Devils on Horseback: Nate (5 page)

“Now what?” he ground out, his gaze slipping to her shirt.

Elisa looked down, embarrassed to see that her very hard nipples were clearly visible through her homespun shirt. He already knew she wore no corset or female trappings, but now he knew that the sight of him naked made her body react.

“You can get naked too,” he whispered.

Of its own volition, Elisa’s hand put the knife back in the scabbard and reached out to touch him. Warm skin met sweaty palm and a jolt of pure passion raced through her. Her body vibrated with need, with want, with animal impulses that almost overtook her. Almost.

Instead, she trailed her hand down his stomach, touching each scar as she went, until she grasped his cock. It was as hard as a tree branch, and as hot as fire, her hand barely encircled its girth. He hissed in a breath and Elisa swam in the depths of heat she saw in his eyes.

“God has blessed you, Nathaniel Marchand. If we weren’t enemies, I’d lie with you.”

“I’m not your enemy.”

“That’s a load of shit, but I’ll let it pass.”

“So lie with me. I want you, sweet, beautiful Elisa.” His voice, that honey-sweet voice, coated her, tempted her, called to her to do as he bade.

“I—I can’t.”

“Let me pleasure you. You can keep the gun if you’d like, but please”—he closed his eyes and sucked in a breath through his nose—“let me taste you.”

Let me taste you
.

Heaven help her. She’d never had a man say that to her before, or even had a man want to get in her britches before. Tragic thing was, she didn’t know if he was lying or not.

“Why would you call me beautiful?”

“You are. Those eyes are as blue as the sky in December. Your skin is sweet as cream, and your breasts…ah, God, I’d give up a week of my life for one taste.”

Nate knew how to seduce, that was for certain.

“How do I know you’re not funning with me?”

He choked out a laugh and pressed her hand to his throbbing hardness. “Does this feel like I’m funning?”

No, it surely didn’t. Elisa swayed for a moment, then threw her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his. The man was like an oven, heat radiated through him, bringing her to a boil. Her lips locked with his and she dove into a whirlpool of sensation.

Elisa let instinct guide her as mouths dipped and played. He cupped her ass and pulled her closer, nestling his staff against her pussy. Before she knew it, the bark of a tree was at her back and both her shirt and trousers were unbuttoned.

As his mouth continued to pleasure her, his fingers dipped into her honey and pleasure ricocheted through her.

“You’re so wet, sweet Elisa,” he whispered against her lips. “So wet.”

She hoped that was good because she sure as hell felt good. He rubbed and circled the pleasure spot she’d discovered years ago. Only with him at the reins, it felt a hundred times better. Soon those questing fingers were sliding into her pussy even as his palm continued to rub her sweet spot.

“I need to get in there. Please, Elisa, let me in.”

She nodded, lost in a sea of sensation and passion, eager to journey with Nate to wherever it would lead. His mouth found her nipples and she nearly cried out from the ecstasy. Somehow her trousers were down around her ankles and his cock had replaced his hand. Just as he slid into her, his teeth closed around her nipple.

Pleasure, pain and everything in between ripped through her as he impaled her, stealing innocence and gifting her with womanhood.

“Holy Christ.” He cupped her jaw. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Doesn’t matter. Better you than some hairy, fat man Da picks out.” She hadn’t let loose the pistol and tapped him on the back with it. “Finish it, Marchand, and make it good.”

He captured her mouth in a kiss as he slid from her body, only to fill her again. And so his rhythm was set, one designed to bring her slowly back to the brink of insanity.

“Faster.” She bit his shoulder and rubbed her hardened nipples against the hair on his chest. Skitters ran down her body as he growled and captured the neglected nipple in his mouth and started fucking her in earnest.

Deep, slippery strokes pushed against her clit with each thrust. His roar of passion took her completely by surprise. She cried out a little, unable to speak, and her eyes closed with the spasms of her release. Nate bit her again as he found his own release, pulling her along on the road to heaven.

Their breathing was the only sound in the woods. The birds and insects had long since quieted against their passionate union. Elisa pushed against his shoulder and he stepped back, his cock sliding from her still hungry body. With a deep breath, she found courage she’d never known she had.

“Thanks, Marchand.” She buttoned up her shirt and trousers with hands that surprisingly didn’t shake. “I enjoyed that.”

His eyes filled with fury. “I am covered with your virgin’s blood and all you can say is ‘Thanks, I enjoyed that’?”

He stepped toward her and she raised the pistol.

