by Robin Gideon
Pamela looked away. Phantom looked at Pamela’s profile, and another surge of emotion went through him, this one heated, sensual, irrepressible. Pamela was so different from the women he usually associated with, and the differences delighted him. She was independent and brave. He looked at her long blonde hair, which she left free and unbound, then down to the full breasts pressing against her cheap cotton shirt, which had obviously seen countless washings. Her men’s Levi’s hugged her hips tightly and seemed brand new. Her mouth was full lipped and absolutely heaven to kiss. There wasn’t a part of her that didn’t excite him. Even the holster and Colt on the gun belt strapped to her hips pleased Phantom, though, despite his considerable skill with firearms, he’d always had an aversion to them. The gun was just one more symbol of Pamela’s independence, and that was why it pleased him.
The thought of what would happen to Pamela when Jonathon Darwell caught her stealing from him bore into Phantom’s consciousness, hitting him with a painful clarity.
“You must never try to steal from the Darwells again,” he whispered. “If you need help—money, whatever—I’ll give it to you. But if you—”
“I don’t want your charity,” Pamela said quickly, angrily. “I don’t need anything from you, or from anyone else.”
From the livery stable below, a drunken male voice asked, “Charlie, did you hear that? I thought I heard a lady up in the hayloft.”
There was a general commotion as the cardplayers argued the merits of checking out the possibility of a woman’s presence. Most thought it just a ploy to separate the players from the money on the table.
Pamela and Phantom immediately moved closer together, each instinctively drawing a revolver. They waited, neither breathing, listening to the men arguing below them. It wasn’t until the card game resumed that Pamela breathed again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into Phantom’s ear. “I didn’t mean to get so angry with you. In the past, the only time men have ever wanted to help me was if they…if they thought…”
“If they thought they could get something sexual in return?”
Pamela nodded and holstered her revolver. She didn’t know why she was telling him the truth. When she looked at him again, she thought of how strange it was she had become so accustomed to the mask he wore that now she hardly noticed it.
“I want to help you, and I want to keep you safe,” Phantom whispered, his face inches from Pamela’s. “But I’ll never expect anything from you in return.”
Pamela looked at his mouth and thought, I want his kisses.
A sudden burst of drunken laughter from the card-playing coachmen intruded on the moment, and Pamela closed her eyes, wishing the drunken men would miraculously disappear. In the moment her eyes closed, she felt Phantom’s lips, warm and pleasing, lightly touch her own.
“I thought you wouldn’t expect anything from me,” Pamela whispered when the brief kiss ended.
“I don’t. But you’re much too beautiful for me not to want you.”
Chapter Five
He kissed her again, pressing his mouth more firmly against hers. This time, without hesitation, she gave herself over to the sensations his kisses drew from her. When he leaned into her, his powerful hands taking her by the shoulders to press her back into the hay, she did not resist, ignoring the little warning bell clanging in the back of her mind that she shouldn’t be doing this.
“You are so exciting,” Phantom whispered between kisses. He caught Pamela’s lower lip between his teeth and bit gently, surprising her with both the act and the sensation it caused.
Pamela tumbled backward, her back cushioned by the hay but separated from it by the silk cape. She parted her lips in invitation and quickly received Phantom’s probing tongue.
She moaned, her tongue dancing against his, shocked at the force of the pleasure she derived from this new way of kissing. She wrapped her arms loosely around Phantom’s broad shoulders as she stretched out her long legs.
The kiss lasted an eternity, and when it finally ended, Pamela turned her face away from Phantom, needing to catch her breath and see what shred of cooler judgment still remained to her. When she did so, she felt Phantom’s lips against her cheek then her neck. The wet warmth of his tongue and lips on her sensitive flesh sent a surge of excitement pulsing through her. Once again, she felt her clit beginning to itch, to tingle in appreciation of caresses elsewhere on her responsive body.
I have to stop this insanity now, Pamela thought. I don’t even know who he is.
