Promises Keep (The Promise Series)

by Sarah McCarty

  “Are you going to have a problem with that?”

  Her laugh was more of a choking gasp. “Cougar, all I have now are horrible, vivid, distorted glimpses of what happened, which leaves me scared and desperately filling in the blanks with my imagination.”

  He stilled. Almost as if he’d taken a blow. “You’ve been thinking on this a lot?”

  “Of course!”

  He pulled back and tipped her chin up, studying her face. “I thought we agreed it was behind us.”

  “It’s not something a woman can forget.”

  “I didn’t think it would be something you’d want to remember, either.”

  She shrugged, unable to look away from his dark eyes. “It’s scarier not knowing. It’s part of my life and I can’t account for it. I don’t know how depraved it was. I was.”

  “Whoa, Angel.” He leaned back, his eyes widening in shock. “What makes you think you were depraved? Hell, that you could even be depraved?”

  He wouldn’t let her turn her face away, so she focused on the tiny scar on the right corner of his upper lip as she confessed. “I know how I am with you. Why would I be different with anyone else?” She pressed her hands into her stomach, the sickening images running through her head. “Especially if I were drugged.”

  His finger dropped from her chin. His hard arms came around her, pulling her into him, as if he wanted to absorb her into himself. “You think what we do together is depraved?”

  “I love what we do, but what if I’m that way with everyone? Any man who crooks his finger?”

  He shifted back against the wall. The bale beneath them rustled with the movement, the scent of hay rising to mingle with the scents of tobacco, sage, and of her own fear. And still he didn’t say anything.

  “Are you being quiet because you’re protecting me?” Her knuckles dug into her stomach. She clenched her hands tighter, pressed harder as she asked, “Tell me the truth, Cougar. Do you know if there were other men? Was I…wild with them all?”

  He took a deep breath, shifted her higher and said, “As far as I know, there wasn’t anyone but me, and you were nothing like you are now.”

  She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. “What do you mean, as far as you know?”

  Beneath her shoulder, his chest lifted as he shrugged. His hand stroked her hair from crown to the ends. Slowly, carefully, as if he were measuring his words by the rhythm he set with his hand.

  “Cecile said she had a new woman upstairs. That I would be the first, and that you would be mine for the night.”

  “She could have been lying.”

  His hand paused at her shoulder. “I suppose.”

  “But?” Lord, she wanted there to be a “but”.

  “No one else in the saloon had heard of you, so unless you worked in a saloon before the Pleasure Emporium, I think it’s safe to say I was the only one. And to answer the question you haven’t asked, you were sweet, placid and biddable, but not a bit wild. However you got to Cecile’s, I’m willing to bet you were a virgin when I made love to you.”

  Cougar had never missed a thing before, so it would be silly to hope he would have missed the telltale clenching of her body as he mentioned her arrival at the Pleasure Emporium. “Any reason you just stiffened up like a board?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s got to be something. Does it have to do with how you came to be in the Pleasure Emporium?”

  He was too damned astute. “It’s not important.”

  “I’m not taking any more chances with assuming.” He slid his hand around her side, over her arm and to her stomach. He worked his fingers under her hands until his palm pressed flat against her abdomen, a barrier to the bruising pressure she was applying. “And since we’re opening cans of worms today, how did you come to be at the Pleasure Emporium?”

  There were some things a woman never told a man. This was one of them. She fought to swallow back the nausea, stiffening her stomach muscles. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He eased his fingers wider over her stomach and stroked her gently. “I think it does.”

  “Why were you there?”

  His hand stilled on her stomach. There was a long pause before he asked, “If I answer yours, will you answer mine?”

  “Maybe.”

  Unbelievably, he chuckled. “Tough little thing, aren’t you?”

  “I try.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Don’t try too hard. I like you just the way you are.”

  “So?”

  “You want me to just blurt it out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn.”

  She waited while he searched for the words, knowing from the way his expression tightened, and his eyes avoided hers that he wasn’t proud of whatever he was about to say.

  “Since my fiancée died, I’d been unable to…” He shifted beneath her. A quick glance up showed his lips were a hard line and his jaw clenched.

  “Unable to what?” she prompted.

  “I couldn’t bed a woman.” It came out an angry hiss of sound.

  Her shocked gasp was totally inappropriate, as was her “You?”

  “Yeah.” He pulled his hand from hers. “Me.”

  She caught his hand before he could drag it away. “You loved her that much?”

  He tugged his hand free. She grabbed it back, holding on when he would have stood. He stopped short of dumping her on the ground. She brought his hand to her mouth, kissing it gently. “I wasn’t making fun, I was just…shocked. I mean, you’re always so ready.”

  He was ready now. She could feel him swelling against her hip.

  She kissed his palm again, keeping her gaze on the ground before her, concentrating on the feel of his callused palm against her cheek as she forced herself to say, “I don’t begrudge you someone you can love. You’re a man. There probably have been a lot of women who’ve caught your interest. It would be silly for me to resent your past.”

