He growled, wishing she would get the hell off of him and do without the torture he knew was coming his way, if not from her then surely when Reardon caught her in the act.
She ground her core against his zipper and growled, too. The damned lunatic grinned—just before she bit through his lower lip.
Muscle crunched. Flesh tore. He couldn’t struggle or pull away. It was all he could do to hold still and not scream in her mouth. His eyes watered. Every muscle shook at the assault. Enough already!
She bit harder. And harder. When she let go and leaned back, his blood dripped from her lips. Leezel closed her eyes with a throaty moan. “Mmm, yum. You taste real good, Mav.”
“You’re insane.”
She dabbed the blood on her chin with the tips of her fingers. Each bloodied digit went into her mouth one at a time, her eyes closed and a stupid look on her face. “Hmm. Yes. You could say I’m certifiable.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “God, get me the hell out of here!”
“Sh-h-h-h-h. Quiet now. You don’t want Troy back in here, do you?” She pushed slowly back to her feet, still sucking her fingers and thumbs after she pulled her dress down and covered herself. “Y. G. M. M. W. I. G. I can promise you that.”
“I’m what?” Damn her and her asinine word games. He’d never asked what she meant last time and he wasn’t sure he cared now.
Leezel blew a kiss down at him. “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone, Mav honey. That’s all it means. Soon as you start burning. You know you will. You’ll smell that hot body of yours on fire, and you’ll wish you’d loved me.”
“Never. I love China.” Leezel needed to get that through her thick skull. “Never you.”
The demonic woman in front of him seemed to grow taller with rage, her eyes more deadly. The kinky seductress was gone. Only the bloodthirsty murderess remained. “I got news for you, cowboy. It don’t matter what you say. By the time Sis hears about this little barbeque, I’ll be gone, and you won’t be nothing but ash and cinders. She’ll never know if you loved her or not, will she?”
Leezel slammed the bunkhouse door so hard the windows rattled behind her.
Maverick sank back against the floor, shaking with pain and adrenaline, the blood from his torn lip pouring down his neck. He swallowed hard and summoned his woman into his mind. Anchoring her deep in his heart, he breathed, “You’re wrong, bitch. China already knows.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“What’s wrong?” Kelsey asked.
China sat fidgeting at the edge of her bed. “Has anyone heard from Maverick yet?”
“He’s called every morning.” Kelsey came to her side. “He knows you’re doing better, but he doesn’t know you’re awake yet. Do you want to call and tell him?”
“Yes, please.” China pushed a hand through her hair. Maybe talking with Maverick would calm the butterflies in her stomach.
“Here.” Kelsey dialed the number on her cell phone and came to sit on the edge of her bed. “It’s ringing. He’ll be happy to hear from you.”
China held the phone to her ear. Wyoming was two hours earlier. Shivers of excitement tingled down her arms. She couldn’t wait to hear his voice, but the phone just rang. Her hopes dashed, she handed the phone back.
“He’s not answering?” Kelsey’s brows furrowed. She checked the number. “That’s odd. He said he would keep it with him at all times.”
Unease skated over China’s shoulders. “I have a bad feeling. Something’s wrong.”
“We’ll try him again in a few minutes. Do you want to sit on the porch while we wait? It’s a nice night.”
But China’s mind had flown to Wyoming. Maverick would be in the bunkhouse by now, tired from another hard day’s work. The man had probably finished the barn. Single-handedly. That was the kind of work ethic he had. Those back muscles would be sore. He might need a massage. Maybe a hot shower which he wouldn’t be taking alone. Heat pooled in the pit of her stomach at the other things he might need.
“China?” Kelsey still waited for an answer.
“Umm, what? The porch. Yes, that would be nice.”
“Before we go, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Oh, oh. What now?
“I didn’t want to say anything with the guys around, but you need to know that Maverick was worried that you might have been, umm—” Kelsey stalled, biting her lip. “He was afraid that while you were out of it that maybe your sister’s boyfriend might have, umm...”
“That bastard Reardon wouldn’t,” China hissed. “Maverick was afraid I’d been assaulted while I was unconscious? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Kelsey nodded quickly. “But you weren’t. Dr. Jenkins gave you a thorough physical. You’re clean. There was none.”
