Catch Me (15 page)

He petted her back and bent his face to her hair. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. But the story you’ve been told…it just doesn’t make any sense at all.”

She couldn’t seem to work through the thoughts crashing around inside her. Fear, certainly. Appalled shock that she was even entertaining the idea her father might not be the man she thought he was. But way deep under that was a little lost child who wondered if maybe it really was Father’s fault their little family had been reduced to two.

Her hands spasmed in Dean’s shirt and she hiccupped once, twice. She took a deep breath, trying to get her emotions under control. “It’s not too late,” she said, quietly, so quietly she almost couldn’t hear herself. She swallowed and said it more loudly. “It’s not too late.”

His hands stopped their long, gentle soothing across her shoulder blades. “What’s that?”

She raised her head, but sometime during her tears the moon had begun to slip behind the low-slung mountains. Only a few pale strokes lit him. She couldn’t read him at all. “You and me. We can ride away from all of this. Just disappear.” He didn’t answer immediately and she felt as vulnerable as if she were naked under the Arizona Territory’s August sun and it were searing her flesh away. “I don’t even care where we go, or what we do. We’ll just…go away. And maybe we’ll deal with all this later, and maybe we won’t.”

He gripped her shoulders back and set her away from him. She knew his answer before he even opened his mouth. “No, Maggie. It won’t work.”

“Why not?” Desperation flushed her. She shoved her hands under her thighs to keep herself from reaching for him. He was already slipping out of her grasp.

“You can’t run away from your problems.”

She tried to sink her nails into her flesh but only got the heavy-duty cloth of her pants. “You have.”

He flinched. “But look how well that’s turned out for me. I’m on the brink, Maggie. And if I run anymore, I’ll keep sliding into—” He tunneled his hands through his hair, visibly searching for words. “If I keep running, I’ll keep killing. And eventually I won’t even know myself anymore.”

“I see.” She did. He was too damn bound by his willful blindness to see any way out.

Maybe it wasn’t too late. They were only two days from Fresh Springs, but that might give her an advantage. She knew this area of the Arizona Territory inside and out. She’d skirted the Indian nations just fine on her way to Texas; she could do so again and escape. If gratitude for saving his life during that fight wouldn’t make him let her go, maybe it would at least make him less wary. She could slip away in the dead of night.

She did her best to dredge up a watery smile. “Nothing more to be said, I suppose. Let’s head back to camp.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What exactly are you thinking of?”

Shaking her head, she stretched her eyes wide and hoped she looked innocent. “Why, getting to sleep, that’s all. It’s been a long day.” Suddenly, a jaw-cracking yawn took her over and made her eyes water. Apparently the words were more truthful than she’d realized. It’d be a struggle to stay awake long enough for Dean to fall asleep and Andrew’s snoring to blanket their little camp.

Dean didn’t much look like he was buying it, though. He watched her with steady wariness and a flat-pressed mouth. But eventually he hefted Linkers onto his shoulder and the trio trudged back to camp. Linkers moaned twice along the way, as Dean’s shoulder dug into his stomach, and Maggie found it surprisingly heartening. While Linkers would have deserved it for fighting dirty, she didn’t want the stain of someone’s blood on her hands. She wasn’t particularly sure she could handle that. Or even wanted to.

Andrew was in his bunk with the fire banked to glowing embers when they got back to the clearing. He sat up even as he rubbed sleepiness from his eyes. “What in tarnation happened to him?”

“Maggie,” Dean said, as he dropped Linkers to the ground in an inelegant pile. The smaller man groaned and raised his hands to his head.

She flopped to her blanket and crossed her legs as she sent a baleful stare Dean’s way. “I saved your life, you ungrateful wretch,” she muttered.

Andrew’s lips parted with surprise. “Is that right?”

Dean shrugged as he went about pulling those dratted handcuffs from his saddlebag. “Maybe. We were fighting and Linkers pulled a knife.”

Andrew lay down and folded his hands behind his head. “Sounds like the shady kind of thing he’d get up to. Wait, what?” He sat bolt upright again. “What the hell were you fighting for?”

Guilt skittered up her spine and burned her cheeks. Her gaze flew to Dean and found him looking back at her. She swallowed past the dryness in her mouth. He really was under no obligation to keep what had happened between them secret. A fallen woman didn’t have much right to expect discretion. But somehow she didn’t think he’d do that to her.

Her lips still felt bruised. If she looked too long at his hands, she could still feel them tracing over her ribs. And lower.

She swallowed again and ducked her head.

