by Paige Tyler
“No,” she said quietly.
Quick as a flash, he stood, suddenly appearing to be much more sober than he had before, pressing the cold, unforgiving muzzle of his gun against her temple and jerking her towards him at the same time. She heard the sound of the hammer of the gun being cocked back. It resounded in the deadly silent room, instantly sobering everyone there, especially Mary Rose. Hernandez abandoned his hold on her waist for a better hold on her hair, wrapping it around his thick wrist like a silken rope and forcing her neck back into an awkward arch, the gun constantly pushing against the fragile bones around her brain.
Mary Rose expected to see her short life passing before her, as everyone said it would. But it didn’t. She fully expected to die right then and there, within the next few seconds. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t feel anything but absolute stark terror. If he didn’t kill her quickly, she was going to end up throwing up all over him. Then she started to hear a high pitched keening and realized that she was the source of it; she was whimpering with fear as her blood ran colder and colder and she knew she was going to die at the hands of this madman.
Click.
For a moment, she thought that Hernandez had relented, but then Rafe began to speak in a tone she’d never heard before from very close to her. “I thought I told you last night. She’s mine. Let her go. Now.”
She couldn’t see it, but he had the muzzle of his now cocked gun pressed against Hernandez’s temple. When he’d come in, Rafe’s heart had lodged in his throat at the sight of Mary Rose in Herve’s hands, that gun carving its way into her soft flesh as sure as the bullet would if it was released.
He’d slunk up behind them as slowly and carefully as he could, until he could do something about it. Hernandez knew that Black wouldn’t hesitate one bit to kill him, so he lowered the gun slowly but reluctantly and holstered it. The Boss had a hair trigger, and there was nothing he wouldn’t put past him. The man had proven himself to be completely ruthless, and Herve had no interest in dying just now, just when his life was starting to go right for a change. Besides, no bitch was worth dying for.
“I didn’t mean nothing by it, Boss.” He smiled, showing several black teeth surrounded by a mouthful of tobacco stained others. “She’s jus’ so purty, I wanted to get me jus’ a taste of her. Jus’ a taste—”
Rafe’s rock hard fist crashed full-on into his nose, making Hernandez let go of his hold on Mary Rose to bring his hands to his face. Blood was gushing from between his fingers, some of it splattering on the girl as she nearly ran away from the whole scene.
Rafe had never been so furious or so scared in all his life. He didn’t leave it at just that one punch. He beat the ever-loving crap out of the man, muttering under his breath the whole time that she was his and he was never to so much as come near her again.
When he came to his senses and stood up, Hernandez was a bloody mass on the floor, writhing and moaning. But Rafe didn’t hear him. He was too busy looking around for Mary Rose, who was nowhere to be seen. Stalking out of the saloon and into the inn, he threw back to Toze, “Your watch. Wake him in four hours for his turn.”
Somehow, Tozier wasn’t surprised at the Boss’s order. He wasn’t known to be the forgiving type. He fully expected Hernandez to pull his own weight, even broken and bloody as he was.
She wasn’t in the kitchen or the pantry. Trying to remain calm and not worry that she might have taken one of the horses and bolted, Rafe took the stairs to the second floor two at a time and checked every room there. She was in the one he expected—her room, just lying on the bed, on her side, facing away from the door.
He closed the door quietly behind him and crossed to the bed, sinking down on the side and reaching out to pat her shoulder. He felt completely at a loss. He hadn’t had much experience in comforting females. The minute his fingers touched her, she rolled off the bed and ran to the basin on the dresser and disgorged the contents of her stomach—not that she’d eaten much all day. But what she had taken in was no longer with her by the time she’d finished.
Rafe stroked her hair and guided her back to the bed, then helped her settle down again. She adopted the exact same position as she had before. He racked his brain about what to do, but the only thing that came to mind was that, when he’d had the stomach flu, his mother had given him weak peppermint tea. “Stay right there,” he ordered, unnecessarily. She didn’t look like she felt like going anywhere any time soon.
