Boyett-Compo, Charlotte - WesternWind 01 - Wynd River (5 page)

“That’s a very handy trick, Cyn,” she said, grinning. “No need to spend money on fashion.”

“You imagine it in your mind and I’ll provide it, wench,” he said, pushing up the tree. Once more he

waved his hand and a new pair of black leather britches and black silk shirt covered his muscular body.

“You want undies?” he asked, blushing. “If you do, just think what they look like and…”

“No I’m getting used to the feel of my britches, but I do need a hat,” she suggested, and in the blink of

an eye, a jaunty suede hat was perched atop her head.

“Wanna a bandana too?” he asked, then provided a bright red paisley print that hung gently around her

neck.

“You are wicked! By any chance do you have the ability to conjure up breakfast for us?” she asked

hopefully.

He smiled and looked ten years younger. “Not in any way you’d want to eat it,” he replied. He nodded

toward his saddlebags. “There is some hardtack and jerky in there, if you want it.”

She made a face. “No, thanks. I’d like to keep my teeth as long as I can.” She smiled broadly.

“They are very worthy teeth, wench,” he said.

“The better to bite you with, Reaper,” she replied in a harsh tone.

Snorting at her answer, he walked over to his saddle and lifted it up along with the thick saddle blanket.

“Briscoe isn’t too far away. We can get something to eat there,” he said, carrying the saddle to his horse.

Aingeal stood back as he swung the saddle into place and began working and tightening the cinches. She

reached up to pat the horse’s head. “What’s his name?”

“Storm,” he said as he went back for his saddlebags and bedroll. “I found him down in a gully during a

downpour. His hoof was caught between some rocks. If I hadn’t come by, he’d most likely have

drowned. I set him free and he followed me home.”

“Storm,” she said, and nuzzled her forehead against the stallion’s. “It fits him.”

“He’s got a devilish temper,” Cynyr said. He slung the saddlebags over the horse’s back then rolled the

canvas up and tied it with two leather thongs atop the saddlebags.

The saddle in place, the Reaper told Aingeal to climb up. “You’ll be more comfortable sitting in front of

me than behind,” he said as he cupped his hands for her to step up.

“Aye, and you can fondle me the better, huh?” she said, rolling her eyes. She put her foot in the valley of

his palms and swung her leg over the beast’s back.

“Well, that hadn’t occurred to me, wench,” he said as he untied his mount’s reins from a small sapling.

He climbed up behind her. “But now that you mention it…”

His hands went to her delightful mounds and he molded them gently, running his thumbs over the erect

peaks. “Sweet,” he said, before pulling on Storm’s reins and giving the stallion a light kick.

“I guess I don’t have to worry about my breasts getting cold,” she said with a sigh.

Briscoe was a much larger town than Dyersville. It boasted two eating places, two saloons, two

boarding houses and two mercantile stores. It seemed to Aingeal that it had two of just about everything.

“Rival competing families,” Cynyr told her. “Makes for interesting bargaining among the locals.”

“You set a price and I’ll beat it type thing?” she queried.

“That’s the way of it.”

Cynyr stopped in front of O’Hare’s Eatery and dismounted. He tied Storm to the hitching post then

came back to hold his hands up for Aingeal.

“Well, aren’t you the gentleman?” she asked as she swung her leg over the horse’s neck and braced her

hands on the Reaper’s shoulders. She leaned into him and slid her body down his as he lowered her to

the ground.

“Behave, wench,” he said, but his tone suggested he enjoyed her tactic.

“I’m so much better when I’m bad,” she whispered, gazing up at him through her long, spiky eyelashes.

He couldn’t resist swatting her derriere and that surprised the hell out of him. As unaccustomed as he

was to interacting with women, it seemed altogether too natural to put his hand playfully to her small

rump. He also found it gave him a funny feeling deep inside his chest and—to some extent—that

concerned him. This little woman was fast becoming a temptation he both enjoyed and feared.

“Are you going to stand there all day looking like you could gobble me up or are we going to find me

some decent food?” Aingeal inquired, one perfectly shaped brow lifted in challenge.

