Playing For Keeps (Montana Men) (17 page)

He touched the brim of his hat. “Yes, ma’am, hurry’s my
middle name.” Rafe understood her silent communication. She needed him, if for
nothing more than to hold her in his arms and love her with his hands and
mouth. By God, he was the lucky man honored with that privilege and he aimed to
please. “Lock the doors, baby. Don’t open them for anyone.”

She shivered. “I won’t.”

Rafe adjusted the front of his jeans. Hell, discussing
them making a baby had made him hard as an iron bar. He ducked his head and
headed across the highway to the all-night diner flashing its red and blue neon
sign. Rafe wondered if he’d ever stop getting hard whenever he was near his
wife.
His wife.
He savored the sound
of those two words. His wife. His woman. Hell, his dick twitched just at the
thought of the words.

He didn’t think any man had ever had the hots for a woman
the way he did for Lacey Blackstone
—
McCord
. He had to remember she was Lacey
McCord now. Starting tonight, he intended to burn the memory of the Blackstone
name from her heart and out of her mind.

He didn’t want her to remember being anyone’s wife but
his. He didn’t want her to recall the nightmare of her last year with Danger.
He wanted the memory of the other man permanently erased from their life. There
was nothing left to bind the sheriff or Lacey together, nothing but bitter
memories, and the loss of their son.

Rafe grinned. He intended to blot Danger out of her life
forever, make new memories with Lacey, ones that bound her to
him
until the day he died. If it was
within his power, neither he nor Lacey were ever returning to Rimrock, Montana
again.

Chapter
Fourteen

Even psychopaths have emotions, then again,
maybe not.

~
Richard Ramirez

Blackstone Ranch

Rimrock, Montana

February 17, Tuesday

Three hours and thirty minutes after the
assassination…

Smitt
Davis was fully awake and alert when the barn door squeaked open in the wee
hours of the morning.
Fuck!
How was a
man supposed to sleep when it was cold enough to freeze off his balls, and
people kept coming and going at all hours on the Blackstone Ranch?

First,
Lacey darling and that sonofabitch she’d left Danger for
—
she probably fucked the big man, too,
maybe even right here in the barn.
She’d been pregnant by someone other
than her stud of a sheriff husband, the cheating bitch. That much information
he’d cut out of her while he was slicing her belly open.

No
matter how many times he cut her, she’d refused to give him the name of the man
she’d screwed. It was no wonder he went a little crazy torturing her.

After
Lacey darling and her
fuck
buddy left
the sheriff’s ranch, one of the Remington ranch hands dropped by to check on
Danger. Now, the invalid sheriff was prowling around in the barn like some kind
of feral cat hunting a mouse. Hell, why couldn’t he remain in the house with
his new bride, instead of coming out here and disturbing
his
rest?

Inside their stalls, the horses tramped and snorted,
welcoming the early hour visitor with soft knickers. Smitt’s upper lip curled.
Stinking animals. All they did was eat, snort, piss, and shit. He detested
them. If he didn’t need warm shelter out of the snowstorm, which apparently had
no end in sight, he’d light a match to the barn and cook the fuckers.

But he didn’t loathe the four-legged shitters nearly as
much as he despised being stranded in this lousy weather, or the man standing
below near the stalls, disturbing his solitude.

A sneer flitted across his lips. How he ached to go down
there and taunt the sheriff, tell him just how good it felt to titty-fuck
Lacey. Describe to him in detail the many times he’d run the knife slowly
across her belly, and how he’d taken great pleasure in killing that screaming
brat, Joseph.

One day soon he intended to give the sheriff the graphic
details of everything he’d done to darling Lacey, and more, he intended to tell
Danger just how deep Smitt’s role was in destroying his life.

He stood in the deep shadows in the loft above and peered
down at the sight below him. Smitt liked existing on the edge of his victim’s
world, waiting in the gloom, an undetected, underworld figure. Furtive.
Unheard. He thrilled to the fact he knew things the sheriff had no clue about.
Soon. Very soon he’d share his wealth of information and watch the hotshot
lawman squirm.

Like a spider lurking, watching and listening, Smitt
waited. Waited. Waiting. Always waiting, always requiring patience. He liked to
plan his moments of attack, catch his targets with their defenses down.
Unguarded. Like now.

Right this moment, Danger was still weak from surgery.
Still confused. His mind was shattered from the attack on Lacey, and the loss
of his son and sister. Perfect. It meant the know-it-all sheriff wasn’t paying
attention to the little things going on right under his nose.

