Nan Ryan (40 page)

Lew raised his head to look at her. Her hair swirled around her head in an oversized fan of gleaming gold and her breasts were pointing proudly to the sun, their crests tight little rosettes of sweetness. He felt his breath grow short, felt his growing erection.

“I’m still thirsty,” he said, scooped up a handful of water and let it spill from his palm into the hollow of Mollie’s throat. He bent his head and captured the water with his mouth as it trickled down her chest.

Mollie’s breath grew short too. “Still thirsty?” she asked huskily.

He nodded, his silky black hair tickling her chin. She scooped up more water and dribbled it onto her taut, left nipple. Lew licked away the diamond droplets and stayed to suck on the passion-hardened center as Mollie’s eyes closed in building rapture. He lazily spilled some water over her right nipple and his lips moved to it while Mollie’s fingers curled into his hair to press him closer.

Mollie lay there stretched out on her bed of rock in the shallow, placid water while Lew’s warm mouth enclosed her aching nipple and his hard, heavy cock pressed insistently against her bare hip. She was suddenly very grateful for the cooling water flowing around her. If not for it she would surely have burst into flame.

Her eyes opening and closing with pleasure, she watched Lew’s lips leave her tingling nipple. He put out the tip of his tongue and licked a circle around the passion-darkened bud, then dragged his teeth across it and said hoarsely, “I’m still thirsty.”

He cupped more water in his hand, poured it into her navel, and looked at her face, his blue eyes burning with desire.

“Drink,” Mollie whispered breathlessly. “Drink, my love.”

Lew bent to her. Mollie’s stomach quivered when his hot, wet lips covered the small indentation and rolled the beads of water up onto his tongue. He stayed to probe the navel for any residue of moisture and to place dozens of plucking kisses around its circumference. Mollie luxuriated in the delicious joy, but felt that she would surely explode from the excitement surging through her heated, yearning body.

Finally Lew raised his head. With quick, fluid grace, he parted her legs and moved between, sliding down on his stomach until his face was above her flat belly. Mollie tensed when he cupped more water into his palm and moved his hand directly over the blond triangle between her pale, parted thighs. Their gazes locked as Lew slowly spread his fingers and allowed the cool water to spill down into the golden curls.

“Still thirsty,” he said, as the water beaded, then trickled down through the dense golden triangle to the hot, slick flesh beneath and Lew’s gentle fingers urged the springy coils aside so the water could find and follow its natural path. “Let me, baby,” he whispered. “Let me drink my fill.”

Mollie couldn’t answer. Her throat wouldn’t work. It was far too tight, too dry. Her heart beat fiercely and she felt she couldn’t get a breath. Her arms, her legs, they wouldn’t move. As if in a dream, she lay there totally still and helpless with this daring, dark-skinned god lying between her parted thighs, his handsome face slowly, surely lowering to her.

“Soooo thirsty,” Lew murmured as his hands went beneath her and Mollie anxiously exhaled when his strong fingers cupped her buttocks and he gently lifted her to him.

“Lewwww,” his name came out in a startled gasp as this magnificent man she loved bent to her and pressed his dark hot face into the dampened golden curls.

Mollie’s entire body spasmed when he nuzzled and kissed her in that spot where she was throbbing and blazing hot. Her back arched up out of the shallow water and her eyes closed when his mouth found and enclosed that pulsing, aching source of all her sensual joy.

Lew’s face sank deeper into her. His eyes wide open, he stroked her lovingly with his tongue while Mollie moaned and called his name and tossed her head as jolt after jolt of incredible sensation shook her to the core. The shocking pleasure was so intense it swept away all logical thought. Mollie felt herself being lifted into a wild new kingdom of exquisite ecstasy. Time did not exist there, space did not exist there, the whole troubled world did not exist there.

Only incredible splendor.

“Mollie, my love,” he mused aloud, “you’ll
never be free of me.” His grin was evil, his gray eyes demonic, as he lifted the cross he had found to his bearded face and pressed his thin lips to it. Looking up then, the Texas Kid said, “They’re not far ahead. They camped here in the past two or three days. We’ll ride out of the canyon, head due east and overtake them.” He put the cross in his breast pocket. “Remember, when we find them, nobody is to touch Mollie. Understand?”

His men nodded.

“Kill him if you get the chance, but don’t risk firing if there’s any danger of hitting her.” He grinned and scratched his bearded chin. “She’ll get her punishment, but I’ll be the one doling it out.
Comprende?”

Again his men nodded.

“Then let’s go get her,” said the Kid, and climbed back on his horse. He slapped the reins across his gelding’s neck as tingling excitement filled his chest. In a matter of hours—days at most—his little blond wildcat would be back in his arms.

And he would never let her go.

Mollie and Lew had quit the canyon and were riding through the colorful Goldmine Mountains of the towering San Francisco Range as the sun began to wester. Lew explained to Mollie that they would ride to Flagstaff Spring and stay the night at a brand-new hotel an enterprising Easterner had recently built there.

There they would purchase supplies, buy a couple of fresh horses from an area rancher, enjoy a fancy meal, and sleep in an honest-to-God bed. After a good night’s rest, they would head east and, hopefully, make it down out of the mountains before the snows came.

Lengthening shadows stole down the sides of the timbered mountains when Lew, pointing, said, “There it is, honey. The Hotel Mountainaire.”

Two hundred feet below, a huge, three-story brick building was the only structure in the wide, high valley. It looked out of place amidst the towering pines and fragrant cedars. Rising grandly toward the cloudless Arizona sky, the big hotel was a pleasing sight to Mollie. Her first thought on seeing it was,
Tonight I’ll sleep in a comfortable bed with Lew. Such luxury
.

