Tucker’s Claim Read online

  A step closer and the mystery of Crockett’s disappearance was solved. He lay curled on the bed. His tail thumped as Tucker came over and scooped him up. With a sleepy little yawn, Crockett snuggled into his arms. Tucker sniffed. The puppy smelled of soap. At least Sally wasn’t so softhearted that she would invite fleas into her bed.

  He took the puppy downstairs and let him out. Crockett immediately went about his business before bounding back in and sitting down in front of Tucker, his eyes drooping pathetically, clearly looking to be picked up again.

  Tucker folded his arms across his chest. “Less than a week in her company and already you’re spoiled.” The pup made a rumbling noise in his throat, thumped his tail, yawned again and started to slump. Tucker swore and picked him up.

  “Don’t get used to this,” he told him as he carried him back into the house. “For one thing, you’ll soon be too big to be carried everywhere.”

  He got a sloppy kiss across his chin in response to his warning.

  “Ugh.” He wiped his chin on his shoulder. “You’re a hunting dog, for crying out loud. The good life isn’t for you.”

  Any more than it was for him, but the knowledge didn’t stop him from walking back into the house, didn’t stop him from breathing deeply of that subtle, complex scent he associated only with Sally Mae as he closed the door behind him. It always made him think of moonlight and springtime. He climbed the stairs and paused at her bedroom door.

  Damn, now she had him waxing poetic. He really was in bad shape.

  He pushed the bedroom door open with his foot. Crockett looked toward the bed and whined.

  “Oh, no,” Tucker whispered.

  Crockett looked up at him with liquid brown eyes. Damned if there wasn’t quite a bit of his daddy in him. More than once, Boone had wheedled a biscuit from Tia with just such a look.

  “Don’t even try it. It’s the floor or nothing.” Crockett moaned and flopped to the floor. Tucker took off his gun belt, folded it and set it out of the pup’s reach on the dresser. Next he stripped off his shirt and kicked off his boots. The right one immediately fell under attack by puppy teeth. Tucker sighed. There was a soup bone on the floor, half-under the bed. Apparently Sally Mae had been battling Crockett’s teething tendencies also. He took the boot away and nudged the bone over. Crockett accepted the substitution with a ferocious growl.

  “Remember. This is just for tonight.”

  Crockett paid him no mind. Tucker shucked his pants and lifted the covers and slid beneath. Sally Mae stirred, turned as the mattress dipped. He expected her to scream. Instead, she smiled and, as her arms came around his neck, whispered his name. “Tucker.”

  He curled her tighter against him with a flex of his arm, sliding his hand down her back as the rightness of holding her sank to his bones. Despite telling himself no good could come of these stolen moments, that he was only begging for a world of hurt down the road, he brushed his lips across the top of her head, “Who else?”

  Her sleepy chuckle was as soft as the movement of her hand across his chest. “No one else.”

  Her fingertips found his nipple. Dawdled. “Thee shouldn’t be here.”

  He smiled and breathed in the scent of her shampoo. Damn, it felt good to hold her, smell her, laugh with her. “Gonna kick me out?”

  She snuggled in. “I don’t have the strength.”

  Neither did he, which probably explained why he didn’t catch her hand when it traveled down his ribs and across his abdomen in a clinical exploration. His cock didn’t care how she touched him, just that she did. It jerked up to tap the back of her hand when she probed his pelvis.

  “The only part of me that hurts is about six inches lower,” he informed her.

  “Thee are sure?”

  He caught her hand and brought it down, his breath hissing through his teeth as her fingers curled around his cock. She gave a little squeeze. Lightning streaked under his skin. It was hard to find his voice.

  “Very sure.”

  He skimmed his fingertips up the ladder of her spine as she nibbled her way down his body. Her braid trailed over his wrists in a sultry connection. “But you might want to check for yourself.”

  “Yes, maybe.”

  “Just remember the windows are open.”

  Her teeth grazed the layer of muscle slabbing his stomach. “Then thee will have to be very quiet.”

  It didn’t take brains to figure out her meaning. She found a spot just inside his left hipbone that shot all sorts of sensations straight to his cock. His curse skated his control. She laughed and touched her tongue to it again. Wrapping her braid in his hand, he held her to him, sliding his foot up the bed, shivering as the cotton of her nightgown caressed his inner thigh.

  Sally looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “I did not sleep for worry.”

  What could he say to that? “I’m sorry.”

  “When I got tired of worrying, I started to think.”

  Her grip shifted and moved down to the tight sack of his balls. The heat seared.

  “About what?” The question came harder than he wanted, but the delicate way she squeezed his balls made smooth speech impossible.

  “About how good a man thee are. About how good I feel when I am with thee, and how very much I missed thee.”

  He could see the remnants of worry in her eyes. He touched his finger to the faint circles beneath. His skin was very dark against the fairness of hers. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “My choices are mine.”

  It mattered. He traced her cheekbone to her jaw, tipping her face to his. “Then make smart ones.”

  Holding his gaze, she rubbed her cheek against his cock, the inherent submissiveness in the gesture rippling along his desire. He could do anything he wanted to her and she would let him. The knowledge splintered into white-hot desire as she pressed the softest of kisses against the tip of his cock. “I do.”

