Renegade Riders

by Dawn MacTavish

  Mae did as bidden, unbuttoned her jacket, the flannel shirt. He had to help her slide them both off, for she winced when she tried to lift that arm. She loosened the top of her camisole and tugged the wide strap off her shoulder. Trace frowned. She hadn’t opened the wound, but it was swollen, red, and angry-looking.

  “It needs another poultice to bring the swelling down,” he said. Pouring warm water from the coffeepot over his bandana, he bathed the wound. “My herbs are in my pack.”

  Working quickly, he mixed ground herbs to pack into the wound, which would be held in place by his kerchief. He reached out to press the poultice to the shoulder, and the warmth of her opalescent skin under his fingers excited him. Glancing down, he saw the water from where he’d bathed the wound had wet the front of her camisole. The material was nearly transparent. Swallowing hard, he stared at the clearly revealed dark nipple.

  The hand holding the poultice dropped, and Trace tried to remind himself he was only caring for her; he had no right to look at Mae in this manner. Tried and failed. Her nipples strained against the cloth with her every breath. Even scuffed up, tired, and shaken, Mae was still a beautiful woman. He had to get her back to Kentucky where she belonged. She didn’t belong out here, no matter how he might want her.

  Though he attempted to swallow his desire, it only increased. Waves of warmth surged through his loins. Over and over he told himself the hundred reasons to keep his emotional distance from this woman, not the least of which was that his life was too damn empty now. When she went back to Kentucky…Well, he didn’t want to contemplate the bleakness of a future without her. It would destroy him.

  He started to turn away, but Mae reached out, catching his face with her hand, guiding it around until their eyes met. He shook his head.

  “Trace, don’t turn from me. Please.”

  His whole body clenched as he fought both the emotional and physical pain of wanting her. Touching her as a man who wanted a woman would be wrong. Worse, it would destroy him.

  She leaned close and brushed her lips against his. They were soft, moving against his mouth, warm, seeking. “Please,” she whispered, and then bestowed upon him another kiss.

  He was undone by her plea. Laying her back against the bedroll, he kissed her, tasting her deeply. How sweet she was, like honey. Her heady wild clover scent intoxicated him. She was another man’s wife, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but them. Here. Now. She would go back to Kentucky and his life would once again be empty, but for this small space of time it would be filled with magic.

  Every fiber of his body was suddenly obsessed with the notion of showing Mae how a man should make love to a woman, how a man should revere and pleasure her above and beyond himself. He couldn’t imagine Jared Comstock had done as much. He opened the buttons on her camisole and spread it wide, moving with caution and gentleness since at any moment he fully expected to have his face slapped. But she didn’t slap his face. Her breath caught in a strangled gasp as his lips grazed her throat, the swell of her breast, and then closed around the puckered rim of her tawny nipple.

  A raw, guttural moan escaped him as that tiny bud hardened against his tongue. The sound mingled with something similar coming from deep inside her, as she fisted her hands in his hair and held him there, arching her body against him. Caught up in the eagerness of her response, he teased first one and then the other nipple with his tongue, tugged with his lips, and nipped lightly with his teeth. She shuddered with pleasure.

  Trace rolled onto his hip, tugged off his boots, and stripped naked. Mae’s gaze raked his naked body. Another gasp escaped her parted lips, and those dark eyes settled on his engorged sex. He almost laughed. It seemed almost as though she had never seen a naked, fully aroused male. How embarrassing for her husband.

  Dropping down beside her, he helped unfasten her jeans. His eyes feasted upon her silky, translucent skin, the gentle curves of her body, and mound of red-gold hair curling between her thighs.

  “You’re beautiful, Mae,” he murmured, gathering her against him.

  His heavy sex bobbed against her belly. The flesh-to-flesh contact struck him like forked lightning, and he shut his eyes, threw back his head, and prayed—a defense mechanism he’d developed to delay climax. After a moment, he found her lips again and teased her tongue into his mouth, murmuring assurances that mingled with the compulsive moans leaking from her throat. She began to shake violently in his arms, and he showered her face, her eyes, and her arched white throat with kisses before drawing her closer still.

