Lone Star Lover (16 page)

He shook free, and gripped her hips. “Lift up,” he told her in a hoarse voice. “Come on.”

She let him guide her, but was too dazed to understand what he was doing until she felt the blunt head of his manhood nudge her opening. Her muscles involuntarily clenched. His fingers dug slightly into her flesh as she let him pull her down on him.

“You’re so small and tight,” he said raggedly. “We’ll go slow.”

She wished she had something to hold on to, but she didn’t dare get near his ribs. Clenching her teeth and fisting her hands, she slowly sank down, ordering herself not to tense as he filled her.

Jake’s eyes briefly drifted closed and he groaned low in his throat. “That’s it.” He moved his hands from her hips to her breasts and again gently kneaded.

Finally, she’d sunk down as far as she could, awed by how completely he’d consumed her. She wiggled to get into a more comfortable position, and he groaned again. At first she’d thought she hurt him, but he moved his hips, asking for more. She experimented, moving back and forth, but then repeated the motion of sliding onto him and retreating.

That seemed to please him the most, and he took her by the hips again, controlling the rhythm, up and down, going slow at first, and then faster and faster.

She caught on quickly because the sensation felt good to her, too. Bending her knees more, she pushed herself up as far as she could without losing him, and then came down hard, taking as much of him in as she could.

Jake moaned, the sound almost feral, like something she would hear coming off the mountains at midnight while huddled in her teepee. His eyes mere slits, he found her breasts once more, and lifted his hips, hard, fast, until her buttocks slapped against him. He arched into her, his face a tense mask, his jaw clenched. His chest heaved, a strangled cry escaped his lips and then he went limp beneath her.

For a minute, his hands stilled at her breasts, and then as he opened his eyes wider, his mouth curved in a satisfied smile that made her grow warm once more.

“That was—awesome,” he said, breathing in deeply and exhaling slowly.

“What does this word mean?”

Chuckling, he teased her nipple until it ached. Then he curled up and soothed it with his tongue. When he slowly lay back down, she could tell by his grim expression that lifting up like that had hurt his side.

She swung off him, ignoring his protest, and snuggled beside him, careful not to press against his ribs. But he foolishly lifted his arm and pulled her closer. She didn’t fight him because the action would only cause him further pain.

Besides, if she let him continue to play with her nipples, she’d want to start over, and she didn’t think he was ready to mate again.

“Tell me what awesome means,” she said, partly to distract him, and partly because she truly wanted to know. She’d always read a lot and was proud of her wide vocabulary, but sometimes he used words she didn’t understand.

He stretched out his free arm and grinned at the ceiling. “Where I come from, it’s a highly overused word of the moment, though starting to die out. That and perfect storm.”

There he went with that frustrating speech again. “A storm is never perfect. They’re scary.”

He made a funny expression, and then his face got so serious it made her skin tingle. But not in a good way. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I have something to tell you,” he said, tightening his arm around her, almost too tight and stoking a spark of fear in her belly. “It’s about where I come from.”

“You said you have something to tell me.”

“I do.” He sighed. “I warn you, though, it’s going to sound crazy.”

“Tell me,” she prompted, when he stayed silent too long.

“You’ve been talking about the railroad men coming. Have you seen a train?”

“Yes, many times. I rode on them when I was a child.”

“Okay, not a good example.” Jake rubbed the top of his head, frowning. “What about the telegraph? Isn’t it amazing that you can send a message practically through the air?”

She nodded, apprehension niggling at her as she studied the nervous tic at his jaw.

“What I’m trying to say is that new things are discovered all the time, things we would never have dreamed possible until they suddenly existed. Would you agree?”

“Yes.” She pulled the quilt more tightly to her breasts, trying to understand his suddenly strange mood. The moon wasn’t full.

“Keep that in mind when I tell you this.” He paused, cupping one hand over her cheek, his blue eyes piercing in their intensity, and feeding her uneasiness. “When I said I’m not from around here—There’s no good way to say this. I’m not from this time. I live in the future.”

Wordlessly, she stared back at him, helpless to understand what he was saying. It made no sense.

“I know it sounds crazy, and I know you think this has something to do with my hitting my head. I did too at first. But it’s been almost a week, and believe me, I don’t have that good an imagination.”

Rebecca swallowed. “I don’t understand. You’re here now. The future is not until tomorrow or next week or next year…”

“Or a hundred and forty years from now.” He continued to hold her gaze, his eyes imploring her to ponder his meaning.

She shrank from him, her body numb with worry and fear. Doc Davis had thought Jake was all right. What would he say if he heard such a fanciful tale?

“Oh, God, don’t. Please.” Jake rubbed her shoulder. “I’ve dreaded telling you. I knew you wouldn’t understand. Something happened out in the desert where Slow Jim found me. Somehow I crossed a time barrier. I’m guessing at this, but that’s why I need to know the exact spot where he found me.”

Thoughts flew through her head like a flock of birds rushing south for the winter. His strange speech pattern, words he used that she didn’t understand, his calm acceptance of her past…“This future you speak of, how is it different from now?”

“That’s a tough one. There are a lot more conveniences in the kitchen for instance, and we don’t use fire to heat our homes. Transportation, communication, that’s all different.”

