DangerousPassion (12 page)

Derek looked straight into Jerome’s eyes, and sensed that the elder understood fully what had just been explained. It was also clear to Derek that Jerome was furious at his son’s overly descriptive explanation of what job duties would be necessary.

“Listen, if it’s a matter of money, I’m sure we can negotiate a fee more to your liking,” Edgar said quickly, sensing a change of opinion that would mightily disturb the patriarch of the Patterson clan.

With forced calmness, Jerome said, “Edgar, shut up.” To Derek he said, “Don’t make a hasty decision. My son has never quite learned that a man’s got two ears but just one mouth, and he should use them in that proportion.” He smiled as a father would who had been embarrassed on more than one occasion by his son, and wished for a little understanding because of it. “You’re staying at the Golden Nugget?”

“The Spoke and Wheel.”

“Cancel your room at the Spoke and Wheel. You’ll be much more comfortable at the Golden Nugget. Just tell them that you are a guest of Jerome Patterson.” He turned his palms upward in a gesture of frustration. “Please, accept my hospitality. Nothing will be requested of you. You came all the way to Deadwood, the least I can do is pay for your hotel room.”

“I’ll pay my own way.”

“Fine. Pay your own way. But I’m sure you’ll find the Golden Nugget much more to your liking than the Spoke and Wheel.”

Derek at last smiled and replied, “Thanks for the advice. I’ll take it.

* * * *

“How long you been in town, mister?”

Derek looked at the woman who had spoken. She was perhaps twenty-five, but she looked a few years older than that. Her hair was golden blonde, her eyes light blue, her skin pale, her figure trim. The dress she wore was too big for her, and Derek suspected it was a hand-me-down from some other woman selling her services at the Golden Nugget. All of the women working at the Golden Nugget were quite pretty, though the profession took its toll.

“Well? Don’t you talk none? My name Gertrude, but everybody calls me Gertie.” She slid her chair a little closer to Derek’s and, beneath the round, much-scarred wooden table, placed her hand on his thigh. “You looking for some company?”

Derek finally spoke. “No.”

The bluntness of his comment caused Gertie to sit a little straighter in her chair. Her hand trailed up from his thigh to his hip. The pink tip of her tongue moistened lips tinted red with rouge. It was obvious to Derek that she was contemplating her next statement to him carefully. He had no wish for either her companionship or her conversation. In front of him was a reasonably decent bottle of whiskey, and a beer that was quite fresh, rather cool, and came from
St. Paul
,
Minnesota
. Several beers and the bottle of whiskey was all that Derek was looking forward to for that evening.

“Listen,” Gertie said at last, speaking just loud enough to be heard above the badly-played piano and the general din of the saloon’s crowd, “I’m not going to pretend I’m a lady, but I’d really like a drink. Would you see it clear to buying a working girl a drink?”

For the first time, Derek looked the woman directly in the eyes. “Get a glass,” he said.

Her genuine smile took years off her appearance. She was out of her chair in an instant, striding with practiced ease between chairs and patrons who tried to grope her, until she was at the bar. The bartender raised a knowing eyebrow and handed her a whiskey glass. Gertie was back beside Derek in just seconds, her glass on the table and her hand high on the inside of his thigh.

“I don’t want to be selfish,” Gertie said, “so I’ll just let you do the pouring.”

Derek pulled the cork from the bottle, filled Gertie’s glass to the rim, then set the bottle down on the table—conspicuously not returning the cork to the bottle so that Gertie would know this wouldn’t be her last free drink of the night. She smiled for a moment, then slowly lifted her glass, careful as a surgeon to not spill so much as a single drop of the precious amber liquid.

Derek picked up his whiskey glass, took a hefty swallow, followed that up with three swallows of beer, and then leaned back in his chair and looked out the window. The sun would be setting soon. Tomorrow he would talk to Jerome privately, without Edgar being there, and find out exactly what he would be expected to do. If, after all the fancy words, it turned out that Edgar’s blunt declaration of needing a hired assassin proved to be correct, then Derek would refuse the assignment, get on his horse, and ride out of town. It wouldn’t make any difference how much money Jerome offered.

He felt slender feminine fingers tracing circles on the inside of his thigh, inching closer to the slowly growing bulge of his awakening cock. Derek continued looking out the window. He wasn’t interested in Gertie. Not that he hadn’t been with women of her profession, but for tonight, his thoughts never roamed far from a voluptuous auburn-haired vixen named Sarah Miller. The very fact that Derek wasn’t interested in Gertie was somewhat more than mildly irksome to Derek. It would be so easy to lose all his worries in a woman’s bed, to bury his hard cock into her willing body, and when he achieved his satisfaction, simply put on his clothes and ride out of town. He’d done it a hundred times in a hundred towns not substantially different from Deadwood. Probably more than a hundred times. But he just wasn’t interested in sex with a stranger on this particular night.

