At length, he pushed her away but still held her with his arms. “I missed you, too, Layla,” he said. He shook his head wryly, as though he couldn’t believe what he was feeling and saying. “I do believe I got you stuck in my craw, and that’s not good.”
She placed both her hands on his forearms and squeezed, staring deeply into his troubled eyes. She felt as light-headed as she did after slogging through snow on brittle winter afternoons. Her stomach was rolling, doing flip-flops. “Why isn’t it good?”
“You don’t know who—what—I am.”
“You’re a bounty hunter,” she said. “That’s not so bad. It’s like a lawman in a way ... isn’t it?”
He shook his head, releasing her, and looked away. “No. That’s not what I mean.” He turned to her again, this time with a pained expression on his handsome, stubbly face. “I’m a drifter. I ride from place to place looking for wanted men I can turn in for the bounty, so I can have a good time for a few weeks, until I run out of money and have to start drifting and hunting again.”
She stared at him, not quite sure what he was telling her. Her emotions were changing so fast, she couldn’t get a fix on them. All she knew was that she wanted him to kiss her again, to hold her, and to make her forget all about her promise to her father.
Staring at her, he smiled suddenly, but the only humor it contained was a dark, sardonic kind. “You don’t know about my pact with the devil, do you?”
Her brows knitted. “Huh?”
He turned away again, removed his hat, and ran a big hand through his light-brown hair, which had matted with sweat to his skull. “Yeah, I made a pact with ole Scratch a few years back, after the war. After seein’ half my family either killed or maimed in the Little Misunderstandin’, I promised the devil that if he showed me a really good time for the rest of my years here on this side of the sod, I’d shovel all the coal he wanted down below.”
Prophet chuckled and set his hat back on his head with a careless flair and a grin. He turned to her. “So that’s what I’ve spent the last ten years or so doin’: havin’ one hell of a good time.”
“What are you saying, Lou?” She truly didn’t understand.
“I’m saying I’m a hell of a lot older than you in more than years, Layla Carr. My soul is plumb ancient. You’re just a kid. Eighteen years old. You don’t need an old man like me takin’ advantage of your youth and beauty.”
He looked her up and down. It wasn’t like him to be at once so humorless and droll, so sarcastic. Suddenly, she felt insulted, almost violated.
“Hell, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t hesitate one bit about takin’ a girl who looked like you into the old mattress sack, peckin’ her cheek in the mornin’, and ridin’ off into the sunset.”
“Is that all it would be to you?” she said, feeling her lips tremble and her chest tighten. Suddenly she was falling down a very deep, very dark well.
He turned completely away from her, giving her his back. Softly, staring at the barn, he said, “That’s all it’s ever been to me.”
He stood there for a long time, staring at the gray logs of the barn, feeling his own chest tightening, as though squeezed by a massive vise. Finally, he swung around, saying, “Ah, hell, you’re Gregor Lang’s woman, any—”
But she no longer stood behind him. She was walking away across the barnyard, disappearing in the darkness.
He heard the porch steps creak as she climbed them, the screen door squeak as it opened and slapped shut behind hen
“Ah, hell,” he said to no one. He turned and looked at Mean and Ugly, contentedly munching hay. He knew he should leave here, but he didn’t feel like saddling the horse and riding anymore tonight. He’d had three days of that. Besides, Ugly needed a good night’s rest as badly as Prophet did.
He grabbed his Winchester and ten-gauge, went into the barn, lit a lantern hanging from a post, and found a comfortable mound of hay. He stood the guns against the post, removed his hat, sat down in the hay, and kicked off his boots, thinking over every word of the conversation he’d had with Layla, feeling sick and empty inside, but not regretting a sentence.
When his boots were off, he blew out the lantern, removed his gun belt, and coiled it beside him. Then he lay back in the hay and folded his arms across his chest, closing his eyes.
“Had to be done,” he told himself with a final sigh of the day. “Had to be done.”