  “Bullshit.” He flipped his hand in hers and used her arm to pull her around until they were chest to chest.

  She looked up. His eyes were dark and intense. His forearm across her back held her breasts to his chest. She could feel his heart beating faster than normal. “What?”

  “It’s bullshit that you don’t resent Emily.”

  “That’s so unfair.” True, but unfair.

  “You don’t want me to have ever loved anyone before you anymore than I want you to have loved anyone before me.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.” He touched her cheek, the light gesture infused with the softness in his eyes as he said, “You’re as possessive as I am, so you can drop any bullshit to the contrary.”

  “All right,” she grunted, pushing against his chest. “I don’t want you to have loved Emily. I hate knowing you compare me to her and she wins every time because you loved her and she’s always going to have that part of you.”

  “I didn’t love her.”

  “I hate wondering if I’m doing the right thing, and in private, if it’s right or wrong that I do as you ask. Whether I should enjoy it, and whether Emily would have done it and therefore whether I should. I hate—”

  His hand over her mouth stopped the torrent of words. She considered biting his palm. “I didn’t love her.”

  She blinked, still not sure she’d heard him right.

  “And yeah, you should definitely do as I ask in private and you should absolutely enjoy it until you scream yourself hoarse. You should wiggle and beg and—”

  She bit him then. Hard.

  “Ow.” He didn’t look upset. He looked extraordinarily pleased.

  “I hate you,” she whispered to her lap.

  “No, you don’t.” He slid his hand into her hair, clenching his fingers in the loose strands at her nape, and tilted her head back until she was staring into his face. “You love me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you rap
ed me.” The tears she was blinking back pooled in her voice.

  He kissed her very, very gently on her lips, brushing her nose with his as he pulled away. “But you do, and maybe, if I’m very lucky, sometime in the next fifty years, you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.”

  “I can never forgive you if I don’t know what happened. Why it happened.”

  “I can’t tell you why, Angel, but I can tell you how.”

  “Please.” She just wanted it over.

  He let go of her hand and pressed her head into his chest. “All I know is what I overheard and what I put together later.” His words were muffled by his hand over her ear.

  “That’s fine. Just tell me.”

  “Cecile was going to auction you off to the highest bidder, make some money off you before handing you over to the regulars. Virgins bring a high price.”

  “Oh God!” She fought back the nausea.

  His hands rubbed her back, her thigh, whatever they touched. “We don’t have to do this.”

  “No. I want to know. I don’t want to wonder about it anymore.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded.

  “You ticked her off and she gave you to me.”

  “You were my punishment?” She sounded shocked. She couldn’t help it. Who could ever see Cougar as anything but a reward?

  “Guess she figured being taken by a half-breed, especially one in the state I was in, would make an impression on you.”

  “You’d never hurt a woman.”

  He held her stare. “Most people are afraid of me.”

  “Most people are fools.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “But you don’t ever like it?”

  “No,” he admitted after a slight hesitation.

  “So I shouldn’t start calling you Gut ’em?”

  He smiled and touched her cheek. “You do and that little pussy of yours will be red for a week.”

  She offered no comment.

  His finger slid across her cheek and settled into the corner of her mouth. “I saw you in that room, Angel, and I knew I’d found something special. Something I’d been looking for my whole life.” He shook his head, his finger insinuating between her lips until he could slide it along the sensitive lining. “You were so damned beautiful and so sexy in that floaty nightgown.”

  It was ridiculous but she was relieved she’d been dressed.

  “I knew right then that when I left, I was taking you with me.”

  “Did I fight?”

  He shook his head and his hair brushed her cheek. She caught the strand and held it, making him meet her gaze. “You were so drugged, though I didn’t know it at the time, you didn’t do much except lay there, sigh, and let me touch and play with you.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “Then I guess you’ll just have to remember the time at the ranch as our first. Remember how you rose to my touch, how you screamed in release under my mouth, how you made me senseless with pleasure.”

  Yes. She could do that, but first, she needed to deal with what happened at Cecile’s. “What happened after?”

  “At Cecile’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knocked me out with the lamp, and took on Aleric and Cecile. You killed Cecile. I came to in time to stop Aleric from killing you, and then I took you out of there.”

  “Really?” He made it sound so simple. Straightforward. So unimportant.

  “Yes.”

  “You were my first?”

  “First, last, and the only one who will ever matter.”

  “That’s a strange way of putting it.”

  “I want you to remember that I’ll always want you, Mara. And if anything happens to you that makes you feel dirty or uncertain, you just remember, I’m coming for you, and you hang on no matter what.”

  “That’s a strange thing to say.”

  “As a marshal, you get to see a lot of things you’d rather not. One of those things is women who’ve been raped. They get it in their heads they can’t go back, that it somehow matters, and they do stupid things.”

