Passion of Madeline

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Passion of Madeline ISBN # 978-1-906811-31-0 ©Copyright Robin Gideon 2008 Cover Art by Lyn Taylor ©Copyright November 2008 Edited by Michele Paulin Total-E-Bound Publishing This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing. Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution. The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork. Published in 2008 by Total-E-Bound Publishing 1 The Corner, Faldingworth Road, Spridlington, Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, LN8 2DE, UK.

Warning: This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has been rated Total-e-burning.

PASSION OF MADELINE Robin Gideon

Dedication To Dane & Greg, With Love

Trademarks Acknowledgement The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Winchester: Winchester Repeating Arms Co. Levi's: Levi Strauss & Co. Colt .45: Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Co., Inc.

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Chapter One

The horses wouldn’t run much farther. Hawk was certain of it, and if there was anything in the world that he understood, it was horses. Horses and tracking. His mare, a deep-chested paint that he’d ridden for four years, was lathered and breathing hard, but her stride was strong as her long legs ate up the ground beneath them. There was perhaps another ninety minutes of sunlight. Maybe not even that much. With nightfall the chances of following the outlaws and rescuing the girl before she was raped and killed diminished significantly. Hawk glanced to his left. The expression on Cole Darden’s face was one of quiet fury. Hawk had seen his friend wearing that expression before. Every time he’d seen it, men had died. Cole was a man who took justice seriously. Dead serious. Three hours earlier, they’d come upon what remained of the stagecoach. The drivers had been executed, as had the two male passengers. The body of the one woman passenger couldn’t be found, leading Hawk and Cole to believe she’d been kidnapped. They had been following the outlaws’ trail since then, getting closer with each passing minute, pushing their horses to the limit of endurance. It was instinct that made Hawk pull back on the reins to slow then stop his mare. Cole reined in as well, deferring to his friend’s superior tracking skills. “What?” Cole asked when they’d come to a complete standstill. Hawk shook his head, his ears pricked for any sound, raising a hand to silence any more questions. His mare and Cole’s gelding both breathed deeply, nostrils flared. They had set a punishing pace for the horses. It took a moment for Hawk to recognize the sound as human. The sound of her voice was carried on the wind. It was high-pitched and shrill with primal fear. Hawk and Cole exchanged a look. The sound had come from the opposite side of the sloping hill they had been riding up. If Hawk hadn’t stopped his mare, he and Cole would have galloped straight into the outlaws’ camp—perhaps straight into a barrage of gunfire.

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“How many do you think there are?” Cole asked. He pulled a Winchester carbine from the scabbard under his right thigh and worked the action, levering a fresh round into the chamber. “I count eight horses.” Hawk pulled his own lever-action rifle from a saddle scabbard. “They won’t be as exhausted as we are.” Making up lost time had drastically sapped their energies. Hawk said, “Let’s go in easy. They’ll be looking at the girl, not at us. Let’s use that to our advantage.” Hawk heard the woman scream again, then say, “Stop it! Stop it! Just stop it!” He smiled. She was still alive and still fighting. That was good. At least, she hadn’t already been killed. That idea had been his constant fear since he and Cole had found the bullet-riddled stagecoach and the bloodied corpses. Cole moved to the right, putting distance between himself and Hawk. Over the years the two men, both in their early thirties, had learned to act in accord without speaking. They simply knew what the other one would do. Words were unnecessary—especially at a time like this, when the element of surprise was critical, and sudden death was a heartbeat away. As he neared the peak of the hill, Hawk dismounted and crept forward slowly, the reins in his left hand, the Winchester in his right. The girl screamed again. This time he clearly heard her call them ‘stinking bastards!’ A half-smile tugged at his mouth. The girl was feisty, she was. Hawk knew almost nothing about her, but his respect for her went up. She was against insurmountable odds, and still she fought back, cursing her tormentors. Giving up would have been easy—but she just wouldn’t do it. Spirit like hers was rare. Hawk was a man not often impressed with people, but he was impressed with the girl, whoever she was. He dropped the reins to the ground. His mare knew that if the reins touched the ground, it wasn’t to run, but it was allowed to walk to nearby grass or water. Bent over at the waist, Hawk hurried forward, his dark eyes darting here and there for some sign of danger. Cole had moved thirty yards to his right and neared the crest. By nature, Hawk was a peaceful man, but the world often seemed to deviously plot against his wishes. He knew that within seconds bullets would fly and blood would stain the

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Dakota prairie. Such things had happened before many times in his life. Hawk got down on his belly and crawled to the hill’s crest. Why the outlaws had chosen to stop where they had, Hawk couldn’t guess. Perhaps it was because a single tree had long ago somehow taken root in the middle of the prairie and so was an incongruous sight among the endless, rolling grassy plains. Or maybe the outlaws simply couldn’t wait any longer to force themselves upon their captive. Vicious lust had a way of making men both barbaric and impatient. There were seven men taunting the naked woman, and they were about eighty yards away from him. They surrounded the woman and cackled sadistically. Even from a distance, Hawk could see that her body was voluptuous, her complexion pale, her feminine charms ostentatious. Her clothes had been ripped from her, even her shoes. A profusion of auburn hair cascaded over her bare shoulders as she wheeled right and left, continuously trying to confront and beat back the nearest attacker. The swaying movement of heavy breasts caused a primordial response in Hawk, and he cursed himself for thinking sensual thoughts at such a time. But a man was a man…and Hawk was much more of a man than most. It was instinct that had earlier caused Hawk to rein in his mare when they had been at a full gallop, and it was instinct that made the half-breed tracker look to his left. He had tracked eight horses from the stagecoach. Now, there were only seven men tormenting the girl…and that meant one man was missing. Had he not rolled the instant he’d sensed danger, the bullet would had hit him in the head. The sentry—the lowest ranking of the gang members, it would seem, since he’d be the last man to have his fun with the kidnapped woman—had been watching the woman and so hadn’t spotted Hawk until a mere fifty yards separated them. As the sentry worked the lever of his rifle, Hawk aimed and fired in a split-second. His aim was true. The sentry tumbled backward and did not move. As Hawk ejected the spent cartridge, Cole, with the chance of surprise attack now gone, began firing at the outlaws, his rifle shots spaced at an even one second apart. The thieves’ attention had been exclusively on the naked woman when the gunfire started. But one does not live afoul of the law for years without developing a survival instinct, and though three of their comrades had been cut down in as many seconds, weapons were drawn and answering fire soon followed.

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Numbers were on the side of the outlaws, but they didn’t know that. The men who hadn’t felt the burn of bullets from either Hawk or Cole leaped into saddles and rode away at a full gallop, leaving behind their dead and dying friends and one tormented women, taking with them only the money they’d stolen from the stagecoach. “Let ‘em go, Hawk!” Cole called out as the three outlaws fled eastward on galloping horses. “We’ll catch up with them later.” Hawk nodded. He took off his hat, a pearl grey Stetson, and combed his fingers through shoulder-length hair the colour of a raven’s wing. He had killed before, and he suspected he would kill again—but it always left a sour taste in his mouth and a pang in his conscience. Even when he killed foul men desperately deserving to die, he never felt good about what he’d done. Eighty yards away, the naked woman looked around, one hand modestly between her thighs, the other vainly trying to hide extravagantly rounded breasts. She seemed in a daze, the reality of what had just happened impossible for her to grasp. Cole called out, “It’s all right now! No one is going to hurt you!” They’re dead! The bastards are dead! thought Madeline LaFontaine, blinking rapidly, afraid that somehow her eyes were lying to her. It wasn’t easy to believe that the nightmare could be over so quickly. Only seconds earlier there had been seven men surrounding her, teasing her, torturing her in the same way a cat tortures a mouse before killing it—with joyous good nature, casual indifference to any suffering they caused, and an infinite supply of sadism. Only these men hadn’t had murder on their minds. Perhaps they’d eventually have gotten around to murder, but it hadn’t been their first order of business. First they’d intended to rape her. Either one at a time, or all at once. Madeline couldn’t be sure, and really didn’t know if one act of defilement was any more or less repugnant to her senses than another. The men had ripped off her clothes then set her free. They had enjoyed their sadistic game, telling her the things they would do to her, using the foulest language imaginable. And then shots had rung out and men had started falling to the ground, some of them crying out in agony before falling silent, others dying instantly.

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She heard a groan to her left and looked at an outlaw. He was the one who had lost his front teeth years earlier, so that when he spoke his words were badly slurred, and his lips sloshed back and forth hideously. Earlier, he had promised Madeline that she would scream with joy once she had his cock inside her. “What’s wrong, big man?” Madeline asked in a sarcastic tone. “Tell me again what it was you were going to do to me?” Madeline saw the change come into his eyes. He had a hand to his stomach and blood poured out between his fingers. There was another bullet wound to his neck, though the damage appeared to be only superficial. His pistol was in the grass five feet to the left, and he started for it, muttering, “I’m going to kill the bitch…” Madeline reached the pistol before the outlaw. She held it in both hands and thumbed back the hammer, pointing it at the man on the ground at her feet. “I’ve never shot a man before,” she said, rage now making her oblivious of her own nudity, “and maybe I won’t like it. Maybe I won’t like killing you…but you sure as hell deserve killing.” The outlaw looked down the muzzle of his own pistol, then took his hand away from his belly wound. The blood, quite literally, pumped out of him. He looked up at Madeline and said, “Gut-shot’s a bad way to die. Finish it. Kill me.” Though he hadn’t known it, he made Madeline’s decision for her. She turned the muzzle away and eased down the hammer. “No,” she said quietly. “A quick death is too good for you.” “You bitch. You’re gonna let me die slow?” Madeline nodded. The man lived for another four minutes, and he felt agony for every second until death finally released him.

Cole Darden had been born and raised in the Dakota Territory. As the son of a cattle baron, he was wealthy and privileged, and had been his entire life, but as the son of a selfmade millionaire, he had been taught that hard work was not simply a responsibility, it was an expectation. From infancy the concept of noblesse oblige, the belief that with great wealth comes great responsibility, had been inculcated into his soul.

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Good looks, a confident easy charm that came naturally, and a libido both prodigious and prodigal, meant that from Fargo to St. Louis to Billings, women of all shapes, sizes and temperaments had found themselves blessed by Cole Darden’s sensual skills. Many had initially murmured ‘no’ to his advances, and later sighed ‘yes’. Others said ‘yes’ right away. And still others, the boldest of all, simply approached the young cattleman and made their desires quite plain. His ability to make women have orgasms was the territory’s least-wellkept secret. Both Cole Darden, and his seemingly indefatigable cock, were completely without prejudice. Plump or svelte, wealthy or poor, educated or illiterate, if a woman wanted Cole to make love, he made love—and he did so with a skill, grace, and physicality that shocked and delighted even the most promiscuous and jaded. To those women new to lovemaking, Cole was a patient tutor. To those women looking for more pleasure than their previous experiences had provided, they discovered what ecstasy was possible while having sex—or at least having sex with Cole Darden. For some, Cole was an addictive narcotic that had to be experienced again and again and again. For others, he set a standard for performance that they realised could be matched by no other man. And since it was abundantly clear that Cole was not on the marriage market, they were resigned to having luscious memories of several hours of blissful delight in his arms, but nothing more permanent than that. Often, when these women made love with their husbands, they closed their eyes and fantasised of Cole. He’d been told as much often enough, usually murmured under the breath by a former lover at a cattleman’s ball while the husband smoked cigars and drank port with other rich men in a separate room. Some of his ex-lovers felt guilty for fantasising about Cole while in the arms of their current husbands. Others accepted their fantasising about Cole as an after-effect for having experienced his sensual charms. None of his ex-lovers, however, regretted their time with him. None regretted sharing their passion with him. And their numbers were legend. Nevertheless, despite his vast experience in carnal pleasures with women of all shapes, sizes, colours, and creeds…when he saw the voluptuous, auburn-haired beauty standing completely naked in the middle of a Dakota prairie holding a pistol on her former tormentor, a significant portion of his anatomy—which everyone knew was notoriously without conscience--took notice. When it began to stand up and pay rather more careful attention

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than Cole’s better angels would have liked, he cursed himself. As a gentleman, he felt quite guilty about looking at the woman’s naked body. He did not, however, look away. He could no more tear his gaze from her than he could change the colour of his eyes. “Easy, miss,” Cole said, approaching slowly. The woman was scared, but she also had a pistol in her hands. He doubted she was very good with the gun, judging by the awkward way she held it. Just the same, a lucky shot killed a man just as surely as a skilful one. “The bad men are all dead. My name’s Cole, and I’m not going to hurt you.” Hardly more than twenty feet separated them now. When she looked at Cole, the blue fire of her eyes made his heart skip a beat. He’d never seen eyes quite that colour of blue before. It wasn’t strictly blue. Violet was mixed in there, too, like when the clouds are low and heavy with rain, and you know that the thunderstorm that is so quickly approaching is going to rattle the windows. “Drop the gun, miss. You don’t need it now.” She looked from Cole to the dead outlaw at her feet. For a moment, Cole thought she might fire a bullet into the corpse. If she did, he wouldn’t blame her. Standing in profile to him, completely naked and with a heavy revolver held in both hands, caused her biceps to press against her breasts, forcing them together and to billow upward and outward, making her bosom appear even larger. Those are the greatest tits in history, Cole thought before guilt changed the direction of his mind’s temporary flight of fancy. The naked woman looked at him again, and Cole saw the anger fade away as embarrassment flooded into her consciousness. She dropped the gun then put one arm over her breasts, and the other hand down between her legs. The notion that she could hide the lush extravagance of her sumptuous breasts with a single hand was, on the face of it, patently foolish. Nevertheless, as she turned sideways to Cole in an apparent attempt at modesty, her beguiling allure was heightened with her effort at modesty. Cole’s restless cock, always ready for conquests—particularly new conquests—pulsed with wanton life, rapidly stretching and growing down the leg of his denim trousers. “Just stay there,” Cole said, fighting against his baser impulses, forcing his gaze from the pale-skinned woman. “I’ll find your clothes. It won’t take but a second, then you’ll be dressed again.”

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He was right about finding her clothes, less so about being dressed again. The barbarous monsters who had kidnapped her had, upon ripping the clothes from her body, taken their long and razor-sharp Bowie knives to them. Her camisole, blouse, skirt, jacket, drawers, and all her petticoats, had been cuts to shreds. Even her white socks and her sidebutton boots had been defiled by foot-long knives with blades sharp enough to shave a man’s whiskers. “Hang on, miss,” Cole said, looking at a square piece of cloth that had earlier, he suspected, been part of the woman’s wool skirt, or perhaps part of the matching jacket. With the clothing all cut into such small pieces, it wasn’t easy deducing what had once been what. “I’ve got a spare shirt in my bed roll.” He started for his horse, a tall, black gelding named Dog. He added, as much to himself as to the naked woman, “At least, it’ll be something.”

**** There was a moment of confusion for Madeline when the tall man returned from his horse with his spare shirt. He extended it towards her, but to take it meant taking a hand away either from her breasts or from between her legs. The man looked away, so Madeline took the hand from her bosom and quickly plucked the blue cotton shirt from his grasp. She turned sideways to the man in blue Levis, a black shirt, and a fringed buckskin jacket. As embarrassing as it was to be completely naked in front of a stranger, she almost felt like laughing. Minutes earlier she had been quite convinced that she’d soon be gang raped. Now she was with a man who averted his gaze, making what appeared to be a serious attempt to not look at her nudity. A gentleman in the middle of the Dakota prairie? And a hero, no less! His shirt was clean and appeared to be new. Madeline tried to tell herself that such things shouldn’t be of importance to her at a time like this, but it really did matter. She pushed her arms into the sleeves and had to turn the cuffs up several rotations before she could even button the front of it. The blond man was head and shoulders taller than she, so the shirttails hung down to the middle of her thighs. With the shirt on, Madeline knew she was still showing an indecent amount of flesh by revealing her knees and some of her thighs, but at least she was no longer completely naked.

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She turned towards the man. He stood with his back to her. “You can turn around now,” Madeline announced quietly. The man turned. His gaze went up and down over her, his eyes appraising without being overly lustful. Madeline was thankful for that. “My name is Madeline LaFontaine, and I can’t begin to thank you enough for rescuing me.” An errant thought crossed her mind, and she nibbled on her lower lip for a moment. “You did come to rescue me, right? I mean, that’s why you’re here? You’re not a bounty hunter or—” The man raised his hands to stop Madeline from going any further. She noticed that his hands were quite large, the palms broad. They were callused, the hands of a man who worked for a living. “I’m not a bounty hunter. The name’s Cole Darden. The man I rode in with is a friend of mine name of Hawk. He’s making sure those men we chased away keep on running and don’t double-back on us. We came across the stage you were on.” He looked away for a moment. “We knew there was a woman aboard that stage. When we came across it, we found the bodies of everyone but you. That told us they took you.” A smiled touched the fullness of Madeline’s lips. Unconsciously, she took a half-step closer to Cole, drawn by a force she was unconscious of. “You risked your life just to save me?” She spoke quietly, as though she couldn’t quite believe what she’d heard. “Are you a lawman?” Cole shook his head. “I’ve got a ranch about a hundred miles from here. Horse and cattle.” He smiled and glanced away uneasily for a moment. “The ranch is doing quite well.” He took off his hat and combed fingers through slightly wavy blond hair. “I put money on that stage to pay for some breeding stock that’s coming from Billings. The breeder is a damned old fool who doesn’t trust bank drafts, so the payment had to be in cash. I got word in a roundabout way that a man name of Willy Boy Brown had found out about the transaction and intended on stealing it. The stage had already left town, so there was no way of warning you folks of what might be headed your way. Hawk and I were hoping we’d reach the stage before Willy Boy and his gang. Obviously, we failed.” “So you’re not a lawman,” Madeline said quietly. “You just came after me because you knew that I had been kidnapped by those monsters.”

