Bounty Hunter (16 page)

“I agree that Matt would be a welcome sight right now, but he’s not here and someone
else is. In
the meantime, we can’t just sit here and wait like sitting ducks.”

He watched as she fought down the fear that had become an instinctive part of her
life, her gaze skittering away as the fear began to win.

Kane’s pulse pounded with fury at his inability to put an immediate end to her terror.

“I’ll have to leave here,” she whispered. She lifted her eyes to his. “I … I don’t
know where to go. And how will Matt find me?”

“Annie—”

“No, Kane. You’ve done enough. I’ll figure something out. No!” she repeated when he
tried to cut in. “You’ve alerted me to the danger here, but now you have to go. I
know how angry you must be, how insulted by what Sam’s involved in. But it’s precisely
because of his beliefs that I think you should go.”

“I can handle Sam.”

“You don’t know him.”

Kane flinched, feeling again the twist of pain in his gut for having to continue evading
the issue of his damning connection to Sam Perkins.

“If he’s not worried about killing me, he sure won’t think twice about killing you,”
she stated evenly.

“And I said I was willing to take that chance. I won’t leave you here.”

Fire lit the depths of her brown eyes. “Why?” she asked, her voice anguished. “And
don’t give me all that stuff about being the kind of man who can’t
walk away. Damn your honor and damn your integrity!” she choked out. “I’m barely able
to manage here, wondering from one minute to the next when Sam or one of his pals
will track me down.” She turned pleading eyes to him. “I can’t worry about you too.”

Kane wondered if a person could hear his heart break. “So don’t,” he said quietly,
wishing more than anything he was worth her anguish and concern. Especially given
the harsh truth that all he was liable to do was add to it. “Let me worry about me.”

“I don’t think I have that choice. Not anymore.” Almost to herself, she added, “I’m
not sure I ever did.”

Kane swore under his breath, his control so close to shattering, he trembled with
the effort to piece the ragged edges back together. This was alien territory for him,
having someone be truly concerned about him, and frankly, it was scary as hell.

“Little sun,” he whispered, his tone rough. “Don’t waste that precious energy on me.
I’ve taken care of myself for so long, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

A sad smile lit the corners of her mouth. “That’s right, the man with the empty soul.
Your black
mu’gua.
If there was ever a soul worth caring about, it is yours, Eyes of the Hawk.”

Kane’s control snapped like a fine wire tightened past all endurance. Her solemn avowal
unleashed a response in him that was elemental, primitive. He untangled one hand from
hers, barely registering
the tremors in his fingers as he threaded them into her tangle of curls until he could
grip her head.

Slowly, so slowly he could feel each complete second tick by, he tilted her head back.
Spending his last shred of sanity, he searched her eyes for … what? Uncertainty? Fear?
Yes, anything to keep him from answering the need that had spiraled out of control
the moment she’d spoken his Shoshone name.

It wasn’t there.

All he found, amazingly, impossibly, was a need that matched his own. He lowered his
head, the blood rushing through his veins, becoming a tangible feeling. He watched
the pulse under the soft skin of her temple match his own internal rhythm.

“Stop me.” His lips touched hers.

“No.” And she lifted her mouth to his.

The first taste of her sweet, warm breath stilled him for the space of a heartbeat.
Then she ran the tip of her tongue over his lower lip, and he lost it.

With a rumbling sound that originated deep in his chest, he wrapped his arm around
her waist. He slid his other hand down to her nape as he shifted his mouth and deepened
the kiss.

She tasted better, sweeter, wilder than even his most tortured fantasies. He pushed
his tongue past her soft, wet lips, seeking her tongue, twining with it, drinking
from it. The pleasure was so intense, it was almost painful. Then she touched him,
framed his face with her hands, slid her fingers into his hair. She slowly worked
her fingers against his scalp, she
pushed the leather strip holding his hair downward then off. His sanity followed the
same path.

“Little sun,” he said against her cheek as he pulled in air. No longer consciously
guiding his actions, he trailed his lips across her cheek, then down the side of her
neck.

