Marshal of Hel Dorado (5 page)

 
    
She smelled of sunshine, horses and
something distinctly feminine, without the overwhelming lemon verbena favored
by the town girls or the eucalyptus and horse lineament that ranch women often
reminded him of. The feminine scent was sweet cakes and fresh baked bread
rolled into one.

 
    
“This isn’t the most comfortable way to
sleep.” The low hushed response prickled with irritation and just the barest
hint of entitlement.

 
    
“It’s the best we can do for now, unless
you think sleeping at the end of a noose is more to your liking.”

 
    
“Could you at least move your gun?” The
complaint was more plaintive than vitriolic. “It keeps jabbing me in the back.”

 
    
He was glad for the darkness, for it shielded
the heat that ruddied his face. That wasn’t his gun. He shifted in the saddle,
easing her forward and then back so her bottom nestled on his opposite thigh.
She let out a sigh of relief, her body softening and settling against him. The
new position teased him with even more of her scent, but kept that sweet bottom
from rubbing on his arousal.

 
    
He was male and she was definitely
attractive, but she was a thief. He tried to tell his body that, but it didn’t
care. It was more interested in the soft curves, sweet fresh scent and the
little soft sighs she kept making.

 
    
“Better?” It went against his nature to
ask, but he liked the sound of her voice.

 
    
“Yes. Thank you.”

 
    
“If you don’t want to sleep. You could
answer some questions.” Where the hell had that come from? He’d just wanted her
to go to sleep so he could stop tormenting himself and now he wanted to add to
his own tension.

 
    
Corona nickered and he forced his legs to
relax. He didn’t need to accidentally urge the mare into a faster speed. The
loping walk kept rubbing his prisoner against him as it was.

 
    
She was silent for so long, he wondered if
she had fallen asleep. They were leaving the main trailhead, Corona picking her
way across the rocks to the downward track that wound through the hills. He
knew the moment they crossed onto Kane land.

 
    
He always did.

 
    
The pressure on his chest lightened, his
lungs expanded and even the air tasted sweeter.

 
    
He took a deep lungful, but it wasn’t just
Kane cedar and sage that teased him, but the rich scent of summer raspberries.

 
    
“It would depend on the question.” She
wasn’t going to make this easy for him. Oddly, that pleased him more than
cooperation. He liked the independent fire that blazed in her eyes, the warning
snap in her gaze and the temper that sparked when Ryker and his boys burst into
the Marshal’s office. He’d watched her watching them.

 
    
It hadn’t been fear clenching her fists.

 
    
His little redhead was a fighter.

 
    
“Let’s start with something simple. What’s
your name?” He knew, of course, Cob mentioned it. But he still wanted her to
tell him.

 
    
It might have been his imagination, but a
measure of the stiffness in her body relaxed.

 
    
“Scarlett.”

 
    
“Appropriate.”

 
    
“It’s a name.” A little shrug.

 
    
“You don’t like it?”

 
    
“A name is a gift, a promise of what you
must live up to or live down. It can be a test or a curse, a challenge or a
blessing.”

 
    
“So is yours a blessing or a curse?”

 
    
“I don’t know.” A quiet note, barely heard,
but filled with inordinate sadness teased at the lonely syllables.

 
    
“What is your family name, Scarlett?”

 
    
“I don’t have one.”

 
    
“Everyone has one.”

 
    
“Maybe most of the people you know have
one, but that doesn’t mean everyone does.

 
    
There are more people in the world than
there are in Dorado.”

 
    
He laughed at the contrary note.

 
    
“Do I get to ask questions?”

 
    
Sam considered the request, keeping both
hands on the reins even as he debated dropping one to lay against her thigh. He
wouldn’t normally ride two handed, but he wanted to keep her boxed in, as much
for her safety as security. It would be harder for her to slip sidewise if she
bumped against his biceps when Corona moved up hills and down.

 
    
It had absolutely nothing to do with the
sensation of soft, full breasts rubbing against him.

 
    
Nothing.

 
    
He cleared his throat.

 
    
“I won’t promise to answer them. But I
figure we can trade, one for one.”

 
    
“Who is Molly?”

 
    
Pain squeezed his heart.

 
    
“My ma.” He said after pulling the reins
tight on his emotions. It didn’t usually trouble him to talk about her, but the
intimacy of Scarlett’s body against his, the blanket of the night and the
breathy, hushed whisper of his voice spoke of trading secrets.

 
    
“Oh. She won’t think it odd that you’re
bringing a woman home tied to your saddle?”

 
    
There was no mistaking the teasing note
that slipped into her voice. He smiled. His mother might very well have had a
problem with it, particularly if she could see into Sam’s thoughts. He found he
liked the idea of Scarlett tied up and he wondered about tying her down, but
the uncomfortable arousal swelled to nearly unbearable.