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“If the monsters you’re talking about are Willy Boy Brown and his gang, then that pretty much sums it up.” He made a motion with his hand, and his lips pursed into a narrow, tight line. “It wouldn’t have been right to leave you to Willy Boy and his men.” “You just made the decision all on your own to come for me?” Cole shook his head. “Hawk decided, too. He wouldn’t have left you to Willy Boy any more than I would.” There was obvious pride in his tone of voice regarding his friend. Madeline put her hands on her hips, unmindful of how this made the size of her breasts more pronounced as they pressed against the thin cotton shirt that concealed their naked glory. “I’ll bet there aren’t ten men as decent as you and Hawk from San Francisco to New York,” Madeline said, this time making no effort to disguise the admiration she felt for the men who had saved her from what undoubtedly would have been agony then death. “I must surely be the luckiest woman west of the Mississippi.” Cole smiled, and a dimple formed in his right cheek. Apparently admitting to altruistic bravery made him uncomfortable, and Madeline’s bold flattering even more so. If it was possible for Madeline’s estimation of the man to quadruple in size and scope in the single heartbeat, it did. Then Cole sighed, and Madeline could tell that this was a man who had pushed himself to the brink. “You’re exhausted,” she said. “You’re dead on your feet.” He gave her an arch look and she winched. There were dead men all around her at that very moment. “Bad choice of words.” She took another half-step closer to Cole. His presence seemed to draw her, despite the brevity of her sartorial selection, as if he possessed some magical magnetism that Madeline responded to, even if she was unaware of its influence. “What can I do? You’ve done so much for me and I have done so little for…” The sentence died a slow but necessary death in her mouth without being completed. There were a thousand ways her comment could be misinterpreted, and none of them were flattering to the scantily-clad woman speaking. Cole looked away, and a crooked smile did battle with a mouth that was trying not to smile. Ambiguously, he replied, “Yes, ma’am.” Several seconds ticked slothfully by before Madeline replied, “I see there’s a stream over there.” She nodded her head towards the north. “I’d like to wash up a bit, if I might.”

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“I’ll give you privacy. There are bodies that need burying and a campfire that needs building.” He touched the brim of his hat with his fingertips. “Just don’t go too far. Willy Boy isn’t the only bad seed in these here parts.” Madeline’s eyes darted left and right, and she swallowed dryly. Recent horrors could not be easily banished. “Okay. I know you’ve got things to do but don’t…um, don’t go too far.” She smiled sheepishly and glanced away for a second before looking up into Cole’s jade green eyes. “I feel safer when you’re around. I know we don’t know each other very well, but I feel safe next to you.” Her cheeks and ears turned a slight shade of pink. Her bare feet shifted nervously in the prairie grass. “I hope that doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable.” “No, ma’am.” It was a patent lie. “Please, call me Madeline.” With obviously feigned casualness, he said, “Go on now. Don’t go far. If you hear anything, let out a shout and I’ll come quick.” Cole turned and walked away. For several seconds, Madeline just stood there watching him. Despite the marrow-deep horror of the previous eight hours, she found herself paying careful attention to the broadness of Cole’s shoulders, the narrowness of his hips, and the length of his legs. The thoroughness of her assessment of Cole’s masculine attributes warned Madeline that she was more than simply curious as to whether the man could continue to protect her against renegade forces who regarded violence as a currency they possessed in abundance. I wonder if he’s the marrying kind, she thought. The instant this thought registered in her consciousness, it was immediately followed with, Haven’t you had enough man-trouble in your life already?

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Chapter Two

Previous generations of travellers had long ago made a campfire circle with stones. Like so many of those weary travelling souls before him, Cole used it for his own, piling up dead, dry prairie grass and the few pieces of wood that he could find. He had already pulled the corpses far away from camp so that Madeline wouldn’t have to see them. The single dead horse could be moved, and would prove a valuable series of meals for fox, wolves, badgers, crow, and magpies. When Hawk returned, the two of them would dig graves for the men. Cole believed that even the most vile of human beings deserved a proper burial—and the men he’d killed had truly been some of the most vicious that he’d ever come across. What surprised him most—and solidified his notion of just what kind of men they really were--was that they hadn’t been satisfied with simply ripping Madeline’s clothes off her body. That wasn’t savage enough for them, not humiliating enough. Once they’d stripped her completely naked, they slashed her clothes with their knives. They even cut up her leather footwear. Though not a man given to spend any time thinking about what might have been, pondering Madeline’s fate at the hands of the Willy Boy Brown and his gang was enough to make even a man hardened by tough circumstances shudder in horror. He looked in the direction of the stream where Madeline had disappeared only minutes earlier. She was already walking back towards camp. Even from a distance and in the dimming sunlight, Cole could see that her hair was damp. With each step she took, the taut, rolling movement of her breasts beneath the cotton shirt drew his gaze and held it. His chest instantly tightened. With some difficulty, he turned his attention from Madeline and towards the flames licking at the grass and scraps of wood in his campfire. In just seconds, she once again drew his eyes. Beneath the shirttails were full, tapering legs, and this time Cole not only felt a tightening in his chest, he felt his heart begin to pound against his ribs. She’s been scared half to death, kidnapped and attacked by Willy Boy and his men, Cole reminded himself, feeling guilty at his own insatiable—and astonishingly undisciplined-libido. The last thing in the world she needs is for you make her your latest conquest.

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“Is there anything to eat?” Madeline asked as she approached. “We’ll have beans and slab bacon in a couple minutes,” Cole replied. “How was the water?” “Clean and cold, and I feel much better. Thank you for asking.” Cole, on his knees near the campfire, took in Madeline with a glance. For a man who had spent countless hours over the past decade in casual, meaningless banter with naked and semi-naked women, Cole suddenly found it very difficult to speak. He cleared his throat, paying particularly close attention to the fire, and tried hard to ignore the small, feminine feet that had moved close enough that he saw them in the grass in his peripheral vision. “It’s not much of a fire,” he said finally. In the back of his mind, Cole wondered what had happened to all the blithe, amusing toss-off lines he issued for the entertainment of women he wasn’t particularly well-acquainted with, even if he had shared shocking intimacies with them. “Not much wood in the middle of this prairie.” Madeline replied, “If we can reach it, there’s a busted branch in the tree. It looks like someone tried to shoot off the branch a couple years ago but couldn’t because the limb wasn’t dead yet.” Turning and rising to his feet, Cole checked the tree. Perhaps fifteen feet up there dangled the remains of a branch. The limb was dead and dried, hanging only by fibrous wood sinews and some bark. It would burn nicely—but Cole, at six-two and almost twenty pounds over two hundred, was far too big of a man to shimmy up the tree, and with Madeline wearing only his spare shirt, hoisting her up to the lowest limb would prove embarrassing, enlightening and highly erotic. And Cole was currently in no mood to experience any of those emotions. He wondered if the limb was brittle enough now to come down with a well-placed rifle shot, but didn’t like this plan. It was never a good idea to go banging about unnecessarily with guns in the Dakota prairie. Willy Boy and his gang of thieves represented only one threat. There were many others, like the renegade bands of Sioux that attacked travellers. And there were also Blackfoot and Cree roaming about, looking for easy gold, as well as former soldiers from both the Confederate and Union armies who had lived by their guns during the war and, now, knew of no other way to earn money. To them, gunfire sounded much the same as a dinner bell.

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Madeline moved closer to the tree. She walked partially around the trunk, looking up, studying the dangling branch. Standing with her profile to Cole, she put her hands on her hips, unintentionally tightening the shirt over the magnificent swells of her breasts, more clearly defining their size and shape and the fact that her nipples were still quite erect from the cool stream. For a moment, Cole closed his eyes, took a steadying breath, and then let it out slowly. “That branch would be perfect for us,” Madeline said. She turned and smiled at Cole, unmindful of her own erotic allure, oblivious to the havoc she created in the man who had saved her life less than an hour earlier. Cole’s cock, always responsive to the potential for adventure, grew swiftly, stretching down the leg of his Levi’s, creating a prominent bulge in the denim. “I’m way too big for you to lift me to that lowest branch, but maybe…”

In an unconscious defensive gesture, Madeline caught her shirttails and tugged them an inch farther down her naked thighs. She stammered, “Yes…but I…” Madeline felt more than actually saw Cole stepping closer. She thought it odd that whenever he was nearby the warmth of his body seemed to go into her blood. Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she could distinctly feel him looking at her. In her mind’s eye, she saw the emerald green of his eyes, shimmering like priceless wet jewels. It seemed ironic to her that her personal saviour was devilishly handsome, as though the gods had a particularly wicked sense of humour. Cole said, “There’s got to be some way.” Madeline tried to calm herself. So far, Cole had behaved like a perfect gentleman under the most trying of circumstances, and there was no reason to believe that he wouldn’t continue his exemplary behaviour. At least that’s what Madeline told herself, though she struggled to believe it. But she felt jittery inside whenever she was near him—and she didn’t like the feeling. Under the circumstances, she didn’t like the feeling one little bit. Now that Cole was within arm’s reach, she turned towards him and said, “I’m sure we can think of some way to—“ The words were choked off in her throat when her gaze travelled from Cole’s face downward, and when it did, she couldn’t help but notice the long, prominent bulge in his

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Levi’s. Her eyes widened, and she put a hand to her mouth. She wasn’t a virgin, but that was the largest bulge she’d ever seen in her life—to a factor of about double. “Oh, my!” Madeline whispered through her fingers. Cole made a pained expression and said quickly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen.” Madeline shook her head, sending her auburn tresses swirling over her shoulders. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine, I’m sure.” That devilish half-smile again pulled at his mouth, making the dimple form in his cheek. He said, “Actually, it is your fault. I took the blame, but I was only being gallant.” Madeline’s right hand slowly drifted from her mouth to her chest. She could not take her eyes away from the enormous erection trapped inside Cole’s trousers. She couldn’t even blink. In a breathy whisper, Madeline said, “I truly am sorry, Mr. Darden. I…I’m sure that can’t be comfortable.” Her blue eyes blinked several times. Cole’s dimensions weren’t within the parameters that she understood. “I’m not a naïve virgin,” she continued, feeling the need to explain. “I was engaged to a man for nearly three years and we were…intimate.” For a moment, Cole’s brows pushed together beneath the brim of his Stetson. “Why didn’t you get married?” The timbre of his voice was low, seductive, and a little sympathetic. Madeline paused a moment, wondering just how much she should tell this man. Several seconds passed before she looked into his eyes and answered with painful honesty, “One day he married another woman. Simple as that. I was a virgin until he came courting me. He said he loved me, and when he got—” Words failed her for a several embarrassing seconds. “Well, like that,” she nodded in the direction of Cole’s erection, “he said that it was my fault and that I had to give him relief. So I did. At the time, I thought it was a loving thing to do, and since we were going to get married anyway, it didn’t seem immoral.” Hearing herself say the word immoral twisted the invisible dagger of guilt a little deeper into her subconscious. She looked at Cole’s face, niggling resentment insinuating itself into her emotions. And then, inexorably, her gaze went slowly south, from his face down to the broad expanse of his chest, lower still to the flat stomach and narrow hips—until her shuttered blue gaze finally rested on the stretching denim that struggled to contain an enormous erection throbbing with virility.

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“He is the only man I’ve ever seen,” Madeline explained, her voice now barely audible even though only a few feet separated her from Cole. Briefly, unconsciously, the pink tip of her tongue appeared between her lips. “Only he wasn’t anything like you.” She pointed a trembling finger at Cole’s prominent erection. “His wasn’t anything like that.” There were equal measures of censure and awe in her tone. “Mr. Darden, is that really all just you?” Cole took another step closer. Madeline took a measuring step away from the tall man, and found herself pressed against the trunk of the tree. Her mouth opened, and her breathing became rapid and shallow. Recent horrors vanished from her thoughts as an unprecedented sense of erotic potential made the surface of her skin tingle. There was humour in Cole’s eyes and tone when he replied, “So, it’s Mr. Darden now, is it? Too bad. I rather liked the way my first name sounds when it comes from your lips.” She tried to keep from looking at Cole’s crotch. She really did. But forces more powerful than her inhibitions possessed her. Drawn magically, she looked down again. If anything, the swollen bulge of Cole’s imprisoned cock was more prominent now than before. He was close enough to touch. All she had to do was reach out with her hand to find out whether her eyes were lying to the rest of her senses. Madeline said softly, “Oh, my…” And then, after several seconds, she said a bit louder, “Oh, my, my, my!” She tilted her head back and looked into Cole’s emerald eyes. “Does it hurt?” He smiled crookedly, charmingly. “I’ll admit it’s more than just a little uncomfortable right now.” “No, I mean when you’re with a woman. Does that…hurt her?” She looked down again at the solid erection fighting against its denim constraints. “It seems so very large. It must surely hurt.” “To be honest with you, sometimes it does. At first, anyway. But then I make it better for her.” He paused, then added truthfully and with characteristic confidence, “I always make it better. Always.” Madeline tried to swallow, but her mouth was desert-dry. Even when she tried to moisten her lips with her tongue, her effort was only partially successful. Thinking of her exfiancé, Madeline confessed in a whisper, “He always said it would feel better, but it never really did. It didn’t hurt, though, so at least there was that. And when he was doing it…it

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didn’t feel really bad, but it didn’t feel really good.” She blinked, her breath coming now more rapidly and in tiny gulps. “I tried to like it. You know…like it the way he said I would. Sometimes he would get angry with me because he could tell that I wasn’t as excited about what we were doing as he was. He…he always said it was my fault.” Madeline looked up into Cole’s eyes. “Was it my fault?” Cole shook his head. Though a man with felicity for light banter, he earnestly answered, “No, it wasn’t your fault if it wasn’t good. It was his. He was just blaming you for his inability to arouse you.” He lifted a hand and lightly placed his palm against Madeline’s cheek then brushed his thumb gently back and forth over her lips. “Men blame women for a lot of things that aren’t really their fault.” Madeline closed her eyes. She felt Cole’s callus-roughened palm against her cheek, and the delicacy with which he brushed his thumb across her lips. He was only touching her face and lips, yet his touch was more arousing than any caress she had ever before received anywhere on her body from the only man she’d ever let touch her. Madeline was consciously aware of her labia swelling, moistening, instinctively readying itself for Cole’s penetration. And even more shockingly, her clitoris pulsed with life, throbbing and tingling, achingly hungry for sensations that she had dreamed of and hoped for, but had never personally experienced. As his thumb brushed over her lips, Madeline whispered, “So I began to pretend…pretend that I was having as much fun as he said I was supposed to. He seemed to believe my…my act. At least he stopped criticising me and telling me that there was something wrong with me.” “He was an idiot, and you should consider yourself fortunate you’re not married to him. A woman as passionate as you shouldn’t be locked away with a clumsy buffoon.” A short gasp escaped Madeline when she heard herself described as passionate. Of the long list of words she had at one time or another used to describe herself, either to others or to herself, never once had she ever used or even thought of the word passionate. She cupped her hands over her ears and whispered aloud but to herself, “I can’t hear this! I mustn’t hear this!” Madeline gasped aloud when Cole’s hands, so large and strong, closed over her wrists. He first pulled her hands away from her ears, and when she looked up into his eyes, he

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brought her hands together above her head. He held her wrists together in just his left hand, and pinned them to the tree. “You mustn’t hear this?” Cole asked, a roguish smile pulling at his too-kissable mouth. “Not only are you wrong—you’re completely wrong. It’s the things you don’t want to hear that you most need to hear.” He cupped her face in his palm again, and she sighed softly, the surface of her skin heightened to the potential pleasure of Cole’s touch. “I could make you feel the things that he promised but couldn’t deliver. I can make you feel that kind of ecstasy.” Madeline turned blue eyes filled with fear and hope up to Cole’s. He concluded, “I will make you feel such ecstasy! You’ll think you’re on fire, and you’ll know that I’m the man holding the match.” Madeline closed her eyes and turned her face away. She whispered, “Oh, God…Cole…you’re a devil. You’re the devil!” Madeline’s heart pounded against her ribs. She opened her eyes, and her gaze slid downward until it settled on the long column of his erection hidden behind denim. If anything, his erection appeared to be even larger now than earlier, though Madeline couldn’t be certain her mind and body weren’t playing some sinfully wicked trick on her. When will he reach full extension? How big is that thing going to get? a small, still-logical part of her brain inquired. And then another thought followed it. He’d tear me apart if he ever put that inside me. The thought made her flinch. Her breasts felt tight, full, as though encased in the bodice of a too-small corset, though in point of fact they were embarrassingly unfettered. Her nipples were erect and tingling madly. How could a man make her respond so powerfully without ever actually touching her intimately? What sorcery did he conjure to make her body become such a traitor to her own better judgment, to her own good sense? “Kiss me,” Cole whispered, leaning into Madeline. She turned her face away, knowing she must avoid Cole’s kisses. She had always avoided kisses because she knew they wouldn’t feel good against her lips. With Cole, her fear was that they would feel too good. Madeline was aware of her body more distinctly, more precisely, than ever before in her life. She felt the harshness of the tree’s bark against her wrists, which Cole kept pinned to

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the tree above her head. She felt the warmth of his breath against her cheek as he waited like a predator to capture her lips with his. She felt the throbbing in her clitoris, and the way that Cole’s broad chest pressed against her breasts and made her nipples ache with the need of caresses. She felt the grass beneath her bare feet. Most distinctly of all, she felt Cole ease his knee between her thighs to force them apart. Madeline tried to close her legs, but it was too late, and Cole was much too strong. A moment later, his thigh pressed firmly against her pussy, and waves of unprecedented desire washed over Madeline, making her body shudder. “Oh…Cole, I…” She turned her face to look up into his eyes. If she was going to speak to him plainly and truthfully to explain that what they were doing was completely wrong, then she had to look into his eyes when she spoke the words. But that was her undoing. When Madeline looked into Cole’s eyes, she saw the emerald green fire there—and seconds later, his mouth brushed lightly against hers. Soon his lips sealed tightly over hers in a kiss that was very firm and distinctly possessive. A soft, whimpering sound drifted to Madeline’s ears, and it took a moment for her to realise she had made the sound. It was unlike anything she had ever heard before because it was softly feminine and carried with it a helplessness to the passion Cole inspired. Never having been aroused so quickly or to this degree, Madeline was sailing in uncharted waters that were very frightening. Then his tongue touched her lips, seeking entrance, and though she had always loathed it when the only lover she’d ever known kissed her in that intimate way, Madeline’s lips parted fractionally. Having received silent permission, Cole’s tongue eased into her mouth. This time the passionate moan Madeline heard was considerably louder than the first one, though it sounded frightened of feelings that were too powerful and unusual to be greeted with unconditional acceptance. Madeline sucked Cole’s tongue deeper into her mouth, dancing her tongue against his. She shivered as though cold, though quite the opposite was true. Her body heated rapidly, and she wasn’t at all certain she wouldn’t soon simply burst into flames—the way Cole had promised she would. She felt his right hand go from her cheek down to her neck, then lower still. Madeline flinched and tried to pull her arms down, but Cole’s left hand instantly tightened around her wrists, pinning them above her head against the tree.