He ran back downstairs to rifle through the pantry and came up with some tea—although it wasn’t peppermint. The kettle was still full of warm water on the back of the stove, so he made some very weak, warm tea and brought it back up to her.
“Here,” he said softly. She didn’t move. Rafe rolled her over and brought a spoonful of tea to her lips. She refused it. “Mary Rose, it’ll help settle your stomach. Now drink it.”
She frowned up at him, but opened her mouth. “What are you, my nursemaid now?”
Rafe frowned right back. “Never you mind what I am. I want you to drink some of this. I don’t need you getting sick on top of everything else.”
“What’s the difference?” Mary Rose asked. “You’re probably going to kill us, anyway,” she said with an indifference he found disturbing.
“Sh. Don’t you worry your little head about anything like that.” Rafe lay down behind her on the bed, snuggling his front up to her bottom and wrapping his arms around her. Instinctively, he began to rock them both gently back and forth, sneaking a kiss beneath her ear as he stroked her hair. “I’m sorry about what Hernandez did. He won’t do it again, I promise.”
Mary Rose just shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want him to hold her like this, but what she wanted didn’t seem to count for much. And she absolutely refused to admit that it felt good to be held in strong arms—if not safe ones. He had his own gun that he could decide to use on her at any time, she kept trying to remind herself.
But it wasn’t easy to remember that he was supposed to be a bad guy when he was nice to her like this. It was much easier to recall that fact when he was being nasty and ordering her around, or worse, spanking her.
On some basic level, he was different from Hernandez. She didn’t know how to explain it, or how she knew it, but she believed it to be true. He hadn’t been needlessly cruel to her, as Hernandez had. He hadn’t taken any joy in frightening or hurting her, as she would expect from someone like him. He was a puzzling man.
On impulse, Rafe turned Mary Rose onto her back and kissed her, softly and slowly, taking his time and making sure that she enjoyed it, even if she didn’t want to.
Oh, God, he was kissing her, and it felt too good to bear! She didn’t want to like kissing him, and thought she was very prepared to try to fend him off, at least mentally, but she just couldn’t. It wasn’t anything like what she’d had to imagine kissing Hernandez would be like. Rafe smelled good, and his breath tasted faintly of tea. He was holding her close, and her body was clamoring for more, no matter how hard she tried to ignore and suppress it.
His lips nibbled softly at hers, encouraging her to lose herself, to forget her morals and who and what he was to join him in that soft abandon. Mary Rose couldn’t help herself; she arched against him, pressing herself into him, reveling in his slight groan at her unexpected movement.
Rafe couldn’t believe that she wasn’t fighting him tooth and nail about the kiss. He expected it to be about as exciting as kissing a wet dishrag, but here she was, practically writhing in his arms—or as close to it as he could reasonably expect from a woman who was most definitely a virgin and was as starchy as she was. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this—he knew that the smart thing to do was to turn her loose and go downstairs to see what trouble the other two had inevitably stirred up in his absence. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to hold her in his arms as long as it took, rocking them together, and see where this wild abandon of hers led.
H
e carefully twisted his mouth across hers, separating her lips in as non-threatening a manner as he could, then slipping his hard pink tongue between them. Mary Rose moaned softly, and Rafe thought he was going to explode at the sound. She was such a lady that making her emit an unconscious cry like that nearly made him lose his self-control right there. But somehow he kept a hold of himself—barely, teasing his tongue along the edge of her teeth, tickling her just a bit.
Mary Rose shuddered. She’d never known a kiss could be like this—dear God, she felt like her brain was melting away to be replaced by the unfamiliar base needs of her throbbing, aching body. Suddenly, the bodice of her dress felt much too tight as her peaked nipples pressed against it, the worn fabric brushing against them and aggravating their condition until she had to rub herself against his chest to find some relief—but instead she found herself in a worse state than before.
