The Texan

by Joan Johnston

  Bay sighed in relief when he continued down the trail they’d been following. As they headed south, the wash widened into the Ernst Valley. They no longer had to dodge cactus, but now her calves ached from walking in loose sand. “How much farther?”

  “Another couple of miles.”

  Bay wasn’t going to beg Owen to stop. If he could keep walking—limping—on that injured leg of his, she could manage on her aching hip.

  At least they didn’t have to worry about being ambushed. She could see for miles in every direction. “There must have been one whopper of a fire here,” she said as she surveyed the charred vegetation that lay ahead of them as far as the eye could see.

  “Yep. ’Bout ten years ago. Started by lightning in the spring. Burned for four days, then petered out on its own.”

  “What was there to burn?” Bay asked, looking at the desert landscape.

  “Sotol. Yucca. Brush. Grass.”

  “Why hasn’t it grown back?”

  He shrugged. “Not enough water, I guess.”

  Which reminded Bay they were walking in the desert with less than three quarts of water between them, when they ought to be drinking a gallon of water a day—each. “Where’s the closest water?” she asked.

  “The Rio Grande. But I’m not sure you’d want to drink that.”

  “How far away is the river?”

  “Eleven or twelve miles.”

  “We can walk that in what—maybe four hours?” Bay said, relieved.

  “If we were traveling on a flat surface, maybe. There’s a place farther on where the trail is blocked by boulders. We’re going to have to do some climbing before we get where we’re going.”

  Bay stared at Owen’s horse. “How is your horse supposed to get over country like that?”

  “He won’t.”

  “So you’re saying that eventually we’re going to end up carrying our supplies on our backs?”

  “I’m saying we’re going to end up carrying our supplies on our backs in the dark.”

  “Oh, shit,” Bay said.

  OWEN DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HIM. SOMEthing had gone haywire inside, and he couldn’t look at Bayleigh Creed without having sexual fantasies that were mostly visions of the two of them naked, with him buried deep inside her. Anybody looking at the waif in blue jeans and a ripped shirt, with one cheek scabbed over and a handkerchief bandaging her hand, would think he’d gone loco. Maybe he had.

  There was nothing remotely sensual about her appearance. Except he couldn’t look into those violet-blue eyes of hers without getting a fluttery feeling in his stomach. The memory of her nipples stabbing him in the back made his groin draw up tight. And watching her fanny move in those butter-soft jeans as she walked along the trail in front of him had made him hard as a rock. It was not a comfortable way to travel.

  Owen swore, low and soft.

  Sunlight gleamed off her auburn ponytail, as she glanced at him over her shoulder. The auburn curls at her temple had been tickling his nose when he’d woken up in the tent with her. He imagined what all that silky auburn hair would look like draped across his body. And felt about a hundred butterflies take flight in his gut.

  “Keep moving,” he said curtly.

  The guttural sound that came from her throat made him think of hot, sweaty sex.

  Owen didn’t want to contemplate the difficulties of getting involved with the daughter of a man his mother—or maybe his father—had arranged to have murdered. That alone should have been enough to discourage his interest. He couldn’t understand how she was having this effect on him now, when their situation was so fraught with danger. But maybe that was exactly why he was reacting the way he was. Danger heightened sexual tension. Yeah, that must be what it was.

  Owen knew the significance of the message that had been left for them back in that dry wash, even if Bay didn’t. They were being warned off, given a chance to get the hell out of Dodge. He knew he should have backtracked, especially since they’d lost half their water, along with the rubber suits and gas masks that would have protected them if they ran into any VX nerve gas.

  Fortunately, he’d put the atropine-oxime autoinjectors into his shirt pocket to keep them handy, figuring that if they needed them, they’d need them in a hurry.

  Unfortunately, the hijackers weren’t going to need anything as deadly as VX nerve gas to kill them. Or even a couple of bullets. If he and Bay didn’t keep moving, if one of them got injured, or if anything delayed them from getting to the end of this trail—like a standoff with the hijackers who’d taken this same route—they would die of thirst.

  They’d been walking through a broad valley, and he began searching the limestone walls above them for one of the caves that had been inhabited by some prehistoric people—in a day when there must have been water here. He spotted one of the lower caves and pointed it out to Bay. “We’ll stop here and wait out the heat of the day.”

  He watched her stare down the valley ahead of them, knew she was calculating whether they could make it without stopping, and saw the small shake of her head as she turned back to join him.

  “How much farther will we have to walk when it’s dark?”

  “A couple of hours.”

  Bay stared up at the opening in the limestone that was easily eight or ten feet above the ground. “How do we get up there without a ladder?”

  “We’ll use a trick my brother Clay and I worked out,” Owen said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll hold the horse near the opening, and you stand on the saddle. That’ll give you enough height to grasp the edge of the cave with your hands and pull yourself inside.”

  “Women don’t have the same upper body strength as men,” she pointed out. “I did a paper on it.”

  He grinned. “I’ll give you a shove from the bottom.”

  In the end, she turned out to be strong enough to make it on her own. He handed up the saddlebags, then loosened the cinch and hobbled the horse below the cave, before he joined her. The cave wasn’t large, but they were out of the sun.

