Icy fear gripped her heart as he pushed her over sharp stones and through patches of briars. Lilah stumbled on, mindless of the damage to her feet, knowing those injuries would be minor compared to the ones she would suffer from Chapman.
The gelding was strong and gave what was asked of him. When the trail was clear, Tabor kept him in a gallop. At times when he lost it, he led the horse, often resorting to holding a lighted torch over the ground to find it again. He tried to keep his speed faster than the tracks indicated the pair ahead were moving. He thought he must have made up half an hour of the lead they had on him.
Whatever Delilah—Lilah, he corrected himself—was, he had never meant for her to be in any danger because of him. He felt the rise of a strong protective instinct. It didn’t occur to him that in her eyes he might have been doing the same thing as this man who had forced her to leave the camp.
Seeing her out on the trail would be enough to arouse a man’s lust. He supposed the man had hung back and followed them most of the day, then waited near the camp until Lilah gave him an easy opening for kidnapping. She was safe as long as they kept moving. Evidently the hombre who had her wanted to put miles between him and a rescue party. Tabor urged the gelding to go faster, calculating how much more stamina the horse had. He couldn’t slack off, but he couldn’t risk wearing out his horse and winding up on foot either. He knew what any man low enough to abduct a woman would do as soon as he felt safe enough to let his guard down.
He had to find Lilah before that happened. A cold sweat broke out on his brow at the thought of anyone taking her with brutal force. Lilah might not be an innocent, but no woman deserved to be taken against her will. Back by the stream he had seen boot prints. Both horses ahead wore shoes, which meant it probably wasn’t a renegade Indian who had snared her. That might be good, though he knew some white men who could be as heartless.
Already this man had crossed the line that would allow Tabor to show him mercy. His hand went involuntarily to the handle of one of the guns at his side. Grim creases cut into his brow; his lips were sealed tight. He knew deep in his heart he could shoot Lilah’s captor in the back without a qualm. The gelding, lathered and nearly winded, but still in a lope, whinnied lightly.
“Easy now. No noise.” Tabor laid his hand on the horse’s neck and spoke softly to him. He guessed his mount had picked up the familiar scent of Lilah’s horse. He rode a few more yards, then dismounted and followed the fresh tracks. Lilah and the man had dismounted too. The gruesome thought that he might not have reached her in time tore at his insides.
Hearing sounds ahead, Tabor tied the gelding and proceeded on foot. The voices came from only a hundred or so yards ahead, muffled but clearly from a man and a woman. He moved toward them but stopped when he saw a bundle of cloth on the ground. Tabor picked it up and felt his blood chill to ice. Lilah’s yellow dress. The implication cut him in two, still he moved ahead cautiously, not daring to rush in and maybe cost Lilah her life.
* * *
Chapman’s slap knocked Lilah to the ground and left her jaw feeling as if it had been stung by a hundred bees. Too tangled in her petticoats to jump to her feet, she scrambled into a thicket, hoping to avoid more of his wrath. Chapman, ugly red veins pulsing in his neck and temples, pursued her.
“You’re no woman,” he ranted.
Lilah pushed herself back along the ground with her hands. “Please,” she cried. “I don’t know what you want.”
He snarled. “I want you to act like a woman. I want you to make me feel like a man.”
“How?” Lilah whimpered.
She had an ugly suspicion why Chapman was enraged. Stripped down to his drawers and boots but with his gun in his hand, he was a fanatical sight standing over her, urging his limp, flaccid member to rise.
Breathing raggedly as if he couldn’t get enough air, Chapman rubbed his hand over his groin. “I’m warning you. Make something happen.”
“Tell me how. Tell me what,” Lilah pleaded. She thought she might rather die than follow through with what he said, but maybe if he thought she was willing, he’d put down that gun. And just maybe she could get her hands on it.
“Your mouth,” Chapman said. “With your mouth.”
Repulsed and feeling the heaves start in her stomach again, Lilah shrank away from Chapman, not realizing how that would anger him.
He planted his foot on the ruffles of her petticoat. “Don’t back off from me, gal.” The gun waved close to her face. “You don’t back away from Stanton, do you?”
“Yes,” Lilah said weakly.
Chapman ground her petticoat into the dirt. “Don’t lie to me neither. I’m not fool enough to believe Stanton hasn’t been shaking the sheets on your bed.” He dropped down on his knees. “I reckon you’re quick to spread for him.”
