Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Matt Moran.” As he spoke, he stuffed clothes back into the saddlebag. “But most folks call me Reno.”
Eve’s eyes widened to startled pools of gold. She had heard about the man called Reno. He was a gunfighter, but he never looked for battles. Nor did he hire out his lethal skills. He simply went his own way through the wild country, looking for placer gold during the high-mountain summers and for Spanish gold in the red hush of desert winter.
For a few crazy moments, Eve thought of bolting into the underbrush and hiding until Reno gave up and rode away. Almost as soon as the idea came, she abandoned it.
Reno’s aura of lazy grace no longer fooled her. She had seen him move in the saloon, his hands so fast they blurred. The Lyons had often praised Eve’s quick fingers, but she had no doubt that the man called Reno was faster than she was. She wouldn’t get three steps from her bedroll before he caught her.
“Don’t suppose you’d want to tell me where my ring is?” Reno asked after a moment.
“
Your
ring?” Eve asked indignantly. “It belonged to Don and Donna Lyon!”
“Until you stole it and lost it to Raleigh King, and I won it from him,” Reno said, shooting her a glance out of eyes like green ice. “Then it became my ring.”
“I didn’t steal it!”
Reno laughed.
It wasn’t a warm sound.
“Sure,
gata
,” he said sardonically, “you didn’t steal the ring. You just won it in a card game, right? Was it your deal by any chance?”
Anger rippled through Eve, driving out the odd sensations that had bothered her since she had seen the delicate pearls held so gently in Reno’s hand. With the surge of anger came a diminishing of her caution. Once more her hand eased toward the shotgun that lay just beyond her blankets.
“Actually,” Eve said in a clipped voice, “the ring was taken at gunpoint from a dying man.”
Reno gave her a disgusted look and went back to rummaging in the saddlebag.
“If you don’t believe me—” she began.
“Oh, I believe you, all right,” he interrupted. “I just didn’t think you’d be so proud of outright robbery.”
“I wasn’t the one holding the gun!”
“Had a partner, did you?”
“Damn you, why won’t you listen to me?” Eve demanded, furious that Reno thought her a thief.
“I’m listening. I’m just not hearing anything worth believing.”
“Try shutting up. You might be amazed at the things you learn with your mouth closed.”
The corner of Reno’s mouth lifted slightly, but it was the only sign he gave that he had heard Eve. Almost absently he groped in the saddlebag,
searching for the ring. The cool, unmistakable feel of a gold coin brought his full attention back to his search.
“Didn’t think you had time to spend anything,” Reno said with satisfaction. “Old Jericho didn’t let any grass grow under his feet before he—”
The words ended abruptly as Reno tossed aside the saddlebag and uncoiled in a swift lunge that ended with the shotgun being yanked from Eve’s fingers.
The next thing Eve knew, she had been jerked from beneath the covers and was dangling from Reno’s powerful hands like a sack of flour. Fear shot through her. Without thinking, she brought her knee up fast and hard between Reno’s legs as Donna had taught her to do.
Reno blocked the blow before it could do any damage. When Eve went for his eyes, he buried his face against her throat and took her down to the ground.
Before Eve knew what had happened, she was stretched out flat on her back, unable to fight, unable to defend herself, unable to move at all except to take tiny, shallow breaths. Reno’s big body covered every bit of hers, driving the air from her lungs and the fight from her body. The bedroll’s thickness did little to cushion her from the hard ground beneath her.
“Let me go,” she gasped.
“Do I look like a fool?” he asked dryly. “God only knows what other nasty little tricks your mama taught you.”
“My mama died before I ever knew her face.”
“Uh-huh,” Reno said, obviously unmoved. “I suppose you’re a poor little orphan child with no one to look after you.”
Eve gritted her teeth and tried to get a grip on
her temper. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
“Poor little
gata
,” Reno said coolly. “Stop telling me sad stories or I’ll cloud up and cry all over you.”
“I’d settle for you getting off of me.”
