Tracker’s Sin (11 page)

“Could we just try a kiss?” she murmured.

“We can do whatever the hel you want.”

Shit, now he was swearing. A touch of his thumb to her cheek tilted her face to the side. He lowered his head, watching and waiting for

that moment when her past came rushing forward, waiting for the protest that would save them both. It didn’t happen. There was just the flash fire build of

anticipation searing through him, stopping his breath in his lungs, his heart in his chest the split second before his mouth touched hers, and then there was

no going back. No going anywhere but into the fire that threatened to burn him from the inside out.

Her mouth was sweet, soft and compliant beneath his. She kissed like a virgin with no idea what to do.

He pul ed back. Her eyelids lifted slowly. The softest of smiles touched her lips. Hel , she didn’t have a clue.

“I like that.”

So did he. He liked being the one to teach her about pleasure.

“Good.” He smoothed his thumb over her lips, pul ing the lower one down until her mouth parted, moist and ready for his attentions. “Now,

this time let’s try it with your mouth open.”

She blinked and caught her breath in shock, or anticipation. He couldn’t tel , and truth be told, didn’t want to know. Shock would mean he

had to pul away, and he needed to know how she tasted. Needed it with everything in him. And if it was anticipation? Hel , if he began to believe she was

anticipating that kiss, he’d lose control.

Replacing his thumb with his mouth, he fitted his lips to hers. Perfect. A perfect fit. In a haze of rising desire, he stroked his tongue over

the plump flesh, giving her time to pul back. She had to pul back. For both their sakes.

She came forward, arching her body into his, giving the soft, whimpered gasp of pleasure he craved, dreaded, relished. She wasn’t

herself, wasn’t for him. He clung to the knowledge, battling for sanity as her hips pressed to his, rubbing when he expected her to pul away, giving when

he expected her to flee.

“Tracker.” She breathed his name into his mouth like an answered prayer.

He caught her hips in his hands, stil ing their restless movement. “Don’t.”

“Oh, yes.” Her eyes opened as he ended the kiss. Try as he might, he couldn’t find a lick of fear in their depths. Only an abundance of

anticipation. “I knew it would be this good with you.”

So had he. Son of a bitch, so had he.

“You’re going to regret this.” Later, when her memories returned, she was going to hate him.

Her leg slid up his. Her foot hooked behind his knee, trapping them together. “No, I won’t.”

He didn’t argue. He was done arguing. Done fighting her, himself. He gathered her skirts in his hand as he kissed his way down her neck.

She liked that, moaning and shivering every time he kissed the soft white flesh. His own memories flashed through his mind. His father’s anger, his

mother’s face rigid in death. His first love, his first heartbreak, his first understanding of what it meant to be Indian in a white world. His first whore, his

second, third. Faces blended together in a mass of indifference he’d tried to maintain.

“Oh my God, Tracker.”

An indifference that was nowhere around with Ari.

“Yes, Tracker.”

He lifted her up, kissing her breasts through her shirt. She moaned his name again, her thighs natural y parting. He wouldn’t al ow her to

be indifferent with him.

A world of hurt was coming his way when this was over, but for now there was lightning-hot pleasure, breathless joy and the delusion that

he mattered. To her.

Her hands tugged at his hair. “Kiss me again.”

“Ah, hel .” He needed his ass kicked. His mouth slammed down on hers as he pushed her up against the wal and stepped between her

thighs.

“Yes.” The jubilant sigh of satisfaction fanned his desire into a flickering flame. The woman kissed like hel on fire, innocence and passion

riding instinct in a potent combination that shredded his control and left him on the verge of coming.

“Sweets.” His cock found its home between her thighs. “We have to stop.”

“No.”

Her hips pulsed in counterpoint to his thrust, sliding her pussy along his cock, gasping every time the thick head caught on her clit. Son of

a bitch, even the layers of clothing between them couldn’t hide the heat of her desire. She wanted him, and if he unbuttoned his pants and opened the slit

in her drawers, he could be inside her.