China’s heart stopped. In her wildest fears of Reardon, she had never suspected—that. Tears brimmed all over again. Her entire body cringed at the thought of him touching her. Holy smokes. He could’ve done anything he wanted with me. To me. I never would have known.
Kelsey wrapped her arm around China’s shoulders and drew her in tight. “I’m sorry. You’ve been through so much, honey, but when he rescued you, you were in nothing but a ratty T-shirt. You were dehydrated and dirty. He just wanted you taken care of in all possible ways.”
“No, that’s okay.” China choked on a sob, trying like hell to catch her balance again. Leezel’s and Reardon’s actions appalled her at every turn. “Did Dr. Jenkins check Kyrie?”
“Do you think she should?”
“Yes. Maybe. I just don’t know anymore.”
“Let’s talk with Kyrie first, okay? She’s old enough. She’ll tell you if he’s ever touched her inappropriately.”
China nodded. Kelsey had a calming way about her, but—so help me God. If he laid one finger on Kyrie, I’ll kill him.
“Let’s think positive,” Kelsey urged as she helped China into the wheelchair. “Alex has a saying. Don’t borrow trouble. It’ll show up soon enough.”
China wanted to believe, but trouble had been showing up pretty damned regularly in Wyoming the past few weeks.
She had showered earlier and changed into casual active-wear instead of her open-backed hospital gown. Dr. Jenkins had already visited, removed the IV and catheter and pronounced her not exactly well, but doing much better considering all she had been through. The good doctor prescribed rest, but China was disgusted being sick and weak. She needed to be with her kids again. And Maverick.
“Holy smokes,” she muttered as Kelsey helped her transfer to the wheelchair. “I feel like an old woman.”
“I know what you mean. I’m not a big fan of wheelchairs myself.” Kelsey wheeled China past the open bedroom where Kyrie lay sound asleep, and into the living room where Gabe snored lightly from the couch. A basketball game droned on the big screen.
Taylor sat engrossed at the desk, the muted light from a laptop computer shining on his face. He looked up in surprise when the women appeared just above his monitor. He shut the laptop. “You two are up late. What’s up?”
“China can’t sleep so we’re headed for the porch for a midnight chat. Want to join us?”
“Sure.” Taylor scrambled to hold the door while Kelsey maneuvered the chair outside. “Feel like sitting in something besides that wheelchair for a change? I could help you into the swing.”
“Please.” China rose unsteadily to her feet while Taylor eased one arm around her waist and lifted her up from the chair. She transferred to the wooden porch swing with a great feeling of accomplishment, but an unexplainable bad feeling still niggled at the back of her memory. “I don’t know why, but I don’t ever want to sit in that thing again.”
“You had bedsores when you got here,” Kelsey told her gently. “They probably left you sitting in the wheelchair until Maverick came for you.”
“You ladies need something to drink?” Taylor offered. “I’ve got lemonade, beer, bottled water and—”
“I’d die for
a beer.” China embarrassed herself when she blurted it right out. “Join me?”
“You bet. I think you can have one beer with your meds. How about you, Kelsey?”
“Sure. It’s late enough.” Kelsey turned with a sheepish smile to China. “Alex says I’m a lightweight when it comes to beer. It puts me to sleep.”
Taylor returned with three ice-cold bottles and glasses. He pulled another chair near to the swing and sat opposite them. After he twisted the bottle tops off, he handed the ladies their drinks, his dark eyes probing from Kelsey to China. “Did I miss anything?”
“Just girl talk,” Kelsey said.
China couldn’t look him in the eye. She took a bottle, and an extra-long swallow, afraid that her teary eyes would give her away. Taylor didn’t need a weeping woman on his hands again.
She should be happy. At least, happier. The fenced yard of what Gabe and Taylor called the safe house looked like any other on the street, except for the brand new swing set in the front lawn. Another agent, Mark Houston, had dropped by earlier with his two little girls, JayJay and Faith. Kyrie played to her heart’s content with her new girlfriends and pitched a fuss when they had to leave. It made China smile to hear the high stakes bargaining of a five-year-old when her newly adopted Uncle Taylor bribed her to come indoors for bedtime.
