She’d read her ma’s words and tried her hand at seduction. She failed miserably. In fact, she’d been rejected. The two strangers obviously didn’t think she was capable of pleasing a man.
She’d show them. Humph, she’d prove it to herself if no one else. She was born for this kind of life. She was supposed to follow in her momma’s footsteps. That was her sole purpose. Pleasuring men had to be the reason she was put on this earth. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have stayed in that prairie.
Victoria looked down at her heaving chest as she approached the cabin. She had a decent body. She was curvy. Men liked women with a little meat on their bones, or so she recalled men telling her momma such a tale.
She was untouched, so what? She could change that, and she would. Starting tonight.
Maybe.
With damp hair and clothes, Victoria dripped all the way across her front planked porch. She stomped rather than taking an easy stroll, aware of the fact the two men she’d just met had followed her all the way home. Their horses had kept some distance but trailed behind her all the same.
Reaching her front door, she turned the knob and started inside. Instead of traipsing ahead and making a muddy mess of her dirt floor, she wheeled around and faced her uninvited guests. “Seeing as you claimed to have seen the best parts of a woman, it shouldn’t be too much to ask a favor.”
“You mean since you granted us that opportunity and we didn’t look away, we owe ya?” Art asked.
She held her head higher. “I’d like for you to turn your head. Let me strip off here so I don’t track up my floor. If you don’t mind to look the other way, I’d be much obliged.”
Art leaned over his saddle horn. “I’ll cover my eyes, but I can’t promise I won’t peek.”
Her nostrils flared, and she glared back at the handsomest men she’d ever seen riding on horseback. “A gentleman would turn around so a lady doesn’t have to go inside with wet skirts and make the floors into a muddy mess.”
“A lady wouldn’t have been frolicking in the waters like what we saw earlier. We’ve done seen you aplenty,” Art advised. “Go on now, get those wet clothes off, and you can start supper. We’ll pay you for a hot meal. We’re hungry, and you must’ve known we had eatin’ on our minds when we saw you home.”
“Then turn your blasted head.”
Lane chewed the inside of his jaw like he had a spit of tobacco rolling around in his cheek. “Miss, after the kind remarks you made down there by the stream, I’m not inclined to turn around. If you want to change, you might as well get on in there and do it. Otherwise, strip right here. I’ll watch. I think you might like that, but it’s your call.”
“I’m not inclined to mess up my cabin,” she bit out, already twirling the buttons at her sleeve. They’d seen her once. They could see her again. Besides, there was only one way to lure a man—show him the goods and sell him on the fact he couldn’t live without ’em.
Now, she was starting to act like her mother. She couldn’t help it. Whore blood ran deep. Either that or these two fellows pissed her off. Considering she’d never been with a man in the past, she sort of thought the latter made more sense.
She locked gazes with Art and then shifted her focus toward Lane. By the look on his face, he was betting on a taste of defiance.
Victoria didn’t know a lot about men, but she understood one thing. Her momma’s company often looked at her ma in much the same way Lane was studying her then. He liked what he saw. He was playing hard to get.
“Well, then. So be it,” she said, hurriedly working to free the buttons on her skirts.
Lane bowed his head but lifted his gaze, studying her with the hottest eyes she’d ever seen. Maybe he was waiting to see if she had the guts to do the unexpected. Regardless of what he thought, lust and hunger spilled from those pretty green eyes of his.
And God help her, she had plenty of guts to take this as far as he wanted to go. She dug in her pocket and pulled out her mother’s letter. Placing the crumpled paper on a nearby ledge, she loosened the buttons on her white blouse and let the collar fall completely open.
Art rolled his tongue over his lower lip, and scratched the back of his neck. Lane’s right eye twitched. The corner stamped with wrinkles showcased his age and highlighted the fact he was getting on in years.
Then again, Victoria figured anyone beyond the age of thirty was advancing toward old age quicker than they might have liked. Maybe that’s why he had the wrinkles in the first place. He worried himself to where he looked a year or two older than what he was.
Not one to undress in front of strangers, she thought of her ma’s letter one final time. Her mother must’ve known she’d understand what to do with that note when she finally came of age.
She was twenty-one, untouched and pure, but regardless of the facts, she was pissed. They’d shown her plenty of interest until they found out how old she was, and now they were about to find out why age didn’t matter.
Besides, she wasn’t about to track up her recently swept dirt floor for the likes of stubborn strangers. If these men were true criminals, hell-bent on showing off their unlawful acts, they would’ve acted like outlaws long before they shot the likes of that snake. They would’ve shown their true faces back when she was bathing earlier in the day, which made her wonder all the same.
A bald eagle flew overhead, shrilling as it descended in the distance. Sometimes she felt like that damn bird, a free spirit enabled by her surroundings, and the lack of disturbances often caused by other humans.
Her present company had disrupted her nest. They took away her privacy but she wasn’t about to let them change her behavior. If she’d been out there all alone, she would’ve stripped off in a hurry, leaving heaps of clothing which she’d tend to the next day. If they couldn’t behave like gentlemen, it was their problem, not hers.
