Dude Ranch Nights Read online

  Cam angled along the slope, heading downstream as he made his way steadily lower on the steep hillside. They rounded a jagged ledge and looked down into the bottom at last, much closer than it had been in her last glimpse. Now C.J. could see the stream that danced over the rocks and the trees along the watercourse, delicately green with new leaves. Then she saw the darting shapes of the dogs, circling the bole of a towering sycamore tree and leaping into the air. Last she saw the lion, a tawny shape wedged into a double-vee of limbs, some twenty feet or so above the ground.

  Cam urged Flossie to an even faster pace. Mousie hurried after the taller mule. His little feet almost danced down the steep winding trail, which was really more of a small ditch here. Quicker than C.J. believed possible, they reached the canyon floor. Cam headed for the treed lion and the frantic hounds at a trot. He reached for his rifle in the scabbard as he reined in about ten yards from the tree.

  From here they could see the lion clearly because the new leaves were small and did not provide the thick canopy they would when fully unfurled. The beast looked every bit as large as it had the day before, maybe even fiercer. Snarling and spitting at the dogs, the cat shifted, claws extended for balance and purchase on the slippery bark.

  The dogs barked wildly now, almost a constant roar of sound, an octave or more difference in the pitch of their varied voices. They had the lion and they knew it. But they were frustrated because they could not get anywhere near its lofty perch. Without intervention, the situation could go any one of several ways, most of them not good from the hounds’ point of view or the hunters’.

  Cam turned to C.J. and extended the rifle. “Do you want to do the honors?”

  She hesitated, torn between a desire to make the kill as she had on hunts with Rene and a sudden reluctance to do in this wild creature, so magnificent in its fury. “Do we have to kill it?”

  Cam shrugged. “We should. There’re too many cats in the area right now and they’re taking a toll on the deer, elk, and the cattle that graze the rim in the summer. The ranchers are paying a bounty for each one taken. Killing this one could mean half a dozen calves will survive to go to market this fall, plus some fawns and elk calves. This is your hunt and your cat, though, so it’s up to you. I can call off the hounds and we can ride away, if that’s what you want to do.”

  “Pancho was calling it ‘she.’ Is it really a female?”

  “From what I’ve seen, I would say so. Probably an older one, maybe carrying kits, but I’d say she’s not from the looks of her. She’s no young kitty and looks well past her prime. It’s often the older ones who go rogue and start to kill for sport or orneriness, not just to eat, so I wouldn’t feel bad about killing her.”

  C.J. sighed. “You do it then, if it needs to be done. I think I’ve lost interest in trophy collecting. What would I do with a lion skin or whatever one keeps anyway? It would look absurd in my apartment. When I go home I’ll be starting a job and moving out of the family home at last. At least I’ve recognized the fact I’ve been under my parents’ thumb much too long. That’s part of what this trip was about—a final fling of adventure and also proving I could do it without my uncle to take care of me.”

  Cam looked at her with keen attention for several seconds. Then he nodded. “Okay. I think I understand what you’re saying.”

  Just as he finished speaking, the cat yowled and crouched, its long, ropey tail twitching fitfully. The dogs continued their urgent cries, circling the base of the tree and jostling one another to make the leap right under the lion’s perch.

  “Oh, Jupiter, she’s going to jump.”

  A shiver of mingled dread and excitement raced down C.J.’s spine at Cam’s words.

  Chapter 6

  Cam raised the rifle to his shoulder, swinging to follow the sudden movement of the lion. It stretched up to a higher branch, but one barely able to take its weight. The bough bent with an audible creak, only to spring back as the lion launched into the air. The shot caught it at the apex of the jump. It jerked in midair, twisted and began a tumble that seemed slow motion to C.J. Just then, Pancho huffed into view, almost running in his haste to reach the scene.

