My Darling Gunslinger (21 page)

“Oh, Ty,” she murmured, blinking furiously to stave off the inexplicable urge to cry.

“Vows to protect you and Sebastian,” he said, his voice almost lost to the press of his lips to the hollow beneath her ear. “To keep you safe until that bastard is dead.”

Of course. How foolish to have forgotten the impermanence of their marriage and the reason they’d entered into it. For just a moment she’d simply been a bride cuddling and holding hands with her husband in a carriage.

“I made another vow in the church,” he continued, as if he hadn’t tossed her fantasies out the window to be trampled beneath the carriage wheels right alongside his hat. “I vowed you would never feel you must acquiesce to my husbandly demands.”

She felt suddenly hollow, as if a terrible emptiness had taken up residence deep inside her. Ty didn’t want her.

Except he was hard and heavy against her buttocks. “Did you carry a gun to our wedding?”

In answer, he gently thrust his hips, dragging his arousal along the crease of her bottom. “I made no vows regarding acquiescing to my wife’s demands.”

“I haven’t made any demands of you,” Charlotte replied breathlessly.

Ty dragged their joined hands up to just beneath her breasts, left them hovering there. “You just pounced on me the second we were alone.”

“I did not pounce on you.” Charlotte barely got the words out past the stuttering breath she drew when his thumbs brushed along the curves of her breasts.

“No? Then how is it you ended up on my lap?” Again his thumbs coasted over her breasts, feathering over her nipples.

With a gasp, Charlotte arched into the touch, her head falling back to rest on his shoulder. “It was your hat, that infernal hat.”

“Damn, and I’d just gotten that hat broken in,” he murmured, his lips trailing down the column of her neck.

“I suppose…” Charlotte lost her train of thought entirely when he traced her collarbone with his tongue.

“You suppose?” Ty’s hands moved, slowly coming up to cover her breasts and Charlotte couldn’t help the flex of her fingers around his, a silent demand. In answer, he balanced the weight of her flesh on his palms, spread their entwined fingers and gently squeezed.

“Yes,” she gasped, bowing her back and pressing against his shaft, hot and hard at her bottom.

“What do you suppose?” Ty’s voice was a low rumble as he set up a steady, relentless rhythm, his long fingers squeezing and plumping her breasts, his hips rocking, gently riding the crease of her bottom.

“Suppose?” Charlotte could not concentrate on their conversation, couldn’t understand why they were even attempting to hold one.

“About my hat,” he prompted with a strangled laugh as he released her right breast and swept their hands down over the curve of her waist to her hip.

“What hat?” Charlotte’s legs fell open in invitation.

Ty traced her inner thigh to her knee, down her calf, took hold of the ruffled flounce of her hem and lifted her skirts to bunch around her hips.

The sight of her pale legs spread out on either side of his, their joined hands moving to the juncture of her thighs, brought a flush to her skin and drove a coil of heat deep into her core.

When his fingers drifted lightly over her drawers, over the flesh beneath, she shivered and her hips gave an involuntary little jerk.

He found the slit in her drawers, delved inside, skimming over her folds with the tips of his fingers.

Charlotte swiveled her hips, flexed her hand over his, pressing the rough pads of two fingers to the sensitive bud hidden within, moaning at the delicious shaft of pleasure flooding through her, taking root deep within.

“Like this?” Ty’s voice was a guttural whisper, his breath hot on her neck and shoulder.

In answer, Charlotte lifted her hips and guided his fingers until they curled into her body.

Ty’s hand on her breast clenched, squeezing almost to the point of pain, dragging a ragged moan from her lips. Untangling her fingers from his, she wrapped her hands around his thighs and lunged up, forcing his fingers farther into her body.

Her new husband was nothing if not acquiescent to her demands.

Slowly, relentlessly he foraged deep, his fingers thrusting into her only to withdraw and return again and again, setting up a tempo that had Charlotte undulating wildly, arching and twisting as desire climbed.

“Christ, you’re beautiful,” Ty growled and Charlotte realized he was watching his hands play over her, clenching and squeezing her breast, thrusting and retreating between her legs.

The heat of his gaze, the sound of his panting breath, the feel of his hips working beneath her, his shaft thrusting against her bottom, pushed Charlotte over the edge of reason into a swirling vortex of pleasure.

Her climax was exquisite, dark and endless, wave after wave of bliss lashing through her, tossing her about until she finally fell, limp and boneless, against her husband’s chest.