She groaned again in a very unladylike fashion, and Rafe knew exactly what she wanted even if she didn’t quite, placing his hand over the rise of her breast for a moment, just to see how she would respond. He was elated when she pressed her breast into his palm. He could feel her pebbled nipple, and gently plucked at it, watching her open, unguarded face eagerly. Her genuine responses were driving him crazy. He was rapidly reaching the point of no return, as far as his body was concerned.
His fingers pinching each nipple in turn made goose bumps appear on every inch of her skin. Mary Rose didn’t know what to do with the overwhelming feelings that were flooding in a tidal wave through her untried body. Her mind was taking a back seat to her flesh, and because of it her usual fear of the unknown—of pretty much anything male as regards touching and kissing—wasn’t apparent, even when his fingers went to the buttons that marched down the front of her dress, slipping each through it’s notch until he could peel the two halves apart.
Rafe reached out and cupped those lovely breasts, the sides of his thumbs rubbing over the very tips of those delicious nubs. He kept his eyes on her face, trying to read her, trying not to get her to the point where she’d come to her senses and stop him, wanting to keep her trapped in his sensuous web as he spun it around them. With deliberate slowness, he moved his hands under her chemise, drawing it upwards until her breasts were revealed to his heated gaze. She was perfectly formed and fit into his palm as if she were made for him.
His index finger and thumb came together to pinch and pluck her in a manner that was just a whisker harder than gentle, as he drank in each puffed breath and soft whimper as if it was manna from Heaven. He couldn’t believe how relaxed she was. He knew she’d had a little to drink, but he hadn’t thought it was enough to make her let her guard down this much.
But Rafe was on the horns of a dilemma. If he took her now, as he wanted to, she might regret the entire incident when they awoke. He didn’t want her to look at herself with that kind of loathing. How had he gotten himself into this situation? He wanted her so badly he thought he was going to explode with it, and he wasn’t used to having to deny himself much of anything, much less an apparently willing woman.
But in this situation, with her eyes looking as bloodshot as they did, and her acting in a way that he knew was entirely contrary to her conscience, he knew he was going to have to resist, in order to not hate himself in the morning.
Some cold-blooded killer he turned out to be … he chided himself. He wasn’t getting the job done very well, at least not in this aspect, anyway.
So instead of following through with his instincts and burying himself within her as his body urged him to do, he began to undress her in as calm and remote a manner as he could manage, considering how much he wanted to kiss every inch of the milky white skin he was revealing. He tsked over the stains Hernandez’s spattered blood had left on her dress.
“Whadare you doing?” she asked, blinking her eyes owlishly up at him.
Rafe frowned. “I’m getting you ready for bed.” He stripped her in a quick, no nonsense fashion and slipped her under the covers, then stripped down to his union suit and lay down on top of the covers, trying unsuccessfully to ignore his rampant erection.
“Why’dja stop kissin’ me?” she asked plaintively, putting her hand on his arm.
If she remembered any of this in the morning, she would probably be looking for the nearest gun. Rafe took her hand and carefully deposited it on her side of the bed, well away from him. “Because I had to.”
“But I wanna kiss you. It felt really good.” She smacked her lips loudly.
Rafe grinned. He couldn’t imagine the situation could possibly get any more absurd. He wasn’t at all sure that his constitution—weak as it was—could take her begging for what he was dying to give her. “Go to sleep,” he said gruffly, turning on his side away from her.
She was undeterred, and cuddled herself up against him as close as she could, considering the bedclothes were between them, for which Rafe was eternally grateful, along with the fact that she fell almost instantaneously asleep rather than lying awake torturing him with her innocent wiles. He lay awake most of the night, aching and kicking himself for ever having had the hair-brained idea of coming to this damned place. He should have done what he’d thought of first and just ridden on—the situation would have resolved itself by now.
