TheSurrenderofLacyMorgan (22 page)

He pulled his shirt off and hung it on the back of the
chair, all the time watching her, seeing her anger build. Then he sat and
pulled off his boots. “Take off your dress.”

She shook her head. “Not until you answer me.”

“Fine, I’ll fuck you while you’re still wearing it, but I
can’t guarantee it won’t get ripped.”

“Damn you.”

She gave him a female growl of frustration but started
unbuttoning the dress. Once she had it off, folded neatly and lying on the
bureau, she crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing them up and almost out
of the silk camisole she liked to wear, her taut dark nipples peeking through
the lace trim. “There, I took off the dress, now tell me what you did to those
two men.”

With deliberate movements, he rose out of the chair then
unfastened his pants. He shoved them and his drawers off his hips, freeing his
straining erection. He stepped out of them and stood with his legs braced
apart. “Come here.”

“No.” She took a step backward.

He advanced. “You’re going to have to trust me.”

“How can I trust you when you won’t answer me?” She
retreated as if they performed the intricate steps to a country reel.

He reached her on the next step and gripped her by the arms.
“Because you know what kind of man I am.”

“You’re a man. That’s enough reason not to trust you.” She
lowered her eyes and tried to wiggle away, but he held her firm.

With her arms trapped at her side and her pert nipples
pressed the silk and lace of her camisole against his naked chest, his need to
dominate her surged through him.

“Look at me, Lacy,” he ordered, letting his voice go dark
and insistent.

It took a moment, but finally she raised those deliciously
green eyes to meet his gaze. Her anger had dulled, but only slightly.

“You know what kind of man I am.”

Lowering his lips to claim hers, he slid his hands down her
back to untie and push down her silken drawers to her feet. Cupping her ass
cheeks in his hands, he nudged her legs apart with his knee and lifted her
until she was poised over the tip of his cock. It took all his willpower to
keep from surging deep inside her heat. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” she whispered against his lips.

“Hold on to me.”

With that command he lowered her, impaling her completely on
his turgid shaft. The gasp that escaped her thrilled him as much as the heat
that enveloped his throbbing length.

“That’s it, darlin’. Wrap yourself around me.”

He moaned as she clenched his shoulders with her hands and
entwined her legs around the back of his thighs. For several heartbeats he held
her steady, flexing deep inside her, watching her green eyes darken to the
color of fir trees in the mountains during winter.

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes. Please…” she begged, slipping her pink tongue out to
trace her lush bottom lip.

“Tell me.”

Every muscle in his arms, back, ass and thighs strained to
support her and yet keep from thrusting deeper. He wanted more than her sex,
more than her submission. He wanted her complete surrender. Nothing else would
do.

“I trust you, Quinn.”

Her admission broke the restraints on his control. Grasping
her thighs, he lifted her to the tip of his cock, then brought her back down
while he thrust forward to the hilt. Then he repeated the motion, her murmured
whimpers encouraging him to move deeper, faster.

He was happy to oblige.

With each thrust he moved forward until her back was pressed
against the wall. Braced eye-to-eye with him, passion danced in the depth of
her gaze. She slid her arms around his neck to twine her fingers in his hair,
then she did something she’d never done. She claimed his mouth with hers. First
she nipped at his bottom lip, then pulled it between hers, sending his brain
into a spiral. All he could do was ride the passion to completion.

He pistoned in and out of her sheath.

Harder.

Faster.

Deeper.

Then took command of the kiss. Savagely, he thrust his
tongue deep inside her hot mouth to taste her. With each thrust he came closer
to filling her with his seed, but he wanted her to find her release first.

Bracing her against the wall, he slipped one hand between
them and into her silken folds, finding the throbbing pebble of her sex. He
timed his thrusts to the rhythm of his fingers until her arms clutched him
closer, her legs tightened around his hips and he felt the tremors ripple
through her.

Wanting to hear her cries of completion, he tore his mouth
from hers. “That’s it, darlin’. Come for me.”

“Oh God, Quinn!”

A second spasm shook her and she keened her climax.

