Sunset Embrace (24 page)

Winston raised her hand to his lips and kissed it softly. "Good night, fair Lydia."

Then he disappeared in the darkness and Lydia was left alone to wait for Ross.

* * *

It was the kind of place he used to frequent, and he knew before he went in that he was courting disaster. Yet he went anyway with an almost compulsive need for self-punishment. The "ladies" were getting on his nerves by the time they reached Owentown. They giggled and simpered and managed to maul him with soft, well-placed, accidental touches that, rather than inflaming his desires, quenched them. He kept thinking about Lydia and the valiant way she had stood her ground both with him and with the women who had all but promised to seduce her husband. She had made them all look pathetic.

Combating guilt and dissatisfaction, Ross swung open the doors of the Shady Rest and entered the clamorous racket. The air was thick with smoke and the stink of stale beer and unwashed bodies. The red wallpaper had long since been peeled away from the clapboard walls and the naked girl reclining in the badly painted portrait over the bur had had both eyes shot out. The floor was sticky with tobacco spittle. The pianist was an abomination to anyone with half an ear for music, and the drinks were watered down.

The clientele didn't seem to notice these deficiencies. They were there to have a rambunctious good time and the arrival of five new whores had everyone's blood pumping and tempers flaring.

It was just the kind of squalid atmosphere Ross needed to convince himself he was unhappy in his new life.

He picked up a bottle of whiskey at the bar and waded his way through a maze of foul-smelling bodies to a table where a poker game was in progress. Thankfully the stakes weren't high, and he got in on the next deal and won it. He had taken the next few hands and had drunk numerous glasses of the whiskey when he noted a man across the room watching him closely. The man was too innocuous not to alarm Ross immediately.

Every instinct he had groomed over the years went into play. Even after three years of living straight, his whole body was trained to react to potential danger. When he looked up again the man had turned his back, but Ross knew he could have been recognized. He gathered up his winnings, left the bottle to the others as a token of fair play, and wended his way to the side door of the saloon.

He entered the dark alley cautiously, his eyes darting around the myriad places a sniper could lurk. He knew them all. Damn! The man he had noticed watching him in the saloon was standing at the corner of the building, lighting a cigar. It might mean nothing or it might mean everything, but Ross didn't take chances. He had left Lucky at the front of the saloon. He would have to whistle for him later. For now he had better lie low.

He flattened himself against the wall and, keeping his eyes on the silhouette at the corner, soundlessly crept along it to the rear of the building. He saw Madam's wagon parked at the back door. The soft lantern glow from within revealed her standing on the tailgate.

He walked toward her on silent feet. "Why aren't you inside with the others?" he asked in a whisper.

"Why aren't you?" she returned.

She was smoking a cigar, the smoke wreathing the mass of coal-black hair piled high on her head. Her cheeks and lips were rouged. Her face was pasty with makeup that, if one didn't look closely, camouflaged the hard-earned lines surrounding her eyes. Her arm was lying across her stomach holding together the front of a black satin robe with a garish dragon embroidered over the shoulder, his fire-breathing nostrils and red, mad eyes crawling down her generous bosom.

Ross glanced over his shoulder at the saloon. Squeals of pleasure, the thumpingly brash piano, and the roar of anger and laughter mingled offensively. "Too big a crowd."

Madam dropped her cigar into the dust. "That's what I thought. I was too tired for it tonight."

Ross was lonely. He thought of the man in the front of the saloon. Pursuers, always, for the rest of his life, pursuers. He thought of Victoria dying and leaving him mercilessly to fall back into the life he had tried to escape. He tried not to think of Lee. And Lydia.
God, don't think of Lydia.
"You got a bottle?"

"Yes." She let her arm drop and when it did the wrapper fell open to reveal a body that must once have been desirable, but that now sagged and lumped in unfortunate places. Only her breasts were fine. She had magnificent breasts with nipples rouged to match her mouth. The nest of hair between her thighs was coarse and thick and dark. Her thighs were heavy, but her ankles trim. "I've got plenty of whiskey and everything else you need right now, Mr. Coleman."