He ran a tether from Linkers’s cuffs to a slender juniper tree and wrapped it around the trunk. “Some words were exchanged.”

“Is that right?” Andrew looked from Maggie to Dean and back again. The weight of his suspicions bent her neck even further and she looked at her dirty, scuffed boots. They’d had more wear over the past three weeks than in the three years she’d owned them.

Dean managed to agree without saying much at all. A funny little hum and a shrug of his shoulders. He tugged on the strap binding Linkers to the tree, then shook the man awake.

Linkers groaned as he tossed lank dark hair out of his eyes. He tried to raise his hands to his head, but came up short against the leather strap that imprisoned him. Squinting, he peered at it. “What the fuck is this?”

Easing back onto his heels, Dean let his hands dangle between his crouching knees. “It seems I can’t trust you as far as I can throw you. So you’ll understand my need to take precautions.”

Linkers scrambled to a sitting position and bared his teeth. “I don’t think you have any idea how much you’ll regret this.”

Dean rose to stand over the other man. “I already do.”

“What are you and your whore going to do? Kill me?”

Maggie’s ears burned with humiliation.
His whore
. In a manner of speaking it was true. But she hadn’t got much for her trouble beyond scratching her shameful itch, now had she? Certainly no gratitude. Maybe a broken heart to go along with her disappointment.

She blinked. Her neck prickled and her hearing whooshed with the heavy beat of her pulse. A broken heart? Don’t be ridiculous. She’d never be so foolhardy and stupid as to fall in love with a man determined to use her to pay his way to a clear conscience.

“Maggie. Maggie, damn it, I’m talking to you.”

She shook her head free of the dreadful haziness clogging her and peered up at Dean where he stood over her. He held white bandages and the little crockery pot of cream. “What?”

“Like I said, you need to lie down and sleep. We’ll be covering a lot of distance tomorrow.” His eyes begged her to understand. The idiot.

Part of her screamed that she ought to help him as he awkwardly began tending to the shallow wound along his forearm. Instead, she lay down like a good little girl, pulling the blanket over herself. But she didn’t sleep. She had to find a way out.

When Dean awoke, the sky overhead had the peculiar bleakness of a night that couldn’t quite decide whether to break to dawn. There’d been many a night he’d hoped it wouldn’t, that he could stay suspended in the in between. He didn’t even have it in himself to hope for that much anymore.

He stretched his senses out as far as he could. Their small clearing was quiet. Too quiet. Andrew’s snoring was the only sound.

Quick as a flash, he whipped a hand out. He latched on to Maggie’s ankle and found her on her hands and knees, silently crawling away. He yanked and she went sprawling, her chin jamming into the soft sand.

“Goddamn it, Maggie,” he said as he hauled her toward him. “We’ve been here, been through this. I pretty much thought we were finished with it.”

She kicked. Her boot scraped his forearm. Pain singed the cut from Linkers’s knife. “I’m not about to stick around and let you sell me to Masterson for no reason.”

Still tied to his tree, Linkers whooped it up. “Get ’im, sister! Make him pay.”

Dean ignored the asshole the best he could as he struggled with Maggie. She flailed and writhed. A small-fisted punch cracked across his jaw, stinging his skin. She tossed sand in his face, but he managed to close his eyes to avoid most of it. He wound a hard grip around her wrists and stretched her arms over her head, pressing his body into hers.

Damn it.
He’d thought they’d gotten past her reckless anger. There was no way he was letting her escape the consequences of her lawbreaking, not when he had so much riding on it to boot.

He locked his legs to the outside of hers and allowed his body to go to dead weight, pushing her into the ground, and prayed she’d eventually fight her energy out. Her hips bucked under his and he swallowed.
Ignore, ignore, ignore.
This was neither the time nor the place to be remembering how wet she’d been and how tightly her sheath had gripped his dick. He couldn’t think about how her salty sweet taste on his tongue had gotten him so wound tight he’d had to come on the rocks like some sort of goddess’s acolyte before he dared fuck her.

He swallowed and his throat clicked and choked. He wiped sand from his eyes against his shoulders, one after the other, anything to avoid looking at the pitiful desperation in her fine features. Her eyes were huge pools of pleading that he simply couldn’t listen to.

The fight went out of her as quickly as a colt that had been broken harsh. It near about crumbled his heart to see. She stopped struggling and sank back as she turned her face to the side.

“Oh, come on, girlie,” Linkers said with a harsh note of amusement. “I was hoping to see you give him what for.”

