Western Ways

by Tysche Dwai

  He wanted to wink so badly, offer hope, but as the truck bucked and staggered over bumps in the hard packed dirt he saw no way out. If he didn’t think of something fast, they were going to be abandoned in the middle of nowhere or worse—be killed in a place only the buzzards knew about.

  Jenny wanted to cry—both in frustration and fear. In all her years of service to the state as a peace officer, she’d never run into a sorry situation like this. These men clearly carried something in the bag more valuable than their lives. She and Neal were expendable. Thankfully neither checked her purse; she still carried her badge as well as her service revolver, a Sig Sauer .357. But how to get the jump on these two in such close quarters without Neal getting hurt? She’d go along with anything the kidnappers wanted if he remained safe.

  “Stop the damn truck,” Muscles growled. “Now!” Just as Neal steered the big Dodge over an especially deep rut, he heard and obeyed. His foot stomped the brake pedal, sending them against the dashboard, steering wheel and seat backs. In the tense jumble of bodies, Jenny saw Neal lunge for Muscles’ gun hand, but the smaller man reacted faster and pushed his head against the side window.

  “Out!” Tall and Handsome roared in anger. One hand pushed his door open, and he piled out, pulling Jenny with him so fast that her purse landed with a thump on the floor of the truck. No way could she get to her weapon now. In a lightening quick move, he swung her around in front of him and stuck his gun under her jaw. “You make one more move, Mr. Ranger, and she dies.” His labored breathing made it hard for his hand to remain steady. His voice and hand trembled in unison.

  Jenny knew whatever the two originally planned had now gone seriously wrong. But with a rock hard arm around her body, pinning her in place, and the cold metal of a gun less than an inch from her brains, she had no choice but to stand still as Muscles pushed Neal out of the truck.

  Dust flew up as he fell in a tangle of arms and legs in front of her. Like a drunk, he attempted to rise to hands and knees only to have Muscles knock him over again with a kick in his ribs.

  Jenny winced as Neal rolled. A groan rose along with more dust. Sweat trickled down her face, and her knees resembled wet noodles when Muscles relented and grabbed Neal by the shirt collar and hauled him to a standing position.

  For a second, he swayed, each foot moving a little side-to-side in an attempt to stand still as the world refocused. Jenny knew the minute his head stopped spinning and his gaze found hers.

  Frustration, fear, despair—and something that looked like love. All those emotions she read. But no hope. The first time she met Neal Franks, she saw hope in his eyes. But not this time...not now.

  Muscles pushed Neal ahead of him toward a cluster of tumbleweed. As he lurched past Tall and Handsome, the blond man shoved Jenny so hard she fell against him.

  They staggered like passengers on the deck of a ship caught in a hurricane’s wild waves. Finally, Neal caught her around the waist, and together they managed to stand erect.

  He held her hand and leaned forward quickly as the men approached. “I love you, Jenny Lincoln.” Tender as a summer breeze that caresses hot skin then moves on, he kissed her.

  “Neal...”

  The kidnappers gave them no chance to speak further.

  Jenny took his hand and turned when Muscles called, “Hey, Ranger.”

  Two faced two. Defenseless faced dangerous.

  Then defenseless caught a break.

  No Hollywood scriptwriter could have created a better scene. Actors in a play could not have performed on cue better than the two criminals.

  Neal tried to pull Jenny behind him as they turned to find Blondie and Muscles behind them.

  Guns raised, feet apart for better balance, the men stood less than eight feet away, practically shoulder to shoulder. Only a large rock separated their feet from each other.

  As they steadied their guns in a two-handed hold, Neal’s eyes left the sight of imminent death to stare in dumb wonder at a closer death poised at the two men’s heels. Despite what was about to happen, he swallowed loud enough for Muscles to notice in the complete silence of the high Texas plateau.

  “What the hell are you staring at?”

  The words barely cleared the man’s lips when all hell broke loose. In the cleared space under the rock lay two rattlesnakes, disturbed and pissed.