  When his hand traveled over her breast to her belly and approached the silken curls beneath, she leaned her lips against his ear and murmured, “There’s something that I must tell you.” She was caressing his back with her tiny fingers. “I’ve never…That is, I haven’t…ever…”

  Trace froze. His heart seemed to tumble to a halt. His breath was short as he leaned back and looked her in the eyes, those incredible, limpid doe eyes. But she couldn’t mean…? Good God, that was exactly what she did mean!

  “You once accused me of holding something back,” she said. “This is what I’ve kept from you, Trace. I didn’t think I’d ever have to tell you. I didn’t expect to fall…But I have—oh, I have—and I don’t know…what to do.”

  Trace began to breathe again, and his breath left his lungs on a groan.

  “I don’t want you to stop,” she went on through a tremor. “I want you to make love to me. I’ve dreamed of this moment, fantasized about it. It’s just…I don’t know what’s expected. How to…You know.”

  Of all the words she might’ve spoken, this was the last thing he’d expected. His mind swam. While he was experienced in the art of making love, he had no experience with virgins. Once again, he fought the urge to laugh. Mae would not understand.

  “H-how…?” was all he could get out. “Comstock married you. You can’t expect me to believe—”

  “It’s the truth.” She took his hand and put it against his face. “He seems to want to genuinely win my favor. I begged him for a few weeks of time to grieve for my father, to come to know him, and then I said I would accept him as my husband. I didn’t think he would agree, but he did. Only, Morgan wasn’t scared of Jared for some reason. You’d think he would be, with Jared being the boss, but he’s not. His hands were all over me whenever Jared’s back was turned. That’s why I ran away. After Jared dragged me back, he was…cold. I cannot explain it. He scared me. That’s the reason I took Diablo and ran again. We’re kindred spirits, that horse and I—both captives of a cruel master.” There was a tear in her eye, though she stared at him with quiet awe.

  Trace drew a ragged breath and pulled her into his arms. His heart was beating like a blacksmith’s hammer; hard, irregular, heavy thumps against her smooth breast. The muscle in his jaw began to tick. He had to force the words out. “A woman’s first time should be special, not on the floor of some dingy cave.” He couldn’t even begin to think with her in his arms, but this had changed things. “And…if I take you here, you could go home with child. I can’t allow you to do that, to face that alone.”

  He shifted her weight off him, despite her hands clinging to his shoulders, and got to his feet. Grabbing his trousers, he jerked them on.

  “Wait. There’s more,” she said. “Remember when I told you that Jared brought a preacher from the village to marry us?”

  Unable to speak, Trace nodded, his eyes riveted to her flushed face.

  “He…wasn’t.”

  “Who wasn’t what?”

  “The man,” she said, raising herself to a sitting position, drawing her camisole close with a tiny shiver. “He wasn’t a preacher. I saw him afterward. He came to the ranch to gamble with Jared’s men after the first time I was brought back. I overheard them making sport of what they’d done, how they’d fooled me, tricked me into believing a seedy saddle tramp was a man of the cloth. They don’t know I heard.”

  Trace rocked back on his heels. Blind rage starred his vision
. After a moment, he reached out with trembling fingers and closed the camisole over her breasts. It was a display of painstaking control for a madman, which was what he certainly had become. “And you wanted me to take you back there?”

  “I would have been safe with you and Preacher close by. I was trying to help you. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be in this predicament. And I really want to find the letter my father signed. I know they said whoever killed and robbed him must’ve taken that. But I know either Jared or Morgan did it. That deed to the farm is back there. If Jared were to show up with it…it could kill my granddad.”

  Taking up his boots from the floor of the cave, Trace tugged them on and then snatched up his shirt and jacket.

  “What are you going to do?” she breathed.

  “I don’t know,” he replied.

  “Where are you going? No! Don’t leave me!”

  “I’m not going to leave you, Mae,” he assured her. “I’m going outside, where I can think. I can’t do that here with you. Not now, not like this.”

