STORY EXCERPT

Pamela Bragg stood in the dark, her back pressed against the high brick wall surrounding the finest mansion in all of Whitetail Creek. Her heart was thundering in her chest, and her palms were moist with fear. What she was about to do was illegal, and if she were caught, she knew she hadn’t a prayer of getting a fair trial.

She heard laughter from inside the mansion. Gathered in the enormous, lavishly appointed ballroom, the cream of Whitetail Creek society, made wealthy with cattle contracts for both the Army and the Cavalry, probably sipped chilled champagne. Making deals to expand their already considerable personal fortunes, the gentlemen undoubtedly laughed among themselves and pretended that life for everyone was as deliciously satisfying as it was for themselves.

Easing cautiously along the wall, Pamela felt a loathing for the people in the ballroom. She resented their wealth and their smug condescension as she imagined them standing with cool champagne glasses in manicured hands, congratulating each other on how magnanimous they were to have planned, then financed, the charity hospital for those less fortunate.

But these folks didn’t fool Pamela for a second. She knew the charity hospital was just a ruse to promote themselves. Worse, the journalists who chronicled the event were willing pawns duping the public into believing the wealthy weren’t simply manipulators of society’s good nature.

Another carriage rattled down the street. Pamela moved to her left, stepping into the darkest part of the shadows. She could hear a woman laughing inside the carriage. Who was having such a wonderful time on this sultry summer evening?

Pamela forced the question from her mind. She didn’t care who occupied the carriage. The only person she was interested in was the mansion’s owner, who was already partying inside. And that man Pamela Bragg would destroy.

Jonathon Darwell.

A bitter smile compressed Pamela’s lips. Darwell and his family had been linked to every major criminal enterprise in the territory for the past thirty years, from bribery of elected officials to cattle rustling and extortion. Pamela and the authorities knew of Darwell’s involvement, yet he’d never spent so much as a single day in jail.

Tonight Pamela would even the score however. Tonight, Jonathon Darwell and his thieving family would be the victims, not the villains. They would finally get a taste of their own medicine.

Inhaling deeply, filling her lungs with the night air scented with wildflowers, Pamela jumped up to reach the top of the stone wall with her right hand. Strong and agile, she quickly pulled herself atop the two-foot-thick barrier, paused to reassure herself that she hadn’t been seen, then leaped soundlessly to the thick green grass below.

The mansion was surrounded by two hundred and fifty feet of lawn on all sides. Crouching, Pamela covered the gap in less than a minute, her gaze darting right and left, searching for the multitude of gunmen parading as guards who always surrounded the Darwell residence. Whenever Jonathon Darwell left his fortress, some of these men served as his bodyguards.

Pamela pressed herself against the mansion wall, waiting, forcing herself to be patient, willing her erratic heartbeat to become steady and slow, her breathing normal. To her left, the darkness was heavy, though she’d spotted two guards walking slowly back and forth along the perimeter of the wall. She would avoid that area. To her right was the main entrance to the mansion, which, though well lit, lacked the armed guards who were the greatest threat.

As more people moved in and out of the huge, double front doors, Pamela was glad she had spent the money to purchase new Levi’s for herself. They were dark blue, and they helped to conceal her in the shadows. She didn’t care that the so-called good people of Whitetail Creek scoffed at her because she wore men’s denim trousers, and she didn’t care that the local preacher had once given a sermon using her as an example of the moral decay infecting womanhood, citing the fact that she was never seen without a Colt revolver at her hip.

The metal grid placed along the south wall of the mansion to encourage the vines to grow upward was suitable for a makeshift ladder, so within seconds, Pamela was scaling the wall and pulling herself onto the balcony of a second-floor bedroom.

Dropping to one knee, she then crouched low, her eyes narrowing as she looked in the window to search the interior darkness. Her ears were now attuned to the slightestsound that did not belong. Several times she resisted the urge to pull her revolver from the holster. She feared that, tense and nervous as she was, she might shoot too quickly or inaccurately and could not chance that.

This war—her personal, private war against Jonathon Darwell and the evil he represented—would be one fought intelligently. And in the end, when Pamela failed—she had no doubt that she would fail, because the Davids of this world defeated the Goliaths only in the Bible—she would be able to say honestly that she’d never hurt an innocent person.

