As the Cowboy Commands [Ecstasy in the Old West 2] (Siren Publishing Allure) (15 page)

“This night’s beginning to look up,” Jared said aloud as he stepped off the boardwalk and into the muddy Main Street of Whitetail Creek, beginning to close the thirty-yard distance that separated him from the woman who had captured nearly all of his thoughts from the first moment that he’d met her.

* * * *

“Helen Miller, I swear, you’re the oddest young woman I’ve ever met in my entire life!” Marcus exclaimed, jogging several steps to keep up with his friend’s entirely undignified rapid pace. “And will you please slow down? There are those of us who don’t like running, you know?”

Helen wheeled swiftly upon her friend, and the look in her emerald-green eyes was anything but sympathetic. “Marcus, perhaps this isn’t the time for you and me to be together. I’ve had a very bad day, and if you really must know—”

From the corner of her eye she caught movement. Why she paid attention to anything other than Marcus, in the midst of a rather heated conversation, would later mystify her. But Helen did, in fact, turn toward the “movement,” and when she did, the breath caught in her chest because Jared Parker was striding swiftly toward her, and the look in her eyes was sufficient to put ice in Helen’s veins.

“Oh, God,” Helen whispered, a hand to her mouth. “I’ve got to go.”

Jared caught up with Helen after she turned west at the back of the bank and found herself blocked by crates of pickaxes waiting to be unloaded into Carver’s Mining Supplies. She had a death grip on Marcus’s left wrist, preventing her best friend from leaving her alone with the man who had proven himself amazingly capable of talking her into doing nearly anything.

Marcus, having been dragged along in a feverish dash from Main Street into the back alleyways of Whitetail Creek, had no doubt that Helen’s fear was completely genuine.

“You’re the man that was at the bank earlier today, aren’t you?” Marcus asked. Despite the fact that Jared towered over him, he moved so that he was standing directly between him and Helen. “I don’t know what business you’ve got with my friend here, but she’s scared of you. And you’d better know that her fiancé is the vice president of that bank, so if you’re a smart man you’ll just start walking away. Her fiancé is one of the most powerful men in the whole Dakota Territory.”

Helen watched as Jared’s dark eyes narrowed venomously. He looked a bit haggard, as though he hadn’t slept well, and for reasons she could not even begin to understand, she took a certain satisfaction in his bedraggled appearance.

Jared slid his hands to his lean hips, pushing his coat back as he did so. He hardly looked at Marcus at all. His eyes glittered menacingly as he said to Helen, “So that overfed, little jackass is your fiancé?” With a fingertip he pushed his new Stetson back on his head. He was shaking his head in utter disgust. “Goddamn it all, not for a second did I think someone like you would be messed up with a preening jackass like that.”

Jared took a step closer. Helen took a step back, pulling Marcus along with her. Her shoulders were against the back wall of Carver’s Mining Supplies. With Jared closer now, Helen was faintly aware of the scent of whiskey.

“You’ve got to leave me alone,” Helen said quietly. She sniffed the air with a touch of drama. “Have you been drinking?”

Jared snarled. “Goddamned right I have. Why in hell would you ever give a man like Gregg Neilson two seconds of your time?” He moved closer, and now his body was nearly touching Marcus, who was shivering visibly but holding his ground. “I recognized that jackass from when he rode to your house. The minute I walked into his office, I knew he was the man in your life. He was the son of a bitch that bought the good whiskey at your house.”

“Don’t. Please, don’t say any more,” Helen pleaded. She was frightened of Jared, frightened of her response to him whenever he was near, frightened of emotions that made no sense to her. Irrationally, she put one hand over her ear, though she continued to hold tightly onto Marcus’s wrist with the other. “I’m not going to listen to any of this.”

Marcus squared his slender shoulders and said as firmly as he could, “You’d best just leave now, mister. The law around here doesn’t take kindly to men who—”

Jared’s dark, flinty gaze turned slowly and ominously toward Marcus, and when he fixed him with his cold stare, Marcus’s throat tightened up and words became impossible.