“You look like a man with a lot on his mind,” Gertie said, keeping her voice low. Her fingers eased up Derek’s thigh, crawling over the lump of his burgeoning penis. Gertie smiled and purred, squeezing several times in quick succession. The cock beneath her palm was growing swiftly. “You not only got a lot on your mind…you got a lot in your trousers, mister.” With the flat of her palm, she rubbed up and down the length of Derek’s cock, her eyes widening with pleasure and awe as she felt the long column of manly flesh stretching and growing down the leg of his black trousers. “Goddamn it, mister, you got the equipment of a stallion!” She ran her fingers up and down over his length, measuring him, judging him. “I had thought I’d be charging you to go on upstairs, but mister, if you want me, I’m yours. That’s the biggest piece o’ man-meat I’ve ever come across—and you don’t seem fully grow’d yet.” She snorted with self-derisive scorn. “And trust me, I’ve come across a lot of man-meat in my life!”

Derek said nothing, continuing to look out the window. He was faintly annoyed that his penis, as always, had responded to a woman’s touch, acting of its own accord, perpetually ready for pleasure, for excitement…no matter where it came from, no matter what the circumstances were. The rational side of his brain said that there was no reason in the world he shouldn’t take Gertie upstairs. It was all but guaranteed that she would treat him well sexually, and it was always a special thrill to fuck a woman for the first time.

Only Derek wasn’t listening to the rational side of his brain, and he wasn’t interested in the “special thrill” of sex with a woman for the first time. What he wanted—to his considerable consternation—was the thrill of making love to one particular woman again. Traveling over territory he’d crossed before wasn’t usual for Derek, but he didn’t care. He wanted Sarah. He wanted to feel her full, firm thighs surrounding his hips as he drove his hard cock into her pussy. He wanted to feel those astonishing tits billowing out against his naked chest as he heaved above her, driving into her with every ounce of strength and energy that he possessed. He thirsted for the taste of her lips…

“Mister, you want to tell me your name? If you don’t, just make somethin’ up. I don’t mind.” Gertie giggled softly, almost like a little girl, as she fondled Derek’s now considerably-sized erection through the gabardine fabric of his trousers. “I ain’t never had a man built like this shoving up inside me. Saints be praised, mister, you got yourself somethin’ real special here.”

Derek at last turned away from the window. He picked up the whiskey bottle and filled Gertie’s glass once again to the rim. His face was utterly devoid of expression when he looked at the woman surreptitiously fondling his erection.

“Come on upstairs with me, mister,” Gertie whispered. She picked up the now-full whiskey glass and brought it to her lips without spilling a drop. When the glass was again back on the table, it was half-empty. “You don’t gotta pay me nothin’.” Her face lost its animation, taking on a quiet seriousness as she added, “I ain’t never been with a man like you.” She reached deep between his thighs to fondle his testicles. “You’re more man than any man I ever know’d.”

Derek was not entirely drunk, but he was not entirely sober, either. His cock was hard as stone, but for the life of him he just couldn’t find enough motivation to take Gertie upstairs to her room. She had made it clear that she wanted him, that she would do anything he wanted, and that she wasn’t looking for payment for her services. But every time Derek looked at her, all he saw was a very slender woman with unremarkable breasts that she was more than willing to show with a low-cut décolletage. What Derek was hungry for, what his mind and body were aching for, was a voluptuous woman with large and round and amazingly beautiful breasts who wore dresses that hardly showed any cleavage at all. He wanted Sarah…or no one at all.

Derek rose to his feet. He picked out a five dollar coin from his pocket and dropped it onto the table near the half-empty whiskey bottle. “You take that money and that bottle up to your room,” he said. “If I get the feeling, I’ll be up to see you. If I don’t get the feeling, you just stay alone in your room all night. You can help yourself to that bottle, if you like.”

Such behavior was so uncommon in Gertie’s life that she couldn’t think of anything to say. Derek was walking through the swinging batwing doors of the Golden Nugget saloon when she said with absolute honesty, “You’re a real gentleman, mister. A real, true gentleman.”

Derek had made it through the saloon’s doors, but had not stepped off the boardwalk yet, when he watched two women walk out of the First Bank & Trust of Deadwood. One woman was Sarah Miller, wearing a gray skirt, white blouse with a touch of lace in front that buttoned all the way up to her throat, and a gray waist-length jacket. Her luxurious auburn hair was held in a rather severe bun at the base of her neck. She was talking animatedly to a short, slender young woman, who apparently wasn’t believing what it was Sarah was saying because she was shaking her head vigorously, and making motions in the air with both hands.

“This night’s beginning to look up,” Derek said aloud as he stepped off the boardwalk and into the muddy main street of Deadwood, starting 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.

* * * *

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

Sarah wheeled swiftly upon her friend, and the look in her emerald green eyes was anything but sympathetic. “Ellie Mae, perhaps this isn’t the time for you and I 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 Ellie Mae, in the midst of a rather heated conversation, would later mystify her. But Sarah did, in fact, turn toward the “movement,” and when she did, the breath caught in her chest because Derek Jordan was striding swiftly toward her, and the look in his eyes was sufficient to put ice in Sarah’s veins.

“Oh, god!” Sarah whispered, a hand to her mouth. “I’ve got to go!”