The quiet click of a pistol hammer echoed even over Dean’s harsh breathing. Andrew was not only awake, he’d sat up and leveled his gun at Linkers as easy as you please. “Shut your mouth, if you’d rather not have your brains splattered all over that tree.”

Linkers twisted his mouth into a sullen pinch that made his ratlike features all the more apparent. “I weren’t saying nothing that wasn’t true.” He made as if to cross his arms, but came up short against his tether.

Andrew kept the gun pointed dead between the other man’s eyes, but slid his gaze over to Dean. “What’s going on, brother mine?”

Dean sighed, even as he knelt beside Maggie and held her wrists together. He dug in one of his packs for the handcuffs. “She was escaping.”

The doubt came off Andrew in waves. “Is that right?”

He waited for Maggie to make some sort of smart-ass remark either to confirm or deny, but it didn’t come. Instead, she kept her face averted from him, even as he pulled her hands down to her belly and linked them together. “What do you think, Andrew? I was raping her in front of both of you until she decided to get a little loud?”

His brother lowered the gun and slipped it back in its holster, next to his pillow of folded clothes. “Nope. But I must confess I’m wondering if it’d be such a bad thing if our Maggie did escape.”

Our Maggie
. The words became a vicious roar in his head. Not an option. Not a choice. She was not his, nor Andrew’s. Maggie was no man’s, and that was the way it should be. Her pride shone too bright to belong to anyone.

“No,” was all he said, shoving down the irrational side of himself. The side that had started him on this bleak path when it demanded Whitson’s slow, painful death. The side that had bathed in a river of blood and reveled in it. He had to learn to be rational about his future and not give in to the cold part inside him that cared nothing for the lives he took.

Andrew said nothing in response, but the weight of his stare burned into his neck. He was reminded yet again that his brother had changed from the steady, carefree man he’d once known. Once he’d decided the past was better left in the long ago and he wouldn’t ask Andrew what he’d missed. But anything had to be better than actually thinking about what he was doing to Maggie as he tied her up yet again. “Pretty steady with that gun there, aren’t you?” said Dean.

Andrew lay back and folded his hands behind his head. “Steady enough, I suppose.”

“Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

His brother rocked up on an elbow on the other side of the fire and brushed hair out of his eyes as he looked at Maggie. “You’ll understand if I’m a mite worried about your being worthy of any confidences at the moment.”

Dean yanked the last knot tight and sat back on his ass, his wrists draped between his knees. Maggie didn’t move, didn’t test her bonds. She didn’t even move her head from where she faced the trees. “Yeah. I understand perfectly.”

Dean pushed the little group as hard as possible, until the horses dripped with white sweat and a trio of grumpy faces looked back at him. His own arm throbbed with the five-inch gash Linkers had sliced in it and still he went on. But as the sky streaked with pink and orange and the sun dropped behind the western horizon, he had to admit defeat. They weren’t making it to Fresh Springs that night.

He led the way off the trail, to a small clearing with a little hillock to the right. Getting Maggie off her horse, hands still bound before her, was beyond awkward. Lifting her was easy enough, but she refused to look him in the eyes and seemed to be doing her best to be dead weight. Linkers was immensely easier—Dean sliced through the ties he’d used to bind the man to his saddle and let him slam to the sandy ground.

Silence as thick as cactus juice sluiced over the little camp as Dean and Andrew set about grooming the horses and building a fire. Everywhere Dean went, it felt as if Maggie were watching him. But when he turned, expecting to see her big brown eyes on him, he found her downcast and staring at the ground.

He gritted his teeth and flicked out first his bedroll, then hers. This was all nearly over. One more day and he’d deposit her with Masterson in Fresh Springs. And after only a day or two, he’d surely discover this strange give and pull between the two of them was nothing special. Forced proximity with a woman had sent something in him stampeding. He could admit Maggie was an attractive, earthy, sensual woman too, which hadn’t helped matters.

On his knees as he spread out his blankets, Dean froze as his body responded to the instantaneous memory of the way she’d kissed him, as if their world would die if she couldn’t get more. The way her lithe curves writhed under his touch.

He blew a tight breath out through his nose as he compressed his lips.

Hard to believe that had been just last night. Before all the ridiculous drama. Before Maggie’s stubborn attempt to run one last time.

Her voice broke the silence, sending a shiver up his spine. But she wasn’t talking to him.

“Andrew, do you think you might see fit to walk me over that hill? I have the necessaries to see to.”

