Part 4: link
The desert somewhere between Silver City, NM and Tombstone, AZ, 1880
kbrand5333
“Well, I ain’t no gentleman, and you sure as hell ain’t no lady,” U.S. Marshall Arthur Pendragon drawled slowly from his place under a sparse tree, trying to catch a little shade. “If you want a wash in that stream, you’re gonna have to do it with me watchin’ ya.”
Gwen growled quietly in frustration. “A girl can’t get any privacy?”
“Darlin’, you gave up the right to privacy last night when I caught you climbing out of the window to the room I let you have in that inn,” he answered coolly, only calling her “darlin’” to annoy her.
“Fine. You want an eyeful, lawdog, you’ll get one,” she huffed, turning her back on him to unbutton her shirt.
“Ain’t interested,” he mutters, idly cleaning his fingernails with the bowie knife he keeps strapped to his thigh.
“Oh, so you’re one of those kinds of men. I’ve heard about your type,” she says over her shoulder.
He lifts his eyes to her, fixing her in his cool stare. “I simply meant that I ain’t interested in you. Not that I gotta explain myself.”
But Marshall Pendragon had to admit that he was a little interested. Interested to see what she looks like under the dirt and the ill-fitting men’s clothing.
He continued to work at his fingers, peeking out of the corner of his eye. Her shirt was off, but her back was to him. She glances over her shoulder once at him, and he quickly turns his attention back to his nails. As she bends to remove her trousers, he looks up just at the right – or wrong – time and ends up stabbing himself under the nail of his left index finger.
“Dammit!” he curses softly, bringing his finger to his mouth. He looks up. Oh good. She didn’t hear me, he thinks, seeing her emerge from beneath the surface of the water, smoothing her dark hair back, careful not to emerge too fully.
Water does look inviting, he thinks, removing his hat and wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve. The desert is unforgiving this time of year, scorching in the day and freezing at night. They happened across this stream and Arthur had foolishly asked if she wished to stop and clean up a bit. He wasn’t expecting her to jump at the chance like a child in a general store with a fistful of pennies.
“If you’re fixin’ to come in here, Marshall, you stay clear away from me,” she calls, seeing him walking forward.
“If you say so,” he says, heading downstream a few yards. He pauses, looks back at her, and turns around, heading back upstream, unbuttoning his shirt as he goes.
“Water better back that way?” Gwen asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Yep. It’s upstream of you.”
“I ain’t any dirtier than you are!” she protests, throwing a rock at him and missing.
“I’d expect such a successful bank robber to have better aim than that,” he shoots back at her, unperturbed.
“Give me your gun and I’ll show you how good my aim is.”
Ignoring her completely, he strips down and strides into the cool stream, completely unconcerned about her seeing him.
Good Lord, the man has a body, Gwen thinks, noting his broad muscular shoulders and back leading down to a backside that she could really get a grip on. She quickly turns to face away from him so he doesn’t see the color rising to her cheeks.
“Hand me that soap,” Arthur calls to her.
“I ain’t done with it yet,” she answers.
“It’s my soap.”
“Yeah, and I ain’t done with it.”
I could say the sky is blue and she’d argue that it’s green.
Gwen hums to herself, taking her time running said bar of soap along her arms and shoulders, unconcerned. Suddenly she feels a strong hand grip her wrist, pulling it backwards.
“Hey!” she protests, feeling her whole body drift back and connect with something warm yet hard as rock.
I forgot that she weighs almost nothing, Arthur manages to think in the split second before the tempting rounded backside he glimpsed earlier makes contact with his groin. He bites back a groan and plucks the soap from her hand.
She turns around to scowl at him, only to see him wading back away from her. Bastard, she thinks, but cannot deny the fact that she is drawn to him, the image of his body flashing through her mind again, this time accompanied by the memory of the feel of him against her back. At least physically. Better at least be only physically.
xxx
“We’re going to have to camp here for the night,” Arthur says, slowing his horse to a stop. Gwen sways in the saddle behind him, bumping into him. He can feel the weight of her breasts as they make contact with his back, acutely aware of her body since the stop at the stream.
“Oof,” she says, irritated. “You don’t have to tie my hands behind my back,” she protests for the twentieth time that day.
“The hell I don’t,” he shoots back.
“Well, these ropes are digging into my skin.”
“I have some iron handcuffs, if you’d prefer.”
Handcuffs I could get out of, she thinks, counting on him not knowing that her father is a blacksmith. “Actually I would.”
“Ropes it is, then.”
“Bastard.”
“Pretty talk.”
“Well, you said yourself that I ain’t a lady. Just living up to your standard.”
He swings down from the horse and reaches up, hoisting her down by slinging her over his shoulder.
“I may not be a lady, but I ain’t a sack of potatoes either, Marshall,” she says.