“Damn, yes!” He gripped her beneath her thighs, lifted her
halfway off, then brought her down to grip him completely once more. Pushing
her into the hard planks of the wall, he held her fast, his face buried against
her shoulder as he shot his seed deep inside her womb.

It took several minutes, but finally sanity returned and he
dragged in a shuddering breath. He leaned back enough to see her face. Lips
parted, face flushed with spent passion, tendrils of hair curled around her
face, she had the look of a well-loved woman—one who had put her body and trust
in his hands.

The need to claim more filled him. He crushed her lips
beneath his and gripped her by the thighs once more. Still buried deep inside
her, he carried her to the bed. The kiss continued, becoming more. He let it
soften and turn seductive as he lifted her from him and eased her onto the
mattress. Slowly he backed off, letting their lips cling for a breath longer,
then climbed in beside her, drawing her into his side so her head rested on his
shoulder.

“You’re a treasure,” he said, rubbing his hand down her arm.

“Because I respond like that to you? It only makes me my
mother’s daughter. Nothing special.”

He slipped his hand beneath her chin and lifted until he
could see her eyes. “When I saw Pete’s hand on you, I wanted to kill him at
that moment. Then when he talked about kissing you, I knew he was a dead man.
Two things kept me from putting a bullet between his eyes.”

“Two things?”

“Cap taught us to always fit the punishment to the crime.
Those two drunks scared you but didn’t harm you.”

“And the other reason?”

“You would’ve thought it was your fault, not theirs.”

“It would’ve been. You heard what they said. They’d
witnessed me sitting on your lap in the café, kissing you like some whore.”

“Hush.” He stopped her words with a finger on her lips. He
didn’t want to hear anyone call her that name, especially not her. “Listen to
me. You kissing me didn’t force Pete to grab you and Duffy to dishonor you.
They chose to do that. They made a poor decision and had to pay for it. You’re
not a whore and I don’t want to hear you say that again. Understand?”

It took a moment, but she gave him a simple nod.

With that nod, something hard and tight deep inside him
loosened. Something he wasn’t ready to examine just yet.

“Good.” He tucked her head back down against his chest.

“So, where are Pete and Duffy?” she asked, her breath
whispering across the hairs on his chest.

“Cooling their heels in the town jail. I have the sheriff’s
promise to keep them there for forty-eight hours. Long enough for us to get out
of town without them bothering you again.”

“Thank you.”

He stroked his hand over her arm. “Had I known they would’ve
attacked you, I wouldn’t have had you sitting on my lap like that.”

“Yes, you would’ve. You like making me do things I don’t
feel comfortable doing. Pushing my boundaries.”

“Only because you respond so readily to them.”

“I’ve had other men try to control me.”

“Devil?”

“Him and his number-one man, Santos.”

The way she spit out the other man’s name set his danger
sense on edge. “Did this Santos leave those scars on your back?” If he did, he
was a dead man.

“No, Devil did that.” She let her hand trail over his
stomach then up his chest. “Before you and Dakota, Santos was the only man I’d
let fuck me.”

He was definitely dead.

“It was my own fault. I was lonely. He didn’t act like Devil
or the others. He actually bathed.”

He snorted at that. “Honey, even dogs will jump into water
to kill fleas.”

She laughed, the sound easing some of the tension in him.
“Not the dogs in Devil’s valley.”

A minute passed. Then another.

Was she asleep?

“How did he try to control you?”

“Besides leaving me completely unfulfilled? He was sneaky. I
thought I was in love and he knew that. He wanted me to prove my love by going
on the Cheyenne raid. Then afterwards, when he laughed at how naïve I was, I
knew I’d meant nothing to him and he’d used me for his own purposes.”

Guilt stabbed through Quinn. Wasn’t he doing the same thing?
Dragging her back to Devil, using her body’s responses to force her to obey him
and help them capture the gang and recover the money?

Reaching across him, Lacy turned his right hand over and
traced her fingers over the scar bisecting it. “How did you and Dakota come to
have identical scars in identical places?”

He recognized her need to change the subject, but damn did
the woman have to focus in on his darkest secret? And how much did he tell her
about the night that forever tied his fate to Dakota’s?

