tell.”
“Live and let live?” he repeated caustically while he stared at her lips, making her wonder what it would be like to kiss him. “Except for former lovers who test your temper, you mean?”
The taunt ignited her fury in one second flat and made her wonder why she speculated about his kisses. Before she realized what she’d done, she plowed her manacled fists into his belly, forcing him to double over and gasp for breath. When he reflexively lowered his head to protect himself, she upraised her bound hands and smacked his chin. His head snapped back as he stumbled and fell into a graceless sprawl.
Chapter Three
Lori wheeled around to escape from the infuriating marshal who tormented and humiliated her to no end. She yanked on the leash, hoping he’d lose his grasp, but he held on tightly. She yelped when he jerked hard, pulling her off balance. Before she hit the ground, he was looming over her, looking as fierce and deadly as any four-legged predator she’d ever encountered.
“Don’t try to escape because you’ll never win,” he growled harshly.
“If I hadn’t been half-starved these past few days, I’d have had the strength to put up a better fight,” she blurted before she could bite back the remark.
“It was fight enough, hellion. But it damn well better be the last because I won’t go this easy on you next time.”
“You call this going easy?” She gave an unladylike sniff and glared in defiance.
“If you get on my bad side, honey, I guarantee that I will make your life miserable,” he said menacingly.
“I suspect that all your sides are bad sides,” she countered before good sense warned her to shut her mouth.
Curse it, her knee-jerk reaction was to sass him. It was like asking to die. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t restrain her rebelliousness when he looked so ominous.
“I just gave you a test and you failed it.”
She grumbled under her breath. She should’ve known he’d purposely provoked her. And she was too sensitive to everything he said and did. Consequently, her temper got the better of her and she’d reacted the same way she did to men’s unwanted advances. She fought back. It was a natural reflex.
“Not only are you willing but also quite capable of violence,” he told her as he eased down on her hips to restrict her movement. “You provoked me to retaliate,” she muttered begrudgingly. “You bring out the worst in me.”
“I’m left to wonder if your former lover refused to marry you and that’s why you shot him.”
“That is not what happened and I don’t like you at all, Gideon Fox,” she said with a spiteful hiss.
“I can live with that.” He stared intently at her. “Are you carrying his child and he rejected you?”
His suspicion outraged her. “No, I’m not!”
To her further frustration, having Gideon sitting on her in such a suggestive manner left her thoughts galloping off in the most improper direction. She could not possibly be attracted to this maddening marshal…could she? He taunted her, provoked her, tested her…and still she lay here wondering how she would respond if he leaned down and kissed her, despite the stubble of his five o’clock shadow that had progressed past the shadow stage days earlier.
She’d gone insane. That was the only logical explanation.
Her emotions were in the worst possible turmoil. An unknown assailant had shot at her accidentally. Tony had died tragically. Two hired hands from the stage station—and maybe the killer himself—were chasing after her. She’d gone to Gideon Fox for protection and he had arrested her.
Fool that she was, she’d looked to him for comfort and support and he believed her to be guilty—without bothering to open an investigation.
Her thoughts scattered when his raven head moved deliberately toward hers. The air practically popped and crackled between them as he settled his sensuous lips over hers. The scrape of his whiskers was in direct contrast to the surprisingly gentle manner that he stole the breath right out of her lungs. His tongue glided into her mouth and he breathed new life into her.
Lori closed her eyes involuntarily. When he settled suggestively on top of her, the tension melted from her body and she instinctively shifted beneath him, unsure what she wanted or needed, but she definitely needed something his mind-boggling kisses only hinted at.
This man—her sworn enemy who believed the worst about her—was not supposed to taste like heaven or make her feel these warm, throbbing sensations that left no part of her body untouched. But he did.
Before she realized what she’d done, she looped her bound hands over his head and emulated his arousing technique. Suddenly she was ravishing his mouth as he’d ravaged hers. She matched him, kiss for impatient kiss, using everything he had unknowingly taught her. She hoped he felt half as devastated as she did while they were chest-to-chest, hip-to-hip and kiss-to-breathless-kiss.
She shifted restlessly as he nudged his knee between her legs. The erotic sensations he incited took on a life of their own as she breathed him in, tasted him, teased him as he teased her with tantalizing kisses that seemed to go on forever.
His hands moved over the fabric covering her breasts and she arched helplessly into him when the fire of desire burned brighter, more intense. She forgot to breathe when his hand settled between her legs, touching her in that secret place where she burned for him the most.
Then, while she lay breathless, yielding and starving for something she couldn’t name, he reared back, nearly jerking her arms from her shoulder sockets. Scowling, he grabbed her wrists and pulled her bound arms over his head. He stared at her with the strangest expression, as if she had somehow betrayed him. Though why he would think any such thing made no sense to her. Honestly, nothing about the last few minutes made any sense to her.
“I suppose I just failed another of your mysterious tests, Marshal Fox,” she said, her voice nowhere near as steady as she’d hoped. “I consider it very unfair that you don’t give me time to study for these spur-of-the-moment tests.”
His expression transformed into a scowl as he hauled her to her feet and set her away from him. He said not one word as he shepherded her back to where Clem was tethered to his horse and the tree, then tossed her unceremoniously on Drifter’s back. Then he tied her hands and feet in place.
While they rode toward camp, with Clem in tow, Lori forcefully discarded the memory of kissing Gideon Hard-Hearted Fox for all she was worth and of him kissing her back with the same wild, reckless desperation. She fixed her attention on the three marshals guarding the wagon where five outlaws sat cross-legged in a six-by-eight-foot jail cage.
“This is what the first level of my private hell looks like,” she murmured to herself as they approached camp.
It’s what she deserved for kissing Gideon Fox…and liking it so much.
Gideon cursed himself up one side and down the other for his unprofessional mishandling of Lori’s escape attempt and the subsequent embrace. Damn the woman! She’d stunned him by knocking the air out of him. If she’d hit him harder with her doubled fists she could’ve broken his
