Nicademus: The Wild Ones (17 page)

“Sorry it took so long. I had to get some things the Doc wanted and bring them by his place. How you?”

“How do you think I am? I don’t know what plan this is of Cora’s but it can’t be a good one if it involves her handing Tyler Shepherd my gold!”

Annabelle untied it from her waist. She walked over and handed it to him. “Here. Go on! Take it!” she demanded. “Ain’t nothing worse than a whinin’ man! Can’t stand it! Go on! Get!”

Jeremiah didn’t get the joke. Annabelle’s mean glare indicated it wasn’t one. He hesitated. He accepted the gold. He walked away and checked the nuggets and found them all accounted for.

“You wants to run, leave us to clean up this mess alone. I’ll help you. I’ll get you out of here with your gold and your horse.”

He glanced back. “It might be for the best. We can’t win this fight. Not really. You and I leave and Tyler Shepherd will too.”

“No. I’ll help you but you leave as you came. A bandit. An outlaw. A hunted man with no soul. Because I don’t want nothing to do with that man. The man I want will stay and join my fight. Not because it’s something in it for him. But because it’s the right thing to do.” She backed away from him then started to climb up the rope ladder.

“Wait,” he said.

She paused. Jeremiah held out the gold. “Tell Ms. Kitty that whatever she wants to do to settle this with Tyler Shepherd I want in. Tell your sheriff I want my guns. I won’t be forced down here into this cellar to cower. We do it together,” he insisted.

Annabelle ran over to him and leaped into his arms. He dropped the bag of gold to hold on to her. She squealed. “I knew it! I knew it! I knew you were a man of your word.” The kiss she gave him had him backing up to the nearest cot. But she broke free from his embrace before he could bring her down for more.

“Gots to go tell her. I’ll find out when we fight. I will.”

**

“Ms. Kitty?” Honey closed the door behind her.

Cora looked up from the letter she was writing. “One moment,” she said. She finished the letter with her signature. She took the time to fold the perfumed note and slip it into the envelope. Joshua stood off to the left waiting. “I want you to put this in his hand personally. It won’t be easy. But you do it. Ride all night if you have to. But get it to Tulsa. Do you understand?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am, Ms. Kitty,” he said.

She nodded for him to leave. After the door closed she glanced into the eyes of a very distraught Honey. “What is it? I thought you were going to visit Mary for a few days. To deal with your grief.”

“I decided not to. You know word travels fast.”

“Does it?” Cora asked.

Honey gave her a sheepish smile then averted her gaze. “Okay, truth is I never left.”

“Why are you here, Honey?”

“I came back for you,” she said.

“How’s that?” Cora asked.

“I heard what you said out there. You ain’t going to face no railroad toad like Tyler Shepherd alone. I need to come with you.”

“I haven’t finalized anything yet. I’m waiting for Red Sun—”

“I wants to come!” Honey took a step toward her. “I know what you doing. I know it better than you do. You can tell them whatever you like. Say it’s for the town. But you going after revenge. I did the same thing once. It’s not easily had—justice. It’s not easily done. Killing a man does something to you.” Honey touched her heart. “It changes you.”

Cora looked Honey over. What she said was true: Cora wanted to atone. She wanted justice for May, for herself, for all the girls Shepherd had broken over the years. She wanted payback for Daniel and the things that were to never be. And she was scared out of her mind over what she faced.

“You know why I can’t include you. What if you get caught and they discover your crimes in Georgia? There’s a bounty on your head. Or have you forgotten?” Cora sighed. “I’m not even sure if what I got planned will work.”

“It’ll work, if you let me help you.” Honey walked over to the desk. She leaned across it with her hands pressed flat to the wood surface. “I know they think I’m crazy. And I swear to you if any woman had to live with what I carry they’d be crazy too. But I’m sane. I’m sane and I’m angry. I want to kill every Tyler Shepherd. Every man that—”

“Stop. Honey, stop. Please.”

