Beauty and the Bounty Hunter (11 page)

“Lost the baby?”

He winced, and she heard what she’d said. The words gave her a strange, hollow feeling. But what was his excuse?

Cat tilted her head. She couldn’t decipher his expression. His face seemed so…different.

The bruises,
she thought. She’d never once seen Alexi with a bruise on his face. It changed him, made him vulnerable. She wasn’t sure she liked that any more than he appeared to.

Come to think of it—she tilted her head in the opposite direction—she’d rarely seen Alexi with a bruise anywhere. And she’d seen everywhere.

The memory of that seeing, the touching, the tasting suddenly hit her so hard she swayed.

He cursed. French? Spanish? Italian? She wasn’t certain, but whatever language, the words, the tone, the cadence were both beautiful and brutal. Kind of like Alexi himself.

She brushed her fingertips across his face. “Why did you let him hurt you?”

“Sometimes,” he said, “the hurt just happens.”

She didn’t think he was talking about Langston anymore.

He peered at her as if trying to see into her mind, her heart, her soul. “Don’t you agree?”

Cat froze, hand still in the air. She’d never shared a single word about her hurts. As she didn’t plan to start now, she sidled away.

Alexi crossed to the table, where he picked up the deck of cards and began to shuffle. She became entranced, seduced by the grace, the rhythm. How could
she have forgotten? In Alexi’s hands, cards did whatever he wanted them to. Kind of like women.

“When you say ‘knock,’” Cat murmured, bringing them back to their earlier conversation, happy to pretend the other had never happened, “you mean ‘bust in here and drag us back to jail’?”

“No.” He didn’t look up; he just kept shuffling the cards. “As long as you keep that kid in place and Meg on your face, we’ll be fine.”

Why was he irritated with her? She’d just saved his life.

Cat paced in front of the window. The urge to peer from it again was nearly overwhelming. What was out there that was bothering her? If there was a rifle, and considering the prickling of her skin, there might be, she should stay
away
from the window.

She sat. First on the bed. Then on the chair. Then on the bed again. Alexi ignored her, seemingly captivated with the cards.

Cat went to the door, put her hand on the knob. Alexi “tsked,” and she turned away. Her gaze went again to the window, and from this angle, with the horizon framed like a picture, she saw what was wrong. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before, but she’d been Meg, and Meg wouldn’t recognize that vista. Only Cathleen would.

She had not been back to the farm since she had left it nearly two years ago. It took Cat only an instant to decide that she was going back now. Or at least as soon as she could get away from Alexi.

“Deal,” she said. Alexi glanced up, expression curious, hands still shuffling, shuffling, shuffling. “If we have to stay in here, we can at least make it interesting.”

His lips curved. “Faro?”

Cat took a chair at the table. “You know better.”

Cat loathed faro, known by many as “Bucking the Tiger.” Every saloon between St. Louis and San Francisco offered the game, and most of them cheated. Stacked decks, with many paired cards that allowed the dealer, or banker, to collect half the bets, as well as shaved decks and razored aces were common.

Alexi wouldn’t stoop to such tactics; he’d consider mundane cheats beneath him. Besides, he’d already taught her how to spot them, so why bother? Certainly he cheated, but with faro, Cat had never been able to discover just how.

He’d swindle her at poker too if she wasn’t paying attention, but at least with that game she had a better-than-average chance of catching him.

Alexi laid out five cards for each of them. “Stakes?”

“We can’t play just to pass the time?”

He didn’t even bother to dignify that foolishness with an answer.

For an instant Cat considered forgoing the wayward nature of the cards and, instead, getting him drunk. But she’d attempted that before. Alexi had remained annoyingly sober, and she had been rewarded with a three-day headache, which Alexi had found beyond amusing.

She had more tolerance now—Cat O’Banyon had drunk many a bounty beneath the table—but she still doubted she could drink this man into a stupor. Sometimes she wondered if he sipped on watered wine daily just to ascertain no one ever could.

Which meant her only other choice was this.

