by Cora Brent
She had clasped her hands in her lap. Suddenly the room felt very small. Or else Mercer seemed very large. “I don’t know. I don’t feel well.”
Mercer withdrew a silver flask and held it out. “Drink this,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”
Annika took a reluctant sip of the burning liquid. And then another. It didn’t help. Her gut was still queasy and her heart lurched beneath her breasts. “You’ll need to leave, Mercer,” she gasped. “I’m suddenly quite unwell.”
Annika did not look back. She stumbled out of the schoolhouse toward her room. Once the door was closed behind her, she clutched at the bed frame, struggling to inhale. A large hand was suddenly around her waist, pulling her insistently against the hard male body it was attached to.
Mercer wrapped her in both of his arms and drew her tightly against him. Annika saw the bare skin on his heavily muscled arms and realized he had removed his shirt.
“No wonder you’re unwell,” he growled in her ear, expertly undoing the buttons of her dress and pushing the fabric from her shoulders. “You can’t breathe, Annika.”
She was reeling against his touch. It was too much. She could not resist. “Then help me, Mercer,” she whispered.
He wasn’t gentle when he broke the laces of her stays. His hands immediately dove under the stiff corset once it was loose. The way he kneaded her breasts was skillfully rough and Annika pressed his hands more tightly, vaguely hearing the low moan in her throat. Mercer silenced her with his mouth, pushing his whiskey-tainted tongue into hers.
The pieces of Annika’s clothing could not fall away quickly enough as his hands moved everywhere, impatient and sure. She gasped as he felt insistently between her legs, then pressed against him more urgently, wanting him to find his way inside the cotton undergarments.
“Mercer,” she breathed when their mouths broke apart briefly. He answered by lifting her in his powerful arms and tossing her ungently onto the bed. Instinctively her legs went around his waist as he lowered himself on top of her.
“You’re so lovely,” he said, his voice coated with passion as he stroked her breasts, her belly, the tender interior of her thighs. He reached into the crevice between her legs and she was helpless against the heady sensation. Annika had no doubt that Mercer had done this many times before, to many women. Even that thought was intoxicating.
She ran her hands over his broadly muscled back, marveling over the perfection of him. His skin was smooth and tan, as if he often bore the brunt of the sun.
“Let me see you,” she said suddenly, struggling to rise up on her elbows. Even as she heard the demand leave her lips it shocked her.
Mercer had been teasing her breasts with his mouth as his hands worked between her legs. At the sound of her voice he paused, raising his head. When he smiled, an invisible hand reached around Annika’s heart, squeezing.
“Please,” she whispered.
Never taking his eyes from her face, Mercer unfastened his denims and pulled them down. He seemed to enjoy her stare. His organ was rigid and immense. Annika couldn’t imagine it inside of her and yet she wanted it there more than she had ever wanted anything.
“Touch it, Annika,” Mercer commanded roughly. When she hesitated, he reached for her hand, pushing it toward his hard length. A moan of ecstasy escaped his lips as her fingers found him. Then he suddenly jerked her hand away, pushing her arms over her head and securing her wrists in his strong grip. Annika’s shift was all that lay between them as he pushed that hard shaft against her. She saw her own exposed flesh, the expanse of her naked breasts, arching to meet his touch. Mercer paused briefly to run his tongue along her hard left nipple and then reached for her chin, jerking her face hard so that she had to meet his gaze.
“You’ve never had a man before.”
“No,” Annika sputtered, wanting him to return his mouth where it had been. “Of course not.”
Mercer nodded at her answer and some of the fire left his eyes. When he kissed her chastely on the forehead and slowly rolled his body away she was as confused as she had been the other night.
Annika sat up, meagerly covering her breasts with her hands. A feeling of shame pricked at her. “Mercer, have you been with many women?”
He raised his eyebrows at the question, then smiled slowly. “Hundreds,” he confirmed, laughing hoarsely and pulling her against him so that their bare chests were flush against each another.