  Setting the rifle down, Cam lifted the curved horn he carried and blew one sharp blast. That tone called the hounds away from the limp and awkward carcass that had hit the ground with none of the grace the animal had shown in life. As soon as she saw the scarlet blotch staining the tawny hide, C.J. looked away, feeling a little sick. She turned her attention to the pack. Obedient and well-trained, they clustered around Cam, looking for their praise and reward. He took a handful of jerky strips from the pocket of his chaps and gave one to each dog, starting with Old Noddie the lead bitch and ending with the yappy young Blue Tick who’d just completed his first successful hunt. He spoke to each dog by name as he handed out the treats.

  Pancho and Chuy took charge of the lion, field dressing it and then preparing to hoist the carcass and load it onto a pack mule they’d led along.

  “We should put the mark on the Senorita VanDemont,” Pancho said, grinning. “It is her first hunt and her lion.”

  Hearing the jocular tone in the man’s voice, C.J. glanced at Cam for guidance. “What is this about?”

  “It’s an old custom, marking the new hunter with the blood of the kill.”

  Pancho held up one finger, sticky red with the lion’s blood.

  C.J. managed a shaky laugh. “Er, no, thanks. I’ll pass on that one.” As Pancho headed her way, she backed off, stumbling in her haste to escape the odious marking. She shut her eyes in desperation as the bloody finger approached her face.

  “¡Bastante!” Cam’s sharp command halted the Mexican in his tracks.

  Pancho managed to look crestfallen and ashamed at the same time. He muttered an apology to C.J. and went back to work.

  After the other two started back to the ranch, Chuy leading the pack mules and Pancho taking charge of the hounds, Cam led C.J. back up the stream a short distance. In a sheltered green swale, he stopped. They dismounted, loosened the mules’ saddles and he got out the lunch he’d brought for them.

  * * * *

  Cam watched Carole dismount, noting she seemed a bit dispirited. She sat down on the blanket he spread almost as gracelessly as the fallen lion.

  “Did he touch me? Get any blood on me?”

  The sudden question caught Cam by surprise. So that’s what she was worried about. He smiled to himself. “No, he never touched you at all. It was just a joke, tasteless maybe, but not meant to upset or alarm you.”

  “I’m not sure what’s changed,” she said after a moment. “It never bothered me before—the hunts and the kills…Uncle Rene played the great white hunter to the hilt, and I was right in there with him. But it never seemed quite real somehow. More like a shooting gallery at a carnival or something. Somehow this was more personal, closer and more…disturbing. I’m sure you think less of me now, that I’m just a weak woman after all and a waste of your time and talents.”

  He sat down beside her and curled an arm protectively across her shoulders. “Why should I think less of you? Death is not a pretty thing, nor is it an act to take lightly. I’ve had male guests react much the same. Chasing a lion as we did, you can form a strange kind of bond with it. They’re efficient and effective killers, but, except for an occasional rogue, they kill only what they need to eat or feed their kits. I’ve always admired the big cats. It doesn’t trouble me to kill one, but if this one had turned out to be younger than we thought and pregnant, I’d have regretted the shot. She was old. I doubt she’d have survived another winter.”

  Carole exhaled a long sigh. “It’s a letdown in a way. The chase was exciting, but now it’s over.”

  “There’re still many things to do, much to see and experience. Unless you plan to leave early, your adventure has several more days to fill.”

  She looked at him then, her expression brightening. “You’re right. There’s more, isn’t there? But I think I want to do the r
est of my hunting with a camera.”

  “I might want to continue my chase right here.” He saw in her eyes the moment his words registered. A delicate flush swept up her cheeks and her gaze fell away from his as the tip of her tongue slid out to moisten her lips. Right then she looked fragile, vulnerable, and young. Compared to his thirty-eight years, maybe she was. For all her sophistication and worldly-wise veneer, he believed she’d led a sheltered life.

  Her soft words were not much above a whisper. “I don’t think I can run very fast right now.”