“You look like one to me, darlin’.” He sets her on her feet and sees a pair of dark brown eyes full of rage.
“If that is a remark on the color of my skin, I will kill you where you stand, ropes or no ropes,” she threatens.
“Farthest thing from my mind, actually. It wa’n’t your coloring I was insulting, it was your looks,” he quirks his head to the side and adds, “or maybe your personality. I haven’t decided yet.”
She moves to kick him and he takes a calm step sideways, avoiding her, still holding her arm. He pulls her to a rock and sits her on it. “Stay.”
Arthur starts constructing a small fire from dried branches and brush he finds and some tinder he’s brought. He struggles to light it; the match won’t stay lit and the dried brush won’t take. Gwen watches and laughs at him.
He sits back and glares at her. “I suppose you could do better?”
“I guarantee I can,” she challenges. “You gotta untie me, though.”
“No.”
“Then no fire and we’ll both freeze. You really think I’m stupid enough to run away into the desert at nightfall alone?”
“You were stupid enough to think you could rob banks and not get caught,” he says, walking towards her.
“Took you a while to catch me,” she shrugs.
“But I still did.” He steps behind her and in moments her hands come free. She brings them around to the front, rotating her wrists and stretching her shoulders.
“That’s damned uncomfortable,” she comments, walking to their makeshift fire ring. Arthur follows.
She kneels next to the fire, taking a look. “You’ve got this set up all wrong,” she mutters, and reaches in to rearrange his haphazard pile of sticks and brush into an orderly stack. “Match,” she holds her hand out, palm-up, towards him, and he places a match on her hand. She takes it, and with a devilish look in her eye, reaches over and strikes the match against the gold star pinned to his chest.
“Hey!” he protests, grabbing the star and looking at it, scowling at the diagonal drag mark scarring the surface.
Gwen chuckles and cups the flame in her hand, setting it to the brush. It takes immediately, and she blows gently on it, encouraging it. Soon enough the flames are hearty enough to take one of the large logs Arthur had found nearby, and she drops it delicately on the flames.
Arthur just watches her. “What is that, some Cherokee trick?”
“I’m half Navajo, for your information, and yes. A little. Combination of that and just having had a lot of experience starting fires,” she says, almost giving her father away. Still hoping for those handcuffs instead of the ropes.
“Don’t tell me you’re an arsonist, too,” he says.
“No. What’s the point in burnin’ something down when there’s stuff inside you could take?” she asks, actually smiling at him.
Is she joking with me? Arthur is starting to grow confused. He hasn’t seen her smile before now, and it transforms her entire face. She is actually quite lovely when she’s not frowning at me.
“Good God, man, do they take away your sense of humor when they give you that star?” she asks, standing up again.
He stands quickly, in case she tries to bolt.
“Christ, you’re jumpy. I ain’t goin’ anywhere, I told you,” she says pointedly, sitting back down on her rock.
“Just don’t try anything funny. If I don’t get you into Tombstone tomorrow, Marshall Earp will have my neck as well as yours.”
“Still don’t know why I couldn’t have just stayed in Silver City,” she shrugs, playing with a flat silver ring around her index finger.
“Earp wants you in his jail in Tombstone. And Wyatt Earp does tend to get what he wants,” Arthur says, unpacking blankets and pans from the saddlebags. He pulls out a packet of beef jerky, and Gwen makes a face.
“Ugh, not more of that dried shit,” she complains.
“You have got a mouth, woman,” he remarks. “But unless you reckon on killin’ somethin’ out here, it’s what we’ve got. And I don’t think there’s anything all that edible out here,” he says, looking around. All he sees is sagebrush and cacti, mesas in the distance glowing orange and red in the fading sunlight.
xxx
Gwen huddles in a blanket, growing ever colder. The sky is clear, and there are innumerable stars overhead, a half-moon providing faint light.
Dinner had passed peacefully enough, both eating silently, neither enjoying the fare. Arthur refused to admit that he was as sick of jerky as she was, and even sicker of beans, which he never really cared for in the first place.
“Pass me that canteen,” he says.
She hands it to him, and their fingers brush as he takes it from her. What the hell was that? Arthur thinks as sudden warmth grows under his collar. He glances at her, and she seems to be breathing slightly faster than she was before.
Is she feeling this too?
“‘I would give all my fame for a pot of ale,’” she quotes as he drinks.
“What was that?”
“Shakespeare,” she says casually, studying the dance and crack of the flames in front of her. “Henry V.”
“So you’re educated, then.” Not a question.
“Highly, in fact. Boston.”
“So… why? Why rob banks?”
She looks at him. “Not a lot of ways for a girl to make money. Any real money. Unless I want to, oh, run a brothel or something. Which I don’t.”
“So it’s for money.”