“Yes,” she responded, arching into him.

His hips bucked forward, his action completely instinctive. He trailed his mouth over
the hot surface of her skin, testing the softness of her earlobe with his teeth. He
rimmed her ear with his tongue, whispering to her in his own language, knowing from
her immediate response that even that was no barrier to how completely she understood
him.

She let her hands drop to his shoulders, clinging there for a minute, the sweet bite
of her short nails through his T-shirt, making him feel alive. Wildly alive.

He pulled her shirt loose, suddenly overwhelmed with the need to feel her bare skin
under his hand. He let his fingers climb the ridge of her spine, memorizing each and
every deceptively fragile bone, until the bunching of her shirt prevented him from
going farther.

Consumed by the need to explore, frustrated at this flimsy obstruction, he acted on
instinct. With a quick yank the woven fabric gave, and he pulled until the shirt split
in two as cleanly as if he’d unzipped it.

He heard her gasp as the air touched her bare
back. He swiftly moved his lips from her ear and swallowed the soft sound into his
mouth. He kissed her deeply, relentlessly, while his hands took their time mapping
the fine muscles that flexed underneath her skin as she writhed in his embrace.

The sound of fabric ripping and the air hitting his own suddenly bare back hit him
like a cold shock. But instead of dousing the fire, it fanned it to a white heat.
It quickly became a contest to see who could rip the clothes from the other first.

Her shirt flew seconds before his, and when the burgeoning tips of her breasts kissed
his chest, he lost any and all capacity to breathe. He stilled completely, wanting
to savor this heady rush, to freeze the sensation in time until it was forever a part
of his sensory memory.

He heard nothing beyond the pounding of his heart and the harsh gasp of their combined
efforts to draw in much-needed air. In that moment, their gazes locked again. Kane
felt an instant of fear at the sudden tidal wave of feelings that crashed against
his heart.

He couldn’t move, could barely breathe. He didn’t care. She took one of his hands
in hers and raised it to her lips. She turned it over then lowered her gaze to study
it. She dipped her head and brushed a light kiss over one knuckle, then another, and
another. Then she found each scar, and he knew there were many, and kissed them too.
Only when she’d found and healed with her own fiery
brand every visible scar, did she take his hand and lower it, laying it against her
heart. She held it tightly as if in fear he might yank it back.

And it took will he’d never dreamed he still possessed not to do so. Her gift to him
was unbearable—and incredibly, wrenchingly unacceptable.

He’d thought nothing could penetrate the haze of desire he’d been in, nothing except
burying himself to the hilt inside her until stopping no longer mattered.

A strange burning made him press his eyelids shut, breaking the formidable bond she’d
tried to forge. “You can’t do this.” His voice was so hoarse, it was barely intelligible.

“I did. I would again.”

“It’s wrong.” He barely swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. Of all the deceptions,
this lie to himself became the harshest to endure.

“Look at me.”

He obeyed her soft plea instantly. This was his punishment, he thought. Looking into
her eyes, eyes that pledged things he never dared hoped for.

Even now. Especially now.

“This isn’t … It’s the hardest … thing …” He wrapped his arms around her, tucking
her against his chest, steeling himself for the further punishment of enduring the
feel of her bare torso pressed to his. He buried his face in her hair, having to spare
himself the torture of looking at her while he spoke, knowing it was cowardly.

“I’d give anything … anything to make things different.”

“Different? Than what?”

He dragged air into his lungs and forced the words out. “Than this, than—”

“I know the timing is horrible,” she broke in, her words raspy. “I wish it were different
too.”

“That’s only part of it, Annie.” He paused for a moment. “You don’t love him anymore,
you told me that.”

He felt her tense and damned himself for thrusting the ugly specter of Sam Perkins
between them, but there was no help for it.

“I don’t.” She tilted her head back, and he looked down into her worried gaze. “There
is nothing left for me there.”

“You’re running scared, Annie. And rightfully so.” He stared hard at her, willing
her to understand, to accept what he was trying to tell her. “But I’m not your answer.”

