California Caress (26 page)

In an instant, he was on top of her, his weight pinning her to the ground. The knees that tightened around her ribs made even the smallest breath impossible.

“No!” she screamed as his eyes settled on the mud-caked length of her neck. The last of her breath left her. A feral smile curled his lips as his fingers quickly followed his gaze.

“Told you my patience with you was thin, woman. You should’ve listened.” His fingers tightened around her throat. His smile turned into an evil leer when a strangled croak escaped her lips. “Too bad you didn’t, because now you’re going to have to pay the price for disobedience. I don’t tolerate disobedience, sweet thing. Not from anybody.”

Hope struggled, her fingers clawing at the hands that were squeezing the life from her throat. He seemed completely unaffected by her struggles.

“Don’t think I need to keep you around to get to Frazier. He knows I’ve got you. He’ll come, whether you’re alive or dead. No way he’s going to know which you are. Not that it matters, since he’ll be buried by your side soon enough.”

Oh my God, he’s going to kill Drake.
The thought ripped through Hope’s mind with all the force of the lightning bolt that cut through the sky.

Frantically, she reached out and seized a handful of mud. She flung it at his face, and it hit his skin with a sickening slap. Thunder crackled overhead, overriding the man’s cry of surprise when the mulch embedded itself in his eyes.

His hold weakened enough for Hope to push him back. His hands released her throat as he tried to rub the mud from his stinging eyes.

Gasping for breath, she attempted to squirm out from under him. In her struggles, her foot smashed into the horse’s rear leg. Already skittish from the storm, the contact made the gray rear up on its hind legs. Another streak of lightning illuminated the magnificent stance of the horse pawing the air.

Its front hooves hit the dirt with a crash. Again, the gray bucked, its back hooves shooting out to catch Tubbs in the temple. Just as he was reaching for Hope, he toppled lifelessly into the mud.

With a cry, she shoved the body away. She was shaking badly as she raised herself to her feet. She had taken no more than a step when her legs buckled beneath her.

Her knees hit the ground in a bone-jarring collision that made her eyes water. Her hands were buried up to the wrists in mud. In her mind, the sight of Tubbs being struck by the deadly hooves played over and over again.

Hugging her arms around her stomach, she leaned forward as nausea racked her stomach. When she was done, she numbly collapsed atop the cold wet mud.

How long she stayed like that, she didn’t know. It seemed that for an eternity the rain lashed at her face and neck, soaking her already wet clothes, but it might actually have been only a few minutes. She’d lost all track of time.

At the feel of a hand on her shoulder, she screamed. So convinced had she been it was Tubbs, come back from the dead to seek his revenge, that she almost wept with relief to find herself staring into a pair of familiar sea-green eyes.

Without thinking, Hope threw herself headlong into his outstretched arms. “Drake! I—I didn’t think you’d come,” she sobbed into his shoulder. The tears that had been building now burst from her. Desperately, she clung to the warm strength pressing against her.

“Shhh. I’m here, Hope. I’m here.” Drake wrapped his arms around her back and cradled her against his shoulder. His hands stroked the mud-streaked hair that limply hung to the small of her back.

“He tr-tried to kill me, D-Drake,” she whispered against his throat, her voice trembling almost as much as her body. “He tried to strangle me. I couldn’t st-stop him.”

“Hush, sunshine,” Drake murmured in her ear as he hugged her close. “You don’t have to talk about it. It’s all over now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

With a ragged sigh, she nodded. Instinctively, her arms tightened around his neck when his weight shifted.

“Come on. Let’s get you inside where it’s warm.” Instead of leading her, as she had expected, Drake bent and swept her up into his arms, offering a harbor of safety unlike any she had known before.

Drake turned toward the deserted shack, rainwater pouring down his harshly chiseled face. His arms supported her weight easily, as though he was carrying nothing larger than a small child. His boots squished in the mud with each long stride until he stopped at the shack’s door. He had only to nudge it with his foot to send it flying open.

He stepped into the center of the room and tenderly lowered her to her feet. The feel of his wet, sinewy body slipping against hers made her tingle.

Hope shivered. She was soaked to the skin, he clothes thoroughly drenched. The pieces of hair that insistently escaped the leather thong at her neck were etched with dirt and plastered to her face. She pushed the filthy tresses from her brow as she returned his appraising glance.

