Chapter Seventeen #2
He looked up and down the dark, empty street. There was no one else around. Mavis and Benny had left a few minutes before him, while he chatted with Grady.
He took her hand and pulled her around the side of the boardinghouse and into the alley between it and the building next door. Light filtered into the alley through the drawn curtains of the window above the sink in Grady’s kitchen.
He gathered her in his arms and kissed her, pouring all his bottled-up frustration into it. A dark alley wasn’t the place to do all the things he wanted to do, but pretending she didn’t drive him crazy was making him nuts.
She clung to the front of his shirt and leaned into him for support, then tracked a finger down his chest, before looking up at him while batting her lashes.
She was ridiculously brazen, and while her flirting amused him for that very reason, it also filled his head with ideas, because she never knew when to quit, and it shocked his willpower into submission.
“You’re going to be kidnapped,” he told her, because he’d decided to do it himself, and he didn’t want to risk the damage she might do to him through a simple misunderstanding. “Cassidy thinks we should have a woman in camp, so Grady tinkered with the script.”
“Wonderful!” Malika exclaimed, clapping her hands with enough enthusiasm to make him suspicious. “Kidnap me right now.”
Her attitude towards kidnapping had certainly changed.
He couldn’t think of a reason why they should wait, or what real harm she could do to the script, outside of her bad acting skills.
He hesitated mostly because he wasn’t sure she understood that this kidnapping meant she’d have to sleep on the ground, under the stars, and that the stars didn’t twinkle when it was raining.
She hadn’t complained about the many inconveniences women associated with life in a nineteenth century, Wild Western town, however. If the novelty didn’t extend to roughing it around a campfire in the rain, he could always arrange for her to escape.
He couldn’t delay his return to camp, with or without her, for much longer. Someone had to make sure the Mexicans didn’t knock off the client, and sadly, that someone was him.
First things first.
There were a few insecurities he’d like to address. “I’ve missed you,” he said, and he meant it. Hostile fake Mexicans on the brink of revolt were a whole lot less trouble than her, but also a lot less appealing.
He’d never once felt an urge to kiss Dave.
She toyed with one of his buttons, popping it free. “I’ve missed you, too. My sister Yara says sex standing up is very good if your husband is strong.” She dipped her finger inside his shirt and swirled the hair on his chest. “You’re a very strong man.”
He was tempted.
So sorely tempted.
Except they might as well go ahead and have sex in the middle of the street at midday for all the privacy the alley would give them. Chances were good that no one would walk by, but the chances weren’t zero, and he didn’t feel the same inhibitions about exhibitionism that she did.
Then she went and slid her hand into the front of his jeans, and what with one thing that always led to another, his willpower tapped out.
He soon had her back pressed to the side of the boardinghouse, her skirts hiked to her waist, and her legs draped over his hips while he put on a full display of his strength.
The soft glow from the kitchen window overhead added mood lighting to their peep show for any spectators lurking nearby.
He was gentleman enough to make sure she finished first, but that was as far as his manners went, and it was a close call.
After that, he needed a few minutes to regain some of that strength he’d shown off, so they stayed as they were, with her back to the wall, and his pants at his knees. He pressed his forehead to hers while they both caught their breath.
Common sense began to return along with an awkward awareness of their surroundings. Sound carried, and they hadn’t exactly been quiet. He set her feet on the ground, hauled his pants up, and helped settle her skirts.
“Yara was wrong,” she breathed into his ear while she buttoned his shirt. “Sex standing up is not very good. It’s magnificent.”
He had no business feeling proud about this, no matter how magnificent it was. But his pride strutted around in his chest like a chicken that laid its first egg and wanted the whole world to know.
He wanted Cassidy to know she was his.
He picked up her shawl from where it had fallen and draped it around her shoulders.
He kissed her. “Consider yourself kidnapped, ma’am. Let’s go.”
*
Kidnapping Malika might have been a mistake.
Jayce should have asked a few questions as to why she was so willing, but his ego had gotten involved, and now the train wreck was in motion.
He’d offered her a choice between cattle rustler, harlot, and music teacher. The role of cattle rustler intrigued her, but she said she knew nothing about it. She claimed to know even less about teaching music. The role of harlot, however? Especially a reformed harlot who now belonged to one man?
She was giving that role an Oscar-worthy performance.
Dave and his buddies were greatly entertained by her vocal admiration of Jayce’s magnificent prowess in bed.
To be honest, he found it funny, too, because she was so outrageous.
He didn’t have the imagination to dream up the things she accredited him with and they knew it.
If he ever met her sisters or their husbands, however, he wouldn’t be able to look them in the eye without blushing. Women talked dirty.
Butch Cassidy didn’t find her as amusing. She was deliberately trying to provoke him, and no one knew better than Jayce how well she could succeed at that when she tried. What he wasn’t sure of was why.