“Basically,” she says, pausing. He hands her the canteen. “Thank you.” She takes a drink. “My mother is very ill, you see. And my father isn’t getting any younger. He can’t sell any more of our cattle or we’d starve. My brother took off for New York,” she continues, idly fingering her silver ring again. “So I took matters into my own hands.”
He stares at her. “Really?” he asks, interested now.
“No.” A slow grin spreads across her face. “It’s mainly boredom.”
He actually laughs. A real laugh. Gwen is stunned. He lights up when he smiles a real smile. He’s actually quite handsome…
“So your mother’s not ill?”
“She’s been dead for years. And we don’t even have any cattle. My brother did run off to New York. Gave me this before he left,” she slides the ring from her finger and holds it up.
He chuckles, shaking his head. “What does your father do, then?”
“Not telling.”
“Hmm. Protecting him?”
“Yes.”
“From whom?”
“Me. He doesn’t need his good name sullied by my… activities.”
“So your real name isn’t Guinevere Smith, then.”
“I prefer Gwen. But no, my last name ain’t Smith.”
There’s a good person in there somewhere, he thinks, still just watching her, watching how the firelight gives her skin a golden glow, the flames reflecting in the midnight pools of her eyes.
xxx
“What are you doing?” Gwen asks, as Arthur grabs her right hand. He fastens a handcuff around her wrist.
“How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not going to run off in the night?”
“It’s not the night that I'm worried about, it's the morning,” he says, fastening the other cuff on his left wrist. “I don’t trust you any farther than I could throw you.”
She reaches over and gives his bicep a tentative squeeze. Wow. “I think you could probably throw me pretty far if properly motivated. I’m not very big,” she says.
He gives her an irritated look to disguise the fact that the touch of her hand mixed with the compliment of his strength is giving him pause, not to mention a curious feeling in the pit of his stomach. What is with me today? It’s like I'm drunk and she’s the whiskey.
They lay down to attempt to sleep atop a large wool blanket, each covered by their own separate blanket. Their cuffed hands are there between them, lying limply, awkwardly.
After a several minutes, Gwen sighs heavily. Then again.
“What’s your problem now?” Arthur asks.
“I can’t sleep like this.”
“Like what? Handcuffed?”
“No. I’m uncomfortable. And cold. I can’t sleep on my back.”
He looks over at her. So?
She scoots over, closer to him and turns on her side, facing him, their cuffed hands between them at their hips.
“Um…” he starts.
“Look, we’ll both be warmer this way,” she says, scooting even closer, drawn to his warmth like a moth to a flame, aware of the danger but unable to pull away from its undeniable attraction.
Now I can’t sleep, he thinks. Nevertheless, he reaches across her and drags her blanket across them, over his, for another layer.
“What are you…?” She jumps when his arm comes over her. “Oh.”
He returns his arm where it was, saying, “Why are you always so ornery?”
“Me?”
“You.”
“Well, you ain’t exactly pleasant to be around, either, Sunshine,” she says sarcastically.
“See, that’s what I mean. You argue everything.”
Humph. She tucks her head down, saying nothing.
After a time, she sighs, this time resignedly. He is too close, she thinks, finding that his proximity and warmth is making her want to be honest with him. Unwittingly, she snuggles in closer to him.
“Do you want the truth?” she asks quietly.
He turns on his side, facing her now. “I always want the truth,” he says quietly, his free hand lifting her chin.
Good God, he really means that. She swallows. “I act like an ass half the time to hide the fact that I’m scared.”
She meets his eyes and suddenly he sees the scared girl instead of the mouthy criminal. He feels her right hand slip into his left where they are cuffed together between them, twining her slender fingers with his.
“I’m scared of the things I’ve done,” she says, her wide brown eyes meeting his blue ones, her free hand coming up to rest on his chest. She can feel the pounding of his heart beneath her palm.
“Scared of who I’ve become.” His lips, so close, touch hers, feather-light and fleeting.
“Scared of facing the…” he kisses the corner of her mouth, “…the consequences of my actions,” she finishes breathlessly.
Her candor and vulnerability is his undoing, and he takes her upper lip between his, sucking at it lightly, his tongue reaching forward to sweep lightly at it before releasing it.
“I never intended for it to go this far,” she whispers before crashing her lips fully against his, her free hand clutching his chest.
His hand moves from her chin to cup her cheek gently, the softness of her skin surprising him. Her lips part beneath his and he groans into her, plunging his tongue into the welcome warmth of her mouth.
She meets his thrusting tongue with her own, just as demanding and full of need. More so. Pushing up on their cuffed hands, she leans over him, kissing him greedily, unable to slake her thirst for him.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Arthur gasps, breaking away momentarily. Gwen’s hand is at the buttons of his shirt as fast as his is at hers, both struggling to unbutton one-handed. Her slender fingers are more nimble than his and she has better luck, reaching back to finish her own buttons after she’s done his.