“Me too,” Linkers supplied. He’d hopped his way clear of the horses to sit near the campfire. “If I don’t go soon, I’ll piss right here.”

Maggie wrinkled her nose but otherwise didn’t acknowledge the crude speech. From where he was drawing supper supplies from the saddlebags, Andrew flicked a wary glance at Dean. “I’m not exactly in charge of this entourage.”

She finally deigned to look at him, but didn’t renew her request. He had the distinct impression she’d rather soil herself than ask him for assistance. Rising to his feet, Dean brushed clinging grains of sand from his knees. “I’ll take her. You take Linkers off the other way.”

Andrew rose as well, scratching his temple as he looked out from under his brows. “Maybe that’s not the best choice.”

He narrowed his eyes and bit back the curses that wanted to fly. “I’m as like to kill the asshole as let him piss. You take him.”

Andrew quirked his mouth and lifted Linkers by one arm. “You heard the man. Up you go.”

“Aw, come on. Tell you what, why don’t you let me walk the little lady into the desert.” Linkers leered, his beady eyes going heavy. “I’ll treat her right nice. She sure wouldn’t be cranky with me the next day, I’ll promise you that.” He stumbled as Andrew dragged him out of the camp but didn’t stop running his mouth.

Dean’s hands knotted into fists as he watched the pair disappear into the dark. When they were finally alone, he turned back to Maggie. “I’m sorry you have to listen to that. I’m thinking about gagging him.”

She shrugged and didn’t seem to care. “I wouldn’t object.”

He didn’t realize how much he’d been looking forward to one of her smiles until it failed to appear. The loss socked him in the chest. He rubbed at the phantom ache beneath his breastbone. This was beyond ridiculous. She meant nothing to him, a passing diversion, much as he’d been to her.

“Let’s get this over with before they get back,” he said, picking up a canteen of water and a cloth.

She nodded as she rotated her wrists in the cuffs. “As you like.”

They made the short walk over the hill in silence as Dean searched vainly for something to say. But after everything they’d been through, nothing he came across seemed sufficient.

A stand of three scraggly looking juniper trees huddled together on the far side of the ridge. Dean handed her the canteen and cloth. “I’ll be on the other side of the trees. I thought you might like to wash up a little.”

She nodded. Again. Then she disappeared behind the trees and set about her business.

Dean turned his back and pinched his tight neck in a death grip, hoping to ease some of the painful tension that seemed determined to wrap him in barbwire.

She was so damn subdued it felt like a slice at his soul every time she accepted blindly. He was so much more used to her fighting and snipping at him.

He ground the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. This simply could not go on. She was nothing special, certainly not special enough to throw away his only chance at redemption. He had to prove it to himself somehow.

Like a conjured ghost, she was there when he lowered his hands. She held the canteen out and the cuffs gleamed in a sliver of moonlight. He hadn’t seen her mouth held that flat since he’d first abducted her from her hotel room.

He took the water and his fingers brushed hers, sending a fluttery shock up his arm. It rocked him all the way down to his toes, tightening his body and making his dick perk up in eager attention.

Her gaze ranged over his arousal and she cocked a hip. “Got yourself fully under control, do you? Looks like at least part of you thinks running away with me might be a good idea.” And then she smirked. Downright, goddamned smirked, lips curving in a sultry smile.

His vision washed gray at the edges. After all this time, she still didn’t understand. The control he had to exercise, the rigid lockdown he had at all times.

By god, he’d show it to her, exactly how dangerous he could get. And then she’d please, Christ, just shut up already.

His hands flashed out and sank deep in her hair, yanking her head back and pointing her lush, tempting mouth up. He had only a second to see how wide her eyes went before he swept in and kissed her.

Except this meeting of lips and teeth wasn’t about giving anything. It wasn’t a prelude to more. It wasn’t a promise.

It was an exorcism.

He pushed her back, back again, holding her up by his tight grip on her skull when she stumbled, still kissing her all the way. Still taking. Still stealing. She slammed back into the twisted trunk of a juniper tree hard enough that their teeth clicked together, but still he didn’t let up.

Not until her tongue slipped across his bottom lip. But it was the teasing little nip she took next that sent a shiver down his spine.

He yanked back. Her eyes glittered in the half dark and her mouth, slightly swollen from the bruising force of his kisses, still smiled. Completely undaunted. He bit back a growl. “Stop playing with me.”

“Who says I’m playing?” She ran her hands up the center of his body, and it was more proof of how damaged he was that the sight of those gleaming cuffs did nothing to quell the raging lust swelling through him. She hooked her fingers in his shirt collar and pulled. “Give me more.”

