She responded with wild, unbridled desire for one heartbeat, then she tore her mouth away.
“Oh,” she said, gasping for air. “No, Cole.”
He had scared her. He’d lost all control, he was losing his mind.
But still he couldn’t help himself. He kissed her cheek, her nose, then her chin and her slender, arching throat, dropping pleading kisses lower and lower on it, pressing begging kisses to her hot, sweet skin until she tore herself away from him.
“Stop,” she whispered. “Stop, Cole. We must stop.”
“We can’t.”
His own voice was so hoarse he didn’t even recognize it.
“We have to. I … I …”
“Did I scare you? I’m sorry.”
“No. I mean … yes. Yes, you scared me bad.”
But he hadn’t. Her voice and her eyes and her swollen, bruised lips told him that.
Her gaze kept going to his mouth and lingering there.
“You didn’t act scared,” he drawled.
She looked up and stared at him, her eyes huge in the dimming light that filtered in through the canvas.
“Go,” she said. “Get out, Cole. You shouldn’t have come in here like this.”
The dismissal sparked his anger, it was so unexpected, so abrupt, after all they’d just shared. He didn’t move.
“You shouldn’t have hauled a goddamned piano down the trail in a hoodlum wagon.”
“Stay away from me.”
“How the hell can I stay away from you when I’m your bodyguard? Are you firing me off this job? For a kiss?”
Her hands flew to his arm, clutched it, then let it go. He could still feel the long, slender shapes of her fingers as he had the day they’d met.
“A kiss. And you can’t say I held you down and forced it on you.”
“No, I’m not firing you. Just go.”
He stood up, took the two steps toward the door, then turned to look at her again.
“We don’t want to stay away from each other, Aurora. You know that now.”
“Yes, we do,” she cried. “Don’t you ever kiss me again.”
“Suit yourself.”
He stepped outside and jumped down from the tailgate. She appeared in the doorway, color high in her cheeks.
“Don’t kiss me,” she repeated, her voice breaking a little on the last word.
An edge of steel came into it.
“And don’t ever grab my reins away from me again!”
She closed the canvas flap between them with a fast, sharp snap.
Cole strode off into the growing gloom of the evening as fast as his feet could move. The woman was loco. He had thought so the first time he saw her.
Aurora’s plan had been to change and sleep in the hoodlum wagon after the cowboys had taken out their bedrolls at night. She intended to dress and undress in there and unroll her bed in the aisleway between the boxes and barrels each night so that she could maintain a modicum of privacy.
But tonight, the very first night out on the trail, she thought she would smother in there. She barely had room to spread out her quilts between the piano and the wooden boxes that held her grandmother’s silver and china.
But what was most disturbing was that Cole’s scent hung in the air. A scent made up of horse, leather, and his own renegade self, some cedary man scent that belonged only to him. She had to get away from it or she’d never be able to sleep. It had been on her, too, on her skin, and she had deliberately washed it off when she changed her clothes for bed.
A cold pain twisted her heart. She couldn’t sleep because she couldn’t stop thinking about him.
She pressed the tips of her fingers against her swollen lips, tasted the flavor of his mouth on her tongue again. Tears stung her eyes.
He was staying away from her, all right. From the time he’d walked away from her wagon, he had not shown up at the fire all evening.
Thank God, Cookie had sent Nate out with a plate and some coffee to find him. The boy had come back empty-handed, saying that Cole was keeping watch, and she had felt a little bit better—it would’ve been terrible if Cole had eaten nothing after the horrendous day they had had.
The thought made her throw her arm over her eyes. For the first day on the trail, this one had held enough adventure and excitement for the whole trip. It had worn her out completely, and she had to make decisions in the morning—like exactly where they should cross the creek. And there might be a river to cross before the day was over. That or some of Gates’s minions to fight or a runaway wagon or no telling what else.
She had to get some sleep or she wouldn’t be able to think.
But, although pure exhaustion held her body limp on her quilts, her mind went back over and over the day, and her memory wouldn’t let her rest.
Never, ever, would she have believed that a kiss could rock her whole world, that it could shatter her bones. She thought she’d been kissed before, but she hadn’t.
Cole McCord. She’d had no idea what she was doing in hiring him.
But the whole thing was scarier, even, than the desire he roused in her. He had touched her deepest self, she was coming to depend on him. Already. On the very first day.
When Virgil and his crew had had them under their guns, she hadn’t been able to think of what to do because deep down she’d kept on expecting Cole to take care of her. Which he had.
Then she hadn’t even been able to make a decision about a bedground without asking his opinion, and his praise had warmed and reassured her. Her, Aurora Benton, who never relied on anyone but herself!
She was relying on him, not just for her physical safety but emotionally, too. Already. On the very first day.
Worst of all, so frightening she could barely bring herself to think of it again, was the way she had felt at the first instant of his kiss. That weird calm, that sense that this was so right, their mouths melded together, their flesh delivered up into flame in a heartbeat. That harmony was stronger than the heat and desire. That was the danger, far more than the pleasure.