She was an old whore. But what was he? A whores son. And one took comfort where one could find it. He climbed into the wagon and let the canvas flaps close behind him.

* * *

It was stygian when Ross drunkenly stumbled out of the wagon. He blinked against the moonless darkness and took a few halting steps before he gave up the endeavor to walk as useless. Lifting his fingers to his mouth, he placed them just right and whistled through numb, flaccid lips. It pierced the night, slicing through the stillness like the blast of a bugle. He tensed, but relaxed when his horse rounded the building. That was the only movement. The saloon had long since closed its doors for the night.

After several aborted attempts, he managed to climb onto his horse and guide him in the general direction of the train. God, he felt miserable. Each clop of Lucky's hooves slammed against his skull. He was never so glad to see the faint, shadowy outline of the circle of wagons.

He slid down Lucky's side, taking the reins and guiding him into the roped-off corral. "You're a friend," he muttered as he clumsily took the saddle off. "A real friend."

When the horse had been seen to, Ross ambled around the circle of wagons trying to decide which was his. The venture made him dizzy; the whiskey he had drunk churned in his stomach, and before he knew what had hit him, he was racing for the bushes where he vomited it up violently. God, at one time what he had drunk tonight would have seemed only a thimbleful.

He reeled toward the wagon, feeling badly, about the way he had treated Madam ... uh ... Madam whatever the hell her name had been. He had thought he could go through with it, thought that it didn't matter which female body he spent his frustration on. But he had been wrong.

She had been accommodating, telling him how smart and witty and handsome and strong he was. She had praised his body even as he drained the bottle of whiskey while trying to conjure up desire for hers. He had even kissed her. Compared to Lydia's mouth, hers tasted sicken-ingly sour. He had buried his face in the folds of flesh at her neck and nearly gagged at the cloying fragrance. Drunkenly he had fondled her breasts, but instead of finding them firm and ripe, he had only been handling globs of loose, pudgy flesh that he found repugnant.

She neither looked, nor felt, nor tasted, nor smelled like Lydia. No, goddammit. Not Lydia, Victoria. Victoria. Say it. Victoria. Remember? Your wife. The woman you loved. The woman you still desire.

But it had been Lydia's face he had seen, not Victoria's. Even as Madam had patiently stroked and manipulated him, he had tried to envision Victoria, but could see only Lydia, staring up at him with censure on her golden face and in those amber eyes. When Madams perseverance paid off and he became hard and throbbing in her hand, it had been Lydia's name he had moaned, and Lydia's name he had repeated, even as he pulled on his clothes and left Madam cursing him to perdition.

Swaying precariously, he gained the back of the wagon and pulled himself inside, bracing his hands on the floor in a futile attempt to keep it from tilting. Then, on all fours, carefully placing one palm and one knee in front of him, making no jarring, hasty motions, he crawled to the place in the wagon that offered him the solace he craved, and he lay down.

He sighed once with immense pleasure, then let the blackness that obliterated conscious thought engulf him.

* * *

Lydia awoke to a pleasant heaviness on her breast. At first she thought she was holding Lee against her as she slept, as she had done when he awakened at night and wanted to suckle. But even Lee, after he had begun gaining weight, wasn't this heavy. Cocooned in that hazy cloud between sleep and wakefulness, she lifted her hand to the delicious weight and touched silky hair. As her fingers imbedded themselves in the thick mass, the strands curled around her fingers in their own caress.

She sighed with a sense of well-being and shifted slightly, realizing that the heaviness extended down her torso and onto her legs. Curiosity was beginning to overcome sleepiness, but still she didn't come fully awake. She didn't want this rare pleasure to be disturbed.

Something stirred over her breast and her flesh responded. Her nipple beaded into wakefulness and a mysterious tingling was generated there and radiated throughout her body. It was the most profound pleasure she had ever felt. She made to bend her knee and a soft moan, not unlike the one she felt rising in her own throat, vibrated from the heaviness atop her.

Yawning, she opened her eyes. Then, blinking them rapidly, she lay perfectly still, looking down at the long body sprawled over hers. His head was pillowed on one of her breasts, his large hand covered the other. He was snoring softly through his mouth. The moisture of his breath had dampened her gown and the skin beneath it. One long leg, still booted, was stretched along the floor of the wagon, the other was bent and lying across her thighs. Her knee was tucked firmly against his crotch.

