The Outlaw's Wife

by Cindy Gerard

  He kissed her. Sweetly. Deeply.

  “Come on,” he urged and, taking her hand, led her back toward the cabin. “Let’s go make a baby.”

  He fed her first. And because they were both exhausted from the emotional release of the morning, they made sweet, slow love and fell immediately asleep.

  Dusk was creeping across the western horizon when Emma felt Garrett stir and stretch and slowly come awake. She worked fast to tighten the last knot.

  By the time he opened his eyes, she was feeling a little uneasy and wondering if her methods had crossed the line to extreme.

  His eyes were blurry, a little out of focus, with the look of a man well loved.

  He smiled, all sleepy and sexy when he spotted her kneeling naked on the bed beside him. Then he reached for her—at least he tried to.

  His confusion lasted long enough to feed her guilt before he twisted his head around and discovered she’d bound his wrists to the headboard of the bed.

  He tested the knots she’d made from pieces of lingerie, then gave her a long, questioning look. Finally a slow, wicked grin tilted one corner of his mouth. “And me without my video camera,” he murmured with a thoroughly staged and wholly decadent leer.

  She shot him a nervous smile, kissed him lightly on the cheek then crawled off the bed.

  “And just where do you think you’re going?”

  His question was more curious than threatening, but she tensed anyway.

  “Not far,” she promised as she pulled the sheet up to his waist then began to gather her clothes.

  Clearly baffled now, he just watched her, his expression guarded.

  “Comfy?” she asked as she zipped up her jeans and tugged a sweater over her head.

  He nodded then watched with an increasingly confounded frown when she checked her knots.

  “Not too tight? Circulation okay?”

  His eyes never left hers as he flexed his fingers, the action reflexive, automatic. “Fine. Em—what’s going on?”

  “In a minute.” She crossed the room, dragged a brush through her hair, then came back to sit beside him. “Are you thirsty? Would you like some coffee or some water?”

  He let go of a nervous chuckle. “What I’d like is an explanation. Would you mind telling me what this is about?”

  “It’s about trust,” she began as she laced her fingers together on her lap. “It’s about the fact that now that we’ve opened up this new line of communication, I’m going to make sure we keep it open.”

  His frown upgraded to a puzzled scowl. “And you think you have to tie me to the bed to do that?”

  “No,” she said a little shyly, then let a smile—sexy, seductive and ripe with a sense of awakening power—tilt her lips. “I think this is something I just want to do.”

  He had nothing to say to that—which was fine with her for the moment because she had plenty of things just bursting to be said and done—if she didn’t lose her nerve.

  “This,” she said, touching her fingertips to his wrist, then running them in a slow, intimate caress down his bare forearm, across his exposed armpits to rest on his chest, “this is our final moment of truth, Garrett.”

  She felt his big body tense, then shiver with an elemental rush of desire.

  “Moment of truth?” he managed as she gave his other arm the same sensual, erotic attention as she had the other. “I’d...have bet the farm we’ve had several moments of truth the past few hours...some of them in this bed.”

  He swallowed back a groan when she trailed her fingers through his chest hair then drew a circle around his navel with one single, silky glide of her index finger.

  “You’re right,” she agreed, a secret smile tilting her lips when his abdominal muscles clenched beneath her touch. “We did. And this is the last one. The last step to complete and total trust”

  Watching his face, seeing the fire spark his eyes to blue flames, she reached for him then cupped and stroked his sex beneath the concealing sheet.

  He shuddered and arched and instantly swelled into her kneading hand.

  “So—” he caught his breath, rode with her touch “—this would be another one of those layers you were talking about.”

  She nodded at his acknowledgment, then slowly tugged the sheet aside until he was naked and completely vulnerable to whatever it was she wanted to do to him.

  “Be gentle with me,” he murmured as a slow, sexy smile crawled up his beautiful face. “It’s my first time.”

