The Bounty Page 8

  Goddammit all to hell!

  The sheriff was already behind the desk although it was just past dawn. He looked up from his cup of coffee as Tyler entered.

  “Calhoun. Good to see you. I was hoping you’d collect your prisoner before mine woke up.”

  Tyler’s brow furrowed as his frown deepened. “Your prisoner?”

  “A local. Drunk as a skunk. I had to throw him in there last night after he passed out in the middle of the street.”

  Tyler took a deep breath. He hadn’t honestly expected anybody else to be put in the cell with her. He nodded curtly to the sheriff. Son of a bitch.

  “Let’s get her then.”

  As the sheriff was opening the door, a woman’s cry assaulted their ears. A fierce, cold fury swept through Tyler as he pushed past the sheriff. The local drunk had his hands on Nicky’s body, pushing her down on the bed. She was kicking and clawing with all her might. Tyler’s blood thundered through his head as he saw Nicky struggling. All his common sense and training flew out the window on a breeze. All that mattered was helping her.

  “The keys!” Tyler bellowed as he grabbed them out of the sheriff’s hands. He twisted the key in the lock and rushed in, yanking the man off Nicky with the force of two men.

  He held the man by the collar, shaking him like a rag doll. “Didn’t your mama ever teach you not to touch a lady without her say-so?” he snarled.

  The unshaven, slobbering fool actually burst out crying, begging Tyler to let him go. He hadn’t meant any harm—thought she was one of the saloon girls or something so what’s the big deal? She was wearing britches, for Pete’s sake.

  “Tyler?” came Nicky’s voice. His Christian name sounded strange coming from her lips.

  Tyler’s gaze snapped to hers as she spoke his name for the first time. Not “Calhoun” or “bounty hunter”—no sneer, no sarcasm, no anger, and no censure. Like a magic wand, her voice broke the spell of fury that had taken hold of Tyler. He dropped the man unceremoniously on the floor as he turned to her, easing his features. She was sitting on the bed, dirty, disheveled, and obviously badly scared.

  “Are you okay?” Her green eyes almost looked worried.

  He wanted to laugh at her question. Was he okay? Sure, he was fine. How could she ask if he was okay when it was she who had nearly been raped? Now his inner voice was laughing like a lunatic. Tyler was not only worried about his prisoner, but he felt guilty for what happened to her. Holy hell.

  He held out his hand to her. She ignored it and rose from the stinking mattress with as much dignity as she could muster. He followed her out of the cell, clenching and unclenching his hands. The sheriff shut the door behind them, swiftly turning the key in the lock. He looked at Nicky with embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry he done that, miss. If I knew he was awake, I could’ve taken you out of there before he…well, before he attacked you.” His apology was strained.

  Nicky didn’t speak.

  “Thanks for your hospitality, sheriff,” said Tyler in clipped tones.

  He steered Nicky out of the building into the new morning sunlight. She squinted, then pulled her elbow out of Tyler’s grasp.

  “Where are we going?” she asked tightly.

  “The hotel. I thought you might want to clean up and change.” As he spoke, he kept his eyes facing forward, not daring to look at her. He was having a hard time not going back in there to beat the shit out of the bastard that dared to touch her.

  “I would have preferred to sleep in a bed that didn’t crawl with bugs and smell of a hundred drunken men.”

  Tyler did not comment—he knew she was right. She twitched her nose then leaned toward him and sniffed.

  Tyler realized he should’ve changed his clothes. Too late now.

  Oh shit.

  “Why do you smell like a whore?” she asked through clenched teeth.

  He decided to try distraction. “And how do you know what a whore smells like?”

  She stiffened her spine even more as she eyed him with murder in her eyes. “I’ve spent enough time in saloons over the last three years to know what a whore smells like, Calhoun. Cheap perfume and unwashed sluts are pretty distinctive. So, I’m going to ask you again, why do you smell like a whore?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t, bounty hunter. But I think it would about make me mindless with rage if I found out you were poking some whore while I sat in that putrid jail cell last night,” she ground out, her face flushed with anger.

