Silver Nights With You (Love in the Sierras Book 1) (24 page)

“Perhaps a lively tune now?” he said, and Ellie nodded enthusiastically.

“I’m definitely of a mind to dance with my betrothed,” she said.

After he cleared his throat a few times he lifted the instrument again and struck the Celtic chords of “The Girl I Left Behind.” Sandy whipped Ellie round and round, hopping from foot to foot in a perfect Polka. Morgan’s shadow fell over Lila, and she looked up and smiled.

“Is your dance card full or may I have the next one?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she teased with an air of aristocracy. “I
suppose
I can fit you in.”

She stood and eased smoothly into Morgan’s arms. Argyle sawed the first notes of “Abide With Me” and Morgan swept her around in circles. His hand smoothed possessively over her lower back and she pressed her chest against his.

“As much as I love everyone here, I can’t wait for the day when it’s just you and I,” he said. “You think it would give your father a heart attack if I told him that I was going to have my way with you in the woods for a little while?”

She laughed softly. “I do so enjoy the way you love me.”

“I don’t suppose we’ll be able to sneak away together tonight?”

“Hmm…we shall see, but I don’t think so. Not with so many bodies around.”

He grunted in frustration and she laughed again. “We just need to make it through these next torturous days and believe me, the gift will be far greater than the price we paid in pain.”

“I know, but my body is having a hard time understanding.”

She could feel the hardness of his arousal pressed between their bodies and her love-sore limbs answered with a simmering of their own.

“Maybe we shouldn’t dance,” she cautioned. “Your touch turns my blood to fire.”

The song ended and another began. Lila danced most of the night away, she and Ellie changing partners so that each of the gentlemen had an opportunity to dance. When Argyle’s gnarled fingers began to ache, Morgan relieved him and carried on with a youthful vigor, surprising Lila with his talent.

No one wanted to ruin the pleasant evening, so the name Jared Percy was never mentioned, but Lila couldn't fight the creeping dread filling her. The threat of him was a reality they couldn't avoid forever.

The night wore away with laughter and music and when the fires died down and Ellie and Sandy had retired to their comfortable bed in the back of the wagon, only Lila, Morgan, Val and Argyle remained awake by the fire.

The memory of her last moments with David came unbidden to her mind. She looked across the fire at Val, who was puffing away on a cigar.

“Did you see David today before you left?” she asked him.

“No.” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen him since last night when he stormed out of the parlor.”

“Why do you ask?” Morgan said to Lila. “I can tell something is troubling you.”

She took a deep breath and then told them about her encounter with David in the room back at the boarding house. Morgan’s features hardened, and Val shook his head casually.

“Don’t worry,” Val finally said. “David will cool down once he’s had a night or two to sleep on it. He’ll be back to his usual self in the morning.”

“You didn’t see the look on his face,” she countered. “I’ve never seen him look like that.”

“I’ve seen him madder than a hornet in a pricking contest, believe me. I’ll tell you what, I’ll ride out tomorrow after we round up the cattle and find David. If he’s still worked up I’ll talk him down. It’s just his pride that’s stung, is all.”

“Thank you, Val,” she said with relief. “I know he’ll listen to you.” She stood and looked around at the men. “I am going to take a walk.”

“I’ll come with you,” Morgan offered, but Argyle cleared his throat and stood.

“I’m not sure that’s entirely appropriate. You aren’t married yet.”

“Oh, Papa,” Lila said with a roll of her eyes. “With everything that’s going on you’re worried about such scruples? Are you suggesting that Morgan would take advantage of me?”

Argyle arched an eyebrow. “That’s exactly what I am suggesting.”

“And you’d be right, Doc,” Morgan said. Lila’s eyes widened, and he shrugged. “No use lying about a thing that’s as plain as the nose on your face.” He turned to Argyle. “I love your daughter. She’s as mine now as she’ll be after a wedding night. If it’s her honor you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ll safeguard it like it’s my own. Still, out of respect for you, if you’d rather accompany her I will stay here.”

She was mortified, but Argyle sighed. “Young man I have lived three quarters of a century, in times a lot stricter than these. Yet…I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t…
compromise
my own wives before the nuptials.”

Lila gasped and winced. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! If I stand around any longer during such talk I'll never return to my normal color!”

