Beauty and the Bounty Hunter (29 page)

He blinked. “You thank me?”

“I wouldn’t have survived without you.”

He turned his face away. “Don’t say that. People die because of me; they don’t live.”

“
Durochka,
” she murmured, and waited until he turned his face back before whispering, “I did.”

They remained motionless, barely breathing, his hand still on her breast, hers still upon his. Was this real or wasn’t it? She wasn’t sure herself.

“Catey?” he asked, and her heart took one hard, fast leap at the name.

“Yes?” Her voice quavered.

“Call me…” He seemed to struggle. Was he Fedya? Was he Alexi? Did it matter? Not to her.

She lifted her arms, welcomed him into them. No more words. No more names or pasts or memories. Only the two of them. Whoever they were.

His skin no longer cool, he didn’t shiver or shake or moan. Then. Later, of course, they both did.

He kissed her as only he could—until she forgot where
they were, what day it was…hell, what century. Then he trailed that clever mouth across skin that flamed—crackling, snapping, ready to blaze.

He tasted of her breasts, drank of their tips as if he were thirsty too. Made her writhe and clutch, then murmured comfort in a dozen languages against her belly, laid his cheek upon it, let his breath cast across the damp trail.

Gooseflesh rose, chasing the heat like lightning chased the sky. Like she chased the wind.

He lifted his head, became distracted by her wound. It was very hard to miss. “Does this hurt?”

“There are things that hurt much, much more.”

He nodded and pressed his lips to the ravaged flesh just once before he moved on. She tangled her fingers in his hair and let him. He teased; he tormented. He went from gentle—tongue taunting, tickling, then plunging, mimicking what was to come—to rough. His teeth grazed the cusp of her thigh, the beginnings of a beard scraping skin that had never been scraped so before.

He brought her to the edge; then he pulled her back. His lips caressed the muscles as they tightened and released in her legs, her stomach. His eyelashes fluttered across her hipbone like the wings of a butterfly. He took a fold of flesh into his mouth and worried it with teeth and tongue, marking her as she had marked him.

Returning to a place that hummed, he made it howl. Arching, gasping, still she did not beg. She didn’t have to. He knew what she needed, wanted, desired without a single word. He always had.

He rose above her as the moon fell. He plunged into her, rocked against her, riding the wave, holding himself in check, eyes closed, belly quivering, or maybe that was hers. His face, so beautiful and still, she had to touch it. When she did, he opened his eyes.

Stark with an emotion she couldn’t place, she felt her
heart hammer once and seem to pause. She whispered, “Darling?” before she could stop herself. It was what she’d called him when she’d been Meg, when he’d been Jed. But she wasn’t Meg now; she was—

“Catey?” he returned, and she stiffened.

The movement caused him to gasp, to arch, to thrust so deeply she felt him where she never had before. Where she hadn’t realized she’d wanted to.

Then she was clutching his shoulders, lifting her mouth, devouring his as they shivered and shook, as they moaned. When he collapsed atop her, his slick chest slid across hers, chiding her nipples, making her catch her breath as another tremor threatened. What was it about this man that made her body respond to the slightest glance, the softest word, the briefest touch?

His cheek was damp; she rubbed her lips across it. “Alexi,” she murmured, and he sighed, then fell onto his back.

“What happened to ‘darling’?”

Something in his voice made her glance at him, and again his expression was not one she recognized. “I…uh…” She found herself grateful for the night, so he couldn’t see her blush. She’d never been so caught up in the act that she blurted endearments.

Until now.

He shifted onto his side; she followed. Their noses nearly touched. She set her hand on his hip, rubbed her thumb along the dip there.

“When you become this woman,” he said, “the one no one can resist.” His voice dropped. “The one I can’t.”

She stopped rubbing, but she couldn’t remove her hand. And she couldn’t look away from his eyes.

“When men rise over you, plunge into you, taste and taunt you, do you think of dead William? Is that how you manage?”

At the mention of her husband, she removed her hand. Not because his words had brought back Billy, but because, until he’d uttered them, she hadn’t thought of Billy at all. And she realized something.