“Uh uh. I ain’t gonna. I don’t wanna,” she had answered from her swing, her head tipped back and her legs extended as she flew for the first time in her life. “I yikes ta swing.”
“Oh, yes. You have to come in, little girl. It’s time for a story.”
“But I don’t wanna story. I is pwaying.”
“Not even from your very own storybook?”
“No. I wanna pway.” She had leaned so far back that her hair swept the grass beneath the swing. “Come pway wiff me.”
“Well, I guess I’ll have to eat the chocolate chip cookies Aunt Kelsey made all by myself then.”
“Huh?”
“Hey. Did you know Uncle Gabe bought chocolate milk for a special little girl?”
“Me?”
Kyrie’s stubbornness crumbled. That hit the spot too, just knowing her niece acted like a normal five-year-old for a change. Everywhere she turned, the little gal had an adoring uncle who spoiled her rotten.
Yes, China should be a lot happier. But she wasn’t. Her new reality included a psychotic sister who meant to destroy all China held dear.
“It’s fairly warm tonight.” Kelsey poured a small portion of her beer into a glass and daintily sipped through the froth. She was so refined and genteel, China’s exact opposite.
“So why can’t you sleep, Miss Wolf?” Taylor eyed her intently. “Are you feeling okay?”
“You’ve got to stop calling me that. It’s so formal. China, please.” She smoothed the condensation off the long neck of her bottle, her mind a couple thousand miles away. “I can’t shake this edgy feeling.”
Taylor planted his bottle on his knee and studied her with that same probing look. He was the ultimate tall, dark, and handsome Hollywood stereotype, only with a serious streak that rarely allowed a smile. She estimated him to be the same age as Maverick, maybe mid to late-twenties. Like her. In the dim porch light, he sat relaxed yet still alert, his shoulders back but his eyes constantly searching their surroundings. “What kind of edgy feeling? Explain it to me. Is it like nausea? Do you feel like you’re going to pass out?”
“No, it’s different. It’s more like... have you ever been in a tornado?”
He shook his head. “Can’t say that I have.”
She looked to the darkening western sky. “Maybe I’m just anxious because I want to be home.”
“That stands to reason,” Kelsey offered. “You’ve been through a lot.”
Taylor leaned forward, still probing. “Maybe someone is trying to tell you something. My grandfather believes our feelings of unease are messages sent to us from our ancestors.” Taylor’s voice turned reverent. “We must learn to listen when they speak.”
“How do I do that?” China rubbed the shiver of his words off her arms. “I feel like something evil is coming for me.” Or Maverick.
Taylor’s dark eyes pierced hers. “In the old times, my ancestors used medicinal plants to achieve an altered state where they believed our ancestors could communicate with them. But that isn’t our way anymore. My wife has taught me how to use relaxation instead. I would be pleased to show you a technique I’ve learned if you aren’t too tired.”
China nodded. “Show me.”
He set his beer to the floor near the leg of his chair and dropped to one knee at her feet. “May I hold your hands?”
She nodded. She trusted this gentle Native American, simply because Maverick did.
Taylor accepted her hands into his, her fingers nestled into his palms and his thumbs firmly fastened over the tops of her hands. “China Wolf. You are named after a fearless hunter, as am I. Fearless hunters stand apart from the world. We don’t choose to follow the flocks of deer and sheep, and because we don’t, our path isn’t easy. We walk lonely roads. We climb higher mountains. We soar above and beyond the crowd.”
She peered into the depths of his dark eyes. Something about them reminded her of Maverick. It wasn’t the color though. Maverick’s were lighter brown, like coffee. Taylor’s were nearly black. It wasn’t the angles of his handsome face or the light coppery tone of his skin, either. He and Maverick shared a quality she couldn’t yet pin down, but it glowed deep in the recesses of his pupils. Like an ember that could flame to life at any moment. Like a hurt that lingered, unhealed and unforgotten.
“If you allow me, I’ll take you on a journey.” Taylor took another deep breath. “Before we begin, you must open your mind to the universe. Close your eyes and see that all things are for your good. Know that all blessings are poured out upon you. Believe that all creation was created for you and you alone.”