  The fierce shaking of long hollow rattles clued the kidnappers at the same time. In unison, they dropped their gazes to the rock where the snakes lay curled, rattling and poised to strike. Guns followed the direction of their eyes, and twin shots echoed twin screams.

  The snakes struck, but both men fell backwards fast enough that neither got bit. That didn’t mean Neal froze like a statute.

  Pushing Jenny to one side in case either decided to shoot them, he went after Muscles. Blondie had rolled as he fell back and seemed to have trouble regaining control of his weapon. Neal landed a blow to Muscles’ jaw that popped every knuckle in his fist. When Muscles attempted to bring the gun up against Neal’s head, he grabbed the gun hand and banged it against a white caliche rock. The thug howled and clobbered Neal against the temple hard enough to send him falling back.

  Desperate to subdue the man before Blondie could recover, Neal swore as he kicked out with one booted foot and caught Muscles hard in the chest. The man fell back but in the direction of the gun he’d dropped. In a flash, Neal landed on him, both hands wrapped around the shorter man’s wrist.

  The moment had come. Either he put Muscles down for good or the man would kill him. He needed an edge, an advantage. Muscles seemed intent on breaking Neal’s grasp while at the same time trying to gouge out his eyes.

  With a twist, Neal managed to redirect Muscles’ eye-gouging effort. Rearing back, he slammed his head forward into Muscles’ forehead. The immediate lack of response told him the man beneath him lay unconscious.

  “Neal!” Jenny’s desperate scream came from behind. Grabbing the gun from Muscle’s slack hand, he rolled across the compact body, aimed and fired.

  The instant the kidnappers fell away from the snakes, Jenny felt Neal release her hand and dive for Muscles. Hoping he could handle the smaller but more athletically-built man, she ran after Tall and Handsome.

  Handsome lost his gun when he moved. In a mad scramble, Jenny dived for it at the same time Handsome realized what she was doing. Four hands wrapped around the wide pistol grip as man and woman rolled in the white dust, broken rocks and blooming cactus.

  Before she knew what Handsome planned, he wrapped his legs around her and rolled her to her back. Giving a vicious twist to his upper body, he managed to break her hold on the gun. Bending again, he drove one elbow into the side of her head.

  Powered by his body weight, her head snapped to one side and slammed into a low rock. A soft grunt and lights began to fade around her. A buzz began in her ears as her vision narrowed to a pinpoint.

  Sheer determination kept her from fainting when she saw Handsome keep rolling, turn to rise in one graceful motion, gun in hand, aiming at Neal.

  “Neal!” Her scream blended with the sharp bark of a gunshot.

  Unable to face Neal’s death, she fainted.

  “Jenny? Come on, woman. Wake up.” A slap on one cheek had her turning her head. When she moved, Neal let out a gusty breath he hadn’t realized he held. She wasn’t dead, only unconscious. A scrape along one temple indicated she’d hit her head, but until she moved, he wasn’t sure what was going on.

  “Open your eyes, honey. Wake up.” Once more, she moved her head,

  he ran his hands along her arms then around her ribs. When she didn’t protest, he figured she might be sore as hell for a few days, but nothing seemed broken.

  He ran his hands along her hips then down each leg. Her clothes looked as bad as she probably felt. One pants leg lay open from thigh to the top of her boots. Her blouse hung on her by shreds.

  “Neal?” One hand covered her open eyes as she squinted against the sun’s glare. “Oh, Neal!
” and, before he knew it, she surged up and wrapped her arms around him so tightly he had trouble catching his next breath.

  “Oh, Neal,” she repeated as she squeezed him. “I thought he killed you.”

  To his surprise, he discovered he held a weeping woman in his arms. Still on one knee, he soothed her as best he could, his nonsense words of assurance finally bringing her to the hiccupping stage.

  “He aimed and fired.” Jenny sat up and wiped hot tears from flushed cheeks. She looked around, her brows drawn together in confusion. From her vantage point, sitting on the ground, she could not see the gully behind him. “Where’s Tall and Handsome anyway?”

  Neal suddenly realized how tired he felt. But he had no time to stop and indulge his desires at the moment—desires like a hot shower and Jenny beneath him, alive and beautiful.

