Teresa Medeiros (15 page)

He half expected her to slap him for his insolence, but she surprised him by rolling over on the blanket and pressing the back of her hand to her brow.

She remained in that dramatic posture for several minutes before lowering her hand and fixing him with a stern look. “Close your eyes, sir.”

He pretended to comply, using the asinine eyelashes his brothers had always teased him so mercilessly about for the only thing they were good for.

“And no peeking!”

He swore beneath his breath, but obeyed in earnest this time. Until Esmerelda’s first breathy whimper sent a prickle of awareness dancing across his flesh.

His eyes flew open. Esmerelda lay on her back in the moonlight with her eyes pressed shut. Longing and pain flickered across her features in a wistful duet. Her lips were no longer pressed together in prim disapproval, but parted to release throaty little gasps that soon had his own breath coming in feral pants.

Billy gaped in unabashed fascination as her whimpers deepened to a full-bodied moan, earthy and wildly stirring in its power. The dead silence drifting up from below warned him that his brothers must be similarly captivated. He could almost see them there in the firelight, their eyes glazed with lust, a forgotten mouthful of whisky dribbling down their chins.

Esmerelda arched her throat; her small, firm breasts strained against her bodice, a tantalizing reminder that
there were no barriers of lace or linen between flesh and fabric. All he had to do was lean over and flick open one hook, then another …

He knocked off his hat and groped for his bandanna to mop away the beads of sweat forming on his brow. In the months that he’d slept in the attic at Miss Mellie’s, the moans and grunts of pleasure being given and received had ceased to move him. Especially since he knew most of the girls were faking their cries of ecstasy in the hope that some gratified cowboy might flip an extra nickel on the bed before strutting from the room.

But his body throbbed in time to the irresistible rhythm of Esmerelda’s song. As it reached a crescendo, the ache intensified, growing more bitter than sweet as he realized what its melody signified.

Winstead had been right. Either Bart Fine had taught her how to make those sounds or some other man had. The innocence shimmering in those big brown eyes of hers was an illusion. Just as much of a disguise as the mask an outlaw might wear to rob a bank. Only she wasn’t using it to steal his money, but his heart.

Billy’s keen disappointment did nothing to defuse his lust. He wanted to coax her out of his brothers’ earshot and make her moan in earnest. He wanted her to watch everything he did to her until the sight of his face above her blotted out every memory of the man who had touched her first.

He wiggled forward on his elbows until he was looming directly over her. He didn’t really want to know, but couldn’t resist growling, “What in the hell were you thinking about?”

Esmerelda opened her luminous eyes and smiled up at him, her cheeks flushed with the rosy glow of a woman well satisfied. “A French cream puff.”

Struck mute by her reply, Billy had no choice but to listen to her dreamy recital.

“After Mama and Papa died, I used to pass by this bakery on Beacon Street on the way to the market. Every morning, they’d put the tray of cream puffs in the window, fresh out of the oven. I desperately didn’t want to want one because I knew we didn’t have enough money to waste on such extravagances. But I wanted one anyway.” She sighed wistfully. “I never succumbed to the temptation, but I used to stand there in the cold until my breath fogged the window, imagining what it would feel like to lick away the glaze of honey butter, to sink my teeth into the flaky pastry, to plunge my tongue into the cream-filled center …”

Billy held up a hand to silence her, his groin bound into a knot of sweet agony. If Esmerelda could get that worked up over some imagined indulgence, what might a taste of genuine pleasure do to her? He thought it a damn shame that she’d deprived herself of such a simple delight and spent the rest of her life regretting it. He’d never denied himself any pleasure he wanted.

Until now.

Esmerelda stretched and yawned, looking as drowsy and vulnerable as a woman who had actually experienced the release she’d so cleverly mimicked. “Do you think we fooled your brothers?”

Desperate to escape before she realized she’d made an even bigger fool of him, Billy threw the other half of the blanket over her and climbed to his feet. “I’ll go find out,” he said tersely. “You stay put. Get some rest.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, touching her brow in a mocking salute.

