Devil in Texas (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 1) (27 page)

Cass grinned. He trailed his wicked gaze from the knob on the hilt to the apex of her spreading thighs. "I'm not sure. But it looks illegal."

"You're
illegal."

"That's why you like me."

She snorted. "As far as I'm concerned, Wright should have locked you in the calaboose and thrown away the key."

"Aw. Whose fluffy, white pillow did Vandy
really
soil? Yours or loverboy's?"

"You think vandalism's a game?"

"Life's a game, sweetheart. I just play by different rules."

"This from the man who wants to be a Ranger."

"I'm starting to have second thoughts about Rangerhood," he said drolly. "Women aren't allowed on the force."

"Oh, so now you're all about equality."

He winked. "Mostly, I'm about undercover work."

She didn't dare let her lips twitch.

"So tell me," he drawled. "How does a woman who couldn't bear to breathe the same air as a tin-star wind up becoming one?"

He was probing. Her guard raised a notch.

"If you can't fight 'em, join 'em," she answered breezily.

"Now that doesn't sound like you."

"Let's just say I liked the perks."

His eyes narrowed with speculation. "Care to be more specific?"

"Oh, you know. Steady pay. Lots of travel."

"And a tyrant boss to take the place of a husband?"

With a sudden flash of insight, she guessed where his questions were leading. The scapegrace was actually concerned about her! The notion warmed her heart in a dangerously romantic way.

"Does putting up with
tyrants
sound like me?"

He cocked his head, studying her. "No. But tyranny does sound like Sterne's style."

She rolled her eyes. "Right. I forgot who I was talking to."

"'Course, if you
like
being bossed around these days...." He flashed his Coyote grin.

"My, aren't you the considerate villain."

"Just doing my part to keep womankind sated and happy."

Dog.

Plotting his comeuppance, she let her gaze roam over the chamber. Tiled with colorful, Mexican-style images of suns, moons, and stars, it was the perfect backdrop for a heavenly body, like Cass's. Great earthen pots of yellow lantana, silver sages with lavender flowers, bushy dwarf palms and other drought-resistant flora had been cleverly arranged on limestone tiers to form a grotto, beneath which the spring's source bubbled forth. White colonnades, painted with fanciful sunflowers marched along the pool's eastern side, closest to the vaulted doorway that led to a pitch-black corridor and parts unknown.

Finally, Sadie spied what she'd been searching for: the glint of silver. Cass had stashed his all-black wardrobe in the shadows, under one of the grotto's slabs. Beside his boots and spurs sat his Stetson. He loved that hat almost as much as he loved breathing. Once, after he'd lost everything except his guns during a particularly bad craps shoot, she'd watched him bet his horse for the return of his hat—not for the knife that had made him a mumblety-peg champion. Not for his award-winning rodeo buckle. Not even for the hand-tooled Justin boots that he lovingly polished each morning until he could glimpse his stubbled mug on the toes.

The fact that he had stolen back his gear and his gelding hours later was beside the point.

"I don't suppose you
paid
to enter this bathhouse after hours," she accused.

"Why rent a pool when you own a lock pick?"

"Is that a
confession
, hooligan?"

"Are you going to arrest me?" he countered hopefully.

"Not if you're going to like it."

"Then I confess. I hate to swim. Especially when I'm butt-naked and all alone."

"Isn't that a shame?" Her smile was smug. "'Cause all I came for was the button."

She turned on her heel and headed for his trousers. She was intent on ransacking his pockets—maybe even tossing his hat into the pool.

"You mean this button?" he challenged, opening his fist. Brass flashed from the chain that slid through his fingers.

She sucked in her breath.

"Take another step toward that hat, Tin-Star, and the button gets it." He was wading backwards into the pool's center, her keepsake dangling precariously above murky waters.

"If you don't want to walk out of this bathhouse in your birthday suit," she retorted, annoyed that he'd out-coyoted her, "you'd better get your butt
and
my button up on this pool deck!"

He flashed all his pretty teeth. "I got plenty of duds stashed in Baron's private locker. You only got one button."

Baron has a private locker?

She filed that information away for future reference. Then she shot a vengeful glance at the Stetson.

Retaliating, he let the chain slide lower.

"You wouldn't dare!"

"Try me."

She fumed. The water was lapping around his pectorals now. If he dropped Daddy's button, even by accident, she wasn't sure she could ever find it in the pool's dark, green depths—at least, not by moonlight.

"If you lose Daddy's button, I swear to God, I'll skin you alive!"

"Be my guest. 'Course, you'll have to dive in first."

Donkey butt.

She eyed the water dubiously. In this part of Texas, spring-fed pools could be colder than a witch's tit—and that was in the sunshine.

"Truce?" she offered grudgingly.

"Spoken like a loser."

"A loser who pocketed four-hundred of
your
dollars, sucker."

He snorted at this dig. "Where'd you learn to count poker chips,
cheater?"

"Cheater!?"

"Why, sure. If it looks like a duck, and waddles like a duck—
"

"You are
so
dead, Cassidy." She ripped off the first boot.

He twirled the chain around his fingers, quacking like a mallard.

She ripped off the second boot. "You're fowl, all right!"

He winked, dunking the button like a teabag.

Her hat, trousers, shirt, and breast bindings flew off at his threat. Gritting her teeth, she took the plunge, leaping feet first into the shallows. The shock of that icy water ripped a shriek from her throat, especially when it slapped the undersides of her breasts and puckered her nipples. Sputtering curses against him and all his ancestors, she planned to drown him the moment her blood thawed.

