Worry lined his forehead. His jaw tightened. “Are you allergic?”
“I don’t know. Do scorpions make you itch?”
“When they bite their sting burns. Do you burn, honey?”
She stilled. “I am kind of…giddy.”
“Hey.” He felt her head then put a hand to her wrist. “How’s your breathing? Pulse is fast. You feel okay?”
“Sure. Wonderful.” She smiled at him, woozy and suddenly just not…caring…any longer…about bugs as she slid to the dirt.
“Oh, hell.” Wade caught her to him as she swooned. She had been bitten and gone into shock because he’d been an infatuated puppy. He should beat himself silly with a dead porcupine. Striding with her to his horse, he dug in his saddlebag for his cell phone. Coverage in the hills could be damn spotty but he prayed for a good patch. Fishing out his phone, he hit 9-1-1 and shut his eyes in thanks when he heard a dial tone and friendly voice at the other end.
“Hey, Mo!” he barked at his dispatcher. “Get the EMS team out to me pronto.”
“Sheriff? Copy that. What is your emergency?” Mo was always after him about his diet, eating too much beef and heading for a first-class heart attack. Whenever he called like this she was quick to assume he called for himself.
“I have Miss Turner with me out here at the Bull Rock, off Highway 46. She’s been bitten by scorpions and she may have gone into anaphylaxis. I need cortisone and fast.”
“Yes sir. How long since she’s been bitten?”
“A minute, max. But her reaction was fast. Too fast.”
“I hear you. Let me patch you through.”
“Fine.” Wade shifted Willow in his arms and looked at her face. Out cold. With her head flung back, her lips parted, she looked as though she was sleeping. God, she was lovely and too damn precious to lose like this. Hell, if only he’d been more careful of her and not tried to—
“Wade?” A male voice crackled through the static. “Doc Benedict here. You have someone in shock?”
“I do, Doc. Scorpions might have gotten her. Three maybe. Not sure.” In the background Wade could hear the rev of the EMS truck and the barking signal of an alert at the firehouse on Main Street in Bravado.
“Is she allergic?”
“I had just asked her that but she passed out before she answered. Bottom line, I have no idea.”
“Okay. Let’s see.” The doc sounded as though he was walking, opening a door, slamming it. “Maureen says you are off Route 46 near Bull Rock?”
“Yeah. If you don’t encounter any traffic holdups on the road it’ll take you fifteen minutes to get here. “
“Are you in your truck?”
“No. Horseback.”
“Can you ride with her to the main road?”
He’d dead-carried many a GI to sickbay, many a drunk to the dry-out tank. She weighed nada compared to those dudes. “I’ll do it.”
“Go at a walk. Not even a canter. She could convulse, you could lose hold of her and she’d fall, break a bone.”
“Don’t worry, Giles. I won’t drop her.”
“Better not,” he said with humor. “You’d have a few bachelors in Bravado mighty upset if you killed her.”
Smart-ass. “Do not sass me, Benedict.”
“Sheriff, you can’t arrest me.” The new guy in town was having a hearty chuckle at Wade’s expense. Too bad, Wade didn’t have the heart for humor at the moment.
“I damn well can, doctor or not. I’m off the line now.”
“Wait! Is she breathing heavily?”
Wade bent down to put his lips close to hers. Poor baby, she was so gone to la-la land. “Seems normal.”
“Take her pulse.”
“Can’t.” Wade clicked his tongue at his horse to move to one side so that he might mount the animal from the top of the rock.
“You must!” Benedict slammed a car door.
“I am not setting her down on the ground again, Benedict, so get that straight. We got a nest of scorpions out here and they love her. No dice.”
“Okay. Cool off! But listen, if she begins to pant or the opposite, if she heats up and doesn’t look like she’s breathing at all, you’ll have to do mouth-to-mouth.”
“Got it. I know emergency procedures.”
“You’re up on that?”
Wade ground his teeth. “I am up on that, Doc.”
“Good. Okay, Shannon, you ready?”
“Sure thing, Doc.” Shannon O’Donnell was Giles’ driver today?
