by Maren Smith
Holding onto her bad wrist while he wiped the cooling water over her sweat-covered skin, Cullen looked at her knee. “Maybe tomorrow,” he assured her.
“I need work.”
“You need rest.”
She pulled at her captured arm, but even that feeble resistance exhausted her. “Work…”
“Go to sleep.”
She twisted her face away and her gaze must have fallen on the strap. “No more spanking.” She burst into tears. “Please, Gabe… No more…”
And just like that, Cullen had a name and focus for all the anger that had been building up in him with every tear she’d shed and every moan her writhing had pulled from her. He stood, ripping the strap off the wall where he’d hung it. Stalking across the floor, he threw it down the hatch, getting it as far from her as he could. Chin was struggling her way out of bed before he returned to it. He caught her before she fell, the heat of her small, overheating body burning through his shirt and jeans.
“Twenty dollars,” she told him when he lay her back into bed. She pulled the hem of her nightshirt up around her hips, laying herself completely bare to him. As if he didn’t have enough of her already burned into his mind’s eye.
He quickly pulled it down again, covering her but the damage, if such it could even be called, was done. Up until that moment, he’d been able to bottle up what he was doing. She was sick; he was doing the best he could to help, but now… She was small, but she was exquisite and his body responded to hers like… well, like any man who hadn’t known the comfort of a good woman in years.
“Twenty dollars,” she said again. “Pony up, cowboy. Let’s ride.”
Those would be the words that haunted him until the day he died, he knew it even before she followed them by cupping her good hand to his cheek. She tried to kiss him. Had she the strength to get all the way up off the pillow, she might have succeeded, because Lord knew, he hadn’t tried very hard to evade it.
“Lie still.” Belatedly, he gripped her shoulders and forced her down again, but putting her back under the sheet was like trying to stuff a weasel in a gunny sack. Prying her hand off his face, he pressed her arm down over her stomach only to have her hook her other over his shoulder. When he bent over her to catch the sheet, she leaned up to nip the lobe of his ear and suckle it in the heat of her mouth. Lightning split the sky and may as well have split him too. A near electric current cut him through and through. His whole body shuddered.
“Stop,” he said, more harshly than he’d intended, but he was done. Tired, exhausted, worried, and now aroused in ways he knew he ought to be ashamed of and probably would be, just as soon as he got her tucked safely back beneath the sheet and into the role of a sick woman instead of a seductive one. He pointed a stern finger at her. “Do that again, and I’m going to tie you to the bed.”
“That’ll cost you extra,” she purred, her alluring tone at complete odds with the weary resignation on her face. “What can I do for you, gwailo?”
“I don’t suppose lying still would be too much to ask?” He had to pull the sheet back over again; she was already trying to pry it off.
“Thirty dollars to play dead. Thirty-five if you want me to bathe in ice so I’m cold.”
He almost laughed, but it wasn’t funny. Not even close. “This Gabe fellow makes you bathe in ice?” He hoped he never met the man. It had been two years since he’d last killed a man, and he was awfully proud of that, but he might just have to make an exception the day he met Gabe. And not just because he’d dared to raise a hand to Chin—hell, Cullen had known her two short days and already she’d pulled a knife on him, cut up his saddle and stole his horses. Some women just weren’t comfortable unless they knew they had a lickin’ coming, and he was willing to allow Chin might be one of them. But sure as she was lying here, Cullen knew any man warped enough to make a woman bathe in ice so he could pretend to fuck a corpse had to be man enough to put the fear he could see in her eyes when he asked, “Chin… Chinny girl, look at me. Is he the one you’re running from?”
Her reaction was instant. She recoiled, snatching back her hands and twisting her head away. She would have rolled over, but he grabbed her arms and leaned on her, keeping her on her back before the pain in her legs flared enough for her to remember them. He didn’t know if it was the fever or the laudanum-laced tea he’d been feeding her that had her eyes so dazed and confused.