“It’s never stops, Ms. Kitty. That’s the problem. That’s what hurts. No matter how many of them demons you get rid of, more come back. Don’t they?” Honey didn’t bother to turn when Annabelle entered the room after a single knock. “Send me in your place. If he sees you, whatever message you come to give, he won’t hear it. All he’ll see is what he wants from you. Use me. I’m already lost. I’m just as hunted as that outlaw. I can make this sacrifice for the town. To pay all of you back for taking me in. For helping me.”

Cora wanted to face Tyler Shepherd. She wanted to be the one to slip him her poison. But a better plan would be to send Honey to bait the hook. She hadn’t worked out how she could walk into Tyler’s world and walk out, and buy herself the time she needed. Annabelle stepped aside as Honey left. She made sure to close the door behind her.

“What has her all riled up so early?” Annabelle asked.

“Never mind it. What bring you?” Cora asked. “I swear I can’t think with the coming and going out of my office!”

Annabelle raised the bag of gold. She walked over and put it on the desk. “You promise me that you won’t tell the sheriff? That you’ll not let Tyler Shepherd keep it?”

“I only need three nuggets of that gold,” said Cora. “I’ll keep the rest in my safe upstairs.” Cora pushed up and stood with a weary sigh.

“He has a request. Only one. He wants to be included. In whatever it is you planning, he wants to be part of it. Wants his guns back too.”

Cora nodded. “Oh he will be. I plan to put him front and center in this entire mess!”

Annabelle lowered her gaze. Cora studied her for a moment before she spoke again. “He your man right?” she asked.

Annabelle dared to look up.

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you. A man doesn’t look at a woman that way unless he knows her. Intimately.”

“He wants us to leave together. After all of this is over. He says in Wyoming we can be husband and wife. He said we could get land, and live free of all of this.”

Cora’s brows arched. “Wyoming huh?”

“I love Nicademus. I do, Ms. Kitty. But what’s here for me? Henry? Being his wife? That’s not what I want. Jeremy can’t stay here.”

“What about being a nurse?” Cora asked. “It’s all you ever talk about.”

Annabelle shrugged. “Depends on where we go. Never seen a town that didn’t need a nurse or doctor.”

“And Red Sun?” Cora asked.

“I dunno. I can’t think of leaving him. Ever,” she said. “But Red Sun needs to be happy, and he is, with you.”

For a moment Cora digested everything. She then smiled. “Tell your man that we leave at dusk.”

Annabelle smiled. “Will do!”

**

Red Sun never argued. He wasn’t prone to long winded debates on a discussion that should never be had. He made his feelings clear to the two women he cared to share them with and expected them to accept them. Cora would never do what was expected of her. It’s why he loved her so deeply. He had to find another way to convince her the plan she had was the dream of death that visited him on the mountain.

He rolled his neck back and closed his eyes.

In his mind time had rewound and he was with his tribe again, full of pride and righteous conviction. He fought with everything in him as every person he loved was slaughtered. It nearly cost him his mind to the grief. And it was coming to Nicademus, which had saved him and Annabelle. Everything they worked for would be reduced to ash if the town was lost.

The door opened.

She walked in and looked at him with those round brown eyes of hers. A sense of inadequacy swept over him. The sheriff was right. She deserved things he could never give to her, not even a child. All he could offer was his life in return for how she had healed him.

“You’re here?” she said. “I’ve been waiting in my office. How long have you been up here?”

It was only him and her now. He could unleash. He could tell her the horrors of a war they would not win. He could predict the casualties. But she had lived through her own horrors. There was no balance on the scales of pain.

“I’m sorry for taking you by surprise down there,” she began. “I … I know you considered the matter settled. It isn’t. I’ve thought it through and I think I have an even better plan now. We need to talk. I’ll listen, if you’ll listen.” She clasped her hands in front of her and inhaled deep. He loved when she spoke to him in his native language. It only drew her closer to his heart. “Will you listen to me?” she asked.