He started to go, then hesitated and turned back. Esmerelda’s eyes widened as he slipped her derringer out of his boot and tossed it on top of the blanket. “It’s loaded.
Shoot the first man who lays a hand on you in a disrespectful manner.”

“Even if it’s you?”

He didn’t return her wry smile. “Especially if it’s me.”

As Billy stumbled down the path wind and time had carved into the canyon wall, he ruffled his hair and unfastened the first two buttons of his Levi’s. He was thankful both his brothers’ wits and their vision had been addled by whiskey. If any one of them gave him more than half a glance, they would realize his hunger had been in no way satisfied by his tryst with Esmerelda. On the contrary, he was as hard and thick as a bundle of dynamite awaiting the kiss of flame to its fuse.

He swore, but the eloquent oath failed to give him its usual satisfaction.

As he approached the campfire, he shifted his walk into the deliberate swagger of a man who’d just proved his prowess to a woman for all the world to hear.

Virgil presided over the fire like a tribal king, puffing on a cigar Billy recognized as being stolen from his saddlebag. Jasper reclined on one elbow, nursing a fresh bottle of rotgut. His smoldering glare warned Billy that he was still sulking over their earlier confrontation. Sam was tearing at a ragged hunk of jerky with his yellowing teeth while Enos sat next to Sadie, absently fondling the basset hound’s floppy ears. Her tail twitched a lazy welcome at the sight of her master. The aroma of canned beans wafted up from an iron pot dangling over the fire.

Virgil winked at Billy, his booming voice softened by mock concern. “I hope she was gentle with you, son. You did tell her she was your first, didn’t you?”

Billy tucked his thumbs in his gunbelt and forced a grin,
hoping it didn’t look as sick as it felt. “She must have been
your
first, Virg, because she swore I was the best she ever had.”

Virgil’s roar of laughter did nothing to lighten Jasper’s black expression. He took another swig of the whiskey and cast the bluff above them a contemptuous look. “I bet I could give the little whore a ride she’d never forget.”

A scarlet haze descended over Billy’s eyes, blinding him with rage. He took a step forward, fully intending to launch himself across the fire and wipe the sneer off his brother’s pretty face with his fists. But that was before he remembered that Jasper was only believing exactly what he’d wanted him to believe.

His amiable smile still couldn’t completely buff the dangerous edge from his voice. “That might be true, Jasper, but it’d be the last ride you ever took. Last time I checked, horse thieving was a hanging offense.”

Still spoiling for a fight, Jasper started to rise, but Virgil clapped a hand on his shoulder. “No need to scrap, son. I’m sure Billy only meant to say you were hung like a horse.”

Enos and Sam stuttered out a nervous laugh while Virgil pried the whiskey bottle out of Jasper’s clenched hand and offered it to Billy, along with one of Billy’s own cigars. Jasper might be the brains of the gang, but Virgil had always been the muscle.

Billy accepted his brother’s peace offering and sank down on the opposite side of the fire. Still acutely aware of Jasper’s glare, he made a great show of wiping the mouth of the bottle on his sleeve before lifting it to his lips for a desperately needed swig. He had hoped the rotgut would sear Esmerelda’s taste from his mouth, but it only intensified the yearning ache in his belly.

While he struck a match and lit the cigar, Sam finished off the jerky with an audible gulp and shot Sadie a predatory
glance. “I shore is hungry. A fellow can grow mightily sick of canned beans and prairie dog.”

Billy patted his thigh. Sadie ducked out from under Enos’s hand and waddled to his side. He rewarded her for her obedience by gently stroking her grizzled muzzle. “I can assure you, Samuel, that my Sadie ain’t near as tasty as those tender little ears of yours.”

Sam sheepishly jerked down his hat and helped himself to a ladle of steaming beans.

Billy hid his smile behind a long draw on the cigar and another swig of whiskey. “Where you boys headed? I figured you’d be off somewhere raising hell instead of stuck out here in the middle of it.”

