9. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

O ne of Junior's least favorite tasks on a ranch was punching a trocar and cannula through the sides of cattle suffering from gassy bloat. The animal would bellow in pain as the deadly gasses were released from its distended abdomen. This was usually done as a last resort but was in the animal's best interest; such a diagnosis could be fatal within fifteen minutes of its first symptoms.

Junior felt akin to a bovine with gassy bloat, uncomfortably obstructed by his many secrets. His shame. Confiding in Isa provided Junior an unexpected relief, a sharp stick to the side with a blade, releasing mortal pressure. The weight of it—the burden —peeled away from his body, molting a heavy skin he'd suffered beneath for ten long years.

Beside him on his worn bedroll, Isa was silent. Usually, her response to anything was as fast as a rattler strike—sometimes in warning, sometimes a fatal hit. Strangely, she didn't seem to be pondering the best way to strike him. She sat, hugging her legs tightly, as though he was the one who had doled out the blow. Flames licked along the logs he'd found, red light giving Isa's dark-blonde hair an auburn sheen.

"I never knew," she said finally.

"I regretted it the second I did it." He touched the smaller scars peppering the column of his neck. "Thank God Lucy followed me to see what I was up to. She got one of the ranch hands to cut me down." He remembered every detail. Lucy's fragile strength beneath him, holding his legs and pushing him high enough to put slack in the rope. Her screams for help. Hay, stacked high in the loft, floating everywhere—in his hair, in his clothes. The ranch hand, Crew, sawing at the rope when the noose wouldn't loosen from Junior's neck. Junior still couldn't believe he'd done it. If Lucy hadn't followed him to the loft…

"Have you told Ben?" Isa had inched closer to him, so close he could see the tips of her brown lashes framing translucent hazel eyes.

"I told him when he asked. He made me promise not to do such a thing again. To tell him if I ever felt like repeating history." A burning farmhouse, an old haunt, flickered in his mind's eye.

"Good. Add me to the list of people you're forced to talk to if you get those feelings again." Isa said it sternly.

He wanted to scoff at her. To smile. But he couldn't. Discomfort quickly replaced relief, and he wanted to change the subject to something else— anything else. His attention drifted over to her, falling to the inch of cleavage above her white undergarment.

Guiltily, he looked away, clearing his throat. "You wanna borrow one of my shirts or something?"

Her mouth, soft and dewy from chewing her lips, parted in affront. The gentle concern hardened. "No, I do not wish to borrow one of your shirts."

"I was just asking—"

But she was a coiled rattler again, striking for the jugular. "Did you stop drinking around the time you stopped whoring?"

"Christ, what kind of question is that?" He reeled back from her, singeing his blanket with his cigarette. Quickly, he dabbed the last of it out and stowed it away for later.

"I heard a man can catch more than just a good time from a painted lady," Isa added, heedless of his mortified groan. "Did you know that coital-related maladies men catch from scarlet women can make their peckers swell up like a—"

Junior clapped a hand over her mouth, unable to believe his ears. "What in God's name are they teachin' you at that school?" he bellowed.

She ripped his hand off. "College didn't teach me that; David told me about it. He said they studied such things on both living people and cadavers in medical school. Consider yourself lucky you never caught anything. Or did you?" Her scrutiny drifted lower, searching for a tell-tale sign that he had a few important parts missing or maimed.

He was sick to death of hearing about David. His ears turned hot enough to steam. "No, I haven't caught anything from whores, not that it's your business. And if you won't put a shirt on, go back to your side!"

Sparks flew from her eyes, and she defiantly thrust out her chest, putting her breasts further into relief against her neckline. "They're just bosoms! Every woman has them."

"I don't care if your precious David has them; they need to be covered up." He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling panicked.

More ruffled than ever, Isa snapped, "It's not my fault you can't keep your eyes to yourself. I bet you like looking at them, and that's why you want them covered up."

"You're bein' a brat." She was too close, within arm's length. It would be too easy to wring that long, skinny neck. "You can't just say everything you think to men, damn it!"

Her nose went in the air. "I can say whatever I want. It's reasonable that your proclivity for big bosoms is because you grew up a mama's boy—everyone knows mama's boys take forever to get off the tit."