She strode briskly away, hoping the cool air would calm the flare in her cheeks. A knowing smirk passed between the three men and Morgan bowed before Argyle, sweeping his arm out in her direction.

“Either you or me, Doc,” he said.

Argyle folded his arms over his chest and tipped his head. “Go on, then.”

Lila hadn’t gone far before Morgan was trotting beside her with a pleased look on his face. She stuck her nose in the air and moved out of his reach.

“After that little humiliation you can keep your hands to yourself, Mr. Kelly,” she said as she fought the corners of her lips from lifting. “You’ll not be taking advantage of me tonight.”

He hid his grin and clasped his hands behind his back as they carried on walking. “Suits me just fine,” he said, and she stopped.

“Oh, it does, does it?”

“Sure. I enjoy just being with you. I don’t have to touch you to enjoy you.”

She studied him in the waning moonlight, knowing that he was playing with her. No bother, she thought. She would just play back.

“Good,” she said. “Because I forbid you to touch me this evening.”

“Then, I won’t.”

They walked on in silence, following the steady rise of the land until they came to the edge of the forest and looked out on the rest of Morgan’s acreage rolling away in grayness. Cattle moved like black shadows in the distance and the flame from the fire blinked like an orange star near the house. Morgan leaned his forearm against a tree trunk and scratched his temple as he looked out over all he possessed.

When her hands moved, smooth and sure, over his torso and the twin rounds of her breasts pressed into the delicate nerves of his back, he smiled. She stood on the tips of her toes and placed a warm kiss on the nape of his neck. He tasted of salty, sun-dried sweat and she tightened her hold on him as she breathed him in. The thought of someone taking him from her made her throat tighten.

She hid the burgeoning tears by working her hands beneath his shirt, her fingernails circling lightly over his nipples, teasing them as he’d done hers. His skin was smooth, but solid, and if she hadn’t seen first-hand how perishable the human body is she might have believed him indestructible. She skimmed her nails down the panes of his belly and felt his powerful body shiver. A delicious sense of power filled her hands as she moved them lower, behind the band of his trousers and took hold of his impressive arousal.

His back expanded next to her cheek as he sucked in a deep breath. He’d shown her the night before how to please him, and his body was reacting to her well-learned lessons. The skin against her palms was soft and pliant, moving in compliance with the stroke of her fingers, rubbing gratefully against her as a kitten sleeks its body along the limb of a beloved master. She felt the breath leave him as she controlled the very flow of his blood, knowing the agonizing pleasure she was giving him for he had done the same to her.

“Lila,” he rasped. “This is not the way to keep me from taking advantage of you tonight.”

“You’re wrong, my love,” she whispered hotly into his ear before tugging lightly on it with her teeth. Her strokes moved faster, her grip tightening just a fraction, and he groaned even as he fought to speak.

“I am intrigued,” he said. “Care to explain your logic? Or shall I finish what you’ve started?”

“Oh, no, you won’t,” she said, releasing him to lift his shirt over his head. She placed a soft kiss on his bruise and moved to stand before him. “You’re forbidden to touch me, remember?”

Her nimble fingers worked open each tiny button of her blouse until she removed it completely. Her skirt fell on the ground beside it. Soon, the rest of her outfit joined the pile until she stood naked before him. Her hands went to the band of his pants again, smoothed around to his buttocks, squeezing once before pulling the britches down.

He looked down and managed only a whisper. “If I can’t touch you, how can I…”

“You can’t,” she cut off, reaching up to grab his hands and pull him to sit on the ground atop their discarded clothing. She eased his back against the tree trunk, and when he made to wrap his arms around her, she shook her head and lowered them to his sides. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, and she smiled wickedly. “That’s right, my love.
I’m
taking advantage of
you
tonight.”

She watched the flame of desire in his eyes as she straddled him, taking all of his throbbing length into her body. His head fell back against the bark and he sighed in pure ecstasy. She rocked her hips slowly back and forth, rolling and sliding over his hardness. At first, she let the tight tips of her breasts rake his chest up and down while she moved, but she soon leaned down to run her lips over his muscles and along the side of his throat.

At the portentous howl of a distant coyote his eyes opened, but all anxiety was swiftly abandoned as he feasted on the body undulating atop him. In her eyes was a passionate love, and twin reflections of the full moon overhead.

