The hands she had raised to ward him off were captured between their bodies, and the sensation of his bare flesh beneath her fingers assaulted her at the same time his tongue ran a flickering trail along her upper lip. A faint sigh floated on the air. It took a few seconds for Hope to realize the husky whisper, echoing over the off-key piano music, had emanated from her own throat
.
The only things holding her up at that precise moment were the strong hands resting on the gentle curve of her waist. As his mouth teased her full, lower lip, his hands slipped around her. One cupped the small of her back while the other strayed to a point just below her shoulder blades. Both pulled her closer to that hard, lean frame, and both made the skin beneath her clothes feel as though it was smoldering.
She didn’t realize she had allowed her own hands to stray higher until she felt the soft silk of his hair beneath her fingertips. The baby-fine curls that played at that thick nape wrapped around her fingers as she pulled him closer.
Pulled him closer? She hardly heard the strange, haunting echo of her mind. It was overridden by warm waves of eager anticipation, sensations that quickly flooded the rest of her body. It no longer mattered that she could never follow through on these feelings. What mattered was that she felt them, and they felt sinfully delicious!
The probing of his tongue became more insistent as he tested the place where her lips met, forging a path that let him invade the soft, moist recess and explore at leisure the perfect, even line of her teeth. Her own tongue ran frantic circles against the opposite side of the barrier, but she dared not surrender to the urge to remove the impediment for fear she would lose what little control remained of her badly tattered defenses.
I can’t lose control, she reminded herself briskly, trying in vain to stem the liquid fire coursing through her veins, Not with Drake Frazier, not with anybody. But damn him! Why did he have to so expertly arouse the forbidden desires she had, in all her innocence, thought she could live without?
Drake took full advantage of her momentary lapse into thought. The second he felt her defenses slacken, he slipped his tongue into the honeyed sweetness of her mouth.
Stop this exquisite torture? Why would I want to? Restraint was only a dwindling memory as all forms of protest left her mind.
She returned his kiss with a timid intimacy that grew bolder with each passing second. At first her tongue coyly flicked against his, darting and retreating, only to search again. But with each retreat, he sought her out, teasingly probing her into an awareness that was sweeping away her self-control at an alarming rate. She was vividly aware of every male inch that pressed tantalizingly against her.
The hands she’d wrapped around his neck now roved curiously over broad shoulders, glorying in the feel of muscles bunching tightly beneath her fingertips. His flesh seemed alive with the sinewy tendons beneath, tendons that seemed to be everywhere her inquisitive palms roamed. They were on his shoulders, his back, his upper arms. Even the thick cord of his neck was alive with movement as his mouth worked its sweet magic over hers. The curling golden hairs coating his chest tickled her palms and sent white-hot sparks of delight shooting up her arms, sparks that wrapped tightly around her heart and stole her breath. The taut line of his stomach was being thoroughly investigated just as his lips playfully encircled the timid exploration of her tongue, gently sucking it into his mouth.
Her fingers quickly surrendered themselves to the pleasures to be had. One of Frazier’s hands, riding the curve of her back, pulled her closer. The other slid up her back and entwined itself in the cascade of shimmering chestnut satin. She ran her tongue along the line of his teeth, and her reward was a sweet guttural moan released from somewhere deep in that muscular chest. The moan was soon joined by a soft sigh of her own.
There was another sound, too, one that Hope was becoming aware of in slow, languid degrees. It was the sound of knuckles rapping sharply on the door behind her. The noise, once it penetrated the foggy recess of her mind, served to jar her to her senses like no logic could have.
“Hope!” a frantic voice demanded as the knocking turned into an insistent pounding. The sound of a board splintering beneath a meaty fist cut the air, making her drop her hands as though she had just found them attached to the leathery hide of a crocodile.
Fraziere stiffened, his mouth leaving hers long enough to utter a string of muttered curses beneath a ragged breath. “Go away,” he growled at the intruder, but it was already too late. The girl had pulled away from him and was regarding him with a look that was half-passion, half-terror. Even a fool could have seen her fear went far beyond virginal innocence.
“Hope, are you still in there?” The pounding grew more insistent, almost matching the frantic tempo of her heart as she took a weak step backward.
“Yes,” she answered shakily. Her fingers were trembling badly as she raised them to her lips and sent the gunslinger a look filled with confusion, and a goodly portion of self-recrimination. “J-just a minute,” she stammered, dropping her hand to her side the second she realized what she was doing. “I’ll b-be right there.”
“Hurry up,” her brother barked testily, annoyed at being left alone in the hall.
She reached shakily behind her, wrapping her fingers around the doorknob as she sent Frazier a questioning glance. The feel of hard metal beneath her palm was oddly reassuring, as was the knowledge of Luke’s presence just beyond the thick panel.
“You’ll be there on Saturday?” she asked, her voice a faint, husky whisper as she turned the knob.
The man looked long and hard into the beseeching, velvet brown gaze, and for a split second she expected him to refuse. Instead he nodded, turning away as he combed his fingers through wheat-gold hair and went in search of his infernal gin.
“I’ll be there,” he answered gruffly. He found the glass and drained it in one long gulp. He didn’t bother to turn toward her as he asked, “And Saturday night, you’ll be here?”
Hope was glad his back was to her, glad he could not see the flinch of self-hatred shimmering in her eyes as she slowly opened the door and backed out of the room.
Chapter 4
Saturday dawned hot and bright. Rumors of the fight between Luke Bennett and Oren Larzdon had spread faster than a brushfire. By mid-morning the sun was beating unmercifully on the miners’ hat-covered heads as they left their diggin’s and gathered at the outskirts of camp. The only relief from the heat was the cool southern breeze filtering down from the high Sierra Mountains. The gusts twisted in fluctuating waves through the rocky valley of Thirsty Gulch. The American River gurgled on, oblivious to those who continued to work it, ignoring the commotion.
Only two women were present among the fifty or so men. Both were new to the camp. They’d arrived by muleback mid-week, and their presence caused a flurry of commotion amidst the women-hungry men. In less than two days the petite blonde widow had found herself an intended. The other, a plump, sandy-haired woman with five older children, was standing beside the husband she had traveled from the Northeast to join.
More than one covetous eye turned their way time and again. The women clung nervously to their men as they regarded the ragged faces around them with caution.
Hope slowed her burro as she rounded the path nature had cut through the granite walls. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she squinted at the crowd. It was impossible to discern her men from the rest. They all looked alike: tattered clothes billowing clouds of dust with every movement, expectant faces so dark with dirt that the eyes and teeth looked stark white in comparison.
She nudged the burro on. The smell of sweat-soaked bodies and horse dung stung her nostrils. The former, of course, was due to the scorching fierceness of the day. No man would smell pretty after he’d just crawled out of a coyote hole. The shafts, dug deep in the ground to get at gold that panning wouldn’t reach, baked openly beneath the sun. The latter odor, ripe and pungent as it rippled through the air, was caused by the horses attached to the whims—large, hourglass-shaped drums used to hoist the miners from the coyote holes in round, crude wooden buckets.
In the distance, over the hum of conversation and the gentle whisper of the hot, dry wind and churning river, Hope could hear the grinding of the newly constructed stamp mill. Situated halfway between the town and the mines, the mill was in constant use. In the six days since their arriva