by Starla Kaye
The Marshal’s Rebellious Bride
By
Starla Kaye
©2013 by Blushing Books® and Starla Kaye
Copyright © 2013 by Blushing Books® and Starla Kaye
All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Kaye, Starla
The Marshal’s Rebellious Bride
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62750-006-7
Cover Design by edhgraphics.blogspot.com
This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.
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Starla Kaye
“Live, love, laugh… such simple words, but words I take to heart. There are never enough hours in my day to do even half of the things I would like to do. But no matter how crazy my life get, I try to incorporate my words to live by (live, love, laugh) into each day.”
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Don’t miss these other exciting stories by Starla Kaye:
All He Wants For Christmas
Bah, Humbug Cowboy
Cupid’s Mistake
If You Loved Me
Prologue
Wakefield Ranch, Kansas
September 1876
Whiskey raced up the porch steps, her chest drumming in excitement. She sped into the large entry of her family’s two-story Victorian house and wished it was smaller so she would be easily heard. Frustrated, she raised her voice and yelled, “Taos! Keno!”
She waited a second to see if anyone had heard her. Impatience had her tapping her right foot. Nothing.
Then a muffled sound came from the second floor. A footstep?
Eager to share her news, she lifted her long skirt and hurried up the staircase. Her stomach fluttered in anticipation. This was the best day of her life!
“Keno! Taos!” she called out when she reached the landing.
Again there was no response.
She stopped in the upstairs hallway between her older brothers’ rooms to catch her breath and listen once more.
Silence. The house must have just been settling again. Disappointment weighed her down. Dagnabit! She had the most wonderful announcement to make and nobody to listen to it!
Shoulders slumping, she started to turn back toward the stairway. All right, maybe she couldn’t tell either of her brothers right this minute. But surely one of the ranch hands was around somewhere. By golly, someone was going to listen to her! She hadn’t ridden her horse near to death from Dodge City to not find someone—anyone—on the ranch to tell her news to.
A thud came from Keno’s room, followed by a man’s deep voice grumbling, “Damn.”
She dashed down the hallway to the closed door and rapped once. Too agitated to wait for a response, she yelled, “I’m getting married!”
Still no response.
Irritated beyond her nearly nonexistent patience, she pushed the door open without waiting for an invitation just as she’d done a thousand times in her nineteen years of life. “Didn’t you hear me? I said I’m getting married!”
She was in mid-step into the room when she froze. Her eyes widened. “Who the hell are you?”
A mountain of a man sat on the side of the rumpled feather bed wearing only a pair of red long johns and rubbing a toe he’d apparently stubbed. Thick, unruly black hair dusted wide shoulders. At least a day’s worth—probably more—of beard stubble covered carved cheeks and a strong jaw tight with annoyance. Dark blue eyes pinned her in place. His fierce expression would have intimidated a meeker female, but she’d grown up with two brothers who could get pretty testy at times.
She simply returned his scowl, putting her hands on her hips. “I repeat, who the hell are you? And what are you doing in my brother’s bedroom?”
He stood. Good Lord! He was even taller than her brothers, who towered over most men in town. Taller than any man she’d ever met. And, oh my, he certainly filled out those long johns quite well. For the first time that she could remember, she felt a blush clear to the roots of her hair. She shouldn’t be noticing another man’s private parts—even as spectacular as they appeared to be, at least from what she could see. She was an engaged woman now.
She swallowed a lump in her throat. Her heart pounded harder than when she’d sped into the house. She felt a bit lightheaded and felt a tingling low in her belly. She blushed even more.
The remarkable mountain stepped toward her on long, muscled legs. His back was rigid and he ground his jaw, seemed to be struggling with his temper. She stiffened her knees to not back away and wished the heat would leave her face.
He raised one dark eyebrow as if he were surprised that she hadn’t fled the room at his approach. Then he looked down at her and growled—yes, his voice was as deep as a bear’s growl she’d once heard, “Morgan. Morgan Rydell.” He appeared to stand even taller, squared his impressive shoulders. “Get out. Now.”
She stood inflexibly in place although her insides roiled with nerves and she dropped her hands from her hips. This was her family’s house, her brother’s room. “No! You get out. Now.”
Shock flashed in his expression, apparently not used to being not instantly obeyed. “I’m not dressed.”
