Promises Keep (The Promise Series) (6 page)

“You should never have punched me, my dear,” Cecile broke in, her voice conveying her enjoyment of the tense drama. “We might have broken you in more gently otherwise. You cost me a pretty penny, you know. Virgin whores come dear.”

“I’m not a whore.”

“Yes, you are. That man paid cold hard cash for your services, and from the looks of him, he more than got his money’s worth.”

“I am not a whore.”

Cecile’s laugh sent shivers down Mara’s spine.

“Oh, yes you are, dear. You may not have come here willingly, but you are here, and you did have sex with a man for money.” She shrugged philosophically though a slight bitterness tinged her tone. “As you will soon find out, nothing else matters to the outside world. They don’t care how you got here. They aren’t even interested in whether you fought. That man,” she nodded her head toward Cougar’s prostrate form, “spilled his seed in your body. It’s as good as a brand.”

Never, Mara vowed. She would never allow that to become the truth. She ignored Aleric who bounced her over his groin, trying to get her to flinch. If the man was too dumb to recognize the uselessness of his ploy, who was she to educate him? At least it kept him busy while she came up with a plan.

She closed her eyes. There. That was better. At least the room stopped spinning with her eyes closed. And she was spared Aleric’s gloating. Her thoughts slowly began to collect. She paid close attention to her speech, deliberately spacing her syllables. She had to make this clear. “You can’t make me a whore.”

“I already have,” Cecile laughed. “It’ll almost be worth the financial loss just to see that arrogance of yours get ground into the dust when every man in this territory gathers round for their chance to drive that point home.”

“I won’t let them.” The words came out slow and inconsequential when she wanted them to be angry and determined.

“My dear, you won’t be able to stop them. If I have to, I’ll keep you drugged so that your struggles will be as ineffective as today. And if you keep resisting me, if you refuse to learn, I’ll stake you out in the back room, and let any man who can get it up have at you. After that, I guarantee you, you won’t need the drugs, because there will be nothing left inside to protect.”

Aleric shifted his grip on her arms. Mara opened her eyes. The jostling caused Cecile’s face to fade out of focus. Mara shaped her lips around a “no” she couldn’t get out. She fought for the coordination to shake her head from side to side. She must have succeeded, because Cecile kept arguing.

“Yes, I will.” Her face swam back into focus. She’d adopted an expression of benevolence. Mara thought it looked as out of place on her face as a smile on a rattler.

“But, as madam of this house,” Cecile continued, “it’s my job to try to salvage my investments. You could help me with that by accepting your lot, but I can see you have too much arrogance left in you for that.” She bestowed a regal nod on her henchman.

“Maybe Aleric can convince you of the futility of rebelling.”

Mara fought, but Aleric anticipated her move and easily evaded her knee.

Cecile laughed deep in her throat. “Really dear, you’ll have to be more imaginative than that! Aleric is long accustomed to women and all their little tricks. Why don’t you relax? While not as well endowed as your first lover, he is quite adequately equipped to service you.” Mara ignored Aleric, staring over his shoulder at Cecile, projecting all of her hate and fury at the woman.

Despite her resolve, Mara winced when Aleric prodded her bruised flesh. Cecile watched the proceedings with fanatical intensity, her voice coarsening as she met Mara’s gaze. “Isn’t it the most exquisite pain?”

Mara closed her eyes. She eased her hands up between her body and Aleric’s chest. She’d only have the one chance. At the most, they’d kill her. And right now, death didn’t seem so bad. If she were very, very lucky, she’d take one of them with her. They would not make her into a whore. Clutching that conviction as her lifeline, Mara willed the remnants of her energy into her limbs.

Smiling coldly into Aleric’s lust-contorted face, she drove her thumbs into his beady eyes, gouging fiercely. Aleric squealed like a stuck pig and dropped her. As soon as her feet hit the floor, she kicked him in the groin as hard as she could. He doubled over and dropped to his knees. It felt damned good seeing him like that.