“What do you want me to say? Marry me, Nate?” She snorted. “That ain’t never gonna happen, so I figured thanks would be good. It was definitely good, I’ll give you that, but that doesn’t change anything.”

She circled around toward her escape, keeping her eyes on the seething, naked man in front of her.

“What do you mean, it doesn’t change anything? It changes everything.”

His dark gaze reflected confusion and anger. Elisa wouldn’t fall for any of it. Her family was more important than anything she could ever have with a stranger who made her feel like a woman. A stranger who made her heart gallop and her body throb.

“No, you’re wrong. You are still my enemy.” Elisa ran, escaping the man who already owned a piece of her soul.

Chapter Five

Nate stood there trying desperately to catch his breath and locate his brain, which had relocated to somewhere between his legs. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at his dick or he’d see the proof of the innocence he’d just taken against a tree.

A tree!

God help him, his father would have whipped him with a switch, one of the thin ones that always stung the most. Gideon would likely tear his hide for this.

Nate wanted to redo the last thirty minutes. If only he’d told someone he was meeting Elisa. There went the “if only” problem again. He needed to forget about that and live with the regret now that he’d deflowered a young woman.

He smacked himself on the forehead and ran toward the stream. At least the temperature of the water would cool the boiling heat that still gripped him. He felt hunger for the voluptuous woman he’d had in his arms a few moments ago, a hunger that hadn’t been satiated by one encounter. Even now, he hardened just thinking about her curves, her breasts and the sweetest pussy he’d ever had.

Without forethought, Nate brought his right hand to his mouth, the hand that had been pleasuring her, and sniffed. Her scent washed over him and damned if all the blood didn’t pool in his nether regions again. Just to torture himself, he licked his finger and her taste coated his tongue.

“Shit, shit, shit.” He jumped into the one foot deep stream and rubbed himself raw with the sand from the bottom, washing away any trace of Elisa Taggert from his skin.

Too bad he couldn’t erase her from his memory. She’d taken up residence and it didn’t seem likely she would leave anytime soon.

After drying himself off with his shirt, he dressed in his remaining clothes and went back to the camp. Gideon eyed his bare chest with raised brows, but said nothing. Zeke gestured for him to sit. Lee and Jake were nowhere to be found.

“Did the talking work?” Gideon asked.

Nate shook his head. “No, not a whit.” Thank God Gideon didn’t know exactly what had worked.

“I figured as much. I think we’ve got a plan.” Gideon gestured to Zeke. “Listen to what he has to say.”

Nate turned to Zeke, his stomach clenching at the thought of facing Elisa again.

“I’ve got Lee and Jake doing reconnaissance to verify my theory, but I think this will work.” He drew a circle in the dirt with a stick. “Here’s the Taggert ranch, approximately fifty acres. The cattle are here.” A smaller circle within the first. “The house is here.” A square within the larger circle. “The tree line is here.” A bunch of squiggles above the square.

“That sounds correct from what I remember.”

“Me too. Your Elisa surprised us from here.”

As Zeke pointed at the squiggles with the stick, Nate’s stomach tightened so hard, he thought he’d be sick.

Your Elisa
.

“There must be a path from behind the house to the trees. Something hidden and known only to the Taggerts. If we find that path, we can surprise them and take either the old man or the boy.” Zeke’s brown gaze met Nate’s. “Your Elisa then has no choice but to agree.”

Your Elisa
.

“Stop calling her that. She’s not my Elisa, no matter what happened.”

“What do you mean no matter what happened? I thought you said she only kissed you.”

Damn Gideon and his perceptive mind. Nate searched for something intelligent to say.

“What I mean is, she’s not, nor will ever be, my Elisa. Now let’s focus on successfully completing this mission and not on the girl.”

“Agreed. Now the key is going to be timing. I believe they take twelve hour shifts watching the herd. I doubt the old man gets on a horse anymore.” Zeke squinted at the horizon. “If we surprise them halfway through a shift, one will be asleep and the other unsuspecting.”

It sounded like a marvelous plan, one that was sure to work. So why did Nate feel like a snake in the grass? It was an honest job, one that had been verified on paper.

“Your Elisa is going to be a tough opponent to beat.”

That did it. Nate’s sleeping temper exploded.