In a quiet voice, Jared said, “Nothing is going to happen to your friend that she doesn’t want to have happen. Why don’t you just take a walk? There’s no need for you here.”

Before Marcus could respond, it was Helen who stomped her foot and said, “No, Marcus, you stay right here.”

A muscle twitched angrily in Jared’s jaw. He looked past Marcus at Helen, the expression on his face hot with anger and yet cold-blooded. Several seconds passed in total silence before he put a hand to Marcus’s shoulder, pushed him two steps to the side, and then hooked his left hand around the back of Helen’s neck.

“I know what you want. I know what you need.” He paused a moment. “Most of all, I know how you like it,” Jared said, his voice low and menacing. “So get ready because you’re going to get it.”

He pulled Helen closer as he slanted his mouth down over hers. His kiss was brutal, demanding that Helen respond, triggering in her that strangely submissive quality that Jared’s dominating, alpha-male persona alone could reach in her. As he pressed his lips tightly against Helen’s, Jared forced her harder against the wall, trapping her voluptuous body. Holding her securely with his left hand, he put his right hand over her breast and squeezed, his ardor and fury, his hunger for the pleasures he knew were possible with Helen, causing him to use too great strength.

With her mouth pressed against Jared’s, she uttered a high-pitched squeal of pain. Helen used her free hand to push Jared’s hand from her tender breast, though she continued to squeeze tightly onto Marcus’s wrist with the other.

Jared finally ended the kiss, and when he did, he forced his knee between Helen’s legs then raised his knee so that his thigh pressed firmly and intimately against her. Her lashes batted against cheeks that had become pink with a combination of embarrassment and sexual excitement.

“Don’t,” Helen gasped, her mouth open as she gulped in air, her expression one of fear and futility. “Don’t do this to me, Jared. There are—”

Jared spat, “You can’t mean to tell me that you actually want that banker!”

Helen’s green eyes instantly became glassy with unshed tears. “There are things that you’ll never know,” she said softly, her tone changing from helplessness to a world-weariness. “I have obligations that make everything…” Her voice drifted away.

“Make everything
what
?” Jared demanded.

Leaning back against the wall, Helen’s face was completely blank of expression when she finally answered in a voice so soft it was almost inaudible, “Difficult. Very, very difficult. Sometimes even impossible.”

Jared took Helen’s face in his hands, using his thumb lightly to brush over her lips as he looked into her eyes. He said, “Tell me. I’ll make the difficulty go away. I’ll even take care of whatever the hell you think is impossible.” He smiled crookedly and added, “People pay me damned good money to make problems disappear.”

Helen glanced over at Marcus. The young man’s face was ashen, his eyes darting nervously from Jared’s face to Helen’s before jerking back again. With her gaze on Jared, she shook her head, and with a kind of sad resignation replied, “You just don’t understand…”

As Jared dipped his head down to kiss her again, he said fiercely, “I understand more than you think.”

He kissed her again, a bruising and demanding kiss like the first time. His right hand went from her shoulder down to her breast, and this time he caught her nipple between forefinger and thumb and caressed with just the right amount of pressure to draw the maximum amount of pleasure. Despite herself, Helen moaned into Jared’s mouth as she began kissing him back. When Jared touched his tongue to her lips, Helen willingly parted them. His tongue eased into her mouth and began the erotic tongue-dance of lovers.

They kissed for a full forty-five seconds before Marcus said softly, “Helen, this isn’t the right time…and Lord knows this isn’t the right place for…ah…” He cleared his throat nervously. “Come on, Helen. Let me take you away from here. This man…he’s not good for you.”

Jared ended the kiss and stood erect, glaring down at Marcus. His eyes went from his face to the wrist that Helen was still holding tightly with white-knuckled intensity. A crooked half smile pulled up the corner of his mouth and caused the dimple to form in his cheek. “By the look of it, she seems to think you’re some kind of lifeboat that’ll keep her from going under.” He lost the half smile so that his expression was oddly neutral, though his body was tense. “Stick around. Maybe you’ll learn something. I don’t mind an audience, and I’ve been known to teach more than a few young bucks a thing or two about giving and receiving.”

