An Outlaw in Wonderland (7 page)

The whip whistled. Sharp pain slashed Mikey’s chest. He bit his lip, attempting to
keep the moan from breaking free, but he couldn’t.

“I won’t hurt you,” Fedya said. Mikey met his friend’s gaze. “I promise. Everything
will be all right.”

Fedya pulled the trigger.

And the whole world changed.

•   •   •

When the guards crowded into Ethan’s infirmary, shouting and laughing, carrying a
litter on which lay a very bloody body, Ethan thought he’d gone mad. What could possibly
be amusing about that? Then he saw the size of the body, the clothes that it wore,
and he knew he
had
gone mad.

“Mikey?”

Annabeth, who’d been dispensing what medicine they had—mostly cold cloths and a kind
word—lifted her head. Even with all the commotion and the noise, she sensed his distress
and started toward him.

He should have stopped her, should have sent her away right then, but he could think
of nothing other than his brother lying on that stretcher, bleeding from the head.

“What happened?” He beckoned the guards to cross the open, looming space, dotted with
the sick, the wounded, the dying.

He pointed to the table. As they lifted his brother onto it, he wanted to slap at
their filthy fingers and order them not to touch. Instead he glanced at Annabeth;
she was already gathering what he needed.

“The doctor asked what happened.” She held a bowl of water. The scent of the alcohol
that had been “donated” just that morning wafted upward. Ethan shoved his hands into
it.

Someone sniggered. Ethan’s gaze drifted over the men who’d brought his brother to
him. “What did you do?” When no one responded, he shouted. “What?”

Annabeth laid a hand on his arm, but he pulled away, stepped toward his brother. There
was so much blood, he couldn’t see—

Then Annabeth was there, wiping Mikey’s face, revealing the neat, round hole in his
forehead. At least he was still breathing. Picking up a knife honed and sharpened
into a scalpel, Ethan determined to keep him that way.

Another snigger. “Best goddamn sniper in the Union finally missed.”

Annabeth’s eyes met Ethan’s, then flicked to the speaker, that brutal excuse for a
human being named Beltrane. “Fedya did this?”

“Sure did.” Beltrane fingered the blood – and flesh-flecked whip on his belt.

Ethan glanced at Mikey, but there was so much blood from the head wound, he couldn’t
determine if there were lash marks as well.

“Fedya doesn’t miss,” Ethan said.

Beltrane’s grin revealed what was left of his tobacco-stained teeth. Though he appeared
to be in his twenties, most of his thin brown hair was already gone.

“No one’s perfect, Doctor. You oughta know that.”

The guards enjoyed playing with the prisoners. The combination of viciousness and
boredom meant their games were as evil as they were. For Ethan, they devised a simple
torture—feed tainted food to Yankee prisoners, then watch while he tried to save them.
He’d failed, of course; then they laughed and laughed and laughed. Was his brother’s
injury merely another torturous joke?

“You made Fedya do this.”

“I
made
him pull the trigger? I
made
him miss? I think I’d have to break his fingers to get him to do that.”

Something in Beltrane’s voice caused Ethan to look up. “Where is he?”

The guard’s cruel mouth curved. “Gone.”

“You killed him?”

“’Course not. He’s been released.”

Annabeth’s hands jerked so badly, water sloshed over the side of the bowl and onto
her shoes. “Released?” she asked at the same time Ethan said, “Why?”

Beltrane’s smirk widened. He lowered his eyes to Mikey, then raised them to Ethan’s
as if to say,
Isn’t it obvious?
before he and his men walked out.

The next several hours passed in a rush of panic. Ethan had no idea what he was doing
beyond digging for a bullet in very poor light, under terrible conditions.

He was a surgeon, but he’d never had to operate on someone’s head. He’d never encountered
anyone who’d been shot there and lived long enough to reach a field hospital.

“You need to stop,” Annabeth said.

“He’ll die if I don’t remove the bullet.”

“Ethan.” She waited until he was able to tear his gaze from his brother and meet hers.
“Neither of you can go on like this.”

Ethan was so tired and scared and lost, he just blinked.

“The bullet’s in too deep,” she continued. “Who knows where it’s lodged. If he hasn’t
died with it in there so far, maybe he won’t.”

Ethan knew better. “The body rejects foreign objects with suppuration. Infection.”
Which was often more deadly than the injury itself. Certainly he’d done his best to
disinfect everything, but here his best was rarely good enough.

Ethan returned to work with a renewed fervor. He
had
to get the bullet out.

Minutes, hours, years later, Ethan found what he was searching for. He drew the obscenity
from his brother’s head and threw it across the room.

“Enough.” Annabeth removed the scalpel from his hand, which ached almost as much as
his eyes.