She had wanted to be with Cole forever, to kiss him from now on, to feel she was with him for the rest of her life.
That in itself was far scarier than Virgil and five shotguns.
The next morning she stayed busy giving orders while Cole rode out ahead, even before the wagons started, to scout for enemies. He came back when the herd began to move and then rode three or four lengths ahead of her south down the trail.
By the time the sun was halfway up, the silence between them was too heavy to bear. They had hundreds more miles to ride, after all, and there was no reason they couldn’t behave like civilized persons.
“Cole!” she called. “Wait!”
He greeted her with a scowl as she loped up beside him.
“What?”
“I just wondered how you like your mount so far.”
Both of them were riding different horses to let their personal favorites rest and travel with the remuda.
“How can I know a thing like that? This is the only one I’ve tried.”
Each of the hands had approximately ten horses in his mount, and the same was true of her and Cole.
“You don’t have to be so grouchy,” she said in a teasing tone. “I wish you could see your sulky face.”
He didn’t take it well—he looked surprised and then fighting mad. No doubt he was the handsomest man ever born, with his dark, mysterious eyes and the hard, uncompromising line of his jaw that fairly begged her to run her fingertip along it. She wouldn’t, though, and she wouldn’t think such things. She’d look at him dispassionately from now on.
“You’re getting mighty personal with your remarks,” he growled.
“My remarks? Plural? I haven’t said a word to you before now and you talk as if all I’ve done since sunrise is talk your ears off!”
He threw her a wry glance.
“That wouldn’t take you from sunrise to the middle of the morning. That’d be about an hour
’s job for a medicine tongue like you.”
His tone was still gripy, but a bit of amusement had crept into it, too, and she decided to try to make him smile. They might as well be pleasant as well as polite.
“That’s not fair,” she said, pretending great indignation. “Yesterday there were long stretches of silence in our scouting.”
“Hmpf! About half an hour, as I recall, and that was only when we were riding at a high lope to save our necks from a hanging tree.”
Her irritation became a little more real.
“I’m perfectly capable of maintaining a companionable silence,” she said. “I do not talk all the time, Cole. You have to admit that.”
“You promised me that night in the saloon in Pueblo City when I foolishly signed on with this piano-toting trail drive that you wouldn’t talk to me at all.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. You did. Remember that and abide by it.”
“But you would get too lonesome,” she said, unable to resist teasing him some more. “I’m only thinking of you.”
That did make the corners of his mouth turn up in the tiniest hint of a smile.
Then his face filled with thunder again.
“Yesterday you weren’t thinking of me,” he said, “throwing me out, telling me to stay away from you, ordering me never to grab your reins again. You’ve turned through yourself since then, Aurora. How come?”
All of it came rushing back to her—the passion and fear that his kiss had inspired, the desire that had threatened to take her over. Those feelings had been there all night long and all morning while she’d been trying to deny them. When would they go away?
“I was thinking of both of us,” she said to her saddle horn, so quietly that he had to lean toward her to hear. “Such a … an association would be impossible.”
He didn’t answer, but his silence seemed to contradict her.
She turned to look at him.
“I meant it,” she blurted, fighting through the images in her mind to find a new topic of conversation. “Don’t ever grab my reins away from me again. I hate that. It makes me feel like I have no control over where I’m going.”
“Because you don’t. And I’ll grab them again if I have to.”
Then he just sat there, riding his horse at a slow trot, watching her. He nodded, slowly, while he searched her face.
“What else? And don’t ever kiss you again? Don’t you want to repeat that order, too, Miss Trail Boss?”
Her lips parted, but no sound came out.
He was looking at her with his eyes hot enough to burn her skin.
“I thought so,” he drawled.
She couldn’t see him dispassionately. She wanted to taste his mouth again, yearned for it with such a savage intensity that she trembled all over. It made her furious that she couldn’t either make the feeling go away or ignore it.
And that she couldn’t repeat the command to stay away from her.
“You’re just like all the men,” she snapped. “You think one kiss from you will have a woman on her knees begging for more.”
“All the men? You’re in the habit of kissing a lot of men?”
His arrogant tone fueled her anger.
“That’s not what I said.”
“Sounded like it to me.”
“Then you must think I’m pretty loose with my favors.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Sounded like it to me!” she cried.
They both laughed in spite of their ire, but their laughter sounded more bitter than amused. Aurora took a deep breath, hoping it would calm her.
“This conversation’s going around in circles,” she said.
Cole wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. And kiss her, damn it. How had he let her get them talking about kisses? How had he let her get him talking at all?
“I’ll put it on a straight line,” he said. “If you aren’t in the habit of kissing all the men, then what have you been doing with them?”
He could’ve bitten off his tongue. Where in the hell had that come from? He’d no more intended to keep on prying into her life than he’d intended to listen to her prattle again today.
She shot him a startled look, angry at first, and then haughtily defiant.
“I don’t appreciate your tone one bit,” she said. “I hired you to be my bodyguard, not my father.”