The Reaper’s lips twitched. “I offered you hardtack and biscuits, wench. You declined.”

“Humpf,” she said, and pushed past him, stepping up on the boardwalk and heading straight for

O’Hare’s Eatery.

Cynyr shook his head and strolled after her, reaching around her to open the café’s door for her to

enter. He almost laughed at her grunt of surprise.

There were ten tables scattered about the pleasant room. Green and white checked tablecloths were

adorned with little white clay pots filled with an overflowing growth of shamrocks. White linen napkins

and polished flatware made the tables look homey and welcoming.

“Top of the morn to ya!” a portly waitress greeted them with a beguiling smile before she got a good

look at the tall man following the petite woman into the room. As soon as he swept off his hat, the

woman’s eyes widened and she stopped dead still in her tracks, drawing in a quick, fearful breath.

“He’s a handsome brute, isn’t he?” Aingeal asked the woman. Her bright smile drew the woman’s

tremulous gaze to her. “His bite isn’t nearly as rough as his bark, though.”

“How would you know?” he whispered to her as he put his palm on her back and escorted her to a

table at the far end of the room.

“Can I get you some coffee?” the woman asked nervously, bunching the immaculate white apron she

wore in her hands.

“The hotter, the better, if you please,” Aingeal replied. She smiled up at the Reaper when he pulled out

her chair. “Thank you, Cynyr.”

“My pleasure, Aingeal,” he returned, and draped his hat on a coat peg behind him. He took her hat from

her and placed it alongside his own.

The waitress stood where she was, watching the black-clad bounty hunter take a seat so that his back

was not to the room. She glanced down at the six-shooter strapped to his hip, but it was the silver handle

on his other hip that drained the color from her face.

Cynyr looked at the woman. “Coffee?” he prodded, his eyes locked on the woman’s.

Katy O’Hare stared into those dark amber depths and felt as though she was falling through layers of

ice. The blue tribal tattoo fanning out from his right eye was one with which she was familiar and it made

her blood run cold. It was all she could do to turn away from his frigid stare and scurry to the kitchen for

the coffee.

“Stop intimidating the poor thing or we’ll be here ‘til doomsday getting our food,” Aingeal chastised him.

“She’s Gaelach,” he said as though that accounted for the woman’s jitteriness.

“Now what were the odds of finding a Gaelach woman in a place called O’Hare’s?” Aingeal asked,

opening out her napkin and placing it in her lap.

Cynyr didn’t answer. He tipped his chair back and folded his arms over his broad chest. Though there

were no other patrons in the eatery, he seemed to be constantly scanning the room.

“So, what does it mean?” Aingeal asked.

His gaze shifted to her. “What does what mean?”

She was sitting to his left—away from his gun hand. “The tattoo.”

He reached up to finger the design. “It’s a raven, the symbol of Morrigunia, the Triune Goddess of Life,

Death and War. It signifies I am one of Hers.”

The waitress came to the table carrying two white china cups and a pot of coffee on a silver tray. She

didn’t glance at the Reaper, but put the tray down and poured first Aingeal’s then Cynyr’s coffee.

“Go raimh maith agat,”the Reaper said to her.

Katy O’Hare ducked her head.
“Tá failte romhat
,
mo tiarna,”
she replied in the old language. She

stood with her eyes downcast, waiting for the Reaper to order.

Cynyr ordered a platter of scrambled eggs, a bowl of fried potatoes, a rasher of bacon, toast and jam

then asked if there was any fresh fruit.

“We got peaches,
mo tiarna
,” she told him.

“That’ll do, Katy,” he said, and pretended he did not see the waitress flinch when he used her name.

The woman bobbed a curtsey then hurried off, her hands once more wrapped in the safety of her apron.

“What did you say to her?” Aingeal asked. She had her elbow on the table, her chin propped in her

hand as she sipped her coffee.

“I thanked her and she said I was welcome,” he explained.

“You called her by her name. Do you know her?”

He shook his head and took a sip of the hot brew. “I plucked it from her mind, wench, trying to make

her more comfortable around me, but I think I made matters worse.”

Aingeal shrugged. “People fear you, Cyn. You should be used to that.”

