Wanton Angel (43 page)

Eli still didn’t raise his head. “I thought you would be spending the evening with your father.”

“No,” Bonnie said with a sigh. “I don’t believe I’ll be up to having a chat with Jack Fitzpatrick for a while. I went to the Brass Eagle to see Forbes.”

“Oh,” Eli said. That was all, just “oh.”

Bonnie felt fiery disappointment. She’d expected a grand and passionate rage at the very least. Didn’t Eli care whether she danced the hurdy-gurdy in a scarlet dress? She was silent for a long time, not trusting herself to speak.

Eli lowered his hands, but he had yet to so much as look
in Bonnie’s direction. His magnificent shoulders were stooped, she noticed now and, in the last fierce rays of daylight pouring in through the windows above the bed, he looked drawn and strangely hopeless.

At last Bonnie overcame the odd shyness she felt and approached the bed. Standing at its foot, she asked, “Eli, what is it? What’s the matter?”

He turned his gaze to Bonnie with an effort, and she was stunned at the anguish in the depths of his eyes. “There isn’t any easy way to say this, Bonnie,” he said in a voice as ravaged as his face.

Bonnie’s heart threatened to stop beating, and she put one hand to it. He was going to say that he’d lied before, that he’d shared Earline’s bed after all. She just knew it. Maybe he had even decided to have this second marriage annulled …

“Sit down,” he said with an attempt at a smile, his hand patting the nubby white bedspread.

Bonnie obeyed, mostly because she couldn’t trust her knees to support her, but she didn’t say anything because it was taking all the energy she had just to keep herself from crying.

“There was a woman in Cuba,” he said. While Bonnie’s mind reeled, he uttered a sound meant to resemble a laugh, but falling far short. “Consolata was a girl, really—she must have been about eighteen when I knew her.”

Bonnie reached out blindly for the bedpost and held on. She still couldn’t speak, but she’d given up the effort at holding back the tears that streamed down her cheeks.

Eli made no move to touch Bonnie and that was a kindness, for she couldn’t have borne it, but he went on talking, his voice taut with controlled emotion. “I liked playing soldier, Bonnie, and when I was asked to carry a dispatch to the southern part of the island, I jumped at the chance. I’d been in Santiago de Cuba all of six hours when I collapsed in a cantina—”

“You had yellow fever,” Bonnie said stupidly, still gripping the bedpost. She remembered the day Genoa had showed her a letter from Seth, explaining that Eli had contracted the disease.

Eli’s hand touched hers and then drew back to run
through his hair. “A young girl named Consolata Torrez took care of me. I was out of my head most of the time and I don’t remember much even now, beyond cracked walls and a crucifix and the godawful heat.”

Bonnie cleared her throat. “And Consolata?” she prompted miserably.

Eli stood then, facing Bonnie. He pried her fingers loose from the bedpost and crouched before her, catching both her hands together in both of his. “I know you’re not going to believe me, Bonnie, but I wouldn’t recognize Consolata if I met her on the street. The only woman I remember seeing is you.”

Bonnie had not intended to look at Eli again, but her eyes sliced to his face. She trembled with sudden fury, wanting to kick and scratch and scream. “You must think I’m every kind of fool, ready to believe any outlandish lie—”

Eli closed his eyes for a moment. “No.”

“You made love to that woman, didn’t you?” Bonnie spat, struggling in vain to free her hands from his. “You made love to Consolata Torrez and now you’re trying to say that you were so delirious with fever that you thought she was me!”

“It began that way, Bonnie,” Eli said brokenly. “I swear it did.”

Bonnie spoke archly, for all that she was sobbing by then. “And how did it end, Eli?”

Eli might have been an actor, had he not been born to an industrial empire. He looked at Bonnie as though she’d run him through with a sword. “According to Consolata and her uncle,” he said after a long time, “it ended in disgrace.”

Bonnie had managed to free her hands, but she clasped them together in her lap, afraid of the violence she wanted to do. “I can imagine your horror,” she mocked, sniffling, “when you realized that you’d just taken your pleasure with someone other than me!”

