Gideon, Robin - Desire of the Phantom [Ecstasy in the Old West] (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Robin Gideon

  Pamela pulled the blankets down enough to expose him, and when she took his engorged flesh into her hand, the heat of it shocked her. Squeezing, she watched as Garrett’s eyelids fluttered briefly, passion soaring through him. She inched closer, her gaze locked with his, her small hand moving over the length of his erection as her desire escalated.

  “Last night, I needed you to hold me close,” Pamela whispered. “This morning, I need more than that.” She stroked him. “I know I sound like a wanton, but I’m only that way with you.”

  She kissed him and, with the meeting of their lips, experienced the sweetest helplessness she’d ever known. She hungered for him and all that he could make her feel in every fiber of her body. She didn’t just want him, she needed him. She didn’t just want to make love with him, she had to if she was to maintain whatever sanity she still possessed.

  His hands were strong and unyielding when he took Pamela by the shoulders, pulling her close, twisting and turning upon the undersized bed to position her beneath him.

  “Wait, I want to kiss you,” she said after he had pulled her nightgown over her head.

  But he had not fully understood her intention, or he was much too aroused to allow for such a diversion. He thrust his knee between her thighs to separate them, stretching out above her, her nakedness fueling the flames of his passion.

  “I can’t wait,” he said a bit breathlessly, keeping his weight on his elbows so he could look down into her face.

  He reached between their bodies to touch her low, feeling the honey of her excitement on the delicate lips, thankful she was as ready as he.

  “Let me,” Pamela said, a gentle command in her voice.

  She was just a little distressed that Garrett had not allowed her to experiment with his body as she had wanted. She took his cock between her hands to guide him to her entrance. The heat of him touching her entrance shot through her like a lightning bolt, and she raised her knees higher to form a valley for Garrett’s hips.

  When Garrett entered her in a single, thick thrust, she gasped and said, “Deep!” on a breathy sigh that might have either been a request or a blissful exclamation of fact. Pamela wasn’t certain which.

  Garrett was a man possessed, and Pamela accepted his ardent passion with a shocking abandonment of inhibition. Beneath them, the ancient springs of her bed creaked raucously, protesting the thrashing of their bodies.

  Pamela hooked her ankles together at the small of Garrett’s back, squeezing his lean, undulating hips with her thighs. She heard him gasp as though in pain, tossing his head up and arching his back as he thrust deeply into her. Only then did she realize that she had raked her fingernails over his back, as a reminder of the heady heights to which his passion could take her.

  Each thrust was a hard-charging affair that forced the breath from Pamela’s lungs. She clung tightly to her lover, her arms around his neck and legs around his middle. She kissed him with a hunger that shocked her. And when, not much later, she felt her insides begin to tighten, she knew that Garrett was going to once again take her to the summit of all sensations.

  But then Garrett untwined her arms and slowed his undulations.

  “Have I don’t something wrong?” Pamela asked.

  “I don’t think you could, even if you tried,” Garrett replied. He kissed the tip of her nose then pulled his knees up beneath him so that he sat on the bed with his erection still fully buried in Pamela. “I want to show you something different.”

  He began rocking back and forth, working his erection between Pamela’s lips. She felt her breasts rolling with Garrett’s movements, but the heat in his gaze as he looked at her told her he liked what he saw.

  Garrett reached down to where he was joined with Pamela and touched her clit with his thumb. He began caressing her, and the sensations of having his body filling hers while he played skillfully with her clit was much more than Pamela could withstand. Within seconds, her body was flexing through a series of climactic contractions.

  When she could breathe normally again, Pamela blinked and looked up at her lover.

  “You’re incredible,” she purred. She noticed he was no longer rocking back and forth. “Don’t stop. I want you to come for me.”

  “I will.” He began sliding the length of his erection in and out of Pamela. “When the time is right.”