Wonderful. Just what I need. My ex-wife’s sister broadcasting what I do on my off hours. Shannon never missed a trick and never failed to report it to the world. Even though the fire chief had warned her often that she’d be dismissed for unprofessional conduct, she gave out gossip as if she were the anchor on the ten o’clock news.
“Benedict, look for me along the path of the Duck River. I’m on a quarter horse.”
“Will do. Take it slowly.”
“I will,” Wade said and signed off then called Mo again. “Call my bunkhouse and get my foreman to come meet me and take my animals. I’ll be going with Miss Turner to the ER and I need my two horses taken to my barn.”
Signing off with Mo, he crooned to his horse about how they were going to cooperate and do this little trick nice and easy. One foot in a stirrup, he swung himself up and his other leg over, settling Willow into the curve of his arms. Careful of how she lay against his torso he cradled her close. Shuddering in fear, he nestled his nose into the soft hair at her temple and uttered a little prayer she’d be fine. As he raised his head, he trained his gaze on the plush center of her lips and pressed his mouth there.
She nigh unto purred. “If you think you can kiss me,” she drawled, “and I won’t know it, you’re wrong.”
He drew away, his lips curling in delight that she was back with him. He kneed his horse to begin a walk and heard the other mount following behind. “I’m trying to save your pretty hide. Can you breathe? How’s your heart rate?”
“Breathing is good. Heart rate, not so.”
“No?” He glared at her, his blood pumping in fright.
“Looking at you?” she said, laughter in her wispy voice. “Makes me want to jump out a window.”
“No windows here.” He massaged her shoulder and cuddled her close while the horse clip-clopped on down the dirt path.
“Off this horse, then.” She beamed at him, dreamy-eyed and lolling in his arms.
Wrapping her more firmly to him, he grinned at her as he examined her. “Are you with us? Or dopey?”
“Dopey.” She snuggled against him, burrowing her nose into the fabric of his shirt, rubbing against his nipple and making his cock jump. “Love how you smell.”
Love how you feel. All soft and warm and cuddled in my arms. He gulped. She made him feel young again, stupid and infatuated. “How’s that?”
“Leather and dust. Yum.”
Now he was hard, curious and oh so wary of her mental state. Driving his fingers into her hair, he pressed a kiss to her ear. “Do not move, honey. You might be really sick.”
She whimpered and tried to push away from him. “You’re not comfortable.”
Don’t I know it. “No squirming. Uncomfortable or not we’re walking to the main highway.”
One of her hands lay flat against his ribs, the other was tucked under her. She tried to turn to look at him. “You’re very determined, Sheriff.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Why are you?” she asked, dazed, her umber gaze an appreciative caress of his features.
“Because I’m to blame for you getting bitten by scorpions. I never should have let you roll to the ground. I must have my head examined.”
“Whoa there. No more.” She waved away his words. “We don’t do apologies here. You wouldn’t let me yesterday. You can’t now.” She wiggled. “Why can’t I get up? I’m not an invalid.”
“You do sound better,” he said as he grasped her wrist and flung her arm over
his shoulder. “Now come on up here.”
The way he swung her around had her mound pressed right smack dab to the bulge that strained his sensitive crotch.
“That is,” she said, her eyes drifting shut and her mouth dropping open, “wonderful. Oh. My.” She arched, her head falling back, her straight black hair streaming like a river of silk into his hands.
If she rubbed his cock and balls any harder he was going to lose his wad right in his pants. He swallowed. He hadn’t done that since he was sixteen, grinding away in the backseat of his father’s Jeep. It had been where all his troubles began. Shooting his cum, losing his mind over a woman who was fine and lovely and willing to spread her thighs for him. Was he deluding himself into thinking that this one was worth more than a good roll in the hay?
“Kiss me,” she beseeched him, her eyes wistful, her words whispers on the wind.
Enchanted, he held her tightly. “You’re a damn tease.”
“Mmm. Think of it as therapeutic.”
“If kissing calms you down then either I’m doing it wrong or we have no business locking lips.”
