Ace's Wild (6 page)

He groaned deep in his throat. She stood higher on her toes, pulling him down, dragging herself up, rubbing her breasts against his chest, trying to get closer, but she couldn’t. There was no way she could get close enough. The kiss was good, but it wasn’t good enough, and she didn’t know what to do. She dug her nails into the back of his neck in silent demand. Again she got that look that asked for the words. She blushed at the thought. But what choice did she have? This was her one chance, and she wasn’t done with it yet.

She had to struggle to find her voice and when she did, it was a breathy thread of sound that took the command out of her order. “Fix it.”

He didn’t seem to have the same trouble. His voice was deep and even and seductive in its calm. “You know our deal.”

This time it was her turn to growl but not with passion. “Not that.” Nipping his lip, she snapped, “This.”

Catching her chin in his hand, he held her still, his mouth just inches from hers. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t look away. God, she wanted him.

“Do you want my mouth, Pet?”

She nodded.

With a little jiggle of her chin, he snapped her gaze to his. “Not good enough. Do you want my mouth?”

Why did he have to be so demanding?

She nodded again, hoping it would suffice, not willing to give him everything, not understanding how he could resist the fire she could feel burning just beyond her reach. She could only imagine how good it would feel while he had to know.

His fingers rubbed against her nape; his thumb crept over her cheek, catching the corner of her mouth, pressing gently, forcing her lips to part naturally around it. She touched it with her tongue. His pupils dilated and his nostrils flared, but he didn’t give ground.

“If you want it, my Pet, you’re going to have to ask for it.”

“Kiss me.”

She’d thought he’d kiss her then, but though his eyes narrowed, all he did was hold her still and give another order, “Ask nicely.”

She wanted to stomp his toe. “Just kiss me.”

A tap on her cheek made her look up again. There was desire in the hard lines of his face and the softness of his mouth, but in his eyes...in his eyes was the will of a man who expected to be obeyed. A shiver she didn’t understand went down her spine. Between her legs, moisture gathered.

“Say it right,” he ordered.

He wanted her to beg. She wasn’t a begging woman, but the word slipped past her control, filling the silence between them with an import she didn’t understand. “Please.”

It was enough. With a curse that sounded like the sweetest music to her impatient ear, he stepped in, his hands sliding down her back, pulling her into his body, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, breast to chest, mouth-to-mouth. Oh, God, mouth-to-mouth. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled him closer still. Another growl, and his mouth smoothed across hers. Against her groin, his erection pressed. Thick, hard and foreign. A shock at first followed by a soothing burst of pleasure. She had the urge to spread her thighs, to grind against him, but she couldn’t move, and even that was good. So good, and she was so hungry. The hot, wet touch of his tongue along the seam of her lips had her jumping again.

“Open.”

This order growled against her mouth didn’t annoy her at all. She opened, willingly, eagerly, joyfully, her heart pounding so loudly in her ears, it blocked out the world, and there was only him. Ace took advantage of her surrender, full, wonderful, glorious advantage, claiming her mouth in a single thrust of his tongue. She opened wider; he teased further. His breath became hers; his moan hers and hers his, she realized. It was a blending; it was a mating; it was a... She couldn’t find the word but the feeling. Oh, the feeling! It surged forward out of the most primitive part of her in an exultant burst of joy. Free at last; she was free. And just in that moment when she would have given that moment a name, Ace fisted his hand on her bun and pulled her mouth from his, leaving her aching as he stepped back.

For a second, Petunia couldn’t comprehend what had happened. The only things that kept her from tumbling were the wall at her back and his hand on her arm. She felt bereft and abandoned. Lost.

“You’ve got your deal.”

A slap to the face couldn’t have been more shocking than his withdrawal. The afternoon sun had sunk behind the buildings, and she felt the chill of the shadows sink into her bones, even as he took that second step away. For him, it had been nothing more than a kiss, probably one of thousands, but for her it had been a moment that shook her world in ways that was going to take days to figure out. She licked her lips, tasting him. Her breasts felt swollen and tender, and when she looked down, her nipples were evident through her clothes. She brought her hands up, only realizing the mistake of that when he laughed.