“Is he here?” she whispered. “I wasn’t supposed to leave, but I had to. I had to! Gabe… he’s going to kill me…”
“He’ll have to get through me first,” Cullen vowed. Why he said it, he didn’t know. Why he meant it, he knew even less, but a man was nothing if he could not honor his word. Cullen had done a lot of wrong in his life, but that was one sin—perhaps the only one—he’d never have to apologize for. Holding her arms over her chest to still her weak struggles, he brushed a stray lock of midnight black hair back from her sweaty brow. “Lie still. I’ve got you, Chinny girl. You’re safe with me.”
“No. You don’t understand.” She shook her head, but then, she was shaking everywhere now. The flush of her fever never left her skin and yet she seemed to pale before his eyes. “He’ll kill everybody. He’s done it before.”
He caressed the honey-bronzed softness of her cheek. “So have I,” he told her, a confession he’d once told himself he’d never breathe word of again. “He’ll have a helluva time getting past me.”
“My mother…” Chin began to cry. “My father and my brothers…” she wailed.
“Shh.” But she was too far gone—the fever, the tea, and whatever demons haunted her past, they had her in a grip her weak struggles could not tear free of. Perhaps being a gwailo had its benefits. Sometimes it took one demon to fight off others.
He shouldn’t do it. He knew he shouldn’t. It felt too much like taking advantage when she was in no condition at all to tell him to stop, but Cullen could bear anything but that look of fear and her tears.
“Shh,” he whispered again, shifting to lay down beside her. She was under the sheet; he stayed on top of it, keeping at least that thin barrier of decency between them. “Shh, you’re going to be fine.”
He wrapped his arm around her, holding her as tight as he could without hurting her. He let her cry, because sometimes that was what a body needed to purge the darkness and find some ease. Somewhere between the hiccups and groans, the weariness took her over and she finally fell asleep, but Cullen never did. He stayed awake, one ear turned toward the window, listening for anything that didn’t sound like thunder or rain.
Just before dawn, Chin awoke, but only long enough to take notice of him and how close he lay. “Twenty dollars,” she mumbled.
“I know.” He coaxed her to drink more tea and then lay down beside her again. “Thirty if I tied you to the bed. Thirty-five if I make you bathe in ice. Don’t worry, Chinny honey. I paid at the door.”
Chapter Nine
She was burning.
She was drowning, the air so thick and hot and wet that it hurt just to breathe.
Chin tossed, unable to escape the constant mugginess. Unable, no matter how she twisted or turned, to escape the agony of every spasm and twitch that her restless muscles forced her to bend to. And the pain… she moaned; she wept.
Sometimes the brush of a cool cloth came, wiping at her face, her chest and her legs, easing the constant misery for a short time. But the relief never lasted for long because, while the cloth did manage to chase away the fire, after it was gone, in swept the cold and then she froze. The shivering hurt far, far more than the twitching did. She tried to tell her mother that and beg for a blanket, and never mind that she knew—knew—her mother had been dead for years, she could see her, hovering over the bed with that cool cloth that eased the fire and brought on the shakes clutched in her soft, elegant hand.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked, reaching for her. “So sorry for what I’ve become.”
But her mother passed no judgments. She did, howeve
r, press a cup to her lips, lifting Chin’s head so that she could drink. She’d expected hot Gan Cao tea, but what flooded her mouth tasted nothing like the licorice drink her mother had always sworn by. It was cold and so cloyingly sweet that it left a bitter, rancid taste in her mouth. It made her head swim too, even more than it already was. She fought the effects, but her eyes grew heavy anyway, too heavy to keep open.
Despite her best efforts, Chin slept and when next she awoke, her mother was gone and Cullen had taken her place. Not just beside her bed, but stretched out beside her and fast asleep with his heavy arm across her waist and his other hand holding fast onto the wrist of her bad hand. It was throbbing, hot pulses that radiated all the way up her arm. His grip made it hurt worse, and she tried to pull back, but he woke the minute she moved and then he was on her, a massive weight more than twice her size, pinning her down into the hot sweltering softness of the bed.
“Shh, it’s all right, Chinny honey,” he said, climbing on top of her to still her struggles.