ADULT EXCERPT

“Give them to me, Pamela,” Phantom whispered, his voice hoarse with passion.

Pamela looked down, and when she did, it was very nearly her undoing. She watched as he kissed her between her breasts, just above the top tie of her chemise, then he moved to the side, opened his mouth wide, and took her cloth-covered nipple between his lips. Even through the material of the chemise, the sensation of wetness and warmth was all pervasive.

For only a second, Pamela’s knees buckled, and she sagged against the smokehouse wall as Phantom’s lips tugged her nipple into even greater arousal.

“Oh, god,” she gasped, unable to believe that anything could feel so good, that the sensations coming from her breast could arouse the rest of her body so completely.

He bared his teeth, nipping at the tip of Pamela’s breast.

She shivered, her legs straightening so that she stood upright once more, though she leaned heavily against the smokehouse wall and would surely have fallen without its support.

“Do it for me, Pamela,” Phantom urged. He turned his attention to her other breast, taking the nipple into his mouth, moistening the tingling flesh through her chemise. “Open it. Let me taste you.”

His request intoxicated Pamela, who knew that to do as he asked meant her passion would reach yet another, even higher, plateau. But how high was too high? Could she ascend so far that she never came down? And when she did come down, how fast and brutal would the descent be? With Phantom’s kisses, so warm and intimate even through the cotton, it seemed entirely possible that her passion would never cease, that she would never again know a moment’s peace from the longings of her body.

She felt his hands slide slowly down her sides then curl around her hips to cup her bottom. She groaned as his long, strong fingers kneaded the cheeks of her ass, squeezing and caressing her through the Levi’s, tight across the backside because they’d been cut for a man’s narrower hips.

Phantom’s heart nearly burst right out of his chest as he cupped Pamela’s backside in his hands and nipped the crest of her trembling breast with his teeth. He hungered for the taste of her nipples without the distracting cotton chemise, but he would not strip that last barrier from her. That was something she had to do.

His cock ached from being trapped inside his trousers for so long. He wanted to free it, but he knew that Pamela would never understand. She was still holding back, still unwilling to completely explore passion. He sensed her reticence, but he held out hopes of changing it.

“Untie your chemise,” Phantom whispered, his lips warm and wet in the deep valley of her breasts. “Untie your chemise…for me.”

Pamela’s hands were still at Phantom’s shoulders. The pleasure that she anticipated was almost unimaginable to her, but she believed there were more important things in the world than simply giving free rein to one’s desire for gratification.

Each time his strong hands squeezed her ass, a fresh burst of pleasure coursed through her, emanating outward from her pussy. When his right hand eased around her hip to slide up high between her thighs, Pamela’s breath caught in her throat. A fresh burst of cream made her pussy even hotter and wetter.

“Phantom! Phantom!” She gasped as his hand cupped her pussy, the heel of his palm rubbing back and forth over her clit to spread the inferno of her passion through her body in heated waves. Her clit throbbed lustily, pulsing with her escalating desire.

She wanted to push him away. She needed to if she was ever to think of herself in the same way again.

But she could not. Her body could not do the bidding of her mind. Her sense of propriety was no match against the passion that Phantom had ignited within her.

His hand moved back and forth, pushing firmly against her delicate flesh, touching her through her Levi’s. Pamela had never felt so wet, so ready to accept a man’s arousal into her body. Phantom caught her breast between his lips again, tugging at the small, aroused bud through the moist cotton.

Pamela spread her feet farther apart, availing her pussy, shocking herself with her wanton behavior.

What is happening to me? She tried to think but was wildly confused.

Phantom’s hand moved more quickly between her thighs, his palm and fingers putting just the right amount of pressure, the right amount of friction against the lips of her pussy, against Pamela’s pulsing clit, to draw out her pleasure. Still, his teeth tugged at her nipple, sending yet additional waves of excitement rippling through her curvaceous body.

For Pamela, it was as though she had become possessed, her body taken over by a demon. She spread her feet even wider, her shoulders against the smokehouse wall, her hips churning madly in response to the motions of Phantom’s hand between her thighs.