Enos opened his mouth, but Virgil’s booming voice drowned him out. “We been thinkin’ about headin’ south. To Mexico City.”

Billy’s spirits soared. Blood might make them brothers, but the badge tucked into his shirt pocket would make them mortal enemies. He’d love to see them well on their way to Mexico before he was forced to make use of it.

“A wise choice,” he said. “I hear there are opportunities to be seized and fortunes to be made in Mexico City for enterprising young gentlemen such as yourself.”

Virgil and Jasper exchanged a furtive glance, but it was Enos who piped up. “We ain’t g-g-goin’ to Mexico just yet. We’re on our way to Eulalie first.”

“Eulalie?” Billy echoed. He caught the smoldering cigar before it could tumble out of his slack mouth into his lap and disguised his blossoming dread with a bark of laughter. “Why Eulalie? I’ve always heard the only thing uglier than the town is the women who live there.”

This time it was Virgil who opened his mouth and Enos’s high-pitched giggle that drowned him out. “Why, we’re g-goin’ to Eulalie to rob us a b-b-bank!”

When Esmerelda awoke, the heat had yet to tighten its relentless grip on the day. She sat up and pushed the blanket aside, indulging in a languid stretch. An arid morning breeze caressed her hair.

She smiled to find Sadie curled into a shapeless lump at her feet. If the dog hadn’t wheezed out a melancholy sigh, Esmerelda would have been tempted to pry open one droopy eyelid and make sure she was still alive. Bemused, Esmerelda shook her head. Who would have thought she would sleep so soundly wrapped in a coarse blanket on a sandy rock next to a snoring hound with four incorrigible outlaws camped only a stone’s throw away?

But as her gaze fell on the man sleeping across from her, she understood why.

Her guardian sat with his back against a rock and his hands curled around the stock of the Winchester laid across
his knees. His position had to be painfully uncomfortable. He must have nodded off only after a long and harrowing battle with exhaustion.

Esmerelda found Billy’s vigilance oddly irresistible. She’d forgotten what a luxury it was to sleep while someone else kept watch against the night.

Rising to her knees, she crept closer, eager to study him without the shield of his hat. Even in sleep, his was the wary face of a man who had known too little tenderness in his life, too many stolen kisses and bought caresses. His most recent wounds were already fading, but he still bore the scars of past battles, both won and lost.

A thin white knife scar bisected his right eyebrow, ebbing to insignificance dangerously near to his eye. A matching one marred his stubborn chin. His nose had been broken more than once. Esmerelda pondered it from all angles before deciding that she fancied it. It kept him from being too pretty, like Jasper. The harsh New Mexico sun had etched permanent creases around his mouth and eyes, but the tumble of his hair made him look younger than his years—boyish, yet every inch a man.

Caught off guard by a swell of tenderness, Esmerelda gave in to a temptation she had managed to resist ever since Bartholomew had grown old enough to roll his eyes, shove her hand away, and accuse her of mothering him. She reached over and gently brushed back the lock of hair that had fallen across Billy’s brow.

He came awake at the first touch of her fingertips, swinging the rifle around to point the barrel at her breast.

Esmerelda slowly raised both hands in the air, just as she’d seen his brothers do the night before. “Don’t shoot me. I surrender.”

Although she uttered the words in innocent fun, the intensity of his smoky gaze seemed to imbue them with
another meaning altogether, leaving her to breathlessly wonder what it might be like to surrender to a man like him. To lay down her own carefully chosen weapons and trust her lips, her will, her very heart into his keeping.

Sanity came rushing back with her next uneven breath. She nodded toward the gun. “I surrendered without a struggle. Isn’t that your cue to put down the rifle?”

Billy lowered the gun and rubbed a hand over the thickening stubble on his jaw. “I ought to shoot you anyway. Didn’t your mama teach you never to sneak up on a man with a loaded gun?”

Esmerelda managed a shaky laugh. “She probably didn’t realize it was a social skill I would have need of. She was too intent on teaching me how to fold supper napkins, monogram handkerchiefs, and darn my father’s socks.”