Wild Texas Rose (5 page)

“Seems like with your horse-selling business making money, you’d be a little more kindly to your old friend, Thorn Maxwell.” He smiled and patted the bed beside him. “Why don’t you sit down and talk to me? Maybe I can help with your problem.”

“Everyone has problems,” she said shortly. But she was tempted. So tempted.

“There are a lot of rich and not-so-rich bastards in this county who’d stoop pretty low to get their hands on your land. Might even sabotage your operation.” He rubbed the quilt as if it were her thigh. “Might even steal your horses.”

Horrified, she wondered if this was proof that everyone in Presidio County knew her troubles … or proof that Thorn was the culprit. “What makes you say that?”

“Come and talk to me.”

“I think I’ve talked enough.” She paced toward the door, then back. “How did you—”

“Get in?” He pointed at the window, which was open to the breeze that blew her lace curtains. “I pushed it up. You never locked it.”

“No. That’s not what I wanted to ask. How did you get here so quickly?”

“I was ahead of you, darlin’“ — he flashed her a smile — “all the way.”

CHAPTER SIX

She knew what he meant. She heard the significance beneath the words. But nothing could induce her to acknowledge it. She stalked to her dresser and placed the lantern beside her neatly arranged brush and comb. Using a thin stick, she transferred the flame to the glass kerosene lamp and looked in the mirror. Her appearance appalled her. Sue Ellen’s ribbon had disappeared in the ride, and her hair had snarled around her shoulders. The wind had turned her cheeks pink, and her brown eyes looked at least as wide as any heifer’s and twice as confused.

“Where’s your horse?” she finally asked.

“I tethered it on the other side of the house. I didn’t want him … disturbing you when you rode in.”

“You mean you didn’t want me to know you were here.”

“I suppose some suspicious people could interpret it that way,” he admitted.

“No one could move faster than Goliath.”

“My horse is a good one, like yours.” He relaxed back on the bed and closed his eyes. “Good lineage, well broken, comes straight from an Irish stable.”

She flinched, and although he shouldn’t have been able to see it, he came up and into the sitting position as if her wedding-ring quilt had bugs. “Why, darlin’,” he crooned. “What’s the problem? You act like I stole that horse.”

Lifting the brush, she applied it to the tangles. “Did you?”

He must have moved as swift and as silent as a ghost, for suddenly his fingers closed on her bare shoulders.

She jumped and dropped the brush.

“You’re strung tight as a bowstring.” His breath caressed her neck as he spoke. “Why don’t you lie down on the bed and relax?”

“That’s it!” Her elbow connected with his solar plexus before he could react, and she heard a satisfying gasp.

His hands dropped away.

She caught him before he could stumble backward, and in one efficient move, she brought the noose out of her pocket, looped it around his wrist, and tightened it. His other hand came up to tug at the cord, and she wrapped the rope over it with the expertise of a cowhand — which she had been in her day.

Like a fractious calf, he jerked back, and she used the motion to set the knot.

“Damn, woman!” But while his astonishment was genuine, his eyes twinkled with tiny blue sparks.

And that made her madder. Hooking her heel around his knee, she knocked him off balance.

He stumbled backward, but without his hands to break his fall he hit the puncheon floor hard.

She wrapped the length around one booted ankle. She jumped away from his free foot and reflected that her performance would rate well in a rodeo.

With one foot connected to his tied hands, he couldn’t stand with ease, nor do more than roll and sit. But he tried. Oh, yes, he tried. When he’d proved the strength of her knots, he complained, “You have me trussed up like a Sunday roast at a potluck dinner.”

Keeping one cautious eye on him, she knotted the end of the rope to the foot of her brass bed frame.

“Darlin’, if you wanted me at your bedside this bad, you should have whistled. I’d have come.”

“Humph.” The man should have looked like a disobedient mongrel. Instead he looked like a bright, chipper, well-groomed purebred.

It had been too easy.

She should never have been able to hog-tie Thorn Maxwell.

It had been too, too easy.

“What are you going to do with me now?” he asked.

