SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (33 page)

Aiken looked at me as if he’d read my mind, reminding me that tickets to somewhere else were not all I needed for them. They would have to disappear, vanish without a trace. How would I accomplish that?

“Aiken?” Meaira called from upstairs. “Are you comin’?”

I’d learned that Aiken kept Meaira on short supply when there was work to be done. I could hear the yearning in her voice now, the raw need to have her awareness dulled. I couldn’t blame her.

Sawyer pushed the five hundred dollars at Aiken. “I’ll have you paid before the month is out.”

“I never said you had to do it all at once,” Aiken said, trying to push it back.

“No, but I can see it’ll be for the best.”

Aiken looked back and forth between me and Sawyer, and I knew he wanted to argue. I knew he liked having Sawyer owe him. I wanted to plop my thirty on top of Sawyer’s hundreds, but I knew that the gesture would infuriate Aiken more than anything, and I was smart enough, for once, to restrain myself. I had an idea though. I counted ten dollars from my pile and handed it to Sawyer.

“My rent,” I said.

He had a poker face I couldn’t fault, and only a flicker of his eyes gave him away. Beside me, Aiken shifted uncomfortably, reminding me of a street dog backed into a corner with a bone.

“Your girls are using four rooms, that right?” Sawyer asked.

Aiken nodded suspiciously.

“You want to pay cash or you want your room and board to go against the debt?”

I saw understanding dawn for Aiken, and with it, anger that crept up his face and stained it a dirty red. “We didn’t never talk about rent.”

“I could be letting those rooms,” Sawyer said, taking a drink of whiskey. “I already got the other two going tomorrow. Won’t charge you what I charge them—not by half, but I expect you to keep that between us.”

Sawyer’s voice rang clear and honest, and I knew he meant it. He wouldn’t swindle Aiken, though I wished he would. He took another drink and then played his ace, which I had not suspected he held.

“To show you I’m fair, you can play your cards with house credit until my debt is squared.”

This, I saw, was a generosity Aiken didn’t expect. It went long in appeasing the insult of paying rent. But what I knew and Aiken did not, was that Sawyer had set a trap of his own making. For Aiken could not resist the cards, nor could he win if he was forced to play by the rules. He’d been cheating at his own table for so long, that he believed he had a gift for gambling. But he was no better than my father. By giving him his bankroll up front, Aiken would play more daringly, and he would lose. I knew it without a doubt.

I felt Aiken’s eyes shift to me, and I quickly lifted the glass of whiskey Sawyer had given me and took a small sip. The alcohol burned my throat and set me to coughing. Aiken laughed meanly.

“That’s a deal. Against your debt, all of it.”

“I’ll need your mark before you have any of it.”

“I’ll give it.”

And with another mean glance my way, he turned toward the stairs as Meaira’s pitiful voice called out again. He paused as he set his foot to the first riser. “Almost forgot to tell you,” he said. “I heard Jake Smith is still hunting for her. If I was you, I’d turn her over before he finds her.”

I’d almost brought the coughing under control but his threatening words started me anew. I felt I would choke on the burn the liquid left in my throat and the fear his words seared in my thoughts. Sawyer came around the bar and patted my back awkwardly until the coughing subsided. Tears were in my eyes as I struggled to draw a breath. Sawyer stood beside me until I got myself under control again.

“All right?” he asked.

It seemed an insane question to me when Aiken’s words still rang in my ears. Sawyer didn’t wait for me to answer. He went back behind the bar, scooped all the money and the ledger into a box, and disappeared into the storeroom. I heard thumping and sliding, as if he were moving something heavy out of the way. I stayed where he’d left me, unsure of what to do next.

He stepped from the back room and I slowly stood. I smoothed the fabric of my dress with nervous hands. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I felt him watching my every movement.

“Jake isn’t going to touch you,” he said softly.

Surprised, I jerked my gaze from the floor to his face. “What did you say?”

“No one’s touching you but me.”

In two steps he was beside me. Without waiting to hear my response, he swept me off my feet and cradled me against his chest. My arms circled his neck, and I held on as he carried me toward the stairs. A million thoughts flashed through my head but not one of them was
no
. Not one.