Eli rose to his full height and then sat down beside Bonnie again on the bed. The sunlight had faded away and the room was dim. There was a long, torturous silence.

“Did you make her pregnant?” Bonnie whispered, when she couldn’t hold the question inside her any longer.

Eli grasped Bonnie’s shoulders in a sudden motion and there was true and startling anger in his face. As well as in his rasped “No, damn you, I didn’t make her pregnant, but I ruined her for any other man, at least the way her uncle tells it, and I’ve been supporting her ever since! Are you happy now, or do you want to torment us both by asking to hear every last detail?”

Somehow Bonnie broke free of his grasp and shot to her feet. She’d already slapped Eli—her hand throbbed with the force of the blow—before she even became conscious of the impulse to make him hurt the way she was hurting.

He made no attempt to retaliate, to restrain Bonnie, or even to rise off the edge of the bed.

“Why did you tell me this?” she whispered, her hands clasping each other. “Why, Eli, after all this time, did you tell me?”

“Someone found out about Consolata and tried to use the information to blackmail me. I didn’t want you to hear the story from anyone else.”

Bonnie felt sick and covered her mouth with one hand for a moment, before going on. “Who? Who was blackmailing you?”

The look Eli gave her was at once scornful and wry. “It wasn’t Durrant or Hutcheson,” he ground out, “so don’t worry. Your circle of admirers is unbroken, Bonnie.”

“I can always ask Seth.”

He stretched out on the bed then with a weary sigh, his hands cupped behind his head, his golden eyes closed. “If it’s that important to you, Bonnie, you go right ahead and ask him.”

At that moment Bonnie was fairly convulsed with rage. She flung herself at Eli like a furious animal, all claws and teeth, and all the while she was sobbing because the pain was beyond bearing.

Eli grappled with Bonnie for several seconds and then subdued her by clasping her wrists in his hands and flinging her onto her back beside him. Still she struggled, kicking as hard as she could, and Eli finally pinned both of her legs beneath one of his own. There were long, angry scratches on his face and tears in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Bonnie,” he choked out. “I’m sorry.”

Eli’s hands were still holding her wrists and she arched her back in an effort to be free of him, curses she didn’t remember learning hissing past her lips. The shock was a jolting one when he kissed her, and the sensation was not all rage.

She squirmed, now more furious with herself than with Eli, but he subdued her by stretching out upon her, the kiss unbroken.

His weight was crushing, and yet Bonnie no longer sought to be free of it. Eli had released her wrists and, in a last-ditch effort to save her pride, she tangled her fingers in his hair, fully intending to pull it out in hanks. Instead she took frightening pleasure in the silky texture, pressing Eli deeper into the kiss.

With a groan that made Bonnie’s embattled tongue and the whole inside of her mouth quiver, Eli ground his hips against hers. Through skirts and petticoats and drawers, Bonnie felt the awesome, heated length of him and her body raged to be appeased.

Gasping, Eli escaped the kiss, and Bonnie saw bewilderment in his eyes, along with a nearly ungovernable passion. Her hands meshed in his wheat-gold hair, she forced him back to her, meaning to consume him in her anger and her love. She wasn’t thinking, only functioning on the most primal level of her femininity, and there was no pain, for that had been thrust aside by the fury that drove her to take and be taken.

A violent tensing of muscles as hard as tamarack told Bonnie that Eli was not going to be conquered willingly; he was too used to conquering. He tore his mouth from hers and rolled onto his back, his chest heaving as he fought to breathe. “Bonnie—” he said in a rasping attempt at reason.

She knelt beside him, slowly unbuttoning his shirt, her hands hungry for the warm feel of his chest. His eyes aglitter with warning, he clasped her wrists in his hands, but she freed them easily and bared him to her touch.

Bonnie’s palms tingled as they made soft, fevered circles on his flesh, brushing over the mat of golden maple hair glistening there.

