WANTED (A Transported Through Time book) (9 page)

She needed only one more good kiss before she relieved herself. If she woke up in a warm pool, well then, she’d have to change the sheets, and she’d never tell another living soul.

The door opened near her, and she felt him close in. He walked up behind her, his scent and body heat tingling her senses long before he touched her. If she didn’t have to pee so badly, she would turn and seduce him.

Instead, she enjoyed the feel of his arms wrapped around her waist, his face nuzzled into her neck. He carefully took the gun from her. When she stepped away, he playfully smacked her ass.

“Heavens, but you are one beautiful creature, Samantha.”

She smiled. She kissed him and stepped inside the wooden walls. Samantha closed her eyes and waited. Any second now she’d wake up. Any time now. Her bladder thanked her.

Finished, Samantha opened her eyes and frowned. Was she still asleep, still in the same dream? How odd.

When she stepped out of the outhouse, her confusion grew. Several feet away, Jesse had his back to her. He was guarding the outhouse. She became gripped by the need to speak his name and tell him about this strange dream he was a part of. At the edges of her mind, a pinch of reality came through. What if this was
not
a dream? But that couldn’t be. She swallowed against the bile creeping up her throat and steadied herself to ask Jesse if he was real when something sharp stabbed her ankle, shooting stinging pain up her calf.

Samantha shrieked. Jesse rushed to her, taking her elbow to help steady her. The pain was blinding, and tears streamed down her cheeks unbidden. A snake. It must have been a snake. What else could it be?

A loud bang rang in her ears. A gunshot. He shot what was definitely a snake and picked her up, rushing her to his small cabin home. He jostled her about in his hurry, and she felt like punching him in the arm for it. She would have, too, if not for the need to hold her calf in both hands and moan while pain ebbed and flowed through the muscle.

Jesse set her down and lit a match to a kerosene lamp at his nightstand. He turned up the flame, blew out the match, and tugged on a pair of jeans. His face serious, he examined her leg.

“Show me where it hurts.”

Samantha lay on the bed, rocking from side to side. It hurt everywhere. She shook her head.

“Samantha. I need to see where it hurts. It’s a snakebite, I have to know where it bit you.”

She nodded her head, bit her lips. Yes, snakebite. She pushed her ankle under his nose and pointed to the spot where the pain originated. Jesse didn’t touch, only looked. Thank God, because if he had, she’d have kicked him square in the jaw, and the last thing she wanted to do was knock him out, the one person here to help her.

It seemed like he was taking forever. He scanned her skin, moving his gaze over it, rubbing his chin with his forefinger and thumb. He brought the lamp near for a better view, but didn’t seem to be able to find any marks. If he had, he’d have told her, wouldn’t he?

“Did you twist it, too?” He looked at her.

Samantha furiously shook her head.

“I’ve got to get Ginny. She’ll know what to do.” Jesse went toward the door, stopped, and turned back. “We have to get you covered. She’s my sister, and a woman, but she shouldn’t see you this way.”

Samantha’s eyes bulged, but she swallowed and nodded. If propriety got him out the door and back faster, so be it. She tried as best she could to help him get her into the long-sleeved, button-up shirt and men’s undergarment. He assured her they were clean, and she would have laughed, but it hurt so damned bad. The pain was spreading—and beginning to burn.

She grunted to tell him to hurry. He met her gaze and kissed her forehead.

“Don’t move a muscle,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. He smiled, half-cocked, and left her.

The silence he left behind filled the room, blanketing her in chill and emptiness. Samantha concentrated on her breathing, trying to imagine with each breath—in and out, in, out—that the pain was receding, lessening, disappearing. She counted up and back down, like she thought a woman in labor might do after a hundred Lamaze lessons.

It only helped the time pass and kept her from screaming.

When she heard footsteps coming fast and close, relief flooded through her. He was back. Everything would be okay. She would be okay.

