Working the Lode (3 page)

Mercy came around the side of the counter to confront her friend, grabbing her by the shoulders forcefully. “I saw no redheaded man, Zel. Tell me, then, about the shorter one, the dark-haired one.”

Zelnora felt faint. Although the autumn rain had just ceased outside, her face burned, and she longed to dive into the river. She looked her friend in the eye. “His name is Aaron Erskine, and that’s all I know, they work with Marshall up at Coloma building a mill, but you can’t go down there now because I… ” She closed her eyes, struggling to continue. “I have to go to the pantry shed for some, ah…some lemonade!”

She grabbed the padlock key and her tin cup from underneath the counter, whipping the rebozo from her hair and flinging it over a stool, and her last view was of Mercy, hands on hips, declaring, “That must be some rugged redheaded man to make you so featherheaded!”

“If Brannagh returns, tell him I’ve gone to bathe in the river!”

Her real goal was to sneak more whiskey from one of the kegs she knew were there, and gather herself. She fairly ran the fifty yards up the hill to the pantry shed, letting herself in with the key. It felt safe and secure inside here with the barrels of flour and pickled salmon, the comforting smell of tallow and cheese.

She sat on some bags of dried corn holding her whiskey cup with trembling hands, just soaking her lips in it and breathing, hoping the essence would bring her to her senses. With a shock, she realized she was contriving to somehow meet up with Mr. Bowmaker again. How dare she? How could she? Brannagh would never hear of it! Perhaps he had a wife cached away somewhere up in the mountains. Perhaps she even cooked for them at the mill. What did she know? Mr. Bowmaker would play the fiddle or some other mournful instrument at night as the exotic wife of Indian descent—a beautiful, lithe maiden no doubt—danced a fandango about the fire with upraised arms, and then he’d fuck her ferociously, like an animal, with her on her knees, flattening her like a frog against the bearskin, as Barton used to do to her. Only Mr. Bowmaker wouldn’t grunt like a barnyard animal. No, he wouldn’t let his tremendous strength hurt her, he would use his strength in the adept, agile manner the mountain man used when he put his all into tracking, scenting, shooting, and skinning his prey. The stalk of his penis would be thick, like a proud, giant trunk, but he wouldn’t hurt her in his brutality, the ecstasy would last longer than thirty seconds, and he would—

“Oh, excuse me. I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

Good Lord!
It was him! He poked his head and shoulders beyond the shed’s doorframe, lit like a beatific angel by the filtered light of the one sooty glass window.

Zelnora was so lost in her reverie she jumped a foot in the air at the sound of his voice, embarrassingly sloshing the whiskey out of her cup as she put her free hand to her chest in shock. But she did note the tiniest of amused smiles at the edges of his mouth—oh, his beautiful mouth, with its bow-shaped cupid’s upper lip. Gathering herself, she leaned forward in anticipation, perhaps knowing this position showed her bosom to its best advantage. “No, no, it’s fine, I was just, ah…” Smiling, she held out the cup as though it explained everything. “Please come in. What can I do for you?”

More confidently now, he entered the room, and he had to stoop a bit to clear the doorframe. Oh, dear Lord in heaven, how tall he was, how masculine the way he stood, how large and experienced his hands as they hung at his thighs, powerful thighs tightly encased in buckskin…He looked directly at her with that unwavering gaze. “Brannagh said I could find a box of rifle ammunition in here. Is that true?”

Zelnora stood and set the offending tin cup onto a barrel. He gazed at her as though she were his prey, or an oracle capable of answering his innermost life questions. She returned the unblinking gaze and the sly smile. “Is that true?” she said coquettishly. “Why, yes, I suppose it’s true.”

His smile widened—a soft, almost fond gaze, a woman could imagine, if such things were possible. He took one step closer to her. “Is it true, really? Maybe life is just a dream and we wake up when we die.”

Zelnora was startled to hear such a sentiment come from a mountain man. She had thought they just discussed rifles, pelts, and, well…ammunition. The smile melted from her face, and she felt the sting that signaled tears might fill her eyes at any moment. “Yes, but wouldn’t that be sad? Shouldn’t we live life to its grandest extent?”

“Do you, though?” he asked ironically. He had almost no accent at all. It was hard to pinpoint where he was from. Maybe a tinge of French, but it was just a flat, sandy…beautiful voice. “Working in Brannagh’s store, being his ‘helpmate’? Is that your grandest extent, Miss Sparks?”

How presumptuous of him! Yet how correct. She dropped her direct gaze to his throat, which was unfortunately covered with a black silk cravat. He stood so still, with hands at his sides immobile, taking her answers so solemnly. No one ever listened to her or requested her opinion on anything. “Well, no, of course not. My situation could be a lot worse, however. You’ve seen those poor emigrant women in the fort. I’m very fortunate to have Elder—Mr. Brannagh as my protector.” Defiantly, she looked back up into his eyes, only to discover he was no longer smiling in that deliciously impish manner. Now he was dead serious.

And took another step toward her, so there was only the distance of a foot between them. He looked her up and down, assessing. “Yes, I reckon you’re fortunate to have Brannagh as your ‘protector,’ as you call him. Many unlucky women have had to stoop to worse than him.”

Oh, dear Lord, he knows…
“He is merely my protector!” She shrugged. “And he’s not that bad. Once you become acquainted with him.”

Tilting his head in that assessing way of his, Mr. Bowmaker actually reached out and took her chin in his fingers, his fingers so long and warm, capable of doing so many things, such as knapping flints, and skinning animals, and…Zelnora’s mind became a complete blank. “A protector? And that makes it better? To cavort with a protector?”

The nerve!
“Who said anything…about cavorting…” Her voice was becoming completely uncertain.