“Charlotte.” Ty’s voice, as quiet as a spring breeze, called to her as he carefully turned her so that she was draped across his lap, her legs curling around his hip and her shoulder tucked against his chest.

Lifting heavy lids, she found her new husband looking down at her with some indefinable emotion shining in his eyes. Eyes he was unable to hide beneath the brim of his hat.

“I suppose I ought to apologize for throwing your hat out the window.” She lifted her hand to run her fingers along the hard angle of his jaw and decided she rather missed the rasp of his whiskers.

“I’ll buy a dozen more,” he replied, lips curling into a smirk, “so you can use the excuse of tossing them away to pounce on me.”

It occurred to Charlotte, rather belatedly, that Ty had not found the same satisfaction, the same bone-deep bliss she’d experienced.

He was still hard beneath her, his arousal poking her hip. Carefully scooting back, she reached one hand down and stroked his length.

Without a word, he clasped her hand and brought it back up to his jaw.

“I could take you in my mouth,” she offered. “Though it seems a dangerous endeavor in a moving carriage.”

“That’s not what I want,” Ty replied, his gaze falling to her lips.

“Do you want to kiss me?”

Ty dipped down, pressing his lips gently to hers and she felt his smile, a rare and precious gift. His tongue eased into her mouth, soft and sweet and leisurely, wound over and around hers, pulling her into a kiss as lovely as any they’d ever shared. With his lips he made promises, promises Charlotte wasn’t sure he even realized he’d offered. Affection. Tenderness. Eternity.

Not much distracts me when I’ve a winning hand.

Tyler Morgan

Ty prided himself upon being a man who recognized danger when it faced him across a card table.

“I’ll meet your two dollars and raise you five,” Charlotte said with a grin that gave away not a single hint as to the hand she held.

The woman grinned and fidgeted, tapped her fingers and toes endlessly and just plain wreaked havoc with his concentration and his sanity every time they sat down to play a hand of poker.

Hell, she threatened his sanity every time he spent more than two seconds with her.

And seeing as they were sharing a suite of rooms on the
SS Oceanic
, he’d been spending damn near every moment with her.

He’d also been spending damn near every moment with Sebastian, the boy having taken possession of the second bed in their marital chamber.

“Are you quite certain American husbands and wives sleep in the same bed?” Charlotte had asked when he’d lifted her from that bed and dumped her unceremoniously onto the one they’d be sharing.

Since Akeem stuck to her son like glue, and rightly so, the giant Arab shared a palette on the floor with a hairless cat who’d taken to crawling up to sleep on Ty’s pillow of a morning.

As if their bedchamber weren’t crowded enough, Magnus thought nothing of wandering into the room at all hours.

“I get to having dreams what give me a dose of the woolies and can’t settle back to sleep until I’ve checked on the lad,” Magnus had explained the first time Ty had awoken to find the old man looming over Sebastian’s bed.

Ty couldn’t find woolies in his dictionary, but he reckoned he knew what the word meant.

There was no privacy to be found in the parlor, what with Daisy bustling around tidying this and that, and Ken Chang fussing at Ethel to rest with her feet up and cooing over her still flat belly.

It might have been worse. They might have had a stranger among them, an awkward addition to the already crowded suite, if Ken had been able to find Kim Windsong in San Francisco.

“Your bet, Mr. Morgan.” Charlotte’s feet tapped out a symphony beneath the table in the cozy little parlor of their suite.

“Hell, I’m out,” Ty grumbled, throwing his cards down on the white linen tablecloth.

“You sure you won the Zeppelin fair and square?” Magnus asked with a chuckle.

“How can a man concentrate with all that tapping and squirming?” Ty demanded, shooting a glare across the table at his grinning wife.

“Bet or fold.” Charlotte tossed the words at the Scotsman but her smiling eyes were on Ty. “I thought nothing much distracted you from a winning hand.”

“He ain’t held a winning hand all night on account of you turning into a cardsharp,” Magnus tossed back. “I’m not convinced you aren’t cheating somehow.”

“Keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night, old man,” Charlotte replied, bouncing in her seat.

“How else have you won nine games out of ten since Morgan made the mistake of teaching you to play poker?”

“One man’s mistake is another man’s fortune. Or woman’s, as the case may be. Now are you in or out?”

“Out.” Magnus’ card went the way of Ty’s. “You remember how prickly KC used to get when you bested him at draughts?”