  “Snakes can’t climb, can they?” Bay asked as she cautiously walked farther inside.

  “No snakes,” he said. “Maybe a few spiders. Scorpions could be a problem,” he said as he retrieved the nearly empty canteen.

  He saw her shiver as she said, “I sure hope I don’t accidentally sit down on a scorpion. At least you can see a snake coming.”

  Owen watched her use her boot to scrape away a few cobwebs and debris along one wall.

  “I get the feeling we should have brought a whole posse of Texas Rangers along with us,” she said, as she sank down in the space she’d cleared.

  Owen smiled wryly as he remembered Clay had made the same suggestion.

  “I can’t believe we could be in such terrible trouble from such a small accident,” Bay said.

  “The Big Bend is notoriously unforgiving,” Owen replied. “People have died of thirst out here even when they stayed with their car and their car was on a road. This place is just too damned big and too damned remote.”

  “Which is why those hijackers picked the Big Bend to hide out in, I suppose,” Bay said with a sigh. “And why my brother must have felt he had to keep an eye on them, rather than calling for help. It’s easy to see how someone might disappear in this place and never be found.”

  “Right now, we need to worry about getting ourselves out of here alive.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’m doing fine.”

  Maybe now she was, Owen thought. But the heat was dehydrating her, and since she was a great deal smaller than he was, she was going to find herself in trouble long before he did. He handed her the canteen. “Take two swallows. No more.”

  When she was done, he took one swallow himself. He intended to conserve what water they had until he was sure they were going to make it out of here without anything else going wrong. He threw the rolled-up sleeping bag to her. “Get some sleep. It’s the best way to p
ass the time.”

  He saw how carefully she moved in deference to her sore hip as she unrolled the bag, unzipped it, and laid it flat. “You might as well join me.” she said.

  “I’m going to keep watch for a while.”

  She stopped and tipped her head sideways. “Watch for what?”

  “The bad guys,” he said with a wry smile.

  She frowned. “We’re supposed to be chasing them, not the other way around.”

  “Yeah. But we might be getting a little too close for comfort.”

  Her eyes widened. “Do you think they’ve been watching us?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Don’t worry about it right now. Get some sleep.”

  She lay down with her hands cupping her head, making her breasts jut. He forced himself to look away, but it was too late. His blood was pumping, and his jeans no longer fit comfortably. He limped to the opening of the cave and stared out.

  “You seem to know this trail pretty well,” Bay said.

  “Yeah. Clay and I came here every summer to spend time by ourselves.” He thought of the accusation her brother had made—that his brother was involved in the hijacking of the VX mines.

  Owen had refused to even consider the possibility, because he couldn’t conceive of a reason why Clay would be involved. But he hadn’t spent much time with his brother over the past ten years since they’d graduated from college. Clay had gone one way, and Owen had gone another.

  And there was that coincidental visit by his brother to Paul Ridgeway in Midland, where Clay had been seen by Luke with two men who’d traveled on to the Big Bend—and then abducted Luke.

  Owen knew Clay was ambitious. His brother believed political power was the road to important social change. The Texas Rangers, along with the FBI, had been investigating the possibility that the mines had been stolen by a Texas-based white supremacist group, the Rattlesnakes, who’d bought stolen guns in the past and met secretly, fomenting civil rebellion against the government. Had Clay decided that change came too slowly within the boundaries of the law and decided to step outside it with help from a couple of friends from Midland?

  Owen tried to imagine himself doing such a thing and couldn’t. Clay was his twin. They used the same toothpaste, ate the same favorite foods. His brother was the other half of himself. Innately, they were the same person. There was simply no way Clay could be involved.

  When Owen looked back into the cave, he saw Bay had turned on her side, with her good hand beneath her good cheek. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing deeply and evenly. She looked so helpless, when she was anything but. She was prickly and persistent, and she’d turned his world upside down.

  Somehow, he managed to keep his distance from her for the rest of the afternoon. When the sun was low in the sky, he retreated back into the cave and tapped her on the shoulder. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

  She bounced upright, and her head caught him on the chin, knocking his teeth together and catching his lip between them.

  “Ouch!” he yelped.

  “I’m sorry. I get called so often in the middle of the night for emergencies that I’m used to popping out of bed.”

  He massaged his chin and worked his jaw and dabbed at his split lip. “I’ll remember that.”

  She leaned toward him and moved his hand out of the way. “You’re bleeding.”

  She unwound the handkerchief from her hand and used it to dab at his lip. She moved the cloth away and used a finger to plump his lip where his teeth had left a tiny cut. “Speaking as a physician, I’d say you’ll recover.”

  “Not if you keep that up for long,” he murmured, looking into her eyes.

  She seemed startled, then looked back at him. Their eyes caught and held. “We really shouldn’t do this,” she murmured.

  “I know,” he said, as he lowered his mouth to hers. “Be gentle with me. I’m wounded.”

  Her lips were incredibly soft, a little damp, and giving. He pushed his mouth against hers, his heart thrumming as he felt her cautious response. He wanted to taste her and captured her nape to hold her steady as he slid his tongue along the seam of her lips. She opened wide.