Instead of leaving the bed, the room, his life, she moved closer, until her breasts brushed his chest, her nose brushed his face, and her breath, when she spoke, mingled with his.

“When I let other men touch me, when I let them grind and buck and sweat, in order not to scream, so I won’t cry or kill them before I find out what I need to know…”

He held her gaze; he didn’t flinch. He never would, which was why she told him the truth.

“I think of you.”

A
lexi managed not to laugh, or perhaps he managed not to cry. Instead, he smiled gently, touched her face; he kissed her brow and drew her back into his arms, where she sighed, settled, then slept.

God, she was good. Better than he could ever hope to be.

She could lie next to him naked, her hand upon his hip, her thumb gently stroking, after he’d just been inside her so deeply he’d thought they were truly one at last.

Until she stared him in the face and told him one of the biggest lies he’d ever heard. And he’d heard a lot.

Had he begun to suspect when she murmured “darling”? Or perhaps it had been when she’d invited him to call her “Catey.” If she’d wanted him to believe this was real, she should never have said that. The question was: Why had she?

If she hadn’t gone to sleep in his arms, Alexi would think she’d meant to slip out after he did.

Again.

But her breath puffed against his chest in a slow and steady rhythm. Her heart, too, thudded evenly against his ribs. To be certain, he ran a fingernail along her spine. She slept on. Unless, of course—he narrowed his eyes on her face—she didn’t.

Doubting himself was new. Alexi understood what
he was and what he was not. He was aware of his limitations, and he worked within them. Until tonight, until her, he would have been confident that the woman in his arms slept. Satisfied. Sated. Seduced. Now…

He just didn’t know.

Alexi slid from her embrace; she did not cling. Had she ever? Her fingers limp, her face slack but no less beautiful. Her skin was like ivory; the wound just above her breast made him ache.

His fault she was marked and always would be. She didn’t seem to care, or even notice. But then, like him, Cat understood the worst scars could never be seen.

He kept his gaze on her as he moved to the window. Before he exited a room, as soon as he entered another, he always had a peek at the street.

Alexi glanced out, then back at Cat. She hadn’t moved except to breathe. He’d taken one step toward the door when his mind saw what his eyes already had.

Someone was out there.

Cat awoke, and she knew she had to run.

The scent of rain surrounded her and with it the memory of what had happened last night became as fresh and clear. She’d told Alexi something she shouldn’t have. Of course he would probably say the same for himself.

He’d never asked her why she’d deserted him the first time. If he had, she would have told both him and herself that she’d left to become Cat. But if she were being truthful—and after the revelations of last night, why the hell not be truthful about every damn thing?—she would admit that she’d left because she’d begun to feel something other than nothing.

And that she could not afford. Not then. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

Last night, when Alexi had pulled her close, kissed her brow, said nothing, thereby accepting everything, she’d known she would have to leave again. Instead, she’d fallen asleep in his arms, squandering her chance to escape. How would she flee now when she could smell the approach of dawn along with the rain? If she’d meant to get away, she should have done it in the dark.

Slowly Cat opened one eye, expecting to find Alexi staring right back. Instead—

Both eyes snapped open. She was alone. And that scent of rain?

Droplets chased down the windowpane, gathering along an opening at the bottom, hanging there like lace until they became too heavy and full, then tumbling downward to join the ever-expanding puddle on the floor.

Alexi must have gone back to his own room. Which meant she still had a chance. Cat leaped out of bed and snatched a shirt from the floor. She left her “amputated” arm loose beneath the fabric, but it wasn’t until she was struggling to button the buttons with her one remaining hand that she realized she’d put on Alexi’s garment and not her own.

A thorough search of the remaining clothing revealed her boots, socks, and pants. But, apparently, Alexi had been in such a hurry to leave that he’d put on the wrong shirt and not even noticed.

She didn’t have time to find another, and for her purposes, it didn’t matter. She had to escape Jepsum before Alexi or Mikhail woke, but she couldn’t afford to let anyone see her out of her costume, or guess that she was a woman in man’s clothing.

Cat O’Banyon was dead, and Alexi had been right about keeping her that way. She was going to finish this once and for all. Her best chance of doing that was as a ghost no one saw coming.