  Ten

  His smile was a decoy. They both knew that. He was still unsure about this. This man, who had held himself in check for so long, didn’t know if he could allow himself to let go.

  Emma didn’t give him the option.

  And it wasn’t gentle. It couldn’t have been. He was too needy. And she—she was a woman with one mission in mind.

  Making sure she had his complete attention, she rose and slowly undressed for him.

  Garrett watched, knowing she wanted him to, knowing he couldn’t have torn his eyes away if he’d been pressed to at gunpoint.

  He knew where the power was then. So did she. And she used it. To make him want. To make him need. To drive him to that jagged edge where surrender transcended to power and control broke down to pure, unbridled greed.

  Dusky light limned her body in gold. Her hair fell across one side of her face in silken waves. Her eyes were dark as she came to him, a little dangerous, unabashedly daring. Her hands were restless, as was her touch, as she pressed her body against his with the same evocative boldness as she’d undressed for him.

  And her sweet mouth was open and wanton and lush, as she bent to him, tasted the essence of him, surrounded him in velvet heat.

  He groaned her name, and with one hard, vicious yank, broke the silken ties that bound him. It took everything in him to keep from taking the control she was so bent on testing.

  But taking control and losing it were twin edges of a jagged blade. If he took control, he’d diminish hers. If he lost control, as she wanted him to, he might hurt her.

  He chose the middle road, contented himself with touching her, knotting his hands in her hair—then sank into excruciatingly exquisite despair when she began her seduction in earnest

  She was fragrant heat, essentially woman. Her bold possession shot him to flash point so swiftly the blood left his head in a dizzying rush. What was left of his reason quickly followed.

  Then all there was was sensation—and a wild craving that gave the caged beast in him a dangerous taste of freedom.

  When she lifted her head, she left him hungry. She left him hot. His fists in her hair tightened, held, demanded what he would have never before dared to take. But she had another end in mind for him as she denied his clench-jawed plea and freed herself from the hands that begged her.

  She rose above him—an erotic, pagan priestess—and made him a supplicant at her altar.

  He’d never wanted this badly. He’d never needed this much. It was primitive and potent—and she fed the desire with bite-sized pieces when he wanted to tear into it with his teeth.

  She knelt above him, over him, tormenting him with the brazen touch of her hands to her breasts until he reared up and took her in his mouth. He wasn’t tender. He wasn’t anything but what she’d tempted him to be: selfish, ravenous, he suckled and feasted and gorged himself on a need that only she could satisfy and he could no longer control.

  Only it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough until she was covering him, surrounding him, sheathing him inside her.

  Restraint became an abstract, distant fallacy as she tormented him with the suggestive brush of her body over his.

  A growl, guttural and savagely fierce, rumbled from somewhere deep in his gut as he clutched her hips in his hands and demanded she take him inside.

  With hungry hands she surrounded him. With a siren’s smile she guided him home—on her terms, in her own time—and took him deep.

  Sin had never been this seductive. The
claw of lust never as ravaging, as he lifted his hips and begged her to ride with him past the boundaries of love and into an unknown realm of passion.

  He was soaring. She was the sky. He was the lightning unleashed and unrepentant in the rage of the storm she’d conjured. Utterly consumed, completely vulnerable, he let the thunder take him.

  He couldn’t plunge deep enough, couldn’t get close enough as he pumped into her, harder, faster, then rode with her to the pulsing edge of release—and to an end as stunning as death, as sharply thrilling as escaping it.

  Sleep claimed him again like a drug. Peace filled him like fine whiskey, a mellow burn, a warm, satisfying contentment. And when he awoke, hours later, it was to morning light and the provocative sight of his wife standing on the other side of the loft.

  To the muffled creak of the old oak bed frame, the soft rustle of smooth sheets, he rolled to his side to better enjoy the view. Her back to him, wearing only the shirt he’d discarded when they’d gone to bed, she stood studying the pictures on the wall. When she reached above her head to straighten one of the framed prints, the luscious curve of her bare bottom peeked out from under the hem of his shirt.