“You’ve got a known enemy hiring idiots and laying plots with your own men, trying to get you killed,” he said coldly. “And you mentioned some suitors who told you you’d never make it to the end of this trail. Seems to me I’m asking for information that affects my job as your bodyguard.”
He hadn’t meant to pursue this line of inquiry like a dog on a trail. This was as bad as when they’d barely met and he had quizzed her about her enemies although he’d had no intention of becoming her bodyguard. What was it about her that made him as loco as she was?
“Well, back East, I went to socials and lectures with several different escorts,” she said, “and I had other gentleman callers come courting as well. But then I don’t suppose they would have any connection with your job, do you?”
Did he detect a teasing tone in her voice? What had happened to her haughtiness?
“No, they wouldn’t,” he said, feeling a little foolish.
But flashes of fashionably dressed, dandified dudes bowing to kiss Aurora’s hand—or maybe her lips—crossed his mind. Dandies offering her a supporting arm and escorting her into her parlor. Or out of it. Aurora responding to them with that incredible, magical smile that could blind an eagle.
“Since I returned home to Colorado, I have accepted three of my bachelor neighbors as gentleman callers,” she said. “Terrence Peck, Darius Martin, and Harvey Thorne. But then, their names may not help you much, since I’m assuming you don’t know any of them.”
There definitely was amusement in her tone. Was she making fun of him? Well, she probably was. She probably was thinking that he was wanting to know all this because he was jealous. She was deluding herself that she’d hurt some feelings more delicate than his pride last night.
“Never heard of any of the three,” he said.
“Terrence is my favorite of my Colorado men,” she said thoughtfully.
Her Colorado men.
“That doesn’t sound too good,” he said. “Sounds like you worked as a saloon girl before you started down the trail.”
“Do you want to hear this or not?” she cried, suddenly completely exasperated.
He grinned. That was the thing about her that interested him—she was so alive, every minute, so completely caught up in whatever was going on, whatever she was feeling. To her, everything mattered.
And to him, dead in spirit as he was, nothing had mattered that much for a long time, at least not since Travis was killed. He pushed the thought of his old partner away, pronto, and fastened his gaze on Aurora’s blue eyes.
“Maybe I ought not,” he said. “This may be too risqué of a tale for my young ears.”
She gave an unladylike snort that made him smile again.
“You are so delicate,” she said. “I’ll be careful what language I use.”
“Thanks.”
She rolled her eyes at him.
“Terrence Peck. He’s a true gentleman and a scholar, a writer and photographer and I could sit and listen to him recite poetry all day long. He loves animals, too. Especially Bubba.”
She shot him a significant look.
“Where is ol’ Bubba today, by the way?”
“Nate wanted him to ride on the wagon seat with him so he wouldn’t get so lonesome. He’s used to always being with Newt, since they’re twins, you know.”
“Can’t baby him too much, Aurora. Young’uns who go down the trail have to grow up in a hurry.”
She gave him a long, straight look.
“I’ll baby whomever I please,” she said. “Sometime I’ll tell you about how fast I had to grow
up. Now, do you want to hear about Terrence or not?”
He shrugged.
“Can’t see that I have any choice since now you’re threatening me with your whole life story.”
That time, he made her smile.
“Terrence saved my sanity this winter,” she said. “He came to see me as often as he could with the snow so deep so much of the time.”
He gave a skeptical grunt.
“How far did he have to ride?”
“Twenty miles.”
“He must not be too tough nor too serious about you if he let a little snow and twenty miles get in his way.”
She threw him an irritated look.
“Oh, he’s serious, all right.”
“Let me get this straight,” he said, wishing fruitlessly that he could jerk his mind away from this petty subject, which was none of his business anyway, no matter what he’d told her, “this poet fellow saved your sanity and hugged your big wolf-dog but you can’t abide him.”
She gave him the blankest look.
“Those were your very words that night in my hotel room,” he said, locking his eyes on hers. “One of your unacceptable choices for your life was to marry a man you can’t abide.”
“I didn’t mean Terrence.”
“Then who?”
The expression on her face made him vaguely aware that his tone was the one he always used to intimidate outlaws and bandits and other long-riders, and he tried to add something more kindly, but he was powerless to speak another word until he heard her answer. Hell. Now she’d probably start to cry or something.
But no. She sat up as straight as if she had a poker down her back and raked him with an icy stare.
“Who is none of your concern. I don’t know why we’re talking about this, anyhow.”
“Neither do I,” he snapped.
However, before they’d ridden one length farther, his mouth fell open again and, nosy as an old camp cook, he had to pry. He even used a falsely careless, softer tone.
“Terrence hasn’t asked you to marry him?”
She relaxed, mollified by the change in his manner, but she didn’t reply right away. Finally, a little stiffly, she did. But it didn’t answer the question.
“Darius Martin and Harvey Thorne are the ones I referred to that night in your room,” she said. “I never did want to marry either of them, but now I cannot abide them because after I refused them, they each made the long ride out to my place for the specific purpose of telling me that I should stay and marry him because there’s no way on earth I’ll ever get these cattle to Texas.”
The Renegades: Cole Page 9