He carried me as if I were a child, and I let him. It seemed like years had passed since anyone had taken care of me or sheltered me from the world beyond, yet only a few weeks ago my father had been alive and watching over my family. How different my life was now. But as I looked into Sawyer’s face, I realized I felt no fear. In fact, somehow I’d come to trust him. Whatever happened next, I knew my trust would not be shaken.

He carried me into his room and kicked the door shut. Neither of us had spoken since he’d lifted me into his arms, but words seemed unnecessary. My heart was pounding like the hooves of a stampeding herd, and my dress seemed suddenly four sizes too small instead of only two.

Sawyer dropped the arm beneath my legs, and let me slide slowly down his body, until I was standing in front of him with less than a breath of air between us. The moonlight fell across the floor and turned our world into a silver-edged cocoon where only the two of us and the tension that trembled between our bodies existed. He lifted a hand and placed it on the swell of my breasts. I inhaled sharply at the heat of the contact. Slowly, he moved his hand down, watching my face as his fingers cupped my breast. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath, but I didn’t care. I only wanted more.

Amazed at my boldness, I leaned into him and raised my mouth to his. My small gesture of surrender, or perhaps aggression, seemed to unleash the need he’d trapped inside. His arms circled me and pulled me tight against his chest, the buttons of his shirt pressing into my skin. I ran my hand through his soft hair and opened my mouth to his kiss. He lifted my feet from the floor and moved closer to the bed. I braced myself for something rough, something taking and unknown. I’d seen glimpses through the tent flaps of what happened next, and I was afraid of it. I expected things to go fast now, for him to act as the men I’d seen had—as if they couldn’t believe their good fortune and they wanted to press their advantage before minds could be changed and opportunities lost.

But Sawyer’s arms loosened, and I now I feared that he would let me go and I would be the one left with chances ended before they’d begun. Once again my body slid down his until I stood in front of him, the top of my head beneath his chin. I was afraid to look up, embarrassed by my behavior, more so by the lust that surely showed on my face. I kept my eyes fixed on his chest and my splayed fingers. The fabric of his shirt was worn and soft, warm from his skin, which I longed to touch. His throat was golden brown from hours in the sun.

I looked higher at the strong line of his chin and the gold-flecked stubble that had grown since he’d last shaved. His lips were soft and dusky beneath the mustache, moist from my kisses. His face was weathered, creased from squinting his eyes as he looked across a horizon. White filled in the lines that fanned from their corners where the sun couldn’t reach. And then I was looking into those hazel eyes of his, and what I saw made my heart somehow stumble. There was the need that I felt in myself, but with it was an uncertainty, not that he wanted me but that I wanted him. I understood instinctively, and it made me feel bold and sure when I had no right, no experience to validate the feeling.

He surely saw the wonder as my emotions played on my face, and then he smiled, a slow, alluring smile that made everything inside me feel hot and pliable, like melting wax. His hands moved up and around from my back to my ribs to just below the swell of my breasts. He moved his thumbs lightly over my nipples, watching my face as reaction went through me. I arched against him without meaning to and slid my arms around his neck, pulling his head down so I could kiss him. His mouth hovered over mine for a moment that was at once exquisite and torture. Our breath mingled and I breathed him in, wanting to keep the scent and taste of him in my memory forever.

And then his mouth was over mine, his tongue against my lips, which parted without hesitation. I’d never known anything could feel like this total surrender. His fingers fumbled with the buttons down my back, but mine had no trouble freeing him of his shirt.

I’d pulled the two sides open and pressed my mouth to his chest before he’d freed the first of the tiny pearl-like fastenings that ran down my spine. He made a sound of frustration and turned me. I reached back and started with the last of them as he struggled with the top. After the first came free the others followed willingly, and before I knew it, he was pushing the shoulders down and the dress pooled at my feet. My heavy breasts swung free from their confines, and I was grateful. His touch had made them swell and feel trapped by the tightness of the bodice. He turned me again, like a doll, and I stood between his large, workingman’s hands in only my chemise. He had no troubles with the lacings, and in an instant, he’d loosened them. His hands were indescribably gentle as he smoothed the cotton down until it fell away.

His breath seemed ragged and uneven, and all at once I felt shy after so much boldness. But Sawyer seemed to understand. He slid his hand across my chest and up my throat until it cupped my face. He tilted my chin until I looked into his eyes.

“I’ve been wondering how to get you out of that since I first saw you,” he said softly.

And he kissed me again. My bare breasts pressed against his chest, skin against skin, heat fusing us together. I pushed his shirt off his shoulders, and we pulled and freed and fumbled until we both stood naked. Sawyer smiled at me again, and the look in his eyes spoke of passion and possession. I was his now, and I let him see that he would be mine in exchange. He lifted me in his strong arms and set me on the bed, following me down to the softness of the mattress. It was too late to turn back, but the thought of it didn’t cross my mind. I wanted him. I think I loved him. It didn’t matter what reasoning or sense belonged to the feelings.

I felt the dark danger inside him. The ruthlessness of a man who lived outside the boundaries of civilization, who slept beneath the stars because walls were too confining. I felt his desire to change that, to become one with a life more gentle, more willing to give and less likely to take. In his own way, he sought after stability here, with the saloon. If not an acceptable way of society, then at least a predictable one.

And I realized that my needs had changed so that I wanted it, too. I couldn’t go back to the confines of my old life. To marry one of the boys back home and live life like I’d been raised to do. In too short a time I’d changed, and that forging of a new woman couldn’t be undone. I belonged here now, in the arms of Sawyer McCready, and I would do everything in my power to stay there.

He didn’t ask me if I was sure in my giving. I saw from the look in his eyes that he knew already. There was power there, the power of knowing I was his to take, to love, to pleasure. His hands slid over my body, and my skin seemed to light wherever he touched. I wanted my own dose of the heady stuff shadowing his eyes. I ran my fingertips down his spine as I pressed my mouth to his collarbone and the hollows beneath it. When I reached his bare buttocks, I froze for a moment. The intimacy of touching him here, where the skin was white against the sun-darkened waist, somehow matched any we’d had so far. He felt my uncertainty and looked up from my breast. The cool air where his mouth had been warm and wet added yet another sensation to the thousands assaulting my senses in a delicious rush.

For a moment I thought he might ask if I’d changed my mind. I thought he might play the honorable gentleman and leave me with my virtue. But when I looked into his eyes I realized he had no intentions of the kind. His smile was slow and seductive as he shifted his weight so he lay right beside me, his chest, hips, and thighs a burning magnet down the length of my body. He propped his head up and looked at my nakedness with bold possession.

I was breathing hard and fast as his fingers moved to parts of me that no fingers had touched before. The shock of skin on skin, of the gentle exploration of his fingers, wet from the need inside me, arched my body into his. He watched my face as he touched and teased, and this, I realized, was more intimate, more consuming than the feel of his hands. He stared deeply into my eyes, refusing to let me turn away, refusing to let me hide the tide of emotion, sensation, overwhelming longing that hit me with each gentle movement. When he slipped a finger inside that tight place no one had ever invaded, I caught my breath and moaned.

He teased me until his fingers were slick, watching my face for signs of my needs. I felt raw and exposed and utterly at his mercy. He laid me back and kissed me like I was the beginning, like I was the end. Our hot breath mixed and made me giddy. My skin burned, my body ached for something I didn’t know how to ask for.

Sawyer worked his way down my throat, my breasts, his mouth hot silk on my nipples, his teeth nipping just enough to make me shiver. His hands were rough, his touch tender, and his kiss a spark that lit me like a torch.

I didn’t understand his destination until I felt the soft swipe of his tongue a second before his mouth covered my sex, and the exquisite feeling of heat and friction brought my hips up and made me cry out.

I was embarrassed and enthralled, captive as he licked and sucked and drove me to an edge I wanted to leap from. He murmured words I was too crazed to hear, and then he slipped one of his clever fingers inside me and I was soaring into pleasure and pain so perfect that I cried out his name.

He smiled when he rose to kiss my mouth, a devastating, knowing smile that made me blush even as I spread my legs for him. I kissed him deeply, my taste on his tongue, and that excited me even more. I felt the rigid tip of him and then the slow, insistent pressure as he moved inside. There was pain, but in some unfathomable way, it was good pain. For a moment, concern darkened his eyes and he held still, watching me for a signal. I took in a shaky breath and kissed him, pulling the breath of him into my lungs as he moved again, long and slow, then deep, then shallow. The rhythm of it excited me in the same way plunging heights and dizzying falls could.