Sweetwater Seduction

by Johnston, Joan

  “Uh . . . don't you think we should get up?” he said.“Why?”

  Blamed if he could think of a reason. But if they weren't going to get out of bed, there were other things he had in mind to try. Things he had thought about last night when Persia had first walked through the door to this room, and he had seen this big brass bed with the scroll trim at the head and foot topped with an old-fashioned canopy.

  “Persia?” Her name got caught in his throat, so he cleared it and tried again. “Persia?”

  “Yes, Ben.”

  “Did you mean it when you said you'd try anything I wanted in this bed?”

  “Yes, Ben.”

  “Then I want you to grab hold of the scroll trim up there at the top of the bed.”

  “Okay, Ben.” Persia slowly reached her hands over her head and curled her fingers around the cold brass.

  “Now, all I'm asking is, no matter what, I don't want you to let go of that trim. All right?”

  Persia felt her muscles tense as she took a tighter hold on the bedstead. He could have tied her there, but he didn't need to. The words were enough. “Okay, Ben. I won't let go.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what.”

  Persia knew what Ben was really asking. Do you trust me? Do you believe I love you enough to treat you with respect, when you're helpless and can't stop me no matter what I choose to do?

  Persia had married Ben when she was only seventeen and he was twenty-two. Now she was thirty-three. Over the years there had been times when she had questioned him, contradicted him, fought like the very devil with him. This was a chance to show him that she loved him enough to trust him with her happiness. It was an awful burden to hand him. Because it would break her heart if she gave him her trust—and she was going to trust him in this—and he trod it underfoot.

  “Relax, Persia,” Ben murmured.

  Persia felt anything but relaxed. Ben was arranging her on the bed, making sure her head was comfortable on the pillow, drawing the covers away so he could see the ribbed cotton chemise and pantalettes she had slept in. His hands created spots of heat wherever they touched. They finally came to rest at her waist. But they didn't stay still for long. Ben took her chemise in his strong hands and ripped it open down the front.

  “It was in my way,” he said, his voice husky. “I couldn't see you.”

  Persia clung to the bedstead, her heart beating a tattoo against her chest, as Ben shoved the ragged material aside and took the pebbled tip of her brea in his mouth. He suckled until she arched upward, and then his tongue became a soothing balm, only to rouse her again.

  His hands were everywhere touching her. His mouth was everywhere tasting her. She kept waiting for the moment when he would rip off her pantalettes.

  It never came.

  Instead he gently tugged them down and off over her toes and threw them aside. “Don't want to be too predictable,” he said with a teasing smile.

  Then, except for the cotton scraps of her chemise, she was bared to his heavy-lidded gaze. It was an intoxicating feeling, to lie there, clinging to the bed, seeing him so aroused, wanting to touch, and being unable to reach out to him.

  He rubbed himself against her. He kissed her toes. He bit her armpit. He spread her legs and looked at her with awe and with desire.

  She had never felt so revered. She had never felt such an object of love. Because even though he was pleasing himself, everything he did was for her.

  He slipped inside her and stayed there a moment, not moving. She thrust her hips trying to create the friction they both enjoyed.

  “Don't move,” he ordered.

  She lay still. And felt him inside her, filling her. She clenched her inner muscles and felt him grow inside her. She closed her eyes and bit her lip to keep herself from arching up to meet him.

  He withdrew and she was bereft.

  She opened her eyes and saw him watching as he connected them one to another again.

  “You are so beautiful, Persia,” he whispered. “And I love you so much. I dreamed this when I couldn't touch you. How I would put myself inside you, and we would be one person.”

  Persia felt the tear coming and turned her head into the pillow so he wouldn't see it. “That is the . . . the most beautiful thing you've ever said to me, Ben Davis. If having lots of room to move inspires you, I think I'm going to insist on having a very big bed in our new house.”

  Ben laughed. “Let go of the bedstead, Persia.”

  “You told me to hang on.”

  “I want you to hang on to me now—and I don't want you ever to let go.”

  Persia threw her arms around Ben. “I do love you so, Ben Davis!”

  “Then you have my permission to move,” he said with a grin as he thrust deep inside her.

  Persia laughed and obeyed her husban

  They were making so much noise, they never heard the cry of agony down the hall as Kerrigan woke and found the note left the night before by Deputy Joe.

  Kerrigan pounded on the door to Darcie's room, which was down the hall from his room at the Townhouse Hotel. “Wake up, Felton! I know you're in there.”

  Felton came to the door dressed in a sheet, angry at the interruption that had come at a very inopportune moment.

  “Let me in,” Kerrigan said.

  “I ain't dressed. Neither is Darcie.”

  “Tell her to get dressed, and get dressed yourself. We've got work to do.”

  Felton raised a brow at the way Kerrigan had made them a team again, like they'd been back in Texas. “What's going on?”