When Lew led Mollie into the hotel’s lobby, she admired the many-prismed chandelier suspended from the three-story-high ceiling. She looked around. To one side of the darkly paneled lobby, a pair of louvered swinging doors opened into a saloon. Directly opposite the saloon entrance, a matching pair of doors was the entrance to a general store.

Mollie paused beside a tall wing chair of smooth wine leather while Lew walked to the back of the lobby and rang the bell for service. She couldn’t hear what Lew was saying, but she saw the puzzled look on the desk clerk’s thin face give way to disdain as he threw his hands in the air as if giving up.

Seemingly undaunted, Lew continued to talk softly, smiling as he spoke. Straining to hear, Mollie wondered with dismay if the hotel was full. Disappointment swamped her at the prospect.

The conversation between Lew and desk clerk continued and, his smile growing broader, Lew pulled out a roll of paper bills, peeled off several, and laid them on the counter. The clerk looked at the money, then at Lew, and finally nodded his head. Lew signed the guest register and Mollie breathed a great sigh of relief.

“We have the fanciest suite in the Mountainaire,” Lew said when he came to her, took her arm.

“Wonderful. Let’s go right up and—”

“Not just yet. We need those supplies.”

“Lew, let’s do that tomorrow. I’m tired and hungry.”

“I know, but the room’s not quite ready.”

Mollie sighed wearily. “How long before …?”

“Not long.” He propelled her to the general store’s slatted doors and urged her inside.

A portly woman looked up and smiled warmly. “Anything special you folks need? We have just about everything.”

Her mind on the evening meal and the comfortable room awaiting them, Mollie leaned on the counter while Lew chose warm clothes, fur covers, canned goods, rope and candles. When the counter was stacked high with his choices, he told the proprietress he would be back come morning to pay and pick up the merchandise.

Back out in the lobby, Lew said, “Let’s go play a quick hand of—”

Mollie irritably interrupted, “Lew, I am starving. Let’s go to the dining room for dinner.”

“Ah, Mollie, just one hand of faro.” His voice was soft, persuasive. “Remember how much you liked the game in Prescott?”

She pursed her lips, but allowed him to usher her into the saloon and gambling hall. He directed her to a faro table where a tall, rawboned dealer nodded and went to work as soon as she was seated.

Mollie felt a mild flutter of excitement similar to that on the night she had gambled in Prescott. In a few short minutes she was winning and having such a good time she had forgotten about dinner.

Standing behind her, his bootheel hooked over the bottom rung of her chair, Lew said, after a half hour had passed, “That’s it, sweetheart. Let’s go.”

“Oh, must we?” She protested. “I’m winning, and—”

“You can play again after dinner if you like.”

“Very well, but don’t forget you said so.”

“I won’t forget,” he said, smiling enigmatically and adding mysteriously, “but you may.”

When he headed for the stairs, Mollie said, “Aren’t we going to the dining room?”

“I think not,” he said and winked at her.

“What’s going on here?” Mollie asked as they climbed the carpeted stairs. “There’s a devilish gleam in your eyes like you know something I don’t. What is it?”

Lew shrugged, smiled. “You’re imagining things.”

On the second floor, at the end of the corridor, Lew stopped before a massive door, put a key in the lock, and said, “I believe, Miss Rogers, you’ll approve of your accommodations.”

He opened the door, and Mollie swept inside. She was midway through the spacious sitting room when she stopped short and her hands flew up to her cheeks as she squealed, “Lew Hatton! I don’t believe it! I do not believe it!”

Across the silk-walled room, below a quartet of two-story high windows with the heavy drapes thrown open to the star-filled night, sat a large dining table. A red linen cloth covered the table’s surface and fell to the plush carpet. Upon the cloth covered table, two dozen tall, red candles in silver candelabrum cast soft, honeyed light on sparkling crystal, fine porcelain, and Georgian silver.

And on an oversized bathtub with steam rising from its soapy depths. The tub was atop the table.

Loving the look on her face, Lew said, “What are you waiting for?”

Mollie turned to him, her cheeks hot, her eyes flashing with excitement and surprise. “I never expected … I didn’t actually mean …”

“Didn’t you?” He stepped closer, his heavy-lidded gaze becoming blatantly sexual. He unbuckled his gun belt and laid it aside. “Got cold feet? Change your mind?”

Lew opened his shirt down his dark chest and reached for Mollie. He deftly unbuttoned hers, pushed it down her arms and off, then lifted her chemise up over her head. Holding the flimsy satin undergarment in his hand, he drew her to him, tilted her face up to his, and kissed her.

He said, “Aren’t you going to give me a bath like you promised? Or must I find myself another woman?”

Mollie’s hands went to his belt buckle as she said, “You’ll
never
need another woman.” She whipped the belt out of his trousers, whirled it around his waist, and drew him closer. “Never. You hear me, Hatton?”

“I hear you, sweetheart.”

“I, and no other, will do everything for you and to you,” Mollie told him, feeling his body’s response to her nearness. Experiencing a delicious sense of power, she said, “I am indeed going to bathe you, my love.”

She slipped a hand between them and began unbuttoning his snug trousers while Lew, enjoying her assertiveness to the fullest, let his arms fall to his sides and stood there gladly allowing her to undress him.

“You’re mighty good at this,” he teased when she managed to get his boots off and then swiftly peeled his trousers down his hips. “Sure you haven’t had practice?”