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  “Sweet,” she murmured. “So fucking sweet.”

  I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t. I just curled up in her arms while the warm water rolled over us. After a few minutes, we staggered out and I found a towel and gently dried her face.

  “I need to put some more ointment on these scrapes,” I said, my voice sounding huskier than normal. “I want you to know I’ve never done anything quite like this, and I don’t believe I’ve ever come so hard.”

  “I like the sounds of the last part.” She grinned and kissed me.

  “Turn around. I want to see your back.” As I carefully blotted the skin around the large abrasion, I said as casually as I could, “You’ll be moving on to the next town on the circuit soon, won’t you.”

  She looked over her shoulder at me, her eyes going midnight again. “One of the best parts about being free is you don’t have to leave to prove it.”

  “Well,” I said, trailing my fingers over her mouth, “I hope you feel free to come back anytime then.”

  When she kissed me, I knew she’d be back, and I finally understood what was so damn sexy about cowboys. When they came to you, for you, the ride was like no other.

  QUEENS UP

  Andrea Dale

  It was my daddy who taught me to play poker.

  He was a good father as fathers go, I suppose, especially considering my mother died when I was four and he had his hands full raising me. He was also a very good teacher, and I was hustling the ranch hands before some of them realized the ragged moppet who dogged their heels was not, in fact, of the male persuasion. Took them a right long while, too, considering how I’d been so modest about peeing in front of ’em.

  I tended toward wearing men’s clothes even as I grew older, because it was much easier roping cattle in breeches than a skirt, and skirts were just nuisances anyway, not to mention stockings and petticoats, and besides, there was no one around to properly lace me into a corset.

  Even my childhood playmate Margaret Compton didn’t know when we were children. Which is why when we grew older things grew a mite complicated, because I had a crush on her.

  In the end, though, it worked out fine, because sweet Margaret Compton wasn’t about to go getting any crushes on men, either, and when she found out my secret, well, we then had a delicious secret to share, just between us two.

  But I was talking about my daddy.

  For all he was a good man at heart, the problem was simple. There was one other thing that he was good at, and that was drinking. So, for all his good teaching of the cards, my father wasn’t a very good poker player at all.

  Which is how he came to lose our family’s ranch to one Mister Samuel Owens.

  By the time this happened, I’d been running the ranch for years, not that anyone outside knew that. Wasn’t proper for a woman to be making such decisions—what did a pretty thing know about cattle and budgets and weather patterns and ordering men around? So my daddy was the figurehead, the one who went to the bank and the auctions (on mornings after I’d hidden his bottles so his head would be clear). Me, I balanced the books and wrote up orders for supplies and, yes, bossed the men around, but by that time they knew I was capable and cared enough about the ranch to keep our secret safe.

  God took pity on me the next morning when Samuel came out to the ranch to take a good, long look at his new ownings (not that I knew the reason for his visit as yet).

  I wasn’t riding out on the back forty or forking hay off a wagon that day. Instead, I was inside catching up on some business correspondence for my daddy to sign when he woke up from last night’s binge, and Margaret had time to run in and let me know company was approaching.

  I’d have to play hostess while someone roused Daddy and stuck his head under the pump to shock some soberness into him.

  Margaret was more versed in the intricacies of women’s clothing than I, so she rushed about gathering skirts and boots with tiny buttons and whatever else I’d need to shoehorn myself into.

  At that point in our relationship, we had to keep things pretty quiet, so Margaret slept in the servants’ quarters and our trysts were rare, stolen moments. Her own daddy had died coming up on two years ago, and I’d promised him that we’d take care of Margaret as if she were one of my own. And she was my own—she had my heart, and I hers. By outside appearances, she was our maid and cook, and when the occasional hand took a fancy to courting her, she smiled and gently eased his attentions aside.

  My point being, when I looked up from shucking my shirt and trousers, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the look in her eyes.

  Hunger. Need. Lust.