“I am.”

She studied him as he squinted against the waves of heat wafting up from his cup. His amber eyes were

narrowed, half-hidden by the longest, darkest lashes she’d ever seen on a man. He was by the far the

most handsome she’d ever encountered, with a rugged complexion that bespoke power and authority.

The finely chiseled planes of his face with high cheekbones, a strong chin with just a suggestion of a cleft,

lips that were sensually full, dark eyebrows with wicked peaks rising at the corners of his eyes, a straight,

manly nose and ears that sat close to his thick dark brown hair gave him the appearance of a god

stepped down from the heavens—and in a way, he was.

“You have the strangest thoughts, wench,” he said, casting a glance to her before looking down into his

coffee.

“Stop reading them then,” she warned, and leaned back to pour them both another cup of coffee. The

mouthwatering aroma of sizzling bacon and frying potatoes made her stomach growl and she giggled.

“You don’t need to read my mind to know I’m famished.”

He half-smiled at her. She had an uncanny way of bringing out the human side of him and that bothered

him. It was his inhuman side that held sway most of the time and he liked it that way. The inhuman side

kept his head firmly attached to his shoulders and evil walking a tightrope around him.

“Where is home?” Aingeal asked.

“A world in the Fuilghaoth Galaxy,” he said. “A long, long way from here.”

“I don’t know any worlds beyond my own,” she said with a sigh. “What is its name?”

“Peacúil.”

Aingeal frowned. “That sounds sinister.”

“It was a dark world, a place of deep shadows and rampaging evil.” He finished off his cup of coffee but

shook his head at her offer to pour more.

“How did you learn Gaelach?”

“The Gaelach and I have a common ancestry,” he replied. “Long ago, another of my kind crash landed

on this world. He taught the tribe the language all Reapers speak.”

“He too came from Peacúil?”

The Reaper shook his head. “He came from Rysalia, a world located in a distant galaxy from the one in

which I was born.”

Aingeal’s eyes showed her concern. “There are Reapers on a lot of other worlds?”

He looked her in the eye. “Wench, Reapers are made, not born. Even a Reaper’s offspring must have a

fledgling transmerged into him before he can have the full powers of his sire. The male child is born with a

parasite but in order for him to have all the abilities his sire has, he must have a fledgling given to him

when he reaches puberty.” He shrugged. “Otherwise, can you imagine what a mean little brat of a kid

could do with Reaper powers if he didn’t like his nanny?”

The waitress brought their food and quietly placed it before them. She stood with her head down,

awaiting the pleasure of the man sitting beside Aingeal.

“That will be all, Katy,” Cynyr said. “Thank you.”

She bobbed him a curtsey and backed away.

“Does it bother you that people fear you like that?” Aingeal asked as she ladled food onto their plates.

He shrugged. “Not especially so. At least they leave me the hell alone.”

Outside a rumble of thunder shook the building and Aingeal flinched. “Where did that come from?” she

asked. “The sky didn’t have a cloud in it when we came in here.”

“If you don’t like the weather on the plains, just wait a minute and it will change,” he told her.

Wind pushed against the eatery’s windows for a moment then rain began pelting the roof overhang. It

sounded as though it might be hailing.

“I don’t like bad weather,” Aingeal stated, glancing toward the windows where darkness had gathered.

“Lightning scares the juniper berries out of me.”

Cynyr half-smiled at her comment. “I’ll see about getting you a room here,” he said as he finished the last

of his eggs and stuffed a piece of bacon in his mouth.

Aingeal paused in taking a bite of toast. “Why?”

“You’ll be safer here than on the trail with me,” he replied. “You wouldn’t want to get speared by a bolt

of lightning.”

She put down the toast. “You aren’t going out in weather like this!”

“Why not?” he asked. “Lightning wouldn’t dare strike me, wench.” He crammed the last of the bacon

into his mouth. “And even if it did, it wouldn’t do that much damage.”

Aingeal thought of the rumors she’d heard whispered about his kind and asked if it was true only a

beheading could kill him.

“That, drowning or being burned to cinders,” he replied casually. He leaned back in his chair with his

coffee cup.