The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1)

by Barbara Ankrum

  He lifted her hips and plunged deeply into her with a final thrust. She heard his strangled cry as he spilled his seed into her and at the same moment, felt that fragile thread she'd been clinging to snap inside her. With a moan, she spiraled upward, then fractured apart in tiny pieces in an impossible explosion of fire and ice.

  Minutes later, still entwined, they lay recovering their breath as the night air cooled the sweat glistening on their bodies. Reese absorbed the feel of Grace's hand against his back. She moved it in slow, comforting circles and, aside from what had just happened, he'd never felt anything so good.

  Above them, the dome of stars seemed somehow fuller and nearer, and he wondered hazily if that piece of heaven he'd shared with her had accomplished that. He tightened his jaw and closed his eyes against her shoulder.

  Fool.

  It just proved how low he'd sunk that romantic notions were actually popping into his head. There was no defense for what he'd done. He'd warned her he was a selfish man, but even he had rarely stooped to such depths as to ruin an innocent virgin, even if she had begged him for it. Grace couldn't possibly know the full ramifications of what they'd done tonight. But he did.

  But she wasn't just any virgin. She was the woman who'd saved his life, brought him back from the dead in more ways than one. She was the woman who'd asked him to believe in himself again.

  A single, terrifying thought, one that had edged stealthily into his consciousness for the past few days, circled in on him now and coalesced into this simple truth: He'd fallen in love with her.

  When had that happened?

  Slowly, he thought. She'd crept up on his heart and charmed her way in with a smile here, a word there. He'd tried hard to dislike her, harder still to keep her at arm's length. But all for naught. And this was where it led.

  He had no right to her. And even if he could stay right here and hold her forever, she'd one day resent him for it. Of that he was certain.

  He pushed up on one elbow, feeling the heat of the fire warming his back. It cast Grace's features in a burnished light, and his movement caused her to open her eyes.

  "Don't go," she whispered, pulling him back. But, breaking the intimate connection between them, he did.

  "Did I hurt you?" he asked.

  She shook her head, watching him uncertainly. "No. Just for a moment." She reached out to trace a finger in the whorl of hair matting his chest. She sighed. "I never knew it could be like that."

  Reaching for the edge of the blanket they lay on, he drew it up over her shoulder from behind and told her, "It's rarely like that. At least, for me. In fact, it's—"

  He broke off the thought, kissing her forehead briefly before sitting up. She followed his movement, drawing the blanket around his back, too.

  "It's what?" she prodded.

  "It's never been like that." Bracing his elbows on his bent knees, he clawed his fingers through his hair. "What have we done?"

  A tremor skittered through Grace. It was the look of torment on his face she'd been afraid of. "We made love."

  He laughed a humorless laugh. "Aye, we did that, and quite thoroughly, too. And there's no undoing it, now."

  "I don't want to undo it."

  "I never should have taken you. I've ruined you for anyone else."

  Hurt caught in her throat like a burr. "I don't want another man."

  He shook his head. "Grace, it can't be between us. You must know that."

  Her eyes glistened as she spoke. "No, I don't believe that."

  Picking up a stone, he tossed it hard toward the river. It landed in the water with a hollow, plunking sound. "I'm a wanted man. There's a price on my head and yours if you stay with me."

  "Not here. Not in Mexico."

  "Is this what you want?" he asked, incredulous. "A life on the run with a fugitive? You need a man who can settle down, ply a decent trade, father a dozen kids for you, who never has to look over his shoulder. You've got a farm, a home, Grace. Don't be throwin' it away on the likes of me."

  "I don't care about all that."

  He stared her in the eye. "That's a bloody lie."

  It was impossible to hide the truth from him. She wanted all those things—with him. If she had to, she'd follow him anywhere. Staring into the fire, she argued, "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a fugitive, too."

  "They don't even know your name. They thought you were a boy! And if St. John talked, the only name they have to go by is 'Drucilla.' You could go home today and no one would be the wiser. I can't do that."