  The same sensations flared through me, ignited a fire in my belly—and below.

  Aware of my own foolishness, I still couldn’t help but step toward her, take her face in my hands, kiss her.

  Every time I kissed her was heaven, but it had been far too long since we’d been able to be together, and so the sweet heat of her mouth was a desperate homecoming. I wanted to devour her, be devoured by her. Her tongue danced with mine, and all I could think of was how that tongue felt in the hollow of my shoulder, on the hard peak of my breast, at the juncture between my thighs.

  I moaned, and she answered. I wound my fingers into the honey-colored upsweep of her soft hair and kissed her as if I were making love to her. Right now this was the only moment I had, and if I didn’t have time to strip her and lay her down beside me and love her properly, I could at least do this.

  But it couldn’t be that way, and it couldn’t go on forever.

  Her whimper as I pulled away almost drove me to my knees, because her desperation and desire mirrored my own. I was hot and wet and quivering on the edge, and all I’d done was kiss her.

  If her hands hadn’t been full of my dress and petticoats and stockings—if she’d stroked between my legs—I would have known the oblivion I craved.

  No time. I kissed her on the tip of her pert nose and whispered my love and apologies. One reason I love her is that she understands the tightrope I must walk.

  It was excruciating to feel her hands on me and have them putting clothes on me, not stripping them off. Every tug that tightened my corset lacings was like a step closer to the gallows. How I ached to be naked in her arms, breasts pressed to breasts, fingertips chasing over skin and raising gooseflesh and desire.

  Later. I promised us both that.

  My father was being fetched, and Samuel Owens awaited me in the parlor.

  “Why, Miss Josephine, you are quite a sight today,” Samuel said, rising with his hat in his hand to greet me. Oh, he might have said the right words, acted all solicitous and proper, but his eyes revealed his true thoughts. His gaze raked over me, greedy and lascivious, a disgusting parody of the way Margaret had stared in awe at my figure just a few moments ago.

  Oily, I thought. Oily Owens, that’s what they called him behind his back, and I could see why.

  “And a good day to you, Mr. Owens,” I said, my smile as sweet as I could manage, and him no wiser for it. “What brings you out here this fine day?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Your daddy didn’t tell you?”

  Now I felt like I’d been sitting under the water pump. Oh, Daddy, what have you done?

  “I haven’t spoken to my father yet today,” I said. “He’s been…”

  I couldn’t say indisposed, because I guessed Samuel Owens had been witness to my daddy’s drinking the night before.

  “…occupied,” I finished.

  Samuel wasn’t a good enough actor to suppress a snort of derision, although he seemed to catch himself enough to bite back whatever it was his first instinct to say.

  “Well, now, I hope he’s not too occupied to see me,” he said. “We have some business to attend to, your father and I. You might want to fetch him, Miss Josephine, and hear what needs to be said, as it involves you.”

  At first I couldn’t imagine what business Samuel might have with my father (since I knew firsthand what-all business was
to be had regarding the workings of the ranch), much less how it could involve me.

  But I’m not stupid, and a sick gnawing started in my chest that had nothing to do with the tightness of my corset.

  When Daddy wouldn’t meet my eye as we sat down at the kitchen table, I knew something was very, very wrong. Much worse than just another dreadful night at the card table.

  “Jo—Josephine,” Daddy said. “I had a run of bad luck with the cards last night…”

  And I knew, with head-spinning certainty, what he’d done.

  I would not—would not—faint like a simpering girl. No matter how hard it was to draw in a full breath in this damnable contraption.

  “Now, Miss Josephine,” Samuel broke in, “I’m not a hard-hearted man. I know we can come to an equitable agreement that keeps your family’s ranch intact.”

  I was certain his heart was as hard as another part of him, given the way he couldn’t keep his eyes off the swell of my breasts, but I held my tongue.