“No,” Lilah whispered, drawing her body into a tight knot as Chapman leaned into her.
Eyes glazed over, he touched the red spot his slap had left on her cheek. “I’m gonna leave my marks all over you,” he said. “That’s what I do to gals who don’t get my cock up. I put my teeth in ‘em, Lilah. I bite till the blood runs out. I bite ‘em everywhere, Lilah. And them that don’t like it, I take my knife to. I ain’t gonna have to do that to you, am I, Lilah? Am I?”
“No, no,” Lilah whispered, hoping against hope Chapman was only trying to scare her into submitting to him without a fight.
The rough inside of his hand slid down her neck and over her shoulder; then he moved it to his groin. His member hadn’t grown an iota. A tic started in his eyelid, turning on the uncontrollable spasms he got every time he tried to take a woman. He damned Abe Wafield for that. The tic had started the same time he had lost his ability to get an erection, back that day when he was nineteen and fucking the hell out of Wafield’s daughter.
The little bitch was just fourteen and had a face about as pretty as Wafield’s old rabbit hound, but she had been prissing around and leading him on for two weeks, all the time since he’d hired on to help Wafield work his farm. Finally one day she had come down to the barn where he was tending the cows.
“I ain’t never had a sweetheart, Judd. I ain’t never had a boy to kiss me.” Judy followed right behind him while he was pitching hay to the cows. “Pa’s gone off to town and Ma’s busy in the house with the little ‘uns,” she hinted.
He stopped for a minute and jabbed the tines of the pitchfork in the dirt. “You wantin’ somebody to kiss you, Judy? That why you been swinging your skirts around me? That it?”
Judy turned red to the roots of her hair. “I reckon it is, Judd,” she admitted, her stubby-lashed lids going down. “Wouldn’t nobody have to know ‘cept you and me.
Chapman grinned wide. The little twit. He’d show her about kissing and something else too. “Well, come on over here then,” he told her. “Come on over here by the feed room where it’s kinda dark.”
Judy followed him over there, looking about as stiff and appealing as one of the scarecrows out in the field. But he could see those soft triangles under her dress where her young breasts were starting to bud out. She closed her eyes and lifted up her face for a peck on the lips. He gave her that but got her by the arms and jacked her up against the wall and then he covered those tempting little swells with his hands. Judy got scared and started crying and saying she needed to get on back to the house. But it was too late for that by then.
“Shut up, you slut,” he warned her. “You got what you wanted, now I’m gonna get what I want.” Feeling a hot surge in his loins, he ripped open the front of her homespun dress and uncovered the dusky breast buds that looked like they were just waiting for him to take them in his mouth. Judy screamed when he did that but he shut her up by slamming his mouth over her lips and driving his tongue in her mouth so far she choked on it.
Hot, sour sweat poured from Chapman’s body as he remembered what happened after that, he pushed Judy into the feed room and tore off her cotton drawers and then he busted into her with all the fury he had in him. Judy screamed like a dying owl and he reckoned she fainted after that. But it didn’t matter because he just kept hammering into her anyway.
Chapman shuddered and the tic got so bad he had to cover it with his hand. Old Wafield found them on the corn sacks in the feed room and snatched him off his daughter just before he finished with her. Wafield handed Judy out the door to her wild-eyed mother. From what he had heard later, Judy Wafield went soft in the head afterward, couldn’t stand to be around a man, not even her pa. Served her right, though, because with him being in no condition to run, Wafield caught him by the neck and threw him down.
Chapman pressed the heel of his hand against his twitching eye. Wafield, red with rage, started bellowing about rape and Judy being just fourteen. Wafield didn’t give a shit that Judy had asked for it, had been asking for it. Telling him that just made the bastard madder.
Chapman croaked for air. For a minute he didn’t see Lilah cringing there in front of him or hear her pleading for him to let her go. He heard Wafield yelling he’d fix that smart cock, and then the big man took that bullwhip of his and damn near stripped all the skin off Chapman’s body. When he was done with the whip, he spread-eagled him and stomped his testicles until Chapman stopped screaming and passed out.
Chapman shuddered convulsively. He hoped Wafield was burning in hell, and that little whore Judy with him. Since that day, no matter how much he wanted a woman, he couldn’t drive himself into one. But he kept trying and kept trying to find another way to get the same release. What he did with his teeth to whores and the young girls he sometimes managed to lure off alone came close, but never close enough.
