Nora Roberts - Lawless

Crying and sniveling and begging God’s forgiveness, Carlotta thought. Her mother had been the whore of that frigid little town in the Carolina mountains, but she hadn’t had the guts to make it work for her.

Always claimed she was doing it to feed her little girl, Carlotta remembered with a sneer. She poured more whiskey into the glass. If that had been so, why had her little girl gone hungry so many nights? In the dim light, Carlotta studied the deep amber liquid. Because Ma was just as fond of whiskey as I am, she decided. She drank, and savored the taste.

The difference between you and me, Ma, she thought to herself, is that I ain’t ashamed-not of the whiskey, not of the men. And I made something of myself.

Did you cry when I left? Carlotta laughed as she thought back to the night she’d left the smelly, windowless shack for the last time. She’d been fifteen and she’d saved nearly thirty dollars she’d made selling herself to trappers. Men paid more for youth. Carlotta had learned quickly. Her mother had never known her daughter was her stiffest competition.

She despised them all. Every man who’d pushed himself into her. She took their money, arched her hips and loathed them. Hate made a potent catalyst for passion.

Her customers went away satisfied, and she saved every coin.

One night she’d packed her meager belongings, stolen another twenty dollars from the can her mother kept hidden in the rafters and headed west.

She’d worked saloons in the early years, enjoying the fancy clothes and bottles of paint. Her affair with whiskey had blossomed and helped her smile and seduce hungry-eyed cowboys and rough-handed drifters.

She’d saved, keeping her mouth firmly shut about the bonuses she wheedled from men.

When she’d turned eighteen she had had enough to open her own place. A far cry from the Silver Star, Carlotta remembered. Her first brothel had been hardly more than a shack in a stinking cattle town in-east Texas. But she’d made certain her girls were as young and pretty as she could get.

She’d had a brief affair with a gambler who’d sported brocade vests and string ties. He’d filled her head with talk of crystal chandeliers and red carpets. When she’d moved on, she’d taken his pearl stickpin, two hundred in cash and her own profits.

Then she’d opened the Silver Star.

One day she’d move on again, on to California. But she intended to do it in style. She’d have those crystal chandeliers, she vowed. And a white porcelain tub with gold handles. Gold.

Carlotta felt a pleasure flow through her, a pleasure as fluid as the whiskey. It was gold she needed to bring her dream to full life. And gold she intended to have. The man beside her was the tool she would use to gain it.

Jim Carlson. Carlotta looked down at his face. It was rough with several days’ growth of beard and slack from sleep, sex and whiskey. She knew him for a fool, hot-tempered, small-minded and easily manipulated. Still, he was better-looking than many she had taken into her bed. His body was tough and lean, but she preferred young, limber bodies. Like Jake’s. Scowling, Carlotta took another drink. She’d broken her most important rule with Jake Redman. She’d let herself want him, really want him, in a way she’d never desired another man. Her body had responded to his so that for the first time in her life she hadn’t feigned the ecstasy men wanted from a whore. She’d felt it. Now she craved it, as she craved whiskey, and gold, and power.

With Jake, desire was a hot, tight fist in her gut. Not just because he had a style in bed most men who came to her didn’t feel obliged to employ. Because Jake Redman held something of himself back, something she sensed was powerful and exciting. Something she wanted for herself. And had been on her way to getting, she thought, before that pasty-faced bitch had come to town.

She had a lot to pay Miss Sarah Conway back for. Thoughtful, Carlotta touched a hand to her bruised cheek. A whole lot. Pay her back she would, and in doing so she would take Jake and the gold.

Jim Carlson, though he was unaware of it, was going to help her on all counts.

Setting the empty glass aside, Carlotta picked up a hand mirror. The bruises annoyed her, but they would fade. The faint lines fanning out from her eyes and bracketing her mouth would not. They would only deepen. She cursed and pushed the mirror aside. With a pleased smile, she ran both hands down her body. It was long, smooth-skinned and curvaceous.

It was her body men wanted and her body she had used, and would continue to use, to get what life had cheated her of.

She shifted, took Jim in her hand and brought him breathlessly awake.

“God Almighty, Carlotta,” Groaning, he tried to roll over and into her.

“In a hurry, Jim?” She evaded him expertly, all the while using her skill to keep him aroused.

“Thought you’d burned the life out of me last night.” He shuddered. “Glad to find out it ain’t so.” “I want to talk to you, Jim.”

“Talk.” He filled his hands with her breasts.

“Honey, I got better ways to spend my money than talk.”

She let him suck and nuzzle, calculating how far she could let him go and keep him in line. Rooting about like a puppy, she thought in disgust while she stroked his hair.

“Your money ran out at dawn, sweetheart.”

“I got more.” He bit her, hard. Because she knew he expected it, she gave a soft moan of pleasure. “House rules, Jim. Money first.”

He swore at her and considered taking his pleasure as he chose. But if he forced her and managed to avoid getting tossed out by Eli, the doors of the Silver Star would be barred to him. He had money, he thought. And a need that was rock-hard.

When he started to shift, Carlotta trailed a finger down his arm. “Talk, Jim, and I’ll…” With a long sigh, she arched back so that he could look his fill.

“I’ll give you the rest for free.”

Sweat beaded on his upper lip as he studied her.

“You don’t do nothing for free.”

Deliberately she ran a hand over her breast and down her rib cage and stroked the soft swell of her belly. “Talk. We’re going to talk first.” Her lips curved as she watched him swallow. “About gold.” When he stiffened, her smile only widened. “Don’t worry, Jim. I haven’t told anyone, have I? I’ve never said a word about how you and Donley killed old Matt Conway.”

“I was drunk when I told you about that.” He wiped a hand over the back of his mouth as fear and desire twined inside him. “A man says all kinds of things when he’s drunk.”

That made her laugh. She pillowed her head on her folded arms “Nobody knows that better than a whore or a wife, honey. Relax. Who was the one who told you old Matt had finally hit? Who was the one who told you his daughter was coming and you had to move fast? Don’t try dealing from the bottom with me, sweetheart. It’s business, remember. Yours and mine.”

After pushing himself up in bed, he reached bad-temperedly for the whiskey bottle. “I told you once Sam got things worked out you’d get your share.” “And what does Sam have to work out?” She let him take a swallow, two. It never hurt to loosen a man’s tongue, but there were some who went from relaxed to mean with whiskey. With Jim the line was all too easily crossed. She took the bottle back.

“We’ve already been through this,” he muttered. He no longer felt like having sex, and he sure as hell didn’t want to talk.

“If Sam had some idea about getting that Conway bitch to the altar to get his hands on the deed, he’s had time enough. Everybody in town knows she doesn’t have her eye on your brother, but on Jake Redman.” “How about you?” He tapped a finger, none too gently, against her bruised cheekbone. “Who do you have those blue eyes on?”