Kate Wingo - Western Fire 01 (23 page)

Knife in hand
, she left their encampment and made her way along the overgrown path, her passage illuminated by a pale moon shining in the southern sky.

As
she neared the clearing where she’d earlier seen the prisoners, Mercy exhaled a gusty sigh of relief, grateful that there were no armed guards on duty. Evidently, Bloody Ned didn’t think there was much danger of the prisoners escaping.

Hearing
her approach, one of the bound men opened his eyes. Mercy immediately put an index finger to her lips, imploring him to remain silent. Although he wore a wary expression, he nodded his head.

It only took a few moments for
Mercy to cut through the hemp rope and free the prisoners. She then hurriedly counseled them on which direction to travel to avoid a run-in with the bushwhackers. About to take her leave, she impulsively handed Spencer’s pistol to one of the men before wishing them Godspeed.

Worried that Spencer might come looking for her, Mercy rushed back to
their encampment. Before returning to her bed pallet, she surreptitiously slid the skinning knife under the wagon seat.

A few moments later, as she slipped
under the covers, she couldn’t help but smile. She’d managed to free Bloody Ned’s prisoners without anyone being the wiser.

A
chorus of bird song roused Mercy from a deep sleep, the cheerful patter reverberating throughout the wooded glen.

Opening her eyes, she
could see that dawn was still several minutes away, their encampment shrouded in shades of gray. As had happened the previous morning, Mercy found herself draped across Spencer’s torso, their limbs entwined together. Whether by accident, or design, Spencer had placed their bed pallets on the other side of a fallen tree, giving them a small measure of privacy.

When, a few moments later, she
shifted her weight, the movement caused Spencer’s eyes to slowly open.

“Mmm, that feels good,” he drawled, his lips
curving into a sleepy smile.

It took Mercy a moment to realize
that she’d unwittingly lodged her hand between his legs, her palm resting squarely on the crotch of his pants.

Afraid to move, s
he stared at Spencer’s face, transfixed. As her heart pounded against her breastbone, Mercy wantonly envisioned that day in the barn, and the way that Spencer had thrust his hips against her as he’d implored her to intimately touch him.

“I’m only going to say this one time,” Spencer
said teasingly, his heavy-lidded gaze sweeping down to the woolen blankets that were tangled between their hips. “That’s a mighty dangerous place for a lady to rest her hand. Why, there’s no telling what might happen to her if—” He stopped abruptly in mid-sentence when she gently tightened her grip. “Christ Almighty.”

Nervously, Mercy moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue
. It was all the invitation that Spencer needed.

Removing her hand from between his legs, Spencer pinned it to the side of her face. Then, in one agile move, he rolled on top of her, snugly fitting his hips between her thighs.

A shudder passed over her, Mercy unable to control her response. Unable to do anything other than arch her back, hoping,
praying
, that Spencer would take what she so freely offered. When his lips grazed the length of her neck, she entwined her fingers in his hair, pulling him toward her breasts.

Sensing
her urgency, Spencer laid siege to the buttons running down the front of her dress bodice, his fingers nimbly slipping the wooden buttons free of their moorings. That done, he shoved the coarse homespun fabric aside. In the next instant, his mouth seized upon the nearest nipple, his hand cupping the underside of her breast as his tongue coaxed the little circle of pink flesh into pebbled hardness.

As he suckled her,
Mercy writhed beneath him, the sensation exquisitely pleasurable, just bordering on pain. There was a wildness about Spencer, an uninhibited savagery as his mouth moved to the other breast.

With a trembling hand, Mercy pulled at his shirt, frantically trying to pull it free from his
trousers. More than anything, she wanted to feel his skin beneath her fingers, to explore the muscled strength of his chest and back. Spencer lifted his torso, allowing her to yank his shirttails free. Not about to waste time fumbling with the buttons, she shoved her hands under the well-worn fabric, greedily clutching at his shoulders.

“Wrap your legs around my waist,”
Spencer husked.