Something in him broke loose and whatever it was had sharp, nasty edges that ripped and shredded him on their way out. He’d show her more. Until she regretted the very word.

Maggie knew a smart woman wouldn’t have begged for more—not when the wicked light in Dean’s eyes warned of roughness and regret.

Unfortunately she was more furious than smart at the moment.

He wrenched tight the links between her cuffs and pinned her hands far above her head. The rough bark stung the backs of her hands and her shoulders burned with the stretch. She didn’t care. Curving an ankle about his lean hip, she pressed her bosom out.

Her tongue slicked across her bottom lip, taking another taste of his salty essence. “I can take everything you can dish out.”

“Is that right?” He palmed her breast roughly and caught her nipple between two fingers. Even through the layers of her chemise and coarse shirt it sent a rough thrill through her.

Her eyes wanted to slide shut with the pleasure. Pure force of will kept them open and fixed on his face, with its harsh lines. “Want to know a secret, Dean?”

“What’s that?”

The blunted edge of his holster brushed her shin as she shifted her leg higher over his hip. “I’ll love every second.”

She knew what he was doing—trying to burn her out of his memory. All so when he handed her over in Fresh Springs, he wouldn’t be eaten up by the guilt. But it wasn’t possible. Whatever this was between them went deeper than a crude mating. Deeper than some angry words. She couldn’t put a name on it any better than he could, but that didn’t mean it would go away just because he wanted it to.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.” Keeping her hands pinned above her head, his other hand roamed down her body until it reached her belt and denims.

He popped them open with a couple flicks to delve beneath. His fingers were thick as they speared her. She dropped her head back to the trunk when he pushed over the tight bundle of nerves at the top of her sex.

He pressed into her. “All you’re going to get from me is sex. Hard. Rough. Fucking, not love.” His breath washed over her ear, sending trembling shivers working across her neck.

“You wouldn’t—wouldn’t be trying to scare me off, would you Dean?” Keeping her thoughts together was harder than herding dandelion fluff.

“If that’s what it takes.”

He wouldn’t get off the hook that easy. If he wanted to be rid of her, she was going to make him pay. He’d treated her like some pale version of herself. A faded tintype. If this was what she had to do in order to get every bit of him, she’d take it.

With a hop, she hitched her other leg around his waist so that she was fully supported by him. Just as she’d expected, he leaned in between her legs to press her to the tree, taking the weight off her pinned arms. Her breasts were crushed against his hard chest. His sex pressed into the apex of her thighs, hot and swollen. Just like she was. He thought himself a bastard, but she knew better.

“Give me more,” she whispered. She punctuated the words with a wet nibble of his earlobe. Salt rolled over her tongue even as his back went ramrod rigid.

He jerked back and for a second she thought she’d pushed too far. But he whipped her shirt off over her head, wrapping the cloth around her cuffs. Her trousers fell before he spun her around and pushed her to the ground. The denims pooled at her knees protected her from the cutting sand but she didn’t care. His movements were jerky with fury and want, temptation given into.

“Little girls ought to be careful when they play with fire.” He palmed her ass, kneading.

She flicked her hair over and angled a taunting smile at him. His gaze was locked on her body, drinking in every line. She preened and stretched her spine under the scrutiny. No matter how she had to take it, she wanted every bit of this man. If only she could make him see that, maybe they would have a chance.

“I’m no little girl. And you damn well know it.”

His eyes glittered pale in the moonlight. “Fuck. Yes. I do.”

He surged inside her. Thick. Scalding.

A moan burst from her throat. This was what she’d needed. Him. Wide open and giving in.

His strokes were rough. Jerky. It didn’t matter. She pushed back, pushed into every movement, drank it all in like he was bringing her back to life. Sharp darts of pleasure rocked through her core. He wound his hand in her hair and pulled, yanking away the support of her hands.

She didn’t care. She let herself go free to ride the angry joy he gave her. Her bound hands went between her legs. Covered in her wetness, his length surged between her fingers into her body. He banded an arm across her chest, pressing her breasts high. His harsh breaths rushed over her neck and sent tremors down her skin.

“Oh, fuck,” he groaned. “Maggie.”

“Yes,” she hissed. Her hand pressed down on them both and she tightened her fingers around his shaft. Bliss ricocheted up through her, pushing her over the cliff to spin wild. She floated free through the abyss of pleasure.

And still he held her, even as he pulsed with his own orgasm.

Still he held her.