She rolled her eyes and then looked pointedly at him, sweeping her gaze over his less-than-properly clad body. “You think I haven’t noticed that?”
H
is jaw tightened and a vein pulsed in his thick neck. The man clearly had trouble controlling his temper, much like she did at times. Except she paid the price for losing her temper on a fairly regular basis by getting her backside warmed. She doubted few people ever took on this man or ever thought to tell him to calm down.
“Don’t you have any sense at all?” He looked ready to pick her up and toss her out of the room. Yet something more than irritation heated his eyes. His nostrils flared as he seemed to draw in a ragged breath. She’d seen her fiancé react like this after he’d dared to kiss her that one time.
Now she did take a step back. She should not be feeling a warmth building inside her. She should not have this tremendous urge to reach up and push that one intriguing dark curl off his forehead. She definitely should not want to feel his lips pressed against hers!
He moved forward again. Huge. The man is huge.
She held her ground, but her gaze shifted down his body for an instant. Her cheeks heated even more as she noted that “his man parts” appeared to be even bigger. She had seen her brothers in long johns—a time or two in even less, which she didn’t like to think about. But she couldn’t remember them looking like this. Maybe she hadn’t noticed because they were her brothers.
She tried to pull her gaze away from his “endowments,” but it was difficult. Oh my, oh my! She licked her lips.
Did he groan? No, it had sounded more like a curse, something a lady shouldn’t hear.
She closed her eyes to gather her wits. Ace. Think about Ace. His youthfully handsome face flashed into her mind. And, yes, he was still a young man in comparison to this steal-her-breath-away mature man standing all too close to her. Did Ace have such impressive…um…man parts? If not now, would he mature into…
She sucked in an annoyed breath. What was she doing? Admiring another man was wrong. It made her angry…with this stranger, with herself.
She inched back into the hallway. “Where is my brother? Why are you in his room?”
The door slammed in her face. “Both of your brothers are in town, I reckon. Go away,” he gritted out. Again, he seemed to have muttered something not suitable for a decent young woman such as herself to hear.
She curled her hands into fists at the sides of her riding skirt and stomped a foot. “I want you out of Keno’s room. Out of this house.” She reached for the doorknob, ready to battle him, as outrageously stupid as that was since it’d be like taking on an immovable mountain. “I’ll fetch my gun if I have to,” she added boldly.
“Go away, brat.” To her surprise, it sounded like he jammed the chair that had been sitting next to the door under the doorknob.
“Brat?” She kicked at the door, winced at the pain in her toes. Sure, her brothers called her that all the time. But this was a stranger! She would not put up with such rudeness. “You need to leave.”
She tried to shoulder the door open, only to end up wincing and rubbing her shoulder. The door hadn’t moved at all. He must be standing by it or the chair and holding it shut.
“Trust me, Brat, you don’t want to take me on. Now go away!”
He was right; she really didn’t want to take him on. She would lose and she hated losing. Besides, she’d come here for a reason: to tell her brothers about Ace proposing today, about her accepting.
Dang it! She hadn’t thought to check out their saloon before she left town. She’d been sure they would be here since Taos was getting ready to leave for Texas again tomorrow. He would be reporting in for a new assignment as U.S. Marshal. They had argued last night about his leaving again. She worried every time he put on his badge, every time he rode away from the ranch. So wasn’t it ironic that she’d agreed to marry Ace, a deputy in Dodge City.
She sighed, momentarily forgetting the man inside Keno’s room. She smiled, thinking about Ace. He was so handsome, so absolutely wonderful. Love was so amazing.
With that marvelous thought lightening her spirit, she tried to put the confrontation with the irritating stranger aside. Her brothers could deal with him. She turned toward the stairs.
Wait! Rydell? She froze.
Now she remembered. He was the big, bad Texan who’d teamed up with Taos a couple of years back as U.S. Marshal. The man was legendary. Dangerous. She’d sensed that herself at first glance, yet she hadn’t been frightened of him. At least his size and his just-dare-me attitude didn’t have her shaking in her shoes. No, he frightened her in a more basic way. Morgan Rydell was a man who would love hard and be hard to love. Somehow she just knew that.
Ace loved her and she loved him. Their love was pure and simple, nothing hard about it.
She hurried down the stairs determined to get far away from Marshal Rydell, determined to ride all the way back to town and find her brothers. She had to share her wonderful news. Now. Right now.