  “I guess,” he said lazily, breaking the quiet and causing her to jump and press a hand to her throat in surprise, “if I had to wake up to an empty bed, this is the next best thing.”

  It took her a moment to catch her breath. “I was trying not to wake you.”

  “Well, I’m awake now, sunshine. And I want you to come here.”

  He tossed back the covers. Levering himself up on an elbow, he patted the mattress in front of him. Her gaze tracked his naked length with a lover’s intimacy, lingering on that part of him that was swollen and straining for want of her.

  “Now,” he said darkly.

  She walked toward him, a smug, sexy smile tilting her lips. As one, their thoughts returned to last night and the urgency with which he’d taken her, the freedom he’d allowed himself in the taking.

  She lowered a knee to the bed. “I think I woke up a sleeping lion.”

  He trailed his hand up the inside of her thigh, sucked in a breath when she trembled. “Take it off.”

  Her eyes darkened then fired as she undid the buttons, shrugged his shirt from her shoulders and let it fall, forgotten, to the floor.

  “I don’t think I can walk.” In fact, he was surprised he had the strength to talk.

  Spread-eagle on his back, his breath slogged out in deep, labored puffs. On her stomach beside him, Emma balled a pillow under her breasts, hugged it to her cheek and grinned at him. “Sooner or later we’re going to have to put it to the test.”

  “Later,” he grunted, stalled somewhere between ecstasy and exhaustion. “Definitely later.”

  She laughed, a rich, throaty chuckle. “I love you this way.”

  “Half-dead?”

  “Wholly satisfied. Totally spent. Completely at my mercy.”

  Serious suddenly, he held her gaze. “Thank you, Em. Thank you for showing me. Not just the sex. For everything.”

  “You’re very welcome,” she whispered, then with a teasing light returning to her eyes, trailed her fingers across his chest, and lower.

  He caught her hand with a groan. “You’re going to kill me.”

  “Not what I had in mind.” She sat up cross-legged in the middle of the bed. “I’ve still got use for you, partner, so how about if I feed you to get your strength built back up?”

  “A half a beef ought to do it.”

  She rose with a laugh, wholly confident, lavishly female, and shrugged into his shirt again. “Think you can make do with steak and eggs?”

  The thought of all that silky skin beneath the coarse chambray of his shirt had his blood running hot again. “And then?”

  “And then,” she purred huskily and lowered her mouth for one last kiss, “you’re going to take me treasure hunting.”

  “Again?”

  “Again. It’s our last day. We’ve got to give it one more try.”

  “So this has nothing to do with me,” he teased, falling back on the bed and working hard to look wounded. “It’s Frank and Jesse’s gold you’re after.”

  “Oldest motive known to man—or woman,” she added with a sassy grin. “And that reminds me—” barefoot, she crossed the room to the picture “—this is of them, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” He rolled to his side, content to just look at her. “It’s an old tintype Dad discovered, had blown up and framed.”

  “There’s a striking resemblance to you boys.”

  “So we’ve been told,” he said dryly.

  “When was it taken, do you think?”

  “Shortly before they were run out of the valley. Story goes that it was the photographer in Jackson Hole who recognized them and alerted the local sheriff, who put the word out to the officials in Arkansas who were looking for them.”

  She studied the picture a little longer. “Which one is Frank?”

  “The mean-looking one. Jesse was the baby—had the baby face to go with it, too. Just like our Jess. You’re awfully interested in them all of a sudden.”

  She worked her lower lip with her teeth, nodded. “Have you ever noticed this—whatever it is—hanging around Frank’s neck?”

  He shrugged. “Hadn’t paid much attention.”

  “It looks like a strip of leather with a piece of wood or something attached to it.” Her brow furrowed. “Wait a minute. You know those things you showed me the other day?” At his blank look, she elaborated. “You know—the gun barrel, the hinge, those shell casings you found when you were kids?”