She didn’t waste time admiring her work. She rounded on an open-mouthed Cecile, the knife she’d whipped from Aleric’s belt firmly clenched in her palm. She stumbled forward, the blade flashed in the faint moonlight, and Mara had the satisfaction of witnessing the woman who’d destroyed her life crumple to the floor, the knife buried in her throat, her expression frozen for all eternity into one of incredulous horror.

Her heart pounded madly in her throat as she drunkenly spun back toward Aleric. The sudden movement brought back the dizziness, and she wanted to scream her frustration as the image of his approach wavered in and out of focus. She couldn’t tell anymore where reality began and illusion left off. She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. She squeezed until she thought her head would explode. She would not succumb to the haze. She would think. She would fight.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed movement, but she couldn’t force her head around to investigate. Oh damn, why couldn’t she act? Her gaze landed on Cecile and the blood seeping from her body. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the grotesque sight. She’d done that, she thought. And with every repetition of the thought, she felt her grasp on reality weaken. It was as if each drop of Cecile’s blood pooling on the carpet sapped her own energy until there was nothing left.

Oh God, she thought as Aleric reached for her, his fingers curled like claws. She didn’t want to die like this. She wanted a home. She wanted children. She wanted…dignity. It was the last thought she mustered before she tumbled to the floor.

With a roar of rage, Cougar stepped between Mara and certain death. Deflecting Aleric’s blow with his forearm, he held the other man’s gaze with his. He smiled as fear replaced the victory in his enemy’s eyes. With a grim precision, he wielded his knife. First down and then up. He exacted justice in two quick slashes. Too quick. Months with which to punish his victim wouldn’t begin to satisfy the anger he felt inside.

A rapist. He glared at Cecile’s still warm body, the conversation he’d overheard echoing in his mind. She’d made him into a goddamned rapist with her lies and manipulations. Chest heaving with the depth of his emotions, fists clenched at his sides, Cougar observed Aleric’s death throes dispassionately. As the last bloody gurgle bubbled through the castrated man’s lips, he wiped his knife on Aleric’s shirt and replaced it in its sheath. He turned to face the woman called Mara.

She sat half-propped against the wall. Those expressive eyes were open, but he doubted she saw him. Damn, how badly was she hurt? What drugs had they given her to force her cooperation? And what in hell was he going to do with her?

A pounding on the door and a clamoring of excited voices told him that she couldn’t stay here. She deserved better than what would happen if that door gave. That being the case, she would just have to accept his aid, because there was no way in hell he was going to trust her welfare to any of the inhabitants of this godforsaken town.

An angry male voice demanded admittance. Knowing there wasn’t any time to lose, Cougar scooped up the woman and carried her to the window. In two seconds, he had the stained sheets off the bed. In another two, they were knotted, anchored, and flowing out the window where they swayed gently in the rising breeze.

Mara lolled where he had left her. Lightly slapping her cheeks, he was gratified to see a little color flush the waxen pallor. Holding her face between his palms, he eased his face close to hers. Each word was precisely enunciated.

“We’ve got to get out of here. Do you understand?”

“No.”

The response was weak. Her chin shot up and defiance entered her vacant gaze. Cougar didn’t know whether she was denying going with him or denying understanding. In the end, he figured it didn’t matter.

He lowered his voice, trying hard to impart his regret while his fingers lightly caressed the fragile skin drawn too tightly over her high cheekbones. “I didn’t know about Cecile’s game until it was too late. I know you don’t have any reason to believe that, but it’s true.” Was it his imagination or did her lips move? “You are going to have to trust me, Angel. At least until we get out of here.”

There was no marked change in the mutinous face so close to his. Cougar felt his frustration mount. How could he get through to her? With the tail of the too-long shirt, he gently wiped most of the blood and grime from her face.

“The sheets won’t hold both our weights,” he explained. “I’m going first, then you. That way, I can catch you if you fall.”