She bent her head to tempt one masculine nipple with the tip of her tongue and Eli tensed, groaning. He tried valiantly to resist the sensations Bonnie was creating with her fingers and her mouth, but at last his formidable will was broken. His hands grasped Bonnie’s hips and he thrust her onto her back in a single fierce motion.

If she hadn’t been driven beyond good sense already, Bonnie would have been frightened by the look in his eyes. Kneeling astraddle her like a furious Viking, he ripped her dress from neckline to waist, and then he did the same with the camisole beneath. Her breasts swelled proudly, defiantly in his hands.

“You wanted this, Bonnie,” he ground out. “Remember that when it’s over and you’re back to hating me.”

Bonnie heard Eli’s words and at some level of her consciousness they registered, but she was consumed by her own aching need for the full and thorough loving of this one man. He moved sinuously into a position of interwoven subservience and mastery, and Bonnie gasped with pleasure as she felt his mouth close over her breast. Instinctively her fingers entangled themselves in his glossy, toasted-gold hair, caressing. He drew at her, now hungrily, now with a tormenting tenderness, until he’d taken his fill at both her nipples, and then he sat back on his haunches. His breathing was deep and uneven and his eyes were closed.

Bonnie, still caught between his powerful thighs, shinnied upward until she was half reclining and half sitting up. A visible tremor went through Eli’s body as she undid his belt buckle and then the buttons of his trousers. He endured her caresses as long as he could and then lunged off the bed, pulling Bonnie after him.

Glaring at her all the while, he finished removing his clothes and then proceeded to divest Bonnie of hers. They stood facing each other, like naked warriors about to do battle.

Eli lifted Bonnie by her waist, setting her firmly upon his manhood. She wrapped her arms around his neck and tilted her head back in glorious submission as he glided slowly inside her.

The room had long been dark, but there was no lamp burning. Bonnie feigned sleep when Eli left the bed, breathing evenly and keeping her eyes tightly closed. There was moisture along her lashes, but he couldn’t know that.

Eli dressed quietly; she heard the jingle of his belt buckle, the change in his breathing that meant he was pulling on his boots. When the doorknob turned, Bonnie could no longer keep up the pretense.

“Eli, wait,” she said, through the wall of pride that was threatening to smother her.

He was silent, but Bonnie sensed that she wasn’t the only one struggling to hold dangerous emotions in check. She sat up in bed, drawing the covers over her breasts even though the room was pitch dark.

“Where will you go?”

Eli sighed raggedly. “San Francisco, I think,” he answered. “There’s a shipyard there that I might buy.”

Bonnie was ever so glad that he couldn’t see her face in the gloom. She needed to hide her despair and her hurt and her shattered pride. She would always love Eli McKutchen, right or wrong. For all of this, her words were a flippant taunt. “So you’re tired of the smelter works already. I guess the challenge is gone now, isn’t it, Eli? It’s time for a new toy.”

There was a muffled curse as he left the door and collided with the footboard of the bed, and then a match flared. His face grim in the crimson flicker, Eli lifted the globe of the lamp on the bedside table and lit the wick.

The springs creaked as he sat down on the side of the bed and ran one hand through his hair in a typical gesture of frustration. Bonnie used those brief moments to gather her dignity.

She needn’t have worried that he’d see her reddened eyes, for Eli was studiously looking in the other direction. “That’s what you think the smelter is to me? A toy?”

Bonnie was breaking apart inside, but she shrugged and her voice was light. “It was broken, you fixed it, and now it’s time to play with a shipyard.”

The pale amber eyes sliced to her face, menacing and despondent. Bonnie knew then that Eli had told her the truth about Consolata Torrez and about Earline, but it was
too late for forgiving. Too late for loving. The damage was probably irreparable.

“I think it would be better if Rose Marie stayed here with you.”

Bonnie settled back on her pillows and closed her eyes.
Please God,
she prayed silently,
don’t let me cry again.

“All right,” she said, for there seemed no point in telling Eli that she’d never have let Rose Marie go without a fight.