For the first time Annika glimpsed a certain tenderness in the outlaw as he loosed the pins from her long yellow hair and talked in a languid, leisurely voice. Some of the things he told her she’d already heard from James; the long trek west, the death of his folks. His brother’s name was unspoken between them for the longest time as the night deepened and they lay in one another’s arms.
“You two don’t get along, do you?” Annika finally asked.
Mercer’s hand ceased stroking her soft skin and his body tensed. “We’ve had our disagreements,” he sighed. “But he’s my blood and I’d risk a powerful lot for that man.” Mercer paused and then turned his steely gaze in her direction. The lantern in the corner of the room had nearly burned out and she could barely see him. His words were forthright as he moved several inches away to avoid touching her. “Annika, if you tell me you prefer James I’ll get out of your bed right now and never give you a moment’s grief about it. Hell, I can see why a decent woman would pine for the comfort of a steady lawman more than the company of a rowdy gunslinger.”
“No,” she shook her head, leaning over and kissing him on his lips, allowing her tongue to enter his mouth in the manner he’d taught her. Wanting James Dolan would be so much easier. But she didn’t, may god help her for it. After a quick tease she pulled back, staring at him earnestly. “Even though it makes no sense and I might live to regret the outcome, I want you, Mercer. You’re a puzzling man. There are things about you which horrify me and you’re something I never expected to want. But I do anyway. God, I want you.”
Mercer Dolan chuckled and carefully rearranged her long hair over her breasts. “My prim little schoolteacher. You have a notion of just how bad I want to sink into your sweet maidenhead, Annika? But I ain’t never had a woman I wanted for more than a few hours.” He grew serious and rolled his hard body on top of her, locking his eyes onto hers fiercely. “Until now. I don’t just want to deflower you, Annika.”
“What do you want, Mercer?” she asked, moaning over the feel of his manhood against that untouched cleft which begged in silence.
“Everything,” he answered, pushing against her harder. Even though he didn’t explain further Annika understood. These intense connections between men and women had only ever been a rumor to her. She hadn’t felt it even with the man she had once agreed to marry. She believed Mercer when he said he wouldn’t just be satisfied having her once. She wouldn’t be satisfied with that either.
Mercer remained with her for hours. They slept occasionally and then awoke to revel in each other’s touch. She knew what a supreme effort it was for him to keep the slight distance between them which would have allowed him to possess her. Though she desperately wanted to, Annika did not ask him about The Danes. She knew the question wouldn’t be welcome or even answered.
When the first streaks of morning began to lighten the sky she shyly wrapped herself in her dressing gown and saw him to the door. Mercer touched a rueful finger to her lips and promised to return.
“Good day, Annika Larson,” he said jauntily before fastening his denims and ambling away on foot in the direction of the river.
As she watched him with her dressing gown clutched tightly against her throat she wondered if the ache in her heart was love. Even as a school girl she’d never been the silly sort who insisted on the sentiment. Annika did not know everything about Mercer Dolan and she was unsure she wanted to. She tried to dismiss the frightening picture of him riding furiously with a gun his hand and a mask on his face. But as she reluctantly closed the door against the still darknes
s of the early morning, she missed him. She missed him terribly.
CHAPTER NINE
Contention City, Arizona
Present Day
Priest wandered in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he asked where Tildy was. Other times he told Maddox to be sure to do his homework and to stay out of the mountains. Priest warned him again and again about the mine shafts. He said there was too much danger for a young boy.
Gaby did the best she could. Mad was grudgingly grateful for the tender care she gave his father. She told him she had taken family leave from her job at the medical center. The Hospice care worker arrived in the afternoon and gave them some relief from watching over the dying man.
Maddox watched from the living room window as Miguel explored the yard in the restless manner of boys. At one point he knelt, avidly watching a chuckwalla scurry across the sand and up a mesquite tree. Maddox observed a sharp intelligence in the way the boy absorbed his surroundings. He recalled wandering endlessly through the mysteries of that same yard so many years ago. The instant affection he felt for his nephew surprised him.