Jared Percy spit a wad of tobacco juice on a boulder outside the cave. The phosphorous in the rock made it glow in the light of the full moon. They always used its natural guiding light to find their way back to their hideout. It served them especially well on drunken nights when everything went haywire. As the woeful moan of a coyote carried on the breeze, he ground his teeth until he heard cracks. How the hell could they disappear?

The night Bobby patched up his arm he passed out good and drunk and awoke, aching and retching with the dawn. Even with the ground tilted firmly at forty-five degrees he staggered onto his horse and sped toward the boarding house. All day long the hot sun raged, blistering his dry skin and rotting the pile of whiskeyed vomit he’d hurled in the bush beside him. But the lodging house had awakened with such a sense of normalcy that the two shattered windows looked almost out of place.

It had been the worst day of his life, at least as far as he could remember. His arm throbbed with the vengeance of a viper. His stomach felt like a plague come to life. The pounding in his head threatened to burst his skull in two, and the sun scorched him nearly to the bone, but still he never saw one glimpse of Lila and David. Convinced that they’d have to leave the place eventually, he’d camped out the night, too, but still no sign of them.

He finally had to rest his body, so he and Bobby finally gave up their surveillance and returned to the cave. Bobby wanted to abandon the entire scheme, but Jared couldn’t. Something in him was hooked and he knew he’d be restless until he saw it through. The onyx ring on his finger burned with the blood of his brother, and as he swiveled the trinket on his small finger he watched a rider approach, sure of the way that led him straight to the cave.

Jared pulled his gun and slinked back into the shadows. His instincts, dull as they were, told him that a rider so definite in his heading had to know of the cave, and if that were the case he’d have to know that he and Bobby occupied it and must therefore be an ally. Still, there had been too many kinks in his knot of late, and he wasn’t about to take any chances.

“I know you’re there, Percy,” the shadow said. “Lower your gun so I don’t have to kill you for accidentally trying to kill me, although I’m of a mind to do it anyway for your disobedience.”

Jared cursed under his breath. Damn the man for always being one step ahead of him. “Mack,” he said with feigned cheerfulness. “Just wanted to be sure.”

“Yeah, just wanted to be sure it was me before you fired,” he replied dryly as he swung from the saddle and entered the warmth of the cave. Bobby was sitting by the fire, blowing through a harmonica and spoiling the air with a shrill sound. When Mack entered he dropped the instrument and smiled nervously.

“Mack! Didn’t expect to see you.”

“I didn’t expect to see you two either, especially since I told you,
and paid you
, to get the hell out of here.”

“I…uh…well…”

“Don’t worry your little tongue with explanations,” Jared counseled his accomplice calmly. “If our Mister Moneybags here had any intention of killing us, he would have done it already.” Slowly, he circled Mack, suddenly feeling like the cat instead of the cream. Based on recent events, he had a feeling Mack was more mixed up in events than he was letting on. “No, I’d say he’s got another job for us.”

Jared’s gloating led him too close to Mack and the latter lashed out, gripping the former’s throat like a vice and shoved him against the cave wall.

“Listen to me, you worthless piece of shit. You think I need you? I could wipe the bottom of my boot with you and not a woman would weep. I could haul you before a judge and jury and not one of them would spare a prayer before stringing you up. You are the faceless, nameless filth that heroes make their names off of. Do not, for one second, think you’ve got the drop on me. I hired you to commit robberies, not murder, and not to go kidnapping people and shooting up boarding houses. Your mistakes have caused a lot of problems for me.

“So, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna help you, and then you’re gonna get the hell out of here and never come back. But you listen good. The only way we’re gonna do this is my way. You do as I say and when I say it, do you hear me? You don’t eat, drink, shit or piss without my permission. You got that?”

It took a long moment and a hell of a lot of will, but Jared finally nodded, keeping his tongue pinned to the roof of his mouth for the moment. Mack released him and shifted his murderous glare between Bobby and Jared.

“Now,” he began more calmly. “About what happened at the boarding house…”

“I wondered when you were gonna bring that up,” Jared began. “Seeing as how you were…”

“I know where they went,” Mack interrupted. “The man and the woman you’re looking for. I know where they are.”

“I suspected you might,” Jared said, his eyes sharpening like knife points.

“Well, I do,” Mack barked. “And I’ll tell you exactly what we’re gonna do about it.”