Victoria slid the skirt away from her hips then removed her blouse. “Say you saw everything you wanted to see back there in the water, spying on me, did ya?” she asked, slapping the wet material over the front porch railing. The bishop-style sleeves fell over the top split log, landing in a perfect position for a good drying.
“No, ma’am,” Art replied. “I don’t recall saying I saw everything.”
She discarded her crinoline and stood there in her pantaloons. “Well?” she asked, studying Lane with her hands on her hips.
His lips curved in a wicked smile. When his tongue darted in and out of his moist mouth, Victoria knew she was in trouble.
Lane was the epitome of a dangerous man, the kind a woman typically avoided. He was like the fellas described in her mother’s letters. Only her ma forgot to mention one crucial fact.
Men like Lane came and went, but the memories they left behind didn’t easily fade. She’d watched her mother damn near mourn fellows like these two. They were the kind of cowboys who ruined a woman for good loving unless the loving came from them.
“Seen enough yet?” she asked, shifting her position, changing her pose.
Lane glanced at his sidekick. “I’ve seen a right smart. Art, how about you?”
Art placed some distance between the bulge in his breeches and the saddle horn. “I still don’t have a right mind to look away.”
“Then you ain’t got a mind to speak of,” Lane informed him. “Seeing those full tits without anything to hold ’em back will get us both in trouble.”
“So that’s what it’ll take, huh?” Victoria asked, slipping her arms out of the camisole. She held the material against her chest. In one fluid motion, she turned her back to them, dropped her pantaloons, wiggled away from her camisole, and left both garments on the porch to dry.
“Good God in heaven above,” Art said, releasing a whistle.
Victoria felt her skin heat, but she didn’t turn around to give them the full show, even though she craved the attention. She stepped inside and called out over her shoulder, “Put your animals in the barn. That’s where you’ll be sleeping, too, by the way. Th
at is, if you take a notion to stay.”
Art grunted. “After seeing that body of yours, I don’t have the first inclination to leave!”
* * * *
Lane leaned over a broken-down fence waiting for Art to finish bedding down the horses. He watched a wolf studying him in the distance.
Stroking his chin, Lane decided the wolf represented an ever-present danger. In a day or two, maybe tomorrow, he and Art would ride on into Cripple Creek and turn themselves in. The local marshal had a bounty on their heads.
Way Lane saw it, he had two choices. He could turn himself in and face a hanging, or stay on the run and take a bullet in the head. There were two options within those choices, too.
With the hanging, he’d see the rope coming. With a bullet, he’d never know what hit him.
Lane didn’t like surprises.
His gaze stayed with the wolf. The animal started following them a few days back. Lane wondered if the four-legged creature was friendly, or maybe waiting for the right time to let them know he was a real hungry creature.
Art and Lane had discussed the animal’s potential dinner—them—and they feared one day soon, they’d come face-to-face with a formidable prairie enemy. Lane constantly worried they might have a proper introduction only after they were under attack. The concern made for some sleepless nights.
At least this fine evening, Lane didn’t fret over the unknown. Did he?
He turned around and watched Victoria through the small cabin’s only front window. She was a beautiful young woman. She’d tested them, too, which he appreciated. A telling sign, if he wanted to give her actions a little consideration.
What kind of woman stripped off in front of a man and let him stare at her breasts when she could clearly see he carried around pure, raging need in his breeches? Lane knew how to answer his own question.
His memories drifted back to a woman much like Victoria. Time’s hand was a cruel one, and he rarely allowed himself the opportunity to revisit history. Even now, after all these years, he had to fight like mad to stop the tears from falling. The itch to feed the sorrow he would always carry in his heart often hardened a man.
In fact, today was the first time another woman had stirred that familiar angst inside him, the battle between right and wrong. He once belonged to another. Looking at someone new with pure lust driving him didn’t sit well.
Lane’s deceased wife, the one he watched die at the hands of a bitter and cruel marshal, spoke to him in his dreams every now and again. As the years passed, Lane discovered her image in his fantasies had begun to fade.
He could still hear her sweet voice, but he rarely made out her extraordinary features. Right after she died, he often awoke in the middle of the night swearing his fingers had been latched around one of her auburn curls. Now, he couldn’t be certain of her precise hair color. Was it auburn, or more strawberry blonde?
Sometimes he wondered if his urges for another, his growing man-needs, kept him from hanging on to the past he shared with his Sarah Ann. He had a hankering for a woman. There was no way to deny the fact, and for the first time since his wife passed, he had an awful urgency to consider a left-handed wife. In recent months he’d started to ask himself if he would be considered an unfaithful man if he took another woman to his bed as his mistress.
In his mind, he was still a married man. Perhaps he always would be.
What would his wife think if she knew he’d considered having relations with another?
Art slapped his back, interrupting his thoughts about the woman who now tempted him, and the one who kept him bound to her from the grave.
“I see our friend is still there on the hill,” Art said, pointing.
“I reckon so,” Lane drawled.
“I’m gonna say he’ll come on down here tonight and watch over us. He’s a curious creature. He won’t know what to do when we turn in for the night and sleep in a barn.”
“You’re probably right.” A beat later, Lane said, “I’m trying to figure out what he wants with us.”