She didn’t believe him. He watched as resignation crept over her face. She expected him to leave her to those ravenous wolves beating down the door. Her mouth quivered once before tightening resolutely. Cougar touched their straight line approvingly before leaning forward to place an infinitely gentle kiss on her forehead.

Her hand came up, as if to capture the sensation with her fingertips.

“That’s right. Trust me. Just a little more and you’ll be safe. Wait for my signal.”

Pausing only to pull on his pants, he left.

Mara watched, strangely detached, as the man squeezed his big frame out the window. Was he two men? One brutal, one gentle? Was it a trick? She heard the whistle just as the door began to crack. What did it matter now? Far better to have only one enemy to vanquish than one hundred. She dragged her tortured body to the window, fighting back the crippling fear. She would survive. Over and over she repeated the litany in her mind until it became the talisman that gave her the strength to throw her leg over the windowsill and her body into the darkness below.

Cougar was just in time to halt her plummeting fall. She was no bigger than a minute, he marveled as he caught her close. Such a little thing to harbor such a huge spirit. And he’d hurt her. Lord, that was hard to stomach.

The descent must have drained the last of her reserves, for his little warrior slumped meekly against his chest. And meekness just wasn’t something he associated with this woman. Arranging her legs across his in the saddle, he nudged Flame Dancer into a full gallop, leaving the seedy town and all its disreputable populous far behind.

When he felt it was safe, he stopped. He wrapped his poncho around the woman’s limbs, grimacing at the blood seeping through his buckskins. He had to get her to Doc and fast. No telling how much harm had been done. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to atone, but what could he say to an innocent girl he’d raped? How could he make it right? How could he earn forgiveness for the unforgivable?

He swallowed hard, knowing he couldn’t undo what had been done. He rubbed his chin reflexively against the sun-streaked silk tucked into the curve of his neck. “I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’m so very, very sorry.”

What a pointless thing to say. As if an apology could remove the shame and taint. As if anything could make what he’d done palatable. He wondered if she’d ever get past tonight. God, he hoped she wasn’t gently reared. He’d been a Marshal too long, and first rescued and then buried too many women who felt rape made them less than human. They’d chosen death instead of life to spare their families shame. It still struck him as an obscene waste.

He pictured his Angel holding off Aleric and killing Cecile. His grip tightened. If he had to, he’d watch her day and night until he was sure she didn’t have suicidal tendencies. The thought of all that fire being senselessly extinguished was unbearable.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he vowed. “Somehow, someday, I’ll make it up to you.”

The only response he got was a faint moan from the woman in his arms. He chose to interpret it as acceptance.

Chapter Four

Two months later, Cheyenne

He’d never had to work so hard to keep a promise.

Cougar stepped out of the shadowed livery and into the street. A wagon loaded with squealing pigs rolled by, slipping in the mud left over from a steady rain. He held his breath until it passed, not only because of the stench, but because if those back wheels lodged, he’d be obliged to help out. If he did that, all the trouble he’d taken with his appearance this morning would be for nothing.

The wagon lurched free. Cougar started breathing again and immediately wished he had gills so he could breathe without his nose getting involved. The hot humid air was loaded with the scents of animals, manure and garbage. The first two he could live with, seeing as how they were natural like, but the last—

He shook his head. Pure and simple, toss garbage into an alley, drown it in moisture, and then bake it in the sun and the resulting stench would have a skunk begging for mercy.

He angled the brim of his hat to better shade his vision as he waited for a flatbed tied high with lumber to pass so he could search the other side of the street. It wouldn’t be hard to locate his quarry since his eyes were trained to pick out a tiny woman inevitably dressed in brown, who walked like the world was hers for the taking.

That never ceased to amuse him. The only dress he had ever seen Mara Kincaid wear was too big, obviously a cast-off. The damned thing had been mended so often, it was in danger of disintegrating with the next light breeze, but she carried herself as if she were a queen in silks, casually making her way to her throne.