Jerking out of his grip, she felt her bun give and her hair fall around her shoulders. Petunia didn’t need to look into Ace’s face to know he’d only been amusing himself. He was who he was, and she was a fool.

“Bastard.”

He had the gall to smile. “I assure you, my parents were married.”

She hated that he could be so reasonable when she was fumbling just to get her tongue around words.

“Our bargain’s done?” she asked, yanking her jacket down and untangling her reticule from her wrist, pretending that her nipples weren’t still tingling, that her breath still wasn’t raspy, that her voice wasn’t a shadow of its former conviction.

Ace picked his hat up off the doorknob and settled it on his head as he nodded, studying her in a way that made her want to... She didn’t know what it made her want to do but whatever it was, it wasn’t what she was used to, and she didn’t want to explore it while he watched.

“You’ll give back the money?”

“I’ll handle it.”

She reached behind her for the door. She wanted away. He stopped her before she got her hand on the knob.

“Not that way.”

Her first instinct was to tell him to go to hell. Her second was to swear. He was right. She couldn’t go through the saloon. She didn’t want to go down the alley, either, but she didn’t have much of a option. He took her arm as she hesitated.

“You go that way, you won’t get home before dark.”

That was the truth. This late the streets started to get wild, and schoolmarm or not, a woman alone was easy prey for the miners and cowhands who flooded the town when they got a bit of gold dust in their pocket.

“Come.”

“Does everything you say have to come out an order?”

“Yes.”

Twisting her hair back up into a bun as she skipped to keep up, she muttered, “I don’t like it.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

She didn’t think so.

He steered her down the alley to two buildings over and opened a door. It was the mercantile; she should have thought of that herself.

He said, “Go through here.”

Part of her hoped there was some gallantry trapped somewhere inside him because he didn’t leave her to find her own way home, but more of her wanted to believe he was a reprobate that she could dismiss as a mistake. Her “Thank you” came out choked. His “You’re welcome” was just as tight.

That tightness in his voice could be because the moment had affected him just as much as it had her, but she didn’t fool herself into believing it was the truth. She might be an old maid who didn’t get kissed often, but if the stories were to be believed, he was a man who spent a lot of his time in other women’s beds. And what he did there was something that was whispered about and speculated on, but she never understood why his bed sport created so many blushes and twitters among the loose women of town until now. The man was a warlock. She wasn’t going to be just another conquest to him.

“Thank you for the kiss.”

His eyebrow rose. She smiled, not giving him any option but to respond in kind.

“You’re welcome.”

It was time to go. She didn’t want to. Hugging her arms to her chest, she asked one last time, more to delay rather than because she doubted his word. Ace was many things, but she’d never heard he wasn’t a man of his word.

With her hand on the doorknob she asked, “You’ll give Brian back his money?”

She couldn’t see his eyes between the shadows of his hat and the creeping of dusk, but there was no mistaking the promise in his voice.

He tipped his hat. “I’ll handle it.”

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HE
NEXT
MORNING
, Ace ate breakfast, ignored the shocked looks from the women not used to seeing him up before 3:00 p.m., settled his hat on his head and walked out of the saloon. Before the doors stopped swinging behind him, his best friend and fellow ranger, Luke Bellen, pushed off the wall and fell into step beside him, his dark gray duster flapping around his legs. He’d clearly been waiting for him.

“Morning.”

Ace looked over. “You’re up early.”

Luke shrugged. “More like late. I haven’t been to bed yet.”

“Was she any good?”

Luke smiled. “Good enough.”

As they stepped off the walk, the wind kicked up, blowing fine brown dust on everything.

“Figures,” Luke said, looking down at the particles clinging to his shiny black boots. “I just got these cleaned.”

“They’re boots,” Ace pointed out. “They spend all day in the dirt. They’re not supposed to be pretty.”

Luke glanced at Ace’s scuffed, well-worn brown footwear and shook his head. “If you’re going to stick with this gambling thing, you need to pay more attention to your wardrobe.”

Ace shrugged. Gambling was an outlet. It gave him a rush of excitement. It kept his mind from dwelling on other things. It was a bit of competition when things got dull, a chance to beat the odds. He liked to beat the odds. “I haven’t made up my mind if I’m sticking with it.”

“Still, if you’re going to play the role, you ought to look the part.”

“I look just fine.”

“You look pissed.”

“Really?” He reached in his pocket for his makings. “What makes you say that?”

“You’ve got your hat pulled down low.”

Pausing, he shook some tobacco onto a paper. “I could be blocking the dust,” he said, licking the paper to help seal it up.

Luke held out his hand for the makings when he was done. “Or you could be pissed.”

Ace stepped up on the walk on the far side of the street. “Looks like I’m going to have to break that habit.”

Luke shrugged and shook tobacco onto a paper. “Most can’t tell. Unfortunately for you, I’ve known you since we were infants sharing a crib.”

Striking a sulfur on a boot heel, Ace shielded his smoke from the wind. Holding the cigarette in his mouth, he muttered around it, “Only reason we had to share a crib was because your mama couldn’t stand your squalling.”

“I didn’t like being alone.”

“You don’t remember.”

“I can guess.”

Ace shook out the match. Luke’s mother had been the delicate type, never standing up for herself, not even against her son. Which had led to Luke always getting what he wanted, by hook or crook. A habit he carried into adulthood.

He took a slow drag on the cigarette. The acrid smoke burned his nostrils. “So why you tagging along with me today?”

“’Cause you look like you’re heading for trouble.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The fact that you only smoke when you’re contemplating murder.”

“That’s not the only time.” He also liked a cigarette after sex.

“Well, it’s a well-known fact the teacher’s got a burr up her butt about Terrance Winter. Add that to the fact that rumor has it Miss Wayfield went into the saloon looking for you yesterday and then you come out of the alley with your lips all kiss bitten.”

“You’ve been spying on me.”

“I prefer to think of it as keeping busy.”

Luke had been
keeping busy
a lot lately. Ace touched his still tender lower lip, remembering that moment when Pet had lost control and bitten him. He cocked an eyebrow at his friend. “Kiss bitten?”

Luke shrugged again.

Ace shook his head. “I swear the words that come out of your mouth could tarnish that killer reputation of yours.”

“It’s the poet in me.”

“Uh-huh.”

Luke didn’t tell anyone he penned dime novels to sell back East about the life of the wild men in the Wild West. It’d started out as a dare between him and one of his ladies and developed into a passion. Not one Luke flaunted, but a passion nonetheless and one that kept growing. Easterners had insatiable appetites for the excitement of the West. Hell, if most of them came here, they’d shit their pants the first day out, but reading it in their parlor at night, Ace guessed it was a safe bit of adventure.

“When you going to write something more serious than those dime novels?” he asked Luke.

“When you going to settle down and be who you ought to be rather than hiding?” Luke countered.

“I’m not hiding. I’m an assayer, or haven’t you heard the latest?”

“That takes up an hour a day. The rest of the time you practice being a wastrel.”

“I’m not wasting. I make good money gambling.”

“I know there’s a cost. Isn’t that what the teacher was riding you about?”

“That woman has way too much time on her hands.”

“I don’t think it’s a matter of time. It’s a matter of passion.”

Yeah, Pet had a lot of passion.

“I’d turn it my way if she’d look at me,” Luke mused.

Ace didn’t believe the innocence in that statement for a minute. Any more than he expected Luke to believe the calm distance in his “Have you tried?”

Luke shook his head. “Nah. No point. That lady treats me like the fence post in a corral. Handy when needed but otherwise not worth the attention. Mind telling me where we’re going?”

Ace waved to the end of town. “I’m going to the livery.”

“And after that?”

“For a ride.”

“Would this ride entail a trip by the Winters’ place?”

“Might.”

Luke took a drag on his cigarette. “Going to have one of your infamous chats with him?”

“Might be.”

“You know your chat’s not going to do any good, don’t you? That man’s just soaked in gambling the way other men are soaked in gin.”

“He drinks that, too.”

“Not whiskey?”

“He drinks anything.”

“He hit the boy again?”

Ace nodded. It wasn’t the first time he and Luke had talked about that situation.

“Are you going to kill him?”

“Might.”

Luke shot him a look. “That would be murder.”

“Not if he takes a shot at me first.”

“You plan on being that provoking?”

Ace shrugged. He didn’t really know what he was going to do yet. “If the lay of the land demands it.”

They reached the livery. Ace nodded to the stable hand and went to the stall that contained his sorrel.

“Crusher is getting fat hanging around here,” Luke observed going to the next stall over, which contained his big roan.

Ace shook his head. “Not like Buddy’s wasting away.”

“I take him out every day.”

“I take out Crusher, too, but it’s not the same as riding trail.”

They were all getting soft. Ace shook his head. Respectable. Fuck that.

“No, it’s not.” Luke patted Buddy’s neck before he reached for the saddle. “Do you miss it?”

“What?”

“The old days,” Luke said, tossing the saddle on Buddy’s back, “when all we did was ride from one bad place to the next, one bad fight to the next.”

Ace shook his head and eased the saddle back on Crusher before cinching it up. “That got old.”

“Yeah, it did.” For a moment they were both silent as old memories—old battles—rose to haunt them.

Luke broke the silence first like he always did. Ace often wondered if it wasn’t being alone Luke hated as much as quiet. Holding his smoke in his mouth as he tied the rifle scabbard onto the saddle, he asked, “Can you believe Caine, Shadow, Tracker, hell, even Sam, settled down into business?” He dropped the stirrup down and patted Buddy’s flank. “They’re almost darn right respectable.”

There was that word again. Ace smiled ruefully, checked his own weapons and led Crusher out of the livery. Yeah, they were. They’d achieved something none of them ever thought they would when they’d stood side by side as boys in the aftermath of the Mexican Army’s attack, hands blistered from digging graves for their loved ones and made a promise to follow Caine Allen on the path of revenge. They’d almost starved that first year, all their promises vanishing with them, but they’d found Tia, and she’d healed them body and soul. Over time, they’d settled those debts, become Texas Rangers. And now, respectable.

Ace stubbed out his smoke on the sole of his boot once outside, shaking his head as Luke winced. “I’m making up for the rest of you.”

“Uh-huh.” Luke leaned over and ground his out in the dirt before dusting his fingers off on the saddle blanket. “So what are we planning on doing if Winter meets us at the door with a shotgun?”

“Whatever the hell we want.”

Luke smiled that easy smile he trotted out when he was contemplating mayhem. “More fodder for my next book.”

Ace shook his head at the nonsense. Luke had a penchant for nice clothes and pretty words, but there was no one else Ace would want more by his side in a fight. Luke might dress fancy, but he fought like a cornered badger, with no quit and no mercy.

“What do you think would happen if people actually knew you lived what you wrote in those damn novels?” Ace asked.

Luke shuddered. “We’d be drowning in the frills and bows of all those prim Eastern women who’d want a piece of the real thing.”

“What’s with the
we
? You can keep all those fancy Eastern women for yourself.”

“Oh, hell, no!”

Ace couldn’t help but smile. Luke did like his women wild.

He waved toward the fancy vest and coat Luke was never without. “You’re dressed for it.”

“Clothes don’t make the man. And under all this I’m the same no-account desperado I’ve always been.” He swung up on Buddy and picked up the reins. “No lady can handle that.”

That was the truth. Ace couldn’t imagine anything worse for Luke than being tied up with something all prim and proper.

He wheeled Crusher around to the north. “Then you best not be saying that too loud. You know fate has a sense of humor.”

Luke shuddered again and kneed Buddy into step beside him. “Even fate wouldn’t be that cruel.”

They passed Pet’s little house next to the school. There was no class on Friday. She was probably inside planning a lesson. Or sleeping. The thought of her all sleep warm and ready made him hard. Fuck.

Shaking his head he muttered, “Don’t bet on it.”

* * *

T
HE
W
INTERS
’
PLACE
was little more than an overgrown mud wasp’s nest, consisting of sawed sticks and logs packed together with dirt to make a home. From somewhere around back came the irregular sound of an ax hitting wood.

Luke pulled up and spat. “You’d have to take a step up to make this a hovel. No wonder Terrance is never clean.”

Ace looked around with the same disgust. “It would be hard to wash this filth off.”

And it wasn’t the filth of the surroundings that Ace was talking about. It was the utter lack of self-respect the home reflected. Brian Winter didn’t think much of himself or much of his prospects. “Might explain why he was at the gambling table every night looking for a miracle.”

“And every morning taking out his disappointment on his son. This place isn’t fit for a hog to live in,” Luke said, kicking a nail-studded board out of his way before he dismounted. “Whatever we do, we can’t be leaving the boy in this.”

“It’s not our responsibility.” The words sounded hollow when he looked around. It shouldn’t have taken Pet coming to town to bring this to his attention. He might have been walled up in that saloon too long.

Luke spat. “It’s got to be someone’s.”

“He’s almost the age we were when we were on our own.” It wasn’t the challenge Luke took it as.

“You forget we almost starved to death till Tia took us in hand?”

He didn’t forget much, least of all the hunger, the pain of knowing his parents were dead and that he had nowhere after the massacre to go except with the other boys of Hell’s Eight. Then there had been Tia. Tia, who’d taken on the role of mother, guide, disciplinarian. She’d saved their souls, shaped their anger, given them a purpose.

“We had each other.”

“He’s got no one.”

Terrance had better than one. He had Pet.

Ace made the call. “He’s got us now.”

Luke nodded. “Amen.”

They cleared around the little hovel, and they could see Terrance in the back splitting wood. The ax was bigger than the boy.
Too small, too skinny.
Those were the words that jumped into Ace’s head. Hell, even his shirt draping off his thin shoulders made Ace feel guilty.

“He’s going to cut off a foot,” Luke muttered.

There was something in that boy’s swing that told Ace there was more to him than the disappointment that life was handing him. “I don’t think so.”

Just then, Terrance looked up. The only word Ace could think of to describe his expression was
terrified
.

Luke must have seen it, too. “We’re not going to hurt you, boy.”

Terrance didn’t put the ax down. Ace turned to Luke. “Must be your sour face that he’s reacting to.”

“Ha-ha.” His gaze was locked on the bruise on Terrance’s face. It was hard to look at. Harder to believe a man would do that to his own son.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Terrance said, glancing anxiously at the house.

“Or maybe his father’s,” Luke muttered before calling out, “Miss Wayfield sent us.”

He only looked more terrified. “She didn’t say nothing about you coming here.” The kid looked at the house again. It wasn’t hard to imagine why.

“Is your father home, son?” Ace asked, trying to think how one talked to a kid. Shit. He wasn’t sure he ever had.

Terrance nodded.

Ace wanted to spit. “Is he still drunk or is he awake enough to move?”

From the fact that there weren’t any fresh bruises on the kid, Ace was guessing that his father was probably still sleeping off last night’s bottle.

Shifting the ax in his hand, Terrance gestured to the measly woodpile. “I’ve got to finish my chores.”

“That didn’t answer the man’s question,” Luke said.

“I’ve got my answer.” Ace nodded to the woodpile. “You finish your chores, and we’ll go talk with your pa.”