Chapter One
Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory
April 1878
Morgan shivered against the gust of early spring wind that circled around him. His partner turned up the collar on his jacket. It wasn’t the coolness that bothered him. Something prophetic, something ominous rode within the breeze and whistled through the towering pines that lined the narrow path snaking between the mountains leading to Sierra Blanca. He couldn’t explain why, but he somehow knew his life would change today.
Not liking that notion, he went back to studying the area. Gray shadows on one wall of the mountains seemed to darken as if evil hid in the dense green underbrush. He tensed and gripped the reins tighter with one hand. He reached down to undo the safety flap over his Colt with the other hand.
“You feel it, too, don’t you?” Taos Wakefield asked, drawing Morgan’s gaze. “I’ve been uneasy ever since we started into this valley.”
Morgan nodded and looked away. “Trouble ahead. My gut tells me so.” His instincts were seldom wrong. They were what had kept him alive this long.
They plodded on another few yards, silently waiting. When he nudged his horse into a trot, he wondered if it were a poor choice. Would that take him into danger even sooner? It also made him think about the poor choices he’d made in his twenty-eight years. Choosing to go on this particular assignment, as a Marshal was one. Deciding on this route was another. Yet the choices that most bothered him—ones that haunted him day and night—had been made years ago. They were choices that still tore at his soul and were part of what made him such a hard man today. A stone-cold bastard sometimes. At least that’s what Taos told him from time to time.
Birds warbled cries of alarm from within the pines. Taos’ horse whinnied and sidestepped.
Morgan scanned the area with narrowed eyes. His heart pounded in dread of what lurked in the darkness surrounding them. All he spotted was a squirrel scurrying into the underbrush. His senses remained on alert. Something was out there. Someone watched them. Again he thought about his gut feeling that his life was about to change for the worse.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” He kicked at the sides of his powerful bay horse. Demon’s massive muscles bunched and then he tore ahead down the valley floor.
“Right behind you,” Taos called out, snapping his reins.
A bullet whizzed out of the thick forest before they’d gone more than a hundred yards.
“Damnation!” Taos hissed.
Morgan pulled up on the reins and hazarded a glance over his shoulder. Taos had slowed and now held a hand to his upper left chest. They shared a brief look of understanding, of anger and determination.
“Get out of here!” Taos ordered as he struggled to control his frightened mount.
“Like hell,” Morgan bellowed back. He turned his horse as he fired into the brush where he thought the shot had come from.
Taos’ buckskin reared on its back legs, toppling him to the ground. Before Morgan could catch the reins, the horse snorted in fear and took off at full-speed.
Grimacing against the pain, Taos growled, “Get out! Now!”
Morgan didn’t even consi
der the idea. He leaned down to offer Taos a hand up as a second bullet whistled out of the brush. It planted itself in Morgan’s gun arm just below the shoulder. His revolver slipped from his hand and his attempt to pull Taos up ended. “Well, shit.”
“I told you to get out of here,” Taos gritted out. “You don’t listen worth a damn. Never have.”
Morgan slid from the right side of the saddle and jerked his Winchester from the scabbard. He ignored the throbbing pain in his arm as he sought meager protection behind his trembling horse. “We’re partners. We don’t abandon each other.” He would be pissed if whoever was taking pot shots at them hit Demon.
The sound of a branch breaking echoed through the tension-filled air like the roar from a cannon. Demon pawed at the ground and finally jerked free of Morgan’s tenuous hold on the reins. The horse took off in a blaze of fright leaving him exposed.
He glanced down and found Taos clutching his chest with one hand, blood oozing between his fingers. His other hand tenaciously gripped his Colt. Morgan knew his partner felt—could almost taste—the same outrage at being bushwhacked that he did. But he refused to accept their dying in this lonely valley as inevitable.
Hidden somewhere in the trees a horse snorted impatiently. Hooves stomped on the pine needle covered ground and the rustling sound carried through the area.
He whirled around to face the spot he determined the sound had come from and awkwardly aimed just as their attacker rode out of the bushes. Rafe Marino! The heat of hatred swelled within him.
Rafe sat boldly in a beam of sunlight and faced him. His thick mustache was curled up at one side in a sneer. Rafe snickered; the mocking sound evil and crazed. At the sight of the outlaw bounty hunter an acid-like bitterness churned in Morgan’s stomach.