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Stop this! Stop this now, Madeline! The frantic voice of her better judgment screamed in her brain, desperate to have her behave in a rational manner. Only Madeline’s traitorous body and her escalating passion didn’t want to be rational. Her body wasn’t interested in what was right or wrong, only in what felt good and what felt even better. Cole’s thigh, thick and solid with muscle, moved slightly, rubbing against her pussy. Another whimper came from Madeline’s throat. She sucked on Cole’s tongue with a kind of hungry abandonment to a mysterious and carnal world she did not understand. Madeline was infinitely aware of Cole’s right hand as it eased around her left breast, touching her through the shirt. When his forefinger and thumb found her erect nipple and pinched firmly, she gasped and turned her face sharply aside, ending the kiss. His touch was electrifying. “Don’t! Don’t!” she said quickly, whispering words she suspected a proper and prudent woman would say. Cole took his hand from Madeline’s breast. He knocked off his hat, then he bent into her, his mouth searching, his knee moving between her thighs, his hand again closing over her breast . With a vague, erotic sense of being devoured by emotions she could not control, Madeline shivered. “Oh, Cole—“ Madeline managed to say before his moist lips slanted down over hers. Madeline felt helpless against Cole, powerless against his greater strength…and in ways that she could not comprehend, it was his masculine dominance that heightened her wanton desire. He was not a vicious monster, like the men who had attacked her earlier. And he did not whine and plead his case for sexual relief, like Madeline’s ex-fiancé had been wont to do. Instead, Cole was a man who knew what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to be commanding and forceful to get it. He had spent a lifetime dominating people, either through the force of his will and personality, or through the sheer might of his powerful body. Either way, Madeline was certain that Cole Darden was a man seldom thwarted in his wishes. Squirming, trapped between Cole and the tree, Madeline was appallingly aware that her pussy was hotter and wetter than ever before. Was her honey flowing so freely that it would show on the thigh of Cole’s trousers? Was it even a good thing to be so passionately

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aroused that the nectar from her pussy readied her for Cole’s penetration? There was nothing in Madeline’s personal love life to give her any understanding of what she was supposed to think, do, feel or say. Cole’s hand travelled from one breast to the other as he continued kissing Madeline, pinching her nipples to make them stand up and tighten with lust. Then his fingers began freeing the buttons with a swiftness that suggested unbuttoning the blouses of trembling women was a common occurrence in his life. Madeline squirmed with greater desperation, and when she made an attempt to free her hands, Cole again forced her wrists tightly against the harsh trunk of the tree, reminding her without words that she was his captive and would remain one until he desired otherwise. Once he had completely unbuttoned the shirt, Cole ended his kiss and leaned away. With an almost casual flick of his hand, he opened the shirt to expose the entire front of Madeline’s body. She had never been comfortable with her body, and certainly wasn’t with Cole’s emerald-green eyes roaming slowly over her generous curves. With his knee no longer between her thighs, she was able to press her legs together. She tried to twist her hips aside to hide her pussy from his wolfish gaze. It was an almost laughable attempt at modesty. “Don’t hide,” Cole said, his voice low, his authority to command Madeline implied. “Turn towards me. Let me look at you.” Madeline shook her head, sending her still-damp auburn tresses swirling over her naked shoulders. The mounds of her breasts, heavy and round, wobbled and swayed tautly, drawing Cole’s gaze. Madeline shivered, her clit tingling, her nipples throbbing as though they were being caressed by nothing more than Cole’s vision. “Turn towards me, I said.” The timbre of his voice, the way Cole dominated her body physically and emotionally, compelled Madeline to be submissive to his wishes. She turned her hips towards Cole. “Now spread your feet.” “But Cole—“ “Do it!” The words came out like a gunshot. Madeline spread her feet to shoulder’s width. She closed her eyes. “Open your eyes. You should see what is happening as well as feel it.”

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Madeline did as she had been ordered. She watched as Cole bent low and opened his mouth to suck her left nipple between his lips as the middle finger of his right hand simultaneously slipped upward between the slippery lips of her pussy. And then Madeline said a word she had never before used. As the warmth and wetness of Cole’s mouth surrounded her nipple and areola, and his finger pushed up deeply into her cunt, she gasped, “Oh, fuck!”

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Chapter Three

Cole sucked hungrily on Madeline’s breast, drawing the flesh deeper into his mouth as she squirmed. His right hand moved slowly, a single finger gliding between passion-swollen labia. When Cole transferred his attention to Madeline’s other breast, she let out a whimper. As he did this, he found her clitoris and caressed it with a fingertip moistened by her own juices. “God, Cole, you’ve got to stop,” Madeline whispered. “Oh, please…” Releasing her nipple from his mouth with a moist, slurping sound, Cole stood upright. He towered over Madeline. When she tried to pull her hands from his grasp, he tightened his fist around wrists to pin them even more securely against the tree trunk. “Stop?” Cole asked quietly, his tone faintly mocking. “I’ve hardly gotten started.” Before Madeline could protest further, he kissed her again in his fiercely dominating way, forcing his tongue deep into her mouth. He’s a heathen, a barbarian! I hate him! thought Madeline, but she really didn’t mean it as she swooned, her tongue playing with Cole’s. Ending the kiss, Cole paused a moment, his face inches from Madeline’s, his eyes boring into hers. There were words that should be spoken, Madeline thought. She just didn’t know what those words were. The proper young woman in her knew protests were expected. Cursing Cole was what she should do. But just when Madeline was about to explain in the most emphatic terms possible that Cole really had to release her, he bent his knees and once again captured her left breast in his mouth, sucking hungrily. “Oh, Cole…that feels so…” Cole transferred his kisses to Madeline’s other breast, his lips travelling slowly from the crest of one mound to the other, occasionally baring his teeth to lightly nip at soft flesh. Squirming, shivering, Madeline’s overheating senses could hardly comprehend the scope of the emotions Cole drew from her. Unconsciously, she arched her back, pushing her plump breast more tightly into Cole’s face as his sharp teeth sank sinfully into her soft flesh. And between her legs, the broad-palmed hand that was roughened by hard labour caressed with

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infinite skill, a single finger pushing upward between her labia then retreating slowly before placing slight caresses directly on the erect nub of Madeline’s clitoris, then starting the erotic journey all over again. Madeline did not at first realise Cole had released his grip on her wrists. She had been utterly transfixed by watching his gloriously handsome profile as he sucked on her nipple. She kept her hands above her head and against the trunk of the tree until Cole was down on his knees in front of her, his arms around her hips as strong hands kneaded the rounded globes of her bottom while he flicked his tongue in her navel. As Madeline’s arms slowly sank to her sides, Cole put a hand to the back of her knee. She did not understand what he was doing, and she resisted at first. Determined, Cole forcibly lifted her left knee and put it up on his shoulder, then tilted his head back on his shoulders to look up at her. In a faintly mocking tone that piqued Madeline, he said, “I’m guessing you’ve never been kissed.” There was an underlying message in his statement, but with Madeline’s naiveté and her current state of lust-addled disorientation, she could not think of a response. Her heart was beating like Sioux war drums in her chest, and it irked her immeasurably that Cole seemed utterly at ease with what they were doing. Emotions this intense were completely new to Madeline, and it was clear to her that passion was something he experienced regularly. She watched as Cole, still looking up into her eyes, turned his head to the side, bared his even white teeth and bit the inside of her knee. Madeline let out a little squeal of pain, but a moment later, he licked the area that he had just bitten, soothing away the discomfort with that devilishly skilled tongue of his. When he bared his teeth again, Madeline sucked in her breath and held it, anxious to feel his teeth and anticipating his tongue’s soothing caress that would immediately follow. Cole did not disappoint her, biting and licking slowly, leisurely working his way from the inside of her knee to her thigh, moving inexorably towards the pink-lipped pussy that glistened with Madeline’s honeyed essence. When his lips were a fraction of an inch from Madeline’s moist entrance, and she felt the heat of his breath on her tingling labia, he let out a soft, low, rumbling moan. This was a man who liked the taste of a woman, she could tell, a

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bit mystified by all that Cole was doing. She was unaccustomed to a man selflessly giving pleasure to a woman. He leaned forward, and for the first time in her life, Madeline felt a tongue slide between the lips of her pussy, work its way slowly upward, then graze lightly over the tingling nub of her clitoris. The sensations elicited by the oral caress made Madeline flinch as though she had received an electrical shock. Through the valley of her quivering breasts, Madeline watched as Cole pressed his mouth tightly against her pussy, his nose burying in the soft auburn curls above her mound. The tactile stimulation provided by Cole’s lips and tongue made her shiver as she balanced precariously on one foot. She heard him moan, and it seemed to be the strangest sound in the world to Madeline. Did he really enjoy giving pleasure that much? she wondered. The only man she could compare Cole to was her ex-fiancé, and he was as unskilled and selfish a lover as any woman could hope to avoid, so to have Cole on his knees before her, nibbling and licking and caressing her with a connoisseur’s touch, was not only wickedly arousing, but wildly strange behaviour. Seconds passed. Then a minute. Tension built within Madeline, a tightening she had never before experienced. Not even on those few occasions when she had touched herself had she felt this slow, relentless tightening. Her breathing had been ragged before. Now it came to her in uneven gulps. Her moans of passion were continual. Unconsciously, she tapped her heel against Cole’s back, her body twitching under the electric pleasure of cunnilingus delivered by a master of the art. “Oh…oh…oh…” The soft, almost plaintive sounds came from deep within Madeline’s passionate soul. The carnal thrills going through her were too powerful to not be frightening to a sexual novice. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried very hard to be motionless. Her efforts were successful for only a few seconds. She once again looked through the valley of her breasts at the handsome face of the man delivering such scorching pleasure. Madeline was certain she would burst into flames at any moment.

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Her body started to twitch harder than before, her hips moving erratically back and forth. Cole, infinitely more experienced in such matters, tightened his arm around her thigh and squeezed her bottom with greater force with his other hand. “Cole! Oh, Cole!” Madeline gasped, reaching down to pushed her fingers into his thick blond hair. “You’ve got to stop! You’ve…oh, oh, oh no!” She grabbed his hair with both hands and tried to wrench his head back to put some distance between his sorcerer’s tongue and her own ultra-aroused sex. But Cole wouldn’t allow it. Even though strands of his hair were being yanked from his scalp, he continued to hold tightly onto Madeline, attacking her clitoris with his lips and tongue with predictable results. There was nothing delicate about the first orgasm Madeline LaFontaine experienced. Quite suddenly, her insides knotted up into a fierce ball, twisting so tightly that she was gripped with pain. And then, without warning, what had been pain was exquisite ecstasy of the purest variety, and the tightness was released in a series of contractions that started powerful then diminished in intensity. And when at last it was all over, Madeline gulped in air. Balanced as she was on only one foot, and with her muscles all suddenly enervated in post-orgasmic lassitude, she would have fallen if Cole hadn’t kept her leg up on his shoulder. Madeline’s mind spun, her thoughts in such a state of chaos that she was absolutely certain she would never again be able to think clearly. Cole had thankfully stopped pleasuring her. If he hadn’t stopped, Madeline had no doubt that she would have died by now. There must surely be limits to the amount of pleasure a woman can experience. Whatever those limits were, Madeline didn’t doubt that she had crossed that line quite some time ago. “What was that?” she asked, gulping in air. Still on his knees, Cole looked up at Madeline with a smile. His mouth shimmered with her juices. “First one, eh?” He chuckled softly. “But, to answer your question, that was what I like to think of as a good beginning.” Madeline’s eyes widened. “Beginning? There’s more?”

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Cole eased her leg off his shoulder. For a moment, it was unclear if there was enough strength left in Madeline’s legs to support her weight. Then he rose to his feet. The bulge in his Levi’s was even larger than before. That big thing is for me, Madeline thought as she looked at Cole’s imprisoned erection. I can’t take that. As Cole was unbuckling his holster, from off in the distance a man’s voice rang through the early evening air. “Hail the camp! Hail the camp! Cole, I’m coming in!” A string of invective’s burst from Cole’s lips before he said, “Hawk’s back. Goddamn it.” In a voice weakened by satiation, Madeline said, “He’s…he’s come back. Now?” For a moment, Cole just looked into her eyes. Madeline wondered if he would take her forcibly, throwing her to the ground and taking his pleasure from her—even if Hawk would be in camp shortly. She wondered, too, whether she would resist Cole’s passion. He had brought her to the summit of desire, let her dance there as pleasure built on pleasure, and then skilfully pushed her into the carnal abyss, and in doing so, introduced her to the extremes of physical consummation. No other sensation she had ever experienced could come close to the climax that had just ripped through her body with convulsive intensity. With obvious resentment at both Hawk and Madeline, Cole said, “My best friend has suddenly developed extraordinarily bad timing.” Then he grinned, taking humour in his own incredible bad luck. “Better button that shirt.” He shook his head, his grin widening as the absurdity of the moment swept over him. “Madeline…you’re delicious. I could have you for breakfast, lunch and dinner and never tire of the same meal.” Then he walked back to the campfire. Madeline knew he was furious. He had not only introduced her to pure lust, he had satisfied that lust. He created the hunger, then he sated it. And for his incredible skills…he had been left untouched, his passion unfulfilled. This was new emotional territory for Madeline, but she knew instinctively that the time would come when she would have to satisfy Cole’s virile desire. Cole was a man who always got what he wanted, even if he had to wait a while to get it. Madeline knew this. Cole would insist that she satisfy his desire. It wasn’t a question of ‘if’ only ‘when.’ It was only a matter of time.

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Madeline shivered.

**** Hawk pulled the map from his saddlebag and spread it out on the grassland. “I followed them about three miles. They rode hard to begin with—maybe the first mile to mile and a half—then they slowed down.” He tapped the map near a sharp bend in the narrow stream. “They got in the stream here, to hide their tracks. I didn’t bother trying to follow at night.” Cole, on his knees beside Hawk, nodded and replied, “If you can’t follow them, then nobody can follow them. You were right to come back to camp.” He touched the area marked ‘Dunnigan’s Crossroads’ and said, “You don’t suppose they’ll be headed here, do you? They’ve got our money, but they’ve lost most of their food and supplies.” Hawk shrugged his broad shoulders beneath the buckskin jacket. “Maybe.” “What if I take a ride, making our way through here,” Cole continued. “It would slice miles off our trek if I could spot them cutting through here,” he indicated a spot on the map, “or here.” “Bit of a long shot, I’d say, but then you’ve always been one to draw one card to an inside straight.” “I won’t be gone long. Right here,” he tapped the map, “I’ll see if they’ve cut through the valley. If they have, they’ll leave tracks. If they haven’t, I’ll be back in two hours at most.” “Sure you don’t want to just bunk down for the night and start fresh in the morning? Our horses are about played out. Us, too.” Cole shook his head and got to his feet. “It’s worth a little effort. If I find their tracks, I’ll come straight back. If they’re headed to Dunnigan’s Crossroads, we’ll be able to catch up with them tomorrow by early evening. They’ve got a couple thousand dollars of my gold with them, so they’ll be liquored up by then.” “I could go with you.” Cole shook his head. “Get something to eat. Keep an eye on Madeline. She’s had a pretty rough time of it.”