What was she going to do with him? It had been a stupid, if undeniable, impulse. “I’m going to” — she groped for inspiration — “call the sheriff first thing in the morning and have you hauled off.”

“To jail?” He lifted one quizzical eyebrow. “Again?”

“Again.”

“I won’t be there long. Coming into your house by the window is hardly the equal of stealing your daddy’s best tooled-leather saddle.”

“No,” she admitted.

“But it’s a damned sight more interesting.” He chuckled and shook his head. “What kind of rumor do you suppose that will start, when the sheriff finds me tied to your bed?”

“I’m not interested in rumors.” But she was, especially in this one, and he knew it.

“I’ve been dreaming about seeing you in your nightgown, Rose.” Never taking his gaze off her, he rolled into sitting position and braced his back against the post. “I guess this is my chance.”

“Your dreams are no concern of mine.” She eyed the knot holding his wrists together. It looked firm. The knot around his leg was stupid — he might be able to get out of it by taking off his boot. She wished she had another length of rope or the nerve to hit him on the head and knock him unconscious.

“Why are you staring at me like I’m a bull you’re about to make a steer?”

He asked, but clearly he knew. She wanted to tie him in knots so he couldn’t escape — and in fact, the thought had its appeal for more than one reason.

“These ropes are unnecessary. You know I’d never hurt you.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” She agreed without even thinking about it, and she didn’t notice the complacency that creased the corners of his mouth. “Not physically. But maybe…”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe you’d do something worse.”

She was thinking of horse stealing.

He was not. “What I want to do to you isn’t worse. It’ll be the best time you ever had.”

No matter what she said or did, he came right back to the same thing. The way he talked, it was the only thing on his mind — as it was the only thing on hers. “You are the most frustrating man.”

“And you are the most frustrated woman,” he teased. “But I can cure that. Come here.”

“I must appear to be a fool.”

He looked her over carefully before he answered. “No, ma’am. You look like the sweetest woman this side of the Pecos.”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed as she thought of the back-stepping caution she and her ambitions generated among the ranchers. “You’re the first man to see that.”

Drawing out the words as if he savored them, he said, “That’s because you’re only sweet on me.” He crooked a finger. “Come here.”

“No.”

“I need you to roll me a cigarette.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“You’re one observant lady.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I have an itch in the middle of my back.”

“Scratch it on the bed.”

“Heartless ladies have no fun.” He hung his head. “I may as well tell you the truth. You tied my hands too tight.”

He wiggled his fingers, and she almost groaned. Was it possible for a man to lose his hands from lack of circulation? No, surely not. She hardened her heart. “I’m sure you’ve experienced worse.”

“They’re getting cold.”

Although it was hard to see by the light of the single lamp, his fingertips did look white.

“If I promise not to touch you in any undignified way, would you come here?”

Against her better judgment, she moved closer and knelt down. “I can’t loosen the knots.”

“Of course you can’t.” He smiled. Not his smirky, superior smile, but as kind a smile as she’d ever seen. “But you can kiss ‘em better.”

She tried to jump back, but his bound hands caught her with more strength than she could have imagined.

“Just a kiss,” he coaxed. “I want to show you something.”

“And I know what it is,” she muttered, trying to twist free — from him, and from the impact of his body so close to hers.

“Why, Rose. Your mind has truly sunk to the depths.”

He sounded as if he were marveling, but at what? At her crudeness? Or at the attraction that flared with the power of their vanished adolescence, and with the hunger of long denial?

She didn’t want to look into his eyes. She knew she shouldn’t, for if she did …

Blue sparks, his sparks, lit the fire in her. The same conflagration he’d created nine years ago, and nothing had ever extinguished it. Somehow, he looped his arms over her head to pull her close, and she sprawled across him in wicked abandon. “Thorn.” She whispered his name, but she could have been shouting, for it betrayed her loneliness — and lust. Bawdy, heart-thumping, wicked, delightful lust.

She clasped the hair at the nape of his neck with both her hands, holding a willing man captive as she tried to remember all the ways they’d kissed once upon a time.

She remembered. He remembered. And they discovered a few new ways for lips and tongues to meet and mate.

She’d never before kissed a man who needed a shave — as a youth he’d been clean-shaven, not prickly and tickly. She’d never before kissed a starving man — as a youth he’d been intent on seduction, not honest about his need.

“Rose,” he groaned. “Closer. God, Rose, harder.”

An imp, one she thought long slain by suffering, raised its mischievous head. “Pull your hair,” she murmured, “harder?”

He grinned at her, his mouth still wet, his lips softened with pleasure. “You are a sly and scarlet woman. I do love a scarlet woman.” He slid lower and arranged her on him, so she lay on him chest to chest, stomach to stomach. Then, raising his free leg between both of hers, he pushed her against his thigh so she rode him like a stallion. “Harder — like that.”

The pressure melted her bloomers and layers of petticoats, sending such a surge of sensation through her that she bucked to escape — or get closer. He chuckled and groaned, seeming to luxuriate in her enjoyment as much as his own. “When you make those little whimpering noises, you make me want to bust my buttons.” Then he gave her no time to worry about which buttons, but kissed her until she ran out of breath.

She drew back to gasp, to learn something new, to give some more pleasure, but he wouldn’t suffer her to move away. He came after her, and his mouth found the skin of her shoulders.

Closing her eyes, she braced herself for the memories that would sweep her.

But they didn’t come. This was too immediate and so much more delightful than before.

His head dipped, and he followed the lace across her bosom to its lowest point. With his chin he nudged at the material, but her rigid corset thwarted him, and he whispered, “Dammit, take that instrument of torture off.”

“Don’t swear,” she rebuked automatically as she reached for her buttons — and rapped her hand against rigid whalebone and stiff satin. The corset, she realized, was more than an undergarment. It was a call to sanity and decency.

He realized it, too, and glared at her. “Don’t think. Stop thinking! Don’t remember the facts. Remember only the sensations, the glory. There’s no other two people in the world like us. Don’t” — his arms tightened — “think.”

Filled with despair, she gazed at him, wishing she could do as he demanded.

“Too late,” he whispered. “That brain of yours is working.”

He took a deep breath, a breath he seemed to need. He, too, had been willing to deprive himself of air for their kiss. But no sense of decency could cure disappointment and desire, and he knew it.

A grin, crooked but satisfied, slashed his face. He whispered still, as if this matter was for the two of them only. As if it were too intimate to confide even to the breeze. “If you must think, think of this. My hands are tied. I’m almost helpless. But you’re helpless, too. Even when you could have run, you stayed to kiss me, not because you wanted to, but because you had to. I had to come back here, Rose. Sooner or later you knew I would. I had to fulfill that promise.”

She pushed his arms over her head and wiggled away, and he lowered his knee and let her go without any attempt to keep her. It was as if he knew he held a lasso looped around her or a corral built to keep her close.

“Remember,” he urged. “Remember. Someday I’m going to make you mine.”

A chill ran up her back. The words were the same. The tone was the same. But the audacious boy had grown to a man, with a man’s determination and a man’s confidence.

And her doubts were no match for his arrogance.

“I’m going to lay down now,” she said.

He covered his eyes with his clumsily arranged fingers, then peeked as he said, “I won’t watch as you undress. I promise.”

“Listening to your promises is about as useful as spitting into the wind. I’ll rest exactly like this.” She moved away from him in much the same manner as she would move away from a threatening rattler. “I’m a light sleeper — I’ve had to be.” That much was the truth, she comforted herself. Anything woke her these days, for anything might be a threat to her horses. “So don’t try to escape.”

“You still don’t understand,” he said. “I’m never going to escape from you.”

No. She’d never sleep now.

But for some reason — a false sense of security? — she did sleep, and when the discomfort of her corset woke her two hours later, he was gone.

So were two of her horses.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Goliath and Starbright. Gone into the night.

Rose stared numbly at the empty stalls. They were gone, Thorn was gone, and Patrick—

“Patrick. Patrick!” She clawed her way up the ladder to the loft where he said he’d been sleeping. Scattered throughout the hay, his belongings testified that he had been there, but now he, too, was gone.