  “Trace—”

  “Go to sleep, Mae,” he said, stalking past her into the frosty night. “There’s not much night left before dawn.”

  Of course, he already knew what had to be done. What he needed was the strength and the courage to do it. He had to let Mae go.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mae woke before dawn, her heart heavy with a dread of facing Trace. Not even the tantalizing aroma of coffee in her nostrils could coax her to leave the cave. How could she look him in the eye after what had almost happened between them? She was still so confused. Trace was a gentleman all right. Only, she hadn’t wanted him to be a gentleman.

  “Fool man,” she muttered, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. At the back of her mind she also felt a modicum of guilt. Oh, she wanted Trace to make love her, but she also hoped that if he did so, he would follow her back to Kentucky. Maybe that wasn’t an honest way to deal with a man, but then, men these days weren’t dealing too straight with her.

  Hot blood raced through her at the recollection of his naked body, the hard, well-muscled length of him standing over her, burnished by firelight. Her breath caught, and she relived the intimacy of their kisses, of his lips on her eyes, her throat, her breasts, awakening her to pleasures between a man and a woman she’d never dreamed existed.

  She dreaded the mortification to come, facing his steel gaze. She dreaded the climb back down to the mesa, and the prospect of tracking his Indian friends. Still, she was no coward. Determined to emerge head high, as though nothing had occurred between them, she made herself presentable and stepped out into the misty predawn gray. Trace was nowhere in sight.

  She sank down on a flat rock near the fire to compose herself, muttering, “Well, fie on him.” Not finding him was a bit anticlimactic. She’d polished her aloof bearing and mustered the courage to employ it, but now that courage was fading fast. It was like swallowing a dose of castor oil; such a confrontation had to be done quickly if at all.

  “Here,” he said, appearing and handing her a plate of frijoles. “Eat up. We need to hurry.”

  Startled, she jumped. He’d approached with the stealth of an Indian. Where had he come from? It wasn’t a very big ledge. He must have been crouching in the shadows. Or was it that he’d been standing in plain view all the while and she’d been too preoccupied to notice? Her hands shook helplessly. The spoon rattled against the plate she balanced on her knees while he poured her a cup of coffee and put it beside her on a rock.

  “We need to move on as soon as you’re done,” he said. “Can you climb down by yourself, or do you want help?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “If you don’t think you can manage on your own, I’ll tie a rope harness onto you and lower you down.”

  Cheeks burning, she studied him. There was no trace of the passion he’d shown the night before in that expressionless face. No tenderness or caring. Instead, there was an angular hardness about his flushed features, as though they were carved of the same rock as the mesa. His rigid posture was unnatural and alarming. Trace was steeling himself against something.

  What ever it was, clearly he wasn’t about to share it, and she wasn’t about to probe him.

  “I can manage without being hog-tied,” she answered frostily. “The poultice helped. Thank you for waking me last night and making sure I put it on my shoulder.” Sadly Mae recalled him awaking her, caring for her wound. It was obvious that he wanted no more physical contact. He’d been distant, but nothing like this.

  He gave a short nod.

  They ate in silence. She had scarcely swallowed the last mouthful on her plate when he doused the fire with the remainder of the coffee, collected the bedroll and gear, and strode stiffly to the ledge. “I’ll go first,” he said. “You come after me.”

  She had never been particularly fond of heights, but Mae wasn’t about to let him know that approaching the cliff so soon after careening off it all but paralyzed her with fear. A cold, metallic, bloodlike taste was building at the back of her throat.

  The first step was the hardest. Trace was right behind her, and she was certain he could hear her heart pounding. She didn’t look over her shoulder, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, and when she came to the dead scrub she’d clung to so desperately the night before, she looked away quickly, reliving her climb to safety: his strong hands pulling her up, her feet slipping on the wet rocks. How passionately he had kissed her when they rolled away from the edge.

  “To the left!” Trace called.