Jesse brought a cool cloth to her forehead and wiped away the sheen of sweat. Ginny peered at her ankle, hands behind her back, similar to the way Jesse had. She went a bit more slowly, though. Samantha watched the woman’s face. She was pretty in a handsome sort of way and had intelligent eyes. She carefully examined Samantha’s ankle. Not once did she look up and take in or judge Samantha’s appearance.

“How far up has the pain moved?” Ginny said and met her stare evenly.

“Knee,” Samantha said through clenched teeth.

Ginny nodded and stood back up. Jesse paced behind her, arms crossed over hard muscle. His pecs formed a deep valley of male cleavage. Samantha closed her eyes. How could she notice such a thing at a time like this?

She opened her eyes and forced her gaze to stay on Ginny. The little brunette bent over her ankle again and suddenly, her delicate eyebrows arched upward, her mouth opening to form a small “Oh.”

“What?” Samantha asked. “What is it?” Pain throbbed with each pulse of her blood. She felt like a good scene out of a bad movie. That’s when she remembered this wasn’t real. Samantha laid her head back and wiped her eyes.

“Jesse,” Ginny said. “Look at this. Here ... and here.”

“I didn’t see it,” Jesse said, sounding angry.

Samantha opened her eyes. Jesse stood at her foot, shaking his head and looking like he’d sucked on a tart lemon. Was he angry with himself? He shouldn’t be. He didn’t bite her.

Besides, this was no more than a figment of her—

“Get my knife,” Jesse said.

Samantha fought to sit up, to stop Ginny from scrambling from the room for any sharp object. If she didn’t wake up from a wet bed or from shooting, stabbing pains up her leg, who knew what was happening in reality. Anyone getting a knife was a bad idea.

The last time this happened, she’d never found those panties. She’d
somehow
removed them in her state of semi-consciousness, who knew where
or why
. If she were in that same semi-conscious state now, she could be doing all sorts of strange things to herself, causing her own pain, acting out what she dreamed.

She might have peed in the kitchen sink, broken a glass, and was now bleeding on her dingy grout while Charles and Fluffy slept peacefully two rooms away, oblivious that she was hurting herself.

Ginny returned, knife in hand. The blade shone in the moonlight and looked nothing like Samantha pictured any old western utensil did. No rust, no crude handle. Nice gleaming steel and an expensive-looking ivory handle.

Samantha blinked. She shook her head. The pain moved upward, and for a moment, terror traveled through her. She didn’t want to die. She wanted whatever had bitten her to die instead. When Ginny approached, Samantha had the urge to close her eyes and let the woman cut her open.

Jesse must’ve seen her rising panic, because he lay next to her and began whispering soothing words into her ear. “Shhh. It’ll be all right, Samantha. You’re safe with me. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”