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Hawk watched his friend swing up into the saddle and canter away, and as he watched Cole receding into the darkness, he wondered what was bothering him. The loss of a few thousand dollars in gold was enough to annoy Cole, but it wouldn’t hurt him financially. With his millions, he wouldn’t even notice a few thousand was missing unless one of his accountants told him so. Though Cole had never been a lethargic man, since returning to camp, Hawk had watched the big man pacing needlessly, despite his obvious physical exhaustion. He was unable to sit still for more than thirty seconds. Then he abruptly decided he had to leave. An hour later, standing at the edge of the campfire’s light, Hawk watched Madeline as she spooned a little more of the beans and slab bacon onto her plate. Dressed only in Cole’s shirt, she had been a visual treat for Hawk’s eyes. A hundred times, he found himself looking at her, his eyes taking in the beauty of her naked legs beneath the shirttails. And equally as enticing as her legs were her unbound breasts moving beneath the thin cotton. Had there ever been another woman with such extraordinary breasts? Luscious and round, moving sensually beneath cotton whenever she walked. Hawk had typically been a man who enjoyed his women slim and svelte, but there was something fundamentally enticing about Madeline that made him more than willing to adjust his notions of feminine beauty. He watched as she sat near the campfire, folding her legs beneath her before pulling the shirttails to cover as much of her thighs as possible. Then she resumed eating, a faintly distracted smile touching her lips, staring off into the darkness. Hawk returned to the campfire, his empty plate in hand. “There’s still a lot more left,” Madeline said a bit guiltily. “I hope you don’t mind that I helped myself to seconds.” He shook his head and avoided looking at her. “Of course I don’t mind. I’ve had enough. Cole will be back in forty-five minutes. Maybe an hour. There’s enough here for him.” Hawk felt Madeline’s eyes as she studied at him. He could almost hear the questions that she was aching to ask. Folding his legs beneath him as he sat on the ground, he turned towards her and said, “You might just as well ask. I’ll answer what I can.” Madeline looked away and inhaled deeply, clearly summoning courage. Then she looked back at Hawk and asked, “What kind of Indian are you?”

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Hawk’s sudden smile held a touch of melancholy in it. He had fielded that question many times before by white women, though typically they were the bored young wives of much older, wealthy cattle baron husbands. “Am I the first Indian you’ve ever met?” “The first one I’ve ever really talked to. There weren’t many Indians in Kansas City.” Anger flared briefly in Hawk’s breast, but he tamped the sentiment down. He knew the reason why she’d never met any Indians in Kansas City—because the city power brokers wouldn’t allow Indians within the city. For a moment, he thought of explaining this to Madeline, then he discarded the idea. She didn’t seem to be goading him, merely curious as to who and what he was. Hawk decided a little patience on his part wouldn’t be the most difficult thing that had ever been asked of him. “My mother was Sioux, my father a white man.” The words came out with little inflection. “What…what happened? How long have you and Cole been friends?” One side of his mouth quirked in a bitter half-smile. “We were just kids. The only thing my mother and father had in common was a love of whiskey. The tribe didn’t want me, and my father’s people sure as hell weren’t going to tolerate having a half-Indian bastard child in their midst. One day when I was fourteen some boys decided they were going to teach me a lesson. There were four of them.” With the memory, a light of amusement came into Hawk’s dark eyes. “They came out of nowhere and started beating on me. Then this big, rangy kid steps in and starts throwing punches.” “Cole?” Hawk nodded. “I got to my feet and what had been four against one is now three against two. It wasn’t long before it was just two against two, and that’s when Cole and I pretty much taught those boys a lesson they’d never forget.” He took off his hat and combed his fingers through his thick, long black hair, smoothing the strands away from his forehead. “Cole and I were both a little bloodied up, so we went to his ranch to get cleaned and bandaged. When his father heard the story, he said I could bunk in the guesthouse. I moved in that night, and that’s where I live most of the time today.” “Most of the time?” “I’ve got a hunting shack about thirty miles from the homestead. I go there sometimes to be by myself.”

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Hawk had never liked talking about himself, and even though he’d only answered a few questions and spoken a few sentences regarding his childhood, he was ready for the topic to change. Madeline rose up to her knees. There was an expression in her eyes Hawk couldn’t quite read. She said in a voice barely above a whisper, “That must have been awful…your mother and father being like they were…white people not accepting you—“ “The Sioux didn’t accept me, either,” Hawk said quickly. Madeline smiled softly. “You surprise me. I thought when I finally met an Indian, he’d be more…I don’t know—different, I suppose.” She once again tugged the shirttails a bit farther down her thighs. “I can’t thank you enough for saving me. Cole said you were as much in favour of coming after me as he was.” Hawk shrugged and got to his feet. Unlike his friend, he’d never been very good at small talk. When Madeline also got to her feet, he turned his back to her and said, “I’m sure you’re tired.” “Does it bother you that I ask so many questions?” Her voice was soft on the night breeze. Hawk turned to face her. “I’ve never had a conversation with an Indian before, and I guess I…I just don’t know how to behave.” She’s completely without guile, Hawk thought. Over the years, he had known a whole host of young women who had married well-meaning they had married for money. But once married, they grew bored with their generally much older husbands. And what better way to shake off the dust of boredom than to do that which is entirely unthinkable to the moneyed gentry of the plains states—having sex with an Indian? The fact that Hawk was sinfully handsome added to his exotic mystique. Hawk couldn’t count the number of women he’d had sex with who, when they crossed paths in the streets of Helena or Bismarck or some other city, would pretend that they didn’t know him. Sometimes they even whispered behind their hands to their female companions, no doubt uttering some contemptuous insult, questioning why Indians were allowed to walk the streets with decent white folks. A hundred times, Hawk had promised himself that he’d never again find himself in bed with some rich society belle looking to escape boredom in his forbidden arms, and a hundred times he succumbed to the pleasures of the flesh. And as Cole’s closest friend and top hand

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at the ranch, Hawk was obligated to attend any number of social functions where society’s elite congregated. Madeline whispered, “Have I said something wrong? Your face…you just suddenly had no expression at all.” “I was thinking about something, that’s all.” Hawk inwardly cursed himself though. He never liked it if someone could tell what he was thinking or feeling. “I’ll go get a little more grass for the fire.” He turned his back on Madeline, walking out into the darkness of the prairie. He didn’t like her questions, and after a couple seconds of deliberation, decided he didn’t like her innocence. In some ways, the wealthy socialites and emotionally callused debutantes who made little effort to hide the fact that they were seducing him because he was an Indian were easier to accept than Madeline’s blameless curiosity. The debutantes wanted the exotic experience of having an Indian cock to play with. Madeline just wanted to know if Indian men were intrinsically different than white men. She didn’t seem in the least bit interested in either hating him or seducing him, she just wanted to know him better. This was unique among the women in Hawk’s life.

**** Cole had ridden four miles when he stopped his gelding, dismounted, and took a big swig from the whiskey bottle he had in his saddlebag. Leaving camp to go on some absurd mission of finding the tracks of Willy Boy Brown had just been a gossamer-thin excuse to get away from Madeline for a while. Cole prided himself on the fact that he could sexually satisfy women. He enjoyed knowing that he could bring them to heights other men hadn’t. But he also held a quid pro quo view of sensuality—a man had the right to expect to receive as good as he gave. Hawk’s horrifically ill-timed return to camp, with Cole’s erection about as solid as it had ever been, couldn’t have been more infuriating. With his lust thwarted and with no wish whatsoever to make idle chitchat with Madeline—or to spend time talking with Hawk, with whom he was irrationally peeved, Cole knew that the best thing for him to do was leave for an hour or two to allow his better judgment to return and his temper and passion to cool.

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He took another sip of whiskey, corked the bottle and returned it to his saddlebag, and said to his mare, “You know, I’m not going to be able to breathe easy until that damned women puts on something more than just my spare shirt.” The gelding whinnied as though in commiseration.

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Chapter Four

When Hawk returned to the campfire and saw Madeline on her hands and knees, leaning in close to the embers to blow life back into the coals, he thought, She’s not trying to be provocative. But whether she was trying to be sexy or not made little difference to Hawk’s masculine sensibilities. She was in profile to him, inhaling deeply then blowing out slowly onto the coals. The position caused her shirttails to ride high up her thighs. Seeing her from the side, he had a throat-tightening view of the luscious mounds of her breasts swinging beneath her, full and round, moving freely. She was the image incarnate of full-bodied femininity. “I couldn’t find any wood,” Hawk said, announcing his return and trying to sound casual. The tightness in his tone, he hoped, would go unnoticed. Remaining on her hands and knees, she smiled innocently at him as he approached. “The firewood was still a little green,” she explained. “I’d better get it going again or Cole won’t have hot food when he returns.” “I’ll do that,” Hawk said, more gruffly than he had intended. It was impossible for Hawk to keep his emotions in check when Madeline’s allure had him by the throat in a vicelike grip. He got down on his knees beside Madeline and began twisting handfuls of yard-long prairie grass into ropes that would burn more slowly and hotter than if the dried grass was just put into the campfire loose. Then, with the campfire suitably stoked with rather green firewood and sufficient quantities of prairie grass, he began blowing on the embers. To his displeasure, Madeline resumed a similar position and also started stoking the flames with oxygen. What Madeline could not know was that her proximity was an intoxicant to Hawk, an elixir to his libido that he did not want awakened. Not now. Not with her. Not with Cole to return at any moment. Hawk was fighting a desperate, silent battle within himself to ignore compelling temptation.

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Within a minute the campfire burned nicely, the flames leaping a foot in the air. Madeline leaned away from the fire, sitting on the backs of her heels with her hands on her thighs. “Whew! I got lightheaded blowing like that,” she said, putting a palm to her forehead and smiling brightly as the red-gold flames from the campfire highlighted her features. Hawk turned to look at Madeline, and when he did, his breathing stopped. It simply stopped because at that precise moment, he realised he had never seen any vision so chastely innocent and yet so blatantly erotic in his entire life. He looked into Madeline’s eyes…and felt the iron-handed self-control of his emotions simply slip away. He’s going to kiss me, thought Madeline as Hawk moved closer on his knees, sliding his hands around her hips to pull her body against his. She felt the heat of his palms through the cotton shirt, Hawk’s hands firmly pressed against the small of her back. She watched his face coming downward, slowly drawing nearer. It was as though the world was suddenly moving at a snail’s pace, and there was nothing that Madeline could do to return it to its normal pace. Scream! Scream, Madeline! He’s going to kiss you! Scream you fool! a frantic voice of moderation implored. But she didn’t scream. Hawk’s mouth touched the softness of her lips and his sinewy arms wrapped around her voluptuous body to pull her intimately close so that her body touched his from thigh to mouth. He forced Madeline to be aware of the unforgiving solidity of his physique, and in doing so, Madeline’s resistance evaporated in a heartbeat. Madeline’s lips opened to accept Hawk’s questing tongue. When his tongue eased into her mouth, she whimpered softly, gratefully. Her arms came up slowly, hands sliding up his biceps and then shoulders before entwining around his neck. She felt his hands go from the small of her back down to slide beneath the shirttails until he cupped her naked buttocks, long brown fingers massaging, squeezing, tantalising. A soft, almost unheard voice within Madeline’s mind demanded to know what she was doing kneeling there kissing a tall, dark-skinned, distinctly dangerous man. Hawk was an Indian, after all, and young women like Madeline weren’t supposed to kiss men like him. To make matters worse, her pious inner voice intoned, she hardly knew the man. And hadn’t

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she just extricated herself from Cole’s arms and passionate kisses? All she could be really certain of was that Hawk, along with Cole, had risked his life to save hers. That and the fact that he kissed divinely. Uncongealed racial prejudice surrendered without a fight to overwhelming sensual skill. Passion defeated narrow-mindedness in milliseconds. Madeline sucked Hawk’s tongue deeper into her mouth as her nipples tightened and the embers of passion, which had never really been extinguished after her unplanned encounter with Cole, returned to flames within seconds. They kissed avariciously, their bodies pressed together from the knees upward. When Madeline felt Hawk guiding her downward and to the side, she did not resist. She couldn’t. Hawk’s lips ate away her inhibitions, his tongue stripping her of words like ‘no’ and ‘we shouldn’t’. Not even ‘Cole will be back soon’ seemed relevant to say, though his return was imminent. Hawk eased Madeline to the side, and when she was on the grass, she unfolded her legs. A moment later, Hawk rolled towards her, the lean weight of his body pressing down upon her. For the second time that evening, Madeline felt her shirt being unbuttoned with strong, masculine hands skilled at such passionate tasks. It took only seconds for Hawk to open her shirt completely, and when his fingers pressed deeply into the mound of her left breast, Madeline moaned passionately into his mouth. Suddenly, Hawk pushed himself up onto his knees. Madeline watched him looking down at her lying in the grass, her pose quintessential carnality, her naked charms wantonly on display. For a flashing moment of panic, Madeline considered the fact that he was an Indian. As a child she’d been told there was nothing dirtier or more dangerous than an Indian. What she hadn’t been told was that this particular Indian, with his long, hawkish nose, his wide mouth and high cheekbones, and dark eyes that smouldered with vitality, was gorgeous to look at and heaven itself to kiss. Giving in to temptation she’d never before experienced, Madeline raised her hands slowly and whispered, “Please…” The single word spoke volumes about her passionate need. Hawk stripped off his holster in an instant. Loosening the leather cord closing the fly of his buckskin trousers took several more seconds. He pushed his buckskins down to his

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thighs and his erection, beautifully formed, long and throbbing with tension, sprang out. Madeline gasped softly when she saw the extent of Hawk’s excitement. He was significantly larger than the one man she had any sexual experience with. “Hurry,” Madeline whispered as a passionate hunger exploded in her heart, in her soul. “Hurry!” Hawk was on top of her a moment later. There was something deliciously wicked about the fact that he was fully clothed that appealed to Madeline’s newly expanding libido. She slid her hands inside his jacket, touching him through his shirt, angling her face to invite his kiss. But he kept himself propped up above her, pausing to guide his erection to her entrance with his free hand. “Please,” Madeline whispered again, the single word spoken as a plea. She’d never experienced this kind of desire, this kind of readiness. Hawk entered her slowly, with controlled force, a man accustomed to having women need a little time to adjust to his size. As Madeline felt her labia separating, expanding as never before to accommodate Hawk’s dimensions, she felt only the slightest pang of discomfort, and the greatest sense of oneness. Hawk gave her half his length, retreated slowly, then pressed forward once again, each move measured and controlled. By the fourth revolution of his hips, he had at last buried his entire length inside Madeline’s sweetly clasping sheath. Only then did he lower his upper body until the broad expanse of his chest pressed against Madeline’s breast. “Kiss me,” she whispered, sliding her fingers into his raven-black hair, pushing the hair away from his face, feeling the bold length of his cock throbbing inside her. “Kiss me,” she repeated, because a woman could get drunk on Hawk’s kisses and lose all her inhibitions— and that’s exactly what she wanted. Fully embedded in Madeline, Hawk ground his pelvis against hers, trying to invade an additional fraction of an inch. Madeline slipped her tongue between his lips, French kissing him, exploring his mouth, for once taking the active rather than the passive role in the kiss, emboldened by Hawk’s passion for her. She raised her bare feet, lightly looping her legs around Hawk’s buckskin-sheathed thighs as he began to piston his hips. Withdrawing until only the very tip of his crown was still inside Madeline, Hawk ended the kiss and whispered, “So smooth.” Then he pushed downward, his unyielding

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erection gliding between the passion-lubricated lips of her vagina. And when he had the entire length of his cock buried and he was deeper within Madeline than she’d ever had a man, he said, “So tight!” His words were as stimulating as his caresses. Too often in her life, Madeline did not feel sexy, did not feel particularly feminine. The nasty insults she’d taken from her ex-fiancé had cut wounds that weren’t visible to the eye—but they were wounds just the same. But now, to hear a man as handsome as Hawk saying that she was sexy, was to put a salve on tender nerves. In ways she could not comprehend, Madeline’s soul began to heal. She kissed his mouth hungrily, trembling beneath him as he drove into her with increasing speed and energy. Each time his body collided with hers, the breath rushed from her lungs, a short gasp being forced from her as she gladly accepted the onslaught. She loved the coarseness of Hawk’s shirt against her tender nipples, and the feel of his naked hips pumping between her thighs. His hands, on her bottom, held her securely, squeezing and occasionally pulling her hips upward so that she met his downward thrusts. Madeline felt her climax approaching. Earlier that evening, she hadn’t known what was happening when she first felt that strange tightening within herself. Cole had taught her what was awaiting just over the horizon. The first time, it had been Cole’s lips and tongue that had driven her half-mad with want. Now it was Hawk, lean and muscular and thrashing above her, into her, who took her breath away with all that he was doing to her. But even as her passion stripped away inhibitions, reality intruded into Madeline’s thoughts. Though women certainly had more rights than in previous generations, it was still a man’s world in many ways. She put her hands to Hawk’s face and eased him away slightly so that she could look up into his eyes. “Hawk, wait,” she whispered. He continued driving into her. “Hawk, please, wait a moment.” He blinked his eyes and stilled his hips. Madeline cleared her throat and said the words that had to be spoken. “Don’t…don’t climax inside me.” Whether rightly or wrongly, the responsibility for avoiding pregnancy was considered a woman’s duty. He smiled. “You didn’t have to tell me that. A gentleman knows such things. He doesn’t have to be reminded to do the right thing.”

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Only I did have to say it because the man I was engaged to always promised to do the right thing and never did, thought Madeline, pulling Hawk down so that she could taste his kisses. I could fall in love with a man like this. The brief moment of rational thought soon vanished as Madeline was indelicately but erotically pummelled into a climax. No matter how harshly, how violently Hawk thrust his hips downward, spearing his magnificent cock to the hilt inside Madeline, all she felt was pleasure. Being dominated by Hawk, being consumed by his lustful hunger for her, made her feel more desirable than ever before in her life. He stroked hard and fast into Madeline when her senses overloaded for the second time that evening and the second time in her life. She wrapped her arms around Hawk’s neck and squeezed with all her might, his heated, laboured breath against her cheek and ear a symphony of orgiastic delight, as she shook through the spasms of a wrenching climax. This one was just as powerful as the first one, and the best part of it was that Madeline was no longer afraid of what she was feeling. Madeline’s climax had preceded Hawk’s by no more than a minute. With her eyes closed, she was wondering with an awestruck sense of amazement if she would climax a second time around Hawk’s invading masculinity, when he pulled her arms from around his neck in preparation for the moment of truth. Then, with a groan, he raised himself off Madeline’s perspiration-moistened body and withdrew from her body’s warm embrace. She kept her eyes closed, but she felt four distinct rivers of semen striking her, leaving a warm, gooey trail from her breasts down to the soft auburn curls of her pubic hair. Opening her eyes, Madeline raised up on one elbow to examine herself. She had given her ex-fiancé sexual relief enough times with her hands to have an awareness of the volume of a man’s orgasm. The milky lines of semen constituted three or four times what she had anticipated. “Oh, my,” she purred, touching one of the thick streams with a fingertip. “Look at the mess you’ve made of me.” There was nothing censorious in her tone. It was with pure adulation that Madeline spoke. “Sorry.”