  “Maybe their husbands would have cared.”

  “They wouldn’t have.” He sounded very sure.

  “How do you know?”

  “Someone had to tell them their wives were dead.”

  And it had fallen to him. How hard that must have been for him. Cougar wasn’t a man who dealt in what-ifs. He accepted life’s ups and downs and made plans on how to get through them. Explaining to another something that made no sense to him would have been hard. It would have left an impression. One that had him once again gripping her chin between his fingers, the calluses on his hands rough on her flesh as he brought her gaze to his. “I don’t want anyone ever coming to tell me something like that.”

  “I already promised I wouldn’t leave you that way.”

  He dropped a hard kiss on her mouth. “Promise me again.”

  She placed her hand on his cheek, understanding in that moment, that there was no way he would have taken her at Cecile’s if he’d known she was unwilling, and even if she couldn’t remember what had happened, there was no way that Cougar would have been cruel. It wasn’t his way. “I promise, Cougar. I’ll hold on until you come for me.” She stroked her thumb over his wide, generous mouth, smiling as he immediately pressed a kiss against the pad. “No matter what,” she added softly, knowing he needed to hear it, understanding his fears.

  His “See that you do” was gruff. She didn’t take offense. He was such a deep-feeling man, her husband. He just didn’t understand that she was better now, stronger. That she had strength of her own that he could believe in. She would wait for him, if it ever came to that, because he needed her and she wouldn’t leave him alone with that need. As he had never left her alone with hers, even when she’d faced the specter of pregnancy.

  She sat up straight. Her hand dropped to his shoulder, as she gasped, “No wonder you weren’t worried about raising another man’s child!”

  He flinched and had the grace to look guilty. For about two seconds. Then his expression turned sober. He slid his big hand behind her neck, bringing her back against him.

  “Has there ever been anything in my background or your dealings with me that would make you think I would ever turn a child away from my home?”

  “No.”

  “Anything I’ve ever done to make you think I’d hurt a child out of spite?”

  “No.” She could see him dying to protect a child, but she couldn’t see him hurting one.

  “Anything you’ve ever heard or seen that tells you I get my jollies from hurting things littler than me?”

  “No, but—”

  He reared back the slightest. “But what?”

  Beneath her hand, his muscles were tight, telling her that he still wasn’t comfortable with the way things were between them. He still expected her to walk away on some excuse. She stroked the hard ridge of his collarbone. He had so much to learn about her.

  “But if we do have kids, you’d better find a way to toughen up. I’m not going to have a household of hooligans running roughshod over me because you crumple at a pout.”

  There was a shocked moment of silence, a short burst of laughter and then he hooked her neck in the crook of his elbow and kissed her hard. There was passion, hope, and relief in that kiss. He rested his forehead against hers. “Witch.”

  “I’m serious Cougar. You’ll have to hold up your end of the discipline.”

  He hugged her tighter. “Then you’d better make damned sure none of them look like you.”

  She smiled and snuggled into his shoulder. He would be a wonderful father. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  She let her hand slide down until it rested on his chest.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  She barely felt the kiss that landed on the top of her head. She tilted her head so she could see his face. “If you didn’t love Emily, why
did her death bother you so much?”

  Beneath her ear, muscles jerked and his breath hitched. His expression became guarded. And sad. “Because I should have loved her. Because I couldn’t. Because I tried to force the issue and she died.”

  “Doc said she died in a flood.”

  “She did, but if I hadn’t pushed her, she wouldn’t have fought me.”

  “You pushed her in the water?”

  He shook his head and looked over the buggy wheel. “I pushed her for intimacy.”

  She could see him doing that. Easily. He was a very physical man. This time, it was her hand on his cheek bringing his face to hers. “There’s no way you forced her and if you were about to be married, she should have been happy with your touch.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “Then she should have called off the wedding, not thrown a hissy fit that almost killed you both.”

  His smile was a small curve of his lips. “You’ve been talking to Doc.”

  She shrugged. “He offered the information.”

  “And you were curious.”

  “More like intimidated. She sounded so perfect and you were engaged.”

  He turned his mouth into her palm, and kissed her. “She was window-dressing. You’re the real thing.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Of course I do.”

  He nipped her palm and slid his hand down her thigh, pulling her closer. “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “I do.”

  He dropped his head until his mouth caressed her ear. “I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “How’d you end up at the Pleasure Emporium, Mara?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He kissed her temple, his lips sliding in her hair. “I think it does.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “You’re going to tell me someday.”

  But not today. She laid her head on his shoulder. Between them, his stomach rumbled loudly. “You’re hungry.”

  “I could eat.”

  “Me, too.”

  “The one thing we can’t have is you skipping meals.”

  “You are obsessed with fattening me up.”

  “You’re still too thin.”

  There was no arguing the truth, so she didn’t bother. “So let’s go do something about it.”