by Pam Crooks
“No other way to save your fool neck when Catfish pays you a call.” He hooked a boot heel on the bootjack, slid his foot free and proceeded to do the same with the other.
“But Mr. Templeton would never approve. It would be most inappropriate, besides. What would the bank’s patrons say?”
“They’re going to say plenty once they catch wind you’re Wild Red. And just how do you think Templeton is going to take the news when you tell him?”
She stiffened. “If I thought it would be easy, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?”
He dropped his boots and socks next to the hamper. “I’m not letting you out of my sight, Lark. No telling what could happen when my back is turned. And that’s my last word on it.”
“You’re overreacting,” she said nevertheless. “Catfish is too smart to come to the bank in broad daylight. I’m sure he knows the sheriff is looking for him.”
“Has nothing to do with being smart. Has to do with being desperate. He’s in a real hurry to get to South America. That means he’ll do just about anything to get himself there.”
Lark conceded Ross the point on that, and, defeated, she fell silent. His ability to see the cold hard facts and lay them flat out on the table said it all.
Ross clearly considered the subject closed. He poured water into the washstand basin and lathered a cloth with soap. Lark’s gaze strayed to the play of muscles in his back as he cleaned up for the night. Despite her somber thoughts, they fascinated her, the power in those muscles. The way the breadth of his shoulders tapered in perfect symmetry to lean hips, too, and reminded her yet again Ross Santana was as fine a piece of masculinity as any she’d ever seen.
Persistent and shrewd and a whole lot more besides. A man to be reckoned with, certainly, and how could she possibly win over his fervent need for justice?
“You’re looking mighty serious, woman.”
His low voice dissipated her musings. He’d finished washing and held the towel in one hand while the other finger-combed his hair back from his face.
“Am I?” she asked coolly.
“You are.” He reached out, hooked the towel around the back of her neck. With an end in each hand, he tugged her up against him. “Scared, too.”
Words leapt onto her tongue to deny it, but why bother? It was the truth.
“Wouldn’t you be if you were me?” Her mouth curved into a pout. She didn’t care how self-pitying she sounded.
He made a grim, guttural sound of agreement. “You have a lot at stake right now. No doubt about it.”
If only he wouldn’t be so brutally blunt. Couldn’t he have given her something to hope for?
She heaved a weary sigh. Her head sank onto his chest, and he let go of the towel to enfold her in his arms. The heat of his skin soothed her, and oh, how she would miss him when she was gone.
Her eyes closed, and she allowed herself to treasure the feel of him without questioning why. Her arms curled to his back and clung.
“Let me help you, Lark,” he said. “Tell me where the Muscatine money is. Hard to do, I know. Real hard. But you have to trust me.”
Her eyes shut tight. If she could just shut off the reality of what he was asking the same way.
“It’s the only thing that’ll save you from him, if the posse doesn’t find him first,” he continued, his tone grave. Darkly urgent. His hand slid up her spine and back down, over and over again. Melting her defenses. Making her want to weep. “Turn the money in, and you’ll be rid of him for good. I promise.”
“I can’t bear to think of it,” she whispered, tormented.
Yet his words circled harsh and relentless in her head. He was right. Deep down, in the blackest part of her soul, she knew he was right.
She had to tell him where the money was. She couldn’t keep living like this, afraid for her future. Of going back to prison. Of being a convicted criminal all over again.
She had to tell him.
But she couldn’t. Oh, God, she couldn’t.
He breathed a curse, as if he’d opened up her mind and read her agony. And hurt right along with her.
“I wish I could take you out of this hell you’re living in,” he said huskily. His hands lifted to her face and gently nudged her to look at him. “I wish I could make it all go away for you.”
No one had seen this hidden, ugly side of her except for him. No one else had protected her, worried for her. What would she have done, alone, without him to help shoulder the burden of her past?
After tomorrow, everything between them would change.
But she had tonight.
She wanted a part of him to tuck away into the memories of her heart. A treasure she would forever have, no matter where she was or what happened to her. She wanted Ross Santana, and it didn’t even matter that he was a bounty hunter, because God help her, she’d fallen in love with him.
Her hands slid upward across his chest and wrapped around his neck. She pulled his head down to hers.
“You can,” she said simply. “For a little while.”
She heard his slight intake of breath moments before she brushed her mouth against his, a provocative invitation that teased as lightly as the flutter of butterfly wings. She angled her head, and brushed his lips again, one side, then the other and sealed the invitation by tracing their shape with the tip of her tongue.
Ross drew back. His gaze smoldered; she could feel the desire in him, desire he held in check with the control so much a part of him.
“You’re feeling pretty low right now, Lark. You don’t know what you’re asking,” he murmured.
“I want you to make love to me.”
The barest of trembles went through him, a sign the hold he kept on his control was precarious.
“You might want it now,” he said. “But things will look different in the morning. Might be you’ll regret then what you’re feeling now.”
“I don’t want to think of the morning, Ross.” She speared her fingers into the ebony thickness of his hair. “I’ll have to, soon, but not now. I want you. Tonight.”