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“Don’t be.” Madeline looked up at Hawk as he pushed himself up onto his knees, remaining between her legs. The urge to cover her nudity hit Madeline, but she refused to give in to it. She liked the way she felt when Hawk was looking at her naked body. “I never knew doing this could feel…well, feel like this.” And from off in the darkness, hidden in shadows, it was Cole’s voice they heard next as he called out, “Hail the camp!”

**** Willy Boy Brown looked at what was left of his gang, then took a swallow of rye whiskey. The cheap liquor scorched a path down his throat, and he grimaced. Hours earlier, he had been the leader of a gang of eight men. He had enough men when the day started to terrorise a small town. Enough men to rob a good-sized bank and have plenty of backup. Enough men to cut a hundred head of cattle from a herd and ride off with them on an evening. Now he had only two men under his command—and they were looking at him with suspicion in their eyes. Both had just lost brothers that they were forced to leave behind without so much as a burial. “What you thinking, Willy Boy?” Paul Nickerson asked. “You coming up with a plan?” “A plan to do what?” Willy Boy shot back sarcastically. This reversal of fortune had rattled his nerves. “To bring your brother back to life? No, I ain’t got a plan for that.” Sam Taylor, the other remaining member of the gang, put a hand out towards Willy Boy, wanting the liquor bottle. “I think he’s talking about revenge. We left five good men back there to rot or become buzzard bait. Seems to me we aught not just let something like that go without seeing to it that we get some revenge.” Since none of the dead were any kin to Willy Boy, revenge was a minor motivation for him. However, seeing that his leadership position could well be in jeopardy, Willy Boy was inclined to sail with the prevailing winds. “I didn’t get a real good look, but it sure seemed to me that it was Hawk and Cole Darden who bushwhacked us,” Willy Boy said, his tone changing, becoming lower, deeper, more authoritative. “I gave a twenty dollar gold piece to get the information that Darden

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money was on that stagecoach. The only way they could have followed us is if someone told them what I had planned. That tells me the guy I bought the information from also sold me out to Cole Darden.” Paul and Sam were nodded in agreement. Willy Boy liked the way they were looking at him now for leadership and direction. “First thing we do, we make sure that bastard suffers for what he did to us. Your brothers would all be alive today if he hadn’t sold us out to Cole.” Willy Boy waited, looking at his men, wondering if one death would be enough to assuage their sense of duty and vengeance. After several seconds of silence, Willy Boy knew he had to add more names to the death list. “Then we’ll take our own sweet time getting revenge on none other than Cole Darden, and that half-breed heathen he keeps at his side, Hawk.” He laughed. “Either of you boys ever kill a millionaire before?” Paul said, “Now you talkin’, Willy Boy.” “But we’re gonna play it smart,” Willy Boy continued. “We ain’t riding up to Cole when he’s ready for us. He’s got what? Maybe a hundred fifty men working for him? That don’t make no sense to go straight up against that.” Willy Boy raised an index finger heavenward, not unlike a preacher giving a sermon. “You mark my words, boys…before the snow falls, Cole Darden and Hawk will be in their graves!”

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Chapter Five

“Listen, damn it, this is just as much my fight as it is yours!” Madeline retorted sharply, her eyes blue eyes casting daggers at Cole. “There’s no reason in the world you shouldn’t let me help.” Cole gave Madeline a look of incredulity, which only heightened her fury. Hawk stepped between the combatants and said, “Let’s everyone calm down just a little.” Cole was shaking his head as though the discussion itself was sheer lunacy. “I’m not going after Willy Boy with Madeline along. First off, she doesn’t have any clothes. Secondly, she doesn’t know how to use a pistol.” “But I know how to use a rifle! I proved that just a minute ago!” snapped Madeline. Earlier, when Madeline claimed to have skill with a rifle, Cole had given her his Winchester, jammed the handle of the cast iron cooking pan into the ground, and together they walked a good eighty yards from the campsite. Madeline aimed and fired and the bullet made a solid clang! when it hit the pan. The shot was as much luck as skill, since Madeline really wasn’t very adept at using a rifle, but she didn’t let Cole know that, and he was obviously surprised that she’d hit the pan. Turning to Hawk, Cole said, “I say we go to Dunnigan’s Crossroads and drop her off. There’s a very real chance Willy Boy will go there, anyway. I’ll toss some money around and we’ll get information on where he’s taken what’s left of his gang. If the sheriff there is still the one they had there two years ago, he’s a good man. He’ll put together and posse that we can lead and we’ll find Willy Boy and take down him and what’s left of his gang.” Madeline stepped closer. “The longer you wait to follow Willy Boy, the less chance you have of finding him.” Cole and Hawk turned to look at Madeline. Her blue eyes danced back and forth between the two men who had first saved her life, and then changed it completely—all in one day and night. If they hadn’t rescued her, she would most likely have died sometime during the night after suffering the agonies of the damned with Willy Boy and his gang. But

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they had rescued her, then Cole taught her that his French kisses could be unbelievably arousing…but not nearly as arousing as when he used those oh-so-kissable lips on her pussy. Madeline hadn’t known what an orgasm was until Cole gave her one. And then there was Hawk, the dark-eyed half-blood who filled her so completely she thought she could die of ecstasy… In a tone only slightly less confrontational, Cole said, “Please, Madeline, be reasonable. Willy Boy isn’t someone to trifle with. There’s a nice hotel in Dunnigan’s Crossroads that I’ll set you up at. I’ll buy you clothes. You’ll want for nothing.’ Madeline looked into Cole’s eyes. Everything he said sounded so tempting, so relaxing, so…safe. But she didn’t want to be safe, she wanted to be with Cole. It was irrational, she knew, but it was what she wanted. “The offer is kind, but I’m still refusing.” She saw the fury flash in his green eyes as Cole asked sarcastically, “What makes you think you’ve got a choice?” Hawk stepped between the two again. “I say you’re both wrong.” Cole and Madeline gave him a quizzical look. “Willy Boy may be headed for Dunnigan’s Crossroads, and maybe not. But our horses could use some rest. If we push them hard today after what we put them through yesterday, we could ruin them. And if we ride hard, Madeline’s bare bottom is going to be flaming red by noon.” He gave her a hard look as though defying her to argue. “I’m telling the truth, and you know it.” Madeline sighed. There wasn’t anything Hawk had said that she could disagree with. If they pushed the horses to so much as a canter, she’d soon be unbelievably sore, riding as she would not in the saddle but behind it on either Cole’s horse or Hawk’s. Cole pushed his Stetson further back on his head, and put his hands on his hips. Madeline was once again impressed with just how big of a man he really was. “What do you think we should do, partner?” Cole asked Hawk. “I say we go back to the Diamond D, taking it nice and easy the whole way. It’ll be best on the horses, easiest on Madeline, and it’ll keep her from being the hottest source of gossip in the territory. If we ride into town with her dressed like that, how long do you think it would be before her reputation was completely ruined?”

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Madeline nodded in agreement, and though she had much she wanted to say, she remained silent. Hawk continued, “You’ve got spies from Fargo to Helena to Yellowstone. Let’s let them find Willy Boy for us. If you make the price for the information high enough, you’ll find out where he is. He’ll surface, one of his not-so-loyal men will turn on him, and then we’ll get him. We’ll get him and take him down so hard he’ll be six feet under.” Cole grinned and said a bit guiltily, “I prefer to think of them as informal employees, not spies.” Hawk grinned back, and Madeline sensed the deep bond of friendship these men shared. It was a friendship deeper and truer than any she’d experienced personally, and she felt a small, uncharitable pang of envy. “If we take it slow,” Cole continued, “we’ll get back to the ranch in two days.” He was looking only at Hawk. “Two days is about all the provisions we have left. We’ll travel by way of the Tillman Pass so most likely we won’t be seen. We’ll set Madeline up in the Schaeffer homestead—at least for now, until she can get settled elsewhere.” It nettled Madeline that the men were making decisions for her without asking her opinion, but she tamped down her annoyance and kept her comments to herself. Both Hawk and Cole seemed genuinely interested in not just seeing to her safety, but also in protecting her reputation. She had never really felt protected by a man before, and she rather liked the way it made her feel. She cleared her throat to draw their attention. When both men were looking at her, Madeline said, “While the two of you are planning on just exactly what you’d like to do with my life, I’d like to go to the stream and wash up a little before we set out. Do either of you mind?” Cole appeared relieved as he replied, “Now you’re being reasonable. I like that.” Madeline went to the bend in the stream where she had gone the previous night. At night she hadn’t been visible from the campsite, but in daylight she could see Hawk and Cole clearly just seventy yards away—which meant they could see her, too. Modesty made her hesitate for a couple seconds before she unbuttoned the shirt and tossed it aside. Naked, she walked into the clear, cold, knee-deep water.

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Looking down at herself, Madeline saw the flaky evidence of the previous evening’s excesses. Hawk’s sperm had been warm and slippery, the very essence of life itself, when she’d first felt it striking her passion-heated skin. But it quickly cooled and dried, making her skin feel itchy from breasts to pubis—but Cole had returned to camp by then, so she had to pretend that nothing was amiss. Hawk had given Madeline his bedroll to sleep with. But sleep, despite the absolute exhaustion that gripped her, was almost impossible to find. Every time Madeline had closed her eyes, she saw in her mind’s eye images that were either too embarrassing or too erotic to allow sleep to claim her. To the age of twenty-six, she had allowed only one man to make love to her until the previous evening. And then, as though possessed by demons of seduction, Madeline had willingly shared her body with two of the most handsome, dashing men she’d ever met in her life. As far as men were concerned, she suddenly found herself with an embarrassment of riches. Cole and Hawk were the inspiration for extreme behaviour. They made her want to be bad. But Madeline didn’t want to be bad. She’d never really misbehaved in her entire life— not until Hawk and Cole had entered her life. Yesterday was a horror, and it wasn’t my fault, Madeline thought, searching for coherence, searching for reassurance that she wasn’t immoral. I was attacked by Willy Boy and his men. I was seduced by Cole and then by Hawk. It wasn’t my fault I gave in to them, that I fell under their spell. It was just a moment of weakness, that’s all. If the circumstances had been different, I never would have acted with such…passion. Accepting the previous evening’s behaviour as an anomaly that would never be repeated, Madeline felt better about herself. But when she’d finished washing herself and stood at the bank of the stream, she discovered she was in no hurry to put the shirt back on, knowing that Cole and Hawk were looking at her. I’ve become a terrible flirt, she thought as she leisurely slipped her arms into Cole’s spare shirt.

**** This crazy woman is going to drive me crazy, Hawk thought without rancour as he rode slowly westward towards the massive Diamond D ranch.

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The crazy woman was Madeline, but she really wasn’t driving him crazy or being even a tiny bit annoying. She was sleeping. That’s all, just sleeping. It was how she slept that made things so distracting for Hawk. When the three had started back for the Diamond D ranch that morning, Cole had decided—dictatorially, as always—that Madeline should ride double with Hawk, his reasoning being that Hawk was considerably lighter and so his mare could accept the extra weight more easily than his gelding. Hawk had taken his bedroll, carefully folded it several times and put it on his mare just behind his saddle so that Madeline would have something soft to sit on during the long hours of the journey. He got in the saddle, making a point to keep his eyes averted as Madeline swung up behind him. So far, all was good. Hawk hardly even thought about making love to her the previous evening. He only thought about it every fifteen or twenty seconds. The trouble came when Madeline started to fall asleep. Hawk told her to put her arms around his waist so that, should she fall asleep, at least he could keep her on the horse. Fair enough. She put her arms around him and laced her fingers together at his stomach. Then she’d fallen asleep, and when she had, she’d leaned into him…and those magnificent breasts that had so thoroughly entranced and enchanted Hawk the night before pressed against his back. He tried to ignore their firmness, their size, their warmth. He really, really tried, but ignoring such a temptation wasn’t what his virile body and all his lusty instincts had been trained for. Quite the opposite, in fact. The final straw was when Madeline, her cheek against the back of his shoulder as she breathed softly, relaxed even more deeply into sleep…and her hands drifted downward from his stomach to settle almost delicately on his buckskins. Her left palm rested lightly over the now-swollen length of his cock, which had come to life even before being touched by Madeline. He looked to his left. Cole was a good three hundred yards away. They had decided to split up a bit during their ride home. The larder was running woefully low. They actually didn’t have two days’ worth of provisions because that was assuming they were only feeding Cole and Hawk. Madeline’s inclusion meant they would run out of food before reaching the Diamond D. By splitting up, he and Cole doubled their chances of perhaps scaring up a

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much-needed rabbit which, while not overly plentiful on the plains, weren’t unheard of, either. Hawk looked down at the small, delicate hand resting lightly over his bulging buckskins. His cock grew just a little bit harder, and Hawk got just a little bit more uncomfortable. His eyes trailed from the hand on his erection over to the naked leg exposed almost to the very top of the thigh. Jarring memories of what it had felt like to have those naked thighs surrounding his waist as he thrust his hard cock deep inside Madeline came to mind. Hawk squeezed his eyes tightly shut, fighting against the mental images, knowing that he had plenty of women—some married, others single—who were more than willing to share his bed. He could keep his libido tamped down until he got home, Hawk told himself. Madeline had been through enough already, she didn’t need him as a lover. Even more importantly, Hawk knew that he would disappoint Cole by making love with Madeline. For all of their profligate intemperance as far as women goes, he and Cole had always been careful to seduce only those women wanting to be seduced. They both preferred their women experienced, even a little jaded. It kept the complication of falling in love out of the equation. Hawk felt Madeline stir. He tensed, ready to grab her should she slide off his mare. But she didn’t slide, she just sighed a little, and he felt her yawn. In a sleep-muddled voice, she murmured, “How long have I been sleeping?” “Two hours. Maybe a little more. Go back to sleep. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.” “I didn’t sleep well last night.” And I’m probably the cause of that, thought Hawk guiltily. Madeline yawned again. Hawk hoped she would sit upright so that those spectacular breasts wouldn’t be pressed so erotically against his back. He also wished she’d take her hands from his crotch because if his cock got any harder, it would surely rip a hole in his buckskins. Madeline did neither. She said, “Last night, every time I closed my eyes, I could see you in my mind…see you as clearly as if you were above me once again, looking down at me with that lusty, wild, barbaric look in your eyes.” Madeline kissed Hawk’s shoulder. “I never knew making love could feel like that, could be so…” She searched for the right word. Not finding one, she

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shrugged her shoulders, which caused her breasts to move a little against Hawk’s back. “I don’t know how to describe what I felt, only that I’d never felt anything like that before.” Hawk’s mouth was dry. He was used to women telling him they enjoyed his skill in bed. He was not used to the words ‘making love’ used in conjunction to those activities. ‘Fucking’ was one thing, ‘making love’ was a rather more complicated matter altogether. “I’m making things hard, aren’t I?” There were several ways to interpret that question. Hawk cleared his throat and uneasily queried, “I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at.” “I’m making life more difficult for you and Cole.” Relieved, Hawk grinned. “A little bit, I supposed. But it isn’t like you set out to be a burden.” Then he felt Madeline’s fingertips against the shaft of his cock, touching him through his buckskins. She purred, “Oh, my! I am making things hard!” “Madeline…” Unable to see the object of her affection, she measured Hawk with her fingers, walking them from the base to the tip. She pressed her palm firmly against the virile bulge. In a soft voice that did unholy things to Hawk’s sense of restraint, Madeline whispered, “I thought I satisfied you last night.” “That was last night.” He looked down at the small hand squeezing his erection. He wanted to take her by the wrist and move her hand away, but he lacked the willpower to turn thoughts of discipline into action. She moved a little behind him, rubbing her breasts against his back, and Hawk groaned low in his throat. Sexual self-denial was a new phenomenon in his life, and he wasn’t at all certain he appreciated its influence. “Where’s Cole?” Madeline asked, still whispering. Hawk nodded to his left. “We split up. Better chances of scaring up a rabbit or grouse.” Madeline rubbed her palm boldly over Hawk’s erection. “Take it out. He can’t see anything from way over there. I’m at fault for this.” She squeezed his erection. “I should be the one to take care of it.” “Damn,” Hawk muttered, but he was already unknotting the leather drawstring of his buckskins.