“She’s a stubborn, ill-tempered, illiterate girl without the sense God gave a goose. That combined with our purpose here and her personal hygiene habits are a sure bet that Elisa Taggert is not my kind of woman. I don’t like her, nor will I ever like her. She’s beneath me.” Nate didn’t mean a damn word of what he said but it all tumbled out of his mouth like a black cloud. “We’ll do well to finish this job as quickly as possible and be away from Grayton, Texas.”

A rustling was the only warning before a redheaded snarling beast exploded from the bushes, her pistol cocked and aimed at his head.

“You’re a lousy excuse for a human being, Nathaniel Marchand. At least your friends have the courtesy to give me credit for being smart. You have no idea who I am or what I am, but you pass judgment like some preacher.” Her eyes glittered dangerously. “I should put a hole in your head this second for what you said about me especially after your cock was just inside me not thirty minutes ago. You bastard.”

She smacked him on the side of the head with the pistol and the ringing felt like his death knell. God knows he deserved it.

“You will not capture any of us, and you ain’t gonna make us leave the land my grandfather owned. I am a part of this dirt under your feet and have more right to it than Samuel O’Shea ever will. He stole the land from my mother while my da was away at war. However he did it, she ended up dead by her own hand while he told everyone she wanted her children to be safe in his care.”

She laughed, a choked, mournful sound that made the hairs on Nate’s arms stand up.

“His care? The first thing he did was try to kidnap me. I’ve kept him off my land for more than a year. If you think you and your friends can succeed where he’s failed, go ahead and try. I guarantee you that someone will be dead before it’s over.”

Elisa smacked him again, and he felt a trickle of blood by his ear. He took it like a man accepting punishment for his sins, without protest or denial. He dared not look at Gideon and see the condemnation in his eyes.

“Now you’ve got two choices, leave now or stay and be ready to go to war with the Taggerts.” She stepped back toward the trees, her gun still rock solid in her hand and aimed at Nate’s head. “If you were any kind of men you’d take the first choice.”

“I’m sorry.” He said it without thinking. His heart squeezed painfully around the vicious, cruel words he’d spouted about her.

Nate finally met her eyes and recoiled from the hurt and fury he saw in their blue depths.

“Too little, too late, Frenchie. I hate you.”

She was gone without a whisper of sound. The far-off echo of hoofbeats was the only indication that she’d left entirely. Nate was afraid to move, to breathe, for fear the world would come crashing on his head.

“I’m not going to ask you anything, Nate, but I’m hoping you’ll be kind enough to tell us what the hell just happened.” Gideon’s voice permeated Nate’s pain-filled stupor.

Nate took a shallow breath and realized his entire body trembled. He held up two fingers, asking for a precious snippet of time to regain control of himself. He thought it would be a good job, a new start for the Devils. Instead he’d plunged himself into a hell of his own making.

“She’s not like any other woman I’ve ever met.”

“That’s obvious. I’ve only seen you lose control once before, and I never expected it over a woman.” Gideon knew him better than anyone.

“She’s strong, aggressive, outspoken and…she makes me feel alive, for the first time in a long time.” Nate knew Zeke and Gideon would both keep his confidence and he needed to tell someone how he felt. “I don’t know what happened, but somehow I ended up with her in my arms and my head buried so far up my ass I couldn’t even tell what day it was.”

Gideon touched him on the shoulder. “She’s a powerful woman to have that kind of affect on you. Are you committed to the Devils?”

“Yes, absolutely.” There would never be a question of that.

“What about this job? It’s not too late to tell O’Shea no.” Gideon forced Nate to meet his gaze. “You’re hurting, I can see that, but I need to know that you’re with us on this job or we’ll move on.”

Nate couldn’t possibly live with that. Turning down enough money to feed them for two years because he thought with his dick instead of his brain? It wouldn’t, just couldn’t, happen.

“We’re going to finish this job, no matter what. I’ll keep my distance from E-Elisa.” Although he wasn’t prone to affection, Nate gave Gideon a quick hug. “You are my family, and my loyalty is to the four of you. Always.”

Gideon looked up at Zeke who nodded.

“We won’t tell Jake and Lee about this, but we’ll have to rethink our plan, especially considering she heard every word of it.” Gideon shook his head. “She’s going to give some husband a hell of a ride.”

Nate swallowed hard. If circumstances had been different, he’d never have met Elisa Taggert. If circumstances had been better, he might be the one marrying her.

Captain Nessman rode up to the general store with his grudge firmly stuck in his craw. Those damn rebel bastards. They’d been telling the truth about working for O’Shea, but he’d been evasive as to what exactly they were doing for him.