Meanwhile, her man-shark was knifing through the water on a collision course with her. She glimpsed taut buttocks, gleaming like snow-capped hillocks in the lunar light. She was almost sorry when the show ended. He surfaced before her, a cascade of liquid emerald rolling off moon-chiseled shoulders, biceps, and pectorals and an abdomen that might have been cut from white granite. Tossing back his hair, he revealed starlit eyes that twinkled with mirth.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

Uncertain what he meant, she shot her sea monster a warning glare. It didn't stop him from wading closer.

"Where's my button, felon?"

"Reckon you'll have to search me for it, detective."

His head lowered, and his tongue slid along her bottom lip.

That's when she remembered, to her utter mortification, she was wearing whiskers.

But Cass, being Cass, was thoroughly amused by the sheer wrongness of kissing a bearded woman. He rubbed his chin against her chin. He nibbled the bristly end of her mustache. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed his dimples. Darling. Devilish. Dangerous to any female with a functioning brain.

So what did that say about her?

"The glue tastes like honey." His murmur throbbed with sin. He reached for her waist.

"Don't you dare get my face wet!" She reared back, shoving a hand between their chests. "I'm wearing my favorite beard, and it has to look presentable after you ravish me!"

His chuckle was wolfish. The next thing she knew, he'd kicked her feet out from under her. She squealed in protest, but it was already too late. Cold, dark waters were closing over her head. She came up blind and sputtering, her sodden curls plastered over her nose, her whiskers floating somewhere in a sea of bubbles.

"Ducks don't have beards," he said cheerfully. "'Course, now you look more like a drowned rat."

"I hate you."

He whooped and splashed her in the face.

"All right. That does it, slug-head."

She pounced, but he fended off her headlock, and they had a rollicking wrestling match in the shallows. As her legs grappled with his, she felt the small pouch that he'd strapped above his right knee. But it was hard to plunder pouches when his wicked fingers kept dancing across her flesh, stroking and tickling. She tried to dunk his cocky head, but the water worked against her, slowing the Judo moves she'd learned in Pinkie training.

"Is that the best you can do?" he taunted.

She grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanked his head lower, and thrust her tongue into his mouth. He growled. The rumble vibrated deep into her belly, awakening her smoldering volcano, shooting sparks of lightning along her nerves. When she locked her thighs around his waist, he turned predator. He kneaded her buttocks with powerful hands. He slanted his mouth across hers, demanding more of his feast.

Now she was panting, but he was too. His arousal was hot, like velvet-sheathed steel sliding against her belly. She rubbed his swollen head, delighting in his throttled groan. Knowing his weakness, she clamped her teeth over his earlobe and tormented the ticklish inner space. He staggered, and she smiled wickedly, enjoying the way his nipples pebbled against her chest.

But Cass had tricks of his own that could drive her wild. Most had to do with his mouth and her cleft, but with the water in the way, he shifted tactics. He arched her back over an arm, suckling a ripe, rosy breast while circling his thumb in an insidious pattern of pressures over her pleasure bud. She bit back a moan, nearly crawling out of her skin when his forefinger finally, slyly probed her. She hiked her hips in shameless wanting, and he obliged, taking his time to please her, to tease her, to milk her restless yearning to a fever pitch.

"Take me Tiger," he murmured, "make me yours."

So you can leave me again?

For an embarrassing moment, her eyes filled with tears. She was aghast at her traitorous rise of sentiment. A woman like her couldn't afford to feel. If caring for Cass had been unwise as a whore, it was sheer lunacy as a Pinkerton. Cass excelled at many things, but fidelity wasn't one of them. He was the minstrel of charm, the sensei of seduction...

And the wizard of pleasure. An exquisite, aching kind of pleasure that could leave her shattered in a jumbled heap of emotions she didn't dare explore. His expert caress fanned her inner fires in a way that no other man's could. Friend and foe, lover and rival, student and master—that was Cass. When the stars faded and daylight bloomed, she could count on him to ride away. Because that's what the Rebel Rutter
always
did.

She squeezed her eyes closed.

She blocked out the hurtful memories.

Hugging his shoulders tighter, she locked her ankles over his buttocks. He shuddered as her hips sank, driving his sleek, slick length into her smoking core. She delighted in the erotic sensation of rubbing bellies and the sinful indulgence of sensitized nipples, dragging through silky man fur. His heart beat a wild, ecstatic cadence against her breasts; her blood thrilled to the surge of his pleasure.

With each rhythmic pump of her hips, she reveled in the corded strength of his thighs and the primal power of his thrusts. He was like her mountain, her Gibraltar. On the outside, icy green tidal waves buffeted her body; on the inside, a firestorm crashed and flashed, raining stars and comets on her senses.

And then came the explosion. Crackling, sizzling, her awareness rocketed through a heavenly storm.

Cass staggered, gasping her name. He clutched her heart fiercely to his, burying his face in her hair. Only a desperate act of will could silence the rapture that wanted to rip from her throat in wild, fearless song:

Always yours, I shall be,

Born for you...

He must never know,
she warned herself sternly.
He must never, ever know...

"Sadie." He was panting. "How could you not tell me you were a Pinkerton?"

Emotionally drained, physically spent, she slid from his hips. She hadn't expected her knees to buckle. He caught her waist from behind, and for one precious moment longer, she leaned against him, serenaded by the thrumming of his heart.

"Here," he murmured.

The button swung before her tear-glazed eyes. She swept aside her sopping hair, and he fastened the chain around her neck.

Then he turned her shoulders to face him. His fingers, warm and tender, steadied the bauble where it nestled among her freckles, just above her cleavage. She gazed down at his big, sun-bronzed hand, and another forbidden frisson of feeling threatened her composure.