  "If we cleared your name—"

  "Even assuming Sanders has given up for now and hasn't followed us here, the second I set foot in the U.S. you can be sure I'm a dead man."

  "Then I'll go. I'll see the governor, or the president, or whoever I have to." Her eyes widened. "Of course, why didn't I think of it? I know people in Washington. What happened to you was a travesty."

  "It'll do no good. My reputation precedes me, as they say. Not even the military governor would stick his neck out to help me."

  "That can't be true."

  His expression grew grim. "You're so innocent." He touched her cheek with the backs of his knuckles. "If I'd met you before, if things had been different..."

  She edged closer so she could look him in the eye. "What? You'd let yourself love me?"

  "That won't happen. It'll never happen, do you understand?"

  "No. Reese, all these years you've let them convince you that you were nothing. Worthless. You let them drive you to a bottle. But that's not you. The man I know," she said, touching his arm, "is brave, honorable, caring."

  "No," he said, edging away from her. He reached for the longjohns that lay in a heap beside them and started to pull them on. "I'm none of those things. I've killed men for reasons of my own and before I'm done, there's yet another I intend to put an end to."

  "Jake Scully?"

  "Aye. As soon as I find him," he admitted. "I'm going down, Grace, whether Sanders tracks me, or not. But I'll say this. I've found enough good in myself not to take you down with me."

  She stared at him, a lump rising in her throat, unsure of what else to say.

  Pulling his arms into his sleeves, he looked at her. "I'll take you to Querétaro and take a stab at rescuing your brother, Luke. But after that, princess, I'll be sayin' good-bye."

  Grace pulled the blanket around her nakedness, suddenly shivering with cold. Good-bye. She couldn't say good-bye to him. Not next week; not in a hundred years. He started to rise, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  "Then we'll face that when it comes." Her eyes implored him. "We've so little time and we've wasted so much already. Don't leave me yet, Reese."

  He bowed his head, taking a deep steadying breath which she knew cost him. "We've got to face reality."

  With a shake of her head, she told him, "Maybe we will have to face it, but not yet. Not tonight. Just for now, let's just pretend there is no bounty on your head, no one to rescue, no past to haunt us. For now, let's pretend there's only you and me. And that we love each other."

  The ragged rise and fall of his chest betrayed the conflict raging inside him. He reached out and cupped her jaw with his hand. "Pretend?" He covered her mouth in a heated kiss. When it ended, he hissed out a breath and closed his eyes. "You tempt me, woman."

  Looping her arms around his neck, she let the blanket fall away as she climbed onto his lap and straddled his arousal boldly. "After all, you can only spoil me once."

  He rocked his hips against hers. "Ahh, is that what you've heard?"

  Nibbling on his ear, she murmured, "Mmm-hmm. Perhaps," she suggested, catching his attention fully with a well-placed caress near the valley of his hips, "we should explore what happens next."

  A shudder tore through him and his eyes slid shut as he clamped a hand over her wrist. An eternity passed in that long moment. Beyond that hardened sweep of jaw, behind those eyes slammed tighter than a keg of explosive powder, she understood the battle raging t
here between good sense and fiery need. She understood it because it burned inside her as well. But nothing would steal this moment from them. Not the threat of tomorrow, not Ephram Sanders, not the past that Reese had left behind him, crushed beneath a boot heel but not forgotten. She took a deep breath to tell him just that, but his open mouth drove against hers, his tongue silencing her in ways words never could.

  With one hand at the back of her head, he drew her closer until her breasts pressed against the soft cotton of his half-open longjohns. Their lips ground together and before it was over both of them were gasping for air.

  He lifted his head to look at her, his fingers branding her bare nipples with heat as he lifted her breasts in his hands. "What are you doin' to me, woman?" he rasped.

  Loving you, she told him with her eyes, her heart, her body. She slipped a hand inside the placket of his longjohns and slid the garment off one shoulder. Then she did the same for the other. He pulled his arms from the sleeves, bracing his hands alongside her hips.