She’d been weak. Allowing herself to be seduced by the magic of Alexi, the camaraderie of Mikhail, the security she felt when the three of them traveled together. But
she
had to kill the man who haunted her. Her and no one else. That was the only way to make things right.

Cat crept into the hall. She needed to slow down her companions or they’d be on her trail so fast she might as well not leave them behind. A quick glance toward their rooms revealed both doors ajar. There was something so wrong about that Cat pulled her Colt and crept closer for a peek. Not only were the men not in their beds, but the rooms were completely empty. Not a saddlebag in sight. No clothes. No signs of a struggle, no blood, no note. Nothing. It was as if they’d never been there at all.

Cat hurried to the livery and questioned the new man in charge.

“Yeah.” The old fellow turned his head and spat into a bucket. The resulting
ping
caused the nearest horse to shuffle and snort. “Big man come in when it was still full dark. Kept mumblin’ somethin’ ’bout a cat. Lost one. Mebe left one behind.”

“He was alone?” Cat’s gaze scanned the remaining horses; Alexi’s wasn’t there.

“Yeah.”

“Anyone else leave in the middle of the night?” He shook his head.

What was Alexi up to? He’d taken his horse, probably while the stableman was occupied with Mikhail. Why the secrecy? Had her admission scared him so badly he not only had to escape, but he had to do so in the dark? Or had it been his admission that caused him to run?

Either way, he was gone, and she had no doubt if she tried to track him, she would discover two trails that crossed each other, wove here and there, then disappeared.
Considering she’d been in the process of deserting him, she should be happy to discover he’d already deserted her. Instead she felt…

Abandoned. In a way she hadn’t since she’d buried Billy.

The man in front of her rubbed his unshaven cheek, the sound reminiscent of a dust storm casting against the walls of a prairie house. “You wanna point me to your mount? Fellow who usually works here got hisself dead, and I don’t know whose is whose.”

Or, apparently, how many there had been in the first place.

Cat indicated the horse she’d rode in on, and the man spat into the cistern again before retrieving the animal, then saddling it too, as she was still one-armed Joe.

“You hear the news?” he asked.

Cat grunted. She didn’t want to hear anything but the hooves of her mount carrying her away from Jepsum in the direction of Denver City.

“Cat O’Banyon was in town.”

Cat, who’d been fastening her saddlebag, dropped it. “Who?”

“You know, the bounty hunter woman. Has everyone say
you or her?
’fore she kills ’em.”

Cat had to press her lips together to keep from correcting him. She didn’t kill people. Unless, of course, they asked for it.

“I heard she was dead,” Cat said. “Shot in Injun Territory. Buried there too.”

“Guess not. Horace—the usual stableman—said she made him say the words.”

“I thought Horace got hisself dead. How’d he say anything?”

“’
Fore
he was dead,” the fellow muttered as if talking to an idiot.

And how right he was. Cat knew better than to assume someone was dead and not make sure of it.

“She had him say the words,” the stableman continued. “Then she shot ’im.”

Horace was a liar. But Cat could hardly blame the man. Who wouldn’t want to die at the hand of a legend rather than at the hand of her companion, who could barely hold on to a gun without puking?

“He didn’t die right away. Told the sheriff ’bout it first.”

“Sheriff catch her?” Cat asked in an attempt to keep the conversation going. She needed to know what else Horace had seen and told.

“He did,” the man said with pride. Cat, who’d been in the process of mounting her horse, slid off. “Here now. Let me give ya a boost.”

“Wait.” Cat turned. “He caught her?”

“Sure enough. Heard tell there was a woman in man’s clothes creepin’ around after Horace got kilt. Sheriff walked right into her when he went a-lookin’.”

“Wouldn’t anyone who’d shot Horace just get the hell gone?” Why, oh why, hadn’t she?

“You’d think.” The old man’s face creased. “But it had to be her. How many women wearin’ men’s clothes and a gun belt are there?”

You’d be surprised,
Cat thought. “Where is she now?”

“On her way to Denver City with the sheriff.”

Cat glanced through the open door of the stable. “Already?”