The agony made her scream. She blacked out.
When next she awoke, she was five years old, crying over the small, still body of a white puppy, the only one in a litter of four that hadn’t survived beyond birth. Her father’s hand felt so warm, so real upon her shoulder as he said, “All of life is a dream walking, all of death is a going home. Do not weep. The Mighty Dragon protects us all.”
He stroked her hair, his long-fingered hand becoming thicker, broader, the light brown hue growing darker right before her eyes. His features wavered, melting into a face she didn’t recognize. So wizened and wrinkled and…foreign that it barely seemed human to her much less like her father. No longer tied up in the bun of a noble lord, his long black hair hung loose about his shoulder and was pinned with long feathers. His royal silk robe became buckskin, decorated in beads and bone, and he wasn’t alone. There were others like him prancing at her bedside, chanting words she didn’t understand, smudging the air over her with smoking bundles of tightly bound herbs.
Cullen knelt behind her head, one hand firm upon her burning forehead and the other pressing down on her chest. She didn’t do groups. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but he stopped her.
“Twenty dollars,” he said grimly. “I know, honey. I know. You’re going to be all right. It’ll be over soon, and you’re going to be fine.”
The old Indian shifted at her side, taking hold of her bad hand as a companion passed him a knife. As one, they moved in to hold her, but it wasn’t until she felt that first cut that she saw Quan Ji. His royal guard holding her down, Ji’s face held neither malice nor regret as he sliced down the length of her grossly swollen fingers, lancing her whole arm in hellfire and releasing a spurt of pus and blood.
She screamed, scream after scream, cut after cut, bucking and fighting to get out from under their hold, but she hadn’t the strength or the leverage, and Quan Ji’s work never faltered. He tortured her the way she deserved to be tortured, punishing her for having escaped him, for having fled while all the rest of her family died.
Run, her mother whispered.
“Help me!” she wailed back, and perhaps it was her cowardice that won her ancestors’ contempt. No one came, no one helped, and Quan Ji cut her over and over, opening up her hand to let the fire out before turning his attention to her knee.
“No!” she begged Cullen, but he refused even to look at her. That restless muscle leapt and bunched along the hard line of his jaw as he fixed his almost angry stare on some obscure thing across the room, away from her so he would not have to see. But he could feel, she knew he could feel, and he was not unaffected. Each time she cried out, his body grew tenser above hers. His hands on her forehead and chest did not weaken, but his lips pulled away from tightly gritted teeth, teeth that grew longer and sharper, and fanged. His eyes turned red and the heat in the room swelled until it became impossible that her flesh could endure without burning all the way to her bones.
“Enough!” he roared, releasing her chest to lash out, knocking Quan Ji back.
The royal guard tried to stop him, but Cullen was changing. Rippling in the sweltering waves of heat searing her from the inside out. He became a dragon. The Mighty Dragon, filling the room with his heat and his fury, crawling practically on top of her as he batted at them with his fists.
The darkness rose, flowing over her like a warm ocean wave, lapping at her consciousness and beckoning her to come drown beneath it.
Cullen looked down at her and for just a moment, as their eyes met, she saw him. Just him. The white devil. The man.
But that was all right, because she’d also seen the other part of him; the dragon part. And as her father had already told her, the Mighty Dragon protected them all.
Chapter Ten
“Well,” Garrett said from the window. One of the Indian healers must have looked back then, because he nodded and raised his hand by way of a fare-thee-well wave. “That was a pig well-spent. What we’re going to eat come winter, I have no idea.”
“If you think we’ll still be here for winter, you’re as delusional as Chin,” Cullen countered without rancor. He was too tired for rancor. Sitting on the edge of her bed, he ran both hands through his hair. He was too tired for a lot of things, including a bath and he desperately needed one.
It had been three days. Three of the longest of his life, but although the Indians’ ministrations had been nothing short of barbaric, something in their medicine must have worked because sometime during the wee hours of the morning, Chin’s fever finally broke. Her hand and knee looked better too, despite the old healer’s cuts, and so after two days of non-stop chanting, smudging and sweating, the Indians had packed their herbs and left.