Yet her soft fingers caressing the ridge of scar tissue held
the promise of acceptance no matter how bad the tale.

“Remember the story I told you at the river of how Dakota
came to live with Cap and me?”

With a shift of her head on his chest, she raised her gaze
to meet his. Compassion and sadness turned her eyes an almost emerald color in
the lamplight.

“Yes. He’d been almost carved in half and nearly dead.”

Bile rose in his throat at the memory. He swallowed hard,
fighting back the anger that surged inside him. It was in the past. And
besides, he and Dakota had prevented it ever happening again.

“Quinn?”

“We weren’t sure he’d survive, but thanks to Juanita’s
nursing skills and Dakota’s stubbornness, he was up on a horse in a month,
hell-bent on revenge.”

“On his grandfather? But wasn’t he just a boy?”

“Yep. He wanted to go after the son-of-a-bitch the first day
out of bed. Scared poor Juanita half to death.”

“Juanita is Cap’s wife?”

“Sort of like a mother to us.”

“Ah. So what happened?”

“The only way I could think to keep him from doing anything
too soon was to promise to go with him once he was all healed. We spent weeks
making plans. And frankly after seeing what the old man did to Dakota, I wanted
nothing better than to make him pay too.”

The room’s dim light shifted and he drifted back to that
night, creeping through the countryside, heart pounding with fear in his ears.

“His grandfather was a former Confederate soldier who
wandered from town to town, never really staying too long in any one place. Cap
said he was the kind who found trouble wherever he went. We got word he’d been
seen in town. So we waited until Cap and Juanita had gone to bed and the
cowhands would be changing watch over the herd, then we snuck out Dakota’s
window and headed for the old man’s campsite.”

The drunk man had shouted his surprise when he realized his
grandson hadn’t died from the thrashing and torture three months earlier. Then
he’d seen the knife in Dakota’s hand and the gun in Quinn’s.

Looking down at Lacy, who studied him closely, he decided to
leave out the more gory details of the story.

“When we were done, we dragged him into a gully and left him
for the coyotes and buzzards.”

She nodded. “And the scars?”

“The whole time we were planning our revenge on his
grandfather, Dakota told me stories about living with his mother’s family. When
the men were going on a raid of another tribe or against the army, they’d slash
their hands and mix their blood, becoming blood brothers, sworn to always watch
the other’s back in a fight.”

“So you and Dakota aren’t just adopted brothers…”

“We’re closer. We’re blood brothers.”

“And did Cap ever learn what you two did that night?” she
asked, no condemnation in her voice.

“He knew. We confessed, expecting him to hang us for our
crime. But that was the first time he told us punishment should fit the crime.
Dakota never would’ve gotten justice in the white man’s courts. Better to deal
with it on our own.”

“Smart man, your father.” She kissed his palm. With a yawn
she snuggled in beside him. “Thank you for sharing your secret.”

After a few minutes, he let his hand slide down Lacy’s back
and pulled her in tighter. He listened to her breathing become soft and even in
sleep, and found himself relaxing too.

When had he become so comfortable with her by his side? All
the women he’d had over the years, none had spent the entire night with him
unless he or Dakota were buried deep inside them working their bodies to come
one after another.

With Lacy it was different.

Holding her like this filled something inside him, something
he hadn’t known was missing. He’d delighted in her happiness over the new
dress. Talking with her like tonight at the café seemed natural to him. Hell,
he’d just trusted her with his darkest secret.

Whether he wanted her to or not, she’d managed to become
important to him. And wasn’t that a kicker? Because what was he going to do
with her when this was all over? Even if she wasn’t involved with Cap’s death
and the other two murders, she still had to answer for helping in the bank
robbery.

What kind of punishment would fit her crime?

* * * * *

“Damn, bitch, you’re as loose as the valley walls.”

Devil gripped the whore’s ass tighter with one hand as he
pounded into her from behind. He grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the table
beside him and took a slug. It burned its way down his throat. Damn if he
didn’t feel more from the whiskey than he did from his prick these days.