Tracker dropped his forehead to Ari’s as he unbuttoned his pants. He wouldn’t take her, but he needed a taste. Just a taste of that sweet

heat.

“You don’t want this with me,” he moaned, anger and frustrated desire hoarsening his voice to a growl.

But he wanted it with her. He wanted his cock deep in her pussy. He wanted to fuck her hard and deep until the impossible happened.

Until she was his.

Ari shook her head, a denial of his words or her need? He didn’t care. He worked his cock free. It surged against her, fal ing natural y into

the niche between her thighs, leaving just a thin layer of linen between him and that hot pussy. His hips surged forward, pressing the fat head into the pad

of her pussy. Even through the material she was soft and giving. Eager. It would take so little to give them what they both wanted.

He looked down. He couldn’t see anything but the press of her nipples against her blouse, and her skirt bunched between them. Damn,

he wanted to see what he could only imagine. The swol en folds, wet with her desire, open and hungry for his mouth, his cock. He pressed against her

once, twice, the urge to thrust riding him hard.

Her answer was a moan and a tightening of her legs around him. “Don’t stop.”

He kissed her hard and fast, al owing himself just that much of a taste. His cock throbbed and burned as he pushed against her. “We have

to.”

“No. I want you.” Her eyes opened. Her legs spread wider. “I want you.”

He snarled with the impossibility of it, the perfection of it, bending his knees to get a better angle. He moaned as his cock slipped

between the folds of delicate material, finding flesh even more delicate, sliding through the proof of her desire into the wel of her vagina, notching there.

She held his cock in a kiss of heat for an endless moment.

“It means nothing more than this,” he growled, keeping from tearing into her through sheer force of wil . He’d been searching for her for so

long, and now she was here, offering him everything when he could have nothing.

“Yes.” She struggled against him, rocking her hips and trying to coax him deeper. “Just this.”

“There can be nothing more than this.”

Her head fel back against the wal , exposing the creamy line of her throat. A pulse of his hips emphasized his point. Her pussy parted, the

supple muscles working over the head of his cock in inviting flexes as they struggled to accept him. The flesh of her throat was sweet and salty against his

lips. He strung hard, biting kisses down her skin, nipping at the juncture of her shoulder and neck, lingering when she moaned and tilted her head, giving

him better access.

“Take me.”

He thrust deep, and she took him ful y. “Yes. Oh yes!”

Pul ing back, he thrust again and again. Her pussy accepted more and more until she held him bal s deep, her strong muscles rippling

along his cock, inviting more. Close. They were so close. His cock flexed. His bal s tingled in prerelease. It was so good.

The barn door creaked. Familiar footsteps scuffed across the hay-strewn floor. In the periphery of his mind, Tracker knew he had only

seconds to let Ari go if he wanted to preserve her reputation. His feet wouldn’t obey his order. He was so close. She was so close. “Vincente’s com—”

Ari didn’t let him finish. With surprising strength, she held him to her, grinding down on his cock. His snarl blended with her moan of

pleasure. He couldn’t wrench away, couldn’t face Vincente, couldn’t save her reputation. Couldn’t stop the orgasm from taking over as her pussy spasmed

on his cock and she cried out. Son of a bitch. Tracker pressed a kiss to her lips. She was perfect. She was his.

A pistol cocked. He couldn’t summon the strength to reach for his knife. If Vincente pul ed the trigger, it was no more than he deserved.

“This is how you treat my hospitality?”

Ari jumped, and Tracker’s cock flexed within her at the inadvertent caress. He drew her face against his chest, giving her a place to hide

as he slowly separated their bodies.

With a wave of the gun, the old man indicated the door.

“Take your son and go to the house, Ari.”

Ari’s “no” seared Tracker’s heart.

He smoothed his hand down her cheek. “Go. I’l settle this.”

She grabbed her son and fled.

When the barn door closed behind her, Vincente said, “You wil marry her.”

Shit.
“She deserves better.”

The old man didn’t budge, just kept that rifle trained on Tracker’s gut. “Maybe, but you are her choice.”

Son of a bitch. Tracker stared at the gun, stared at the resolution in Vincente’s eyes, remembered the hot clasp of Ari’s pussy.