Charlotte raked in her winnings with a giggle. “How could I forget? It got so I had to let him win a game now and again just to keep the peace.”

“And even then, he’d remember the games he’d lost over those he’d won,” Magnus said. “That boy could hold a grudge like nobody’s business.”

“Who is KC?” Ty asked, leaning back and stretching his arms up over his head, gratified by the way Charlotte watched the movement, her eyes going soft and unfocused.

If it weren’t for those little signs of desire, he’d think his wife was perfectly pleased with the lack of privacy they’d endured since they’d stepped from the carriage and clambered aboard the Pleasure Palace for the remainder of their journey. He sure as shit wasn’t embracing that lack of privacy.

“KC used to watch over me,” Sebastian piped up from the floor where he was sprawled out in a nest of pillows, a book propped up on his knees. “I don’t really remember him except for his laugh.”

“KC does have a nice laugh,” Ethel agreed, smiling at her husband as he carefully lifted her feet onto the low stool before the overstuffed chair in the corner. “And a pretty smile.”

“So who is this KC and why isn’t he still with you?” Ty asked, attempting with little success to tamp down on a spark of jealousy.

“Karl Chatsworth is the ne’er-do-well son of a gentleman, a bored aristocrat, swordsman and all around rascal we met up with in Paris,” Magnus replied. “Lad joined us on a lark, traveled with us to Spain, and stayed with us longer than he might have, hoping for vengeance after his Magdalena went to her maker.”

Ty knew without having to be told that the woman had died protecting Sebastian.

“Is KC the one who jumped ship in Lisbon?” Daisy circled the table to top off Charlotte’s tea.

“Only figuratively,” Charlotte replied with a laugh.

“He gave his heart to a pretty little Portuguese lass named Maria.” Magnus produced a flask and added a dram to his mistress’ tea and two fingers to Ty’s empty tumbler. “And seeing as he’d already lost one woman, none of us blamed him for wanting to hold on to love when he found it a second time.”

“How long have you all been together?” Ty asked.

“Well, now let’s see…” Magnus paused to ponder the question.

“Magnus was there when I was born.” Sebastian tossed aside his book and came to his feet, rounding the table to lean against his mother’s chair. “He helped to choose my name. I’m named after St. Sebastian on account of he was a soldier, and another Sebastian who was a warrior-king and crusader.”

Charlotte wrapped her arm around his slender back and pulled him close, pressing a kiss to his temple.

“Right you are, my boy,” Magnus agreed. “Seamus and his lass was with us for a time, before Agatha…well, before we left England for good. Then KC come along, and Magdalena right behind him.”

So this lass Agatha, and likely the unknown Seamus, had fallen in defense of the boy, too. Christ, it was going to be a pleasure to rid the world of Grenville.

“Akeem came next.” Sebastian climbed onto his mother’s lap and propped his elbows on the table. “Mama saved him from a warlord’s harem in Baghdad. She had to buy him ‘cause he was a slave.”

From the corner of his eye, Ty watched Daisy hurry over to sit beside Akeem on the settee below two portals. She placed her hand on his knee and the Arab covered her fingers with his giant paw.

“We found Ethel and Ken in India traveling with a circus.” Magnus picked up the list of warriors who’d dedicated their lives to guarding the ninth Earl of Westlockhart. “Though, I suppose it’s truer to say the Changs found us.”

“Mama had been trussed up like a chicken and dumped in the corner of a dirty little shack on the outskirts of Delhi,” Sebastian added.

“That bastard Grenville thought to use the lass as bait to lure us away from the Pleasure Palace where Sebastian was sleeping,” Magnus bellowed, slapping his hand on the table.

“I was sleeping like a baby, but I wasn’t. A baby, I mean,” Sebastian said, all earnest eyes and trembling lips, so like his mother when she wanted to be sure to get her point across. “I was three and I remember how the gunshots woke me up and how Mama came back with Ethel and Ken after they followed the bad men to the shack and saved her.”

“Her ladyship started her training the vera next day,” Magnus said. “So’s she wouldna be the weak link in our merry band of warriors, you ken?”

Ty understood all too well. Charlotte had been forced to spend her days learning to fight with knives, guns and her own pale, delicate hands when she should have been spending her days pampered and cossetted in some castle somewhere doing whatever it was countesses did all day.

It was just one more reason in a long list of reasons why Frederick Grenville would die.

