Savage Impulses (2 page)

“I don't, but I thought I'd make an exception
tonight. You look like you need a fourth.”

They made way so that the new stranger could
sit, but Marigold could see that the tone of the game had changed.
Suddenly the men were playing much closer to their chests, and
Black himself, who had gotten her name maker back, had his face
fixed in a quiet snarl.

The play went back and forth. For a while,
Marigold lost track of it again. She was making herself numb, she
realized dully. She found that she could even wonder what it would
be like to lie underneath these men, to wonder what would be left
of her afterwards.

She woke up when she heard numbers that she
could barely believe. When she opened her eyes, the stakes on the
table were high. There was cash, a bag of what she supposed was
gold dust, and then there was her homely little marker, all there
under the light.

“Well, let's see them,” Black said with a
hiss as he threw down a pair of fours and a triplet of fives.

“Full house,” one of the other men said with
disgust. His partner agreed, and they cast their cards down without
flipping them.

The stranger, younger than they were and
quieter, too, simply turned his cards over without a flourish.

The table stilled.

From her position, Marigold could see four
tens and the Queen of Hearts.

“Four of a kind,” he said quietly.

She realized that his hand was on the rifle
that sat by his side.

“Son of a bitch,” Black snarled.

For a moment, it looked like Black was going
to go for the gun Marigold knew he carried by his side, but then he
shoved himself back from the table swiftly, shaking his head. He
looked like he would have liked to spit at the man who had won the
pot. Instead he only stalked off, giving Marigold a dark look that
cut right to her soul.

“You can have her, poxy slut that she is,” he
told the younger man acidly. “I wish you joy of her then.”

The stranger, in the middle of gathering his
winnings up, frowned at the retreating man's back.

“What the hell?” he asked the other men at
the table.

Much more relaxed now that Black was gone,
they answered him easily.

“The girl's all yours,” one said. “He brought
her all the way from back east, said she was a virgin an' all.”

Marigold paled as a dark cloud seemed to come
over the stranger's face.

“I never wanted a whore,” he said furiously.
“I thought the bastard was in for ten dollars with that slip.”

Marigold gasped. She knew that ten dollars
was more than some laborers made in a week, but to be given a price
on her body like that shocked her to her core.

He glanced up at her sound. If he seemed
contrite at all, it was quickly driven away.

“Get her out of here, Sloan,” the other man
advised. “Black will beat the hell out of her if he sees her, what
with the state that he's in.

Sloan snarled something in response.

For a long, terrible moment, she thought that
he would leave her. A glance around at the men nearby, who the
night's progression and liquor had only made more savage, made her
realize that that was the last thing that she wanted.

“You. Come on.”

She had no choice but to follow him into the
night, wondering what would happen to her.

* * * *

Hours later, they came back to his ranch.

It was full dark, and she had nearly fallen
asleep in the saddle. At first she had been nervous about sitting
so close to him, her back against his chest and his arms around
her, but, over the course of the ride, she had relaxed. The horse
seemed as sweet and gentle as the mare that had pulled the coal
wagon at home, and, lulled by the motion and the man's silence, she
drifted off. For some odd reason, she felt safer than she had in
ages.

That illusion ended when the man dismounted,
helping her down off the saddle. The ranch house itself was small
and dark, and she realized how far away she was from everyone else.
She couldn't stop a soft whimper from escaping her lips, and that
made the man turn on her.

“What the hell are you making that noise
for?” he demanded. “I haven't laid a goddamn finger on you.”

“I'm not making any noise!” she retorted,
stung. “I didn't, I wouldn't!”

He laughed. “Are you the type of whore who
likes to play Miss Purity? Trust me, miss, I don't have the time
for the likes of you.”

Fear was replaced with fury, and she stamped
her foot on the hard-packed dirt. “I'm no whore!” she cried. “I'm
not. I'm here to work, do you understand?”

His eyes raked her up and down.

In the bright moonlight, she could imagine
how skimpy her outfit looked, how easily he could see the shape of
her breasts and the curve of her hips.

“I can just imagine you sweeping and
scrubbing in those clothes,” he retorted.

She trembled with rage, but he was right, and
she could find nothing else to say.

Abruptly, the biting anger went out of him,
and he just looked tired. “I have no place here for someone who
can't work,” he told her. “I just took you out of Langtry because
the men said that you would see worse if you stayed. I'll take you
back tomorrow and maybe you can find some rich supporter or
something that will treat you right.”

The thought of going back to Langtry, of
running back under Black's hands, terrified her.

“You can't! I won't go back there, you don't
understand!”

“I understand just fine,” he snapped. “You
think I'm a cheap meal ticket, well, I'm not. I don't give a damn
how sweet that body of yours is, I don't want it.”

At least in the dark, he couldn't see how
brightly her cheeks were flaming. After a long moment, he allowed
her to go into the house while he saw to his horse.

He was true to his word. He never touched
her, but she wondered if there was some terrified, frightened and
longing part of her that wanted him to. He was handsome, she
realized, and when he was making up a pallet for her on the floor,
she saw his name on some of the papers of his desk. Jake Sloan was
a good looking man with strong features and an inherent strength
and grace that called to her. At the moment, however, he was only
treating her like a frustrating inconvenience.

“Rest easy,” he said.

Marigold wondered if she could hear some kind
of remorse for his cruel words earlier in his voice.

“We'll go back to Langtry in the morning. If
you really do want some kind of honest work, well, maybe I know a
man who needs a floor scrubbed or a lady who needs a maid. You
can't be carrying on with the men when you do that, though. They
like their maids to be good, even if they do show up a little
soiled.”

“I'm not soiled at all,” she said softly.