And oh, there was more to come. Smitt could hardly swallow
back his glee. He wanted to dance. Laugh. Hell, he felt like kicking up his
heels. Oh what surprises lay in store for the smart-ass, cocky lawman. Smitt
grinned and licked his lips. Oh yes, his little game of cat and mouse had only
just begun. So much more to come, but he was nothing if not patient. Waiting
was part of the thrill, part of the game, his perfect little game.

And the anticipation was a major turn-on.

He enjoyed matching wits with the smart bastards around him
—
the high and mighty Remingtons with
their power, money, men, and snobbish women. Hell, he’d walked right up on
Kaycee and Jace and their little blanket party. He’
d nailed the
sonofabitch too, brought Jace to his knees.

If Kaycee, the interfering bitch, hadn’t had that
damn gun crammed in her boot, he’d have finished Jace off and then she’d be
seated at
his
table where she
belonged. Her belly would be near to bursting with the three babies she carried
that belonged to him.
Him!
His
swimmers were the ones that raced up inside her and pumped her up real good.
The babies belonged to him. He intended to have them. Jace was trying to steal
what belonged to him. Well he wouldn’t let the big man win.

And Danger Blackstone, who hadn’t been able to keep his
cock in his pants and remain faithful to Lacey darling, would have been just as
dead as the rich and mighty King Remington, but his plans had gone a little
awry with Lacey’s rescue.

No matter. Everything would get back on the right track
soon. He snickered. If the sheriff only knew what surprises lay in store for
him.

Oh yes, a joyous day was coming, and it was right around
the corner. It gave him a sense of supremacy to know he knew something
important—something the sheriff, with all his fancy investigation, failed to
discover. Smitt smiled. He couldn’t wait to see Danger’s expression when he
realized just what was going on under his nose.

He felt as if he was akin to God, the one with the power
to grant life or death, to share information or keep it his sweet secret was a
thrill Smitt couldn’t begin to explain or purge. There was only one way to
cleanse and that was with smoking, hot sex.

The one big mistake he’d made was Lacey darling. He hadn’t
meant for her to survive. She’d been in the way of his plans. Even if Joseph’s
screaming hadn’t shattered his control, his intent from the start had been to
remove Lacey and that bratty kid of hers out of the way. He’d only succeeded in
one of his goals. Killing the sheriff’s sister was a bonus he hadn’t
anticipated, but oh, it’d given him such a high.

When he dumped Lacey darling in the well, he’d thought she
was dead, but no, the bitch had still been breathing. He should have put a
bullet in her brain before tossing her in that cold, black hole.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize he’d got rid of her
real fast. Too fast, maybe, but he’d been in a hurry to find Kaycee. Dumping
Lacey in that well had been fun and easy, but every time he’d thought about
her, something niggled at him. He kept thinking he’d seen her tits move with
the faintest of breaths right before he sent her body over the lip of the well.

Unable to leave it alone, he worried she was still alive.
He knew it, felt it in his bones. He’d gone back to check, to ease his mind,
and nearly got caught for his efforts.

Deep inside, chills had rushed through his blood when he
watched the chopper lift off with her, the big man holding her like she was
something special to him. He’d known immediately that man was the father of the
baby he’d ripped from Lacey’s womb. There had been something very intimate
between them.

Smitt licked his dry lips and rubbed his crotch, recalling
the fun he’d had torturing Lacey. Damn, he should have fucked her that day, but
things had got a bit out of hand, a bit out of focus. All that blood. Lacey’s
blood. How it excited him.

Painting her kitchen wall in red letters with her blood
had been like celebrating Christmas. He’d slipped over the edge a little, doing
things to her he couldn’t even recall, but he knew it was things that hurt her,
made her bleed, and he knew he’d thrilled to every second of pain he inflicted
upon her, savored every drop of blood she lost. Her pain. His pleasure.

He always went over the edge into darkness when he
tortured his victims, but that day with Lacey darling, he sank a little deeper
into the madness than he ever had before. Still, after his fun, he should have
made certain she wasn’t breathing.

Instead of tossing her in that old well, he should have
dumped her in the woods. Left exposed to the elements, weak and bleeding, the
wolves and bears would have finished the job for him.

Lacey, bitch that she was, had stubbornly clung to life,
and now he knew there was a reason. She was meant to be
his
, forever in his cave, one of his brides. Yes, he wanted her
back, to keep her. She’d proved she was a survivor. There were very few women,
he’d discovered, worthy of sheltering and incubating his seed. Kaycee Remington
was a fighter. He wanted to give her the honorable position of being seated to
his right, and now Lacey had earned the slot to his left.

