The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1) (26 page)

Reese stared at the froth on the waves that cut under the boat. "I mean to kill him."

Grace fell silent. "I see," she said at last. "I don't know you very well, Reese, but I don't believe you're a killer."

"You're right. You don't know me."

"But I want to."

If he didn't know better, he'd think she really meant it. He looked over at her. The moonlight was skimming off her features like liquid silver, making her look more angel than woman. Her lips were parted and he had to tamp down the urge to run a finger along the softness of her lips to see if she was real. She was real, all right. And she was turning every cynical truth he believed in inside out.

She made him laugh and feel and want again. And worse than that, he found himself drawn to her flame like a light-blinded moth, even knowing that the center of that flame had only searing pain to offer. Even knowing that, he wanted her beneath him, her legs wrapped around his waist, and his hands lost in her hair. He wanted the sweetness of her mouth on his—

Hell,
he swore, reining in his thoughts.
Hell. Hell. Hell.

Grace clasped her hands together and leaned on the railing beside him, blissfully ignorant of his train of thought. "I'm sorry for prying. Luke always said I was too pushy for a female. And too impulsive."

"Your brother?"

She nodded. "I suppose it's a family trait."

"Tell me about him," Reese said, hoping to divert his rampant imagination.

"He's twenty-seven." She smiled thinking of him. "Handsome as the devil—stubborn as him, too. When he was fresh out of the university, he joined the military during the war, worked his way up in the ranks. After the war ended, he was promoted to the diplomatic corps in Washington. He impressed his superiors and nearly everyone else involved in politics there. I suspect he's interested in a career as a politician."

"So what's he doing in a Mexican prison?"

She drew in a deep breath of sea air. "I'm afraid that's my fault."

"Your fault?"

"He never would have gone if—" She broke off, staring at her hands.

"If what?"

"If I hadn't ruined things between him and Karina. His fiancée."

Reese stared at her, waiting.

"You see," she continued haltingly, "I discovered, quite by accident, that Karina was being unfaithful to him while he was away. She was very discreet about it. But I stumbled upon the whole awful thing. I agonized about telling him, but in the end, I thought it best that he know the truth."

"So you told him?"

"Yes." She paused for a long moment. "It was the end of their relationship—and ours. We had a terrible fight and Luke went back to Washington, furious with me for interfering. The next thing we heard, he'd left for Mexico. No one could tell us why, but I'm certain it was on some diplomatic mission."

"That's hardly your fault," Reese argued. "He's a grown man with a mind of his own."

"He wouldn't have gone if things hadn't fallen apart with Karina. I'm sure of it. At any rate, it all apparently went badly somehow and he wound up imprisoned by the French. Somehow, he smuggled a letter out of the prison. Once we learned about his capture, Brew and I tried everything to get the U.S. government to intervene. But they denied he was even there on official business. They gave us all sorts of political rhetoric to keep us off balance, but in the end, it was clear they meant to let Luke rot in Mexico rather than help him."

"Why?"

She took a deep shaky breath. "I don't know. I can only assume that he was doing something there the United States didn't want the world to know about. And when it went wrong, they washed their hands of it rather than let the truth come out."

"Sounds about right." He gritted his teeth against what he really wanted to say.

She steepled her hands over her mouth, emotion pooling in her eyes. "What if they've killed him already, Reese? What if we're too late?"

He couldn't help himself. He drew her up against his chest, enfolding her in his arms. She fit against him as if she'd been made to do it, with her damp cheek cradled neatly in the curve of his shoulder and her hips flush against his thighs. Her breasts flattened against his chest, and for a moment he forgot that he didn't care about her brother, or the revolution that had brought her into his life. For a moment, he shared her pain, remembered his own when the men he'd trusted had turned their backs on him as well, and left him hanging in the wind to dry.

Grace's arms slipped around his back and she pulled him closer. Her fingers splayed against him there. A tantalizing heat spread from each point of contact and gathered at the center of his being like a ball of flame. Barely aware of what he was doing, he let his own hands drift past her shoulders, gliding down her spine in a gentle, comforting massage. She was so small, fragile, so unlike all the roughness he was used to in his life. And when he held her like this he could almost believe that they could belong together, that she could see past what he did to who he was.

Lifting her head, Grace searched his face with a look so tender Reese almost pulled away. With a hand to his cheek, she stopped him.

"Kiss me, Reese," she implored. "Kiss me like you mean it."

"Ah, Grace." His breath was a shaky thing inside him.

"Please. I won't ever ask you again."

With a need stronger than the current that was pulling them toward disaster, he took her face in his hands and lowered his mouth to hers. He meant it to be gentle, but it wasn't. Not even close. Not when he felt her melt against him as if the only things holding her up were his two hands. Not when he felt her fingers spread across his chest like the lick of flame. Or when her tongue sought his with wanton heat, the very way he'd taught her that night on the docks.

Since that first kiss, he'd wanted this; he'd needed to be sure that he'd imagined the feeling of her in his arms or exaggerated in his memory the wholeness he felt when she kissed him. He'd told himself it couldn't have been this good.

He'd been wrong.

His palms slid along her smooth jawline, cupping the back of her head, drawing her sweetness closer. She swayed against him, circling his neck with her arms. Their breaths came in hungry gasps, mouths slanting against one another with an urgency that belied reason and coherent thought. Turning her in his arms and pressing her back against the rail with his weight, Reese's mouth left hers and skimmed down the slender column of her throat.