She opened her eyes and saw, in the darkness, the dusty arched beams of the stable loft roof. She could hear the laughter and arguments of the coarse men so incredibly near. Phantom’s body pressed against hers while his lips worked their own special brand of seductive magic on her throat. Her nipples tightened, aching for Phantom’s skilled caresses.
The threat of discovery mingled with her passion, escalating its intensity, heightening its force. Nectar moistened the lips of her pussy, readying it for even greater intimacy.
Why did it have to be Phantom who made her body come alive? Previous experience in kissing had taught her there was nothing pleasurable in the act, but even the first of Phantom’s kisses was addictive.
A particularly loud and vulgar laugh from one of the poker players made Pamela flinch in Phantom’s arms.
“Don’t think about them,” he whispered into her ear, his body pressing into hers. The tip of his tongue traced the circumference of her ear briefly. “They mean nothing to us. They’re no danger at all.”
“I can’t help thinking of them,” Pamela replied softly. She stifled the moan that threatened to escape her when Phantom caught her earlobe between his teeth and bit gently. “They’re so close.”
“They’re a world away from where we are now,” Phantom replied.
Why did his words make sense to her passion-addled brain? Those dangerous men below, all bearing pistols beneath their fine uniforms, were not a world away—they were very close. Dangerously close. That was why she and Phantom had to whisper, so that they wouldn’t be heard—which was why Pamela was at that very moment in Phantom’s arms.
No, that wasn’t the reason, and she knew it.
She was in his arms because that was right where she wanted to be, even if she couldn’t quite admit that damning little fact to herself.
“Forget about them,” Phantom repeated, his lips at Pamela’s throat, warm and moist, touching her flesh yet caressing her deeper than that.
His right hand was at her hip, pulling her toward him so that the fit of their bodies was more secure. She parted her knees just enough to capture his thigh between her own. Phantom moved closer still—close enough to slide his hard-muscled leg up to the juncture of her thighs.
The pressure of him pushing against her pussy so intimately drew an immediate and surprising response from Pamela. Though layers of clothing actually separated them, she could feel the heat of him, and even more, the heat of her own passion, escalating now at a furious pace. Her clit throbbed with an almost painful intensity.
The dewy moisture of Pamela’s desire was centered down low yet traveled throughout her body. She tried to clamp her thighs together, to prevent his thigh from rubbing even more intimately against her, but all she really accomplished was trapping Phantom’s leg against her pussy.
“It’s not wrong to give in to your feelings,” he whispered.
There was a half smile on his lips that was at once seductive and thoroughly infuriating. As Pamela looked into Phantom’s dark brown eyes, she realized that, to him, this encounter, this stolen moment of eroticism, was nothing more than a diverting way to pass the time while waiting to escape from the well-guarded Darwell estate.
With a forceful shove, Pamela put her hand on his hip and pushed him away with all her strength. At the same time, she unclamped her thighs and slid her hips away. That kind of contact had been much too pleasurable to be allowed to continue, especially with a man as devilishly seductive as Ph
antom.
“It is wrong,” Pamela said through clenched teeth, as angry at herself as at him.
“Why?” Phantom asked, his half smile still tauntingly in place.
Pamela opened her mouth as though to speak, though no words came out. The answer was obvious, yet when she came to put words to it, she could find none. Why, indeed, was it wrong to give in to one’s feelings? Society, she knew, considered it to be perfectly acceptable for men to let their passions run free. Why was that freedom not accorded to women?
“Well?” Phantom chided, sliding closer to Pamela once again. He eased his hand from her hip, running it around to the small of her back, very subtly pulling her to him again.
“I d–don’t know why,” Pamela at last confessed, her mind in a whirl.
The hypocrisy shocked her for a thousand reasons, but mostly because she’d never thought of it before. How many other injustices were there that she’d never given a second thought?
Unconsciously, she eased her arm around Phantom’s neck.