  A moment later he was inside, his tongue lapping at the honeyed taste of her. She was equally ravenous, he discovered. Her hands didn’t seem to know where to go, and he felt them moving across his chest and finally clasping him around the neck. He wrapped his hand around her ponytail and angled her head back so he could thrust his tongue deep into her mouth.

  And he was lost.

  They were a tangle of arms and legs as he lowered her to the sleeping bag, both grabbing at buttons and snaps and belts and boots. Trying to get naked, anxious to put flesh next to flesh. Anxious to touch. To caress.

  “Hurry, hurry,” she said breathlessly. “I can’t wait.”

  He was afraid he wouldn’t last long enough to get inside her. She was fire in his arms, and he was on a very short fuse. “Don’t wait on me,” he said, as he plunged himself deep inside her.

  Lord, have mercy. She was so hot and tight and wet. She wrapped her legs around him, and he could feel her nails piercing his back as she cried out and surged upward, driving him in to the hilt. His mouth found hers, and his tongue mimicked the hard thrust of his body. He was out of control, his body forcing hers against the hard ground, the blood pounding in his ears, his lungs shrieking for air.

  He couldn’t take it all in fast enough. The smell of her heated flesh, the taste of her mouth, the touch of her silken hair. He thirsted, and she was life-giving water. He needed her, had to have her, could not survive another moment without the completion she promised.

  “Can’t … wait,” he gasped.

  “No need … to wait,” she gasped back, as her body began to convulse around him.

  He threw his head back in a grimace of excruciating pleasure as he spilled his seed within her.

  He pulled her close as he collapsed beside her, his chest heaving in concert with hers, their bodies slick with sweat, as they sucked enough air to stay alive.

  He felt her easing away and said, “Don’t. We have to talk.”

  She looked up at him with the knowledge of what they had done in her eyes. She looked terrified. And unhappy.

  “We can figure out a way to make this work,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No, we can’t.”

  “Our families—”

  “This has nothing to do with your family or mine. There are … personal reasons … why I’m not going to get involved with you.”

  He sat up abruptly. “Are you telling me you’ve got a boyfriend—or a husband—out there somewhere?”

  “Nothing like that,” she said, turning her face away. “I’ve just decided that … I’m never getting married.”

  He thrust a hand through his hair, shoving it back from his face. “I see.” But he didn’t really. He grabbed his underwear and dragged them on, then pulled on his jeans. “I wasn’t proposing marriage. I was only suggesting—”

  “Sex?”

  He grinned. “You must admit, what just happened was pretty incredible.” He paused with his shirt half on. “I wouldn’t mind repeating the experience.”

  From the speed with which she began dressing, she didn’t share his feelings. “I’m not proud of what I just did,” she said. “I haven’t forgotten who you are, or who your family is. Ordinarily, I have a lot of self-control. I can’t explain what just happened. I can’t imagine what Sam would think if he ever found out I had sex with the man who crippled him.”

  “I—” Owen cut himself off. There was no way he could excuse himself. Nothing he could say that would undo the past. He tucked his shirt in, zipped up his jeans, and buckled his belt. “Our families don’t have to get involved in this.”

  “How can we keep them out?” she asked bleakly.

  “I thought we managed fine.”

  She shook her head. “I wanted to know what it would feel like to make love to you. I had a lapse in judgment and indulged my curi
osity.” She shoved her feet into her boots. “That’s all that happened.”

  “The hell it was.”

  He yanked her onto her feet and had his mouth open over hers in two seconds flat. He shoved her legs apart, unzipped her jeans and thrust two fingers deep inside her. She moaned and bucked and shook her head in denial, but it was too late.

  He already knew she was wet and ready.

  Owen looked into her eyes and said, “That sweet little mouth of yours can tell tales all day long. But your body doesn’t lie. You want me every bit as much as I want you.”

  He let his thumb caress her, and she writhed in his arms.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I don’t want this.”

  She stared at him with heavy-lidded eyes, violet eyes still dazed with passion.

  “Oh, you want it all right. Every bit as much as I want it.” He abruptly released her, stepped back, and said, “Let me know when you decide to let us both have it.”

  She sank back onto the sleeping bag, wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her upraised knees. “I don’t think I could stand to get hurt again, Owen.”

  “Again?”

  “I had a … bad experience.”

  He opened his mouth to deny that he’d ever harm a hair on her head, but she cut him off.

  “There are things you don’t know about me. Things I have no intention of telling you. Reasons why I won’t have a casual affair—”

  A loud voice from outside the cave interrupted her. “Hey, you two in there. Throw out your weapons and come out with your hands up.”

  Owen shoved Bay flat and used his body as a shield to cover hers. He met her startled gaze and said, “I guess we found the bad guys.”

  Chapter 9

  BAY WAS TERRIFIED. SHE’D KNOWN THE HIjackers were dangerous, but frankly, she’d been more worried about dying of thirst. It seemed she was going to be spared that fate—and get shot instead.

  “You’ve got ten seconds to throw out your guns before I start shooting.”

  Bay realized the hijacker’s bullets wouldn’t have to hit them. They could easily ricochet off the rock walls of the cave and kill them.