  “Such discipline,” Pamela said, half in awe of the man who could make her body sing with pleasure. “If you have any other tricks up your sleeve…”

  He continued to rock slowly while his hands caressed, gliding up and down her thighs, sometimes paying attention to her clit, at other times tugging erotically on her nipples. It seemed to Pamela that Garrett was making love to her in a most calculating manner, determined to give her more erotic pleasure than she could possibly withstand.

  “Oh, god,” she said, panting now. “You’re going to make me come again.”

  She expected him to put his thumb to her clit, as he had earlier, to plunge her into the abyss, but he did not. Without warning, Garrett wrapped his arms around Pamela’s thighs from the underside, and he lifted her hips high, so that only her head and shoulders remained on the mattress. Then he put his mouth to her pussy, devouring her, seemingly eating her alive.

  Pamela’s voluptuous body was nearly upside down when the next orgasm slammed through her senses. This time, unconsciously, she let out a high-pitched scream as she climaxed. She looked up to see Garrett’s handsome face pressed against her sex.

  “Oh, god…oh, god…” She sighed once her contractions stopped, looking up at Garrett through the mounds of her breasts. “If I come like that again, I’ll die.”

  Garrett eased Pamela’s hips back to the mattress then stretched his powerful body out over hers, keeping much of his weight on his elbows.

  “You won’t die,” he said as his erection once again spread her now-tender lips. “I won’t let you.”

  Pamela came a third time before Garrett, with a deep growl in his throat, pulled out at the last second and climaxed. This time she reached for him, stroking the slick length of his shaft as his creamy semen was released. When he was satisfied and empty, he slumped down on Pamela, their bodies sweaty with their exertion.

  Lying beneath him, her whole body tingling as she relaxed, she stroked his back lightly with her fingertips, feeling the welts she’d made on his pale, flawless flesh with her fingernails.

  “I’m sorry,” she said between panting gasps of breath. “Did I hurt you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Garrett replied, breathing deeply to recover his equilibrium.

  A tiny corner of his mind, competitive and primordially male, took pride in knowing that his sensual skills had driven Pamela to uncharacteristic levels of desire. Her passion for him had erupted, causing her to rake his back frantically with her nails.

  She poured more coffee for both of them, and they drank and chatted softly. The sensation that she was enjoying a morning in the way she could almost daily if she were his wife came to Pamela. Was this what it was like to be married? She was suddenly painfully aware that these moments with Garrett were stolen. If Jedediah were to come home, he’d surely call him out and insist that guns be drawn. Furthermore, Garrett hadn’t returned to his own home yet, and though Pamela couldn’t be sure, she highly suspected he would have some questions to answer when he got to the ranch. He had been born and raised a Randolph, and as such, he knew what his place was in society. Pamela Bragg had no place in his world, as far as his family and his obligations were concerned.

  “As much as I hate to say it, I really must be going,” Garrett said, his arm still around Pamela. His fingertips traced light circles on her bare back. “It must be after nine by now.”

  “Don’t go,” she quickly replied, leaning into him so that he would need to push her off to leave the tiny bed. “You don’t have to.”

  “I do. Much as I hate to say it, I do,” Garrett repeated, turning beneath her. He kissed the top of her head, loving the
feel of her silky blonde hair against his lips, inhaling the fragrance of her to store in his memory.

  Pamela again complained, but Garrett extricated himself. He put his clothes on, even though she halfheartedly tried to stop him, making a game of her efforts. As he balled his necktie and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket, Pamela jokingly accused him of leaving her to go to another woman. Oddly, Garrett enjoyed her outrageous flirting, her display of nudity, and he suspected that if she really insisted upon it she could get him to stay the morning, possibly into the afternoon.

  “Really, I must leave,” he said, cupping Pamela’s face to stop her movements. He looked into her eyes, hoping she would understand and not feel abandoned. “I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

  He kissed her softly, knowing he should say something more romantic, perhaps address the vow of love she’d uttered just before falling asleep the night before. Did she even remember saying she loved him? She had been very tired, and she’d fallen asleep immediately after saying the words. Maybe it had just been the wine talking, Garrett told himself. But he knew she hadn’t been intoxicated.