  Darcie donned her Chinese robe, tying it haphazardly so a great deal of skin was still exposed, then grabbed the blankets and sheets from in front of the fireplace and dumped them on the cherrywood four-poster. A moment later her head showed at the door. “You can let him in, Felton. I'm dressed.”

  Felton stepped back as Kerrigan stepped inside. Kerrigan had been around a lot of women in revealing robes like the one Darcie had on. When he spied the ring on Darcie's finger, he was suddenly aware that she was not some lady-for-the-night Felton was seeing, she was soon to be Felton's wife. A man did not ogle another man's half-dressed wife. Since Darcie was standing next to Felton, he didn't know where to look. He kept his eyes on the floor, trying to figure out how to pose his predicament delicately so Felton would get his point without taking offense. “Uh . . . maybe Darcie should . . . uh . . .”

  It was Darcie who perceived Kerrigan's problem first and, suffused with pleasure at the gunslinger's sudden awkwardness, said, “I'll get dressed while you two talk.”

  Kerrigan flashed Darcie a grateful smile and she grinned back before disappearing behind a lacquered dressing screen in the corner of the room.

  Felton dropped the sheet and pulled on his long johns as Kerrigan explained how he had gone to sleep in the dark the night before and found the note on the floor when he had woken up this morning.

  “What does it say, exactly?” Felton asked, tugging on his Levi's.

  Kerrigan read the erratic block printing.

  iF YoU WAnT TO See MISS DEVLIN ALivE

  CUM Alone TO the OLD LiNE ShAK

  at THE NorTH ENd OF SWeeTWaTeR CanYUN

  DoN'T SAy NOthIN to NO ONE.

  “Are you sure whoever wrote that has kidnapped

  “I've already ridden over to check out her place. She isn't there. The house is stone cold.”

  “Any signs which way they went?”

  “Wiped out by the wind and the snow.”

  “Who do you suppose has got her?”

  “Levander Early,” Kerrigan replied with conviction.

  “I thought he left the Territory.”

  Kerrigan grimaced. “Obviously he didn't go far.”

  “You know, if you go to Sweetwater Canyon alone, you'll be riding i
nto an ambush.”

  “What choice do I have?” Kerrigan said, his eyes bleak. “He's got Eden. What would you do if he had Darcie?”

  Felton's lips flattened into a thin line. He would do exactly what Kerrigan was planning to do. Felton buckled on his gun belt after checking the five rounds he kept loaded in his .45. “There's something wrong with this whole setup. From what you've told me, Levander Early isn't bright enough to plan something like this all by himself.”

  Kerrigan forked an agitated hand through his hair. “It has to be him. Who else could it be?”

  “Maybe there's another bad guy.”

  “Who?” Kerrigan demanded, his frustration apparent. “With you out of the picture, I don't have another suspect.”

  “Let me see the note,” Felton said. He took the crumpled paper in one hand and slipped the other around Darcie, who was now dressed in another of the “decent” gowns Kerrigan had helped her pick out, this one a princess dress in a gray-green merino. “I recognize this writing,” Felton said.

  “You do?”

  Felton frowned. “Yeah, but I don't understand this.”

  “What?”

  “This mixture of capitals and lower letters looks like my deputy's work.”

  Kerrigan shook his head. “It can't be him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Think about it.” Kerrigan snorted derisively. “That man's about the most pitiful excuse for a deputy—” Kerrigan realized as he spoke that because Joe Titman was Felton's deputy he would know exactly when Felton was out of town. He would have been in a perfect position to schedu rustling raids so the sheriff wouldn't be around to catch the culprits. Kerrigan thought back to the day he had questioned Deputy Joe, and how the man had come up off his bunk holding a Colt and looking mean. “Where is Deputy Joe now?” Kerrigan asked.

  “He was supposed to be on duty last night. He should be at the jail. Unless . . .”

  “Let's go,” Kerrigan said.

  Felton gave Darcie a swift, hard kiss. “I'm going with Kerrigan. Be waiting for me when I get back. We've got a date in Canyon Creek.”

  Darcie knew better than to argue. She loved Felton for the kind of man he was. Sometimes that meant staying behind, knowing he was risking his life when he walked out the door. “Take care of yourself, Felton.”

  “Don't worry. I've got nine lives.”

  “Yeah, but you've already used up a bunch of them,” she called after him. “Be careful! I love you!”

  Felton grabbed his bruised ribs and followed an equally careful Kerrigan down the stairs of the hotel. “How's the weather this morning?” he asked as he gritted his teeth and stuck his arms in his coat.

  “It stopped snowing, but it's still clouded up and the wind's still blowing.”

  “That's going to make for a cold ride to Sweetwater Canyon,” Felton said.

