Beauty and the Bounty Hunter (28 page)

“He’s not dead!”

“The only thing that remains of Michael Walsh is his talent at scouting. He was a bright young man. He had a future. Now he’s—

“Fine.”

“He isn’t fine, Cat. He thinks he’s Mikhail.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Mikhail.”

“Tell that to Ethan.”

“Why is he so angry?”

Alexi threw up the hand that wasn’t around her. “I shot his brother!”

“What choice did you have?”

“
Not
shooting him.”

“It didn’t sound to me like that was one of the choices Beltrane gave you.”

“I never missed before.” He whispered the next sentence in the voice of a child whose world has been shattered. “Why did I have to miss then?”

“You understand that they would have made you continue
until
you missed? Wasn’t that the game all along? To prove you weren’t as good as you thought you were? To destroy you from the inside out? I’d think you would be smarter than to let them.”

“I…What?” He frowned down at her.

“They continued the game until you lost. I’m sure you lasted longer than most. How many men did Ethan save in their poisoned food game before he ‘missed’? Once he did, didn’t they move on to another game?”

“Yes,” he murmured, as if the concept were a new one.

“If Ethan’s so damn brilliant, you’d think he would have figured that out for himself.”

“He believes I bartered Mikey for my freedom.”

“What freedom?” As far as Cat could tell, Alexi was still a prisoner.

“I shot Mikey; then I was released the next day.”

“But Mikey just happened into the situation. One had nothing to do with the other. It was bad luck.”

“Bad something,” Alexi muttered. “But it did appear…suspect. I can’t fault Ethan for doubting me.”

“He had to have heard how they forced you. That Beltrane hurt Mikey. That he threatened to kill him. Didn’t he see the marks on his brother’s back and chest from the whip?”

“What happened, why, how, didn’t matter. Mikey was no longer…Mikey. The guards enjoyed making us suffer. That Ethan believed I had betrayed him, betrayed Mikey, that the relationship of the three men
who could have been responsible for killing their president and beloved general was in tatters, well, they found that—”

“Hilarious.”

“They definitely weren’t going to do or say anything that might help us make peace.”

“Ethan had to have trusted you, or at least trusted those who did. You wouldn’t have even been in Castle Thunder if you weren’t worthy to be included in the same plot he was. Yet he didn’t take your word over that of the enemy?”

“I was the one holding the gun; his brother was the one dying. Before we had a chance to speak, I was released.”

“They just opened the door and let you walk away?”

“Prisoner exchange. The Confederates had kept me alive because one of
their
most valuable assets had been captured. To get him back, they needed someone of equal value.” He laughed—one short, sharp bark. “You can imagine the army’s disappointment when they discovered how significantly my worth had decreased while incarcerated.”

Cat tilted her head. “You couldn’t shoot.”

“Like my father, if I held a gun, I trembled. So, like him, I…”

“Taught,” she whispered.

His breath blew across the top of her head, and she remembered standing in a field, Alexi at her back, showing her how to aim high, hit low, his breath distracting her then, as now. Schooling her about the kick of the gun. Teaching her to breathe in, hold, then pull the trigger. Why hadn’t she noticed that he never pulled the trigger himself?

“Shooting made you throw up,” she said.

“The trouble was not so much the throwing up as the
uncontrollable shaking of my hands whenever I pointed a loaded gun at someone.”

“Loaded gun,” she repeated.
Aha.

“I spent the rest of the war training recruits. Probably the only instruction they ever received. By that time, both sides were just throwing bodies at one another, waiting for someone to blink or run out of bodies. They could have thrown me, but I had a reputation, and someone in command decided it might be more advantageous to send the soldiers we had left out there with more than the first gun they’d ever seen in their hands.”

“Was it?”

“Perhaps. They let me continue. I was still teaching when Mikhail arrived.”

“Arrived? How?”

“He escaped.”

“From Castle Thunder?” Cat didn’t think that was possible.

“Many did. Of course, most were recaptured. Fools would jump out the windows, break a leg when they hit the ground. Made it difficult to run.”

“No doubt.”

“I remember one attempt. Quite ingenious. They tunneled through a wall, came up in the stable. Unfortunately, one of the conspirators decided he’d rather have more food and less brutality, so he turned traitor. When they finally dug through the earth, a guard with a gun awaited them.”