Chuckling seductively, Arthur pulls her over him and slides her up his body to lavish attention on her breasts. He takes one into his mouth and she gasps, grabbing a fistful of his hair with her left hand. Her right hand takes advantage of the handcuffs and guides his hand to her other breast.
“Better idea,” he groans, moving their hands down so that they can undo the buttons on their jeans.
“Definitely,” she agrees, taking his earlobe into her mouth, sucking and biting it gently.
With some minor acrobatics they manage to shed their jeans, tossing them to the sides of the blankets hurriedly before scrambling back under the warmth of the blankets.
Gwen reaches down and grasps him in her hand, squeezing his firm shaft gently in her small hand. His fingers find their way between her legs and she sighs deliciously when they slide languidly along her folds before slipping within her.
His head drops back over to her breasts, taking a nipple into his mouth, flicking it with his tongue, savoring it.
She climbs over him again, her hand on him still, guiding him into her as she eases herself down onto him. She joins their linked hands, threading her fingers through his, pinning it next to his head as she leans on it for support.
“Guinevere,” he says, her name a prayer, and she nearly comes at the sound of it.
“Arthur,” she responds, claiming his lips with hers again, demanding, hungry, as she moves her hips, meeting him thrust for thrust, their unspoken desire building, mounting, until they are both mindless, aware of nothing else but each other and this moment.
Gwen trails kisses along his jaw, down his neck, tasting the smoke and salt of his skin on her tongue. Her body is tingling. Sensory overload claims her, and she is lost to him; lost to his arms, his lips at her ear, his hand at her breast. She moves faster, more urgently, and small noises escape from her throat as the wave pours over her, huge and powerful. She cries out and sinks her teeth into his neck.
“Oh…” Arthur grunts hoarsely as his release follows on the tail of hers, and he wraps his arm tight around her back, not even feeling the bite he has just received.
I am going to burn in hell for this.
xxx
The rising sun wakes Gwen, and she blinks her eyes open to find herself staring at Arthur's neck. Oh, yeah. Right, she remembers. Twice.
She leans back to look at him. He appears to still be deeply asleep.
“Arthur?” she whispers tentatively. He sighs, cuddling her in his arm. A moment later he starts to snore.
All right, then. She gently raises her left hand to inspect the handcuff still around her wrist, looking for the maker’s mark.
LDG. There it is, faint. She smiles. If he only knew how many hours I spent sitting in my father’s forge working out how to escape from these…
Gwen grasps the cuff in her left hand and squishes her slender hand down as compact as she can, and pulls. She is free in less than a minute.
xxx
Arthur begins to wake, turning slightly, reaching for the small, warm and surprisingly luscious body he remembers beside him.
Something just ain’t right, here, he thinks, opening his eyes.
She’s gone.
Frustrated, he reaches up to run his fingers through his hair, and discovers that his left hand is now cuffed to his own right instead of hers.
How the hell…? She probably found the key.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. He closes his eyes again.
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” he vaguely remembers a voice whispered close into his ear. A soft kiss on his stubbled cheek.
He sits up and reaches for his jeans, hoping the key is still there. It isn’t. Shit.
Sighing, he reaches for them and pulls them on. At least she cuffed my hands in front, he thinks bitterly.
He buttons his shirt and starts to think.
All right. She did just what you expected. He looks around. And she stole your damn horse. He sighs and drops his hands. Looking down, he notices that she’s slipped her silver ring on his pinky finger, and a slow smile creeps unbidden across his face.
So it’s a game now, darlin’?
He stands and pulls his boots on. …The hell?
Arthur pulls his foot out of his boot and tips it over. The key tumbles from his boot into the dust, glinting in the sun.
Much to his own surprise, loud, raucous laughter erupts from his lips, and he sits down on a rock, shaking his head, still laughing, as he picks up they key and frees his hands.
Most definitely a game.
He packs up what he can carry, and reaches for his hat. She stole my hat. She stole my horse and my hat. He looks down. Star is still there. That’s something, anyway.
Surveying the land around him with his hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun, damn her for taking my hat, he spies something about thirty yards away: A scrap of material tied around a scruffy hunk of sagebrush. He recognizes it immediately; it’s from her shirt.
She’s heading south. Mexico, probably. He starts walking.
An hour along, he finds another piece of her shirt, and finds himself wondering if she’ll have anything left of it by the time he finds her.
And he will find her.
“Was she worth it, Pendragon?” A familiar voice reaches his ears and he hears the unmistakable sound of horse hooves.
“Yep,” he says, not turning around. “Tell you what, though: it’s sure as hell going to be fun catching her again.”
The horse draws up next to him and stops. ”Get on, Clotpole.”
Song suggestion: “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. Of course.
