Once he was alone, stretched out on a rope bunk with his boots and gun belt and buckskin shirt off, Fargo let out a low groan. Even though most of Jarlberg’s punches had been wild, the ones that landed had felt like sledgehammers. Fargo knew he was lucky that his active life had given him the sort of iron constitution that enabled him to shake off such injuries in a hurry.
He dozed off and didn’t know how long he had been asleep when a stealthy sound woke him. His Colt was on the floor right beside the bunk. Without making a sound, he dropped his hand to the gun and closed his fingers around the walnut grips.
‘‘Skye?’’ Belinda whispered in the darkness.
Fargo wasn’t surprised. He’d been halfway expecting her, in fact. He didn’t have an ounce of vanity in him. He knew he couldn’t have any woman he wanted. But at the same time, he was a man who recognized facts, and he was aware that plenty of women were attracted to him. Belinda had demonstrated the night before that she was one of them.
‘‘Over here,’’ he said.
She came to him as he sat up on the bunk. The farmer’s hut had only a couple of windows, but they let in enough starlight for her to find her way around. She sat down beside him and said, ‘‘I’ve been thinking about you ever since last night, Skye.’’
‘‘That was a mighty nice kiss, all right,’’ Fargo admitted.
‘‘Nice enough so that I want more. A lot more.’’ She put a hand on his bare shoulder and let it caress his skin. ‘‘But I didn’t know if I ought to come over here or not. You must be awfully sore after that fight.’’
‘‘I’m all right,’’ Fargo told her. ‘‘Your father’s liable to wake up and worry if he finds you gone, though.’’
Belinda laughed. ‘‘He won’t wake up. I told you he’s a sound sleeper.’’
‘‘In that case . . .’’
Fargo turned toward her and took her in his arms, discovering as he did so that she was dressed only in a thin wrapper. Her flesh was soft and pliant under his hands as he drew her to him. Acting on instinct, they had no trouble finding each other’s mouths, even in the dark.
In truth, Fargo was pretty bruised and sore from the battering. But he was also so aroused by Belinda’s soft warmth and the sweet taste of her mouth that he forgot all about any aches and pains as he hugged and kissed her. He tugged on her so that she straddled his hips, settling her pelvis down against his. He still wore his buckskin trousers and she had on the flimsy robe, but they felt each other’s heat and desire anyway. Belinda moaned into Fargo’s mouth as she ground herself against his hardness.
She pulled her lips away from his and whispered, ‘‘We’ve got to . . . get rid of these clothes!’’ Her words were urgent with need.
She stripped her wrap off and tossed it aside. Fargo ran his hands over her body, loving the feel of her. He cupped her firm breasts and found the hard nipples with his thumbs. She clutched at his broad, muscular chest and leaned down to rain kisses on it.
Fargo let go of her as she continued sliding down his body, trailing hot kisses over his flat, hard stomach. Her hands hooked the waistband of his trousers and pulled. He raised his hips so that she could pull them off of him. His erect member sprang free. Its thick, impressive length jutted up from his groin. Belinda caught hold of it and rubbed the head against her cheek. With her other hand, she pushed his trousers down around his ankles.
The heat of her mouth was incredible as she closed her lips around his shaft. He leaned his head back against the wall as waves of pleasure cascaded through him. Either she had experience or a natural talent for what she was doing, and Fargo didn’t care which it was. He was beyond caring about much of anything except the wonderful sensations her mouth bestowed on him.
With one hand, she pumped slowly on his shaft, while the other cupped the heavy sac at the base of his manhood. All the while, her lips and tongue continued their exquisite teasing. When at last she closed her lips, hollowed her cheeks, and sucked hard on him, it was all he could do not to let himself explode in her mouth. He wanted to delay his climax, though, until she was ready to share it.
When she raised her head from his groin, he put his hands under her arms and lifted her slender figure like she weighed little or nothing. Holding her above his throbbing hardness, he lowered her onto it, letting his shaft sink into her inch by inch. She gasped when he hit bottom, sheathed all the way inside her.
They stayed there like that for a long moment, luxuriating in their closeness. Then Fargo withdrew a little and surged up again, causing a delicious friction as he slid between the slick folds of her femininity. Belinda rocked her hips to meet his thrust. They fell into a rhythm, rocking and thrusting, that sent their shared arousal spiraling higher and higher.