“And Mikhail?”

“During an uprising, while the guards and the prisoners were scuffling, he tossed a rope of sheets through the window, climbed down, then disappeared.”

“Isn’t it a bit difficult for someone of Mikhail’s size to disappear?”

“One would think; yet he did.”

Considering Mikhail’s memory, they’d probably never know how. “And Ethan?”

“Remained. He would not desert his patients. They had no one else. Mikhail tracked me to New York, Rikers Island. Some called it Camp Astor, after a rich fellow who donated funds for training and uniforms.” He waved his hand. “Something. He insisted I was Alexi; he was Mikhail.”

“Why would he think that?”

“We’d played so many parts, so many games in that place. In one we were Alexi and Mikhail Romanov, brothers who had many adventures on the road. We took care of each other.”

“So you began to live the life he imagined for you?”

“Why not?” Alexi returned his gaze to the ceiling. “I didn’t have anything better to do.”

“Ethan knew Mikhail was with you? And why?”

“Of course. All Mikhail talked about once he could talk again was his brother, Alexi. When Mikhail escaped, Ethan knew he’d gone to find me. When the war was over, Ethan followed.”

“I bet that was a wonderful reunion,” Cat said dryly.

“Fantastic,” Alexi returned in the same tone. “Mikhail nearly killed him.”

“He wouldn’t!”

Alexi lowered his eyes, lifted one brow.

“All right,” she muttered. “I’m sure he had a reason.”

Alexi shrugged.

“You’d prefer I think Mikhail attempted fratricide, or that you ordered him to, rather than tell me the truth?”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. She knew Mikhail. It didn’t take long for her to add one and one and come up with—“Ethan tried to kill you.”

Cat’s fingertips curled inward as the urge to impart murder of her own washed over her. Alexi took the
hand balled into a fist upon his chest and smoothed it out. “He had his reasons.”

Her teeth ground together. “He’s an ass. Didn’t you explain?”

“No time. He attempted to wring my neck; Mikhail nearly broke his; Ethan left to avoid any more violence, and I didn’t see him again until last week.”

“How did you know where he was?”

“He wasn’t trying to hide.”

Cat silently performed another quick addition of the facts before speaking. “You had Mikhail keep track of him.” Alexi sighed, which was answer enough. “What if Mikhail had decided to finish what he’d started with Ethan while you weren’t around to stop him?”

“Mikhail doesn’t just kill people. He has to be told…” He left out the words
by me.
“Or he has to be threatened.”

“Or you have to be.”

“I doubt he’d be very amenable if someone threatened you either.”

Why that made Cat feel part of the family, she didn’t know. Alexi and Mikhail weren’t
really
brothers. They weren’t family. They weren’t
her
family. Her entire family was dead.

“I told Mikhail to find Ethan. He was not to approach him, talk to him, or watch him. Just locate and return.”

“And he was all right with this? After all that happened at Camp Astor?”

“He doesn’t remember very well,” Alexi continued. “The things that upset him fade away. You saw him in Freedom. He had no recollection of Ethan. Not from before the…” His voice trailed off.

“Accident,” she said firmly.

“Or after,” he continued. “By the time I sent him to find a man, he’d forgotten all he knew of that man.”

“But Ethan doesn’t forget,” Cat murmured.

“Why would he?”

“Doesn’t forgive either.”

“Again…” Alexi murmured. “Your point?”

“Ethan said he owed you.”

“For taking care of Mikhail.” Alexi’s mouth twisted. “As if I wouldn’t.”

“But you used his gratitude—” Alexi snorted. Cat ignored him. “To force him into doctoring me.”

“He’d have done it,” Alexi said grudgingly. “He wouldn’t have been able to help himself.”

“You let him keep his pride.”

“Did I? That doesn’t sound at all like me.”

There was something else. Cat thought back to the night they’d snuck out of Freedom. Ethan and Alexi in the bedroom doorway, the words spoken low, but not so low she couldn’t hear.

“What will happen ‘next time’?” she asked.

“Next time he will kill me.”

