Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(49)
He blinked. “But you are only . . . what? Twenty? Twenty-one?”
Her shrug was negligent, despite the giddiness that besieged her. “Ye wanted something?” Of course, she was not what he wanted. At least, not for a lifetime’s span.
“Johnson will be here today – to breed his prize bull with one of my heifers, before he returns to Washington. Is there any hope in hell that you’ll behave yourself? All I am asking is for a decent New Year’s luncheon spread – and to keep your carcass out of his lecherous sight.”
Well, that was an interesting request. And the way he was staring down at her, she could not mistake the hunger in his own eyes. A grin threatened to tilt the ends of her lips. “And that bothers ye? The congressman’s sights on meself?”
“Damn straight. I have enough to handle here without wrangling with hanky-panky.”
“Hangkeypainkey?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, you know . . . . ”
She sat aside the paring knife, and, hands on hips, head cocked, said, “Nay, I dunna know. This is a word I dunna understand. Hangkeypainkey.”
His gaze lifted to the ceiling plaster, as if studying its smoky splotches of soot her cooking had silhouetted. “You know. Like, well . . . ” his campfire eyes found hers, “hell, like kissing . . . and stroking. . . fondling. That sort of thing.”
Fondling. That word held a wealth of meaning. “Ahh, like when you are courting yuir woman. That kind of hangkeypainkey?” She could have continued to play her teasing game, to make the sweat bead even thicker on that luxuriant, soft mustache of his, but she said quietly, “And which of the two have ye decided on, Duke – the one ye will take to wife? Charlotte – or Sally?”
She waited in breathless anxiety to hear whom he preferred. Because with either, it would mean, most likely all too soon, the death knell for herself. She would no longer be needed once he wed.
As if in disgust, he shook his head. “No hanky-panky has gone on with either of them.”
The relief she felt galvanized her to blurt, “I think that sort of thing – this hangkeypainkey is what ye want to do with me, Duke McClellan.”
The temperature in the kitchen surely shattered the mercury’s thermometer. His head jolted back. He glared down at her. “Are you out of your crazy-loving mind?!”
Her relief metamorphosed into mirth. “Nay, Duke, I am not. But ye are. Ye’re wanting crazy loving from meself, aye?”
His hands grabbed her shoulders, as if to set her from him. But he didn’t. His mouth hardened. Those generous lips parted, apparently in repudiation of his feelings, but it was as if he could find nothing with which to counter her assertion.
Palms splayed on his chest, she stood on tiptoe and barely reached high enough to brush her lips against his.
He was as stiff as a medieval suit of armor. With an inward sigh, she drew her lips away from his. “Tis a strong will, ye have. If only me own was as strong.”
“I’d sooner jerk off than bed some – ”
“ – than bed me?” she completed his falsehood of a statement. Foolish and shameless she was to offer her kiss so freely when she should play the demure young lady. Yet, she strained against his clamped hands and kissed him again, this time her lips lingering. Bloody blooming saints, she would best him yet.
Below his raffish mustache, the easing of his obdurate mouth signaled she was in for the ride of her life. He swerved her toward the long plank table and boosted her onto its edge and wedged himself between her thighs. Bracing himself over her, his mouth took possession of hers. The shock of his conquering tongue immobilized her. That primordial kiss wiped all fantasy kisses from her mind. Wiped everything from her mind.
He jerked his head back, his heated breath fanning her swollen, wet lips. “Damn you, Romy! You’re asking for pure trouble.”
She sensed she was damned anyway. This craving of him with no release would be an eternal, earthly hell. “Then give it to meself.”
His hands cupped her buttocks and yanked her pelvis toward his crotch. “Is this what you want?” he growled.
For answer, her hand tangled in his hair, tugging his head back; her other splayed on his chest, her fingers clumsily, frenziedly working the top snap of his shirt, and all the while her lips scaled the muscle that was a live wire flicking in his thick throat. His guttural utterance, her gasping moan, proclaimed that yet another ritual, the mating ritual, was under way.
The saints, karma, or maybe even pure dumb luck saved them both, as first the porch screen door and then next the front door banged open, and Bud bellowed, “Duke, the Congressman’s here!”
Duke blinked glazed eyes and stared at her as if trying to refocus, then he levered his hammering weight away from her.
Gawking at one another, both their mouths opened, as if to excuse what had transpired.
Wordlessly, rebuttoning his shirt, he stalked from the kitchen to greet outside the arriving Johnson and staff.
With shaking hands, she went back to making sangria with some overripe oranges and shriveled lemons and mixed with a cheap wine Arturo had procured from God knew where.
Finished with the New Year’s Day preparation, she knew she could not hide out. Better to make the best of it. Face Duke and pray they both could pretend as if that flashfire moment had not happened.
But it was not wining and dining the illustrious congressman that continued to unsettle her and palsy her hands. Nay, what unsettled her was the looming consequences of the solar heated attraction between herself and Duke, which could not continue to be ignored within the confines of the S&S’s small adobe house. They had passed into a danger zone, a point of no return. And she knew she was more responsible than he. She had goaded him.