He guided her over to the single chair beneath the window and pushed her down onto the cane seat. Like a lifeless puppet, she complied.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he promised. His eyes were dark, their expression unreadable, as he reached down to caress her muddy cheek. The touch was wonderful and much too fleeting as he sighed, pulled away, then turned for the door.

Hope sat, shivering with emotion as much as cold, waiting expectantly for the gunslinger’s return. It wasn’t long before, true to his word, he was back, almost as quickly as he’d gone. A saddlebag was tucked beneath one arm, a faded bedroll beneath the other.

“Are you all right?” he asked, as he dropped his burden onto the dirty floor. A cloud of dust billowed up from the floor.

Hope nodded, her smile weak. Now that Drake was near, her strength was slowly beginning to return. “Yes. I just—I just need you to hold me.”

Drake plucked the wet hat from his head and tossed it into a dusty corner. All traces of concern were suddenly gone from both his voice and his expression, replaced by an inexplicable warmth. Insistent fingers wrapped around Hope’s wrist. Before she knew what he was doing, he had tugged her into his tight embrace.

Hope savored the contact. She could feel the furious beat of his heart beneath her cheek. His clothes were as wet and dirty as her own, but she didn’t mind. The warmth of his body made up for it.

“I thought I’d lost you, sunshine,” he whispered in her hair, his voice so soft she had to strain to hear him. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life.”

A nervous laugh escaped her. “I was scared to death myself. That man was going to kill me—then you. I still don’t know why.” Her voice was strong compared to the weakness that invaded her knees. Instinctively, her arms tightened around him. Drake’s body responded in kind and she was rewarded with a deep whiff of his thoroughly masculine scent.

“Tubbs was a sick man,” Drake said, his tone serious. “His depravity was topped only by the man who hired him.”

“Hired him?” she gasped, pulling slightly away to stare into his eyes. “Someone hired him to kidnap me and then kill us? Why? Who would do such a thing?”

“My brother,” he replied solemnly.

Hope shook her head, her eyes wide. “No. No, it can’t be true. Nobody would do something like that to his own brother I tell you.”

His gaze hardened. “You’ve never met Charles, Hope. You have no idea what the man is capable of. Murder would be a small enough price for him to pay to have me out of his life for good.”

“But how can you be sure? Maybe—”

The finger he slanted across her lips stifled Hope’s words. She glanced up at him, her gaze wide-eyed and innocent.

“It was Charles. I recognized his henchman back in Thirsty Gulch. Tubbs was the one who started the fire in your cabin.” His fingertip brushed her wounded shoulder. “He also did this.”

Her cheeks drained of color as a shudder trembled across her shoulder. “He was going to kill you, Drake,” she said, her voice flat. “He said so. He said he took me so you’d follow him. I—” she averted her suddenly moist gaze to the rain-drenched window, “I told him he was wrong. I told him you wouldn’t come, that you didn’t care enough to try and find me.”

“Come here.” Drake pulled her up hard against his chest and buried his face in her hair. The gentle rush of his breath whispered in her ear.

The guilt of her admission ate at her. She hadn’t believed he would come for her,
yet he had.
He’d risked his life tracking them down, and she’d just repaid him by slapping him in the face with her doubts.

Hope shivered as she tried to pull away. Drake refused to let her go as his lips nuzzled her ear. All sense of fear and humiliation vanished like steam under the feel of his lips brushing against her flesh.

“Let me go, Drake,” she argued weakly, trying to twist from his grasp again. His hold tightened and she became excruciatingly aware of every virile inch that pressed so intimately against her. “Let me go. There’s something I have to do.”

“Whatever it is, it can wait,” he murmured huskily as he lowered his head to taste the delicate line of her jaw. Her skin tasted of rainwater and mud.

A tremor that had nothing to do with the fear coursed through her veins. “No,” she replied, her voice a hoarse, ragged breath, “it can’t. I don’t know about you, but I’m soaking wet and freezing. I want dry clothes and a fire.”

“What do you think I’m trying to build here?" He countered teasingly, as his mouth worked tiny kisses up the line of her neck, over her jaw. Cupping her cheeks, he pulled her face up to his. With the tip of his thumb he wiped away the tears that trailed down her cheeks unchecked. “I need you, Hope, even more than I realized. The whole time I was searching for you, I feared I would never see you again. Now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to let you go. I want to take you in my arms and love you the way you were meant to be loved.” His eyes darkened until they glistened like emeralds in the lamplight. “Let me, Hope. Let me love you.”