Cat sat up. The sheet fell to her waist, exposing her breasts to the moonlight. The bandage that covered her wound tugged on her skin, and she yanked it free, then tossed it aside.

“Do not worry your pretty head,” Alexi said. “I don’t worry mine.”

“Why not?” She turned to him, slightly concerned when she found his gaze on her face and not her breasts. Did the huge, healing scar repulse him? He avoided looking at it as if it did.

“Do you believe Ethan could kill me?” he asked. “He’s tried before, and he’s failed.”

“Because of Mikhail. If it were just you and him, your empty guns would be the death of you.”

“You think I haven’t killed since Castle Thunder?”

“Why would you? You have Mikhail for that.”

He winced but recovered quickly enough, sitting up so that the sheet pooled at his waist. The moon highlighted the muscles in his belly as he moved, and Cat was the one distracted.

“You saw me shoot the stableman.”

“And then puke and shake and nearly faint.”

“I still did it,” he muttered.

“But could you do it again?
Would
you, if it were you in danger instead of me?”

“I may have difficulties shooting people, but that doesn’t mean I can’t stab them, strangle them or…” He waved a beautiful hand. “Something else.”

“Have you?”

His eyebrows crashed down. “Keep asking and I’ll strangle you.”

“Doubtful,” she said. “I don’t think you’d kill Ethan either. You’d stand there and let him murder you, and you’d never once try to tell him why he shouldn’t.”

“There
is
no reason why he shouldn’t.”

“I’ll give you a reason,” she snapped, and kissed him.

His lips were cool, but they warmed beneath hers, as did his skin when she stroked it. He barely breathed; he did not move. He let her do anything that she wanted.

And she wanted. Desperately. With Alexi, how could she not? He was sin; he was sex. He was safety and sanity. The first she had found after—

Cat tensed, and with a sigh of acceptance, Alexi began to pull away.

Desperate again—she needed this, needed him—Cat shoved her hands into his hair and held on. She pushed every thought aside and filled her mind, her senses, her soul with the man who had brought her back from the brink. She could never repay him; he wouldn’t ask her to, no matter how many times he insisted what was between them was no more than the fulfillment of a bargain.

It had begun that way, certainly, but things had changed. She wasn’t sure when…how…why. She didn’t care.

She left her mouth on his, lest he open it and let words tumble out. No time for talk. Talk only got in the way. Like his lips, his teeth, they kept her from his tongue.

She nipped him, and he gasped. Ah, there it was.

He tasted of the night and the wind. Despair. Desire. Destiny. He smelled of the rain after a hundred-year drought. She wanted to drink of him until her eternal thirst washed away.

She trailed her lips to the curve where his neck became his shoulder and inhaled. “The ocean,” she whispered, and captured a fold of his skin, suckling until she left a mark. She’d never done that before, but suddenly, she couldn’t resist. “You always smell like water, like rain.” She lifted her gaze. “Like things that are blue and white and new.”

“Prison.” He rested his shoulders against the wall. “We never got clean; we always smelled…bad.” His hands clenched, and she took them in her own, unfurling the fingers, pressing a kiss to each palm before releasing them. “Every time I smell sweat, or dust, or filth, I…” He paused, swallowed, then raised his eyes.

The honesty in his expression, his words, humbled her. He’d bared his soul, and she’d bared her breasts. If she were half the woman that he was a man, she’d tell him everything. But she’d never claimed to be much of a woman at all.

Instead, she gave him what she could of herself. Tossing the sheet to the ground, she bared both of them to the night and each other.

“Cat,” Alexi began, groping for the covers.

She caught his hand, drew it to her. “Catey.”

“What?” He was still inordinately concerned with the damn sheet.

She curved her own hand over his, squeezing her breast, lifting the weight, rubbing the delicious grain of his palm against her nipple until it peaked. “Call me Catey.”

He tried to yank away, but she wouldn’t let him. He gave an impatient sigh. “And who should I be? The czar? A prince? A pauper? What are we pretending tonight,
mein wunsch?
”

Cat considered asking what he’d just called her, then decided she didn’t want to know. His
something.
That was good. That was right. She
was
his. Just as he was hers.

For tonight.

“Pretend whatever you like,” she said. “Whatever gets you through the night, through the pain. You taught me that, and I thank you for it.”