  With steady pressure on the back of her head he kept her mouth there, touching but not engulfing, teasing but not delivering. “I should be shot.”

  “Thee should be loved.”

  “Not by you.”

  Pain flickered in her eyes, followed just as quickly by that stubborn look with which he was familiar.

  “Tonight I am what thee have.”

  “I can still leave.”

  It was a weak retort and her victorious grin said she knew she had him.

  “I have been very patiently waiting for thee.” Her tongue stroked up the underside of his cock, tickling just beneath the head. “Will thee give me what I want as my reward?”

  He’d give her anything she goddamn well wanted. “What do you want?”

  Her smile sent his heart racing and his cock jerking against the moist pad of her tongue. “Thee.”

  Another pass of her sweet tongue. Another tiny kiss to the crest that had his hips arching off the mattress and then she looked up at him, his cock tucked into the hollow of her throat, her breasts snuggled against his balls. Her eyes filled with understanding. “I would take the violence from thee, Tucker, and give thee peace.”

  His heart twisted. His past was steeped in blood. His future looked no different. He balanced her chin on his fingertips. “You have no idea who I am.”

  “As thee do not know me, but we are drawn together.”

  The truth hung between them, strangers yet lovers, separated by differences and yet drawn together by an illusive, magical possibility.

  Tucker slid his hands over Sally Mae’s shoulders, lingering on the delicacy of the bone.

  “We couldn’t be more wrong for each other.”

  “Yet we have been presented with this opening.”

  He cupped her breasts in his palms. She shivered and the nipples pulled into tight beads. He watched the spread of goose bumps over the creamy white of her skin. “You said that before. What exactly is an opening?”

  There was an infinitesimal pause and then the plain truth
. “An opportunity to grow.”

  “If we grow like this, Sally, there’ll be no going back.”

  “I have decided that forward is the way I want to go.”

  Each word spread over the sensitive tip of his cock. Ah, damn, she was so sexy. A pearly bead of fluid formed on the tip. He waited to see what she would do. Leaning forward, she scooped it up on her tongue, holding it so he could see before swallowing.

  Son of a bitch. He held her mouth to him, helpless against the moist temptation as she sucked him deep. “I can’t give you what you want.”

  She let him go with a soft pop and loving squeeze that milked a groan from him. “But thee will give me what thee have, Tucker McCade. I won’t settle for less.”

  She might not settle for it, but she would regret it. He knew that just as he knew there could be no future for them. But they had right now, and now had the burn of passion sanctioned by the intimacy of the night. The plump nubs of her nipples gave easily when he pressed them into the soft flesh behind. The last of his resistance faded with her soft mewl of pleasure. He could never get enough of the way she filled his hands, as if she’d been made for them. He couldn’t get enough of those sexy little sounds she made when he pinched her nipples just so, or of the sheer joy he felt to be with her. “Then take me.”

  “Yes.”

  She did. Without hesitation, without fear, without anything between them except the burn of desire. He was supposed to be taking her, but as her lips slid down his shaft, the truth rippled through him—she was taking him. One excruciating inch at a time. He held her, hips lifting off the bed as he struggled to get deeper. He had to get deeper, had to hold on to this moment for the time when there would be just memories.

  And she took him, accepting every thrust, every pump of his hips—deeper, harder, faster—making demands of her own, pumping his cock, squeezing his balls, sucking until he had no choice but to give her his seed, his loyalty, his passion. He shuddered and held her, his body aching, her name a chant in his mind. His Sally, his moonbeam. And she held him, too, with gentle kisses along his cock, soft strokes along his abdomen and an even softer chuckle.

  “Thy control is not what it should be. I think thee have started a scandal.”

  Shit. He remembered the note. A hint of unease went up his spine. “Anyone who heard will know enough to keep their mouths shut.”

  Or he’d shut them up. He tugged her up alongside him, still struggling to catch his breath after that soul-shattering orgasm.

  Sally Mae settled into the crook of his shoulder as though she belonged there. Her hand covered his heart. “That is good because thee obviously can’t.”

  He fell asleep laughing.

  9

  Sally Mae woke to Tucker’s lips on the back of her neck and the cool brush of his fingers between her buttocks.

  “What are thee doing?”

  “I’m getting ready to go.”

  She pressed back into the dark seduction he wielded so effortlessly. “I might point out that doesn’t feel like leaving.” His fingers centered on her anus, pressed. His promise of that second night whispered in her ear.

  Next time you’ll take all of me here.

  “This,” she whispered, just the thought stealing her breath, “is getting ready for hello.”

  “You think?” His teeth grazed the tendon along her neck. Goose bumps sprang up along her back. He chuckled as his finger parted the tight muscle the tiniest bit.

  “The time for hellos will be tonight. Leave the back door unlocked.”

  “Why? Locks never seem to slow you.”

  “True.”

  She turned her face into his forearm and kissed him gently. A second finger joined the first, bringing on that first erotic bite.

  “Oh.”

  “Like that, did you?”

  Saying yes was giving away too much. Saying no was too ridiculous, considering how she was pushing back.