Chapter Eight

Derek caught up with Sarah after she turned west at the back of the bank and found herself blocked by crates of pick axes waiting to be unloaded into Carver’s Mining Supplies. She had a death grip on Ellie Mae’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.

Ellie Mae, having been dragged along in a feverish dash from
Main Street
into the back alleyways of Deadwood, had no doubt that Sarah’s fear was completely genuine.

“You’re the man that was at the bank earlier today, aren’t you?” Ellie Mae asked. Despite the fact that Derek towered over her, she moved so that she was standing directly between him and Sarah. “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
.”

Sarah watched as Derek’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.

Derek slid his hands to his lean hips, pushing his coat back as he did so. He hardly looked at Ellie Mae at all. His eyes glittered menacingly as he said to Sarah, “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!”

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

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

Derek snarled. “Goddamned right I have! I thought that maybe if I had enough whiskey I could figure out why in hell you’d ever give a man like Edgar Patterson two seconds of your time!” He moved closer, and now his body was nearly touching Ellie Mae, who was shivering visibly but holding her 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 for himself to drink at your house.”

“Don’t! Please, don’t say any more,” Sarah pleaded. She was frightened of Derek, frightened of her response to Derek 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 holding tightly onto Ellie Mae’s wrist with the other. “I’m not going to listen to any of this.”

Ellie Mae squared her slender shoulders and said as firmly as she could, “You’d best just leave now, mister. The law around here don’t take kindly—“

Derek’s dark, flinty gaze turned slowly and ominously toward Ellie Mae. In a quiet voice, he 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 Ellie Mae could respond, it was Sarah who stomped her foot and said, “No, Ellie Mae, you stay right here!”

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

“I know what you want…I know what you need…and most of all, I know how you like it!” Derek said, his voice low and menacing. “So get ready ‘cause you’re going to get it!”

He pulled Sarah closer as he slanted his mouth down over hers. His kiss was brutal, demanding that Sarah respond, triggering in her that strangely submissive quality that Derek’s dominating, alpha-male persona alone could reach in her. As he pressed his lips tightly against Sarah’s, Derek 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 Sarah, causing him to use too much strength. With her mouth pressed against Derek’s, she uttered a high-pitched squeal of pain. Sarah used her free hand to push Derek’s hand from her tender breast, though she continued to squeeze tightly onto Ellie Mae’s wrist with the other.

Derek finally ended the kiss, and when he did, he forced his knee between Sarah’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…” Sarah gasped, her mouth open as she gulped in air, her expression one of fear and futility. “Don’t do this to me, Derek. There are—“

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

Sarah’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?” Derek demanded.

Leaning back against the wall, Sarah’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.”

Derek took Sarah’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.”

Sarah glanced over at Ellie Mae. The girl’s face was ashen, her eyes darting nervously from Derek’s face to Sarah’s before jerking back again. With her gaze on Derek, she shook her head, and with a kind of sad resignation replied, “You just don’t understand…”

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

He kissed her again, bruising and demandingly 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, Sarah moaned into Derek’s mouth as she began kissing him back. When Derek touched his tongue to her lips, Sarah 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 Ellie Mae said softly, “Sarah, this isn’t the right time…and Lord knows this isn’t the right place for…ah…” She cleared her throat nervously. “Come on, Sarah. Let me take you away from here. This man…he’s not good for you.”

Derek ended the kiss and stood erect, glaring down at Ellie Mae. His eyes went from her face to the wrist that Sarah 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 fillies a thing or two about giving and receiving.”

Sarah gasped, “Oh, god! I can’t believe this is happening!”

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

Derek took his hand from Sarah’s neck and, without a hint of forewarning, grabbed her skirt and raised it high. Even under the best of conditions, Sarah could not adequately defend herself against Derek, 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 Ellie Mae’s wrist.

When Derek reached up beneath her skirt for her underpants, Sarah squirmed and tried to swat his hand away. Derek would not be denied. He thrust his fingers inside the waistband of Sarah’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. Derek put his left hand to Sarah’s chest to keep her forced back against the wall, then yanked a second time. What little of Sarah’s cotton bloomers that had remained intact after the first assault did not survive the second. While keeping her pinned against the wall, Derek 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. Sarah inspired extreme behavior in Derek.

“Oh, yes, Sarah! I know just what you need!” He turned and glared at Ellie Mae, saying, “Get the hell out of here!”

Before Ellie Mae could respond, Sarah shot out, “Stay! Please, Ellie Mae, don’t go! I need you with me now more than ever!”

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

He moved swiftly yet without any appearance of hurrying. One second he was towering over Sarah, pinning her to the wall; 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 Sarah’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 clitoris that pulsated almost visibly.

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

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

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

Derek 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 Sarah behavior that she would not otherwise experience, to speak words that she would not under other conditions even consider speaking. With his left hand he adjusted the position of Sarah’s leg on his shoulder; with his right he cupped her buttocks and squeezed, thrilling at the velvety softness of her skin as he lavished her clitoris 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 Sarah’s clitoris, 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!” Sarah 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 Derek 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 Sarah’s freefall into complete and total sexual abandonment. Yes, she knew what was just down the road, just over the hill and 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.