Only 03 - Only You

himself. He had taken her wearing his boots and pants as though she were no more than a whore bought for a few minutes of ease.
    And she had let him. She had begged him.
    Reno looked at Eve as though he had never seen her before. And he hadn’t. Not the way he was seeing her now. He hadn’t allowed himself to look past the scarlet dress to the innocent girl beneath; because he had wanted that girl too much to turn aside, no matter what the truth of her innocence was.
    “ Virgin. ”
    “That’s right, gunfighter,” Eve shot back. “I’m a virgin.”
    Suddenly her mouth drew down in an unhappy curve.
    “Well, I was a virgin,” she said. “Now I’m just one more ruined girl who should have known better.”
    The word rang in Reno’s mind. Ruined.
    Like Savannah Marie had been ruined. Like Willow had been ruined.
    A decent man marries an innocent girl if he ruins her.
    Suddenly Reno felt cornered. Like any cornered animal, he fought to be free. His fingers wrapped around Eve’s shoulders.
    “If you think you just traded your maidenhead for a husband,” he said, “you’re dead wrong. I won you in a card game. I took what was mine. That’s all the payment that’s required.”
    “Thank God,” Eve said between her teeth.
    For the second time, Eve had shocked Reno. He had expected an argument, a torrent of words tellinghim how it was his duty as a decent man to marry the girl his lust had ruined. It was an old trick, the oldest and most potent in the arsenal of the war waged between marriage-minded girls and freedom-minded men.
    Yet Eve wasn’t using it.
    “Thank God?” Reno repeated numbly.
    “Damn straight,” Eve shot back. “Thank God I’ve paid off the bet fully and you won’t want to do that again, because—”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” he interrupted.
    “—now I know why women get paid for it!”
    Eve’s furious words hung in the air for a long, taut moment before Reno trusted himself to answer.
    “You liked it and you know it,” Reno said in a low, lethal voice. “I didn’t rape you.”
    “You didn’t rape me. And I didn’t like it!”
    “Then why did you beg for me?” he retorted.
    Humiliation and anger burned on Eve’s cheeks. Her lips trembled, but her voice was as steady as her eyes.
    “I’ll bet if you asked a baby bird how it liked flying, it would sing happily all the way down to the ground that breaks its stupid neck!”
    For an instant Reno was silent. Then he laughed despite his anger at taking a saloon girl and discovering he had made a passionate virgin bleed.
    “Flying, huh?” he asked deeply.
    Eve gave Reno a wary look, not trusting the sudden, velvety darkness of his voice one bit. With small, subtle motions, she tried to ease away from his grip. His long fingers tightened just enough to let her know that she was well and truly held.
    “Not flying,” she said in a clipped voice. “Falling. There’s a big difference, gunfighter.”
    “Only in the landing. Next time you’ll land on your feet like the sleek little cat you are.”
    “There won’t be a next time.”
    “Are you going back on your word?” Reno challenged smoothly.
    Eve’s smile was like a piece of winter.
    “I don’t have to,” she said. “You can handle me until fire freezes solid. I won’t ask again to be hurt until I bleed.”
    “It’s only like that the first time. And if I had known you were a virgin, I—”
    “I told you I’d never let a man under my skirts,” she interrupted. “But you didn’t believe me. You thought I was a slut. Now you know I’m not.”
    Then realization came to Eve. Her mouth turned down in a bitter curve.
    “I wasn’t a slut,” she corrected. “But I am now.”
    Anger coiled in Reno.
    “I did not make you a slut,” he said, biting off each word.
    “Really? How does it happen, then? One time is a mistake and two times makes a slut? Or is it three? Maybe four?”
    “Damnation.”
    “Precisely,” she hissed. “How many times does it take before a girl magically becomes a slut? Do tell me, gunfighter. I’d hate to use up more than my God-given share of fun .”
    “What am I supposed to do?” he asked furiously. “Marry you? Would that make it right again?”
    “No!”
    “What?” Reno asked, wondering if he had heard correctly.
    “Nothing would make what we did right but love,” Eve said bitterly, “and getting love from a man like you is about as likely as finding ‘a shipmade of stone, a dry rain, and a light