“Bet none of that will happen.” She splayed her fingers in his hair, drawing him down to her. “Where’s your hat, sweetie?”
“Lost it,” he told her as he let her rub her hot lips over his. “Yours too.”
“Along with my mind,” she said on a sigh as she drilled her nipples into his chest, grabbed him close and kissed him as though she might never have another chance.
God. What was he going to do with so much woman? She better remain eager for him for at least another four or five hours until he got her home and recovered from the bug bites.
He tore away from the kiss. “No more.”
She pouted, her gaze sultry and downright woozy. She pushed against him, trying to get away.
“Hold on there.” He grabbed her.
“You don’t want me to kiss you?” She was angry, insulted. “Let me down.”
“You think you’re leaving me? Here?”
She glanced around, frowned and swayed against him.
He wrapped her close, the feel of her supple body the solace that calmed him. “You, my hardheaded Willow, are befuddled by those scorpions. You’re not going anywhere. We’ll let Doc Benedict check you out then I am taking you home with me.”
“You are?” she asked, as enchanted as if the idea was the only comfort she had ever wanted.
Speechless, he nodded.
She hugged him so hard he went weak as a calf. The steel in his swollen cock told him he could be strong as a bull.
“I am not leaving you alone tonight.” I’ll play nurse…and hell if I won’t be a real good boy.
Chapter Five
Willow opened her eyes to the long shadows of dust seeping through the drawn curtains. The bedroom was big and strange. A dark oak armoire stood along one wall, and an elaborate Spanish silver-rimmed, floor-length mirror in one corner. The bed had to be a king size with six-foot carved spindles. A big playground for a big man.
She grinned but lost it in a heartbeat when she bet that the to-die-for sheriff spent few nights single in his nice broad bed.
She blinked, forcing her mind to recall the afternoon. Wade’s ranch foreman had arrived at the rock first with one of his wranglers, waiting to depart with the two horses until after the ambulance arrived with Giles Benedict and his female EMT driver. Those two had met Willow and Wade at the edge of the Duck River path. The woman had been quiet, almost too much so, her eagle eyes eating up Wade as though she’d have him for breakfast and sizing up Willow as though she’d prefer to peck her to death.
Giles, on the other hand, had offered a breath of fresh air and assurances Willow would recover. Willow had been scared by her reaction to the scorpions. Bugs, she had never liked, but she hadn’t ever fainted when she’d been bitten. Giles explained that her reaction was a cumulative one.
“You should have an Epi-Pen and carry it with you all the time,” he advised as he shot her up with cortisone, taking her blood pressure and temperature then pronouncing her fit as a fiddle.
“Still feel fuzzy in the head,” she told him as she settled against Wade’s chest with a sigh. Wade hadn’t let her out of his arms since she’d collapsed, even holding her in the back of the ambulance while Giles examined her.
“That’s normal. But you need rest,” Giles told her.
“She’ll get it,” Wade assured him.
Giles had shot a nasty look at Wade. Giles, no doubt about it, had been jealous. She also had no idea what to say to sooth Giles’ feelings. She liked the doctor.
But Wade had a sharp edge of danger to him that drew her like good old-fashioned sin. His embrace had been one of three finest experiences of her visit to Bravado to date. And his kisses had been the next best with the feel of his rigid cock against her pussy by far the greatest experience of her two days in Texas.
“I’ll be good,” she had told Giles when he’d ordered her to drink lots of fluids and take a long nap.
“Take these pills too.” He had pressed a prescription into Wade’s hand. “You need them. They have the proper dose of cortisone in them for the next few days. And stay off your feet until you see how you tolerate them.”
“I’ll take her home with me, Giles,” Wade had been quick to tell him.
Giles had locked eyes with Wade. “If you’re on duty I’ll—”
“Not a problem,” Wade’d bit off. “My deputies are on duty this weekend. Willow will be well taken care of.”
Giles had checked Willow’s gaze. “Sound good to you?”
Had there been some reason Wade and the good doctor seemed to have a conflict? Whatever it was, it wasn’t Willow’s business.