Color washed into her cheeks, and she tried to pull away from him, flailing one arm
out to grope for at least a remnant of her shirt as if her nakedness had suddenly
become a point of shame.

Anger flared in him at her obvious misinterpretation, anger at himself for being so
callous, anger at her for not having a stronger sense of self-worth. And a rage that
was palpable for the bastard who had robbed her of that.

He pulled her around, held her arms tightly in
his hands. “You … are … everything … Everything any man could want, little sun. Never
doubt that.”

Her shoulders straightened as she locked her gaze with his. “Any man? I don’t want
any man.” She wrenched her arms from his grasp and grabbed at her shirt. She yanked
it on so the rip was in the front, swiftly tying it into a knot below her breasts.

Kane couldn’t have moved if she’d thrown a lit stick of dynamite at him. She was magnificent.
A true glimpse of the fiery nature that lay beneath the shell of fear and doubt that
she’d been forced to adopt in order to survive.

“You say my doubts about myself aren’t warranted. Did it ever occur to you that your
doubts about yourself aren’t either?”

Kane shot to his feet in one fluid motion. He was so close, a deep breath would have
caused his chest to touch hers. “I know what I have to offer you, Annie. Nothing.
Less than nothing. Certainly not what you deserve.”

“Since when did I lose the right to be my own judge?”

“Since the night you discovered your husband is a racist,” he shot back, hating himself
for his harshness. “When you get out of this, when you can put this—him—behind you,
then you can be your own judge. But I know that when you finally have that choice,
that your choice will not be me.”

The fist she’d pressed against her lips during his
speech dropped away. Kane had expected tears, yelling, screaming, at the very least
an argument. So he was totally unprepared for her choked sound of relief, much less
the tentative smile that curved her lips.

She shifted forward, closing the yawning quarter-inch gap between them. “Is that what
this is all about? I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out. It’s my fault, I suppose,
for not making it clear.”

She’d caught him so off guard, he could almost ignore the tiny electric shocks the
brush of her body against his had ignited. Almost. She looked … confident.
That’s what you wanted, right?
his inner voice taunted him. Yeah, right. He swallowed hard. Twice. “Mak—” He cleared
his throat. “Making what clear?”

“Let me ask you something?”

Giving up completely any hope of regaining control of the conversation, he responded
on a pained note. “Sure, why the hell not?”

“If I
was
free to choose any man I wanted …”

Uh-oh.
“Yes?” was all he managed to get out.

“Would you at least give me—us—a chance?” She faltered for a brief moment, and he
wondered if his reaction was so obvious. “If I chose you?” she finished on a whisper.

Why was she doing this? “It’s a moot point, Annie.”

She placed her fingertips on his lips and shook her head. “Hawk, I was engaged. But
I’m not—and never have been—married.”

“That can’t be … Sam—”

“Was my fiancé,” she finished.

“You … lived together?”

He looked shell-shocked. Given what he’d believed, she shouldn’t be surprised. But
there was something else under the surface of confusion: A trace more disbelief than
she’d thought to see.

“Yes. He sort of swept me off my feet, he can be very focused when he wants something.”
Like her, dead. She shuddered. Shaking that off, she added, “But it was sort of overwhelming
and … I won’t lie and say I wasn’t flattered or influenced by all the attention. By
his seeming sincerity.” She felt her skin burn. “But I wouldn’t commit to a wedding
date right away. I could barely breathe, much less … Anyway, about three months before
this happened, Sam finally convinced me to move in with him. He was pushing me to
quit my job too. He wanted to give me the chance to see how the house staff was run.
Let me learn the ropes, so to speak, of what’s expected of a bank president’s wife.”

She saw the question in his eyes. Part of her felt relieved that he wasn’t demanding
to know the gritty details, that he respected her past as being her business and not
part of what was between them.

There was another part of her, though, the part that had seen how vulnerable this
tough man was, how little he trusted others with even the smallest piece of himself.
She suspected she’d been given more than most. That part of her wanted to tell
him, show him, how special a man he was. And not stop until he believed it.