  Despite his intention to make Carole wait, forcing her to make the first move before he indulged their passions again, Cam found himself drawing her close, although with an unusually tender touch. Her sudden vulnerability both startled and pleased him. To discover there was a gentle, feminine side to her as well as the brittle toughness she tended to show the world made her more desirable to him. C.J might be a tomboy, a tough modern woman—on the outside. But inside that façade lurked Carole, fragile, not always sure of herself or the world around her, a lost soul needing something solid and sure to cling to. She was out of her element here, no matter how many safaris and expeditions she claimed to have made in the past.

  He wasn’t sure what about the death of the lion had shaken her, but that seemed to be the precipitating event. Unwittingly, Pancho had triggered her reaction with his clumsy joke about blooding her for the initial hunt. For a moment, Cam had seen complete panic in her expression. That’s when he’d called a halt to the hazing.

  Now she snuggled close to him, burying her face against his shoulder, as she wrapped both arms around him, one inside his jacket, her fingers clenching into his denim shirt. For a little while, he only held her and let her recover. When he felt most of the tension had seeped out of her body, he reached up and nudged one hand under her chin, lifting her face to his view. Her eyes opened at once, two emerald pools, bottomless and alluring. For now they held no guile, no distance.

  He brushed the lightest of kisses across the bridge of her nose, her lashes tickling under his lips.

  I could drown in those incredible eyes. Jolted by that errant thought, he corrected himself at once. No, this is not the time to let down my guard. This woman poses no less threat in her current state than in her guise of toughness. She’s perhaps even more dangerous this way.

  Deliberately, he shifted his mouth to her lush, rosy lips and plundered them with a possessive, lustful kiss, forcing her to open to him and grinding his lips over hers with force just short of violent. His tongue took possession of her, ruthlessly plunging into the intimate depths of her mouth, subduing hers and invading without asking permission or giving quarter.

  When he felt the lassitude of desire soften her body, he drew her still closer, shifting to press her fully against him where she could not help but feel his surging erection. Her response came at once, at first melting surrender, but soon a hotter and more active participation. He held her with one arm around her shoulders, freeing one hand to start to work on her shirt. One by one he undid the buttons until the soft plaid flannel parted, revealing her satiny, alabaster-white skin. When he pushed the two sides back, only a fragile, flesh-toned brassiere remained to limit his view. Soon he found and released the fastening at her back, then removed the garment. She was left bare to the waist, a modern Venus revealed to his appreciative gaze.

  The sun beat down into the canyon with powerful intensity, but a whisper of breeze coming off the higher terrain above still held a breath of chill. Between that and arousal, her nipples peaked into tight mauve berries, temptingly displayed on the creamy mounds of her firm, high breasts. He had to test their flavor and texture. As his lips closed over the first one, the left, she reached up and tangled her fingers into his hair, pressing his face against her. With a soft, needy whimper, she arched her back to lift that tempting flesh more fully into his mouth.

  They rolled together until he lay half on her, one leg between hers, which brought his cock close to the heat of her pussy. That blaze seemed to burn him through the layers of fabric that still separated them. So hard now it was almost painful to remain confined by his jeans, he rocked against her, while he continued to tease and suckle her breasts. She twisted and writhed under his weight, trying ineffectually to get a hand between their bodies to unfasten belts, lower zippers, and free them both of the confining and restricting layers of denim.

  “Now…I need you now! Please.” Her words came in panting bursts, torment clear in the tone. She had managed to pull his shirt tails free from his jeans and unsnap it down the front. Her hands forged beneath the fabric, sending tingling sparks of raw energy surging through him with each touch. Her nails raked across his chest and back with force just short of sufficient to score the skin. Every scratch left a trail of flame that sank into his nerves to add fuel to the heat of his desire.

  At last he reared back, lifting his weight free of her. Immediately, she began to tear at her jeans, working with frantic haste to free the buckle of her belt, lower the zipper, and then wriggle the stiff cloth over her ass and down her legs. He was as quick to shed his own, fighting the tangle of cuffs and boots, finally kicking one foot free of boot and all and leaving the other as it was.