Helen gasped, “Oh, God! I can’t believe this is happening!”

“It’s happening, all right,” Jared replied like a shot. “And I know just what you need.” He paused for several weighty seconds before adding, as much for Marcus’s ears as for Helen’s, “And how you like it.”

Jared took his hand from Helen’s neck and, without a hint of forewarning, grabbed her skirt and raised it high. Even under the best of conditions, Helen could not adequately defend herself against Jared, who was so much taller and stronger than she and had reflexes countless times quicker than hers. But her defense was made even more ineffectual by the fact that she refused to relinquish the firm grasp she had on Marcus’s wrist.

When Jared reached up beneath her skirt for her underpants, Helen squirmed and tried to swat his hand away. Jared would not be denied. He thrust his fingers inside the waistband of Helen’s bloomers, curled his hand into a fist, and yanked. The drawstring bit into the flesh of her hips for a split-second then snapped as soft cotton, washed countless times, gave way to greater strength.

Jared put his left hand to Helen’s chest to keep her forced back against the wall then yanked a second time. What little of Helen’s cotton bloomers that had remained intact after the first assault did not survive the second. While keeping her pinned against the wall, Jared raised her destroyed underpants in his hand, looking at them with a queer expression in his eyes, as though he was shocked at what he had just done. Helen inspired extreme behavior in Jared.

“Oh, yes, Helen. I know just what you need.” He turned and glared at Marcus, saying, “Get the hell out of here.”

Before Marcus could respond, Helen said quickly, “Stay! Please, Marcus, don’t go! I need you with me now more than ever!”

Jared made a chuckling sound, only there wasn’t any mirth in it. He said, “If you want an audience, go ahead and have one, my dear. Makes me no never-mind.”

He moved swiftly yet without any appearance of hurrying. One second he was towering over Helen, pinning her to the wall, and in the next he was down on one knee in front of her as he forced her dress up high around her waist. An instant later he had raised her left leg and forced it up onto his shoulder. He took a moment—no more than a split-second—to appreciate the visual beauty of Helen’s sex, noting the soft, sparse hair that grew in a narrow triangle, the pink labia already gleaming with the nectar of her passion, and the small, pink nub of her clit that pulsated almost visibly.

“Gorgeous,” Jared groaned, as angry with himself for his inability to stay away from Helen as he was at her for making him want her so much.

He pressed his mouth against her delicate sex lips and without hesitation thrust his tongue far into Helen. She inhaled deeply, the molten fire of desperate passion burning her up. Then the breath got caught in her chest as Jared pushed his tongue upward, spreading the lips of her pussy as he searched for, and then found, her erect clit.

“Oh, fuck!” Helen hissed through teeth clenched with passion.

Jared heard the single, coarse vulgarity, and had his lips not been so preoccupied he would have smiled. He liked knowing that he could incite in Helen behavior that she would not otherwise allow, to speak words that she would not under other conditions even consider speaking. With his left hand he adjusted the position of Helen’s leg on his shoulder. With his right he cupped her ass and squeezed, thrilling at the velvety softness of her skin as he lavished her clit with licks that tantalized feminine nerve endings.

He brought his right hand up close to his mouth and, while flicking the very tip of his tongue up and down over Helen’s clit, eased his index finger between the lips of her pussy, entering slowly until the knuckles of his fist were pressed tightly against the shivering woman and his chin was in his palm.

“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” Helen chanted, her eyes closed, her head against the wall as wild pleasures rocketed through her voluptuous body.

She had experienced before the thrills that were possible for a woman to feel when Jared was on his knees and delivering the devastating cunnilingus that made bones melt, that made willpower vanish, that made two-word sentences like “fuck me” seem as natural to say as “thank you.” But past experience could not entirely account for Helen’s free fall into complete and total sexual abandonment. Yes, she knew what was just down the road, just over the hill though still out of sight. But still…something was different this time—delightfully, magnificently different. And in a way that was charged with a special eroticism that made her willing to do
anything
so long as she achieved the orgasm that she sensed was approaching like a runaway freight train.