Part 6: link
The desert somewhere between Silver City, NM and Tombstone, AZ, 1880
kbrand5333
“Well, I ain’t no gentleman, and you sure as hell ain’t no lady,” U.S. Marshall Arthur Pendragon drawled slowly from his place under a sparse tree, trying to catch a little shade. “If you want a wash in that stream, you’re gonna have to do it with me watchin’ ya.”
Gwen growled quietly in frustration. “A girl can’t get any privacy?”
“Darlin’, you gave up the right to privacy last night when I caught you climbing out of the window to the room I let you have in that inn,” he answered coolly, only calling her “darlin’” to annoy her.
“Fine. You want an eyeful, lawdog, you’ll get one,” she huffed, turning her back on him to unbutton her shirt.
“Ain’t interested,” he mutters, idly cleaning his fingernails with the bowie knife he keeps strapped to his thigh.
“Oh, so you’re one of those kinds of men. I’ve heard about your type,” she says over her shoulder.
He lifts his eyes to her, fixing her in his cool stare. “I simply meant that I ain’t interested in you. Not that I gotta explain myself.”
But Marshall Pendragon had to admit that he was a little interested. Interested to see what she looks like under the dirt and the ill-fitting men’s clothing.
He continued to work at his fingers, peeking out of the corner of his eye. Her shirt was off, but her back was to him. She glances over her shoulder once at him, and he quickly turns his attention back to his nails. As she bends to remove her trousers, he looks up just at the right – or wrong – time and ends up stabbing himself under the nail of his left index finger.
“Dammit!” he curses softly, bringing his finger to his mouth. He looks up. Oh good. She didn’t hear me, he thinks, seeing her emerge from beneath the surface of the water, smoothing her dark hair back, careful not to emerge too fully.
Water does look inviting, he thinks, removing his hat and wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve. The desert is unforgiving this time of year, scorching in the day and freezing at night. They happened across this stream and Arthur had foolishly asked if she wished to stop and clean up a bit. He wasn’t expecting her to jump at the chance like a child in a general store with a fistful of pennies.
“If you’re fixin’ to come in here, Marshall, you stay clear away from me,” she calls, seeing him walking forward.
“If you say so,” he says, heading downstream a few yards. He pauses, looks back at her, and turns around, heading back upstream, unbuttoning his shirt as he goes.
“Water better back that way?” Gwen asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Yep. It’s upstream of you.”
“I ain’t any dirtier than you are!” she protests, throwing a rock at him and missing.
“I’d expect such a successful bank robber to have better aim than that,” he shoots back at her, unperturbed.
“Give me your gun and I’ll show you how good my aim is.”
Ignoring her completely, he strips down and strides into the cool stream, completely unconcerned about her seeing him.
Good Lord, the man has a body, Gwen thinks, noting his broad muscular shoulders and back leading down to a backside that she could really get a grip on. She quickly turns to face away from him so he doesn’t see the color rising to her cheeks.
“Hand me that soap,” Arthur calls to her.
“I ain’t done with it yet,” she answers.
“It’s my soap.”
“Yeah, and I ain’t done with it.”
I could say the sky is blue and she’d argue that it’s green.
Gwen hums to herself, taking her time running said bar of soap along her arms and shoulders, unconcerned. Suddenly she feels a strong hand grip her wrist, pulling it backwards.
“Hey!” she protests, feeling her whole body drift back and connect with something warm yet hard as rock.
I forgot that she weighs almost nothing, Arthur manages to think in the split second before the tempting rounded backside he glimpsed earlier makes contact with his groin. He bites back a groan and plucks the soap from her hand.
She turns around to scowl at him, only to see him wading back away from her. Bastard, she thinks, but cannot deny the fact that she is drawn to him, the image of his body flashing through her mind again, this time accompanied by the memory of the feel of him against her back. At least physically. Better at least be only physically.
xxx
“We’re going to have to camp here for the night,” Arthur says, slowing his horse to a stop. Gwen sways in the saddle behind him, bumping into him. He can feel the weight of her breasts as they make contact with his back, acutely aware of her body since the stop at the stream.
“Oof,” she says, irritated. “You don’t have to tie my hands behind my back,” she protests for the twentieth time that day.
“The hell I don’t,” he shoots back.
“Well, these ropes are digging into my skin.”
“I have some iron handcuffs, if you’d prefer.”
Handcuffs I could get out of, she thinks, counting on him not knowing that her father is a blacksmith. “Actually I would.”
“Ropes it is, then.”
“Bastard.”
“Pretty talk.”
“Well, you said yourself that I ain’t a lady. Just living up to your standard.”
He swings down from the horse and reaches up, hoisting her down by slinging her over his shoulder.
“I may not be a lady, but I ain’t a sack of potatoes either, Marshall,” she says.