But he had to go scout this place ahead when they saw it, becoming hopelessly intrigued by the young woman who appeared to be running the place single-handedly. They all needed some time off the trail to sleep in real beds and eat real food, and, once he’d ducked in and checked things out, he knew that they could take the place—that there were no guests. The place was practically deserted. He was amazed she was even able to keep it open.
When they’d been there for a while, he realized that, if he could keep the women safe, it would be the perfect place for things to come to a head, if he could get it all set up. The telegram should have gotten there already, and hopefully things were already settling into place. He just had to stay alert, and not let himself get too involved, although he didn’t know how he was going to stop it. He was already too involved with one particular person who was right now plastering herself up against his back.
But she would be regretful in the morning of what little they’d done, he knew. It was more than he could ever hope for that she could actually go through with it and make love with him, considering what he was to her. She wasn’t the type to be happy being an outlaw’s lover.
She didn’t seem much like the type to forgive and forget, either, which was much more what he was worried about.
~
Mary Rose awoke slowly the next morning, her mind fuzzy and blurry for the longest time while she fought her way to consciousness, and some prankster had glued her tongue to the roof of her mouth. As she opened and closed her mouth trying to lubricate it some, she opened her eyes and saw that she and the outlaw had ended up in the same position as they were in yesterday morning: he was on top of her. Only this time he was stark naked and so was she. There were no bedclothes between them—she could feel every inch of his taut, muscular naked body as it pressed into hers—more inches than she thought she wanted to, frankly, but she was afraid to move in any direction, lest he consider it an invitation.
So she lay there, trapped beneath him, very worried that it didn’t seem as unpleasant as she wished it did. He smelled clean and inherently male, and everything female in her wanted to answer that maleness in the most primitive of ways—yielding to him, cleaving to him—and no amount of shaking her head seemed to clear it enough to rid her of those unwanted desires.
She couldn’t give herself to a killer—could she? And if she did, what would that make her?
Although she was deep in thought, Mary Rose knew the minute he awoke—those deep black eyes snapped open and his body tensed on hers.
Rafe awoke fully capable. It was no wonder—he was already pressed into her very feminine cleft. He closed his eyes and groaned, trying but not succeeding in dragging himself off her. He shouldn’t. He shouldn�
��t do it.
Almost angrily, he pressed his mouth to her ear. “If you don’t want to do this, you’d better say so now.”
Mary Rose swallowed hard. He was giving her the choice—she hadn’t really expected it of him, although not all of his behavior added up to what she would expect of the homicidal maniac the rumors painted him as. She knew it would never be more than this—he certainly wasn’t the type to settle down and have children, maybe take over the running of the inn and saloon, becoming her partner in business and in life …
She was spinning dreams that would never come true. The question was, could she live with herself as a fallen woman, or would she prefer to go through life untouched and untouching, as she had—she knew instinctively that there wouldn’t be anyone else. She had lost her heart to a killer—no, he had taken it as surely as he would take her. All of her sensibilities had flown out the window when they first met and he aroused her sensuous side—a part of her she hadn’t even known existed before.
But the incident in the saloon had made her take a good look at her life and all she was missing out on. Maybe all she would have were these last few days before she was killed by one or the other of them. Did she want to know what went on between a man and a woman? Did she want his hands to roam unfettered over her body, wreaking havoc with her nerves, making her crazy with wanting him?
Her body screamed that the answer was a resounding “yes”, already dampening the way for him, moistening her hidden recesses, flushing them with a heat that plumped the whole area and set it ablaze against the head of him.
Mary Rose looked up at him and said only one word, in a breathy, hoarse voice. “Please.”
Rafe lay completely still for a long moment. He could not believe that she would allow him to do what he was literally in pain from wanting. Suddenly, he wanted desperately to tell her everything, to tell her why and how he had ended up practically barging down her door, so that she would really know with whom she was entrusting her body.