It was the wrong thing to say. Junior had been ribbed for being a mama's boy his whole life, and it was the surefire way to prick his temper. Through a haze of irritated fury, he gripped her body with strong hands and pulled her over his thighs.

"Junior!" she shrieked. "Don't you dare!"

"It's about time someone gave you the licks you deserve," he growled through her struggles. Swat! Swat, swat! Each strike of his palm on her upraised derrière incensed her more. His arm was an iron bar over her back, and her maddened shrieks cut through his ire like hot iron dipped in water. She had morphed into the aggravating brat she used to be, pulling pranks on him and her brother and then caterwauling when she got her just deserts. Mirth replaced righteous anger until he shook with it.

Suddenly, strong teeth bit the muscle of his outer thigh.

Hard.

Shouting in pain, his grip slackened, but she'd no sooner scrambled to her knees than he was flipping her to her back on his bedroll. They scrapped in his blankets for what felt like hours, and it was worse than trying to catch a greased pig. Straining and grunting with the effort of overpowering without harming, he asked, "Where did all that catch-as-catch-can practice get you, huh?" The words hadn't left his grinning lips before she rolled him. She had the upper hand for two seconds before she was flat on her back again. Half on his bedroll, half on the grass, Isa was neatly pinned, his body heavy upon hers. Her thighs were indecently spread, feet trying to find purchase, until her long legs eventually wrapped tightly around his hips to offset his center of gravity.

Junior was as unbudging as a thousand-year-old boulder in a field.

"Cry Uncle," he said in her ear.

"Never," she gritted, red-faced and straining, her hair coming loose. She tried to shove him off with her forearms. But no matter how she pushed on his shoulders, chest, or neck, she couldn't move him.

It almost made him feel guilty. Almost. "Yield, half-pint. I figured you'd get better at wrestling as you got older, not worse."

"Oh yeah?"

Her face was close, so close. Her mouth reached up, and Junior's smile froze. Was she about to…

Isa licked his face from jaw to temple.

Of the hat of tricks she had, licking was the dirtiest. She well knew that other people's spit filled him with disgust. Dog drool was a close second. The wet warmth of her tongue along his cheek, the incredible closeness of her face pressed against his, made his body immediately respond. He was already painfully aware of all her soft places pressing against him, but now his nerve endings flared to life. The wriggling body beneath his had stilled, and he sensed her smiling from ear to ear even before she lay back in the grass. She was waiting for revulsion followed by surrender. But he wasn't repulsed. His blood was simmering in his veins. He felt primitive. Furious. Isa's smile faded, and her crinkled eyes widened until the golden depths became something turbulent. Wild. Breathing hard, she struggled against his weight—she felt as weak as a kitten beneath him—and only managed to squirm towards the top of his bedroll.

With this action, her undergarments slid down, revealing more of her breasts. Junior looked down at them helplessly; her nipples were hard and dusky just beneath the neckline. Tension thickened between them, and only the rough sounds of their panting broke the lull. His eyes dragged from her breasts to her mouth, the crisply defined upper lip, the lusciously pink lower that curved sweetly, begging to be bitten. Black pupils spread, catlike, inside her citrine irises. He was very aware of her thighs around him, cradling his hips. His belt buckle was flush against her most private parts.

When her back arched sharply beneath him, he was unsure if it was to get away or get nearer. He lowered his mouth, no longer in control of his faculties. Isa strained against him—and accidentally bumped his mouth with hers. Had it been an accident?

The barest hint of softness took possession of his intoxicated mind.

Junior lowered his lips, molding them tightly to hers until their mouths were one. Slanting his head, he pressed her head deeper into the grass and bedroll, plundering her lips until they opened. The smooth slide of her tongue made a silken entrance into his mouth. He met it with his own, feeling the kiss not just inside his mouth, but lower, where he was hard and thick beneath his denim trousers. Their tongues mated in a sensual glide, and their hands gripped each other closer, fingers rigidly curled into suddenly constrictive clothing. She tasted sweet, and he drank her in like he was both starving and fatally thirsty, knowing he could survive on this kiss alone.

It went on forever. Junior barely came up for air, his eyes closed, their mouths finding a rhythm that started at a leisurely pace and then increased in both pressure and speed. The interior of her mouth was hot, her tongue tangling boldly with his. Even with kissing, she imbued confidence. Challenge. The rougher she became—fingers threading hard in his hair, lips and tongue demanding—the deeper inside her he wanted to go.