Red Sun extended his hand to her. It was impossible to say the words lodged in his throat.
I’m sorry. Forgive my temper. I want to listen.
She walked toward him and her small palm rested in his. He lifted her against him, capturing her lips and drawing her tongue forth into his apologetic kiss. The initial hard press of his lips against hers should have sparked resistance. Instead, her hands spread weakly against his chest in submission. Oh how he loved his sweet Cora. He peppered her face with kisses. He pressed one to her neck and then to her breast, which heaved up against him in a lovely fashion. Cora ran her hands over his shoulder and dropped her head back with a soft sigh.

Thank heaven for her love.

Cora gave an involuntary gasp and was lost in his kiss as she often was. She struggled to remember the reasons why his objections were unfounded. Reasoning with him had now become the furthest thing from her heart. He turned her to face the bed. Both of her hands gripped the footboard for balance. She dragged down a deep breath in anticipation. Red Sun’s lips were soft as satin and pleasing as heat, but it was his hands that she found the most seductive. When they were on her, his touch was all male, domineering, and possessive. The hard and soft sides of her man’s personality made him a gifted lover, a caring lover, a demanding lover. Her special lover.

The gentle squeeze of her breast and his breath washing over her neck brought her close against him. He said something to her in his language she couldn’t translate. She didn’t know every word, especially the ones he hoarsely said against her ear while in the throes of passion. And she didn’t need to. He began to unlace her corset. He cast it aside and did away with the blouse she wore underneath. She aided him. She dropped her skirt and slip. Underneath she wore nothing.

“I love you,” she said in English and then again in Chickasaw.

She turned and faced him. Her hands went to the footboard and her eyes fastened on his. “I love you, Red Sun.” Cora nearly wept from relief. She hung her head and squeezed. In all her life only one other person, her mother, had loved her. And that love died when she was sold off to Tyler Shepherd. She was afraid of love. In some coherent part of her mind she knew that fear was unreasonable. But she remained chained to it. Afraid of how vulnerable and weak her heart could make her. And with Red Sun she couldn’t deny the feeling. That’s what the sheriff didn’t understand. That a woman’s heart wants what it wants.

“I’d die for you,” her man told her.

“No. I’d die if I lost you,” she wept.

Red Sun went to his knees. His kisses against her abdomen were smooth like wet heat. Then she was treated to the coolness of his tongue as it traced a path to her navel. Appeased, her own tongue circled her lips and she willed him to go lower.

He parted her sex with his marauding fingers and his tongue swirled over her sweet spot. He flattened it to glide it up and down, and return repeatedly to her sweet spot to suck. Repetition was the greatest sin. Over and over he went and it nearly drove her to madness.

“Mercy,” she breathed.

He paused and whispered his love to her pussy before delving his tongue deep and covering her sex with his mouth. He had her by both buttocks. She lifted her left foot and braced it against his right shoulder, spreading her thighs to open herself fully. Cora nearly fell back over on the bed and would have if it weren’t for the tenacious way he held to her. A delicious shudder spread like lava through her body. Her pulse skittered and a vibrant bolt of pleasure struck at her core. She shattered through loud cries for release.

Red Sun did not pull his face away until every drop of her essence was spent. Cora shuddered so bad she slipped to the floor, bringing them both down. He swept her up again and brought her over to the bed. He shed his clothes within seconds and was on top of her. He fit his wide hips between her soft thighs and plunged his meaty dick into her quivering pussy. Cora held on to his broad shoulders. She chewed on her bottom lip and welcomed each powerful thrust as he pumped his hips and went deeper. Amazingly she adjusted to his powerful demands. Her slender legs curved sensually around his hips. When he started to withdraw, almost to the point of separation, she rolled her hips and pumped her pelvis upward in time with his downward strokes to entice him to stay. Their union was one of love, and in his arms she was adored. No man had ever made her feel so complete. No man ever would.