Nessman dismounted from his Army issue horse and cursed the stupid nag. They paid for greenbroke wild horses and got the bottom of the barrel. Stupid thing constantly tried to bite him. Two ladies walking down the street eyed him with concern until he smiled and tipped his hat.

“Good morning, ladies.”

They nodded and moved off, apparently unwilling to speak to an Army officer. Texas had, after all, fought for the Confederacy and resentment ran high and wide. He didn’t give a shit though. His quarry was the Devils.

As soon as he stepped into the general store, he knew the owner was a man to be reasoned with. A mousy little man with beady eyes, he gave Nessman a toothy grin.

“G’mornin’ to you, Captain.”

“Same to you. Captain Elliot Nessman.” He held out his hand and was rewarded with a clammy, limp hand in return. Nessman extricated his hand from the other man’s grip quickly. “I was hoping you might be able to help me with something.”

“Anything you need, sir. My name is Marvin Scofield and I own this establishment. I’d be happy to assist you.” The little man definitely knew how to butter his bread.

Excellent news.

“There’s a group of five men camped just outside town, apparently working for Mr. O’Shea.”

“Oh, yes, I know one of them sir, a Mr. Marchand. I hung up his advertisement there.” Marvin pointed to the window. “Mr. O’Shea hired them right quick.”

“Do you know what for?”

“I think it was to get rid of the Taggerts.” Marvin shook his head. “Sad story actually.”

“And who might the Taggerts be?” He was so close to catching the Devils, closer than he’d been in months. Nessman could almost taste victory.

Elisa shook with rage and hurt. She’d never been on such a wild ride of emotions before. Damn Nate Marchand. Before he’d stepped into the store, her life had been hard, but bearable. Now it was on the verge of being hell on Earth.

She rode like she was being chased, more than likely by her own conscience. Elisa had been the instigator, as usual, the one who found trouble no matter where it hid. She’d wanted to humiliate him, to make him regret ever agreeing to work for Samuel O’Shea.

Instead, she’d fallen a little in love with him. He hadn’t given an inch of his pride, standing there buck naked. Truth was, he probably could have disarmed her easily but he hadn’t. She’d suspected he was a gentleman by the way he spoke and acted. However, the way he’d allowed her to hold her power had convinced her of that fact.

Then she’d gone and done it again. Stepped from the frying pan into the fire…into his arms. And Lordy it was hot, hotter than the flames of Hades. She’d been scorched by it. Her body felt sore and still sizzled from the memory of the heat. For some strange reason, she’d wanted more, more of the magic she’d felt in Nate’s arms.

Now she knew it had been a sham—a way for Nate to take control over her physically without actually putting her in chains. He’d thought her beneath him.
Beneath!
Just because she wasn’t book-learned or went to some fancy school didn’t mean she was beneath anyone.

It hurt. It hurt bad. Enough to bring tears to her eyes, something she swore she wouldn’t ever do again after her mother died. Now here she was practically blubbering over a man who took her virginity. At least now she was spoiled goods and maybe no man would come sniffing after her. That’d suit her just fine. She didn’t need any man by her side.

Elisa was strong. She’d stand alone and protect her family and land. Nate Marchand had no idea what he’d thrown away, but she’d show him. She’d show him good.

The ride helped clear her head of the cobwebs of confusion that surrounded her. Nate and his friends were skilled, better than average, perhaps nearly unbeatable. Elisa would do her damnedest though. She rode out to Daniel, who looked about ready to fall asleep. It was no life for a fourteen-year-old boy, but he took the responsibility like a man.

Elisa was proud of him, although if she dared said that to him, he’d probably blush and tell her to go to hell. He was Irish, after all.

“What are you doing here?” he asked when she got closer.

“I need to talk to you.” She reined up beside him and gazed over their precious herd. “Those five men O’Shea hired are plotting to kidnap you or Da to try to get me to give in. They already know a lot about us and what we’ve been doing so we need to change our ways for a bit.”

He nodded. “I didn’t get a good look at them, but they seemed pretty big. Who are they?”

“Ex-Johnny Rebs. I don’t know from where, but likely Alabama or maybe Georgia. I’m guessing they worked together in the war.”

“That’d make them pretty fierce then, since they survived.” Daniel might be a boy but he was even smarter than Elisa.

“You’re right. Since they survived together, they probably are very fierce. We’re just going to have to outwit them.” She reached over and grabbed his hand. “I need to know if you’re ready to try. We can take what we have and leave Grayton.”