She closed her eyes and pictured the great night sky of Wyoming, full of stars, galaxies and a crescent moon. With the Milky Way sprinkled high above her, she stood alone in the universe, yet not alone at the same time. The vast night sky swirled around her. Crisp mountain air feathered her cheek with kisses. Dew settled lightly on her face. A hoot owl hooted from the nearby pines. All the elements of her rugged mountain home were very much with her.
“Give up all your fears and worries, China.” Taylor gripped her hands tighter. “Give up all of your strength, from the power resting at the crown of your head to the energy stored in the soles of your feet. Release it. Let it go. Relax.”
She clenched his hands in return and took a deep, cleansing breath.
“All, China Wolf,” he commanded. “Every last stress. Everything you feel and more.”
She took another deep breath and slowly released it, trying to do as he ordered, but the more she tried, the harder he gripped her hands and the tighter her muscles contracted.
From out of the dark Wyoming sky in her mind, a herd of magnificent Percherons galloped toward her. Dust lifted around them from their journey, but not a sound did they make. Not a nicker, grunt or footfall. Ghosts. The thought popped into her mind. These magnificent creatures were the ancestors of her horses. Her dreams. Her family.
“All of it, China Wolf.” Taylor’s voice turned hoarse. He gripped her hands tighter still.
He squeezed so hard she didn’t think she could stand it much longer. Biting her lip in one last effort to relax, she envisioned a shooting star, flung across the Wyoming heavens in an arc of light.
Just as the image of the star faded in her mind, Taylor released her hands. A sensation of warmth prickled up from her bare toes all the way to her scalp. Her body relaxed like it had never relaxed before. Her shoulders, biceps, abs, and every other muscle down to her feet rippled as the edgy feeling diminished. Every tightened muscle let go of the angst she didn’t know she had been holding.
The cool Virginian air smelled sweeter. She leaned back into the swing, needing the support of
its wooden slats. Maverick’s handsome face came easily to mind, his eyes glistening from the depths of humility. His reticent smile, the one he had given her that day on the hill when he had asked if she trusted him. He spoke to her again. “I love you, China Wolf. Know that.”
She heard his voice as surely as if he had been standing in front of her. I do.
China opened her eyes to Taylor still kneeling at her feet, his dark eyes fierce and kind. She had seen that look before, up high on a Wyoming hillside when the man who loved her had shielded her from a sniper’s bullet. In her yard when that same man backed down a vicious biker gang. That morning when he wept in Star’s neck.
A knowing look lighted Taylor’s face, a sign of recognition from one kindred spirit to another. “You saw him, didn’t you?”
She nodded, finally content, her body relaxed. “I did.”
“He spoke to you.”
The unease she had felt earlier returned with a vengeance. China knew then what quality these two warriors shared. They’d both seen death, and Maverick was seeing it again. Now.
She jumped to her feet. “He’s in pain. Maverick’s in trouble. Help him, Taylor. You have to help him!”
Chapter Thirty
Reardon was right.
The bunkhouse went up in a sheet of flame. The front window shattered inward, probably because one of the bikers threw something through it. Maverick coughed and tried like hell to see Z through the smoke. He had seconds before the whole place went up. He had to save his friend.
With a puff of white smoke, a ribbon of fire materialized along the lower edge of the front wall. Flames already engulfed the tinder dry roof overhead. Melting shingles dripped tentacles of fiery hot tar to the floor. So far he had been spared, but it wouldn’t take long before one drip of tar would hit him or the roof would collapse. He had minutes to live. Seconds maybe.
And he was still tied tightly to the chair.
He thrashed his body back and forth until the chair turned on its side and took him with it. At last he caught sight of Z sagging in the other chair, his head to his chest, still gagged and blindfolded. Heat blistered Maverick’s arms and hands from the spreading flames on the floor, but there was no other way. With jaws clenched tight and a gut full of old-fashioned USMC bullheadedness, he shoved his hands into the flames behind him. It hurt. He shuddered and endured the red-hot tongues devouring his skin. At last, the twine gave way. Holy hell.
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