She listened silently as he described inventions that she had trouble understanding. Sometimes he went into so much detail that she had to believe he was telling the truth. But then she’d read a Jules Verne novel once, full of fancy. And how many times had Wind In The Trees told magical tales by the campfire on cold winter nights. Her storytelling had been so real that the children sometimes had trouble falling asleep. Was Jake nothing more than a good storyteller?

“In your world,” she said finally. “You have Indians?”

He smiled. “Yes, some of them live in cities, some choose to live on reservations. They own their own property, and live alongside and marry white people if they want. We also call them Native Americans.” He shrugged. “They were here first.”

This sounded very strange to Rebecca. “And if a white woman is bedded by—”

He found her hand under the quilt and kissed it. “None of that matters. Not to civilized people, anyway.”

This made the most sense of all. She remembered Jake’s reaction to finding out she’d lived with the Comanche. He hadn’t even blinked. He’d been sorry she lost her husband.

“This is a lot to take in, I know.” He slid a hand across her belly and pulled her close. “I need you to promise not to tell anyone, not even Kitty. I can’t have Wade thinking I’m crazy, or he won’t trust me.”

She stiffened. “You saw how awful the Rangers are. You must stay away from them.”

“I can’t.” Jake closed his eyes. “It’s complicated, but I can’t let them get away with what they’ve been doing.”

“But you’re only one man—”

The hard pounding at the door startled them both. “Malone?” It was one of the Rangers. “The captain says to get ready. We ride in fifteen minutes.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Jake asked him, tired of the silence since the man had summoned him from Rebecca’s warm bed.

“They’re coming.”

As if on cue, the thundering approach of horses drew his attention toward the four riders appearing out of the darkness. Wade rode lead. Where the hell had they come from?

“Let’s go.” Wade galloped past them, and Jake and Bart quickly swung into their saddles.

When Bart seemed content to trail the group, Jake stayed with him. He liked bringing up the rear so that he could watch what was going on. What he didn’t like was that Corbin wasn’t there, which meant he was probably still in town. With Rebecca.

The thought of the bastard even looking at her, much less touching her, drove a stake of fury straight into Jake’s heart. He could only hope the guy was out cold. Which was entirely probable, Jake thought, trying to calm down. Shit, he had to get his hands on a gun.

After what seemed like an hour, they came to a fork in the road, and the horses were pulled to a stop. The four men dismounted, and each of them handed Bart their reins. “You two wait here,” Wade said. “Bart, make sure no one passes.”

Bart muttered something unintelligible, netting him a menacing look from Wade, and for the first time, Jake got the feeling the Ranger didn’t want to be here.

“What about me?” Jake asked, his mind zigzagging as he tried to pinpoint what had given him that impression, and how he could use the information.

“Stay with Bart. Have the horses ready.” Wade adjusted his hat, checked his gun.

This wasn’t gonna be good. “What’s going on?” Jake asked. “What are we doing out here?”

“If I wanted you to know, I reckon you wouldn’t have had to ask the question,” Wade said with his gun raised and aimed at Jake’s face. “Isn’t that right?”

Jake looked him dead in the eyes. “That reminds me. I should have a gun.”

Chuckling, the captain lowered his weapon. “You got a way of tickling my funny bone, Malone.”

“That’s a no on the gun?”

“We’ll talk about it when we get back to town,” he said, all business again. “Let’s go boys.”

Jake watched them run toward a grove of cottonwoods, and then with the stealth of preying tigers, slipped through the trees and scrub brush, crouching when they were out in the open.

“Why didn’t they take the horses?” Jake asked Bart.

He didn’t answer, only tugged up the collar of his coat.

It
was
pretty damn cold, and Jake was grateful for the borrowed coat he wore even though it smelled like stale tobacco.

“Where’s Corbin?”

“Drunker than shit, like always.” Bart glanced over his shoulder, probably nervous that he’d spoken out of turn.

Jake decided to drop the subject of Corbin. “Too cold to be out tonight. Hope this is worth it.”

Bart grunted.

“Can’t we tether the horses? Why stand here like this?”

“No.” Bart stared off toward the grove of trees though every one of the men had disappeared. “They won’t be long.”

“So what are they doing?”

“Shut up.”

A yell came from the other side of the trees. Then a gunshot. More yelling. The horses whinnied and stomped their hooves. Taken by surprise, Jake almost lost hold of the roan.

“Shit.” He looked at Bart. “Should we go help them?”

He snorted. “They don’t need us,” he said, obviously unconcerned, and put a long thin cigarette between his lips.

An eerie silence descended, and then a second gunshot split the air. A few moments later, a horse galloped out from the trees toward Jake and Bart, before it circled into the darkness.

Jake peered toward the cottonwoods, his mind racing. A gunshot, a horse with no saddle, no rider. Sweat coated the back of his neck. He’d bet anything there’d been another hanging. He saw the Rangers start to emerge from the shadows, but they didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

Bart puffed on his cigarette, his face a hard mask of barely controlled repugnance, the tension radiating from his body enough to power a small cabin. Whatever had just gone down, Jake was now complicit. Had that been the plan? Was Wade that smart?

The men approached, their expressions unreadable. “Bad news,” Wade announced as he calmly took the reins of his horse. “Looks like the vigilantes struck again.”

Jake tamped down his anger and disgust, and glanced at Bart, hoping like hell he’d found the group’s weak link.