“So in answer to your question, the lot of us been together for more ‘an four years,” Magnus said after a pause that spoke of shared beginnings and endings. “Guarding the wee lordling.”

“And being a family,” Sebastian said with a nod. “Then we went to live with Uncle Jasper and Daisy. Only Uncle Jasper went away back to Prussia on account of he’s old and he wants to die in his homeland.”

Ah, so that was the reason the old man had wagered the ranch and disappeared.

“And now Ty’s part of our family.” Sebastian tilted his head back to grin at his mother. “And soon we’ll have a baby, too.”

Charlotte smiled with forced cheer and Ty wondered how she would explain both the defection of the Changs and the loss of the promised baby to her son.

Then it hit Ty.

He’d spent his seed within Charlotte’s body more than once. Without a single thought to the consequences.

As if the same thought occurred to Charlotte, she ducked her head and peeked up at Ty through the fringe of her lashes, a flush spreading over her cheeks.

Her pretty blush, the shared remembrance of their lovemaking, and the nearly three weeks spent in close quarters all combined to undo Ty’s meager control over his body. His cock twitched and hardened beneath the soft wool of the trousers New York’s finest tailor had sewn to fit him like a second skin.

Charlotte ran her tongue over her bottom lip, her gaze flitting over his features, surely reading the desire he could not hide even within the shadow of his hat brim.

There was a beat of pure silence in the parlor before the air shifted and the silence was disturbed by the shuffling of feet and the scrape of a chair being pushed back as Magnus lumbered to his feet.

“The captain said as how they’ve a magician performing after dinner,” the Scotsman proclaimed cheerfully. “What say you, Sebastian m’ boy? Would you like to eat in the fancy dining room with all the nabobs and follow it up with a magic show?”

“Can we, Mama?” Sebastian squirmed around on his mother’s lap to face her.

Before Charlotte could agree, Daisy leapt off the settee. “Your mother looks fair done in, Sebastian. Why don’t we have a tray sent up and let her rest a bit?”

“That’s a fine idea,” Ethel agreed as her husband helped her to rise from the cocoon of blankets he’d fashioned around her. “We’ll all go in to dinner and stay to watch the show while her ladyship relaxes.”

“But won’t you be lonely, Mama?” the boy asked.

“We’ll only be gone two hours, three at the most,” Magnus said with a wink to Ty.

“If it please you, my lady, perhaps Mr. Morgan will stay to watch over you?” Akeem asked the question of his mistress but it was his companions who hurried to answer in the affirmative.

Less than a minute later, shawls and gloves and hats had been collected and the door closed with a decisive click behind the lot of them.

Leaving a blushing wife and her grateful husband sitting across from one another at the linen draped table.

“Well, this is rather awkward,” Charlotte murmured as she gathered up the cards strewn across the table. “I can’t imagine what they were thinking, manipulating you to stay behind with me that way.”

Ty knew exactly what her hodge-podge family had been thinking and he would find some way to thank them for it later.

“You needn’t remain with me,” she continued as she neatly stacked the cards before her. “I would not want you to suppose yourself obliged to keep me company if you are inclined to take refreshment in the dining room.”

“I’m fine where I am,” Ty replied.

“Shall I ring for dinner, then?”

“Magnus said he’d see to it.”

“Did he?”

“Just as they were leaving.”

“His dictate must have escaped my notice.” Charlotte shuffled the cards, her nimble fingers sure and graceful. “It’s hardly surprising, what with the upheaval of their vacating the premises in such a boisterous, not to mention precipitous fashion.”

It was all Ty could do not to grin in the face of her nervous, baffling chatter.

“Honestly, what possessed Daisy to suggest I appear fatigued?” his wife asked with a huff as she cut the cards and brought their edges together, effortlessly riffling them until she had a single tidy pile once more. “And Akeem, it is not normally a characteristic of his temperament to presume to dictate the actions of others. He was reared in a harem, after all, and as such has a lamentable tendency to conduct himself in a docile, subservient manner.”

“What sorts of card games did you play in England?” Ty asked in an effort to rein in her agitation before she worked herself into a lather.

He only had two hours, three at the most, to entice his bride to pounce on him.

“Most often we played whist or piquet,” she replied readily enough. “And Vingt-et-un. But not until I was married as it was considered quite improper for unmarried ladies to play.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted with a delicate shrug. “I suppose because it is customarily played in casinos rather than in card rooms at balls and such.”