  Preoccupied, Mae stepped in a pile of loose rocks created from the debacle the night before. She regained her footing, but her heart jumped and she had a hard time catching a breath. A shower of rock dust and grit rained down upon him, and a spate of muttered expletives followed that he tried but failed to disguise.

  Fortunately, the rest of the descent was accomplished without incident. The horses were saddled and waiting; Trace had clearly been working early. A diamond hitch secured their packs to the burro, and Trace now added the bedrolls and the last of their gear.

  “How are you going to track your Indian friends in this?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we wait until full light?”

  “We aren’t tracking them,” Trace replied, jamming his Winchester in its saddle sheath.

  “I don’t understand…”

  “I’m taking you south—to the railroad,” he said, swinging himself up on Duchess’s back. “Stay behind me and do like you did coming up. Give Diablo his head and a loose rein. He’ll do the rest.”

  “Wait!” she cried. “Trace, wait—”

  He was already in motion. “Mae, I’ve been thinking on it all night. You’re going back to Kentucky just as fast as I can put you on a train.”

  “Have I no say in this?” she snapped. She was panicked. He meant to put her on the train—alone.

  “You’re going home. It’s where you belong.”

  “And where do you belong, Trace Ord? Don’t tell me you don’t feel something for me. You’d be lying. You think to put me on that train and then go back there and face Jared Comstock and Bill Morgan? You’re going to get yourself killed, that’s what.”

  “I won’t lie to you, Mae,” he said. “I’m going after Comstock. I’ve got to. That was my plan, what I was hired to do. It was in the works before I ever met you. What that bastard did to you and Diablo…well, he doesn’t deserve to draw air, and I aim to see that stops. It was set in stone the minute I clapped eyes on what he did to my horse. As to me getting killed…I keep telling you to trust me.”

  “What about Diablo?” Mae pressed.

  Trace hesitated.

  “Well?” she prompted. “Trace, take me back to Kentucky. Bring Diablo. Come with me. Please.”

  Trace made no reply. He looked away, his steely-eyed gaze fixed on some point along the eastern horizon; then he tipped back his Stetson, gave a crisp nod, and eased himself out of the saddle. Removing his gloves, he wedged them under hi
s saddle.

  He walked to Diablo in slow, measured steps and looked at Mae, his face unreadable. All at once he reached up, dragged her out of the saddle, and pulled her hard against him. Her breath caught again, the wind knocked out of her. Her upper arms were locked in his grasp, and he pulled her closer still, until every inch of their bodies was touching.

  “Last night never should have happened,” he stated.

  She jutted out her chin, challenging him. “But it did happen—or at least would’ve if you’d allowed it. You think you alone can decide my future? Then you don’t know me, Trace Ord.”

  His face was etched with grief for a love he was going to kill before he ever gave it a chance to survive; she could read that in his eyes. He said, “We don’t know each other. But one thing’s for sure: I’m going to do right by you even if it kills us both. Now get up on Duchess and follow me down. That’s the sun shining on those mountaintops. We’ve wasted enough time already.”

  “Duchess?” she repeated, confused.

  “Duchess,” he agreed. “I don’t trust you with Diablo. Not anymore. And if I have to give chase again, I want that black devil underneath me.”

  “Chase me? Where would I run to, Trace?” she asked. “Afraid I’ll ride this stallion all the way back to Kentucky? Then you’d have to come after us…” She smiled, suddenly feeling the upper hand. “You’re a coward, Trace Ord. Oh, you’ll face down Jared, guns blazing, but you’re afraid of what you feel, afraid to reach out for the future we could have together.”

  He was so close. His body heat scorched her, and his raw male scent was dizzying. His hot breath puffed in her face and she narrowed her eyes. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her. How she longed for that! The mere thought of it, and she was aroused. So was he. Her heart leapt. His hardness leaned heavily against her belly, and his eyes were dark and dilated. If he would only kiss her…

  But he didn’t. Instead, he scooped her up in his arms and plopped her down on Duchess. Mounting Diablo, he pointed her down off the mesa toward the valley below and rode off.