Cat raised her cards. She gave away nothing; neither did Alexi. After pulling her purse from her pocket, she tossed a few coins onto the table. With a lift of his brow, he did the same. They played in silence as the day waned.
The room grew hot. In the way of cards, first Alexi was ahead, then Cat. She watched him as closely as he watched her. Neither one of them cheated.

Much.

Cat arched, rubbing absently at the ache in the small of her back with her free hand.

“Stop that.” Alexi flicked a glance from his cards to her face, then back again.

“What?”

“You’re not expecting.” He set two cards onto the table, then took two more with stiff yet fussy movements. “Stop acting like it.”

There was something in his face she’d never seen before. Was he scared? Had coming a hair from a hanging frightened him at last? Or was she merely seeing in Alexi a reflection of herself?

Cat bit her lip to keep from looking at the window. Instead she continued with the game.

An hour later, a commotion ensued on the stairs. Many booted feet, loud voices. A door was banged upon. “Open up in there!”

Cat put down her cards. “Two of a kind.”

Wood splintered. More thumps and curses, then footsteps descended once again.

Both Cat and Alexi exhaled. He set his cards on the table. “Three of a kind.”

Cat didn’t bother to frown; she merely swept up the cards and dealt.

Alexi peered at his new hand. “The signora’s room?”

“Sí.”

He muttered a few words in who the hell knew what language and laid down a card. Somehow Langston had convinced the marshal to ask around about the big, hulking brute; then
voilà
, someone had seen a big, hulking
brute, and the lawman had been forced to investigate.

However, with no big, hulking brute—and no signora—the entire tale fell apart. Langston’s fate was sealed. Cat would have felt badly about that if she hadn’t been of the opinion that the litany of crimes Pardy had attributed to Alexi had, in fact, been a recitation of his own.

When the sun began to slant toward dusk and the pile of coins on both sides of the table lay about even, Cat lifted her eyes. “Wanna make this interesting?”

“
Khriso mou,
” Alexi murmured. “When you say things like that…” He moved a card from the right side of his hand to the left. “I get excited.”

“How about we raise the stakes to…” She drew out the moment, and even though he knew exactly what she was doing, as he was the one who had taught her to do it, eventually his anticipation caused him to lean forward. Only then did Cat give him what he sought. “Anything.”

“Anything?” he repeated.

“
Oui.
” He cast her an exasperated glance as she purposely mangled one of his favorite words. “I win this hand, you give me anything I ask. You win—”

“I get anything I ask.”

“You’ve played this before.”

“Not with you.”

She doubted he’d played it with anyone. What moron would promise anything?

Only someone with little left to lose or…

Cat considered her cards without so much as a flicker of an eyelash. Someone with a hand like hers.

“All right,” he agreed. “Who am I to turn down
anything
?”

Not the man she knew and—

Cat brought herself up short. Not the man she knew and what?

Well, not the man she knew.

Alexi turned his cards faceup.

Cat kept her face blank as she placed hers facedown. “You win.”

C
at stood, then crossed to the window and, again, peered out. Watching her, Alexi frowned. She was behaving like her namesake.

In a room full of rocking chairs.

He didn’t think his winning the bet had anything to do with her behavior, as she’d been behaving that way since they walked into the room.

Alexi followed, leaning so close his cheek nearly brushed her shoulder, trying to discover what in hell was so fascinating on a dusty Missouri street.

Nothing that he could see.

Cat straightened, nearly knocking into his poor, maligned nose, and turned. For an instant he looked at her and saw someone else. That horrible dress, her hair drawn back in an atrocious bun, she even smelled of dust and dirt and despair. He could swear he spotted a bit of grime in her hair.

Alexi shook his head and the world, along with Cat O’Banyon, swirled into focus. He set his hands on her hips. “How do you do it?”

She didn’t pull away. How could she? He’d just won anything.

“How did you feel Meg Nelson so deeply you became her?” he murmured. How did she walk and talk and
move like a woman heavy with child when she’d never
been
with child?

Cat merely stared at him—confused, captivated, a little concerned. Why should she be any different?

His palms slid up her body, pausing just short of her breasts. Beneath the faded calico she seemed on fire, and his belly burned.