In the pale golden lamplight, his gaze glittered down at her, worry and fiery lust and understanding, all rolled together. “Yes.” His hand fisted in her hair. “Yes, damn it, I want you, too.”
His control shattered, and his mouth took hers with none of the gentleness that she’d given him before. Her own fire leapt through nerve endings already alive and pulsing. If not for the muscled arm he held at her back, her knees would have given way, and she’d have fallen boneless at his feet.
The hot, wet thrust of his tongue between her lips demanded she open for him. She was beyond denial when he delved deep, and the erotic game he played in the recesses of her mouth left them breathing hard and needing more.
“I’m going to make love to you all right.” He dragged fevered kisses along her jaw, and her skin tingled from the restrained savagery in him. “The likes neither of us have been made love to before.”
But his husky avowal intruded into the sensations rushing through her. Her eyes opened.
“I’ve never been with a man before you,” she admitted softly.
He stilled. Lifted his head. Stared at her with a surprise she wasn’t sure she should find amusing or offensive.
His brows furrowed. “I’m sorry. I assumed—”
“—that when I was an outlaw I would have been promiscuous?” She shrugged. “Hardly. For all their lawless ways, my cousins were protective of me. They would’ve shot anyone who tried to violate my virtue. For that, I’ll always be grateful.”
“I’ll be the first.” He sounded bemused, a little hesitant.
And made Lark wonder if he thought she was some naïve schoolgirl that would only fumble her way through lovemaking.
“I know how a man can pleasure a woman,” she said.
“Do I look worried?” He kissed her, long and slow before lifting his head again, leaving her lips wet and swollen. “I’m just humbled by what you’re giving me.” He found the
end of the white satin ribbon which held the front of her nightgown together. He pulled, undoing the bow, in no hurry to see the job done. “And I’ll enjoy the gift all the more.”
He unfastened her gown, button by button, his fingers charmingly out of place amongst the dainty tucks and lace against her bosom. He nudged the pristine fabric off one shoulder, then the other, until it drifted to the floor.
She stood naked before him and drew in a flustered breath. He chuckled softly, slid a bold knuckle down the swell of her breast and across the rosy-hued peak. The nipple pearled, and a slow heat pooled in her belly.
Sweet anticipation.
“No need to be shy, darlin’, when you’re as beautiful as this.”
She gave him a taunting lift of her brow. “You think I’m shy?”
She’d know his body as well as her own by the time the night was gone, and she reached to unfasten the denim riding on his hips. After he stepped out of them, she had a pretty good idea this man would give her the most exhilarating ride of her life.
His beauty stole her breath away. That pure male part of him, thick and glorious and pulsating with life. She took him into her hand, stroked the velvet length, savored his manly feel. He sucked in a breath and covered her hand with his, an invitation for her to linger on him, that he was hers to take and pleasure. She marveled at his heat, at how he quivered beneath her touch and that she had the power to affect him like this, most of all.
Ross groaned and tumbled with her onto the bed. He buried his fingers in her hair, holding her mouth to his. The feel of his skin, hardened and sculpted with muscle, of his big bounty-hunter body against her smaller, softer one, was unlike anything she’d ever imagined. She purred and twined her legs through his. Took his rough kisses eagerly. Hungrily. Matched them with a wildness of her own.
Her hands skimmed down his back, feeding the desire to touch all of him. She cupped his taut buttocks, pulled him closer against her, kneaded the strong flesh in her palms. He breathed her name again and again between frenzied kisses, heating her blood and her need. He shifted against her, but only to splay his hand across her breast and mold its fullness. Lark moaned in pleasure, her mind attuned to what he was doing, how he made her feel. He shifted again, lower, and licked at her nipple, again and again, before opening his mouth wide to suckle her deep.
She rasped his name on both a gasp and a moan. Her hands slid into his hair, keeping him against her. Every pull, every caress of his tongue across the sensitive tip sent her higher toward a crescendo somewhere deep inside.
Her hips moved beneath him in search of it, needing him to take her higher still. And when he rose above her, when her legs untangled and opened, when his male length probed her female folds to find his place, gently at first, she took him inside her, took him deep and fast, thrust for mind-numbing thrust, until that crescendo finally, and ecstatically, exploded inside her.
Ross heaved a throaty groan, eased down on top of Lark and lay there. He didn’t have a single working muscle left in his body.
Never would he have thought himself worthy to receive what she had given him. That all-consummate female part of her that she’d shared with no one. Knowing she trusted him enough—that she chose him—was an honor in itself.
An honor that went beyond pure physical satisfaction. A distraction from her troubles. Or even the innocence of her virginity.
Lark had lifted him to a new level, a higher plane of trust and vulnerability and feelings that up to now she’d kept closed up tight inside her in one prim, respectable, red-haired package.
She showed him she was all woman. Lush and silky-skinned and without inhibition. And she made him feel things he wasn’t sure he wanted to feel. Things she made him want to want. Impossible things, like being with her, like this, every night for the rest of his life.
“Got to be getting heavy on you,” Ross muttered, his voice muffled in her neck and hair.
“Mmm. You’re not.”