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Madeline’s nipples were hard and tingling. For the sixth time in the last thirty seconds, she looked to her left at Cole. He was a long way off, but Madeline felt wicked being able to see him while she was touching Hawk. “I’m at fault for this,” she said, her fingers toying with the solid masculine flesh. “I should be the one to take care of it.” Madeline was distinctly aware that she had just crossed a line. Never before in her life had she volunteered to do anything sexual. She had been coerced, seduced, pleaded with, and on one particularly unpleasant evening with her ex-fiancé, intimidated into using her hands to give sexual relief. In all those times, never once had she volunteered to give orgasmic relief. But with Hawk, it was different. There was a charisma to the man that made Madeline want to please him. And, to be honest with herself, she knew that his Indian heritage and exotic looks added a taboo eroticism to the man that she found quite tantalising. She heard Hawk sigh when he’d freed himself. She leaned a little to the side to look around his body. His cock, magnificently long and with a blue vein running along its upper surface, stuck out through the gaping fly of his buckskins. The sight of Hawk’s erection caused the breath to catch in her throat. With a hand that trembled slightly, she reached out and curled her fingers around the shaft. Hawk sighed again, and so did Madeline as the heat of his body went through her palm and into her bloodstream. Madeline sat upright behind Hawk, no longer needing to see the object of her desire to know what to do. She leaned into him, pressing her breasts more firmly against his back, her nipples spreading the glowing embers of an escalating passion. She stroked Hawk slowly, in no hurry to have him reach culmination. Perhaps in all other sexual activities, she was a novice, but with this, she was experienced and confident. “Does that feel good?” she asked impishly, knowing full well what the answer was. “Yes,” Hawk replied. After a moment he added, “Hell yes!” Madeline stroked from the tip down to the base, once again marvelling at Hawk’s dimensions. She felt a bit guilty that she was taking such pleasure in his size, as though she could take responsibility for Hawk’s heroic dimensions. Madeline occasionally squeezed Hawk very tightly. At other times her fingers barely touched his shaft as they travelled back and forth. When she reached the tip of his cock, she rubbed the small slit with her thumb and

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smeared a pearly drop of thick fluid over the crown, drawing yet another low-pitched moan of passion to rumble from Hawk’s broad chest. “You like it when I do that, don’t you?” Her tone was laced through and through with carnal confidence. Madeline knew that she was the one in control, the one who had the power, and she liked the way it made her feel. “Yes. You know that.” “But I wanted to hear you say it.” She stroked him harder, faster, angling his cock to the side. “Will you come soon?” “Yes,” Hawk answered. And then, after a moment, “If you want me to.” Madeline chuckled. Now there was no doubt that she was the one in control. She felt nectar oozing to the lips of her pussy. If Hawk wanted her, she wouldn’t say ‘no’ to him— even if they had to do it with Cole watching. Feeling daring, emboldened by a confidence she’d never before experienced, Madeline whispered, “Try to keep from coming. Don’t make it easy for me.” She twisted her right hand around his shaft as her left hand came up to pinch Hawk’s nipple through his shirt. “Make me work for it!” Through clenched teeth, Hawk growled. He put his right hand down on Madeline’s bare thigh, stroking her flesh from hip to knee. Madeline felt Hawk’s body tensing, the lean muscles in his back knotting up as she worked on his cock, pumping her hand as she rotated it around the huge shaft. Sixty seconds later, Hawk hissed “Oh, fuck!” and came. Madeline felt the thick streams of cum rushing through his shaft before jetting from the head. Leaning around Hawk, she watched as the last of his ejaculation oozed out from the tip to trickle down the shaft and onto her hand. Carefully, she worked her hand up the shaft, capturing his cream on her hand. Hawk let out a long, slow exhalation of satisfaction, his body going lax, his shoulders slumping. “Feel better?” Madeline asked, looking at her hand, not quite certain what she should do to clean herself. “Madeline, my darling, you are one tempting woman,” Hawk replied. She adored the way her name sounded when Hawk said it, and she particularly enjoyed him casually calling her ‘darling’.

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As Hawk tucked himself back into his buckskins and laced them up, Madeline leaned away from him, then used the inside of her shirttails to wipe his cum from her hand. She was smiling, feeling wicked and daring without the slightest sense of guilt. She kissed his shoulder, inhaling deeply to imbibe his musky, male scent. She whispered, “I’m glad I could make you happy.” “Happy? That’s such an understatement.”

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Chapter Six

It wasn’t quite yet noon. Willy Boy was down to drinking nickel-a-glass whiskey that went down the throat as smoothly as a hacksaw blade. But at least it was whiskey. He could remember times in his life when he would have killed just for a glass of cheap whiskey—and there were times when he’d done just that. It had been a month since he and his men attacked the stagecoach and made off with more than three thousand dollars in gold. One month since he had lost five of his seven gang members. One month since he had gone from being a worthless petty criminal in the eyes of law abiding society, to being a man with a bounty on his head. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the territorial governor had put a one thousand dollar reward, dead or alive, on Willy Boy and what was left of his gang, Cole Darden had put a personal bounty out of five thousand dollars to anyone willing to provide his whereabouts. Word had swept through the criminal underground, and Willy Boy had no illusions as to how well loved he was. With Cole’s private bounty looming over his head like an executioner’s axe, Willy Boy had needed to disappear. His head was shaved now, and for the past month he’d been growing a beard. But Willy Boy hated shaving his head because he always cut himself. And the beard, which he’d never before grown, itched day and night. But at least he had radically changed his appearance so that he looked nothing like the likeness of him printed on the wanted posters. Willy Boy sat at a saloon table with Paul and Sam. They, too, had shaved their heads and grown full beards. His men looked mangy, he decided, like a pack of wild dogs that had gotten diseased so that there were only a few survivors. Those who still lived were dissolute and just waiting to die. Looking at Paul and Sam did not fill Willy Boy with confidence or anything even approaching that emotional state. “I’m gettin’ another glass,” Willy Boy said, getting to his feet. Paul and Sam looked at him with whiskey-glazed eyes, neither saying a word. If he had said instead, ‘I’m going to the moon,’ they would have looked at him the exact same way.

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The bartender was reading a newspaper as Willy Boy approached. He set the newspaper down on the bar as he turned his back and reached for the whiskey bottle which, Willy Boy noted, was without a label. He could be drinking poisonous moonshine, doctored up to look like whiskey, for all he knew. “Let’s see the nickel,” the bartender said. “Real trusting fella, ain’t you?” The bartender pulled the bottle’s cork but didn’t pour until Willy Boy fished a nickel out of his pocket and placed it on the newspaper. The bartender filled his glass to the rim. “Not trusting,” Willy Boy commented, “but you sure know how to pour a full glass.” The bartender smiled, and Willy Boy wondered if he might not get a free glass of whiskey for the flattery. It didn’t work. But as the bartender picked up the nickel from the newspaper, something else caught Willy Boy’s attention. There was a photograph on the front page of the newspaper. A photograph with a picture of eight men standing in two rows of four. Willy Boy spun the newspaper around so that he was no longer looking at the photo upside down. He blinked his eyes and looked hard at the photograph. There were words printed beneath the photo, and for the first time in years Willy Boy wished that he could read…because in the photograph was none other than Cole Darden and Hawk, dressed in suits and ties. “You can read?” the bartender asked. He tone suggested he highly doubted Willy Boy could. “What’s this picture about?” Willy Boy asked, trying hard to not sound as interested as he really was. The bartender took the newspaper. “There’s a big gala dance of the Montana Cattlemen’s Association. These guys are the…wait, let me read the caption. Ah, here it is. These men sit on the Association board of directors.” “When’s this dance going to be?” Willy Boy felt a spark of confidence come to life within his chest. It was the first positive thought he’d had in a week. “Let’s see. Hmmm…the newspaper’s two weeks old. And the dance is going to be…ah…a week from today, on the sixteenth.” The bartender’s eyes narrowed as he looked

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at Willy Boy. “Why would you want to know? Don’t seem likely you’re going to get an invitation.” Willy Boy shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I used to punch cattle for one of those men. Maybe I could get my old job back.” The bartender’s eyes went over Willy Boy’s dissolute appearance and ragged clothes. “Seems like you could use one,” he said, then went back to reading. Willy Boy smiled as he carried his glass back to the table. He sat down, drank half the glass with a flourish, and announced, “Boys, we’re going to have gold in our pockets one week from today.” That focused the attention of Paul and Sam. The latter asked, “We gonna hit another stagecoach?” “Better than that. There’s going to be a dance, and at that dance there are going to be all sorts of rich folks. We’ll hold up the whole lot of them. At that dance, there’s going to be Cole Darden and Hawk. We’re going to single out Cole Darden and Hawk, and right in front of all their fine and fancy friends, we’re going to gut-shoot ‘em both!” He laughed. “Hell, nobody brings guns to some highfalutin fancy-pants dance!”

**** Cole looked at the dress and smiled. He had ordered it from Miss Molly’s, the finest dressmaker in Montana. He was certain Madeline would like it. The dress was silk, and the deepest, most vibrant shade of blue-green Cole had ever seen. The colour would bring out the full beauty of Madeline’s blue eyes and auburn hair. The U-shaped neckline was a touch on the daring side, especially with Madeline’s sumptuous bosom, and was trimmed in white lace, as were the cuffs and the skirt’s hemline. The annual Cattlemen’s Association dance was in one week. Cole smiled. Just one more week, then he would ask Madeline— The library door opened, disturbing Cole’s reverie. Morton, Cole’s valet, stepped into the room. “There’s a lady here to see you, sir,” Morton announced. “Who is it?” Cole wasn’t in the mood for visitors. He glanced at the clock on the mantle above the fireplace. It was just now noon.

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“Mrs. Angela Bartlett, sir.” Softly, Cole whispered, “Shit!” For a second, he wondered if there was some way of avoiding Angela. He didn’t like it that she had come over without arranging her visit ahead of time with him. He looked at Morton and decided it wasn’t a valet’s responsibility to shoo away transient bed mates who had become possessive. “Show her in, Morton.” Cole looked at Madeline’s new dress. He crossed the room quickly, plucked the hanger off the hook and brought the dress to his bedroom. He hung the dress in his own bureau, decided he rather liked seeing Madeline’s dress mixed in with his own suits, and had just made it back to the library when Morton escorted Angela in. Cole closed his bedroom door and suddenly wished that he had agreed to meet Angela somewhere else. The last time he and Angela were in the library, he ended up carrying her into his adjoining bedroom. “Thank you, Morton,” Cole said before Angela had a chance to open her mouth. “I’m sure Mrs. Bartlett would appreciate some tea. Can you make us some tea?” “Yes, sir.” “That won’t be necessary,” Angela said sharply. Her lips curled into a smile that never reached her eyes. She looked straight at Cole and added, “I’m not really in the mood for tea.” Her tone and inflection hinted that she was in a mood—just not for tea. Cole cringed inwardly, and as he heard the door being closed behind Morton, he had the distinct impression of being imprisoned with a rabid hellcat in heat. “Hello, Angela,” he said blandly. Her eyes narrowed on him. She walked past a leather wingback chair and sat on the long sofa. She crossed her legs at the knee and patted the cushion beside her. Cole studied her a moment before saying with just a touch of annoyance in his tone, “I wasn’t expecting you.” “I waited for an invitation, but it never came.” Angela’s brown eyes were dark with annoyance. “So I sent two letters to you, and you didn’t answer either one. You’ve disappointed me, Cole.” She patted the sofa again. “Come sit next to me. I’ll give you the chance to apologise for your dreadful behaviour.” Cole crossed the room to the liquor cart. He poured himself a brandy, needing alcoholic fortification if he was to withstand Angela’s company so early in the day.

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Angela lounged against the backrest of the sofa, her pose lazily suggestive. “After what we did the last time we were together, I should have thought you’d be happy to see me again.” Her rouged lips curled. “My husband’s taken the train for Denver. He’s going to look at a mining company there. Or maybe it’s a telegraph company. I can’t remember which.” Her lids lowered partially over eyes that now smouldered with passion remembered and passion anticipated. “He’ll be gone for two weeks. Do you have any idea how much fucking we can do in two weeks?” Cole wasn’t smiling. It had taken days for the bite marks she had put on his shoulder to fade. After his evening with Angela, he’d had to put ointment on the scratches on his back and shoulders. Sadistically, Angela liked dishing out pain with her pleasure. Angela waited for Cole to respond. Concern flickered across her expression when he remained silent. As a universally recognised beauty in the territory, and one of the wealthiest women in Montana, Angela was not accustomed to men being aloof with her, especially not when she was making her lustful intentions crystal clear. “Come sit next to me.” This time she spoke in nearly a whisper. There was an undercurrent of doubt in her voice when she added, “Don’t make me beg, Cole.” Cole finished his brandy in a gulp before pouring himself some more. He looked at Angela, admiring her physical charms from a distance. She was indeed beautiful to look at. And he knew she was passionate. They had fucked four times that night, and though Angela enjoyed inflicting pain while having sex, she didn’t at all mind being on the receiving end of punishment. After she had bit Cole’s neck hard enough to draw blood, he’d tossed her onto her stomach and fucked her in the ass. She bit the pillow and gasped each time thrust between her cheeks, but she never once asked him to stop. Upping the stakes, she said in a whisper, “I’ll suck your cock.” A nervous smile tugged at red lips. “I know you like it when I do that. God, Cole, you are such an exciting man. We fucked four times in four hours. That’s more sex than I get in two months with my husband.” “When you marry a man twenty years your senior because he’s worth a fortune several times over, you’ve got to expect to make a few sacrifices.” The blunt appraisal of her marriage decision was akin to a slap across the face. With characteristic petulance, Angela replied, “I don’t like making sacrifices.” Her next smile was quite confident. “I know what I like, and I always get it. Come fuck me, Cole. You

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can even fuck me in the ass again. God…I couldn’t sit comfortably for three days after that.” She laughed softly, the husky sound of a sexually confident predator. Angela’s voice was a carnal purr when she said, “Sit next to me, Cole, and I’ll swallow your cum. I don’t know who you’re fucking now, but she can’t suck cock like I can. You know that’s true.” He turned slowly to face her, and when he did, Angela smiled wickedly, triumphantly, a seductress in full control of the situation. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Angela, but our fucking days are over.” He saw the murderous gleam come into her eyes with quicksilver speed. Men didn’t turn down Angela. She was always the one to cast them aside. But Cole also knew of Angela’s temper, and of her nasty vindictiveness. With this as incentive, he added, “But to give you a token of our time together, I think a gift is in order.” Greed came full-bloom into her eyes. However much she wanted Cole’s cock, his was still just one of many in Montana. “There are a pair of tear-drop diamond earrings at the jewellers. I think you’d look lovely wearing them.” “No, darling, they’d look lovely on me,” Angela corrected. She rose to her feet, suitably mollified by a pair of one karat diamond earrings. “Who is this woman, Cole? She must be something special because she’s just cost you the world’s best blowjob and a jeweller’s bill of just under three thousand dollars.” Cole just smiled. He figured it was the bargain of a lifetime. With Angela out of the way, he could turn his full concentration on Madeline.

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Chapter Seven

Angela Bartlett closed her fan with a snap! and tried to not glare too openly at the woman new to the territory who, standing perhaps thirty feet away at the edge of the ballroom dance floor, had eligible bachelors swirling around her like bees at a honeycomb. “If you ask me, she’s showing way too much cleavage,” Pamela Bradshaw commented, making little effort to keep her voice down. “She’ll never catch herself a beau looking like a harlot.” Angela nodded. “I think so, too. Look at all those fools hovering around her. You’d think they’d never seen anyone in an evening gown before.” Jealousy and resentment underscored her words. “She’s only been in Helena a month and already she acts like she’s the belle of the ball.” Her gaze turned bitterly from Madeline LaFontaine over to Pamela. It was time to discuss more significant matters. “What did you learn about her?” Pamela Bradshaw paused, waiting until the five women in the small group were all focused on her before she answered. “She’s twenty-six and is a spinster. She comes from money. Liquor money, I heard. Or maybe it was beer. Her family comes from St. Louis, I heard.” That wasn’t one of the rumours that Angela had heard, and she prided herself on being on top of all available gossip. She asked, “Who did you hear that from?” Pamela gave the smallest of shrugs and looked away. Unnamed sources were the norm in such matters. With all eyes on her, she waited several more seconds for the interest to heighten before she added, “But there’s more…” “Such as…?” Angela raised one eyebrow in inquiry. Again Pamela shrugged. Interesting rumours, whether real or imaginary, were a prized commodity among the wealthy women in the territory. With Pamela now the centre of attention, Angela realised she had to lay down her trump card if she were to resume her rightful position among the quartet of well-heeled young married women. In a voice so quiet her listeners had to lean towards her to hear, she said, “I heard some stories, as well. She’s here alone, without her family, because of murder.”

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Eyes widened, and three women in exquisite Worth gowns and several fortunes worth of diamonds, pearls, rubies, and emeralds, leaned in even closer, gloved hands clutching lacquered fans. Angela smiled. Her world was once more spinning as it should, with Angela herself the centre of the universe. “What I had heard is that our bosomy new neighbour had ongoing affairs with two men. One was the son of a man big in railroads, and though I didn’t get a name, I was told that it was a name we’d all recognise.” She fanned herself for a moment as though the topic itself was enough to elevate a woman’s body temperature. “Her other lover was just some stable boy.” Pamela nodded her head quickly, sending the dangling diamond earbobs swinging against her cheeks. “I heard that, too! It must be true if we both heard it!” “Anyway, she spent weeks dancing back and forth from the railroad baron’s private rail car to the hayloft to see her impoverished young stud,” Angela continued. “Then one day her rich lover showed up at the family estate.” Because such matters were of critical importance to women of their class, Angela added as an aside, “Her father has some of the finest racing horses in the country. Men bring their prized mares from as far as San Francisco and Boston to mate with his bloodstock. Anyway, the railroad heir catches her in flagrante dilecto with the stable boy and without so much as a word of warning shoots him stone dead on the spot.” The audience all gasped, and Pamela nodded her head in enthusiastic agreement. “That’s what I heard, too!” “Well, there’s no jury that’s going to convict the heir to a railroad fortune for killing some penniless hired hand who cleans horse pens for a living, but just the same, even people in our position can’t just go around shooting the hired help without causing a scandal.” As a waiter walked by carrying a silver tray of champagne flutes, Angela, with practised ease, plucked a glass from the passing tray. She sipped the icy champagne before continuing. “What I’ve heard is that LaFontaine isn’t her real last name. She’s taken her mother’s maiden name, at least until things quiet down in St. Louis. Apparently her father wasn’t too happy with the railroad heir for deflowering his daughter.” “What happened to her rich lover?” Pamela asked. “The one who killed the stable boy.” “Once Madeline’s father found out the reason for the killing, he threatened a nasty lawsuit. Her rich lover, you see, was already married.”

