Omega's Gamble on Alphas

CHAPTER 4

Once she had vanished around the corner, he lingered for a moment, listening to the sound of her boots vanishing away, then he went back into the box and dropped heavily into his chair.

“s**t…”

Now that the cowgirl had proceeded, Tanner could think a little more clearly, and he had to admit he presumably had been a bit out of line with that last demand. Gaille Duffy wasn’t like the other women he was used to.

Despite her rough and tumble impression, she was a sensitive woman on the inside, soft and delicate as a cactus rose. He should have understood his usual, somewhat blunt method of temptation wouldn’t have worked with her.

God, what a woman.

Tanner flared his nostrils, scouring for some lingering wisps of the woman’s scent, but he found nothing. How strange. A woman like that must like something in.

Tanner slid out of his seat and dropped to his knees in front of the chair that the Duffy woman had recently vacated. He lessened his face to the cushion where her butt had been pinched less than a minute before, and he drew a deep inhalation into his lungs.

Nobody.

What is the nightmare? How could that woman have left no trace of her scent behind? It was impossible.

She was concealing something. Tanner had sensed it from the moment he’d started talking to her. She was hiding something about herself, and she was hiding something about that ranch of hers too.

He intended to find out what.

Tanner McBain might not have been the kind of man to chase after women, but stalking… tas another matter entirely.

A noise from the auditorium roused Tanner out of his thoughts. The audience was once again exploding with joy and applause. He got to his feet and turned around to see what all the unrest was near.

On the stage, the performers had switched positions. Little Red Riding Hood was now sandwiched between her two alpha mates, and she was taking both of them between her legs at the same time. Their n***d bodies glistened with sweat in the spotlight.

The omega’s skin was much fairer than the Duffy woman’s, and her dark hair was wavy, not straight, but if Tanner squinted his eyes enough, he could almost imagine that was Gaille Duffy down there, and the two alphas giving it to her were him and Logan.

His c**k bulged until it felt like it was nearly bust through his britches. He unfastened his sash buckle, unbuttoned his fly, and took it out. It felt hard and desirable in his hand.

He began to massage it, toiling his fist up and down his shaft in time to the omega’s moans. He imagined those sounds coming from the Duffy woman’s trembling lips. He imagined her turquoise eyes staring up at him as he filled her.

He would see those eyes again.

Tanner felt his knot starting to form and quickly aimed his tip toward the corner of the booth. His first shot of seed hit the brass spittoon with a satisfying, metallic bong!

Ned Clarity,Reached across his mahogany desk, leafed open the ivory cigar box, and pulled out a fat cigar. He trimmed the end of it with the direction of his Bowie knife, punched it between his lips, and lit it with a nickel-plated kerosene lighter, twisting the cigar slowly so it would burn evenly.

When he was located, he bent back in his chair, probed his watch out of the pocket of his waistcoat, which was weakening around his bulging stomach, and studied the time.

“Ten o’clock,” he said, throwing away smoke with words. “Where the hell’s Lacerda?”

“Don’t know, sir. He said he’d fulfill us here at ten.”

Clarity stared across the spectrum of his desk at the two men who stood on the other side. Whittaker and Guthrie were two of the sorriest excuses for cattle rustlers he’d ever seen. Good help was so damned hard to find these days.

“What do you mean he said he was here at ten? He was supposed to be with you all along!”

“I know, Mr. Clarity,” Whittaker stammered. “But something came up. You see, we all three rode out there to Duffy Ranch, just like you wanted us to. It was still light when we got out there, so we hunkered down behind a ridge to wait for it to get dark.

While we were wringing, we saw something out from the ranch. From where we were we looked like a man. Then I looked through my spyglass, and I saw it was Miss Duffy herself, all dressed up in a duster and hat, just like a cowboy.”

“What has any of this got to do with Lacerda’s absence?”

“Well, when we saw Miss Duffy ridin’ off by herself like that, Lacerda reckoned maybe we ought to take advantage of the situation. He reckoned maybe we could kidnap her, or k—”

“Buffoons!” Clarity slammed one meaty fist against his desk, and the two men standing on the other side flinched. “I’ve told you a thousand times, the Duffy woman is not to be harmed…not directly.”

Lamentation was not an entirely lawless place, and money only went so far. Murder or k********g—especially of a woman—were acts that would be met with hostility by the local lawmen, and even a man of Clarity’s means would have difficulty paying his way out of that kind of trouble.

“That’s what I told ’em!” Whittaker blurted. “But then Lacerda, he got the idea that maybe he ought to follow the Duffy woman, just to see where she was going. He reckoned he might be able to learn something.”

Clarity puffed on his cigar and scowled.

“I don’t pay you an i***t to think ng! I pay you to do what I tell you.”

“I know Mr. Clarity. That’s exactly what I told Lacerda. But you know how that boy can be. Once he gets a notion in that durn head of his, he just can’t get rid of it.”

Clarity just glowered.