  It came as no real surprise that the ranch wasn’t really what Samuel had sought to win in that game. What my daddy had thoughtlessly tossed into the pot, believing his hand was the unbeatable one, was me. My hand—in marriage.

  Well, of course I gathered what dignity I could and politely told Mr. Samuel Owens that we appreciated his offer greatly, but that my hand was not available at this time, and wasn’t there some other way we could resolve this issue to our mutual satisfaction?

  The fact to me was simple: No, there was not.

  He went on speaking quietly, outwardly calm, but the way his face flushed and his hat shook in his hands made it clear he was reining in his anger.

  Seeing as we were all in the middle of calving season, he said, he’d give me two weeks to think over his offer. At the end of those two weeks, if my answer was the same as it was now, then we would have three days to remove ourselves and our belongings from the premises, or Samuel would see to it that the sheriff did so.

  Then he stood, jammed his hat back on his head, and walked out of the house, his footsteps slamming down on the floorboard of the porch as if he were marking the house as his own with his boot heels.

  We did not have the money to buy the ranch back from Samuel.

  We did not have anywhere to go, any real means of income, without the ranch.

  Oh, we could go work on someone else’s ranch—if I had to scrub floors, I was perfectly capable of doing so—but my father’s health wouldn’t allow for riding the range or baling hay, and I couldn’t support him on a maid’s salary.

  There was whoring, of course, but if I was going to do that, I might as well marry Samuel and keep the ranch in the family.

  My father, bless him, never said a word about that, never spoke once about that arrangement being the only thing that could save us. I saw it in his eyes, when he thought I wasn’t looking. But he never said it aloud, and I loved him for that.

  We were four days from our deadline, with no miracle in sight, and Margaret had been quietly packing up my mother’s bone china when my father wasn’t around (I had already been through her jewelry, estimating how much I could get for it and how long we could live on that money), when a chance—just a fleeting chance—presented itself.

  One of the hands happened to mention the rumor of a poker game in Haldern City: A high-stakes game, with men coming from all over the territory to participate.

  The type of game Samuel Owens wouldn’t be able to pass up.

  My plan was plumb crazy. I don’t deny that for one second. Given what was at stake, though, crazy was all we had left.

  I took a loan out against the ranch. Samuel had the deed in his hands, but hadn’t told the bank that yet, and the banker was my mother’s cousin once removed.

  If I lost the game, I’d no doubt be seeing the next few years from the inside of a jail cell, but I had no choice.

  My breasts were fortunately small; bound properly, they wouldn’t be obvious. But Margaret still fretted, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t share her worries. Passing myself off as a boy when I was ten years old was different than trying it at twenty, even with a hat low over my brow and a fake mustache that in daylight looked like the runt of the litter had chosen my lip to expire on.

  The only likely person to recognize me would be Samuel, who didn’t know me in anything but flounces and bows.

  The hardest part was my hair. Margaret wept as she sliced the scissors through it and the long black locks littered the floor. I hadn’t thought I’d care, but the sight of my shorn head in the mirror was disturbing, unreal.

  How I’d explain it away after the game was something I just didn’t have time to concern myself with.

  I was more worried that my father would want to go to Haldern City himself, but the loss of the ranch had broken his spirit. He had nothing left to gamble away.

  The thing with plans is sometimes you get so caught up in them that you don’t realize someone else is making plans, too.

  My sweet, cunning Margaret intended to make sure no one suspected my name wasn’t Joseph.

  I’d been lying for so long to keep the ranch running that it came easily to me. Still, one gentleman kept asking, “Now, what parts did you say you were come from?”

  I’d mentioned a city far enough away that none of them knew it well, but I still couldn’t slip up on any details. Another muttered, “Awfully skinny looking fellow,” to his acquaintance.

  I knew my face was too smooth. I knew my voice hovered on the high side of tenor.

  If I was found out, there was no telling what they’d do. All I knew is that I’d be in a world of hurt—if I made it out of there at all—and the ranch would be lost forever.