“He’s a good kid,” Maddox said aloud to no one in particular.
“He is,” Gaby confirmed with a proud grin. He hadn’t realized she was standing directly behind him. She came to the window to watch her son.
Miguel hooted and jumped back as he apparently found something alarming under a creosote bush.
“You live local, huh?” Maddox asked.
“A mile up the road, that low lying area close to the river bed.”
He knew the place she meant. The houses were little more than shacks, built during the Great Depression to house the workers brought in to work on the dam reconstruction as part of Roosevelt’s Work Progress Administration. The worst disaster known to Contention was the 1890 flood which resulted from the broken Orange Grove Dam. The lower valley had flooded up to ten feet in some places, taking hopes and dreams and a few dozen lives with it. The replacement, completed in 1938, had held up so far.
“Just you and the kid living there?” Maddox asked carefully.
“Just us,” she sighed. “My father’s remarried and drives out maybe twice a year. And I don’t know if you heard, but Old Juan passed away a good five years back.”
“Sounds lonely,” Maddox said. “For Miguel, I mean.”
“It’s not,” she argued. “I have enough cousins in the area who have families of their own now. And Jensen’s a good father,” she added.
“You knew he would be.”
She chose to let the comment go by. “We’ll miss Priest a hell of a lot.”
“He’s not dead yet.”
“But he will be, Maddox. Soon.”
He felt his shoulders slump. He didn’t need to be reminded.
“What about you?” she asked, looking him over. “All decked out in your leather, I hear you’re in a motorcycle gang.”
“Club,” he corrected her, frowning. “And what of it?”
“Seems like childish nonsense is all. Like something which could get you in a whole lot of trouble.”
Maddox stiffened with anger. He kept his voice down though, not wanting to alert the Hospice worker or disturb Priest. Still, his words dripped with poison. They came, unbidden, from somewhere he didn’t often indulge. “You still don’t know a fucking thing, Gabriela. Not about me, or about much of anything. Judgmental bitch, as always.”
He’d gone too far. Her hands clutched the windowsill and she refused to fight back.
Maddox needed to get the hell out there, away from her. He stalked out of the front door as she called his name. She could call until her voice wore out for all he fucking cared.
Miguel looked up, startled, when Maddox hurtled out of the house and furiously gunned his bike. He would ride for the mountains. The desolate familiarity was what he needed right now.
It didn’t take long to ride up that way. He remembered how the hike had taken hours when he’d been a child on foot. But somehow he’d never minded the long trek back then. There was buried treasure up there. He knew that. Everyone did. He and Jensen ventured up there on endless occasions, poking sticks down the perilous shafts and searching for the lost safes full of gold which were rumored to have been buried somewhere in the area over a century earlier. They never found a thing except snakes, lizards and a wonderland of ghostly remnants belonging to people who had long since stopped living.
In the early spring the Scorpion Mountains were often covered with a green carpet of life. But it was autumn and the summer had been its usual brutal self. Everywhere he looked it was brown, parched.
Maddox parked his bike casually on the side of a dirt road. Chances were slim that anyone else would pass this way and if they dared fuck with him or his bike they would be sorry. As he climbed up a steep precipice, his boots slipped in the loose dirt. He cursed wildly as his right knee cracked against a jagged rock. When he reached the top he looked out over the small world of Contention City. He loved that place. He hated that place. He wondered if all men felt the same conflict over their origins. Jensen didn’t, he would stake money on that. Maddox and Jensen had always been different in every way that counted. They’d fought like wild animals when they were kids but there was a natural acceptance about it all. Jensen was his brother and sometimes he sucked but he was always there.
Back then, Maddox had known that Jensen liked Gabriela too. She’d backed away from Maddox after that first night when they kissed in the dark next to the river. He saw her at school and tried to reach out but she was distant. Several times he’d caught her staring at him with those impassable dark eyes and he felt guilty for the overt way other girls, girls who meant nothing, were draped all over him. Whenever he tried to speak to her she was polite but aloof. The handful of casual dates she’d had with Jensen didn’t seem to come to anything. Jensen was suddenly preoccupied with his new steadfast mentality and his plans for a dedicated future in uniform.