“Absolutely fine.”
“I’ll call you to check how you’re doing.”
“Thanks. Give him my number, would you please, Wade?” She watched Giles fight a smile and Wade clench his jaw. Never having had two men vie for her, she thought this was either great fun or she was goofy on Giles’ meds. But Giles packed up, patted her hand and stood.
Wade led her to his truck while his foreman and wrangler mounted the two horses and headed down the trail back to Wade’s ranch.
That had been hours ago, clearly, by the light from the far window. A tiny light flickered from her phone on the nightstand. Smiling, she reached for it. Her head spun a little as she pushed the button and saw that Giles had called three times. Not really up to talking to him and possibly encountering some of the conflict she had sensed between him and Wade she texted him back. I’m awake. Sorry for delay. Woozy here, but good. THX for coming to fix me up!
Footsteps had her turning her head toward the door.
“You’re awake!”
Willow smiled at the dark shadow filling the doorway and put her phone down. “I am. Hi!”
Wade sauntered in, his hulking form silhouetted in the golden light behind him. “Hungry?”
“Starving and thirsty too.”
He leaned over her, a satisfied smile tipping up the corners of his generous mouth. “I can fix all that.”
She raised her head, the better to inhale the rich aromas from the kitchen. “A lawman who cooks. I am impressed.”
He gave a short laugh, extending a hand to help her sit up. “Don’t be until you taste it.”
“What have you got?”
“Steak, beans. Salad. And pie.”
“Pie,” she crooned, allowing him to lead her to perch on the edge of the bed. She had changed out of his daughter’s clothes and into her own long summer dress before she had lain down. Pushing aside the crumpled blanket, she stretched her muscles and circled her neck around to get the kinks out. “What kind of pie?”
“Rings your chimes, huh?” He sat down next to her. Dressed in a plain white tee-shirt, faded jeans and no shoes, he seemed relaxed but distant.
“Does a bear do it in the woods?” She rolled her eyes, attempting to warm up his mood from kind to interested. “Love pi
e! Apple, blueberry, strawberry. Makes my day.”
“I made peach. You like peach?”
“You bake?”
He nodded. “Rolling dough soothes the savage beast after chasing bad guys all day.”
She put a hand to her heart. “The domesticated sheriff.”
“In some things.” He arched his brows at her, grinning like a gleeful lion.
“Not going there. No sir.” She chuckled. “Did you have a chance to call Cara and Samantha to cancel this afternoon at the shop?”
“I did. They understood and were concerned. They want me to call with an update on your condition. Said maybe you would feel better tomorrow. Cara’s there doing her bookkeeping.”
“Thanks for telling them. I’d like to go tomorrow.” I have to get started on my research.
“Good.” He tugged at her hand. “Stand up. Let’s see if you have your sea legs back yet.”
Getting to her feet, she was glad she went slowly. “Whoa, Captain. The world is tilting.”
He had a hand under her elbow and slid another around her waist. “Take it easy,” he urged her as he led her toward the door.
“Um. No. Have to go that way.” She nodded toward the bathroom. “All that iced tea you poured into me is having its way with me.”
He helped her pivot. “Let’s go.”
Within minutes she was refreshed, her hair combed and a gargle of mouthwash finishing the job. They walked together to his kitchen, where he deposited her at his breakfast bar and put a tall glass of water before her.
“I’m going to sprout gills if I drink any more.”
“You know what Giles said,” Wade warned her with squinty little eyes.
“Hey, no worries. I’m drinking. See?”
“How do you like your steak?”
“With a good merlot.”
“Forget that. No alcohol with the cortisone. Doctor’s orders.”
“Nasty man.” She spotted the beautiful mound of pastry on the island counter. “But you can redeem yourself in my eyes if we have dessert first.”
“Like sweet things. Do you?”
She tipped her head at him, her gaze falling over his gigantically appealing form. She shivered, her mouth watering and her pussy dripping in her ridiculously tiny thong. “I often have my dessert before my entrée.”
Bind Me Close: 3 (Knights in Black Leather) Page 7