At that his lips broke into a beaming smile. “We’ll do it, then! Twenty grand. And then we’ll go to San Francisco.” He poured her tin full again, looking bedazzled by his own machinations.
Dear God, do I want to do this? Can I?
The demons flickered, leering, whispering, making her soul shrivel. She forced the memory of groping hands away, stilled the violent ghosts. Sought to ignore the stench of sour breath, the cooing words accompanying her violation.
She slipped her legs past him, and stood. Setting her cup to the side, she pulled him to his feet and looked squarely into his eyes. All she saw was dancing anticipation of the future and a sense of shared excitement.
The pounding inside left her fingers trembling as she undid his coat, pulled his cravat loose.
“Sarah?” he asked softly, as though suddenly unmanned.
“Hush, Bret. I need to do this. I have to do this.”
“By this, do you mean … I don’t want you to think I…”
She placed her lips against his, letting them linger, slowly teaching herself how to kiss a man. Feeling her way.
As she slipped his shirt from his shoulders, she felt him shiver with anticipation. Backing up, she locked her eyes with his, willing herself to live in the moment. This moment. One where Dewley and McConahough’s farm didn’t exist.
His hands cupped her shoulders as she undid his trouser buttons. Next she tackled his long underwear, sliding it off his shoulders and letting it fall down the length of his muscular body. She traced her finger along the slick pink of his bullet scar.
She sounded uncommonly calm when she said, “You’ll have to recline so that I can get these boots off.”
As though a man in a dream, he sank to the bed, and one by one she removed his boots and shucked off his clothes. She knew his body, the muscles, the scar, the thick dark hair on his chest. She had managed to clean him when he was fevered and delirious. But he’d been helpless, unaware.
The sight of his erection should have left her shuddering, but this was Bret. His arousal was different—from another existence than Dewley’s and that of his demonic minions.
This is Bret, she reminded herself as she unbuttoned her nightshirt, shrugged, and let it slip down. Every muscle in her body went tense, electric, her stomach aquiver. The cold air brought gooseflesh to her skin and tightened her nipples.
Naked.
Vulnerable.
For a moment she panicked, fingers of terror eating at her. Flashes of memory behind her eyes.
Bret whispered, “God Almighty, you are the most beautiful woman on earth.”
And she came back to herself. To this night. To the reality in Bret’s eyes, brimming as they were with worship and love.
She lowered herself to the bed beside him, heart beating furiously. Her throat dry. Fear pulsed, and her breath seemed to catch in her throat.
Do it, Sarah. There’s only one way to vanquish the demons. Swallowing hard, she battled to keep from trembling as she reached down and grasped his hard penis, watching him tense.
If she could be on top this first time, hold Bret’s eyes, it would be different. “I need to go slowly. Do this my way.”
“Tonight is yours, Sarah. Anything you decide to give me is a gift.”
And then, as if to finally murder the last of Dewley’s memory, she took a breath, let herself drown in Bret’s eyes, and lowered herself onto him.
69
February 14, 1866
“For the love of mud, Butler.” Doc turned his head away and coughed, then dabbed at Butler’s face. “How many times have I told you to stay out of the street?”
“Yankees took us by surprise.”
Butler winced as Doc cleaned the cut on his cheek. Bruises were darkening on his jaw, and his ear was swollen. After prodding Butler’s ribs, he suspected that while not broken, they were most likely bruised from the kicking he had endured while down.
Doc coughed again.
With the cold weather, it was back, and getting worse. He shook his head, breath puffing in the chill only to vanish as it encountered the warmer air around their little tin heat stove. Doc blinked wearily as he huddled in his coat. On the snowy street beyond—if the path through the garbage could be called that—someone drove a wagon across the frozen, snow-covered ruts. The thing banged and rattled, trace chains clinking.
“Butler, you and the men can’t just wander off.” Doc reached down and opened the stove, tossing the blood-smeared bandage inside to incinerate on the glowing coals. “Half the men in Denver are drunk, and the other half are on the way to getting there. I can’t take you with me everywhere I’m asked to go.”
“Corporal Pettigrew wants to know why not? We’ve come all the way to Denver. We can help. Like when we doctored that Cheyenne warrior out on the trail. The men and I have watched you. You’d be surprised how much medicine we’ve learned.”
Butler’s blue eyes—the right one surely going to swell shut by morning—wavered in his head, as though confused by the voices he was hearing inside.
“When I’m asked to attend to someone sick, it distresses them to have you hovering in the background, carrying on conversations with the men about my patient’s condition.”
Doc slapped his knees, wishing they had more wood for the stove. “But if I leave you, you wander off like you did this morning. At best you end up the laughingstock of drunks, or worse, like just happened, some bummer takes a board and beats you.”
“Private Peterson thinks you need to have cards made. Like the ones used to introduce gentlemen.” Butler blinked, nodded, and said, “Yes, yes, I’ll tell him.” He looked at Doc. “You know Phil Vail, our scout? He has made the point that an ad in the Rocky Mountain News—and even an introduction to that man Byers—would have a most salubrious effect as you go about building a practice.”
“Vail thinks this?” Doc asked dryly.
“It’s