  Grace fanned her fingers across his chest. She studied the sculpted valleys and planes of his torso as a cartographer might a landscape, memorizing the beauty of him, and she gloried in the shudder her touch evoked. Still astride him, she felt his hips shift beneath hers, seeking release from the maddening ache her closeness stirred.

  His hand slid between them then, seeking her slick heat with his fingers. He took his time, tormenting her, withholding the one thing she truly craved until he'd brought her to the edge of desperation. Only then did he draw her hips onto his, impaling her on his hardened shaft.

  The love they made this time sizzled with simmering, erotic passion and a fierceness that stole her breath and sent her soaring over some never-before-crossed threshold. He cried out her name as he ground his hips into hers one final time, his face contorting with pain and pleasure and a thousand other things he'd never say aloud.

  And afterward, he held her tenderly long into the night until at last, exhausted and sated, they both fell into the deep, dreamless sleep of lovers.

  Chapter 18

  "It was, I believe, in Duel on Crosscreek where the infamous treasure hunter, Tom Sperlow, faced a dilemma quite like this one," Grace mused aloud, holding the parasol above her head as she gazed out at the ever-shrinking Moctezuma.

  Reese grunted in reply, a response with which she'd grown increasingly familiar in the last thirty-six hours, and kept his gaze trained on the water. Though their nights had been filled with passionate lovemaking, more wonderful than anything she'd ever dreamed of, the days found him pulling further and further away from her emotionally as they drew closer to their destination, as if he was making the break from her in his mind, if not with his body. And though his eyes would sometimes soften when he'd look at her, there was a forced detachment in his voice when he did speak to her was hard to stomach. Two could play this game, she decided.

  Fingering her tender, sunburned nose, Grace decided she'd just about reached the end of her considerable fuse. "Don't you want to know what Tom Sperlow did?"

  "I feel sure you're about to tell me," he answered distractedly, maneuvering around a small sandbar.

  "Well," she began, "you see, he was being chased in his pirogue—that's a canoe—by, uh, let me see, yes—he was a scoundrel named LaFarge. Nasty sort, you know, a scavenger, really, who was after the treasure Sperlow had singlehandedly discovered in the delta caves below New Orleans."

  Reese nodded absently and gazed above her head, searching the shoreline for something. She was certain he wasn't listening. Tamping down the urge to run her hand wickedly up his thigh to get his attention, she lifted the edge of her muslin skirt, straightening the stocking on her left leg. Reese kept his eyes trained straight ahead.

  "LaFarge," she continued, getting casually to her feet, "was pursuing him in a vessel of his own, so Sperlow decided to veer off on a smaller tributary, hoping to shake the bounder."

  "Mmm-hmm."

  She ran one finger along the thick wood edge of the rail as she prowled closer. "He paddled furiously, but the man kept pace. The river began to narrow alarmingly. Soon, he realized that some farmer had dammed the river to irrigate his field. Caught at that impasse, Sperlow began to fear all hope was lost and he'd have to make a stand right there for his life and his treasure."

  Reese fed wood into the firebox without reply. Grace arched one eyebrow, watching the way his muscles flexed beneath the taut fabric of his shirt. She swallowed thickly, wondering at the insatiable appetite he'd awakened within her. Getting his full attention had become something of a challenge.

  "So, just when he was about to give up"—she walked two fingers up the thick muscles of his back, breaking a tickling trail toward the nape of his neck—"a huge African elephant appeared on the shoreline and scooped up Sperlow's pirogue in its enormous trunk, carrying him past the obstruction."

  "Uh-huh."

  She gritted her teeth. The scoundrel meant to ignore her all day! "And soon a whole herd of elephants appeared and told him the secret of life, and carried LeFarge to his just rewards, and," she whispered close to his ear with wanton heat, "crowned Sperlow King of the Elephants."

  Reese captured her hand as it slid around his neck, pressed her back against the wheel and his own hips hard up against hers. It became suddenly and graphically clear that he hadn't been ignoring her at all.

  With eyes darkened with something hotter than amusement, he grinned and said, "Now, that's going a bit far even for elephants, don't you think?"