  With a pretty pout on her lips, Pamela wrapped herself in a blanket from the bed and walked Garrett to the door.

  “What do we do next to Jonathon Darwell?” she asked, standing before the open door. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and she felt a pang of sadness that she couldn’t spend every such day with Garrett.

  “We?” Garrett asked with raised eyebrows. “We won’t be doing anything. I thought we already discussed this.”

  “We did. We just didn’t come to an agreement,” Pamela replied, her eyes narrowing. This was a conflict she really did not want to face.

  “Yes, we did. You’re going to stop fighting Jonathon Darwell. It’s as simple as that.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re in no position to tell me what to do.”

  Pamela squared her shoulders. She had started fighting Jonathon Darwell and his pernicious influence on her own without asking for any man’s acceptance of what she was trying to do, and she would continue on her own, if necessary.

  Garrett looked away, grinning sardonically. He knew the grin would infuriate Pamela because she always thought it meant he wasn’t taking her seriously. But it was absurd for her to continue her lawlessness when she knew that Darwell was on his guard. Garrett also realized that the main reason he needed Pamela to follow a safer course was that she had become a part of his life—how important a part he didn’t yet know—but now he couldn’t imagine what life would be like without her.

  “Let’s not argue,” he said crisply, adopting the flinty tone he’d used when he was the Midnight Phantom.

  He knew he was being unreasonable, even dictatorial, but he simply couldn’t understand why Pamela, just once, couldn’t behave like any other woman he’d known.

  “Just leave fighting Jonathon Darwell up to me, and there’ll be nothing for us to argue about,” he added.

  “Why not leave it up to me?” Pamela shot back, crossing her arms over her chest, her stance and expression as intractable as her mood. “I’ve never had a gun pointed square at my back, and that’s something you can’t say.”

  “We’re not going to argue about this,” Garrett said after a long pause. Couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut and simply do what she was told?

  “You’re right; we’re not,” Pamela replied, kicking the door shut.

  Alone in her house, she gritted her teeth, angry that Garrett should suddenly find it impossible to think of her as a competent person able to take care of herself. Why couldn’t he see how much he needed her when it was so obvious?

  Their argument had cast a dark pall over the day, which had begun so spectacularly.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jedediah knelt beside the carcass, feeling a cold, dead emptiness inside himself that he could not explain. The horse had been Pamela’s mare, Daisy. Though little more than the skeleton was left now that the coyotes and buzzards had picked the bones clean, Jedediah recognized the oddly stripped hooves that had been peculiar to Pamela’s mare. Then, too, he recognized the renailed left hind shoe, which Pamela had fixed herself in a marginally successful effort to save money rather than take Daisy to a blacksmith in Whitetail Creek.

  The surprise wasn’t in finding the carcass. Pamela had told him roughly where the mare had gone down. The awful wound from the heavy-caliber bullet ending the noble mare’s suffering was plain enough to see, despite the predation of scavengers.

  What made no sense at all, what put the first tickle of surprise and doubt in Jedediah’s mind, was the condition of the mare’s legs. Not one of them was broken. The animal had obviously needed to be put out of its misery, but not because of a broken leg, which had been Pamela’s explanation for the tragic incident…or was that her excuse?

  Jedediah looked in all directions, seeing the endless prairie in all its stark splendor. A beautiful sight, certainly, if one had an appreciation for such beauty. Pamela did, but was that reason enough for her to ride way out here?

  He had the eerie sense he’d been lied to. What skewed the equation for Jedediah was the belief that someone who should be telling the truth—someone with everything to gain and nothing to lose by the truth—was the one telling the lies.

  But why?

  He eased into the saddle and rode away slowly, in no hurry to return home to Pamela or to ride into Whitetail Creek to report to Richard Darwell.