  He looked down to see she had peeled off her briefs with her jeans and now lay spread before him, open and waiting. The pink folds of her labia glistened with her juices, hardly concealed by the pale hair. She bent her knees, lifting her legs to receive him. When he hesitated, she reached down and spread herself with both hands, drawing one finger in a slow path along the crevasse of her pussy and rubbing it around her budding clit.

  He had to tease her just a little bit more, relishing her uninhibited display. “What do you want, sweetheart?”

  “You…your cock in me.”

  “In you? Where?”

  “I—in my pussy!”

  “Oh, why didn’t you say so? It isn’t so hard. All you needed to say is, ‘Fuck me, Cam,’ and I’d be glad to oblige.”

  Her face went scarlet as she continued to play with herself, but she said it, each word distinct and vehement. “Fuck me! Just shut up and fuck me!”

  He couldn’t wait much longer either. Dropping to his knees between hers he brought his cock to the beckoning haven she offered and thrust into her quickly and fiercely. She lifted her legs and locked them around his hips, arching into him to get the greatest penetration she could. He hadn’t imagined how tight she’d been last night—she still was. A perfect fit, with strong muscles that gripped him and squeezed at just the right moment each time he drew back and thrust in again. He’d been a connoisseur of female flesh for twenty-some years. As ass went, he’d have to rate Carole a perfect ten, even a ten-and-a-half.

  He could feel the pressure building. His balls drew up, high and tight. The milking pressure of Carole’s cunt became almost unbearably intense. When he felt the spasms start deep within her, he let go, shooting off as if he hadn’t come for days instead of less than eighteen hours ago—with this same woman. Some woman…

  * * * *

  C.J. came back to earth and reality in slow degrees after her cataclysmic orgasm. Cam still held her, having only shifted enough to keep from crushing her when he collapsed in the aftermath of his own climax. Her face heated as she thought of all she’d done. She’d never been so wild, so wanton, or so swept away. A myriad of things were responsible, of course, but foremost among them was Cam himself. He was the most electrifying man she had ever known. A foolish, blissful smile wanted to stretch her lips and take away her last shred of dignity, but she fought it back.

  Instead of how incredible she felt, sated and content, she concentrated on how absurd they must appear, were there anyone around to see them. Cam still had on one boot, his Levi’s shoved down over it in a wrinkled mess, the rest of him bare—that sculpted chest shaped not by a gym’s art but hard work. And his horseman’s ass, tight and hard, a study in his snug jeans and almost too perfect now.

  Her own clothes were stre
wn around, all over the blanket and under their bodies. They’d look like a buffalo had wallowed on them, no doubt. But then her denim jeans and flannel shirt were not crisply pressed to begin with, thank goodness. Maybe by the time they got back to the ranch, the abuse her clothing had suffered would not be too obvious. Her eyes drifted shut in spite of her best intentions, closing off her worries.

  When she opened them again, she could see some time had passed, perhaps a half-hour. Cam still sprawled at her side, but had now propped himself on one arm and watched her. When he saw her eyes open, he smiled down at her, not the smirk she half-expected, but a genuine smile.

  “Are you feeling better now, more like yourself? At the risk of sounding crass, you’re fantastic when you’re upset, although sometimes danger and death can be powerful aphrodisiacs. Maybe I should apologize for taking advantage of the circumstances, but I don’t want to.”

  “It’s not necessary,” C.J. mumbled, tearing her gaze away from the brilliant heat of his when the intensity grew too strong. “I can’t claim to have been forced or even taken advantage of.” The grin she’d contained for an hour or more escaped her control. She laughed as well. “It was marvelous, the best sex I ever had, bar none. How could I possibly complain?”

  Cam traced his palm down her cheek, brushed his thumb across her lips, and then trailed his fingertips down her side to her waist, sliding past her breast with only the merest hint of a touch.

  “Just around the bend, a hot spring feeds into the stream. It warms the water to the perfect temperature. If you’d like, we can take a dip and then share the lunch I brought along today.”

  “That sounds like heaven. I’m famished, but a quick swim is too tempting to pass up. You’re blessed with wonderfully convenient warm springs here, aren’t you?”