He moved anyway, but only a little bit off her. He wasn’t ready to let her go just yet, not when he hadn’t had his fill, and maybe he never would. His hand skimmed her hip, dipped into the curve of her waist, and discovered an imperfection in her warm, smooth flesh.
His head came up to inspect it. A coin-sized scar, slightly puckered, pale pink and telling him exactly what put it there.
“That’s where you shot me,” she said, vaguely amused.
His horror melded into regret. “Looks like it hurt.”
“It did, at the time.” The hate was gone now, he realized. She could talk it about with no animosity. “The bullet went clean through, so I healed quickly.”
He exhaled in disgust. The violence from that day. The ugliness neither of them could forget. “I’m sorry for putting you through it.”
“Don’t be. I had it coming, I suppose. I would’ve done the same to you, if the tables were turned.”
She would have, yes. He would’ve understood, too. Accepted it as the price for justice each had to pay.
Her finger traced the narrow lacing that held his eye patch in place.
“You hurt back then, just like I did. But more, I think.” She braced his head in her hands and tugged him closer to press a gentle kiss against the patch’s black leather.
Her compassion moved him. He thought of the pain and fury he’d endured from Catfish Jack’s shotgun. He’d felt plenty sorry for himself back then. Some days he still did. But Lark had always made him feel whole, despite his half-blindness.
“As long as we’re tracking our injuries, we can’t forget this one.” He indicated the thin bandage on her shoulder, the knife wound Catfish had given her.
She sighed. “Yes.”
As if his mention of the injury reminded her that reckoning with the ruthless outlaw loomed ever closer, her glance darted to the small clock on his bedside table. The slender hands read three hours after midnight. Dawn would arrive soon, and the worry returned to her expression.
Ross knew of ways to make her forget until it did, and he rolled to his back, bringing her with him. Without another word between them, he made love her to her again, slow and easy and thorough, until the sun peeked golden over the horizon.
Chapter Fourteen
“I’ll be out shortly, Lark,” Chat said, hurrying from the kitchen to her room, drying her hands on a towel as she went. “I forgot my hat.”
“Is there anything I can do to help you before we leave?” Lark asked.
“No, but thank you.” The armoire door slammed closed. A dresser drawer clattered open. “Ross has already loaded the butter and eggs. I won’t be but a minute.”
“All right.” Lark picked up the wicker basket holding her possessions, few that they were, and hooked the handle over her arm. She’d already pinned her hair securely in its usual bun. She wore her best dress, her sensible shoes and she carried the key to the bank’s front door in her pocket. She’d been ready to go for the better part of an hour, but now that it was time to leave, she could hardly force herself out the door.
She cast a final sweeping glance around her. Ross’s house. The home she’d come to love.
She wouldn’t be back. If Mr. Templeton fired her this morning, she’d leave Ida Grove for good. If he didn’t, well, she’d return to her sleeping room and show Catfish Jack he couldn’t scare her away, no matter what.
Yet her gaze lingered through the open door of Ross’s room. Sunlight beamed on the quilt spread neatly over his bed and brightened the rows of cheery blue squares. The furniture gleamed with its high polish. She’d always remember the magnificence of his bed and the time she’d spent with him there.
An incredible longing surged through her for those things that could never be. That damnable emotion, too, and she resolutely stepped outside before she crumpled from the weight of it.
She found Ross waiting by the buckboard wagon, one booted foot propped on the wheel. He appeared deep in thought as he put a cigarette to his lips and inhaled. His Stetson hung low on his for
ehead, and he’d rolled his shirt-sleeves up his forearms. No one could miss the pair of Colts strapped snug to his hips.
He heated her blood. Excited her like none other. But she refused to let him deter her from her mission—to live her life in Ida Grove.
His gaze lifted. Found her. Watched her come toward him as he lazily exhaled a thin cloud of smoke.
She halted in front of him with her chin held high and her resolve firmly in place. His scrutiny burned hot down the length of her and back up again.
“You look pretty,” he murmured. “Efficient and professional, too.”
“Thank you.”
“But then—” he studied the glowing tip of his cigarette “—I prefer you like you were earlier, wearing nothing at all.”
“Ross.” She drew in an unsteady breath. “Please, just don’t say anything.”
A tiny muscle leapt in his jaw. He straightened, sent his cigarette arcing into the grass before he took the basket from her and set it in the back of the wagon.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said.
“Yes, I do.”
“They’ll make you bleed for the whole world to see.”
“I’m hoping they’ll understand that I was an outlaw a long time ago, and that I’m an honest citizen now.”
He made a sound of disgust. “Then you’re a fool.”
Wounded impatience spiked through her. “This is my decision, Ross. Not yours.” She managed to keep her voice cool, even. Chat would be coming out any moment. “And let me remind you that it is at your insistence you accompany me to the bank this morning. Not mine.”
“I won’t have you go through it alone,” he said, his mouth a grim line.
“Then you must accept what I have to do and not quarrel with me about it.”
But she regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. He was worried for her, nothing more. Wasn’t she worried, too? She sighed and touched his cheek, roughened by the stubble he hadn’t yet shaved. They’d lingered too long in bed for him to have time.