But there was only one woman good enough to sit beside him
at the head of the table. His queen.
His
wife.
He grinned. His sweet, sweet wife. One day soon, she’d take her rightful place
beside him. The king and queen, and his females, each carrying a child he’d put
in her.

In the meantime, Kaycee was married and settled right here
in Rimrock where he kept a close eye on her. Wife to Jace Remington and heavily
pregnant with triplets, babies he knew were from
his
powerful seed and not from Jace’s weak loins
—
she wasn’t going anywhere.

Lacey
—
he’d
either have to go get her, or figure out a way to force her back here where she
belonged. Yeah, Smitt liked that idea. Force her back to where she
didn’t wanna be—right here in Rimrock, under Danger’s nose. Under
his
. He’d show the bitch where she
belonged, and just who she belonged to. First, he had to kill the tall man.

Smitt rubbed his hands together in anticipation. Yeah.
He’d cut off the man’s dick and shove it down his throat for touching
his
Lacey darling.

A queen and a couple of princesses
—
how lucky he was to have found his
perfect queen, and now they had a family. They’d sit at the table, right where
they all belonged. Soon. Very soon. The other six brides
—
the other six he still had to find, but
he wasn’t as particular about them as he was the first three.

Feeling smug at the way he’d outsmarted Danger, Smitt
hugged his shoulders and rocked back and forth. Listening to the sheriff talk
to the horses in soft murmurs annoyed him. It distracted him from his daydreams
of Lacey and Jace’s bitch of a wife. One day he’d ram a knife so deep in the
sheriff’s kidney Danger would piss blood for the rest of his life. How he
savored the thought of killing the tough lawman.

Smitt watched Danger move from stall to stall, patting and
soothing the paints. The sheriff was oh, so fucking proud of them. Smitt
listened to how he coaxed them to eat from his hands and whispered their names.
Hell, it was enough to give a man a hard-on the way the sheriff sweet-talked to
those critters.

Smitt balled his hands into fists at his sides, and
focused his full attention on the sheriff’s wide back. How easy it would be to
take him. He smothered a laugh, and tallied in his mind the last few months and
weeks of Danger’s dismal life—w
eak, a bit
rattled over the loss of that screaming brat. Still uncertain of
the role his new wife plays in his future.
Newly divorced. Ex-wife not only slept with another man right there in his
home, but became pregnant by other man. Ex-wife sexually abused and sliced and
diced on the kitchen floor. Dead son. Dead sister. New wife. New baby on the
way. Brawl in the hospital with tall man over ex-wife. Brain surgery. Against
medical advice, checked self out of hospital just hours after surgery. Motor
skills still not up to scratch. Brother-in-law not speaking to him. Twin
brother pissed at him. New wife nagging about decorating the house to suit her
personality. Ex-wife off with new husband to begin a life of wedded bliss.
Smitt
snickered. New husband would likely have ex-wife knocked up pronto. Aww, the
sheriff had definitely had a few rough patches lately. Smitt could barely
contain his glee. Lordy, he’d walked right inside the lawman’s home today,
walked in, and hid inside the guest bedroom. Neither Danger nor his new wife
had been any the wiser.

Hell, he’d even heard them having make-up sex. He’d got so
hard he’d ended up dragging his cock out of his jeans and whacking off. The
satisfaction he’d felt when he spilled his seed on the fancy new candy-pink
comforter Danger’s recently acquired wife had bought, and put on the bed just
that morning, had been beyond description.

He left a condom trailing on the bed, too, just to be
certain one of them discovered the little gift he’d left staining the
comforter. While they showered, he grabbed some food from their fridge and
skedaddled back to the barn. There, he settled in for what he planned as a few
days relaxation right under the stupid sheriff’s nose.

While he’d hid in that bedroom, he listened to them argue
all day over changing the decoration and furnishings from the way Lacey darling
had done them. Smitt grinned. Hell, much as he hated to agree with Danger
Blackstone about anything, he had to admit sweet Lacey had far better taste in
furnishings than the sheriff’s badgering new wife.

He snickered. How funny that Danger’s bride won the
battle. He’d gloated over the way the sheriff caved, giving into her wheedling.
Danger had stormed away telling her to do whatever the fuck she wanted.

Smitt smothered a laugh. All was not rosebuds and
champagne in the Blackstone home. On the other hand, Lacey darling had appeared
happy as a duck on a pond with her handsome new man.

Damn it. The big man had kissed her. He held her
possessively when the fucker had no right. No right to touch what belonged to
him
. Smitt sucked on his bottom lip.
When he learned Lacey darling had married the tall man from Texas, he’d been shocked.
Texas. A big state for a big man, but he had his name now. No more mystery.
Rafe McCord.