She felt his lips upon her own, but after a moment, she turned her face aside, exposing her neck. Phantom’s teeth nipped at her flesh, the sensation almost painful yet very stimulating. The soft gasp never escaped her lips because, before it could be expelled in a rush of breath, Phantom soothed her fevered flesh with his tongue. He knew exactly where to draw the line.
Why is it wrong to do what feels so good? Pamela asked herself. She angled her head slightly more to the left to allow Phantom to kiss her collarbone. Everywhere he kissed her he left behind a trail of tingling, aroused flesh that wanted more of his attention.
“It’s not wrong.”
It took a moment for Pamela to realize she had spoken, answering the question that had been dancing in her mind. Anything that felt this good simply couldn’t be wrong, she reasoned.
“That’s right,” Phantom gently replied. His touch, precise and light, went unnoticed by the woman in his arms as he unfastened yet another button of her blue cotton shirt. “It’s not wrong at all.”
He continued to hold Pamela in his arms, his weight lightly upon her. She was bold and brave, he realized, but she was also clearly inexperienced in the ways of the flesh. He could tell from the way she kissed, moved in his arms, and reacted to his kisses.
Something made him stop.
He was shocked to realize he had gotten much more aroused by this enigmatic, poor young woman from the outskirts of Whitetail Creek than he’d thought he would.
She was femininity to the nth degree, Phantom realized, to his surprise. Broad-shouldered, wide-hipped, strong in the arms and legs, yet curvaceous. Her firm breasts drew a man’s eye, and her soft lips begged to be kissed. She was that rare combination of softness and strength, and everything about her excited Phantom.
“Shhh!” he shushed, placing a finger to his lips. “I think I hear something.”
He rolled away from her, turning his back to Pamela. Actually, he hadn’t heard anything from the men down in the main area of the stables. Garrett quickly rearranged his rigidly erect cock within his clothing so that he would be more comfortable and his passion would be less visible. He had responded to Pamela’s beauty, his cock throbbing to life and straining against the fabric of his exquisitely tailored trousers.
If she had been another woman, if the confusion that went along with her passion had not been genuine, then perhaps he would have continued with her, using his charm to seduce her so they could both experience the release they needed.
But she was not one of the coy, wealthy debutantes who played at innocence, throwing themselves at the wealthy Garrett Randolph and then pushing him away and pretending to be shocked at his passionate ardor, only to succumb to his desire in the end.
Pamela wasn’t playing that silly game of cat and mouse, and because she wasn’t, Garrett wanted her all the more and knew he couldn’t have her.
He breathed deeply several times, trying hard to compose himself, wishing he had as much control over certain parts of himself as he did over his thoughts. His mind said he had to stop, but his cock was still pulsating with need.
What in hell did he think he was doing with Pamela Bragg? He knew her brother and had even helped the bounty hunter with legal problems on occasion. In theory, there was absolutely nothing he, Garrett Randolph, and she, Pamela Bragg, had in common. But Phantom did have something in common with her. Though a lawyer with political aspirations might never look twice at a woman from Pamela’s background, Phantom had tasted the sweetness of her kisses. He had felt the lushly feminine graces of that curvaceous body hidden in man’s clothes, and could accept her as an ally in the war against Jonathon Darwell. She was a woman of courage and passion.
“What is it? Did they hear us? I’m sorry,” Pamela whispered, crawling on hands and knees until she was behind him, her hands light on his shoulders.
Together they looked down at the men throwing dice against the wall, Pamela peering over Phantom’s shoulder, quite unaware of the warmth of her breasts lightly touching his back. When he looked at her, their faces close together, he realized that if he would seduce her, his name—albeit, as the Midnight Phantom—would be added to the list of men who had at some time taken advantage of her, in one way or another.
It was not a list either Garrett Randolph or Phantom wanted to be on. No matter how aroused he’d become because of Pamela’s unique, ineffable allure, he had honor.
“I’ll get you safely out of here,” he whispered, feeling the need to say something, yet not quite knowing what the appropriate words were.