“Why?”
“You’re crushing me. I can’t even breathe.”
“Really?”
Reno looked at the flushed, beautiful, furious face that was only inches from his own.
“Odd,” he said deeply, “you’re not having a bit of trouble talking at thirty to the dozen.”
“Listen, you overgrown, overbearing gunfighter,” Eve said icily. Then she corrected herself. “No, you’re not a gunfighter. You’re a thief who makes his living robbing people who are too weak to—mmph!”
Eve’s words had been effectively cut off by Reno’s mouth closing over hers.
For an instant she was too shocked to do anything but lie rigid beneath his warm, overwhelming weight. Then she felt the sure thrust of his tongue between her teeth and panicked. Twisting, kicking, trying to throw him off, she fought with every bit of strength in her body.
Reno laughed without releasing Eve’s mouth and deliberately let himself sink down over her, pinning her to the ground with his much greater weight, absorbing her struggles without in the least stopping the sensual probing of his tongue within her mouth.
Eve’s wild, futile fighting did nothing but wear her out and make her desperate for air. Yet when she tried to breathe, she couldn’t, for Reno’s weight was too great to shift from her chest even the bare inch she needed.
The world began to go gray, then black, receding from her in a rush, spinning away.
The small, frightened sound Eve made as she felt herself fainting did what none of her struggles had accomplished. Reno lifted his head and body just enough to allow her to breathe.
“That’s your second lesson,” Reno said calmly when Eve’s dazed gold eyes focused on him once more.
“What—what do—you mean?” she gasped.
“I’m faster than you are. That was your first lesson. I’m stronger than you are. That was your second lesson. And the third lesson…”
“W-What?”
Reno smiled oddly, looked at Eve’s trembling lips, and said huskily, “The third lesson was mine to learn.”
He saw her wide, confused eyes and smiled again.
This time Eve understood why the smile seemed odd to her. It was much too gentle to belong to a man like Reno Moran.
“I learned that you taste hotter than whiskey and sweeter than wine,” he said simply.
Before Eve could say anything, Reno lowered his head once more.
“This time give it back to me,
gata.
I like it hot and deep.”
“What?” Eve asked, wondering if she had lost her mind.
“Your tongue,” he said against her open mouth. “Take that quick little tongue and rub it over mine.”
For an instant Eve thought she had heard wrong.
Reno took her sudden stillness for agreement. He lowered his head and made a husky sound of pleasure as he tasted her once more.
The sound Eve made was pure surprise at the gliding caress. For the space of a heartbeat she felt
like a pearl being delicately held by a powerful hand. Then she remembered where she was and who Reno was and all the warnings Donna had given her about the nature of men and what they wanted from women.
Eve jerked her head aside, but not before she had felt the hot, textured surface of his tongue rubbing over her own.
“No,” Eve said urgently, frightened again.
But this time it was herself she feared, for a curious weakness had shot through her at the caressing touch of Reno’s tongue.
Donna Lyon had warned her bond servant about what men wanted from women, but she had never warned Eve that women might want the same thing from men.
“Why not?” Reno asked calmly. “You liked kissing me.”
“No.”
“Like hell,
gata
. I could feel it.”
“You’re—you’re a gunfighter and a thief.”
“You’re half-right. I’ve fought with my gun. But as for being a thief, I’m only taking what is rightfully mine—the pearls, the ring, the journal, and the girl with the golden eyes.”
“It wasn’t a fair poker game,” Eve said desperately as Reno bent down to her once more.
“Not my fault. I wasn’t the one dealing.”
Reno brushed his mouth lazily over Eve’s and listened to the surprised rush of air between her lips.
“But—” she began.
“Hush,” Reno said, cutting off Eve’s protest by biting her lower lip gently. “I won you and I’m going to have you.”
“No. Please, don’t.”
“Don’t worry.” Slowly Reno released Eve’s lip.
“You’ll like it. I’ll see to it.”
“Let me go,” Eve said urgently.