Then came the terrible night of Tildy McLeod’s death. Maddox had never seen his father cry. It seemed his father would never stop crying. Jensen went to see about the awful details, like identifying the body. It had been a collision with an eighteen wheeler so there wasn’t much. But Priest simply couldn’t manage it.
Maddox recalled stumbling around in a haze. The small house was stifling and the noise of his father’s crushing sobs were driving him crazy. He hadn’t realized he was heading in her direction until he wound up at Old Juan’s door. Gaby answered and he could see in her face that she had already heard. And that she was sorry for him.
“Maddox,” she sighed, hugging him as he held her tightly and cried.
They talked for hours. Maddox said things he’d never known were important, like how his mother had made him peanut butter and apple sandwiches every day for a year because it was all he would agree to eat for lunch. Gaby listened and held his hand. In time she talked about her own mother and the pain of a long, lingering death. When he finally kissed her good night, it wasn’t a casual passion but something else. Something he already knew to be far more precious.
Once he awkwardly asked Jensen if he minded but his brother shrugged it off. He said he had more important things to worry about, like picking their father up out of his vomit and misery and requiring him to live.
“Besides,” Jensen had said with bitter weariness. “It doesn’t make a damn difference because you never keep a girl around for longer than a week or two.”
But Jensen was wrong for once. Maddox was suddenly uninterested in other girls. He only wanted Gabriela. It was more than her body, although he was half crazy from waiting for her to be ready. He wanted to hear her voice and show her the view from the Scorpion Mountains as the dusk shadows fell across their town. He just wanted to be with her.
She’d said it first, the word ‘love’. She’d said it the night he was a centimeter away from entering her before he stopped himself. All the hot times he’d had already didn’t matter. He’d give it all up. Goddammit, he l
oved that girl.
They fought often. She told him he was far too smart to be barely skating through school. And what would he do after graduation in a few months? Had he even thought about it? Maddox never wanted to talk about any of those things. He figured he would eventually get licensed and mess with pipes, like his old man. He didn’t want to hear about other options and he sure as hell wasn’t planning on putting in any more time at school no matter what Gaby had to say about it.
She had her own plans. She’d hinted a few times that her goals didn’t mean to keep her in Contention City. Maddox didn’t want to talk about that either. He cracked a beer and stopped listening. When she tried to yell her way through his vagueness he stalked away, ignoring her exasperated cry.
“Maddox, you shit! I love you.”
The fight was nothing. She would still love him later. It wouldn’t be much longer, he knew, before she would love him completely. When that happened, all the garbage which kept them at odds would fall away. He figured she knew exactly how he felt. He also figured that when she said she loved him it meant she trusted him.
It was the worst error in judgment he’d ever made.
Maddox wasn’t the one who stole the car. He ran into Chaz Coletti when he was still buzzed and smarting from his fight with Gaby. It was a Caddy and obviously belonged to one of the snowbirds who found their way to the southwest to escape the cold which seeped into their old bones. Maddox knew the two girls who were with Chaz. They were juniors and he’d messed with them both before but that was long before Gabriela. Chaz wanted to drive down to Phoenix just for the hell of it and Maddox agreed that getting out of Contention City for a few hours was a great plan. He leaned back into the seat and closed his eyes, vaguely aware that the girl on his left was vomiting out the window.
What happened after that was a little bit of a mystery but when Maddox opened his eyes it was daylight and there were people everywhere. He knew most of them. Chaz had driven the goddamn car into the middle of the Contention High track field and then stopped. Chaz was blearily sputtering over the state of things as he wrestled the front seat. Maddox discovered he couldn’t get up because someone’s head was in his lap. It was one of the girls and she wasn’t wearing a shirt. She groaned and nestled her face in his crotch as his classmates tittered and exclaimed.