Mercy tried to comply, but
couldn’t, her skirt tangled beneath her. Cursing under his breath, Spencer hoisted himself to his knees. He then yanked her dress to her waist, exposing her drawer-clad legs. Before resettling himself between her hips, he slid both of his hands under her buttocks, possessively molding his fingers around the two rounded halves. His need to mate as fierce as hers, he tilted her bottom, firmly nestling his swollen erection against her woman’s mound.

“Can you feel that?” he panted. “Can you feel how much I want you?”

Unable to speak, she nodded her head. Then, acting on wanton urges that she had no control over, Mercy tightly cinched her legs around his waist.

“I’ve been dreaming about this for the last two nights,” Spencer muttered, his hands still
molded around her bottom. Pumping his hips, he rhythmically mimed the mating act.

“I
dreamt about it, too,” Mercy confessed, whimpering when Spencer slid a hand between her legs.

As he finagled
his fingers between the slitted opening in her drawers, she lifted her hips in silent invitation. Obliging her, his fingers deftly glided over her moist folds.

“Please, Spencer
. Don’t make me wait any longer,” Mercy pleaded as she fumbled with the top button on his trousers.

“Who
said I was gonna make you wait?” Grunting, Spencer shoved her hands aside, his fingers making quick work of opening his trousers.

Not bothering to remove her
drawers, he thrust into her.

Mercy stifled a gasp, taken abac
k by the near painful friction as Spencer stretched her wide open. With each push of his muscled hips, he inched deeper into her.

Tears pooled in her eyes. He was
too hard. Too thick. She didn’t know how much more she could withstand.

Spencer smothered her panic-stricken whimpers with a full-bodied kiss, removing his hands fro
m her hips to cradle her face.

“You gotta relax for me, honey, okay? I promise it’ll feel good if you just relax.”

Hearing the tender note in his voice, Mercy willed her muscles to relax. Just as he promised, her body finally gave way, allowing him full penetration, the pain replaced with a pleasurable throb.

Spencer took several
deep breaths. Then, lifting himself onto his forearms, he slowly started to pump his hips. In a state of bliss, Mercy sighed.

No more than a few seconds had passed when Spencer suddenly stopped
in mid-motion.

Without warning, he shoved a hand
over Mercy’s mouth, silencing her.

“Somebody’s coming!” he warned, as he unsheathed himself from her body. Lifting his hand from her mouth,
Spencer reached for his gun belt.

Terrified, Mercy grappled with her open dress bodice, buttoning it as fast as she could.
A few moments later, Spencer audibly groaned as Dewey charged pell-mell into the camp.

“What the hell are you doing up so early?”
he irritably growled at his brother as he dragged a woolen saddle blanket over his hips.

Inundated with shameful embarrassment, Mercy glanced
at the wagon, relieved to see that her family had yet to stir. What would she have done if Prudence, or Gabriel, or, God forbid, her mother, had decided to wake earlier than usual? What kind of power did Spencer McCabe have over her that she would throw caution to the wind in so brazen a fashion?

“Spencer, you got to come quick,”
Dewey unceremoniously announced. “Ned needs to see you and Mercy on the double-quick!”

“Can’t it wait?”

Dewey’s face turned beet red. No doubt, he just realized that it wasn’t their sleep he’d interrupted. “Ned says that if you aren’t there in five minutes, he’s gonna—”

“All right. I get the point.” Spencer pushed himself into a
seated position, wincing as he did so. “Mercy, you go with Dewey. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

“B-but, Spencer, I don’t . . . don’t understand,” Mercy sputtered, baffled by his refusal to accompany her.

“You don’t understand a damned thing about men, and that is the gospel truth,” he muttered. Then, grazing his fingers across her cheek, he said in a gentler tone of voice, “I just need to catch my breath, so to speak. You go with Dewey. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

Mercy scrambled to her feet
. To add to her further embarrassment, her cotton skirt hung on her body in a myriad of crinkled folds and pleats. Reaching for her boots, she slipped her feet into them, quickly tying the laces. Not having so much as a wooden comb to her name, the best she could do was braid her hair in a single plait, securing it with the same scrap of fabric that she’d ripped from her shirt the previous morning.