Lydia stared at her own hand moving through the dark waves of his hair of its own volition. And she looked at his hand, curved protectively, almost lovingly, around her breast. She had an impulse to cover that large hand with her own, to trap it there, even as she pressed his head deeper against her breast.

Maybe then he would wake up, and look at her, and kiss her the way he had the other day. Maybe he would slide his tongue between her lips again and she would feel its hard, velvety length inside her mouth. She would taste him again and feel his hard body close to hers, feel his moustache brushing her lips.

But then she remembered the way he had looked down at her from his horse the evening before, all but laughing at her in front of the prostitutes. He had probably spent the night in their company and had just minutes ago returned. Didn't she smell whiskey? And something else that was overpoweringly sweet? Cheap cologne?

His hand moved and he murmured something in his sleep. Lydia watched, not daring to breathe, as his fingers sought out the taut peak of her breast. He brushed against it with his fingertips. They stilled, then moved again, gently rolling over the tightening flesh. He lifted his head to move his mouth nearer. His lips made seeking motions.

A tight constriction claimed Lydia's throat. Blood pounded in her veins. If she didn't stop him now, she wouldn't be able to.

She put all last nights anger and loneliness and embarrassment into the blow her fist gave the middle of his back and the shove she gave his shoulder. "Get off me, you drunken . . . bull!"

Startled awake out of an alcohol-induced sleep, Ross rolled to his back, caught himself on his elbow with a loud crack, banged his head against a trunk, and sat up cursing.

"Sonofabitch!" he said in a scorching hiss. He clutched his head while the whole Union army seemed to tramp through it. The pain from his elbow shot like malicious arrows through his whole body. "Goddammit," he muttered, squeezing his eyes against the pain that wouldn't stop.

"Shut your foul mouth," Lydia said in a harsh whisper. Dawn was just breaking and she didn't want their neighbors to hear his vile curses.

He blinked bleary, bloodshot eyes in her direction, trying to get her four images to congeal into one. His look was as black as the stubble sprouting from his chin. "Are you the one responsible for waking me up like that?" he growled.

"You wouldn't get off me," she said haughtily, standing up and checking to see that Lee was still asleep. "I woke up and thought there was a fallen tree lying on me."

Ross rubbed his throbbing temples. He had been sleeping on her? Vaguely he remembered getting into the wagon and finding the softest pillow he ever remembered putting his head on. He had slept better than he had in months. He looked at her now and let his eyes focus on her breasts. He felt his blood heat and glanced away before she could see his fixation.

That damn cheap whiskey had made him sleep like a dead man. He felt like a fool. Worse, he knew he looked like one. "Don't you ever wallop me like that again, Lydia," he said, pointing a threatening finger at her and trying to look stern, though arranging his face into any expression brought on such intense pain he wondered if it was worth it.

"Don't ever weigh me down like that either. Especially after you've been in the company of whores all night. If you wanted to sprawl on top of somebody, why didn't you stay with them?"

They were still whispering, but it was going to be a helluva fight just the same and both of them were spoiling for it. Bad as he felt, Ross managed to get to his feet, hating the way he had to bow his back in order to stand in the wagon, while she faced him standing straight as a flagpole, her fists digging into her hips, her chin pointing defiantly toward his chest. "Why didn't you ask me not to go?"

"Because I didn't care if you went or not."

"No? Then what are you mad about?"

"
I
didn't care, but other people on this train will. I was only worried about the appearances you were so all-fired anxious that
I
maintain. Apparently the same rules don't apply to me as apply to you."

"That's right. I'm the man."

Lydia made a sound of total disgust as she whirled away. Lost in anger she whipped the nightgown over her head and stood with her back to him wearing only her pantalets.

And he, with some demented demon pounding the eyeballs out of his head from the inside, couldn't help but notice how neat and enticing and rounded her butt was, and how slender and shapely her calves were. Still befuddled, he was about to reach out and touch her skin to see if it was as soft as it looked when she spoke.