“Not a chance. You’re mine until I say otherwise.”
He smiled and kissed the frantic pulse in her throat.
“If you’re real nice,” he said in a low voice, “I’ll let you go after a few nights.”
“Mr. Moran, please, I didn’t mean to lose the bet. It’s just that Mr. Slater was watching too closely.”
“So was I.”
Reno lifted his head and lookéd down at Eve curiously.
“You dealt every card of mine off the bottom of the deck,” he said. “Why?”
Eve spoke quickly, trying to keep Reno’s attention on anything but the sultry, sexual heat that made his eyes burn like gems.
“I knew Raleigh King and Jericho Slater,” she said. “I didn’t know you.”
“So you set me up to be killed while you ran off with the pot.”
Eve couldn’t help the guilty flush that crept up her cheeks.
“I didn’t mean it to turn out that way,” she said.
“But it almost did, and you didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.”
“I shot at Steamboat when he was drawing down on you!”
“With what?” Reno scoffed. “Did you throw a gold coin at him?”
“My derringer. I keep it in my skirt pocket.”
“Handy. Do you have to shoot your way out of many card games?” Reno asked.
“No.”
“Pretty good cheater, huh?”
“I don’t cheat! Not usually, anyway. I just…”
Her voice died.
Amused and skeptical at Eve’s difficulty in finding the right words to explain how she was innocent when both of them knew she wasn’t, Reno lifted one black eyebrow and waited for her to continue.
“I didn’t know until too late that Slater knew I was cheating,” Eve admitted unhappily. “I knew he was cheating, but I couldn’t catch him at it. So I lost to you when I should have stayed in and called Slater.”
“The emerald ring,” Reno said, nodding. “With the cards you threw in, you should have hung around for at least one draw. But you didn’t. So I won that hand, because Slater hadn’t had time to deal himself the rest of his full house.”
Eve blinked, surprised by Reno’s quickness. “Are you a gambler?”
He shook his head.
“Then how did you know what Slater was doing?” she persisted.
“Simple. When he dealt, he won. Then you started dropping out too soon, and I started winning hands I shouldn’t have.”
“Your mama didn’t raise any stupid children, did she?” muttered Eve.
“Oh, I’m one of the slow ones,” Reno said in a lazy drawl. “You should see my older brothers, especially Rafe.”
Eve blinked as she tried to imagine anyone faster than Reno. She couldn’t.
“All through explaining?” Reno asked politely.
“What?”
“This.”
Reno bent just enough to cover Eve’s mouth with his own. When he felt her tighten beneath him as
though to fight again, he settled more heavily on her, reminding her of the lesson she had already learned: When it came to a contest of strength, she didn’t have a chance against Reno Moran.
Tentatively Eve relaxed, wondering if Reno would release her if she didn’t fight him.
Immediately the overwhelming pressure of his body lifted until it was little more than a warm, disturbingly sensual contact from her shoulders to her feet.
“Now kiss me back,” Reno whispered.
“Then you’ll let me go?”
“Then we’ll negotiate some more.”
“And if I don’t kiss you?”
“Then I’ll take what is already mine, and to hell with what you want.”
“You wouldn’t,” she whispered weakly.
“Care to bet?”
Eve looked into the cool green eyes so close to her own and realized that she never should have allowed Reno Moran to sit down at her poker table.
She was very good at reading most people, but not this man. Right now she couldn’t tell if he was bluffing or telling her the simple truth.
Don Lyon’s sage advice rang in Eve’s mind:
When you can’t tell if a man is running a bluff, and you can’t afford the ante if you lose, then fold your cards and wait for a better deal.
W
ITH
trembling lips, Eve lifted her head to give Reno the kiss he had demanded. After a quick pressure of her mouth against his, she retreated, her heart beating wildly.
“You call that a kiss?” Reno asked.
She nodded, because she was too nervous to speak.
“I should have guessed you’d cheat with your body the same way you cheat with cards,” he said, disgusted.
“I kissed you!”