  Before he could tell her it was none of her business, he opened his mouth and told her the truth.

  “Even though it’s none of your business, I didn’t poke anybody last night, Malloy. Nice language by the way. That’s not to say it wasn’t offered to me. Not every woman thinks I’m hell’s spawn.”

  She stared into his eyes for a full minute before she apparently decided he was telling the truth. “Pity for those women then. They don’t know what they’re lusting after. I’m surprised you don’t have a forked tongue and a tail.”

  His mouth turned into a sardonic grin. “You know what my tongue feels like, don’t you? It’s not forked at all. And I’d be happy to show you my tail.”

  Nicky flushed. “Bastard. Why don’t you go back and find that whore and leave me alone?”

  She turned and stomped to the hotel with Tyler right on her heels. She didn’t notice the men in town staring at her as she walked past them. Tyler did. Even dirty and rumpled, she was a sight to see in her jeans. He sent fierce, quelling looks at them. Like a jealous dog guarding his bitch. He had to stop himself from punching two of them.

  ———

  Nicky had a lukewarm sponge bath and put on fresh clothes. The hotel room had a nice, tall screen to give her privacy. What she really wanted was a real bath, but there wasn’t time according to Calhoun. At least he was letting her have this small luxury.

  She reached into her saddlebags, finding her brush. She combed her hair briskly. Stupid hair. It was already growing. It grew like garden weeds, and she had to cut it once every two weeks. She had been due for a cut before Tyler caught her, and now it was getting close to touching her shoulders. She didn’t have anything to secure it, so she gathered it up into her hat instead.

  When she stepped out from behind the screen, she felt like a different person. Tyler stood with his back to her. He watched out the window, silhouetted against the bright morning light streaming in. A lump formed in her throat for the way Tyler had pulled that lecherous drunk off her. He had been so angry at that drunken fool, she could almost believe he cared. In his eyes, she swore she saw concern and regret.

  Nonsense. All he cared about was the reward money. Being shackled must have rattled her brain. She reminded herself that he’d at least spent some time with a whore last night while she was sleeping with bugs and filth.

  Rat bastard.

  “Ready,” she announced.

  Tyler still would not meet her eyes as he turned, swinging his saddlebags up on his wide shoulder.

  “Calhoun?”

  “What?”

  “Look at me.”

  He raised his eyes to hers and she saw a flash of guilt in their depths. Good, she hoped he was feeling it, too. “I hope that when I get to Wyoming they string me up right away because I’ll take my own life if I have to spend another night in jail.”

  He didn’t respond, but Nicky was satisfied to see him twitch as though she had poked him with something. She was telling him the truth about jail, and fully intended to escape before he could put her in another one of those nasty little rooms. That was a promise she intended to keep.

  ———

  Tyler should have expected it, but he didn’t. They had stopped for the night in an abandoned farmhouse. He had just brought in wood to feed the fire in the old cookstove so they could have a hot meal. That’s when it happened.

  He heard the wind whistle sharply and knew something was coming at his head. He dropped the wood and feinted left int
o a crouch, and his shoulder took the brunt of the hit. He sprang to his feet and there she was. Like a goddess of old. Her hair was in a flaming halo around her head, the block of wood in her hand like a sword. Nicky was ready to battle him. Tyler respected that.

  She swung again, but he was ready this time. He stopped her in mid-swing and ripped the wood from her hands. She squeaked in protest when he yanked her against him so her behind was flush against his groin.

  Immediately his body reacted and rose like the good soldier it was. Her indrawn breath was the only indication she felt his arousal, as if she couldn’t feel the iron bar in his britches.

  “That wasn’t very nice, Nicole,” he breathed into her ear.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Tut, tut, you’ve got a mouth like a muleskinner.”