Finished with her hasty toilette, Mercy followed
Spencer’s brother through the wooded glen. Although Dewey had given no reason for the early-morning summons, she was fairly certain that she knew why Bloody Ned wanted to see them. No doubt, it had to do with the missing German prisoners. Because no had witnessed her freeing the prisoners, she had little to fear.

Upon entering the clearing, Mercy could see that the dying embers from the previous night’s bonfire still smoldered
and that a large number of men had congregated around it. As she and Dewey advanced, they turned en masse to glare at her.

In that instant
, terror sank its claws into Mercy’s heart.

“Just the lil
’ lady I want to see,” a voice loudly boomed. Turning her head, Mercy inwardly cringed as Bloody Ned Sykes shoved his way to the fore. “You can run along now,” he said to Dewey. “I got no quarrel with you.”

Rooted in place,
Dewey made no move to leave. Clearly, the youth was reluctant to leave Mercy alone with so many hostile men.

“I’ll be all right,” she assured him
, forcing a smile onto her lips. While she appreciated the boy’s gallant impulses, it was more important that he return to their camp and warn the others.

Turning on his booted heel, Dewey wordlessly
strode away from the clearing.

“And what quarrel could you possibly have with me?” Mercy inquired of the bushwhacker chieftain,
deciding to take the bull by the horns.

Sykes unholstered a pistol, the other men in the crowd following suit. With revolvers in hand, they completely encircled her, blocking off all means of escape.
Filled with a dread fear, Mercy found herself staring into the deadly muzzles of nearly a dozen revolvers. Enough fire power to put the fear of God into even the most craven of sinners.

“Somebody done paroled my prisoners,” Sykes growled,
aiming his revolver directly at Mercy’s heart. “And I aim to find out who did it.”

“Surely, you don’t think that
I
had anything to do with that,” Mercy retorted, desperately trying to hide the fact that she was scared to death. Never in her life had she been the target of so much focused hatred.

“The way I see it, once a damned Yankee, always a damned Yankee.”

Lifting her chin, Mercy said, “I never laid claim to being anything else.”

Just then,
Kid Mooney elbowed his way to the front of the crowd. “I say that’s proof enough that she did it,” the juvenile declared angrily. “Hell, let’s just kill her and be done with it.”

“But I have committed no crime!”
Mercy exclaimed fearfully.

“An
d I say that you have!” Mooney retorted, waving his pistol in her face.

Rather than answer his charge, Mercy kept
silent as she frantically weighed her options. If she admitted to freeing the prisoners, not only would she be killed, but more than likely her entire family would be slaughtered. If, however, she veered from the truth, she might be able to keep her family safe from harm.

“Perhaps those men weren’t . . . weren’t set free,” she
suggested, no longer able to keep her panic at bay. “Perhaps they managed to escape all on their own.”

“T
’aint likely.” Reaching behind his back, Bloody Ned yanked several pieces of rope out of his waistband, slapping them against Mercy’s chest. “These were cut with a knife. Which means that those Dutch bastards had help.
Now
what do you have to say for yourself?”

Very little, indeed, given that Sykes and his cohorts seemed to have a
lready passed judgment on her. Peering at their furious faces, Mercy feared that rather than shoot her, these bushwhackers might very well tear her apart, limb by limb.

Nervously twisting her hands together,
Mercy said, “I . . . I . . . only. . . .”

“Leave her be. She didn’t do it.”

Hearing that low-pitched declaration, the circle of men backed away, allowing Spencer room to enter their ranks. Shoulders squared, he strode to the front of the crowd, his expression one of barely bridled rage. Gone was the ardent early-morning lover. In his stead was a well-armed gladiator, ready to battle anyone who crossed his path.

Bloody Ned scowled fiercely.
“How do you know she didn’t do it?”

Spencer’s lips
curled in a humorless smile. “Don’t see how she would have had the time considering that she was squirming under me all night long.” His crude reply met with several sly guffaws. Glowering, Sykes speared the guilty offenders with a murderous glare, instantly silencing them.

“Well, if she didn’t do it then who did?”

Spencer shrugged. “Some of their German kinfolk, more than likely. I reckon they waited until we got good and drunk, then they sneaked in here and cut those Dutch fellas free.”