobacco juice on the dirt floor an inch in front of Miss Devlin's sho
e. “You got them idjits all lickin' outta your hand, but I ain't as dumb as them, and you ain't gonna hog-tie me with your goody-goody manners. Now you set yourself down over there and keep outta my way!”

  Miss Devlin looked in the direction Levander had pointed and saw nothing remotely resembling a chair. “I'm afraid I don't see—”

  Levander grabbed Miss Devlin's arm to steer her toward one of the two double-deck bunks in the room, but he had barely laid a hand on her when he was grabbed under the armpits and lifted clear off the floor.