“The way a frightened virgin kisses her first boy. Well, you’re no virgin, and I’m no wide-eyed country boy.”
“But I—I am,” she stammered.
Reno said something beneath his breath, then added in a cutting voice, “Save the wide-eyed act for a pup that’s still wet behind the ears. Men my age know everything worth knowing about women’s
tricks, and everything we know, we learned the hard way.”
“Then you didn’t learn enough. I’m not what you think I am.”
“Neither am I,” he retorted dryly. “I haven’t been taken in by that look of wide-eyed innocence since I was innocent myself. That was a long time ago.”
Eve opened her mouth to further argue her innocence, but a single look at Reno’s face convinced her that he had already made up his mind on the subject. There was nothing of comfort in his ice green eyes or in the flat line of his mouth beneath his mustache. He believed she was a saloon girl and a cheat, pure and simple.
Even worse, she couldn’t wholly blame him. She
had
cheated him. Although she hadn’t started out to use Reno in her deadly game with Slater and Raleigh, in the end she had risked Reno’s life without so much as warning him of what was at stake.
To add insult to injury, she had run off with the very pot she had cheated to give to Reno. The fact that he had survived at all was due to his own unusual skill with a gun. She hadn’t even known who he was, so she could hardly say that she was certain he would be able to fight free of the trap he had walked into.
A kiss seemed a simple enough apology to a man whose death she had nearly caused.
Lifting up again, Eve put her lips over Reno’s. This time she didn’t retreat instantly. Instead, she increased the pressure of the kiss gradually, learning the smooth resilience of his lips in a silence that was bounded by the frantic beating of her heart.
When Reno made no move to deepen or to end the kiss, Eve hesitated, wondering what she should do next. Though Reno didn’t believe it, she had
told the truth about her innocence. The few times she hadn’t been fast enough to dodge a kiss from a cowboy, there had been nothing gentle or pleasant about the embrace. They had grabbed, she had fought free, and that had been the end of it. If there had been any sensual enjoyment in the experience, it hadn’t been hers.
But Reno wasn’t grabbing, and Eve had agreed to this kiss. She just didn’t know how to go about it. The realization perplexed her almost as much as the discovery that kissing Reno affected her in an entirely unexpected way.
She liked it.
“Reno?”
“Keep going. I’ll get an honest kiss out of you yet.”
Tentatively Eve’s hands crept around Reno’s neck, for she was becoming tired of holding herself in a half-upright position. At first she was reluctant to trust her weight to his strength, but the temptation was too great to resist for long. Gradually the pressure of her arms around his neck increased as she allowed him to support more and more of her weight.
“Better,” Reno said in a deep voice.
His lips were very close to Eve’s. The warmth of his breath sent a glittering wash of sensation over her. For an instant her own breath hesitated, then came back quickened. She arched her body to close the remaining distance between her mouth and Reno’s.
The first touch of his lips was already familiar, as was the frisson of pleasure that went over Eve when their mouths met. The silken brush of his mustache over the edge of her upper lip was also a pleasure she had known before. Yet each time she felt it, the intensity of the sensation grew
greater, shortening her breath even more.
“I wouldn’t have guessed,” Eve whispered.
She was so close that each word was a separate brush over Reno’s mouth. It was the same when he spoke to her, each word a caress.
“What wouldn’t you have guessed?” he asked.
“That your mustache would feel like a silk brush.”
Eve wondered at the ripple that went through Reno, but had no time to think about it, for his arms were sliding around her. She stiffened, expecting to be grabbed and held down once more.
But Reno made no further move to force her. He simply held her so that she didn’t have to make any effort at all to stay close to him. Slowly she relaxed, letting his arms support her.
“I’m still waiting for my kiss,” Reno said.
“I think I’ve kissed you more than once.”
“And I think you haven’t kissed me at all.”
“What was I just doing?”
“Teasing,” he said bluntly. “Nice enough, but not what I had in mind, and you know it as well as I do.”