Art snickered. “No you ain’t. You’re trying to figure out what Victoria wants with us.”
“That, too,” Lane admitted. “The way she strutted around here was indecent. She knows how to make a man think.”
“She makes a man hard, too,” Art grumbled, pointing toward the hill again. “If our friend planned on going after the horses, he’s had enough time to pounce on either one of ’em. Maybe we ought to reward him for good behavior. The little woman might let us take him some leftovers out tonight.”
“Maybe. We’ve rarely had them on the open range. That’s for sure.”
“Supper on?”
“Hadn’t made my way over there,” Lane replied.
Art started toward the cabin. “After seeing her strip off her clothes like she was mad at us, I can’t wait to get there.”
Lane laughed, watching his young friend make his way toward dinner and Victoria, and he wondered then if Victoria didn’t represent both. If so, she might bite off a little more than she meant to chew.
Art always had all sorts of ideas for the opposite sex. Most gals cursed him like crazy when they found their way into his bed. There were whores in Tombstone that refused to service him.
Lane understood. In the early years of his marriage, his wife used to say his penis was worthy of a cussing. Art had one about the same size, maybe a little longer and wider, not that he was paying attention when they bathed in front of one another, but Sarah Ann had made the mention. Art had visited Lane’s wife’s bed a few times in the past.
Lane felt it was his duty to share his woman. The first time nearly killed him, but he became accustomed to their arrangement. Fact was, Lane really didn’t have a choice in the matter if he and Art were to remain on friendly terms. When Art lived with them, there wasn’t a woman around to service him, and Sarah Ann liked Art well enough to let him use her body to find some relief.
Anyhow, based on what he overheard for himself, Sarah Ann and even some of those prostitutes Art later frequented yelped and cried. He sure wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of something like what Art had between his legs. Poor Victoria would run like hell if she realized what Art most likely held in store for her.
The wolf paced in the distance, rushing back and forth across the slanted ridge a stone’s throw from where Lane stood. He felt the four-legged creature’s anxiety. He wanted to hang out in one place for a little bit, too.
He turned his focus back to the small cabin, now aglow with candles in the back windows. Without a doubt, he was in some real trouble. He recognized the coming hardship.
If he were a smart fellow, he’d march back in that barn, throw his saddle over his tired gelding’s back, and ride the hell on out of there. Instead, he was like the lone alpha watching him. He knew he was going in for the kill from the moment he spotted his prey.
The only question was when.
Chapter Three
Victoria stacked the hoecakes high in the center of the table. “Dig in,” she told them as Art started piling up his plate with several helpings of beans, bread, and potatoes.
“Mighty obliged for your hospitality,” Art said gruffly. Art had a certain rasp to his voice. Deep and throaty, the sound of him sent shivers down her spine.
“Enjoy,” she stated proudly, glad to have company at her table.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said without looking away from his plate. Since he’d entered her cabin, he’d been in a surly mood. She wondered if he and Lane had gotten into a men’s disagreement.
Excitedly, she also wondered if their discussion—assuming they in fact had a disagreement—had anything to do with her.
“You’re welcome to stay the night,” she remarked casually, aware of the fact she’d already extended the invitation.
Picking up his fork, Lane said, “We were hoping you wouldn’t mind. The horses are bedded down for the night. We appreciate the offer.”
By Lane’s reply, she wonde
red what they’d planned to do if she hadn’t invited them to stay. Remembering the men there were strangers, she hurriedly added, “I have plenty of blankets. I’ll be happy to share them, but you’ll have to stay out in the barn with your animals.”
Art shoved a slice of cornbread in between his lips and swallowed, washing it down with a sloppy slurp from his water glass. “You already know we ain’t gonna harm ya.”
“If the lady wants us in the barn, she’ll have us in the barn,” Lane said, gripping his fork and looking at her dead-on.
Immediately, her mind replayed the past. She remembered her ma instructing her guests. “I said wait for me in the barn. I’ll meet you out there after the kid goes to bed.”
If the wood in that barn could talk, the planks would tell one hell of a story. Victoria would like to hear them. Then again, she’d witnessed all she needed to hear way back when the doors would rattle the hinges and the coyotes would howl loud enough to cover up the animalistic happenings out there in that barn.
“That’s what you want, right, Victoria?” Lane asked. There was a dark edge to his guttural voice. When she didn’t reply, a masculine grunt fell from his lips, leading the way into all sorts of improper thoughts.
“I didn’t say that’s what I wanted exactly,” Victoria said, rising. She went back to the chopping block and grabbed a full pitcher of recently pumped water. Her free hand settled against her camel-colored apron, and she noticed how Lane followed her hand as her nails raked across the center pocket.
Why did he watch her with such interest? Did he find her attractive? Did he use a sexy voice and say the types of things guaranteed to make a woman take notice?
Lane twirled his fork between two fingers, stirring his beans. “Are you all right, ma’am?” As he spoke, he watched her. There was no doubt. They would come to some kind of sensual understanding.
“I’m fine,” she choked out.
Acres, Natalie - Propositioned by Outlaws [Outlaws 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 3
