naturally, he’d punished her by kissing her—and inadvertently punished himself to the extreme.
Hell and damn! Was he out of his mind? Must be. There was no other reasonable explanation for his inexcusable behavior. Unless you counted being bewitched by a wicked siren that lured him into the depths of forbidden desire and left him drowning in erotic pleasure.
Gideon was thoroughly ashamed of kissing her—and yearning for another taste of her. He’d tested her temper on purpose and he’d provoked her to retaliate. Unfortunately, he’d also discovered that no matter how mad she made him, he couldn’t resist kissing her lush pink lips, sinking into her soft body and skimming his hands over her tantalizing curves and swells.
Gideon decided he was more than ready for a mental and physical break from the grueling demands of chasing fugitives, sleeping with one eye open and standing at the ready to fight for his life. Dealing with criminals who’d just as soon kill him as look at him was wearing him down. Hence, his absurd reaction to the lady renegade he toted to camp.
When he reached camp, every pair of male eyes zeroed in on Lori. Her trim-fitting clothing called entirely too much attention to her tempting body. Fellow marshals and outlaws alike drooled and fantasized about doing the same thing he’d done several minutes earlier.
He had no reason whatsoever to feel protective or possessive, just because he’d impulsively kissed this seductive woman who was wanted for murder.
You’d think the charges against her would be deterrent enough. But no, he’d ignored common sense in his reckless desire to taste her and touch her.
Gideon shifted his attention to Pecos Clem, who was glaring hot pokers at his two cohorts—the men Gideon had forcefully persuaded to give up their leader’s hiding place.
“Nice work, Fox,” Deputy U.S. Marshal Stephen Wilson remarked while he made a close inspection of Lori’s feminine assets—and she had plenty of them, damn it. Then Phen dragged his eyes off her long enough to glance questioningly at Gideon. “Who is she, and does she have a few sisters who look just like her?”
The other men snickered at Phen’s question…until Gideon said, “This is Lorelei Russell. Remember the name?”
The three marshals studied her speculatively then frowned. A moment later Deputy U.S. Marshal Noel Perkins strode over to untie Pecos Clem’s feet from the stirrups then hauled him to the ground. “Your friends have been missing you, Clem. Glad you can join them.”
Dismounting, Gideon walked over to untie Lori’s feet. Instead of pulling her none too gently from the saddle, as Perkins had done to Clem, he clamped his hands on her narrow waist…and wished the hell he hadn’t. Touching her again, no matter how inadvertently or innocently, sparked fiery sensations and memories of their scorching-hot kisses. The minute her feet touched the ground he set her away from him, as if he’d been burned—because that’s exactly how he felt.
While she stared up at him, her golden eyes smoldering with anger and resentment, he turned away. He gestured to the three marshals who waited introduction.
“Lorelei Russell, these are my compatriots. Phen Wilson, Noel Perkins and Mitch Hines. They ride for Parker, same as I do.” He gestured toward the jail wagon. “Two of the men in the cage are with Pecos Clem. The other three are Chester Felding, Leland Bates and Ambrose Thomas. They are wanted in Missouri for bank robbery and assault.”
Lori surveyed the scruffy men in the metal cage, then inwardly cringed at the prospect of being stuffed in the mobile jail with them. Felding, who had a square face, bulky shoulders and a missing front tooth, leered at her as if she were standing naked. Thomas, a frizzy red-haired, overweight prisoner with arms and legs like tree stumps, licked his lips as if she were his next meal.
Bates reminded her of a rat with his pointy nose, dark, beady eyes and scarecrow-thin features. His leer made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
Clem’s two cohorts were no better. The scraggly scoundrels ogled her unblinkingly, making her squirm uncomfortably.
Repulsed, she shifted her attention to the three deputy marshals who scrutinized her closely. Better the devil I know, she thought, glancing sideways at Gideon. Then again, she might find compassion in one of the other lawmen.
She hadn’t found it in Gideon Tough-As-Nails-Fox.
Lori tossed around a polite smile to Phen Wilson, the lanky, blond-haired marshal with pale blue eyes, high cheekbones and a cleft in his chin. He looked to be thirty-five or thereabouts.
Noel Perkins was about the same age as Phen Wilson. He had straight brown hair and hazel eyes. He was thick-chested, stocky and not as tall as Gideon, who towered over everyone.
Mitch Hines had a friendly smile and Lori hoped she could count on him for the simplest of necessities during her captivity. She nodded a greeting to Mitch, whose gray eyes swept over her in careful assessment a second time. His sandy blond head was a little too big for his narrow shoulders, but she predicted he was quick of foot and as agile as a cat.
She wouldn’t want to get into a footrace with him during an escape attempt—if and when she could manage one.
The impulse to flee suddenly assailed her and she shifted restlessly from one scuffed boot to the other.
“Don’t even think about it,” Gideon murmured, as if he’d read her mind, damn him. “The odds are not in your favor. There isn’t an incompetent lawman in the bunch.”
“The odds are against me no matter where I go,” she grumbled. “You refuse to listen to my side of the story and you won’t accompany me home to investigate.”
When he infuriated her by tugging on the rope leash still attached to her metal bracelets, she glared holes in his broad back. Lori had never felt so outraged and powerless and she never wanted to feel this way again. It was humiliating and exasperating and she blamed all her woes on Gideon Fox.
He was so blasted mistrusting and cynical…and it incensed her to no end this bullheaded marshal physically appealed to her. She thought she had better taste in men!
“What are you going to do with her?” Phen Wilson asked. “We can’t cage her with those men and you damn well know it.”
Gideon glanced this way and that. “We’ll stake her out under a shade tree,” he suggested.
Perkins glanced over at Lori and frowned. “That sounds a little harsh. She’s a woman.”
“A woman wanted for murder,” Gideon reminded him. “She didn’t show her last lover much sympathy.”
Lori stamped her foot in frustration. “He was not my lover,” she protested. “He was my friend and I didn’t kill him. For all I know my friend was hiding out in the territory, like your prisoners, and a bounty hunter identified him, shot him and claimed the reward for Tony after I left. I might have been cleared of this disastrous mistake—” she doubted it, but there was an outside chance “—but Marshal Fox refuses to take me back to find out for certain!”
As the other three marshals stared pensively at her she kept talking, hoping to sway them into being lenient and volunteering to check out her story. “Please consider that I’m upset about Tony’s death. It’s bad enough that he proposed and I turned him down right before someone ambushed him and very nearly shot me in the