“Back there, I could have sworn these were fuller.” His thumbnail traced the base of one. “Your face seemed rounder. Your skin goddamn glowed.” His voice roughened. “How do you do that?”

“I—” she began. “What?”

“In the old country,” he whispered, “they’d burn you for a witch.”

“Lucky then”—she took a deep breath, lifting, then lowering those fabulous globes so that they brushed his knuckles and made him yearn—“that we’re in a new one.”

“Lucky,” he repeated, running his thumbs along the underside of her breasts—
definitely
fuller—teasing, taunting, tormenting.

She lifted her eyes—those glorious Cat eyes—and then she was in his arms, kissing him. The “baby” was now crushed into his stomach, and that stomach no longer burned. But everything else did.

Her mouth opened; she welcomed him in. She tasted of memories—him, her, them. One other.

No. She’d turned to
him.
She’d
kissed
him.
He wasn’t going to ruin that with thoughts of…What
was
his name?

Alexi cursed against her lips. Too slow. Needed fast. Before she changed her mind. Or he did.

Cat must have sensed the same thing, because she didn’t ask why he cursed; she didn’t even lift her mouth from his.

That should have been his first clue, but he was a man. When she yanked open his shirt, spraying buttons all over the floor, he yanked her dress right back. Then he was captured by the silky texture of her skin. She felt like…

A full house—queens and aces—his favorite. The faces of the ladies promising the world, the spike of the aces delivering it. The cards were as dewy and smooth as her breasts beneath his fingertips.

Her nails scraped his nipples, first a mere hint, enough to make him hold his breath, waiting for her to—

She flicked her thumb—back and forth, back and forth—the movement a promise of tongue, the scrape like teeth. Just thinking of her clever mouth made his ravenous, and he shoved the dress from her shoulders, capturing her at the elbows, lifting her breasts.

He let his gaze touch them as he wanted to, as he would. Her breath came as harshly as his own, every inhale an offering, each exhale pure temptation. Though he wanted to dive, to delve, to devour, instead he lowered his head, inch by desperate inch, drawing out the moment, licking his lips, tasting her there, knowing that soon he would taste her everywhere. His breath wafted over her, and she shivered. Fascinated, he watched the gooseflesh race across her ribs, flow over a breast, then—

He stopped breathing as her nipples swelled right before his eyes. One actually brushed his lower lip. He had to bite his tongue to hold it back. His mouth flooded with saliva, as if the juiciest, ripest, most tasty—

“Do it.” An order, not a plea. Nothing new. She’d never begged. Then again, she’d never ordered him before either.

His gaze lifted. Her eyes blazed emerald against the nearly russet flush of her cheeks. Something was different. With her? With him?

With us?
his mind whispered.

“You think too much.” Her hands, trapped at her sides, nevertheless found him and stroked. “You always did.”

“Someone has to.”

“No.” Cat stepped back, and then he let her go. She shrugged, and the dress fell to the floor. Reaching around, the movement causing muscles to ripple beneath her skin, which in turn caused muscles to ripple beneath his, she tugged the tie on the
baby
.

He discovered he no longer cared what it had been made of—amazing what the sight of a naked woman could do for one’s curiosity—and it fell too, tumbling away, unraveling into a pile of faded, wrinkled cloth atop that horrible dress.

She stood there in nothing but her stockings and boots. “Someone doesn’t.”

His gaze on her hips, slim and perfect, her legs, just the same, her breasts—oh, those breasts, sonnets he could write to them, if he were capable of writing sonnets. He had to rummage through his brain to remember what she was talking about.

Ah, yes. She was right. No one needed to think. Him least of all.

He reached for her. She was looking out the window again, and he frowned, looked out there himself. What was so damn—

She went to her knees. He forgot all about the window. Hell, he forgot all about his name. It was only later that he remembered. Later was when he always remembered.

She pressed her mouth to his stomach, her tongue chasing the ripples, dipping beneath the waistband of his trousers, brushing across his tip. She inched back, he thought to remove his clothing, so he released the button at his waist. Instead she mouthed him through the
material, lips running his length; she used her teeth down low at the root.