Grace threw her head back with a shuddering sigh, clutching his shoulders with both hands. Flooded by sensations, she couldn't think or speak. All she could do was hold on as he bent her back over the railing, and pray that he didn't stop kissing her. His mouth seared an erotic trail of heat down her neck, and she felt her knees give. He didn't let her fall. One strong arm curled around her waist while the other slid up her rib cage past the stiff stays of her corset, until his palm cupped her breast, kneading and lifting it.

A breath sighed from her lips as his fingers worked the buttons at her throat. One by one, he flicked them open until he'd managed all seven. She didn't think to stop him, though somewhere in the dim recesses of her mind she thought she should. Logic, modesty—all of it vanished in the heat of the moment. As he pushed the fabric aside and dropped his mouth to the tender skin just above her breast, drawing moist circles with his tongue, she arched mindlessly toward him, wanting more. It was impossible, this feeling, she told herself. Only birds could fly, but her heart felt so light she thought it might take flight right over the swells of the ocean.

I love him. Love him. Reese Donovan—gunslinger, ne'er-do-well—the dangerous man with eyes of a wounded bird of prey.

I love him.

Never, not with Edgar or any other man, had she been so sure of her feelings. There was no logic to it, no rhyme or reason. Only the pure truth. That they were all wrong for each other mattered not at all. That she hardly dared hope he could ever share her feelings made no difference. For now, there were no rules that could take this moment from her. In her heart, it would live forever.

Through the thin cotton of her camisole, Reese kissed her nipple, dampening the fabric as his tongue drew maddening circles around the hardened bud. The strange, exotic feel of it made her shiver and spread a burning ache through her. Moonlight shimmered in his black hair as she buried her fingers in it and pressed her lips to the top of his head.

A sound issued from Reese's throat as he cupped her bottom and pulled her hard against him. The hard length of his arousal dug into her abdomen, startling her with its power. She could feel the driving beat of his heart against her chest, keeping time with her own.

Then, his breath rasping against his throat, he abruptly ended the kiss and leaned his forehead against hers.

"Grace," he said, panting.

"What?"

"Do you know what you do to me?"

She shook her head silently.

"You make me forget who I am. What I am. I should never have done that. I'm sorry."

"I'm
not," she whispered, holding him with her fingers behind his neck. "Not at all. Reese, I—"

He grabbed her upper arms and held her away from him. His eyes were clouded and angry. "Don't you understand? Another minute and I would have thrown you down on this deck and taken what I wanted from you. Are you so naive you don't know that?"

She shook her head. "You'd never hurt me."

"Do you really believe that?" He grabbed her hand and pressed it coarsely against the hard length of him. "Feel that?
Do
you, Grace?"

She started to shake. "Y-yes."

"That's how much I want you. It's physical. That's all this is, do you understand?"

"I—"

"That's all it can ever be from me. I can't give you any more. And you deserve so much more than that." He released her hand and gripped the rail beside him, staring out at the dark water.

She took a faltering step back. Fumbling with the buttons on her bodice, she didn't take her eyes off him. "You're wrong, you know."

A humorless smile lifted one corner of his mouth. "Which part?"

"The part about me deserving someone better. Someone, somewhere convinced you you were no good. Who was it? Your wife? Did she hurt you so much?"

He shot a look at her that sent her back another step. "Who told you about her?"

"That doesn't matter."

"Leave her out of this," he snapped.

"Can you?" Grace asked, touching his sleeve. He jerked away. "Can you forget her and put her behind you? Or will you carry her around in your heart like a wound for the rest of your life?"

"You don't know what you're talking about. Adriana's long dead. I never even think about her."

"When you were ill, you called her name. You thought I was her." She could tell that shocked him.

"What's your point?"

"Do you still love her, Reese?"

"Look," he said turning on her. "What happened then has nothing to do with now, or us. There is no
us.
Understand? I'm the sort of man your mother should have warned you about. I am who I am and there's no changing that, Grace. I don't care about anything but myself. I'm a selfish bastard, and if you give me the chance, I'll take from you the one thing you consider most precious. And when you look up, I'll be gone.
That's
who I am. So don't go playin' with fire anymore, little girl. 'Cause you might just get burned."

He whirled away, heading for the stairway to below decks.

"Reese—"

He froze, waiting, without turning around.

"Just now," she said, "and before, a dozen times, you could have hurt me, but you didn't."

He tightened his jaw, silent, waiting, feeling his world rocking with the ebb and flow of the tide.

"Has it been so long since someone believed in you that you've forgotten how to believe in yourself?" she whispered over the rush of the water. "I believe in you, Reese."

"Then you're a fool."

With a curse, he stalked off into the darkness, leaving Grace and all her misguided faith behind him.

Chapter 14

Tampico was exactly as the sailors aboard the
Defiance
had described it, Grace thought, as they docked at the rustic port on the Panuco River—quaintly beautiful, quiet, and most of all, tropical. Surrounded by pristine sandy beaches and bordered on all sides by verdant lagoons, the city looked as welcoming as a cool drink of water after traversing a desert. The air held the distinct scent of fish—or, to be more precise, crabs. The docks were lined with fishing vessels of all shapes and sizes with wooden crab cages stacked on their decks. It was this mainstay of the Tampico economy that Tom Newcastle had said was the reason the locals here were commonly refered to as
jaibas,
or crabs.