  “That’s my girl. Push back. Take more.”

  She’d take everything he had to give. She proved it as his knuckles slipped inside. Her muscles locked down hard. She needed more.

  All his delicious muscle against her back went absolutely still. “Shit.”

  He wanted it, too. “Are thee sure thee can’t stay?”

  She knew the question was unfair as soon as she asked it. Asking him to stay was asking him to risk his life. It was wrong to invite such trouble into a man’s life just because she hungered for the pleasure he could give her.

  “Make it worth my while.”

  The edge of his teeth resettled against the cord of her neck. Memories of their last time together broke over her common sense. It would be so easy to let herself believe that maybe exposure was worth the moments with him, but the reality was, it wasn’t. For her, the repercussions would be unpleasant. Men would call her names if they saw her leaving her house. Men even might try to take advantage. Women would certainly scorn her. But Tucker? For Tucker, the repercussions would be far more deadly. Tucker, they would hunt down like a rabid dog. And when they caught him, they’d put a rope around his beautiful neck and hang him. A lot of things were forgiven out here in the territory, but a man with Indian blood touching a white woman? Even she, with all her Quaker ways, knew they wouldn’t tolerate that.

  She knew better than to say that to Tucker, though. Tucker had his pride, and a rebellious streak that gave him a tendency to thumb his nose at personal danger. She struggled to contain her instincts, to stop the involuntary flexing of her inner muscles. “I think I would rather savor the anticipation.”

  The heel of his hand pressed against her buttocks. “You wouldn’t be fretting about my health, would you, Sally Mae?”

  Reaching back, she curved her fingers over his shoulder, holding him to her as tightly as he was holding her. Maybe even with the same tenderness. This affair was getting out of hand.

  “Considering it would be my time that would be spent restoring thy health, I consider it a good investment.”

  He laughed, a soft sound that was pure seduction. She imagined the glint in his eyes, imagined they would be slightly narrowed in a way that indicated high feeling. Tucker was hard to read unless a person understood his ways, but there were signs if one knew what to look for.

  She moaned as his fingers left her. Where before she’d felt unnaturally full, she now felt unnaturally empty. It was always that way with Tucker. At first what she thought was too much ended up being just a teaser. The mattress shifted as he stood. Before she could ask what he was doing, he was back. Something round and hard and slick slid between her cheeks. Shivers of something—dread, anticipation?—tingled up her spine.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a little something to remember me by.”

  “Little?” It didn’t feel little. “I’m not sure…”

  His lips brushed over her nape, his breath fanning the sensitive nerve endings there. He was so good at finding those inconspicuous spots that could leap to such incredible sensitivity. Always knew just how to trigger them.

  “But I’m going to be very sure all morning as I think about you wearing this. How open and ready you’ll be for my cock when I come back later.”

  “Thee want me to wear this all morning?”

  He pressed harder and delicate muscles separated to embrace the now-familiar burn that should have been pain but was always pleasure. “Yes.”

  “And what will you do all morning, while I—” she gasped as he gave a little twist, working it deeper “—suffer?”

  He nudged aside her braid. “I’ll be hard as a rock, imagining finally getting to slip it from you, imagining how easily you’ll take me afterward.” A hot, biting kiss pressed between her shoulder blades.

  Her shudder was part arousal and part fear. But mostly arousal. “What is it called?”

  “The woman who gave it to me used a name I couldn’t begin to pronounce in a language I don’t understand, so how about we just call it a toy?”

  She cl
enched the pillow to her chest as he pressed harder, stretching her just a little farther. Reaching out, she grabbed his arm and tugged. He wrapped it around her chest and pulled her back against him. “Toys are fun.”

  This wasn’t fun. This was too dark, too erotic, too…much…to be fun.

  His lips skimmed her neck and his teeth tested her earlobe with the same deliberate delicacy that the toy tested her rear. “Do you want me to stop?”

  She should. Oh, heavens, she should. His hair fell over her shoulder. Between her shoulder blades she could feel the weight of the bullet he always wore around his neck. A reminder of who he was. What he was. Violent. Tender. Sexy. “No.”

  But she wanted to wish ill upon the woman in his past who’d taught him such sexy games.

  He kissed her shoulder.

  “Good.” The pressure increased. “Just a little bit more, moonbeam. Just take a little bit more.”

  Lowering her head to his forearm, she twisted it from side to side, but not in denial. She wanted this. And as her body opened, so did her heart. “It’s too big.”

  Another of those sexy laughs. “It’s supposed to be big. It’s supposed to remind you of me.”

  “Lands.”

  She opened her mouth against the strong muscles of his forearm as the pressure reached the fine line between pleasure and pain.

  “This is the worst. Just take this last little bit.”

  She shook her head at the impossibility.

  “Bite down if you need to.”

  She did, hearing him swear as the last of her muscles gave up the unequal battle. Shock rippled through her. Her muscles clamped on the narrower section at the end. She couldn’t breathe for a heartbeat, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but absorb the intimate reality, while Tucker swore against her shoulder, his hand cupping her rear, his fingertips sliding through the wet folds of her pussy to find her clit to circle the hard nub in sensual reward.