“No, I don’t. I’m not a mind reader,” she retorted, irritated that he hadn’t been half so unsettled by the slow, gliding kiss as she had.
“I know what you are. You’re a saloon girl with fast hands who promised me the one thing she can’t deliver—an honest kiss.”
Eve opened her mouth to ask Reno what he thought an honest kiss should be. Then she remembered what he had said about kissing.
I like it hot and deep. Take that quick little tongue and rub it over mine.
Before Eve could lose her nerve, she brought her lips against Reno’s open mouth and touched his tongue with her own. The nubby, velvety texture
she felt intrigued her. Tentatively she ran the tip of her own tongue over him once more, tracing the shape of his mouth. In the course of her explorations she discovered how smooth and silky the underside of his tongue was.
She didn’t notice the gradual tightening of Reno’s arms or the quickening of his breathing. She didn’t notice that she was being lured more deeply into the kiss with every speeding heartbeat. All she knew was that Reno’s taste and warmth were more intoxicating than the French brandy Don and Donna had so loved.
Eve didn’t question the growing urgency that claimed her. She simply tightened her arms around Reno’s neck, trying to get even closer to him, seeking a more complete merging of their mouths.
Suddenly the ground pressed up hard beneath Eve’s body. She was on her back once more, and Reno was covering her like a warm, heavy blanket.
This time Eve didn’t protest, for the position allowed her to get even closer to Reno. Her fingers searched through his hair, knocking aside his dark hat. Restlessly she combed her fingers through his hair, enjoying the thickness and texture and warmth of it.
Reno shifted and arched against her like a great cat, silently telling her that he liked the feel of her nails against his scalp, his neck, the bunched muscles of his back. He liked the taste of her too, sweetness and a heat that grew greater the more he tested it.
Reno’s tongue probed deeply into Eve’s mouth as his weight settled between her thighs, separating them until he could press the ache of his arousal into the soft nest that was made to receive him. He felt the sensual ripple that went through her body at the contact and wanted to groan at the
savage thrust of his response.
He hadn’t meant to get this aroused. He certainly hadn’t meant to show her just how badly he wanted her.
But it was too late now. She would know exactly what that hard ridge of flesh pressing against her meant, and she would know exactly how to use it against him to get what she wanted. All that remained of the game was to see how far she would let him go before she tried to stop him.
And what she would offer to make him stop.
Reno’s hips moved again, pressing more intimately against Eve’s yielding body. A sweet fire blossomed in the pit of her stomach, making her moan. Instinctively her arms tightened around him, seeking to keep him close. She was rewarded by a sinuous movement of his hips, his body retreating and returning to hers in the same primitive rhythms of his tongue moving within her mouth.
Long fingers slid from Eve’s shoulders to the lacy camisole and pantalets that were all she had worn to sleep in. He stroked from her ribs to her hip and then up again, not stopping until one breast was filling his hand. His thumb moved, discovered the velvet hardness of her nipple, and tested it with a sensuous, twisting pressure.
Pleasure speared through Eve, taking her completely by surprise. Instinctively she arched, increasing the sweet pressure of his hand, twisting against him like a cat.
With a husky sound of triumph, Reno increased the caress, capturing Eve’s nipple and rolling it between his fingers, drinking the whimpering cries that rippled from her mouth. When he could resist the temptation no longer, he tore his lips from hers and dragged a path of fire down her neck and
breast, seeking the berry that had ripened to fullness at his caress.
The liquid heat of Reno’s mouth sinking through the thin camisole to the naked flesh beneath shocked Eve back to her senses. Dazed, uncertain about what had happened, she fought for breath, only to have it taken from her once more when his mouth tugged on her nipple and fire whipped through her body.
His hand moved and laces came undone, threatening to bare her in an intimacy she had never known before with any man.
“No!” Eve gasped.
Before she could say another word, Reno’s mouth was over hers and his tongue was thrusting deeply into her mouth, making it impossible for her to speak. The hungry rubbing of his tongue against hers sent the world spinning away from Eve once more, leaving only Reno’s heat and strength as an anchor.