Now he stood so close she had to back up against a shelf of sardine tins. “I saw the way he touched your earring, and I know he gave them to you.” He even bent the smallest bit at the knees, so as to look her more closely in the eye, but she didn’t want to meet his gaze.

“That is none of your business, Mr. Bowmaker. I get by all right.”

“Excepting he’s a heartless bastard, and you’re a lovely mountain flower just waiting to be plucked.”

Did he say…plucked? Or fucked? Zelnora’s head spun wildly with this sinewy man’s proximity. What was his goal, to taunt her? Well, then, he was succeeding excellently. Recalling her recent ambition to track him down and pluck him, she gained the courage to look him in the eye again and say, in what she hoped was a careless tone, “Yes, he is rather heartless. I don’t care much for him personally. And I do find you rather beautiful and wild and…animalistic.”

Mr. Bowmaker ran one long arm up against the sardine shelf, nearly engulfing her in his wood smoke and pine scent that was scintillating rather than nauseating. She was melting utterly and completely, Zelnora knew, and would do whatever this potent man asked of her. Now, he fairly whispered down at her in a husky voice, “How would Brannagh feel…to know that you were alone with a wild mountain man in a shed full of ammunition and whiskey?”

“We’re doing nothing wrong.”

She realized he panted with lust, too, his lovely, almost aristocratic nostrils flaring slightly. “Yet.”

He kissed her, and it was not what she expected. She expected to be thrown to the floor and fucked brutally, the butt of the rifle he still had slung over his shoulder tapping out a staccato beat for the entire fort to hear. She would have willingly done so, too. No, he was tender and respectful, his beautiful, full, moist lips moving slowly across hers, occasionally nipping a bit at her lower lip. None of that slurping and grunting and shoving of tongues. His free hand cradled the back of her skull in his hand, sinking his fingers deep into her braids. Oh, this was heaven. She had never been kissed like this before, snorting hot air against each other’s faces, slowly licking each other’s lips, sucking on each other. He was like a piece of chocolate one wished to melt gradually in one’s mouth, not gulp down all at once.

She needed him closer as she ran her hands down the solid rock of his lower back and over the perfect globes of his ass and pulled his crotch into her. He came eagerly, with one great exhalation, angling his hips into her, so that he lifted her several inches into the air against the sardine shelf, sending some cans bumping to the floor.
Oh, good Lord, yes.
Even though two layers of leather separated them—his shirt and his pants—Zelnora’s experience told her his penis was long, thick, straight, and so plump she could even feel the giant mushroom head against her dripping quim.

They pulled apart several inches so that he appeared blurry, his face was so close, the clarity of his aquamarine eyes obscured, but not the strength of his lust. And need, she saw suddenly. Need. There was something more here than just the need for a fast fuck. There was something more that he needed, and she aimed to find out what it was.

Her quim shivered with anticipatory delight as a drop rolled down her inner thigh. Her quim, that used to be so traitorous, was now on the same team as her brain—for once, they worked in tandem, both desiring the same thing, and it was a delicious sultry heaven.

Bringing both slippered feet off the floor, Zelnora attempted to hook her toes around the back of his calves into the tops of his…moccasins? He wore no boots! Under the covering of his buckskins, the hems of which dragged the ground, his moccasins only reached his ankles, and she had nowhere to hitch her toes. He must have known her goal, for he reached one long arm down and gathered her Californio skirt in his nimble fingers, collecting it fold by fold like one would gather a curtain, bringing it slowly up her heated thigh. Oh, the unbearable agony as his fingers came closer and closer to the soaking lips of her sex.

But he only wished to grab her bare thigh in his burning-hot, able hand, to lift it higher off the floor, to get a better angle to swivel his hips into her. His eyes seemed to roll back into his head then, and he issued the deepest guttural groan she had ever heard, as though he imitated a bear, and Zelnora went loco then.

“Mr. Bowmaker!” she cried quietly, running her fingers underneath his head scarf so that it slid off, and she was able to finally feel the heat of his scalp, the fine silken strands of his thick ginger hair. She yanked her own bodice down in order to feel her nipples rub against the heated leather of his chest. She arched her back, and he licked a steamy trail from the pit of her throat downward. His tongue may as well have been licking her clitoris—not that she knew that forbidden feeling—for all the shivering and clutching her sex was doing.

Oh yes please, please suck my nipples,
she thought fervently, head thrown back as though praying, something she was quite accustomed to, although not in this manner. Gathering a handful of his silken hair into her fist, she gave a gentle yank that may have been misinterpreted, for he suddenly brought his face back up to hers, panting heavily, and she realized he was sweating with passion. She wondered briefly,
Is he this passionate with every woman?

“Miss Sparks…” he pleaded sincerely. “Gut-shot is this child.” He could barely speak, he breathed so heavily, and she felt a fine tremor go up the front of his thigh that was plastered to hers. “You’ve turned me into a thoughtless beaver kitten.” He placed his forehead against hers, shutting his eyes as though in pain. “You’re the biggest kind of pumpkin, but I can’t act such as this on the property of another man.” He dropped her thigh slowly, her toes touching ground again, and disappointment washed over her.

Tenderly, she kissed the tip of his nose where a drop of sweat perched. “Mr. Bowmaker…” she whispered. “You are a refreshing bed of sweet delights, the most handsome, stimulating, sensuous man I’ve ever met. I absolutely revel in your masculine charms. I know we cannot act such as this—”

Mr. Bowmaker wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and blinked down at the floor, as though he’d forgotten where he was. “Lord. I need to get myself my own pantry shed.”

There was a brief pause before Zelnora almost giggled, but suddenly, Brannagh’s loud braying wafted up, coming from outside the store. It appeared he brayed at someone other than them, but they quickly separated by a few feet, smoothing down their clothing, clearing their throats, regaining their senses.