  “Where is he, Neal?” She turned blank eyes to him.

  Neal jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Behind me a couple of feet. Your warning saved my life. I’d just finished with Muscles when you screamed. I grabbed the gun and fired. Plenty of rabbit and squirrel practice.” He gulped. “I’m a good shot. Both guns went off at the same time. He missed.” A pause as he pondered what might have been. “I didn’t. He’s dead.” A nod of his head in the other direction. “Muscles is tied up over there.”

  Pushing off one knee, he stood and held out a hand. “Can you stand?” When she grabbed his hand and finally stood in his embrace, he filled her in on what happened with his fight.

  “Muscles and I fought for his gun. I knocked him out then shot Blondie over there. After I made sure he wouldn’t give us any more trouble, I tied up Muscles so he couldn’t get away. I gagged him too. He woke up cursing. But Jenny, you scared the hell out of me. It took a long time for you to regain consciousness. You okay?” His kiss grazed her temple.

  “I’m fine. We’re both going to be sore, but I’m fine—now.” She stepped away from him far enough to look him straight in the eyes. “You saved my life, Neal. I can never repay that. Thank you.”

  Neal opened his mouth as if to speak but could think of nothing to say. Beneath the brilliant blue sky, fanned by a hot breeze, surrounded by rocks, snakes, cactus, grit, a criminal and a dead man, what could a man say? “You’re welcome, Jenny.” He pulled her into his embrace again and held her, felt her chest rise with each breath, smelled the fear that still perfumed her skin and thanked God they’d survived.

  A little chuckle echoed from somewhere around his breastbone. Jenny emerged from his arms with a smile. One hand brushed his cheek. “You always know how to accept a compliment.” A deep breath and she stepped back to look around. “Time to get practical here, cowboy.”

  In the bustle of calling the State Troopers, notifying her captain in Garland at Ranger Company B headquarters, undergoing an exam by the local EMTs and each telling how the kidnapping and shooting took place, Jenny and Neal never found a single moment alone together.

  Detectives interviewed each in separate rooms at the Childress police station. Jenny relayed a message to Neal saying she’d meet him at her hotel when the police finished with them. He sent a message back saying he’d be there as soon as he could.

  “Thanks, Sergeant. Appreciate the lift.” Neal stepped out of the squad car and stretched. Seemed all he’d done all day was sit, first in the truck in that crazy cross-country dash with Blondie and Muscles, otherwise known as Doug Switch and Alex Mendel. While Switch went to the local mortuary, Mendel sat in the jail. He would be arraigned within the next few days for robbery, kidnapping and attempted murder of a civilian and a Texas Ranger.

  The police car drove off, and Neal turned to the door of Jenny’s room. Never had he appreciated being alive. Never had he realized how critical Jenny Lincoln was. Oh sure, he’d proposed just before the shit hit the fan and he’d loved her then.

  But since that moment, Neal learned that all he was or ever wanted to be was tied to that one woman. Her well-being and happiness meant all to him, for when she was content, he was too.

  His hand shook as he rapped sharply on her door. Deep in the middle of the night when the traffic was light and the area lay quiet, his heart hammered deep in his chest, and the noise rumbled up to his ears and trembled in his hands.

  So happy to be alive—his first thought when she opened the door. Does she know what I’m thinking? Apparently, Jenny read the look on his face, his need to feel alive. Arms open wide, she invited him into the room, into her embrace.

  Two steps in and one booted foot pushed the door closed. He grabbed Jenny around the waist, twirled her until her back slammed against the door. Her open mouth and eager tongue met his. They battled for dominance, settled on compromise.

  One long bare leg slid up Neal’s thigh and hooked around his hip bone. Still deep in a kiss that threatened to rob his mind of coherent thought, he slipped his hands under the silk shirt she wore and down over her bare rear, took time to massage the firm mounds then grabbed and lifted her against the unforgiving wood.

  Legs locked around him, both hands clasped around his head, Jenny kissed him desperately. Deep in that same kiss, Neal wanted more than her body wrapped around his. He wanted inside her. Hitching her higher, he gave one corner of his mind permission to detach from her luscious lips and get to the job of moving his jeans and boxers down far enough to free his erection.