Before he lifted his head again, she was clinging to him, her instinctive protest drowned beneath the heady pleasure he was giving her.
Reno stripped Eve’s camisole away with a smooth movement of his arm, revealing the creamy curves and tight coral tips of her breasts. His breath came out with a low sound of need. She glistened with the heat of his mouth, and each rapid breath she took made her breasts shiver invitingly. She had looked so slender, so like a young girl, that he hadn’t expected her to be so much a woman.
Without really intending to, Reno bent down to Eve once more.
“Reno, don’t, I—”
Eve made a broken sound that was part fear, part fire, as he ignored her small struggles. Slowly his hands slid beneath her back. Then his arms
tightened and she was arched like a bow in the instant before he opened his lips and began to suckle and tease the nipples he had aroused.
A low moan was torn from Eve. She shivered as lightning arched her body even more deeply into Reno’s hungry mouth.
“What are you doing to me?” she asked brokenly.
His only answer was to turn his head and pull her other nipple into the sultry, unexpected paradise of his mouth.
The sensation of pleasure was even more violent this time. It dragged another cry from Eve as her body arched to meet the demands of the man who held her with such fierce care.
Then Eve felt Reno’s hand between her legs.
Fear burst, driving out pleasure, quenching her passionate fire with the icy certainty that Reno wasn’t going to stop short of taking her.
“No more!” she said desperately, trying to twist away. “No! Stop! You said a kiss, and I kissed you just the way you said you liked it, didn’t I? I’ve kept my part of the bargain. Please, stop. Reno,
please.
”
Slowly, very reluctantly, Reno lifted his head. The lingering, sensual release of Eve’s nipple from his mouth sent a helpless wave of response through her.
He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth against an involuntary groan. The hand he had pressed between her legs was surrounded with the kind of fire he had never drawn so quickly from any woman.
He flexed his fingers, savoring Eve’s passionate heat, drawing a cry that wasn’t wholly fear from her flushed lips.
“Why should I stop,
gata
?” Reno asked huskily,
watching her. “You want it damn near as much as I do.”
His hand moved again, and again she cried out, for her pantalets had no center seam. There was not even the frail barrier of cotton to dull the sensation of his hand curved possessively around her.
Eve grabbed Reno’s wrist, trying to drag it from between her legs. She couldn’t. He was much stronger than she was.
“You said you would stop if I gave you an honest kiss,” Eve said, raggedly. “Wasn’t that an honest kiss? Wasn’t it?”
The desperation in Eve’s voice was unmistakable, as was the sudden stiffness of her body and the hard arcs of her nails digging into his wrist.
Yet at the same time she was a fire surrounding Reno, luring and burning him with each caressing instant.
“If that kiss had been ‘honest,’ I’d be hilt deep in you right now and you’d be using those sharp little daws on me in a different way, and we’d both be loving every last bit of it,” Reno said flatly.
“Is that the only honesty you know?” Eve demanded. “A girl giving herself to every man who wants her?”
“
You
wanted
me
.”
“And now I don’t! Are you going back on your word, gunfighter?”
Reno took a deep breath and called himself twenty kinds of fool for wanting the expert little cheat from the Gold Dust Saloon. He thought he had been teased by the world expert, one Savannah Marie Carrington. She had tied him in sexual knots and then dragged promises from him before she would let him so much as kiss her hand again.
But each time the promise she really wanted—a settled life in West Virginia—wasn’t forthcoming,
she had buttoned her bodice with calm fingers and left him. It hadn’t been that easy for Reno to turn passion on and off. Not at first. But he had learned. Savannah Marie was a good teacher.
“I didn’t promise to stop,” Reno said coolly. “I just said we’d negotiate after one kiss. Offer me something,
gata.
Offer me something as interesting as this.”
Reno’s hand moved once more, pressing against Eve, caressing her. Again she tried to push him away.