That’s when the world went pitch-black.

~~~

Chapter Eight

Long before she actually passed out, Jesse could see she was going to. Her face grew pale, and her lips lost their rosy color. A fear unlike any other gripped him, along with the knowledge he mustn’t stop her. Better for her to stay knocked out than to be in pain.

A fear too similar to one he’d long ago felt for his sister, when they’d first found themselves on their own—mother gone in childbirth, father dead in the war. Grandmother passed away after raising them best she could for ten years.

As he watched her eyes flutter and listened to the small gasp escape her mouth, his belly roiled in acidy powerlessness. Her head went limp and to the side. That’s when he knew Ginny had better cut into her then, or he’d lose all sensibility.

“You sure?” Ginny asked.

He looked up at his sister and nodded. He didn’t know how long she’d be out, but they had to move quick-like while she was. Better this way. As long as the poison wasn’t to blame for her faint.

He hadn’t seen a snake. Not ’til he shot it dead. He’d like to shoot it dead again, seeing her like this. He should have looked first, carefully. Damn distracted is what he’d been. Just the other morning, he’d found a rattler curled right on the wooden seat, waiting for him like Satan for Eve. Thankfully, he hadn’t had a hangover to contend with and spotted the serpent before it bit him right in the ass and ended the life every sheriff from here to California wanted swinging in trees.

Leave it to a snake to go and ruin an ideal evening. But then, a snake couldn’t change what it was. Not even most men could.

This was all his fault. First, letting Samantha stay, lying snugly in his arms, then falling asleep himself. Being too busy looking for persons in the trees to remember that scouting the underbrush might be a better plan.

He’d had no choice but to get Ginny. Now Ginny would be haranguing him for the ruination of a young woman’s reputation, never mind that the young woman had been willing and able, and she wasn’t known in these parts by any other soul. Well, he assumed.

“Keep her still,” Ginny said.

Jesse winced, watching his sister steady the ankle and delicately fillet open the pinked, ivory skin. He held Samantha’s hand and patted it, even though she wasn’t aware. Ginny put her mouth to the cut and began to suckle it.

Ginny pulled her mouth away and motioned for something to spit into. Jesse fetched a bowl from the small kitchen and brought a jug of cider vinegar. Old-wives’ tale or not, he’d try anything to get Samantha back on her feet.

They took turns sucking and spitting, and the longer Samantha stayed out, the better and worse he felt. The more they sucked out, the poison’s taste bitter and distinct, the less likely she would die. But the longer she lay there, motionless, eyes closed and breathing shallow, the more worried he became.

If Ginny felt the same, she didn’t show it. She sucked and spit and watched, quiet and deceptively calm. She was a wonder in a crisis. Her calm had gotten them through more than one scrape on their rough road to adulthood. His cunning, her calm. They’d been a pair, still were. Even now, grown and married, Ginny remained his baby sister.

He liked to think their parents looked down from heaven, proud of the two of them, despite the life he led, the life he was ending. He figured they understood and they’d make sure God got on his and Ginny’s side. Not that Ginny needed any help in that area. She was a giving soul, patient and nurturing. Strong. If she and Tom were ever blessed with children, she’d be a wonderful mother.

After taking turns in sucking, they administered the cider vinegar and some whiskey on top of that for good measure. “I think we’d better wake her,” Jesse said at last.

Jesse returned Ginny’s look of wariness. ‘I’ll take no part in a dunking, Jesse.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll do it, if it comes to that. Now, back away, because I have a feeling she’s going to be mad as hell.”

“Mad? We’ve been working to save her, Jesse. She’ll recognize we’re only helping her.”

“Yeah, while she’s been out cold.” Jesse held up a hand. “You didn’t see the way she looked when she saw the knife. There’s something there neither you nor I can understand, but I’ll tell you, I think she’ll be right mad. Call it instinct.”

Ginny threw up her hands in small defeat and backed away. She was still in her nightclothes. He wondered if Tommy even noticed she was gone.

Jesse sat on the bed next to Samantha and gently shook her shoulder. “Samantha,” he said softly. “Samantha, can you hear me? Wake up, beautiful. Samantha?”

He looked at Ginny. Ginny shrugged, as though to tell him this was his game, and she was taking no part in it.

He tried again, speaking louder, shaking harder. “Samantha, wake up. Can you hear me? Wake up.”

His worry doubled in on itself, prickling up his gut. Ginny crossed her arms, stepped closer, and peered over the bed. “Should I get some water?”

“Try some noise first?” he asked.

Ginny smiled, opened her arms wide, and clapped in fast, noisy succession. She sounded like she was bringing in a herd.

It worked.

Samantha abruptly sat up and looked about the room, panic painted on her face.

“It’s all right,” Jesse said, and touched her arm. “You’re all right. You fainted.”

Ginny bit down on her lower lip and nodded. “How’s your leg?”

Samantha looked at Ginny’s face and back to Jesse. “I don’t understand,” she said.

Jesse frowned. “A snake bit you. Outside the privy. We need to know how bad it still hurts.”

Samantha shook her head, putting her hand to it. “I’ve totally and completely lost my mind, haven’t I? Am I on meds in some psych ward somewhere?”