  As fast as he moved—and he congratulated himself that an old guy like him could move that fast—his lower body hurt by the time his jeans and drawers sagged around his knees.

  “Please, Neal, come in me.” Jenny panted as her lips teased his jaw then caressed his ear. She trailed sweet kisses inside his shirt collar before ripping the snaps apart. One hand frantically slid over his skin, her fingers opening and closing, catching the hair across his nipple as she pinched.

  Neal eased her down his body until his rod jutted up in her crack, warm skin enticing him until he thought he’d bust right there.

  “Gotta have you, Jen. Gotta’ feel you. Alive. Beautiful.” As if her ass were a melon and his rod a stake, he lifted her bodily then rammed her tight hole down on his shaft. Pushed her down until his penis practically rammed through her womb. Crazy with desire, mad with a need to affirm their safety, Neal bucked Jenny against the wall, plowing into her body hard and fast.

  Never afraid he’d hurt her because she urged him on in a guttural mutter intended to incite, inflame lust. “Faster. Faster.” A grunt and she ground against him. She bounced like a ball tied to a bounce-back paddle as he rode her to their climax.

  When Jenny sucked in her breath and ground down on him and held, Neal felt that sweet channel grab him with love muscles that vibrated. So hard did they roll around his rod that he let the rising tide of completion swell then wash over him. Buried deep in her, his body shot a thick hot sap of life. He held her hips to his groin as his climax went on and on.

  When he came back to his senses, he lay against Jenny, her back still to the wall, feet now on the floor. His energy seemed to have spurted out; he wondered if it might have gone to her.

  Her hands roamed his spine then lower to smooth his butt muscles, running her palms over and over the sleek flanks. “Neal?” Even her voice sounded needy.

  Lifting away from her, his palms braced against the door, he sensed her quest for more. “Go, Jen. Do whatever you want.”

  A sigh escaped as her lips tickled one nipple hidden in the open edge of his shirt. He should have been embarrassed, a grown man standing with his jeans around his ankles now, his dick limp but beginning to take interest, his body so weak from good loving that he wondered how much longer he could stand.

  And then he forgot everything as Jenny slipped down his body to kneel between him and that poor battered door. He suspected the door would soon be all that supported him if what he hoped happened. And that hope bloomed slowly to fully-realized completion.

  Neal put both hands together and leaned his head against them as his mind’s eye imagined what she did as she proc
eeded to work his body to a fever. First, she slid his boots and socks off, followed by his boxers and jeans. Naked from the waist down, he waited in anticipation as she wrapped her arms around his thighs. Just a little pull and she urged his legs wider. What little air-conditioning he detected now caressed his buttocks and exposed balls with chilly air. But the shiver up his spine had nothing to do with AC so much as it did with Jenny using a finger to stroke that seam from his anus to his balls. Her cheek warmed one thigh as she continued rubbing him.

  Neal rolled his eyes up then shut them as he loosened his stance, widened his legs and invited her to do even more. When her tongue tasted his dick, his eyes popped open quick enough. He bowed his back, leaned his head against hands that almost left prints in the door and let his gaze fall so he could watch her eat him.

  Holy shit! Her mouth swallowed the tip of his rod—that engorged veined piece of flesh where his entire world now centered. On her knees, her long silk shirt unbuttoned so those breasts stuck out, her arms around his legs, Jenny used her tongue on him like he was an ice cream cone. Long slow laves of hot skin against skin drove him crazy.

  He lost his mind completely when she took him into her mouth, and that clever tongue danced over burning skin. Though she went back and forth, sucked then released, Neal couldn’t stay still. One hand left the door; the other grabbed the doorknob and his cheek flattened against the panel as he pumped his body in and out.

  “You’re killing me,” he growled, his throat full of seductive sounds that made her move faster, take him deeper until he pushed her head against the door and shot burning cum into her mouth. A cat at a bowl of thick cream wouldn’t have had a better time than she seemed to have because she drank him down without choking. And licked him as if she wanted more.