Mikey’s face was unrecognizable due to the swelling and the wash of blood. Head wounds
bled fiercely. Digging into them only made them bleed more so. Mikey was ice white,
his hand, when Ethan touched it, too cool.

Annabeth held a needle and thread, which was all they had in this hellish place to
close a wound. As she made tight, tiny stitches in the raw flesh of his brother’s
forehead, Ethan stood there, feeling helpless again.

“He’s lost a lot of blood,” she said. “His respiration has increased from far too
slow to far too fast.”

Head injuries led to slower breathing. Excessive loss of blood produced something
akin to a pant. Right now, Mikey’s large chest pumped like a stray dog that had run
after a rabbit in July.

“You did all you could,” she murmured. “Let him rest.”

Ethan wasn’t sure if Annabeth meant
rest
in the sense of eternal, or just for the night. Either way, she was right. Ethan
had done all he could for the moment. He could barely stay on his feet; his fingers
had cramped from holding the scalpel for so long; his eyes burned; his head ached.

“
You
should rest.” Finished with her stitching, Annabeth pushed him toward the storeroom
where he spent his nights. That small room was the one privilege he’d been given for
all his hard work.

“I need . . .” His words drifted off. Ethan stared at his bloody hands, not quite
sure what to do about them.

“I’ll finish in here.” She pushed him again. “You wash in there.” He walked in the
direction she’d urged him. “I may be gone when you come back.”

Ethan turned. “What?”

“It’s past the time when they usually put me out.”

Every night before sundown, the guards escorted Annabeth to the women’s section of
the prison. Every morning at sunrise, they escorted her back to his. He still wasn’t
sure why.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Nine? Ten?”

He should have known that by the flicker of the lanterns. Someone had lit them; it
hadn’t been him.

She spread hands as bloody as his. “Either they forgot, or they’re being reprimanded.”

Ethan laughed—just once, which was all he could manage. “For what?” She glanced at
Mikey, whose only movement continued to be his puppylike panting. “This is Castle
Thunder, Beth. One less Yankee prisoner is a good day.”

She flinched. “I’m sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry about?”

She moved to Mikey’s side. “They’re Confederates. Like me.”

Ethan thought of all
he
had to be sorry about. When he’d been shoved into Palmer’s Factory, he’d thought
he would never see her again, and that had bothered him almost as much as being here.

Ethan’s chest went tight. Words of love trembled on the tip of his tongue. He almost
allowed them to tumble free.

But not here.

His gaze went to his brother and stuck there.

Not now.

F
or an instant, Annabeth thought Ethan might take her in his arms at last. Then he
turned away and disappeared into the storeroom where he slept.

A foolish longing. He was a spy; she was a liar. That didn’t mean she loved him any
less. That didn’t mean she didn’t dream of his kiss, his touch, and more. Who knew
what might happen. Just look at what had happened today.

Mikey dying on a makeshift table in a Confederate prison. Fedya forced to hurt his
friend, most likely in as much agony as Ethan because of it. Ethan would be inconsolable
if his brother died.

She should console him. Tomorrow was a mystery. But it appeared they, at least, had
tonight.

After scrubbing the blood from her skin, she found a clean bowl and filled it with
fresh water; she even managed to find a cloth that wasn’t soiled. Then she quietly
opened the door to the storeroom and slipped inside. A lantern swayed, casting golden
sprays of light across the floor.

A cot sat behind several empty barrels. Before the barrel he’d fashioned into a washstand,
Ethan scrubbed his chest. Annabeth had never seen a man’s chest while he was conscious.
Considering the way her body warmed and her hands itched to touch, her lips to taste,
that was probably a very good thing.

He turned, saw her, and froze. “Is he—?”

“He’s alive. Still breathing.” She lifted a hand. “Slower. Better. But . . .”

“What?”

“There are lashes on his chest and back.” The sight of them had made her want to bloody
someone in exactly the same way.

“I doubted Mikey would agree to let Fedya shoot at him without encouragement.” Awkward
silence ensued. “Beth, I should—”

“Wash.” She lifted the bowl.

She tried to keep her gaze on his face, but she was distracted by the beautiful, naked
expanse just below. So much smooth, olive skin.

He reached for his stained shirt, grimaced, and dropped the garment back on the floor.
He peered around for another.

“You traded it for some thread,” she reminded him. The last of which they’d just used
on his brother.

Annabeth crossed the room, set the bowl of clear water next to the bowl of red. After
wetting the equally clean cloth, she turned. The back of her hand slid across his
stomach.

He snatched her wrist—to pull her away or to pull her close, she didn’t know. Neither
one of them seemed able to breathe.

“Let me,” she whispered.