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In unison, Angela’s three listeners all gasped and raised a white-gloved hand to the mouth, eyes widening with horror and interest. Murder, promiscuity, sex with the lower classes—this had all the elements of a story worth repeating as quickly as possible. “So Madeline’s lover had to take a train to San Francisco with his wife and child, and right now they’re sailing in the Mediterranean—Greece, probably. It’s so lovely there this time of year.” Angela paused a moment to look around the ballroom at the more than two hundred guests. In a country and territory where cattle reign supreme, being invited to the Cattleman’s Ball meant having wealth and social stature, so all around her were the wealthiest men and women in a thousand mile range. At the massive double oak doors, she watched as Hawk and Cole entered. Men moved aside for the two. Women followed them with their eyes. Seeing Cole in a tuxedo caused Angela’s heart to skip a beat and then beat twice as fast. “I heard that she bought a thousand head of cattle from Cole Darden.” “She paid in cash,” Pamela added. Her husband owned fifty percent of the third largest bank in Helena. “And she hired eight of Cole’s men to change the brand. She bought the old Schaeffer ranch from Cole, but she doesn’t have even a single servant, only ranch hands.” “Her father’s probably got her on a pretty short leash financially,” Angela said distractedly, unaware that purchasing a thousand cattle and a large ranch house along with numerous outbuildings was not a particularly ‘short leash’. Now that Cole and Hawk had stopped walking, no less than six women surrounded the duo. The women were looking at the territory’s most eligible bachelors with varying mixtures of admiration to outright lust in their eyes. With indignation in her tone, Angela snapped, “Would you look at all those shameless tarts and how they’re throwing themselves at those men? Girls today have no sense of decorum, I tell you.” Under her breath so that only Angela could hear, Pamela said, “Cole is positively divine in bed. He can go all night long.” Angela cast her a wickedly knowing look. “Can’t he just though?” “When did you have him?” “Let’s not get into too many details.” Pamela’s lower lip pouted outward theatrically. “It’s not like you to keep secrets from me, Angela, and I must tell you, I don’t like it very much.” She turned her attention to Cole

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and Hawk. “I wonder what Hawk’s like in bed. Lord knows he’s dark as sin and handsome as the devil.” Angela’s brows lifted in surprise. “You’d sleep with a redskin? Pamela Bradshaw, what is the matter with you?” “He’s only half Indian, but he’s all man as far as I can see. Juliet Bailey slept with him the night of the Easter Dance and again when we celebrated the new bank opening in town, and said she lost count on how many times she climaxed.” “He’s still a savage,” Angela said firmly. Sexual skill could not outweigh tainted blood in her way of thinking. “Sleep with him and your skin would never be white again. Not pure white.” Dismissively, Pamela replied, “Maybe…” She sighed. “Who do you think Cole is sleeping with now? He hasn’t been making his usual rounds.” The teardrop diamond earrings that Cole had given Angela as a going-away present shimmered in the light of the numerous chandeliers. Unconsciously, Angela touched one as she replied, “It’s not like Cole to keep his sex life such a secret. And as we all know, he’s not a man to go without women.” Out of the corner of her mouth, Pamela said, “Then maybe tonight he’s ripe for the picking. At the rate my husband’s drinking, he’ll be cross-eyed drunk long before midnight.”

**** Madeline took a sip of champagne and made a conscious effort to pay attention to the stalwart young man talking to her, though her attention kept drifting toward Cole and Hawk. The young man—his name was Adam or Anthony, Madeline couldn’t remember— had already explained that his father owned several gold mines. When he earlier had asked Madeline to dance, she had turned him down but promised to dance with him as soon as she finished her champagne. Madeline’s suitor watched the champagne glass go to her mouth, though his gaze invariably trickled down and stayed on the creamy mounds of her bosom, exposed above the ball gown’s lace-trimmed, U-shaped neckline.

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“I understand you come from St. Louis, and that your father owns a railroad line,” a young man asked. He had already let Madeline know his trust fund was sufficient to assure a lifetime of complete leisure. “Yes, I come from St. Louis,” Madeline said, going along with the rumours that Cole himself had started. There needed to be a cover story to account for Madeline’s sudden wealth. Madeline didn’t really understand the how’s and why’s of it all, but Cole had stated that it would be enormously helpful to him if she would pretend to be running a ranch. Sometimes she suspected that it was just a ruse to keep her near the Diamond D, but Cole had stated emphatically that such was not the case. “And my father’s involved with the railroad, but he doesn’t own a line.” “Would you like another glass of champagne?” This time the question had come from another eligible bachelor. His tone of voice suggested he wasn’t interested in Madeline going off with anyone else to dance. At just twenty-one, he was a full five years younger than Madeline, and she thought him hopelessly full of himself. As she answered inquiries with “Hmmm?” and “Maybe,” Madeline surreptitiously watched as no less than six women flittered about Cole and Hawk. I’ll scratch the eyes of out the first bitch that touches Cole or Hawk, thought Madeline. The thought shocked her, and she blushed a little. For the past month, since Cole had set her up at the Schaeffer ranch, daydreams of the two men who had rescued her had been continual. She adored them both. She would have admitted to herself that she loved them, but she couldn’t come to emotional terms with loving two men equally and simultaneously. Unable to choose between the two, Madeline had adamantly refused to succumb to their advances—though she was sorely tempted, night after night. Though they hadn’t really planned it out, Cole would show up at her door one night and Hawk the next. They always visited her individually, never simultaneously. Sometimes she cooked supper for the men, and at other times, they would take her riding in the evening. She never allowed either man so much as a single kiss, knowing from experience that one kiss led to a second kiss, and after that, Madeline was helpless against the passionate desire they inspired.

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It was a hopeless arrangement that satisfied no one. Night after night, tormented by lustful dreams, Madeline would put a hand between her legs. With the images of Cole and Hawk playing in her mind, she would caress her vagina until she climaxed. But the relief she felt was short-lived, and the satisfaction from the orgasm was next to nothing compared to the ones she experienced with her heroes. She watched as a slender, attractive young girl—she couldn’t be a week over eighteen— placed her gloved hand on Cole’s forearm and said something apparently humorous. Cole laughed, his eyes alight with mischief as he looked down at the girl. Flaming jealousy exploded in Madeline’s bosom, burning incandescently. “What’s wrong, pet?” It was the one whose name was either Adam or Anthony, and he had seen Madeline’s expression change to sudden anger. “It’s nothing,” Madeline replied, more quickly and sharply than she would have liked. She handed her nearly empty champagne glass to him. “Would you be a dear and get me another glass?” He smiled, and his eyes widened, “Two glasses of champagne? My, you are a daring girl, aren’t you?” I’m not a girl, you rich, pompous twit! Like a magnet, her gaze was drawn back to her heroes—and Cole was headed straight for her! They were supposed to pretend that they hardly knew each other, and now he was coming straight for her, and the heated look in those too-tempting emerald green eyes was unmistakable. “Good evening, Miss LaFontaine,” Cole said. He didn’t even glance at the young men surrounding Madeline. “Have those men you hired from me been working out?” “Yes, they’re good men, Mr. Darden. I do thank you very much for letting me hire them away from you.” She opened her fan, needing to cool the sudden heat she felt. Cole’s proximity always had an immediate effect on her senses. “Are you enjoying the dance?” Cole bent low and, with his lips brushing Madeline’s ear, whispered, “At the top of the stairs, there’s a room to the left. Meet me there in exactly ten minutes.” He straightened, smiled down at Madeline, and said, “Perhaps we can discuss further arrangements at a another time. Enjoy the dance, Miss LaFontaine. I’m afraid I have obligations elsewhere.”

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If I go to Cole, I won’t be able to resist him, thought Madeline in a flurry of panic. If I choose Cole, Hawk will hate me. If I choose Hawk, Cole will hate me. I love them both and I can’t live with the thought of either one hating me. What am I going to do? Madeline knew she had a grand total of ten minutes to make her decision.

**** Hawk looked down at Angela and, seeing her up close for the very first time, now understood why so many people considered her the most beautiful woman east of the Rockies. “I wonder why it is we’ve never spoken before,” Angela said softly, her voice faintly husky. “We’re always at the same social events.” “Yes, aren’t we though,” Hawk replied. Angela had a way of toying with her necklace to draw a man’s gaze to her bosom. She was slender, her bosom feminine without being extravagant. Hawk tried to think about how lovely Angela’s breasts would be, but he kept comparing her bosom to Madeline’s lush curves, and the comparison made Angela seem almost boyish. “Can I ask you a question?” Hawk smiled. Wealthy married women often had questions for him. More often than not, they whispered their questions. Looking into her soft brown eyes, he nodded. “Do you find me attractive?” Making little effort to hide his desire, Hawk’s gaze went up and down over Angela’s trim figure. “Yes. Very much so.” “Then why don’t you and I leave this dreary dance separately and meet at my carriage in, say, thirty minutes?” She took a sip of champagne and looked around to make sure she wasn’t being overheard. “I’ve never been with an Indian before.” She turned eyes sparkling with mischief up to Hawk. “Pamela Bradshaw’s set her sights on you. Juliet Bailey said you’re heavenly in bed.” Hawk looked at Angela, thinking how coarse and callow she was despite all her wealth and supposed sophistication. He tried to not compare her to Madeline, but he couldn’t help himself. The more he thought of Madeline, the less appealing was the prospect of a

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meaningless fuck with Angela Bartlett, despite her considerable beauty and the fact that she wouldn’t expect anything more of him than having a good time. Angela’s expression altered slightly when Hawk didn’t immediately approve of her plan. With the champagne glass close to her mouth so that nobody could lip-read her words, she whispered hotly, “I’ll suck your cock.” And then, almost to herself, she added, “I’ve never given a blowjob to a savage before.” Ignorant of the insult in her words, Angela looked expectantly up at Hawk. Her eagerness was little incentive to the lean, mixed-blood man. He was the only Indian in the crowded ballroom, just as he was always the only Indian at such functions. Angela asked, “Do you know what my carriage looks like? It’s quite big. We’ll be ever so comfortable.” Hawk looked at Angela, confused as to why he wasn’t already pulling her outside so that he could push her down to her knees. He hadn’t touched a woman since his encounter with Madeline. When Hawk looked away, he saw Madeline making her way up the long stairway at the far end of the ballroom. “Let’s talk about this later,” he said, already walking away from Angela, who was open-mouthed in shock at being abandoned by a man.

**** At the outskirts of Helena, Willy Boy looked at his men, Sam and Paul, and felt a warm flush of confidence go through him. He and his men were sober, none of them having touched so much as a drop of whiskey in the last three days. They were clean-shaven in preparation for the robbery and revenge killing, intending to grow back their beards while they hid out in the Badlands. Sam looked at Willy Boy and said quietly, “Now remember, me and Paul get to be the ones to gut-shoot Cole and Hawk. It was our brothers they killed an’ none of yours.” “Don’t worry, I’ll let you get your revenge,” Willy Boy replied. “If you want to blow their balls off before you gut shoot ‘em, it won’t worry me none.” Sam smiled. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He looked at Paul and said, “Which one you want to kill? Cole or the redskin?”

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“I’ll take the redskin,” Paul answered. He smiled, showing missing and yellowed teeth. “I like killin’ redskins.”

**** Don’t run. It’s so undignified to run, thought Madeline as she hurried up the stairway. When she reached the second floor landing, she saw there were three oak doors to choose from, each one polished to perfection…and behind one of them was a man she adored. When she reached for the doorknob, Madeline saw that her gloved hand was trembling. Grabbing the knob, she paused for only a moment, making a futile attempt to calm herself. She turned the knob, stepped into the room and closed the door. Cole stood near a white grand piano, looking devastatingly handsome in his black tuxedo, illuminated by candlelight from two enormous candelabras bracketing the piano. Madeline’s stride halted so abruptly it was as though an invisible hand had stopped her. “My God, you’re a handsome man, Cole Darden,” Madeline whispered. She had denied herself the pleasure of his passion for one entire month. Those thirty days had seemed more like an eternity. No woman, she had thought, could be expected to be so tempted and yet so self-restrained. The promise of heaven on earth was in Cole’s lips, in his eyes and smile, in his caress. A thousand times in that month she had imagined what his cock looked like, long and hard, the embodiment of the great man’s power and passion. It seemed to be entirely unfair for Cole to be so intoxicatingly beautiful. It didn’t matter whether he wore scuffed boots with his denims and range clothes or a black tuxedo with a crisp, white, high-collared shirt with the slender black necktie. He was more elegantly masculine than any one man had a right to be. He just stood there, silent and gorgeous, looking at her, drawing her closer with nothing more than his mesmerising allure. Madeline walked very slowly towards him, hardly breathing, her nipples tightening, the surface of her skin tingling. Cole said quietly, “The dress…it fits you well. I knew you’d be beautiful in it, but I never thought you’d be so…”

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His voice caressed Madeline, making her tremble softly, making her labia swell and her clitoris tingle. Before she’d completely crossed the room, her pussy was wet. The tip of Cole’s tongue did a quick circumference of his mouth to moisten his lips. In Madeline’s hyper-sensitised state of mind, the simple act of wetting his lips seemed unbelievably provocative, the sexiest thing she’d ever witnessed. “I think there’s something I should tell you,” Cole said, his voice very soft in the enormous room. Madeline stopped short of him. There was something in his tone that frightened her. “Tell me.” Her voice was a whisper. Fear was palpable in her countenance and posture. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can tell me anything.” “I love you.” The statement hit Madeline like a sledgehammer blow. She staggered a single step backward as though physically struck. It was what she had wanted—but so much more than she had dared hope for. She studied his face, searching for sincerity, desperate to know that his bluntly-delivered statement was the heartfelt truth. “Please, Cole, don’t toy with me. I’m too vulnerable right now. Tell me you really love me.” Tears misted Madeline’s eyes. “Say it again.” “I love you.” He smiled as though the words surprised him. “I do.” His grin turned roguish. “I really love you.” She ran to him then, launching herself at Cole with such force that when their bodies met he was staggered several steps backward. Madeline wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, pressing her breasts against his chest as she tilted her head back on her shoulders. Cole kissed her hard, claiming her mouth, his arms going around Madeline’s curvaceous body. As he thrust his tongue between her lips, he cupped her ass in his hands, squeezing her tightly and pulling her in so that she had no choice but to feel his rapidly swelling erection. Madeline shivered, swirling her tongue against Cole’s, her pussy creaming in anticipation as—even through the multiple layers of petticoats and her gown—she felt his cock growing with astonishing speed. This was how Madeline loved Cole most—when he was demanding, even a little frightening in his passion for her. When he thrust his right hand between their bodies and squeezed her breast, Madeline whimpered into his mouth, sucking on his tongue. The corset

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Miss Molly had delivered to her house was lined with silk, with an under bust décolletage so that the corset’s half-cups cradled her breasts from the underside and did not completely cover them. Only the gown and a silk chemise separated Cole’s erotically pinching fingers from Madeline’s pulsing nipple. The pleasure that surged through Madeline’s system when Cole pinched her nipple was so powerful her knees buckled. She would have fallen had she not been holding so tightly onto the big, broad-shouldered cattleman. “I’ve thought about you every night,” Cole declared hotly, his lips brushing Madeline’s even as he spoke. “I’ve tried everything I could to stop thinking of you!” Madeline arched her back, thrusting her breast even more firmly into Cole’s clasping hand. When he kissed her again, slanting his mouth over hers with bruising force, it was a kiss meant to punish Madeline for making him want her so much. Madeline felt Cole’s anger, his frustration at falling in love with her, his love for her in complete opposition to the transient nature of all his previous women. The hand that had crushed her breast soon pulled up her skirt and petticoats. Shamelessly, Madeline spread her feet wider apart to make room for Cole’s hand as it slid up between her stocking-clad thighs. An instant later, Cole rubbed her pussy firmly, touching her through silk bloomers. “Oh, God!” Madeline gasped as Cole’s massaging hand set her soul on fire. So enthralled with each other were Cole and Madeline that neither of them heard the door open and close.

Cole felt the heat and moisture of Madeline’s pussy through the silk underpants. Though hardly a minute had passed since he’d first kissed her, his cock was already fiercely aroused, tenting out the trousers of his tuxedo, aching to be freed from its cloth prison. He took his hand from between her thighs, reaching up higher beneath her gown, searching for the drawstring of her underpants, needing to remove all barriers. He heard Hawk gasp and demand, “What the fuck is this?” Cole raised his head, ending the kiss with Madeline. With his right hand still inside her skirt, his eyes flashed with fury as Hawk strode closer.