Drake didn’t wait for an answer as his mouth sought its own response, a response Hope was helpless to deny. With each tantalizing stroke of his tongue, she lost a little more of her rapidly dwindling self-control.

She needed this man, she realized suddenly. She needed to feel his tender lovemaking wipe away all the bitter memories this night had held. By the time his tongue had touched the honeyed sweetness of her own, she no longer had the power to deny their hungry bodies the release both so eagerly craved.

Pushing all doubts aside, she surrendered to the urgency of his kiss. The sheer intensity of desire that coursed through her blood still frightened her, but the sweetness of Drake’s skilled, urgent caresses quickly blotted out her fear. “Ah, Hope.” He whispered huskily against her lips. His breath was a hot caress against her moist flesh as she tangled her fingers in the damp thickness of his hair. “My sweet, beautiful, Hope. Tell me you need me as much as I need you.
Tell me, sunshine.”

“Yes,” she sighed, straining into the hard promise of his body. She had no control over the passionate fire raging through her blood, over the wild beating of her heart. Her thick lashes flickered shut as she allowed Drake to lower her to the floor. “Ooohhh, yeessss....”

“What are you doing?” she asked sleepily. Rain splattered noisily against the window and a rumble of thunder echoed in the distance. With a contented sigh, she smoothed the wrinkles from the bedroll Drake had placed over her naked body.

“Your wish is my command, m’lady,” he replied as he knelt next to the cold, empty hearth and began piling it high with sticks and twigs. From over his shoulder, he sent her his most charming smile. “I’m building you a fire.”

Drake had put on his trousers to fetch the wood. Hope pushed up on one elbow and watched him, fascinated by the way the rain glistened against his bare torso, aroused by the way the snug denim stretched over his lean hips. His damp hair shimmered in the pale glow of moonlight.

“Isn’t it a little late for that, gunslinger?” she asked, a teasing lilt to her voice. Her smile came easily now that she basked in the sweet afterglow of their lovemaking.

“It’s never too late.” Drake shot her a glance of pure devilry as he touched the match to the wood. The sticks caught and the small room was quickly filled with flickering orange shadows. Still holding Hope’s gaze, he raised the burning match and blew it out. A waft of smoke curled in the air around his head as he tossed the match aside. “Come here, wench.”

“Wench, is it now?” Hope giggled. Clutching the blanket to her chest, she wiggled out of his reach. “Wherever did you pick up these words? Hasn’t anyone ever told you that gamblers and rogues don’t talk that way?”

“I’m not a rogue.” One golden brow rose in mock offense as he tossed a log into the fire then lurched for her. He pinned her squirming body beneath his. “Gambler? Unquestionable. Rogue? Not a chance.”

His mouth swooped down to steal a fleeting kiss. She smiled, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him closer. The golden curls at his sun-kissed nape were damp as they tickled her bare forearms.

“You are a rogue,” she murmured against his lips, her eyelids heavy with satiation. “And a conceited one at that. Now get under this blanket before you catch a chill.”

With a playful shove, Hope pushed Drake off her. He slipped beneath the blanket when she lifted it invitingly.

“Hmmm, you’re right, this is much better.” He sighed with contentment as he scooped her to his side.

Hope nestled her head on the hard pillow of his shoulder. His heart beat a rhythmic tempo in her ear as the fire warmed her cheek and brow. “Where did you learn those things, Drake?” she asked, her fingers teased the golden pelt of hair on his chest.

“What things?”

The memory of the fight flashed through her mind, as did the lock of hair he’d stolen from her on that day. “Oh, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Ladies fair, jousting knights, tokens, wenches—those sort of things. Not exactly the kind of stuff you expect to find in your average gunslinger’s repertoire.”

A chuckle rippled deep in the back of his throat. “I’m not your average gunslinger, sunshine.”

Hope slapped his chest playfully. She placed her hands on his chest, one atop the other, cushioning her chin on her knuckles as she glanced up at him through hooded lashes. Each exhalation of his breath fanned her face, set her skin alive with liquid fire. “
That
I’d already guessed! But you still haven’t answered my question. Why won’t you tell me about yourself? I know you had a life before you came to California. You mentioned your brother and his wife, the problems there, and you said something about Boston. But you didn’t give details. Why not?”