“I can’t believe you took a swing at their medicine man,” Garrett said, after a short pause. “I can’t believe they didn’t kill you for riding right into the middle of their camp like that. It’s not like they’ve got a whole lot of fondness for crazy white people to begin with.”
No, they didn’t, Cullen privately agreed. They didn’t have a lot of reasons to like them, but also, Cullen hadn’t had a lot of options. The night Chin’s fever and delusions hit their pinnacle, the rain had finally ceased. He’d tried, but the flood waters had been raging and no matter what way he rode, driving Nico to the fullest of the stallion’s capabilities, he could find no place to cross that would not guarantee either his death or the horse’s, or both. It had been pure dumb luck that he’d stumbled upon the migrating tribe in the midst of sitting down around a supper of stolen cow—Cullen did another mental deduction. That they hadn’t immediately shot him off his horse had been dumb luck too.
Garrett was quiet again. “I hope she doesn’t get worse again. Pig or not, I doubt they’ll come back if she does. Smacking at a medicine man seems a might offensive.”
“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?” Elbows braced on his knees, Cullen rubbed his face.
“Maybe we should have given them the chickens too. One less thing to have to pack, and all that.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Cullen said wearily.
Turning from the window, for the first time in days, Garrett grinned. It looked as thin and tired as Cullen felt. “You’re right,” his brother said. “We will figure it out. Only thing I’m curious about is, are we figuring it out for two people… or is it three now, do you think?”
Raising his head, Cullen stared at him. “You think I’m going to run off in the middle of the night and not tell you?”
“Oh no.” Shaking his head, Garrett came away from the window. He stopped at the foot of the bed, his gaze drifting to Chin. “We’ve been thick as inkle weavers, as Ma was so fond of saying, practically from birth. Remember how she’d tell folks I used to follow you like a lost chick? Hell.” He laughed, soft and rueful. “I followed you all the way into the military and, damn, if I didn’t look good in that uniform.”
“How would you know?” Snorting, Cullen half-smiled now too. “You were never in it longer t
han it took some pretty girl to bat her eyelashes…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Garrett drawled. “Control your jealousy. If you’d smiled once in a while, it would have been you they’d have gathered round and we both know it. The thing is…” Though Garrett never lost his smile, somehow it seemed thinner. “Short of this country going to war—I mean, a real war; not that bullshit we waged against the Indians—I’ll never put on a uniform again. That part of my life is over. I’m not saying I regret it exactly, but I’ll never repeat it. So, if pulling up stakes here is what we’ve got to do, I’m with you. I don’t care where we go—Texas, New York. Hell, I saw an ad in the Culpepper Daily a few months back calling men to Australia. I’d even go there. But I’ll never pick up a gun, point it at a man just trying to defend his home and his family, and pull that trigger again. God and me… we squared ourselves to what I’ve done a long time ago. I know you ain’t never found that peace, and I hope one day you do. But last week when you were cooking and you laughed at what Chinny called you—” Garrett tsked, giving his head a shake. “That was the first time I’ve heard you laugh in almost three years. Since she’s been here, trouble that she is, you done smiled twice. Do you know that?”
Uncomfortable awareness itched up Cullen’s back. Try though he did, he couldn’t see where this was going. “I didn’t realize you were keeping track.”
“Well, after so long, it just sort of catches the eye,” Garrett said with an easy shrug. He looked at Chin, sleeping peacefully for the first time since her injuries. When his gaze found his brother’s again, his smile dimmed a little. “We both know what she is,” he said, then raised a hand to stop Cullen before he could do more than open his mouth in her defense. “I don’t care. Really, I don’t. Like I got any right to judge the sins of another with the ghosts I’ve got riding my coattails. If she makes you smile, then as far as I’m concerned, when she gets up out of that bed I got no problem kissing her cheek and calling her little sister. My only point is, that two men can pull up stakes and move a whole lot easier than two men and a woman.”