The far door to the livery opened, and a uniformed maid from the mansion stuck her head inside. She was immediately greeted with whistles and catcalls from the men. Pamela and Phantom ducked low, keeping hidden.
“Bugger you all,” the maid said in disgust. “It’s time to get Mr. Napki. He’s passed out stone-cold in the game room.” She slammed the door quickly before the loutish men could say anything more to her.
“It’s time,” Phantom whispered, turning to Pamela.
For several seconds, they looked into each other’s eyes, each knowing they were parting company.
“What now…for us?” Pamela asked.
Phantom took Pamela’s hand and helped her to her feet. He knew words needed to be spoken, thoughts and feelings needed to be expressed. He also knew that he could not do that now. Chaotic emotions collided with beliefs he’d held deep within himself for a long time. He could not speak.
He led Pamela to the rear of the stables where they had entered. After a quick inspection of the shadows to see if guards were nearby, he slipped down the ladder with Pamela close behind.
On the west side, where the carriages were all lined up waiting to be occupied, Pamela saw the largest private carriage she’d ever viewed. It took six horses to move it, and it was Tyler Napki’s. Enormous and ornate, it was the fitting symbol for a family man with a wife and eight children. Garrett knew that when Tyler Napki went to church on Sunday morning, his entire family surrounding him, his hangover from his Saturday night binge howling in his ears, everyone knew he was a successful man—and penitent for his behavior of the night before. That, anyway, was what Tyler Napki hoped the good people of Whitetail Creek thought, much to Garrett’s amusement.
Pamela and Phantom climbed onto the roof of the carriage and, lying flat on their stomachs, waited breathlessly in the dark. Very soon, they could hear the coachman grunting drunkenly with exertion as he assisted his employer, the wealthy and even more intoxicated Tyler Napki, to the carriage.
“In you go, sir, and we’ll get you right home,” the coachman groaned, pushing his employer into the plush confines.
“I’ll be fine,” Tyler said, one foot still outside the carriage door. “All I need is forty winks, an’ I’ll be back in the game fresh as a daisy.”
“The daisy’s done wilted, sir. Get some sleep, and I’ll wake you when we get home.”
Pamela caught her lower lip between her teeth and bi
t hard, causing pain. She needed the pain to keep laughter from bubbling out. In her mind’s eye, she could picture the two men, Saturday night after Saturday night, going through the same ritual.
She looked over at Phantom. Behind his black mask, his dark eyes were shining like wet onyx, twinkling with the joie de vivre that seemed as much a part of him as the color of his hair or the dimple in his cheek.
He’s such a handsome man, Pamela thought, smiling at the mysterious stranger who had changed so many of the beliefs she’d had about herself. Even with the mask, he’s so handsome. Too handsome for my own good.
The carriage rattled under the high stone archway at the gate and onto the street beyond. Glancing over her shoulder, Pamela looked at the massive mansion that hours earlier she had broken into, and the exciting events of the past hours came back to her. She breathed a sigh of relief, suddenly realizing how tense she had been, even if she hadn’t been totally aware of it.
The horses settled into a leisurely pace, knowing the way home.
When the carriage had traveled several hundred yards, Phantom rose to his knees and motioned for Pamela to follow him. Soon they’d jumped to the ground as the carriage continued into the night.
“Over here,” Phantom said, his hand on Pamela’s elbow, leading her off the street, moving between several houses so they wouldn’t be seen.
Pamela leaned back against a small smokehouse. The air, now that she was no longer surrounded by the Darwells’ high stone wall, seemed fresher, cleaner. She inhaled deeply just to reassure herself that this was true.
Phantom stepped back into the street, looking in all directions until he was convinced their escape had gone completely unnoticed. As he returned to Pamela, his hat, mask, and cape still in place, she watched him practically dissolve into the shadows next to her, and she understood once again why the stories concerning the Midnight Phantom had always sounded so fantastic.