 
    
“She might.” Honesty might encourage the
same from her. “But she passed nearly nineteen years ago, God rest her soul.”
She died in the labor bed, giving birth to Kid. His brother had a name, but no
one used it. He’d been Kid to his father for months after Molly’s passing, the
grieving Jebediah too preoccupied to name the boy until Cob took him in line.

 
    
“I’m sorry.” Scarlett’s voice was a whisper
of compassion, a soothing salve to the injured soul.

 
    
“It was a long time ago.” Barely six, it
was a struggle for Sam to remember his mother.

 
    
The Flying K had been Molly’s for all of
his life, a home where his father still addressed what his mother would have
wanted or tolerated as though she were still with him.

 
    
Sometimes, in the deep of winter, when the
hard northern winds howled down from the plains, Sam thought he was right.

 
    
He cleared his throat. “And your parents?
Where are they?”

 
    
“My folk passed when I was a baby. I don’t remember
them.” The barest pause, the hiccup of dishonesty layered among the truth.

 
    
Sam frowned. “Then who raised you?”

 
    
“It’s my turn.” She bucked against him, the
faintest of shrugs slapping at his chest. Her hair drifted along his neck, the
soft, sweet tangle clinging to him, tickling.

 
    
“So it is.” He could be agreeable, but he’d
not forget his question. She chortled at his acquiescence. A simple, gleeful
little chortle that she probably would have punctuated with clapping hands if
they hadn’t been secured to the pommel.

 
    
“What’s it like to be a Marshal?”

 
    
It was as unexpected as it was a difficult
question. Sam frowned into the darkness, judging their position by the stars
overhead and the flattening landscape. Kane land nestled amongst the hills,
with a plethora of ponds, shallow creeks and a runoff that swelled every
spring, bringing water out to the parched areas. Where there were springs, his
father had dug wells. They were running parallel to the runoff, a bare trickle
of water skipping over the rock bottom. They would turn east where the runoff
met fresh water, but it would be a good place to break and let her stretch her
legs.

 
    
“Marshal?” Her soft voice pulled him back
to the present.

 
    
“Sam.” He corrected her absently, inviting
even more familiarity into the already increasingly difficult situation. But he
really wanted to hear that breathy little voice whisper his name.

 
    
Cry out his name.

 
    
Scream his name.

 
    
He cleared his throat. “Please call me
Sam.”

 
    
“Okay.” Apparently she was just as
bewildered by his sudden deviation as he was. Good.

 
    
“Sam?”

 
    
Yes, it sounded every bit as sweet as he’d
thought it would.

 
    
“Sam?” She repeated when he still said
nothing, twisting in the saddle to look back at him in the dark. Her body whipped
his into a frenzy with one slow grind.

 
    
“Sit still.” He growled, clamping a hand on
her thigh and giving it a squeeze.

 
    
She froze against him. That wasn’t what he
intended either. His body was nearly weeping with the ridiculous need to pull
her down off the horse and plunder her. Sam barely recognized the desire for
what it was, he’d long since sown his wild oats, pillaring every woman in Miss
Pontfour’s establishment and traveling as far as San Antonio for other
possibilities.

 
    
He was an upstanding man of the community
and he treated women with respect. Even thieving hellions with mouths made for
kissing and flame red hair he longed to see spread against a pillow. Or the
ground. Or his chest.

 
    
 
Dammit
.

 
    
He growled. “What?”

 
    
“You didn’t answer my question.” The small
voice admonished him, stripped of the gentle teasing and good humor. Sam
dropped his head, his nose just brushing her shoulder, a torment of her sweet
scent filling his lungs.

 
    
“My apologies.” He brought his raging need
back into line, forcing his mind to consider the rapping his father would
deliver if he brought the girl in, despoiled and used. His father’s fierce
features were the antidote he needed. Thief or not, prisoner or not, one just
didn’t take advantage of a lady.

 
    
No matter how badly his body wanted too.

 
    
“It’s a fair job,” he answered slowly,
pulling his head up and peeling his hand off her thigh. He lifted it to his
Stetson, adjusting it to let the breeze wash against his face. The cooler air
couldn’t alleviate the fire raging in his belly, but it brought some clarity.

 
    
“Most of the time it means I just have to
listen to the townsfolk, sort out the arguments and occasionally give some hand
on a mean drunk a thumping.”

 
    
“It doesn’t sound very exciting.”

 
    
He bristled at the disappointment in her
words.

 
    
“A Marshal’s job is to keep the excitement
to a minimum. If it’s tame then I’m doing my job, keeping the peace. Trouble
stirs people up and gets them killed. Like beautiful little bank thieves riling
the town up.”

 
    
“Oh.” The swift intake of breath pushed her
back against him again and he leaned forward, shifting her once more to a safer
position. Not that her wanton little bottom didn’t provide as much allure
rubbing on his thighs as it had his groin, but he was trying.