Releasing her, he stepped back. She followed, pressing the cool, white cloth to his
belly. The muscles beneath fluttered and danced. She stroked the material back and
forth, back and forth. She wanted to make the same movements in the same place with
her tongue. She traced her thumb there instead, and he tensed.

“Shh,” she whispered.

He bit his lip as she washed his stomach, then his shoulders and arms, but he let
her. What else might he let her do?

The hair on his chest appeared soft. Slowly, she reached out, tangling one finger
in a curl, rubbing it between her fingertips. “It is”—she lifted her gaze—“soft.”

He kissed her. Hard. She thought she might fall. She pressed both hands to his chest,
wound her fingers into the softness, scratched her nails across his skin, and held
on.

Her mouth opened; her tongue brushed his lips and slid, seeking, within. He tasted
of heat and despair; she wanted to heal him as he had healed so many others, and this
was the only way that she knew.

“Need . . . you,” he whispered against her lips. “Need you, Beth. Hold me.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck; he wrapped his around her waist as she pressed
her body the length of his. The hardness at his center felt delicious, and she rubbed
herself against it. He hissed in a surprised and somewhat pained breath.

She smiled, dazzled—his kiss, his touch, his face—so beautiful. “I’m dizzy.” She laughed.
She
sounded
crazy.

Concern flooded his eyes. “Sit.”

He urged her to his cot, the only place in the room to sit. The rickety contraption
teetered, creaked, held. That should have been enough to bring her to her senses,
if her senses hadn’t been full of him.

The taste of his skin—salt and spice. The scent of herbs, they soothed. His breath,
harsh like hers, arousing. His hands both rough and strong, but with her, ever so
gentle. The hands of a healer. She pulled one to her mouth and kissed the palm.

“Beth, you should—”

Her tongue snaked out and tasted where her lips had been. His eyes widened. He looked
away, swallowed, then looked back.

She patted the cot at her side. He shook his head like a child who did not want his
medicine. She merely patted it again. “You wanted me to hold you.” She opened her
arms.

He came into them with a sigh of surrender, kissing her with a desperation born of
pain. She tangled her fingers in his hair, ran them across his shoulders, down his
back, across naked, warm, smooth skin. She had never touched anyone like this, never
wanted to. She couldn’t think why.

She’d like to spend a lifetime learning every inch of him, but while they might have
tonight, they also might not. Who knew when someone might remember her and come calling.

He freed the buttons of her bodice and everything else that needed freeing—her corset,
his trousers, their shoes. Wherever he touched, she burned; wherever he kissed, she
yearned. She welcomed his weight; they fit together just right. Though the night seemed
theirs alone, the room a place far removed, they knew better.

“Please,” she whispered, wanting him, needing him now.

He kissed her brow, began to lift himself away, and she clutched him tight. “Don’t.”

“This isn’t a good idea. Not now. Not here. There’ll be time enough—”

“Will there?” She locked her fingers at the base of his spine, pressed him ever nearer.
“I could walk out the door and be hit by a cannonball.”

He lifted a brow. “In Richmond?”

Despite the constant movement of the armies in the area, the city itself had remained
relatively unscathed. Because it was the capital of the Confederacy, the troops protected
Richmond as if it were made of gold.

She brushed her lips across his jaw, relishing the tingle brought about by his beard.
Still nestled between her thighs, Ethan’s hips moved forward on their own. Her head
fell back, her neck arched, her breasts pressed into his chest, and he clenched his
teeth.

“Don’t,” he managed.

She cupped her palm beneath the jaw she’d just kissed and left it there. “I don’t
want to die without knowing this. I don’t want to live without loving you.”

“Don’t talk about dying.”

“Death is all around us, Ethan. Not a cannonball? Fine. Then a runaway carriage. A
stray bullet. A deserter.”

“Don’t,” he said again, and his voice broke.

She understood. The idea of a life without him devastated her, too.

“Anything could happen to you,” she whispered, leaving unsaid what they were both
thinking.

Like it happened to Mikey.

“Make me yours, Ethan. So I can never be anyone else’s.”

She waited, holding her breath, hoping, praying, and when he closed his eyes, pressing
his forehead to hers, whispering her name with anguish, she believed she had lost.
She lifted her mouth for one final kiss, and when their lips touched, everything stilled.

Then he was kissing her as he never had before. As if she were already his, as if
she always would be. His teeth scored her chin, tasted her neck; his lips closed on
a breast and drew deep.

“Please.” She begged again for the unknown.

She was so empty, she wept. When he filled her, something broke with a tiny ping of
pain.

“Oh,” she murmured, more fascinated than afraid. Understanding bloomed with her smile.
“I’m yours.”

“Yes.” He kissed her brow as he began to move within her. “Mine.”

She wanted to examine that statement further; she wanted to kiss and touch and cuddle,
but what he was doing was so delicious. The rhythm of their bodies echoed the beat
of their hearts. She’d never felt so enveloped, so loved, so chosen.

The emptiness was filled again and again. There was something special waiting for
her just out of reach and only he could take her there.

“Ethan,” she managed. “I—

He pulsed, and that tiny movement revealed all she needed to know. Like a cauldron
set on too high a flame, she bubbled over. She could swear she heard a far-off sizzle.
She clenched around him, holding him close both within and without. The waves, the
heat, the sizzle continued. She never wanted them to stop. But, eventually, they did.

When Ethan collapsed at her side, he drew her into his arms, smoothed his hand over
her hair, pressed his lips to her brow. She burrowed in close as his heart slowed,
his breath evened out, and he slept. She had consoled him, and he had shown her a
whole new world.

It wouldn’t do for one of the guards to catch them like this. They’d never allow her
to come back. But for just a moment, she imagined what it would be like to marry this
man, to have his children, to live a life far away from here, leave the war and every
last pain behind. To work at each other’s sides saving lives.

“Heaven,” she whispered. Too good to be true.

Carefully, she extricated herself from his embrace. He didn’t resist; his eyelids
never fluttered; he didn’t even mumble. She was nearly dressed when she heard someone
coming.

She blew out the lamp, shoved her last button through the buttonhole, and picked up
her shoes. She managed to slip out the door before whoever was clomping through the
infirmary reached the storeroom.

Once outside, however, she saw no one. Strange. Her gaze went to Mikey. She couldn’t
tell if he was still breathing, so she hurried across the room, set her hand on his
chest. It rose—barely—then fell.

“Your bodice is buttoned wrong.”

Annabeth jumped. Moze stood at her side. “I hate it when you do that.”

“Your feet are bare.”

She held up her shoes; her stockings were stuffed inside. “Anything else?”

“You smell like him.”

Silence descended. Really, what was there to say?

Annabeth put on her stockings and shoes, then followed Moze out the door of Palmer’s
Factory and through the night to Whitlock’s Warehouse. She started for her cot among
the other women, but he stopped her, pointing to the room where they discussed things
they wanted no one to hear.

He shut the door; Annabeth sat. She was so tired, the room spun.

“You can’t go back.”

Her head came up; the room spun faster. “I have to. He needs me.”

“Everyone’s going to need you.”

“What?”

“Do you think no one else noticed your dishevel?” He flicked a finger at her yet-crooked
bodice. “That they didn’t see you go into the doctor’s room and stay a while? Every
man in Palmer’s is going to want a taste. You think
he’ll
be able to keep them from having one?” Moze shoved a hand through his golden hair.
“Jesus, Annabeth, I thought you’d have more sense.”

She had, too. But when she’d been in Ethan’s arms, the only senses she’d had were
filled with him.

“I’ll be fine,” she said.

“That’s right, because you’re going home.”

“No.”

“I’ll tie you up, toss you in a wagon, and take you there myself. In fact, that sounds
like the perfect plan.” He pulled a length of rope from his belt. Annabeth whirled
toward the door. “This is a prison. There’s nowhere to run.”

“No one will hurt me with Mikey—” Her voice broke. Mikey was unconscious. He’d be
lucky if he lived one more day. Even if he woke, Lord only knew what he’d say, if
he was capable of saying anything at all. It would be a long time before he could
keep anyone from hurting himself, let alone her.

Annabeth’s eyes burned. She continued to face away so Moze would not see. “I thought
you couldn’t get me out.”

“You were right—I just didn’t want to.”

“Why do you want to now?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“It was always dangerous.”

He sighed. “I need information, but it isn’t worth your life.”

“I never knew you cared,” she muttered.

His silence made her arms prickle, and she faced him. She couldn’t decipher his expression.
“Moze—” she began.

“You said you’d spy if I arranged to exchange the sniper for Luke. Except you haven’t
found out anything worthwhile.”

“There isn’t anything to find out.”

“Then it’s time to go.”

“Beltrane hinted that Fedya shot Mikey on purpose.”

“You know better. It was an accident. But it’s probably best to let that rumor stand.”

“Why?” she asked.

He gave a growl of exasperation; she was stalling. “Better that the prisoners think
Fedya was rewarded for being a traitor than that he was released to get your brother
back.”

“What difference does it make?”

“Everyone will want an exchange.”

“Everyone isn’t Fedya.”

“Thank God,” he muttered, then took her arm and tried to tow her out the door.

She yanked free. “I’m not going.”

He bent and tossed her over his shoulder. “Yes, you are.”