He hadn’t planned on this.

6

T
he night was peaceful. The smal pond a mile east of the Morales ranch was bathed in the faint light of a half-moon. Branches swayed in the soft breeze,

their reflections dancing across the glassy surface of the water in a rhythmic bal et. Somewhere in the stil ness of the night, Shadow waited.

Tracker struck a sulfur on his boot and lit a smoke. It’d been a hel of a week, in which one puzzle had been solved and another

developed. The solution to the first puzzle was good. Ari was found. The second was not so good. Vincente was insisting he marry her. Josefina was

against it. For seven days he’d suffered burned meals and angry looks. Where Ari stood was a question mark. As soon as he’d protested the notion,

she’d fal en back into politeness, as if it were a shield against rejection.

She believed herself to have been married to a Mexican. She had a child who looked more Mexican than white. To her, there was no

reason for the flatness of his refusal. She didn’t know the truth and he couldn’t give it. A white wife for a man like him would be more trouble than she was

worth in most cases, but when that woman was Ari?
Shit.
He flicked the smoke into the water. That would be a dream come true. And Vincente had known

it and announced the bans despite Tracker’s protests.

“You never did have any respect for a good smoke.”

“Hel o, Shadow.”

Buster tossed his head and whickered a greeting of his own.

His brother stepped away from the tree he’d been leaning against and crossed to his side. “Took you long enough to figure out I was

here.”

Tracker shrugged. “Guess that means I’m buying next time we get to town.”

They’d been playing this more sophisticated form of hide-and-seek since they were kids.

Shadow motioned for his fixings. Tracker handed them over. “Consider my forgiving the debt a wedding present.”

“You heard?”

“Not much else anybody’s talking about around here. There’s al kinds of stories about how it happened, but somehow Ari Morales landed

as a groom the great Tracker Ochoa.”

Landed?
That was an interesting way to put it. “I’ve been waiting for the lynch mob.”

Shadow smiled. “This would be a good spot for hanging. Not many trees around these parts big enough to hang a man your size, but that

one over there could probably do it.”

Tracker’s gaze fol owed Shadow’s pointing finger to the tal oak.
Yeah. It probably would.
“Thanks for the sympathy.”

Shadow sprinkled tobacco on the paper. “I wasn’t aware you were looking for any.”

Tracker wished he hadn’t been so quick to toss away his smoke. He had nothing to do with his hands. “I’m going to be the number one

attraction for a shotgun wedding.”

Shadow rol ed the smoke, ran his tongue along the edge of the paper and twisted the ends. He put the cigarette into his mouth. “To a

woman you’ve been half in love with ever since Desi told you about her. There have been worse reasons to marry.”

“Shit.”

Shadow struck a match. Light danced over his face as he applied it to the tip of the cigarette. “You denying it?”

Hell yes.
There was no future for him with the woman. “Go home, Shadow.”

His brother shook out the match and smiled. “When you do.”

“I told you I had a bad feeling about this.”

“Al the more reason for me to stay.”

One of the problems with having a twin brother was he often had some of your same qualities. Like stubbornness.

Tracker pushed his hat back. Frustration gnawed at his gut. “This isn’t your destiny.”

“It’s always been you and me against everything. Might as wel add destiny to the list.”

“No.”

The end of the smoke glowed red in the night. “Not your cal .”

“The hel it isn’t. I don’t want you here.”

Shadow blew out a stream of smoke. It faded like Tracker’s patience into the darkness. “And here I was counting on being your best man.

”

“Son of a bitch, you’re a stubborn bastard.”

He smiled. “I am, aren’t I?”

“I wouldn’t be bragging on it.”

“Then I’l brag on my new sister-in-law instead. She’s a looker.”

Tracker snatched the smoke from Shadow’s hand, took a deep drag. The smoke burned his throat and lungs. He inhaled deeper, burying

beneath the discomfort the need to punch his brother for admiring Ari.

“She looks just like Desi.”

“Yes, she does.” But somehow a touch softer. A touch more delicate.