  * * * *

  Pamela didn’t trust anything anymore. Jedediah had been looking very strangely at her, and occasionally she wondered what his thoughts were. Did he suspect Garrett was the Midnight Phantom? No evidence had been left behind anywhere to lead her brother to Garrett Randolph, the respected attorney. Still, Pamela was uneasy.

  Perhaps Jedediah suspected she and Garrett had become lovers, but usually if he had questions regarding her relationship with a man, he confronted her with them. His style was to attack problems head-on and work toward an immediate answer. Now, instead of being direct, he was even more silent than usual, and in the two days that had passed since his return from Juniper Junction, he hadn’t once gone to see his sweetheart in Whitetail Creek.

  Thoughts of Garrett flooded Pamela’s waking hours. She tried to banish them from her thoughts, but she could not. She first remembered the tender times, when she was in his arms and they were talking quietly, then vividly clear images of their lovemaking followed. Frequently, she would find herself blushing, and though she was certain it was wicked of her, she let herself replay these passionate scenes repeatedly in her mind.

  She wanted Garrett. She loved him with all her heart and soul, though there were things about him that she did not like very much. Such as his attitude toward her effectiveness against Jonathon Darwell. When had Garrett become so certain that she was a hindrance to their cause?

  Could his attitude have changed because they’d become lovers?

  Pamela dismissed this notion. They had very nearly become lovers on that very first night when the Midnight Phantom had saved her from capture. And later, when the two of them had attacked Darwell Cattle Outpost #3, he hadn’t found her presence at his side so terribly disconcerting.

  Perhaps she was something more than just another lover now.

  This thought brought a smile to Pamela’s lips as she continued brushing down the mare “loaned” to her by Paul Randolph and not yet returned because Garrett had insisted she keep the animal.

  Was Garrett falling in love with her? He hadn’t said as much, but then, he seldom said everything that was on his mind. As a result, Pamela had learned to prod and pry in her attempts to find out what it was he was thinking, what was in his heart.

  But if he loved her, as she hoped he did, then why hadn’t he come to her? Two days ago she’d kicked the door shut on him, but two days was plenty of time for a man to realize he was being a pigheaded fool. Now Garrett should apologize so that he and Pamela could again make love and then get on with their lives and thei
r private war against Jonathon Darwell.

  Pamela played the fantasy over and over in her mind. She pictured clearly the look on Garrett’s face as he swung out of the saddle. His grin was sheepish, even boyish, and it devastated Pamela’s anger, melting the ice in her heart. He would apologize, saying he’d finally realized what a damned fool he was being, and she would take him by the hand, tell him she forgave him, and then lead him into her bedroom where they would make glorious love all night long.

  Except Garrett never rode up, never grinned sheepishly, never said he’d realized the error of his ways.

  “You’re a damned stubborn fool, Phantom,” she whispered, running the currycomb along the gelding’s flanks.

  She remembered the exciting times, when she hadn’t yet learned who the man behind the mask was, yet was making love to him. He’d been so patient with her then at that oasis, concerned for her comfort, for her pleasure, aware that she was a virgin and needed much tenderness. And, oh, how he had made her senses sing.

  Far off, she heard a horse neighing. Her heart leaped in the hope that Garrett had at last come to her. But emerging from the trees in the distance was Jedediah, and Pamela’s heart sank. There were times when she wished her brother wasn’t around. If she couldn’t have Garrett with her, then she wanted to be alone with her thoughts, her dreams and memories.

  It’s time to stop feeling sorry for myself, Pamela decided with determination. I’m taking charge of my own life. I can’t change Garrett any more than I can become the rich society woman he wants me to be.

  * * * *

  Jonathon Darwell leaned back on the sofa in his office and stared out the window. He puffed slowly, contemplatively, on his pipe. The rich, fragrant Virginia tobacco never failed to soothe him, and his lips curled into a smile.

  He had put all his energy into thinking about how to apprehend the Midnight Phantom. His other business enterprises were now neglected so he could concentrate on that man who prevented him from sleeping at night.