  When they arrived at the jail, there was no sign of Deputy Joe. The bunk in the jail cell where he normally slept was undisturbed, and there was no coffee, day-old or otherwise, heating on the stove in the front office.

  “What do you think?” Felton asked.

  “I think maybe he's out on the trail somewhere between here and Sweetwater Canyon,” Kerrigan replied.

  “I think maybe you're right.”

  “I left my horse saddled at the livery,” Kerrigan said. “I'll wait for you there.”

  “You're really going to give that lily-livered bush-whacker the chance to shoot you in the back—again?”

  “You'll be keeping an eye on my back, too. That'll give me a fighting chance. That's all I'll need.”

  “I don't like the odds,” Felton said.

  “I want Eden back. And I want her alive. I don't have any choice but to spring this trap. I just have to make sure I don't get caught in it.”

  Felton shook his head resignedly. He knewhe got like this. He was a wolf on the hunt. He wouldn't give up until he'd cornered his quarry. “Well, then, I guess I better get my horse saddled up too.”

  Across the universe, in another time and place, Miss Eden Devlin awoke with a start. It took her a moment to focus on where she was and what had happened to her. She looked around the room of sleeping men. Bud was snoring. Doanie and Hogg were curled up on the same bed, like two little boys. Stick was hanging well off the end of the bunk. Levander slept with a gun in his hand. In the corner, the mother cat was already hard at work bathing her kittens.

  Eden was sitting in one of the kitchen chairs that she had situated in the corner of the room closest to the stove. She was using her coat for a blanket, because at least that way she didn't have to worry about unwelcome vermin. She wished she could see outside, to find out what kind of day it was, but everything was boarded up tight. The wind was still howling, though, and she could feel the bitter cold.

  It was hard to believe she had been kidnapped. Hard to believe that Kerrigan might be killed today trying to rescue her. Equally hard to believe that her whole life had turned so horribly, terribly upside down in a mere twenty-four hours. She closed her eyes. This was one day when she would just as soon turn over in bed and go back to sleep. Only she didn't have a bed. And she was wide awake.

  She forced herself to think. The only thoughts that came to mind were painful ones. How could Kerrigan have done such a despicable thing? Maybe she had misheard the drunken men. Maybe it hadn't been like they said. She hadn't exactly given Kerrigan a chance to explain. She realized now it was because she had been afraid that Kerrigan didn't love her after all. She had not been able to face that possibility without running from it. As she had run from her fears in the past.

  Without Kerrigan, her life in Sweetwater wouldn't have much meaning. Oh, she would enjoy teaching the children. They would be the closest thing to having her own. She could go to the church socials and let the town bachelor buy her picnic basket at the Fourth of July celebration. But it wouldn't be the same as having children of her own, and a man to love who loved her back. Miss Devlin wanted it all. And there was only one way she was going to get it.

  After a long night on a hard chair Miss Devlin had come to the conclusion that if she wanted a life with Burke Kerrigan, she was going to have to stop running away every time she felt afraid. If she got a second chance, and with the situation being what it was, that was a little doubtful at the moment, she was going to sit Kerrigan down and ask some questions. With any luck, he would have a perfectly simple explanation for what the drunken revelers had said. And she would be able to run toward her future, instead of away from her past.

  Chapter 21

  If you can't get the job done in five shots,

  you better get the hell outta there.

  KERRIGAN FELT THE HAIR PRICKLE ON HIS NECS HE rode along the snowy rim of Sweetwater Canyon, then headed down the trail toward the boarded-up line shack that was his destination. Any second he expected to hear the crack of a rifle and feel a bullet tear into his flesh.

  It never came.

  He could see the line shack now. Smoke belched from a stovepipe chimney, which meant there was someone inside. The place looked too small to house Levander's whole gang, but that didn't mean they weren't all there. Kerrigan felt the sweat trickle down his spine despite the freezing cold. He had been playing life-and-death games like this for years, only this time it really mattered to him whether he wound up dead.

  Maybe he and Felton had been wrong. Maybe Levander was the brains behind this gang after all. Maybe he was riding into a trap, all right, but it was one Levander had set for him.

  Kerrigan's eyes scanned the horizon. He halted his

  paint horse, then stood in the stirrups and looked back over his shoulder. He didn't see anything suspicious, or any movement at all, except the snow blowing across the rocky surface of the canyon. Yet he knew the
re was at least one man—Felton—out there following him. He wondered what Felton thought about the fact they had gotten this far down the canyon without running into an ambush. Or maybe Felton wasn't behind him. Maybe Deputy Joe had realized there were two men on the trail and had let Kerrigan pass him by and then quietly taken care of Felton.

  It was dangerous to start worrying. He needed to keep his mind on the here and now. Felton was fine, probably just worried, like he was. Kerrigan kneed his horse back into a walk, his eyes searching the terrain for something out of place, something to give him a clue where the ambush would come.