Chapman moved up on Lilah, his pupils cold and fixed as snake eyes. He wiped sweat from his face with the back of his sleeve. “I bet that white flesh tastes sweet as sugar.” He groaned. “Untie them ribbons on that camisole. I want to see your breasts.”
“I can’t.” She meant it. Frozen with fear, she couldn’t make her arms move.
“Do it!” Chapman warned. He pulled the hammer of the gun back with his thumb.
Lilah, wrists tied, fumbled with the ribbons, opening up the front of her camisole, exposing her cleavage to his mad-dog gaze.
Chapman licked his lips. “That’s mighty purty,” he growled. “I bit a woman’s tit clean off one time ‘cause she wouldn’t make me proud. You gonna let that happen to you?”
“No, no,” she said weakly. Knowing any show of tears would only bring more abuse from him, she bit her tongue and concentrated on the pain.
“That’s good to hear,” he said, giving a half-sneer, half-smile. He laid the gun to one side and straddled her legs. Lilah rubbed her wrists when he freed them from the tight bonds. Indicating the slit in the front of his drawers, he whispered to her, “Touch me.”
Lilah followed the placement of the gun without moving her eyes. God’s mercy! She hoped she could reach it in one try, otherwise she didn’t think she would want to see tomorrow. She felt her mind going black with terror. But she couldn’t faint. Being unconscious wouldn’t stop Chapman’s wrath. He was a madman, a sexually deficient one, and he expected her to make him a man.
A strangled cry slipped from her lips. Chapman’s cruel face contorted more.
“I said touch me,” he repeated.
Lilah stretched out a trembling hand toward him. Let him think she was going to touch him. But if she couldn’t reach the gun, he would have to kill her first.
Feeling a stir in his groin for one of the few times in all those years, Chapman closed his eyes to slits and groaned in lustful anticipation. At last. He groaned loudly. At last. It was happening to him.
“Get off her, Chapman!” Tabor, his voice a deadly snarl, lunged into view. If he could have fired without hitting Lilah, the bastard would already be dead.
Awkwardly positioned for a fight, Chapman yelled a curse and started to his feet. Trying to get clear of him, Lilah lurched and rolled away, knocking Chapman on his side. Cursing her and trying to straighten out, he belly-crawled toward his gun.
“Move, Lilah! Move!” Tabor shouted, wanting a clear line of fire.
Lilah, still foggy with fear, was slow to realize what Tabor wanted her to do. Ripping her petticoats as she bolted away from Chapman, she had only the presence of mind to mutter a prayer of thanks she had been saved.
Almost blind with pain and fury, Chapman groveled for his gun and found it as the girl bounded past him. He snarled a curse. He needed her for cover to get away, but there wasn’t time to grab her before Tabor fired at him and he had to slide behind a fallen tree. The bullet sent splinters of wood and bark spattering into the air. Chapman fired back two shots without even attempting to take aim. The next of Tabor’s bullets vented the baggy leg of his drawers. Chapman sent off another two wild shots.
Lilah was between them with the paltry cover of a stump protecting her from Chapman’s bullets. Tabor ordered her to flatten out on the ground, a decision he quickly regretted, because it drew Chapman’s attention back to her.
Gasping for breath, Chapman stilled himself to look. He could see a shimmer of red-gold hair and aimed at it. “I’ll split her skull, Stanton,” he yelled. “Throw out your gun.”
Tabor plastered himself against the tree trunk that was his cover. “I hope you had a full round in that gun, Chapman, because when you do I’m going to put a hole right through your rotten heart.”
Chapman fired at the stump. The bullet whizzed by Lilah’s head. She screamed, not because she was hit, but because she was suddenly unsure Tabor was going to give up his gun.
“The next one’s gonna give her a third eye. You want to see that?”
“No,” Tabor answered hollowly. Lilah heard a thud and wasn’t sure if it was Tabor’s pistol or her heart falling. “Your choice, Chapman. You’ve got one bullet left, either for her or for me.”
Chapman’s laugh sounded like glass breaking. He stood but let Tabor see his gun was still aimed at Lilah. “It’s yours, Stanton. I still got a use for her. Step out here, though, I ain’t too choosy.”