  “Yeah...I remember.”

  “Well, this thing...this thing around his neck. It looks kind of like one of those shell casings.”

  His interest piqued, he rose, found he could walk after all and joined her by the picture. “You’re right. It does look like a spent shell.”

  “Why do you suppose he’d wear something like that around his neck?”

  He lowered his mouth to the curve of her neck, nuzzled lingeringly, his mind turning to other things. “Maybe it was a souvenir. Something to remind him of a particular job they’d pulled. Who knows how a criminal mind works.” He tugged her back against him. “Wanna know how my mind is working right now?”

  She leaned into his caress, laughed. “No question there. At this particular moment, you’re as easy to read as a primer.”

  She turned in his arms. “But you need nourishment, remember? And I could use a shower.”

  “Good idea.” His grin was lascivious and completely without shame. “I’ll wash your back—and any other little thing that needs attention.”

  Their late breakfast turned into a very late brunch—and with the heat of this newfound passion in their relationship once again cooled, they both started thinking about the picture of the James boys and the possibility that there was some significance to the shell casing Frank had worn.

  They both looked toward the old pine chest and the drawer that held the James boys’ childhood finds with the same questions in their minds.

  Fifteen minutes later, an effervescent excitement bubbled through their blood like fine champagne as Garrett held one of the brass shell casings between his fingers. There were five casings in all. Four of them were hollow and empty. The fifth had been sealed at both ends. The letters F.J. had been crudely carved on the scarred three-inch-long brass outer shell.

  Attention focused and intent, Emma watched over Garrett’s shoulder. “Can you get it open?”

  He’d been carefully working the end with pliers, trying to pop the seal free. “I need something smaller, something sharper to wedge between the casing and the seal.”

  “A hair clip?” she suggested as she pulled the gold barrette from her hair.

  “Yeah, that just might work.”

  With the precision of a jeweler, he worked the sharp edge of the fastener in between the fused metals. After several minutes, it broke free with a surprising pop and tumble
d onto the table.

  “I’ll be damned.” He scowled into the dark cylinder that wasn’t quite as big around as his index finger. “There’s something in there. I can’t get it out.”

  “Let me try.”

  Emma took the casing, gingerly stuck her pinkie in up to the first joint and with a little careful manipulation, managed to pull its contents free.

  With excited eyes, they stared at a tiny rolled cylinder of dried, brittle paper.

  “Holy horse thief, Robin,” Garrett said, in his best Batman voice. “I think we’ve got a breakthrough.”

  Anticipation added a charged edge to her excitement. “Unroll it. See what it says.”

  “I’m afraid to—it’s so brittle, it might break into dust.”

  “Let’s try a little steam to soften it up,” she suggested and hurried to put the teakettle on to boil.

  Fifteen minutes later they stared in intrigued silence at the letters scrawled on the paper they’d managed to unroll. Some were indecipherable, the ink was so faded. Some appeared to be destroyed by the cracks in the aged paper.

  “I can make out about every other letter on the top line. There’s a W and an I. And I think that’s a K. Damn, it’s just too hard to read.”

  Emma added an S and a Y until, in order, they read W-I-S-K-Y. The second line, though smudged, appeared to be intact: R-I-S.

  “What do you think it means?”

  He shrugged, slumped back in the chair. “I don’t know. Could be a code of some kind. Maybe a combination to some vault W-I-S-K-Y. R-I-S,” he repeated aloud letter by letter. Together they tried to construct a word or a phrase or a name. Finally he shook his head. “It’s like playing poker with half a deck. The closest I can come up with is he was a bad speller and was trying to write whiskey and rice. Maybe it was a list of supplies he needed.”

  She studied it closer. “It’s got to mean something. It’s got to be important for Frank to have worn it around his neck.”

  “Woah. You’ve jumped from speculation to fact pretty fast there, girl. We don’t even know for certain if this is the shell in the picture.”