Authors: Robin Gideon
“Now we wait. It’s nearly one o’clock. By about three o’clock, Tyler Napki will be drunk as a skunk, and his coachman will toss him into his carriage and take him home. Mrs. Napki and the children were already taken home, around eight-thirty, I believe.”
“What’s that got to do with us?”
“We’ll be riding on the roof of the carriage. Once we’re outside the gates, we’ll jump off. Napki and his coachman are both notorious drinkers on Saturday night. Neither one will hear a thing.”
“You’ve planned everything, haven’t you?”
“I didn’t plan on you.”
His gaze met hers, and Pamela looked away. When Phantom looked into her eyes, it seemed he could see right through the defenses that she had erected to keep herself safe from the world. When she looked at him, she saw nothing but shadows, both literally and metaphorically. He was all light and darkness, part of him revealed, part of him concealed, his identity and his essential, intrinsic self elusive and enigmatic and tantalizingly seductive to the responsive female Pamela had never before realized she was.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to cause you any bother. I just wanted…I had to strike out at Jonathon Darwell, don’t you see? Somebody has to. He’s got
ten away with everything, absolutely everything…and the law never touches him. He
owns
the law.”
Garrett listened carefully to Pamela and wondered how many people shared her sentiments. He also wondered
what Darwell had done to her to make her hate him
so much. Her contempt for Darwell was based on more than
principle. Garrett hated Darwell because he’d wit
nessed the havoc left in the wake of Darwell’s greed, but Pamela
hated the man for personal reasons.
Though Garrett Randolph’s legal expertise told him not to get involved, Pamela’s unexpected intrusion into his life had delighted him too much for him not to pursue the answer.
“He owns a judge and a businessman who one day
might be the governor of this territory, but he doesn’t own
the law, Pamela. Nobody can own the law,” Phantom said quietly.
She looked at him, shaking her head. “You just don’t understand.”
Garrett reached out, removing his Stetson from her head.
Her long, honey-blonde hair tumbled down around her
shoulders in waves of satin. He smoothed some of it over
her shoulders, wanting to touch both her hair and her body.
She did not move away from his touch.
“How did he hurt you?”
Pamela looked away, shrugged, seemingly unaware
that the move caused her heavy breasts to rise and fall
beneath the well-washed blue cotton shirt. It appeared that this was not something she wanted to think about, much less talk
about
.
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered quietly after a long
pause. “It happened
a long time ago. It really doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I think it does,” Phantom observed softly. He reached
out to brush the backs of his knuckles lightly against Pamela’s
soft cheek. When she turned her gentle green eyes toward
him, he felt a strange tightness in his chest, a reaction that
mystified him since he’d known the gazes of many a
beautiful woman in the past and had never before reacted
quite this way. “Jonathon Darwell has done something to you
that he shouldn’t have, but I won’t force you to talk about
it if you don’t want to.”
“Thank you,” Pamela replied
.
She closed her eyes and rolled her head back on her shoulders, suddenly feeling very tired. It wasn’t a sleepy
kind of fatigue, though, since she was still far too ener
gized by excitement to even consider sleep. She had spent
days thinking about how she would break into the
Darwell mansion during the charity hospital ceremonies,
and as it turned out, she had done almost everything wrong. If it hadn’t been for the Midnight Phantom, she
would now be in the custody of some sheriff, sitting in a
jail cell, or be the captive of Darwell, being tortured.
The thought made Pamela shiver.
“What’s wrong?” Phantom asked.
“Nothing.” She shifted positions in the hay, curling her
legs beneath her. Sometimes she wished he wasn’t quite
so perceptive.
Phantom unknotted the tie at his throat and then removed
his cape and spread it out on the hay. Pamela ran her hand
lightly over the black silk, enjoying its texture. She thought
it a shame that he would
put
such exquisite
material upon
hay.
“Sit on it,” Phantom prodded, taking Pamela by the upper arm
and urging her onto the cape. “We’ve got a couple hours
yet to kill, so you might just as well get comfortable.”
Pamela knelt on the cape, though she was careful to keep
her boots off the fabric as she sat with legs curled beneath
her and to the side.
“Why is it
you
hate Jonathon Darwell?” Pamela asked then,
at last feeling a certain sense of safety after so many hours
of unremitting emotional strain. “You seem to know an
awful lot about him, his house, and all the people in it.”
Beneath the mask that covered his eyes, Phantom’s mouth
curled into a smile that touched Pamela deep inside.
“I like your dimple,” she whispered.
In a bold gesture for her, she touched his face lightly with her fingertips. That night he had reached out to her, but she’d never been the one to bridge the chasm that separated them physically.
“You won’t tell me why you want to destroy Jonathon Darwell,” Pamela continued. “And you’re embarrassed about your dimple.
”
Phantom tossed his Stetson aside. He’d had women tease him flirtatiously before, to be sure, but he’d never had anyone accuse him of having a double standard. He didn’t like the accusation, though he couldn’t blame Pamela in the least for voicing it.
“I don’t mean to,” he said quietly. “For reasons that are crucial to me, I must keep my identity a
secret. And because I must, I am in a position where I
might be able to help you, but you can do nothing for
me.”
Pamela looked away.
Phantom looked at Pamela’s profile, and another surge of
emotion went through him, this one heated, sensual, irre
pressible. 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 ar
gued 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-play
ing 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 sensa
tion 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 be
neath their fine uniforms
, were not a world away—they were very close. Dangerously close. That was why she and Phantom had to whis
per, 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 noth
ing more than a diverting way to pass the time while wait
ing 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 Phantom.
“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 ac
corded 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 sensa
tion 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, pre
cise 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, a
nd 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. Ac
tually, 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 com
fortable 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 com
pose 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 as
pirations 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.