  To say I was tense during the first hand was an understatement, which is why, even with the decent cards I had, I bowed out early. I needed to focus, to concentrate, and to gauge my opponents. My father had given me a few tips about Samuel (none of which I figured I could actually count on), but most of the men were unknown to me. Two more I knew from town, but not well enough to judge them now.

  I could do this. All I had to do was read my cards, read my opponents, not get greedy. Focus on Samuel, push him until he had no choice but to ante up more than he ever planned to.

  “Why, Joseph, there you are!”

  I knew that voice. But it couldn’t be…

  Tarted up with rouge and paint, her curves cinched into a tiny corset, her breasts nearly spilling out over the low-cut ruffles, Margaret was near to unrecognizable to me. She’d dyed her hair a shocking red, and the beauty spot on her cheek looked as though she’d had it since she was a squalling babe.

  I stole a quick glance at Samuel, frantically trying to recall if he’d ever met her and, if he had, would he be likely to remember her face.

  But he was as mesmerized as the rest of them.

  The rest of us, I should say, because I could barely keep my eyes off of her. She was beautiful in her gaudiness, no more beautiful than she always was to me, but in a different way now.

  Her fearlessness and ingenuity had a lot to do with that.

  The man who kept asking where I was from—Ed was his name—actually stood and touched his forehead. “Greetings, ma’am,” he said, with that touch of irony all men have when greeting saloon girls, “and who might you be?”

  Her laugh tinkled musically. “Why, I’m Joseph’s good luck charm, or so he says. He never plays a game without me.” She leaned forward, just a little, and the men all leaned forward, just a little, hoping for a glimpse of more secret flesh. “Now, if my presence is bothering you-all, I’d be happy to wait outside.”

  They swallowed, they twitched, they considered. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have other such girls in the room, freshening our drinks, singing a song or two. There was always the chance, though, that Margaret and I could have some sort of cheating scam set up.

  Samuel, of all people, spoke first. “I say let her stay,” he said. “She’ll no doubt distract poor Joseph here more th
an any of us, and that’s money in our pockets!”

  The others whooped and agreed. They whooped even louder when Margaret bent over me and angled for a kiss, which I was more than happy to oblige.

  She made my head spin and my skin shiver, and for a moment she was the entirety of my world. It was only the knowledge that I had to win back the ranch so that I could give her a home, a home with me, that pulled me back to the stink and sweat and clamor of the room.

  Because they expected me to, I slapped her bottom lightly and told her to get me a whiskey. With a saucy grin, she asked if any of the other gentlemen needed a refilling of their refreshments, which caused the other girls to scowl when several of my opponents took Margaret up on her offer.

  Ed dealt the next hand. It was hell focusing on the cards and not on Margaret’s fine bottom. Thankfully I wasn’t the only one who was distracted.

  I felt a little bit more confident with this hand. I was getting to know the other players, and thanks to Margaret, I wasn’t as worried at being found out.

  Cards were examined. Odds were considered. Bets were made.

  Margaret came back and distributed drinks. I took a cautious sip of mine—it would be too obvious if I completely ignored it. Oh, smart girl! She’d watered it down.

  To solidify our relationship, and to the hoots and comments of the men, she settled down on my knee.

  She smelled sweet—some sort of lavender powder she’d dusted on—and I knew she tasted even sweeter. And it’d been too long since I’d tasted that honeyed sweetness.

  If I’d had male parts, I’d’ve been drilling through her petticoats right about now.

  My thighs were sweaty and itchy in my woolen trousers, but my pearl was slick and throbbing. I couldn’t resist letting my hand slide up the boning along Margaret’s waist to rest on the curve of her breast. Beneath the ruffles, I knew I could find her sensitive peak. There was so much temptation to lose myself in her…but we both had to deny ourselves pleasure, and to struggle with arousal and desire.