Together, they climbed those heights until Fargo felt his culmination boiling up inside him. It was too strong to be denied. Thankfully, he didn’t have to, because at that moment shudders began to ripple through Belinda’s body and he knew she had reached her own climax. He drove hard up into her, burying his manhood to the deepest possible point, and let go, emptying himself into her.
A final spasm went through Belinda, and then she seemed to melt against him, the muscles that she had tensed as her climax swept over her all going soft and yielding. She rested her head on his shoulder. He felt her hot breath against his neck. Turning his head so that his lips nuzzled her ear, he stroked her back. Her heart beat strongly against his chest. He figured she could feel his heart beating as well.
When she had caught her breath enough to be able to speak again, she said, ‘‘Skye, that was . . . that was as good as I thought it would be. Hoped it would be. Every bit as good.’’
‘‘Yes, it was,’’ he agreed.
‘‘I wish I could spend the rest of the night here, so that we could do it again. Maybe even more than once.’’
‘‘But it’ll be dawn in an hour or so,’’ Fargo said. The faint tinge of gray in the sky he could see through the window of the hut told him that.
‘‘Yes. I’d better get back.’’ She lifted her head and kissed him again. The urgency was gone now, but not the sensuous delight they both took in each other’s lips.
After a few moments, she slipped out of his arms and picked up her robe from the floor. Wrapping it around her, she went to the door, eased it open, and went out, pausing only to glance back at him one last time. Because of the darkness, Fargo couldn’t read the expression on her face. He hoped it was a satisfied one.
He lay back on the bunk and took several deep breaths. Now that Belinda was gone, he was beginning to feel those bruises again. But he smiled, knowing they didn’t really amount to anything. In a day or two, it would be like he had never had that battle with Matthias Jarlberg.
Thinking about the tavern owner made Fargo frown. He sat up and swung his legs off the bunk, then stood and went to the door. From there he could see the long, low bulk of the tavern. The building was dark now, closed down for the night. He wondered what, if anything, was going on in there. A part of him worried that he shouldn’t have left Angie there. There was no telling what Jarlberg might have done when he regained consciousness. He might have gone into an insane rage.
And yet, Angie ought to know him well enough to know whether or not she would be in danger, Fargo thought. She had seemed confident she would be all right—or at least as confident as someone could be whose spirit had been beaten down as Angie’s was.
Fargo shook his head and went back to the bunk. The night was quiet, and within minutes he had dropped off to sleep, taking advantage of the time he had left before a new day began.
9
‘‘I want to go with you.’’
The words were spoken in a quiet voice—so quiet that even Fargo’s keen ears had a little trouble making them out. As usual, Angie’s eyes were downcast as she made her request.
Fargo put his hand under her chin and brought it up, lifting her head so that she had to look at him. She used her right hand to push her hair back on that side, but left the hair on the left alone so that it obscured her burned cheek.
‘‘What about Jarlberg?’’ Fargo asked.
She cast a nervous glance toward the tavern, which sat dark and silent in the gray dawn. ‘‘That’s why I want to go with you,’’ she said. ‘‘He—he’s asleep now, but he swore he’d get even with you . . . and with me. I—I’m afraid of what he might do.’’
Fargo wasn’t afraid of Jarlberg, but he could understand how this slip of a girl would be. Despite her confidence of the night before, fear had caught up to her and prompted her to slip out here while Fargo, Sandy, and Jimmy were getting the teams and the coach ready for another day of travel. Belinda and Grayson were still asleep in the farmer’s hut.
‘‘Please let her come with us, Mr. Fargo,’’ Jimmy put in from the back of the coach, where he had been securing the canvas cover over the boot after stowing away some of their gear. ‘‘That fella Mr. Jarlberg might go on a rampage. He’s a bad man.’’
In his own way, Jimmy cut right to the heart of the matter. Fargo didn’t trust Jarlberg. They had already seen plenty of evidence that the man mistreated Angie on a regular basis. Filled with rage and the desire for revenge, there was no telling what he might do.
Fargo looked at Angie. He didn’t see any fresh bruises or other signs of violence on her. After the thrashing Fargo had given Jarlberg, he probably hadn’t felt like dishing out any punishment to the girl the night before. But when he awoke this morning, that might be a different story.
‘‘Who is he to you?’’ Fargo asked. ‘‘Any kin?’’