“You look like one to me, darlin’.” He sets her on her feet and sees a pair of dark brown eyes full of rage.
“If that is a remark on the color of my skin, I will kill you where you stand, ropes or no ropes,” she threatens.
“Farthest thing from my mind, actually. It wa’n’t your coloring I was insulting, it was your looks,” he quirks his head to the side and adds, “or maybe your personality. I haven’t decided yet.”
She moves to kick him and he takes a calm step sideways, avoiding her, still holding her arm. He pulls her to a rock and sits her on it. “Stay.”
Arthur starts constructing a small fire from dried branches and brush he finds and some tinder he’s brought. He struggles to light it; the match won’t stay lit and the dried brush won’t take. Gwen watches and laughs at him.
He sits back and glares at her. “I suppose you could do better?”
“I guarantee I can,” she challenges. “You gotta untie me, though.”
“No.”
“Then no fire and we’ll both freeze. You really think I’m stupid enough to run away into the desert at nightfall alone?”
“You were stupid enough to think you could rob banks and not get caught,” he says, walking towards her.
“Took you a while to catch me,” she shrugs.
“But I still did.” He steps behind her and in moments her hands come free. She brings them around to the front, rotating her wrists and stretching her shoulders.
“That’s damned uncomfortable,” she comments, walking to their makeshift fire ring. Arthur follows.
She kneels next to the fire, taking a look. “You’ve got this set up all wrong,” she mutters, and reaches in to rearrange his haphazard pile of sticks and brush into an orderly stack. “Match,” she holds her hand out, palm-up, towards him, and he places a match on her hand. She takes it, and with a devilish look in her eye, reaches over and strikes the match against the gold star pinned to his chest.
“Hey!” he protests, grabbing the star and looking at it, scowling at the diagonal drag mark scarring the surface.
Gwen chuckles and cups the flame in her hand, setting it to the brush. It takes immediately, and she blows gently on it, encouraging it. Soon enough the flames are hearty enough to take one of the large logs Arthur had found nearby, and she drops it delicately on the flames.
Arthur just watches her. “What is that, some Cherokee trick?”
“I’m half Navajo, for your information, and yes. A little. Combination of that and just having had a lot of experience starting fires,” she says, almost giving her father away. Still hoping for those handcuffs instead of the ropes.
“Don’t tell me you’re an arsonist, too,” he says.
“No. What’s the point in burnin’ something down when there’s stuff inside you could take?” she asks, actually smiling at him.
Is she joking with me? Arthur is starting to grow confused. He hasn’t seen her smile before now, and it transforms her entire face. She is actually quite lovely when she’s not frowning at me.
“Good God, man, do they take away your sense of humor when they give you that star?” she asks, standing up again.
He stands quickly, in case she tries to bolt.
“Christ, you’re jumpy. I ain’t goin’ anywhere, I told you,” she says pointedly, sitting back down on her rock.
“Just don’t try anything funny. If I don’t get you into Tombstone tomorrow, Marshall Earp will have my neck as well as yours.”
“Still don’t know why I couldn’t have just stayed in Silver City,” she shrugs, playing with a flat silver ring around her index finger.
“Earp wants you in his jail in Tombstone. And Wyatt Earp does tend to get what he wants,” Arthur says, unpacking blankets and pans from the saddlebags. He pulls out a packet of beef jerky, and Gwen makes a face.
“Ugh, not more of that dried shit,” she complains.
“You have got a mouth, woman,” he remarks. “But unless you reckon on killin’ somethin’ out here, it’s what we’ve got. And I don’t think there’s anything all that edible out here,” he says, looking around. All he sees is sagebrush and cacti, mesas in the distance glowing orange and red in the fading sunlight.
xxx
Gwen huddles in a blanket, growing ever colder. The sky is clear, and there are innumerable stars overhead, a half-moon providing faint light.
Dinner had passed peacefully enough, both eating silently, neither enjoying the fare. Arthur refused to admit that he was as sick of jerky as she was, and even sicker of beans, which he never really cared for in the first place.
“Pass me that canteen,” he says.
She hands it to him, and their fingers brush as he takes it from her. What the hell was that? Arthur thinks as sudden warmth grows under his collar. He glances at her, and she seems to be breathing slightly faster than she was before.
Is she feeling this too?
“‘I would give all my fame for a pot of ale,’” she quotes as he drinks.
“What was that?”
“Shakespeare,” she says casually, studying the dance and crack of the flames in front of her. “Henry V.”
“So you’re educated, then.” Not a question.
“Highly, in fact. Boston.”
“So… why? Why rob banks?”
She looks at him. “Not a lot of ways for a girl to make money. Any real money. Unless I want to, oh, run a brothel or something. Which I don’t.”
“So it’s for money.”