He wanted to go so deep she'd finally be still. She'd stop challenging him and would lay there, overwhelmed. Limp with surfeit.

Fantasies of overcoming Isa, of her giving in to him, dissolved whatever reason had remained in a mind already mindless with lust. His body was damp with sweat. Tense. The pulse in his cock was more insistent than his own heartbeat. It throbbed, uncomfortably hard, too full for the delicate skin encasing it, and he slid up a little to press the straining clasp of his jeans against the notch between her legs. It was relief and torture in equal measures.

Isa made a soft, fierce noise in the back of her throat.

Clothes off , he thought savagely, his dominant hand reaching purposefully toward the breasts that had plagued him since Austin.

A log rolled off the fire, throwing a shower of sparks into the air. Flames soared, startling them so that their flushed faces turned as one toward the fire, eyes blinking at the sudden blinding light.

What the hell are you doing, Stone?

Junior was moving before Isa had caught her breath. Before she could decide to be disgusted. He sat up, eyes fixed and forehead creased. His trembling fingers scraped through his hair, his palm rubbing his forehead, but the lines remained. While he tried to calm his racing heart, she sat up, observing him. Guilt swiftly cooled his ardor, but even with the shame of what he'd been doing to his best friend's little sister, a part of him was tempted to turn back to her. To finish what they'd started.

Isa began to unbraid and re-braid her tangled hair. The normal activity she did several times throughout the day focused him. Made breathing easier.

"You should see your face," Isa commented, her voice husky in the silent woods around them. She appeared coolly rational as she slipped her leather band between her teeth.

"What?" Junior risked fully looking at her, but it was like seeing a priceless piece of art he'd defaced. He'd ruined something precious. Broken it because she was wild and alluring, and he was a fool with no resistance against her.

"That was not my first kiss. And it certainly wasn't yours." She tied the leather around the curling tip of her braid. "You don't have to look so upset. You'd think your favorite aunt had died."

It felt as though his favorite aunt had died. He smoothed the lines of his face. Shuttered his eyes. "We can't do that again," he said hoarsely, thinking what it would do to his friend if he'd seen them a minute ago.

Isa shrugged, picking bits of grass and leaves from her skirt. Faint red marks marred her arms and neck from their scuffle. "We won't."

"If Sol found out—"

Her sudden laughter startled him. "Oh, please, as though I'd say anything. The world won't fall out from under us because of one insignificant kiss."

Junior mouthed the word. Insignificant .

She stood and dusted her backside off. Despite her bravado, he could see the pulse flickering in her neck. It was racing. "It wasn't even that good. I suppose this is why friends don't kiss."

Another line formed on his face, between his brows. "‘It wasn't even that good,'" he echoed, trying the words. Testing them. He heard them as clearly in his mind as though they'd been announced through a megaphone.

No one had ever told him his kiss "wasn't that good" before.

"No," she said above him, looking down at the top of his head. "Was it good for you?"

"Hell no!" he said vehemently, staring determinedly at the fire.

Liar . They were both rotten liars. He could still feel her. Still taste her. He licked his lips.

"Excellent," she said brightly, practically skipping to their supply pile. He wished for a limb to wedge between her ankles, tripping her. "Would you like it if I read some more Sherlock Holmes?"

Junior made a noise that could have been assent or denial.

"Good. We'll probably discover who the killer is."

BEFORE THE SUN made its sleepy appearance over the horizon, Isa woke to the sound of scuffling. Straining to see in the dark, Isa felt around for her gun belt.

"Lie down," Junior hissed across the banked coals.

Half-asleep, she whispered, "Is it coyotes?

"Sh," was his reply, and the cock of his pistol cracked loudly in the tense quiet.

Mirage whinnied in the distance, and Isa came to full attention. Her horse sounded very far away. Too far.

"Damn it," Junior cursed, and she heard him get to his feet. "Stay down. I don't want to shoot you."

She followed orders but twisted her head, listening. It was dark as pitch.

Cursing louder, Junior uncocked his pistol. The sound of their mule's and horses' hoofbeats disappeared in the distance, headed east on the main road. At least two riders yipped and shouted, urging them on.

Someone had just stolen their horses.