She shook her head, making her hair move and giving him a glimpse of her scarred cheek. ‘‘No. He’s no kin. He was a friend of my father. When the fever took my mother, and then my father died not long after, Mr. Jarlberg said he’d take me in and give me a place to live if I’d work for him. I—I didn’t have anyplace else to go.’’
Fargo heard the bleak desperation in her voice and knew it must have been a terrible time for her. But despite the sympathy he felt for her, he wanted to know exactly what she had in mind.
‘‘Where will you go if you come along with us?’’
‘‘You’re bound for San Francisco, aren’t you? I can get by in a big town like that. I’m a hard worker. And I ain’t afraid of anything except . . .’’
Her eyes darted toward the tavern.
‘‘You don’t have any relatives in San Francisco?’’
‘‘No, sir. But like I said, I can get by.’’
She would wind up in a Barbary Coast whorehouse, Fargo told himself. Even with that scarred cheek, she was young enough and pretty enough to last for a while, and she probably wasn’t inexperienced. Jarlberg had talked like he’d rented her out to travelers before. But it would be a hell of a grim life, and probably a short one, too.
What did she have to look forward to here, though? Years of abuse at the hands of the brutish Jarlberg? Would that really be any better?
Fargo couldn’t answer those questions, but he knew that if Angie left this place, at least she would have a chance, slim though it might be, for a better life. As he came to that realization, he nodded and said, ‘‘You can come with us.’’
She smiled. The expression was an awkward one, as if she hadn’t had much practice at it. ‘‘Thank you, Mr. Fargo,’’ she whispered.
‘‘Go get your stuff, but be quiet about it. You don’t want to wake him up.’’
‘‘I can go with her,’’ Jimmy volunteered.
‘‘You stay right here, boy,’’ Sandy told him. ‘‘No offense, but them big clodhoppers o’ yours make enough noise to wake the dead when you go to trompin’ around.’’
‘‘That’s all right,’’ Angie said. ‘‘I’ll be right back.’’
Like a shadow, she flitted off toward the tavern and disappeared inside.
Sandy came over to the Trailsman with a frown on his face. ‘‘You sure this is a good idea, Fargo?’’ he asked. ‘‘When that fella Jarlberg finds out the gal’s gone, he’s liable to come after us and cause us even more trouble.’’
‘‘I thought about that,’’ Fargo admitted, ‘‘but I don’t think he’ll do it. That would mean leaving the tavern, and I’m not sure he’d trust the folks around here not to break in and help themselves while he’s gone. He’s bound to know that he’s not well liked. He might even be afraid that they’d burn the place down if he left.’’
Sandy scratched at his beard. ‘‘Yeah, could be. Anyway, I don’t reckon we can leave the poor little gal. No tellin’ what that Scandahoovian bastard might do to her if we did.’’ He shook his head. ‘‘I ain’t that fond o’ havin’ another of her species along for the ride, though. Sooner or later, them blasted females always mean trouble.’’
Fargo chuckled and went to saddle the Ovaro. He kept an ear out for sounds of trouble from the tavern, just in case Jarlberg woke up before Angie could gather her few belongings and leave.
The place was still quiet as she stole out of it a few minutes later and hurried over to the coach. She carried a small carpetbag. Jimmy had unfastened the cover over the boot again and pulled it back. He took the bag from her and placed it inside.
‘‘There you go,’’ he told her with a shy smile. ‘‘Safe and sound, just like you.’’
‘‘Thank you.’’
‘‘My name’s Jimmy. And yours is Angie—I know that. Angie’s a pretty name, I think.’’
‘‘Thank you,’’ she said again, not looking at him. In fact, each of them was being so careful not to look at the other one that they were liable to trip over their own feet if they tried to walk, Fargo thought with a grin as he led the stallion over to the coach.
He handed the Ovaro’s reins to Jimmy and said, ‘‘I’ll go wake Mr. Grayson and Miss Grayson. We’ll have to get breakfast farther on up the trail somewhere. I don’t reckon we’d be welcome for a meal at the tavern, and these farmers are poor folks. I don’t want to impose on their hospitality any more than we already have.’’
‘‘Reckon we can get somethin’ to eat at San Luis Obispo,’’ Sandy said. ‘‘We got a few supplies left if we can’t, so we won’t starve to death ’fore we make Paso Robles tonight.’’