“Basically,” she says, pausing. He hands her the canteen. “Thank you.” She takes a drink. “My mother is very ill, you see. And my father isn’t getting any younger. He can’t sell any more of our cattle or we’d starve. My brother took off for New York,” she continues, idly fingering her silver ring again. “So I took matters into my own hands.”
He stares at her. “Really?” he asks, interested now.
“No.” A slow grin spreads across her face. “It’s mainly boredom.”
He actually laughs. A real laugh. Gwen is stunned. He lights up when he smiles a real smile. He’s actually quite handsome…
“So your mother’s not ill?”
“She’s been dead for years. And we don’t even have any cattle. My brother did run off to New York. Gave me this before he left,” she slides the ring from her finger and holds it up.
He chuckles, shaking his head. “What does your father do, then?”
“Not telling.”
“Hmm. Protecting him?”
“Yes.”
“From whom?”
“Me. He doesn’t need his good name sullied by my… activities.”
“So your real name isn’t Guinevere Smith, then.”
“I prefer Gwen. But no, my last name ain’t Smith.”
There’s a good person in there somewhere, he thinks, still just watching her, watching how the firelight gives her skin a golden glow, the flames reflecting in the midnight pools of her eyes.
xxx
“What are you doing?” Gwen asks, as Arthur grabs her right hand. He fastens a handcuff around her wrist.
“How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not going to run off in the night?”
“It’s not the night that I'm worried about, it's the morning,” he says, fastening the other cuff on his left wrist. “I don’t trust you any farther than I could throw you.”
She reaches over and gives his bicep a tentative squeeze. Wow. “I think you could probably throw me pretty far if properly motivated. I’m not very big,” she says.
He gives her an irritated look to disguise the fact that the touch of her hand mixed with the compliment of his strength is giving him pause, not to mention a curious feeling in the pit of his stomach. What is with me today? It’s like I'm drunk and she’s the whiskey.
They lay down to attempt to sleep atop a large wool blanket, each covered by their own separate blanket. Their cuffed hands are there between them, lying limply, awkwardly.
After a several minutes, Gwen sighs heavily. Then again.
“What’s your problem now?” Arthur asks.
“I can’t sleep like this.”
“Like what? Handcuffed?”
“No. I’m uncomfortable. And cold. I can’t sleep on my back.”
He looks over at her. So?
She scoots over, closer to him and turns on her side, facing him, their cuffed hands between them at their hips.
“Um…” he starts.
“Look, we’ll both be warmer this way,” she says, scooting even closer, drawn to his warmth like a moth to a flame, aware of the danger but unable to pull away from its undeniable attraction.
Now I can’t sleep, he thinks. Nevertheless, he reaches across her and drags her blanket across them, over his, for another layer.
“What are you…?” She jumps when his arm comes over her. “Oh.”
He returns his arm where it was, saying, “Why are you always so ornery?”
“Me?”
“You.”
“Well, you ain’t exactly pleasant to be around, either, Sunshine,” she says sarcastically.
“See, that’s what I mean. You argue everything.”
Humph. She tucks her head down, saying nothing.
After a time, she sighs, this time resignedly. He is too close, she thinks, finding that his proximity and warmth is making her want to be honest with him. Unwittingly, she snuggles in closer to him.
“Do you want the truth?” she asks quietly.
He turns on his side, facing her now. “I always want the truth,” he says quietly, his free hand lifting her chin.
Good God, he really means that. She swallows. “I act like an ass half the time to hide the fact that I’m scared.”
She meets his eyes and suddenly he sees the scared girl instead of the mouthy criminal. He feels her right hand slip into his left where they are cuffed together between them, twining her slender fingers with his.
“I’m scared of the things I’ve done,” she says, her wide brown eyes meeting his blue ones, her free hand coming up to rest on his chest. She can feel the pounding of his heart beneath her palm.
“Scared of who I’ve become.” His lips, so close, touch hers, feather-light and fleeting.
“Scared of facing the…” he kisses the corner of her mouth, “…the consequences of my actions,” she finishes breathlessly.
Her candor and vulnerability is his undoing, and he takes her upper lip between his, sucking at it lightly, his tongue reaching forward to sweep lightly at it before releasing it.
“I never intended for it to go this far,” she whispers before crashing her lips fully against his, her free hand clutching his chest.
His hand moves from her chin to cup her cheek gently, the softness of her skin surprising him. Her lips part beneath his and he groans into her, plunging his tongue into the welcome warmth of her mouth.
She meets his thrusting tongue with her own, just as demanding and full of need. More so. Pushing up on their cuffed hands, she leans over him, kissing him greedily, unable to slake her thirst for him.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Arthur gasps, breaking away momentarily. Gwen’s hand is at the buttons of his shirt as fast as his is at hers, both struggling to unbutton one-handed. Her slender fingers are more nimble than his and she has better luck, reaching back to finish her own buttons after she’s done his.