  She grunted and tried to break free, and that just pressed her more firmly against him. He hissed as the cleft of her ass cradled his rock-hard cock.

  “Let me go.”

  “Not yet. We need to get a few more ground rules here.”

  She pulled against him again. “Let me go.”

  His hand snaked around her waist and slid downward toward her core.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure you’re not a man. I could swear there’s a pair of balls down here somewhere.”

  As his fingers crept down inside her pants, she continued to struggle, but not with any real effort. She sucked in a breath when he finally settled on her pussy. She was hot. Not only hot, but damp.

  Hell, he had all he could do not to rip off the jeans and feel that heat firsthand. She moved against him, rubbing, feeling. He heard her moan low and deep in her throat. She was so damn wet and so damn hot.

  Tyler started moving himself up and down against her even as his hand rubbed her. She picked up his rhythm and together they built up a pace designed to bring them both pleasure.

  “Oh God, what are you doing to me?” she asked brokenly.

  “Fly with it, Nicole. Fly.”

  She apparently understood well enough. As his balls tightened signaling his release, she jerked against him and moaned again, this one longer and harder. The sound was enough to push him over the edge. He clenched her against him as the waves of orgasm rolled through him.

  The quiet was only broken by their breathing. Hers was short and choppy. His sounded like a steam engine.

  What the hell had he just done?

  Tyler pulled his hand out from inside her pants and stepped back. Before he could stop himself, he tasted her essence from his fingers. His body was screaming at him to throw her down on that dusty old straw mattress in the corner and fuck her until neither one of them could move.

  His head was kicking his own ass for touching her. Again. Only this time it was worse. He knew what she felt like, sounded like, hell, even what she tasted like.

  He should have screwed that whore back in Clayton. Now all he could think about was getting his prisoner naked. He quickly cuffed her to the chair and backed off like he was facing a grizzly.

  Tyler practically ran outside with a bucket swinging from his hand looking for water. The same hand that smelled and tasted like Nicky’s passion. He didn’t give a shit what she thought of him, as long as she stayed put while he cleared his head.

  He listened for water and heard a stream nearby. As he stomped toward it, he told himself he wasn’t going to touch her again. No siree. No more touching.

  ———

  Nicky was trembling. For the first time in a long time, her body felt alive. Her blood was flowing like a strong river and her head felt clear.

  She hadn’t expected it. The pleasure, the yearning or the hunger. She was sitting in the chair, trying to slow her heart rate down. Trying to yank her damn head out of the clouds.

  Nicky knew he had found his own pleasure. She heard the guttural cry that escaped from his throat and had felt his hard cock up against her ass. Lord, the man was big…and he was as hard as an iron bar. That meant he was not unaffected either. Something she could use to her advantage if she was smart. She could take as many opportunities as possible to rub against him, to touch him. A man itching to get into a bed was a man liable to make mistakes. A mistake could afford her the opportunity to escape.

  Now if only she could stop trembling.

  Chapter Nine

  They fell into a pattern over the next few days, following a routine for everything. They were a regular two-man platoon. It was driving Nicky insane like an itch she couldn’t scratch. She couldn’t get close enough to him to brush him, even with her fingertips. He kept his distance as if there was two foot of wall between them.

  To top it all off, she was bored silly. He didn’t talk, didn’t have a deck of cards, and he wouldn’t let her read either. She had to do more than sit on a horse or on the cold ground watching Tyler perform every task efficiently. She was used to being busy, not sitting on her ass and doing nothing.

  They had just stopped to make camp for the night, and Tyler was planning to snare a rabbit for dinner.

  “Let me come with you. I’m tired of just sitting around. I can help.”

  “Yeah, you’ll probably help me right out of my pistols and into the ground six feet under,” he said, lips twisted.

  “I don’t need your pistol to catch a rabbit.”

  “Look, Nicky, just let it go, would you?”

  “No, I can’t. I’m going crazy doing nothing.”