He’d just fallen asleep when he heard footsteps outside. He grabbed his gun as the barn door opened and a lantern was raised, nearly blinding him.
“Who the hell—?” he barked, ratcheting his gun hammer back.
“It’s just me,” Layla said. “Easy, cowboy.”
Chapter Seventeen
“WHA-WHAT THE HELL do you want now?” he complained. He’d finally gotten his mind off her and had fallen asleep, and here she was again.
She stepped into the barn, set the lantern on a rough wooden bench, and turned to him, lit from the side and slightly behind by the lantern. She was wearing only a striped Indian blanket. Her legs and feet were bare. Her hair lay fanned across her shoulders. With the light on it, it glowed like a jar of honey held to the sun.
She moved to him where he sat in the hay looking up at her, his jaw hanging.
She squinted her eyes at him disdainfully. “I just came back to tell you I think you’re full of shit.” The words were hard but oddly lacking in rancor.
He climbed to his feet. His legs were wobbly. For a long time, he stared down at her, breathing heavily through his mouth. He ran his eyes again across her bare shoulders, down the quilt to her bare feet on the hay-matted floor. The feet were long and smooth and delicate, and the smallest two toes of her right foot rose a little from the floor. It was a shy, fidgeting gesture. She stared up at him defiantly. Then, slowly, his hands rose from his sides. He peeled the blanket off her shoulders and let it drop.
She exhaled softly and gave a shudder as he ran his hands down her arms and cupped her full, firm breasts, kneading them tenderly, the calluses and rope burns scratching just a little. Goose bumps rose on her skin, and she swallowed, her breath coming hard as her desire grew, and she placed her hands on his. His hands were large and hard but at once soft and pliable, and she wanted them slid across every inch of her body.
All at once, he picked her up in his arms and kissed her, long and deep. When he was done, he knelt and lay her gently down in the hay. Turning, he picked up the blanket she’d been wearing, and spread it out beside her. She slid onto it, then lay back, one knee up and tilted modestly over the other, and watched him undress, shirt first, then jeans and underwear, all of which he tossed brusquely aside as he stared into her eyes.
She couldn’t have been more grateful that the sarcasm and mirth that had darkened his gaze only a few minutes ago had left without a trace. His eyes were filled now with warm desire, traces of the old humor crinkling their corners.
As he knelt down, she saw his member, fully erect. As he leaned toward her, she pushed his shoulders. “Wait.” And he sank back on the hay.
Smiling adventurously, she pushed herself up and crouched between his legs, taking the member in her right hand, feeling it throb as though with a life of its own. Staring at it, appraising it from only an inch away, she giggled.
He swallowed and rasped, his voice constricted with passion. “You’re not... you’re not s’posed to laugh with a man’s dong in your hands, girl.”
“I’ve never seen one before,” she said, lips parted, smiling at it. “I mean, I’ve seen the boys’, of course, but never ...” Her voice went low, and her smile faded from her lips. “... never a real man’s.”
She stroked it several times, slowly, then kissed it. With a girlish squeal of delight, she lifted her head and bounded into Prophet’s arms, which engulfed her completely as she kissed him.
As he rolled her onto her back, she pulled away from him and gave him a schoolmarm’s reprimanding glower. “I’ve never done this before, Lou Pro
phet. You be gentle with me.”
He smiled and kissed her, smoothed her hair away from her face. “Where is this taking us, Miss Carr?”
She clutched his hands in hers and lifted her face to within an inch of his. Her eyes were smoky with desire and suffused with all the sadness, longing, and loneliness of her young life. Her voice was half a whisper, half a cry.
“Who cares?”
Then she smiled and lay back, and he entangled himself in her arms.
Later, she lay with her head on his chest, hair fanned across his belly. He ran his hands over it, absently, staring into the shadows.
“You were right,” she said sleepily but with a touch of humor in her voice. “I did kiss you.”
He looked down at her. “What’s that?”
“Back in the cave. I kissed you.” He felt her lips form a grin.
“I knew it. Why?”
She shrugged. “You were calling out someone’s name. Over and over again. You were delirious. Almost in tears. It just seemed like the only way to give you comfort.” She lifted her head to look at him directly. “But I’m not a loose woman, Mr. Prophet.”
He smiled, took her face in his hands, and kissed her lips. She smiled back at him and rested her head again on his chest.
“Whose name was I calling?”
“Robbie, I think it was.”
Prophet sighed and looked off. “My cousin. Killed in the war... because of me.”
“Why because of you?”
“He signed up because I signed up. He was only fifteen, a year younger than me. A Yankee sharpshooter got him on the road south of Chattanooga, when we were withdrawing to Dalton.” Prophet wagged his head darkly. “I cried over that boy for an hour ... holding his head in my lap on a muddy road in the rain.”
She turned her head slightly and rolled her eyes to look up at his face, studying him quizzically. Finally, she said, “Is he the reason you made the pact with the devil?”
“One of ‘em. One of many.”
“You been havin’ a good time?”
Prophet bounced one shoulder. “I can’t complain. Ole Scratch has been doin’ all right by Lou Prophet.”
“Well, don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry about what?”
“I’m not going to hold you to anything.”
“What about Gregor?”
“What about him?”
“You still gonna marry him?”
“Of course,” she said, though her voice lacked conviction. There was a pause. His hands had stilled on her hair.
She turned her head to look hopefully into his face. “Don’t you want me to?”
He thought about this, not quite believing that he was actually in love with her. He’d loved only two other women in his life—a teenage sweetheart and the showgirl, Lola Diamond. He wasn’t sure now that he’d ever really loved the other two. What he’d felt for them had been powerful, but not nearly as powerful as what he felt for this girl sprawled naked between his legs.
He hadn’t been able to admit it to himself before, but he loved her. Oh, how he loved her! He, Lou Prophet, the man who’d made the pact with the devil. Mr. Footloose-and-Fancy-Free himself.
How could he not? How could any man not love someone so honest and lovely and filled with such earthy vitality? A girl who could cuss like a mule skinner and love like an angel?
But now that he did love her, what in the hell was he going to do?
He could come to no reasonable answer other than to pretend that he did not. What else could he do? He had a small, well-armed cavalry after him, and the odds of his surviving even a few more days were slim. Why pull her into his life when there wasn’t much of it left? Why make her break her promise to Gregor Lang and to her father for a corpse?
Even if Loomis hadn’t been in the picture, Lou Prophet was not a one-woman man, no matter how much, at the moment, he wanted to be.
He never should have come here. Never should have made love to her. There had just been no getting her out of his craw.
And now he had to hurt her.
“Lou,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you want me to marry Gregor?”
He swallowed and sighed. “You better.”
And that was the end of it. She blew out the lantern and came to him once more, straddling him, placing his hands on her breasts as she worked away on top of him, rocking her hips gently, shedding tears on his chest and belly. When they were through, she collapsed on him, sobbing silently.
“I think you’re full of shit, Lou Prophet,” she half whispered, half cried.
And then they slept.
When he woke in the morning, she was gone.
He was still looking around, sleep-foggy and blinking, keenly aware of her absence, when he heard footsteps approaching the barn. He reached for his revolver but couldn’t find it.
The barn doors parted, opening, filling the barn front with pale morning light. A floppy-hatted figure stepped inside, silhouetted against the sky and holding a wooden milk bucket instead of the gun Prophet had feared. Layla’s brother, Charlie. Apparently not noticing Prophet lying in the hay to the boy’s right, Charlie kicked a prop before one of the doors and walked toward the back of the barn, whistling.
Prophet sighed with relief.
While the boy whistled and milked the cow, the jets of liquid hitting the bucket with high, wooden reports, Prophet found his gun, which must have gotten buried in the hay during his and Layla’s lovemaking. He dressed, gathered his weapons, and stepped outside, donning his hat.
It was a fresh, clear morning, with swallows wheeling and the sun casting its buttery glow over the eastern buttes—another morning to be thankful for, as his mother used to say. But Prophet felt hollow and out of sorts and wishing to hell he would have stayed clear of this place.
Last night had been pure, unmitigated bliss. But in its wake he felt as though he’d taken a dive off a high cliff. Now, in spite of her eagerness to spend the night in his arms, he felt like an old fool who’d taken advantage of a lonely young woman. Taken her virginity, as a matter of fact.
Now he’d leave, and in spite of the fact that it was the best thing for them both, he felt like a heel. Not that he hadn’t loved and left other women—hell, strings of other women!—but this one wasn’t like the others, most of whom he’d paid for their services.
This one he loved.
Shaking his head at the improbability of the situation— Lou Prophet in love!—he turned and headed for the corral.
“Where you goin’?”
Prophet stopped and turned toward the cabin, which several gold rays of the rising sun had discovered with its roof of tawny grass and weeds. Layla stood on the stoop, leaning against one of the posts holding up the awning. She held a cigarette in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. Even from this distance, he could see a soft smile on her lovely mouth.
Prophet remembered the old Southern adage: “Her smile makes the old feel young and the poor feel rich.”
“I reckon I’ll be headin’ out,” he said.
“Not before breakfast,” she objected. “Get up here.”
He tipped his hat back and looked at her skeptically. Then he shook his head and, with his rifle in his right hand and the shotgun hanging down his back from its worn leather lanyard, he walked to the porch. He stopped at the bottom step and gazed up at her.
“Good morning, Miss Carr.”
Her eyes were demure. She lifted the heel of one of her scuffed boots and twisted the toe against the worn porch floor. Strands of her freshly plaited hair wisped in the dewy breeze. “Mornin’, Mr. Prophet.”
“I don’t want to put you out....”
“It ain’t puttin’ me out.”
There was a long pause as she stared across the ranch yard at the chicken coop, where Keith must have been gathering eggs, for the roosters were crowing and the hens’ raucous complaints echoed. He stared up at her, wanting to make love to her all over aga
in.
Finally, she leaned over the railing, offering him her coffee cup. When he took it, she turned and disappeared inside the cabin.
Sheepishly, hating himself, hating his life, he climbed the steps, leaned his guns against the cabin, took a long sip of the hot coffee, and sat down in a chair with a heavy sigh. He took another sip of the coffee and set the cup on the porch rail while he built a smoke and lit it. Regaining his coffee, he sat back in his chair, hiked a boot on a knee, sipped the coffee and smoked, and let his gaze wander around the ranch yard.
It wasn’t a bad place, all in all. The barn needed more chinking between its logs, the chicken coop could use a new roof, and the main corral posts needed tamping, but this was certainly a place a man could call home—if he was given to calling anywhere home, that was. Prophet wondered what it would be like, living here with her and the boys. Having a wife making breakfast for him mornings. Having a bed to sleep in, a favorite chair to sit in, a ranch to tend, a herd to manage.
A real life. Not the cheap imitation he was living now, roaming from place to place, hunting men here and there, squandering bounties in places like Denver, Dodge City, Kansas City, Abilene, and, occasionally, Tombstone and Tucson and other points south and west. A different woman every night. Breakfast with strangers in the morning.
Just him and Mean and Ugly and lonely trail nights under the stars with a moon quartering and wolves howling ...
But he’d said no to a real life a long time ago. Could he say yes to it now? Could he live here, day in and day out, and be happy?
It didn’t really matter if he could or couldn’t, now, did it? He was a wanted man. Lighting here wasn’t an option—not without getting Layla and her brothers murdered by Loomis.
But what if he tended to Loomis? What if, after the smoke cleared and the dust settled and all the trouble was behind him ... ?
What then?
He remembered how she’d looked late last night, asleep beside him, blond hair fanned across her slender back, pale young breasts snugged against his side—
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