He only shook his head and took the candle
he’d brought with him to light his way to his own room.

Marigold lay down, but she didn't undress.
After what must have been hours, she decided that he must have
fallen asleep.

She realized that if she was going to be
saved, she would have to do it herself, and she refused to trust
any man with it. She took a few deep breaths and quietly made her
way to the door. One floorboard creaked under her foot, making her
freeze with terror, but when there was no sound from the other
room, she crept out the door.

There was a shred of light to the east, but
true dawn was still hours away. The cold night air hit her like a
slap in the face, but she stifled her gasp and made her way around
the porch to the tiny stable that was behind the house. Thankfully,
the stable was a little warmer as she looked around and found a
horse blanket that she could drape around her shoulders. It was far
too long and heavy, but it was at least some protection from the
cold as she tried to saddle the horse.

The mare looked at her with what she thought
were friendly eyes. For a moment, she felt so relieved to see a
friendly face that she could have cried. Instead, she clumsily
bridled the animal, thanking God for her friends who had worked
with carriage horses in Bristol and had taught her something of
what they knew. After a moment's struggle, she realized that there
was no way that the saddle would be anything more than a hazard to
her. When she tried to get it off the wall, it fell straight to the
floor with a thud, and the contraption of straps and leather looked
daunting. She wasn't sure that she could tighten it enough, and the
idea of slipping off of a horse that was moving was terrifying.

It took more time and more effort to get on
top of the animal, but even then the horse was steady and allowed
her to fumble and fall before she was mounted.

Riding couldn't be so difficult,
she
thought. She clicked her tongue the way that she had heard Sloan
do. The horse started walking. For a few minutes, she was
delighted. She thought about making it to another town, a place
where she could throw herself on the mercy of the locals who might
give her a job or at least tell her how to get one in this strange
new land.

Her pleasant thoughts took an abrupt stop
when she realized that instead of heading down the road, the horse
was simply circling the property. Now that she could see that she
was back at the house, with the horse circling back to its stable,
she let out a short cry of frustration.

“No, no, please, this isn't where I wanted
you to go!” she whispered loudly, tugging ineffectually on the
reins.

The mare obediently turned, but she only
seemed to want to repeat the circuit from before.

It was as if the animal thought she was a
child who wanted to go for an adventure. “No, not like this,” she
hissed. In frustration, she pulled harder on the mare's reins.

This seemed to irritate the animal, who
tossed her head warningly.

When that was all the reaction that Marigold
got, she groaned with anger and pulled far harder.

The mare's ears flicked back in anger.

That was all the warning she got before the
bit was seized in the animal's teeth. Then no amount of tugging
could pull control back from the mare who suddenly took off like a
shot into the pre-dawn light.

Marigold screamed as the brush of the desert
rushed past. She slumped down on the mare's back, clinging with her
arms and her thighs for dear life.

The madcap ride could only have lasted for a
few moments, but it felt like an eternity when she could already
feel her grip failing.

All of a sudden a warbling whistle, high at
the start and falling like a diving hawk, cut through the early
morning air.

The mare stopped in a heartbeat. Another
whistle turned the mare around and had her cantering back as
sedately as a draft horse.

Before Marigold could even sit herself
upright, she was in front of the little house again and in front of
Jake Sloan, who looked furious.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?”
he snarled, pulling her off the horse.

He caught her when her legs went to jelly
underneath her, but she pulled away from him, stumbling hard.
“Getting away from you!” she shouted. “Getting away from you and
... and finding my own way to where people don't think that I'm
some kind of loose woman.”

His dark eyes narrowed, and she realized that
she had just tried to steal this man's horse, something that was
considered a hanging offense in this part of the country.

“You little fool,” he hissed. “Do you have
any idea how easily you could have killed yourself? Or worse?
There's a lot worse in this country than me.”

She could have spat with rage. “I don't know
if I believe that! You're a bastard and a savage and...”

Something about what she said seemed to break
the last ounce of control that Jake Sloan had in him, because
suddenly Marigold was being dragged over to the low wood rail fence
to the side of the house.

“No!” she shrieked, terrified about what he
intended to do. Her cries were stopped short when he threw her over
the railing, her rear presented high in the air.

“Shut up,” he snapped. “I'm going to give you
the lesson you should have had the minute you ended up in this
country!” In the space of a heartbeat, he had flipped her skirt up
over her head, and then he was parting the fabric of her
drawers.

With no center seam, the flimsy fabric opened
to give him what must have been a painfully clear view of her ass.
She struggled against his hold, blushing crimson to think of
herself so exposed.

For a moment, he paused.

She could only imagine that he was staring at
her. She became aware of a deep yawning feeling in the pit of her
stomach as well as something that made her press her legs together
in sudden strange need, but then his hard hand made contact with
the vulnerable flesh of her rear and that thought fled.

The first blow was so hard that she would
have tumbled right over the rail if he hadn't been holding her with
a hand at the back of her neck. After a moment of stunned shock,
she cried out at the fiery pain that spread over her ass. She had
been strapped before as a child but that was nothing compared to
what this man could do with his bare hand.

The pain crested, but before it could fade,
there was another slap. She could hear the echoes of her own cries
through the countryside, and the fact that there was no one to hear
made her sob.

The slaps came hard and fast, working their
way from the crack of her ass down almost to her knees. At first
she kicked and struggled and swore, but that only seemed to make
him angrier. He struck her harder and harder. Finally, she gave up
entirely. She went as limp as a rug over the fence railing, only
sobbing more loudly when he landed another blow.

Marigold was only aware that he had stopped
when she felt the cool breeze against her blazing hot skin. She
realized dully that he was quiet behind her, and she wondered if he
was as shocked as she was.