  He rolled his eyes and put his hands on his slim hips. Damn the man for looking so good. Her body heated just looking at him.

  “Then go crazy. I’m not going to let you roam around on your own. Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?”

  “You don’t care if I’m crazy or not, I know. Six thousand dollars goes a long way to salve a conscience, doesn’t it?”

  “Jesus Christ, Malloy. Give it a rest.”

  He went over to his horse and pulled a rope from his saddlebags. She watched him, frustrated and angry, and although she tried to ignore it, excited by their argument. It was exhilarating. It was something other than sitting on her ass. Well, bullying was definitely not the tactic to use with him. Time to switch back to female mode.

  “Please?”

  The “please” must have given him pause. He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. She was hopeful. “You’re not going with me, Nicole.” Tyler’s voice was firm. “So stay here and I’ll do it.”

  Well, she wasn’t hopeful anymore. He crouched down to check her shackles again, then he rose and walked away with his usual feline grace.

  “Calhoun,” Nicky called to his retreating back as he ambled into the trees in the twilight. “Thanks so much for your consideration.” Her sarcasm wasn’t satisfying as Tyler calmly ignored her.

  “What is it with men?” she wondered aloud. “Is there one on God’s green earth that will treat a woman as more than a piece of property? I can snare a rabbit better than he can, any day.”

  She kicked at the dust with the toe of one boot, disgusted with the situation and her helplessness. He had twisted up the chains again, and wrapped them around her ankles so that she was practically hog-tied, and could hardly even straighten up to walk. Pushing aside her fear of being chained was getting easier each day, although her nightmares continued on a regular basis.

  The way Calhoun had shackled her now, even if she could reach her horse, she couldn’t ride, which was exactly the reason why he did it. Her pride smarted from the way he treated her as a common criminal. How was she supposed to escape when she couldn’t even get up to pee?

  “Goddamn bounty hunter,” she shouted. As she watched his back disappear from view completely, she sighed long and hard. “Goddamn beautiful bounty hunter.”

  Since the incident in the farm house, her body had seemed to come alive. To become aware of the world, aware of Tyler. Her nipples hardened and her pussy grew damp when she saw him washing shirtless. Lord God, that man was incredible. And apparently they had some deep connection now.
A physical connection that went beyond what her brain and her heart told her to do.

  As she struggled against her body’s betrayal, a dirty hand clamped over her mouth.

  “Gotcha, Jesse,” came the warm, fetid breath on her cheek. “Thought I wouldn’t catch up to yore fancy bounty hunter, didja? Thought he was so smart leaving all kinda tracks to follow. I found ya anyway, didn’t I?”

  Son of a bitch! Nate!

  Nicky bit down hard on one filthy digit.

  “Shitfire!” Nate choked back a yelp. “I’ll get ya for that, ya little bitch,” he exclaimed in a heated whisper.

  As Nicky opened her mouth to yell for Tyler, Nate backhanded her so hard her head whipped around and she saw stars dancing in front of her eyes. The coppery taste of her blood coated her tongue. The next thing she knew a dirty rag was stuffed in her mouth, and another wound around her head. She still struggled as best she could, like an undulating snake trying to escape Nate’s grasp.

  “Help me get her back to the horses.”

  “Let’s take hers,” Rusty suggested.

  “No, he hobbled ‘em, it’d take too much time. Just cover me while I carry her. I plan on riding double with her.” Nate chuckled thickly.

  As the two men made their way back to their mounts with a struggling Nicky, she silently called Tyler with her mind.

  Calhoun! Help me! Where the hell are you when I need you?

  ———

  The rabbit was almost in the snare when Nicky’s voice intruded in his thoughts. Tyler pushed it away, but it kept returning. The hackles on the back of his neck rose, and he whirled with a pistol drawn, but saw nothing. He berated himself for jumping at shadows, and when he turned back the rabbit was gone.

  “Damn, even when she’s not here, she’s ruining my life.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck.