Silver Bound (8 page)

Guy groaned, long and guttural. “Can I kiss you, sweetheart?” he asked in a choked rush. In a swift, graceful move, he sat next to her on the couch.

“Please.” Nowhere inside her did she find any hesitation. He needn’t have bothered to ask.

“I’m stopping with the kiss. You’ve allowed me that privilege before.” A bleakness in his faraway expression, he stopped inches away. “I’m not taking anything from you. I’m just returning it now, like I borrowed it.”

“You noble, noble man,” she whispered and did as she’d longed to do. Pushing her fingers into his thick shiny hair, she shivered with the sensation like heavy silk stroking her palms. “Take what you want from me. I’m yours.”

A pained grunt came from deep within his chest, and strong arms enveloped her, wrapped around her waist and pulled her tight against his solid strength. At last, in his arms, she gripped his head, bringing him to her, never wanting to let go. Soft petals flickered across her lips, brushed back and forth, before making firmer contact. Like home, secure, surrounded in peace and strength. And blazing passion.

He teased her, nipping at her, licking the seam of her mouth and sucking on her bottom lip. She whimpered and fisted her hands in his hair as she struggled to get nearer. She couldn’t get close enough.

Slanting his head to a better angle, he slipped his tongue into her mouth to taste, to linger, to drive her wild with desire. His wet caress deepened, became forceful, hungry. This kiss was new, more urgent, more determined. Just, more.

Jewel hung there, swaying between heaven and desperation.

Then he pulled back.

“My Jewel,” he panted. He was no longer kissing her, had put inches between them, but he still held her. Long strokes down her back settled her but couldn’t draw back the programming that had ratcheted to a grind in her pelvis. He stared at her lips. His were wet, swollen and red, a shade that beckoned her.

“Won’t you take me to bed? Let me be with you?” She held her breath, waiting, hoping her forwardness didn’t offend him.

He shook his head, but his hesitant expression gave her hope. “I shouldn’t do more than kiss you.”

Shouldn’t.

With a push at the chink in his armor, she urged him, “But it’s your right. I’m yours. You can do what you want.”

It was the wrong thing to say because he drew away from her. She bit her lip and castigated herself.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“How about another game of holo-castle while we eat?” He asked, but it was no question. He left her side to go back to his chair. The emptiness chilled her head to toe.

“Yes, of course.” Movements stilted, she pulled several delicacies off the platter and put it on one of the included plates for him.

After she’d filled two plates, he removed the tray and set up the board again. While he concentrated on placing the pieces in their correct positions, she had to speak, had to rid herself of the heavy weight on her chest. “How long before we get to the medship?”

“Three days,” he answered gruffly.

“And after I have my memories back, you’ll let me give you sexual release?”

His attention snapped to her, and the white king—hers—fell to the rug. Mouth open, he didn’t speak but winced before he bent to retrieve the errant king. With an unrepentant urge to poke at him, give back some of the unsettled feelings she’d dealt with since her awakening, she continued. “You’ll let me ease your desire, my desire? I need you deep inside, to stop the burn. My hands ache to stroke you. Touch you.”

Heat prickled up her neck, over her cheeks and across her chest. She probably looked like she’d been rubbed in red talzicberry juice.

“If you get your memories back and still want to bed me, I’ll be more than happy to oblige.” Guy grinned, a crooked slant of lips that made him appear rakish, desirable and more appealing than ever.

“I’ll hold you to it,” she answered, though the breath had left her body.

“No, sweetheart.
I’ll
hold
you
to it.”

***

I’d cheat, lie and steal. No question about it.

Guy’d told Jewel that, but she didn’t know how much he meant it. In the dark, he sat in the chair and ignored her tossing and turning on the bed. Well, he didn’t rightly ignore her as much as he pretended he did. He was good at pretending, like he pretended Kalon Geanus wasn’t her ex-husband and hoped like hell she’d continue to forget the man she’d chosen over a poor rancher.

Cheat, lie and steal.

Pathetic. Where Jewel was concerned, he couldn’t make himself walk the right line of the law. He was a thief. Like her new silky wrap that he’d nabbed from the chute before it could be sent to the sanitizer. He gripped the dress in his hands and brought it to his face. With a deep breath he pulled in her scent, the scent he’d never forget even if they silver-tipped his ass.

It was the black. He couldn’t stop himself from taking it. Once he’d seen it on her, it’d stood out with stark clarity. The day she’d left to marry Kalon, she’d worn black. He couldn’t bear for her to wear it again. He’d intended to send it to the incinerator, but once he touched it, he gave in to his craving and clutched it to his heart.

The wrap had touched her skin. He couldn’t throw it away. But the heady effect of the softness, the honeysuckle aroma, edged him toward the lust he had to avoid. He gripped the fabric so tightly, the rip of the weave broke the silence of the bedchamber.

He knew what would take the edge off his desires, and for the first time in years, he let his mind wander there, to the day he died as a boy and became a man who understood his exact worth in the world.

Jewel as a teenager had been vivacious, always willing to go valley hopping on air skates. Defying her father’s wishes for her to marry well, she’d always said they’d marry, but he’d never quite believed she meant it, that she’d take the rebellion that far. So he’d respected her chastity and never pushed for what he wanted, even as he ignored what would happen if he didn’t take the opportunity.

He’d regretted that noble instinct in the dark of night when he dreamed of her.

She’d told him of her engagement to a Terraloft, one her father made and she insisted she had no intention of honoring. He’d walked away with his gut roiling, his chest pinching so tight he couldn’t breathe, and he’d come home to the ramshackle ranch he’d inherited.

He’d dreamed of her again and awoke with resolve. He’d make her want him.

Days spent courting her. Nights and early morning hours spent working the ranch to make a profit. He had to be somebody. Be as rich as a Terraloft.

Then came that fateful decision, when she was reeling after her mother’s death, he was desperate to hold her, and he showed his true worth—about as much value as the dirt beneath Jewel’s heels.

“Brice, I have a plan.” After a long day roping his last bull and corralling the meager numbers of cattle, he’d pulled his best friend, then his foreman and only employee, into the barn office and started that downward spiral.

“I have a plan, too. I’m on my way to the Star and Spurs.” Brice ran a hand through his dark hair with a grimace. Dust flew everywhere. “After a good scrubbing. You ready to go into town and forget this crush you have? Let me tell you, Molly has her eye on you. She’ll make you a man. I should know.” Brice grinned, his teeth white in his grimy, tanned face.

For the space of a breath, Guy was tempted. But he wanted Jewel, no other, and he’d find a way to win her hand. It’d always been Jewel. Technically, he’d already become a man, but the few times with those lightskirts, he’d closed his eyes and pictured Jewel, and later dealt with the guilt for including her in his sordid mess.

“That good-for-nothing Kirkson, you know he has a whole new passel of steer. Where’d he get them?” Guy swallowed the grit in his mouth. He crossed to the almost empty pantry shoved against the wooden wall, or what passed as a wall, with too many spaces between boards to count. Hands shaking, he poured two shots from the preciously low bottle of Taphgan whiskey. He steadied himself and handed one to Brice.

“Probably the same way the ranch came to this.” Brice waved his hand around to encompass the sparse office—a table and two chairs where they planned how to get the ranch back on its feet, a pallet where Guy slept and the pantry with his few supplies and possessions. Without the funds to keep the ranch house running, he’d boarded it up and slept in the small room in the barn.

Brice knocked back the shot and wiped a hand across his mouth. “He probably won them in a card game or swindled somebody out of them.”

“Right. Just how he took all the money from Trident Ranch when the old man was in his cups.” He slammed the shot glass down on the table without a sip. The sudden urge not to be his old man making his mouth go sour. “I don’t think he came by them honestly.”

“Don’t matter none, my man. We’ll get this place up and running in no time.”

“It won’t be in no time, and by the time we make a profit, we’ll be worn-out old men. You want to waste your life on my ranch, working with this little meager herd?”

“It’s all we got.” Brice glared at him.

He swallowed the apology on his tongue for Brice’s own meager background. But he stopped himself. “We can have more.”

“What do you mean, Guy? Spit it out. It’s not like you to hold back.”

“I want to borrow those steer. Tonight. Before they’re Kirkson branded.”

“Borrow?” Brice wiped a hand over his mouth again. “You mean steal.”

The blood drained from his face, his throat grew even drier and he croaked when he answered. “Yes.”

Brice paced the room. “The sheriff may be as crooked as a Taphgan hound’s back leg but he’ll nail us to the wall. I don’t want to be shipped to the Sibrea Prison Colony. Not even for you.”

“What could go wrong? Kirkson’ll play cards tonight. His men get drunk as old coots before the Starsday rest. And I’ve got something on the sheriff. He can’t take us in. Matter of fact, I’m going after his job. Elections are coming and he’s got to go. It’s the only job in town I could get. Nobody wants to hire a Trident, but they don’t mind one corralling drunks and kicking gypsies out of town. Sorry, Brice, no offense to your gypsy ass.”

“You’re planning on rustling and then running for sheriff?” Ignoring the remarks about gypsies, Brice roared with laughter, the deep lines etched with the dust of the trail. Covered in dirt, they probably looked like twins. “Now I know you’re messing with me.”

“No. I’m not.”

Whatever Brice saw in his face brought his laugh to a halt.

“Kirkson won’t make a fuss because I have it on good authority he swindled this herd from another failing ranch, not just won it in a card game.” He shook his head. “I’m not a thief. I’m just borrowing them. I’ll pay the man back when we’re in the clear, and I’ll never do anything like this again, not after I have Jewel. I couldn’t risk it.

Brice groaned. “I knew it had to be about her.”

Guy nodded. It always was. “I’ve been laying the groundwork. The Kirkson hands talk a lot when they’re drinking. The sheriff is in the pocket of Kirkson, so I got all the lowdown on him. Trust me, he won’t be a problem. I have proof he’s smuggling steroids. We round up the herd tonight, while nobody’s sober. Tomorrow we take the evidence against the sheriff to the mayor. In all the fuss, our little adventure will go unnoticed.”

“What happens when Kirkson notices his cattle missing?”

“He won’t. We’ll be setting it up to look like the cattle stampeded and got loose. By the time they regroup, we’ll have sold off that herd. Next spring, we’ll buy us some new heifers, another bull.”

“You’ve got it all planned out.” Brice sank into the chair and slumped, staring at his boots. “All right, I’ll help you, man. But I can’t stay after that. I can’t watch you turn into your old man.”

He reached for the whiskey and gulped it back. Through his burning throat, he insisted, “I’m not my old man.”

Later, in the dead of night as they sat their horses staring at the Kirkson herd, Guy doubted. He turned to Brice, unable to see his best friend in the dark. “I won’t be my old man.”

“I hope to hell not, but I can’t be around to watch you self-destruct over a girl. They’re all the same under their skirts, man.”

“Just take the ax and break the fence. Try to make it look natural.” He whistled to Max, the robo-shepherd he’d bought with his first piddling profit. The dog panted anxiously next to his horse.

Jewel was no lightskirt. Brice didn’t understand.

When the fence came down, he ordered Max, “Round ’em up, boy.”

With the soft sounds of hooves on grass and the low mooing and shuffling, the familiar sounds of the cattle drive moved him on instinct. He was good at this, if nothing else.

It all went easily, with Max keeping them in a tight mass, Guy on one side, Brice on the other. As they rounded the beasts into a makeshift pen halfway to the Grassland Cattle Market, the sun rose on the dark brown hides of the animals that would save his ranch. Soon, he’d have the funds to be worthy of Jewel. He’d never let her find out about tonight, what he’d done for her. His legs tightened on the saddle. His horse snorted and swished his head in response. He forced himself to relax.

“Brice, I’ve got to get to the mayor’s and turn in this evidence. That’ll get the sheriff off our trail before the cattle are reported missing.”

“It’s under control here.” Brice rolled out his saddle blanket and sank onto it without another word.

Another apology tried to make it past his dry throat, but Guy stifled it and directed his horse back toward Rangetown. As if he felt his owner’s urgency, his horse flew across the range.

He pulled up on the reins at the mayor’s stables, grabbed the pack with the surveillance shots, bank records he’d managed to sweet-talk from one of his old classmates, and a recording of some of the drunk Kirkson hands talking about how the steroids had added meat bulk to their cattle.

Dirty and smelling of horse and cow, he knocked on the door and hoped like hell Jewel wouldn’t see him like this.

The mayor opened the door stared at him with his nose lifted slightly in the air. “You want to clean up before you come here, boy.”