Chuckling seductively, Arthur pulls her over him and slides her up his body to lavish attention on her breasts. He takes one into his mouth and she gasps, grabbing a fistful of his hair with her left hand. Her right hand takes advantage of the handcuffs and guides his hand to her other breast.
“Better idea,” he groans, moving their hands down so that they can undo the buttons on their jeans.
“Definitely,” she agrees, taking his earlobe into her mouth, sucking and biting it gently.
With some minor acrobatics they manage to shed their jeans, tossing them to the sides of the blankets hurriedly before scrambling back under the warmth of the blankets.
Gwen reaches down and grasps him in her hand, squeezing his firm shaft gently in her small hand. His fingers find their way between her legs and she sighs deliciously when they slide languidly along her folds before slipping within her.
His head drops back over to her breasts, taking a nipple into his mouth, flicking it with his tongue, savoring it.
She climbs over him again, her hand on him still, guiding him into her as she eases herself down onto him. She joins their linked hands, threading her fingers through his, pinning it next to his head as she leans on it for support.
“Guinevere,” he says, her name a prayer, and she nearly comes at the sound of it.
“Arthur,” she responds, claiming his lips with hers again, demanding, hungry, as she moves her hips, meeting him thrust for thrust, their unspoken desire building, mounting, until they are both mindless, aware of nothing else but each other and this moment.
Gwen trails kisses along his jaw, down his neck, tasting the smoke and salt of his skin on her tongue. Her body is tingling. Sensory overload claims her, and she is lost to him; lost to his arms, his lips at her ear, his hand at her breast. She moves faster, more urgently, and small noises escape from her throat as the wave pours over her, huge and powerful. She cries out and sinks her teeth into his neck.
“Oh…” Arthur grunts hoarsely as his release follows on the tail of hers, and he wraps his arm tight around her back, not even feeling the bite he has just received.
I am going to burn in hell for this.
xxx
The rising sun wakes Gwen, and she blinks her eyes open to find herself staring at Arthur's neck. Oh, yeah. Right, she remembers. Twice.
She leans back to look at him. He appears to still be deeply asleep.
“Arthur?” she whispers tentatively. He sighs, cuddling her in his arm. A moment later he starts to snore.
All right, then. She gently raises her left hand to inspect the handcuff still around her wrist, looking for the maker’s mark.
LDG. There it is, faint. She smiles. If he only knew how many hours I spent sitting in my father’s forge working out how to escape from these…
Gwen grasps the cuff in her left hand and squishes her slender hand down as compact as she can, and pulls. She is free in less than a minute.
xxx
Arthur begins to wake, turning slightly, reaching for the small, warm and surprisingly luscious body he remembers beside him.
Something just ain’t right, here, he thinks, opening his eyes.
She’s gone.
Frustrated, he reaches up to run his fingers through his hair, and discovers that his left hand is now cuffed to his own right instead of hers.
How the hell…? She probably found the key.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. He closes his eyes again.
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” he vaguely remembers a voice whispered close into his ear. A soft kiss on his stubbled cheek.
He sits up and reaches for his jeans, hoping the key is still there. It isn’t. Shit.
Sighing, he reaches for them and pulls them on. At least she cuffed my hands in front, he thinks bitterly.
He buttons his shirt and starts to think.
All right. She did just what you expected. He looks around. And she stole your damn horse. He sighs and drops his hands. Looking down, he notices that she’s slipped her silver ring on his pinky finger, and a slow smile creeps unbidden across his face.
So it’s a game now, darlin’?
He stands and pulls his boots on. …The hell?
Arthur pulls his foot out of his boot and tips it over. The key tumbles from his boot into the dust, glinting in the sun.
Much to his own surprise, loud, raucous laughter erupts from his lips, and he sits down on a rock, shaking his head, still laughing, as he picks up they key and frees his hands.
Most definitely a game.
He packs up what he can carry, and reaches for his hat. She stole my hat. She stole my horse and my hat. He looks down. Star is still there. That’s something, anyway.
Surveying the land around him with his hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun, damn her for taking my hat, he spies something about thirty yards away: A scrap of material tied around a scruffy hunk of sagebrush. He recognizes it immediately; it’s from her shirt.
She’s heading south. Mexico, probably. He starts walking.
An hour along, he finds another piece of her shirt, and finds himself wondering if she’ll have anything left of it by the time he finds her.
And he will find her.
“Was she worth it, Pendragon?” A familiar voice reaches his ears and he hears the unmistakable sound of horse hooves.
“Yep,” he says, not turning around. “Tell you what, though: it’s sure as hell going to be fun catching her again.”
The horse draws up next to him and stops. ”Get on, Clotpole.”
Song suggestion: “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. Of course.
Part 6: link