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“What the hell are you doing here?” Cole had never used that tone with his friend before. “I’d ask you the same, except it’s pretty goddamned obvious what you’re doing!” Cole was shocked. He’d never before seen such anger from Hawk directed solely and exclusively at him. They’d been each other’s best friend for most of their lives. “Go easy, Hawk,” Cole said, grinning now with embarrassment as he eased his hand out from beneath the skirt of Madeline’s gown. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with her.” “I didn’t mean to fall in love with her, either, but I have, and that’s a fact,” Hawk replied, his words coming out rapid-fire. “Now what the fuck are we going to do?” Madeline turned her back to Cole and Hawk, staggering on wobbly legs with a hand to her forehead as though to check for a fever. She murmured, “Dear God, what’s happening here?” Cole’s eyes narrowed. He squared up to Hawk. He was taller, broader, much stronger; Hawk was more agile and fast as a rattlesnake. “You’re in love with her?” Hawk nodded. He glanced at Madeline, then back to his friend. “How long have you two been fucking?” Cole consciously unclasped his fists and put his hands on his hips. He looked at Madeline, who kept her back to him, then towards Hawk. “Have you been with her?” Bitterness glittered in Hawk’s dark eyes as he nodded. “Yeah…but not since we made it back to the Diamond D.” The information hit Cole hard. He hadn’t an inkling that Hawk and Madeline had been intimate. Though the two men had slept with the same woman on many occasions, their hearts weren’t involved, and the affairs weren’t going on concurrently. Cole said, “Hawk, whatever happened between you and Madeline is in the past, and I can’t change that. But she’s my future, so you’re going to have to back away on this one.” Hawk’s eyes narrowed, and then a mysterious smile curled his mouth. “You’ve never slept with her, have you?” Cole hesitated. Hawk issued a short, harsh laugh. “I thought not! She’s made her decision, Cole, so it’s you who must back away.” Quietly, with forced calm, Cole said, “Fuck you, Hawk.”

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“Fuck you, Cole.” “Walk away.” “You’re the one whose got to walk this time, old friend,” Cole said in a tone suggesting very little friendship. Hawk snarled, “Some friend!” Cole lunged at Hawk, grabbing him by the lapels of his tuxedo jacket. Hawk grabbed Cole similarly, and the two mighty men staggered. They were sticks of dynamite needing only the slightest spark to explode. It was more than Madeline could take. She rushed to the men, trying to push between them, clawing at their hands. In a wail of agony, she sobbed, “Stop it! Stop it! I’d rather die than destroy your friendship!” Cole’s eyes were locked with Hawk’s. Madeline began slamming her small fists against his arm and Hawk’s, trying to get them to release each other’s lapels. While staring down at Hawk, he said to Madeline, “Did you play me for a fool? Just stringing me along while you were fucking Hawk?” “Stop it! Please, I’m begging you, don’t fight each other! I’m begging you!” But Madeline’s anger quickly replaced her horror. “Stop it! If you men lay hands on each other, I swear to God you’ll never lay another hand me!” Cole and Hawk each took a step backward. “I mean it. If I’m going to destroy your friendship, I’ll just walk away instead.” Cole looked at her. Madeline presented an incongruous vision of femininity. She was in the formal gown that he’d had bought for her. Her hair was pinned up in a deceptively simple coiffure with tendrils of silky auburn hair curling down her temples. Her emerald green eyes were filled with fear and anguish and anger. Her hands were clasped as though in prayer. But by squeezing her folded hands, Madeline also enhanced an already impressively exposed bosom, pressing her breasts together with her biceps so that they swelled upward over the low décolletage. Cole released Hawk’s lapel. He had to wait several seconds before Hawk did the same. Then he turned to face the voluptuous woman, her extravagant cleavage even more tempting with him towering over her. There was lust and fury in Cole’s eyes. “Decide, Madeline,” Cole said. “Me or Hawk?”

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“I can’t decide!” she snapped. Her voice softened only slightly as she said, “Don’t you see? That’s the problem! I love you both! That’s why I wouldn’t let either of you kiss me once we got to Helena. I never, ever wanted to get between the two of you. I know how strong your friendship is…and I love you both. I do. Maybe it’s wrong for me to love the two of you, but I do. That’s the simple truth of it, Cole.” Her voice became very soft. “If…if I have to choose between you two…I’ll die. I love you both too much to ever decide between you.” Cole’s blood was heated as never before in his life. He had very nearly come to blows with Hawk. Such a thing was unthinkable for him only moments earlier. The reality that he and Hawk were in love with the same women, and that she was in love with both of them, made his head spin as though he had been drinking heavily, when in fact he was stone cold sober. It was Madeline’s eyes that changed the atmosphere in the room. She had been looking into Cole’s eyes, but then her gaze drifted downward, settling briefly on the bulging erection tenting the front of his trousers. Very slowly, she sank to her knees. Cole made quick work of the four buttons of his fly, though he had more difficulty wrestling the long and steelish cock out through the opening. When Madeline at last saw what Cole had for her, she uttered a small gasp and put a white-gloved hand to her mouth. “If you don’t want to decide between Hawk and myself, I guess you don’t have to, Madeline,” Cole said as he took a half-step closer to the kneeling woman. “That’s something that’ll take some getting used to. I’m not a man who likes sharing, especially when what I’m sharing is the woman I love.” He put his left hand lightly atop Madeline’s head, feeling her silken hair against his palm as he guided the crown of his throbbing cock to her mouth. “The only man in the world I’d share you with is Hawk.” He stroked his erection, and a drop of pre-cum formed at the slitted tip. In a husky voice, he said, “Show me love.” Madeline hesitated but not for more than a second or two. With only a little urging from Cole, she took him into her mouth, her pink lips forming a tight ring around the thickly-veined shaft. Feeling the warm wetness of her mouth enveloping him caused Cole to issue a rumbling groan of carnal delight. It amazed him that he had Madeline on her knees, her mouth gaping as she sucked tenderly upon him, her white cotton glove rough against his shaft while her lips were silky soft. The startling beauty of her on her knees in full formal attire as she behaved wantonly added significantly to Cole’s already rigidly swollen cock.

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He pushed another inch of his erection between Madeline’s lips—then felt her sharp of her teeth against his enflamed flesh. “Ouch!” he gasped, retreating instantly. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’ve never done this before,” Madeline said like a shot. She started to get to her feet, but Cole wouldn’t let her. He pushed her back down to her knees, a leonine snarl curling his lips. “Learn,” Hawk said, stepping closer to Madeline, his fingers curling into her pinned-up hair, destroying her coiffure. He was unbuttoning his trousers quickly. “Learn fast, Madeline.” Then, to Cole, he said, “Well, partner, it seems like she’s ours—and vice versa.” As Cole watched Madeline turning her head to take Hawk into her mouth, he said softly, “Well I’ll be damned…”

I never meant for this to happen, Madeline thought as she pushed her lips down the shaft of Cole’s cock until she had filled her mouth with his solid flesh and could take no more. She closed her eyes as Cole pumped his hips slowly, sliding between her lips. When Madeline rubbed the underside of his crown with her tongue, Cole flinched sharply, letting her know that he was particularly sensitive there. Madeline felt a strong hand close around her wrist, and a moment later Hawk was curling her fingers around the shaft of his cock. She sighed softly, blindly stroking her hand over his rigid erection while nibbling her lips down Cole’s length. After several seconds, Madeline leaned back, sitting on her heels. She looked at her white-gloved hands as they moved to and fro on two cocks, each sporting impressive dimensions. She looked up, her jewel-like green eyes shimmering with passion and utter confusion. “How…how did this happen?” she asked. She had Cole to her left hand and Hawk to her right. Cole’s erection with greater in girth than Hawk’s. Hawk could rightly claim to being longer. Both men put Madeline’s ex-fiancé to shame as far as size. An impish giggle worked its way out of Madeline’s throat and she said, “I seem to have an embarrassment of riches.” And then, saucily, she declared, “I love your cocks.” Hearing her own bold declaration sent a shiver of desire rippling through Madeline’s senses. Never in her life had she dreamed she could be so bold and sexually adventurous.

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With a carnal purr, she lewdly lapped at the tip of Hawk’s cock, flicking her tongue at the slit. He groaned his pleasure. Since she had never before this night pleasured a man with her mouth, Madeline tried to be dispassionate about what she was doing, carefully monitoring the responses she received from Cole and Hawk as she tongued here, nibbled there. She was conscious that the men she loved knew more about giving carnal pleasure than she did. I must be a very wicked woman to enjoy doing this to my men, thought Madeline as she turned alternately left and right to avail herself to Cole and Hawk. She angled her gaze up at Hawk as the head of his cock throbbed against the opening of her throat. The sexual strain showed clearly in his eyes and in the way his mouth was pursed into a thin line. I can learn to be good at this. I’ve never done it before, but I’m good at this, and I’ll get better. My men love me on my knees. Madeline was in her own dream world. Nothing mattered to her but Cole and Hawk and their responses to the lascivious pleasure she could give them with her hands and lips and tongue. “Stand up,” Cole said, reaching down to grab Madeline by her upper arm. “Stand up and bend over.” As Cole bodily hauled her to her feet, Madeline asked, “Did I do something wrong?” “You’re doing everything right,” Cole assured her as she spun her around so that her back was to him. With one hand holding her hip, he pushed on her shoulder with the other, forcing her to bend at the waist. Madeline lost her balance, but not for long. Hawk was soon standing directly in front of her, one hand holding her steady by the shoulder as he positioned his saliva-moistened cock in front of Madeline’s face. “Don’t stop,” Hawk said, the words coming out through teeth gritted with sexual tension. “Damn it, Madeline, you can’t stop now!” She grabbed Hawk’s thighs to balance herself as Cole quickly pulled her skirt and petticoats above her hips. With only a minor amount of fumbling about blindly, he found the drawstring to her bloomers and unknotted it. A moment after that, her underwear were down around her ankles and the pale, half-moons of her buttocks were exposed.

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Madeline felt in a daze, oddly aware of all that was being done to her, yet feeling strangely disembodied from it at the same time. As Hawk pistoned his hips to work the crown and shaft of his cock between her lips, she found it exciting to be making love fully clothed. And to be able to hear the people downstairs at the dance and know that, at any moment, the door could open and her lusty ménage a trois be discovered added to her ecstasy. Forbidden thrills, Madeline was learning, were the best kind. She felt the plum-sized head of Cole’s cock pressing against her slick labia. A shiver of anticipation went through her. His hands, large and powerful, were at her hips to hold her steady as he put pressure against her entrance. “She’s so damned tight!” The words were a throaty growl issued by Cole. Madeline had never really thought about it before, but she was pleased that she was tight, though she suspected all women would be tight when invaded by Cole’s oversized phallus. He growled a second time, and Madeline felt herself opening, expanding, stretching to accommodate Cole’s hard, lusty cock. Madeline spread her feet a little wider apart to get at a slightly better angle as she began rocking back and forth between her men, taking Cole’s cock full-length into her pussy while she swallowed as much of Hawk’s erection as she could. Madeline had hardly taken Cole’s entire length into her slick channel when a powerful climax claimed her senses. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried to sheath her teeth with her lips so that she wouldn’t hurt Hawk as she had Cole. Her contractions were powerful, and had Cole not maintained such a tight hold on her hips and had she not been squeezing Hawk’s thighs, she certainly would have fallen to her knees. “She’s coming already! My beautiful, hot-blooded lady!” Cole’s words seemed to come from far away as Madeline shivered through her orgasm. Even as he spoke, Cole thrust harder and faster into her pussy. Madeline blinked her eyes, struggling to clear her vision. She felt drugged by lust, sated as never before. Behind her, Cole laboured furiously, his pelvis slamming against her each time he buried his cock full-length inside her. “Goddamn…” Hawk groaned, thrusting so deeply into Madeline’s mouth that she sputtered, nearly gagging. “Goddamn…I’m losing it already…I…I can’t hold…back!”

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With her orgasm behind her, logical thought processes returned to Madeline in a heartbeat. The reality that she was standing, bent over at the waist, taking Hawk’s cock into her mouth as Cole plunged with increasing fury into her pussy, was more than she could comprehend. Madeline never dreamed she was capable of such uninhibited behaviour. Hawk was going to come and he was going to come in her mouth. Madeline knew the extent and volume of his orgasms, and for a moment, she considered trying to stop him. It was surely the action of a sinfully wicked woman to swallow her lover’s semen, she decided. I am wicked! she thought then with pride. I’ll do anything to please my men! There’s nothing they can ask of me that I won’t do! Despite his declaration of losing control, Hawk was the last of the lovers in the unplanned ménage a trois to climax. Seconds before he unleashed a torrent of cum on Madeline’s tongue, Cole withdrew at the last instant, depositing his thick spurts of creamy semen against her buttocks to dribble down her thighs, matting in the tops of the silk stockings attached to her corset. Madeline was grateful Cole had known what to do and had shown the discipline to do it. Madeline swallowed twice, turned her face aside to get Hawk out of her mouth, then in a rather unladylike gesture wiped her mouth with the back of her gloved hand. Hawk, now satisfied, took Madeline by the shoulders and helped her to stand upright. The flavour of semen, pungent and distinctly masculine, was not one that Madeline enjoyed. But when she saw the absolute satisfaction in Hawk’s dark eyes, she knew that he had thoroughly enjoyed himself. It wouldn’t be the last time she brought him to supreme satisfaction with her lips and tongue, she promised herself. Breathing deeply, her legs feeling weak, Madeline pulled up her underpants and retied the drawstring. The sensation of Cole’s cum sticking to her undergarments was a naughty reminder of her intemperate behaviour. She stumbled backward, and Cole’s arms went protectively around her. “I…I need some champagne,” she said, her words slurred slightly from the intoxication of carnal bliss. “And we need to leave this dance.” She got up on her tiptoes to kiss Hawk’s chin, then turned and kissed Cole similarly. “This is a beautiful dress, and though nobody can see it, there is sperm drying in my bloomers, petticoats, and stockings. I want to go home, take off all my clothes, wash up…then I want to get sweaty.” Her eyes were heavy

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lidded as she watched Cole tuck his now-pliant cock back into his trousers. “I want the two of you to make love to me all weekend long. I want you individually, I want you simultaneously, I want you every way that’s possible for one woman to have two men.” “I’m up for it,” Cole said. Hawk added, “Me, too.” Feeling as though she was the most selfish woman in the world for capturing two such handsome and virile lovers exclusively for herself, Madeline just smiled.

**** “It’s just like you said, Willy Boy,” Sam remarked as he took a heavy gold watch from the vest pocket of an elderly cattle baron. “Not a damned one of ‘em is carrying a gun!” “Of course we’re not carrying guns,” the man whose watch had just been stolen said bitterly. “What damned fool would bring a gun to a dance?” Angling the sawed-off shotgun upward, Willy Boy pointed the twin muzzles at the man’s face. It was enough of a threat to stop any future comments. Willy Boy’s hat was already nearly full of wallets and jewellery, and there were still many more revellers at the Cattleman’s Ball to steal from. The pickings, it seemed, were even better than he had anticipated, and the urge to giggle with delight—an effeminate habit Willy Boy had whenever a plan was particularly successful—was almost overpowering. The only thing that bothered him was the fact that he hadn’t seen Cole or Hawk. When he, Paul, and Sam had burst in on the ball, the first thing they did was gather everyone onto the dance floor. And since all three of them carried shotguns with the barrels cut off very short to provide a wide killing spray for the buckshot, their orders were quickly followed by the dance’s attendees. Willy Boy walked up to a tall, distinguished-looking man with an extravagantly waxed moustache. He put the barrels of his weapon against the man’s chest and said, “I’m looking for a man name of Cole Darden. Where is he?” The man’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. He was paralyzed with fear. Willy Boy jabbed him with the muzzles, knocking him a step backward.

PASSION OF MADELINE

Robin Gideon

81

“Tell me where Cole Darden and that half-breed named Hawk are, or I’ll cut you in half with this scattergun!” Willy Boy said, enjoying the absolute primal fear he saw in the wealthy man’s face. But it wasn’t the man with the elaborate moustache who responded with, “I’m right here, you bastard!” Willy Boy turned towards the voice. He saw two tuxedoed men, one a tall blond and the other a shorter, darker man. Their jackets were open, showing empty holsters under their left arms. In their right hands were guns. Colt forty-fives. Willy Boy was just starting to raise his shotgun when he heard the roar of the heavycalibre handgun. He didn’t feel any pain. At least not at first. It just seemed as though some invisible fist had punched him, pushing him a step backward. “Now I’m going to kill you,” Willy Boy said. He started to raise his shotgun, but it suddenly felt very heavy in his hands. He looked down and discovered there was a round patch of red on his shirt, just a little below his breastbone. The shotgun now had to weigh several hundred pounds, Willy Boy decided, because it was too heavy for him to hold. The weapon tumbled from his fingers to the dance floor. Willy Boy was watching the red spot on his shirt expanding when he heard the other gunshots. As though from far, far away, he heard Paul’s hideous death scream. Sam had died without making a sound. Pitching forward, Willy Boy never felt himself hitting the floor.

**** Madeline stood on her porch, looking at the skyline. The clouds were steel grey and looked so low it seemed she could reach up and grab one. It would be snowing soon, and Madeline was thankful that she had given her hired hands orders to put up plenty of chopped wood for the winter. A cool breeze played over her, and she shivered. Turning, she stepped back into her home. A smile tugged her lips as the warmth of her kitchen, and the aroma of the apple pie she was cooking, teased her senses.

PASSION OF MADELINE

Robin Gideon

82

It was Saturday. At seven o’clock, Cole would come from his home, and Hawk would come from his. Every Saturday night for months now, she’d enjoyed the pleasure of their company together. On Tuesdays, it was Hawk’s turn to visit her separately. On Thursdays, Madeline had the pleasure of Cole’s complete and undivided attention. But on Saturdays, Madeline had her lovers together. She always slept late on Sunday morning.

About the Author Before turning her creative energies to epublishing, Robin had a dozen historical romances published through a New York publisher. Her novels have been translated into German, Chinese, and Romanian. Her novel “Cheyenne Desire” was named Third Best All-Time by Amazon.com for Sexy Romances, and given five stars out of five. For her novel “Viking Ecstasy,” she was the featured author/artist in February 2006 on the nationally syndicated TV show CBS Sunday Morning. Robin lives in the north central United States, is married, and has one child. Email: [email protected] Robin loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.total-e-bound.com.

Also by Robin Gideon Ecstasy in Eden

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