  Her lips fell open and he promptly took full advantage of that fact by dropping his mouth on hers. His tongue met no resistance from hers as he leisurely explored the smooth surface of her teeth and the insides of her mouth. He deepened the kiss, running his hand up her ribcage until it closed over her breast, and she forgot completely to be annoyed with him.

  When he lifted his mouth from hers, he devoured her with his eyes and a devilish Irish grin. In that moment, he reminded her of that dark archangel she'd first seen sitting in Pair-a-Dice with a woman in his lap. She'd wondered that night what it would feel like to have a man kiss her the way he'd kissed Maria. Now she knew.

  "You were saying?" he quipped.

  "I didn't know you were paying attention."

  "You are, Miss Turner, a hard woman to ignore."

  "I meant to my story," she murmured with a grin, spreading her fingers across his back.

  With feigned astonishment, he gasped. "You mean the part about the elephants wasn't true?"

  She shook her head in amusement. "Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to try to talk to you."

  "Me, too," he replied, showing her explicitly what he would rather she did with her mouth. With his hand to the back of her head, he drew her closer yet. She moaned a sigh of pleasure as he slanted his kiss first one way, then the other. Cupping her buttocks with his other hand, he lifted her against him so there could be no mistaking how much he wanted her. Then he broke the kiss, releasing a deep, shuddering sigh of control. "We'd better stop while we can."

  "Or else?"

  He grabbed the wheel and cut it sharply to the right. "Or else we might just run aground on this sandbar." It took a moment, but he avoided the obstacle neatly, then glanced over at her and shook his head. "You"—he pointed with his index finger—"go sit over there. Way over there, before I kill us both."

  She grinned sheepishly, sinking to the deck and folding her arms around her knees. With a sigh, she asked, "What do you suggest we do?"

  "Do?" His expression said he could think of any number of things.

  "I mean, we seem to be running out of river." Indeed the Moctezuma was shrinking and growing more shallow by the mile.

  "Well," he concluded, scanning the shoreline, "I think we can safely count out the possibility of elephants coming to our rescue."

  "Hmm, yes. But I wouldn't count out farmers."

  "What?"

  "Over there." She pointed to a man dressed in peasant clothes, bent over his half-
tilled field with an ancient hoe. The man seemed to see them at the same time. He lifted the oversized straw hat off his forehead and peered at the odd-looking boat.

  Reese flashed Grace a rare smile that sent her stomach tumbling all over again, then turned his attention to guiding the boat to the shore.

  It took only a few minutes to tie up to the sheltered cove bordered by mesquite, flowering yucca, and the ever-present cattails. After a brief discussion with the farmer, who enthusiastically agreed to watch after their boat for a fee—with the proviso that should Reese not return for it within three weeks, it would be the farmer's—the man directed them to Zimapan, a small village only a few miles inland. They left the old fellow counting and recounting the luck that had just befallen him.

  To call Zimapan a village, Grace thought on first sighting, was overly generous. A collection of rudely constructed buildings surrounded the small, steepled church at the center of things carved out of simple cantera rock from a nearby quarry. The village boasted a working church bell, a small cantina, a livery/blacksmith shop, and what passed for a dry-goods supply.

  Outlying farms were few and far between, and the only transportation they could scare up turned out to be a rickety two-wheeled gig and a mule, aptly named Maximo, who'd certainly seen better years.

  The people, on the other hand, were clearly happy to see outsiders—even gringos who carried their only belongings on their backs. They offered a dozen helpful, and distinctly different, routes to the city of Querétaro along with the first hot meal they'd had in days—tortillas, soup, and something odd-looking, called rellenos, which burned the roof of Grace's mouth and made Reese laugh out loud.

  Marta Gonzales smiled broadly at the sound. A shepherd's wife and mother of ten apprentice weavers, Señora Gonzales had generously insisted on cooking for the village's visitors. As her children watched them with wide-eyed curiosity, she tossed circles of tortilla dough expertly between her hands and let her husband, Juan, do the talking.